Tyranny of Dragons End Boons are too costly and grindy.

ltgamesttv · December 2015

When taken it terms of boon progressions Tyranny of Dragons is by far the most difficult to get the end boons. Firstly the actual cost involved in starting these boons is pricy... 30k for Soul of the Dragon, 40K for Dragon Affinity, and 50K for Dragon mastery. Not to mention either RNG for books or paying a fair amount on the AH for them but my main issue with this boon progression is the amount of Linu's favor necessary for these last 2 boons.

The amount of time necessary to spend in this zone either farming Tiamat or Simply doing quests or, even worse but fastest, running around killing mobs in order to gain dragon hoard coffers is ridiculous. However it's primarily the exchange rate I take issue with: 1500 points = 1 linus favor.

The drop rate on dragon hoard coffers is not that great. If you'd like to buy the coffers off the AH the price is hugely exorbitant often in the 20K per hundred range thus at a 1:15 point exchange rate makes a single end ToD boon in the vicinity of 600K +.

It's exponentially more expensive to buy with genie's gifts at around 8K per 50 Dragon coins which are a 1:1 point exchange thus you would need 30 genies gifts for 1 Linu's favor at roughly 8k per gift that's 240k/linu or 7.2 mil for the Dragon affinity Boon and more fore the last one.

Gawds forbid you use Dragon Empire Treasures, even at a 1:200 point exchange rate they cost 37,500 (with VIP) per purchase. If you want the same boon afforementioned you will spend a whopping 8.4 mil +. This is the equivalent of 20,000 zen at current zax. That's two hundred dollars for a single boon guys, not even an entire campaign unlock... just one boon?

Seriously I think this campaign currency exchange rate needs to be reexamined, especially considering this only includes the price/time of the Linu's favor, it's even more when you factor in other currency and books involved in completing the progression. If you adjust the price of the Dragon Empire Treasures, all other prices will fall in line on the AH resulting in much more affordable boon progression for those of us with limited time to spend on alts while still leaving the grind in place for those who concentrate on one toon and prefer to save the AD. Thanks for your time and consideration.

(Disclaimer: all currency prices mentioned taken at current average market value)

beckylunatic · December 2015

tolkienbuff said:
Gawds forbid you use Dragon Empire Treasures, even at a 1:200 point exchange rate they cost 37,500 (with VIP) per purchase. If you want the same boon afforementioned you will spend a whopping 8.4 mil +. This is the equivalent of 20,000 zen at current zax. That's two hundred dollars for a single boon guys, not even an entire campaign unlock... just one boon?

These can also be made from campaign currency and gold, if you spend one Linu to unlock the ability, about one per day because it's a 20-hour task and most people aren't all that motivated to run it more often. This is very slow progression, particularly if you don't bother to do it every single day, literally looking at years to produce the needed items. It's not really expensive though (if you're well-stocked with gold), just slower than slow.

Edit: Adding to discussion, not disagreeing. I do not think that most people would take a positive view of making those final two boons into a multi-year project. It's demotivating.

rexfire91 · December 2015

I agree. I've been lucky to obtain the various books off the auction house during times when they were cheap, but the amount of Linu favors required is still staggering.

wlinaz · December 2015

Add the fact that the stronghold coffer needs many of these currencies as well at times...

30 linus is insane..

ltgamesttv · December 2015

wlinaz said:
Add the fact that the stronghold coffer needs many of these currencies as well at times...

30 linus is insane..

Too true man, this only compounds the problem for trying to obtain these boons and complete this campaign.

Thanks for your reply.

twoedge1 · December 2015

I tried doing 2 Tiamat runs today and there wasn't even enough people to fill one instance. I think the community has finally had it with this event.

ltgamesttv · December 2015

twoedge1 said:
I tried doing 2 Tiamat runs today and there wasn't even enough people to fill one instance. I think the community has finally had it with this event.

Understandably, everyone's running the new material trying to get legendary rings and what not. The old material is impossible to Q for, including material as recent as SH siege because once people get their gear they aren't concerned with revisiting it.

Thanks for your reply.

deathbeez · December 2015

I finally finished the last boon up about 3 weeks ago.
It took a ton of patience. I'd craft the empire treasures, contribute to the coffer, then spam tiamat on Saturday or Sunday when the coffer was at 100%. I found doing it during the week pretty pointless.

oldbaldyone · December 2015

twoedge1 said:
I tried doing 2 Tiamat runs today and there wasn't even enough people to fill one instance. I think the community has finally had it with this event.

