All TR hearts should be available from heart seeds

[Wizard]

I dunno... is 200 Past Lives a grind if you just break it up into 1 past life a month?

That's over 16 years and assuming taking no breaks from DDO or from TR'ing. If DDO is still running by then (certainly hope so!), another 100-200 PL will probably have come out.

Not that you need every pastlife (R10 capable first lifer builds exist), but if one's goal is "complete all PL" and you start now and don't have high playtime per day you'll never catch up.

 

[Jaspar]

I have them (and I have accumulated tokens from recent iconic TRs), but farming tokens is boring and pointless. What I'm saying is, it's not as easy as just earning them organically while playing the game, because you're often not getting to 30.

It's really time to change how the system works. It's a relic from, what, 17 years ago? Time to update.

Isnt TRing pointless?

Isnt anything in the game pointless other than filling up our days?

Nothing done now really matters in the game in 2 years.

If you can manage that mindset then a few weeks spending 8 x 2 min and 15 secs running BoB and 8 x 4 min and 45 secs running The Prisoner and 8 x 9 min (including the 1st part) Jungles of Khyber is nothing in the grand scheme of things. You could do LOD in maybe 7 min too.

Friends of mine a few years ago spent a few weeks farming tokens when at cap, in amongst running raids and other end game stuff. They are finishing off their final lives and are around 100 tokens now. Having planned it all out. I had a 4 year break so I didnt do this with them, but I had a character at cap so just ran it all myself.

So players with a bit of effort and a bit of planning and its simply not a problem which SSG should spend even 5 seconds thinking about.

 

[Ethril]

Isnt TRing pointless?

Isnt anything in the game pointless other than filling up our days?

Nothing done now really matters in the game in 2 years.

Sartre, is that you?

 

[Jaspar]

Sartre, is that you?

We are our choices.

 

[Bobbryan2]

Isnt TRing pointless?

Isnt anything in the game pointless other than filling up our days?

Nothing done now really matters in the game in 2 years.

If you can manage that mindset then a few weeks spending 8 x 2 min and 15 secs running BoB and 8 x 4 min and 45 secs running The Prisoner and 8 x 9 min (including the 1st part) Jungles of Khyber is nothing in the grand scheme of things. You could do LOD in maybe 7 min too.

Friends of mine a few years ago spent a few weeks farming tokens when at cap, in amongst running raids and other end game stuff. They are finishing off their final lives and are around 100 tokens now. Having planned it all out. I had a 4 year break so I didnt do this with them, but I had a character at cap so just ran it all myself.

So players with a bit of effort and a bit of planning and its simply not a problem which SSG should spend even 5 seconds thinking about.

So... give into nihilism in order to make grinding tokens seem worthwhile.
Well, say what you will about the tenets of nihilism, but at least it was an ethos.

But also... I hope you have the self-awareness to realize why not a soul is going to find that 'argument' persuasive on a forum, yes?

 

[Requiet]

I think versatility is a successful strategy for DDO. If they'd allow us the option to play more quests for things like Tokens and greater tokens of the twelve, more people might be interested in farming and continuing playing. Im not the biggest fan of the older content, and making it a part of my routine is one of the biggest drags when I could be playing newer content I actually enjoy.

 

[Jaspar]

So... give into nihilism in order to make grinding tokens seem worthwhile.
Well, say what you will about the tenets of nihilism, but at least it was an ethos.

But also... I hope you have the self-awareness to realize why not a soul is going to find that 'argument' persuasive on a forum, yes?

Doesnt nihilism perfectly explain how MMOs work?

 

[Bobbryan2]

Doesnt nihilism perfectly explain how MMOs work?

No.

 

[Chacka]

I'm fine with there being any in-game way to obtain TR and ER hearts, and in my opinion, they’re already easy enough to get. I just wish there were also a way to obtain LR +1 hearts, as they’re currently the only way to change an iconic character into a different pure class.


One idea I have is to allow an exchange using heart seeds—perhaps 100 to 200 seeds for one LR +1 heart.


Another option could be to trade 10 flawless Siberys Dragonshards for one LR +1 heart.


I think both are reasonable prices, and IMHO it would be just fair to offer such a deal.

 

[droid327]

I think the whole point of iconics is they're tied to their first level. You can pay to swap it out but it's not supposed to be easy. They aren't meant to be a universal build template. They get better features than base races (chains, recon SLA, FR deities etc) and require less playtime to TR, so there is a trade off for it.

 

[Chacka]

I think the whole point of iconics is they're tied to their first level. You can pay to swap it out but it's not supposed to be easy. They aren't meant to be a universal build template. They get better features than base races (chains, recon SLA, FR deities etc) and require less playtime to TR, so there is a trade off for it.

The "trade off" you're asking for could also require players to "work" for it in-game, rather than relying solely on real money. I generally believe that everything available in the DDO Store should also be attainable just by playing the game.

I understand that the game doesn't run on love and thin air—I personally spend quite a bit on DDO myself. I believe the DDO Store will still generate plenty of sales if they find the right balance between offering items in-game "for free" (though it's not truly free, as it costs your valuable time) and selling them for money.

