Adding comms to Otto's Boxes is a dirty move turbine. Pathetic and petty.

[Grosbeak07]

i 100% think tirbine has not a clue how people play the game. its too bad there isnt something like a computer that could keep stats for them to read.

There are, but I'd also bet you would be surprised what it says.

[Pandir]

But who is the benchmark for the obviously miscalculated typical run to 28 then? The typical hardcore grinder? Or the weekend warrior? The approach for an ETR has to be either opportunistic or dedicated grind. Well, people don't play in only those 2 mindsets. In fact, heroic past lives are used in character planning.

From the little the devs said about how they got to the 4200 comms it seems they based it on playing Epic hard to max level while always or at least mostly playing quests on or above your level.
I think the playing mostly on level quests doesn't really reflect how the average player plays.

[BOgre]

It's quite clear that epic hearts were meant to be a premium item with an annoying mechanic so the free loaders can get it for free, just like other premium items. I'm not sure what people don't get about that. You don't like that Turbine made it a premium item? Of course you don't. Everyone wants everything for free. Why should anyone care that there's this new thing that everyone wants for free?

You miss the point. By applying a gate at end-game, turbine initiates a decision in the minds of their customers: "I have capped my character; do I now Pay to keep playing, or do I quit?" This is the fundamental choice at end-game. Pay to Reincarnate, or stop playing (since there exists nearly no other end-game option).

However, if Turbine completely removed any obstacles to Reincarnation, players will naturally TR/ER/ITR for free, and thereby be tempted to spend their money on Boxes, XP pots, Tomes of Learning, etc. to speed up their levelling time, all to do it again next life. You see?

[Postumus]

You miss the point. By applying a gate at end-game, turbine initiates a decision in the minds of their customers: "I have capped my character; do I now Pay to keep playing, or do I quit?" This is the fundamental choice at end-game. Pay to Reincarnate, or stop playing (since there exists nearly no other end-game option).

Orrrrrrrrrr you could star another first life character in a different class/race/build for free. I know more players who do this than TR.

[Postumus]

I'm sure there is. And I'm sure the "average" DDO player is the complete opposite of 99 percent of the people on these forums.

I agree. I'm sure the average DDO player thinks getting even ONE character to level 28 is a significant accomplishment.

[Postumus]

This is a great example of a first time run thru. But once you have done it and ER'ed, it becomes much, much slower.

No first time bonuses
No Streaks (can't tell how ran them so it may not apply)
No more explorers
Slayers get so high so fast it becomes inefficient at best after about 750 even with slayer boosts.

So yes, the first time around, 20-28 is really fast with no XP pots. Subsequent lives slow down easily by a factor of 3.

Wow, I didn't realize none of that resets for eTR. That makes eTRing even less appealing to me than it was before. So would you have to eTR then TR to reset everything?

[HungarianRhapsody]

You have it completely backwards.

They are meant to be premium items. They are not meant to be free items. Turbine is a business.

Turbine hasn't implemented an annoying mechanic so that people have to bypass it. They've made a premium item and given freeloaders a way to bypass it if they wish. Think of it as a gift. The alternative is no free option.

I'd be fine with these being premium items if there were an end game to play in DDO. Instead, Turbine has decided that eternal reincarnation *is* the end game, so if they want me to keep playing, then they need to provide a reasonable way for me to TR eternally. Now, "reasonable" doesn't have to mean no-grind-at-all and "reasonable" doesn't have to be 100% free, but what they have now isn't even remotely close to reasonable as far as I'm concerned.

To my mind, there are two solutions to this - either drop the required number of commendations by about half OR make a viable end game again for DDO. The first solution would obviously be MUCH easier for Turbine, but I would absolutely prefer the second.

[jalont]

I'd be fine with these being premium items if there were an end game to play in DDO. Instead, Turbine has decided that eternal reincarnation *is* the end game, so if they want me to keep playing, then they need to provide a reasonable way for me to TR eternally. Now, "reasonable" doesn't have to mean no-grind-at-all and "reasonable" doesn't have to be 100% free, but what they have now isn't even remotely close to reasonable as far as I'm concerned.

To my mind, there are two solutions to this - either drop the required number of commendations by about half OR make a viable end game again for DDO. The first solution would obviously be MUCH easier for Turbine, but I would absolutely prefer the second.

Would you also be offended if the new endgame was a couple raids released that you have to buy? They released an update with one premium piece. These hearts. It should be obvious to you and everyone else that if they decreased the amount needed to what people want, then no one would ever buy a heart from the store and finance that update. The belief that people are good and caring and will monetarily support things out of the goodness of their hearts is a myth. The truth is they are all selfish and greedy, and the money has to be pried from their wallets.

