End of the Week with Produktion Malphunktion- Spring cleaning edition

[slarden]

You people want everything for free?
Its nothing like leveling sigil.
If you want to etr you have to work a bit for it, its just like epic tokens before motu and challenges.
From 20-28 I get 5-6k covs playing just ee.

It's a non-issue when running EE. It's an annoyance when running EH because you have to run many extra quests or use a very restrictive playing pattern.

For EN players it's a showstopper. Whatever # of quests they run to get to 28,, they will need to run 3x that many to get enough COVs to ETR. Considering most EN players run slower and play less to begin with, this amounts to months of extra work. You must pay for a heart if you run EN or grind grind grind grind. The casual player penalty to ETR is over 100 quests. That's how it is - no free rides you either up your game, grind, pay or work on new alts until you have enough seeds.

I think getting 20 epic tokens was an easier task, but I don't think the new system is bad. It's designed so that Turbine can make money if you run on lower difficulties. That's fine.

The system works great for me, but not for everyone.

[Wizza]

I don't agree with that for 95% of EE content considering the significantly better drop rates vs. the marginal extra time involved. What you say is true at the moment for the 2 new raids only and nothing else. Those raids are difficult on EE, but like other raids will get easier over time. A 3 person EE FOT takes a few minutes longer than a 12 person EH FOT with the right group. That wasn't the case the first few months of FOT excluding the completions that used the ledge exploit (hey almost everyone that joined an EE FOT back in the day was guilty of that).

Lol, right. Just because one 3-man group did it "a few minutes longer" than a 12 person EH FoT (proof? link btw?) doesn't mean anything You tried thou, I appreciate the effort.

Honestly I haven't seen the new EE raids without massive amount of tornado pots being used yet and I don't think a group should get special loot for using 1000+ tornado pots. when the supply of those are non-sensical

Then you are grouping with the wrong people. Never used even ONE tornado potion in our runs on EE. And yes, WE (as in my friends and I, whom don't use tornado potions in raids) would like loot for doing a raid on the hardest difficulty.

We are in agreement more than you think. I think something extra should be given for EE and I think it shouldn't be a dps booster - it should be rare enough that people keep re-running. Not as bad as shard of ring of spell storing, but not nearly as easy as the base items in recent quests.

Everything will be easy to get with EN having the same loot as EE and 3 rerolls per chest. And again, no reason to run EE.

Let's face it, the devs have an impossible task of pleasing everyone. Balance is impossible, but there are many casual players in my guild and I used to be a much more casual player than I am today running mostly on normal and even casual back in the day before I even ran an epic. If loot is too out of reach for someone, it will decrease their likelihood to keep playing. Prior to U14 casual players could get some good gear quick with festivals, shroud, TOD and easier epics like house P and house D. The difference in player power between power gamers and casual players is much greater today than it used to be. I don't think we need tiered loot making that gap even greater.

I don't understand your point. What you are describing is those players' mentalities being wrong. If you can't beat EE, why would you deserve EE gear? If you are a casual, why do you care what people do with EEs? Why would you care if we get a slighty better item on EE? Non-sense. You shouldn't, that's the answer.

The system works great for me, but not for everyone.

You are just playing devil's advocate aren't you? Most of the forum community AND in-game community agrees that the CoV drop rates and the Hearts of Wood cost is far too high. You are in a minority, hence why they should balance things out even with CoVs drop rates.

[IronClan]

You people want everything for free?
Its nothing like leveling sigil.
If you want to etr you have to work a bit for it, its just like epic tokens before motu and challenges.
From 20-28 I get 5-6k covs playing just ee.

You know there were a few people that defended Leveling sigils as well, none the less they were a player base shrinking bad idea and they were correctly deleted because of that... Remember when 20 Epic tokens was a grind and only a hand full of grinders really TR'ed? I do. I also remember how TR EXPLODED in popularity when getting EPic tokens became much easier.

There's a sweet spot where progress is encouraged, right now players are just looking at 23 heart seeds after leveling from 20-28 and giving up and leaving.

