Transcript: LOTRO Developer Twitter Chat - Thursday March 21, 2013

[Incandesce]

Quote:

Q27: Nasami - Verizal: Is there a way to make war-steed riding 'smoother'? The regular mounts' gait looks so much more natural than the war-steed's gallop...

A27: Evan "Verizal" Graziano
This is another tech limitation that we are forced to deal with. Given their inclusion in combat, the war-steeds have a heavier set of restrictions that they must abide by in order to keep combat, itself, as flowing and functional as possible.



Can someone please tell me that I am wrong in how I read this? Did turbine basically just say that there is no way to fix the chopping mounted combat? Unacceptable.

[hucklebarry]

Can someone please tell me that I am wrong in how I read this? Did turbine basically just say that there is no way to fix the chopping mounted combat? Unacceptable.

I can read it two ways. The first refers to slingshotting, stutter, lag, etc. and I would consider it a bug at best. I still experience this in game.

The second would be aesthetics regarding look and feel. This is how I took the question. Can the animation be smoothed? And the answer was 'no'. Not understanding the big picture, I'm always curious how technical limitations exist in software, especially when other games overcome those exact same limits. Other games exist with cosmetic weapons. Other games can fix lag and/or animation issues. Both of these were answered with "technical limitations".

So for me, I'd still like to know the asnswers to those questions. Is the limitation that you can't staff the positions? Is it that you can't justify the time? Is it that you aren't allowed? I fear the whole answer won't be good because then people will want to know where the game money goes if it can't be used to solve game problems.

[Tecro]

You have to read it better.
Infinite power is there if you sacrifice something else.
With the next class revamps, you might be OOM if you are not willing to make such sacrifices.

Infinite power can only be attained at a threshold.

I disagree, I play a mini who has infinite healing power now, I haven't had to use food or even my anthems or codas since u10. I didn't sacrifice anything for the build I have. If anything I gained more morale. I didn't touch my build and went from 900 icpr to 3.6k overnight. That easily goes over 4k with cappy buffs. My tact mastery has gone up as well. This is not a complaint, it looks like they may nerf icpr in the future for some classes so I will wait and see before I make any big changes since I don't wanna waist relics, shards, xp tomes for a new build just to have it change again. That is the only thing that really urks me about this whole update, will turbine give us back all the materials we used to make builds when Rohan came out just to have to change them again since they didn't realize how op most ppl would become.

[monk_tbd]

I disagree, I play a mini who has infinite healing power now

You misunderstood what you quoted.
Your quote referred to what is planned with the coming slight nerf to fate and additional skill power cost changes.

In the future it should be that you have to give something up to have infinite fight time.


Currently you are right. Power is - for a lot of classes- mainly a non issue right now which takes away some challenge. However - as written above - this will change. By how much? Well we will see.

[Chewie-nl]

i liked the moria revamp but as someone mentioned before it sure feels "empty" regarding slayer deeds.

last week i watched the trilogy again, and really would like to see a mini revamp investing moria with mobs. as said in the books and seen in the movies, it should be a nasty place to get through imo :P

now even though the quest flow is much much better, moria feels boring.

can you please upgrade the mob density again in the future?

[Ithilmegil]

I'm sorry if this was covered and I missed it but will there be any updates to the kinship system?

[GithlithMonaghan]

Concerning the class-revamp and the planned tree-system I'm a bit worried that this revamp will mainly become a big class-nerf. Fact is that up to now we are able to combine any trait with another one. Only three capstones are mainly excluded of our options - and in order to get those capstones we still have a nice choice out of a pool of traits. With a tree there will be a hierarchy of traits and the devs can force any class into very stupid traits in order to get the good ones for now. That's a disturbing idea of course. And the other fact is that you could actually create a mixed-skilling up to now with only the best traits available from each line with only the consequence of going without capstones. Now the thing about a tree-system is that usually you will get the best traits at the very end of it. So players will probably no longer be able to skill themselves as allrounders. And if the treesystem indeed goes ahead with a loss of options to get the good traits, it will be very hard for Turbine not to sell it as a big class-nerf.

Considering today's endgame, a class-nerf might be about the right thing to do. But then again: Nobody likes nerfs. And if an update or add-on comes along with one huge nerf that may not be very likeable, then why a) buy it and b) play it. So I personally will observe the process and development of this class-revamp as news drop in every now and then with a good amount of scepticism.

