Bullroarer Update 32 - Beta #7 - CLOSED

[Crell_1]

- Older scaling instances made it much too easy to farm legendary rarity LI items. As a result scaling instances have had their top end LI drops reduced to Incomparable rarity. Non-scaling instances remain unchanged.
- Players are ending up with lots of inc. or leg. rarity enhancement runes that they have little current use for taking up inventory space. At cap level, rune rewards are now limited to the highest rarity required by a maximum level legendary item. This has no effect on any drops below cap.

I don't think OD is much too easy at T2C. Put them back in raids.
Additionally, if you're not going to give us gold enhancement runes for T5 House of Rest, put gold traceries in the box instead.
If the concern is inventory space, players can use them or discard them. I'd rather have them given so I can start saving them up. We can only get 2/wk/character and we need 18 per tracery at that point. (491-499) Thats 8 runes per slot * 23 slots per set= 184 runes per LI set. That's 92 weeks/LI set from the 6man. There's no reason not to let us start saving these up now.

[Pewpewmidget]

Why are you making things worse, SSG?
Many people, who have far more experience with your miserable systems,
have given you feedback, their opinions and given pretty solid ideas and suggestions to make things better
and to avoid this backlash and yet, here you are, ignoring everyone who has a good sense of what's going on,
and heading further south.

This is supposed to be a game, not a part-time job, and definitely not a full-time job either, let alone overtime.

[CaerArianrhod]

• The Delver's Essence boxes now allow selection of a vitality essence.
• The Adventurer's Quartermaster and lootbox now offer Delving Adventurer's Essence Boxes.

Well, well, well ...
https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...t=#post8103900

• - Players are ending up with lots of inc. or leg. rarity enhancement runes that they have little current use for taking up inventory space. At cap level, rune rewards are now limited to the highest rarity required by a maximum level legendary item. This has no effect on any drops below cap.

Cann you show us please any numbers from SSG's measurement, where any - just 1 (one)! - player ended up with "lots of legendary rarity enhancement runes"????
Legendary rarity enhancement runes are dropping only on T5 in House of Rest and (of course) from the loot boxes.
Yellow (uncommon), Purple (rare) and Teal (incomparable), Orange [gold] (legendary) are taking 4 slots in the inventory / bank.
So please, what are you talking about?

Are you talking about the thousands of level 121 enhancement runes we can not use any more at character level 140, but we have them over from exchange our old LIs.
I was hoping SSG will do something like a 1:10 conversion possible for out-leveled enhancement runes to the next highest tier ... but just removing them???

What means this sentence?
At cap level, rune rewards are now limited to the highest rarity required by a maximum level legendary item. This has no effect on any drops below cap.
I just do not understand what you are saying.

[CaerArianrhod]

Please someone at SSG:

Do not forget/ignore/push back/delay the correct translation of the raid sets!

At the moment, most of the raid sets in German has the old Remmorchant description!
Please don't do it again what you did with the Remmorchant raid sets, where players were going for the wrong set, because of wrong description!

[TobiasEstForte]

Some brutal honesty is needed from the dev team. If you're concerned about people leaving the game they'll do it anyway whether you take away the bone in front of us or start chipping away at it while it's in our hands. For example, every iteration of Bullroarer since the LI revamp has involved taking away a valued tracery source.

School gave rare and incomparable within level scaling, then you made it level band caps.
Random gold tracery sources got the same treatment.
Now the random gold is being taken away entirely.
Reward track - limited golds, mostly random. Even less one iteration later.
Zero indication of adding shattered/crackeds to raids.
To add, lower level raids completely neglected. Where casual players would love to get a shiny tracery after their first watcher run.

People are angry, then the next iteration you make it worse. So people get angry again or the people who were accepting before are now joining the angry party.

A lot of people skip Bullroarer notes or even the forum altogether so you can't even begin to imagine how people will feel when it goes live. And if it drops badly, only then do you potentially go in a better direction as people start to cancel subs when it could've been avoided in the first place.

