Concerning the status of these servers

Howdy all, I don’t usually post on the forums I’m mostly a lurker on here but I have a couple of concerns that I’m sure are shared by a decent amount of people. A couple of things that I am concerned about:

• Loot
• Drops
• Instance Scaling
• PvMP
• Minstrel Scaling
• Overall care for the Legendary Community.

Before I go in to it, people who will complain about “raiders and pvper’s shouldn’t play this game” need not comment. It’s incredibly frustrating reading that because people enjoy the different things this game has to offer. While you may not enjoy those certain things, it doesn’t mean it can’t be improved for those who do enjoy it. If it’s in the game, it’s meant to be enjoyed. I will not be getting in to it with those who respond that way because frankly it’s pointless arguing with a wall that will not try to see it in a different light.

Loot: A big point of concern that was semi addressed was the drops from raids/instances being worse than something that can be crafted. It’s incredibly dull being able to get some at times BiS gear just by doing something as easy as crafting or buying it from the AH. It cheapens the overall experience. Why run a well-designed instance when I can get a better item just by crafting it or buying it? This wasn’t too bad of an issue with Angmar but I worry that Moria will see the same issue.

Drops: The biggest thing here is the essence armor. It’s very unbalanced and game breaking at the lower levels. The introduction of it at the later levels makes sense because the systems at that stage were balanced to be able to tolerate such powerful gear but at the lower levels it totally breaks the game. We have people able to solo raid bosses (albeit some may have simple mechanics that can just be brute forced anyways). Even without the legendary gear my kinship could 6 man all of rift because of the incredible power creep. I’m sure if we had essence armor we could 3 man it. What I would recommend is disabling drops for essence armor until the patch that it was introduced. I know that the game is on the same patch as live but if you can limit the level while on the same patch I’m sure y’all can edit drops with granularity for the legendary servers.

Instance scaling: The instances are trivial in difficulty. Part of it has to do with the power creep I mentioned earlier, but some of the instances feel like they are following an old power scale. Sambrog’s difficulty has not kept up with the power creep of characters at the same level, for example. Characters at 50 now are waaay stronger than level 50 characters in Isengard. Perhaps reevaluating instance scaling could help. Or even offering new tiers of difficulty (With loot to make it worth it, not a cop out like T2-3 Rift with it only being a statistical change).

PvMP: I understand that there’s balancing issues here since there’s no progression for creeps, they’re just the max level every time, but it’s a totally solvable problem. A lot of people like PVP and have expressed less interest as time goes on because of the lack of this feature. It would be best to keep the server populations as high as possible since it’s been split in two.

Minstrel Scaling: One thing that was a little demoralizing was the utter gutting of minstrel at lower levels. Yes, minstrel shouldn’t be a damage class and their damage was a bit too high, but performing surgery with a machete was not the right move. Yes, they got more healing, but they’re still out healed by the rune keeper. Minstrel is very close to being balanced though in terms of healing. Perhaps removing the cooldown on bolster courage would do the trick. The changes with minstrel were both good and horrible. Maybe reducing their damage by 20% overall would have been the right move but downright butchering their damage was not the right move, since it obsolesces this class now.

Overall care for the legendary community: It would be nice to hear from a developer about the status of the game every now and then. It feels like this was just a cash grab, and that they don’t honestly care about the player. I understand, it’s a business, but you must keep your clients coming back, whether it’s through in game sales or memberships, and seeing as how you need a membership to play the legendary servers, it would be nice to at least hear about what’s going on with regular updates. If the team is too small to be able to focus on these issues then perhaps deploying these servers was a mistake, but if it’s a policy to keep players in the dark about these things, then it’s a damaging policy to have.

If I could have a little bit of your time, could y'all also fill out this survey so I can better write about these issues?
https://goo.gl/forms/m2lKHbUPq1A5Nr5J3
Thank you


Abraham of Anor.

"Loot: A big point of concern that was semi addressed was the drops from raids/instances being worse than something that can be crafted. It’s incredibly dull being able to get some at times BiS gear just by doing something as easy as crafting or buying it from the AH."

Funny. Many of us have been crafting for years and do not consider it dull.

Perhaps you should consider crafting your own gear. I appreciate the game making crafted gear better than raid gear and random drops. Good! If crafting was so easy, at the higher levels, and more of a reward with higher stat gear, more people would craft.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HRHofAquitaine

"Loot: A big point of concern that was semi addressed was the drops from raids/instances being worse than something that can be crafted. It’s incredibly dull being able to get some at times BiS gear just by doing something as easy as crafting or buying it from the AH."

Funny. Many of us have been crafting for years and do not consider it dull.

