Old Skills/ Traits/Stuff That You Miss

[Gandolf_TheOld]

I miss the pre-Ironfold Tutelage of the Brown Wizard: Pets have +3 levels over character.
When pets got enough free Finesse from that to consistently hit on-level enemies, and hurt them enough to keep aggro when you cast something wimpy like Gust of Wind.

What Seschat said.

[BlitzKr1eg]

I really miss the versatility, also you had access to every single skill (except legendary), also those legendary trait all felt so impactful.

But what I miss the most is how the game was much much less grindy. Sure there were instances when you had to farm an instance for a certain drop (for example the Amber rings in FT), but once you got them they were already completed (no need for essences and other bs).

Instead of todays stat bloat, you could balance your character more, stuff like ICPR was important for every single character.

Another poster also mentionted the old threat system and how other classes could help manage it, and how self-healing was far less prevalent. I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.

[Hallandil]

I think what I'm actually asking is for people to play the dungeons at an appropriate tier of difficulty for their group.



I'm not the designer of Naerband, but I do know him, and it's working as he intended it to work: long and difficult. "Why would I play this one when I could play a super fast instance and get rewarded for it?" If you're asking the question then I think you've already answered it for yourself.



I don't blame you guys for our decisions. I just have the benefit of knowing why a lot of those decisions were made, so I can't get as upset about them as you can because you don't have that added context. It's normal. A lot of the time it comes from wrestling with our engine to get it to do new and interesting things, rather than the type of things it could do in 2005. Bringing it back to my own sphere of influence (because honestly, what business do I have talking about dungeons?), you might wonder why the first two minutes of the Dwarrowmoot chapter in Legacy of Durin has no voice acting. It's because our engine needed time to load in all the voice clips that get played over the course of that instance -- about two minutes. So I had to add in extra drama to let us basically chew up the clock, letting the engine catch up; otherwise it would play all the voice clips at whatever random time it finished, which of course wouldn't line up with the text.

Was it a bad design decision to not have voice acting for half of the drama in the instance? Maybe... but it was also unavoidable: not only was it discovered long after the recording sessions were done, but it's not like a new session would have solved the problem; the new VO clips wouldn't have loaded either. So we made the decision to do it this way. Decisions like this get made every day, dozens of them. Sometimes they're the right one, and sometimes they're not. Sometimes we have new people on the team that are learning new things, and sometimes we have old hands moving on to new opportunities and we need to figure out how they set up the first half of a big and complicated work-in-progress. We do the best we can!

And sometimes we do make bad decisions. Witness me wading in here to complain about people exploiting the boss fights my coworkers make, for example.

MoL

Okay this is going to bother me if I don't reply to this.

The issue is your obsession over story coherence goes against many modern game design principles.

Famous paper by John Hopson that covers Behavioural Game Design, where many quote the caged rat/button example from.

Old posted version of it here https://www.gamasutra.com/view/featu...gn.php?print=1

To quote Hopson (2022, UBMTech):

How to make players quit. In other words, under what circumstances do players stop playing, and how can you avoid them? I've discussed two main conditions under which players will stop playing. The first is pausing, where their motivation to do the next thing is low. Motivation is relative: the desire to play your game is always being measured against other activities. While they may have a high overall motivation to play your game, during play they're comparing their motivation to do the very next thing in the game to all the other next things they could be doing. If they've just gone up a level and know that they have an hour of play before anything interesting happens, their motivation will be low relative to all the other activities they could be doing.

One way around this problem is to have multiple activities possible at any given time. This means that even if killing monsters becomes unrewarding, there are other activities within the game that can take up the slack. If monsters are unprofitable, exploration may be better. The player could take some time to improve their equipment or to practice a new tactic. Note that this is the same phenomenon that led to quitting before, a drop in motivation in the main activity raising the motivation of lesser activities. In this case, the lesser activities are also part of the game, redirecting their attention within the game and maintaining a high level of play.

The other situation that can lead to quitting is the sharp drop in rate of reward which I discussed in the chimpanzee example. Just like motivation, reward is relative. The value of the current reward is compared to the value of the previous rewards. If the current reward is 10 times the last one, it will have a big impact on the participant. If the current reward is weaker than experience has led them to believe, the player will experience frustration and anger. Violation of expectations is perceived as an aggressive act, an unfair decision by the game's creators. While the game can get more difficult over time, it's best to avoid sharp changes in the rate of reward. This is particularly applicable to puzzle games, where the player may have to spend hours on the same problem before moving on to the next. If the current problem is sharply more difficult than previous puzzles, the player may simply walk away.