[Cennwyn]

I'm particularly fond of our current "buffet" method of selecting class traits. It has me a little worried that the design and development teams are set on implementing class traits as trees, presumably similar to how mounted combat traits are currently chosen.

To me, this doesn't offer interesting decisions. Instead, I just make whatever choices are necessary to get to the delicious pie at the bottom of the tree. The only real decisions are what to do with the points left over.

I would vastly prefer a system where players could choose options based on a course of selections. For example, choose one drink, one appetizer, one salad, one main course, and one dessert (where there are three of each to choose from). If more complexity were desired, some of these choices could have synergistic effects with each other; for example, a particular wine might be better suited to one choice of main course.

Totally agree. To me, this sounds a lot like the system WoW used to employ--a system I despised and because of which I eventually quit playing. I don't see what's wrong with the current system and really wish they'd stop fixing things that aren't broken.

[Saora]

I'm excited for more mounted traits and such and these "specs" and trait trees....perhaps their will now be more uniquity between people of the same class.

I didnt like the fact that classes are going to not be able to do everything....as well not every class can do everything.

However if you mean, following the standards LM has, where if they trait dps....their cc gets nerfed, so to trait one aspect dimishes another....then I'm all for it

For what it's worth (and I know I'm coming into this conversation a little late), I completely agree with the above statement.
I am extremely excited about the new spec trees. I really hope that they add a level of class customization and specialization that has been sorely lacking in the game for quite some time now.
The current trait system is fine, but it doesn't allow for much in way of personalized play style--save for a few classes like the LM and RK. As a result we end up with all toons of the same class being played the exact same way. We also end up with too many "unstoppable forces" like the minstrel, who are specialized in nothing and proficient in everything, making for a lack of need for grouping for most game content, role confusion in group settings, and unfair advantages in the Moors.
So, in summation: very excited and hopeful concerning this latest addition to the game. =)

Also...thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you for the home crafting facilites! I have been wanting an oven in my home's kitchen area forever! Can't thank you enough! <3

[Lagunast]

Can I add one more question?

Do you intend to make change on Kin function? I have read the suggestion about Kin function from Suggestion Forum, the post is quite straight forward and the functions are all amazing.

[Bethup]

I wish there was more info out on the coming changes to housing. Oh well, I guess I can't have everything. Glad to hear that they'll be adding crafting facilities though, that will be nice.

[commodore1]

I'm going to have to point out a couple of points. First, Question #1 was about game performane. Second, it strikes me the majority of those complaining about the quality of the questions and making the most negative comments did not themselves ask any. Perhaps in the future you could seek to rectify that?

Maybe if you started answering questions with out being deceptive, gray, fuzzy, inconclusive, vague. And some people are opposed to using some of your less than savory communications outlets.
which is why I don't ask questions until it gets to here. Quit dancing around the questions and just answer them truthfully without deception and you wont get the questions that are so negative. and if you do answer you won't answer so defensively.

And I will never subscribe to twitter of face book, because I do not want to log on to pedifile.com

[Raowyn]

I find it hard to believe that this "bug" made it through 5 Beta Builds and has passed numerous rant threads unnoticed as well. Plain lying to our face. At least they've fixed it now, and hopefully they won't make this mistake again.

Sapience:
Sorry. You insult my intelligence.

Well, it COULD have been a bug. Although seeing as the same thing more or less happened with the farming of Hytbold and BG AND the fact that it was pointed out on BR... well, if it was a bug the QA team did a rather poor job. Still, bugs are acceptable, a poor job in system design is worse.

What is the point of pulling the wool over your eyes when it clearly was NOT a bug, especially being the second time this has occured. Obviously its about the money, and everyone upgrading their shiny new first ages means a lot more TP bought and used. I will remeber this thread as the last shred of credibility being discarded for blatant lies and defrauding (your new keyword for infractions) customers who explain the truth of it. pfft conspiracy theories lol its not that complicated to see simple patterns being repeated. Ive been here a long time, and question dodging is one thing, but we are not children who cannot see things for ourselves, and this deception speaks louder than the issue itself.

[Thranthir]

Just wondering if March was the last Dev Chat that we'll see.. April and May have already gone by without one..

Any news on that?