Call for Doubloon Exchange

The "Crystal Cove" (CC) event is in the middle of a brief appearance on DDO.  It is part of the "Boarding Party" campaign in honor of the anticipated U22, which includes an epicified version of "Three Barrel Cove".  From what little I've seen from Produktion Malphunktion and Doctor Octothorpe in the fora (sorry, "forums"), it looks pretty darn cool.

But back to CC:  if you've run it a few times, then you know that there is a "major problem" with the loot system - Golden Doubloons (GD).  GDs are the 'top end' of the three general 'currencies' (along with Silver Doubloons [SDs] and Copper Doubloons [CDs]) used to buy and upgrade loot.  I say "general currencies" as there are also 'specialized currencies' in the form of various "stolen gems" and the (in)famous "green dragonshards" that can only be acquired in the actual CC event itself.


However, there has always been a method of converting from one type of 'stolen gem' to another - at an exchange rate of 3:1, provided they are of the same level - from the very first CC event.  And as of last year (yaarrr?), a mechanic was introduced where one can now DOWNGRADE higher level 'stolen gems' to lower level ones on a LOSSLESS basis (i.e. 1:1 exchange) - but still no way to convert doubloons.

But why is this a problem?  Because.

OK, OK - I'll explain further...

In theory, GDs should be the hardest to acquire and, by extension, "most desirable" of the general currencies.  In theory.  And the first time you run CC, they are (more-or-less).  But it became very clear to me that after the first CC event, SDs are, in reallity, the most desirable and that GDs are essentially "worthless".  Since there is little loot that can be purchased for GDs alone, you end up with a bunch of leftover GDs after every CC event.  How much?  Well, over on Cannith, I have over 30,000 GDs "saved" up from past CCs (and practically ZERO SDs).  Unfortunately, they are "bound", so you cannot trade them (or sell them) to any other player.  Fortunately, they are "Bound to Account" (BtA) and not "Bound to Character" (BtC), so you can at least share them with all your characters (on the same account, of course).

So they pile up.  With no way to sell/trade (except purchasing/upgrading CC loot) them - and no exchange - the piles just keep growing.  CC event after CC event, the piles get bigger...and bigger...and bigger, taking up precious inventory space.  The only way to get rid of them is to drag them out of your inventory space and destroy them.  And that just seems very wrong to me.

So, once again I call for some type of doubloon exchange system.  Ideally (for the player base), it would be a 1:1 downgrade exchange, but that's probably not going to happen.  There is precedent all over DDO for a 3:1 exchange (though for this I would expect to be able to both upgrade and downgrade).  But I would even settle for a 5:1 exchange.  Absolutely anything (well, within reason, of course) would be better than the "nothing" we currently have.

Because my piles are still growing...