Developer Q&A Part 2

Not sure if I linked to the first part of the Q&A, but you can find that link here. This post will pretty much be a run down of the questions I personally find interesting and my thoughts. To simplify, I'll just quote the answers. So, here goes...

AMD’s recent announcement of their first DirectX 11 video cards included a mention that LOTRO was adding DX11 support. You will not see it with Siege of Mirkwood, but you should expect it to arrive sometime next year.

I'm really stoked that the dev team is putting effort into adding support for the next gen technology in an previously existing game. There's no doubt LOTRO has some amazing graphics. Anything to further enhance that is good, so long as it doesn't seriously hamper performance. The great thing about the DX10 support is it is activated via check boxes in the graphics options. There's no forcing players to use DX10 cards. I hope their comitment to their graphics engine continues as the game does - perhaps a ways down the road we can see a graphics overhaul similarly experienced in Eve and Ultima Online. This kind of work can certainly prepare them for such an endeavor.

Mirkwood is roughly 75-80% of the size of the Northdowns.

A little disappointed in the size, but oh well. I guess I'm just partial to a grand experience in size and scope of Middle-Earth.

Not for Siege of Mirkwood, though we’d love to revisit [housing and guilds] at some point in time.

Vague enough that I'm pretty positive they do not have any plans in the works yet. I too would love to see this "at some point in time" but previous posts from the dev team have pretty much said housing isn't a priority because it would require enough resources to cut significant work in other areas of the game. Still, at some point in time that priority has to change.

Many of the questions are very specific and reminiscent of dev chat type responses, rather than a press release. That's a good thing. I hope to see more of these types of articles in the future. Perhaps a better method then a dev chat? Maybe that's where they're going. I haven't seen a dev chat in quite a while, now that I think about it.

Yesterday's WarCry Dev Chat Commentary

Okay, this adventurer finally has a moment to sit down and check out the dev chat from yesterday. I'm usually always a day late with these things because I find it easier to just read the transcripts, which usually come out the next day. I'll not be addressing every question in the chat, but the ones I felt were answered well or presented new information. I'll be truncating a lot of the answers to dig to the meat so do check out the link for the full transcript.

"Completely redesigning [the legendary item system], no... [I]n that regard, we're going to be making some solid changes. [O]ur main goal is to make it feel less grindy, to better maintain the feeling of advancement and progression. Will we be able to address all of your complaints? Nope."

I'm glad to hear they see the current legendary system as too grindy. I've been putting grind on one side of a line and epic on the other, where the two are mutually exclusive. If there is less grind in the future, I think we'll be getting a more epic feeling system, as promoted pre-Mines of Moria. And of course there's the requisite disclaimer that not every complaint will be addressed. Not every complaint is... doable. For example, let us pick our legendaries. That errs too far on the side of overpowering the weapons/players and diminishing the uniqueness garnered by a randomized system.

"One of the cool features we are working on for "the Future" is the ability to exchange legacies on Legendary Items."

Hmmm... this will be a toughy. One one hand, you don't want the player to have complete freedom to change his or her legacies to exactly what they want. As before, that results in a loss of uniqueness and too much power. Then again, the current system is very much like a casino... people win on occasion, the vast majority lose, and if you play long enough, everyone, even the winners, will lose.

"There will be a method to reset the legacy points on a maxed out Legendary Item very soon."

Nice. They already fixed the relics not being refunded, now to be able to redo legendary points will be another good thing. Perhaps you have a situation that calls for a different build and your legendary weapon is statted for something else. If you have the right legendaries, it would be great to reset the points for the new build. Couple this with however they manage to trade in legacies, and you have a nice customizable system like the traits. That would feel more legendary to me. Perhaps this can work after all...

"We definitely want to bring crafters into the LI system more than we have."

That's good to hear. I know many of us have commented on how crafting seems so pointless now with LIs and radiance gear. I did have a kinmate make me a Peerless Thain's Halberd which has 6 more DPS than my LI, but there's so many other bonuses on my LI that the crafted halberd would only be useful in situations that need something other than common damage.

