What is Content?

I got into a lively discussion on Twitter the other morning. And by morning I mean 5:45 AM. I like to check my overnight tweets before work (I follow quite a few people significantly outside my time zone). Anyhow, since I didn't ask permission to give out the name, this follower shall remain anonymous, but had a few gripes about Orion's post on some improvements to the rep system. The contention, if I didn't misunderstand, is that additions to the rep system, notably deeds for completing rep, doesn't constitute "content" where content is new activities for the player to partake in. Of course, we're arguing about the definition of "content." I assert that content is anything added to the game. My follower would prefer a more narrow reading of the term. I don't think this definition needs to be hard and fast. I can accept his opinion. Where the discussion became more dynamic was in the idea of too much non-content. And by non-content, I'm using the narrower definition.

Indeed, the whole of Orion's post was about improving the reputation system, in some cases with what could be termed fluff content. That is, rewards that don't directly affect your ability to combat mobs or complete content. This is not to say the improvements won't include useful rewards, but Orion wanted to also implement these fluff items as well - albeit a ways in the future. Notable in my Twitter conversation was deeds for completing reputation. Not trying to put words into my follower's mouth, but it seemed that he would prefer resources devoted to more significant content. As a completionist, I would love deeds/titles for reaching kindred in rep. But I can understand why someone would be disappointed at seeing effort devoted to this type of content.

On the whole, the reputation absolutely needs a steroids shot. It's pretty flabby now, and I think that's a relic of it being added post release, and with limited resources amidst a host of other content additions, many more significant or impacting than rep. The later rep "factions" (for lack of a better word) such as Forochel and Lothlorien implement reputation much better and more fluidly with the rest of the world - quests, deeds, gear, etc. But we're getting a piecemeal system, visible in the game. I would love to see Orion take putting all the reputation factions on the same level. This is especially important regarding rewards. Breeland and the Mathom Society, off the top of my head, have utterly useless rewards, almost entirely comprised of fluff. And this brings me to my last point: I agree with my follower that fluff is disconcerting - but only if all we're getting is fluff. Orion's post clearly points out we'll be seeing the more significant and impactful improvements first, and fluff stuff such as the deeds/titles much later on. He's got his priorities right.

Content, whether fluff or not, is always welcome so long as it's well designed. I think we've seen some hiccups lately with some content, but Orion's work on the early zone revamps gives me supreme confidence that the content improvements we see in the reputation systems will be of excellent quality.

Sunday Progress Report

So I made Friend status with the Galadrim and gained entry to Caras Galadhron. There's are some really fun quests in this area. They're not necessarily innovative in terms of design, but the writers for LOTRO really shine here. I mean, I'm chasing a shrew all over the place trying to get Pippin's pipeweed back! That's just funny!

Okay, I finished all the non-repeatable quests in Lothlorien as far as I can tell. I'm going to finish the deeds up in the next few days since there are so few. The last bit would be to gain kindred status with these elves, which will be a bit of a pain since the quests are pretty spread out. Speaking of kindred, I made kindred with the Moria Guards today, and bought my epic book for the legendary trait. I don't know why. I'm probably never going to use that one. As a captain, though I love to have as many options as I can - I am a utility class after all. Should there ever be a situation where there are more than one captain in a group it's good to be able to trait for something else and give the fellowship an even greater advantage.

Now, onto some screenshots. Probably the last ones from Lothlorien. Hard to trump Caras Galadhon and the Lord and Lady of the Golden Woods no?

Covered Walk
Fellowship Pavilion with Aragorn
Flets at Night
Galadriel's Garden
Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn
The Mirror of Galadriel

Carn Dûm Run

Did part of a Carn Dûm run today. It was a spur of the moment thing. I logged in, thought about what I wanted to do, looked on the global looking for fellowship channel (glff) and saw that one of my friends, and reader of this blog, had one more space for a CD run. Okay, sure, why not. I have some deeds out there, I still have quests to do in CD, let's go. I knew I wouldn't be able to do the whole run, but I could get some done.

