Reputation Items - An Analysis

[Nosdracir]

There isn't a day that goes by where as I log in to the game in the middle of a conversation where it appears that 1 or 2 players are explaining to new players how to farm TP. This must be changed in some form!
They go on to say how long it will take and just how much TP a person can earn. What they seem to be doing is farming the slayer deeds in the lower areas then delete that character rinse and repeat.

I'm rather confused by the reaction of some of the posters in this thread. So many of you are wanting no change in the end. Well this won't happen! Things will be changing and by the looks of it..it's about time!!

I saw nothing wrong with putting level requiremnets on rep items. Maybe just tweek some of them a bit, but I think it was a great idea!

You all seem to forget that Turbine can see who is doing what and how often it is being done. They have the data! They know what needs to be changed and just how much it needs changing, the rest of us can only guess.

There may have been a time where I might have objected to a change like most of you are, but once you step out of the box and look from the outside in, you can look at things a bit more objectively.
A lot of you sound more concerned for yourselves then for Turbine making a profit. They are a business after all and here to make money. Giving people the opportunity to earn "EASY" TP was rather generous and has been going on far to long.

I would suggest not only put level restrictions/requirements on Rep items but also, lessen the slayer deeds TP earned specifically in those lower areas. And take rep items off the skirms camps. They don't belong there anyway. Just my opinion.

I'm reading Turbine's problem to be that players have figured out a way to earn TP at a much higher rate than they had planned.

Stonekeep has pointed out that it takes 2 hours in Ered Luin to complete all the deeds and earn 130 TP, which is a rate of 65 TP/hour. I'm also recalling player designed TP roadmaps from the early days of F2P which I think earned TP at a rate of 75/hour.

Using a Beorning character to shortcut the levelling process, and having a huge supply of marks, you can earn TP at a much faster rate. Assuming you skip Forochel rep because of the extra level of rep needed, you need to buy 122 rep items for 9 factions = 1098 items at a cost of 296,460 marks. (Note that if you only purchase the 4 cheapest items the cost drops to 87,840 marks but have to create 2.5 times as many Beorning characters.)

10:00 - Create Beorning, complete tutorial, go to Bree.
18:20 - Purchase 1098 rep items at skirmish vendor (rate of 1 item per second, which is overestimate)
18:20 - Click the items at same rate

46:40 - Total time to get 450 TP = rate of 579 TP/hour. That's 7.7 times faster than Ered Luin.

This is a low estimate. If you can run the Beorning tutorial faster than 10 min and/or click faster than purchasing/using 1 rep item per second, then the rate just goes up.

For a perspective:

- Using rep items, it takes 7.4 hours of click-grinding and 2.2 million marks to purchase Helm's Deep.
- Running Ered Luin over and over requires 33 hours.

That's the most expensive example of content, but for a player with a huge wallet full of marks it's a faster goal.

Putting a minimum level on these items, like 15 for Shire, 20 for Bree, and 30 for the rest, drops the high rate down a lot. You have to spend more than an hour to get to 15, and maybe another hour to 20, then several more to 30. The rate per hour will drop and get much closer to the original "do all Ered Luin for 130 in 2 hours" rate.

[NaktiesKarys]

Ridiculous idea.
I do realise hardcore players, there is never ever enough hardcore for them. Monster can be defeated by armoured and armed toon? Shame. Monster can de defeeated after months of trying - barehanded? Shame.

Reputation items? Shame too. Because someone thought Turbine is losing money thanks to these items. Turbine never ever did state this or made any hint. But probably we have some telepaths that knows Turbine financial state better than Turbine.

In f2p games player is expected to pay with ca$h or time. Using task board items, maps, rep.items means paying with time. Doing same and same content all the way (do intro, run to neariest vault/house...) for same Turbine points. More convienient way is to buy TPs for real cash:you don't have to do any content, just have valid credit card and enough money (and be smart to use discounts...).

In short: why are reputation items bad?
Answer: they aren't bad for anyone, except 10-50 people in game.
Some of them are rare and you have to grind for them for hours. Some are common. Same goes with quests/deeds, task board items and even crafted items.

There is no need to change system that does work perfectly and is appreciated by great many players.
Grinding for TPs would always exist. Seeking easiest legit way would always exist. Abolish rep.items - people would go for map deeds. Abolish map deeds - people would log on during festivals, make some deed; abolish festivals - people would just travel throughout Dwarven cities, receive few TPs, log off and repeat. There is nothing bad in that - unless someone provided hard data, i.e. on 27 December 2014 Turbine lost 555,55 USD due to 29 players using reputation items.

[smashNslash]

I just want to say, I haven't paid real money since the one month I subscribed and created all the characters I wanted on every server. And I haven't paid full turbine points for in game stuff since RoI. I always wait until sale to use my turbine points. So good luck trying to make any money off of cheapskates like me. lololololol.

P.S. I think giving freeloaders like me the shaft only hurts the game because paying customers will have less people to play with. I've abstained from this game for a while now, this will just makes people like me want to ditch and go to greener pastures.