As to crafting radiance gear, the devs did not comment on that portion of the question. Something tells me radiance is reserved for the raiding circuit, which has stepped outside of the realm of crafting. I don't see it coming, but keep on harassing them. I want crafting to be more meaningful too. Funny I say that though, as I don't craft all that much, except for food, which doesn't have any of those issues. It's always relevant as a consumable.

"We are working hard on Mirkwood at the moment... We plan on going to new areas after that, but that is a bit too far in advance to fill you in..."

As I've said before, I'd love to see an alternative advancement to the North Downs and the Lone Lands, perhaps by opening up another path south of the Shire, Breeland, and Lone Lands. Or even the Gray Havens? Not sure how that would fit in the current story, however. If it were anywhere, it would be either in conjunction with Rivendell (we saw that wasn't the case) or Lothlorien (we still have time here) because the elves are going west. There was a briefest glimpse in one of the elven starter area quest lines, but that's it. This comment only solidifies the expected pattern: Follow the Fellowship.

"As many know Book 8 continues our re-vamp plans and furthers them into Breeland. Breeland will now cover levels 14-22 and be the current, don't read into that too much, single track for getting to 14-22. The next stage is to get two tracks from 22-32, three from 32-42 and four from 42-52. More on all this as we move forward with these changes. But the long and short is that the Lone-lands and North Downs will bother service 22-32. Complete with more quests and a stronger version of the second Book of the Epic story."

Hmmm, so just a reworking of the levels of quests within the current zones it sounds like. Glad to hear they're working on cleaning up the progression. More polish, more polish. SoA was considered a very polished experience when it released. We'll be positively gleaming after all this, but still, I'd love to see new zones as progress options.

More quests... that's a good thing. Can't have enough quests, as long as they're well written. If the Ered Luin revamp is any indication, they will be. But that means me, as a completionist, will have to revisit these areas and do the new quests, just because. GAH! Hey, at least I'll have some more content to consume, despite it being vastly outleveled.

"When we get to Helm's Deep there will be some truly significant changes to the game. We cannot comment on what the players' role will be in the battle because we are not there yet, but be assured, we have done all we can to make the tale of your journey through the early parts of the War of the Ring very important and I think that we will continue to do this in all of our future content."

I like the sound of "truly significant". Rohan is a perfect place for mounted combat. Helm's Deep is a perfect place for implementing siege mechanics and epic army-sized warfare. It'll be hard to wrap the story of our own adventures into something so confined and explicit as the Helm's Deep sequence, but perhaps there will be a way around that. Turbine has bent the rules before (Rune-Keeper).

"I am a big fan of the general environment and the little surprises you come upon while questing. That being said, would there be any chance of having a type of treasure hunting quests, i.e. while fishing you "catch" a map and then have to go and find the location it leads you to claim your reward?"

This isn't a dev response, but rather the question. The dev who answered, Orion, took it as a desire to see more riddle type quests. I like those quests as well, but what I think this question is asking is more comprehensive: A Middle-Earth-wide scavenger hunt. Only problem is that it needs to grow as the game grows, so how do you make it expandable? Perhaps just make it an ongoing deed, with various parts as the game grows. The idea is awesome though and I'd love to see something that highlights certain places in the world.

"...[R]adiance certainly has a mixed reaction from the game populace. Many dislike this as it is a stiff gating requirement and certainly draws hard lines between the casual and hard core players... [W]e are making certain that we are cautious about the way that it is used in the future. For the Book 8 release I can confirm that the smaller instances will not require radiance and that diligent players can utilize a smaller set of radiance gear to enter the new raid. We still want to give the system some more time to shake out before we make any major changes to it..."

The gear check and radiance raid requirement has been a huge topic of discussion in the blogosphere as well as on the forums. I do not see in this statement that Turbine is going to go back to a more "casual raiding" seen in the Rift, for example. Never say never, however. Turbine has shown malleability in the past.

Why is radiance currently in the game? First off, it expands the hope/dread system to be more versatile for conveying the Middle-Earth concept of good and evil. It also, more mechanically, allows higher dread encounters with appropriate mitigation. The use of gear to mitigate the dread does play into the concept of epic encounters with amazing armor (mithril was a concept in the IP was it not?) but it turned into too much of a grind, like the legendary system, and erased the epic feel when it came down to actually getting the gear.