Turns out nobody had done the run before, so it was going to be a bit of an adventure. That's pefectly alright since an adventure will always make things more interesting. First pull was a bad pull and most of us bit the dust. Luckily we retreated right next to the battle and could keep on fighting. After that we got the hang of it. A few of us died again from some lose aggro or stepping into the killer water. We had three under 50's and as such were squishy.

I was the tank, as the highest heavy armor wearer. I think I could have done better as a tank had I had more practice with my aggro skills. Unfortunately I was also watching healing on our lower level fellows in case our minstrel couldn't keep up. That didn't always work either and my attention was divided. I think if I was traited better for a tanking role and we had higher levels I could have managed it fine.

It was fun experiencing some new content. Well, new for me at any rate. Two quests done, a couple deeds finished, good times. And I even managed to get a nice screenshot as well.

Road Block

I finally finished all the solo content in Moria the other day. My last zone was the Flaming Deeps. Now I have a handful of small fellowship content and then all the full fellowship instance runs. Notably in that list is my captain class quest for the Hands of Healing trait - probably the only one I really want but ironically the hardest one to get because it requires getting a full fellowship to run one of the least appealing (at least for my kinship) instances in Moria.

So, with the last quest turned in I made my way out to Lothlorien and the first camp, largely comprised of dwarfs, although it seems some elves have show up to keep watch over their off-and-on companions. These quests surprised me. I was expecting a predominantly solo affair however many of them are rated at small fellowship. Now, I did the first set of each of the quest chains without the need for a small fellowship, but I think that was half luck as there were a bunch of other players clearing out the mobs as well - keeping me more safe than I otherwise would be.

This brings me to the point where I have once again all fellowship content. This means that I will need to spend more time before questing finding groups to go questing with. It means a fundamental shift in my playstyle - for I am mostly a soloer who does group content from time to time. I'm at a point where I have to decided do I want to do fellowship content most of the time until I find more solo stuff? And even if there is (and I think there is) solo content further into Lothlorien, it still doesn't clear the fellowship quests I currently have in my log.

I think I need to give a majority fellowship playstyle a fighting chance. I need to see how much actual work it is to find fellowships (PUGs) versus the perception of the amount of work it is. Some people say you can find PUGs easily in this game, some people say otherwise. Can they both be right? All questions I don't have answers to but ones that I will should I choose to continue questing.

The other option is to grind deeds - but to what end? Every trait I use is tier 10 and many others that I might use are as well. The ones that aren't, well, I'll probably never use. Rep grinds fit in the same picture - no reason to get kindred with any of the factions I'm not kindred with because I have no need for any of the "rewards". That's a post for another day, however.

So, here I am, at a turning point in my gameplay. Do I go forward or do I stagnate? For the sake of this blog, at the very least, I ought to move forward - but ultimately a game is only a game if it's fun. If it ceases to be fun, for whatever reason, there's no reason to play.

Forochel and Eregion Overviews

Zubon over at Kill Ten Rats has done both an Eregion write-up as well as one for Forochel. He discusses at length how the quests are laid out and what sort of storylines you'll find. He also mentioned various deeds you can complete while going through the zones. A commonality between the two zones are that they are designed for the player 45-52ish. Forochel was put into the game when the level cap was still 50 and Eregion came to us with Moria but was accessible to those who did not have the expansion. In essense, these are regions designed for the level cap of 50 and when that is raised, it's hard to fit them into the normal leveling progression.

This is a trade-off from the lack of regions we see at the lower levels. A plethora of content for 45-55 will give players options for what they want to do. Go through Eregion on one character and Forochel on another and Angmar and the Misties on a third. Certainly the natural flow of the regions is broken up but a natural flow tends to be a bit linear, and I like the two axis directions going on in the world development at the moment. Honestly, I'd rather see a checkered board approach - a surface of zones to choose from, but that takes a lot of resources.

In any case, Zubon's comments are worth reading for those interested in what each zone has in store for you. He's frank about both the good and the bad - and with all quests, I recommend you read the quest texts to get a little context to what you're doing. It'll make it that much more enjoyable.

