Ask The LOTRO Team – Answers to your questions – February 6, 2014

[Sapience]

We’ve changed the name of this feature going forward to “Ask the LOTRO Team.” Mostly because we get so many great questions we hate limiting it to just 20 answers. True to form, this time around we have answers to 42 questions posed to the team by you.

Region Revamps

Q1: We're getting revamps for Book 13, any plans to add new region content vs. just updating old regions?
A: [Budgeford] - There will be a small slice of new region content alongside the revamps for Update 13, and there are plans in the works for a full small region in the near future (but sometime after 13).

Q2: Which areas are being revamped for update 13?
A: [Budgeford] - We're hitting the North Downs, Trollshaws, and Misty Mountains with Update 13. North Downs has a lot of content already, and it's a great zone, but the quest flow and level range definitely need some love. Misty Mountains and Trollshaws are beautiful zones, but the quests are sparse and often difficult to find. We're hoping to address all of these issues during the revamps.

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Kinships

Q3: Can we expect a Kinship revamp anytime in the near future?
A: [HoarseDev] – We are designing some features that weave some Kinship stuff into housing improvements.

Q4: Have you found a way for Kin members to contribute Mithril Coins so that the leader can purchase additional storage?
A: [HoarseDev] – It’s on the table. We’re looking at a lot of ways that Kinships can work together.

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Housing

Q5: What kinds of updates are you contemplating for enhanced housing? Will Mithril Coins be necessary for all these enhancements?
A: [HoarseDev] – Yup, we’re still cooking up some housing improvements. We want to weave some of them into the Kinship system so that they have a more tangible social impact.

Q6: Will player housing areas be added in Rohan (Aldburg style, etc.) or other regions?
A: [HoarseDev] – Possibly.

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PVMP

Q7: Any chance to see the access to Ettenmoors possible buying some "Ettenmoors Pass" in the store and not only through VIP?
A: [HoarseDev] – Working on it.

Q8: Will there be a new PvP map?
A: [HoarseDev] – Not planned for any time in the near future.

Q9: Are you planning a major Ettenmoors update during 2014?
A: [HoarseDev] – We’re presently working on shoring up some of the fundamentals (long overdue stat updates). We are also prototyping some new stuff. No promises, but I want to see if we can get catapults in there.

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Epic Battles, Skirmishes, Instances, Raids

Q10: When can we expect new content in the form of a new multi-boss raid?
A: [JWbarry] – A new raid is not in the plans for 2014.

Q11: Do you have any plans to make the BB talent tiers more accessible, especially for solo/duo players?
A: [JWbarry] – As we map out the rest of the year and how we want to expand upon BB we’re looking at how many new points we may be adding and also looking at the current costs of the existing traits versus how many points are acquirable.

Q12: Will Epic Battles be expanded to include more battles and/or size options?
A: [JWbarry] – We’re looking at locations and events within the roadmap for the rest of the year that would be suitable for new Epic Battles. We don’t anticipate any new sizes beyond the 4 we currently support.

Q13: Will Carn Dum et al (not the Rift I know about that), ToO be scaled in near future (2014/15)?
A: [JWbarry] – Carn Dum is not likely. It’s old, crufty, and huge, so it presents a lot of challenges that will take significant time to sort through and implement. ToO is more likely as it was built with scaling in mind. That said, there’s a bunch of work we like to put into instances when we scale them, and we’d like to do that cluster as a whole. There’s some reworking to be done in Dargnákh Unleashed and difficulty swings to be made in The Foundy, in addition to bugfix and polish passes through all the instances. While it is less time than making new ones, it is also generally less satisfying to the community as well. Having all instances available and relevant at cap is still something on the wishlist, but it’s not something we can commit to doing more of this year at this point.

Q14: Are there plans to reintroduce the currency bonus to the Instance Finder?
A: [JWbarry] – Nope. This bonus was initially in place as an encouragement to random a larger group of instances. At this point we’re comfortable with players selecting the specific space they want. We removed the bonus from Instance Finder and added into the base rewards for each instance.

