Upcoming Change to Rose Colored Goggles

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Omg I love that nuke meme. +1

I mean the goggles should be fixed---I'm not complaining---but that meme is golden.

[Xanthrawl]

Agreed! But the Sentient system was new (<1 month old) and the precaution for this sort of thing on the design end wasn't fully formed yet,so it slipped through. Rather than revoke it immediately, we decided to let it pass and fix it for the next Anniversary. So, here we are: Making a balance change, and giving advanced warning so people know this is being corrected and have time to use up any that are left.

Sure, I get that it was a new system. But it doesn't take much to figure out that a system that rewards XP based off an item's quest level + an event that lets you turn in a low amount of favors for a MAX level item = amazing.

I have a job that sometimes gives me a lot of free time, and others almost none. I also have a personal life that is quite busy with an infant and a puppy. Last year I was not able to run the event as much as I wanted. It was all I could do to get the ACTUAL items I wanted, let alone farming Sentient XP. Had I known then that this was officially NOT WAI, and would be removed, I can assure you my priority order would have been reversed. I'd have used every favor I could on the sentient XP and waiting a year for the items. So, yeah, I have some sour grapes.

This is just another case of "get in early." If you wait around, you miss out. Those that were here and took part get to reap those rewards. Those of us that were not or did not have to grind out random drops for months on end.

Can't we meet in the middle? Maybe set a hard limit on how many times one can turn in for the glasses and otherwise leave em be? It's a once a year event. Have some fun with it!

I guess it's my fault for believing the rewards you all offered in an event created BY you all would be available during the next event. You know, like every other year...

[Memnir]

Agreed! But the Sentient system was new (<1 month old) and the precaution for this sort of thing on the design end wasn't fully formed yet,so it slipped through. Rather than revoke it immediately, we decided to let it pass and fix it for the next Anniversary. So, here we are: Making a balance change, and giving advanced warning so people know this is being corrected and have time to use up any that are left.

Thank you very much for the early communication.

[Ralmeth]

Well shoot...I guess I missed out last year

[Rockcrusher99]

So now I won't lose 2 or 3 days of my life (and sanity) in a non-stop event-running cycle. My wife thanks you, I'm sure!

For the record: Last year we did a 2 minute, 7 second run with (6 people). My guildy, and the best runner on Argo, did the kobold gauntlet.
He took two days off of work and I had the time off as well. We ran at least 20-30 hours of the event. Our average rate of completion was 2 mins, 15 seconds with about 15 secs to regroup between runs getting us about 24 runs per hour. You can do the math for rewards. 2-man runs were only 10-15 secs behind the 2:15 averages. Pretty sweet and memorable.

PS: I'm sure when I went to bed at night that I was muttering "not coo-coo-coo-cool" and something about "needing a new rune arm" in my sleep.

[Ellihor]

This is more bad news for newbies and casuals.

[kain741]

@Kain741 Not all items are lvl 28+ in all quests so 200xp AVG . No one is going to just item farm 24/7 for that long, particularly since the grind is still heroics for racial TRs. But feel free to do the match to come up with a total hours per item with your info. It's still a silly amount of hours per item. I did forget about WPM xp gems though. not sure about the drop rate there.

No one is going to spend 20 hours a week capping out a weapon your way either. If someone wanted to cap out their sentient efficiently they can and do actively farm sentient xp by farming level 29 items and sentient gems.

[zehnvhex]

DDO has been about grinding for hours/weeks for a modest upgrade in power for a very long time now. I mean if you hadn't caught on after the TR grind, the various rep grinds, crafting grinding, etc...etc...etc..

I mean DDO is the grind.

[Arkat]

No one is going to spend 20 hours a week capping out a weapon your way either. If someone wanted to cap out their sentient efficiently they can and do actively farm sentient xp by farming level 29 items and sentient gems.

Oh, had I known about it, I would have.

I'm obsessed with getting at least 7 slots in all my sentient jewels. I've gotten 8 in two of them and there's at least one or two more that I'd do the same with.

Running an event for the sure payoff is, imho, better than running WPM for 8 runs (ransack) per toon with no guarantees.

[kmoustakas]

Hello!

We wanted to give you a heads-up about a change to an item coming soon in a patch: The Rose Colored Goggles, found in the Anniversary event. This joke item has a Minimum Level of 30, and applies an effect that "reduces your level cap to 10" by giving you 20 negative levels while equipped. As a joke item, it's fairly cheap to acquire in the Anniversary Party, but its ML30 Named Item status means that it grants the same amount of Sentient XP as a standard level 30 item, which is too much given the effort required to obtain it.

With a patch sometime before this year's Anniversary Event, we'll be reducing the Sentient XP it grants to 10, matching the value of the level this item "reduces" you to.

We recognize that this is a pretty large change for that item, which is why we waited until this year's event to move forward with it, and why we're giving advanced notice now. If you have copies of this item that you're waiting to crunch for Sentient XP, now would be the time to do so.