Urugarth Run Complete

For the first time I've gone all the way through Urugarth. The kinship had a semi-spontaneous run this evening (plus one member from another kin that many of us have played with before). I said I'd like to tag along because I had deeds and never did quests in Urugarth or Carn-Dum. Well, I got all the boss slayer deeds done, finished the orc and troll slayer deeds, but have a couple more Urugarth-specific ones. These deeds also gave me one more max quest in my log. I'm at 47 now with about 30 of them occupied.

The run was fun, but long. We started around 6, 6:30 and ended a little after 10... so about 3 and a half to four hours. Took a small break in the middle. Quite a bit of fun getting that stuff done. I'd hate to do it too many times. I'll go again if there's ever a group again and I'm available because I still have uruks, beasts, and marching orders off orcs for more deeds as well as more quests. My silly completionism. I'm not really pushing to get these quests done though. If they don't get done, I won't be upset. Now, I'd love to say I got all the moria quests done...

Thursday Progress Report

Well, this is looking like a regular post. I did an update to my personal LOTRO gaming last Thursday and it just so happens that I'm updating again on Thursday. Maybe I'll make it a regular Thursday feature, maybe not. Most likely I'll just post interesting things that I did in-game the day after it happens.

So yesterday I logged in finding myself at the Orc-Watch in the Redhorn Lodes. I looked around at my quests and decided I didn't want to do any of those. I'm feeling a little burned on Moria, so, taking my own advice, I decided to change up my activities. Instead, I went out to the Misty Mountains intending on clearing out the rest of the Goblin Town quests plus one quest to kill the Thunder Lord giant.

I did this giant quest first, barely able to solo the guy, who was an Elite Master. I managed to only take on one other giant while I was killing him and I didn't need to fire either Last Stand or Strength of Morale. It felt good to accomplish this.

Then it was off to Goblin Town with four quests. I finished the GT exploration deed, Bilbo's Buttons deed (got to Honesty tier 10 with these), and all but one of these quests. Turns out that I can't solo this guy because of the troll that's right next to him. Total of three mobs. I died trying. Oh well. But hey, maybe one of my kinmates wanted to help me. And that was the start of an epic adventure through GT and a couple other zones in Middle-Earth clearing out the last quests in the Misties, the North Downs, and Forochel.

My kinmate pulled up his level 60 champion and I wept at my relatively woeful DPS. But that's what I needed. I had to burn through the mobs before they burned through me. And that's what we did. I can now say that the Misty Mountains are 4 deeds away from being 100% complete - Bears, Trolls, Giants, and Worms. Granted, I'm only on the first part of trolls and giants so I have 6 really. It'll be a while because both these mobs take forever to kill solo.

We then headed to the North-Downs for an epic duo of Master of the Black Tide. This quest involves clearing out the tent atop a hill in Dol Dinen full of orcs and trolls. Any mobs in the tent will aggro you if you attack the boss so you can't just go straight up and kill him. We had to clear the tent. And we did, bloody carnage we did. It was amazing. I wish I had the presence of mind after the battle to take a screen shot. Bodies of trolls and orcs littered the floor. I was totally amazed we got all the mobs down before respawn. It got a little hairy for a moment when we got five adds, two of which were trolls, but we made it. It was glorious. Kudos to my champion kinmate who made all the difference. Epic. The Northdowns is all the Fornost quests away from 100% complete.

And lastly we finished off my last Forchel quest which puts that zone four deeds away from 100%: Grims, Sabertooths, Worms, and Dwarves.

All in all, a wonderfully productive evening, even if I got no other reward from it (except the coin) that I would immediately use. And of course the company of a friend. I have to say mate, your willingness to help me on these quests and deeds that you didn't even have is a testament to your quality as a person. Thanks again for all your help.

Thursday Progress Report

I'm making headway post-60 in Moria. I don't spend too much time logged in. I usually take one trip out, one trip back for questing. Lately this has been in the Redhorn Lodes. I have a couple small fellowship quests I'll see about recruiting a kinmate to help me with. I've pretty much ignored all the fellowship quests thus far. After I've cleared out the solo quests in Moria I'll put more effort into getting into fellowships for the group quests.