For an RPG that HEAVILY involves items in the game. Not only from form but also function since Skills, Emotes and other parts of LOTRO are technologically handled as items too- LOTRO's abject refusal to put ANY substantial effort into maintaining this NOT ONLY shows complete negligence in sustaining the community but complete failure to grasp an avenue into providing a dramatic quality of life improvement for large swaths of the game overall.

Of course many players on the forums here will show preference to story related elements or more superficial elements. Many of these players have been driven away over this being ignored one too many times- or don't want to put into the effort as a consumer to write at-length in expressing this issue.

[Ainworth]

It might secretly be an NPC! Sometimes (especially when we want to display a dialogue box or do a slightly more complicated drama behavior of some kind) we use NPCs masquerading as items. There might be another reason that causes this too (maybe the item is really small or has a non-standard physics shape), but my guess is it might be a secret NPC.

MoL

Honestly, this whole thread reminds me of the Kindle series that I am reading now. The forum asides in it are spot on to the comments on almost any gaming forum.
The series is: Jeff the Game Master by Jaine Castle & Roy Osgood. It is a LitRPG genre book, so it is Juvenile Fiction.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

My suspicion is that if the instance team didn't have to spend so much time accounting for people trying to skip/avoid the mechanics of their boss fights, they would have more time to develop interesting mechanics. But no: nobody cheeses a boss fight to make it more interesting for themselves. I didn't ping the aforementioned dragon in Dark Souls with hundreds of arrows because it better kept my attention.

MoL

"Nobody cheeses a boss fight to make it more interesting for themselves"

spoken like someone who has never exploited a boss fight. Discovering instance exploits in LOTRO has got to be the most engaging puzzle solving exercises there is, especially when compared to the "proper" way to do the instance.

It usually involves the cobbling together of a huge variety of otherwise unrelated vulnerabilities or highly situational (and usually otherwise useless or neglected) game mechanics to create a truly unique solution to a problem.

without naming specifics, I will give a generic example of an exploit that actually happened that involved a very fascinating problem solving process:



There is an difficult instance that usually involves a very bland and boring tank-and-spank with a few feeble attempts a "mechanics"... success or failure more or less correlates with how good you gear is, as is the case with most lotro content. Most players just stand through it pressing 1-2-3-1-2-3 on thier dps skills and win, with a few tiny moves here or there.


Some bright fellows decided they were bored with having to grind through this slog and decided they were going to cheese it.

Through a long series of trials and errors, they combined the ability to clip through an invisible wall with the ability to damage the boss through an invisible barrier with the ability to not die and with the ability to not reset the boss, to complete this otherwise long and boring boss fight with as few as 2 people. Their problem and puzzle solving was rewarded with faster loot and the sense of pride and accomplishment associated with finding a very unique and otherwise unintuitive solution to the problem of being bored with a boring instance

Option A) slog through a snooze fest for a couple of months
Option B) big brain an interesting solution to an interesting problem: how do we cheese this fight, and get rewarded with faster returns


Can you really blame them for choosing option B? your job requires you to say yes, but in all honesty you know they are in the right.


The solution for SSG is to stop making content a snooze fest. Others can define what that means.

[Braer]

I miss having a skills that had just one function; combining effects has you using up the skill in rotation and miss out on an important situational critical use. Tied in with trait and tracery investment compounds the issue if you are choosing to "save" 'til needed.

Mixing proactive effects and reactive effects isn't in of itself bad if the intent is to add complexity and choices for a player to make during combat but I get the feeling they are a result of no such thought processes. Yes, it's the poorly cared for Huntsman that I have uppermost in my mind.

[gildhur]

otherwise it would play all the voice clips at whatever random time it finished, which of course wouldn't line up with the text.

A LOT of the voiceover in Gundabad instances still has this problem, I noticed. First time I've seen it in this game, and it was very disappointing.

Idea: maybe we should make a boss that you can't defeat -- he just stands outside the arena and his own archers shoot arrows at you until you die. Not gonna lie, seems pretty good!

(I should probably clarify that we wouldn't do that: part of the deal is that we need to play fair; is it too much to ask players to play fair too?)

You mean like the old Lothlorien border patrol? Now THAT is something I wish you'd bring back. Lorien should require rep to get into, or at the very least the Book 6 quest that checks your orc/goblin slayer deed completion.

[Snowlock]

I think what I'm actually asking is for people to play the dungeons at an appropriate tier of difficulty for their group.

But MOL, we're MMO players, there's no tier of difficulty that isn't appropriate for the skill levels we perceive in our minds. If we can't complete the content as intended, obviously it's because it's broken.







And probably the hunter's fault.

