A Bit More Legendary

A legendary weapons dev diary was released today and I must say, I'm excited. This is a much needed boost to a system that, after a while, felt worse than some of the upper level slayer deed grinds. Here are some of the highlights:

• All Weapons Lvl to 60
• Legacy Modifying Scrolls
• IXP Curve Altered
• Crafted Relics
• 4th Runic Slot

All these features combine to do a couple of things. First, the grind is significantly lessened. Second, we will have a good idea of a weapon's value to use right at identification, instead of after leveling it 20 - 30 levels. Third, less pressure to have a 2nd or even 1st age weapon - 3rd ages, at 60, should be pretty decent, especially if you used some of those scrolls. Fourth, crafters play a better roll in the legendary system.

What this means is that we're seeing this system closer to what a "legendary" weapon really would be. While not perfect, we should be hanging on to our swords and bows and javelins a little bit longer now that we can foresee where they're going and significantly alter them at any point in the process. This is an excellent change to the system - and one that many have wanted for a while. Some of the changes were predicted, and others were a pleasant surprise. Quality work, Turbine.

Psychochild's Legendary Evaluation

Psychochild, a game developer named Brian Green, has put up a blog post evaluating the Legendary item system in LOTRO and what could change to make it better. I thought I'd point it out and respond.

He points out two problems with the system. First, its randomness, and second its negative affect on crafting. I whole heartedly agree with his assessment visa-vie crafting. Lucky for us, Siege of Mirkwood will expand the current craftability of legendary items. Depending on what is implemented, this could be a moot point. On the whole, I feel the randomness is generally well balanced, especially with the most recent changes to allow the choice of legacies (out of two) to add or upgrade. In essence, legendary items as a system actually aren't that bad right now. But I do think I would have preferred a different approach, one that would have required implementation of legendary items from launch. Such wishful thinking, however, is futile since the past cannot be changed now.

Despite the system being "not that bad", could Psychochild's suggested improvements help? First he advises to make legacies slottable instead of inherent to the weapon. Like the relics. This immediately eliminates any difference between relics and legacies and therefore should become one and the same - slottable stats. I like the idea but there needs to be a way to keep the current level of randomness present. If we can choose our legacies out of a pool like the relics, then we have too much freedom to create "uber" weapons. Now, of course legendary weapons should be some of the best weapons in the game, but not to the point where freedom to customize will lead to them being overpowered. Psychochild doesn't have any ideas on keeping the randomness, but that's because he thinks there's too much randomness at present. I would suggest that once you slot your legacy, it cannot be removed - only leveled, like present. There is mention of removing the legacy, but I think that keeps the pool of legacies too powerful and perfect. Perhaps removal is permanent - you lose the legacy. This is really only delays the inevitable super collection of legacies. Players will eventually quest enough to get any legacy the want. And since it's not random on the weapon, they will gain the "perfect" weapon relatively quickly.

Honestly, I don't think changing the legendary item system in this manner will bring about any improvement from a game mechanic perspective. From the player's point of view, they'll certainly like it better because they can now really get the weapon or item they've always wanted. But because the grind is virtually eliminated (aside from collecting legacies/relics and leveling) it has less utility for keeping players engaged.

This of course begs the question - is a grind with this system the best way of engaging the players? I would argue no, there's got to be a better, more fun, way. And I think that way can be in part linked to the crafting. Incorporating more playstyles into the legendary system will help it, regardless of the grind. If we can get crafted legendaries to speed up the grind a little, we'll see a little bit more fun.

The root problem, I think, is the dichotomy between randomness and an actual legendary weapon you would keep with you, like Sting or Glamdring or Anduril. With as much randomization as we have, it necessitates burning through legendaries we don't want to find the one that will suffice. Retaining a weapon for a long period of time, as a truly legendary weapon would, requires it be less randomized to ensure desirability on first acquisition. The latter isn't good, as I said above, for retaining interest in the mechanics of the system beyond leveling.

I think the ideas would be good to put on hold till we see how exactly the legendary system improves (or doesn't as the case may be) with SoM. Still worth thinking about though.

Obsoleting Content

With Book 8 Patch one, a set of level 60 bounty quests have shown up in Esteldin. A new Dwarven NPC will issue 5 different repeatable bounty quests to kill a particular named mob in five different locations in Middle-Earth. From these quest you get a set amount of item xp, plus a heritage rune with more ixp.

Yesterday I set out with a couple of my kinmates to do these quests. Three are soloable but two require a small fellowship. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm came through right then and blew out the power and I didn't get them done. (Amazing lightning strike right across the street, by the way.) Today I jumped back in to complete the three solo quests. From those three quests I managed to level my legendary weapon from 30 to 33. It would take considerably longer grinding the xp through kills and deconstructing trash legendaries. Or even running the ixp quest circuit in Moria.

These five quests have singlehandedly made obsolete all other methods of accruing item xp. I'm not complaining that I can get some mucho item leveling done (15 hour cool downs) but I have to wonder if these quests aren't a little "overpowered". New content is one thing, but when the new content completely invalidates the older content, I have to wonder.

