VIP Gold Rolls extended through the weekend!
- Thread starter Cordovan
- Start date
DDO Gaming
Well-known member
Its because gamers like you have been supporting the game since day one that...the game remains online. Do you prefer the game simply experiences a dinosaur-moment so nobody can play it?
No but the company that runs it should at least show the same loyalty back to the people who support them. Remeber without active paying memebers there is no game even if it is "Free to Play"
Complainers gotta complain. *shrug*
DDO Gaming
Well-known member
Would you like SSG to buy you a tesla? Or perhaps a goldplated rolls-royce? Or...do you simply feel the need to endlessly complain because nobody is offering you 300 shards to apply your time more productively?
My point is its just dumb. And if they truly cared about keeping the player base active and engaged they should at least try and make it equal for everyone. Just go to the DDO store and look at the values on both items and tell me how its even remotely equal. And if they can't support their player base why should we support them? And that is why I will no longer be upping my VIP and buy xpacks. If I get them free in 6 months with either farmed DDO points or free giveaways whats the point?
No, but we'd like you to stop strawmanning us.
Maybe this is news to you and others, but there are a lot of options between the extremes of "pointless and insignificant" and "give us everything for freeeeee!!!!" on the reward spectrum.
I don't think any of the long-term paying customers expect SSG to give the farm away for free, but we sure as hell would like them to put some actual thought into it and move further away from the "pointless and borderline insulting" end of the spectrum and more towards the middle. Is that really too much to ask?
The 1-hour discovery elixir is not even remotely comparable in value versus entire expansion. The rewards should have been somewhat comparable.
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DDO Gaming
Well-known member
You do understand the purpose of the elixir of disvcovery is to boost chances of obtaining the toprated named loot? So its not the elixir that's important but your increased chances of obtaining toprate loot items.
If your complaint was "meh 60 minutes isn't enough time, we need maybe 5 potions" then I would understand your point but...that's not your complaint
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Vox
Well-known member
What does this even mean? "topranged"
The elixir doesn't boost gear stats or chances of reaper/mythic boosts.
Use one and go run heroic vecna unleashed. Tell us how many topranged items you got.
Phoenicis
Savage's Husband
IMO a far better reward would have been: If you own all the xpacs you get to select a raiders reward box based on one specific xpac with a random selection of named gear from that specific xpac.
As others have said, a 1 hr 10% bonus is unnoticeable and only good for two quests at best, given the time it takes to complete top end quests.
As others have said, a 1 hr 10% bonus is unnoticeable and only good for two quests at best, given the time it takes to complete top end quests.
Except you don't know that. The position you've been arguing against, in a quite condescending way, is that "One discovery elixir is of significantly lower value than an expansion pack." That's just a fact. An expansion pack costs between 1999 points (Saltmarsh) and 3995 points (Isle of Dread). While Discovery Elixirs don't have a specific points value as far as I'm aware, they're almost exclusively included as "bundle sweeteners"- tossed in with something you were going to buy anyway like Improved Otto's Boxes or DDO points, and I doubt that they are worth 1999 points each, much less the 400-800 points implied by your suggestion as well.
After all, if the idea is that they boost your chance of named loot 10%, well, chest rerolls cost a pittance in astral shards for a similar or higher return (with some limitations, and the two do stack, so it's not without *any* value) but unless I'm extremely bad at math you would be spending roughly 80 DDO points (at 5 points per shard and 20 shards per chest, which is higher than the real number but it makes the math neat and tidy) to reroll even the highest level chests in DDO for a 33% chance (on elite or reaper, not going to do the math out for lower difficulties because if you're farming named loot on normal you're losing value on your personal time unless you really enjoy grinding) for named loot, which is a much higher return, you're essentially getting something like the equivalent of 50-100 DDO points (if you're running legendary content, less if you're running low level content) in value from a potion depending on how many end chests you open. And we're also assuming that named loot holds value equal to the cost of rerolls here, which may or may not be the case, but we'll just go with that.
If you zerg four or five quests in an hour, which is possible but not optimal and might require selecting chests that you don't care about loot from, you could probably get roughly the equivalent of, oh, let's be generous and say 100 astral shard rerolls worth of chests, but at only about 30% efficiency of rerolls, so to be charitable with the math let's say that's "worth" 30 astral shards, which is 225 DDO store points (assuming the least efficient purchasing rate of astral shards, because again, this is the *most charitable* interpretation of the value of Discovery Elixirs so we're going to just assume you have the worst timing on your shard purchases).
