Earning Hearts of Wood - post U20

[bartharok]

If the reason for the new commendation system is that the devs, or whoever, want people to play the new contet, i can understand that (liking is another matter), since the main reason i play mostly the old content at epics is that i like TRing. And since the old content is the only place to get the tokens, i only rarely play the forgotten realms content on epic. Well, rarely is a bit strong, but most of the playing IS done in eberron.

It might be more useful to keep both systems, since that way i would have 2 ways of gaining hearts, and in my case that would definitively increase the amount of time spent in FR, since i kinda like some of the quests there.

[Catteras]

Here is what I think are the problems, and my suggestions for dealing with them:

1) Not enough players are playing the new shiny quests, they're playing the old Eberron quests. This upsets the devs/producers as they want THEIR work to be the most popular.
2) It's too easy for experienced players to get Hearts in game, compared to newbie players.
3) The sagas aren't popular. So Turbine wants to make them required to earn Hearts in game.

.

1) turbine's own fault. New quests need loot and xp to entice us.
2) it should be easier for vets to get hearts. They earned it. The tr cycle also makes turbine money through replayability with no new content and consumables like pots and ottos.
3) again, turbines own fault. Make quests we like part of sagas and/or add more incentive. I personally dont mind sagas as long as they are optional. Make them a required grind and i feel like i am at work.

[Steiner-Davion]

We're not knee-jerk reacting without spending evaluating your feedback and spending real time on this. We don't have announcements right now because we're still meeting about it. The continued (constructive) feedback continues to help, especially when it's specific to the issues at hand, and answers the "why" more than the "how". That's sometimes hard to get, but it shows up when there's enough volume of feedback -- which we have!

I've personally discussed this in at least three or four different meetings today, not counting the dozen or so discussions in hallways, at someone's desks, or via digital communications. Gets hard to keep count after a while.

And given the posting mistakes I've personally already made (and corrected), I know I'd like to be sure of what's what before potentially misleading or misinforming anyone. There's been enough of that.

Vargouille,

This is an amazing post. Not only did it takeguts to publicly admitthat youhadmade somemistakes in what you had posted, you acknowledged the silenceand spoke to thef flurry of activiy over in the office. This kind of communication must be rewarded and praised.

If there is one thing that all parties learned from the Dark Ages in 2008 (suring the lawsuit and leading up to the F2P announcement, was that a lack of communications of any sort, only leads to problems.

So by at lestpopping back in here and saying the things you did (owning up and speaking to the visibility and activity at Turbine) does wonders to help calm the sane and rational part of the community (of which 98% of th ecommunity belongs).

[Archangel_666]

1) turbine's own fault. New quests need loot and xp to entice us.

The other problem is that Turbine changed the name of "Epic Dungeon Tokens" to "Token's of the Twelve" which now have Lore conflicts with Faerûn content.

Had they not renamed them, Tokens could have dropped in any Epic Content and players would have much more choices with regards which Quests they will run if they still want to TR...

[Steiner-Davion]

showing us you've heard the points we have made should help a lot with the waiting to hear your solution.

A definite must, and would go a longway towards restoring Turbine's credibility with the community.

i am also aware that no matter how carefully you word such a post it will get corrected 100 times over, but hey, that just helps to focus the feedback even more. i'm also aware that just because you know the points we are making that doesn't mean your solution will cover all of them.

Again very true.And Vargouille and Glin and any other Dev or community manager who posts in hear should not be affraid to do this. That ishow communication/conversations/dialouge works. Sender transmits signal, to recevier; receiver processes signal; receiver sends feedback to sender; and process start over again.

it might seem silly and trivial, but when there is a disconnection in communication such exercises can really help ensure both parties understand each other.

Exactly. This is pretty much what I just outlined in my above response, but in layman's terms.

[Steiner-Davion]

I wasn't aware they had one of these for DDO. I know they do for LOTRO.