I have 3 of 7 pieces of Sublime Dawn-Rose jewelry. I got two rings and a necklace that my kinleader crafted for me as a level 58 gift. She did that for all the kinship. Very nice of her. Great to have her as a kinleader. The two rings I bought on the AH. They go from 2.5 to 4 gold. I try spend around 3 to 3.5 gold. I got the rings first because they gave me both will and vitality which were my lowest stats. Earrings are next, followed by bracelets. That should give me a good balance, though my agility will be pretty high. But that's okay. I like agility and might the best. Agility helps increase my crit ratings and a higher might will increase my overall damage. Both together give me high damage super crits. I average about 1100-1200 on a Devastating blow crit at the moment, on even to level 58 mobs. I'm not sure how that stands compared to other captains, but I'm happy with it.

I'm also looking at clearing out deeds I have sitting around in Eriador. First on the list are deeds that improve currently slotted traits. Right now that's Discipline and Wisdom. The other three are at rank 10 already. Next are traits that I might use, depending on the situation. Ones I could swap out. After that just comes the rest of them, purely for a completionist, check the box, tic of the accomplishment. Some of these I might require a group still, such as going into Carn Dum and Urugarth. Those will probably never get done... although I don't know how many people are still running CD and Uru. Certainly some for class quest items. People still need slime, and that's found in CD. With fewer people doing it, it's not on the AH nearly as much, meaning the price is higher and more people will have to run CD to get the item rather than purchase it.

I'd like to finally finish Garth Agarwen, notably the Red Maid and Ivar, and get those quests out. I'd also like to run the Fornost instance since I haven't been in there yet and done any of those quests. Yes, I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to questing. I love to see all the stories and content that's available. If I wasn't so slow leveling and casual I would have gone to the Rift and Helegrod, even if it turns out I don't like raiding. (Honestly, I probably would. I do enjoy group content, just not the finding the group part of it).

I think the only part of this game I won't experience will be the PvMP side. Not my thing. So, I'll be a completionist to a point. Ettenmoors deeds, well those are out. But the rest of the game is fair game, as long as I can find people to do the content with me if I require more than one. All in all, things are looking good. I'm going much slower now, but that's okay. I don't want to burn out of content. I don't think that'll be a problem though.

Plan for Post 60

What now? I'm 60, I'm no longer getting xp. Questing is no longer the best way to advance my character unless the quests reward me with a gear upgrade of some kind. What's the plan?

Well, I'm only about half-way through Moria and I haven't seen Lothlorien yet. So I have a lot of quests, deeds, and general exploration yet to do. I'm a questaholic so just because I'm 60 doesn't mean I'm going to stop questing. I did virtually all of Forochel post 50. The most compelling content in this game for me is the quests. Luckily Turbine seems to agree and puts tons of quests in.

Deed grinding is on the horizon as well. First of all, I have a couple slotted virtues that I want to upgrade to tier 10. Second, completing deeds gives you increased quest space in your quest journal. Right now I'm at 46 max.

I also have some gear related goals. Certainly I just got my level 60 captain gear, but there's a better level 60 set commonly referred to as the Radiance gear, which basically gives a radiance buff for each piece you put on. Running around with a full set of that would be great. I need to research where these pieces are dropped - I'm fairly certain it's through instance runs and such. This goal is a long way off though. The other gear goal is to get a full set of Sublime Dawn-Rose jewelry. Each piece is currently 3.5 to 4.5 gold on the AH. I already have the necklace from my kin leader who's a tinker. I have a bid on a bracelet. That leaves five more pieces to get and at the highest price I'm looking at close to 25 gold. For some, that's not much. For me, well, I'm a yeoman and don't have a cash-cow product to craft and sell. It'll be some time where I gain that gold through adventuring.

My less tangible goal would be to help out the kin. I'll try to get some cooking in to dump food in the kinhall for our players post 50. I'll also try and join them on any instance runs they're interested in doing and I'm available.

Newly Discovered Feature

I was sitting in Moria yesterday thinking about when I might get the Forgotten Treasury group quests completed. In Shadows of Angmar, I tended to skip the group content, but still leave it in my quest log for another day. Unfortunately, that "another day" never came along (and they're still sitting in my log). This takes up valuable quest slots - there's a finite number of quests you can have in your log. My thoughts were along the line of "I want to get these done fairly soon so I don't repeat the problem I had before." Lucky for me, the Moria content is much closer in level so the group content is more likely to have PUGs looking for it. However, I'd much prefer to do these quests with my kinmates, which is a normal thing to want.

