Commendations of Valor Update

[Vargouille]

We’re aware of several topics of discussion relating to Commendations of Valor. As players get more time with Update 20, we’ll be keeping an eye on how Commendations of Valor are working out and will consider possible changes. We have identified two issues that we feel we can address sooner rather than later:

1. Bind-to-Character: Earning Hearts of Wood via multiple Characters
Commendations of Valor are an Epic Ingredient that are Bind-to-Character, because we plan to use them for lots of different reward types. However, this puts extra strain on players who are earning Hearts of wood by playing many different characters, or who may have one character earning Commendations in lower levels while another character is already at the level cap. We’d like to address this to give additional options to these players while still allowing us flexibility for reward items we offer through Commendations in the future.

2. Commendations of Valor and Bag Space
The number of Commendations of Valor received scales heavily across different character levels, which means it’s challenging to simply reduce the amounts of Commendations bestowed, or the costs for Hearts of Wood, without consequence for characters of different level. However, this was not intended to put stress on bag space, so we’d like to address that too.


Introducing: Heart Seeds
We’re adding a new, entirely optional ingredient relating to Commendations of Valor and Hearts of Wood called “Heart Seeds”. This new ingredient adds some complications, but we felt those complications were worth it in order to address the above issues.

Heart Seeds:

• Stacks of these precious seeds can be combined to form Iconic or Epic Hearts of Wood.
• Purchasable with Commendations of Valor, these seeds are Bound to Account (unlike Commendations of Valor), allowing you to get hearts of wood by pooling resources from multiple characters.
• Bound to Account items are tradable to your other characters through the Shared Bank.

Notes:

• You can obtain 1 Heart Seed by turning 100 Commendations of Valor.
• You can obtain either one Iconic True Heart of Wood or one Epic Heart of Wood by turning in 42 Heart Seeds.
• You can still obtain either of those Hearts of Wood by turning in 4200 Commendations of Valor. You can safely ignore Heart Seeds if the above issues don’t affect you.
• Heart Seeds are currently only obtainable through the barter interface associated with Commendations of Valor.
• Heart Seeds can only be used to purchase Iconic True Hearts of Wood or Epic Hearts of Wood. In particular, they cannot be used to buy the potions that Commendations of Valor can be used for.
• You cannot turn Heart Seeds back into Commendations of Valor.

Thanks for your feedback on Commendations of Valor and Hearts of Wood.

[Teh_Troll]

This is a good thing. Now change the price of hearts to 25 seeds and you'll have a great thing.

[Healemup]

Thanks for listening to two of the biggest issues.

[RedOrm]

This is a good thing. Now change the price of hearts to 25 seeds and you'll have a great thing.

This. Thanks very much for this solution

Greetz,
Red Orm

[voodoogroves]

Really good stuff.

I'm still worried about stacking, in general, for CoV. If you're saving them up (and not wanting to commit to heart seeds), you're really stretched for space. In theory, there will be more uses, yes? So, still one more stacking problem to solve.

[TPICKRELL]

This is a good change to the system, thank you for listening.

[ComicRelief]

Even though I have yet to TR in any form, I like the idea. I think it's a good solution to having CoVs BtC (not allowing multiple toons to farm for the Hearts was a really big issue), yet allows you to keep your options open for other uses of CoVs. Bravo!

{Guess that's one less gripe I can make...well, legitimately make, anyway...}

[Teh_Troll]

1. Set the heart price to 25 seeds.

2. Lower the Karma required to ETR to 2 million.

Do this and I may even become a Turbine Fanboi.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Ingenious!

[cdbd3rd]

1. Set the heart price to 25 seeds.

2. Lower the Karma required to ETR to 2 million.

Do this and I may even become a Turbine Fanboi.

You may have made em pause long enough to consider it with that challenge!

LOL!

[Silverleafeon]

Do this and I may even become a Turbine Fanboi.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling....