Q15: With the advent of the player up scaling for Epic Battles is it possible and being looked into to allow us to downscale and run other classic instance spaces without requiring the old instances to be redesigned and broken up thus allowing for the continued use of locks on the instances like Tower of Orthanc, Carn Dum, The Rift, Draigoch, Moria, DN etc?
A: [JWbarry] – Not currently. Downscaling presents a lot of different challenges than upscaling does. Upscaling we’re adding statistics to the character, downscaling we have to figure out how to not just add statistics, but what to do about additional skills that have been unlocked. Upscaling can tend to produce underpowered characters, while downscaling more often produces overpowered characters. Additionally, our instance scaling works by moving the instance level up and down. Expectation of how a certain type of space behaves and consistency in its ruleset is a very valuable thing.

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New Regions

Q16: Are there currently any plans to (ever) create content for northern Mirkwood, Gladden Fields, the area south of Bree and other unused spaces that aren't close to the path of the Fellowship?
A: [MoL] – We have plans for areas that aren’t directly on the path of the main LotR story, but they’re prioritized below major events for now. We’ve strayed from the path of the Fellowship before and certainly will again, but the story is moving forward into interesting territory and we don’t want to miss that.

Q17: Will the destruction of Isengard by the Ents find its way into the game?
A: [MoL] – That happens while the Battle of the Hornburg is taking place, so in some sense it’s already happened, storyline-wise. But if you’ve been playing LOTRO for a while you might have seen some of the tricks we might use to let you experience it anyway…

Q18: Does Turbine plan to take us through the Paths of the Dead?
A: [MoL] – It’s tricky, but I think you can expect to see the Paths of the Dead in some form. Aragorn’s path through them is described rather specifically, but I think your character will have a different reason to enter and explore the Paths.

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Crafting

Q19: Are there plans for a new craft?
A: [NLS] There’s not a plan for a new craft profession. However, we have discussed the possibility of allowing players to add additional crafting abilities to their character beyond the three that come with your profession.

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Legendary items

Q20: Will we see a Legendary item revamp this year?
A: [HoarseDev] – We’re in the ideas phase. It’s a maybe.

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Chat channels, Mail and Social Options

Q21: Chat channels: Will we ever be able to have more than 4 user chat channels per character?
A: [Ransroth] - This is something that we could do if there is enough interest. The UI and interaction design isn’t set up to scale but we can overcome that if needs be.

Q22: Do the Regional and OOC chat channels transmit into the same area, or is one reaching a larger area than the other?
A: [Ransroth] – The same area.

Q23: Global Chat Channels have been suggested many times over the years. The Players Council has even brought the subject up. Is this something we’ll finally see this year?
A: [HoarseDev] – Looking into it. It is definitely on the radar. It has gotten pushed aside by other things more than a few times. Just finding a spot to fit it in.

Q24: Could we please get a larger Friends List and a larger ignore list?
A: [HoarseDev] – I’ll investigate.

Q25: Will the in game mail program ever be updated to mail more than 1 item at a time?
A: [NLS] We’re working on this now.

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Music

Q26: Will there be upgrades to the music system to use MIDI instead of ABC?
A: [NLS] We have no plans to make this change.

Q27: Any new instruments?
A: [NLS] There are currently no new instruments planned.

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Miscellaneous

Q28: When inspecting someone, you can no longer see their traits. Will this be rectified in the future?
A: [NLS] Unfortunately with the trait tree redesign, viewing another player’s equipped traits has gotten a lot more complicated. As a result, we don’t expect to enable this function.

Q29: What is the team's opinion on having just 1 bag? 45 slots (bags 1-3) free to all, another 45 (bags 4-6) via purchase, and further storage also for purchase?
A: [NLS] We are working on changes for Update 13 that will allow players to customize the number of slots in a given bag.

Q30: Why can’t dwarfs be wardens? Why can’t any race play any class?
A: [NLS] We’ve discussed the possibility of doing this in the past, but it’s not something we’re currently working on.

Q31: Are there plans to remove all the old icon-placeholders & doppelgangers that are still used for buffs, items, jewelry etc?
A: [HoarseDev] – Icons are always… challenging. We are working on sorting a lot of this stuff out.

