I am here to PROTEST against the NUTS grinds of the game

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

I thought this game was supposed to be fun and not a second job (it actually seems like a main job if you ask me).

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Nobody forces you to play the game so hard to the point it feels like a "job".
I, for one, play for fun and for the story.
If it starts to feel like a job, I will quit playing.
Yea, I occasionally find myself grinding out slayer deeds and getting bored, but then I remind myself that I'm not being forced to do these and I go do something else.

I understand people's desire to be "the best", but if it's at the cost of getting any joy out of the game, it's just not worth it.

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Originally Posted by Hurin

It's probably no accident that the Imbuement system with its exponentially, constantly increasing grind was introduced at just about the same time that they were deciding that level cap increases weren't in our foreseeable future.

"Hey everyone! Thanks to this exponentially grindier system, you won't have to dismantle your LIs the next time your character levels up! Oh, and also, your characters won't be leveling up anymore."

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Blame our fellow players for the lack of level cap increases. Turbine was set to add another 5, when a number of folks started complaining about it. One complaint in particular was that they didn't want to have to destroy their level 100 LI just to build the same one at 105 (like we all did with each level cap increase).

That destroy-your-old-LI-and-craft-a-new one is the "LI grind" that was reduced or eliminated by the imbuement system. ILIs are an alternative advancement system, so the tier caps on the legs better go up with time (since our character levels are stuck).

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Originally Posted by EB64

Nobody forces you to play the game so hard to the point it feels like a "job".
I, for one, play for fun and for the story.
If it starts to feel like a job, I will quit playing.
Yea, I occasionally find myself grinding out slayer deeds and getting bored, but then I remind myself that I'm not being forced to do these and I go do something else.

I understand people's desire to be "the best", but if it's at the cost of getting any joy out of the game, it's just not worth it.

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No, I have a life thankfully and I am not putting myself through that and won't. In case you haven't seen my previous posted, I have stated that I had the pro-active actions to start this thread for its community. People are losing their love of the game because of things like this. This is destroying the game and I as a player cannot accept this silently. I said the game looks like a job atm, but I don't play it as if it were my second job, I play as an escape from real world, to have fun and forget things, do something challenging, not to do an easy instance for 600 hours.
If people want to do instances like sammy a thousand times, maybe they should re-evaluate their time spent on LOTRO. Maybe they're playing more than what's considered healthy. Seriously, there are so many more things to life than just a game and you want to spend the free time you have to play LOTRO doing instances like Sammy when you could do something more interesting in the game? This is a joke.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

Blame our fellow players for the lack of level cap increases. Turbine was set to add another 5, when a number of folks started complaining about it. One complaint in particular was that they didn't want to have to destroy their level 100 LI just to build the same one at 105 (like we all did with each level cap increase).

That destroy-your-old-LI-and-craft-a-new one is the "LI grind" that was reduced or eliminated by the imbuement system. ILIs are an alternative advancement system, so the tier caps on the legs better go up with time (since our character levels are stuck).

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I'm well aware that they canceled that last level cap increase. That, in and of itself, was not a bad thing. But I sure hope you don't believe that they had further level cap increases planned and instead abandoned those at that very moment, and instead quickly developed and released the imbuement system.

And, most of all, I certainly hope that you don't think that the current LI system is less "grindy" than the prior one. Whether LIs are "destroyed" or not, the imbuement system is already well beyond the prior LI system in time and effort required (or, conveniently, you can just buy the hundreds of scrolls you'll need at the Store!). And it will only get worse. And, if the last update is any indication, it will get worse at an ever-increasing pace.

--H

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Originally Posted by EB64

Nobody forces you to play the game so hard to the point it feels like a "job".
I, for one, play for fun and for the story.
If it starts to feel like a job, I will quit playing.
Yea, I occasionally find myself grinding out slayer deeds and getting bored, but then I remind myself that I'm not being forced to do these and I go do something else.

I understand people's desire to be "the best", but if it's at the cost of getting any joy out of the game, it's just not worth it.

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It's sort of sad to me that you come close to an epiphany there with the last sentence. But then you apparently just stopped cold.

Can I also protest?

I wanna protest the lack of unicorns in my house :P

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Originally Posted by Denebrian_Wintersong

If you want something given to you, maybe go play a console game?

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That is not what any of us have actually said here!

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Originally Posted by Spilo

One problem does not justify another. Turbine's disregard for end-game content and PvP is a major issue. In addition, as I've said before, it's ironic that Turbine doesn't care about raiding and PvP- the one type of content where top line gear/grind is necessary.

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To be completely honest, I pay my sub for PvP. At one point, I do believe that PvP was once one of Turbines big money makers. Turbine has been promising a good PvP update (especially for creeps) for ages now. What do we get? Creep cosmetics, mailbox, and a Osgiliath map (which no one uses anymore unless they want to camp at the doors of each side.) Which, IMHO, was a complete waste of time and resources.

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Originally Posted by Denebrian_Wintersong

MMOs are meant for longevity, not weekend flash and done.

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That is true, however, as a business, they rely on their customers. If they do not keep their customers happy, Turbine will lose customers and money. That will be an issue for their “longevity.”

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Originally Posted by Vilan

Why is anyone grinding? You don't need maxed out LIs for any content (PvE anyway, maybe PvP does, not real familiar with that). You don't even need imbued LIs at all. You don't need essence gear... if you want it, you can craft some up, buy some cheap green/purple essences on the AH (or go to the skirm camp and buy some 95 purples for 500 marks each) and be in perfectly good shape for anything. Virtues aren't that big of a deal, a few essences will give you as much bonus as a full set of 19 virtues.

If you WANT to be maxed out and show everybody how l33t you are, that's a different thing. You have the option to do so. But just because the option to grind to the max exists doesn't mean you have to take it.

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I can only assume by this comment that your LI's are aren’t maxed, that you just slapped on some legacies and just went on your merry way? You don’t need nor care for the increased stats or decreased CD times for some skills that the legacies can give for some classes? I am assuming that you don't have essence gear with either greater or supreme essences? I mean, none of us really need them right?

Some of us actually want to max out our LI's and have good essence gear to more effectively play the class that we are playing. Not because we want to show people how “l33t” we are.

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Originally Posted by Denebrian_Wintersong

I am not defending Turbine.

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Seems like you are!

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Originally Posted by Denebrian_Wintersong

You choose not to pay but want Turbine to make it easier to do it for free? Turbine is in business to make money. They lose too much money, we all lose this game. Want that?

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I will say this, even though Diogo has said it numerous times. None of us are wanting to get anything free. In fact, grind is perfectly fine. But a more reasonable, more balance amount of grind is what we would prefer.
Yes, Turbine is in business to make money, BUT there are more effective ways of making money than making the grind so high that they hope that we will break down and buy the scrolls or crystals that we need. Also, as I said before, lose so many customers, and they also lose money.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

Ironically, the initial cost for ASEs and ASCs in terms of SOMs were less than half of what they are now. But some folks complained that this made acquiring them too easy, so the prices got jacked up for Live.
As this thread shows, at least a substantial part of the "grind" affliction is self-inflicted.

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Sad, but true. I do honestly believe that they would have made it higher without people QQing about how low the price was. We will never really know now.

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Originally Posted by Hurin

It would be nice if those with the "you're just lazy" or "you just want it all and want it now" attitudes would actually think outside their myopic little boxes.

There are a lot of players who are fully willing to do immense amounts of grind to achieve everything in the game. . . if they feel those grinds are in the game for the right reasons. That's the way we played the game in the subscription era. And back then, I was right there (though few of those currently in the peanut gallery now were there with me) telling people to either suck it up and do what's required, or do without the reward.

The problem is that when a game starts selling "grind avoidance" to its players, nobody can ever be sure if a grind is in the game --or is as egregious as it is-- because good game design called for it, or because they realize that a lot of people who don't value earning what they get will just hand over cash instead. Thus, the grinds are artificially greater than they "should" be and are ever-increasing relative to where they otherwise would be in a game that didn't have such perverse incentives and conflicts of interest.

Put another way: People don't object to the grinds per se. They object to the perception that the grinds are worse than they otherwise would be because Turbine makes money directly off of making the game more grindy than it otherwise would be.

There are people here who have done every grind in the game. They have demonstrated their willingness to do the work necessary to earn their rewards. But even they are now looking at how the game systems are progressing and pointing out that this is egregious and falling far outside what was considered reasonable when sound game design and compelling gameplay was the prime consideration in adjusting the level of grind.

It's not surprising that those who willfully hand over their money to avoid parts of the game and have rewards handed to them ex nihilo (how is that different than cheating again? Except where you pay money for it?), thus incentivizing the creation of even more content that they dislike and will pay to avoid, aren't able to think beyond their own short-sighted experience, playstyle, and goals. But it's a shame that they have to so obtusely and ignorantly poop all over valid points founded in far more depth than they are willing to consider.

--H

P.S. And I didn't even take a moment to lambast the ridiculous "false choice" already making its appearance: "They have to do this or we'll never make it to Mordor! They're business! They have to do this or the game ends!" That ridiculous logic has been used to justify every game-integrity-undermining decision since store-exclusive relics. When will you folks give it a rest?

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Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Say what you mean, and stop playing these juvenile games.

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I said what I meant. And I've been saying what I mean. Most recently in this latter case, it's sad to me that he just described exactly why so many people are despairing of this game and moving on, but he does not realize it because his solution is to change what we look for in a game:

"I understand people's desire to be "the best", but if it's at the cost of getting any joy out of the game, it's just not worth it."

. . . and I have said that already in this thread. Multiple times in fact. And you've said nearly the same thing.

Perhaps the more "juvenile" behavior is this sudden outburst on your part. Do you really want to go around with me yet again? It has never, ever worked out well for you (which is likely why you're bizarrely lashing out here so inappropriately). And since we're largely in agreement within this context, it would be a shame to go at each other yet again to no purpose.

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Originally Posted by spelunker

Perhaps another way to put this is to compare the current 'grind' with past expansions.

In the past, LIs required (roughly):
1 Scroll of Delving
21 Scroll's of empowerment to max all legacies (assuming everything was at t3-t4 after leveling, which is reasonable)
3 Star-lits (once these were added to the game).

I don't think the time it takes to earn a SoE is drastically different from what it was in the past, perhaps slightly quicker though.

So the LI grind has roughly quadrupled compared to the past.

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Sorry, I have to give you a yellow card for this due to unsportsmanlike conduct. :)

1. First, multiply the above by 5 or 10. Because that's how many times many of us repeated that same destroy-the-old-LI-and-build-a-new one routine. THAT was the LI grind that Turbine responded to, and eliminated, with ILIs.

2. Second, let's not forget other aspects of the old LI grind that you don't list above. Relic Removal Scroll. Crystal of Remembrance. The cost to buy a new Second Age or First Age symbol (or both). The cost for a new title scroll. The relic grind to get the new top-end relics. The LI-to-30 farming to get the higher level legacies to put on your replacement LI. And then multiply all that by 5 or 10, for each LI you constructed under the old system.


This last update, I had to do none of that. No relics to be removed. No SA or FA symbols. No titles to replace. No legacies to replace.

Instead, I got to keep the exact same ILI I had prior to the update, but I got to make it better.

Yes, that improvement requires a number of scrolls and crystals. But that's because 8 or 9 tiers were added to each legacy. That's like building 3 old LIs, which would require just about the same number of crystals and scrolls as we're needing now (not even counting the scrolls of delving, etc.).

Has it been so long that people really have forgotten the pain of the old LI system? Count your blessings.

I agree that the grind to get the maximum gear on a character is fairly high..... however, if you can get your character Dol Amroth slotted gear (which can be done in about 10 days if you have only one level 100, faster if you have multiple as the tokens are transferable), and run around 15-ish big battles, you can get the teal jewelry sets for your class.... plus probably the 2 symbols to make the first age LI's.... and you really should be ready to participate in anything.

I have learned a long time ago, even before the 40-day Hytbold grind, that you don't HAVE to have your characters geared to the best level currently available. The Dol Amroth level 100 slotted gear with teal essences and teal jewelry kits is pretty much perfect, and allows your character to survive most groups, including T2 instances if you have a decent healer.

In other words: You don't have to have the best of the best for every character. I think the reason they did this, is that there is always something more to strive for while keeping the level at 100. Is it the best way? Probably not..... but I believe they should have been slower with the level raising anyways, 5 levels per expansion, not 10. We would have been at level 70 after Isengard, 75 in Rohan, 80 in Helms Deep, 85 in Gondor, and maybe 90 by the time we got to Minas Irith, and perhaps 95 in the next 2 zones and 100 by the time we reach mordor. But that is just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Hurin

I'm well aware that they canceled that last level cap increase. That, in and of itself, was not a bad thing. But I sure hope you don't believe that they had further level cap increases planned and instead abandoned those at that very moment, and instead quickly developed and released the imbuement system.

And, most of all, I certainly hope that you don't think that the current LI system is less "grindy" than the prior one. Whether LIs are "destroyed" or not, the imbuement system is already well beyond the prior LI system in time and effort required (or, conveniently, you can just buy the hundreds of scrolls you'll need at the Store!). And it will only get worse. And, if the last update is any indication, it will get worse at an ever-increasing pace.

--H

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I certainly think the ILI system is less grindy than what we had before. It's worlds better. See my post just above in case you've forgotten what it was like. The grind to get crystals and scrolls of empowerment is, at worst, no worse than it was before on a per unit basis. In fact, I'd argue that it is better. Just remember that the tier increase this last update is effectively equivalent to building 3 LIs under the old system. If there's any legitimate complaint to be made, it's that Turbine dumped 9 additional tiers per legacy on us at one time, instead of 3 or 4. Personally, I like having the 9 additional tiers this update (as compared to spreading it out over the next year in dribs and drabs).

As far as the aborted level cap increase, I was fine with postponing it. It would have followed up too quickly after the last increase, and I do agree that increases do need to come at a measured pace to effectively give players a chance to play at the current level cap before moving onwards.

I know the ILI system was in the works beforehand, and if you read some of the Dev Team statements at the time, it was clear that the complaints about the LI-destroy-and-replace grind were taken to heart, and the next level cap increase taken off the table until the ILI system was put into place. Ironically, while the complaint before was that our LIs didn't grow with us, now our ILIs are growing without us.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

Sorry, I have to give you a yellow card for this due to unsportsmanlike conduct. :)

1. First, multiply the above by 5 or 10. Because that's how many times many of us repeated that same destroy-the-old-LI-and-build-a-new one routine. THAT was the LI grind that Turbine responded to, and eliminated, with ILIs.