You know I was okay with the drop rate for a while too, then I turned in every CoV I had on three different toons and I ended up with 46 heart seeds... (and no none of them have so much as a single EN or EC completion, in fact they all have entire chains completed on EE) It's FAR too much of a grind... by double and I am a free spending job having $199 point pack multiple times buying player who advocates long term goals/ledgendary items/eSoS like items to give us a reason to keep playing. I am not however cool with purely EE running glacial progress of doing an entire ETR and then spending another couple weeks of EE's trying to get enough CoV's to get a heart... So I buy hearts... but it looks like I need to spend roughly $70 per alt... that blows... that just makes me retire alts and play the game less.

Playing the game less = the current major problem facing DDO

So yes leveling sigils sucked then, and that same road block feeling effect with 4200 CoV's sucks now...

[redspecter23]

TR and ETR is what comprises end game now. Getting people to grind or pay in order to play endgame is a very poor way to retain players.

Yes, I get that Turbine needs to make money. First and foremost they need to retain players. Regardless of how much money a few people spend, if you only have a few people, your game will fold. 1 million players spending $1 each is easier than 1 player paying $1 million dollars. Make it easy for players to play the "endgame" that the designers have given us and you'll have happy players that spend more money on the 3 C's that we were told from the start would be monetized, convenience, cosmetics and content. But hey, I'm not a marketing guy. Maybe the bean counters over at Turbine are happy right now with the amount of money and amount of players. As a player, I'm seeing things going in a direction I'm not personally happy with. Just my 2 cents.

[FestusHood]

So i see people complaining that there is no motivation to run EE unless it offers unique loot. Then i see those same people complain that unless you run EE you have to grind too much to get the number of COV's to epic tr.

Is this irony? I'm not sure.

[IronClan]

So i see people complaining that there is no motivation to run EE unless it offers unique loot. Then i see those same people complain that unless you run EE you have to grind too much to get the number of COV's to epic tr.

Is this irony? I'm not sure.

It's not irony it's complexity

You see in the normal game EE LFM's are not the norm (though they are certainly far more prevalent than in the past), people who don't lead (which is most people) join LFM's that are available in their range many of those are EH, MOST of us do not play with a spreadsheet of CoV/XP balance ratios open. Yet most of us still want to feel progress and getting to 28 only to find out you need 1500-2000 more CoV's makes people throw their hands up in the air and leave just like leveling sigils did.

On the other hand you have the problem of loot that gives zero incentive to run harder difficulties. This just makes people throw their hands up and run EH over and over until they get the item. No point in running EE. (unless you're ETR'ing in whcih case maybe you try to combine the two activities... however if MMO's have shown us anything it's that players like to separate tasks into "farming" routines even when it's often better to combine them and multitask).

So:

More CoV's in EE is fine because it does give some people (those who care about ETR) incentive to run EE. For those capable of running EE (they have EE builds and player skills) This is a good mechanic.

And:

Loot being the same in EH as EE is not fine, because it gives those who care about challenge and Loot no reason to run EE unless they are also into ETR'ing (see above). While a player might leave because they've reached a road block (ETR Hearts as leveling sigils) I don't think the same can be said for the minor difference between EE loot and EH loot. No one left DDO because they couldn't get the EE dragon helm with the green slot, and were stuck with the Yellow slot

And Finally:

Drop rate of CoV's when you do normal questing for normal players who do SOME EE and SOME EH (Average sampling of EH and EE content thats available on the LFM) is not fine, as even having many EE completions of diverse content you can still have roughly half the CoV's you need and feel like you are stuck in limbo trying to get more, wasting all that XP you're getting just to acquire enough CoV's. This is leading people to give up in frustration.

See Complexity not irony.

[Jasparion]

If you play at level, on Epic Hard they drop as they are supposed to. this has been discussed numerous times.

They may drop as they are supposed to, but they most certainly do not drop as we were told they will.

We were told one-and-done dungeons on EH from 20 to 28 and we would have enough. This simply doesnt happen. Discussing it numerous times doesnt change the fact that it is not happening. What is required is changing the drop rate or reducing the cost. Or an admission that the original statement was incorrect.

the developers are fine with the comm drop rate. Epic hard At level. Looking at raw data, most people run EH over level. It makes a difference.
Im not going to write a book on some of this. Varaguille has discussed the comm thing...all the way down to the math. Yes, the biggest xp/m quest is not optimal for comms.

