Total Past Life Benefits

[The Blonde]

I'm gonna once again advocate for Past Lives being made server wide. The "lost revenue" argument doesn't hold, as the percentage of players who have all past lives is tiny, and is easily balanced by the players (new or old) who would more actively pursue completing PLs if they weren't tied to a single character.

 

[Silverfox]

The problem with trying to use this as some kind of example is that it was done by old guard veterans who have literally run this content for years, including years of reaper seasons. It's not like it was some newbie who had never heard of DDO in his or her life.

I used to run elite as PD back when elite was the end game, gear was nothing like it was today, and suggesting something like hardcore would have got you canceled by the playerbase. Is it possible to do hard content in garbo gear and underleveled? Yeah it is. It's hard, but it can be done. So what? That is not the experience that the average player ever wants. There's a reason this game is a dying husk of a corpse. It needs to stop catering to a subset of a subset of gamers. Or at least it needed to. Pretty sure that ship has long since passed at this point.

Problem is, unless you want to solo, you have no choice but to participate in reaper and that means past lives. And nobody is catching up in any reasonable time frame without getting extorted by SSG. People take one look and nope right out. They have no desire to jump on this perverse hampster wheel.

I replied to this statement

The problem is not really the bonuses, its when the game gets balanced for people who have them all. Ever notice how every new quest gets harder and harder?

Clearly this is not even remotely true. It can't be hardcore proves that any quest can be completed by a skilled player, with adequate gear, a solid build, game knowledge and less than a full party in a raid.

The biggest trap in the game the players posting on the forums that all past lives are required to play the highest difficulty in the game. It's just not true by any stretch of the imagination.

What more needs to be said

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/duo-heroic-elite-ascension-chamber-on-hardcore-flawless.7276/#post-74049

 

[Toede]

Perhaps not all of them, but you still need a good chunk of them if you want to not spend all your time in someone's pocket on the harder content. It isn't a one or two and done scenario.

 

[drjoans]

I played this game off and on for nearly a decade having alt-itis. Never accruing past lives and just rolling new toons when I wanted to try a new build. I had a blast playing that way. Did all kinds of content. In the last 3ish years I finally decide to start focusing on just one toon and got racial completionist and heroic completionist(not triple yet). In that time I took a break from the game twice nearly halving that 3 years to 1.5 years of actually playing most days. Yeah its a lot, but if you want to go for that goal its there.

It is super nice having a ton of bonuses and stats which is why I decided to put in the grind but definitely not necessary. Honestly there's plenty of people playing harder content than I typically play with far less lives and time behind a toon. The biggest things really are game/quest knowledge and gear, beyond that its just icing on the cake.

 

[Toede]

I don't think they should go away or anything. It's too late for that and it's a nice little long term goal for people to work on for those who like to grind things and that is a lot of people in MMOs. But it is folly to think that content is not created today with the fact that many people have 100 past lives under their belt in mind. Of course it is and that creates an ever widening power gap between those at the top and those who stopped to smell the flowers.

Anyway, I think I have participated in derailing this thread enough. Thanks for laying out the current available PL benefits, OP. It's a neat reference.

 

[popejubal]

Hardcore proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that all quests are complete-able by well built first life characters and certainly not full groups in most cases. Thus the game is not balanced around full past life characters.

And the IAAF proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that a sub 4 minute mile is possible. That definitely doesn't mean everyone can do it.

 

[DBZ]

NO it does not for veterans and perfect statics sure average new players fresh off the boat in korthos pugging randomly does not

 

[Weaponalpha]

Last month, after a decade and a half of playing, I achieved heroic completionist. Who cares? Well, I did.

Congratulations? Clearly,the "Who cares?" was directed at the length of time, not the accomplishment. Again, the "Who cares?" was directed at the length of time, not the accomplishment. More "grind" equals more fun to be had. Bring on more of everything please. More races, more classes, more archetypes, more levels, more Epic Destinies, more gear, more content.

 

[Konsumer]

I played this game off and on for nearly a decade having alt-itis. Never accruing past lives and just rolling new toons when I wanted to try a new build. I had a blast playing that way. Did all kinds of content. In the last 3ish years I finally decide to start focusing on just one toon and got racial completionist and heroic completionist(not triple yet). In that time I took a break from the game twice nearly halving that 3 years to 1.5 years of actually playing most days. Yeah its a lot, but if you want to go for that goal its there.

It is super nice having a ton of bonuses and stats which is why I decided to put in the grind but definitely not necessary. Honestly there's plenty of people playing harder content than I typically play with far less lives and time behind a toon. The biggest things really are game/quest knowledge and gear, beyond that its just icing on the cake.

I had to spend months grinding out Pls, reaper points, reaper helm, ect in order to achieve spell dcs that would land just 90% of the time in mid to high reaper. Without the Pls it would have been impossible for me to make an effective dc caster. In that case it is absolutely necessary.

 

[AbyssalMage]

Hardcore proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that all quests are complete-able by well built first life characters and certainly not full groups in most cases. Thus the game is not balanced around full past life characters.

Actually HC shows us that the game is balanced against PL's (gear and Guild buffs).

How do we know that? Posts by former (and current) developers for starters. Content creators implementing ways into their builds to boost HP's that are frequently disregarded on "normal" servers. HC R1 being a nightmare in Heroics yet quickly becomes standard once you reach Epic. And finally the amount of people who died even with bonus lives in the past HC season.

So yeah... Your statement is demonstrably false. HC and the forums prove otherwise.