2. Second, let's not forget other aspects of the old LI grind that you don't list above. Relic Removal Scroll. Crystal of Remembrance. The cost to buy a new Second Age or First Age symbol (or both). The cost for a new title scroll. The relic grind to get the new top-end relics. The LI-to-30 farming to get the higher level legacies to put on your replacement LI. And then multiply all that by 5 or 10, for each LI you constructed under the old system.


This last update, I had to do none of that. No relics to be removed. No SA or FA symbols. No titles to replace. No legacies to replace.

Instead, I got to keep the exact same ILI I had prior to the update, but I got to make it better.

Yes, that improvement requires a number of scrolls and crystals. But that's because 8 or 9 tiers were added to each legacy. That's like building 3 old LIs, which would require just about the same number of crystals and scrolls as we're needing now (not even counting the scrolls of delving, etc.).

Has it been so long that people really have forgotten the pain of the old LI system? Count your blessings.

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oh dear. FA symbols are in fact so much common that it wouldn't make any difference. Why would I want to remove my relics? Isn't each update/expansions supposed to bring new/better relics? I'd just remove them to refine and get a few shards? To be frank, that's pretty ridiculous. LI titles can be easilly acquired too, you can get both titles for your LIs in a day. You just need to do quests from the current region and you'll have enough tokens to buy 6 titles and more. PFFT
Replacing legacies are also a thing you can do in what, 2 hours? That's the amount of time I spent on each of my toons to get their legacies right.
I think you're not discerning things very well here.

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Originally Posted by maartena

I agree that the grind to get the maximum gear on a character is fairly high..... however, if you can get your character Dol Amroth slotted gear (which can be done in about 10 days if you have only one level 100, faster if you have multiple as the tokens are transferable), and run around 15-ish big battles, you can get the teal jewelry sets for your class.... plus probably the 2 symbols to make the first age LI's.... and you really should be ready to participate in anything.

I have learned a long time ago, even before the 40-day Hytbold grind, that you don't HAVE to have your characters geared to the best level currently available. The Dol Amroth level 100 slotted gear with teal essences and teal jewelry kits is pretty much perfect, and allows your character to survive most groups, including T2 instances if you have a decent healer.

In other words: You don't have to have the best of the best for every character. I think the reason they did this, is that there is always something more to strive for while keeping the level at 100. Is it the best way? Probably not..... but I believe they should have been slower with the level raising anyways, 5 levels per expansion, not 10. We would have been at level 70 after Isengard, 75 in Rohan, 80 in Helms Deep, 85 in Gondor, and maybe 90 by the time we got to Minas Irith, and perhaps 95 in the next 2 zones and 100 by the time we reach mordor. But that is just my opinion.

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Actually DA, osgiliath, you name it grind isnt unreasonable. Originally 24 day grind to get armor, 5-7min per day is hardly a grind when you compare it to system that was clearly designed to be store driven system from ground up. 250+ BBs for one LI. No matter if we need or must get them, just to have that system in the game is cancerous and I dont see how anyone can be proud of the system that is clearly exploiting their customers. And as said in this thread, for many of us maximizing our gear potential was big part of the game and now it's at the point where people who enjoyed that part od the game juat cant be bothered because one can have just so much free time for a game, even if you would play 12h per day grinding BBs, it would take months to get enough stars to kit few alts fully out that was totally reasonably done before imbuing system in few nights.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

Ironically, while the complaint before was that our LIs didn't grow with us, now our ILIs are growing without us.

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No the complaint was about the grind, specially since they were considering to raise the level cap only a few months after they raised it to level 100, so of course people wouldn't accept to grind another LI is such a small amount of time.
If you read the imbuement dev diary, they say it pretty clearly that the imbuement was designed to decrease the grind we had prior its release. In fact it increased the grind 4x and we're only on U17. I can't wait until U18 and U19 when half of my toons are behind schedule and the grind is like 10x more than it used to be.... it will be so so sad seeing all players leaving. And I wonder what you guys will have to say then.

This is a very timely thread for me, as today I was about to embark on my daily routine of DA, MT, Osgiliath, and BBs in order to build up currency for scrolls, when I just couldn't drag myself to do it. The same stuff day after day has finally reached the tipping point for me. I have only played one character through each and every quest in the game. I have alts for each profession that I've only used to max crafting so I can equip my main character. Most people have talked about how the grind has discouraged them from playing their alts, as the time commitment is too much. I can understand this. For me, the grind actually had the opposite effect. Rather than run the same set of dailies for the umpteenth time, I decided to actually play a little bit on one of my alts. I found it had been so long since I'd done the epic story, I couldn't even remember what happened to Horn and Nona. I played for 4 hours just doing the epic quests in Eriador. It was actually very enjoyable. It made me remember how much fun I'd had the first time on my main. It was such a night and day experience to the end game. I'm so glad I took my time and didn't rush to end game like so many do.

The problems I see with the current grind is that it is all centered on empowerment scrolls. There only a few ways to obtain these, so people get burnt out. Prior to imbuement, you could run a wide range of content to get the shards, symbols, crystals, etc. that you needed. There will always be grind, but what we have now is the missionary position of grinding. ;)

It has been mentioned that you don't need maxed out stats and LIs to play the content. This is true, but are we certain it will stay that way? We are only two updates into imbuement and already players are throwing up their hands and giving up because the numbers are so high. Is content still going to be easy 3 updates from now when we're hundreds of scrolls behind the max? Maybe, maybe not.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

The issue isn't so much with the LIs, but it's the devs complete inability to make gear that people want reasonably attainable from places that make sense that has made us so fearful of level cap increases. The essence system sounded good initially, but they never made the essence acquirement sane, and I doubt Turbine ever will. Until the hardest part of the essence system is acquiring the frames (NOT the essences), it's going to make us fear level cap as completely wiping everything on the character is about as close to a char delete as you can get due to the time invested in getting the gear to that point.

When it makes more sense to buy the missing pieces than it is to waste time (especially for someone who's timebound), then there's something very wrong with the game.

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I'm actually 180 degrees opposite on the frame/essence issue. The frame should be the easiest thing to get (e.g., DA 4 slot armor), while the essences are the core of the armor and should be the most difficult part to get. Admittedly, Turbine seemed to use this approach to start (with easy-to-get 4-slot DA frames), attempted to ride both horses at the same time (by making the bare 5 slot frames so hard to get), and then moved back with the introduction of the 3-slot frames. The difference in frames, in any event, is marginal, and can be overcome by the quality of the essences. Consider what 5-slot frames with only major essences would be like.

In any event, I don't see why essence armor makes you fear a level cap increase. With previous level cap increases, we quickly replace our previous BIS wholesale with purple items, thus effectively wiping everything on the character. And we'd then have to take a good bit of time to get the new BIS. With essences, we at least can remove the essences we worked so hard to get and use them in a new, higher level frame. Thus, we effectively are better off than we would be under previous level cap increases.

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

No the complaint was about the grind, specially since they were considering to raise the level cap only a few months after they raised it to level 100, so of course people wouldn't accept to grind another LI is such a small amount of time.
If you read the imbuement dev diary, they say it pretty clearly that the imbuement was designed to decrease the grind we had prior its release. In fact it increased the grind 4x and we're only on U17. I can't wait until U18 and U19 when half of my toons are behind schedule and the grind is like 10x more than it used to be.... it will be so so sad seeing all players leaving. And I wonder what you guys will have to say then.

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I laughed at that dev diary claiming to decrease the grind for the new LI's.
I for one dread when and if they actually do raise level cap. I wonder how much they will increase legacy tiers then? Another 10 - 12 tiers?

I would actually like to set some of the devs down, give them some level 100 toons. No gear, no essences, no marks or meds, no gold, no nothing. Let them completely grind it out and see what they think about what they have done. I wonder if it would actually change their opinions on the amount of grind then.

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Originally Posted by maartena

I agree that the grind to get the maximum gear on a character is fairly high..... however, if you can get your character Dol Amroth slotted gear (which can be done in about 10 days if you have only one level 100, faster if you have multiple as the tokens are transferable), and run around 15-ish big battles, you can get the teal jewelry sets for your class.... plus probably the 2 symbols to make the first age LI's.... and you really should be ready to participate in anything.

I have learned a long time ago, even before the 40-day Hytbold grind, that you don't HAVE to have your characters geared to the best level currently available. The Dol Amroth level 100 slotted gear with teal essences and teal jewelry kits is pretty much perfect, and allows your character to survive most groups, including T2 instances if you have a decent healer.

In other words: You don't have to have the best of the best for every character. I think the reason they did this, is that there is always something more to strive for while keeping the level at 100. Is it the best way? Probably not..... but I believe they should have been slower with the level raising anyways, 5 levels per expansion, not 10. We would have been at level 70 after Isengard, 75 in Rohan, 80 in Helms Deep, 85 in Gondor, and maybe 90 by the time we got to Minas Irith, and perhaps 95 in the next 2 zones and 100 by the time we reach mordor. But that is just my opinion.

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LOL

First: the best of the best should be obtained by doing challenging content, not doing mediocre instances like sammy literally a thousand times. Best of the best should be obtained by the best players that earn it for being good, not for players that do not have life and too much time to play. Let's be honest here, the fact that you're (I am not talking about you specifically, but people in the forum generally) in the forums means that you're probably a little more addicted to the game and you have a lot of time to play. But this is not what the general player base thinks, the majority of players do agree that this time things have derailed.
Again, it's playstyle. Many people's playstyle is to play alts seriously. Unfortunely now they will have to be selective about the characters they are going gear up and eventually getting annoyed then finally QUIT.
That's what you guys want, isn't it?

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

I certainly think the ILI system is less grindy than what we had before. It's worlds better. See my post just above in case you've forgotten what it was like. The grind to get crystals and scrolls of empowerment is, at worst, no worse than it was before on a per unit basis. In fact, I'd argue that it is better. Just remember that the tier increase this last update is effectively equivalent to building 3 LIs under the old system. If there's any legitimate complaint to be made, it's that Turbine dumped 9 additional tiers per legacy on us at one time, instead of 3 or 4. Personally, I like having the 9 additional tiers this update (as compared to spreading it out over the next year in dribs and drabs).

As far as the aborted level cap increase, I was fine with postponing it. It would have followed up too quickly after the last increase, and I do agree that increases do need to come at a measured pace to effectively give players a chance to play at the current level cap before moving onwards.

I know the ILI system was in the works beforehand, and if you read some of the Dev Team statements at the time, it was clear that the complaints about the LI-destroy-and-replace grind were taken to heart, and the next level cap increase taken off the table until the ILI system was put into place. Ironically, while the complaint before was that our LIs didn't grow with us, now our ILIs are growing without us.

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What? How you explain I managed to fully upgrade my first agers after getting one on each level cap in few nights ever since 65 cap (moria was ### in this regards), only now I simply dont have time nor will to do 10x the content than I had to do before in order to get first ager and fully max it. I would also point out that only people who were clueless how system should work and worked only demanded new LI system. Only complaint people like me had since RoI was that first agers were handed out like candies for various reasons and progression from 3->2->1st ager was taken away from the game (went straight from 1st ager to first ager ever since 85 cap). Old system was perfect, you needed new LI on each level cap, first you got 3rd or 2nd ager, upgraded it in order to do harder content then eventually EARNED first ager which had real difference on stats. After that you spend few nights doing instances if you didnt have already currency to upgrade them and then you were done. This utilized crafting, instances, solo play, etc. That was perfect.

Add my name to the list of people who are over the grind. This update has been the worst for me as it seems so pointless. Even the Hybold rebuilt felt more of an achievement then this, because you could see physical progress as each new building was constructed.

I have decided to take a break from the game as of last weekend. The last few weeks I had been logging on only to grind out dailies/BB or skirmishes simply to level my legendary. It stop being fun and I noticed I would log on in a happy mood, then after a hour or two of LOTRO gaming I would log off feeling frustrated and down. Not my idea of escaping when my in game problems are worst then my real life ones.

I only have 3 legendaries on my main and 2 on an alt to grind out. I cant imagine how those with 8 plus alts cope.

But it is simply too much so I cancelled my sub before it came up for renewing this week. I will be back next year with the next update, but for now there is no point for myself to log on

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

No the complaint was about the grind, specially since they were considering to raise the level cap only a few months after they raised it to level 100, so of course people wouldn't accept to grind another LI is such a small amount of time.
If you read the imbuement dev diary, they say it pretty clearly that the imbuement was designed to decrease the grind we had prior its release. In fact it increased the grind 4x and we're only on U17. I can't wait until U18 and U19 when half of my toons are behind schedule and the grind is like 10x more than it used to be.... it will be so so sad seeing all players leaving. And I wonder what you guys will have to say then.

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I suggest reading the dev diary more carefully. The grind that the imbuement system was designed to reduce was the destroy-and-craft grind of replacing our LIs with each level increase. There was never any promise or indication that there would be no grind associated with ILIs. That is wishful thinking on your part, I believe.

In any event, the grind clearly is less, because so much of the old LI system has been eliminated, and the cost to increase a legacy tier is the same, at most. The problem is that Turbine dumped 9 additional tiers for each legacy on us at once, which is the equivalent, in tier terms, of constructing 3 or so old LIs.

I imagine that some folks could digest this better if those tiers were introduced in sets of 3 every 3 months or so (at time 0, 3 months, and 6 months). Personally, I'd rather have the 9 tiers up front, because I can get them all up now and gain the benefit for most of the ensuing 6 month period. The actual effort involved is the same in either case, but I suppose it depends on individual perceptions (and perception is key to whether or not something feels like a grind). The former would find the grind more acceptable if split into smaller chunks over a period of time. I find the grind more acceptable if I can focus on it and get it out of the way relatively quickly (which I have), and thus have 5+ months of playing without worrying about that particular grind.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by snakeeyes00

Add my name to the list of people who are over the grind. This update has been the worst for me as it seems so pointless. Even the Hybold rebuilt felt more of an achievement then this, because you could see physical progress as each new building was constructed.

I have decided to take a break from the game as of last weekend. The last few weeks I had been logging on only to grind out dailies/BB or skirmishes simply to level my legendary. It stop being fun and I noticed I would log on in a happy mood, then after a hour or two of LOTRO gaming I would log off feeling frustrated and down. Not my idea of escaping when my in game problems are worst then my real life ones.

I only have 3 legendaries on my main and 2 on an alt to grind out. I cant imagine how those with 8 plus alts cope.

But it is simply too much so I cancelled my sub before it came up for renewing this week. I will be back next year with the next update, but for now there is no point for myself to log on

---

You're not the first that came here on this thread to say that you're taking a break of the game because of this unrealistic grind.
Now we have the proof that this is actually driving the players away. Only a few weeks after U17 and many people are leaving already. Isn't that strange?
Oh yes, it's strange for me.
If you think that this grind is not an issue, it's time to wake up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

Sorry, I have to give you a yellow card for this due to unsportsmanlike conduct. :)

1. First, multiply the above by 5 or 10. Because that's how many times many of us repeated that same destroy-the-old-LI-and-build-a-new one routine. THAT was the LI grind that Turbine responded to, and eliminated, with ILIs.

