Enjoying playing LotrO - preferences and avoidances?

[Happybudgy]

"Enjoyment is the feeling of pleasure and satisfaction that you have when you do or experience something that you like".

We also do things in life that we do not necessarily enjoy but that 'are good for us'.
Then there are also things we will not do because we a. do not enjoy doing them and b. there is no negative consequence for not doing these things.

What is your LotrO play style to get a, for you, acceptable level of enjoyment out of playing the game?

What parts of the game do you greatly enjoy and what parts can you not stand?
What areas do you keep returning to and what areas can you not be bothered with (because of lack of interest or because of not enjoying)?
What's the level of grind you can stand until it is no longer enjoyable and what grind(s) do you keep plodding away at because the end result is worth it?
What grind/activity will you avoid by going to the store and how much LP are you wiling to grind to avoid spending money?

Would you enjoy more parts of the game if they were set up in a different way? What and how?

Examples: a friend of mine had no desire to go through Mordor and beyond. She finished the Epic Quests and now only plays Festivals.
She gets enjoyment out of that and that is good enough for her. If there were to be a pre-end-of-the-Epic area to be added to the game she would gladly play through it.

Some players only PvP, others mostly craft. Some like gathering skills, while others raid as much as they can. Some players want to min/max, while others stay away from activities where that would be beneficial and instead they enjoy landscape activities.

[DavidmeetHal]

I'm a filthy casual that spends money of parts of the game that I like,. for example I have 4 premium houses, and have bought cosmetic house items in the Store.

As far as gameplay goes, I HATE slug fests and grinding, so I stop at the Dead City in Minas Morgul and head straight to Langflood which is a lot easier and has storylines, like the historian from Rohan.

With Epic Quest lines, I skip Vol 1 and 2 and start at 3, for the reason that I hate slug fests and going back and forth. I'm in this game for story lines, not hack and slash.


With the new updates on upgrading imdubed LIs, I'm pretty much done at max level. I enjoyed going to the South Gate at MT to farm scrolls because it was relaxing, but with the new rules, it's no fun.

So to make a short answer, I play and enjoy up to where having to grind imbuded LIs is necessary and I avoid any part of the game after that. Seriously, SSG screwed the hooch on that.

[JERH]

Can’t hurt to whine? Right?

I have done 8 classes to cap and 2 still in MM. Like landscape and some T1 don’t like gearing and personalities beyond that.

Stay away zones: Talath Urui, Old Anorien, Minas tirith (done way too many dailies and too much lag/rubber banding), any level cap zone once the cap moves up, western Rohan with war steeds, mounted combat and Epic Battles.

Like zones: Moria, Lonelands, Western Gondor, Dunland, evendim, ered mithrin.

Grind: since I have over 50 LIs most at or near max I must have an annoyingly high pain threshold for grinding. . I still have over 200 black steel keys some unbound from Mordor dailies. Sad..........

However, though I have created new characters I haven’t taken any past eastern Rohan in over 2 years.

Store: most of what I’ve bought in the last few years is MC (fast stables), riding, trait slots for premium chars, and I just love carry-all’s.



I would say at this point I just want to go out and kill some orcs and goblins every day or two.

[LadySelene]

Grind: the only grind I can bypass by going to store, is LP grind. It's nice when you play and LP gather themselves, but sometimes I need more of them, and I'd rather drop money on a LP package instead of the sheer boredom of creating-grinding-deleting kind of thing. Recently bought a discounted 120 valar (still not used - have to decide for which character) and a large task carry-all that way. I never use MC on grind bypass - only on what cannot be obtained by playing (+10 quests in quest log, a trait tree unlock, etc).

Areas: cannot answer as I'm still going through the regions.

Avoiding at all cost: dailies and weeklies, when they take longer than 5 min. Fighting on a war-horse, I'm a bad rider after all

Grinding from time to time: deeds, when they switch on VXP bonus after it's over, I'm so tired of deeds to forget them till the next time. (And, a character has to outlevel a zone to have easy slayer deeds). Motes, probably. Festivals, a bit - it was interesting to do them for the 1st time, but after that, they are repeating, so I just drop in to say hi to barter NPC

What I enjoy most in the game: quests and stories. It's like a very good interactive book based on JRRT's world and works. Some quests are, beyond doubt, fillers, but you cannot have 10k character-progress quests equally good. There is also a lot of fun stuff, not excluding the world chat, discussions there are sometimes hilarious
Instances are worth trying and sometimes difficult to complete.
I could probably say - landscape views, but for my old video card...

UPD.
And, oh, currency caps annoy me like hell. Embers, okay, but motes and figments?? Those newest midsummer festival tokens, why?
There's nothing to spend motes on, except:
1) Scrolls/crystals
2) Figments.
Annoying, that's all.

[TamX]

What is your LotrO play style to get a, for you, acceptable level of enjoyment out of playing the game?