[Stonekeep]

I'm reading Turbine's problem to be that players have figured out a way to earn TP at a much higher rate than they had planned.

Stonekeep has pointed out that it takes 2 hours in Ered Luin to complete all the deeds and earn 130 TP, which is a rate of 65 TP/hour. I'm also recalling player designed TP roadmaps from the early days of F2P which I think earned TP at a rate of 75/hour.

Using a Beorning character to shortcut the levelling process, and having a huge supply of marks, you can earn TP at a much faster rate. Assuming you skip Forochel rep because of the extra level of rep needed, you need to buy 122 rep items for 9 factions = 1098 items at a cost of 296,460 marks. (Note that if you only purchase the 4 cheapest items the cost drops to 87,840 marks but have to create 2.5 times as many Beorning characters.)

10:00 - Create Beorning, complete tutorial, go to Bree.
18:20 - Purchase 1098 rep items at skirmish vendor (rate of 1 item per second, which is overestimate)
18:20 - Click the items at same rate

46:40 - Total time to get 450 TP = rate of 579 TP/hour. That's 7.7 times faster than Ered Luin.

This is a low estimate. If you can run the Beorning tutorial faster than 10 min and/or click faster than purchasing/using 1 rep item per second, then the rate just goes up.

For a perspective:

- Using rep items, it takes 7.4 hours of click-grinding and 2.2 million marks to purchase Helm's Deep.
- Running Ered Luin over and over requires 33 hours.

That's the most expensive example of content, but for a player with a huge wallet full of marks it's a faster goal.

Putting a minimum level on these items, like 15 for Shire, 20 for Bree, and 30 for the rest, drops the high rate down a lot. You have to spend more than an hour to get to 15, and maybe another hour to 20, then several more to 30. The rate per hour will drop and get much closer to the original "do all Ered Luin for 130 in 2 hours" rate.

This is a good post that shows the real issue with rep items TP farming. Obviously, 579 TP/hour is ridicilious and should infact be nerfed. However, I can clearly see that the math is 100% accurate. The people who had farmed enough skirmish marks did not farm them without spending time on them. Obviously they were doing it for something else and all those marks were just an added benefit but still time was spent. Also, 2.2 million mark is like once in lifetime thing, obviously. I don't think anyone can farm that much marks in a short time.

I prefer no kind of nerf to this but if they think mark to rep items is the issue, increasing the price of these items would be the best solution.

I just want to say, I haven't paid real money since the one month I subscribed and created all the characters I wanted on every server. And I haven't paid full turbine points for in game stuff since RoI. I always wait until sale to use my turbine points. So good luck trying to make any money off of cheapskates like me. lololololol.

P.S. I think giving freeloaders like me the shaft only hurts the game because paying customers will have less people to play with. I've abstained from this game for a while now, this will just makes people like me want to ditch and go to greener pastures.

This post has a lot of truth in it. Some people will never pay anything for an f2p game, whatever happens. In fact, statistic shows that f2p games have a very low percentage of players paying good money for the game. If the game scares all the f2pers, the game will die. I guess some VIPs think that if all the freeloaders left this game it would be better for the game, however that would mean the end of this game.

[TharbadThief]

*snip* Currently the best method is rep farming, second best is doing only Ered Luin deeds and delete the char and rinse and repeat. Ered Luin takes about 2 hours for 130 TP.
*snip*

I do not believe this, even though I have done that area many times and know the deeds, quests, in what order you ought to do the quests if you want to be efficient etc. That's why I'm going to make a little test today (and continue it tomorrow, if the real life gets in my way). I'll make a new character that
- Is a hunter (for fast killing and running)
- Starts at Ered Luin
- Has +78% riding skill and a horse, in order to make travelling faster
- Has all necessary weapons (and reasonable amount of other gear) readily made so that killing things takes as little time as possible

I'm guessing it takes way more than 2 hours from creating a character to finishing all deeds in there (excluding Sarnur, of course). I would be very surprised if I get it done in less than 3-3,5 hours. The intro itself takes about 30 minutes, IIRC, mostly because you can't use a horse yet. Of course, if there are other people killing spiders, wolves or hendrovail and they don't want to group up with me, it will make deeding much harder. But I'll take those kinda situations into account.

[Laerien]

I don't think you have heard the news. Turbine intends to implement something along the lines of a minimum level on reputation items. In fact, they did this already (mathoms were level 35 I believe) for a very short time only a couple days ago, until they realized the timing and possibly the minimum levels were a mistake. I'm not going to try and find the closed thread below this one, and I'm not trying to derail this one with talk of whether this is a good idea or not. Frelorn said something along the lines of, 'We will revisit this issue after the holidays.' Don't blame the player base for trying to help Turbine get it right next time, because we are quickly coming to the, 'after the holidays,' so this could happen as early as about a week from now, if not simply next Monday.

Probably I didn't explain myself very well (my english is worst than the last year). When I say "stop exaggerating" I'm referring to the false idea of easy TP farming. Most opinions here create the false perception that marks and rep items grow on trees and it takes no time to get them. One user suggest that players can buy them from the AH; like if the AH supply is unlimited or the price is always convenient.


