Earning Hearts of Wood - post U20

[Qhualor]

Experience gains do not reflect skipping a quest, nor does it tabulate any bonuses, even fundamental ones such as +10% for no deaths and +10% for no re-entries. So, if you're a proficient player, that 748,998+ value gets even bigger. As it stands, it is enough experience to raise a Lv 20 character to Lv 22-ish. Which may be more difficult, given some of the later quests start at Lv 24 on E-normal.

which brings us right back to what I said earlier. players will farm the first 2 level 21-23 sagas if they want to TR. eventually more sagas are supposed to be added, but with numbers like these, it makes more and more sense to not include hearts of wood as an end reward option, especially as the only place in the game to get them, in sagas.

[Drwaz99]

Any Dev's care to comment on the fact that 1 single quest closure can shut down half of the Epic saga's and more than half of the saga's currently present in game?

And why they think Exclusively tying a key method of character progression to such a fallible system is a good idea?

good point. this is where they chime in and say they would do an immediate hotfix and not to worry.

I asked twice in the last two day, and nothing other than a small blub from Glin downplaying their closure in the past. I don't think they want to admit that there is a possible large vulnerability with this plan.

From Today:

Sagas a going be obviously be the dominant vehicle to acquiring COV's. That's become obvious. You say their functionality is of high importance, yet they have been down more often than not since their introduction. What plans are in place, if any, to accommodate if a quest requires closure or another exploit occurs. With possibility of multiple Saga's being shut down because of ONE quest closure (some quests are out for months at a time!), this is of utmost importance but no one can say anything other than, "We know". Not acceptable.

And yesterday, both in this thread:

Also - what are the plans should Sagas be shut down for extended amount of time. Like they were for a month + after U19? Is there even one? That would directly shut off the path to woods entirely.

I think it's the most important thing. Maybe even more important that BTA and amounts. After all, if they are closed or taken down, it doesn't matter if they are BTA or cost a gazliion COV's.

[Deadlock]

Worldcrafter is more right than I was, with my misleading "3 per quest" comment. (This is part of why devs sometimes fear to speak and put out 'real' numbers because we make mistakes, and those of us good with numbers are not necessarily the same of us who are good with words.)

My apologies, again.

Can we just spit it out and specify how many commendations per saga a quest is worth on each difficulty?

You've already said that EH is worth 3, so doing every quest on EH gives you a "Hard" reward.

So Hard = 3 commendations per quest.

Can we then assume, or even better, can you specify whether this means:

Normal = 2 commendations per quest
Hard = 3 commendations per quest
Elite = 4 commendations per quest
True Elite = 5 commendations per quest

[Worldcrafter]

which brings us right back to what I said earlier. players will farm the first 2 level 21-23 sagas if they want to TR. eventually more sagas are supposed to be added, but with numbers like these, it makes more and more sense to not include hearts of wood as an end reward option, especially as the only place in the game to get them, in sagas.

Yeah, I foresee a lot of repetition of Menace and End sagas. That'll net 72 CoV a run. First time through will probably be enough exp to bump a 20 to 21 with first time bonuses - or if not, extremely close. Then another 290,455 exp per repetition, minus ransack penalties if done in rapid succession. With a goal of 250 CoV, that means 4 runs through 'em. Even with the ransack, that'll still probably get someone well into 22.

[fourrumtest]

Worldcrafter is more right than I was, with my misleading "3 per quest" comment. (This is part of why devs sometimes fear to speak and put out 'real' numbers because we make mistakes, and those of us good with numbers are not necessarily the same of us who are good with words.)