This is the primary issue. When there were 10+ instances fully going every hour, it wasnt as bad (though still far more difficult than all others). Now with barely 1 instance going, chances are it fails and you get little to nothing.

This campaign needs to be adjusted. As it stands, if they put a campaign unlock in the Zen Market, people will buy it because its cheaper in most cases.

clericalist · December 2015

I have been going into Tiamats every hour today and I must also confirm that the Tiamat instances are just one or two. In most of the runs everyone was giving their all, there were no AFKs, but it in none of them did it ever get close to the point were it was doable.

No doubt somebody here is going to link a video about how easy it all is, before you do that, I suggest you go into Tiamat first and see with your own eyes what state it is in.

wylonus · December 2015

i gave up doing Tiamat since mod 6 released, devs been ignoring for months, it should have taken out same time with dungeons that became unplayable.

urabask · December 2015

beckylunatic said:

tolkienbuff said:
Gawds forbid you use Dragon Empire Treasures, even at a 1:200 point exchange rate they cost 37,500 (with VIP) per purchase. If you want the same boon afforementioned you will spend a whopping 8.4 mil +. This is the equivalent of 20,000 zen at current zax. That's two hundred dollars for a single boon guys, not even an entire campaign unlock... just one boon?
These can also be made from campaign currency and gold, if you spend one Linu to unlock the ability, about one per day because it's a 20-hour task and most people aren't all that motivated to run it more often. This is very slow progression, particularly if you don't bother to do it every single day, literally looking at years to produce the needed items. It's not really expensive though (if you're well-stocked with gold), just slower than slow.

Edit: Adding to discussion, not disagreeing. I do not think that most people would take a positive view of making those final two boons into a multi-year project. It's demotivating.

You could just do one dragon run a day and progress at the same rate. And you wouldn't be burning 1530 dragon sigils, 480 dragon fangs, 1530 cult secrets, five linus and 960 gold. Or about 255 elol keys/350k points for the SH coffer.

Might not be able to find a tiamat run but if you get to WoD early enough there's always a dragon run.

Still ridiculous. I ground out the first thirty linus that way but another fifty would drive me insane.

cambo1682 · December 2015

Completely agree with this. Most of the players I run with just didn't even bother with the last boons, especially on alts, but also on their mains. That in itself should be telling to the game producer...players don't care to do the content because it is not considered rewarding enough to commit to. The roadblocks in progression like this, RNG for boon items and ridiculous grind when you hit 60 all seem to culminate in people giving up and disappearing from the game. It's frustrating because it seems so obvious...to anyone who plays the game I spose.

instynctive · December 2015

80 Linus favors for 3% increased crit severity.

I'll pass, thanks.

santralafax · December 2015

cambo1682 said:
Completely agree with this. Most of the players I run with just didn't even bother with the last boons

I've done the last one on 2 toons so far. I slowly farm dragon hoards and spend about six months to get the boon. My bigger complaint is the AD amount, since AD nerfs.

jugger71 · December 2015

I did it on 8 characters.

You can do it too. You join a channel and you kill Tia 80 times. Each toon.

Everyone else has done it too.

ltgamesttv · December 2015

jugger71 said:
I did it on 8 characters.

You can do it too. You join a channel and you kill Tia 80 times. Each toon.

Everyone else has done it too.

This is a huge assumption, and an incorrect one. Obviously, as stated here, not everyone else has done it too... I have not done these last two boons on any except my main because it is so time consuming, please don't make sweeping generalizations that are incorrect, they don't add to the conversation.

Thanks for your reply.

kurtb88 · December 2015

"jugger71 said: I did it on 8 characters. You can do it too. You join a channel and you kill Tia 80 times. Each toon. Everyone else has done it too."... LOL. Just that easy huh...you have 8 toons that are all high enough Total Item Level that they get invited to the private Tiamat channels which are all 3k+ channels? And when did you achieve this before Mod7 or after? Tiamat is now only viable on weekends. And most players with multiple characters do not have them all geared to 2.5K+

I find your statement laughable.

urabask · December 2015

jugger71 said:
I did it on 8 characters.

You can do it too. You join a channel and you kill Tia 80 times. Each toon.

Everyone else has done it too.

It's funny how in MMOs (more than any other genre of game) people don't understand when they've gotten so into the game that their experience is different from the vast majority of the people playing the game.

jugger71 · December 2015

Maybe reread the boons. Consider what they do. Perhaps thats why many find this game "difficult".

I would argue people find this game difficult because people decided they couldnt be bothered and decided to wait until a later time when they could "persuade" Cryptic to ease the requirements to achieve these boons.

