Commendations of Valor Update

[Thrudh]

Furthermore I personally find running SAGA's suck. Since half the player base expect barbarians to chug pots and self-heal instead of dealing the most melee dmg likely in a group, I pretty much only solo except for epic raids and therefore I hate having to find groups to run SAGA quests on EE and having a player drop and a new one join every second quest. IMO, saga's has made DDO much less fun. Feels like a waste of time typing this- as if turbine is going to make a change in favour of the players that support their company.

Sagas are 100% optional. Pretty easy to NOT run sagas if you hate sagas... People are so weird.

[Thrudh]

Bump, we need lower Commendations of valor amounts. As a casual player, I rarely get more than 50 commendations per day. That means once every 3 months I get to eTR. That's not acceptable.

As a casual player playing only 3-4 quests a day, it probably takes you 2-3 months to get from level 20-28 anyway...

Don't get me wrong...I think should probably lower the number of Comms needed as well, but your argument is weak.

[Gremmlynn]

While it's true that the game is unlikely to get a massive amount of new players, it's also true that a major overhaul can easily drive a large portion of current players away. Clearly they are focusing on short-term gains over any long-term plans/game survivability. The December VIP-heart-event is one more clear stab in that direction; with many players going VIP for one month, I'm sure the management goals will be reached and the hefty bonuses can be collected.

Personally, I think this is what is needed for long, or maybe even short, term survival.

Yes and no. Push us too hard and we push back. Make the $$$-grab too obvious and more and more people will get the reverse reaction and stop spending. I stopped my VIP already at Shadowfail, a guildie ended it with the 4200-tokens, and I've seen forum posts about people stopping potion/box buys.

In addition to the active stop on spending, the huge grind of 4200 comms drains the will to play. From the three of our guilds active players one is enjoying things, farming EE:s with a capped toon and having fun. The two others practically stopped playing, it felt like too much bother even to log on to see if there's anything happening. The upcoming BTA change restored my faith a tiny bit, I've actually logged on since that, and even occasionally done a quest or two. But, unless the cost is lowered, I don't see myself playing very long. Drawing numbers from this small sample, 33% of players continued playing (but didn't start buying hearts), 33% stopped/lessened playing and 33% stopped/lessened playing and canceled VIP.

I can imagine that one dude in our guild might buy a reinc heart from store, so that would even out 1 month of lost VIP. So I guess that's nothing lost, the loss will not come from the earnings in this quarter.

What good is having those people stick around, if it means the game wont even have a chance of meeting WBs expectations? At least this way they stand a chance of doing so if they are in as dire straits as they appear to me to be.

Better to hang one's hopes on a leaky life raft that probably will sink than a ship that you know will.

[Ytteri]

So..... are we ever gonna get some comments or response to the suggestions or concerns raised here?

[viktorserak]

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.

I believe that there is a communication problem between us (your customers, the players) and you (devs, turbine folks).

So, to put it as simple as possible:

With the current drop rate, it is the number of CoVs needed for the heart, that is the main problem. Drop it to 2500 maximum and we will be happy. Well, most of us anyway, some ppl will never be happy.

CoVs may stay BTC, they may not auto-stack (thou I agree that its unpleasant), that is all secondary. The primary and main problem is the number of CoVs needed.

I want to ETR and run the hamster wheel. But Right now, ETR is either P2P aspect of the game, or something that can only be earned by playing the game like it is my job.

And since we are in the situation, where there is litterally nothing to do on capp, that is hurting you. I rarely logg, because I have no idea what I would do.

I pay for DDO. I am unwilling to pay for heart. I am bored by almost non-existent epic capp game. I cant TR without farming till my eyes bleed. I will stop playing and paying, since I am loosing reasons to logg into the game anymore.

[EllisDee37]

With the current drop rate, it is the number of CoVs needed for the heart, that is the main problem. Drop it to 2500 maximum and we will be happy. Well, most of us anyway, some ppl will never be happy.

Agreed, but don't forget that karma needs to drop to 2 million. (The price of a single destiny, which was all you needed to get a free 6 million karma when it went live. Man did I get hosed, needing to grind 5 million xp now instead of 900k the week before U20 went live.)

[Abitar]

I am a very casual player to start with.


I find that getting true heart is very difficult unless I sit and grind for them. Since I have characters who have to group, I never thought of this game as solo but it has turned that way I finding it hard to play my epic characters. tHen running into bugs of the saga rewards disappearing before you can use it??(reported a month ago).

I currently have 2 epic characters, my 'main', only call it that because it hold the most favor, who I started to moving to the new cap. Between the 2 of them, maybe 100 commodation of valor, I should of thought they would been bound to account not character. So, maybe by middle of next year or year after Ill gain enough CoV to be useful. But then again, I have only 1 TR with 1 past life so far. So they just something I have to figure where to put them.

I finding with all the equipment you want to hold for a next life clutters up your bank(s). Adding another item to keep track of... At least you can pool them into one common bank to keep track.

Back to my collections, I been working toward getting the fragment for a heroic true heart, Well After combining all the fragments and such, which has increased many times over since my characters started trying to collect them. I'm still only up to 16 tokens after a few years of casual play.