If the "free" method is challenging enough, players will still choose to pay for convenience—so it can be a win-win if handled properly. I also think I’ve suggested a reasonable price: either having to play around 100 quests for one LR +1 heart, or requiring something as hard to obtain as 10 Flawless Siberys Dragonshards.

 

[Anurakh]

I think the whole point of iconics is they're tied to their first level. You can pay to swap it out but it's not supposed to be easy. They aren't meant to be a universal build template. They get better features than base races (chains, recon SLA, FR deities etc) and require less playtime to TR, so there is a trade off for it.

I disagree. What defines an iconic character is starting at level 15 and their iconic tree, which is what gives their character. Besides, the moment devs removed the requirement for a single class (and that was before the first iconic character was sold, lol), setting a fixed level stopped making sense.

The iconic character tree is enough to define the iconic's character; after all, the remaining 19 levels can make the character look nothing like the concept the iconic is meant to represent. On the other hand, the concepts iconics want to represent could be perfectly represented with various classes (or sometimes, different races). And that's if the concepts aren't epic crap (morninglord sun elf, ehem, ehem. Amanautor's not even an elven deity, lol).

And what they've done with Dark Bargainer is unspeakable. Until now, they haven't changed the base class for the iconic character. For the love of all that's holy, make the Evil Pact one of the basic class pacts too. And why can't an Infernal, a Canceri, an Abyssal, a Faerie, an Old One, or an Acolyte if the Skin be a Dark Bargainer? As if the concepts of these pacts didn't involve dealing with nasty beings from other planes!

Time to remove the fixed level. The character is already determined by the iconic tree.

 

[Bobbryan2]

I think the whole point of iconics is they're tied to their first level. You can pay to swap it out but it's not supposed to be easy. They aren't meant to be a universal build template. They get better features than base races (chains, recon SLA, FR deities etc) and require less playtime to TR, so there is a trade off for it.

I don't buy that as anything other than post-hoc justification for bad designs (likely made for coding reasons)

 

[Ethril]

And why can't an Infernal, a Canceri, an Abyssal, a Faerie, an Old One, or an Acolyte if the Skin be a Dark Bargainer? As if the concepts of these pacts didn't involve dealing with nasty beings from other planes!

At character creation, you can pick a different pact, but you lose out on some of the things in the racial tree unless you pick the undead pact (or the default evil pact).

 

[droid327]

I also think I’ve suggested a reasonable price: either having to play around 100 quests for one LR +1 heart, or requiring something as hard to obtain as 10 Flawless Siberys Dragonshards.

Seeds are not really an adequate cost, even at silly quantities, ignoring the rest of your argument. If you have a char you keep at cap to farm rxp etc. then they're junk loot and you'll be awash in them before long.

 

[Bobbryan2]

Seeds are not really an adequate cost, even at silly quantities, ignoring the rest of your argument. If you have a char you keep at cap to farm rxp etc. then they're junk loot and you'll be awash in them before long.

They're a perfectly adequate cost. They're probably too high.

 

[droid327]

They're a perfectly adequate cost. They're probably too high.

Things you get from doing what you do anyway that you aren't using for anything else are by definition a zero opportunity cost

If seeds had more uses then it'd become a trade off, but i suspect many players already have thousands sitting in their bank, much like rems and CoVs that also don't have enough usage to offset their source rate

 

[SquireZed]

Tokens and Commendations/Heart Seeds should be able to exchange in either direction. That they don't is a major pain point for me, since it makes it tedious. Realistically, neither is hard to get, but having to do two different things to get the hearts for reincarnations just feels silly.

 

[SquireZed]

Things you get from doing what you do anyway that you aren't using for anything else are by definition a zero opportunity cost

If seeds had more uses then it'd become a trade off, but i suspect many players already have thousands sitting in their bank, much like rems and CoVs that also don't have enough usage to offset their source rate

To be fair though just because people end up with a lot of them and start throwing them out doesn't mean that they're necessarily "excessive"- I mean, yeah, if you play cap then you're going to be throwing away a bunch of them but if you are on a treadmill bumping the cost per heart up might be punitive. I think the current rates are pretty reasonable, and I don't think basing things around "endgame farming" is ideal when it makes it harder for, say, new players or early treadmill folks to do things.

 

[Bobbryan2]

Things you get from doing what you do anyway that you aren't using for anything else are by definition a zero opportunity cost

If seeds had more uses then it'd become a trade off, but i suspect many players already have thousands sitting in their bank, much like rems and CoVs that also don't have enough usage to offset their source rate

First, that's not true. You are making an opportunity cost every time you choose hearts instead of other end rewards. That any other rewards are useless is actually not a fault of the heart seed program, but on the failures of end rewards and random loot in general.
Secondly... We're LITERALLY giving more uses to heart seeds... hence, it's inherently a trade off.

Yes... many players, after having years of a dearth of places to spend heart seeds may have a lot. This is analogous to when the S/S/S system was deprecated and many players suddenly were rewarded for years of grinding without clear purpose.

Your *critiques* are actually points in its favor and analogies to previous times the devs have made things less grindy in general.