Certainly the level 60 raids have made the level 50 raids useless in terms of tangible reward, but even then these raids are worth doing if you're a player who simply likes to see the content. Run through them once, or as many times as it takes to complete the quests. Repeatable content is a different animal.

Okay, maybe the ixp quests in Moria aren't totally useless. They do give you the weapon/class item modifiers, so if you need one of those, run that quest. I might suggest raising the rewards from those quest by giving out heritage runes as well so they can compete. I'll let the devs decide what value these runes would be to balance with the bounty quests vs time to complete, effort involved, etc. But I think they need a little beefing up. Or a scaling back of the bounty rewards just a bit to be more in line with the effort required.

Wait... Seriously... Did I just ask for a nerf?

Follow-Up Radiance Q&A

Orion posted a follow up mini-Q&A on his blog today regarding the Radiance changes. Do check it out for even more information and perhaps one of your burning questions was answered.

Radiance Changes Coming

Yes, yes, yes. This is a good fix we've been waiting for. While not quite perfect (no alternate method/alternate radiance gear), taking a bit of the grind out of the radiance instance runs will help out tremendously. Amlug has posted a blog update talking about the new barter system for radiance gear coming Soon(TM). And as a wonderful tease at the bottom he mentions a change to the way Radiance/Gloom and Hope/Dread interact. I'd love to see a bit more detail on that one, but hey, we can't get everything all at once. I wouldn't have anything to write about tomorrow now would I? Do check out the post for more details.

Book 8 Patch 1 Notes

Most of you already know about the Book 8 Patch 1 Notes but I thought I'd link them here on the off chance someone does not know about these yet.

The big news, of course, is the crafting of legendary weapons, called "Reforged". That's not to say crafters can reforge legendary items as a gameplay mechanic, but from a lore perspective, it would be... less epic if everyone and their cousin could make legendary weapons from scratch. So we can merely reforge them. Still a tremendous feat in and of itself.

Not sure yet how these recipes are acquired, be it rep grinds, random drops, or the vendors themselves. Regardless, this is an excellent addition to the game. Crafters really got the short end of the deal with both legendary items and radiance gear. Now they'll get a little bit back. Can we see some crafted Rad gear though devs?

Root of the Consternation

There's tumultuous waters out there in the LOTRO community. Gear gating, hard mode instances, nerfed skills in boss fights, single-path progression. It's hard to sort out what people are really frustrated over and what are minor annoyances usually ignored but now blow out of proportion because of general angst.

Well, Orion, as an aside to his latest series of blogs, answers that question. First off, I want to link to the posts thus far. You can access any of the subsequent entries from the Day 1 post. I highly recommend reading these. In fact, if I would consider it required reading for all LOTRO players active in the community and interested in how this game develops.

Okay, onto the problem. Player Shibi commented on Day 1's post and had this to say:

"I am just suggesting that maybe, just maybe Turbine are going in a direction some of us don’t want and Turbine don’t seem to have spotted... Before you redesign the instance, why not actually ask people what they want, especially as Turbine seem have it so wrong right now... Some of us don’t want gating, we definitely don’t want hard mode, we want things to be accessible and FUN... [Y]ou are forgetting us and only thinking of the uber-elite fat-lewt WoW influx and sucking all the fun out."

That pretty much sums up the general argument from the players about our perceptions of the design direction. Orion had this to say:

"Some of you don’t want hard mode - certainly. Some of you don’t want gating - definitely. Some of you want things to be accessible - yep. All of you want things to be fun. A-ha! What is fun!? ...The answer is, it is subjective."

"It has become clear over the past weeks that the core of the gating issue is tied to the one way and one way only to acquire radiance loot - which is a necessity to participate in new raids. It is a combination of symptoms that combine to form the issue not a single case of “gear gating is stupid and horrible and damn you devs!”"

Creating content on the sole basis of an undefined, intangible, and as Orion puts it, subjective "fun" is a slippery slope. We have to define fun first, but again we run into the subjectivity wall. Still, I think it's possible if a majority of the players are clear on what isn't fun. And what isn't fun is exactly what Shibi is saying. Well, not exactly, and that's part of the problem, as Orion sees it. I think I might have said something to the same effect before.

The limited options present in the gear gating and radiance raid system limits fun. I greatly appreciated, and was sold to this game based on Turbine's commitment to giving players different options for completing the same or similar content. Before those options were seen in the different end-game gear. Now, however, we have only one type of gear that can be used in a raid. So, without destroying the radiance system, what do we do? We put the options in the methods of acquiring the one type of gear. Currently we have one option: hard mode. What about something to do with crafting , or monster play, or lesser raids? It's not any one of the systems that Shibi points out, but rather the limits that went along with those systems. And Orion sees this. And that makes me happy. And the next quote (from Day 2) should be proof enough:

"When you deal with a mass of people all spouting opinions and everyone keeps harping on one point or another it can be very difficult to drill through to the core of the issue. This has been the case with Radiance Gear. At first, it appeared that radiance gating was the only part of the issue because that was the breadth of the complaints. After drilling deeper and reading more and more from folks it became apparent that there were many symptoms to the problem.

1. Radiance gear is now required to enter raids.
2. The only way to acquire radiance gear is to complete hard modes.
3. Hard modes objectives are obtuse.