DDO does not have a player's Council. But it is funny you both should mention it, as I made such a calltoarms in my blog post yesterday: http://www.gamergeoff.com/editorial-...ailed-turbine/

[Arcanghakhyorsarthel]

OK...once in a while I get the random questionnaire from Turbine/DDO.

Here's a thought.....send one out to all the players. 100% mailing. Take a sampling based off MIL-STD-1916, ISO, ASTM, or ANSI sampling standards...doesn't matter. Sorting through the data based off the forums only accounts for what.....5% or maybe a little more of the total population of the servers?

Heck....through 500 turbine points at each account for completing the questionnaire.

But if you guys are wanting to look at hard data, do it and ask everyone their thoughts.

Let the numbers give you an idea and post the results in a couple of weeks before anything rash happens.

[Steiner-Davion]

Thanks for the response. I do wish you'd posted it earlier, would have helped reducing the impression the devs think they can make this go away by ignoring it: we can't see what you do at work, only what is posted here on the forums. Even a quick "Good morning all! We have 4 different meetings scheduled today about this topic, and lots of other people to talk with about it, so keep the feeback coming and talk to you later!" would have gone a long way to give us the feeling somebody might actually be listening.

For the rest, nothing new to say, so back on the bridge.

Greetz,
Red Orm

Red, great point, just a communication and showing the flag goes a long way to keeping people happy.

Years ago, we used to get Weekly Developer updates, which would not necessarily say a whole lot,but they would let us know what they were working onin between content releases.

In the not as distant past, MajorMal used to do weekly updates, which served a similar role.

Heck, even if Glin or someonelikeVargouille stopped by this thread first thing every morning just to say what you suggested would give the impression that they were watching the thread and taking notes... Even if they were ignoring the thread completely.

[Steiner-Davion]

Rumor has it that the only allowed Feedback on Mournlands is being lapdog. ( or Yes man ).

And with the rules to get accepted into it, an application from anybody critical but constructive would be dismissed anyway.

Comments like that are totally uncalled for and serve absolutely no constructive purpose at all. Unless you can say you have been or are a member of mournlands (you can't because those members are under an NDA, and stating that they are or were a member is a violation of said NDA), you cannot speak to what they see on there or what kind of feedback they give and how much the Dev's change after that feedback is given and received.

I know I can't say what happens over there.

[erethizon]

Path #2 - "Finish ONE rich, deep system that encompasses the entire game"
Much harder for the dev team but would maintain an in-game cost to hearts. Add in sagas throughout heroic levels and epic levels. If something is a chain it should be a saga (WW's, STK, Coin Lords, etc). There should be sagas for multiple chains (WW's + STK, Necro1 + Necro2 + Necro3 + Necro4, etc). Sagas should be everywhere. We should have a tab similar to the Explorer Areas tab that has a list of sagas, the name of the saga giver, and our current progress that lights up when the progress is underway (and allows you to click it for details then) just how the Explorer Areas tab works. ALL sagas (heroic and epic both) should offer as one of their reward choices a number of Valor Commendations appropriate to their level range, length, and completion level. Prices on heroic true hearts should be set such that someone could legitimately earn a heroic true heart by concentrating on heroic sagas on their way to 20 and always taking the comm's. Prices on the iconic/epic hearts should be such that people could legitimately earn those by concentrating on epic sagas from 20-cap and always taking the comm's. This has an added bonus that someone that didn't take the comm's while leveling could get a heroic heart fairly quickly through epic sagas since the epic saga rewards will be higher but the heroic heart is priced based on heroic sagas.

If they follow this path it is important to note that it should be possible to get enough comms to get a heroic heart by doing each saga only one time. If by "concentrating on heroic sagas" you mean that people would have to repeat any saga more than once then this not only makes the game more boring, but also reduces the variety that this saga system is supposed to bring. I very much enjoy doing every quest once on elite as I go from 1 to 20. If I have to repeat any quests I am not going to be very happy (and it is going to go against their stated goal of encouraging us to run a wider variety of quests). You currently cannot top the amount of variety I have. Running everything once is as varied as possible.

