I guess you didn't want *anything* slowing you down! Or wait, are you conflating the issue to suggest something without actually saying it? Must be the latter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Teldra
Carry on.
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I guess you didn't want *anything* slowing you down! Or wait, are you conflating the issue to suggest something without actually saying it? Must be the latter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Teldra
Carry on.
Speaking as one who has played MMO's for 10 years, I have no idea why I would ever want such a feature.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxFire
Please note that I seem to level at roughly the speed that Turbine expects. I find lots of folks that level faster AND slower than I do.
I am kind of a completist, and it does bug me that at low levels I level out of quests pretty quickly. However, I also believe that if I were to level another character, I would concentrate on the quests my first character didn't get to do. I don't see any need to make my characters level up slower... and if I want to spend more time in an area then I just DO that. XP has nothing to do with it for me.
You can't expect him to read all 16 pages and the numerous topics that have been made on this. My recommendation is you just let it die. When you're going two rounds with players and devs (even going so far as to badger and refute dev answers) you know you have the extreme majority of both important groups (players+devs) saying no to the idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxFire
Can you actually name another popular MMORPG out there with an XP throttle functionality? I am not aware of any, and I'm genuinely curious.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxFire
Because LOTRO does not encompass all the systems for which an XP throttle presents a (mechanically) compelling must-have.Quote:
If the interest was any higher in those games, why would that be? Surely it can't be because more players in those worlds find them more interesting and want to stick around in each area a bit longer before being leveled out of them. I seriously doubt that. Personally I suspect the interest level was just as high, or maybe even lower, in those games.
There is at least one MMOG that has a level-based PVP bracket/tier system. I'd say the necessity (and demand) for an XP throttle in the face of such a system is significantly more concrete and important than the needs of LOTRO aesthetes.
Not that aesthetic concerns are unimportant, but if we're going to bring other MMOGs into the discussion, our LOTRO needs cease to be the base frame of reference. Our needs pale in comparison with other MMOGs' needs. (And theirs matter because we brought it up.)
Well there have been many 100s of replies (if not thousands) on this feature over the course of several threads and most of LoTRO history. Many (if not most) spoke in favor of such a feature and/or said they might not use it but support its inclusion.Quote:
Originally Posted by densha82
I've also played MMORPG's for at least that long and have numerous ideas why I would like such a feature, some of which I determined from my own game play experience, and some I didn't even think about until reading the myriad of reasons other people have written in these threads on why they would like such a feature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shukar
This makes me wonder how many people can't imagine a reason why they would ever want such a feature, but haven't actually considered the many benefits of it. These people's initial reaction to a poll or survey would be "Nope, not really interested in that", but they really haven't thought it over in any great detail.
How many features has Turbine added to the game which there was no great clamoring for (in the forums or otherwise), but which they thought at least some players would appreciate, or that players may not know they want but will like it after all. If you look at the forums over the last several months, the majority of people REALLY wanted Rohan to be the next expansion. Turbine is giving us Mirkwood. They clearly came to the conclusion that although the majority aren't asking for Mirkwood, that most people will enjoy and appreciate it anyhow.
An XP toggle/throttle is something that some may not imagine they will ever use, but find out that they do use it occasionally under certain circumstances, and others will find that they reap tangential benefits from it by virtue of other players using it.
My recommendation is that if you (and others) really want this to die, start advocating for it, because so long as Turbine continues to put out updates to LoTRO, those interested in this feature will continue to press for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thrandiul110
There are several already mentioned, see posts above.Quote:
Originally Posted by 8skyfaller
That's only in PVP battlegrounds as a sop to twinkers, it's not for PVE activities at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baresira
I been playing online games when they frist came out and I think Lotro was way to easy. For newbies and high level players. But there is a group that WANT A REAL CHALLANGE. I want every battle to be a challange.
I dont want to play a game in 503 hours that 3 weeks (like that hunter) then quit becuse there no more challange. That why alot of people are leaving this game. They got to the end and there was nothing else to do other then to make 6 more toons.