All good points, all taken to heart and all actively in the pipe for some form of retrofit to address the core issues. No time frame yet. Just and admission that we hear you, we understand you and we are committed to rectifying the issue."

Obviously this problem will take a while to rectify, but seeing Orion's journals gives me hope. Before now, I agreed with most of the griping, although not the incessant whining. I had given up posting on the issue further until something more substantial than the same complaining could be found. And at last I've found it. I do hope those of you who take issue with this... well, issue can see the same optimism I do.

Evaluating Legacies Continued

Okay, I'm finally getting around to this post. Took a while. Book 8 and the hotfix got in the way.

One of the comments in my Evaluating Legacies post mentioned that many of the bonuses for Legendaries give you the most reward simply by having them on the item unleveled. That is, the biggest bonus is the first bonus, with the rest giving only marginal improvement. I decided to look at a few of those I use.

First on the list is a series of critical modifiers: Relentless Attack, Devastating Blow, and Pressing Attack. The first is a tactics skill, a buff. The other two are melee attack skills. All three start out with a +245 topping out at +397. For the melee skills, I cannot say what percentage the increase is to the critical chance because that number is hidden. However, for Relentless attacks, I get a 34% increase with the first ranking. This goes up to 55% at rank 10. That's a 1.8% increase each rank. So, indeed having the first bonus is a huge increase and everything after that is quite small compared to it. Now we need to look at over all crit percentages to see the complete picture. With Mines of Moria, those became hidden in the critical modifier numbers, but if you mouse over your character sheet, you can see the actual percentages. Without the critical modifier bonus to Relentless Attack, I have a 6.4% melee critical chance. With the fully upgraded critical modifier (i.e. the 55% increase) I get a 11.4% melee critical chance. 5% is still noticeable, but barely.

Now lets look at another one I use, this time gained from my emblem. It's an increase to Rallying Cry healing. This bonus is a lot more straight forward. The percentages are already on top. Initially I receive a 3% increase. The rank 10 bonus is 11%, therefore after the initial 3%, I get a .8% increase each time thereafter. Again, we're front heavy with the bonus, but not nearly so much as with the critical modifiers.

So, simply having the legacy on the item you're using gives you the biggest bonus. Any rank ups will give less of a bonus, but 11% healing or 55% increase in critical rating is still noticeable, so ranking them up is not a bad thing. What else are you going to do with those legacies? I think looking at the numbers gives more weight to using a crafted item, as the DPS on those tend to be much higher than all but an upgraded level 60 first age weapon. You'll miss out on the sheer number of bonuses gotten from the legacies, but if you're only looking for damage, you might consider it.

EDIT:

Thought I'd add a bit of info about what weapon I'm using. Currently it's a level 59 Third Age Halberd. I mentioned before I got lucky with this one, but even still, if it weren't for the runics and legacies, I'd use the Peerless Thain's Halberd I have in the bank for when I need something other than common damage. I think I'd be able to get the DPS on my Third Age up pretty close to the Thain's Halberd anyhow. I've also got a level 54 Second Age Emblem equipped, legacies I want close to max. I have to ask again, what would you do with the legacies anyway?

Evaluating Legacies

I read a thread on the Captain forums talking about strategies and merits of using the Relentless Attack legacy. This legacy increases our critical rating for the Relentless Attack buff. Some argue that this legacy is one of the most useless because the returns hardly make a difference at all. Others will level this legacy only a little bit, saving their points for what they consider more useful legacies. I think the return on investment (ROI) argument is a little fallacious.

Every legacy operates on very small percentages. 12% increase is the highest I've seen for a fully upgraded legacy, and that was on a level 60 first age weapon. 12% to 100 is only 112, not a big difference at all. It doesn't matter what number you use as your "principle" either because the effects are already balanced for not being overpowered (generally), regardless of the numerical value. That means legacies cannot give too much of a bonus, or the skill would become unbalanced. So, if one does argue the ROI isn't worth it, you have to carry that argument to all legacies.

The legacies you choose to level are generally worth it because you feel they're worth it. It all depends on how you play your class. Certainly there are some legacies more useful relative to others within a class, but none of them are completely useless. The better strategy discussion would be to evaluate the merits of the legacies based on a playstyle, rather than dismissing any one as having a bad ROI. They all do, considering the time sink involved in the legendary item system.

Book 8 Patch Notes Review

I mentioned before I would wait to talk about the Book 8 patch notes until they were finalized. That time has come. This is going to be a epically long post. You have been warned. The format will be as follows. I'll hyperlink the relevant note I'm discussing, summarize what's necessary, and commentate. I'll not be going over all the notes, of course. That would just be insane. Instead, I'm picking and choosing what seems to be of most interest to me. Therefore, I'll be skipping much of the class specific information (aside from captains, because I play one), and a lot of the minor bug fixes. "Major" news is the idea with this post.

Epic Book Continuation

There's no surprise here. Like always, I'll say the epic books/storyline is one of my favorite parts of this game. Sounds like this book will focus on small fellowships.

