Hardcore League Preview: 8/6-8/8

[Cocomajobo]

(EDIT: The preview has ended. The server is coming down momentarily. Thank you to everyone who gave it a try. We'd love continued feedback in the lamannia section of the forums.)

Welcome to the Hardcore League Preview. This preview will be open until sometime in the evening of Thursday 8/8/19.

This preview build contains all changes from the Multi-Patch/Update preview, however, the server has been set up to mimic (with exceptions written in this color) the Hardcore League experience when it goes live. This means that the Test Dojo will not be available to players and that players may not transfer characters from live (Note: Lord Poincelot has been placed in the Eberron Hall of Heroes to allow access to items in the DDO store just like players will have access to on the Hardcore League Server). This combination of factors would make providing good feedback on any feature other than Hardcore League very difficult and, as a result, we are not necessarily going to bog this thread down with full release notes again. You can find a list of systems changes between the Multi-Patch/Update preview and this Hardcore League preview in this thread here but please use this thread to provide feedback on Hardcore League specifically.

The Hardcore League server is exactly the same as a normal live server in all ways except for the following:

• Only 1 Life per Character: Character death on the Hardcore server during the league will be permanent. It doesn’t matter how you die; normal play, one shots, lag, disconnects, earthquakes, power outages, acts of god, ninja attacks on your play area – whatever the reason, character death is permanent during the league. When a character dies on the Hardcore server they enter a nether realm where they exist only as a spirit. They can not be resurrected by any means. No Resurrection Shrines, no Resurrection spells, no spirit cakes, no jack jibbers blades, nothing will bring your character back to life.
• Mortality, the Rewards NPC: At various places in the game world you can find a new NPC named "Mortality". Mortality will grant cosmetic rewards to characters that have passed specific benchmarks. These rewards, once unlocked on a character on the Hardcore League Season server will be available for all characters on that account on all servers (The rewards will only apply to the specific character that turns them in on the preview server). The benchmarks and their rewards are as follows:
• • Reaching a Total Favor of 1750 - Eyes of Darkness cosmetic (For the preview this has been temporarily reduced to 100 Total Favor)
  • Reaching a Total Favor of 5000 - Bloody Footprints cosmetic (For the preview this has been temporarily reduced to 1000 Total Favor)
  • Gaining 10 Reaper Enhancement Points - Special Cosmetic Cloak (For the preview this has been temporarily reduced to 1 Reaper Enhancement Point)
  • Gaining 20 Reaper Enhancement Points - Special Cosmetic Cloak (For the preview this has been temporarily reduced to 2 Reaper Enhancement Points)
  • Reaching character level 20 - Blood Reaper Pet (For the preview this has been temporarily reduced to character level 5)
• Leaderboards: Mortality also allows viewing access to view leaderboards for the Hardcore League Server. These leaderboards will display the top 100 living characters with the most Total Favor and Reaper Enhancement Points. If a character dies they will be removed from both leaderboards.
• No Characters from other servers: Players are not allowed to transfer characters from other servers to the Hardcore League Server.
• Level 1 Iconic Characters: All Iconic Races created will spawn in their usual starting areas but will then be transported to the beach on Korthos and not given experience to level past level 1.
• No Vet Status Characters: All characters created on accounts with Veteran Status will spawn on the veteran status airship, as usual, but will then be transported to the beach on Korthos and not given experience to level past level 1.
• VIP Required: The Hardcore League Season server can only be accessed by VIP accounts. (The preview of Hardcore League can be accessed by all accounts, no VIP required)
• Death is Announced: World Broadcasts are sent when higher level characters die. (Exact level this starts at is yet to be decided.)

Other than those differences the Hardcore League server will be identical to a normal live server.

We look forward to your feedback once you've had a chance to give it a try!

Known Issues

• Mortality currently only allows 1 character to talk to them at a time. To compensate, we have spawned many in the Eberron Hall of Heroes.
• The Cosmetic Cloak rewards are currently just copies of the Masterminds of Sharn cosmetic cloaks.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Nice!

[Sam1313]

Awesome. I will make sure to set aside some time to check this out. Thank you.

[MichelOue]

[QUOTE=Cocomajobo;

Release notes will be made available when the preview opens.[/QUOTE]

The game install preview has loaded for me. 5.30am Level 1 gonna be rough.
The podcast Cordovan said it will be on for 90 days. VIP only

[C-Dog]

The game install preview has loaded for me. 5.30am Level 1 gonna be rough.
The podcast Cordovan said it will be on for 90 days. VIP only

That's the actual event, which (iirc) is slated to start mid-month and go 'til early-/mid-November - this is the preview of that.

We are very excited to announce the preview of our upcoming Hardcore League. This preview is expected to open sometime in the early afternoon of Tuesday 08/06/2019 and to close sometime in the evening of Thursday 08/08/2019...