2. Second, let's not forget other aspects of the old LI grind that you don't list above. Relic Removal Scroll. Crystal of Remembrance. The cost to buy a new Second Age or First Age symbol (or both). The cost for a new title scroll. The relic grind to get the new top-end relics. The LI-to-30 farming to get the higher level legacies to put on your replacement LI. And then multiply all that by 5 or 10, for each LI you constructed under the old system.


This last update, I had to do none of that. No relics to be removed. No SA or FA symbols. No titles to replace. No legacies to replace.

Instead, I got to keep the exact same ILI I had prior to the update, but I got to make it better.

Yes, that improvement requires a number of scrolls and crystals. But that's because 8 or 9 tiers were added to each legacy. That's like building 3 old LIs, which would require just about the same number of crystals and scrolls as we're needing now (not even counting the scrolls of delving, etc.).

Has it been so long that people really have forgotten the pain of the old LI system? Count your blessings.

---

You're right, that post was unsportsmanlike as I left out a number of things.
Along with what DiogoVP said:
How many times will the legacy tier cap be raised, so I can add that into my grind calculations for ILIs? We just had a cap raise, which didn't coincide with a raise in level cap, how many times did we 'have' to grind out more emp scrolls mid-expansion with the traditional LIs? This one mid-level-cap tier raise already equaled significantly more grind than a traditional level cap raise would have in the old system, and this was after a 2-3 month gap, rather than over a year under the old system (level cap changes were more than a year apart for MoM>SoM>RoI>RoR>HD>Gondor). If they follow the trend, in one year we'll have to grind out more Emp scrolls than we had to in the previous 5 years of the game...

I'd say that the added amount of IXP you have to dump into an ILI compared to even a FA LI more than balances out with any of the tertiary grinds related to the old system, which as DiogoVP already pointed out, were quite minor for someone who managed their LI inventory and legacies. I have relics coming out of my ears from all the trash LIs i've leveled up purely for their IXP runes.

I'd even bet i could set up a 100% fresh LI with desired relics upon hitting a new level cap faster than I can sit and click an Emp scroll, select the right LI, select the right legacy, acknowledge, and sit through the induction the 60+ times over I have to for one of these ILI updates.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

In any event, the grind clearly is less, because so much of the old LI system has been eliminated, and the cost to increase a legacy tier is the same, at most. The problem is that Turbine dumped 9 additional tiers for each legacy on us at once, which is the equivalent, in tier terms, of constructing 3 or so old LIs.

I imagine that some folks could digest this better if those tiers were introduced in sets of 3 every 3 months or so (at time 0, 3 months, and 6 months). Personally, I'd rather have the 9 tiers up front, because I can get them all up now and gain the benefit for most of the ensuing 6 month period. The actual effort involved is the same in either case, but I suppose it depends on individual perceptions (and perception is key to whether or not something feels like a grind). The former would find the grind more acceptable if split into smaller chunks over a period of time. I find the grind more acceptable if I can focus on it and get it out of the way relatively quickly (which I have), and thus have 5+ months of playing without worrying about that particular grind.

---

Actually, the entirety of the old LI system still exists, and you still have to follow the vast majority of it plus the new system to maximize your resource allocations.

What makes you think the 9 tiers we just got were the 'upfront' for the remainder of the year from now till summer's end?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

There was never any promise or indication that there would be no grind associated with ILIs. That is wishful thinking on your part, I believe.

---

This is the last time I am gonna repeat this okay? So listen carefully:
WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR NO GRIND, WE'RE ASKING FOR REASONABLE GRIND.
We're ok with grind, as long as it's feasible for all the players with the most varied playstyles.
It's like you choose not to listen and ignore things that we are saying. Haven't you even read my original post?
Wow

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

It's essentially the same thing both of us have been saying, just from being said from very different perspectives.

---

Fair enough. Let's try to get along now. We're essentially in agreement, after all. So, you'll ignore my lame, occasional attempts at being coy when I tire of just repeating myself, and I'll ignore when you wag your credentials around. :p

--H

P.S. That's intended as some self-deprecation and some gentle, friendly ribbing. Though I suppose if I have to explain that. . . ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by spelunker

You're right, that post was unsportsmanlike as I left out a number of things.
Along with what DiogoVP said:
How many times will the legacy tier cap be raised, so I can add that into my grind calculations for ILIs? We just had a cap raise, which didn't coincide with a raise in level cap, how many times did we 'have' to grind out more emp scrolls mid-expansion with the traditional LIs? This one mid-level-cap tier raise already equaled significantly more grind than a traditional level cap raise would have in the old system, and this was after a 2-3 month gap, rather than over a year under the old system (level cap changes were more than a year apart for MoM>SoM>RoI>RoR>HD>Gondor). If they follow the trend, in one year we'll have to grind out more Emp scrolls than we had to in the previous 5 years of the game...

I'd say that the added amount of IXP you have to dump into an ILI compared to even a FA LI more than balances out with any of the tertiary grinds related to the old system, which as DiogoVP already pointed out, were quite minor for someone who managed their LI inventory and legacies.

I'd even bet i could set up a 100% fresh LI with desired relics upon hitting a new level cap faster than I can sit and click an Emp scroll, select the right LI, select the right legacy, acknowledge, and sit through the induction the 60+ times over I have to for one of these ILI updates.

Actually, the entirety of the old LI system still exists, and you still have to follow the vast majority of it plus the new system to maximize your resource allocations.

What makes you think the 9 tiers we just got were the 'upfront' for the remainder of the year from now till summer's end?

---

MWAHAHA
Thank you for explaining what I struggled to explain. You're absolutely right.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Scirocco

I suggest reading the dev diary more carefully. The grind that the imbuement system was designed to reduce was the destroy-and-craft grind of replacing our LIs with each level increase. There was never any promise or indication that there would be no grind associated with ILIs. That is wishful thinking on your part, I believe.

In any event, the grind clearly is less, because so much of the old LI system has been eliminated, and the cost to increase a legacy tier is the same, at most. The problem is that Turbine dumped 9 additional tiers for each legacy on us at once, which is the equivalent, in tier terms, of constructing 3 or so old LIs.

I imagine that some folks could digest this better if those tiers were introduced in sets of 3 every 3 months or so (at time 0, 3 months, and 6 months). Personally, I'd rather have the 9 tiers up front, because I can get them all up now and gain the benefit for most of the ensuing 6 month period. The actual effort involved is the same in either case, but I suppose it depends on individual perceptions (and perception is key to whether or not something feels like a grind). The former would find the grind more acceptable if split into smaller chunks over a period of time. I find the grind more acceptable if I can focus on it and get it out of the way relatively quickly (which I have), and thus have 5+ months of playing without worrying about that particular grind.

---

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4_Pbx9mvWPY
after reading that bull####.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by spelunker

You're right, that post was unsportsmanlike as I left out a number of things.
Along with what DiogoVP said:
How many times will the legacy tier cap be raised, so I can add that into my grind calculations for ILIs? We just had a cap raise, which didn't coincide with a raise in level cap, how many times did we 'have' to grind out more emp scrolls mid-expansion with the traditional LIs? This one mid-level-cap tier raise already equaled significantly more grind than a traditional level cap raise would have in the old system, and this was after a 2-3 month gap, rather than over a year under the old system (level cap changes were more than a year apart for MoM>SoM>RoI>RoR>HD>Gondor). If they follow the trend, in one year we'll have to grind out more Emp scrolls than we had to in the previous 5 years of the game...

I'd say that the added amount of IXP you have to dump into an ILI compared to even a FA LI more than balances out with any of the tertiary grinds related to the old system, which as DiogoVP already pointed out, were quite minor for someone who managed their LI inventory and legacies. I have relics coming out of my ears from all the trash LIs i've leveled up purely for their IXP runes.

I'd even bet i could set up a 100% fresh LI with desired relics upon hitting a new level cap faster than I can sit and click an Emp scroll, select the right LI, select the right legacy, acknowledge, and sit through the induction the 60+ times over I have to for one of these ILI updates.

Actually, the entirety of the old LI system still exists, and you still have to follow the vast majority of it plus the new system to maximize your resource allocations.

What makes you think the 9 tiers we just got were the 'upfront' for the remainder of the year from now till summer's end?

---

I certainly hope we do get another 9 tiers the next major expansion. It is our alternative advancement system, after all, and it's taking the place of character leveling. ILIs are not dead-ends, and it is reasonable to expect future tier cap increases.

The key difference is that the old LIs were dead-ends. Once you maxxed one out, it never got better. You had to trash it and start with a new one (rinse and repeat once or twice with each level increase, depending on when you switched to SA and/or FA).

And are you seriously bringing up IXP as a significant problem? IXP is a non-issue. This time around, I didn't bother using any IXP runes. The IXP requirement for each tier-up is relatively modest, that normal playing with questing and deeds provides all the IXP one needs. There may be legitimate complaints about the ILI system, but IXP is not one of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

This is the last time I am gonna repeat this okay? So listen carefully:
WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR NO GRIND, WE'RE ASKING FOR REASONABLE GRIND.
We're ok with grind, as long as it's feasible for all the players with the most varied playstyles.
It's like you choose not to listen and ignore things that we are saying. Haven't you even read my original post?
Wow

---

I have read your OP, and I do recognize that by "varied playstyles" you mean "multiple maxed alts."

I disagree that "reasonable" should be measured based on someone with 10 alts. A reasonable grind to someone with 10 alts would occupy someone with a single character for a few days, or less.

I measure a reasonable grind in this context based on a player with a single maxed main with 2 ILIs. If someone wants to max 10 alts, more power to them. But it is reasonable to expect them to spend 10x the amount of time and effort to do so as compared to someone with a single maxed character.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

I certainly hope we do get another 9 tiers the next major expansion. It is our alternative advancement system, after all, and it's taking the place of character leveling.

---

Egad! This is being celebrated now?

So instead of content and leveling while we play it, we're all just happy to run the Dol Amroth instances again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

. . . and again.

That you don't click a button that says "deconstruct" in between the grind stages is entirely irrelevant. Objectively speaking, they've increased the grind immensely and yet some people are thrilled because they've attached different labels over the grind.

It tickles me as well when people say: "I agree with you that they dropped too many new tiers on us at once, but it's still okay". . . it's not the first time we've seen people say that. That's sorta like saying: "I don't think the number of speeding tickets I got was excessive. I mean, I got twelve this month. But if I got only one per month over a year, that wouldn't be so bad!". . . ummm, but it's the pace of the ticket influx that is troubling! And we're only in the first month and you have twelve! :rolleyes:

P.S. I'm not saying level caps are necessary for compelling gameplay and development. But pointing to the Imbuement system as an example of how it should be handled. . . that just leaves me speechless.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

I have read your OP, and I do recognize that by "varied playstyles" you mean "multiple maxed alts."

I disagree that "reasonable" should be measured based on someone with 10 alts. A reasonable grind to someone with 10 alts would occupy someone with a single character for a few days, or less.

I measure a reasonable grind in this context based on a player with a single maxed main with 2 ILIs. If someone wants to max 10 alts, more power to them. But it is reasonable to expect them to spend 10x the amount of time and effort to do so as compared to someone with a single maxed character.

---

More bull####. Not all chacaters have just 2 LIs, and even if we would use 2 as neccessary minimum you seriously think you can do over 400 BBs in reasonable time to meet your requirements of reasonable grind?

Edit now that tou think this is totally reasonable. Please link your mains all time BB reward statistics on BB panel. I bet my ### you havent done over 400 BBs on your life time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

The IXP requirement for each tier-up is relatively modest, that normal playing with questing and deeds provides all the IXP one needs.

---

O.O
We are not playing the same game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hurin

Egad! This is being celebrated now?

So instead of content and leveling while we play it, we're all just happy to run the Dol Amroth instances again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

. . . and again.

That you don't click a button that says "deconstruct" in between the grind stages is entirely irrelevant. Objectively speaking, they've increased the grind immensely and yet some people are thrilled because they've attached different labels over the grind.

It tickles me as well when people say: "I agree with you that they dropped too many new tiers on us at once, but it's still okay". . . it's not the first time we've seen people say that. That's sorta like saying: "I don't think the number of speeding tickets I got was excessive. I mean, I got twelve this month. But if I got only one per month over a year, that wouldn't be so bad!". . . ummm, but it's the pace of the ticket influx that is troubling! And we're only in the first month and you have twelve! :rolleyes:

P.S. I'm not saying level caps are necessary for compelling gameplay and development. But pointing to the Imbuement system as an example of how it should be handled. . . that just leaves me speechless.

---

It's getting annoying having to explain the same thing over and over again. Congratz to you for enduring it all so far and with class. lol
I am done repeating myself over and over. I have to take a break :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

I certainly hope we do get another 9 tiers the next major expansion. It is our alternative advancement system, after all, and it's taking the place of character leveling. ILIs are not dead-ends, and it is reasonable to expect future tier cap increases.

The key difference is that the old LIs were dead-ends. Once you maxxed one out, it never got better. You had to trash it and start with a new one (rinse and repeat once or twice with each level increase, depending on when you switched to SA and/or FA).

And are you seriously bringing up IXP as a significant problem? IXP is a non-issue. This time around, I didn't bother using any IXP runes. The IXP requirement for each tier-up is relatively modest, that normal playing with questing and deeds provides all the IXP one needs. There may be legitimate complaints about the ILI system, but IXP is not one of them.

---

IXP is precisely as non-issue as relics, titles, and legacies, which are all also taken care of in the same process (that is still 100% the old LI system), that you claim has been largely eliminated.

So we get a major update every ~3 months in this game. If we get a further 9 tiers every update, that will be more Emp/crystal grinding in 1 year than we had for the entire 5-6-year history of LIs prior to ILIs. The fact that you hang on to one pixelated item rather than swapping it for a new one changes nothing about the fact that you will spend more time working on upgrades for this item than all those previous ones combined.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

Things have derailed since U16 and U17 just came to make things even worse.

Besides the grind we have for essences and morgul crests, any newbie lvl 100 player will also grind for virtues, class trait points, scrolls of empowerment, star-lit crystals, gold epic battle jewelleries.

To have 79 class trait points, a player will literally need to complete all the deeds of Old Anorien, which means that he'll spend quite some time to get it...

For the gold epic battle jewelleries he'll be spending dozens of hours to get the gold jewelleries.

Now players need an average of 85 ASOEs per LI, which is 190 if you have two LIs, (but we know that there are players that have more than 2 LIs, specially if they are guardians or minstrels).

We all need an average of 10 Crystals per LI, which is at least 20 per toon.

