So, what's the incentive to run EEs now?

[Chai]

Fun.

[slarden]

Less chest beating, more numbers. I enjoy running EE, but a guild mate of mine challenged me to look at the xp/minute and the numbers were that sprinting through EN and EH quests is far better exp/minute than moving slower through EE quests. My last defense for running EEs were that I wanted the COVs to get the reinc heart.... now... we blitz epic normals.

Sounds like a self-inflicted problem and not something Turbine is forcing you to do.

[Eth]

Less chest beating, more numbers. I enjoy running EE, but a guild mate of mine challenged me to look at the xp/minute and the numbers were that sprinting through EN and EH quests is far better exp/minute than moving slower through EE quests. My last defense for running EEs were that I wanted the COVs to get the reinc heart.... now... we blitz epic normals.

When you stop caring about xp/min this game becomes really fun. Trust me.

[TrinityTurtle]

Less chest beating, more numbers. I enjoy running EE, but a guild mate of mine challenged me to look at the xp/minute and the numbers were that sprinting through EN and EH quests is far better exp/minute than moving slower through EE quests. My last defense for running EEs were that I wanted the COVs to get the reinc heart.... now... we blitz epic normals.

The problem here is, like the people who don't need a defense to not enjoying ee, you also don't need a defense to run EE other beyond "you enjoy it". If you are having fun blitzing the epic normal, then you're fine and blitz til the servers go dark and know you had a blast. But if you're don't enjoy it, and doing it purely on an xp/min value which is meaningless compared to a fun/min value, then run whatever DOES make you happy.

[Vindraxx]

There have been a number of answers in this thread already, but I will say that fun, bravery, sagas, and loot are pretty good reasons.

I actually ran What goes up on EE for bravery (also my first time) and had a blast with the group I was with last night. I find there are tons of people running EE on Khyber where I think that typically EE probably constitutes more than half the end game LFM's. Usually if I'm just logging on to do a few quick runs like VoN3 or a DA, I'll just do EH. But if I'm sitting down to play and jumping in a group for a chain, EE is typically more fun and I always appreciate the extra end rewards for Sagas or Comms and chance at Epic Elite loot over EN.

[Jumiyo]

EE for fun .. it's more challenging like the way old heroics was ... like the time I first entered the vale of twilight and I almost wet myself just walking around the slayers area - with the huge spiders almost wiping me out... that kinda of feeling. EN and EH is not fun...

Then EE loot is better.

That's it.

[Seikojin]

Well first of all heart seeds are now easy to get. EE is still the way to go if you are farming CoVs. Right now the consumables are meh but Turbine plans to implement more compelling CoV uses in the future. However with all the duping that went on/is going on I wouldn't be surprised if Turbine abandons that plan and creates another new currency.

I think the drop rates should be given a huge boost in EE across the board to equal out the huge difficulty bump from EH to EE. Instead of drop rates being 3%/4%/5% it should be more like 3%/4%/12%.

I'd also like to see some nice (not best in slot or required) items/consumables drop on EE and be EE exclusive. Perhaps deathward potions, heal over time potions and the CoV turn ins. Also would love to see cosmetic armor/hats/eyes/pets drop and be EE exclusive.

I think drop rates should be changed in the following way (for both heroic and epic):
Casual: No special slot in the loot, all lootgen.
Normal: Normal special slots, normal chances.
Hard: Double special slots, hard increase for lootgen.
Elite Triple special slots, Elite increase for lootgen.

This essentially, on paper, is a triple chance to get a named item for running elite.

Then... Vip: get +1 special slot on hard and elite difficulties.

Instead of +1 or +2 loot weekends, they could add +1 special slot or +2 special slots.

Add a new item to the ddo store to do the same thing.

Twerk the dragonmark and the maps to do the same thing.

I triple guarantee you that everyone will run elite, all the time, or as much as possible, to get the drops. Leave the chances the same. Don't mess those up. Just increase the iterations so the randomness pops specials more often.

KISS method.

[Seikojin]

For me though, EE is about fun and challenge. So far, very few of my characters can be a star in EE, so I play it very little.

[Ancient]

The problem here is, like the people who don't need a defense to not enjoying ee, you also don't need a defense to run EE other beyond "you enjoy it". If you are having fun blitzing the epic normal, then you're fine and blitz til the servers go dark and know you had a blast. But if you're don't enjoy it, and doing it purely on an xp/min value which is meaningless compared to a fun/min value, then run whatever DOES make you happy.