Summer Festival

The seasonal content is a nice diversion for a couple days. I think we'll still be seeing the token drops. Really long period of that. I'm no longer a fan of the tokens since they're not scaled to level 60. Now they just take up space in my bags, if I even choose to collect them. Still, festivals are always fun, and sounds like there will be new activities.

Lothlorien Gift Boxes

This has been an issue since Book 7. The drop tables weren't right or something. Looks like these will be more friendly, though chances of a first age are completely gone. I like the changes, but I'm don't really care about first ages. My current third age weapon will be hard to beat as it is. And I'm not really grinding legendaries at the moment either.

First Age Legendaries

They're acquired by barter items now, gained through the instances/raids. Much better system as it eliminates getting first ages for the wrong class. Good change here.

Vendor Stacks

We can buy partial stacks from vendors! Yay! I always hated filling up to a full stack by clicking one at a time. Nice convenience change that just makes our LOTRO lives better. Like it says, it's the little things that count.

Boat Keepers

About bloody time! That lake is beautiful, but swimming across Evendim multiple times gets tedious after a while. Just like a swift travel route. Nothing fancy, but oh so nice. More convenience changes. Gotta love em!

FM Change

Hmmmm, I don't know if this will really affect things much. I don't play in fellowships often enough to really see what causes a FM induction - stun, knockdown, or on purpose (burg skill for instance). I guess it's not so nice we have one less option for FMs, but then again, we can induce them ourselves with the right class(es).

For your convenience (word of the day it seems) I've linked to each class's patch notes:

• Champion
• Guardian
• Hunter
• Minstrel
• Captain
• Burglar
• Lore-Master
• Rune-Keeper
• Warden

Captain Commentary

First on the list that interests me is we can once again rename our banners. Yay! I'm all for fluff changes and I like naming things. I miss it now that I no longer use Heralds (Ruth is so lonely).

Our Cry of Vengeance skill will now have a 10 second window of use and longer range. This is a very good thing. Nearly 2/3 of the time I use that skill, I'm either too late, or not in range of the downed player and it's completely wasted. Very helpful change, especially since the In Harms Way nerf. Makes up for that just a little bit.

Lastly, we can once again use Gleaming Striker, Flashing Bane, and Shining Star scrolls from the solo legendary instances in the Dolven View. When I saw that we couldn't use these post Book 7, I was annoyed. There was no longer anything to modify the Emblems. That was a mistake, obviously, not an intended change. Finally we're getting the fix. Good deal!

All in all I think the captain changes are good this time around. Repeated nerfs will wear on you.

User Interface

I'm happy to see that there is now a /ui command that saves your ui, which you can then load as a new character. Seriously, this is such an awesome feature. I hated going onto my alts (not that I did very much) and having to rearrange my ui all over again. I've done so many tweaks to it on my main that it takes way too long to change it all over again with another character. And then I don't even remember where I put half the stuff that's not visible all the time. Good stuff here.

More skinning options. I don't use skins, finding the default look satisfactory to my gameplay. But many people do, and unleashing the creativity of the player base is always a good thing.

Effect icons will once again pulse properly when running out of time. I don't know when they stopped pulsing, but it became hard to see when an effect was almost complete as sometimes the icons would stay opaque, and sometimes they would stay transparent. Makes it hard in high stress, distracting activities like instances or raids to quickly see what's going on. And that's important - getting the information to the player as fast and as efficiently as possible.

Quest Guide

Indicators on the map now pulse. I always made them pulse manually by moving my mouse on and off the item in the quest guide so I could more clearly see where it is I'm supposed to be looking, especially when I have multiple, large-area quests active and overlapping each other. Nice to see refinement like this.

Housing

Lockout fees will increase each week a house is in lockout (from not paying your bills, lazy bums!) until it reaches 90% of the purchase price. Not so bad for you normal house people, a bit expensive for the deluxe house. I did loose my house once before they were unloosable (That is not a word, I know) but I got my money back from that. I learned my lesson - pay my bills on time. Or rather, log into the game at least once per week to check on it. I got distracted by my school work at the time so I have a legitimate excuse for getting evicted!

Raids

Exploit fixes here. Good to see they're still working on this issue. I wish they had been faster at fixing the initial problems with the radiance instances post MoM release. Let's hope they've learned from that situation and will rapidly develop hotfixes for major issues like that.

Crafting

We're seeing a lot of changes to crafting here. The basic system stays the same, but things have been much more streamlined, such as use levels, crafting materials, tool tips, etc. There was an excellent dev diary talking about the changes, so check that out rather than these notes for the scoop on crafting re-vamp.

Adding a "make all" button is a good refinement, as well as fixing the stupid default to 0 thing. That is annoying.

I've included links to specific professions for your convenience:

• Farming
• Scholar
• Prospecting
• Cooking
• Weaponsmith
• Jewler
• Tailoring
• Metalsmith
• Woodworking

Jaxom the Yeoman

Jaxom is quite happy to see the critical items for farming have been reduced to 1 instead of 3. This does come with a price increase, but that's understandable. Nice to use stacks of mats up equally.

Jaxom is also happy that farming fields produce optional critical cooking ingredients. Looking forward to trying those out.