If your aim is for players to be so bereft of incomparable and legendary sources, that it takes basically an expansion cycle to get the most of the new system (For just one character mind you, due to reward track being account-based), just say it. Say your intention is that the average raider's LI is supposed to comprise of 6 purples 4 teals and 1-2 golds, and that gold traceries are supposed to be mostly disenchanted for the extra 20 script. Because that's how it's coming across. And then people will decide if they can accept that or not, not just be given changes that imply it and make them progressively more agitated.

I'm actually deriving some entertainment from this charade because I play the game less, but the approach is memeworthy and worth calling out nonetheless.

[Vilda]

Lost Ark is being released tomorrow for F2P in EU/NA... just saying...

[Ragnarsong]

- Players are ending up with lots of inc. or leg. rarity enhancement runes that they have little current use for taking up inventory space. At cap level, rune rewards are now limited to the highest rarity required by a maximum level legendary item. This has no effect on any drops below cap.
Legendary items may now reach item level 475.

You know what really take up inventory space? Goddam Runes. Especially when doing instances - since I have to wait for an hour before I can stack them to already owned ones. (I am aware of their use in Reward track).
Just stop using stupid excuses for this and said it directly. "We don't want players to have them in advance" and put some paywall for them, because getting them for more than one toon will be terrible, not to name several alts.

If I understand the part of limiting rune rewards to max level right, we won't see Legendary runes anytime soon, since they should be iLvL 490 and above, right? That's probably coming in U33, 34 or maybe further along the road ......

[Frisco]

If your aim is for players to be so bereft of incomparable and legendary sources, that it takes basically an expansion cycle to get the most of the new system (For just one character mind you, due to reward track being account-based), just say it. Say your intention is that the average raider's LI is supposed to comprise of 6 purples 4 teals and 1-2 golds, and that gold traceries are supposed to be mostly disenchanted for the extra 20 script. Because that's how it's coming across. And then people will decide if they can accept that or not, not just be given changes that imply it and make them progressively more agitated.

And that's the worst part of this. With Imbued LIs it was a massive grind to catch up a brand new weapon. But instead of listening to players and helping new characters by giving them ways to catch up (removing SLC altogether and scaling DPS by character level or auto-granting a certain number of Legacy tiers based on character level) they just gave that grind to everyone. Repeated at every expansion.

Player base: "Hey, new characters should have the same ease of improving their LIs as veteran characters!"

SSG: *monkey's paw curls around a fistful of dollars*

LIs went from something that would grow with us and were not the central focus of the game, to something we almost completely trash and re-grind every level cap. And it appears that the intent is for us to grind the *entire* level cap. We'll finally max out our LIs 3 weeks before L150 hits, get to use them a few times, then start the rebuild all over again. This is the opposite of what people wanted out of an LI system. We've reverted to pre-imbuement days, only at least then it was super easy to finish them even if you had to completely redo them even twice over the course of a level cap. This is like the worst of both worlds. It doesn't grow with you *and* it's a boring grind each time.

And yeah, to add insult to injury, it's a constant stream of taking away LI advancement opportunities while never telling us where we *will* eventually be able to obtain this stuff. I suspect it's because they don't know, as is evidenced by the completely random and inconsistent ways we've had so far. Feels like they spent more time perfecting the LOTRO store buttons on the LI panel than they have putting together a cohesive LI experience.

[Gunhard]

You know what really take up inventory space? Goddam Runes. Especially when doing instances - since I have to wait for an hour before I can stack them to already owned ones. (I am aware of their use in Reward track).

You can sell the runes and buy them back to remove the timer, so can stack them easily. Works with all items with timer you can sell. You could ask in game chat and ppl would respond you very fast, but you decided to post on forums...

[Gunhard]

What means this sentence?
At cap level, rune rewards are now limited to the highest rarity required by a maximum level legendary item. This has no effect on any drops below cap.
I just do not understand what you are saying.

They reduce the amount of enhancement rune types from drop on cap level. Now you'll only get legendary ones. Qol improvement here.

