Earning Hearts of Wood - post U20

[RedOrm]

I am wondering, and I'm sure this has already been asked, but why is it a CHOICE now? If I run a saga, doing quests I greatly dislike or that are boring, I don't want to have to choose between XP and comms. That seems inane, and I don't like it at all. Has this been addressed yet?

Again, sorry but I'm not reading through 30 pages to see if this has been asked, therefore ensuring it probably HAS been asked. If Glin could update the initial post with some FAQs I know a lot of us would be grateful. There's not a toilet comfortable enough to read 30+ pages to get to a question you want asked.

It's been asked and ignored repeatedly. One more thing where we would like an answer but are not getting one.

Greetz,
Red Orm

[karl_k0ch]

Along those lines, for over a year DDO has not been adding to the Twelve tokens reward system, quite the opposite, and we will continue to deprecate this system over time.

That's not true. The Master's Gift requires Greater Tokens of the Twelve and was introduced this Spring.

[Lauf]

I wonder why you can't just tie Heroic TR into Favor.

say 3000 or 3500 favor level get a free Heroic Heart and at the same time drop their price to around 500 TP.

The people who play through a life are going to be in that range generally especially if they aren't out there farming a handful of quests so little to no extra grind for them them to TR.

The stoners who are zerging the lives are going to be NOWHERE near that when they hit 20 so they either have to grind out a lot of quests they paid about $50 to skip having to run OR they will have to buy one. The core here is that Heroic TR's don't use ANY currency to purchase in game.

At $15 that makes a life cost about $65 and for many that simply might be too much to ask but at a mere 10% more I am thinking a great many will indeed bite on that.

Leave the Iconic and Epic fairly where it is now (though adjust the pricing PLEASE) and even leave them BTC and I think you are OK.

you're overlooking the f2p players, who don't have anywhere near 3k favor available to them
so your solution essentially blocks them out of TRing, and is basically a way of telling them "put out or get out", which isn't good.
the advantage tokens/shards/comms w/e have is that they can be farmed, even if all you have is 1 quest to do it in
so over time, even a dedicated f2p player can TR.

[katz]

there are many great ideas on these forums to improve ddo. However that is not really the main goal of turbine, it is a business after all so lets talk profits.

There are pushy ways to do business which may compel customers to make purchases but leave a negative impact on them. Ddo is heading in that direction. It is really unnecessary as you have here a wonderful system already in place which could practically sell itself and become a much more popular game. Would you rather not have players spending money in excitement for what they are getting then bitterness for what they have to get?

There are many features we have been begging to buy. Monster manuals, more cosmetics, more storage, reagent bags, races, classes, housing, sex change, quests, raids. These are just a few off the top of my head. If you would sell us what we want you wouldn't have to trick us into buying what we don't.

Ddo is one of the most unique and complex games i have played. The character creation system alone is the main draw for many people. Sadly most gamers have never heard of this game. Why do you not (modestly) advertise? Something simple and cheap, marketing yourself as the complex mmo or the most customizable or unique or action based combat. Any of these marketing points would be a big draw for people looking for such a game. Flaunt the strengths ddo has. There is a real niche market there for this type of game and ddo is the only place to find it.

stimulate the sales of adventure packs;

while shadowfell conspiracy is very beautiful with great artwork and voice acting it is sadly not enough.
Most people buy packs for 2 reasons, loot and xp. Both of witch cost you nothing to increase. Why don't you?

what makes adventure packs desirable;

xp and loot

there is little to say about xp other than it should be increased if you want to make your adventure packs more enticing. If the new packs had something like von3 you would find eveningstar much less of a ghost town.

loot and how it affects the sales of adventure packs;

you have utterly destroyed the once brilliant and esteemed random loot system for no apparent reason. Not only is getting the same 4 suffixes a giant step backwards from what we knew and loved, the auction house is flooded with cheap random items that outclass most of the highest level named items. There goes any incentive to buy adventures for loot. Poor xp and meager loot have successfully rendered your new shiny expansion insignificant and undesirable regardless of it's quality.