My apologies, again.

good lord this is still just awful. way to put some gravel sprinkles on a dog turd. you expect us to cheer because the original plan was rocks on a cow pie?

take your sagas some where far away from tr. they don't work, sagas have been down more than up, they are not fully implemented in the client. have to be manually tracked.
if you have to have your new shiny forced on us (that seems not very popular with the community, but the devs top priority) make sagas a bonus to acquiring your new waste of inventory space currency.

if we must have yet another inventory killing thing that does the same thing as an old inventory filling thing, make it bound to account, make it no harder to farm than the old inventory filler, and make the value the same.
20 tokens = 20 heroic inventory fillers = 1 true heart, or whatever you have to rename them to this time.
they should drop at the same rates as tokens in the same place as tokens.
oh the new stuff you are trying to force on us does not drop tokens?
double token drops in the new quests we don't seem to like(forgotten realms), bam! watch those quest get run till ransacked.

want people to run the unpopular new ****?
increase drop rates of tokens or heroic comms or inv deadspace.30 whatever you want to call them.
want us to run sagas? make inventory fillers available in a massive bonus stack for suffering threw lots of poor quests in a saga.
keep forcing them on us and expect us to thank you? really?

need more money because you drove off lots of players with dumb dev decisions have the balls to admit it, then start trying to prove to us you want to make it right.
fix my year+ outstanding unresolved turbine borked my stuff again issue, and wont fix it because turbine, and i will be more likely to spend money again.

keep coming at me with this btc saga grind for days **** and drive me off for good.

[patang01]

Worldcrafter is more right than I was, with my misleading "3 per quest" comment. (This is part of why devs sometimes fear to speak and put out 'real' numbers because we make mistakes, and those of us good with numbers are not necessarily the same of us who are good with words.)

My apologies, again.

I understand what you meant, but the 3 per quest should be the norm, not x in the end of a saga. You guys are forcing us to trot through quests we don't like burning us out quicker then ever ending up with more people leaving. For pete sakes - it's not rocket science. Forcing people to do things is not a good idea especially for entertainment people pay for.

[rayworks]

I think the developers need a consultant that plays the game to talk to them before they start making changes to the game. It seems obvious to me that either the development team doesn't have one or the one they have isn't intelligent to stop these problems or brave enough to say their is going to be a problem when they come up with these ideas.

I'm not going to rehash what everyone has already said as it has been made clear this idea is a bad one with the info given so far.

If the development team needs a consultant, feel free to let me know as I would take the job.

I'd be a little iffy on having one consultant. Too much riding on one guy's opinion. Some kind of focus group to bounce ideas off BEFORE devs do any coding would be better I think. Bouncing the ideas BEFORE coding so much as a powerpoint slide would stop bad ideas before they get any resources (money) spent on them. I suspect Turbine holds on to some ideas so hard because they already committed resources (money) to it and they can't back out.

You listening, Turbine? Bounce the ideas off us BEFORE you code a single line.

[Archangel_666]

Can someone remind me how many of the Saga's overlap if one doesn't own Shadowfell, and how many repetitions one would be looking at please?

[Worldcrafter]

Can someone remind me how many of the Saga's overlap if one doesn't own Shadowfell, and how many repetitions one would be looking at please?

If you have MotU expansion, you can do "Menace of the Underdark" and "The End of Eberron" sagas; 8 of their quests overlap. "End" is 11 quests, netting 33 CoV, and "Menace" is 13 quests, netting 39, for 72 total.

For a minimalist approach, you'll have to run "Menace" 4 times and "End" 3 times to get 255 CoV (need 250 for heroic TR)

[Archangel_666]

If you have MotU expansion, you can do "Menace of the Underdark" and "The End of Eberron" sagas; most of their quests overlap, with only 5 quests that don't overlap. "End" is 11 quests, netting 33 CoV, and "Menace" is 13 quests, netting 39, for 72 total.

For a minimalist approach, you'll have to run "Menace" 4 times and "End" 3 times to get 255 CoV (need 250 for heroic TR)

Thank you for your response. It's about what I expected.

I think I'll just keep stockpiling Hearts until Turbine stops the Twelve from granting them. If I run out after that I'll likely just call it a day with DDO.

Thanks again.

[Worldcrafter]

Welcome. I made an edit, as I misspoke about the non-overlaying quests. Still...

