Stealth Changes Suck

*Sigh*  That most dreaded of all 4-letter words (W-O-R-K) has kept me busy with things other than the things I want to do.  Ah! If only I were independently wealthy...or had a nice patron (or even matron) to pay all my bills for me...

Any takers?  No?  I didn't think so.


Anyway, it seems that with the latest update to DDO (that being U22), in addition to all the niceties and cool changes to airships and amenities, there was an undisclosed change to an existing mechanic.  It did NOT show up in the release notes.  It was NOT mentioned that the existing mechanic was not WAI.  It was NOT discussed anywhere (that I can remember seeing, at any rate) when this new system was being discussed, in beta, on Lamannia, or originally put into live service.

According to Cordovan, "Heroic sagas are not meant to be completed more than once per life, and cannot be repeated...."

WTFrench-toast?  Ever since sagas went live, you could always repeat them - even heroic versions - until now.  This is news to everyone.

Now, granted, I will admit that I always thought is was stup...er, I mean, extremely generous of Turbine to give the exact same amount of guild renown for completing "true elite" sagas, regardless of whether they were epic or heroic.  All they really needed to do was adjust the amount of renown reward given (and maybe even the xp reward - or completely drop or limit the xp reward to one per life) way down.  Alternatively, they could have only made epic sagas and not implement heroic sagas - that would have been preferable to this stealth nerf.  But no - they decided to do the "quick and dirty" band-aid instead of a proper fix.

Furthermore, as pointed out by others, this goes AGAINST the very core mechanic of DDO - that of repeatable play (other than this, the only "one and done" quest I can think of is the tutorial quest "The Grotto" on Korthos).

What's worse is that there is NO WARNING ANYWHERE in the game to tell you that you can only claim one heroic saga reward (per heroic saga) per life.  So if you're a premium or F2P player, and you run a heroic saga chain like, say Gianthold, and you're thinking, "Hey!  I can claim a saga reward, just like I can claim a chain reward." and you run all the quests on "normal" because you cannot unlock* "hard" (or "elite") until you've run it on "normal" (and then "hard"), and you turn in you're saga, you're screwed.  No "WARNING - Heroic Saga rewards can only be taken ONCE PER LIFE."  No confirmation like "Are you sure you want to turn this in?  You don't have the elite reward offering yet and you can only ever claim one heroic saga reward (this life) for this saga."  Nope - just *poof* and that's it.

So what real incentive is there for a non-level 20 toon to run heroic sagas?  With this change?  Not much.

So I will go on record right now and state that, in my opinion, this is one of the most stupid changes ever made to DDO.  As I said, I would rather have had them just simply remove heroic sagas from the game rather than insisting on this "once per life"...um...bovine excrement.

Yes, I freely admit that I ran my L25 toon through GH heroic-elite sagas multiple times to pull the nice, fat, juicy, guild renown saga reward (which was the same as for the epic-elite saga run).  I probably ran it a total of ten times because we were (at the time) just short of guild level 55 and a new airship.  And frankly, by the time I was done, I couldn't care less if I didn't see GH at all for the next several months.  (Alas, my guildies wanted to keep running it, so I did; the things I do for guildies....)  But it was NOT an exploit - it was simply the way it was.  If it HAD been an exploit, you better believe they would have shut it down immediately and not leave it "as is" (or I suppose, more correctly, "as was") for MONTHS.  MONTHS!!  (Sagas were implemented with, what, U19?  And we're now on U22?  so...3 updates?  Isn't that nearly a year?)

Maybe if there is enough ruckus on the fora (sorry, "forums") it could be changed back.  I think it SHOULD be changed back.  Yes, by all means - adjust the guild renown reward amount.  Yes, by all means, adjust the XP reward amount or limit JUST THIS ONE REWARD to only "once per life", but DO NOT change the fundamental mechanic behind (nearly) ALL THE REST OF DDO and make it non-repeatable.  That was/is just a bad, bad, bad, BAD thing.

All stealth nerfs suck (some less than others, of course).  Disclosure is always appreciated (mind you, the RESULTS are not always appreciated, but the openness of disclosure is), especially over finding out the hard way.  It would have been better to actually discuss this change before implementing it, but at the very least when something this HUGE in a mechanic is changed, TELL US!!!  It absolutely SHOULD have been in the release notes, at the very least.  There's really NO EXCUSE for it not being there.  None.

I'm just glad someone else found this out the hard way and not me.  Sorry, dude (or dudette).

But if you are going to insist on keeping this extremely BAD idea in place, then at the very least GIVE US A WARNING POP-UP SCREEN WHEN TURNING IT IN.  That's not too much to ask, is it?

Methinks not.


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* Yes, yes - you can buy a key to unlock "elite" from the store, or you can ask someone to open it on "elite" for you.  However, they are completely irrelevant to the discussion.  IRRELEVANT! (Hehehe)