Perhaps you should consider crafting your own gear. I appreciate the game making crafted gear better than raid gear and random drops. Good! If crafting was so easy, at the higher levels, and more of a reward with higher stat gear, more people would craft.

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Well, i wouldn't start with the assumption that i do not craft gear. But the difficulty in crafting is trivial. You gather resources and put them together, with a chance to crit. That's it. Sure you can grind out crafting rep, but again, the difficulty ceiling for crafting is quite shallow. Compared to having to coordinate with 6-12 people to accomplish something, crafting falls short in its difficulty. I dont think it makes sense to make low difficulty actions yield rewards that are better than gameplay that requires some skill. no one is saying crafting armor is useless, but it being better than raid gear makes no sense.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HRHofAquitaine

"Loot: A big point of concern that was semi addressed was the drops from raids/instances being worse than something that can be crafted. It’s incredibly dull being able to get some at times BiS gear just by doing something as easy as crafting or buying it from the AH."

Funny. Many of us have been crafting for years and do not consider it dull.

Perhaps you should consider crafting your own gear. I appreciate the game making crafted gear better than raid gear and random drops. Good! If crafting was so easy, at the higher levels, and more of a reward with higher stat gear, more people would craft.

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You missed the point completely. LOTRO has probably one of the best crafting systems I've seen in the mmorpgs I've played, but it shouldn't be better than the teals you can earn from the raids. You may enjoy having the crafted gear be better, but it defeats the whole purpose then of completing the raids and instances: to get the best gear. It is more rewarding to earn the best piece of gear from a boss kill than to craft it or buy it, especially when it doesn't take much to buy it.

One thing you should completely forget about, as in a "not gonna happen" thing.... is PvMP. Yes, many people like it, but it has been announced that it is probably not going to happen in 2019, and it isn't even sure if it will happen after that. The word that Cordovan brought to us is that it "makes more sense" to do when the level cap is higher.

My guess is that due to the trait tree system that changed the whole game at the level 95 cap, that freeps are going to be way, WAY overpowered if we just pitted level 60 freeps vs level 60 creeps in the coming Moria release for Legendary servers. OP to the point it wouldn't even be fun for creeps to do. In any case, if PvMP is a "dealbreaker", your deal has been broken, at least for 2019....

Re: Loot: There are things that need to be fixed for sure. Currently the only difference in rewards from the Rift at T1 or T2 is that you get a different title. There is no difference in loot. It would be nice to have T2 and T3 loot, but the reality is that in a month from now literally no one will run the Rift anymore, because it is a fixed level 50 raid, and the rewards won't be needed any longer. That said: the loot tables for scalable raids such as Helegrod should be updated to have better items at T2 and T3. The loot tables for all instances should be taken a look at for that matter.... also skirmish loot tables should be improved upon, as currently they literally only drop coinage.

Re: Essence armor: I agree that it should disappear. It really should not exist.... if that is the direction they want the game to go, either do it PROPERLY (such as Moria end-game rewards awarding proper armor and essences), or remove it altogether till level 100. I would rather see it removed till level 100 to be honest.

Agreed with you on your points made. I feel the biggest concern for me right now is essence gear cheapening the experience and making every bit of content even more trivial.
On the live servers during 105 cap I was part of a small project of 75 cap raiding and in order to meet the t2 mitigation caps and cover the mit penetration we were forced to run some essence gear especially on the tanks. This would need to be addressed in order to fully remove essence gear from the legendary server until level 100 when it was launched. They could even just put a level 100 requirement on all dropped essence gear perhaps.

I won’t be holding out for any dev response on the issues raised and I certainly won’t be expecting them to do anything about it. This is a recurring theme every year “I hope next update they change X” and it never happens when it involves balancing issues relating to instance mechanics unless it’s to make it easier for those complaining they can’t do it.

The LAST thing SSG wants for the Legendary servers is to become the high maintenance reality that the regular game the main (FP) servers became over time; to keep everyone happy by constantly placading to all the whining about 'class balance'. Example, PvM, a mere after thought originally, but now a quagmire which was totally unnecessary and never fit the original game anyway.

As to the recent changes of the Minstrels - they make a lot of sense, less destructive power and more reliance on self healing - which fits the role of a minstrel perfectly. If a player still expects (never mind demand) the game's principal healer to continue to one-shot mobs 4 levels above them - you are playing the wrong class (and maybe game). This time I leveled a hunter & minstrel at the same time, and the minstrel was a faster killer than my hunter, until the changes; now I have to rely on ~healing~ with my minstrel to accomplish the same thing which makes perfect sense.