In any case, this got me looking at my total and maximum quests in the log, just to see what kind of breathing room I had in case I came across more fellowship quests. Hovering my mouse over the quest numbers popped up a tooltip I had no idea existed. What's more, this tooltip explained to me a feature I had no idea existed - that is, as you complete deeds, you open up more quest slots. Currently I'm at 46. Now, I had 45 when I started Moria and I thought they had just raised the cap. Seeing 46 now gave me pause and helped contribute to my discovery.

I'm pretty stoked about this for a couple of reasons. First, I can always use new quest slots. Always, always, always. I'm a completionist and it's a whole lot easier for me to keep track of the quests I haven't done if they're in my tracker rather than some mental note of where to find the quest NPCs in the world. Secondly, it gives me another reason to go deed grinding. I find it somewhat ironic that just the other day I was talking about needing different rewards for deed completion. While opening more quest slots isn't a really strong incentive except for quest-a-holics like me. Still, it's another reward.

The tooltip currently states I have 5/40 deeds completed for opening my 47th quest slot. Putting the math together when I first bought the expansion and suddenly had 45 quest slots means that I had completed at least 200 deeds. Wow... 200? And I feel like I still have a ton of deeds to go. I wonder what the current limit for quest slots are. Presumably that would be the number of deeds available in the world to complete unless there's another arbitrary cap somewhere along the line.

Fellow LOTRO Blog Posts

I thought I'd take a moment to shout out to my fellow LOTRO bloggers. The Ancient Gaming Noob has just reached level 20 with his captain. 20 of course is a significant milestone where the captain can now wear heavy armor. It's amazing what a bit more armor will do for you at those levels. Speaking of armor, I really need to update mine. I'm still wearing mostly the level 47 crit crafted gear. It's hard to find any of the middle-level 50-60 crafted gear on the AH. I'll see what it looks like when I get to the top tier again.

The Common Sense Gamer is still enjoying his time in LOTRO amongst other games. He's recently hit 30 with his Warden. He raves about the epic book quests. I rave about them too. The most immersed I've ever felt in this game (aside from simply wandering around the Shire) is when I've participated in the epic quests. The writing is superb in the game as a whole, but the epic storyline takes the cake. Don't ever miss these quests.

Lastly, Van Hemlock is stoked that he's actually playing the same game as everybody else for once. I'm stoked too seeing nearly all the bloggers I read enjoying the same game I've been enjoying for the last couple of years. Hemlock is particularly impressed with the deed system in LOTRO. I've come to take it for granted at this point, but the flexibility is indeed one of the great aspects of the mechanic. That and for someone whose second letter in their Bartle profile is A for achievement, deeds go a long way for me.

Cleaning Up Eregion

I finished the last quest(s) in Eregion this evening, which were seven quests in Tham Mirdain. Both the school and the library instances. I'm glad to see them out of my tracker, because I was at 41/45 quests. I can't say I'm completely done with Eregion yet because I have a whole slew of deeds to complete, the most annoying ones being more killing in Tham Mirdain, which means going back into those bloody instances. They're fun the first or second time around, and after that, well, not so much. I guess that's typical of deed grinding.

I'm not a fan of the long deeds that require a group to do. Getting a group together for quests takes long enough, but just for deeds means there are even fewer people available. It's the same thing with the Carn Dum and Urugarth quests in Angmar. I'll probably never finish those until there's a couple expansions down the road to get me to a much higher level where I can solo 3 elite trolls or orcs etc at once. I know it's unlikely my kinship would be willing to help. They're busy doing more productive things than helping me on my futile quest for completionism. So, it'll be a while. And the deeds will sit.

I'm having fun with Moria so far. I haven't left the Great Delving (the first "room" in Moria) yet. I'm at that point though, which I thought as a good breaking point to go finish up the Eregion quests. I wanted them out of my tracker, because, like I said, it was too full.