He has never, ever revealed his math. If he ever did it would be proven to be wrong, because dozens of people have shown actual results.

The only way you can get to 28 with enough Comms from just EH is by deliberately avoiding the high XP dungeons and *only* running the terrible dungeons once each per day. At level, under level, over level - its all the same.

We hear that devs play the game. Can you name a dev who has run EH from 20 to 28 and got to 4,200 COVs?

I personally think the three pillars are:
Enhancements/ED's/characters. How we play.
Combat systems. The act of playing.
Loot. Why we play.

Its scary that you dont think content is important. The lack of content is why end-game is dead. People completed all the new content on EE on the very first day. That is ridiculous.

We need dozens of dungeons and half a dozen raids to call it "end game".

Without this sort of volume of content the only options then available are people either TRing or quitting.

And it is not our fault that you design content which can be beaten by brute force store SP purchases. The onus is surely on you to design the content which we cannot simply buy our way through?

[PermaBanned]

So i see people complaining that there is no motivation to run EE unless it offers unique loot. Then i see those same people complain that unless you run EE you have to grind too much to get the number of COV's to epic tr.

Is this irony? I'm not sure.

Roflmfao! I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees this; it really is funny, in a sad sort of way...

Most of the time where I've read: "I need an incentive to run Epic Elite" it tends to come across more as "I need to be forced to run Epic Elite." They complain that getting things on Epic Normal or Hard is just plain faster & easier (except Coms, and those should be faster and easier to get below Epic Elite /facepalm) and thus they won't run Epic Elite. Sure, those guys that like to run Epic Elite for the sake of the challenge are happy (well, some of them anyway...), but what about the loot grinders or xp/minners? What about those that derive their fun from doing things in the fastest, most efficient way possible? Epic Elite should be that too. Same goes for toy collectors, Epic Elite should offer things you can only get from Epic Elite, otherwise there's just no point in running it!

I really don't get any of that mindset. Shouldn't the point of running the hardest difficulty setting be... running the hardest difficulty setting? Why does it need a special carrot for the people that don't really sound like they want to run it unless they have to?

[PermaBanned]

Loot being the same in EH as EE is not fine, because it gives those who care about challenge and Loot no reason to run EE...

See, again I don't get that. If people care about challenge, why aren't they running the most challenging game setting? If facing and overcoming challenge is their goal, why does it matter that Norm and Elite have the same (loot) rewards?

[Ivan_Milic]

It's a non-issue when running EE. It's an annoyance when running EH because you have to run many extra quests or use a very restrictive playing pattern.

For EN players it's a showstopper. Whatever # of quests they run to get to 28,, they will need to run 3x that many to get enough COVs to ETR. Considering most EN players run slower and play less to begin with, this amounts to months of extra work. You must pay for a heart if you run EN or grind grind grind grind. The casual player penalty to ETR is over 100 quests. That's how it is - no free rides you either up your game, grind, pay or work on new alts until you have enough seeds.

I think getting 20 epic tokens was an easier task, but I don't think the new system is bad. It's designed so that Turbine can make money if you run on lower difficulties. That's fine.

The system works great for me, but not for everyone.

Why should it work for everyone great?
If you have great gear, skill, knowledge you get rewarded, if you dont you take more time to get covs.
It used to be hard to get tokens to tr, before challenges, you had to have a lot of epic packs if you wanted tokens fast, you had to have great gear, char, you needed a group for every epic quest and they took much longer than most ee quests now.

[droid327]

the completionist, the explorer,the min/maxer the social butterfly exc.

Etc. not exc. Et cetera, Latin for "and such things". I hear people *say* it "excetera" but I've never seen someone transliterate it that way

Also, while I'm at it, "Espresso" not "expresso"...there is no letter "X" in native Italian words...since I get the feeling you say that wrong too

[slarden]

I don't understand your point. What you are describing is those players' mentalities being wrong. If you can't beat EE, why would you deserve EE gear? If you are a casual, why do you care what people do with EEs? Why would you care if we get a slighty better item on EE? Non-sense. You shouldn't, that's the answer.