There is one thing that I am clueless about with everything, however. Hopefully the devs can alleviate my ignorance - why are the tokens of the twelve being phased out? Is it due to the recent scandal with the item duping, or have they become some sort of programming issue with them, perhaps? Please forgive me if the purpose was outlined somewhere else, and I humbly ask for some guidance for where I can check out the reasoning behind it.

[Qhualor]

If you have MotU expansion, you can do "Menace of the Underdark" and "The End of Eberron" sagas; 8 of their quests overlap. "End" is 11 quests, netting 33 CoV, and "Menace" is 13 quests, netting 39, for 72 total.

For a minimalist approach, you'll have to run "Menace" 4 times and "End" 3 times to get 255 CoV (need 250 for heroic TR)

that's my situation. I am VIP, but I didn't buy Shadowfell, which is the only pack I don't own. I might be willing to do it once MAYBE as a compromise, but no way on my gimp TR for just a past life will I run those epic sagas 4 and 3 times.

[Arnhelm]

Welcome. I made an edit, as I misspoke about the non-overlaying quests. Still...

There is one thing that I am clueless about with everything, however. Hopefully the devs can alleviate my ignorance - why are the tokens of the twelve being phased out? Is it due to the recent scandal with the item duping, or have they become some sort of programming issue with them, perhaps? Please forgive me if the purpose was outlined somewhere else, and I humbly ask for some guidance for where I can check out the reasoning behind it.

The only partial explanation was in Producer Glin's post that opened this thread. He stated Tokens were too easy to get for elite players. The disparity of time between how long it took such players to get a heart vs how long it takes casual players to earn one was "balanced" by this new system.

[Ebondevil]

Can someone remind me how many of the Saga's overlap if one doesn't own Shadowfell, and how many repetitions one would be looking at please?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Saga#Sagas_by_Quest_Name

Has a useful list of quests in a chart, further down they're split up into Which quests from which pack belong in which saga

Long Story Short

Heroic 3 in total:
1 Requires Giant Hold
2 Requires Menace of the Underdark, Shadowfell and 2 Quest Packs

Epic 6 in total:
1 Requires Just Gianthold
1 Requires Shadowfell and 1 Quest Pack
2 Requires Just Menace of the Underdark
2 Requires Menace of the Underdark, Shadowfell and 2 Quest Packs

I think...

[Archangel_666]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Saga#Sagas_by_Quest_Name

Has a useful list of quests in a chart, further down they're split up into Which quests from which pack belong in which saga

Long Story Short

Heroic 3 in total:
1 Requires Giant Hold
2 Requires Menace of the Underdark, Shadowfell and 2 Quest Packs

Epic 6 in total:
1 Requires Just Gianthold
1 Requires Shadowfell and 1 Quest Pack
2 Requires Just Menace of the Underdark
2 Requires Menace of the Underdark, Shadowfell and 2 Quest Packs

I think...

Cheers for the link. Appreciated.

[Caellwin-Orion]

I'd be a little iffy on having one consultant. Too much riding on one guy's opinion. Some kind of focus group to bounce ideas off BEFORE devs do any coding would be better I think. Bouncing the ideas BEFORE coding so much as a powerpoint slide would stop bad ideas before they get any resources (money) spent on them. I suspect Turbine holds on to some ideas so hard because they already committed resources (money) to it and they can't back out.

You listening, Turbine? Bounce the ideas off us BEFORE you code a single line.

yea, they are never going to bounce brainstorming ideas off us like that. Even one consultant that plays DDO like a player does and is intelligent enough and brave enough would have squashed this idea of theirs before it got to this point so they obviously don't have one of those types. Now they have people they are bouncing these ideas off of after brainstorming, the Team leader, marketing people, other people around the office, etc as that's just common sense for them to even get funding. The problem is you need to have someone there that has all 3 attributes to get a correct response. The people that don't play DDO as the players do are going to have opinions or recommendations that are unsound if they want to know player reaction. If the person isn't brave enough to give an truly honest opinion/recom then it's worthless, there are plenty of 'YES MEN' in the business world. Not many people are brave enough to tell their boss that he is a moron for his new idea. As for intelligence, they have to be able to realize when something isn't going to work and get the others to see that.
Obviously this didn't happen because one of those 3 things was missing somewhere.