And Jaxom is elated to see food can stack to 50, and crafting ingredients stack to 100. Less trips to MD for cooking as he can store much more food on his person. Must have one of those portable coolers.

Legendaries

Happy to see that auto-combine on runics will pull from the most populated items rather than randomly. That way mutiples are used up first. Just common sense here, but something easily overlooked. Glad it has been changed.

Loot System

Rare Lothlorien monsters now drop Mithril Flakes. About time! You mobs better look out. There's a whole host of levle 60 players that are now gunning for you... er, swining their swords and firing their bows.

Rolls on keys will only apply to players who have not added the key to their ring. Why someone would purposefully roll on a key they already have, I don't know. Accidentally, well, that makes more sense. Glad to see this "fixed".

Graphics

Elated, yes, elated to see the lighting issues in Moria have been cleared up. They were visually annoying, having the ambiant light at your feat and partially through the ground in certain places. I'm a oogler of nice looking graphics, and when things don't look quite so good, I get cranky. Well, not really, but I love it when things do look nice, and LOTRO is a nice looking game.

Creature Pathing/AI

The only reason I bring up this bit is because here we find the lovely humor of whomever it is that writes up these patch notes. I will, for lack of a name, attribute this to the company as a whole. Turbine has a wonderful sense of humor:

"Moose in Forochel will no longer stand around and allow themselves to be turned into Moose-burger."

"Burrow Mobs Take 2! Once again, monsters which "burrow" (Cave-claws, Shades, Dark-waters, Neekers) will no longer do so when they are near death, because that's annoying. Our first attempt at fixing this was equivalent to a 9mm; it should've been enough to get the job done, but it wasn't. *This* time we’re pulling out the Desert Eagle .50, that outta stop these jerks."

Conclusion

Yay! I'm done. Whew! What a set of notes. I heard one comment that LOTRO patch notes give EVE a run for it's money. I assume that means EVE has long patch notes. I've never played it. I don't know how helpful or entertaining this was. Probably not much. On the whole I'm quite happy with the Book 8 changes. It doesn't address some of the larger overaching concerns I talked about in the last couple of days, but that's not something you see in a free patch. More like an expansion scale, or over a longer period of time. And I think that's what needs to happen with a lot of the critiques - Turbine needs time to look over the data, feedback, etc and come to the conclusions themselves. I think they will, considering the past track record with this game.

I'm looking forward to the patch. I really need to get back into the game for the epic quest, which I'm currently sitting on 2.5.5, I think. It's been that long since I looked at it. The only "new" content that I would participate in this time around is the epic storyline. I don't raid, and I haven't gotten any radiance gear anyhow.

Keep up the good work, Turbine. Glad to see the effort in this patch.

Content Bereft of Purpose

Why would content lack purpose? A number of reasons. Perhaps the rewards aren't appropriate for the time necessary to undertake the content. Perhaps the content has no impact on the player or the world around them. Or perhaps the content simply is outdated. It's the latter I want to bring up as a discussion, pointing to a Kill Ten Rats post from today (barely).

Suzina brings up the fact that the level 50 end game content from Shadows of Angmar is no longer relevant to the current cap. First, I'd like to mention this has been a problem since the inception of a level-based MMO. Not even the 800 pound gorilla and most popular MMO in the world, WoW, has done anything to fix it. What's nice about LOTRO is that there seems to be a continual influx of new characters into the game. Visiting Bree on a weekend will usual greet me with a host of pre-40 players. This to me says that the level 50 content is still somewhat relevant to a certain set of players. At least potentially. I certainly can't say one way or another what their playstyle is like and if it will take them to Carn Dum, The Rift, Annuminas, etc when the reach 50. What is certain is they don't have to play that content to advance, whereas when the level cap was at 50, the advancement did come from instance "grinds" and raid runs for better gear and deed improvements. Add into the mix the content revamp currently in progress and I think LOTRO does offer better incentives to play and replay the older content. Just not for level 60s.

And there's the rub. I like the idea of getting more level 60 relevant rewards for the older content. But not rewards comparable to reward for level 60 end game content. It just wouldn't be fair, if the older content is easier. That leads to the idea of scaling the level 50 instances, raids, etc to the level 60 players. Here's why that's a problem: At some point, there will be so many options for end game instance runs and raids that the player base becomes diluted amongst the choices. It will make grouping for content harder in the long run. Secondly, many of the level 50 end game content is within a larger content progression starting before level 50, making it a challenge to scale the content unless it is completely revamped to stand on it's own. I prefer scaling of rewards rather than the content itself, but with some tweaks to make it fair.

First, do it with the existing barter system. We see something similar with the repleted epic storyline instances and reflecting pools. Add repeatable quests available only to players at 55+ (a reasonable overleveled point) that are exact duplicates of the level 50 quests in these instances and raids, but use this barter item as the reward. The turn in rewards for these barter items could be level 60 barter items like the Lothlorien leaves, crafting recipes, not-quite-uber armor (i.e. not the radiance gear, but perhaps something similar to the crafted gear), etc. These are just random things I've come up with at the spur of the moment. I'll leave more creative and adept minds to really ponder it... like the devs should they chose to go that rout. Require multiple barter items for the rewards because the level 50 content is relatively easy compared to the level 60 content - in other words, ensure the reward matches the effort for fairness. Never should the reward be equal to what could be gained through current end-game activities or that would render that content purposeless, ending us back where we started, only in reverse.