All of that wouldn't be a problem if the prices for 85 ASOEs and Crystals weren't so inflated.

This grind is absolutely unfriendly to the players that like to gear up multiple alts and newbie lvl 100 players.

I absolutely reccomend reading this thread before posting here, if you haven't done it yet:

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...e-away-players

I also will quote "Coeprandua" here:

"Having multiple ways to collect your scrolls does not justify making the grind heavier. No matter how many ways you have to obtain your scrolls, there is only a certain number of hours in a day and you can only ontain a certain amount of scrolls in said hours. Having multiple ways does not increase this as you can't do 2 or more things at the same time."

And my own words:

"1) Being optimistic, I'd say someone person gets around 100 Stars of Merit per epic battle and one epic battle takes in average 20 minutes.
2) I have 10 characters and 24 LIs.
3)I need an average of 9 Starlit Crystals and 85 Scrolls of Empowerment for each LI that I have.
4) Currently each Starlit Crystal costs 500 Stars of Merit and each Scroll of Empowerment costs 250 Stars of Merit.
5) That means I need an average of 2280 scrolls of empowerment and 216 Starlit Crystals.
6) Therefore I need an average of 678,000 STARS OF MERIT

That can be translated into an average of 6780 epic battles, which takes approximately 2260 hours.
Considering I have a real life, I play usually 3 hours during the weeks and 5 hours during the weekends. During those hours I play LOTRO, I also do other stuff like quests, non epic battle instances, kinship events, deeds, help out other players, busy on the forums, etc, etc.
So let's say I do 4 epic battles every day. That means in 1695 days my LIs will be maxed (Almost 5 years). That is so many days that it's hard for anyone to believe.
Of course if you consider your marks and medallions gain during the epic battles and the increased drop of Stars of Merit on new epic battles, you might reduce that to almost 3 years... which is still A LOT.

Pricing for Scrolls of Empowerment and Starlitz need to be reviewed not only for the new option that is for Stars of Merit, but all kind of currencies. Scrolls of Empowerment and Starlitz are not what they once were. In the past, their rarity and difficulty to gain was justifiable when we only needed around 20 scrolls and 3 crystals per LI, but not anymore... Now we need almost 5x the amount we needed for scrolls and 3x the amount we needed for crystals...
People who are still defending that those have to be hard to be earned need to have some common sense. Some people claim that there has to be difference between the good player and the better player, but giving us a high price for an item will only create a difference between players that have a lot of free time and players that don't. Maxed gear is not a measure to discern who's a good player. Any solo player can max one LI if he has all the time in the world."

People have gone to the Thorog farm now as well and it seems that one hour doing those runs, you'll be able to get 4 ASOEs, but then again, you need approximately 85 per LI. So to max your LI legacies (ignoring the fact that you also need crystals), you'll spend approximately 22 hours doing Thorog runs. So if you have 24 LIs, that means 528 hours. But of course, ASOEs is not the only grind on the game, so unless you spend your time on LOTRO doing Thorog exclusively, Turbine can stop doing new content right now and you'll still have grinds for years to come, which is absolutely unrealistic and nuts.

In all my time playing LOTRO, I have never seen something so insane and cruel from the part of Turbine. This is one of the things that have stolen the beauty of this game. I am only playing this because of its community and because I want to see the conclusion of Sauron's defeat, but as a game... I feel it's slowly dying and all this effort to merge the servers to do the game more active will result in fail because QUALITY comes before QUANTITY.

I am pretty sure Turbine is already aware of this and doesn't say or do nothing, which for me can only be interpreted as disregard for its part. But I am all for facing the consequences of one's actions, so I am just one that are here to protest. If you're with me, show your protest as well.


____
Also, if Turbine finally decides to do something about this, here is a suggestion of mine:

Since we are needing 5x the amount of the ASOEs and 3x the amount for ASCs we used to need before imbuement, it would be reasonable to decrease the prices of these items by +/- 75%.
This is a list of how the prices should be in order to be reasonable:

Anfallas Scroll of Empowerment:

- Relics quartermaster (Dol Amroth): It currently costs 30 silver tokens and 10 gold tokens -> Change it to 5 gold tokens and no silver tokens.

- Rangers of Ithilien and Dol Amroth quartermaster: Currently, the price is at 100 Amroth Silver Pieces/Eastern Gondor Pieces -> Change to 25 Amroth Silver Pieces/Eastern Gondor Pieces.

- Merit Committee: 250 Stars of Merit. -> Revert it to 75 Stars of Merit.

- Morgul Crests: 2 or 3 morgul crests would be more reasonable. That way we could get one ASOE per run.

- Roving Threat Quartermaster: It currently is 75 Gift-giver brands -> Change it to 10 Gift-giver brands. (The fact that I need to do around 30 RTs just to get 1 ASOE is not reasonable at all)

- Skirmish Camp: 3,782 Marks and 586 Medallions currently -> Change it to 900 marks and 150 medallions.

Anfallas Star-lit Crystal:

- Merit Committee: 500 Stars of Merit -> Revert it to 150 Stars of Merit.

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Thank you for writing this. They really are destroying a great game. Such a shame.

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Originally Posted by Hurin

Egad! This is being celebrated now?

So instead of content and leveling while we play it, we're all just happy to run the Dol Amroth instances again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

. . . and again.

That you don't click a button that says "deconstruct" in between the grind stages is entirely irrelevant. Objectively speaking, they've increased the grind immensely and yet some people are thrilled because they've attached different labels over the grind.

It tickles me as well when people say: "I agree with you that they dropped too many new tiers on us at once, but it's still okay". . . it's not the first time we've seen people say that. That's sorta like saying: "I don't think the number of speeding tickets I got was excessive. I mean, I got twelve this month. But if I got only one per month over a year, that wouldn't be so bad!". . . ummm, but it's the pace of the ticket influx that is troubling! And we're only in the first month and you have twelve! :rolleyes:

P.S. I'm not saying level caps are necessary for compelling gameplay and development. But pointing to the Imbuement system as an example of how it should be handled. . . that just leaves me speechless.

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Actually, as I've stated in other threads on increasing the level cap, I'd prefer a level cap increase every year. I think AA systems just hide the gap in power between players (unless the AA system is toothless, in which case I don't consider it a real AA system).

However, as was pointed out in those other threads, there's no point to a level cap increase unless there is new content to consume at the higher level. And given the limited resources Turbine has, I think I've finally accepted the fact that our characters are stuck at 100 for the foreseeable future.

I also don't think that the ILI system is a true AA, but it's the closest thing we've got. So, I am going to ride that particular horse for all its worth.

Do we have any disagreement on the relative difficulty of obtaining a crystal or scroll of empowerment now vs before? There are more non-Store options now, and I can get an ASE faster than ever before.

Similarly, do we have any disagreement on whether the ILI tier caps should be raised periodically? Our main point of disagreement is on the rate of tier increases, correct?

On BR, I thought that the 9 tier increase for each leg might be too much. But my experience on Live proved that it was reasonable (for a single maxxed character with 2 ILIs, anyway), especially considering that it is the equivalent of raising the tiers of 3 old LIs (or 6 old LIs, if you consider both ILIs). And that's assuming we didn't get any free tier cap increases (which we do, which increases the balance in favor of ILIs even further).

In addition, increasing the tiers on my ILI increases the legacy's power. Increasing the tiers on the old LIs didn't increase the legacy's power, just decrease the point cost, allowing a limited pool of points to be stretched a little further. I don't mind getting 9 additional tier increases per legacy because I consider the increase in power worth the effort.

Instead of the 9 tier cap increase of the last update, what tier cap increase would you find acceptable?

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Originally Posted by Norahcdir

It was your choice to make 10 characters and it's your choice to want to min-max them all. Can't expect any game to balance grind around that. Pick 2 or 3 and focus on those, or deal with not maxing them all. Players with 2 or 3 chars don't want to sit around with nothing to grind for while you finish characters 4-10.

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Sorry, that's a boat I'm not sailing on. Turbine sell the character slots, and ten different classes, and when I purchased them, it was highly probably that I could get them progressed to some degree, albeit not all completely min-maxed. I could comfortably keep up with 6 alts, pre U16, and still be looking for something to do until the next update. I will concede on the other 12 characters I have - they are spares, and are more what one would call - above and beyond.

While you're busy telling me that I should deal with only playing 2 or 3 of the characters I paid for, because you do not want to sit around waiting for me to catch up with the others, will it be ok for me to tell you that you should put your hand in your pocket, buy another 7 and stop being so minimalist? No, I didn't think so. Seriously, you need to come down a peg or two. The game is not just about you and how you choose to play it.

Thank you for bringing this up OP. I spent money on TP because I felt the game was heading in the right direction for my play style when new instances came out, now I'm regretting it. I spent it on empowerment scrolls, rememberence and star-lit crystals on my 4 lis. They still weren't complete and since this new update I'm even further behind. I have no motivation to log on because I feel my character is progressing incredibly slow. I don't have as much time as I used to and I don't want to waste it anymore. I have many alts stuck at 85 and I can't bring myself to level them because I know what's waiting for them. I enjoyed playing and learning all the classes. If I choose to have basic gear on them I lower my chances of getting into a pug or I will make it harder for my kin to complete t2c. For those who say the grind is optional you're right it is, I have a choice. I'll take my time and money elsewhere.

As someone who plays only 1 character, the ILI grind is doable. Is it worth doing though? That's what people are questioning. It's the same #### over and over again. I can count to one million. It's doable. That doesn't mean it's how I'd choose to spend my free time. The end game dailies one must grind in order to get scrolls are equivalent to mindlessly sitting in front of my computer screen and reciting numbers. That is the issue.

Again, since no one has addressed this, what is the state of ILIs gonna look like after future updates? We are currently at level 44 on our legacies. If we don't keep grinding the dailies to keep up, what happens when the max level is 80 and we're still on level 44 cause the grind wore us down? We will get there sooner than you think if they keep up the current pace. With the old LI system, if a player took a break at say level 85, when you came back, you could still use your old LI to level your character, then run the new content necessary to get the new level LI when you got to that point. Since our characters don't progress other than ILIs, what options does a player have other than to resume the exact same daily scroll grind that drove them away in the first place? Except now the mountain to climb is even higher. The way things are going, Our characters will be in Valinor, but will have to cross the Helcaraxe each time they log in just to get back to Middle-earth to do DA $&@!ing dailies for empowerment scrolls.

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

That's not true. That's something that many players do on lotro and you are probably prejudiced. And maxing 1 character is not easy... unless you play a lot, then it is easy. Otherwise maxing one toon would take 3-4 months.
[..snip..]
And you cannot deny that it's going to drive many players away and Turbine will be a fool if it doesn't listen carefully.

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Those were not my words (although i do think that it is easy to max 1 alt in this game). It was Arnenna's opinion too. Is she prejudiced as well?

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Originally Posted by Arnenna

If you only have one alt - then yeah, it's easy to work for. Or maybe you have two or three and they have everything maxed, well done to you if that is the case. If you have ten, and everything on all of them is maxed, then who gave it to you?

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And she was agreed by ElanorFb, who hasn't spent a penny on the 1st character:

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Originally Posted by ElanorFb

I would say more than anything the grind is an alt killer. I have 2 lvl 100 characters. I'm almost done with the first one - level 43/44. I haven't spent a penny on it. I also just got the final essence I needed. So in 2 or 3 days she will be done.

The second character will do a lot less - just the epics in MT - and casually level the LI when I feel like it.

But I agree that after 3 or more characters it's not reasonable to try and get everything done.

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... hence my wording "as we have read here".

And hey, I don't disagree that bad decicions in business drives customers away. Only Turbine knows the effects of their updates, even if there are people in the player base who seem to think they know how many LI scrolls have been bought from The Store compared to previous updates. I myself said in another thread that some of the decicions by Turbine, have made me NOT to buy service X or upgrade Z, and I'm ok with it. Turbine looks at their data and decides if they are ok with me being ok with it, too.

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Originally Posted by Hurin

. . . and yet keeping a stable of alts maxed out and polished would arguably be reasonable/do-able or at least less "impossible" were the grinds in the game not tuned to increasing revenue and instead tuned toward sound/fun/compelling gameplay.

What you've engaged in there is a rationalization. Not an argument for why I'm incorrect. To say "well, at least it's not x" isn't to say that y isn't the case. Nor that y isn't lamentable and/or undesirable.

On a less theoretical note: Even for single characters now, it's getting to the point where many are feeling like suckers for continuing to indulge this business model. We're doing far more, and enduring ever-more tedious gameplay because others are willing to shell out cash to avoid the tedium. When you won't buy your way to advancement (because that renders that advancement pointless according to your playstyle) and yet the tedium required to advance is being artificially increased in order to bilk those who do not play the game in the same way, then the centre cannot hold. The game is leaving you behind.

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Well, I didn't try to make an argument for why you are incorrect. I'm just watching people bang their heads in a wall while they scream in pain. They use words and phrases like "required to do X", "you don't understand my playing style", "because others are willing to shell out cash to avoid the tedium" etc. I'm not that certain that I can say for sure. I can only affect my own behaviour, vote with my wallet, and in the meantime try to alleviate the pain others are feeling by selling them as many Empowerment scrolls for reasonable amounts of in-game gold as I can manage. I sure am not using them myself so might as well soften the wall a bit. And, as I have heard lots of people say they've got thousands of gold coins, many even at gold cap (some, in their own words, many times over), I wouldn't be surprised if many in this thread were able to max one set of LIs by using gold only without going anywhere near bankrupt. Yeah, now there are money sinks in the game. There used to be a time when people were vigorously demanding more of those.

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Originally Posted by Curuer_Bauglir

As someone who plays only 1 character, the ILI grind is doable. Is it worth doing though? That's what people are questioning. It's the same #### over and over again. I can count to one million. It's doable. That doesn't mean it's how I'd choose to spend my free time. The end game dailies one must grind in order to get scrolls are equivalent to mindlessly sitting in front of my computer screen and reciting numbers. That is the issue.

Again, since no one has addressed this, what is the state of ILIs gonna look like after future updates? We are currently at level 44 on our legacies. If we don't keep grinding the dailies to keep up, what happens when the max level is 80 and we're still on level 44 cause the grind wore us down? We will get there sooner than you think if they keep up the current pace. With the old LI system, if a player took a break at say level 85, when you came back, you could still use your old LI to level your character, then run the new content necessary to get the new level LI when you got to that point. Since our characters don't progress other than ILIs, what options does a player have other than to resume the exact same daily scroll grind that drove them away in the first place? Except now the mountain to climb is even higher. The way things are going, Our characters will be in Valinor, but will have to cross the Helcaraxe each time they log in just to get back to Middle-earth to do DA $&@!ing dailies for empowerment scrolls.