For people that can't afford to buy hearts, the option is the same as every other aspect of the game you can't pay for. It becomes slower. It becomes grindy. This should surprise no one.

[DrNuegebauer]

Would you also be offended if the new endgame was a couple raids released that you have to buy? They released an update with one premium piece. These hearts. It should be obvious to you and everyone else that if they decreased the amount needed to what people want, then no one would ever buy a heart from the store and finance that update. The belief that people are good and caring and will monetarily support things out of the goodness of their hearts is a myth. The truth is they are all selfish and greedy, and the money has to be pried from their wallets.

For people that can't afford to buy hearts, the option is the same as every other aspect of the game you can't pay for. It becomes slower. It becomes grindy. This should surprise no one.

Quote for us, if you will, the price of the most expensive pack in store (in TP).
If this pack were endgame, then it is now fully owned, and able to be run over and over and over at no extra cost.

The price of a heart is far greater than any pack, and only allows a single re-run. There is a reason everyone is crying foul over the large amount of work required to get one for free (which actually requires buying content anyway).

It wasn't the playerbase's idea to put out a pack that required the ongoing purchase of hearts. But unfortunately the system isn't limited to a single pack, it's become the whole point of the game. So it's either buy, have nothing to do, or grind the stupid quests they made in the last expansion (with no raid, again not the playerbase's idea).
In the end, it's a failure on the part of the developers to listen to their community that has lead to a year of futility on their part, and seems to have cost some of them their jobs. Good. Now let's cut the nonsense, and slash the in game price of a heart in half. 2100 is still more comms than some people get on the 20-28 journey.

[Postumus]

It should be obvious to you and everyone else that if they decreased the amount needed to what people want, then no one would ever buy a heart from the store and finance that update.

It is obvious. There should be some grind to get the comms. According to Vellrad if you run nothing but EEs there is almost no grind for the COVs. I have no idea if that is true because I rarely run EEs.

I do know the grind for normal is about 8 times the grind for a regular heart. That seems a bit much. I think COVs for a ETR heart could come down to around 3000 and still make Turbine money.

Does the store sell heart seeds? It should. I would think people would be more likely to purchase the last 10 or so heart seeds needed for an eTR heart than the actual heart itself.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Would you also be offended if the new endgame was a couple raids released that you have to buy? They released an update with one premium piece. These hearts. It should be obvious to you and everyone else that if they decreased the amount needed to what people want, then no one would ever buy a heart from the store and finance that update. The belief that people are good and caring and will monetarily support things out of the goodness of their hearts is a myth. The truth is they are all selfish and greedy, and the money has to be pried from their wallets.

For people that can't afford to buy hearts, the option is the same as every other aspect of the game you can't pay for. It becomes slower. It becomes grindy. This should surprise no one.

I'd be fine with paying for an adventure pack (and I certainly hope that VIP accounts would get it with their paid subscription). I'm happy to spend money for something of value. Not because I'm generous, but because I want that thing that I value. Turbine is not doing a good job of creating things that I value at the moment. A reasonable price and a reasonable grind would both be okay with me. The current Reincarnation costs in both grind and in time are not appealing to me. If they want me to jump onto the eternal reincarnation hamster wheel (and that seems to be their new business model), then they'll need to change the costs to something more appropriate.

[SilkofDrasnia]

This is a great example of a first time run thru. But once you have done it and ER'ed, it becomes much, much slower.

No first time bonuses
No Streaks (can't tell how ran them so it may not apply)
No more explorers
Slayers get so high so fast it becomes inefficient at best after about 750 even with slayer boosts.

So yes, the first time around, 20-28 is really fast with no XP pots. Subsequent lives slow down easily by a factor of 3.

Some of us ETR and immediately TR so this does not apply to us

[Drwaz99]

Some of us ETR and immediately TR so this does not apply to us

Yep. I had already finished every heroic PL otherwise I might have done the same. You can also minimize the epic grind by mixing in some iconic lives too. Only kinda bad part of that is going back and rerunning low level favor quests.

[Dandonk]

There are, but I'd also bet you would be surprised what it says.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."?

[Osharan_Tregarth]

We included Commendations of Valor in unopened and future Epic Irresistible Otto's Boxes to address a concern we have heard from players who felt that using the box was a negative experience rather than a positive one in terms of Commendations. This aims to make sure that they're receiving the commendations appropriate to the XP received. Nothing is set in stone, though (remember that this is a particularly early state of Update 21 on Lamannia), so if there is a serious concern about including the Commendations in the boxes, it is something we could remove.

