PAX Siege of Mirkwood Preview

The folks over at ignvault were lucky enough to snag a preview of some of the Siege of Mirkwood content, specifically more info on the skirmishes. I'm absolutely thrilled by what I read. I think this could be an excellent activity for those at the cap who aren't big instance runners and raiders (such as me and some of my kinship). We as yet don't know what the rewards will be for gathering skirmish points, but I'd imagine they'd be inline with the barter items from loth rep quests or something similar.

And, as I've said before, scalable content is the wave of the future. Seriously, having content that caters to the group size rather than being forced to either 1) find more or choose between your friends who gets to go or 2) ignore some of the content because it doesn't fit your group size is an better direction. We're always looking for a more living breathing world in MMOs. Usually this means wanting more of the fluff that fills out a world, but I think it can also mean content that caters to you, rather than you to it. We're removing a barrier to entry, a wall that breaks the player from the world and puts him into the game-side of things, and a stumbling block to fun. We need to see more of this - and again, I'd love to see this implemented for all instances/raids.

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.

The Perspective Dichotomy

Oooh, another fancy post name. Yes, I like fancy post names, and using my college accrued vocabulary. Anyhow, it's not mind-bending in any way, rather a look at the different perspectives between developers and players over game design, notably emergent behavior. This post is powered by Orion's latest blog entry on his MyLOTRO page. The post in and of itself is an excellent read and I found myself fairly captivated by the perspective offered.

Certainly we need to keep in mind his blog post is his own opinion and doesn't reflect Turbine's official... whatever. Still, a well-rounded developer in LOTRO will have influence over design directions (as admitted to in the post) and it's his opinion that directs his influence.

I want to do a comparison of his perspective on MMO design versus the perspective and perception of the players. There has been much talk about design philosophy, design direction, shifting priorities, ect in LOTRO by the various bloggers. Mainly this has been fueled by frustration over some of the end-game content. I think we as players would do well to read into Orion's post with an open mind. I don't think many of us understand the direction designers come from when approaching conentent. I think we take a more casual and biased approach to design. That is, each of us has our own opinion over what is good design, oftentimes not even awknowledging it in those words. Our opinion is framed more by what is fun for us, and it varies widely. The common thread, of course, is that whatever we find fun is the best design, regardless of other's opinions. Developers have to take a less self-centered approach. They know there will be a vast array of opinion on what is fun, so in order to remain sane and not jump on the endless treadmill of player satisfaction, they spell out design into a formal process, a set of guidelines to follow, principles to adhere to.

Where this fits into LOTRO is when Orion talks about the emergent behavior seen in the Moria instances, notably the Grand Staircase. That was his baby, so to speak. Emergent behavior is in a nutshell unanticipated player behavior - emerging on the scene with the content's launch into live. This type of behavior can be seen as strategic, innovatative, and creative, but on occasion, also exploitive. The latter, of course, is a no-no - you'll get banned if caught making use of exploits. So where is the line? One man's exploit is another man's creativity. This is where the different perspectives really shines. Orion arugues that in an MMO, most emergent behavior is exploitive because it takes advantage of a bug or error in the code. For example, being able to take a fall and still live, or using scenery to give oneself immunity from being hit but still able to hit back. And ultimately the developer has to be the one to say what is an exploit and what isn't, because they're the only ones able to access the code and give a difinitive data-supported definition.

We as players don't see this background data, or the original design intent, or any number of things that go into the operation of content. We're front end consumers, and yet we still want to be armchair designers. I'm guilty of that as well. I'm not saying our opinion doesn't count. It certainly has weight as we can choose to spend our dollars anywhere we please, but we as mature and intelligent people should consider that which we do not know or understand. Orion's post is an excellent opportunity to not only understand where a devloper is coming from on their design perspective, but also gives us the tools to frame our concerns. We can awknowledge a lack of data but at the same time speak to the matter with understanding.

I now have to ask myself, using an example from before, does the use of Enrage in the turtle raid contradict or negate the design philosophy of fun the developer had envisioned and put into that content. What was the purpose? What were the goals? What I saw as positive emergent behavior very well could be exploitive. Actually, in this case I don't think it took advantage of a coding error, but rather did violate the design principles behind the content. Same with the root immunity given to certain bosses in the Moria instances.

The one place where I feel Turbine dropped the ball, and this is based off of what I read in Orion's post, is not fixing the exploits quicker. He insists that emergent behavior requires, by it's vary nature, a swift address. The Moria instances went until Book 7 where they were truely fixed (for the most part). This created a set of false expectations and perceptions in the playerbase. Not only were we very tempted to use the exploits, we were learning the wrong behavior for those instances. We were enabled by the developers in our "bad" behavior.

