Twenty Questions with the LOTRO Dev Team

[Rapidash]

One small update to the forums update question. I was just told the update will be delayed until after the July 4th Holiday. So look for it in early July now and not the end of June.

so when will we see the new forum ? thought it would come after July 4th delayed again or ?

[LightOne]

I would like to provide my opinions on several matters:

Could I also suggest a stronger GM presence in the game? At present, the only interaction with a GM is in text form during a ticketing process. In some of the MMO's I've played, the GM's actually patrol the worlds. They show up physically, stand next to you, wearing cosmetics/items that are yet to be released as a teaser and have a big GM mark above their heads. They emote, sometimes talk to you, give you some kind of buff then goes invisible again. Even when they are invisible, they post on global chat channels or the global alert notifications and chats with players much like this forum. When you report a player on suspect behaviour, they show up either to deter such actions, and if the player doesnt respond (confirming its a bot) or any other action that would confirm that the player is breaking the ToS, they ban them on the spot. What we need is some kind of passive surveillance. The knowledge that they exist and could be monitoring them would reduce malicious behaviour to a certain extent.

I enjoy reading dev diaries. I like to read about a dev's thought process when coming up with a new element of the game. I particularly enjoyed Orion's interaction with the players when drafting the last Champion's revamp. The final outcome incorporates the players ideas and the dev's intent resulting in a more satisfying product. This is the kind of interaction a lot of players seem to be requesting and that I would like to see more of too.

OD (lvl 65)/ToO are my all time favourite raids. It involves elements of co-ordination, positioning, dps race...etc etc. You need to really understand the mechanics, know how to press more than 4 buttons, and work with your group in order to complete the challenges. Hours of frustration wiping over and over again trying to learn the fight and pulls, trying different class builds and item combinations to be optimum and useful to the raid group. This was what made me addicted to raiding. This was what made me addicted to LotRO. I remember reading the dev diary on OD. The dev said it is meant to test the limits of the raid. One mistake and it will be a wipe. That is wat a raid should be about. The In Your Absence instance cluster on level was one of the best IMO mechanic and theme-wise. The background stories all come together in the raid and you fight the main antagonist of the story as the final raid boss. They are not face-rollably easy, but neither are they impossibly difficult. I would like to see more content with similar types of difficulty level as these are the challenges and fun factor that kept drawing me back to the game. I was half expecting Nurzum to be a final raid boss because it was a new mob model we've seen in a long time (rather than new skins on existing models) and the whole Wildermore content and epic is based on him. But oh well.

About the loot system, could completing challenge mode be made more appealing? As currently the challenge chest provides nothing more than extra ixp/relics + very low chance for gold item. I would suggest that only purple versions of gear drop from t1/normal chests while only teal versions drop from the t2 challenge chest with a higher chance. Although it was said that t2 has a higher chance of obtaining gear, it doesnt feel that way. I got 4 teal rings from WP running on t1 but never got a teal running it on t2. Maths and statistics doesnt seem to add up. If there was some kind of guaranteed drop from challenge, it would justify the added duration and effort the devs and players put into the instance. Ultimately its all about the gear and people want their efforts to be rewarded. I would rather spend 10 hours on one instance knowing there will be a guaranteed drop at the end than doing 10, 20-min runs with a chance of something to drop at the end or walk away empty handed.

[Hurin]

so when will we see the new forum ? thought it would come after July 4th delayed again or ?

Perhaps this is just phrased in an unfortunate way. . . but since this was written on July 4th and the last news was "after the July 4th holiday," it probably behooves us to give them a week or two before assuming there will be another delay or getting pissy about the potential for one.

--H

[Rampagingdeath]

so when will we see the new forum ? thought it would come after July 4th delayed again or ?

When they've decided if they're going to charge you 1,2 or 3 mithril coins a time to post

[battlem]

I have been playing the game for 6 years and have played MMO's for the last 20 years and in my opinion the first book is the best. Book one parallels Tolkeins' more closely than any other within the game. I actually think that the developers and thinkers are moving backwards and not forward with the game. Adding things that are not Lord of the Rings and do not pertain to Tolkeins' books or journals. The game has become random and hard to follow. Great River jumps through and back through Middle Earth. Where is the fellowship? Where is Frodo? I haven't even played the Treachery of the White Hand because of frustration. In my opinion the game was wonderful in the beginning and now it has fallen into redundancy and catering to those who are willing to pay for turbine points. There is no focus on the Game and its background, but on money, free players, points, and medallions. The game was more fun before the Lotro store. Moria was wonderful and set up perfectly! As a solo player and as a group player Moria caters to all! Now, I feel that the game is for those who group all of the time because you cannot, as a solo player, attain upper level armours alone or the comparable.
I am just stating my opinions, but I think that it needs to be changed to Middle Earth instead of Lotro. This can open the entire Middle earth instead of specifically trying to stick with Lord of the Rings. More adventures, More open areas, more creatures and quests, and more places to explore!
I truly feel that you have lost a lot of the die hard lotro gamers already to other games and there are new ones emerging every year and your paying customers might end up leaving also. Just like Everquest.
Thank you for your time- Just my opinions I Love Lord of the Rings!