Here what I see on this game Level 1 to 46 almost no one on. From 47 to 60 are in moria and people Pout about Lag lag lag. Blame that on power levelers, Blame that on quests that could of been a challange but due your high levels it worthless to do.
Here what it comes down to
Right now the setting for everyone is EASY that why alot of you dont like the XP reducer.
For us that want a XP Reducer so the game will be HARD every challange every quest HARD.
So mybe the topic should be change to Easy mode or hard Mode.
Obviously this feature won't make it into SoM, but I could see it added in a later update or expansion along the way. While I wouldn't use it, others seem to want it, and their use of an XP Throttle would not adversely affect my gameplay in the slightest. Therefore, I'm all for it.
No BellusDuFenna if anything it might help your gameplay. I am talking about your level 9 toon.
A low level skilled player can guide a new player and show them what they need to know. Explain what each skill can do and mybe help in making a better newbie.
Power level is easy levels untel level 50 then they need to learn quick.
XP Reducers setup for hard levels. for every level that last untel the end of the game that a Challange.
More I think about it. It is about Easy leveling players now and hard leveling players with XP reducers.
So the question is do you want a easy game or hard one and do you want a easy game all the way or a hard game all the way.
I am pleased that Turbine has asked the question.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kyrra_T
I am hoping they are aware of some limitations in their methodology.
The last year has been a year with one frustration after another for those players who value challenging adventures and some types of role-playing. The accelerated leveling brought about by the XP curve change in book 7, week after week after month of bonus XP, "The Quiet Calm", and the dumbing down of whole sections of the game have all taken value away from this group of players.
It is only reasonable to assume that, for a subset of those players Turbine has taken away enough value that those players have quit, or made the decision not to come here at all.
Instead, Turbine has put a lot of effort into attracting a larger and larger community of hyper-levelers. Everything that would an adventurer and explorer is meant to appeal to hyper-levelers.
I am not saying that this is wrong. I have said repeatedly that there is no wrong way to have fun except to have fun at the expense of others. I do not object to Turbine's decision to draw in those who value hyper-leveling in any way.
In this respect it is important to note that I have always asked for the OPTION to not participate in hyper-leveling. I have not argued for abolishing the practice. In fact, I have argued that the OPTION would allow Turbine to do even more for the benefit of hyper-levelers (having bonus 50% and 100% months) without introducing frustration and potentially driving out even more of the adventure-style gamers. Because the adventure-style gamers would have an easy way to opt out and not be adversely affected by those programs.
While I am at it, let me burn another straw man before it gets built. I am also not saying that Turbine is going to drive itself into the ground if it does not follow my advice. I am fairly certain that its drive to re-design the game to make it appealing to hyper-levelers has been successful. The number of hyper-levelers drawn into the game is quit possibly larger than the number of adventurers driven out of the game.
Yet would it not be better to draw hyper-levelers into the game WITHOUT frustrating and driving out the adventurers? If there is a way to have both adventurers and hyper-levelers paying money for this game, is this not better than choosing one and losing the other?
Now, AFTER spending a year frustrating adventurers and engaging in a campaign to draw in hyper-levelers, Turbine sends out a questionnaire that asks existing players, in effect, "How many adventurers are there left who have endured this past year of frustration and aggravation."
If it looks at those results and concludes, "While, there sure doesn't seem to be a lot of people around who really value the adventuring play style," it is not drawing sound conclusions from the available data.
In the jargon of professional surveyors, the survey lacks external validity. It's great for determining how many adventure-style players survived the last year. It would be very useful data if Turbine's goal is to drive out the rest of the adventure-style gamers and it wanted to see how successful past efforts had been. It is NOT the appropriate way to answer the question of how many players will come back to the game, or be drawn into the game, by introducing features that would reduce the frustrations experienced by adventure gamers.
This survey could explain Floon's recent remark when a poster suggested that 30% of players would value such a feature that this poster had underestimated the popularity of the feature by orders of magnitude.