Q32: Will we see any more developments in the Lua API?
A: [NLS] None are planned at this time.

Q33: Question for [HoarseDev] - Back during HD Beta in one of the dev chats we had in game it was suggested that key mapping be added as an option for Class Trait Presets and maybe for Big Battle Promotion Presets. You stated you liked the idea and were going to put in a request for it. Is there any update on if this is planned or being worked on?
A: [HoarseDev] – There is a meeting to sort out some details this week. We had a lot of overlapping vacation time with the key stakeholders over the last month =)

Q34: Would it be possible to go more towards the atmosphere and the style of the films?
A: [MoL] – Our game takes its inspiration from the books, just like the films do, and it’s the atmosphere and style of LotR that we’re trying to capture, not anything specifically from the movies themselves.

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Community

Q35: Do you have any plans to set up another 'Design a horse' contest, or similar fun contest which allows players to show their creativity?
A: [Sapience] Not a horse, but we are looking at putting together another “design” type contest in the future.

Q36: Have you ever thought about using polls for the community to vote on what changes (be it large or details) they'd like to see?
A: [Sapience] We have in the past. Usually for minor things. The servers we added when we launched free to play were named based on a player poll. Riddermark was the top choice with 616. We may use polls again in the future for smaller questions like this one.

Q37: Are there any plans afoot to streamline or improve the server transfer process?
A: [Sapience] YES! I can’t really say a great deal right now, but the team is hard at work at making this process much easier and faster.

Q38: Sapience, do you think that Player council is doing well? What can be improved in the PC?
A: [Sapience] We’re very happy with the Players Council so far. Like anything you do for the first time we think there are things that can be improved. The council itself gave us a list of things that could improve the council and much of that feedback will be incorporated into our next selection process.

Q39: The Player Council seems to be a good idea. When will there be an opportunity for a fresh set of blood?
A: [Sapience] Yes. We’ll be announcing a new call for applications very soon. Probably towards the end of February.

Q40: Could the ideas brought forth by the Player's Council be more transparent? Not the answers, just the ideas. We want to know that our ideas are being brought forward.
A: [Sapience] This is a suggestion the council themselves made. It’s a part of the changes we’ll be making for the 2014 council.

Q41: Are there any other fun events such as "Take the Hobbits to Isengard" planned?
A: [Sapience] YES! We’ll let you know when we have things sorted out. Right now we’re trying to get through all 29 servers for this event. But we plan on doing more Live Streaming in 2014 in general.

Q42: Are you working on fixing the lotteries? What is the progress?
A: [Sapience] The lottery system is currently down. The team is looking into it, but I don’t have any new information on when they’ll return.

[Sapience]

While preparing these notes, the Players Council suggested we create a new area on the forums to house all current and past Q&A type features we've done. The feeling was these were being lost among the Official Discussion Threads and Dev Developer Diary threads in the other forum. This made a lot of sense to us, so here we are.

Going forward, new requests for questions will be posted in this forum and will carry the "?" icon. When we post the answers those threads will carry the "!" Icon.

Threads will be locked once we move past that series of questions. For example, the request for questions thread will be locked when the answers are posted and the answer thread will be locked when a new request for questions thread is posted. This should mean the latest thread is always on top of the forum and visible in the main forum list and old threads don't bury more current threads. It will also make it easier for us to keep track of the discussion on the most recent set of replies.

[LethalLethality]

Cool to see the answer to Q19.

I've been hoping for a way to add maybe one extra vocation to your character after reaching a certain goal of some sort.


And thanks for the new forum area for these.

[Bel-Astarte]

Q25: Will the in game mail program ever be updated to mail more than 1 item at a time?
A: [NLS] We’re working on this now.

Yes!!! *happy hobbit dances around the mailbox*

I'll tell the Quick Post to be prepared.

[Bel-Astarte]

Looks like it's not currently tracked, and it would be useful to have that, I think.

[Sapience]

Yes!!! *happy hobbit dances around the mailbox*

I'll tell the Quick Post to be prepared.