When playing games, I am inclined to increase and practise my understanding of game mechanics, to face and beat ever-increasing challenges the game can provide, be them PvE or PvP, solo or group content. For me, there must be "gear cap" that is reachable by climbing "tutorial" ladders (artificially easened content), and the real playing starts once I am at gear cap and can start to practise and beat the real challenges. That foreplay can not be too long in terms of dedication and learning: once I master the difficulty step, my gears should be ready for the next as I am ready for the higher difficulty also as player.

In other games, I have really loved also solo PvE challenges if they have such. I also love if there is either landscape or suitable training instances with increasing difficulty, so that I can go practising for some new things on my own time. It would be great if the game would track e.g. completition time of a solo training instance to track progression. For landscape, my favorite is landscape with increasing difficulty.

If the game mechanics is interesting and the game pleases me, I can dedicate weeks or months for learning and practising, but I really won't put the same time & dedication to grind trivial repetitive content - in fact, I find it really hard to put even a week to run trivial repetitive content. A game that pleases me has challenge ladders to climb _ONCE_ - once I master the ladder, I don't want to repeat it (except for nostalgic reasons, finding new ways to beat it, or helping friends to beat it).

Putting months to learn should reward me the challenge is beaten. I usually run that content tens of times before I feel it mastered, with different people, playing different role, learning details and at some point, dedicating my time to teach the challenge to newer players.

A game where beating challenge provides rewards equal or greater to the same amount of grinding trivial repetitive content pleases me. I want challenges to provide me some visuals as a sign of beating the challenge: cosmetics, titles or something to show to others.

For practise purposes I can take self-imposed challenges, that is, crippling me some way, but that pleases me only if it prepares me to take higher, real challenges. It can be fun, but it is not the bread & butter I want from my game.

What parts of the game do you greatly enjoy and what parts can you not stand?

In lotro, there has been some really great periods I have enjoyed. At some point, we did "daily" T2C 3-man runs, running all three-man instances at that time. It was great time. I have also enjoyed learning new instances to beat T2C regularly, including raids.

It is not hard to guess, that my biggest complaints in lotro are related to resets (gear or level cap raises), obsoleting content and increasing grinding. Obsoleting content - only the few newest instances drop usable rewards and old instances are trivialized in that progress - feels like ultimate waste of all the efforts put to develop them. Instead of giving me more content, lotro just trashes it. The amount of content for me to play stays very, very small, just few instances. Resets really eat motivation to progress, and putting rewards behind grind eats it ever more.

What areas do you keep returning to and what areas can you not be bothered with (because of lack of interest or because of not enjoying)?

All the iconic LoTR places would take me back any time, if they would have kept up to date, providing challenges and adquate rewards for playing.

What's the level of grind you can stand until it is no longer enjoyable and what grind(s) do you keep plodding away at because the end result is worth it?

I really can't stand grinding at all. I am not even willing to pay to by-pass grinding. I am willing to put lots of effort to get rewards behind great challenges. I can put money to convenience items, I can put money to content, but I can't put money to grind by-passing or pay-to-win items. I can buy cosmetics, be them skins, housing or anything that pleases me and makes me care my toons more. I would love to have instances designed purely for role playing, and I could imagine to buy such instances to spend time there with my friends. Not all premium housing needs to be _houses_, they could be just nice places, and they could even have NPCs to play stories for fun.

What grind/activity will you avoid by going to the store and how much LP are you wiling to grind to avoid spending money?

Like said, I can't use much money to avoid grinding. If the game gives rewards from grinding, it is not a game for me, no matter if I can by-pass that grind or not.

Would you enjoy more parts of the game if they were set up in a different way? What and how?

Yes I would. The biggest asset LOTRO has are the iconic places the lore has. I am truly sad that they decided to abandon them. Instead of them adding new regions, they should keep us playing in those iconic places forever: Breeland, Angmar (!), Moria (!), Rohan, Gondor, Lothlorien, Mirkwood, Isengard and so on. Those regions should receive updated content, they could have either level scaling or level zones, they should have up-to-date instance cluster. Instead pushing forward and burning the grounds behind, they should extent the areas that are central to the lore.

Large, challening instance cluster - there is huge amount of PvE instances (skirmishes, non-scaling instances, scaling instances, even BB instances). Would all of them be up to date challenge-wise and give appropriate rewards, well, the situation would be so totally different. Instanced PvP. Duels (instanced 1vs1, freep vs freep, or creep vs creep).

More catering for role playing, that is, just chilling out with friends. For example, instances designed for role playing: you could take some parts of epic or some iconic scenes from the lore, put some NPCs as actors and let people play them together. I don't understand what is the fixation to keep housing only revolving around homesteads. People should be able to buy houses from Bree, Rivendell and other central hubs. They should be able to buy instanced place that has no other purpose but being beautiful (consider a garden plot from Lothlorien), and having some props to decor it.