<<Text removed by author.>>
If that is the case, this would be like responding to a claim that President Obama's popularity among the voters is at 60% by looking at a survey taken among the Republican Party's most devoted volunteers and saying, "You do not realize how many orders of magnitude you are off by that statement."
There are reasons to expect that the sample population is not representative of the population at large, and it would be unwise to make a business decision without considering the possible differences.
And the really frustrating thing is that, with the money that it took to ask the question and tally and assess the results, they could probably have built the thing and been done with it.
What other games have it? WoW just recently added it, but did so more to fix another problem then for the community that wanted it. In WoW there are level brackets to PvP, and there are those who would "twink" or basically get a toon as geared as possible and sit at the maximum level for the PvP bracket.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxFire
This wasn't liked by players would would do some PvP while leveling through, so when WoW added leveling via PvP they gave the twinks the option to turn off exp gains, but they would also be forced into their own PvP instances that ate exp off only.
For years they asked for exp off, and now they have it they hate it. Why? Because there are so few players doing exp-off, they can't get a PvP instance to spin up.
And my point is, the major group that wanted it was so small, they shot themselves in the foot by getting it. Of course how its wanted here is different, but, that doesn't mean that the percentage of effected population is going to be much bigger.
Me too, but for a different reason: such surveys are nearly worthless. If you ask players if they want 50 different features, you're going to get an extremely overrepresentative set of "yes" votes on individual features (as long as the features don't actively harm their own game experience). Why not ask for everything, even if you don't plan on using it? You might some day.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxFire
It's much better for planning purposes to ask people to rank features they want, or to get to spend a limited set of "points" on them (where each feature is given a point cost). That gives you a weighting of features, giving you a much clearer picture of what's likely to improve the product the most for the most people.
I'd bet a fair amount that "Option to Turn XP Off" wouldn't get much weighting in such a list.
Khafar
*watches the helium balloon named "XP off" rising toward space*Quote:
Originally Posted by Khafar
That's an interesting data point. The basic issue here is that there are a handful of passionate advocates of this idea who really don't engage in dialog - just argumentation. They argue with developers, they dismiss any concerns, and basically they don't *listen*. You don't have to agree with a concern that someone has, but it gets wearying when everything becomes a winning/losing debate. It is very hard to have a productive discussion with folks like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reximus
I do think that there are some interesting issues raised here - but that the solutions may be completely different than the proposed mechanism.
They overshot the leveling rate in the first 25 levels or so and should dial it back - so that normal quest progression carries you through content at the originally designed rate. It's a small fraction of the total leveling time anyhow.
It would be nice to be able to jump back and lend a lower level toon a hand without steamrollering it with a much stronger toon (EQ2 has a very nice model system for this). This could be enormously helpful, especially to folks trying to polish off fellowship quests.
Any system has to be reversible or have strong safeguards for inexperienced players who dig themselves into experience holes. You can argue all you want that this isn't a problem - MMOs serve a broad population. It really isn't all about you.
There are also ways in the current system to preserve much of the desired "slower leveling" feel, and it would be an actual service to put together guides on how to do this.
The developers have also given some pretty clear hints on directions that they would be willing to go in and might be interested in. Pursuing those - as opposed to an idea that they looked at and didn't find persuasive - is just much more likely to be fruitful.
I despise the rest xp and always have. It particularly stunk like rotten eggs in Moria. After months at being at the level cap in SoA and looking forward to leveling again, the rest xp only exacerbated what was a pitifully short time to level 60. There were still things to do, but part of the fun is missing when you level every time you sneeze. (It took me a little over two months to hit 60, by the way, so I'm not a power gamer. I was trying to avoid leveling too quickly so I could try and enjoy the new content.)
And finally just for the record, no, I don't expect Turbine to ever do anything about this, particularly after reading Floon's recent responses. But there really are those of us, however many in number, who do abhor this particular "feature" of the game.
What I like about LotRO happily far outnumbers what I don't, but there are negatives. Rest xp is one of them.