Scalability Beyond Moria

What I mean by scalability is extending the current systems into multiple expansions and an increased level cap. The question I want to raise is how these systems will perform as the game is scaled.

We've already seen Turbine overhaul a system due to a level cap increase. This was the combat system. As I understand it, the previous system used direct percentages whilst the new system uses an index rating. After looking at the mouse-over tool tips on my stats, these indexes seem to correspond to an underlying percentage anyway, so I'm not sure how this new system changes anything except for burying the information deeper into the user interface. I'm trusting what I cannot see here will make the combat more scalable as the levels increase with new expansions.

What I can see is that certain other systems will be a problem, most notably in its use of superlatives, which are adjectives denoting a hierarchy. With the new tier of crafting, instead of a grand-master crafter, I'm now a supreme master crafter. The problem is that superlatives are limited in number. We're going to run out of them, and fairly quickly. So what do you then call the next best tier or crafting item (such as hides)?

Another scalability issue was briefly touched on in my last post about the deeds and associated virtues. There's a finite number of virtues and an ever-expanding list of deeds. Not having gone through most of the Moria content, I'm only guessing, but I'd say it's highly likely that every virtue can be leveled to the tenth and final tier, making additional deeds that reward that virtue useless for all but any title they might also reward. The advanced portion of the slayer deeds are completely unnecessary, so players will pick and choose completing the easiest deeds for their virtues and ignoring the rest. And ignored content, to me, points to a problem - this one being scalability.

How does one solve these problems? For the superlatives, I'd just switch the whole thing over to numbers, unnamed tiers of crafting and material. It's not nearly as pretty as words, but I don't see how it can continue much farther down the road. This is by far the easiest thing to do.

But what about the deeds and virtues? Sure, some of them like the explorer deeds that reward a title have a reward that doesn't cause a problem, but there are far more that have an associated virtue upgrade. We might be able to tack on more virtue tiers for a while, but this is only a bandaid. Like the combat system before it, the virtues will become too powerful. A diferent reward for deeds would be the easiest way to reinvigorate the deed system at this point, however they need to be just as compelling as virtue rewards. What that might be, I don't know. Titles are pretty compelling for me, but I'm a title and content whore.

We'll just have to wait and see what Turbine comes up with. There are a lot more people and smarter people working on this problem than me.

Do Virtues Really Help?

This question popped into my mind as I diverted my attention from Moria briefly. I have great difficulty moving onto another area of the world when I know there are activities within the previous area that are incomplete. It I really followed this philosophy, I'd still be sitting in Angmar or the Misty Mountains trying to finish Carn Dum, Urugarth, or Goblin Town amongst the countless deeds out there. Moria would be a long way off with Eregion inbetween.

So, I don't really do that, but every time I look through my deed long, I have this little nagging voice inside my head saying, get those done. It's especially "loud" when I see deeds active that I know improve virtues I have slotted.

That brings me to my point, which is do virtues really help improve your character that much? I think one needs to look at that question from two perspectives: subjectively and objectively. In absolute numbers (objectively) the virtues do improve your character. How much? Well, that depends on what tier your virtue is at. Take a tier 10 virtue and it's almost as good as a piece of equipment in terms of stat boosts. However, from tier to tier, the improvements are fairly small and unnoticeable (subjective).

I think it's a valid pursuit to complete deeds for virtue improvements you know you will use. For me, the one who likes to complete every deed, even the advanced ones that give me virtue upgrades I won't use, maybe not so much. I'm a title whore and completionist though. At the very least, the deeds give a modicum of character differentiation.

To Deed or Not To Deed

With the release of the Mines of Moria, most of the traits (the virtues) rewarded from the deed system can be advanced to their final 10th tier. And in some cases the there are more deeds to advance these traits than are tiers to advance, so once you complete a set of deeds that gives you the 10th tier, there's no longer any tangible reward for completing the deed.

So why would you even bother? Well, I'm one of those people who will probably bother. Why? Well, as I've said before, I'm a completionist type. I look through my deed log and see uncompleted deeds and I begin to cringe. I prefer an empty... or rather completed deed log. Unfortunately, that takes quite a bit of time, and without tangible rewards, I'm only grinding these deeds out for a goal that's purely in my head. That often makes for a tough sell, even for myself. Especially when I have a host of more entertaining content sitting in the form of Moria and Lothlorien.

