Patch tomorrow

[kudurru1]

Basic use items like Small Rep tomes should be available from several sources, a barter here, a drop there. It's bad enough that another game system is apparently silently being retired -> Skirmishes, it's a tone deaf change.

Narrowing the number of "profitable" things to run isn't the answer.

[Neinda]

A game that can only make money by taking away from people rather than creating items worth buying is not going to last that long. The player base will move on if SSG continues their current business model.

[Elesthor]

[jevvy]

and it's not as if we have enough to do with weekly grinds for embers is it. you have to add missions (boring boring missions - with weekly rewards, not even like you can farm them if you need to is it?) to the list just to get embers that you need for end game play.

You really don't want people to raid or do exciting stuff do you? You must just want them to grind everytime they logon.

I really had to check whether it was 1st April!

(oh, and if you think you don't have to worry because not many people have complained here yet, you should log onto World chat ingame!)

[Uroc]

This is very bad sign about game future.

[Brinswith]

and it's not as if we have enough to do with weekly grinds for embers is it. you have to add missions (boring boring missions - with weekly rewards, not even like you can farm them if you need to is it?) to the list just to get embers that you need for end game play.You really don't want people to raid or do exciting stuff do you? You must just want them to grind everytime they logon.I really had to check whether it was 1st April!(oh, and if you think you don't have to worry because not many people have complained here yet, you should log onto World chat ingame!)

Sadly Jev. Unless people do come and post. That's exactly what they'll think. This is a very poor decision and hurts all types of players. I don't understand. They reap the goodwill from an amazing anniversary giveaway and then immediately sour it with this.

[Elhiril]

Horrible decision. Rethink this.

[Calding]

And almost no warning this was going to happen - a lot of people are not going to find out about it until they come to want some more tomes, then they're going to be very angry. One more useful item removed from the game.

Unfortunately I would suspect there is no warning because of what happened when they gave us advance warning about the currency changes they were going to introduce with U32 back in January. This seems to be in the same vein, I'm sure they knew it would result in a similar reaction ahead of time (as people have already referenced the last time they made changes to this item). I would guess it came from the same source, but this time instead of giving the community time to voice their concerns (and some very valid ones imho) we are getting very little time to come up with legitimate concerns to voice on the forums.

I am curious why they want everyone playing old content longer, to get kindred rep, when they keep stating that they want to make changes that do not have us doing old, repeatable, irrelevant content. Or perhaps earning LP is irrelevant, as we are supposed to be using real cash to buy LP from the store.

It certainly does beg the legitimate question of whether they are going to add anything to the skirmish vendors that is worth purchasing with marks and medallions.

Another very sad decision for people who like to play many alts through to level cap.

[DoRonRon]

Not like they are putting much in of use to rep barter at the end of it. A joke of a crafting recipe?

Ofc it's in one of of the selectable weekly missions rewards that you open, when you really should be after another box entirely.

Get ready for their "bartering for them one at a time puts the server under strain" excuse.

They only do this because they have Cord to willing do the dirty for them. Then spout the nonsense he's given to justify it.

I hope some of the "charity" drives have reserved a ward at a local institution.

Time to hit the queue and spend all them Marks and Meds.

On the plus side it just elevated my unbound small acceleration tome stacks into unbound key stacks territory. CH'CHING. Ta very much.

[onor]

Not at all surprising for 4 reasons:
1 There are multiple massive rep grinds. They are in every new zone.
2 The rep requirements/gating have increased as time has gone on.
3 The system is designed with rep accelerators in mind, so if you dont have them, you are screwed.
4 Rep accelerators exist in the store.

I knew it wouldn't be long before I reevaluated my VIP status after I let it go but went back because of all the anniversary freebies.

[Sonkasteszta]

How interesting... SSG do remember skrim camps and how to update them. Seems like they deliberately didn't update the skrimp camp gear and haven't made new camps since lvl 105.

This ship is sinking fast...

[Neinda]

Maybe they think with no rep tomes, fewer people will earn lotro points via rep and have to spend real money in the store? Back to what I said before, this business model is not designed to encourage paying customers. It is a bad sign if SSG has to nickel and dime us to death over something as basic as rep scrolls.

[Mayblossom]

This is just more proof SSG are working towards getting all benefits to us from the Store only, we have endless useless things in our wallets that have no use to spend anything on. Marks are now joining that useless items list. Pure greed SSG and very poor for good customer relations.

[Thugalvald]

I challenge any developer to obtain kindred on Wildermore Survivors without questioning "Why?" Trust me, get back to us in a month or so because it'll literally take you weeks. Even without that specific grind, there has to be upwards of 25 factions in this game now and the sheer amount of time to kindred (or celebrated) each one is at least somewhat alleviated by that.

Last time changes were proposed we had several days to convince you to compromise, I guess now the tactic is just plop it the night before so we can't do diddly squat.

The answer is very simple, as I always said, they never ever played LOTRO. All their decisions are made to ruin the quality of life of their players ingame. If they launched the game at least once they would see that the servers are going to crash any time soon as it was in 2020 (and many times before). They would see the many problems we have with the missions NPCs and stupid bugs we are having every day. The only explanation for all of this to stay as it is and removing quality of life items is just the fact they never ever played the game. Remember when Eriador reputation items weren't level gated, weren't quest gated, when reputation accels weren't that "expensive", when they weren't bound to account. All the changes made to these items were made to be annoying the players, nothing else.