[HunterGreen]

I have been playing the game for 6 years and have played MMO's for the last 20 years and in my opinion the first book is the best. Book one parallels Tolkeins' more closely than any other within the game.

While I can sort of see where you're coming from here, I don't think I agree. Volume I spends a while shadowing the Fellowship, though only occasionally. But that's not a very good measure of how closely it's following the story. To put a contrary case, Volume I spends more than a third of its length, towards the end, chasing around Narchuil and Amarthiel, and virtually nothing in that entire section of the story touches on the actual events of LotR.

In Volume II, you're enough behind the Fellowship that you're not seeing them, or even their traces, that much, even when you're seeing places they went. There's a few small exceptions, like the visions one has at the Bridge and what you find at the bottom of the Endless Stair, but by and large, you spend your time exploring the backstory of LotR more than the events of LotR, but events that the Fellowship also explored. When you get to Lothlorien, though, you're meeting the Fellowship again and spend a lot of time with them.

And after that, while you do go off a ways with Horn, Corudan, and Nona, you also see the events behind what's going on in Edoras and Isengard, and if you go back and read the books I think you'll find those get as many page as what Frodo and Sam are doing at the same time. And into Rohan the epic starts to narrow back in on the events of the book -- you're just steps behind the Three Hunters and Merry and Pippin, and you're seeing (admittedly through visions) the Fellowship at Parth Galen. I think if you sat down and added up the connections, direct and indirect, to the story of LotR with the epic, you'd find that there's really about the same proportions in all three Volumes so far.

All of them have long periods where you're away from the events of the books (Volume I actually goes the longest at this, I think, with everything from the Lone Lands through Evendim, Trollshaws, Misty Mountains, Forochel, and Angmar touching either only on backstory or unrelated events) and all of them have connections at every point to the characters, places, and setting. And this despite the fact, outside Turbine's control, that the story of the Fellowship is a lot easier to follow during the first stretch and becomes increasingly fragmented afterwards. I think they've done an exceptionally good job of staying with the story despite things like that making it harder.

[Thoroval]

It doesn't state who answered this question...

Q16: Is there some kind of performance reason that you shrank the mob aggro radius?
A16: The reasoning behind this change was entirely gameplay oriented. We decided that while a sense of risk is one thing, forming enormous trains when you’re just trying to navigate around the landscape wasn’t fun.

But, isn't the answer really this extremely detailed explanation from 3 years ago?

2) We would regularly see players running/riding across open landscape trailing 2-4 mobs at all times, with no interest in engaging them. This is brutal for server performance and serves little game play function save to annoy everyone involved.
3) We were expecting a substantial increase in concurrent server populations (and thus server load) with the advent of F2P, which would surely exacerbate points 1 & 2.

...brutal for server performance...

[floreane]

Q20: What is being done about Multi-boxing/Rank Farming?

The server should definitely not allow more than 2, maybe 3, clients with the same IP, even if using different accounts. 2 or 3 is far enough for multi-boxing, as no human can truly control more than 3 characters without the help of bots or scripts; It is also enough for playing the game in family without multi-boxing. And by preventing more clients to uses the same IP, we force farmers to spread their accounts over different internet providers, which costs much more and certainly prevents one person to build easily a raid of farming bots all by himself.

[RockX]

The server should definitely not allow more than 2, maybe 3, clients with the same IP, even if using different accounts. 2 or 3 is far enough for multi-boxing, as no human can truly control more than 3 characters without the help of bots or scripts; It is also enough for playing the game in family without multi-boxing. And by preventing more clients to uses the same IP, we force farmers to spread their accounts over different internet providers, which costs much more and certainly prevents one person to build easily a raid of farming bots all by himself.

If this were the case, I wouldn't have been able to play for about a year. I lived in an apartment (house we rented out, really) with 3 other people who all played LOTRO. It's quite fun actually to be able to have your Fellowship effectively be a LAN party.

[SvenNiscadae]

If this were the case, I wouldn't have been able to play for about a year. I lived in an apartment (house we rented out, really) with 3 other people who all played LOTRO. It's quite fun actually to be able to have your Fellowship effectively be a LAN party.

Agreed there! A limitation based on IP address would hinder families playing together from the same household, mine included.

