Category: Lord of the Rings Online

.

Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

.

Pre-Buff Nerf

Your game is balanced at the cap. Your new expansion pack raises the cap. How can you let players rise further without completely disrupting things? Nerf everything, then let the players work to get back to where they were. Then launch the next expansion pack.

Do I need a developer quote for something we have seen on so many major expansions? The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ is the one nearest to my vision. At the end of Shadows of Angmarâ„¢, players had quite respectable Block/Parry/Evasion percentages, some avoiding the majority of attacks. Percentages are dangerous things: they automatically scale, and once you’ve reached a certain point, you cannot give more without giving the enemies an ability like “evasion penetration” that feels like a Burglar nerf. When Mines of Moriaâ„¢ launched, those percentages were all changed to BPE ratings, which were much larger numbers that translated to much smaller BPE percentages. It was an across-the-board nerf to defenses. This, in player relations speak, was done to create the opportunity for future character increases (i.e., work your way back to where you were).

For Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢, several other percentages and numbers were changed to ratings. Who would like to guess whether the rating translates to a smaller percentage than it used to be? Continue reading Pre-Buff Nerf

Clearings in the Lonely Woods

There is a stark contrast between playstyles of many an MMO waiting on an expansion and just receiving the expansion.  The new expansion brings a new journey through many zones and quest chains, and as unfortunate as it is, many people experience the journey at a hugely varied pace.  Real life, and other games, have limited my game time Lord of the Rings Online with experiencing the new expanded content in Siege of Mirkwood.  As it is, almost everybody in my kinship is well ahead of me.  The woods can be much gloomier when only strange creatures and strangers abound.

Yet, Turbine has done a great job (as far as I’ve experienced) with the content concentration.  In the Mirk-Eaves, the quests send players at about three quests per chunk to specific geographical locations.  At the locations, I’ve found there is about 10-20 minutes of gameplay from doing everything from destroying orc weapon stashes, staking out bosses, and everyone’s favorite: killing boars for boar meat.  If a player does it right by picking up all three or so quests at once, then everybody at the geographical location will be doing approximately the same thing. 

Continue reading Clearings in the Lonely Woods

Re-Envisioning Book Instances

One bit of Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢ that I have not seen discussed anywhere is how Volume II, Book 9 uses skirmishes where other books in the epic chain use instances. That they are using the new book to show off the new toy is obvious; that it has skirmishes has been discussed. No, the bit that struck me is that it does not have the group instances that all the other books have. There are solo instances to tell story bits, but it uses skirmishes instead of the old system for instanced group content.

Why does this matter? A recurring problem is how to deal with the older content for new people as the mass of the playerbase has moved past it. Most games go back a few years later and nerf content so that it solo-able, or add different grouping options, or otherwise experiment. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ has weakened some content; before that it added rewards for repeating the 6-person instances so that veterans would have an incentive to help new players; and the latest talk has been of adding a “solo mode,” a mega-buff so that one player could solo what was built as a group instance.

Skirmishes get past that by building in scalability. Playing in off-hours or three years down the line? No problem: the attack on the castle has a solo difficulty built in. Small guild, or want to make it a guild event? Set it for 3, 6, or 12, or make it a higher tier. Never got into skirmishes, so your soldier is weak? You can turn down the level on many.

What impresses me is that the content has been built now so that it will be playable years from now. There will not be a need to fix it three years from now, and the grognards will have no fuel for, “Kids these days all need easy mode, while in my day we ground out ten thousand rats and liked it!” Maybe it is easier to add a super buff, but if I were the one retrofitting old instances to be solo-able, I would strongly consider turning some into skirmishes that you unlock during the epic books. This would also vastly increase the use of the content. Most people play the epic book instances once and then never look back, while people are repeating skirmishes everyday. (Making the boss fights interesting for different group sizes would be a design challenge.)

: Zubon

Token Economy

A typical looting session of the Watcher for my kin will look like this:
“OK we have a Platinum Coin of Spirit.”
“Is that shoulders or helm?”
“One sec… googling it”
“I think it can be bartered for either one can’t it?”
“No that’s the American servers. We have to wait until Mirkwood comes out in the UK for it to barter for either.”
“Spirit sounds more like it’s in your head than your shoulders. I think spirit is shoulders”
“Back. I just checked google and it’s helm.”
“So, if I need shoulders I could use my DKP on it now, and then get the shoulders for it later right?”
“Uhhhh…. need to check google. BRB”

Sometimes when it comes to exchanging tokens for things in games, its just a headache.