On a live stream someone asked me what made me happy in my job and I gave some vague answer about how when I leave a meeting and feel I did a good job of getting something I know the community really wants onto the schedule and that we made a great choice makes me happy. That was me trying not to spill the beans about this. I had left this meeting about a hour before that.

I have other secrets, too.


Note: This forum is being tracked and can be seen in the dev tracker. It just takes a couple of posts for it to show up.

[gonnaplaynow]

We’re presently working on shoring up some of the fundamentals (long overdue stat updates). We are also prototyping some new stuff. No promises, but I want to see if we can get catapults in there.

Is this a joke about the catapults? I hope so, if you mean they will be npc controlled doing aoe from the keeps, because most pvpers I know want more fights with other players and less NPC input in Eteens. If the Catapults are like BB ones, where a player has to control them, maybe there could be some mileage in that but if NPC ones, please scrap the idea now.

[Whiteberry_Laurelin]

This Archive Forum is a wonderful idea, thank you.

[Bragard]

Q5: What kinds of updates are you contemplating for enhanced housing? Will Mithril Coins be necessary for all these enhancements?
A: [HoarseDev] – Yup, we’re still cooking up some housing improvements. We want to weave some of them into the Kinship system so that they have a more tangible social impact.


Do not think putting a cost to kinships is the best way forward and should never be used in the same paragraph as tangible social impact, as its the least social thing anybody could do.

[Bel-Astarte]

On a live stream someone asked me what made me happy in my job and I gave some vague answer about how when I leave a meeting and feel I did a good job of getting something I know the community really wants onto the schedule and that we made a great choice makes me happy. That was me trying not to spill the beans about this. I had left this meeting about a hour before that.

I have other secrets, too.


Note: This forum is being tracked and can be seen in the dev tracker. It just takes a couple of posts for it to show up.

Sapience is a seekrit keeper!!!

Hmmm, whatever shall I do with this pack of York Peppermint Patties...

[Bel-Astarte]

is that, unlike Turbine Points, there is no receipt received. I will not use them for big ticket items without being able to track what they are spent on.

[XinaLotRO]

Fantastic QA, thank you for posting it. So much more good news than bad, it's very exciting! The new sub-forum is a great idea.

[DanteIL]

Q12: Will Epic Battles be expanded to include more battles and/or size options?
A: [JWbarry] – We’re looking at locations and events within the roadmap for the rest of the year that would be suitable for new Epic Battles. We don’t anticipate any new sizes beyond the 4 we currently support.

I feel like this answer kind of missed an important aspect of the original question. I understood the question to be asking, in part, whether or not existing battles would be expanded to support sizes other than the ones that they currently do. For instance, would there ever be a 6-man Glittering Caves or a 3-man Deeping Wall? NOT whether there would ever be, say, an '8-man' Battle anywhere.

[Galuhad]

An interesting read. Definitely lots to look forward to.

Q2: Which areas are being revamped for update 13?
A: [Budgeford] - We're hitting the North Downs, Trollshaws, and Misty Mountains with Update 13. North Downs has a lot of content already, and it's a great zone, but the quest flow and level range definitely need some love. Misty Mountains and Trollshaws are beautiful zones, but the quests are sparse and often difficult to find. We're hoping to address all of these issues during the revamps.

Awesome that we're getting three revamps instead of just one, and regions that definitely needed it. Nice job!

Q3: Can we expect a Kinship revamp anytime in the near future?
A: [HoarseDev] – We are designing some features that weave some Kinship stuff into housing improvements.

Q4: Have you found a way for Kin members to contribute Mithril Coins so that the leader can purchase additional storage?
A: [HoarseDev] – It’s on the table. We’re looking at a lot of ways that Kinships can work together.

Sounds a bit ambiguous to me. Happy to hear that something is being done with kinships, but sounds more like housing fluff than core kinship mechanics - which really is what needs to be improved in my opinion. I will reserve judgement until we have more information.

Q10: When can we expect new content in the form of a new multi-boss raid?
A: [JWbarry] – A new raid is not in the plans for 2014.