"We are very happy with the way the Warden has turned out. I think the Warden is very close to where we wanted it to be as far as class roles. The Runekeeper seems to be doing pretty good as well but has needed a few more tweeks to get it to the right place."

Good to hear that they're fairly satisfied with the two new classes. At least on the surface. "A few more tweaks" constitutes a DPS reduction. Not sure if that's "pretty good" but oh well.

"Are there plans in the works for a new PvMP zone?"
"I am going to be coy: Not in the immediate future, but there is something that is in the works that could lead to some very interesting PvMP moments in the mid to distant future."

This was something we expected, as the level cap was raised, so were the PvMP zones expanded. Perhaps giving some variety like WoW's battlegrounds. Seeing how much effort has gone into the current zone to balance it, creating a new one would be a major undertaking. And for myself, I don't feel that PvMP is the primary focus of the game. A fun diversion to those who enjoy that type of play. There's a lot of more pressing things to deal with, IMO.

"The Amarthiel events were a huge success and we had a lot of fun with them. It's certainly something we want to do more of but there are not immediate plans to do so. But I'd keep an eye peeled."

I'd love to see more Amartheil like events as well. That really helped contribute to the epic feeling of what was going on in Middle-Earth. It was an event, it happened, then passed. It gave the world a sense of history beyond the inherent design. The world feels lived in, but having immediate events that can be talked about from different perspectives (i.e. different players) is really great. Quests are the same for everyone. Live events are different for everyone.

"We would love to do more hobbies, and we're always bouncing ideas around about different things. Unfortunately, hobbies aren't the highest priority."

Oh, that reminds me. I've not yet finished leveling my fishing... guess that's why it's not so high a priority, if some of your players completely forget it exists. Still got the hobby skill on one of my hotbars though.

"Game stability and server performance is our number one priority at the moment. We've made some great strides in that direction and I'll think you'll see more of that when Book 8 is released."

Interesting that it's not expanding the content. Then again, what good is content that can't be experienced smoothly? Glad to hear they're really focusing on getting the servers to a more reliable state. I'd love to see a continued boost in graphical tweaks as well as the server side fixes. But I love me some eye candy.

"End game and the journey there, the journey around the journey there and the time that you spend with friends and the family that you make inside the world are all equally important. Playstyles vary from person to person and we must, as designers, do what we can to try to appease all different playstyles. Thankfully, we have time to try to get to as much as we possibly can to attempt to make everyone a little happy along their own journey."

I have to commend them for trying to make sure each part of the game is approached equally, journey and destination. However, I think the IP really points to the journey as the important part. It's what changed the characters, made them stronger, showed them their true hearts. The destination was just one place on that journey. A matter of perspective, I know, but too many MMOs neglect the journey (leveling) once so many of the players are at the destination (end game). There is evidence of journey love in Orion's revamping process, and I very much look forward to all that.

I hope my commentary was worth reading. The dev chat certainly was. One of the stronger ones to date. Do check it out and leave comments here or on the forums or both and let us all know what you think. Happy adventuring!

March 11th Dev Chat Transcript

For once I can say that a dev chat has given me some interesting information to talk about. Well, maybe they all have interesting information, but I've usually found them somewhat superficial. Today's dev chat has a few things I'd like to talk about. First up is a bit about the captain's In Harms Way skill:

Question: In the Bullroarer patch notes, you stated that it is becoming increasingly difficult to design content with IHW at 100% [damage mitigation]. Could you please expand on this? Do you believe there is a place in [the] game for a 100% damage bubble? Will you be giving captains additional group survivability tools to compensate for this significant loss?

Answer: There were cases where the In Harms Way skill was being used with other skills that trivialized or completely negated content in the game. Our content team did not have any reasonable way to address this - doing so on their end would have meant a severe reduction in the amount of content they could produce over time, due to having to compensate for every 'scenario' that would occur. We chose instead to address In Harms Way, which we believe to be the root cause of concern with this particular issue of trivializing game content. We do not believe there is a place in the game for a 100% fellowship wide damage bubble at this time, so we changed the skill. Making the skill have a 50% damage reduction still means that the skill on its own could be useful, since Captains (via various banners) tend to have a lot of morale. Spreading out the damage for their entire party becomes a preventative tool vs. a panic button, but it also means the skill can be used without pairing it with another. As always, we will be evaluating the change over the course of Book 7, and we will be monitoring your feedback in case we need to make changes.