Even if that is the case, let's be generous and say that a player can get 150TP/hour doing some tedious activity. Well... that is the way of how a F2P model works and the company (Turbine) built its model around this concept. and, as I said in my previous post, it should consider all forms of "free" TP to calculate revenues. People who buy TP (like me) are paying for everybody and I don't see them -for example- asking to nerf lifers "free" TP either.

So you misunderstood me, but to make it clear: I've heard the news and I know a nerf is coming; probably based on some nice support exposed here that justify it. That's why (if you read my previous post) I decided to spend some marks in rep items for my alts (something I never considered until 2 days ago).

Last thing, you say that I should not blame the playerbase for trying to help Turbine... I'm not blaming anyone for trying to help, I just see how many years took to get rid of stupid barriers like the binding system, the lvl req for rep items (yes they had lvl req), the inflated prices at the skirmish camps, the reputation grind (obsolete endgame), etc. All in danger by some brilliant ideas.

[Brutus778]

I think I read somewhere a while ago that f2p characters need to play for a certain amount of time before they can type in /world chat. Why not use the same system here?
You would need to have /played for atleast 2-5 hours with your character before you can use the reputation items.

"You have been playing for 1 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds" -> You cannot use this item.
"You have been playing for 2 hours 20 minutes 20 seconds" -> Item use succeeded.
This was an example and it could be 10 hours for all I care.

[Fratonia]

I do not believe this, even though I have done that area many times and know the deeds, quests, in what order you ought to do the quests if you want to be efficient etc. That's why I'm going to make a little test today (and continue it tomorrow, if the real life gets in my way).

Yeah, the numbers are not correct from my experience but that was more than 2 years ago. I did a few runs at that time using a warden because of superb survivability and decent damage. I even created a spreadsheet of all the deeds in the starter areas and the time it takes to do them. Well, at that time it took about 30 minutes to get through the intro (of course skipping the tutorial). It took 2,5 hours for Ered Luin which granted 125 TP. I was using the free deed accelerator for the hendrovals, grimhands and spiders.

The Shire and Breeland took considerably longer so "farming" TP there was quite ineffective.

[Felisleo]

Okays, I'm not sure if this has already been suggested, but if Turbine is going to add a minimum level for the use of Reputation Items..

Add it to those bought from the Skirmish Camp ONLY, leave those found in world with out restriction.

That would stop people taking a new alt to the Skirmish Camp to Farm Turbine Points, while not having an adverse effect on genuine low level players.

[Dmira]

Well the issue is what is defined as a "problem" and what is "abuse". Frankly it reads to me like Turbine wants to ensure that F2P people have to purchase quest packs. You see they have an ugly little secret, they allow multi clients so its not just one guy with one account leveling and alt and deleting it can be one guy with 10 toons all doing the same TP grind.

I keep forgetting about multiple clients. I'm on Win7 and use two clients when I bring one of my characters into our kinship, or need something from the kinship house and it's not convenient to port there. However, I must use two accounts to do this. I take it if you have multiple computers you can log into your account multiple times. Now I'm beginning to understand the problem.

However the real issue that I see is the timing. Why now? Why attempt to mitigate this issue now? I understand the concept but often the reason can be tied directly to timing. I suspect that Turbine is attempting to tighten up their revenue streams and increase store sales. Limiting or gating TP for F2P/premium accounts is probably on the list of things to fix.

Very interesting. Tis the season to finalize budgets, so this makes sense.

The issue with your solution is there is no exceptions. Should this apply universally? So a VIP who creates an alt and deletes it should loose the TP? What if they later have the toon reinstated (a premium service, free to VIP) do they get the TP back?

My first instinct is that the solution would be universal. If the concern is that F2P/Premium players are exploiting rep TP, then VIP could be excluded (another benefit of being VIP). But in any case, if a character is later reinstated the TP would not given back. That would be a nightmare to track.

And remember there would be a time limit to when TP would be removed; say same day, next day, whatever time range Turbine chooses. Players would retain their TP for any character removed after that time - which I freely admit is a bug in my theory because a good cheater will simply wait until then to delete their alt and start the whole thing over again.

[TharbadThief]

Yeah, the numbers are not correct from my experience but that was more than 2 years ago. I did a few runs at that time using a warden because of superb survivability and decent damage. I even created a spreadsheet of all the deeds in the starter areas and the time it takes to do them. Well, at that time it took about 30 minutes to get through the intro (of course skipping the tutorial). It took 2,5 hours for Ered Luin which granted 125 TP. I was using the free deed accelerator for the hendrovals, grimhands and spiders.

The Shire and Breeland took considerably longer so "farming" TP there was quite ineffective.