I hope to speak to future concerns with more clarity and understanding now that I've gained a little insight into the mind of a developer. I again encourage all of you to read this article not only for the specifics about emergent behavior, but also for the different perspective. Two side of the same coin, if you will. One player, one developer, both wanting the best for the game.

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.

A Design Philosophy of Fun

This has been a long-brooding topic and now broadly covered by a number of people, both professional and amateur. I of course fall into this latter category, but I want to attempt to draw all the lines of thought together. There are two guiding questions: First, "What is LOTRO's design philosophy?" Second, "Is it 'good' design?"

Let's start with a catalyst: From Dusk 'till Dawn posted a rant clearly tinged with frustration about the choice to make the turtle in Filikul immune to the Burgler's Enrage skill. The turtle, named Nornuan, will give the player its attacking a stacking DOT debuff, eventually overcoming the healer's abilities. One strategy is to let the first tank die and a second take over. The Minstrel (or Captain) will rez the first take, whose death canceled out the debuff. However, another strategy would be to take a Burgler along and use the Enrage skill, which will cause Nornuan to attack players randomly. Given the number of players within this raid, no one player will usually have more than one instance of the DOT debuff. The minstrel will have to focus on more than one person, but using Enrage is a viable method towards completing the raid. Well, until Book 8 when Nornuan becomes immune.

Sweet Cherrie, Dusk 'till Dawn's author, asserts this is unacceptable constriction of player behavior - and the developers are trying to force the player into only one strategy - the one they approve of. I agree with her thinking on this, and I judge it to be poor design. Why? Let's get into that by bringing up an article link posted in the forums. There's a nice discussion going on over there as well.

This article is an interview of Craig Morrison, Director of Age of Conan, conducted by MMOGamer.com. The second page, second comment by Morrison, is where the relevant information comes into play. What is good design? Morrison contends that good design first and foremost is creating fun. If it's not fun, it's not good design. He goes onto criticize many developers of spending "90% of [thier] time on the last 10% of any design, preventing players from doing stuff."

Here's what I see going on with the type of content development in Filikul - preventing players from doing stuff. And thereby limiting their fun. Poor design. Or perhaps misdirected design. Why is it necessary to curtail the creative use of the tools already designed for us? Good design is creating fun encounters. I cannot speak to Filikul being fun, because I've never experienced that content, but I know for certain that any content is more fun if there are multiple ways of completing it. It's replayability. If I can go through content mutlipile times without doing the same actions over and over again - without gettin bored, that content is fun. Morrison speaks to this in the interview as well.

The Enrage change in Filikul is ignoring part of your design to force your design ideals into the current work. Rather than embracing creativity, it's being constrained, and ultimately that curtails fun.

I would be remiss in this post to ignore our own developer's perspective on the issue so now I point to Orion's blog post on his myLOTRO page. Here Orion says he generally agrees with Morrison, but thinks that most MMO designers don't follow the 90/10 rule mentioned. He's more optimistic, if you will, and explictily states he does not believe LOTRO's designers to follow that philosophy.

On the whole, I agree with Orion. LOTRO has indeed been a bastion of flexibility, creativity, and good design. He has been personally further refining creativity and in essence creating more fun in the content revamps of the lower levels. I played through the new and old elven starter quests, and watched a LOTRO newbie play the new quests. The progression and storyline in that small part of the game has been improved. The design has been improved. The fun has been improved.

I think that in the post Moria exploit-ridden instances, we've perhaps seen an overzealous effort to constrict the playerbase in the Filikul raid. That's understandable, but an overcompensation. Using Enrage, by all accounts I've read, does not break nor exploit the raid. In some respects, it makes the raid harder as the healer must focus on more than one target. Like an overcompesation on the road may lead you to a ditch anyway, so too could the Book 8 changes to Filikul.

LOTRO's design philosophy is one with the primary goal of fun. Fun is freedom and growth within the rules. Fun is accessiblity, flexibility, creativity, and replayability. Too many rules and you lose those factors. Let's not lose sight of the fun factors in LOTRO.

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.

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?