Welcome to the wall of text. There's a lot there. Where to begin....

First is the point about the negating of content - basically being so overpowered that content became trivialized. I could see how that potential was there but I personally never ran into that situation. I always found the skill usage to tread the fine line between saving a wipe and wiping anyway. If things are going really bad, not even the IHW, LS, and SOM combo would save you. I'm not sure I totally buy this, but since I cannot know for sure, I'll accept it.

Second, there was no other "reasonable" way of addressing the issue. Okay, if I accept the first point, I have to accept this one. And I'm not a programmer or know their tools so I cannot say what's reasonable or not.

Third, they do not see a situation that merits a 100% damage mitigation. That goes with number two - since they seemed to have trouble designing content for such a situation.

Fourth, the skill is now useful on its own without the use of Last Stand or Strength of Morale. Okay, this is the kicker in the "argument" I think. Because of the way In Harms Way was working (100% damage mitigation) I always assumed this skill was never meant to be used on it's own (unless you'd like to sacrifice yourself for the good of the group - which I happen to not be adverse to and have used the skill to that end before). Given that we get Last stand and especially Strength of Morale, I was convinced things were working as intended. Perhaps they were, but as things progressed, they stopped. It's like many features that saw a change with Mines of Moria and now Book 7 - long term feedback changes. Do I like that IHW can now be used as a separate entity? Does it justify the change, that regardless of what you call it, reduces it's effectiveness? I'm willing to accept this new advantage - this trade off. But I haven't tested it yet. And it's still on the test server so it can be changed. I can't know if it will work as intended. Perhaps, as an offhand thought, it should only be reduced to 66 or 75%.

Lastly, IHW as a panic button or preventative tool. I think these aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, I say such a still is a natural panic button and should be forced into being a preventative tool. We're inclined, with cool-down timers, to save INW for the right moment, and the right moment often takes the form of a panic situation. We can't know it's the right moment until the time has passed for preventative measures. And there are a host of other skills that operate much more effectively as preventative skills than IHW.

And now, I have to admit a feeling of loss over the epicness that was IHW. I felt powerful, I felt useful, I felt effective. So does everybody that has an overpowered skill or even class (I'm not saying Captains are overpowered). Compounding that feeling was that I was saving the whole group - it is one of the only times that a Captain is on the "front lines" so to speak, actively saving the bacon. The DPS, tanking, and even healing get all the glory usually. Buffs are in the background, not as noticeable. But when the IHW, LS, and SOM combo was hit, everybody knew the captain was doing something spectacular. We were pulling through. It was our small reward for being the quiet guy in the back that was subtlety helpful. I reveled in that roll, but I also reveled in coming through.

That's not to say that we can't have an epic moment like that, or that IHW will no longer be epic. It'll just be a little less epic and it remains to be seen if it's a 'bad' change or not.

The second item I want to talk about, or rather point out is that Under the Banner managed to get a question in about fansite and blogging tools in relation to the Lorebook. We've of course been having a discussion around this blogosphere about that issue. It sounds to me like they're open for further discussion but the question was to large for the dev chat environment. I definitely encourage my fellow bloggers to follow up on this question. I haven't been the one taking the lead on this, but if anybody needs me to do anything, let me know.

That's all I got for now. I apologize for spending so much time on the Captain issue, but I can only write about what interests and affects me. Playing a captain, this definitely falls in that category. I hope it was entertaining anyhow. Happy adventuring!

Stratics Chat March 11th

There will be a dev chat on March 11th over at Stratics. MMeOw has more detailed information on participating. I've never taken part in a chat myself nor have used an IRC client so my experience is limited. You'll certainly see the chat log linked here afterwards as well as a commentary on anything interesting.