[Wulverine]

Any reason the Heart seeds aren't completely unbound? I know plenty of endgame players who don't like to TR and will still have no real use for the comms of valor. (Potion turn-ins are underwhelming).
What would be the harm of unbound Heart Seeds?

Most ingredients in the game should be unbound, imo. And let supply & demand (and hardcore vs casual players) work it's magic. Turbine would benefit from increased platinum and Astral Shard sinks.

[jakeelala]

Blah blah blah propaganda blah

This is an improvement, the way a tourniquet and amputation of a limb is an improvement on bleeding to death. I wouldn't wish either, or this system, on my worst enemy.

By making the seeds non-convertible back to comms, you've literally done nothing to help with bag space problems for people who still hate the epic TR system and just wish to collect for consumables (because 4200 is insane, and 6 million Xp is just sort of insane). Way to go. Why are you so terrified to make them BtA? It borders (or frankly, is) irrational.

Also, 4200 comms is still vastly too many and it is sill clear this is a money grab for store hearts. Shame on you for not addressing the actual problem, which is prohibitive cost. You wouldn't need seeds if the cost was not so unreasonable.

Also, tokens never replaced loot in chests, so forcing us to choose comms instead of a deserved end reward is also, true to the rest of your implementation of this system, irrational and terribad.

But good job on half-fixing half of the problem. Seriously guys, way to go. Bro hugs all around.

[rest]

The price is still too high.

Adding in ANOTHER layer of ingredients instead of making the comms themselves BTA is asinine, and just means that it's more likely some sort of bug will be introduced to screw people over.

I'm still not convinced that 6 million karma is the right number for ETR. Especially as the past life feats are rather meh.

[Shorlong]

Do this and I may even become a Turbine Fanboi.

If this happens, they should grant you a free forum name change, so you can be Teh_Fanboi

The price is still too high.

Adding in ANOTHER layer of ingredients instead of making the comms themselves BTA is asinine, and just means that it's more likely some sort of bug will be introduced to screw people over.

I'm still not convinced that 6 million karma is the right number for ETR. Especially as the past life feats are rather meh.

And of course, some people will never be happy.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Introducing: Heart Seeds
We’re adding a new, entirely optional ingredient relating to Commendations of Valor and Hearts of Wood called “Heart Seeds”. This new ingredient adds some complications, but we felt those complications were worth it in order to address the above issues.

Heart Seeds:

• Stacks of these precious seeds can be combined to form Iconic or Epic Hearts of Wood.
• Purchasable with Commendations of Valor, these seeds are Bound to Account (unlike Commendations of Valor), allowing you to get hearts of wood by pooling resources from multiple characters.
• Bound to Account items are tradable to your other characters through the Shared Bank.

I like this very much. Since you are a developer posting on the DDO forums, I feel like I'm supposed to make a comment about you being made of poo or something similar, but I can't bring myself to do it since I do like this workaround very much. It's simple and fairly elegant for achieving the goals that you set out without being burdensome in making hearts of wood across several characters.

Yay devs!

[toaftoaf]

1. Set the heart price to 25 seeds.

2. Lower the Karma required to ETR to 2 million.

Do this and I may even become a Turbine Fanboi.

we fear that day troll

[Theboz]

The price is still too high.

Adding in ANOTHER layer of ingredients instead of making the comms themselves BTA is asinine, and just means that it's more likely some sort of bug will be introduced to screw people over.

I'm still not convinced that 6 million karma is the right number for ETR. Especially as the past life feats are rather meh.

They had their reasons for not changing the COVs from btc to bta. They have stated over and over why they are btc and not bta. They have other plans to add options that make them btc in the future. This was a way to separate the covs a bit from the hearts of wood, so that they can in a future update tinker with reincarnation a bit more then what they have been able too.

[Vellrad]

When?

[FuzzyDuck81]

Once again, 42 becomes the answer to life, the universe & everything.

Now, for a more important discussion we need to figure out who on the dev team are:
Arthur Dent
Ford Prefect
Trillian
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Marvin
Slartiblartfast
Trillian's mice