Also, I didn't hear it was "VIP Only", but I could easily have missed that.

(edit - I did, it was briefly mentioned in one of the interviews.)

[Ballrus]

Hello, all!

We are very excited to announce the preview of our upcoming Hardcore League. This preview is expected to open sometime in the early afternoon of Tuesday 08/06/2019 and to close sometime in the evening of Thursday 08/08/2019.

Because of the special needs of Hardcore League this preview is going to work a bit differently than normal previews. The server will be set up to mimic the natural flow of gameplay using the feature to better facilitate accurate feedback. This means that the Test Dojo and Character Copies to Lamannia will not be available to players during this particular preview.

Release notes will be made available when the preview opens.

The preview is also just VIP?

[C-Dog]

@ Devs - Might I suggest a Hardcore subforum? It's already started in /General, but I think it would benefit both interested and disinterested parties to separate that chatter. Maybe under /Servers (since, after all...)?

[Cocomajobo]

The preview is also just VIP?

The preview will be available for all accounts, not just VIP's.

[Ballrus]

The preview will be available for all accounts, not just VIP's.

Nice!
Thank you.

Ps. Smart

[Bolo_Grubb]

I hve not read through everything concerning hardcore, but I wonder will daily dice rolls work on Hardcore? Will Season pass holders get their daily gold rolls on Hardcore?



Also will we get a preview of the cosmetic prizes on Lamannia?

[Cocomajobo]

I hve not read through everything concerning hardcore, but I wonder will daily dice rolls work on Hardcore? Will Season pass holders get their daily gold rolls on Hardcore?



Also will we get a preview of the cosmetic prizes on Lamannia?

Release notes will be made available when the preview opens.

[Cantor]

I hve not read through everything concerning hardcore, but I wonder will daily dice rolls work on Hardcore? Will Season pass holders get their daily gold rolls on Hardcore?

I would hope not. (I do have it too)

There should be no random or paid advantages.

[Cordovan]

@ Devs - Might I suggest a Hardcore subforum? It's already started in /General, but I think it would benefit both interested and disinterested parties to separate that chatter. Maybe under /Servers (since, after all...)?

For sure we can do this when it goes live. Good call.

[Cocomajobo]

Lamannia is now open for public preview! Please refer to the OP for information.

[Cocomajobo]

And just for good measure:

• This thread is for Hardcore League feedback
• The thread started by Steelstar (Here) is for other miscellaneous changes feedback. We understand that most will be hard to test in game with the preview server being set up for Hardcore.

[SerPounce]

allow access to items in the DDO store just like players will have access to on the Hardcore League Server

Boo. So full access to store stuff?

That's pretty disappointing. I'll still do it, it will still be fun, but this kills any competitive element. Someone using gold rolls, 50% XP pots, tomes, mana pots, shards for augments/re-rolls/etc, etc, etc, etc is going to have an absolutely enormous advantage over someone who doesn't.

And if you're going to have the store why is it VIP only? VIP only makes sense if there's no store stuff (I get that there has to be revenue and a premium with no store doesn't generate any), but if it works just like live let everyone in. I'm VIP, so this isn't personal.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I'm in Llamaland and I started at level 1 with all of my expansion pack goodies including a Greater Tome of Heroic XP, a Greater Tome of Epic XP, and the Racial AP tome as well as the various skill point tomes from the different expansions.

I also got 3500 XP from the gold daily dice.

...and I do see ability Tomes available in the store (although I have zero Llama DDO Points to spend)

I also have my level 3 permanent Cleric hireling (BEST HIRELING IN THE GAME) and the other various gold seal hirelings.

[Yamani]

Should lock out a few things in the store like tomes(if you want this to be a competition). Maybe set especially difficult quest to have a specific reward like The pit giving a guaranteed +2 tome for first time completion.

[Ralmeth]

The hardcore league sounds cool, but what if I don't like the look of the cosmetics? Also, for someone such as myself who is a Premium player, it will have to be one REALLY, SUPER COOL looking cosmetic to pay money to potentially get an item where there is a high risk of not getting it. Personally, I think there needs to be some other type of carrot...If you are able to make it to level 20, you get your choice of 1 heroic or racial past life for one character on your main server...

[C-Dog]

The store opens a potential (and partial) Pay-to-win element to this, true, but the Dev's stated that (and paraphrasing here) they wanted to make it "as close to live as possible", so that "you could use all the tricks you've learned". The fact that it's VIP only means there will be a lot of DP's floating around to begin with, so it's not completely uneven.

If they started taking X out but leaving Y in, they'd open up a whole new can of helpful criticisms from the VIP player base. :/

Personally, I think there needs to be some other type of carrot...

Sounds like you're not going to play HCL. Gotta accept it like the majority of Premium.

Hey, you'd be in the happy minority if, as Premium, you ~did~ go VIP to play - and I'm sure the Dev's thought of that. (They're tricksy like that.)