[shino047]

I am just about to reach the level cap and while others have farmed their golden traceries already, I won't even be given the chance to. It is absolutely disgusting and totally UNFAIR that the sources are taken away. You really hate your players.

[4tesZeitalter]

They reduce the amount of enhancement rune types from drop on cap level. Now you'll only get legendary ones. Qol improvement here.

I fear this is not how it is meant, but you will get enhancement runes for the current maximum LI level (475 as of U32). At least this is what it looks like while testing the LI track and opening incomparable and legendary enhancement rune boxes. Or is this a bug?

[Stever1388]

What means this sentence?
At cap level, rune rewards are now limited to the highest rarity required by a maximum level legendary item. This has no effect on any drops below cap.
I just do not understand what you are saying.

What they are saying is that instance chests (at level cap) will, at most, only give enhancement runes that work on LIs current ilvl range. So chests that give common/yellow enhancement runes will continue dropping those (because those enhancement runes work until ilvl 460 and our LIs are at ilvl 470). Same with purple enhancement runes - they will continue dropping in the same places as before. However, teal and gold enhancement runes will not drop from chests anymore because they are for ilvls 480 to 490 and ilvl 490 to 499 (respectively). My guess is that teal enhancement runes will still drop from the weekly quests. Once LIs ilvl gets to 481+, teal enhancement runes will start dropping again. And again, this only affects level cap, so teal enhancement runes will drop from lower level instances for lower LI ranges (for example you might get tier 7 teal enhancement runes from lvl ~101 instances that work on traceries until ilvl 240).

It's a pretty bad change IMO... no one is worried about the very few spaces that teal/gold enhancement runes are taking up (considering if you are that worried, you can just use them). If they really cared about inventory space, they would give us something to do with the 1000s of yellow/common enhancement runes that we have that are worthless once all of your traceries are at ilvl 460+...

[Pewpewmidget]

I somewhat remember some complaints about enhancement runes taking up inventory space.
Mind you, they were the level 50, 86, 100, 105, 115 and 121 runes that nobody has any use for anymore.
Not the current level 131 runes.

Uncommon, rare, incomparable and legendary = 4 spaces BUT there are too many level ranges thus that's why they take up a bit of space.
I reiterate, why the heck do we need to level gate enhancement runes or have FOUR different rarities?
The old system may have had multiple kinds of scrolls for max levels or 60, 65, 75, 85, 95 and 100
BUT Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment were able to be used regardless of level.
Then scrolls were universalized, meaning the ranks were dropped and were just "scrolls of empowerment".

Then the stupid change that capped them at different ranks happened. One of the WORST calls ever regarding LIs.
Now we have these enhancement runes to deal with. 4 rarities over 5-6 level ranges collecting dust then the current level range. (20-28 for those who don't want to do the math)

[TobiasEstForte]

I somewhat remember some complaints about enhancement runes taking up inventory space.
Mind you, they were the level 50, 86, 100, 105, 115 and 121 runes that nobody has any use for anymore.
Not the current level 131 runes.

That's a good theory, also to the other user(s) who have thought as such.

"I have too many runes I can't use!"
Devslation: "I have too many runes above current maximum level"
Actual meaning: "I have too many runes my LI's are too high level for and I can't do anything with them so they're literally unusable"

Players are free to use teal and even gold runes to level from 450-460, but now the 'unusable' stacks will increase as they only get yellows and purples which will have no purpose either now or later.

[Stever1388]

I reiterate, why the heck do we need to level gate enhancement runes or have FOUR different rarities?

The level-gated enhancement runes do actually have a bit of a purpose, that I can understand them wanting to use (and the reason for it being the way it is). Namely, they don't want people stockpiling them to trivialize future content. With the old SOE system, people just stockpiled a ton of them, and the second more levels were added to legacies, people could just instantly max them out again. With the level cap and ilvl cap of enhancement runes and traceries, that problem is solved. It also allows them to have the different rarities of traceries, because you have to replace them each level cap - so they can give gold traceries and then next level cap you need to get them again (not saying whether this is good or bad). My guess is that they didn't want people stockpiling teal/gold lvl 140 enhancement runes so that when our LIs go to ilvl 480+ you can't just instantly cap them out. But since they aren't removing the teal enhancement runes from the weeklies (as far as I know), it seems rather pointless, since most of the teal enhancement runes I get are from the weeklies anyway, and gold enhancement runes drop so rarely (only HOR t5 as far as I know?) it's not like you can amass a large quantity of them anyway...