[Braer]

Leveraging the engine for years perhaps doesn't affect the performance of a lone char on the office development server? I doubt anyone is testing on Evernight peak time. Why else do they keep asking for our feedback if they were looking there themselves. Video conveys none of the haptic elements anyway.

When you establish a cycle of potential reward but excessively limit the resources required at one end and impose a cap at the other end players can't help but feel hemmed in. Compound it all with further content opening/tiering and all you've earnt "trash" by an item level increase. I can get spending a week to get a piece of gear when it lasts 2 years, it has "value" in the accomplishment and period of use. Little lasting worth in generic perishables. And we are expected to still be engaged?

[Seregthol]

To push back to thread topic, any comment on the rewards vs length of certain fights?

This.

I'm not sure why it sometimes seems like this is such a challenging idea for SSG to comprehend. Most successful MMOs understand that if you're going to make a quest/instance/raid/etc. longer and more difficult, then the rewards given at the completion of it should be adjusted higher to reflect that. If you want your customers to enjoy the content as you created it...then consistently make it worth their while to do so.

[Ranmazu]

My suspicion is that if the instance team didn't have to spend so much time accounting for people trying to skip/avoid the mechanics of their boss fights, they would have more time to develop interesting mechanics. But no: nobody cheeses a boss fight to make it more interesting for themselves. I didn't ping the aforementioned dragon in Dark Souls with hundreds of arrows because it better kept my attention.

MoL

My suspicion is that if the instance were well designed at the very beginning no one would feel the need to exploit it. But the reallity is the instances are mostly bad designed, boss abilities don't work, the fight is overtuned and some classes might not fit into a 6-man. So yeah there are actually lots of reasons to cheese a boss fight. And if the developers wouldn't do this mistakes over and over again they might have some more time to actually provide us with other content (:
Instead of fixing an instance even months after its release!

[andrane]

I think what I'm actually asking is for people to play the dungeons at an appropriate tier of difficulty for their group.

timesink != difficulty

[OldMadeOfLions]

The issue is your obsession over story coherence goes against many modern game design principles.

The good news for you is that it's my job to be a story guy, so my particular obsessions don't affect the items and rewards and skills and bosses and dungeons -- we've got other designers to obsess about those things, and they do! It's lucky, too: they know a lot more about numbers than I do.

The last group dungeon I made was The Tomb of Elendil, and that was fifteen years ago! Maybe they learned their lesson: keep me away from those things.

spoken like someone who has never exploited a boss fight.

I've used the Pause Trick with the Elec Beam in Mega Man. It was a lot more gratifying to learn the patterns, though.

Most successful MMOs understand that if you're going to make a quest/instance/raid/etc. longer and more difficult, then the rewards given at the completion of it should be adjusted higher to reflect that.

Seems reasonable to me.

MoL

[JH15547]

To push back to thread topic, any comment on the rewards vs length of certain fights?

At least from discussing across the board with other players it has to do with how/when players choose to engage with exploits/strategies in boss encounters.

The itemization of Naerband vs. Seregost may suck for the relative amount of time each takes, and it's certainly below average design from that perspective. But re-working that stuff does often have hidden costs. Object oriented code can be great when well written and implemented for handling this kind of thing. But if poorly written or implemented, fixing something like itemization might be more involved than we think (many assume it's just tweaking entries in the loot tables, but we don't know how the objects / methods interact with those tables - it could be more work to differentiate Naerband and Seregost).

The thing we players will NEVER know in this calculus is the true level of effort for a change. We think we know, and sometimes we have a good general idea of something. But level of effort relative to available resources and priority is always a factor in deciding what gets done and what is left on the cutting room floor. SSG for sure knows that some of its prior design decisions (or even current ones) have negative impacts on the player experience, and may cost them players. But it can't just magically fix that - it has to decide if fixing it is worth the effort involved.

Ironically, risk/reward challenges are present on both sides of this argument. From the players end on doing the content, and from SSG's end on perfecting the perceived risk/reward balance of all instances and encounters.

[JH15547]

timesink != difficulty

Depends honestly. Some people have endurance problems

[hillard1959]

The last group dungeon I made was The Tomb of Elendil, and that was fifteen years ago! Maybe they learned their lesson: keep me away from those things.




MoL

But, I like Tomb of Elendil. Maybe they learned the wrong lesson.

[Hallandil]

The good news for you is that it's my job to be a story guy, so my particular obsessions don't affect the items and rewards and skills and bosses and dungeons -- we've got other designers to obsess about those things, and they do! It's lucky, too: they know a lot more about numbers than I do.

The last group dungeon I made was The Tomb of Elendil, and that was fifteen years ago! Maybe they learned their lesson: keep me away from those things.