In the mean time, if you haven't experienced the level 50 end-game content and you're a level 60, do so anyway. It's fun stuff, and it doesn't take nearly as long with the extra 10 levels. Who cares if the tangible rewards aren't worth it - the experience is. Do it with buddies, people you like to hang out with. Friends make or break a game. And that's a topic for a future post...

Raid Accessibility

I was excited, having heard about WoW's raid progression, attunement requirements, gear requirements, etc that LOTRO was going a different route with high-end content: casual is king. The Rift proved this. Anybody that was at level cap could conceivably run a successful Rift Raid (with some experienced players guiding the way, of course). As long as you weren't still wearing your level 15 armor at 50 (exaggeration) you were good to go. Like I said, that made me happy. But I never took advantage of the ease of access. I discovered that I didn't really like tuning out the rest of my world as I played. Live games cannot be paused, so when your in the thick of it and the phone rings, the dog wants out, your mother is hollering... well... that's a problem. So I like to play solo mostly, or casually grouped so I don't have to worry about the various interruptions that come from living with others and a dog.

But I liked the principle behind "easy" raid accessibility, even if I don't actually raid. It sets LOTRO apart from the pack. However, with the advent of radiance, we have a paradigm shift. Maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but Unwize's latest post gives a good rundown of the situation.

Now let's turn to a blog entry by Amlug, one of the devs over at Turbine. Posted to his MyLOTRO page, Amlug talks about raid accessibility a bit. And I see a pattern emerging. The earlier raids are getting some of the restrictions reduced (i.e. less gloom requires less radiance), and the increase in instances to get radiance gear provides more options, and a potentially easier set of instances to run for the gear (skip the harder ones). I imagine that the new raid for Book 8 will see a relaxing of requirements in 4 to 6 months as well. Why? Not because we complain about it, but because it makes good business sense. If your hardcore populatin has moved onto the next bit of content, why keep hardcore requirements for content the hardcore aren't playing? If you can extend the lifetime of your content by pushing it through stages reflected on your customer's style of play, who not? The only draw back is the rest of us are doing this "watered down" content after the rewards are relevant.

For me, the casual, I just like seeing the content. For me, the accomplisher, I just like getting the quests and deeds done. Who cares about the gear/rewards? More will come, and I suspect the causuals interested in raiding have a similar mindset.

So, let's not despair over radiance and raids. We're still going a different direction. Perhaps the effect is the same in the short term, but it could be worse - we might be playing a grindy "Asian" style MMO.

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!

Variety of Content

I posted about how happy I am about the bit of luck I got on my current Legendary Third Age Halberd, and before that about the uselessness of crafted items now that gear acquired through other means is significantly better rather than marginally and perhaps an alternative. But after grabbing myself a critted crafted Halberd, if it weren't for the legacy and relic bonuses, I'd use it instead of the legendary. A trade off between overall better DPS and the bonuses... it's too bad it's so unequal and that DPS for a captain isn't everything. Maybe if I were a champ or hunter, but then again, there's so much to lose without a legendary item. Now there's a new one that'll be available through the Galadhrim rep, better than the crafted ones. Why bother putting in these weapons anyway?

I don't mind variety, don't get me wrong, but variety needs to be useful. Having options that aren't worthwhile is pointless. It is true that there are opinions about variety and that an item deemed useless by one player will be embraced by another. At the moment we have an overwhelming opinion towards one option, because it is proven to be the most effective all around.

We're seeing this kind of thing in the raiding structure as well. Take a look at the latest post by LOTRO Chronicles. It seems Turbine is going for one direction in raid design and playstyle. Seriously, this trend needs to be rectified or at least tempered. We need variety, options, choice, free will. Within structure, yes, but Shadows of Angmar was well received in many ways, one for the multiple was to advance your character and be sucessful at whatever end-game activity you wanted (PvMP, raiding, instance runs, etc). We're sliding away from that right now.

Boastful Post

I'm not one to usually toot my own horn about equipment I got, but in this case, I'm really excited about the current halberd I'm wielding. I got lucky on my legacies and ended up with two tier 6 legacies that I wanted, and the third as a tier 4. There's a good chance that tier 4 will be upgraded to tier 6 when the weapon reaches level 40. That means I'll have some spare points left to throw into upgrading the DPS and will have an all-around nice weapon. I'll be hard pressed to find a better weapon, even as a Second Age, perhaps even First Age. And that's really the point of this post - pointing out that once you get lucky on a legendary (if you get lucky), you're probably not ever going to want to try again, or if you do, it'll be very unlikely you'll get the same luck again, even with a "better" aged weapon. That's a sad state of affairs - if my level 59 Third Age Halberd has a good chance of being better than a Second Age of the same level. Like I've said before, perfect system for an MMO, with the near infinite quest for improvement, but ultimately a gambling mini-game.

Oooh, look at the pretty!

Are Gear Checks Inevitable?