You want things for free. Im opposed to giving players what are quite possibly the best two boons in the entire game for free.

urabask · December 2015

jugger71 said:
Maybe reread the boons. Consider what they do. Perhaps thats why many find this game "difficult".

I would argue people find this game difficult because people decided they couldnt be bothered and decided to wait until a later time when they could "persuade" Cryptic to ease the requirements to achieve these boons.

You want things for free. Im opposed to giving players what are quite possibly the best two boons in the entire game for free.

You're just better off grinding skirmishes/dungeons for salvage and upgrading your enchants/buying companions. It'll be faster and your character will benefit more from it. Once you get to the point where it's more reasonable to grind the last two boons out instead of running dungeons/skirmishes you're already outgearing content so much that you do not need the boons.

tvcity · December 2015

the devs should atleast make the Tiamat skirmish available through the queue menu.....that shouldn't be too difficult, right?

ltgamesttv · December 2015

jugger71 said:
Maybe reread the boons. Consider what they do. Perhaps thats why many find this game "difficult".

I would argue people find this game difficult because people decided they couldnt be bothered and decided to wait until a later time when they could "persuade" Cryptic to ease the requirements to achieve these boons.

You want things for free. Im opposed to giving players what are quite possibly the best two boons in the entire game for free.

I don't need to "reread" the boons, I'm fully aware of what they are, thanks for the suggestion though. It's not "difficult" it's unnecessarily time consuming, as stated in the title of this post, and boring to achieve. This being a game, boring is not a desirable feature nor is being too expensive. Boons being time or cost prohibitive slows progression in an unproductive way. The fact this is true is evidenced by everyone's comments here, except someone who put in the boring grind and expense, agrees.

That said, I understand that when someone like yourself, who put in hours of playtime to achieve these boons, would feel unhappy that others may get these boons without putting in that amount of time. It's sort of like getting hazed to join a group and being mad that others may avoid getting hazed or paying their dues. The problem is noone should've gotten hazed to begin with, yourself included..

As for your last statement, noone here has suggested we should get these boons for free, just that they should be less time or AD intensive. The idea that the campaign currency should have a better ratio for turning in and that the dragon empire treasures should be cheaper on the market only make the boons more accessible, not free. It is an exaggeration that you are putting forth as a straw man argument and it is pretty plainly apparent. So while you may keep crows away with your debate tactics, you don't lend credit to your overall discussion.

Thanks for your reply.

jugger71 · December 2015

urabask said:

jugger71 said:
Maybe reread the boons. Consider what they do. Perhaps thats why many find this game "difficult".

I would argue people find this game difficult because people decided they couldnt be bothered and decided to wait until a later time when they could "persuade" Cryptic to ease the requirements to achieve these boons.

You want things for free. Im opposed to giving players what are quite possibly the best two boons in the entire game for free.

You're just better off grinding skirmishes/dungeons for salvage and upgrading your enchants/buying companions. It'll be faster and your character will benefit more from it. Once you get to the point where it's more reasonable to grind the last two boons out instead of running dungeons/skirmishes you're already outgearing content so much that you do not need the boons.

Excellent suggestion! Play the game.

That is exactly what you are asking. You cant be bothered to grind it out like everyone else did. Including yourself on your main.

Quite frankly I find it preposterous the amount of people who come on here asking to have the game dumbed down and made easier.

When devs listen to people on this forum they make the game worse!

flowcyto · December 2015

Yeah as a newer player, I'm not even gonna entertain trying to grind either of the last tiers on any of my characters. Would rather watch paint dry.

That said, they are far from necessary, so I'm fine w/ never getting them and just moving on to content I'd enjoy more- though I can understand why others take issue w/ the overall costs. It is pretty silly how much quicker and cheaper it is to get even the books from the AH than the store (not so much for Haarl's, but even that's better off bought than grinded out atm). It'd be nice if Cryptic would revisit the costs of some of the material related to older content, which somewhat ties into their AD pricing system in general.

reposterz · December 2015

Looking through the campaign data, I think less favours would be ideal drop to rebalance the requirements of getting the final boons. I am basically just playing through Mod 6 data now, I gave up on trying to get TOD boons...

urabask · December 2015

jugger71 said:

urabask said:

jugger71 said:
Maybe reread the boons. Consider what they do. Perhaps thats why many find this game "difficult".

I would argue people find this game difficult because people decided they couldnt be bothered and decided to wait until a later time when they could "persuade" Cryptic to ease the requirements to achieve these boons.