Okays.. I did that "experiment" now and I admit being wrong. Deeds of Ered Luin might actually be done in 2 hours with some optimizing and dull repetitive action. Now it took me 130 minutes (25 for the intro plus chunks of 40, 28, 12 and 25 minutes) from entering the world to the finish line. Some notes that came up to my mind while deeding:
- I chose elf hunter but dwarf might have been better, as you get racial goblin and dourhand deeds at lvl 13, which both give you 5 TP more if you plan your deeding so that you're in those regions at that level (My character got up to lvl 14 with +25% buff item, did not use the gift box Enhanced Supply)

- Nowadays you get 5 TP at level 10: The level which allows you to start doing EB:s.

- Rath Teraig exploration deed felt a bit unnecessary now that I started from the southern part of the map. I had already done the quest deeds and spider + goblin slayer deeds when I got to Gondamon area, so the ride around Teraig (especially Crookdell where the gobbos dismounted me constantly) took too long. Maybe those 5 TPs can be achieved more smoothly if one starts from Thorins' as a dwarf.

- I used the 30 min slayer deed buff - that I got from the gift box at lvl 10 - when going for the hendrevail + spiders + dourhands around Thrasi's lodge and Kheledul. That felt ok spot to use it at.

- There seemed to be plenty of goblins around Limael's Vineyard so I did that deed there along with the quests, instead of the keep near Noglond, where I usually complete it.

- I always stopped timing when I emptied my bags, got afk, did some planning etc, to compensate the time vs. what an experienced deed grinder might achieve.

I'm sure many people are better in this than me and might snip some minutes off my time and even get the deeds done in 120 minutes. Those +15 TPs from lvl 10 and dwarf racials give extra boost that needs to be taken into account when calculating the efficiency of deed grinding in there.

EDIT: I have to add that I did craft 2 weapon sets for my elf hunter: lvl 7 and lvl 12 critted bow + at least 1 melee weapon. Also some lvl 7 and 12 armour pieces, not every piece because they weren't necessary at all. That took 15-20 minutes extra. If one starts from scratch and has to rely on quest gear, it surely affects the completion time a little... although then the time required for crafting + characters relogging = 0.

EDIT 2: One thing I forgot to mention was that I got 5 more TPs from getting Acquainted with Thorin's Hall due to completing the deeds. So that would be +20 TP on top of the Ered Luin deeds...

[Dmira]

Sorry if this looks weird. I can't figure to nest quotes, so I'm cutting and pasting my way through multiple postings.

I like the idea of simply removing reputation items altogether, but I think it would be better if those areas that don't already provide sufficient reputation had their quests updated so reputation rewards are increased, and then players can reach Kindred by questing like Moria and most zones afterwards. Players that already finished quests will see a one time return of reputation increases for quests they've done, if they haven't already finished grinding reputation in those zones. This would take much less time and be much less annoying than Turbine creating a daily quest grind for all the below 50 zones. They'd only need to update what already exists and remove the rep items as drops and at the skirmish camp. It still sounds like more work than implementing a minimum level requirement, but I think it would be more acceptable/reasonable in the long run.

I don't like this idea much. Being able to earn TP so easily is probably the best part about LOTRO's F2P model. I'd really like to keep that ability intact as much as possible. I do like the idea of increasing rep gained from quests in certain areas (Forochel, for example).

I have never fun a F2P character past 15th level (use them mostly to purchase houses for my primaries), so I don't know much about the F2P model beyond that. I don't think rep items should be removed because I like the idea of characters having reputation with the various factions; aids to the roleplaying aspect of the game. As much as it's a pain, I don't think the rep gain for Forochel should be increased. They don't trust outsiders and the extra time/effort gaining rep with them reflects that.

Ding, ding, ding. The lady wins the prize.

Yes, if the problem is people purchasing rep then get rid of that option, don't put level restrictions on the rep itself.

Of course, they'll still be able to buy with gold, but still...

I definitely, DEFINITELY, think that rep items should still be tradeable. I feel this is very important, and it does help the in-game economy, I think. Instead of vendoring all the rep items that players earn naturally through standard gameplay, they can sell them (or GIVE them) to others. I do that all the time. If I've finished a certain rep and have no intentions of making a new toon, I just give them to kinnies or sell them on the AH. And if I ever change my mind and make a new toon... well, most of the areas are easy to get rep for anyway.

Agreed. My kinship has a house dedicated to the storage of extra rep items. We love helping our kin gain rep with various factions, but only after they have started earning it themselves. Never been to the Trollshaws? Don't ask for rep with the Elves of Rivendell. I have never thought of buying/selling on the AH. That could be an interesting source of revenue.

From what I have read, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the core problem is players creating alts, leveling up their rep, thereby getting lots of TP in the process, then deleting said alts and doing it all over again. Perhaps the solution should be to track the TP aquired per character and when that character is deleted the TP is removed from the account. This would only apply to characters created/deleted within a specific period of time, based on the information Turbine is seeing. The idea would be to punish only the abusers and not everyone else.

Just throwing it out for discussion...

I don't think deleting would work. A player could simply spend the TP before deleting.

And that's why I don't cheat. I just don't have the mindset.