Continue reading Token Economy

Instance Quests

Unheralded, Turbine solved a technical issue very neatly. (I may need some sort of conditional tense there, because some things break under pressure, but let’s assume it keeps working.) When you enter an instance, one or more quests pop up on the quest tracker, without your having talked to an NPC. Nothing fancy there, but let me explain the problems solved.

First, this is how you see hard mode in dungeons. Continue reading Instance Quests

Feature is a Word, Like Love

25968When I started reading about the new grouping feature in World of Warcraft, I was blown away.  Here, I thought that Turbine had triumphed in the slaying of “activation energy” to play the vanilla MMO with skirmishes, and Blizzard possibly one-ups them.  It’s a tough call to actually announce a winner. While the goal of both skirmishes and the random grouping feature in World of Warcraft is to decrease the time spent not playing.  They attack it in very separate ways.  Skirmishes are content.  Random grouping is a feature.

Continue reading Feature is a Word, Like Love

Our Favorite Bugs: Skirmish Edition

One skirmish never launched [update: launched the day I posted this] and one was shut down due to unforeseen problems. I have not seen an explicit statement, but it sounds like the Survival skirmish shut down because you could stealth and just stand there while enemies accumulated, unable to find you. I miss all the fun exploits.

But no, the best bug so far is that the healing soldiers do not heal. This is not to say that they just stand there, which does happen at times, but rather that their healing abilities are not actually healing. Instead, they deal negative damage to you. What is the difference? First, your damage mitigation applies to negative damage, so Guardians in heavy armor might get only half the healing. Second, healing buffs do not apply to negative damage, so you get no benefit from traiting your soldier for better healing, your equipment that increases incoming healing, or even the healing soldier’s healing buff.

While this is not an official “known issue,” because why would you put something like that on the list where your players can find out about it, it has been acknowledged and may be fixed someday.

: Zubon

Pro tip: If you want to farm skirmish marks and don’t need the xp, and who does with all the quests available, lower the skirmish level. You may lose 10% of the marks, but you finish in half the time.

Blue Bar Bye-Bye

or: “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Brown Bar”

I have this felt need to level exclusively while under rested xp. Otherwise, it feels like I am throwing away free experience points that I could get for doing exactly the same activities.

The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ lets you spend destiny points (earned by leveling, PvMP, and some quests) to refill a bit of your blue (rested xp) bar. I did that fairly frequently in my original push towards 50, as I was playing often enough to keep that bar around its minimum. Leveling in Mines of Moriaâ„¢, that was not an issue, because the blue bar capped while I took several months off, and it is difficult to burn through the whole thing without playing 24/7 (or 28/6).

Logging into Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢, I did not start with much blue bar. Perhaps I should have stayed logged off for a week before launch. As I emptied it in the first night, I reflexively opened the destiny points window and gave it a couple of shots. Then I realized: this makes no gorram sense. It is not as though I am in a big hurry to reach level 65. Even if I were, paying for a little more blue bar perhaps shaves hours off my leveling time, maybe a night or two of normal play. I have an entire year to gain 5 levels, and I expect to play far more hours at level 65 than getting there. And getting there early just means being slightly stronger when I start on the content I will be repeating for months if I really am that excited about playing.

If I really am that obsessed with playing under rested xp, I have alts. I have a Minstrel nearing the old level cap, and I have a baby Burglar who devastates skirmishes with his archer soldier. The new content will not be less new to me if I see it a week later, and they might have some bugs worked out if I see it a month later.

Viva le leveling whenever I get around to it!

: Zubon

A Request From Your Fellow LotRO Players

Please run a few skirmishes solo. Please read the little page the tutorial gave you about traiting your soldier.

We are all very excited about the new toy, and I understand that you want to jump right in with the skirmishes. And big groups are better, right? But when we have a full raid and two-thirds of the soldiers are fresh from the tutorial, those are effectively level 30-40 players in our level 60+ group. That is not a problem on the normal fights, but for anything hard, you’ll notice that the raid is getting crushed.

This is an issue that will work itself out in a few weeks. You can help work it out faster by doing your part. Thank you.

: Zubon