I've used the Pause Trick with the Elec Beam in Mega Man. It was a lot more gratifying to learn the patterns, though.

Seems reasonable to me.

MoL

Apologies on the ambiguity, but by "you" I mean SSG as a collective. Whomever the team has assigned for items seems to wildly fluctuate between individual update pushes and the absence of any work to touch up areas of the game where reward systems remain completely missing. Cases include:

Battle of the Pelennor Fields instances missing armour sets, Silent Street challenge rewards made obsolete as a result;**

Skirmish Camp sets cannot be accessed on the relevant level caps despite being the primary method of acquisition;

Helegrod being the fastest method of earning Marks/Medals despite the easiest raid-level encounter to complete;

Entire reward structures for 85 missing despite being the primary substitute for group content at that level cap (ALSO the broken crafting recipes that had outputs messed around during the release of Three Peaks);

Caras Galadhon Heritage runes won't be accessible to players AT THAT LEVEL as despite being earned from Medallions of Lothlorien, they are locked to level 85;

Glaring bugs still present in Osgiliath instance cluster, those armour sets haven't been returned**

I could go on and on listing examples... To use the pejorative term, "LOOT", in this game is frankly a giant pile of horse$%^&. From level to level it radically changes, is confusing and many progression paths from expansion to expansion directly conflict with the radically different game directions used by the Producers over the game's lifetime.

**Yes, I know Severlin quoted the "Issue of scaling loot" way back in 2019- However, there's always this radical suggestion- Have the bosses drop barter tokens at 100/105 to turn in to a vendor with >static< items.

Ost Dunhoth and Barad Guldur already prove that the game is capable of handling reward payouts specific to level ranges. There's no reason (and frankly excuse given the constant kicking of the can), to refuse an extension this system to the remaining encounters of Sari Surma, Lost Temple, Northcotton, Stoneheight, Sammath Gul, Dungeons of Dol Guldur, Warg-pens and Sword Halls. Additionally, the level 85 specific rewards for scaled content across the board and also as a possible solution to the Osgiliath/Pelennor armour sets as well.

[Hallandil]

The itemization of Naerband vs. Seregost may suck for the relative amount of time each takes, and it's certainly below average design from that perspective. But re-working that stuff does often have hidden costs. Object oriented code can be great when well written and implemented for handling this kind of thing. But if poorly written or implemented, fixing something like itemization might be more involved than we think (many assume it's just tweaking entries in the loot tables, but we don't know how the objects / methods interact with those tables - it could be more work to differentiate Naerband and Seregost).

The thing we players will NEVER know in this calculus is the true level of effort for a change. We think we know, and sometimes we have a good general idea of something. But level of effort relative to available resources and priority is always a factor in deciding what gets done and what is left on the cutting room floor. SSG for sure knows that some of its prior design decisions (or even current ones) have negative impacts on the player experience, and may cost them players. But it can't just magically fix that - it has to decide if fixing it is worth the effort involved.

Ironically, risk/reward challenges are present on both sides of this argument. From the players end on doing the content, and from SSG's end on perfecting the perceived risk/reward balance of all instances and encounters.

See, posting a reply like this that sits the fence feeds into the ability for the Forums to echo-chamber and ignore legitimate constructive criticism.

Yes, Naerband is a subjective example- but it is also one of many. Some of which don't just explore a case of time sink vs rewards, but the complete absence of any substantive reward to being with.

Depends honestly. Some people have endurance problems

Meanwhile some people also have understanding of Game Design concepts and somewhat vague grasp of necessary work involved, and can weigh up the amount of positive good for LOTRO as an actual game with quantifiable/qualitative metrics to judge a player's value of gameplay experiences upon. And to make a rebuttal to the "cutting room floor" analogy, it's a bit of a dismissive comment without accounting for the fact that many missing and otherwise unbalance reward structures in the game still exist in some form and still receive updates to this day.

For example: Many of the level 65 and level 85 drops continue to be affected by ongoing itemization changes to this day, despite being absent from the reward pools. In greater frustration, the armour sets from 105 also have received updates to where the original reasoning for their removal- to prevent players from making use of the strategic advantages of equipping the armour during Mordor and higher content has now been abated by the changes involved level capped set bonuses instead of restricting/capping the access to rewards. And as such, older decisions that no longer suit the game in its current state should ideally be revoked.

[Zarin]

See, posting a reply like this that sits the fence feeds into the ability for the Forums to echo-chamber and ignore legitimate constructive criticism.

Yes, Naerband is a subjective example- but it is also one of many. Some of which don't just explore a case of time sink vs rewards, but the complete absence of any substantive reward to being with.