[Mar-Evayave]

I understand completely what you are saying and what you explain is indeed does not involve farming much. However, you need to realize that what YOU think happening is not actually happening at all. I already explained it to you that the amount of rep items needed is not always(most of the item) available on AH. Please show me a screenshot of an AH with full rep items available everyday. This just does not happen. Even on few servers that have high population, I don't think there are 100s or 1000s of rep items available on AH. The gold cost is not cheap as well.

I don't have a screenie handy, and I'm not about to start a day-by-day track of what's on Landroval's AH. But yesterday when I was there I saw a lot of rep for the Shire, Bree and Moria. A smaller amount of rep for the others. Lots of rep for West/Central Gondor, but at ridiculous prices.

You don't have to gain access to every faction. All it takes is one faction with a great surplus of rep items. Bree, Shire and Moria all qualify. Shire rep drops just about all over Eriador (Goblin-town, Barrow-downs, etc), not just in the Shire. Bree rep seems pretty easy to obtain as well. Players can hit kindred with Moria without using any rep items at all, so it's more effective to just AH whatever they do get.

In other words, all categories of rep on the AH don't have to be full. All it takes is one. And Landroval has 3 on that given day. And I would be willing to bet it wasn't just a "good day". In the past I have put my own reputation items on the AH, even on Riddermark (much, much smaller server) and seen a lot of those 3 types of rep then as well. It's not really anything particularly special.

I definitely would agree that it's not cheap. I am inclined to believe that gold is much, much easier to obtain (for the average player) than skirmish marks. That said, I believe someone earlier mentioned it takes about 5k marks to go from no-rep to kindred with any given faction. Currently, 5k marks is not very much.

So if Player A is level 100 and has oodles of marks but wants to earn some gold to use elsewhere (maybe to buy essences or something), they can go buy heaps of rep at the skirmish camp, posting them on the AH, and reap the rewards. And then Player B is any level (none in particular; just gotta have the gold available...) and interested in farming TP. Both players are satisfied and with little grind involved.

Compared to slayer deeds. I did the Misty/Trollshaws slayer deeds a few days ago. It took about 5-6 hours.

That's the thing tho, TP farming is usually not done by new players. Most new players would not know about efficient TP farming methods yet. My point is, if Turbine is bent on nerfing efficient TP farming methods, in time they will nerf that one as well.

That is a valid point; I concede there. Unless the player is smart (used to how MMOs work or just does their homework before getting into anything or has friends to help them), they won't have a clue what to do.

Nerfing deeds themselves (slayer deeds) would basically destroy any free income of TPs for any player. Considering this is one of the biggest selling points Turbine has, I definitely think it would be a bad idea.

If they want to try and hinder TP farmers, then they need to find the fine balance between inconveniencing the farmers to the point that farming is less appealing, but without inconveniencing normal players to the point that the game's f2p model is less appealing. Stopping one without alienating the other, basically.

Turbine has already made the first step to show they are pretty serious about this. As such, I fully believe some sort of change is coming. It's on hold for the moment, which is why this is an excellent time to try and make sure this change comes on our terms.

I'm reading Turbine's problem to be that players have figured out a way to earn TP at a much higher rate than they had planned.

Stonekeep has pointed out that it takes 2 hours in Ered Luin to complete all the deeds and earn 130 TP, which is a rate of 65 TP/hour. I'm also recalling player designed TP roadmaps from the early days of F2P which I think earned TP at a rate of 75/hour.

Using a Beorning character to shortcut the levelling process, and having a huge supply of marks, you can earn TP at a much faster rate. Assuming you skip Forochel rep because of the extra level of rep needed, you need to buy 122 rep items for 9 factions = 1098 items at a cost of 296,460 marks. (Note that if you only purchase the 4 cheapest items the cost drops to 87,840 marks but have to create 2.5 times as many Beorning characters.)

10:00 - Create Beorning, complete tutorial, go to Bree.
18:20 - Purchase 1098 rep items at skirmish vendor (rate of 1 item per second, which is overestimate)
18:20 - Click the items at same rate

46:40 - Total time to get 450 TP = rate of 579 TP/hour. That's 7.7 times faster than Ered Luin.

This is a low estimate. If you can run the Beorning tutorial faster than 10 min and/or click faster than purchasing/using 1 rep item per second, then the rate just goes up.

For a perspective:

- Using rep items, it takes 7.4 hours of click-grinding and 2.2 million marks to purchase Helm's Deep.
- Running Ered Luin over and over requires 33 hours.

That's the most expensive example of content, but for a player with a huge wallet full of marks it's a faster goal.

Putting a minimum level on these items, like 15 for Shire, 20 for Bree, and 30 for the rest, drops the high rate down a lot. You have to spend more than an hour to get to 15, and maybe another hour to 20, then several more to 30. The rate per hour will drop and get much closer to the original "do all Ered Luin for 130 in 2 hours" rate.

The average player is unlikely to have so much marks on hand. That said, for those that do, and for those who are using this to farm TP super fast, the rate is unreal. I think the clicking can be sped up a lot more if you drag-drop the rep into the hotbars and spam the keyboard instead of the mouse (I seem able to hit 1111111111 a lot faster and with better response time from the game than when I use the mouse buttons).