Your idea for heroic sagas is a good one and definitely should be adopted. If need be they could even have sagas give a larger comm bonus for the first time you run it that life just to encourage people to run all the sagas rather than farm their favorite one (if variety really is the goal this would encourage that). But the saga reward needs to be big enough that farming the same sagas is not necessary to TR.

[Deadlock]

So far we've been told to expect 3 Commendations per quest per saga for Hard rewards, which comes down to all quests in a saga done on Epic Hard.

I consider Epic Hard to be a reasonable benchmark for the majority of players. New players or casuals have Epic Normal available, and ubers have Epic Elite as always.

Some quests overlap multiple sagas and a VIP can skip one quest per saga, and not all quests take as long as each other.

So I decided to build a very simplistic model and work out in theory what a typical pug group could expect.

The way I'm looking at it, given the 1 skip per saga and the overlap, you would:

1. Do Menace of the Underdark, skip Portal Opens
2. Do End of Eberron, skip Portal Opens
3. Do Planeswalker Path (Chosen of Mystra), skip Through a Mirror Darkly
4. Do Perils of Cormyr, skip What Goes Up
5. For Honor of the Huntsilver, you've done them all, just skip What Goes Up again

The details are here and people can obviously agree, disagree, modify etc etc etc to their heart's content (no pun intended).

Conclusions were:

1. Gianthold never features, the Commendations per Minute makes it not worth doing
2. You're completing the four saga's 9 times (fifth saga you get for free because of overlap) to earn an Epic Heart of Wood at 2000 commendations
3. You're completing the four saga's 5 times (fifth saga you get for free because of overlap) plus one other saga to earn an Iconic Heart of Wood at 1150 commendations
4. It takes 64 hours and 21 mins of quest time to earn an Epic Heart of Wood. That doesn't include buffing time, time running to/from and inbetween quests, time to form up your party. You could arguably double that or more.

Ubers can do it quicker and on EE for more commendations, but I don't really care about that. Times will vary based on the quality of the pugs, I've spent the past couple of days doing random pugs and checking times and I'm happy enough with them. Your times will vary.

I'm curious how this model compares to the model that the development and production team will have used to base their calculations and expectations on.

[susiedupfer]

Please, Turbine, do a poll or survey of some sort of all accounts before taking any further actions. It need not be anything major, just a forums poll or email survey will do. Get some concrete answers on what the player base wants before you completely mess up.

There are many, many suggestions on here. Some who agree, some who disagree. Get some answers from the majority before taking action, please!

Here are the major points you need to get answers to as I see them:

What will help more people buy and play the new content? I think the answers are XP, named loot, a raid.(Lack of a raid and raid loot is the main reason I hear for people not buying the X-pac.) If you give most people pretties to strive to get, they will go and work for them.

Commendations of Valor: BTA or BTC? (This is going to be a no-brainer.)

Where and how should CoV drop? To me, the only possible answer is to have them drop commensurate with the current Tokens of the Twelve drop rate. With QUESTS, not sagas. Others may not agree.

What questions do the rest of the forumites think should be on that poll or survey?

[voodoogroves]

GREAT STUFF

.... skip Portal Opens ...

This works if you've already flagged - you'll have to do it if you're shooting for a heroic heart.

I don't mind the grind as much for an Epic or Iconic heart - you have to hit 28 to use it anyway. Still, 64 hours is more like 120 hours for normal people given waiting, rebuffing, selling, etc. With a somewhat-not-quite-casual person doing 16-20 hours a week - it's going to take a while.

How much XP do you end up at once you do the 9 Sagas though?

[HAL]

A) They do, and they are only twinked out if they have earned it in game.

B) Which means not a **** thing when your manager tells you to code up something even if you don't like it.

Real life sucks, doesn't it?

I think the Management should play the game and float ideas by us...

[HAL]

We still don’t have all the information

There have been a couple of references that there will be other ways to earn Commendations of Valor in addition to completing Epic Sagas. I can’t find a link to one of these references right now, you will have to trust me, someone really did say that.