For myself, I'm not overly concerned about commendations of valor in the epic boxes. It makes a certain amount of sense for them to be in there.

My own biggest concern, is with the drop rate and ways to get them in game.


Right now, like it or not, DDO's end game is TR'ing. Over and over again. With potentially doing loot runs.

You really can't have ANY artificial barriers to people being able to play endgame. It's.. Discouraging at least.

For my own personal experience so far, here's how I stand with my (previously warforged) Sorc. VIP.

Gone from 25 to 28.
Epic TR'd, followed by heroic TR'ing into an iconic.
Gone from level 15 to level 28.
Done an epic TR, that I'm currently back up to level 22 or so.

And I've collected a grand total of 3k coms. Running either Ehard or EE, but probably mostly Ehard. Mostly taking commendations, but occasionally grabbing gear upgrades.

If I want to continue my end game play, I'm going to have to buy an iconic/epic heart every other life, or spend large portions of my in game time doing nothing but grinding the com's out.

It's makes me just not want to log on anymore. I feel like I'm being nickel and dimed to death, just to do anything to advance my character.

[murf201]

Just recently hit 28 , Started my etr with about a hundred comms in my bag .

Ive run almost everything on EE , I didn't do any house p or house d epics yet . I didn't really hit up sands outside of wizking .
no citw or fot since i havent had a group to run it on ee yet first . Ohh yeah i only ran claw in the fens on EE so theres a few more im missing !! Also no cannith raids or quests !

Ive run maybe 5 hard quests helping people out , And maybe 3 EE repeats .

With every epic quest to run on normal still , 90% percent of first time hard difficulties to run left , And almost 3 whole untouched packs left to run on EE then hard and normal .

Idk i think im going to have my comms well before i finish 1/3 of my hard runs .
Doesn't seem to hard or too demanding imo .

Yes it's very far away from htr'n and capping in 2 days just to repeat the process , But i don't think this was intended to be something that you were to be doing every 3 days .

There's already character progression systems in different versions some longer then others .

Capping to 28
heroic past lives
Capping destinies
Epic past lives

Now whatever order you want to place the first 3 in i believe Etr is the one that they wanted for players to take the longest to achieve . Yeah it sucks that most of us on these forums are heroic completionists who maxxed there ed's long time ago ,
So we were sitting waiting for the next thing unfortunately .

When you haven't been at that point already you have all four of those progressions to focus on in your own orders . Idk w.e though !

[SilkofDrasnia]

Just recently hit 28 , Started my etr with about a hundred comms in my bag .

Ive run almost everything on EE,

...SNIP...

Like I have been saying the drop rate is ok if you run EE only because it was balanced around running EE. That is the main problem, the drop rate should have been balanced around EH so as to be in in a more comfortable middle ground and for the same reason that the difficulty of EH is in a comfortable middle ground.

[murf201]

Like I have been saying the drop rate is ok if you run EE only because it was balanced around running EE. That is the main problem, the drop rate should have been balanced around EH so as to be in in a more comfortable middle ground and for the same reason that the difficulty of EH is in a comfortable middle ground.

I would agree if E-hard was actually hard , But it isn't . At the same time i would agree with you for my own selfish reasons .
If they wanted to balance it out for E-hard then i would have finished by now with all the EE's i run !!!

[SilkofDrasnia]

I would agree if E-hard was actually hard , But it isn't . At the same time i would agree with you for my own selfish reasons .
If they wanted to balance it out for E-hard then i would have finished by now with all the EE's i run !!!

What is hard is very subjective and not the same for everyone. This very debate was had and done out when the the whole EN, EH and EE was introduced and guess what it was decided to be made like it is now.

Now some will complain EH is easy some will say EE is too hard but facts is there is now a middle ground... EN for gimps, EH for the average player and EE for the above average player.

Point is this was debated till we were all blue in the face and people wanted to reach out and slap each other and finally Turbine made a decision.

The very same reasons why it was decided this way are the very same reasons vcoms should be balanced around EH and not EE.

Simple no?

[Sonos]

The boxes are a separate issue really. It's just added value and it's not that big of a deal.

The CoV system is ok but imo needs some tweaking. Dial the amount down just a bit and it will make people happy. Should it be 20 quests to ETR as suggested in the first few posts like heroic TRing? Uh no, that would be ridiculous. XP gets tougher toward higher levels and so do a lot of things. MMO 101

They've given the heroic xp TR grind a huge gift by not requiring as much xp. Thanks for that. Lower the comm amount slightly for ETR and it would make for a nice balance.