Some players only PvP, others mostly craft. Some like gathering skills, while others raid as much as they can. Some players want to min/max, while others stay away from activities where that would be beneficial and instead they enjoy landscape activities.

I would love if all these different players could play together. I don't mean that all players should take part to PvP, or min/maxers would take casuals for challenge runs, but that there would be some common ground where these player types meet, like e.g. South Bree.

There is huge lost potential not making Rivendell, Lothlorien, Edoras and such as central hubs for people at all levels, no matter what content they are running.

[TamX]

When playing games, I am inclined to increase and practise my understanding of game mechanics, to face and beat ever-increasing challenges the game can provide, be them PvE or PvP, solo or group content.

My favorite games are such that when I first meet the increased challenge, I am like 'watta phuck, they cant be serious'. Once I beat the challenge, I like to think that phew, that was really hard, heck, I cant understand how I beat it - and there is much harder challenge in front of me, and once I start learning to beat that, I see how the previous ladder becomes trivialized: and I think that how I could be so stupid, that I thought that game developers thought it would be a challenge at all! It is really pleasing moment you realize that the devs are ahead, knowing more than you and luring you to beat the impossible!

I want to reach the point, where there is no much other players left, the point where you really think that the challenge is just impossible, but you still know few ppl who had done that: you are at ice wall you cant penetrate, and you know that there are few ppl in front of you trying to pass the wall twice as thick as you are working. If the game has still one more level to challenge your builds and your knowledge beyond unimaginary, I would keep practising, learning, spending time in the game, buying stuff with real money and so on.

[wrath247]

I can buy cosmetics, be them skins, housing or anything that pleases me and makes me care my toons more. I would love to have instances designed purely for role playing, and I could imagine to buy such instances to spend time there with my friends.

I don't understand what is the fixation to keep housing only revolving around homesteads. People should be able to buy houses from Bree, Rivendell and other central hubs. They should be able to buy instanced place that has no other purpose but being beautiful (consider a garden plot from Lothlorien), and having some props to decor it.

I second this. Easy money right, for the right price that is. They even have an easy fix to it thanks to the broker house feature with the books. They ought to focus more on this so we can get one every few months instead of every 4 yrs -_-

But i guess for me my preference has changed over the years, I'm no longer willing to grind for LP as its a waste of time for as I can just purchase more of it.

I will pay hundreds of dollars (and have) for cosmetics from housing, to steeds, to character customization. Enjoying the regions and plot is fun and all, but living there would add more value to it. I'm basically into raiding, and everything else this game offers minus pvmp because that does need fixing. I put a heavier emphasis now on looks and depth rather than just face-value earnings.

[Elebraen]

I have a long distance friend that I play with regularly and I have ever since I started LOTRO. I met him on LOTRO and we just hit it off well. We've made and played so many toons together just trying out different classes and combinations that one server of toons is dedicated exclusively just for playing with this one online friend.

I also play Landroval for the music community there. I made F2P accounts to make a one man band and I work out the kinks in my own 4 instrument songs that way, doing my own ABC coding for my own favorite songs. My main account is premium, but out of curiosity, I wondered how high I could level as purely F2P buying regions with just one toon earning TP, and I was able to pick up Evendim, Angmar and Moria on sale. I never ran the toon through it to find out how far I could get past Moria on just the solo toon TP earned there because the COVID coupon came out, so I picked that up for my F2P accounts. They're handy hunter travel taxis for me now that I took to Rohan in their level up for their war steeds and guide to's, but I could go much higher with them if I wanted to.

I love the quiet servers like Sirannon where I can just appreciate the storylines and landscape as a solo player, taking my time to just relax into the game world and shut out everyone else in the world chat language that I'm not fluent in. I'm not a visual person, so reading Tolkien has been very hard for me to make sense of, but playing this game as much as I do let's me envision all of the different places that he mentions in his story and orient myself in the story that way. Budgeford!! I've been there!!! So as far as regions go, I like all of them for that value even if I don't really like them for the gameplay. Mordor has the coolest spouting lava effects that I go there just for the scenery, but it's at the bottom of my list for gameplay preferences.

Farming for LP? I haven't done that in a long time, but I did a lot of it in my first year or two trying to open up all of the quest packs or save up for a big expansion. I started LOTRO after Rohan but before Helm's Deep came out. I finish slayer deeds and metadeeds with a friend while we chat about the latest news. Earning LP has never been a grind for us, but something to do together to pass the silent moments that we both enjoy, and we get our goofball giggles from our own trials and errors as we level up. I've never gone VIP because my friend hasn't been able to afford it, so it's gameplay dedication that gets us all of the latest stuff like crafting carry-alls and expansions. Needless to say, I don't use dropping my VIP sub as a threat when I'm upset about something because that would be a rather hollow threat coming from me.

Things I don't like? Grinding, that's a given. I don't like trolls either, but I play LOTRO. I slaughter trolls for a hobby. Or put them on ignore.