But they did not give us any information about what those ways will be. Maybe they will be something that is so cool and perfect that it completely removes everyone’s dislike of the current proposal. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe

I like all of your ideas and I agree that we don't have all of the information. Yes Glin said that there will be other ways to earn Comms, but not in Update 20. And we've seen with so many other systems (Cannith Crafting, PREs, Capstones, etc.) that the devs promise that more content will be added to the system but it never is. These mythical additional ways of earning Comms don't mean squat to us until they are actually in the game. We've learned our lesson about trusting in promises about the future from Turbine.

[Neouni]

This works if you've already flagged - you'll have to do it if you're shooting for a heroic heart.

I don't mind the grind as much for an Epic or Iconic heart - you have to hit 28 to use it anyway. Still, 64 hours is more like 120 hours for normal people given waiting, rebuffing, selling, etc. With a somewhat-not-quite-casual person doing 16-20 hours a week - it's going to take a while.

How much XP do you end up at once you do the 9 Sagas though?

Seeing from my 5% exp pots from the old cannith challenges, a heroic life takes me around 70 hours to complete,
That's including the time I take to actually play some content insteads of "zerg and turn off all the fun", do some wilderness stuff, and run with pugs
When not chaining together quests and being in pugs that fall apart after each quest I can see that number easily doubled.

Menace of the Underdark Whole saga ~208K(base exp), not spectacular seeing you need 6mil and level 20 (300k) is still broken

[Chaimberland]

There's active discussion here at Turbine about the binding status of Commendations of Valor.

This is what we are tentatively moving to for the next Lamannia preview (which is decided days ahead of time, so the conversation is likely to keep moving and Lamannia will be out of date by then):

Heroic True Heart of Wood: Costs 250 Commendations of Valor
Binds to Character on Acquire

This is not what we intend to ship with. However, we need to decide on whether to lower the cost should or change the Commendations to be Bind to Account instead of Character. (Or potentially both, as the exact cost is still under discussion, but for simplicity I'm pretending it's one or the other right now.)

If the Commendations are BtA, we expect that most Commendations will be farmed by level-cap characters and passed to other characters, and that they will be earned much faster than if the Commendations are BtC and earned by lower level characters. 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.

We're of course happy to hear feedback on all aspects of Reincarnation or other upcoming changes, but if you have specific thoughts on whether you'd prefer BtA Commendations or a cheaper price for Heroic True Hearts of Wood, please let us know here in this thread!

I personally like to earn as much as I can individually with my alts. Currently I do not pass tokens between them. I enjoy running content with all of them, it is fun for me. But that being said, there are a lot of people who like to farm tokens with high level toons and give them to a lower level toon as soon as they hit level 20 so they can TR right away. Probably going for completionist.

So to get to my point. The beauty of this game has always been its openness to a wide variety of choices and play styles. It is therefor my opinion that Commendation of Valor should be BTA to continue to give the masses a wide variety of choices. For some it is fun to play all quests with all their alts, for others they like to TR faster. Why hinder anyone by putting stipulations like BTC on commendations? Freedom of choice is good. It gives the player a sense of power or control. BTC gives the feeling of being pigeonholed or forced to follow a singular direction. Plane and simple, people don't like that feeling.

[Systern]

I never answered the "how do you play" question...

I primarily play 3 characters these days, though having more retired alts and mules (currently at 12 of 22 slots). I have "the main" TR junkie. I have the epic druid that recently hit level 28, but does not have destinies maxxed. And, I have the Big Girl, a completely maxxed out Arti (as seen in the Lammania saga screen shots. She's bigger on Orien than her copy on lammania). I primarily play the arti for raiding or helping guildies and friends do epic content or farm a piece of gear/shard/etc. Time spent playing her is fun, and with BtA currencies like Token, I don't feel like playing her is a waste and neglecting my other characters. Taking away a reason to play her guilt free, since new gear is either BtC or BoE, and (proposed) currencies non-transferrable (isn't that the definition of a currency? that it can be exchanged and is able to be traded?) means that she will be "done" until level cap goes to 30, where she will be played and then done again. While not all farming is done on her, it helps that her endeavors are not fruitless.