This is an extension to my crafting post yesterday. Considering that the "supreme" end-game content is raiding, and therefore the "supreme" gear should be acquired from raiding, should we just expect to see crafted gear fall by the wayside? And should we accept it?

I don't raid. I'm not against raiding, I just don't like sitting down at games for large amounts of time wholly focused. I might do it casually, if such a thing is possible. As such, I can't objectively evaluate if gear checks are a good thing or not, as they're usually always associated with raiding. A fundamental goal of raids is to extend the end-game by creating group grinds. Adding a gear check into the process is a very good way of making raiding a grind. Only one person gets a piece of gear per run, therefore one has to run the raid multiple times to gear up every participant.

I think that's perfectly fine. Raiding is a particular game play style and system where a grind such as this is accepted and perhaps even embraced. In this sense, gear checks are inevitable. But raiding isn't an isolated feature of the game. It's connected through the gear progression, and in some cases through the quest chains. And because of the experience gained in raiding, be it gear, grouping mechanics, etc, players who participate in raiding approach other content differently. That's normal.

Because of this connection, there's more to it than just a gear check. So, perhaps raiding should be designed differently to acknowledge this connection. On the other hand, is this connection only superficial and meaningless. Why care about a gear check if you don't raid? I realized my goal of getting radiance gear wasn't necessary if I wasn't going to experience the watcher raid. Sure, the extra stats would help me in the rest of the game but my current gear will probably never be the death of me in gameplay other than raids.

So, to answer the question, yes. I had thought it might be avoidable, but actually, despite my desire to see gear crafting be important again, I also like the extra dimension a gear check like the radiance gear requirement gives to the raid game. However, like anything, it has its side effects. Cost benefit analysis anybody?

What Happened to Crafting?

Heyo! You, armorsmith! You, weaponsmith! Cancel my order, I just got this epic second-age weapon off an orc, and this awesome armor from some deep, dark, dank place in Moria. Your stuff is crap.

The other day I commissioned a level 58 critted halberd from one of my kinmates. Why? Actually, the DPS rating is a lot better than the level 57 third age "legendary" I currently have, despite the almost perfect legacies and some tier 6 runes. I also want an alternative damage type weapon for when I might go back to places like Sarnur or Haudh Iarchith with mobs that require certain damage types for effective combat. As an aside, I'm curious as to what happened to that idea and why it doesn't play a more active roll in the legendary weapon system.

Anyhow, I'll be getting a Peerless Thain's Halberd for a backup weapon in these unique situations. I would have preferred a weapon with light damage, such as the Mirrored Ancient Steel Halberd I once had before legendaries came about, but alas, the new critted crafted weapons don't have that option. It's either Westernese like the Halberd, Ancient Dwarf-Make, or Beleriand. That means I'll probably commission a Peerless Thain's Greatsword and Peerless Thain's Great Axe at some point to have my bases covered. Again, why? Well, those special circumstances, but mostly because I can. And I don't want to believe that crafted weapons and armor is completely useless.

Actually, the crafted armor is useless to me. I've got a full set of the Captain gear acquired from the instances, bought from the AH before said armor was Bind on Acquire. I'm a bit disappointed that crafted armor is no longer "comparable" to the epic sets gained through group play. Certainly the Mirrored Armor wasn't as good as the Rift Armor, but it still was a viable set for combat. With the new enemy types and behaviors in Moria, this became less true. And you could run the Rift in a set of Mirrored Armor just fine, but you cannot run the Watcher raid in crafted gear. No, you'll be dread-killed. You need the best armor in the game, the radiance gear acquired from not just running all 6 instance and winning the roll, but doing so in hard mode.

I'd like to see crafted gear become viable again. One of the big pushes with LOTRO was to make crafted items useful, and equalizing them with raid gear was exactly how to do it. They weren't perfectly equal - raid gear was marginally better. But it worked for who played what type of content. The more "hard core" players went raiding and therefore cared more about getting the best of the best gear, even if it wasn't massively better than the crafted gear. The more casual players went after the crafted gear because it was easier to gain without grouping. And they could deal with it being slightly less than the best because it would still function in whatever activity they wanted to do, even if they decided to do a casual raid run, just for kicks.

Bring back the crafted gear market. Show our hard working laborers that their product is important. Let's acquire crafted gear because it's useful, not just for the heck of it like me.

How to Improve Legendaries

I made a post about a week ago talking about what the legendary system has become. Pearls of Unwisdom has a nice post about what could be done to improve it. Check out the post for some great ideas. I wonder how much Turbine reads these blogs?

EDIT: Nice post from From Dusk 'till Dawn about the subject as well.

Legendary System not Swords

I fully believe that the legendary weapons system is probably the best mechanic in LOTRO. It has complexity, a virtually unapproachable finish line (the perfect first-age weapon), and massive variety of stats and levels. It's the quintessential perfect MMO system. What it isn't is what it was advertised as... or rather, what the players thought they were getting. That is, a system to give them a truely legendary weapon in the sense of Glamdring and Sting. Actually, perhaps my halberd is one of those: I got an orc slayer modifier so my weapon glows blue when orcs are close. It would have a name if I had realized how to name the weapon before it reached max level.