[Dmira]

You all seem to forget that Turbine can see who is doing what and how often it is being done. They have the data!

That they do. But instead of going after just those players they have proposed implementing a change that affects everyone. I think most of the posters here are simply trying to come up with viable alternatives or ways to minimize the impact. Personally, I think Turbine will stick to the level restrictions with tweeks to the Mathom and Bree rep items. But who knows? We'll find out soon enough.

[Dolamrothdame]

Okays, I'm not sure if this has already been suggested, but if Turbine is going to add a minimum level for the use of Reputation Items..

Add it to those bought from the Skirmish Camp ONLY, leave those found in world with out restriction.

That would stop people taking a new alt to the Skirmish Camp to Farm Turbine Points, while not having an adverse effect on genuine low level players.

I like this idea. Short of taking the items out of the skirmish camps altogether, which I waffle about. Back before the North Downs was revamped, I had a mini who was stuck there. Had done all the quests, was about halfway through kindred. Went to Dol Dinen several times to get rep items, did the rep skirmish every day. I got tired of her being stuck there for days and bought her the rest of the rep on the skirmish camp. So it was nice to have that option. But given the revamps of North Downs and the Trollshaws, that's not an option that's really needed any more at the low levels.

[Dmira]

This post has a lot of truth in it. Some people will never pay anything for an f2p game, whatever happens. In fact, statistic shows that f2p games have a very low percentage of players paying good money for the game. If the game scares all the f2pers, the game will die. I guess some VIPs think that if all the freeloaders left this game it would be better for the game, however that would mean the end of this game.

I don't buy the argument that the game will die if all F2P players leave. That's like the argument that the game dies if all raiders or soloist or whomever leave. Besides, not all F2P players will leave.

I am VIP and, yes, it does bother me when someone brags that they have never spent a dime playing the game. That's not something I would be proud of. But at the end of the day it's not my problem or yours or the person who brags. It's Turbine's. They have to decide how best to stay in business. If taking away TP aids them in doing that, more power to them.

[FyreBrand]

I just want to say, I haven't paid real money since the one month I subscribed and created all the characters I wanted on every server. And I haven't paid full turbine points for in game stuff since RoI. I always wait until sale to use my turbine points. So good luck trying to make any money off of cheapskates like me. lololololol.

P.S. I think giving freeloaders like me the shaft only hurts the game because paying customers will have less people to play with. I've abstained from this game for a while now, this will just makes people like me want to ditch and go to greener pastures.

At some point if you aren't a conversion account (one that starts spending money) your value to the company and players goes way down. It wouldn't matter to me at all if you left tomorrow and never returned. I'm not telling you to go. I don't want that, but I am saying the threat of you leaving doesn't affect me negatively at all. I think you over value your contribution as a content asset.

This post has a lot of truth in it. Some people will never pay anything for an f2p game, whatever happens. In fact, statistic shows that f2p games have a very low percentage of players paying good money for the game. If the game scares all the f2pers, the game will die. I guess some VIPs think that if all the freeloaders left this game it would be better for the game, however that would mean the end of this game.

I disagree. At some point if a player isn't a periodic contributor then they aren't really an asset to the game or community. I think the value of free players as content assets is vastly overrated.

On top of that not every free player is going to quit because they can't easily farm their way through the cash shop. They can still play for free if they want, but they won't have access to the premium features (quests, instances, skirmishes, pvmp, etc) the game has to offer. I'm all for a free experience if players choose that, but I'm also a big believer in getting what you pay for and supporting what you use.

[Mar-Evayave]

I just want to say, I haven't paid real money since the one month I subscribed and created all the characters I wanted on every server. And I haven't paid full turbine points for in game stuff since RoI. I always wait until sale to use my turbine points. So good luck trying to make any money off of cheapskates like me. lololololol.

P.S. I think giving freeloaders like me the shaft only hurts the game because paying customers will have less people to play with. I've abstained from this game for a while now, this will just makes people like me want to ditch and go to greener pastures.

At some point if you aren't a conversion account (one that starts spending money) your value to the company and players goes way down. It wouldn't matter to me at all if you left tomorrow and never returned. I'm not telling you to go. I don't want that, but I am saying the threat of you leaving doesn't affect me negatively at all. I think you over value your contribution as a content asset.

I have to say I agree with Fyre.

Smash, I have nothing against f2pers. But... the measure of gloating superiority, boasting of your accomplishments in, as you say it, "freeloading" off the rest of us... hm... that's a bit unsavory. I'd like to see more players coming to this game, rather than see players leave, but... I dunno, your attitude doesn't really endear you to me.

[Stonekeep]

Okays.. I did that "experiment" now and I admit being wrong. Deeds of Ered Luin might actually be done in 2 hours with some optimizing and dull repetitive action. Now it took me 130 minutes (25 for the intro plus chunks of 40, 28, 12 and 25 minutes) from entering the world to the finish line. Some notes that came up to my mind while deeding:
- I chose elf hunter but dwarf might have been better, as you get racial goblin and dourhand deeds at lvl 13, which both give you 5 TP more if you plan your deeding so that you're in those regions at that level (My character got up to lvl 14 with +25% buff item, did not use the gift box Enhanced Supply)

- Nowadays you get 5 TP at level 10: The level which allows you to start doing EB:s.