Revert random loot to how it used to be when motu launched. It was perfect. We had a plethora of unique and exciting effects, we had composed weapon affixes, we had clickies. It was fun, but now loot is boring and therefor the game is boring. Everything we loot now is the same; retributive, doublestrike, ghostbane, deadly or accuracy. We have yet to hear any dev comment as to why you would butcher such a core aspect of this game. Revert random loot and scale it to be slightly less powerful then named loot of the same level. You will once again incentivise people to buy adventures for the sexy named loot. That is one of the biggest draws to mmos, i cannot stress that enough. People love named loot in these games.

Regarding the old packs, they were once the endgame epics. People would stay at 20, raid and farm for epic ingredients and all was wonderful. With the increase in level cap, 20 is nothing more than a pit stop. Those once sought after epic named items are nothing more then level 20 suboptimal named loot. Why do we still need to spend a year grinding for these ingredients when we are getting better random loot, regardless of how boring it is? If the old epic items dropped completed (like every other named item) it would add some value to these old packs. Another thing that made those packs attractive is the ability to work towards your reincarnation which is also being removed, further decreasing their value.

reincarnation

a very tricky feature to quantify. On one hand its current popularity is mainly due to the lack of an endgame, on the other it is ingenious, innovative and unique to ddo. Actually one of the most brilliant features in the genre.

Hearts of wood however remind me of sigils. They were removed because they were a roadblock to player retention. They created a false obstacle in front of players limiting the amount of time they could spend in the game. Hearts are now serving this purpose.

Since the current loot mess has rendered raids quite pointless and the high level quests offering very little, there is nothing else to do at endgame currently which is only exacerbating the importance of reincarnating.
Anything done to make the reincarnation process more difficult is going to limit the amount of time players remain customers.

Instead you have chosen to monetize this feature with a very unpopular saga system. A system designed to sell not only hearts but adventure packs in a very underhanded manner. The community knows this, and the disdain is going to drive even more away. If the above insights about adventure packs were implemented the sales of all adventures would rise and there would be no cause to create such an unpopular system, the players would not hold resentment but respect and elation.

qft ^

[Satyriasys]

you're overlooking the f2p players, who don't have anywhere near 3k favor available to them
so your solution essentially blocks them out of TRing, and is basically a way of telling them "put out or get out", which isn't good.
the advantage tokens/shards/comms w/e have is that they can be farmed, even if all you have is 1 quest to do it in
so over time, even a dedicated f2p player can TR.

I still like the idea. If a f2p really wants to TR he can buy enough content or a heart. He did say in his post to reduce the heart to 500ish

[Chaimberland]

The irony is that your new saga system for hearts would reduce the number of quests I run for tokens. Currently what I do is run circuits of sentinels (skipping black loch, which doesn't drop tokens), red fens, von, lod and da, plus challenges, PLUS RAIDS ON GUILD RAID NIGHTS. (eADQ, eVON, eChrono.) Do you really think it's a wise move to further devalue raids? They are the social centerpiece of many guilds: Guild Raid Night. It's easy to justify running an epic raid you otherwise need nothing from if you at least get a token out of it.

.

EllisDee brings up a good point. Instead of expanding the number of quests people run it will actually get narrowed. And if we don't get tokens/comms (whatever) in epic raids then what's the point? If you're going to go ahead with this plan of one currency then you better make it available in ALL EPIC QUESTS AND RAIDS! Please. To have it limited to just a few sagas would be disastrous.

[patang01]

I wonder why you can't just tie Heroic TR into Favor.

say 3000 or 3500 favor level get a free Heroic Heart and at the same time drop their price to around 500 TP.

The people who play through a life are going to be in that range generally especially if they aren't out there farming a handful of quests so little to no extra grind for them them to TR.

The stoners who are zerging the lives are going to be NOWHERE near that when they hit 20 so they either have to grind out a lot of quests they paid about $50 to skip having to run OR they will have to buy one. The core here is that Heroic TR's don't use ANY currency to purchase in game.

At $15 that makes a life cost about $65 and for many that simply might be too much to ask but at a mere 10% more I am thinking a great many will indeed bite on that.

Leave the Iconic and Epic fairly where it is now (though adjust the pricing PLEASE) and even leave them BTC and I think you are OK.

I like the idea someone had yesterday. A free Reincarnation for VIPs (1 of each flavor) (and I suggested per month) and something premiums can buy such as a permanent TR per month or whatever. Kind of like a buffet. Some people will only do the one Reincarnation per month if even that and it's just pure win win for Turbine and everyone and only a select few will be able to get all or more out of it.