[voodoogroves]

Experience gains do not reflect skipping a quest, nor does it tabulate any bonuses, even fundamental ones such as +10% for no deaths and +10% for no re-entries. So, if you're a proficient player, that 748,998+ value gets even bigger. As it stands, it is enough experience to raise a Lv 20 character to Lv 22-ish. Which may be more difficult, given some of the later quests start at Lv 24 on E-normal.

Right. In order to heroic TR "the right way" I essentially will be level 22 at a minimum, likely level 23+ because I'll end up helping friends or otherwise being inefficient (getting in a group to do something and because of the gating nature of all of these, someone needs to do an earlier one to flag).

PROGRESS at that point (post 20 on a character you want to TR) is only relevant in regards to how quickly you can TR. Running anything that doesn't help you TR is like leveling an off destiny WHEN YOU DONT EVEN NEED THE FREAKING FATE POINTS ... a waste of time.

I'm not sure this is well understood.

Let's say I want to TR as soon as I hit 20. BTA stuff is off the table, so now I have to farm it with the character in question. I have to run the Sagas as the only means to get a heart in-game.
- I run Lords of Dust. Maybe in a group, maybe not. Then I log - life calls.
- I come back, wanting to do Servants. People join the group, but one of them needs Lords of Dust. I can re-run it (for essentially no gain beyond plat for my character in question) or kick the person.

This holds through the entire first chain. Want to run Beyond the Rift? Find someone who's at the exact same spot you are, else everyone will be thinking "god, this doesn't help my saga at all".

It's like running Threnal where everyone wants the end reward. Possible, yes, but unless you happen to find lots of people with the time to do the whole thing you'll end up doing it alone or dealing with an inefficient logistical nightmare. Instead of Coyle, it's the Millers and Ana.

And, you know, Threnal is such an awesome pack and the multi-part chain nature doesn't at all inhibit grouping...

[Archangel_666]

The only partial explanation was in Producer Glin's post that opened this thread. He stated Tokens were too easy to get for elite players. The disparity of time between how long it took such players to get a heart vs how long it takes casual players to earn one was "balanced" by this new system.

That was how I read it also.

Quite frankly it makes no sense.

Player A starts playing DDO today.
Player B starts playing DDO One year from today.

If player A isn't in a more advantageous position than Player B then something has gone horribly, horribly wrong and Player A's time and energy is not being respected.

[Antheal]

That was how I read it also.

Quite frankly it makes no sense.

Player A starts playing DDO today.
Player B starts playing DDO One year from today.

If player A isn't in a more advantageous position than Player B then something has gone horribly, horribly wrong and Player A's time and energy is not being respected.

You're assuming DDO will still be around one year from today.

Of course, Asheron's Call is "still around" so your mileage may vary.

[Fnordian]

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.

Okay, humor me for a moment please, Vargouille, and imagine that there was no cost at all for Hearts of Wood (excluding Lesser Reincarnation), or that you simply spoke to someone to initiate a TR type reincarnation with no cost once you reach the required level (20 or 28).

Ignoring for a moment the lost revenue from DDO store sales, from a purely player perspective, would anyone be bothered by this?

The cost of reincarnation is that you essentially have to start over. So why should it be hard or take extra time and effort to gain this? The very nature of the system means there's an in-built cost to it.

Wouldn't everyone have a lot more fun if reincarnation (excluding Lesser, which has a totally different purpose), was automatically available and not something that required a potentially annoying grind?

Just some tasty hams for thought.

Edit: To address the issue of lost revenue, I would propose that VIPs could reincarnate for free and all others must buy an item for a nominal cost of 50 TP that's only available in the store or perhaps occasional chest drops.