That's a shame, I hope that there will be some other group end-game activities to look forward to.

Q15: With the advent of the player up scaling for Epic Battles is it possible and being looked into to allow us to downscale and run other classic instance spaces without requiring the old instances to be redesigned and broken up thus allowing for the continued use of locks on the instances like Tower of Orthanc, Carn Dum, The Rift, Draigoch, Moria, DN etc?
A: [JWbarry] – Not currently. Downscaling presents a lot of different challenges than upscaling does. Upscaling we’re adding statistics to the character, downscaling we have to figure out how to not just add statistics, but what to do about additional skills that have been unlocked. Upscaling can tend to produce underpowered characters, while downscaling more often produces overpowered characters. Additionally, our instance scaling works by moving the instance level up and down. Expectation of how a certain type of space behaves and consistency in its ruleset is a very valuable thing.

It's a shame you guys can't figure a way to make this work, not only would it be ideal for doing instances on-level, but players could also downscale to mentor new players without sacrificing their experience. Other MMOs have such a feature, and it's a nice thing to have.

Q16: Are there currently any plans to (ever) create content for northern Mirkwood, Gladden Fields, the area south of Bree and other unused spaces that aren't close to the path of the Fellowship?
A: [MoL] – We have plans for areas that aren’t directly on the path of the main LotR story, but they’re prioritized below major events for now. We’ve strayed from the path of the Fellowship before and certainly will again, but the story is moving forward into interesting territory and we don’t want to miss that.

I would love to see the Greenway filled in, linking Bree-land to Enedwaith/Eregion. Would also love to see the gap filled in between Erud Luin and The Shire. I don't think it's necessary for all new content to be aimed at end-game players, there will be plenty of people with alts who would benefit from new lower levelled regions too. Perhaps one day we will get to see them.

Q19: Are there plans for a new craft?
A: [NLS] There’s not a plan for a new craft profession. However, we have discussed the possibility of allowing players to add additional crafting abilities to their character beyond the three that come with your profession.

Please please please discuss this some more. I've mentioned in posts before that, in Rift, a player can purchase unlocks in the store to add additional crafting professions. I would happily pay for such an unlock in LotRO - providing the cost was not ridiculous. I loathe making alts just for crafting, being able to do it all on one character would be amazing.

Q25: Will the in game mail program ever be updated to mail more than 1 item at a time?
A: [NLS] We’re working on this now.

Awesome! A+ to the devs on this one.

Q29: What is the team's opinion on having just 1 bag? 45 slots (bags 1-3) free to all, another 45 (bags 4-6) via purchase, and further storage also for purchase?
A: [NLS] We are working on changes for Update 13 that will allow players to customize the number of slots in a given bag.

Didn't see this question asked, must have missed it, but sounds like a really good idea. I'd happily settle for one bag in the style of the vault, with purchasable upgrades.

Q32: Will we see any more developments in the Lua API?
A: [NLS] None are planned at this time.

That's very disheartening to see. Does anyone still look after Lua at all or has it been completely abandoned? What would it take to get someone more involved?

Q35: Do you have any plans to set up another 'Design a horse' contest, or similar fun contest which allows players to show their creativity?
A: [Sapience] Not a horse, but we are looking at putting together another “design” type contest in the future.

Great! I love design comps.

Thanks to Sapience and all the devs who took part in getting these questions answered, and anyone else involved. Really appreciate getting some definitive answers to a lot of questions.

[Feper]

Hi,

Q10: When can we expect new content in the form of a new multi-boss raid?
A: [JWbarry] – A new raid is not in the plans for 2014.

This must be a joke, or you should change the meaning of Lotro to The Lord of the Rings Offline! Really sad.

[Celembar]

Q9: Are you planning a major Ettenmoors update during 2014?......to see if we can get catapults in there.

Really?.

No-one cares about these silly little gimmicks.

Get a new map.

Fix the lag.

[Aranedain]

So by answering 42, does the LOTRO team now think they have comprehensively given us the answer to life, the universe and everything this time?