That allows people to slowly build up valor (if that's the currency they're going for) while giving anyone the opportunity to reincarnate at their own pace with for profit in excess of that 'free' reincarnation.

Most likely this would lead to more VIPs and a more steady stream of revenue followed by a more amicable relationship between customers and Turbine with me and others giving them plenty of money for the service.

[Alavatar]

We also believe there are legitimate reasons for both choices and why one or the other is better for gameplay or fun, many of which have been expressed by various players recently.

What does Turbine believe are legitimate reasons for BtC Commendations of Valor?

I would still like to understand what Turbine believes are legitimate reasons for BtC Commendations of Valor. Who knows, we might end up agreeing with you.

But, currently, I don't see any compelling reason.

[Chaimberland]

EllisDee brings up a good point. Instead of expanding the number of quests people run it will actually get narrowed. And if we don't get tokens/comms (whatever) in epic raids then what's the point? If you're going to go ahead with this plan of one currency then you better make it available in ALL EPIC QUESTS AND RAIDS! Please. To have it limited to just a few sagas would be disastrous.

Forgot to mention that for casual players like myself, it is hard to run an entire saga in one sitting. Where as it is much easier for casual players to run a couple raids in one sitting, either pugging or on a guild raid night. For example, running epic VoN, EDQ & Chrono back to back is much quicker than running all the EStar or GH quests for a single saga reward.

[Ebondevil]

Base Quest Level/Comms:
Level 21: EN = 10 CoV's, EH = 15 CoV's , EE = 20 CoV's
Level 22: EN = 12 CoV's, EH = 18 CoV's , EE = 24 CoV's
Level 23: EN = 14 CoV's, EH = 20 CoV's , EE = 26 CoV's
Level 24: EN = 16 CoV's, EH = 22 CoV's , EE = 28 CoV's
Level 25: EN = 18 CoV's, EH = 24 CoV's , EE = 30 CoV's
Level 26: EN = 20 CoV's, EH = 26 CoV's , EE = 32 CoV's
Level 27: EN = 22 CoV's, EH = 28 CoV's , EE = 34 CoV's
Level 28: EN = 24 CoV's, EH = 30 CoV's , EE = 36 CoV's

I decided to expand on my previous idea (See quote), it should be noted that my iontention was that half of the listed Comms should drop in the quest, and the other half should go to the saga reward.

However, to compare this to the current system:

1 Heart = 250 Comms or 20 tokens

This means the 1 Comm = 8 token fragments

Which leads to an average of 24 Token fragments per quest based on the 3 Comms per Epic Hard Quest average.

My proposal above would instead net the following equivalents in total (Quest reward and Saga reward combined):
Level 21: EN = 80 Fragments, EH = 120 Fragments, EE = 160 Fragments
Level 22: EN = 96 Fragments, EH = 144 Fragments, EE = 192 Fragments
Level 23: EN = 112 Fragments, EH = 160 Fragments, EE = 208 Fragments
Level 24: EN = 128 Fragments, EH = 176 Fragments, EE = 224 Fragments
Level 25: EN = 144 Fragments, EH = 192 Fragments, EE = 240 Fragments
Level 26: EN = 160 Fragments, EH = 208 Fragments, EE = 256 Fragments
Level 27: EN = 176 Fragments, EH = 224 Fragments, EE = 272 Fragments
Level 28: EN = 192 Fragments, EH = 240 Fragments, EE = 288 Fragments

Which means quests alone would net the following equivalents on average:
Level 21: EN = 40 Fragments, EH = 60 Fragments, EE = 80 Fragments
Level 22: EN = 48 Fragments, EH = 72 Fragments, EE = 96 Fragments
Level 23: EN = 56 Fragments, EH = 80 Fragments, EE = 104 Fragments
Level 24: EN = 64 Fragments, EH = 88 Fragments, EE = 112 Fragments
Level 25: EN = 72 Fragments, EH = 96 Fragments, EE = 120 Fragments
Level 26: EN = 80 Fragments, EH = 104 Fragments, EE = 128 Fragments
Level 27: EN = 88 Fragments, EH = 112 Fragments, EE = 136 Fragments
Level 28: EN = 96 Fragments, EH = 120 Fragments, EE = 144 Fragments

This means that you would never even get the equivalent of two tokens from a single quest, but would still make them viable to earn the rewards. While also making the saga rewards very appealing but not mandatory.