[SeaWolf925]

Turbine can not even keep all of the quests available never mind that the Saga's have not worked at least half of the time and still do not work. This is not to mention that this fun extra is now being made mandatory. Most of my Toons have already done all of the content at least once except for the new Shadowfells stuff prior to U19 and therefore have no credit for any of it. I am not willing to go back and do them just to complete Saga's. In short I can not agree with making Saga's mandatory for any reason, keep them fun and extra.

[voodoogroves]

Hm ... I never answered the "how do you play" question.

I PUG almost entirely. Took a bit of a break around U17 because the new content and level cap was really not that much fun. Even though I'm in a small guild and only PUG raids, I enjoy raiding and playing end-game - and as the level cap increased the variety and fun at "cap" constricted. I have about 7 or so main-ish characters ... then a few smattering playable alts I use for some specific friends / static groups.

- One is a multi-TR who's been going through lives largely with my very small guild. I think I'm on life 7 or so with him. I did a fair amount of epics pre-MOTU, but since MOTU I've hit 20 and TR'd. He has/had decent gear for 20, but not great 21+ gear. WANT TO KEEP HEROIC TRing THIS GUY. Aim is somewhat for completionist, but since I play a lot of alts I recognize this will take a while.

- One is a wizard, pure, first toon I ever capped. I use him to explore new content, help out buddies and if I need/want to farm something he's my go to. I should TR him at some point, just because ... wizard. He was 25 when I took the break, I think he's 27 right now - in no rush to cap him. Likely target for iconic or epic TR. Mess of pre-MOTU raid gear. MAY KEEP AT CAP, MAY TR.

- One is a fighter (really a kensai/monk split) - first life, tactics guy. I have always intended to TR him a few times for the fighter PLs, but haven't. Definite target for iconic TR (he's WF now, Bladeforged would be so much better). He's got pretty great kit for pre-MOTU (claw, jidz, chrono items, spare hand, etc.) and decent MOTU stuff (Avithoul, whatever else). WILL BE ICONIC TRING.

- 3rd life rogue. Really enjoying leveling her again, she may become a multi TR though I'm not set on heroic vs epic / iconic TR. Decent-ish gear from Updates 14-17. MAY KEEP TRing

- Multi-life caster. Running through heroic caster lives, and my intention is to keep doing so. Some decent pre-MOTU raid/epic gear and a few MOTU-related items, but she's been TRing largely since MOTU. Little work on destinies - my intention was to move through some heroic lives first THEN work on destinies. Would prefer to HEROIC TR to get the past lives, then POSSIBLY MULTIPLE EPIC TRs. I just don't have the space to keep her heroic kit and epic 21-28 kit all in the bank each life.

- 2nd life archer dude; currently a bard w/ Manyshot. Lazy TR, mostly with friends. No preference on heroic or iconic/epic TR.

- 3rd life arti, currently a Juggernaut level split but I'm a rune-arm/bastard sword + repeater user. My favor farmer and crafter, will never heroic TR again - though MAY EPIC TR.


The main reason I don't want to go far into epics with the two characters I want to heroic TR multiple times is freaking space, gear and convienence. I could keep decent kit so they could be useful into epics, but frankly THERE IS NOT ENOUGH ROOM. All bank slots, all inventory tabs - can't do it.

I don't care what "number" the cost is for a heroic heart, but make it something I can achieve on the way to 20 reasonably enough, or make it so I can farm materials on another toon. If it has to be BtC, don't make me carry kit for 20-24 - let me get the heart while I level to 20.

Better yet, freaking give VIPs a free heroic heart a month. I'm still ticked off they aren't on the dice rolls - that was about the only thing I ever thought was valuable from the lottery.