I still have 28 pt characters in my stables using ehm as bank toons, I thought of bring them active but getting them to 20 in the gimp form will not be very enjoyable. Couple of my 28pt characters have true heart of wood they got for some promotion years ago. I am a hoarder of old stuff, but I have been turning lots stuff to essences. But, still wonder how long before the birthday cakes go stale I have xp pots, slayer pots, cakes and cookies that are bound to character on toons who I use as banks, with up to a doz slots used for promotional items.

You know what would be nice to have a way to dump the contents of your inventory and banks to a CSV file or another text file so the people who have mules in the stable to keep track of what you have. I recently sold 8 venom blades (still have a pair on each toon who would use them ) So having another item to track that is character bound is a pain, to add to the collections, essence, trap parts, shards, spell components, pots, cookies, coins, gems , and the list goes on. I keep red and green bags in the shared bank for collecting the materials to on location. But this is a problem (or a challenge ) with most MMNOs learning to manage to limited inventory space.

[RD2play]

One other thing to consider is that you guys planned the CoV to be useful for more than just the hearts in the future, as it stands now everyone is picking the CoV because it feels mandatory (picking over loot) if you ever want to ITR/ER. So in its current iteration you really think people are even going to spend their CoV on the other prises?

reduce the amount needed for ITR/ER so you wont have to run all epic content 3 times ! just to obtain a heart , actually after running everything EE you should have plenty CoV to decide whether to farm "bit" more for TR or to spend them on other goodies! and farm later !

[Dalsheel]

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

+1

[DogMania]

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

Why?, after you ETR it is 6.6 mill to get back to 28 from 20 so you have 0.6 mill spare

[Drwaz99]

Why?, after you ETR it is 6.6 mill to get back to 28 from 20 so you have 0.6 mill spare

Because spending so much time out of our preferred destiny isn't only an inconvenience it's entirely not fun whatsoever. 2-3 million (my acceptable range) is still a good amount of grind but not stupidly high. Karma reqs now are stupid high.

I play this game to have fun. Not to get ****ed off because there are artificial barriers in place preventing me, and many others, from having fun.

[Teh_Troll]

Why?

Because I said so. That should be reason enough.

[Silverleafeon]

Because I said so. That should be reason enough.

6,785 now...can we have something cool to buy with 10k of them, like rainbow wings (or autogrant completionist feat)?

[JOTMON]

Because I said so. That should be reason enough.

Good enough reason for me.

Make it so.

[mmitch5]

+1 this is my feeling at the moment : out of whack
Been reading the whole thread and many other messages
In the forum talking about a fair value of 2200-2500 com
Of valor worth the grind.
As many others i will wait for a reaction from turbine to
Playerbase..if not i will be connecting once in a while
Until they come back to earth with decent correction
On this ..
Anamalia level 28 - 1911 com of valor...
Money money money pink floyd

To be fair, if Turbine's recent track record is taken straight up, then while they may be proving they are listening to the playerbase, they are even more so proving they are incompetent and unknowledgeable about their own game.

Recent proposed changes have met with huge resistance because they are so obviously out of touch with game reality. Was the takehome message from the proposed EPIC tr system that turbine listens to players (it took a bridge revolt to make them listen) or that they have no clue?

Same in this case, are you going to beat the "listens to playerbase" drum because we now have a overly complicated (as usual) workaround for an out-of-touch design, or remind Turbine that 4200 comms is still crazy, especially if they plan to make other uses for those comms?

A conspiracy-theorist would definitely say that all of Turbines recent proposals are purposefully out of whack so that they can get immediate harsh criticism and then respond so that they seem to be listening to players, while actually instituting systems that are even bigger grindfests and money-grabs then they could get away with if they tried to set up the systems "fair value" initially.

[Starla70]

I hear from many that I play with that the money grab is getting overdone. I for one do not want to buy hearts of wood. It totally destroys the point of earning turbine points through VIP. I would have to do nothing else but buy hearts or wait for sales of them.

The valor needed and the valor given out just do not make sense to me. I get 8 to 15 generally, so I need to run quests daily to get anywhere as it is now. Which, real life happens and this can not always be done. It frustrates people.

The bank space taken up...wow there is a issue. Maybe it is time to give us new space. I would not mind earning it, but there is just too much to keep track of now. With a TR having to empty out their TR cache on top of it all, another frustration! This I believe is the number one complaint of people I know. There just is not enough room to store things. Taking away the ability to store bags in a shared bank, makes it all that much worse, quivers as well.

The heart seeds is kind of like the epic token making to TR. I think that makes sense. I still think it should be lowered a bit, maybe 3,000.

[mkmcgw17]

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.

I like the change thank you I don't really intend on epic tring but at least I can put all the comms of valor together in case I change my mind.

[hi_sa1nt]

Why not make it 20 epic dungeon tokens to buy any heart (iconic, true, epic, etc)? Gives us a reason to go back to Eberron and quest, in which most of us run quests anyway.

[Ivan_Milic]

Why not make it 20 epic dungeon tokens to buy any heart (iconic, true, epic, etc)? Gives us a reason to go back to Eberron and quest, in which most of us run quests anyway.

Because there is no money in it and with vcomms turbine will sell new packs easier.

[hi_sa1nt]

Because there is no money in it and with vcomms turbine will sell new packs easier.

Well, aren't they planning on using vcomms to upgrade new weapons as well? That's what I heard/read. So, either way, they'll sell the new packs.