And I have a long way to go yet. Only the Shire and the Trollshaws have had every quest completed (aside from the Raids in Rivendell) and every deed completed. Oh well. It just means this game has life for me.

Slice the Grinds

I talked a bit about what LOTRO's grinds are yesterday, but I didn't have any solutions. Merely, I asked, why does it have to be that way. Well, here's a thought about what could be done.

Grinds are doing the same task over and over again for a long period of time. It's only at the end of that period of time is there a rewards. Oftentimes, we as the player have become so jaded over having to grind, we're not nearly so receptive to the reward as we could be, even if it's a fairly good reward, something we wanted. There's nothing to keep us going between when we start the grind and when we end it. How about spreading the reward throughout the "grind", so as you're doing the task, you're getting rewarded and reassured more often.

The reward, however, must be something the player can see affect his character. It can't be something intangible such as points. Rep-points might be given out on a per-mob basis, but after a certain amount of time, they loose their impact. A series of small, but meaningful rewards is a better motivation then one large reward at the end of a long grind.

An example in LOTRO might be the slayer deeds which reward trait upgrades. These aren't very large upgrades to begin with, so there's already a problem of large grinds for small reward. But what about giving each mob kill, or a set of 5 or 10 mob kills an incremental increase in the stats (traits) you're going after. LOTRO frequently uses a whole number to signify strength, rather than percentages. In this example, percentages would be better suited to seeing this incremental increase. Rather than have a set number of mob kills, certain mobs will just increase your stats. It is also possible to have a maximum threshold of effective kills, with diminishing returns nearing that point to move players onto other deeds (and thus areas of the gameworld). The player here is seeing an increase of numbers that mean something more than just points or a tally, but the overall "difficulty" of the deed, that is, the number of mobs slain, isn't necessarily reduced.

A potential problem with this idea is when grinds are used to reward gear. You either have the gear, or you don't. LOTRO is implementing a legendary items system, which essentially allows you to upgrade your weapons. Something similar with all types of gear would eliminate the grind for the gear upgrade. In this case, smaller upgrades would be rewarded as you're "grinding" that marginally increase the stats of your gear, rather than an all-at-once reward at the end.

That's just one idea that floated into my head. How it could be implemented to the current LOTRO game isn't something I could speculated about. However, it is a way that the grind might be sliced.

The Grind - A LOTRO Primer

This is one of those subjects that pops up on every blog about online gaming. In MMO development, there seems to be this idea that in order to maximize player time with the game, one or more "grinds" should be incorporated into the game. A grind is essentially a task that is repeated over and over again for some goal, be it experience, faction points, crafting ability, etc.

LOTRO is no exception to the idea that grinds belong in MMOs. Fortunately for me and the rest of the LOTRO players, the grind isn't necessary to advance in the game and experience a vast majority of the content. However, there are systems in this game that do require grinds.

The first, and probably most used grind is the quest grind. Now this should be an oxymoron. Unfortunately, it's not. There are moments in the game, particularly around the middle levels when working in the Lone-Lands and the North Downs where the quests begin to feel like doing the same thing over and over again. Hunt these boar (boars are infamous in LOTRO), collect this item, talk to this guy. Over and over and over. It's a moment where you must question why you are playing a game where even the quests are grinds. Fortunately, this doesn't represent the quality of most of the quest content. On the whole, I would say LOTRO's strong point is the compelling quest lines - particularly the epic book quests. Still, this grind exists. Thank goodness I got past it. But, it has been a sticking, and even dropping point, for quite a few LOTRO players. They just can't get past those middle-levels (20-30[5]). I hope that Turbine at some point takes a look at this content bracket and either revises the quests or adds another option with more varied, compelling, and even innovative quests.