- Rath Teraig exploration deed felt a bit unnecessary now that I started from the southern part of the map. I had already done the quest deeds and spider + goblin slayer deeds when I got to Gondamon area, so the ride around Teraig (especially Crookdell where the gobbos dismounted me constantly) took too long. Maybe those 5 TPs can be achieved more smoothly if one starts from Thorins' as a dwarf.

- I used the 30 min slayer deed buff - that I got from the gift box at lvl 10 - when going for the hendrevail + spiders + dourhands around Thrasi's lodge and Kheledul. That felt ok spot to use it at.

- There seemed to be plenty of goblins around Limael's Vineyard so I did that deed there along with the quests, instead of the keep near Noglond, where I usually complete it.

- I always stopped timing when I emptied my bags, got afk, did some planning etc, to compensate the time vs. what an experienced deed grinder might achieve.

I'm sure many people are better in this than me and might snip some minutes off my time and even get the deeds done in 120 minutes. Those +15 TPs from lvl 10 and dwarf racials give extra boost that needs to be taken into account when calculating the efficiency of deed grinding in there.

EDIT: I have to add that I did craft 2 weapon sets for my elf hunter: lvl 7 and lvl 12 critted bow + at least 1 melee weapon. Also some lvl 7 and 12 armour pieces, not every piece because they weren't necessary at all. That took 15-20 minutes extra. If one starts from scratch and has to rely on quest gear, it surely affects the completion time a little... although then the time required for crafting + characters relogging = 0.

EDIT 2: One thing I forgot to mention was that I got 5 more TPs from getting Acquainted with Thorin's Hall due to completing the deeds. So that would be +20 TP on top of the Ered Luin deeds...

A good test but as you have said yourself a more experienced farmer would have done better. First of all, hunter was the best farmer about 2 years ago. Now it is the mini. Mini can one shot mobs while moving without the need of any extra gear. Try it next time and you will see the difference.

The items from the giftboxes defintely help alot. A free mount, damage increase and out of combat speed all great. On top of that slayer deed acc is very useful.

I disagree. At some point if a player isn't a periodic contributor then they aren't really an asset to the game or community. I think the value of free players as content assets is vastly overrated.

On top of that not every free player is going to quit because they can't easily farm their way through the cash shop. They can still play for free if they want, but they won't have access to the premium features (quests, instances, skirmishes, pvmp, etc) the game has to offer. I'm all for a free experience if players choose that, but I'm also a big believer in getting what you pay for and supporting what you use.

You might disagree but that is the truth. The statistics also shows that most f2p players do not pay or pay a little. There are a lot of examples out there.

[Laeore]

Why can't they just slap a level requirement on the deed itself? If you can't get TP for any rep before level 50 or whatever, it pretty much solves the problem while allowing people who use reputations for valid rewards (IE: not uber-convenient TP farming).

[Moln]

I wish I had some idea what Turbine considered acceptable TP earn rates so I knew whether I even ought to feel guilty about all this-certainly I don't recall seeing a sign anywhere in the process from them saying 'this far and no further.' I'm a mostly TP grinding premium player (I bought a bunch initially when $50 got you 5000 plus the moria expansion, plus a month of VIP recently to get the various unlocks for my beorning). My impression has been that Turbine wants people to believe that they could have most everything for free if they put the time in, and were okay with some of us doing so, since most folks just won't and eventually 'pay to win' (to use a term that comes up in world chat all the time from folks complaining how hard it is to rush to level cap or whatever their shiny is).

For sake of discussion (and at risk of getting targeted for the nerf), here's what I do. Roll an alt (has been hunters on yellow line as I really liked the DoT no focu skill they get, is currently beornings because they're new and red line bear is pretty efficient DPS wise). Do all pre-Gondamon quests in south EL, then work my way down from Thorin's Hall (and quico pick up the crafting quests for explorers for crafting packs, just in case I ever want to use them) until done in the region, then do Shire and pre-Bree Breeland, plus the deeds for slaying orcs, undead and barghests and the barrow explorer (the cardolan prince one gets done automatically in the process.). All told that gets me 600TP in 3 or 4 days time (16 or 18 hours according to the /played command as I recall). Plus a handful more for logging in daily and turning in all the task items I've picked up in the process.

I didn't take all the posts about turning marks into TP seriously until last year and then only because on turning in all the yulefest daily gifts after the even, I suddenly found myself with 40k marks, and that was more or less stable between my running skirms and getting camp gear and skirm dude upgrades. But then the new area metadeeds arrived and overnight I had 150k marks burning a hole in my wallet. So I bought some of the cheap rep items (21@) and didn't really make a dent in the wallet (122x21=2500ish or 13000marks for a batch of five lowbies). The last time I ran a bunch I went ahead and got the cheap 4 (not lossoth because of the extra rep level) getting my total down below 100k and that mainly because my beorning had picked up a bunch of those on the way through the areas. That's 1000TP in an hour and a half of clicking endlessly, but there's also, at least in my playstyle, about 90 hours of getting to that point.

