Ill Omens Event Postponed

Cord mentioned on his stream that they are not doing the Ill Omens event this year. The reason cited was due to feedback, but I think they are confusing all the outrage last year over Portents for people disliking the event itself.

I think the event is actually quite nice, I like bringing back a focus on skirmishes and having some extra deeds to do. The issue last year was they gave us a reward that was totally OP and forced players to grind the event on multiple characters. The reward turned the event into an awful experience, but the event itself did nothing wrong.

Why can't we continue the event this year but just get rid of the Portents barterer?

I don't think canceled is the right word, but we do currently intend to take a look at the event before bringing it back. It'll definitely return eventually, though.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

I don't think canceled is the right word, but we do currently intend to take a look at the event before bringing it back. It'll definitely return eventually, though.

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Apologies for the misunderstanding, I renamed the thread to 'postponed'.

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Originally Posted by Strider5548

I think the event is actually quite nice, I like bringing back a focus on skirmishes and having some extra deeds to do. The issue last year was they gave us a reward that was totally OP and forced players to grind the event on multiple characters. The reward turned the event into an awful experience, but the event itself did nothing wrong.

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I, on the contrary, think that the event is awful in its current state. Skirmish system is outdated, has many flaws by itself plus some issue were added by the event (like several skirmishes being locked behind epic quests or level). So it was not fun for me to do Ill Omen.

I also can't care less about Portents, Essence or any other "current endagme BiS, OP and so on and so forth" items comming from limited events. The whole approach is wrong and I will not waste my time on it. There will be better gear next patch, next year, next expansion. But I do care about pets, mounts, furniture, houses, even cosmetics, after a fashion. So more rewards from this department would encourage me to participate.

I'm glad that developers are takign time to rethink and redo the event. Hopefully it will be better, and more rewarding for every type of players and levels, next time we see it.

I liked this event well enough and I definitely do hope that they bring it back. I didn't particularly worry about the Portent thingie (I often forget that I have it). When and if they do bring this back, however, I hope that they take it as the opportunity to finally revisit the skirmish soldiers and to provide ways to bring them up to the level where they actually become useful for later-game players.

When our kinship comes together and wants to do something for fun with more than six players, there really isn't a lot of options. Most of the raids require coordination, unlocks, and class compositions. To make matters worse, some of them have horrible loot tables giving some spare bounty coins and a couple of gear items that are far inferior to anything you can obtain elsewhere.

That's when skirmishes come in. We love them. We run them every week. You can set them at pretty much any level. We can chat freely without worrying about a raid leader explaining what we should do next. We can still do them with less than twelve people, with members that have poor gear, or those who are under the level by a small margin. We are constantly asking everyone to complete the skirmish introduction on other characters and the Epic so that we can diversify our list to include the ones from Moria and Mirkwood.

Yes, I see people complain about these unlocks every year. But skirmishes are not an outdated system. There are plenty of people who still utilize them. Running a skirmish raid will also get you seals that can be used towards Essence Reclamation Scrolls. We run them so much over the years that I now have over 400 seals. If they could fix the skirmish loot tables to include new LI items and include new rewards for the Ill Omens Event other than adding another cosmetic pet, then I can see them being popular again. I honestly thought they were just going to add level 140 portents to the event, which would have been perfectly fine by me. But they might choose to add an interesting spin to the event like tracery tokens as a reward or making the daily quest a bi-weekly one that makes us choose 10 out of 15 skirmishes instead of a daily one.

So long as portents are removed I'm fine with the event. Wouldn't say no to a slight reduction in the number of skirms it pushes you to run though, 4 a day for 12 days is a bit too much. Would also appreciate the miniboss spawns being a bit less random in order to make completing the meta-deed easier.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

I don't think canceled is the right word, but we do currently intend to take a look at the event before bringing it back. It'll definitely return eventually, though.

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I'm glad to hear it will return. I love the event, and portents, I can take or leave. I enjoyed the event on the first year without them, and the second year with them, though, such an OP item doesn't belong in a time limited event. There was a lot of feedback over that, and IMO, addressing that would have been enough, rather than postpone the event.