I do think the number of tiers of enhancement runes and traceries is unneeded though - I would have just created two tiers - non-level cap and level cap (kind of similar to embers and motes). Then I would have only done 1 enhancement rune type for non-level cap (instead of common/purple/teal/gold). So those would have worked from level 45 to level 130 (ilvl 45 to 450). Then the level cap ones would be ilvl 450 to 499 like they are now (with the 4 rarities). Same with traceries (in order to make gold traceries not super easy to get for non-level cap, I would probably still require the instances be set to a certain level based on your own level so that you can't farm lower levels to get gold traceries). Then level cap traceries/enhancement runes work mostly the way they do now, the only change would be that when the new level cap comes out, the non-level cap enhancement runes and traceries get updated to go to ilvl 499, and the new level cap traceries/enhancement runes get released that go from 500 to 550 or whatever. They could even convert old level cap enhancement runes to the non-level cap ones (since they are all basically identical).

I don't have any characters leveling from 45 to 140 (all of mine are level 140), but I can't imagine having to replace traceries every ~10 levels, considering how fast I generally level. I'm not even looking forward to having to replace all my traceries at lvl 141, and that could be over a year away still...

[Brolad]

You could just, you know, do that. That's what I do. I have characters at all level ranges, I login and play them, do some quests, run some instances, join a PUG or three, upgrade my LIs a little, and log off. The "grind" for all-gold maxed LIs is entirely optional. Just opt-out.

Congrats, your playstyle is different from mine. I guess that somehow creates a glaring hole in my feedback... or not. I have opted out after interacting with the new LI system for a while at the end of previous level cap and realising that while it wouldn't be horrible as a one-off grind (one-off grind is bad for new players though), it will become the worst kind of grind on future level caps. The thing is, with the way I stopped playing on endgame, SSG stopped getting my money. Players like me have no use for VIP-related perks outside of endgame leveling and endgame runs, and they have no reason to buy the latest expansion for RL money when they are not planning to join the instance progression. I am not here to blindly complain, I am here to make suggestions for how to create a game that I'd get back into and that I'd pay for.

I used to enjoy doing endgame stuff quite a lot. I enjoyed striving to beat more difficult content to get better gear, getting BiS items was a nice reachable goal to be driven by at times. I enjoyed having a little bit of familiar regular grind. I enjoyed the periods when my gear couldn't improve much, which "freed me up" to do random stuff. There were times when I felt like these phases were more or less balanced.

Now the repetitive grind part feels like it is almost never-ending. Virtues are ever-growing and the passives are impactful, which makes many players feel like they have to grind all of them instead of just the most useful of them. If you want BiS gear, you need to grind seasonal events until you are sick of them because some BiS items are not in non-seasonal content.

If you want to have the best LIs, you need to take part in an insanely repetitive RNG-fiesta, which is now becoming even harder to pass because it looks like the plan is to limit the sources of teal and gold traceries even more. What's even worse, while old LI system had a bad grind that was horrible towards new players, once you passed the grind, you were mostly free. With the new system you'll need to repeat practically the whole grind on new level caps. It's insanely bad.

Introducing a new insane grind of course could work if the usual grind (virtues, gear) was limited to balance it out... but it is not the case, and so endgame is becoming too demanding (feel free to substitute this for "boring", as the reason lies in the mindnumbingly repetitive grind part) for people like me. People who want reachable goals that don't make them feel tired. People who want to get BiS gear once in a while without sacrificing their sanity for it.