And yet it really isn't legendary like Frodo's sword. Why? Because Frodo recieved his weapon fully leveled, with max stats. It was legendary from the moment he found it - and it was unique. With the legendary weapon system - everybody has one. Certainly each one is nearly always unique from another, but the fact that they're so abundant considerably lessesn the percieved value. In this case that is the intangible "legendary" quality. What the players expected wasn't possible - giving only a select few people a lengendary weapon isn't smart game design, even if that gives a better feel of "legendary". Basically, we expected the impossible from this system. What we got was a very good MMO system, disguising the new type of grind well.

At this moment in time, having gotten a full set of instance gear from the AH before it was BoA, and a full set of critted jewelry, the only gear goal I have is in my legendary system, and as alluded to before, it is virtually impossible to get the perfect weapon. Not having access to the figures I cannot calculate the probability. I would venture to guess that even if the system had been in the game from the beginning the probability would be so high as to be mathmatically impossible given the length of time players have had with the system. Given the system has only been in the game for five months, it's even less likely the perfect weapon has been found.

My perfect weapon would be a level 60 First Age Halberd with all Tier 8's and the following legacies: Tier 6 Devestating Blow Critical, Tier 6 Pressing Attack Critical, Tier 6 Relentless Attack Critical Modifier, Tier 6 Melee Power Cost Reduction. Will I ever find/buy a level 60 First Age weapon with those exact stats all at tier 6? Very, very doubtful - and that's what makes this system so perfect for an MMO - there isn't an end. There's always room for improvement. Add in the fact that we'll see a level cap increase (and presumably one for the legendary items as well) before the end of the year, and we'll always be running for an unreachable goal.

I have trouble lamenting the fact that we didn't get a true legendary item when I realize just how robust and fitting this system is for the game. It incorporates the lore wonderfully but is still stretched over the MMO core that LOTRO is. And we have to remember, we're not the fellowship. We're not Gandalf, Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, whoever. We're not even the true heroes of our own epic storyline (ever notice how the NPCs are the ones that almost always do the serious, climactic confrontation?). Legendary weapons in the sense of Sting and Glamdring don't belong to us.

A Veritable Plethora

Today is the big day, as you all know. Book 7 is released. I'm currently about half-way through the patching process. I didn't use the pre-patch method and I usually don't mind waiting for the client to patch itself on release days. There seems to be a veritable plethora of posts today. You can find many of these posts using the combined blog feed linked on my sidebar, but Kill Ten Rats has also posted some about LOTRO. Three posts to be exact. Two of them are commentary on issues they see in the game, particularly with the instances and the changes to those instances. The third is an outline of the instance progression, containing spoilers.

As I haven't played through any but one of the instances, I'm not able to comment well on the issues within them, however I did hear they were fairly buggy and had some exploits. However, as Kill Ten Rats points out, one person's exploit is another person's creative thinking. I have to err on the side of the development team however, as it is their definition that ultimately counts. They are the ones defining the game, and while the player base is experiencing that definition, everything is ultimately in their hands. I think we as players get too caught up in an entitlement mentality at times. And here's where capitalism comes into play. If we as players don't like what we're experiencing, we go elsewhere. So the development team's job is to strike that balance - guiding the game where they think it needs to go but in a way that the players like. This doesn't change who is in control, however, who sets the agenda. The developers choose to listen to the players because it's good business, but that doesn't mean they're any less responsible for the direction the game goes.

Okay, now it's time to get personal. I have a goal of getting the radiance gear from these instance runs. I haven't done many so I'm not experientially familiar with the timesinks involved. I only know that by educated guessing and second hand conversations. Despite my goal, I'm conscious that it's unlikely that I'll experience this content in full. I just don't play often enough and don't have the patience for what's involved in getting groups together. I prefer to group with my kin because it's relatively painless and I don't have to work hard to do it. But getting a static group of six players together for six hours minimum for one of six instances is hard. It's not hard because the content is necessarily hard. It's hard because it takes time. Game time is part of free time and free time is a luxury. Most of us have to ration it, myself included, despite my current unemployment. I have to face reality hear and realize I'm not the type of person this content was designed for. I'd like to be the type of person, because I'm really am a completionist, but when it really comes down to doing the deed, I just don't have the will to make that time commitment. Quite frankly, there are more entertaining and fun things I could be doing with my time, some of which don't even involve LOTRO. So while I'm a big fan of the game, I think I'll use my time to push for completing the epic storyline. I love story so that's where I should focus. Gear, instances, what does it matter? I'm experiencing Middle-Earth am I not? Is a 36+ hour gear grind really Middle-Earth or just a game mechanic for those of us with more time and the personality to push through such things?

And with this realization, I also have recognized that I'm not doing the activity that I've gotten most enjoyment from - grouping with my kinmates just because we want to do content. Many of my recent play sessions have involved solo experiences, and those are not the most memorable moments by and large. Where I find most joy is playing with my friends. So, I'll drop the goal of getting the radiance gear and put in it's place play with my kinship. If they're doing instance runs for gear - sure, that's what I'll do, but if they're doing the epic story, that's what I'll do. It's a game for goodness sake. Play it, don't work it. Right?