European Dev Chat

I only ran across this yesterday, right before the dev chat was to start. I don't attend dev chats so that wasn't a big deal, but I wish that I could have found out about it on the main US site rather than through a third party and by sheer luck.

There are few items of note I'd like to talk about that have come out of this dev chat. First is about raid content and the following comment from Jalessa:

"Our progress in our raid sets in the future is something that we are continually discuss[ing] and plan[ing] out. We will continue to use radiance as a requirement for future raids, as you have seen with our current Moria sets. We also plan to improve set bonuses and item bonus amounts."

I made a post a while back about gear checks, and why I like LOTRO because there's not really a gear check in the game. Sure better gear means you do things faster etc, but it wasn't required. Decent gear for level 50 meant you could viably complete the Rift or Helegrod. Requiring radiance gear for raids here on out is a gear check of the purest form. You will absolutely die without the radiance gear because the dread is too much. Yes, this is already in the game with The Vile Maw watcher fight. Raiding wasn't precisely casual before, but it's significantly less now. At the very least you have to complete six instances six times each. That's 36 instance runs, 36 times you have to find a fellowship, 36 times you have to commit. All for six pieces of gear.

Of course, one might argue that casual players don't need to experience this content. It's not casual content and there's plenty of casual content in the game already. That's absolutely true, but what made LOTRO different than, say WoW was it's embracing of all content for all players (within reason of course). Perhaps that was a pipe dream, impossible to achieve. I thought they managed fairly well with Shadows of Angmar content, notably raids. Add this to some of the other changes in Book 7 and I feel like LOTRO is going the route of WoW on a few things that might not be the best way of going about it. Just because WoW has 11 million players doesn't mean it does everything right.

I'm probably being unfair to say the devs are coping WoW consciously. They more than likely came up with the ideas on their own. But I'd like to see this game go a little bit of a different direction. Something a little bit unique. The casual friendliness, even in upper level content, was one of those somethings.

The second item is a comment about the XP curve change by Jalessa:

"The change was primarily focused towards our low-mid level players, in an effort to make our game more approachable to the casual user."

There's that word casual again. But that's not what I want to comment on this time - more the abstract level range mentioned here. I put up a post about the level 30 wall the other day (along with links to other blogs talking about the subject) and I think that the xp change could address this problem. Furthermore, it was mentioned Orion is looking over the mid-range content to see how to make it less linear. Honestly, I think the best solution is a new set of zones to duplicate the progression. I'm not sure how redesigning the content at the lower levels will make it any less linear. You still go from the same zone to the same zone.

Lastly is a lighter comment about festivals by Keth:

"In addition to another horse to try and win, there will be a hedge maze for you to try and find your way through. This hedge maze will be instanced, so you'll never see more than a handful of people in the maze at a time."

I love hedge mazes in real life. I'm probably overly excited about this feature of the festival. But I love that they're coming up with new "light" activities to do for these. It's a lot of fun and a good change of pace from the normal questing/deeds/instances. Oh, and yet another horse? We'll need our own stables at this rate. Give us a horse ring! Ya know, like our key ring. I suppose you could call it a stable. A horse rings sounds... odd.

X-Fire Dev Chat

Yesterday afternoon (at least it was afternoon for me on the Pacific coast) some of the LOTRO devs participated in a dev chat via X-Fire. A couple of my kinmates were on and relaying anything interesting to us that were in game at the time. I wasn't one of those in the chat itself, but I thought I'd post the log via another LOTRO blog I've run across called MMeOw: LotRO and Mines of Moria from a Casual Perspective.

Dev chats, while fun, don't seem to be the best way to convey information. I rarely ever learn anything I haven't already found out via a dev post on the forums or some other official communication. This is the same here, except confirmation of Book 7 including the rest of Lothlorien as well as coming "Soon(TM)". I for one greatly look forward to the book, even though I'm not even close yet. If anything, listening to the devs talk about the game always gets me excited to play again. I love their enthusiasm for what they do.

Definitely check out the blog I've linked to here. The content is of great quality and professionalism. If I had know this blog existed before starting my own, I probably would have had my LOTRO blog itch scratched. However, that's not how things have turned out and I'm pleased to have it on my blog roll. Great stuff over there.