I have fun playing the game. My point was that the "math" currently doesn't favor EEs for any solid reason other than it is harder, with harder being most often defined as hits for more hp and has more hp. I run EE's in level 20 gear, I like challenge... but when I'm grinding towards a goal, I also like efficiency.

The second issue with the "for the challenge!" reason is that if I was after challenge, I wouldn't be running Von3, wizard king and the typical xp grind quests... they are not the challenging content. If I'm running those quests, I'm grinding, and if I'm grinding... efficiency matters.

[silinteresting]

as been said before saga's.

this is because with a full saga list ready, i etr then
hit saga rewards and hey presto im no longer level 20
with hardly any gear im level 22+ with most of my
gear insight.

your friend sil

[Varinon]

Psssh. Back in my day, there was almost no incentive for elite at all, and people still ran it. Bravery bonus? No. Better loot? No (but better chances--barely). CoVs? No. Sagas? No.

There's at least some incentive to run Elite now, or at least hard. Way back when we ran everything either normal or epic, and we had fun then too.

[Bargol]

My guild and I run epic elites every night for the fun, challenge, gear, and xp. I solo epic elites for the same reasons.

When you have been running them awhile and are geared out and prepared they honestly feel like epic hard used to feel long ago.

Every time now that I step into anything less then epic elite it just feels wrong....way to easy.

Additionally in my experience once you have run them on epic elite a fair amount it does not take much longer then epic hard....if its taking you significantly longer and people are getting killed then perhaps the group wasn't really prepared for epic elite.

[Chai]

Turbine must have learned that bottlenecking com acquisition based on ability to run EE was not a viable monetization strategy, so they allowed us to farm heart seeds at cap. If they made it 1 heart seed on normal, 2 on hard, and 3 on elite, I don't think that would incentivize running EE much. The majority of folks who are worried about earning them as fast as possible would still blow through EH rather then run EE.

[Vanhooger]

I see xp grind like a challenge for myself, every time I try to do it faster/better and helps me collecting PL otherwise will be boring, and I really enjoy it.

Most of my guild mate do not like run with me because I zerg way too much, but I suppose we have different play style.

Sometime I screw the quest because I zerg even on red alert, but I'd love to take some risk

I do love to run EE solo, there is more challenge, and if you make a mistake it's just your own fault.

EE in party is too easy.

[Ancient]

Additionally in my experience once you have run them on epic elite a fair amount it does not take much longer then epic hard....if its taking you significantly longer and people are getting killed then perhaps the group wasn't really prepared for epic elite.

I can solo EE von3, it is on youtube. It takes significantly longer than sprinting through epic normal. Please explain how I'm not ready for a quest I can solo. The heart of our disagreement probably lies with the definition of significantly longer... I used to think taking 20% longer for EE was a resonable amount (and from a non min/max perspective, it is). But by the numbers and min/max... it is not.

According to the wiki, epic normal is base 23,299. By the same source, epic elite is 24,784. The optionals scale by the same amount, so EE provides 1.06 times the exp of an epic normal run. Is it honestly your stance that you can run through an EE von3 in 1.06 times the length of time it takes to run full speed through a normal one? Because I don't believe it.

I agree EE is fun, and it isn't too bad... but those are the only arguments. The math doesn't back the time/reward from a min/max perspective. If you wish to ignore min/max, I have no issue with that... but don't pretend the math does work while doing so.

[Ancient]

Turbine must have learned that bottlenecking com acquisition based on ability to run EE was not a viable monetization strategy, so they allowed us to farm heart seeds at cap. If they made it 1 heart seed on normal, 2 on hard, and 3 on elite, I don't think that would incentivize running EE much. The majority of folks who are worried about earning them as fast as possible would still blow through EH rather then run EE.

It is a bit of a lose/lose. Turbine could apply a bravery bonus type reward to the daily playthrough bonus to reward playing on epic elite... but part of the current direction is to allow more flexibility in grouping at the epic levels and that would go against that desire. Unfortunately the flip side seems to be a reduction in difficulty for the average LFMs. People now are interested in the daily speed exp runs rather than catching a more rare EE train. I'm not judging good or bad, just calling what I see, the game changes and players adapt. The current adaptation is that the fastest way to get the xp/past lives is to blitz epic normals. EH is close enough to optimal that it can be worth the extra entertainment value to run epic hard rather than epic normal.

[ishr]

CoVs have always been almost the entire reason ever since they were implemented. But now you gain Seeds running Epic Casual...