If you reroll those chests, and lets say you do for each of those hypothetical five named loot chests, you do stack it, so if you *really* optimize your potion you could get roughly 450 DDO points of value out of it, assuming you buy astral shards at the worst return on investment and you don't get any named loot on a first roll). But even in this *absurdly* hypothetical situation which is extremely biased in favor of the discovery elixir, it's pretty obvious that even against the cheapest expansions (or even, moving away from DDO points, the least valuable in terms of fun and experience vs. the benefit of skipping running a quest .1/.2 times before getting your named loot) is pretty vanishing. Remember too that we pretty generously fudged the math in favor of rerolls earlier.
Moving away from rerolls, if we do the hypothetical and unlikely "five chances at named loot chests" scenario just looking at the probability it gets you a named item, you have a 50% chance (10%+10%+10%+10%+10%) of getting a named item. I'm not entirely sure if discovery elixirs function as an "extra" roll on the table or if they add to the base chance, which changes the math but I'm not going into that because at that point we're getting a little bit whacky with speculation but that's essentially .5 named items per potion. That's not a great payout, especially since half of the time (in this again very generous hypothetical) you get *nothing*.
I support DDO giving away adventure packs and even expansions to players to bring them into the game. I think it's good for the population, good for players, and generally a good thing overall. But if that's the case, you don't need to give players "fake" compensation for their loyalty. Either appeal to players as one collective community, or actually reward loyalty with something meaningful keeping in mind that "pay to not play the game" is kind of a self defeating reward for a loyalty bonus- it makes sense for newer players who might want a leg up, but how many veteran players really have that much loot to grind for other than whatever is in the next big pack? I might just be biased since I got my Cursed Blade of Jack Jibbers and now everything else feels pretty easy to farm, though.
Anyway, there are a variety of reasons why people might not be satisfied with the discovery elixir, whether it's sticker value (or mathematical value in this case since discovery elixirs don't have an associated price), perceived enjoyment value (new quests to run feels better than a button to click to maybe get some loot), or even just probability of the item even being useful since you would need to loot ten named loot chests in the potion's active duration to, on standard distribution, get one bonus item. If you're looking at people getting expansion packs, and you get an elixir, you're going to feel shortchanged, obviously, it's just the difference in value. It smarts more for some people because normally loyalty is rewarded, not ignored, and DDO has a past history of people who have content being given pitiful "bonuses" compared to people being given the content which makes people sensitive to it.
Personally I don't really care. I'm more excited to see people who might come back to the game or pick it up for the first time get some shiny expansion packs. But if you're going to resort to lazy strawmanning to paint people who have their own legitimate opinions that a discovery elixir is not as valuable as an expansion pack as greedy, well, that I do care about, because it's just rude.
I'm sorry but SSG put 0 thought into this. If they did give us 2 or 3 that would have been great or even if they made a special one that was maybe 3 or 6 hrs like a Sovereign pot this may have been worth it
DDO Gaming
Well-known member
I'm arguing agsaint your "either or" argument construct by asserting the potion is a gateway to improving your chances of obtaining named loot...which is one of the reasons folks purchase expansion packs etc.
The fact the expansions are being given away is part of the dragon of the year celebration. there is no attempt to give a monetary value to any of the expansions, that's something gamers like yourself are attempting to do
DDO Gaming
Well-known member
rewards still on hold? 
DDO Gaming
Well-known member
You can "xyz is a much better reward option" in many different ways or...you can say "SSG don;t wish to make this a coding nightmare so this is what they've done"
What you did was strawman people who said "I don't think a discovery elixir is fair compensation for loyally purchasing all the expansions so I get objectively less for the giveaway" by calling them greedy. Also kind of cringe to call other people "gamers" while having "Gaming" in your username. Anyway, clearly you're not arguing in good faith or really listening to what other people are saying.
I don't really care about not really getting anything significant (in my opinion) for this month, but I do see why people are upset, and telling people they shouldn't be upset because *you* think the two are equivalent when they really clearly aren't to anyone looking at them objectively is just wrong. "The customer is always right in matters of taste" (and that last bit is deeply important) matters- if people say "I don't think a discovery elixir is as valuable as an expansion pack" they're probably not just whiny spoiled rich kids like your strawman argument implied, they probably perceive a value difference in those two things, and you can't convince them that doesn't exist by being rude. It may be of similar value to *you*, but that doesn't give you the right to mock someone else because you disagree. That's just bad behavior.
Anyway, even if you go for the argument that expansion packs are about gear and discovery elixirs are also about gear, I'm pretty sure that the discovery elixir still objectively pales in comparison, but it's boring to argue with someone who isn't going to actually participate besides just making up a strawman to tear down to feel big about themselves so you can keep believing that if you like.