[Sapience]

So by answering 42, does the LOTRO team now think they have comprehensively given us the answer to life, the universe and everything this time?

Yes. We're also pretty sure you asked the wrong question.

[OverlordGate]

Maybe my english is not good enough or I do understand this right:

No new instances

No new raids

New big battles just in case you´ll find possible spots for it

no new sclaed instances (they´re on the wishlist....)

just a slice new Region

so what is the Content you talked about earlier sapience? the new book?

except the Region revamps These answers are very disappointing in my opinion

[LorenNell]

Really?.

No-one cares about these silly little gimmicks.

Get a new map.

Fix the lag.

Agree ,pvp area is a joke right now , fix the lags , remove the op wars and buffs , improve the map , don't make new bugs.

[Ravdor]

Epic Battles, Skirmishes, Instances, Raids

Q10: When can we expect new content in the form of a new multi-boss raid?
A: [JWbarry] – A new raid is not in the plans for 2014.

Very disappointed

This is the reason for me playing the game and a lot of other players in my kinship around the server. I loved making videos of our raid progression and being able to accomplish hard end-game content as a group. I enjoyed making a raid progression thread for our server to promote end-game raiding and friendly competition. I really think LOTRO should re-consider this decision as it made a lot of players move on from the game. I have enjoyed other aspects of LOTRO but there is nothing like looking back at the moments that i have recorded on my youtube channel of our group of friends working together and beating a raid at the highest level of difficulty. I hope that LOTRO will bring back the ability for a large player base that wants to have hard challenging content. I don't know if this will ever be looked at and considered by the Dev team but i thought i would take the time to voice my thoughts and its very sad to see the game i grew to love fade away as so many of my friends have decided to stop playing or move on

Best,

~ Rav

[Eldarian_Grace]

sapience, you chose the multi boss raid question for JWB to answer and I imagine that this means no new instances too. Is that correct?
And are there any very forward plans for 2015 to start with some? or is this A just too far ahead or B not likely anyway.

[DJ_JD]

Q13: Will Carn Dum et al (not the Rift I know about that), ToO be scaled in near future (2014/15)?
A: [JWbarry] – Carn Dum is not likely. It’s old, crufty, and huge, so it presents a lot of challenges that will take significant time to sort through and implement. ToO is more likely as it was built with scaling in mind. That said, there’s a bunch of work we like to put into instances when we scale them, and we’d like to do that cluster as a whole. There’s some reworking to be done in Dargnákh Unleashed and difficulty swings to be made in The Foundy, in addition to bugfix and polish passes through all the instances. While it is less time than making new ones, it is also generally less satisfying to the community as well. Having all instances available and relevant at cap is still something on the wishlist, but it’s not something we can commit to doing more of this year at this point.

I'd like to make a point that since we're expecting no new instances at all, having new scaled instances would be more satisfying.

*EDIT* Also just read Rav's post, I agree wholeheartedly with this.

[Belnavar]

Excellent. Looks like lots of good stuff on the horizon, including things we thought we'd never get. I'm looking forward to all the new/revised content and features.

The new forum area for these Q&As is also an great idea

-Bel

[Glohir]

Q7: Any chance to see the access to Ettenmoors possible buying some "Ettenmoors Pass" in the store and not only through VIP?[/COLOR][/B]
A: [HoarseDev] – Working on it.

That sounds promising.

Q8: Will there be a new PvP map?

A: [HoarseDev] – Not planned for any time in the near future.

I would be happy enough if you can fix the lag in the current PvMP map.

Q9: Are you planning a major Ettenmoors update during 2014?
A: [HoarseDev] – We’re presently working on shoring up some of the fundamentals (long overdue stat updates). We are also prototyping some new stuff. No promises, but I want to see if we can get catapults in there.

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I hope this is a joke tbh, new stuff sounds nice but I have no idea how you want to implement catapults without them being either useless or too OP.

Q10: When can we expect new content in the form of a new multi-boss raid?
A: [JWbarry] – A new raid is not in the plans for 2014.

Many players have looked forward to a new raid, knowing it is not in the plans for 2014 I guess PVE will be dead until 2015.