So then why do we keep posting in the threads? :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Ohioastro
Some snipping to get to the parts I wanted to address has occurred...
You misunderstand what floon was saying. He wasn't referring to the estimate of players who'd value the feature. He was referring to what percentage of interested players justified the cost of adding one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiempko
And you suspect this based on ... what? Most likely, your misunderstanding of what he said... but still, way to malign someone's character on no real basis in fact. You proposed to take out a perceived 'straw man' in one part of your post then insist on your own ad hominem? It's still a logical fallacy. The fact you may not like the deliverer of the message (or his 'tone') doesn't invalidate the message.Quote:
To be honest, I suspect that Floon is the type of person who would cheerfully misrepresent the facts for the pleasure of trumping an opponent. I would trust a person whose attitude is, “I regret to inform you that our research simply does not support your position. I am sorry. If there is anything else I can do to help, please let me know,” to a person whose attitude is, “I’m right! You’re wrong! Take that! “The crowd cheers*”
If that is the case, this would be like responding to a claim that President Obama's popularity among the voters is at 60% by looking at a survey taken among the Republican Party's most devoted volunteers and saying, "You do not realize how many orders of magnitude you are off by that statement."
One hopes the marketing department has a handle on demographics, and of the limitations of preliminary surveys. One prelimary survey question is not likely to be more than a bellweather - something for them to gauge if they should research something further. It's equally unwise to assume that they would rely on a single item in making any business decisions.Quote:
There are reasons to expect that the sample population is not representative of the population at large, and it would be unwise to make a business decision without considering the possible differences.
And while we're discussing sample populations that are not representative of the population at large, there is hardly a better example than that of forum posters versus players of the game as a whole ;). Just sayin.'
And here is your own strawman. Surveys like this one, by their nature, are like reconaissance missions. They cover a number of topics, not just one, and the money spent asking the questions has been tagged for the purpose of helping prioritize what might get the development dollars based on customer feedback. Apples and oranges.Quote:
And the really frustrating thing is that, with the money that it took to ask the question and tally and assess the results, they could probably have built the thing and been done with it.
I see some real issues raised by the advocates that are worth thinking about. I suppose that you're correct, however, in that we're now in the stage of digging in heels defending a particular solution and those other discussions won't happen anymore.Quote:
Originally Posted by GregJL
Developer. Singular. Please let's not let urban legend turn this into 'Thus Spake Turbine'. I appreciate Floon's opinion and while I think at this point he just likes this thread for fun at the end of his work day, we really only know a couple of things:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohioastro
1. No one is working on it right now.
2. Floon thinks we overestimate a 'slow xp' or 'opt out xp' feature value
3. Floon can personally see the benefit of a mentoring system as oposed to an XP regulation system.
Couple of things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohioastro
Not everyone is wearing their heart on their sleeve about this this. We have a few folks who are exceedingly passionate about it and fail to modulate a bit... You can't paint everyone with that brush without being disingenuous yourself.
The other thing, BOTH sides of the passionate people are having a religious war. Discussion does not mean that at some point either side 'wins'. Discussion is the back and forth. Advocates have started a thread and want some kind of feature in this realm. A fair amount of detractors have come to this thread for the sole purpose of tearing it down without real discussion themselves. And then of course there are the obvious trolls...
But regardless, there are people on BOTH sides who are trying to be eloquent and civil and it does everyone a disservice to lump both groups into some antagonistic death match.
But it is the internet and this is a forum, so I suppose I'll check out for a few pages again and let people do what they do.
stop doing quests, or stop playing so often. problem solved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarwathiel
Good solution. Where were you when the numerous threads on this subject began, so we could have avoided all this?
:rolleyes:
Excuse me? Would you care to explain this statement? Could you provide ANY examples of where the advocates of this feature have simply dismissed concerns, argued instead of engaging in dialog, and haven't "listened"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohioastro
The advocates of the XP toggle/throttle (particularly us passionate ones) have been engaging in MOST of the dialog, though it's been somewhat one sided. The Devs have NOT really engaged in any real dialog on this subject, and for those detractors who bring up whatever wild (or sometimes reasonable) issues or concerns they think they see with this feature, dialog ensued and it was demonstrated how their concerns could be alleviated even while quite likely being overblown. In the end it didn't end with any of the detractors saying "No that wouldn't work, that won't solve the problem". They essentially agreed with the solution or disengaged from the conversation.