Meanwhile some people also have understanding of Game Design concepts and somewhat vague grasp of necessary work involved, and can weigh up the amount of positive good for LOTRO as an actual game with quantifiable/qualitative metrics to judge a player's value of gameplay experiences upon. And to make a rebuttal to the "cutting room floor" analogy, it's a bit of a dismissive comment without accounting for the fact that many missing and otherwise unbalance reward structures in the game still exist in some form and still receive updates to this day.

For example: Many of the level 65 and level 85 drops continue to be affected by ongoing itemization changes to this day, despite being absent from the reward pools. In greater frustration, the armour sets from 105 also have received updates to where the original reasoning for their removal- to prevent players from making use of the strategic advantages of equipping the armour during Mordor and higher content has now been abated by the changes involved level capped set bonuses instead of restricting/capping the access to rewards. And as such, older decisions that no longer suit the game in its current state should ideally be revoked.

Lets also remind people that Barad Guldur & The Dol Guldur instance cluster had it's own loot table that got removed in favour of the god awful scaling instance loot tables to take over it. When a 12 man raid drops the same loot items as 3 mans, why even bother running the 12 mans if you want to upgrade your character?

Same with 85 gold items, they were the only thing tethering end game players onto the game at lvl 85 with the absolute horrid state of the game back in the day back then. Why were they removed? If its because people kept wearing them 30 levels later, the easy fix would be to put a max level on them like so many other pieces already in the game. I've never actually seen an argument against the above that wasn't just deflection.

[why-becauseIcan]

What I miss the most is endgame progression that isn't dependent on the Lotro Store... I hate how they make most of the tiers skippable using the Lotro store. It's such a shame. The loot tables are garbage compared to SOA>ROI days. And the tiering system for raids/instances is just too much.. YIKES

This game is just p2w now.

[Hallandil]

Lets also remind people that Barad Guldur & The Dol Guldur instance cluster had it's own loot table that got removed in favour of the god awful scaling instance loot tables to take over it. When a 12 man raid drops the same loot items as 3 mans, why even bother running the 12 mans if you want to upgrade your character?

Same with 85 gold items, they were the only thing tethering end game players onto the game at lvl 85 with the absolute horrid state of the game back in the day back then. Why were they removed? If its because people kept wearing them 30 levels later, the easy fix would be to put a max level on them like so many other pieces already in the game. I've never actually seen an argument against the above that wasn't just deflection.

This. Changes were made under a design choice that now better alternatives have been implemented. So there is no excuse on refusing to go back and make amends.

[Zarin]

What I miss the most is endgame progression that isn't dependent on the Lotro Store... I hate how they make most of the tiers skippable using the Lotro store. It's such a shame. The loot tables are garbage compared to SOA>ROI days. And the tiering system for raids/instances is just too much.. YIKES

This game is just p2w now.

Don't call this game p2w!! Its not that p2w, you can only buy 10% Damage Reduction in the store, more morale, mandatory stat tomes, lootbox keys that drop teal tracery & gold tracery tokens, as well as currency to buy what is sometimes incredibly good gear, morale potions that arent on cooldown with crafted morale potions, morale bubbles that arent on cooldown with the other two, and rejuvination potions that aren't on cooldown with the other 3.

[why-becauseIcan]

Don't call this game p2w!! Its not that p2w, you can only buy 10% Damage Reduction in the store, more morale, mandatory stat tomes, lootbox keys that drop teal tracery & gold tracery tokens, as well as currency to buy what is sometimes incredibly good gear, morale potions that arent on cooldown with crafted morale potions, morale bubbles that arent on cooldown with the other two, and rejuvination potions that aren't on cooldown with the other 3.

I feel sick now haha... Please cancel this game

[Zarin]

I feel sick now haha... Please cancel this game

Sorry I was going to post more examples but I don't want to ruin anyone elses day even further.

[TobiasEstForte]

Don't call this game p2w!! Its not that p2w, you can only buy 10% Damage Reduction in the store, more morale, mandatory stat tomes, lootbox keys that drop teal tracery & gold tracery tokens, as well as currency to buy what is sometimes incredibly good gear, morale potions that arent on cooldown with crafted morale potions, morale bubbles that arent on cooldown with the other two, and rejuvination potions that aren't on cooldown with the other 3.

You might want to remove that part of "mandatory" stat tomes. The stat increase is so minor it's basically a fool's purchase at this point, a completionist's at best.

Try to enquire T5 raiders on how many of them actually have 1/20 tomes on a stat nevermind 20/20. You could find a lot of them have 0/20, because they really don't matter.