[SiliconScout]

you're overlooking the f2p players, who don't have anywhere near 3k favor available to them
so your solution essentially blocks them out of TRing, and is basically a way of telling them "put out or get out", which isn't good.
the advantage tokens/shards/comms w/e have is that they can be farmed, even if all you have is 1 quest to do it in
so over time, even a dedicated f2p player can TR.

A FTP can easily earn 500 TP from the favor they do have available to them. so they can buy it.

Now that said it's just about all they are going to be able to spend their TP on but that is OK too in my books. If you want to play 100% free to play then there should be some tough decisions to make. At 500 TP it might be enough for them to just buy that $9.99 package on sale for 2 tr lives and thus we turn them into premium without making them feel there is a gun to their head to do it.

[Thalmor]

I like the idea someone had yesterday. A free Reincarnation for VIPs (1 of each flavor) (and I suggested per month) and something premiums can buy such as a permanent TR per month or whatever. Kind of like a buffet. Some people will only do the one Reincarnation per month if even that and it's just pure win win for Turbine and everyone and only a select few will be able to get all or more out of it.

That allows people to slowly build up valor (if that's the currency they're going for) while giving anyone the opportunity to reincarnate at their own pace with for profit in excess of that 'free' reincarnation.

Most likely this would lead to more VIPs and a more steady stream of revenue followed by a more amicable relationship between customers and Turbine with me and others giving them plenty of money for the service.

Interesting idea, how about giving VIP a free Heroic Reincarnation at character creation or or everytime they TR a character back to level 1. But keep the other TR options as earned rewards. This way the is an extra incentive to go or remain VIP.

[CheeseMilk]

There are many great ideas on these forums to improve DDO. However that is not really the main goal of Turbine, it is a business after all so lets talk profits.

There are pushy ways to do business which may compel customers to make purchases but leave a negative impact on them. DDO is heading in that direction. It is really unnecessary as you have here a wonderful system already in place which could practically sell itself and become a much more popular game. Would you rather not have players spending money in excitement for what they are getting then bitterness for what they have to get?

There are many features we have been begging to buy. Monster Manuals, more cosmetics, more storage, reagent bags, races, classes, housing, sex change, quests, RAIDS. These are just a few off the top of my head. If you would sell us what we want you wouldn't have to trick us into buying what we don't.

DDO is one of the most unique and complex games I have played. The character creation system alone is the main draw for many people. Sadly most gamers have never heard of this game. Why do you not (modestly) advertise? Something simple and cheap, marketing yourself as the complex mmo or the most customizable or unique or action based combat. Any of these marketing points would be a big draw for people looking for such a game. Flaunt the strengths DDO has. There is a real niche market there for this type of game and DDO is the only place to find it.

Stimulate the sales of adventure packs;

While Shadowfell Conspiracy is very beautiful with great artwork and voice acting it is sadly not enough.
Most People buy packs for 2 reasons, loot and xp. Both of witch cost you NOTHING to increase. Why don't you?

What makes Adventure packs desirable;

XP and Loot

There is little to say about xp other than it should be increased if you want to make your adventure packs more enticing. If the new packs had something like von3 you would find Eveningstar much less of a ghost town.

Loot and how it affects the sales of adventure packs;

You have utterly destroyed the once brilliant and esteemed random loot system for no apparent reason. Not only is getting the same 4 suffixes a giant step backwards from what we knew and loved, the auction house is flooded with cheap random items that outclass most of the highest level named items. There goes any incentive to buy adventures for loot. Poor XP and meager loot have successfully rendered your new shiny expansion insignificant and undesirable regardless of it's quality.

Revert random loot to how it used to be when MOTU launched. It was perfect. We had a plethora of unique and exciting effects, we had composed weapon affixes, we had clickies. It was fun, but now loot is boring and therefor the game is boring. Everything we loot now is the same; retributive, doublestrike, ghostbane, deadly or accuracy. We have yet to hear any dev comment as to why you would butcher such a core aspect of this game. Revert random loot and scale it to be slightly less powerful then named loot of the same level. You will once again incentivise people to buy adventures for the sexy named loot. That is one of the biggest draws to mmos, I cannot stress that enough. People love named loot in these games.