[Sapience]

The server should definitely not allow more than 2, maybe 3, clients with the same IP, even if using different accounts. 2 or 3 is far enough for multi-boxing, as no human can truly control more than 3 characters without the help of bots or scripts; It is also enough for playing the game in family without multi-boxing. And by preventing more clients to uses the same IP, we force farmers to spread their accounts over different internet providers, which costs much more and certainly prevents one person to build easily a raid of farming bots all by himself.

As we've mentioned, Multi-boxing is not a violation of any sort and is not something we're looking to prevent or block.

MISUSE of multi-boxing or using it to rank farm or similar actions is what we're looking in to.

I would also not be able to play LOTRO if your plan went into effect. My entire family plays and I usually have two machines logged in for myself. One as an active bank mule that moves things around.

It also would present a dramatic issue for some German players I suspect as I've been told they use IP masking for privacy reasons. Potentially blocking out dozens of legit players who are doing nothing wrong is not a very good idea.

To steal Blackstone's formulation, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

[Eartholloth]

As we've mentioned, Multi-boxing is not a violation of any sort and is not something we're looking to prevent or block.

MISUSE of multi-boxing or using it to rank farm or similar actions is what we're looking in to.

I would also not be able to play LOTRO if your plan went into effect. My entire family plays and I usually have two machines logged in for myself. One as an active bank mule that moves things around.

It also would present a dramatic issue for some German players I suspect as I've been told they use IP making for privacy reasons. Potentially blocking out dozens of legit players who are doing nothing wrong is not a very good idea.

To steal Blackstone's formulation, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

Sapience does your wife play LOTRO?

[Sapience]

Sapience does your wife play LOTRO?

Yes she does. She has quite a few capped characters.

[Eartholloth]

Yes she does. She has quite a few capped characters.

Cool... I use to play with my hubby but am now so use to soloing that I rarely duo anymore. LOL

[Namesse]

Yes she does. She has quite a few capped characters.

What do you and the Mrs. like to do at end game? Grind rep via a limit of 5 dailies? Run instances 300+ times to get the drop you want? Farm Erebor T1 raids? I'm curious what aspect of the game you both find enjoyable at level cap.

[Sapience]

What do you and the Mrs. like to do at end game? Grind rep via a limit of 5 dailies? Run instances 300+ times to get the drop you want? Farm Erebor T1 raids? I'm curious what aspect of the game you both find enjoyable at level cap.

Here's a teachable moment. These aren't questions. It is, bluntly, trolling. Every 'question' has a backhanded comment. Which earns you... no answers.

[GrandCru]

To steal Blackstone's formulation, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

The bad sleep well.
To steal Myown's formulation, "Encore un beau foutage de gueule"

[Namesse]

Here's a teachable moment. These aren't questions. It is, bluntly, trolling. Every 'question' has a backhanded comment. Which earns you... no answers.

Backhanded? Certainly. Yet it's a legitimate question; if we knew that Turbine staff and those close to them enjoyed that type of play then it explains how we got to where we are and that it is unlikely to change.

[Freia]

Backhanded? Certainly. Yet it's a legitimate question; if we knew that Turbine staff and those close to them enjoyed that type of play then it explains how we got to where we are and that it is unlikely to change.

I also agree that these are legitimate questions, because if that is what you choose to do for end game activities, it would be quite the eye opener for the part of the community that thinks that the current end game is in a sorry state.

[Elrantiri]

Here's a teachable moment. These aren't questions. It is, bluntly, trolling. Every 'question' has a backhanded comment. Which earns you... no answers.

Why do you see them as trolling?

Unless a lot has changed since I stopped playing, his examples are seen in the game already.
There are players who grind rep through 5 dailies.
There are players who farm instances and does several hundreds of runs that way.
There are players who farm Erebor T1 raids.

If you consider those questions to be trolling, then where does that leave the players who actually do the things he listed as examples?

[Fipiara]

While I'm not sure if it is something that can be answered, I'd love be to able to ask questions along those lines:

- What are some of your proudest achievements playing LOTRO?
- What are some recent goals/achievements/deeds that you've acomplished?
- What are some goals that you have on the character(s) you are playing currently?

For me, I find quite a bit of enjoyment setting various goals for my characters (gaining kindred with ____, maxing my crafting on my metalsmith, completing all deeds within various regions/instances, leveling all the classes, etc.). It would be fascinating to see what devs and/or other players enjoy and how others approach the game.

[eagleeye64]

What do you and the Mrs. like to do at end game? Grind rep via a limit of 5 dailies? Run instances 300+ times to get the drop you want? Farm Erebor T1 raids? I'm curious what aspect of the game you both find enjoyable at level cap.

Just saying

[Elrantiri]

Just saying

Just saying

[Sapience]

As the new 20 Questions thread is now open, I'm going to close this one off.