Raid Posts

I've never been on a raid. Mostly that's because my schedule has never coincided with the raids that some of my kinmates participate in. I don't think I'd ever go on a PUG raid before I went with my friends. Recently it was my goal to get all the radiance armor. Not so much to go participate in the Vile Maw raid, which requires the radiance gear, but rather just because I like nice armor. But I kind of abandoned that after I realized how much work that was and at my casual pace everybody would be in Mordor before I finally got around to getting my last piece of the set. Hyperbole but you get the point. Essentially, raiding is probably not my cup of tea - not because I don't like playing in groups (see last post for clarification of that point) but because I just don't make the time to do so. My last big excursion was an instance run of Urugarth with my kinship. That was a blast, but it took a really long time - a bit longer than I would have preferred and by the end I was totally wiped out and logged pretty quickly afterwards.

All that said, you most likely won't be seeing raiding posts from me. But in the interest of keeping this blog going with relevant content, I will always link to those who are talking about raiding so you fellow adventureres can get a taste of everything despite my own personal preferences. I point first to LOTRO Chronicles, part of the LOTRO blogging collective, who has a nice post about the state of raiding in general. The next post is from Kill Ten Rats who uses a raid to illustrate the more specific aspect of gear aquisition and class dynamics within raids - pros and cons. Good posts by both.

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.

Empty Zones?

One of the topics covered in the latest episode of RingCast was the fact that the older content has and will be abandoned for the newer content of Eregion and Moria. This is a two-fold problem. First, the level 50 instances and raids no longer have any significance (aside from Carn Dum and Urugarth which hold the level 45 class quest items). Second, the larger world content as a whole is no longer relavent to the characters who have progressed beyond that content level. As the game progresses, this is more and more of the player base - which means the zones become more and more empty.

The question becomes, what to do about it? Through third party research (that is, reading other blogs, official forums, etc) I have realized that little to no MMOs have really addressed this question well. However, there is one system Turbine has already implemented that might be put to good use in dealing with half of this problem.

Repeating the epic story instances is incentivized by rewarding those who have already done them with barter items for relevant rewards. Thus, as fewer and fewer people are going through the lower epic story instances, the greater the demand for a full fellowship to help them complete the story. Giving players a reason to help their fellows (aside from out of the kindness of their heart) really helps the lack of groups for these instances. This sytem could be used in nearly the same fashion with the older level 50 instances and raids. Give these a level window to where the content is relevent and rewarding. Any player higher than this window will instead receive barter items as rewards rather than the epic gear which isn't so epic for them anymore. In the same fashion as the epic book instances are desired content even for those who have already completed them, so can the level 50 raids for those who have out-leveled them.

Now comes the problem of the content being too trivialized for the higher-level player. In other MMOs, a system of scaling the player level is used in various fashions (such as sidekicking in City of Heroes). So, the players that engage in this level 50 content as a level 60, for instance, will be scaled back to an appropriate level for the duration of the instance or raid. Then, once they're out, their barter items are turned in for level 60 relevent rewards. The content is no longer trivialized, and neither are the rewards. Furthermore, Turbine can still keep the current level-advanced system in place because the inherant content trivialization problems with the system are now taken care of.

At least for the instance content. The general world content is another story, and one that doesn't quite have as elegant a solution. This will require more thought.

A Cluster F***?

A new dev diary is up on the official site today called Anatomy of a Cluster. In it, Amlug details how their changing the structure of instances to better relate to each other, creating what they call a cluster. In Urugarth, Carn Dûm, Barad Gularan, and The Rift, there is no obvious progression through the instances, nor any relation to them other than the story - if you so choose to read the story. Otherwise, they're just bad, dark places in the world where you kill stuff like trolls and orcs and the like.

Now, certain games have created progressions through instances where you are required to follow a specific path gated through hard locks, gear, or some other means. In LOTRO, this is not the plan. There should be no reason why you cannot do one instance before another (or raid). However, by going through the instances, there will be rewards that give you abilities or stats that will help you in later instances of the same cluster.

For example, going through one of the new instances in Moria and completing it's "challenge" (the objective giving you these rewards) will give you a part of a piece of the corresponding raid's gear set. In this case, that piece of gear, when ultimately assembled, gives you radiance which helps with gloom. Radiance and gloom are apparently an expansion of the hope and dread system. I do not have any details of how this works at the moment, but I will definitely talk about it when I encounter it in the game or in a future dev diary.

Basically, the point of the diary is that instances will now be linked together in a cluster, with a reward system tying them together. By working through this progression, in no particular order, you'll be better set for the raid at the end. So, there is a one-two system here. Instances, then raid.

I've not been raiding in LOTRO, so I do not know what the experience is like, nor much about the raid locking system. I'm thus not a good judge of if this system is better than the not-worded-as-such cluster f*** in Shadows of Angmar (Amlug would have prefered to see the four instances I mentioned above put in a cluster).