So if there's a point here at which someone at Turbine needs to clarify 'Dude, that's too far' then please say so rather than ask me to read between the lines since I am clearly not getting the message you intend to send.

That said, I think a lot of people's biases have bled into their proposed solutions here. If Turbine meant to abandon the f2p model, they'd be slashing slayer deed TP. They aren't doing that, it seems to be just rep items they're worried about (similar discussions occurred back when the TP from pointer quests were removed-and back then it was just a matter of those being too easy).

If the issue is the short time from rolling a beorning to getting out into the world, it seems to me that could be fixed by taking the level 2 beorning we finish the instance with and sticking it directly into the Archet instance men and hobbits share rather than boosting instantly to level 5.

If the issue is that camp rep items are too cheap, that's been discussed for a while and it will continue to get worse every time the level cap goes up and end game mark payout increases. As mentioned before in this thread, the solution to that problem is to remove them from the camp, or make all of them the same price, aimed at endgame players (and increasing this with level cap increases).

Putting a level cap of 20 on them won't matter to me, as my guys are level 21 anyway (the ones I did during the month we had of welcome back weekend were 24). I would suggest a time (/played) restriction on them if the quick turnaround is the issue. But anything up to 18 won't matter for me. A level requirement of 30, or time restriction of say 25 hours is still going to be tempting, if I'm being honest here.

So if Turbine really wants to nip in the bud the passing of rep items (or effectively marks since they're server bound) to lower level character for easy TP, my suggestion would be not level or time prereqs, but (since they're in the skirm camps in the first place, I assume there is at least the intent to have them for high level characters to top off) give each rep item a prereq of Known to [whatever faction].

Finally for those worry about ground TP costing Turbine money, I have to say I don't believe it does. Most of us grinding will spend real money sometimes and that's money Turbine won't get in the future if they chase us away getting draconian now. Whether it's worthwhile to them to keep us around depends on what it costs them to have us playing and what it's worth to them to have us populating their worlds (when I sell off crafting mats I got while TP grinding someone on the other end is saving some time and their happiness in the transaction may be of value to Turbine, and that's not getting into the value they get from having people form relationships with other players). It is not costing them money they're not getting from me. For example I got 27 LI slots during the sale this weekend, because I had the TP to do it. There's no way I would have spent that on a convenience (If I was drowning in money so that I *could* do that I doubt I'd have the time to play,

[TharbadThief]

A good test but as you have said yourself a more experienced farmer would have done better. First of all, hunter was the best farmer about 2 years ago. Now it is the mini. Mini can one shot mobs while moving without the need of any extra gear. Try it next time and you will see the difference.

Killing faster isn't always the better way of doing it. The only slayer deed in EL area where I can think of a mini making any difference is killing dourhands. Even now, I killed everything in that area faster than the 1st enemy I defeated could respawn (save for the dourhands in Kheledul). I had to wait for hendrevail, wolves, spiders and goblins to start spawning again. If I killed them any faster, the same waiting period would have been ahead of me anyway. I'm not even sure if my choice of class mattered as much as my +78% horse vs. +62% horse (from the whistle for a f2p character). As said: No doubt, though, that mini is a better deed farmer in regions overflowing with monsters.

[JeauxLOTR]

The thing the really hard core F2P (“I’ve never spent any money on the game”) group needs to understand is that someone has to spend money or there won’t be a game. Considering that revelation, the F2P crowd needs players who pay far more than paying players need F2P.

[Valamar]

Using a Beorning character to shortcut the levelling process, and having a huge supply of marks, you can earn TP at a much faster rate. Assuming you skip Forochel rep because of the extra level of rep needed, you need to buy 122 rep items for 9 factions = 1098 items at a cost of 296,460 marks. (Note that if you only purchase the 4 cheapest items the cost drops to 87,840 marks but have to create 2.5 times as many Beorning characters.)

I'm confused -- where on (middle) Earth are players getting these numbers of Marks?

I've been playing for 7 years, with 9 toons and have nowhere near 100,000 marks... gold yes, marks no.

Maybe the problem is that there are far to many Marks available in the game and skirmish vendors who sell things they should not - like Rep items.

F2P was a mistake and the entire gaming industry is now realizing it.

[Nosdracir]

I'm confused -- where on (middle) Earth are players getting these numbers of Marks?

I've been playing for 7 years, with 9 toons and have nowhere near 100,000 marks... gold yes, marks no.

Maybe the problem is that there are far to many Marks available in the game and skirmish vendors who sell things they should not - like Rep items.

F2P was a mistake and the entire gaming industry is now realizing it.

I have no idea if anyone has that many marks. I just did the math and showed the results.

I've got about 90k myself, but only because I don't spend them on anything.