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This ^^

That is exactly the issue one faces when they have more than a handful of alts. It's all very well saying, tough luck, you don't need to max out all those alts, but what happens if we don't bother? What happens to those alts when they have basic level 100 weapons, and the game has progressed to Mordor and those weapons are not strong enough for that content? So not only should we not grow our alts, but we should shelve them too? If that's the case, I want a refund on mine. Selling character slots to later make them redundant or where they cannot keep up with increased difficulty on a horizontal path because there are not enough hours in a day - won't wash.

Previously, if I found myself short of time between updates, and one of my alts got left behind, it wouldn't be an issue. If my RK got left back at level 85, while my others went to level 95, that was ok, because later, when they moved onto level 100, I could easily bring my RK up to speed at 95, by just changing her weapons to 95 weapons which would carry her to 100.

If we leave our alts carrying level 100/38 weapons behind now, because of this grind, they will only have level 100/38 on their weapons when we reach Mordor - Mordor is going to have to live up to that. It's not going to work if Mordor mobs need weapon levels of 100/80+ when those alts get there, and level 100/38 is like shooting them with plastic darts.

So, all those saying leave your alts behind, are you all up for an easy Mordor? While you're completely ignoring the fact that many players are not going to manage this grind - or in some cases, don't want to even entertain it, when Mordor comes, it will cause a massive division. Turbine are not going to be able to cater for both when the time comes. It will be one or the other.

What do they do when some players have weapons that will kill the Mordor mobs very easily, mixed with high numbers of players that have weapons that just blow wind at them (take into consideration all the people that do not have enough time for this LI grind, and the fact that many players have alts, that will be left behind because of it, and actual numbers in game with weaker weapons will likely be the majority)? They will make Mordor suited to the weaker weapons in all likelihood. When that time comes and you're all complaining that its too easy, people will probably just turn around and say, well it's your fault, you are the one that was all for those crazy weapon grinds to make your dps uberhot.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

This result will have been because the devs used grind instead of actual content to keep us busy, and they didn't gate the grind.

The dumbest thing I have seen any MMO do was the lock removal at RoR, because the few remaining raiding kins tore through the content in a weekend, got bored, and left.

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Maybe they were weak of mind and spirit. = |

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Originally Posted by Grego28

I strongly believe they brought all this senseless grind, because they want more and more gain.

That is why they even updated their store.

I hope costumers/players give them back what they deserve for being so desperate with money/gain.

The current state of the whole LOTRO does not deserve a single coin, in my opinion.

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If that is what they want, I don't think it is gonna work.....

Someone calculated 162$ if you buy all scrolls for one weapon in the store. I think nobody is willing to spent this amount of money for a weapon you don't really need to have.....


I can not understand who calculates those store prices........in my opinion the things which made it easy to play the game as a F2P nearly like a VIP have good prices......but the things they really could make extra money with are so expensive that nobody is buying them......

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Originally Posted by Samy1981

If that is what they want, I don't think it is gonna work.....

Someone calculated 162$ if you buy all scrolls for one weapon in the store. I think nobody is willing to spent this amount of money for a weapon you don't really need to have.....


I can not understand who calculates those store prices........in my opinion the things which made it easy to play the game as a F2P nearly like a VIP have good prices......but the things they really could make extra money with are so expensive that nobody is buying them......

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You're suggestion f2p has different pricing than VIP's? Wow! Customization cosmetics, Warsteed colors and textures. INSANE pricing. These should be CHEAP for the sake of fun to play. Argh! :mad:

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Originally Posted by Palenen

You're suggestion f2p has different pricing than VIP's? :

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No I don't suggest that.

What I think is that they made some prices so high that no one will buy it.....

It is possible that Turbine is working "the long tail" here... meaning using a calculus of how many hard-core "pay any price" players there are (however few) and then setting levels so high that those players essentially foot the bill for everyone else.

If so, the mistake or misjudgment here is assuming that there would be no morale effects (I'm talking actual RL morale, not the in-game stat) on the vast majority of the players -- who expect a reasonable grind alternative to the pay-any-price mode of advancement.

Saying this as neutrally as possible: The problem is clearly with expectations, since all content (BBs, Raids, etc.) is doable well before a character and their attendant LIs are maxed. IMHO, players assume if the game offers the possibility of something, they should be able to work their way to it. Turbine has to either manage expectations better or change the game to meet players' expectations. Or scratch its head when attrition takes its toll and shrug and say "I guess MMOs fell out of fashion." Okay that last sentence wasn't so neutral.

This is why i quit the game. The grind is just way too much its crazy. To me it just seems that turbine know that the end is near so we'll make the grind impossible and then allow people to pay to get their stuff geared using mithril. Sad to see the game going this way with all the promise that the server mergers brought. I suggest turbine get it sorted before its too late because if not the players that are leaving now will have already found a new game and will not return if they leave it too late

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

Do we have any disagreement on the relative difficulty of obtaining a crystal or scroll of empowerment now vs before? There are more non-Store options now, and I can get an ASE faster than ever before.

Similarly, do we have any disagreement on whether the ILI tier caps should be raised periodically? Our main point of disagreement is on the rate of tier increases, correct?

On BR, I thought that the 9 tier increase for each leg might be too much. But my experience on Live proved that it was reasonable (for a single maxxed character with 2 ILIs, anyway), especially considering that it is the equivalent of raising the tiers of 3 old LIs (or 6 old LIs, if you consider both ILIs). And that's assuming we didn't get any free tier cap increases (which we do, which increases the balance in favor of ILIs even further).

In addition, increasing the tiers on my ILI increases the legacy's power. Increasing the tiers on the old LIs didn't increase the legacy's power, just decrease the point cost, allowing a limited pool of points to be stretched a little further. I don't mind getting 9 additional tier increases per legacy because I consider the increase in power worth the effort.

Instead of the 9 tier cap increase of the last update, what tier cap increase would you find acceptable?

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How you can compare this grind to old grind that required you to get 6-12 emp scrolls to max your LI, you needed just to do few dozen instances to get required amount of currency. Now you need to do over 400 BBs to max out 2 weapons.

Please as I asked before provide your BB panel that shows you lifetime BB completion and after that we can judge if your 2 years worth of doing BB even close resonates what you think is reasonable grind between 4-5 months between updates that you have time to grind your LIs on theory. I have on my 3 characters only combined of 188 plat runs, 150 gold runs, and 20 silver runs and 2 bronze runs. This means combined 360 runs on 3 characters on 2 year period. And I'm not even close to the number that is required to max out ONLY my minstrel legendaries (got 3 legendaries so need like 600 runs).

I'm waiting your screenshot.

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Originally Posted by Arnenna

This ^^

That is exactly the issue one faces when they have more than a handful of alts. It's all very well saying, tough luck, you don't need to max out all those alts, but what happens if we don't bother? What happens to those alts when they have basic level 100 weapons, and the game has progressed to Mordor and those weapons are not strong enough for that content? So not only should we not grow our alts, but we should shelve them too? If that's the case, I want a refund on mine. Selling character slots to later make them redundant or where they cannot keep up with increased difficulty on a horizontal path because there are not enough hours in a day - won't wash.

Previously, if I found myself short of time between updates, and one of my alts got left behind, it wouldn't be an issue. If my RK got left back at level 85, while my others went to level 95, that was ok, because later, when they moved onto level 100, I could easily bring my RK up to speed at 95, by just changing her weapons to 95 weapons which would carry her to 100.

If we leave our alts carrying level 100/38 weapons behind now, because of this grind, they will only have level 100/38 on their weapons when we reach Mordor - Mordor is going to have to live up to that. It's not going to work if Mordor mobs need weapon levels of 100/80+ when those alts get there, and level 100/38 is like shooting them with plastic darts.

So, all those saying leave your alts behind, are you all up for an easy Mordor? While you're completely ignoring the fact that many players are not going to manage this grind - or in some cases, don't want to even entertain it, when Mordor comes, it will cause a massive division. Turbine are not going to be able to cater for both when the time comes. It will be one or the other.

What do they do when some players have weapons that will kill the Mordor mobs very easily, mixed with high numbers of players that have weapons that just blow wind at them (take into consideration all the people that do not have enough time for this LI grind, and the fact that many players have alts, that will be left behind because of it, and actual numbers in game with weaker weapons will likely be the majority)? They will make Mordor suited to the weaker weapons in all likelihood. When that time comes and you're all complaining that its too easy, people will probably just turn around and say, well it's your fault, you are the one that was all for those crazy weapon grinds to make your dps uberhot.

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A concern, but I doubt the relative power at this point between a full maxxed out ILI 100/44 is that much greater than an ILI where the later grind has been declined (100/38). I haven't looked at the actual leg values for those points, but I will.

I expect that with future updates, there will be a mix of free and locked tier increases. So your no-grind alts progress to 100/41, while a fully maxxed ILI goes to 100/53. Even at that point, I doubt the former will be blowing wind. But I will have to take a look at the numbers.

The fact that we keep our ILI and it continues to grow does make it harder to catch up, especially without character cap increases (which always have been a way of closing the power gap between players, at least temporarily). LIs didn't grow with us, and thus were discarded and replaced just like all other gear. But remember how many people were complaining about the old LI system, and the fact that we didn't keep our LIs and have them grow stronger as we progressed.

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it.

Indeed; I also feel the grind has gotten out of hand. When I heard that U17 was going to include tier upgrades for the imbued LI's, I was thinking, maybe from 38 max to 40 max, and maybe one more star-lit crystal slot... Instead we got a huge and unnecessary 6 tier bump.

Just as others have said; I have 5 characters at 100, which I've reduced to 3 being well geared with ess armor and such (champion, warden, & captain) and out of those only my champ had maxed LI's when U17 went live.
I have two other alts around level 50 I've stopped playing aswell, just thinking of what awaits if I get them to 100. May just give them regular LIs without imbuement if I ever get them there...

But anyway, it's clear some adjustments need to be made...

I agree 100%.

It seems that a massive grind is replacing actual end game content.

I only really play 1 toon and I play a lot and the grind is still absurd.

Some might say that people want more content because they grind too the top and complain that's all there is. Sorry, but a scroll grind is NOT content.

No. This is not about "gimmie gimmie things for free or no work", this only really applies when people complain about how hard an instance is. This is about reducing a mind numbing repetitive cycle, for at this point, almost nothing except to play a game we've all loved for so long now.

This really has got to stop. I've already been thinking about switching MMOs because of this grind.

This is not fun, at all.

You MUST understand this. It's not a good idea to burn out loyal players.

And to address one last thing. Why give us all this amazing gear etc. with nothing to you use it on?

We NEED and WANT actual end game content.

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Originally Posted by Arnenna

Sorry, that's a boat I'm not sailing on. Turbine sell the character slots, and ten different classes, and when I purchased them, it was highly probably that I could get them progressed to some degree, albeit not all completely min-maxed. I could comfortably keep up with 6 alts, pre U16, and still be looking for something to do until the next update. I will concede on the other 12 characters I have - they are spares, and are more what one would call - above and beyond.

While you're busy telling me that I should deal with only playing 2 or 3 of the characters I paid for, because you do not want to sit around waiting for me to catch up with the others, will it be ok for me to tell you that you should put your hand in your pocket, buy another 7 and stop being so minimalist? No, I didn't think so. Seriously, you need to come down a peg or two. The game is not just about you and how you choose to play it.

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It's ridiculous frankly. How can a person say that she'd like to have more time to do instances like Sammy??? If you want more time to be busy with something on LOTRO, at least choose something more interesting to do, right? There is a thousand things they could do that isn't necessarily grind for scrolls or crystals.
I have stopped trying to reason with people of that mentality.
And you know what? This thread has only confirmed that there is indeed a really large quantity of people leaving the game because of the grind. That's something they cannot deny and when this game breaks I wanna hear what they have to say.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

How you can compare this grind to old grind that required you to get 6-12 emp scrolls to max your LI, you needed just to do few dozen instances to get required amount of currency. Now you need to do over 400 BBs to max out 2 weapons.

Please as I asked before provide your BB panel that shows you lifetime BB completion and after that we can judge if your 2 years worth of doing BB even close resonates what you think is reasonable grind between 4-5 months between updates that you have time to grind your LIs on theory. I have on my 3 characters only combined of 188 plat runs, 150 gold runs, and 20 silver runs and 2 bronze runs. This means combined 360 runs on 3 characters on 2 year period. And I'm not even close to the number that is required to max out ONLY my minstrel legendaries (got 3 legendaries so need like 600 runs).

I'm waiting your screenshot.

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Because that old grind was for a single LI. And assuming you spend 3 scrolls per leg to increase the tier, you would spend on average 21 empower scrolls to fully max it. The grind we are comparing it to for this upgrade (which is in lieu of a full replacement), is 6 tiers to unlock per legacy (since we get 3 for free). That 42 scrolls. That's roughly twice the amount of legacy tiers to unlock. Additional work, but the end benefit of advancing 42 tiers total should require more work than advancing 21 tiers under the old system. It's up to the individual player as to whether the end result is worth the effort. For me, it clearly is.

I am at work, so cannot check my BB panel, but I will. Be aware that back during the day I was grinding for jewelry, I often did double-runs of an EB in order to pick up the alternative side quests, and thus would get 2 or 3 plat chests without actually tallying a completion medal (because I already had done the complete EB that same day). Looking at my side quests medals is probably more indicative of EB effort. Last I looked, I had about 800 side quest medals total. Assuming 2.5 to 3 side quest medals per run, that's around 200 to 300 total run equivalents.

Not that it really matters, because I don't recommend using EBs to buy ASEs. Save the SOMs for the crystals. There are more effective alternatives to get ASEs.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

A concern, but I doubt the relative power at this point between a full maxxed out ILI 100/44 is that much greater than an ILI where the later grind has been declined (100/38). I haven't looked at the actual leg values for those points, but I will.

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I look forward to that, like I look forward to any proof that current grind is actually easier than before.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

I expect that with future updates, there will be a mix of free and locked tier increases. So your no-grind alts progress to 100/41, while a fully maxxed ILI goes to 100/53. Even at that point, I doubt the former will be blowing wind. But I will have to take a look at the numbers.

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Dude, this is not the case and doesn't matter because of at the moment grind in unbearable to any average lotro player and this is pushing people away from the game and making them simply quit. Each new legacy tier upgrade will just push difference between maxed out legacy and minimum legacy greater. Are you ready to run 100 BBs between each update just to keep up with the grind? Beautiful thing with old system were that you could finish grind in few days, after that you could ENJOY the game and play like you want to.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

The fact that we keep our ILI and it continues to grow does make it harder to catch up, especially without character cap increases (which always have been a way of closing the power gap between players, at least temporarily). LIs didn't grow with us, and thus were discarded and replaced just like all other gear. But remember how many people were complaining about the old LI system, and the fact that we didn't keep our LIs and have them grow stronger as we progressed.