Re-read the producer's previous comments. He gets it but you do not. Not everyone plays the game for the same reason and what you are trying to argue is that your way of playing the game should be more heavily rewarded. As I said before I was previously a casual player and moved on to a much more capable player today. Just this weekend I ran 3 man EE Von 6, 2 man EE Zawabi's revenge. I've run 50 or so EE FOT all with 6 or less people and most with 3 people. Many people solo the raid EE and many 2-man. I don't think I need better gear for running EE - I do it because it is more fun to run on the highest difficulty I can handle.

You are just playing devil's advocate aren't you? Most of the forum community AND in-game community agrees that the CoV drop rates and the Hearts of Wood cost is far too high. You are in a minority, hence why they should balance things out even with CoVs drop rates.

Nope. If anyone running EE is saying they can't get enough COMs to 28 they are taking a shortcut of some kind or getting XP from methods other than quests. I've run over 20 ETRs 100% EE and others beyond the 20+ that were either no EE or a mix of difficulties for various reasons. If I used a box, got significant wilderness xp, took saga XP twice during a life or was getting first time xp bonuses - of course I would come up short. But my TR partner and I designed a very simple ETR plan which got us to 28 with over 4200 covs, with a variety of quests and banked sagas and consisted of a higher # of fast quests to maximize cov/min.

The complaint is reasonable for people running below EE because the drop rate differences are significant, but this is by Turbine's design. They are trying to reward EE which they've done.

[Jasparion]

See, again I don't get that. If people care about challenge, why aren't they running the most challenging game setting? If facing and overcoming challenge is their goal, why does it matter that Norm and Elite have the same (loot) rewards?

Because after completing a difficult challenge you expect a cookie. At least, 10 years of MMOs have done this. Giving the same reward for completing a simple thing is a new thing for me. Maybe there are other MMOs which do this.

[Qhualor]

Nope. If anyone running EE is saying they can't get enough COMs to 28 they are taking a shortcut of some kind or getting XP from methods other than quests. I've run over 20 ETRs 100% EE and others beyond the 20+ that were either no EE or a mix of difficulties for various reasons. If I used a box, got significant wilderness xp, took saga XP twice during a life or was getting first time xp bonuses - of course I would come up short. But my TR partner and I designed a very simple ETR plan which got us to 28 with over 4200 covs, with a variety of quests and banked sagas and consisted of a higher # of fast quests to maximize cov/min.

The complaint is reasonable for people running below EE because the drop rate differences are significant, but this is by Turbine's design. They are trying to reward EE which they've done.

right, that's a workaround to avoid xp and just playing the game. an argument that many players use that if they want enough Comms by 28, they have to level a specific way. a design flaw by the devs that the minority cant seem to understand.

[slarden]

Why should it work for everyone great?
If you have great gear, skill, knowledge you get rewarded, if you dont you take more time to get covs.
It used to be hard to get tokens to tr, before challenges, you had to have a lot of epic packs if you wanted tokens fast, you had to have great gear, char, you needed a group for every epic quest and they took much longer than most ee quests now.

Nonsense. You would get 2 tokens for hitting a bunch of dancing mobs in eDA. You just needed cc, tank, healer and 3 not horrible dps for 2 easy tokens in 40 minutes. Even on my first life PM with no littany I was able to cc the eDA mobs no problem. You got one token for jumping to the end fight in epic big top. Epic Snitch was never hard and very fast. That's 4 easy tokens per day and you could use your alts to get it while you were TR'ing. And that is not even counting epic bargain of blood and epic partycrashers which were also quick and easy.

You didn't need any hard-to-get gear for this. I did all this before I had a single piece of epic gear. In eChrono people would bring their best toon and then swap out at the end with an alt to avoid timers. You are referring to the "good old days" that never were. Even then epics were short-manned, zerged and started "in process" by a single person - well not eDA but the others. We even farmed for scrolls/seals echrono up to end fight short-manned then.

Do you know what gear I used? shroud gear which was untiered. TOD and Amarath gear which was untiered. Festival gear which was untiered. Minos Legens which was untiered, Mindsunder loot which was untiered. If they had tiered gear and I had weaker versions of everything I may have very well been shut out of epics then.

[ZeebaNeighba]

See, again I don't get that. If people care about challenge, why aren't they running the most challenging game setting? If facing and overcoming challenge is their goal, why does it matter that Norm and Elite have the same (loot) rewards?