XP/time ratio... is bad. You get a bonus the first time through (nice for Iconics!) but so does Epic Normal and even Epic Casual. EEs are now once per life. It doesn't matter how fast you can complete an EE, unless you're 1-shotting everything then EH can always be done faster.

The Tiered Loot topic definitely has some mixed opinions at Turbine, but it's likely getting discontinued or left aside at this pace, either way it won't affect our lives much... too many casuals complaining they can't powergame.

Drop Rates seem to be the only thing we have left, but honestly some items seem to hard to drop that I doubt we're making any decent progress by trying EE instead of EH.
Also, for many quests out there, you can do a EH in half the time and just run it twice, 0% chance of failure and you're getting a lot more XP.

Then we have Drop Rates for Raids, since those can't be easily repeated but... there's a large different from EN to EH and to EH to EE.
Epic Elite raids should drop something REALLY awesome and at a GOOD rate (instead of running it 100 times to finally drop an item), how about some (multiple) guaranteed Dragonshard Essences?

this war has been fought and won by the casual army. dont waste your words. the devs have made it clear through actions that scaling EE rewards is not a priority. Through their silence on this topic they have demonstrated that this is not an issue which is currently up for discussion. As far as we can tell, the slow march towards everything being easily attainable for everyone shall continue. Skill, strategy, cooperation, and time are no longer being rewarded proportionally in this game.

[Chai]

It is a bit of a lose/lose. Turbine could apply a bravery bonus type reward to the daily playthrough bonus to reward playing on epic elite... but part of the current direction is to allow more flexibility in grouping at the epic levels and that would go against that desire. Unfortunately the flip side seems to be a reduction in difficulty for the average LFMs. People now are interested in the daily speed exp runs rather than catching a more rare EE train. I'm not judging good or bad, just calling what I see, the game changes and players adapt. The current adaptation is that the fastest way to get the xp/past lives is to blitz epic normals. EH is close enough to optimal that it can be worth the extra entertainment value to run epic hard rather than epic normal.

Only when capped is it faster to blitz epic normal. So now people are running for XP to cap, then blitzing EN for heart seeds? Kind of ironic, because this is in response to feedback that people should not need to farm much after cap to get the ETR heart. Now they accept having to do so, because the value of the currency of progress gained was ramped up.

If people play EE to 28 they will not have to farm for heart seeds at all however when they get there.

I don't see it as a lose/lose. Its more of a win/win. Folks who can play EE can do so and ensure they wont have to farm at cap for the ETR heart at all. Those who cannot, for whatever reason still have to farm at cap, but far less than they used to have to.

There is still incentive to play EE - not having to farm after reaching cap at all. Can just ETR right away.

[TrinityTurtle]

this war has been fought and won by the casual army. dont waste your words.

If this is true, if there is literally an army of players who could be classed as casual (most likely due to having a job to...you know...pay for the internet, computers, ddo, etc, some friends, maybe even a family) then it's not only a fair change, it's overdue. If they are the majority of the customer payer base paying for the experience, then their needs absolutely should be filled as best as possible.

the devs have made it clear through actions that scaling EE rewards is not a priority. Through their silence on this topic they have demonstrated that this is not an issue which is currently up for discussion. As far as we can tell, the slow march towards everything being easily attainable for everyone shall continue. Skill, strategy, cooperation, and time are no longer being rewarded proportionally in this game.

I agree that skill, strategy, and cooperation should be rewarded by the game, but time...absolutely not.

I'm in a lucky position, I can literally play as much as I want to outside the four hours a day I work (love part time earning what I would full time at most of the other local jobs). My son is grown, my husband games also when he's home, I have complete freedom. But I know that's unusual for most of the players, and just because I'm at a point in my life where I have more free time than I know what to do with, does NOT make me special or more deserving of ANY in game experience than any other players, even a guy who can only play an hour a month.

Not everyone develops skills at the same rate. That one hour a month guy can have the right mental skill set to rock this game, while a multi-hour daily player who doesn't with a different learning curve could be mistaken for a new player years into his gaming lifetime. Strategy is organized in the group, and can be learned from others, it doesn't require a set amount of hours, just running with good people and being willing to think through a problem beyond swinging your weapon at it. And cooperation is a skill slowly eroding from this game sadly where todays definition of cooperation for a lot of people is 'don't die, and do part x of the quest alone while I do part y'.

[Thrudh]

When you stop caring about xp/min this game becomes really fun. Trust me.

Sig-worthy.