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it.

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You might just keep up with the grind with one character, but after next summer how on earth you are going to catch up the grind on fresh new character when you need 20-25 tiers per legacy x 7. Also please find threads where people were massively going mental and saying they are quiting the game on old LI system. Some people weren't just too pleased how old system works but tolerated it, now majority of players hate this system and many are quiting because of it.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

Because that old grind was for a single LI. And assuming you spend 3 scrolls per leg to increase the tier, you would spend on average 21 empower scrolls to fully max it. The grind we are comparing it to for this upgrade (which is in lieu of a full replacement), is 6 tiers to unlock per legacy (since we get 3 for free). That 42 scrolls. That's roughly twice the amount of legacy tiers to unlock. Additional work, but the end benefit of advancing 42 tiers total should require more work than advancing 21 tiers under the old system. It's up to the individual player as to whether the end result is worth the effort. For me, it clearly is.

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If you have legacie on the lowest tier of bronze on your LI you needed on old system 5 emp scrolls to max it, now you need 16 emp scrolls to max one legacy that was on imbuing on bronze tier. Why this system should take additional work? Turbine said this would reduce grind needed for LIs and it's clearly not the case, but we have system where one legacy can take more work than entire LI on old system, not to speak of star-lits that you need 10 per weapon instead of 3.

If we would assume you would replace every LI legacy on old system on max tier foolishly you would need 35 emp scrolls to fully upgrade 7 legacy weapon again. On new system you need 112 emp scrolls to do the same if you use non upgraded weapon on imbuing.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

I am at work, so cannot check my BB panel, but I will. Be aware that back during the day I was grinding for jewelry, I often did double-runs of an EB in order to pick up the alternative side quests, and thus would get 2 or 3 plat chests without actually tallying a completion medal (because I already had done the complete EB that same day). Looking at my side quests medals is probably more indicative of EB effort. Last I looked, I had about 800 side quest medals total. Assuming 2.5 to 3 side quest medals per run, that's around 200 to 300 total run equivalents.

Not that it really matters, because I don't recommend using EBs to buy ASEs. Save the SOMs for the crystals. There are more effective alternatives to get ASEs.

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So you haven't done enough runs to get your LIs done in 2 year period. Also if there's better way of getting emp scrolls faster please tell us. Thorog isn't it, and sambrog and glinghant aren't either.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

I look forward to that, like I look forward to any proof that current grind is actually easier than before.


Dude, this is not the case and doesn't matter because of at the moment grind in unbearable to any average lotro player and this is pushing people away from the game and making them simply quit. Each new legacy tier upgrade will just push difference between maxed out legacy and minimum legacy greater. Are you ready to run 100 BBs between each update just to keep up with the grind? Beautiful thing with old system were that you could finish grind in few days, after that you could ENJOY the game and play like you want to.


You might just keep up with the grind with one character, but after next summer how on earth you are going to catch up the grind on fresh new character when you need 20-25 tiers per legacy x 7. Also please find threads where people were massively going mental and saying they are quiting the game on old LI system. Some people weren't just too pleased how old system works but tolerated it, now majority of players hate this system and many are quiting because of it.

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On the latter issue, you're repeating one of the points I made in favor of increasing the character level cap instead of resorting to some form of Alternative Advancement system. As a level cap is reached, the relative power level between players at the level gap begins to grow. The longer a level cap remains in place, the greater that gap grows. Increase the level cap, and the gap shrinks as old gear is discarded and replaced at the new level cap. The cycle continues at the new level cap.

A fresh new character that reaches the current level cap will have catching up to do, depending on when in the cycle they reach the cap. The greatest gap would be near the end of the cycle, but with the new level cap increase coming up will remove or reduce that gap, and they will be effectively caught up.

Without a level cap increase, this gap-reduction mechanism doesn't take place. And the existence of an pseudo-AA system like ILIs exacerbates the problem, because the ILI doesn't get discarded and continues to advance in power. And a level cap increase becomes less effective as a gap-reduction mechanism, because even if we get a level cap increase, we aren't going to be "resetting" our LIs like before.

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Originally Posted by spelunker

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How many times will the legacy tier cap be raised, so I can add that into my grind calculations for ILIs? We just had a cap raise, which didn't coincide with a raise in level cap, how many times did we 'have' to grind out more emp scrolls mid-expansion with the traditional LIs? This one mid-level-cap tier raise already equaled significantly more grind than a traditional level cap raise would have in the old system, and this was after a 2-3 month gap, rather than over a year under the old system (level cap changes were more than a year apart for MoM>SoM>RoI>RoR>HD>Gondor). If they follow the trend, in one year we'll have to grind out more Emp scrolls than we had to in the previous 5 years of the game...

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This is not even taking into consideration the grind it used to require to get a max LI from an alt (level to level cap with 3rd age LIs with minimal relics/legacies, then max at level cap) to where it is today (grind to 100, then add the massive amount of empowerment scrolls to cover for the progressive LI tier upgrades). At the current rate, rolling an alt will start to be a running joke, because you will have to max non-imbued, then max imbued, a absolutely monumental task that's only going to get more daunting as the LI tiers increase. You simply cannot continue to increase the LI tiers and expect it to be ok.

In case people haven't read the other thread I linked in my original post:


Before U16:

• The absolute maximum amount of ASOEs needed for one LI was 31:
  
  • Unlucky enough to get all legacies at 1
  • 4 free upgrades at levels 40, 50, 60 and 70
  
  
• The absolute minimum amount of ASOEs needed for one LI was 0
• On average, you could say one needed an absolute maximum of 15 scrolls:
  
  • You can expect to get an average of 3 tiers on each legacy after identifying a new LI
  • At levels 10, 20 and 30 you can usually save some ASOEs when adding legacies

Since U16:

• The absolute maximum of ASOEs needed for one LI has gone up by 28
• Only one "sort of" new way of obtaining them was added by increasing the amount of quests in the DA training excercise
• This still only meant getting 7/10th of an ASOE every day = 40 days of doing the same grind
• The average maximum of ASOEs needed has gone up by 186% per LI

Since U17:

• The absolute maximum of ASOEs needed for one LI has gone up by another 42
• Only one new way of obtaining them was added, for once with a reasonable price
• In the next beta cycle, the price got drastically increased while the majority of the Bullroarer forum begged Turbine not to do so
• The average maximum of ASOEs needed has gone up by 98% per LI since U16
• The average maximum of ASOEs needed has gone up by 467% per LI since U15

So to summarize: Before U16 we needed an average of 30 scrolls per character, now we need 170. The prices of the scrolls remain the same and it's hard to understand why some of you would like more time to do things like marks and medallions run which are boring, not challenging and the results are slow.
I have seen a few people desperate because they feel like their LI need to be maxed so they can show people they are good players, but guess what? Any player with a maxed LI isn't necessarily a good player, all he had to spend was his time, not his skill. So if any of you are feeling threatened by thinking that other players with more skill can get maxed LIs like yours if the grind is made reasonable, maybe it's time to feeding your ego. There will be no one else left to compete when everyone have left this game to do something else.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

And the existence of an pseudo-AA system like ILIs exacerbates the problem, because the ILI doesn't get discarded and continues to advance in power. And a level cap increase becomes less effective as a gap-reduction mechanism, because even if we get a level cap increase, we aren't going to be "resetting" our LIs like before.

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I don't think this is gonna happen.

I think If the lvl-cap gets increased, we will get new higher LI Weapons with better Start-Stats as the current ones. Leveling them up to the current Max will be much easier than the current grind....and then the hardcore grinders and the "followers" are again on the same level......

Scirroco, I feel that you are also making the mistake of feeling that there is no "need" to max out LIs in their current state- it's just an option to continue upgrading. However, what you fail to notice is that same logic can easily be applied to LIs pre-imbuement. There is no need for max LIs (outside of PvP) to enjoy the majority of this game, this is the case for pre-imbuement as well. Tier 9 Relics, deconning and constructing a new FA LI is totally unnecessary- Leveling with a 3rd Age LI all the way to Level Cap is absolutely no issue at all. Thing is, people want the best gear. PvPers want the best gear, Raiders want the best gear, Completionists want the best gear, and in the current LI state, getting the best gear is essentially double what it has ever been in the past. Turbine is clearly making an attempt to profit off of this.

You can easily counter and say that then that's what we PvPers want, then we have to work for it, but no one, I repeat no one, wants to grind the absurd amount that we have now in order to be able to PvP at top level. It's discouraging, boring, and has driven many of my PvPing friends away in droves away from this game. Same goes for Raiders, Completionists- anyone who wants a better LI. To a personal level, I've totally left my level-capped, half geared burg to waste away, because I realized I simply didn't have the time or desire to do a Imbued LI grindx2. In fact, I'm still not even half way done with my main- Loremaster. It's a bad business decision- Turbine has gotten too greedy, and they are going to deal with the consequences of what is generally agreed upon to be a bad business decision: making the game unpleasant to play.

Turbine is throwing their hat in the ring by forcing a massive grind. It's a huge gamble for them, and based on the reactions in this thread, and the unspoken sentiments from the even larger number of people who wouldn't bother posting, this is going to be a bet they lose. They're hoping people will turn to the store, and that's obvious with the absurd grind they've implemented. The problem is, this game is nearing its end. They know it, we know it. The game is also severely dated, and can't handle what they're trying to do with it - as exhibited by the random crashes to the desktop, and the whopping 15FPS people are getting on systems that get 125+ FPS in other more current MMOs.

This begs the question - with a title that will be shutting its doors soon(ish), along with a game that is severely outdated, what incentive do people have to spend even more money on their characters in the store? Ride around and admire their bling in the slideshow of a game, for the who-knows-how-many months left until the game is shut down? This isn't the end of the grind, either. You know Turbine is going to release maybe one or two more updates, each with their own grind, new LI imbuement levels, new trait points, maybe a bump in crafting tiers, and possibly a level cap increase and the associated gear grind that goes with it. All of this on top of the current grind.

The business model they're riding on is simply unsustainable with a product that doesn't hold the same value as new games that are available now. I haven't even logged on in probably a month now, as I just feel zero motivation for even completing my main, let alone all my alts. I'm seriously questioning whether I'll ever see the game's end, not because Turbine won't release the content, but because they've alienated me and probably many other fans of the game. This update was such a let-down. I went from being amazed at Osgiliath, seeing Grond, spying Minas Tirith from the hills around Ithilien and the walls of Osgiliath, seeing the road into Mordor, to being disgusted at a field filled with a bunch of moronic mounted combat enemies, a slideshow frame rate, random crashes to the desktop, and WAY too much running around all the circles of MT on what seemed like an endless amount of pointless quests. Completely took all the wind out of the sails for this game.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

A concern, but I doubt the relative power at this point between a full maxxed out ILI 100/44 is that much greater than an ILI where the later grind has been declined (100/38). I haven't looked at the actual leg values for those points, but I will.

I expect that with future updates, there will be a mix of free and locked tier increases. So your no-grind alts progress to 100/41, while a fully maxxed ILI goes to 100/53. Even at that point, I doubt the former will be blowing wind. But I will have to take a look at the numbers.

The fact that we keep our ILI and it continues to grow does make it harder to catch up, especially without character cap increases (which always have been a way of closing the power gap between players, at least temporarily). LIs didn't grow with us, and thus were discarded and replaced just like all other gear. But remember how many people were complaining about the old LI system, and the fact that we didn't keep our LIs and have them grow stronger as we progressed.

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it.

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Last line says it exactly. Some asked for LI's that grow with you, many didn't. They were brought to the table as an "optional" progression, but with the recent turn, they aren''t optional at all. When I compare my maxed hunter bow with that of my other level 100 hunter's normal bow, the difference is significant. She can still manage current content with that bow (that hasn't been imbued), but how long will that last if progression is going across a horizontal and some alts are getting stronger weapons with it. What's worse is that if I do imbue hunter number 2's bow, it takes a large step backward at that point, and it takes a fair number of scrolls to even get it back to where it was pre-imbue. For her to get her bow to the same place as my main hunter's bow, will take 120 Empos and 12 crystals, because she has two updates worth of upgrades to get through. If, by the time we reach Mordor we have seen a further two lots of upgrades added, and mobs balanced to match that level of dps, she will likely need double that to take her bow up to the standard we will hopefully require to kill mobs on that level when we get there.

They cannot expect to be able to find balance up there when the time comes, when some characters have the ability to hit like a train, and others are just peeing in the wind. It can't be done.

They will have to make Mordor easy, to accommodate the hundreds of characters that didn't manage this "optional" grind.

Alternatively, they could make Imbued weapons the optional thing that they promised it would be. They could do that by raising the level cap, and those that didn't opt to imbue at level 100, would need to grind new, stronger LI's at the new level (Those that did imbue at level 100, would just carry on growing their current weapon). Alternatively, if they do not wish to raise level cap, they could introduce later level - level 100 - stronger weapons (obviously not as strong as whatever level the previously imbued ones are at, but enough to keep up with any increased difficulty brought in) at some point.

I look at what they have done here and see that Warner Brothers has forced Turbine to open its eyes to the vast sea of possibilities to milk their playing community of money. My immediate fear was, what's next, they'll release another tier of essences to make us re-grind them again?

Not to mention, the scroll for replacing a legacy after imbuement is still store-exclusive after all these months. A few of my characters are in limbo because of this, I am prepared to pay for things like the wonderful new content MadeOfLions is putting out, and the privilege to play PvMP, but I shall not pay for an essential function of Legendary Items that all along has been, as it should be, free.

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Originally Posted by freedaemons

I look at what they have done here and see that Warner Brothers has forced Turbine to open its eyes to the vast sea of possibilities to milk their playing community of money. My immediate fear was, what's next, they'll release another tier of essences to make us re-grind them again?

Not to mention, the scroll for replacing a legacy after imbuement is still store-exclusive after all these months. A few of my characters are in limbo because of this, I am prepared to pay for things like the wonderful new content MadeOfLions is putting out, and the privilege to play PvMP, but I shall not pay for an essential function of Legendary Items that all along has been, as it should be, free.

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In fairness, I should point out that essence reclamation scrolls are available within the game. You can barter for them at every festival, in the skirm camp (for a ridiculously lucrative amount of marks and medallions) and also at some of the Gondor rep vendors.

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Originally Posted by Denebrian_Wintersong

You people are cra-cra.

The so-called grind in this game is very light when you compare LoTRO to most all Asian developed MMOs.

If you want something given to you, maybe go play a console game?