I can take or leave the event, skirmishes are dull and it became a chore, yet still I got all 3 portents and they have sat in my vault never used, why did I do it?

Can be quite fun if you are part of a kinship where getting a group to play through is always easy. Can't say I used the now useless reward that often afterwards despite getting it on all toons that get regular play. A gold essence that is also a Unique might be interesting as a reward. Not making it unique just risks the minimax crowd breaking the game again.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

I don't think canceled is the right word, but we do currently intend to take a look at the event before bringing it back. It'll definitely return eventually, though.

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Any chance we could get expanded rewards to shoot for? Nothing too crazy, but perhaps something like a Morraval property Guard? Or perhaps some skirmish chest decorations? Some new decorations actually related to the skirmishes would be neat. How about a skirmish soldier display for our houses?

Goshdarnit, I was just going through my wallet and examining all these random, odd bits and trinkets, and came across these "Tokens of Ill Omens". After refreshing my memory via the LOTRO wiki, I was all excited to get some of the pet tomes from the event this year, but... well, I guess that's not happening.

I love skirmishes. They're my kid's favorite thing to do in LOTRO, so I've played a lot of them. I also really like Ill Omens. I got the portent last year for my primary, but then didn't end up using it much because I prefer the challenge in most situations. As usual, I think there's disproportionate feedback from the group of players who believe that if something powerful is offered, there's a requirement to have it for every single one of their toons.

I appreciate that it's hard to offer a reward that affects gameplay. I'm happy with moar cosmetics and housing items. The dog pet is one of my favorite pets.

(Also *whispers* more things to buy with skirmish marks.)

Now that we cannot buy rep tomes with the skirm marks we earn, maybe they will bring it back. With no rewards, participation will be lower and they can say, no one was interested lol. Or maybe, they will restrict the event to purchasing access via the store?

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Originally Posted by Strider5548

Cord mentioned on his stream that they are not doing the Ill Omens event this year. The reason cited was due to feedback, but I think they are confusing all the outrage last year over Portents for people disliking the event itself.

I think the event is actually quite nice, I like bringing back a focus on skirmishes and having some extra deeds to do. The issue last year was they gave us a reward that was totally OP and forced players to grind the event on multiple characters. The reward turned the event into an awful experience, but the event itself did nothing wrong.

Why can't we continue the event this year but just get rid of the Portents barterer?

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Having just obliterated the main use of (what was) only two decent end-game barters for skirmish rewards (marks and medallions, - and seals), I wonder if they thought "too soon"?

My thoughts on ill-omens generally (opinions - not claiming facts)

I'm not a fan of having portents or best in slot rewards from timed events.

The idea of making older content relevent is admirable - so why not update skirmish soldiers to actually contribute. And go the whole step and make a decent rewards table for when the event is not in progress - I know gear progression is firmly tied to latest expansions, but something useful - maybe Ancient script, enhancement runes, Reward track progression.

The event wasn't alt friendly (I know the portents were account bound so didn't need to be run multiple times for those once you had them - or the ones you needed).

Not friendly in number or skirms needed on number of days - had a few in-game friends drop out as work commitments meant they fell behind with no catch-up chance. I'm sure you could put a maximum number per day to count towards completion to keep regular log-ins with a bit more wriggle room for catch-up allowing for days when people can't get on or only have time to run one or two.

As Joedangod pointed out, randomness of spawns for meta-deed is too great. I didn't even bother tracking as absolutely no control over that especially if you wanted to get on with running alts through it.

I do agree with OP that it is good to have a different focus for a while with a couple of new deeds, but it seems a missed opportunity to make the content even vaguely relevent outside the event which seems a shame. Appears as content with minimal effort.

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Originally Posted by Neinda

Now that we cannot buy rep tomes with the skirm marks we earn, maybe they will bring it back. With no rewards, participation will be lower and they can say, no one was interested lol. Or maybe, they will restrict the event to purchasing access via the store?

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Haha - didn't see your post before writing mine!!!

I didn't use my portent as much as I thought I would. Its refresh is long, so I often held off for the ideal moment and didn't end up using it at all.