It only takes one EE run to get the feeling of overcoming a challenge (and there are people who do this on day 1 for most quests/raids), while it takes many runs to get the better gear they want to drop in the quest. If they wanted to be challenged, the only reason to repeat the quest is if they put self imposed challenges in (shortman, no gear, speed run, etc) each time.

[PermaBanned]

Because after completing a difficult challenge you expect a cookie. At least, 10 years of MMOs have done this. Giving the same reward for completing a simple thing is a new thing for me. Maybe there are other MMOs which do this.

Ok call me crazy here, or maybe I'm just old... But I remember non-MMO console video games that had multiple difficulty settings, and the only point of playing on the higher settings was the challenge of doing so. To my mind if you want a cookie, you want a cookie; if you want a challenge you want you want a challenge. If you refuse to play Elite because it has the same cookies as Hard or Normal, it's really not challenge you're seeking.

[slarden]

right, that's a workaround to avoid xp and just playing the game. an argument that many players use that if they want enough Comms by 28, they have to level a specific way. a design flaw by the devs that the minority cant seem to understand.

There are many many many paths to get the COVS you need by 28 running EE. We chose a path that worked for us. I don't really feel sorry for anyone that says they run EE but can't get the covs - they must be taking shortucuts or focusing on lower level quests. I do empathize with EH and EN players because yeah - it's much more complicated for them.

Sorry, but our plan has far more variety in it than the old optimized heroic TR plans that called for repeating the same quests multiple times. No more than 3 repeats of any quests. We were zerging/splitting for fun/challenge and we always tried to beat our best time for chains. It wasn't a work-around, but we also had no intention of running in a stupid manner. I am not a zerg player by nature, but it was quite fun challenging myself to do it.

I've argued in the past for better EH and EN COV drops for casual players. I don't really see the problem with EE drops.

[Xioden]

Why should it work for everyone great?
If you have great gear, skill, knowledge you get rewarded, if you dont you take more time to get covs.
It used to be hard to get tokens to tr, before challenges, you had to have a lot of epic packs if you wanted tokens fast, you had to have great gear, char, you needed a group for every epic quest and they took much longer than most ee quests now.

When it used to be hard to get tokens to TR, you were also usually earning other loot at the same time. That scroll/seal/shard could be a useful item this life, or next life, or eventually when you're done TRing. Loot in general also didn't suck, so there was always the chance of getting a good ML18+ item that was worth a good amount. People also needed raid items, and there weren't raid bypass timers. A couple shrouds/ToD/VoD/eDQ/eVON/etc. also had chances of yielding good loot before you TRed again, and possibly even a tome which would be real useful since for a while they didn't carry over between lives. So while you ended up having to spend a couple days at end-game before getting enough tokens, you were always getting stuff.

Today, random loot sucks, there is no special loot for running it on the hardest difficulty in some cases, and EE loot isn't that much better than EH versions in many cases. CoV must be taken for a good majority of rewards from 20-28, where the couple days worth of quests to get epic tokens were given alongside other loot (granted end rewards didn't scale, so it was often low-level loot, but there was still always renown). There is not really much end-game at 28 to keep a lot of people busy before they just throw their hands up or finish up the CoV grind.

I'd say epic quests became very accessible when Update 7 was released (if not sooner). The archmage prestige stuff made it much easier for wizards to get the DC's needed, as well as a nice boost to spell points and things like 1 SP hypnotism, 3 SP dance made locking down rooms full of mobs much easier. After that it was just a matter of getting a healer and 4 other DPS or woo-woo-ers. Update 7 was released October 2010. Epic was released October 2009. 12 months max before epic quests became very accessable. We'll hit the 6 month mark for epic TR and CoV in a few days.

[Chai]

See Complexity not irony.

Its irony as well, because folks who need the power the most have less ability to earn it in game in any semblance of time that would be considered reasonable. They are also the least likely crowd to p2w in order to attain said power. Those who can already beat everything on EE handedly are the ones who can gain that power in the shortest amount of time in game, and are also the ones who want it the fastest, and will p2w to get it. In this, Turbine put the cart before the horse, and lost out on long term stability for a short term profit yet again.