Welcome to end-game. Now work for your gears ;)

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That's exactly what is wrong with this game and basically any other MMO. Having read the 'Game Archeologist' over at massivelyOP, I can't help but shake my head in dismay at what MMOs have become. Itemization, whether it be actual gear or character customization through talents or virtues, has become the sole focus of MMOs. And that one and only type of 'objective' is all gated behind the same content; repeatables, be they dailies, be they big battles or simple dungeon runs. Other than this there is absolutely no meaningful content. It's the fabled 'endgame' we all so diligently work(ed) towards. But it's also the skinner box taken to extremes.

Log out and think about whether the current MMO mechanics are still worth the investment. I haven't logged on in weeks and will keep checking every so often the only MMO I have invested in past few years, but I haven't a single hope they'll come up with something original. Absolutely no incentive once you step back and think about it. Even our community has taken turns for the worse, me included. Oh well, who cares right? You all know you'll be grinding, you all know you'll eventually whine and get cursed, or you'll curse the whiners, but still you'll be going through the grind. Thus turbine needn't change a thing. Grats us. They won, we just haven't realized it yet.

I think the grind system went too far. I actually use 1 single character and I really didn't even considered to max anything with him, because it really takes too much time. I almost just quest in the new area and wait for other expansions. I would like to do something else in the game (like level another toon) but really is more pain than happiness atm. Let's talk about central gondor: if someone want to reach kindred status with the various faction (and let's say: a kindred faction for a small fishermen village in ringlo vale is kinda sensless) is really going to pain for several days... Back in the day was a little bit easier right?

Have something to do when you're done questing is ok, but that thing need to be achievable.

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Originally Posted by Curuer_Bauglir

This is a very timely thread for me, as today I was about to embark on my daily routine of DA, MT, Osgiliath, and BBs in order to build up currency for scrolls, when I just couldn't drag myself to do it. The same stuff day after day has finally reached the tipping point for me. I have only played one character through each and every quest in the game. I have alts for each profession that I've only used to max crafting so I can equip my main character. Most people have talked about how the grind has discouraged them from playing their alts, as the time commitment is too much. I can understand this. For me, the grind actually had the opposite effect. Rather than run the same set of dailies for the umpteenth time, I decided to actually play a little bit on one of my alts. I found it had been so long since I'd done the epic story, I couldn't even remember what happened to Horn and Nona. I played for 4 hours just doing the epic quests in Eriador. It was actually very enjoyable. It made me remember how much fun I'd had the first time on my main. It was such a night and day experience to the end game. I'm so glad I took my time and didn't rush to end game like so many do.

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I don't think many people are discouraged from playing their alts ... just maximizing them all. I have three 100s and four more at 95-96. I have completed my last ever ILI grind. I did it once on one of my mains ... all my other guys will have to make due with ordinary level 100 LIs. I plan to get all my Hunters to 100 (eventually) ... and I have others in the pipeline at lower levels. You're absolutely correct: revisiting quests and epics in the Lone Lands, North Downs, and Evendim (after not having done them in years) was very refreshing.

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Originally Posted by Curuer_Bauglir

It has been mentioned that you don't need maxed out stats and LIs to play the content. This is true, but are we certain it will stay that way? We are only two updates into imbuement and already players are throwing up their hands and giving up because the numbers are so high. Is content still going to be easy 3 updates from now when we're hundreds of scrolls behind the max? Maybe, maybe not.

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When that day comes, I will respond the same way I always have when MMO developers decide to effectively gate core content behind some activity I do not wish to play ... I will shelve LOTRO (to be used solely for RP) and find a new game. I am close to this decision already since they gate the epics behind BBs now. Which means, I'll probably never play all the epics. I'm still here (hard to leave when I have three Lifetime subscriptions), but I'll stop playing LOTRO when the game requires weeks of content I hate (BBs, Raids, Skirmishes, etc.) just to complete landscape content.

To be clear: I do not advocate eliminating any of the content I dislike. I assume plenty of players enjoy such activities. Some players likely enjoy the challenge and sense of accomplishment that comes from completing the ILI grind, which makes the grind worthwhile to them. What feels like a "second job" to some is simply "playing a game" to others. There are grinds I can (and do) endure, and grinds that serve no purpose to me. ILIs serve no purpose ... to me.

It's practically liberating to just log in and play an alt without concern over maxing his LIs. I recently upgraded four guys to level 95 LIs. Unlike in the past, all I've spent on their LIs are Relic Removal scrolls (not gonna endure that grind again). Sure, some have my favorite Legacies at Tier 2 ... but they're all getting level 100 LIs eventually, so why bother augmenting what they have? They each do okay in quests with what they have.

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Originally Posted by Styrdan

Back in the day was a little bit easier right?

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It wasn't easier, it was harder even, but the 'grind' was an afterthought, something to do whilst your friends were offline. Now the grind has become the focus, friends have become the distraction from it.

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Originally Posted by Aldeld

Turbine is throwing their hat in the ring by forcing a massive grind. It's a huge gamble for them, and based on the reactions in this thread, and the unspoken sentiments from the even larger number of people who wouldn't bother posting, this is going to be a bet they lose. They're hoping people will turn to the store, and that's obvious with the absurd grind they've implemented. The problem is, this game is nearing its end. They know it, we know it. The game is also severely dated, and can't handle what they're trying to do with it - as exhibited by the random crashes to the desktop, and the whopping 15FPS people are getting on systems that get 125+ FPS in other more current MMOs.

This begs the question - with a title that will be shutting its doors soon(ish), along with a game that is severely outdated, what incentive do people have to spend even more money on their characters in the store? Ride around and admire their bling in the slideshow of a game, for the who-knows-how-many months left until the game is shut down? This isn't the end of the grind, either. You know Turbine is going to release maybe one or two more updates, each with their own grind, new LI imbuement levels, new trait points, maybe a bump in crafting tiers, and possibly a level cap increase and the associated gear grind that goes with it. All of this on top of the current grind.

The business model they're riding on is simply unsustainable with a product that doesn't hold the same value as new games that are available now. I haven't even logged on in probably a month now, as I just feel zero motivation for even completing my main, let alone all my alts. I'm seriously questioning whether I'll ever see the game's end, not because Turbine won't release the content, but because they've alienated me and probably many other fans of the game. This update was such a let-down. I went from being amazed at Osgiliath, seeing Grond, spying Minas Tirith from the hills around Ithilien and the walls of Osgiliath, seeing the road into Mordor, to being disgusted at a field filled with a bunch of moronic mounted combat enemies, a slideshow frame rate, random crashes to the desktop, and WAY too much running around all the circles of MT on what seemed like an endless amount of pointless quests. Completely took all the wind out of the sails for this game.

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Yeah I genuinely liked Updates 14,15 and 16 - the questing had the right pacing, some of the stories were very well written - the two brothers in U14 and their run in with the corsairs was excellent, the grind was reasonable, stuff such as Tarlangs Crown, Half Trolls and Osgiliath itself harked back to the old days of SOA and MOM. Thumbs up from me! But what the hell happened with U17? Turbine must have sacked their designers & writers and brought in local S&M massage parlour as the effect of running back and forth around MT only a sadist would have devised as "entertainment" - and I've still to do the Furlong the Fat arc. Oh yippee I can't wait.

Maybe WB are conducting an experiment similar to what the US and UK did with their armed forces during the atomic bomb tests of the late 40s and early 50s to see the extent to which we'll put up with it before we give up. Let's just hope that Turbine learns the lessons sharpish and for U18 we go back to how things were before.

It all begs the question: what content is there, or will there be, that we need to be totally maxed out for? Big battles? Of course there will always be the old scaling instances and raids, but to what end?
You can talk yourself out of ever playing again if you continue down this road, so I'll leave it at that.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

And yes, it means acknowledging that all money you threw at the MMO was a complete and utter waste (for some of us, that's gonna be several thousands of mis-spent dollars, for others of us, not as much). That's the part that a lot of people really don't' want to admit because they hate acknowledging that the time and money invested are a complete waste.

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I culled out the one thing you said with which I disagree. If LOTRO shut down today, I would not consider any of my money or time "wasted." I got my money's (and my time's) worth in pleasure and recreation over the years. Someday, we will depart the shores of Middle-earth forever. On that day, the very last emotion I will feel will be that I could have made a "better investment" of my time and money (in the context of gaming ... I mean, sure, I could have sent the money to feed starving kids and spent the time volunteering somewhere, but let's be real).

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Actually, not all Asian MMOs are as grindy as the posters here want us to believe. While FFXIV's actually runs out of quests for certain levels, it's because they are trying to get people to **gasp** group up and use the other methods of leveling, so they know what those are when it comes to the alt classes (which also get additional XP bonuses if you get a char to 50 and 60). Gear grind isn't that bad, all things considered, as it just takes a couple of weeks to get to the point where you're able to raid, then your gear acquisition greatly accelerates after that. All it entails is running two instance roulettes (and up to 5 if you really want to speed it up) a day for that time, and most instances can be cleared in about 20 minutes or less - provided the group knows what it's doing. With over 20 instances in those two roulettes, the grind also doesn't get stale.

The only grind in FFXIV that's actually rough is one that's 100% optional, which is the relic weapon. I can grind out a relic weapon, or I can skip it and get an equivalent weapon, but don't have the ability to customize it. Well, at 50 I could, at level cap the relic weapon hasn't been extended to 60 yet so it's actually quite pointless at the moment, so only those betting that it will be extended, or those that want it's cosmetic, are after the relic weapon currently.

However, the inane grind that are the LIs are far worse than the grinds in FFXIV, unless you want to level all 13 combat jobs, and all 10ish crafting classes to 60, and kit out all the things with best in slot gear.

And if you are ever at a point where the MMO becomes more work than fun, it's time to move on, because that MMO isn't worth playing. And yes, it means acknowledging that all money you threw at the MMO was a complete and utter waste (for some of us, that's gonna be several thousands of mis-spent dollars, for others of us, not as much). That's the part that a lot of people really don't' want to admit because they hate acknowledging that the time and money invested are a complete waste.

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Have you ever played FFXIV? = |

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7...games/?tab=all

I'll let you figure that out.

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So basically you have no life? = |

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Originally Posted by The_Jagannath

So basically you have no life? = |

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oALUNqVWQoQ

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Originally Posted by The_Jagannath

So basically you have no life? = |

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http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/...20150811224725

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Originally Posted by Toranoga

I'll let you in on the secret Turbine doesn't want you to know.



You don't need to do grind for any of that stuff.
Gasp!

That's right. The game plays the same without all that 'uber' stuff.

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This is my plan because I'm too stubborn to grind and too stubborn to quit.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

It's called "work hard, play hard".

Clearly a foreign concept to you, and most of the other ones that keep calling me a troll.

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The person you are replying to, in yet another thread is a piece of ####. You are not a troll, but you are better than this. You telling that ### clown over and over again he is trash is like pointing to snow and saying "that substance is cold".

Pointing out the obvious is a good forum trick, but needs to be used sparingly otherwise it looses potency.

Not that I would know of course.

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Originally Posted by Thorgrum

The person you are replying to, in yet another thread is a piece of ####. You are not a troll, but you are better than this.

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+10, Agree 100%

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

It's called "work hard, play hard".

Clearly a foreign concept to you, and most of the other ones that keep calling me a troll.

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Do you always take yourself so seriously? = |

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Originally Posted by Thorgrum

The person you are replying to, in yet another thread is a piece of ####. You are not a troll, but you are better than this. You telling that ### clown over and over again he is trash is like pointing to snow and saying "that substance is cold".

Pointing out the obvious is a good forum trick, but needs to be used sparingly otherwise it looses potency.

Not that I would know of course.

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I love the fact that you hate me so much and that your nickname is Taco. ^.^

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Originally Posted by bucko39

+10, Agree 100%

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Hey can I get in on this circle jerk!? =D

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Originally Posted by Thorgrum

The person you are replying to, in yet another thread is a piece of ####. You are not a troll, but you are better than this. You telling that ### clown over and over again he is trash is like pointing to snow and saying "that substance is cold".

Pointing out the obvious is a good forum trick, but needs to be used sparingly otherwise it looses potency.

Not that I would know of course.

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No matter if he's a troll or not, it'll be very appreciated if we can avoid the name calling here. I don't want to see this thread being closed because of people calling other people names in this thread.

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Originally Posted by The_Jagannath

Do you always take yourself so seriously? = |



I love the fact that you hate me so much and that your nickname is Taco. ^.^



Hey can I get in on this circle jerk!? =D

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^ This guy doesn't want to take anything you guys are saying seriously, so don't even bother replying to him.

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

No matter if he's a troll or not, it'll be very appreciated if we can avoid the name calling here. I don't want to see this thread being closed because of people calling other people names in this thread.

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What you want means nothing to me. Report the post if you dont like it. For years I dealt with wannabe forum moderators like you, im not doing it again.

Kiss my ### pal.

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

In case people haven't read the other thread I linked in my original post:


Before U16:

• The absolute maximum amount of ASOEs needed for one LI was 31:
  
  • Unlucky enough to get all legacies at 1
  • 4 free upgrades at levels 40, 50, 60 and 70
  
  
• The absolute minimum amount of ASOEs needed for one LI was 0
• On average, you could say one needed an absolute maximum of 15 scrolls:
  
  • You can expect to get an average of 3 tiers on each legacy after identifying a new LI
  • At levels 10, 20 and 30 you can usually save some ASOEs when adding legacies

Since U16:

• The absolute maximum of ASOEs needed for one LI has gone up by 28
• Only one "sort of" new way of obtaining them was added by increasing the amount of quests in the DA training excercise
• This still only meant getting 7/10th of an ASOE every day = 40 days of doing the same grind
• The average maximum of ASOEs needed has gone up by 186% per LI

Since U17:

• The absolute maximum of ASOEs needed for one LI has gone up by another 42
• Only one new way of obtaining them was added, for once with a reasonable price
• In the next beta cycle, the price got drastically increased while the majority of the Bullroarer forum begged Turbine not to do so
• The average maximum of ASOEs needed has gone up by 98% per LI since U16
• The average maximum of ASOEs needed has gone up by 467% per LI since U15

So to summarize: Before U16 we needed an average of 30 scrolls per character, now we need 170. The prices of the scrolls remain the same and it's hard to understand why some of you would like more time to do things like marks and medallions run which are boring, not challenging and the results are slow.
I have seen a few people desperate because they feel like their LI need to be maxed so they can show people they are good players, but guess what? Any player with a maxed LI isn't necessarily a good player, all he had to spend was his time, not his skill. So if any of you are feeling threatened by thinking that other players with more skill can get maxed LIs like yours if the grind is made reasonable, maybe it's time to feeding your ego. There will be no one else left to compete when everyone have left this game to do something else.