Regarding the old packs, they were once the endgame epics. People would stay at 20, raid and farm for epic ingredients and all was wonderful. With the increase in level cap, 20 is nothing more than a pit stop. Those once sought after epic named items are nothing more then level 20 suboptimal named loot. Why do we still need to spend a year grinding for these ingredients when we are getting better random loot, regardless of how boring it is? If the old epic items dropped completed (like every other named item) it would add some value to these old packs. Another thing that made those packs attractive is the ability to work towards your reincarnation which is also being removed, further decreasing their value.

Reincarnation

A very tricky feature to quantify. On one hand its current popularity is mainly due to the lack of an endgame, on the other it is ingenious, innovative and unique to DDO. Actually one of the most brilliant features in the genre.

Hearts of wood however remind me of sigils. They were removed because they were a roadblock to player retention. They created a false obstacle in front of players limiting the amount of time they could spend in the game. Hearts are now serving this purpose.

Since the current loot mess has rendered raids quite pointless and the high level quests offering very little, there is nothing else to do at endgame currently which is only exacerbating the importance of reincarnating.
Anything done to make the reincarnation process more difficult is going to limit the amount of time players remain customers.

Instead you have chosen to monetize this feature with a very unpopular saga system. A system designed to sell not only hearts but adventure packs in a very underhanded manner. The community knows this, and the disdain is going to drive even more away. If the above insights about adventure packs were implemented The sales of all adventures would rise and there would be no cause to create such an unpopular system, the players would not hold resentment but respect and elation.

This is a very well-written and thought out post that deserves to not get lost in the mire.

[Ebondevil]

I would just like to note, that at the current rate of acquisition proposed by the developers (average 3/quest), that I would have more fun rolling up 60 characters and farming 100 favour on each of them, it would also take me less time to earn the TP to buy the heart through that method, than it would to grind out all the saga's 9 times over.

So even if the new Commendations are BtA, the Grind suggested to get them is currently completely ridiculous.

[patang01]

Forgot to mention that for casual players like myself, it is hard to run an entire saga in one sitting. Where as it is much easier for casual players to run a couple raids in one sitting, either pugging or on a guild raid night. For example, running epic VoN, EDQ & Chrono back to back is much quicker than running all the EStar or GH quests for a single saga reward.

It's close to impossible to find a PUG to stick around for more then 2 quests, let a lone an entire saga.

[Flavilandile]

there are many great ideas on these forums to improve ddo. However that is not really the main goal of turbine, it is a business after all so lets talk profits.

There are pushy ways to do business which may compel customers to make purchases but leave a negative impact on them. Ddo is heading in that direction. It is really unnecessary as you have here a wonderful system already in place which could practically sell itself and become a much more popular game. Would you rather not have players spending money in excitement for what they are getting then bitterness for what they have to get?

There are many features we have been begging to buy. Monster manuals, more cosmetics, more storage, reagent bags, races, classes, housing, sex change, quests, raids. These are just a few off the top of my head. If you would sell us what we want you wouldn't have to trick us into buying what we don't.

Ddo is one of the most unique and complex games i have played. The character creation system alone is the main draw for many people. Sadly most gamers have never heard of this game. Why do you not (modestly) advertise? Something simple and cheap, marketing yourself as the complex mmo or the most customizable or unique or action based combat. Any of these marketing points would be a big draw for people looking for such a game. Flaunt the strengths ddo has. There is a real niche market there for this type of game and ddo is the only place to find it.

stimulate the sales of adventure packs;

while shadowfell conspiracy is very beautiful with great artwork and voice acting it is sadly not enough.
Most people buy packs for 2 reasons, loot and xp. Both of witch cost you nothing to increase. Why don't you?

what makes adventure packs desirable;

xp and loot

there is little to say about xp other than it should be increased if you want to make your adventure packs more enticing. If the new packs had something like von3 you would find eveningstar much less of a ghost town.

loot and how it affects the sales of adventure packs;

you have utterly destroyed the once brilliant and esteemed random loot system for no apparent reason. Not only is getting the same 4 suffixes a giant step backwards from what we knew and loved, the auction house is flooded with cheap random items that outclass most of the highest level named items. There goes any incentive to buy adventures for loot. Poor xp and meager loot have successfully rendered your new shiny expansion insignificant and undesirable regardless of it's quality.