[Schaijian]

I tested the hunter and the champion raidsets. In both cases I used a mastery-capped character an those sets really need to be looked at from a balancing point of view.

First we have the hunter bowmaster set:



The Barbed Rain bleed is the same as the Barbed Arrow bleed but can be distributed on up to 10 targets without using a targets increasing tracery.

Over 54k damage (tooltip) per bleed tick per target every 2s with a theoretical uptime of nearly 100% (12s duration with 12s CD)


Edit: forgot to reforge before taking the screenshot. It actually is 57k damage per bleed tick.


Second we have the champion storm set:



An additional automatical AoE attack for every 10th blade skill crit (tooltip) for pathetic 1510 damage.



Not only is this in itself such a low damage number, that if it won´t be changed nobody would want to get this set for its bonus, but additionally the Born for Slaughter damage even does not execute as stated in the tooltip.
As can be seen in the CA window I only got 2 procs after 45 crits and 9 dev crits (not sure if dev crits count) instead of at least 4.

[Joedangod]

Still not a fan of the general UX around the reward track so felt like screwing around for an hour to mock up a more easily navigable design.

In general I'd say steer clear of horizontal scrolling, especially on something that scrolls this long since it's very fiddly trying to navigate to a specific point. A tabbed page setup with left/right arrows to navigate is a fair bit more fluid although you don't really want to create too many tabs here, would advise not going above 10.

As for the reward boxes you're leaving a lot of wasted space, there's not really room to display the full name of whatever item is being bestowed at each tier so I'd honestly just give up on that and rely on mouseover tooltips for the reward descriptions. You would end up with a bit more vertical space than might strictly be necessary but you could probably extend the reward track to make use of that later, whether it be through adding a VIP track or just generally putting more than one reward on each tier.

Claim button could go pretty much anywhere within the box...I just kinda set myself a hard limit to the amount of time I actually wanted to spend on redesigning this panel so didn't get to it.


Oh, and make shift+I shortcut (Old LI panel) bring up the reward track. The binding isn't really needed for the old stuff anymore.

[Markbjorn]

Funny (or sad/pathetic) how players can make mock UI layouts that are far better than what SSG makes....

I think they are too ARROGANT to admit that their layout is patethic and accept customer's suggestions.

[squirle]

This currency has surpassed the cap for a special reason but no more can be earned until some is spent.

On every single item in my wallet. Ranging from kegs of cram, marks, embers. All limited and broken

[Kehleyr_SSG]

This currency has surpassed the cap for a special reason but no more can be earned until some is spent.

On every single item in my wallet. Ranging from kegs of cram, marks, embers. All limited and broken

This is a Known Issue with the Barter Wallet in this build. We hope to have this resolved quickly but it's going to take a new build.

[Elenarra]

SSG won't be abandoning their Reward Track and first attempt at a Battle Pass but they definitely should not let it go Live with Update 32.

We've not had said Reward Track since the New Legendary Item System went Live. It's not going to kill LOTRO to see the Reward Track take 3 Months, 6 Months or longer to be Delayed further and being a much better Idea, Concept & UI looking far better.

Otherwise it will hurt LOTRO in the Short Term going Live in a Rushed, Unready from just a First Impression & Visual Perspective and Lacking Features if it's with Update 32.

I beg to differ.... things might be just fine at 140 but for those of us frozen out of LI progress in the 50-100 level range the reward track is the only game in town and LI's are a massive Eff Yew by SSG until that is implemented. Waiting another month or six until it's "perfect" for the high end is not ok.

[Joedangod]

I beg to differ.... things might be just fine at 140 but for those of us frozen out of LI progress in the 50-100 level range the reward track is the only game in town and LI's are a massive Eff Yew by SSG until that is implemented. Waiting another month or six until it's "perfect" for the high end is not ok.

It's pretty terrible at the high end. Nobody is getting anything good here.

[vleydwyyn]

[*]The Gold restriction has been removed from free and premium accounts. All account types can now have a maximum of 9999 Gold without purchase of the Currency Cap.

Awesome! Could we get swift travel too?