You want things for free. Im opposed to giving players what are quite possibly the best two boons in the entire game for free.

You're just better off grinding skirmishes/dungeons for salvage and upgrading your enchants/buying companions. It'll be faster and your character will benefit more from it. Once you get to the point where it's more reasonable to grind the last two boons out instead of running dungeons/skirmishes you're already outgearing content so much that you do not need the boons.
Excellent suggestion! Play the game.

That is exactly what you are asking. You cant be bothered to grind it out like everyone else did. Including yourself on your main.

Quite frankly I find it preposterous the amount of people who come on here asking to have the game dumbed down and made easier.

When devs listen to people on this forum they make the game worse!

Look, you may have been stupid enough to grind them out, but now it's untenable. The game just doesn't have enough people playing Tiamat for most players to actually finish the last two boons. Maybe you like being the special cupcake that did it but that doesn't really make it a good thing for the game. And honestly if there's anything that's dumbing the game down it's a twenty hour grind for 1.5% crit severity on one character.

They've already shortened DR, IWD and ToD with the demon hunter quest so it really shouldn't come as a surprise that they need to change the last two boons in ToD too. They can't leave the boon grind the same as it is or they've essentially gated off that content for new players. People will move on to new content or go back to grinding dungeons/skirmishes and no one will play Tiamat/Demo/etc. They can't leave new players behind or they'll just quit.

Then again it's more important to you that you're the special cupcake with eight characters that did something than it is to have more people feel they aren't gated out of end game content by a terribly implemented raid.

ltgamesttv · December 2015

jugger71 said:

urabask said:

jugger71 said:
Maybe reread the boons. Consider what they do. Perhaps thats why many find this game "difficult".

I would argue people find this game difficult because people decided they couldnt be bothered and decided to wait until a later time when they could "persuade" Cryptic to ease the requirements to achieve these boons.

You want things for free. Im opposed to giving players what are quite possibly the best two boons in the entire game for free.

You're just better off grinding skirmishes/dungeons for salvage and upgrading your enchants/buying companions. It'll be faster and your character will benefit more from it. Once you get to the point where it's more reasonable to grind the last two boons out instead of running dungeons/skirmishes you're already outgearing content so much that you do not need the boons.
Excellent suggestion! Play the game.

That is exactly what you are asking. You cant be bothered to grind it out like everyone else did. Including yourself on your main.

Quite frankly I find it preposterous the amount of people who come on here asking to have the game dumbed down and made easier.

When devs listen to people on this forum they make the game worse!

Your assertion that making these boons less grindy somehow makes the game "easier" is comical. There is no "difficulty" in grinding these boons. I could sit all day in the ToD zone and farm coffers. This isn't hard to achieve... at all. However, it is zero fun. There is literally no fun to be had in mindlessly, endlessly farming mobs to get dragon hoard coffers. There is also zero fun in running the exact same Tiamat instance 80 times per toon (assuming they're successful runs which is another issue in itself).

The issue here isn't difficulty, although apparently you have difficulty understanding that very basic principle. The issue here is time spent doing something that is crazy boring in order to unlock a boon that is now mods behind. Your argument that we should be happy to grind out a very boring zone in order to be just like you is silly m8. The people here are stating it is boring to do so, however if you love farming so much noone will stop you from doing Tiamat all day long, I promise. If you love this zone and content so much, we promise we aren't asking to have it removed. We simply want to achieve the boons and move on from that content.

What it really boils down to, and is painfully evident, is that you went through this process to get these boons and you want everyone else to suffer along with you. We respectfully disagree. The less grind I'm forced to do, the more of the material I enjoy I can play. It's that simple.

Thanks for your reply

melodiezxx · December 2015

Wow you did the boons on 8 char wow dude do you even go outside ?

jugger71 · December 2015

"Stupid"? "Cupcake"? "Difficulty understanding basic principles"? "Do you even go outside"?

Considering you guys are more interested in making this debate about me I think I'll take my leave.

ltgamesttv · December 2015

jugger71 said:
"Stupid"? "Cupcake"? "Difficulty understanding basic principles"? "Do you even go outside"?

Considering you guys are more interested in making this debate about me I think I'll take my leave.

"Maybe reread the boons." Condescension much? Pot meet kettle. Not to mention, there wasn't a debate. It was a unified voice and then your obviously biased singular voice of dissent misquoting the rest of us saying we were asking for it for free. If you put words in peoples mouths and act condescending you can expect the same, at least, in return.

Thanks for your reply.

Tyranny of Dragons End Boons are too costly and grindy.

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