We've got some other new goodies for the Anniversary coming down the line soon, looking forward to sharing them with you!

Makes sense. Also makes a lot of people sad, but makes sense.

[Loromir]

Everyone knew (or should have known) that what was happening last year was not intended. I know I did.

I consider what happened last year as an added anniversary gift. I didn't expect that gift to be given again this year.

[Ulfo]

Running an event for the sure payoff is, imho, better than running WPM for 8 runs (ransack) per toon with no guarantees.

Moreover, WPN or RL and majority other quests with ML28-ML29 loot drop all p2p, and Anniversary event pure f2p.

[Feralthyrtiaq]

But appreciate the heads up. Instead of full "Stick in the Eye" it's "Just the Tip" this time....

[droid327]

the design is you must spend 100,000xp taking 200 xp per upgrade = 500 items = 2 hour per named item avg drop rate (varies per quest) = 1000 hours or 20 hrs per week for a year.

Ha, you like that, try running the numbers on getting a fresh alt to heroic+epic completionist without Otto boxes

[mr420247]

This is the most pointless nerf i've seen

I can ranack all r1 ravenlofts in 5 minutes or less for reaper gear or

Waste my time on that the only ones doing that are new players

Do you want new players to play or quit its your game

[karatemack]

This was never WAI, sorry. It's been on our hitlist ever since we realized it was happening.

These types of changes put the people who didn't get in early further behind those who did. I'm NOT saying this is an unreasonable change... just another in a long series of events (intentional or not) that leaves a larger gap between vets/new players and single-toons/alt-players.

This type of QOL fix would be easier to swallow if some of the other endless grind in the game were reduced or if the game moved more towards ACCOUNT progression vs CHARACTER progression.

[psykopeta]

This was never WAI, sorry. It's been on our hitlist ever since we realized it was happening.

sorry, but that is no excuse, it's like the crystal cove armor with red slot (random example, cause crunching card is already talked enough)

a proper fix is a fix, clears all benefits gotten from before (like you did with retroactive changes), what you're doing here and in the example before is messing with "right players" who don't go mad after finding something that "maybe it's not right but well, let's exploit it like mad because it never happed anything to exploiters in ddo"

just saying, the only time i played cove was before last event/s (so yes, my gear needs to be updated yet roflmao) and i'm pretty confident i haven't run anniversary challenges since release, i just don't like the mechanic

but i like much less that "oh let's keep bad guys who happen to be whales doing what they want and screw newbies"

cause i really don't care if the goggle give 3000xp and take less than 5 mins to farm, i would run 1, 2 or 3 times at must, but others may find they need that xp more than other greedy bastards farmed til eyes bleed

if someone decides to pour their life in that challenges IT'S FAIR TO LEAVE THEM DO LIKE OTHERS DID BEFORE, cause saying "we didn't know blablabla" is just ********, saying you don't know where you can get xp is... loling? releasing sentience xp stones? hello?

same with red slotted armors in cove "oh sorry we're gonna fix them", it has been proven you can do retroactive changes so pls, don't lie, it's just ugly

saying it's WAI or not, it doesn't matter when you clearly know that people got more than 1 weapon in that event (lol poor guys, but if that's how they want to play DDO... xD) and then punish others cause they weren't greedy enough

what you (as group, not personal lol, as turbine/SSG) are promoting is the religion of ddo that has been staying for years and driving players away like nothing can do: EXPLOIT BEFORE IT GETS FIXED

which makes me sad, do you know how many times did i needed to post tickets, ingame and outside due to "using ED skills at heroic lvls" before getting fixed? or how many threads of VIDEOS with players farming orchard for renown? and yes, you're right, nothing happened in a long, long, loooooooooong time

that's what makes me (and not me alone XD) think that would be better saying "we're changing that because we wanted to" that giving weird excusers like WAI or not, when they're only aimed to punish new players (because whales don't get happy if someone catches them w/o spending that lot of money you know, envy it's called, number 1 in promoting nerfs in forum)

that's my opinion, on a really bad decision (if you find me touching these anniversary challenges lemme know, so you can call me hypocrite, good luck with it tho)

[Anaximandroz]

One less reason to login and/or take party in the anniversary. Cant just compromise and just halve the Sxp? Or you may as well delete the item; because, really, who got it if not to feed a gem?

[Arkat]

One less reason to login and/or take party in the anniversary. Cant just compromise and just halve the Sxp? Or you may as well delete the item; because, really, who got it if not to feed a gem?

I got one just out of curiosity.

I'm guessing that reason was very close to what the Devs were expecting. I doubt they EVER thought anyone would get more than one.

[SocratesBastardSon]

My sentient weapon objects to be fed anything "rose colored," "rose flavored," or "rose scented." So it's probably just as well.