We've seen several detractors who came to these threads to poo-poo the idea and were subsequently converted into supporters who either realized they COULD use such a feature, or at the very least, understood the need that others have for it, realized it wouldn't impact their gaming style, and could see the value in it.
I don't know of a single player who's come to these threads as a supporter of the idea (passionate ones or otherwise), and was convinced by any other players, or the Devs, that this idea had no merit and wasn't worth putting into the game (even with a Devs post that they believe it's not worth putting in - and you know how SOME people just swoon over, and hang off of every word coming from, a Dev).
It appears OhioAstro that you (like Floon) are a supporter of the mentoring idea, and therefore perhaps want to see something far more full-fledged like that be worked on, than a simple XP toggle/throttle. That's fine. I'm all for it, though it doesn't fully address the concerns of those who what to slow down their leveling to begin with, and it's also EXCEEDINGLY more complicated by far, which means that Turbine will have to invest significantly more resources into putting something like that in, and it will take a LOT more time to see the light of day, if ever. If that is the direction Turbine wants to go, then I think an XP toggle/throttle is a good first step.
You forgot one:Quote:
Originally Posted by henry316
floon: there's no serious perceived need to work on itHe's been at this a long time, and puts disclaimers in his statements when it's just his opinion (e.g. #3 above). He's a department head, and can likely talk to anyone on the live or expansion teams he wants to within a 30-second walk from his desk. He also undoubtedly sits in on all sorts of meetings to discuss development priorities, and if anyone thinks that everything discussed in those are entirely (or even primarily) of interest to every single person attending... LOL :). Whenever I go to one of those meetings, easily 2/3 of it has nothing whatever to do with anything I'm going to work on, which means I get to learn a bunch about what other people are going to work on. (That's actually a good thing, by the way).
I very much doubt that statement was just floon flapping his gums. However, that doesn't mean that Turbine cannot become convinced that this feature is worth keeping on the cut list at some point. It just means that their team doesn't currently see it as important enough to bump other things they're working on, or plan to work on, in the short term.
They have some legitimate concerns about doing this:
So if people really want it, they should focus on proposing a feature which minimizes those concerns. Keep it as simple as possible, and make it as idiot-proof as possible.
- Virtually anything you do is non-trivial, can impact gameplay in unforseen ways, and requires a non-trivial amount of testing.
- Anything that increases customer service volume is signficantly less attractive to consider.
Example:
Development is simplified, testing is simplified, and customer service isn't much of an issue either. That helps address legitimate concerns from the developer, which improves the chances it might get done. Yes, that might mean someone who wants it off might forget to do so every once in a while. OK... you'll survive. If that's the price to get the feature done at all, it's probably worth it.
- Make it command-line only for now: "/xp [on | off]", default of "on". No UI work or testing required. If it some non-trivial number of players use it, adding it to Gameplay options in the UI (with appropriate warnings) can be done later.
- Put a bright yellow "warning" in the Chat box whenever it's turned off, so people are aware that they can temporarily strand themselves without any completable quests if they run with it "off" long-term.
- Turn it on whenever a character logs out, so nobody accidentally goes for days without accumulating XP (and therefore has a reason to submit a customer service ticket).
Khafar
I wish I got the market surveys I would of sign for the xp reducer and the people who want this feature do not care about what floon says. The topic is not called floon. He/She might be a great Person. BUT he/she is not the topic. The topic is about XP Reducer.
We want a Challange and the xp reducer would give us this Challange. We can do all the level 30 quests at level 30 then level up once we are done with level 30 quests.
I starting to look at the game now as EASY MODE (free exp, Rest exp, 25% weekend exp) Power levelers paradise.