Revert random loot to how it used to be when motu launched. It was perfect. We had a plethora of unique and exciting effects, we had composed weapon affixes, we had clickies. It was fun, but now loot is boring and therefor the game is boring. Everything we loot now is the same; retributive, doublestrike, ghostbane, deadly or accuracy. We have yet to hear any dev comment as to why you would butcher such a core aspect of this game. Revert random loot and scale it to be slightly less powerful then named loot of the same level. You will once again incentivise people to buy adventures for the sexy named loot. That is one of the biggest draws to mmos, i cannot stress that enough. People love named loot in these games.

Regarding the old packs, they were once the endgame epics. People would stay at 20, raid and farm for epic ingredients and all was wonderful. With the increase in level cap, 20 is nothing more than a pit stop. Those once sought after epic named items are nothing more then level 20 suboptimal named loot. Why do we still need to spend a year grinding for these ingredients when we are getting better random loot, regardless of how boring it is? If the old epic items dropped completed (like every other named item) it would add some value to these old packs. Another thing that made those packs attractive is the ability to work towards your reincarnation which is also being removed, further decreasing their value.

reincarnation

a very tricky feature to quantify. On one hand its current popularity is mainly due to the lack of an endgame, on the other it is ingenious, innovative and unique to ddo. Actually one of the most brilliant features in the genre.

Hearts of wood however remind me of sigils. They were removed because they were a roadblock to player retention. They created a false obstacle in front of players limiting the amount of time they could spend in the game. Hearts are now serving this purpose.

Since the current loot mess has rendered raids quite pointless and the high level quests offering very little, there is nothing else to do at endgame currently which is only exacerbating the importance of reincarnating.
Anything done to make the reincarnation process more difficult is going to limit the amount of time players remain customers.

Instead you have chosen to monetize this feature with a very unpopular saga system. A system designed to sell not only hearts but adventure packs in a very underhanded manner. The community knows this, and the disdain is going to drive even more away. If the above insights about adventure packs were implemented the sales of all adventures would rise and there would be no cause to create such an unpopular system, the players would not hold resentment but respect and elation.

^this^

[patang01]

Interesting idea, how about giving VIP a free Heroic Reincarnation at character creation or or everytime they TR a character back to level 1. But keep the other TR options as earned rewards. This way the is an extra incentive to go or remain VIP.

Whatever works. If they want our money, give us a permanent value and that'll make us happier to spend more money. I mean if there was such a thing like buy a TR per month permanent feature for premiums it would be one of those investments that begged for a premium player not only to use it, but also spend more money to take advantage of it, like potions, timer resets, additional TRs after the first free etc.

Kind of like a 'cheap' investment for Turbine to hook someone on something they see a value in and will continue paying for. How about valor boost potions. Just drop valor in each quest, maybe a few more in FR quests and a bonus in sagas. Incentivice people to want to go for the better return and then a monetary boost to get a little bit more from it.

Add incentives, don't just FORCE people to take it or leave it.

[rest]

Take heart everyone! Someone is most certainly watching this thread as a post I made celebrating the post that faydingsun posted seems to have vanished somehow. That means they're still reading! (Maybe.)

[ArcaneArcher52689]

I would just like to note, that at the current rate of acquisition proposed by the developers (average 3/quest), that I would have more fun rolling up 60 characters and farming 100 favour on each of them, it would also take me less time to earn the TP to buy the heart through that method, than it would to grind out all the saga's 9 times over.

So even if the new Commendations are BtA, the Grind suggested to get them is currently completely ridiculous.

... You do realize you comparing the equivalent of 600 quests versus 85(actually less, but let's run with it)? Talk about being ridiculous...

If you run Motu saga and End of eberron sagas, that's 72 comms, for 17 quests. Run 4 times, so 68 quests. 68 vs. 600 quests...

[ReaperAlexEU]

Take heart everyone! Someone is most certainly watching this thread as a post I made celebrating the post that faydingsun posted seems to have vanished somehow. That means they're still reading! (Maybe.)

was that the one where it was quoted several times in a row in the same post? i was wondering if that would get the snip