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Well summarized. And totally spot on and anyone who can defend current system after reading this have their own head so up to their own asses that better just ignore them.
Only thing I would like to correct is that you bring out that some players feels that they are threatened if they would make grind easier, I assume you mean more HC crowd of community and I can say nobody likes this system on those circles since this requires no skill, just pure grind and reducing grind will serve us all positively. Only ones who are backing this system are clueless people who haven't read your OP or have no idea how much time is required to fully upgrade your ILIs. Raiders already accepted that any casual gets their first agers ever since 85 cap.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Only thing I would like to correct is that you bring out that some players feels that they are threatened if they would make grind easier, I assume you mean more HC crowd of community

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That was just an assumption, I don't know what really goes on their head, but I have talked to a few players that say "Grind should stay as it is so that there is distinction between good and better players" which is very silly as a maxed gear will not define a good player. It can definetely make your character better, but you as a player can only be good if you have skill. What I felt is that some of those people are not really good players but they want other people to think they are great players because of their gear. I could be wrong but it's an assumption.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

So why not derail it back on topic?

At least ignore my derp-tastic fan club.

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Because I have seen threads getting closed because of players who do not have a language filter and say anything they like. So can I not express my concern?
I am not trying to be a moderator, but if this thread is closed no dev is going to read it.

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Originally Posted by Thorgrum

What you want means nothing to me. Report the post if you dont like it. For years I dealt with wannabe forum moderators like you, im not doing it again.

Kiss my ### pal.

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I was expressing *MY* concern for this thread which *I* created. I am not trying to be a moderator, but I have seen Frelorn closing many threads because of people with the same attitude as you.
That arrogant attitude will not take you far in life, you know.
Have a good day. Now I'll get back to the discussion this thread was supposed to bring.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Well summarized. And totally spot on and anyone who can defend current system after reading this have their own head so up to their own asses that better just ignore them.
Only thing I would like to correct is that you bring out that some players feels that they are threatened if they would make grind easier, I assume you mean more HC crowd of community and I can say nobody likes this system on those circles since this requires no skill, just pure grind and reducing grind will serve us all positively. Only ones who are backing this system are clueless people who haven't read your OP or have no idea how much time is required to fully upgrade your ILIs. Raiders already accepted that any casual gets their first agers ever since 85 cap.

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It's only spot on if you ignore the fact that a "maxxed LI" under the old system is not equivalent to a "maxxed ILI" at present.

In fact, in looking back over this thread, it appears that the folks making this cost comparison argument are overly focused on the "maxxed" part of the description. The label is irrelevant; what matters is the difference in power between the two. Considering the significant increase in power in the ILI at tier 44 than an LI at tier 6, it certainly ought to take more effort to get your ILI "maxxed out."

In addition, a straight comparison of a singleold-style LI to a single ILI no longer works, if it ever did. With the last tier increase taking the place of at least one round of discard-and-replace under the old system, you should be comparing the current cost of the current ILI to multiple LIs under the old system.

If a maxxed ILI were equal in power to a maxxed old style LI, then I'd be right in there complaining with you. Fortunately, this is not the case. (In fact, the ILI was equal in power to a maxxed old style LI well before we incur any significant expenditure of ASEs.)

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

If there's one thing I've learned in all my time here, it's that the devs are going to do whatever they are going to do.

Our feedback is irrelevant.

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And yet you have probably the 4th highest post count of anyone on these forums...

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

The irony with arguments like these is they wouldn't exist if we didn't get instances designed to take advantage of the gear.

You're also skipping the edge cases where certain classes actually benefit from a classic LI, because the LI system is (yet another) half finished system in the game.

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I'm staying away from the "need" vs. "want" argument, or whether there is content that we need the more powerful ILIs for. As someone has pointed out, some folks just want to have the most powerful weapon available. If they're willing to pay the price, so be it.

I am aware of a relatively small group of players that keep a classic LI due to a desire to have certain legacies (as an LM, I know, because I do have a classic LI FA book in my bags for this reason, although it frankly never gets used, because the ILI book at 100/44 is better). However, this a variant on the player who wants to carry multiple ILIs for their character. If one of these multiple items is a classic LI, they get away cheap.

Bottom line is that comparing the cost of a classic LI to the cost of 100/44 ILI is like comparing the cost of Yugo to the cost of Mustang. Of course a Mustang costs more. You're not going to buy a Mustang for the price of Yugo.

Well I finished the game and I won.
No seriously I did all the quests in the last update and now I'm away until u18. There is nothing to do except grind the same stuff day in and day out as has always been the case. The OP was correct this grind is no substitute for a proper game and they've increased it exponentially. Remember Hybolt? I thought that was bad but this LI grind is way beyond that. My advice to anyone else thinking the same, go and play another game, rift is quite good or FF 14 then come back with the next update.
In the meantime unfortunately for turbine I won't be spending money in the store.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

It's only spot on if you ignore the fact that a "maxxed LI" under the old system is not equivalent to a "maxxed ILI" at present.

In fact, in looking back over this thread, it appears that the folks making this cost comparison argument are overly focused on the "maxxed" part of the description. The label is irrelevant; what matters is the difference in power between the two. Considering the significant increase in power in the ILI at tier 44 than an LI at tier 6, it certainly ought to take more effort to get your ILI "maxxed out."

In addition, a straight comparison of a singleold-style LI to a single ILI no longer works, if it ever did. With the last tier increase taking the place of at least one round of discard-and-replace under the old system, you should be comparing the current cost of the current ILI to multiple LIs under the old system.

If a maxxed ILI were equal in power to a maxxed old style LI, then I'd be right in there complaining with you. Fortunately, this is not the case. (In fact, the ILI was equal in power to a maxxed old style LI well before we incur any significant expenditure of ASEs.)

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Yes indeed turbine allows us to build so strong LI that it totally break the game, I dont need any mastery on minstrel to heal any content in this game since weapon boosts my healing like 20-30% more than old book (that already was imba). Not a great design. My minstrel has 50k morale on pve build just to self nerf myself.

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Originally Posted by Rothan117

The grind is completely out of control. First it caused me to park 7 out of 8 toons permanently, and now my one remaining toon I just cannot work up the interest to do the grind at all. I play some quests on lvl 100 warden, content myself with quest gear and not having every available trait point.

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Same here, I totally lost interest in this grind of all grinds, I can't get myself getting fully geared up on even 1 toon, let alone the other 20-ish lvl 100's.

To the OP: it is our own choice to think of gearing up all toons, we won't miss any of the current 'content' in lotro if we would stick to just one. Imho you can't blame Turbine if you look at a 5 year grind for all toons. And since the current 'content' can hardly be qualified as interesting or challenging we better look elsewhere for fun in MMORPG's.

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

I'm staying away from the "need" vs. "want" argument, or whether there is content that we need the more powerful ILIs for. As someone has pointed out, some folks just want to have the most powerful weapon available. If they're willing to pay the price, so be it.

I am aware of a relatively small group of players that keep a classic LI due to a desire to have certain legacies (as an LM, I know, because I do have a classic LI FA book in my bags for this reason, although it frankly never gets used, because the ILI book at 100/44 is better). However, this a variant on the player who wants to carry multiple ILIs for their character. If one of these multiple items is a classic LI, they get away cheap.

Bottom line is that comparing the cost of a classic LI to the cost of 100/44 ILI is like comparing the cost of Yugo to the cost of Mustang. Of course a Mustang costs more. You're not going to buy a Mustang for the price of Yugo.

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So you find it reasonable that Turbine has created a gear level that is virtually unreachable (or at the very least, totally abymsally miserable to reach for)? Again, I'm looking at things from a Raiding/PvP/Completionist stand point.

Never in its past (to my memory) has Turbine created a grind so horrific that it's not reasonable to reach top-level gear. Whether that gear is "needed" or "necessary" or not is totally irrelevant, as you could say the same about multiple grinds in the past that were to a far less extent.

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Originally Posted by botoo

Same here, I totally lost interest in this grind of all grinds, I can't get myself getting fully geared up on even 1 toon, let alone the other 20-ish lvl 100's. ... it is our own choice to think of gearing up all toons, we won't miss any of the current 'content' in lotro if we would stick to just one. Imho you can't blame Turbine if you look at a 5 year grind for all toons. ...

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What Turbine designs, promotes, and supports is THEIR choice. What we play within those parameters is OUR choice. And I think they have shot themselves in the foot with this one.

It is in their interest to have people playing multiple characters. They need people to buy stuff for their toons. The more toons, the more stuff. Reducing the incentive for playing multiple toons means reducing the likelihood people will buy stuff.

I only play about 8 hours a week these days. If I had to spend that time doing content I loathe (BBs, for example), I wouldn't play at all. I "bought" my imbued weapons on my main toon. I don't have time to grind, and I figured (silly me!) that it was a one-time purchase. Apparently not.

I have a good friend in game who has no money, so she spent months grinding to get her weapons imbued. (So much for those who say "It's easy", meaning "It takes very little time or effort". It's not "easy" for everyone.)

With this grind model, I'm not going to spend anything on the alts I was leveling. I'm not even going to level them. Turbine has lost the money I would have spent on other things.

No doubt there are some who will spend lavishly. I have my doubts that it's a large proportion of the player base. I think Turbine has made a design decision that will significantly reduce their profit margin.

Actually, the people I really feel for are the designers and developers at Turbine who are doing their level best for us and are having to work under the constraints of poor management decisions. I've been in IT since Jimmy Carter was President, and I know exactly what it's like when you're waist deep in the Big Muddy and the Big Fool says to push on. You do your very best, and you still get abuse from the users of your product (in this case, us).

I don't bother with the grind anymore. Even the epics have become a grind, running all over Minas Tirith with wash buckets tells me that their well of ideas ran completely dry. In fact I had to force myself to complete it, at least the rewards are good. These days I usually just level alts and play the game as it was meant to. Not doing some trashy dailies over and over again, I know this game can do better then that, well at least it used to.

The grind is a big hill to overcome at this point but it is doable. What bothers me more and more is why are we doing it? I have naively held out that raids and traditional instances were on there way back. Even if there were traditional instances what are they going to offer for loot at this point... essences... essence jewelry... first age symbols... scrolls... crystals? What they can offer for loot at this point is just Meh. Everything has been broken down to component levels and there is nothing to get excited about.

I remember the joy of seeing Captain Arm drop in BG for a kinnie, or hoping to win the Wig-feld drop in Rift, or running the moria instances over and over to get painted vein or insidious cuffs. At this point there is no carrot to dangle, no legendary loot, just more of what we are grinding for and can obtain several different ways.

Overall I am getting very tired of being all dressed up with no were to go.

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Originally Posted by Spilo

So you find it reasonable that Turbine has created a gear level that is virtually unreachable (or at the very least, totally abymsally miserable to reach for)? Again, I'm looking at things from a Raiding/PvP/Completionist stand point.

Never in its past (to my memory) has Turbine created a grind so horrific that it's not reasonable to reach top-level gear. Whether that gear is "needed" or "necessary" or not is totally irrelevant, as you could say the same about multiple grinds in the past that were to a far less extent.

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You appear to be arguing against someone else, perhaps a straw man, rather than me.

I agree that whether gear is "needed" or "necessary" is totally irrelevant to the point at hand. Which is why I've stayed away from those side arguments. And by that same token, it doesn't matter whether you are looking at this from a raiding, PVP, completionist, or other standpoint.

I simply disagree with you that the grind is "horrific," and the gear level is "virtually unreachable." I've done the grind for 2 ILIs, this last boost took a handful of weeks, and it was not horrific. It obviously is reachable, since I reached it, and so have others.

So, the grind for a single main character to max out two ILIs is not unreasonable, in light of the result and compared to previous grinds involving LIs.

I do understand the problem those with MMCS have (Multiple Maxed Character Syndrome): multiply the grind by 10, and it can be crushing.

So, how can Turbine make that 10-alt maxxed ILI grind more reasonable, without trivializing the amount of effort for a player with a single main with 2 ILIs, like me?

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Originally Posted by Scirocco

You appear to be arguing against someone else, perhaps a straw man, rather than me.

I agree that whether gear is "needed" or "necessary" is totally irrelevant to the point at hand. Which is why I've stayed away from those side arguments. And by that same token, it doesn't matter whether you are looking at this from a raiding, PVP, completionist, or other standpoint.

I simply disagree with you that the grind is "horrific," and the gear level is "virtually unreachable." I've done the grind for 2 ILIs, this last boost took a handful of weeks, and it was not horrific. It obviously is reachable, since I reached it, and so have others.

So, the grind for a single main character to max out two ILIs is not unreasonable, in light of the result and compared to previous grinds involving LIs.

I do understand the problem those with MMCS have (Multiple Maxed Character Syndrome): multiply the grind by 10, and it can be crushing.

So, how can Turbine make that 10-alt maxxed ILI grind more reasonable, without trivializing the amount of effort for a player with a single main with 2 ILIs, like me?

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Hm, then it comes to a simple difference of opinion. That being said, others have done the math (look at the first post); I find the grind to be massive from any standpoint. Considering just how many Scrolls of Empowerment it requires now, I'm not sure how you could think otherwise. That being said, at least I'm clear on your standpoint now.

It just makes me sad this whole thing. To think of the endless hours i used to play on this game spending hours running instances and gearing my character as much as i could then starting again on another one to allow me to help with other roles in raids etc. Now I'm just gearing them for the sake of it as there's nothing else to do and im still doing my main so i dare not think how long it'll take to get my others semi decently geared. Im so glad fallout came out to keep me occupied hours on end till they change something in the game and i can return.

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Originally Posted by AMDG93

It just makes me sad this whole thing. To think of the endless hours i used to play on this game spending hours running instances and gearing my character as much as i could then starting again on another one to allow me to help with other roles in raids etc. Now I'm just gearing them for the sake of it as there's nothing else to do and im still doing my main so i dare not think how long it'll take to get my others semi decently geared. Im so glad fallout came out to keep me occupied hours on end till they change something in the game and i can return.

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I'm about an hour away from starting a six-day weekend. I will leave my office, pick up breakfast, head home, and log into LOTRO. With any luck, that old magic feeling will return and I will remain logged into LOTRO until Monday. I purposefully reserved virgin content for my mains to play this weekend ... hopeful that East Gondor and Minas Tirith will hold my attention against such strong distractions as some sort of "feast" going on tomorrow and some very good football games this weekend. That's the thing though: I'm hopeful ... but not confident ... that just playing LOTRO will sate me such that I can resist all temptations to spend my time elsewhere. To paraphrase Vader: "I find my lack of confidence disturbing" (yeah, I know ... wrong MMO). But with two guys to push through new (to me) LOTRO content, I still found myself picking up Dragon Age: Inquisition and EA NCAA Football 14 (the last iteration of that game before all the lawsuits) yesterday ... just in case.:(

And my current sense of malaise ... following an extended break from LOTRO, no less ... doesn't even factor in any grinding.