The second grind is the crafting grind. Being someone who enjoys crafting, this isn't too bad. Now, I am a yeoman and have only leveled cooking and farming to grand master. Unfortunately for me, cooking is (was worse) expensive, so the grind in the last tier took quite a bit of time. Cooks don't have a very strong and stable market for food unless it's critted food. Lucky for us, this grind is the least annoying of them all - or rather, least expansive. If you hate grinds in crafting, then it might be the most.

The third grind is the deed grind. Deeds are like the XBox 360 achievments, or the recent achievments added to WoW. They're a set of optional, non-quest, objectives to complete. The come in a few varieties. You receive a title and/or a trait (character stat modifier you slot) as a reward for completing the deeds.

• First, the explorer deed focuses on finding a set of locations in Middle-Earth. These frequently revolve around some aspect of the lore. As such, they tend to be loved by the lore junkies out there. These are the least grindy of the bunch.
• Second, there are also quest deeds, which advance as you do a certain number of quests. These also rarely incorporate grinds (unless it's quest grinding).
• The third type is collection deeds. These are deeds asking you to collect a set of items, typically books or papers, off certain mob spawns. These can be a grind, but in my experience, the items drop at a decent rate for almost every deed.
• Fourth, slayer deeds are the ones that create the most grind. These are the primary source of trait upgrades, but unfortunately, those upgrades require a grind. These deeds are two-tiered. the first tier gives you a title - such as "Slug Squisher" (for killing slugs in the Rukshuk Bog in the Shire) - and the second tier gives you the trait - such as Determination (trait for the slug slayer). The second tier also requires more kills than the first. The early deeds aren't too problematic (unless being farmed by many other players) with 30 the first time and 60 the next. But, as you get to the more advanced zones, you'll frequently see 150 for the first set and 300 for the next. Killing 300 of anything is a grind.
• Fifth are the social deeds. These deeds revolve around emotes. A player will receive a new emote of other players emote a certain type to them a certain number of times. To prevent random emote spamming, these are blind deeds. That is, you don't know where you stand in terms of progress. These are definitely grinds, but the blind nature of them reduces the impact somewhat.
• Sixth are the class skill deeds. These deeds give you improved skill traits that will upgrade certain skills. These aren't a grind necessarily because you advance them by doing what you're already doing - using your skills.
  
• Seventh is what I'd call miscellaneous. They cannot be easily classified. They might (Shire post runs) or might not (festival tavern run) be grinds.
  

The last grind is the reputation grind. This basically means gathering reputation drops from mobs of a certain type to turn in with a given faction's rep vendor for reputation points. The number of points you have determines the level of reputation you have with that faction, and that level determines the type of rewards you can aquire. It has been my experience that these rewards are seldom worth the grind it takes to get the required rep.

However, despite my dislike for grinds, I've been doing a fair bit of it over the past few weeks. Certainly I still have quests hanging around, but all of them are fellowship quests. With my kinmates few and far between lately (work, life, MoM beta) I've been slower in the completion of fellowship quests. I'm not a huge fan of PUGs (pick up groups) despite having a fairly high sucess rate of a good group. So I've been grinding deeds and rep.

The rep I've been focusing on has been to unlock certain quick travel routes that are gated by reputation. Merely to make things more convenient should I ever need to travel to a given place. The Council of the North is my main focus. Their quest hub in Northern Angmar is time consuming to "run" to due to aggro and the distance from the nearest ungated quick travel route. I also have a fair number of quests still up there that I might want to complete at some point. The deeds I have been focusing on haven't been in any particular order. I've pretty much completed the ones I wanted to for the trait upgrades I need. So I've just been going through them systematically. Lately it has been completing them in the Trollshaws just to say I can completely check off an area of all quests and deeds (barring the raids quests).

The question is, why is this sort of gameplay necessary. I have the fortunate (or unfortune, depending on your point of view) to have a need for coin. My crafting skills aren't particularly profitable. So, these grinds, by gathering and selling the trash loot, gives me a "good" source of income. Still, there ought to be a better way of going about gaining the rewards and money that is more fun than a grind system. It's not hard, it's just tedious and time consuming. MMO companies are taking the easy road out with this type of content, in my opinion.

So, I bide my time till Moria with my grinding. I do bring a bit of it on myself by my completionist attitude toward the game, but still, it doesn't change what exists.