At least we can now add Marks and Medallions to the list of the useless currencies that will never ever be reworked (hi shards). They will say "soon tm" as always (hi closed servers transfers) but you know that they will never do anything about that.

[Hephburz-2]

Didn't they try this before? And that's why we have them bound to account now, because there was an uproar?

Now they are trying to sneak through this change again! When will they learn? There is absolutely no GOOD reason why these items need to be removed, aside pushing someone to the store. Leave them as they are.

[Curuer_Bauglir]

I think this is another step to attempt to limit players from getting quick LP from early faction rep completions. They added level and quest requirements for rep faction tokens not too long ago, but apparently that wasn’t enough in their eyes. I’m surprised those are still in skirm camps at all.

It’s becoming apparent their f2p model revamp is totally focused around players earning LP from the store or sub and less in-game. They dropped LP rewards from some deeds in new regions.

I also think they’re narrowing the focus of the game. We are clamoring over the near uselessness of skirm camps, but there are a bunch of new players who don’t notice because they weren’t around to remember when it was useful. They’ve done the same with crafting. New players don’t remember when each crafting tier came with a basic set of gear, so they don’t notice that it doesn’t. Bartering for recipes is all they know, so they think nothing of it.

Getting back on topic, rep is a source of LP that doesn’t require players to go too far out of their way in most zones. You earn rep just by questing in each zone. Even if you don’t max rep on your initial pass through the zone, you usually get far enough along that most players will take the extra time to complete it, earning LP as a result. SSG doesn’t like that. They want players to either ignore it because of the time involved (forgoing the free LP) or head to the store and buy rep boosts. Slayer deeds are set high for this reason. Treasure chests, rare chests, and dwarf markers were added to the game and included in explorer meta deeds for this reason.

Their free to play model is going to be designed around the new generation of players. They’re giving away free content to draw them in and funneling them to the store as much as possible. It stinks for the older players because we already owned the giveaways, yet still losing things we’ve gotten used to.

[Lobothehunter]

[Sarge4Hire]

I have subbed to this game since day 1 and have spent probably close to $10,000 in purchases over the years and for the most part played daily until recently. you guys just keep making idiotic GREEDY changes and its getting ridiculous. now you propose this....its just stupid. this is yet another STUPID change driven by GREED. cancel this change please!

i also have 8 VIP subs going at the moment...cancelling every single one of them right now.


GREED GREED GREED

[Hephburz-2]

@Cordovan
@Raninia

LISTEN to YOUR playerbase!

[maartena]

Whyyyyyyy.

Because as usual, a few players with millions of marks ruin it for the rest of us.

First they put level restrictions on rep items, because it was too easy to get full kindred on a just born toon and as such getting lots of LP.
Then that wasn't enough and they added a quest line for each rep item that you have to complete first before you can use them.
Then that wasn't enough so they slowed people down by putting the reputations accelerators to bound to account, where they could be freely traded before.
And apparently that wasn't restrictive enough so they are removing them completely.

There are players that probably create a toon, craft them to level 20, then do the quest really quick, use their millions of marks to barter for mathoms, and then get 50 LP from getting kindred, delete the toon, and do it again. Its easy to level to 20 while working from home on crafting so they can probably do this 5 times a day with lotro running in the back ground.

And the solution to stop them is SO simple: DISABLE CRAFTING EXP!

1) Keep the level restrictions for rep items in place.
2) Remove the stupid quests you have to do before using rep items.
3) Completely remove experience from crafting so people actually have to play/kill things to get to level 20.
4) Keep the reputation tomes on the skirmish vendors.

These problems all started with crafting experience. When people actually have to play the game to GET to level 20 and above, they are much less enticed to make quick Beornings (5 minute intro) just to craft them up to level 20-ish.

I think it is probably a few individuals that ruin it for the rest of us, and they can't seem to figure out how to allow us "regular casual" folks to still have nice things.

[theultimatekyle]

They don't have time to properly balance the raid, fix broken trait lines, can't fix hrimil's wipe bug, and no time to waste on customer service responses.
But they have the time to screw players over. Just gotta see how far they can push us and get away with it. Seems to be happening more often since Raninia joined.

[karakiri2]

Simply terrible decision, mostly dictated by greed. Even if you want to make people complete missions more frequently - provide them something ELSE valuable rather than cutting rewards from other game content.

[Shins0n]

Yeah...thanks very much for this very "nice" change according to the reputation-boosts. Always a pleasure to get spit in the face and again especially costumer-friendly behaviour to the european playership

[Sonkasteszta]

Their free to play model is going to be designed around the new generation of players. They’re giving away free content to draw them in and funneling them to the store as much as possible. It stinks for the older players because we already owned the giveaways, yet still losing things we’ve gotten used to.

It's really courios how they are alienating the core playerbase who plays and pays for the games regardless of its clunkiness, while not realising the majority of the new players will leave the game as they experience the wonkiness.

[DoRonRon]

/lol

30g for one small rep on Evernight AH tonight