Patch tomorrow

[Thorandril]

Not surprised, I guess you could say it was making a few reputations a bit trivial and shorter than intended to max. Though this was really the last thing (perhaps 1 other item worth getting) worth bartering for, what is the point of an endgame instance currency that you can't use for anything?

Marks and medallions used to mitigate the grind that was legendary items, but now since there's no easement with that and they are useful for literally 1 item at end game what is exactly meant to be the purpose?



The wallet was meant to clear our bags but since it was introduced about 2000 currencies have flooded it and become impossible to navigate.

[Echoweaver]

With that in mind, either making enhancement runes buyable with marks or (probably easier) marks convertible into ancient script would make the skirmish marks fill a similar role to what they did in the old LI system.

I'd personally rather have the reputation boosts. (Or both, even better.) There are a LOT of factions in this game and plenty of reputation to be worked for even with the boosters.

[Neinda]

The wallet was meant to clear our bags but since it was introduced about 2000 currencies have flooded it and become impossible to navigate.

If the currency is useful, they don't want us to have it and actually be able to buy something useful so most of the time they cap it. In this case, they decided to take away the one thing we could actually buy. I guess getting that rep and buying the ability to port to locations gives some of us an unfair advantage over other players. Much better if we spend all of our game time running solo missions and playing low level areas. Maybe doing this and driving players away is SSG's way to fix the lag and other performance issues in the game. Fewer players = fewer servers to maintain = less need for group content = less lag.

[Hephburz-2]

I love SSG's silence on this. Really shows they care.

[OldPlayerGator]

Awful, under-handed decision by SSG to do this without any discussion or explanation or even a little bit of warning. DIRTY SHAME! You earned all this good will for the anniversary gifts. Then you turn around and slap us all back to reality with this decision. P.S. Essence removal scrolls are still sold for marks and medallions plus seals. For how long though?

[Laurelinarien]

The announcement that all rep grinds, present and future, are to be halved across the board would be a good move. Perhaps Cord left that out of the patch notes? Can't have much rep anywhere to have context to relevance.

This would be in line with the usual trend of half-announcements or maybe late damage control that we see pretty often.

How different the reception would've been if they had said: no more tomes in the camp, but we trimmed down all the old reps & we promise no more rep inflation in the future. Can you imagine doing Derndingle for the eleventh time without tomes? *shudder*

But no.. we get the stick & no carrot. Plus a handful of players that delight in blaming their peers for SSG's bad moves like this one.

[LadySelene]

Oh my. Thank goodness I've opened the forum this early morning before running off busy.

* barters for tomes, pausing to read the topic while the game says "Too many requests, slow down" *

I usually finalize rep with tasks, but some factions don't have them. Crafting guilds, say hi.
Missions, really? The item is in one of the boxes but you need another, so get screwed.

[Indelin]

What is going on at SSG? Can we please get an answer? Weren't we promised better communication after the disaster with the planned ember revamp? Seems like they've already forgotten their promises.

I was enjoying a break from the endgame grind by rolling a new toon (who has just reached Moria). I'm enjoying the journey immensely but the prospect of grinding all that rep without accelerator is disheartening. I'm going to have to make a list where reaching kindred or honoured is worth my time and the precious tomes that I managed to aquire before giving up at 01:00 am. Because hell will freeze over before I'll go to the store.
And playing through all the content should automatically award to the highest reputations in previous level-cap areas. Am I really expected to grind dailies in old zones?

[Arnenna]

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.

There will be further souring to come.

People in this game have short memories. Always when gifts are thrown around, it follows with some sort of take back which affects everyone.

This move may be a step too far though, as can be seen here in the forum and in game/discord chats.

Could see this coming though, quite clearly, when they buried ember hand ins behind celebrated status in Gundabad.

There has been a major shift in how the game works in the last 18 months - specifically. Nickle and Diming is at the fore. just do the maths.

[Brinswith]

There will be further souring to come.

People in this game have short memories. Always when gifts are thrown around, it follows with some sort of take back which affects everyone.

This move may be a step too far though, as can be seen here in the forum and in game/discord chats.

Could see this coming though, quite clearly, when they buried ember hand ins behind celebrated status in Gundabad.

There has been a major shift in how the game works in the last 18 months - specifically. Nickle and Diming is at the fore. just do the maths.

As of the time of this post. The thread has over 4k views and 83 replies. With the exception of the Evernight lag thread this is by far the busiest and largest thread on the forums over the last few weeks. The fact that neither Cordovan nor Raninia have responded to what is a major concern by players is shocking.

The sheer numbers of people stood at Skirmish camps across servers shows how much people relied on these to lessen the absurd rep requirements for some of factions. Given the pushback the community gave them over the proposed changes to Embers and also the response to the original changes they wanted to make to rep tomes (Usage capped at level 100 and BTA). You have to start wondering if this change and the less than 24 hour warning of it was absolutely a deliberate move. Especially given this was tacked on to a xx.x.x update and not something placed on BR for people to get advance notice of.

[Feldanor]

Well done ssg, you've just earned more dislike from your player base. Money grabbing tossers. Such a dirty way of doing it too. If there's a bigger picture then say it. Right now you're just supporting the theory that you don't care about the players, only about money.

[Elesthor]

Ahhh LOtRO community, you never cease to amaze.

[Mithithil]

South Bree skirmish camp looks like Rivendell used to look when the message went out "hope boost at Glorfindel" on a Friday night.

Poor decision and I see a lot of toons from end game kinships stacking up. "Too many requests, slow down" is going to be a thing for a bit. Folks in the chat have generally >500K marks to get rid of.

I assume a long rep path is upcoming

Known>Acquaintance>Ally>Kindre d>Celebrated>Honoured>Revered> Worshipped>PalanTube Inffuencer>C list Celebrity>Leila's Market Fashion Model>B list Celebrity>You Bow To No One>Gets a round in at the Green Dragon

[Strider5548]

Guess we can't have any useful things to buy at the skirm camp anymore... I know what I'll be tossing my marks and medallions into tonight.

- Small Reputation Accelerator Tomes have been removed from the Skirmish camp curiosities vendors. They can still be obtained from weekly Missions in the "Missions: Bonus Character Boosts" package.

https://www.lotro.com/update-notes/l...lease-notes-en

I got a lot to say about this but don't want to type it all out on mobile...I'll just say this is an awful change and I hope SSG smartens up and reverses it.

[Forodir]

The sheer numbers of people stood at Skirmish camps across servers shows how much people relied on these to lessen the absurd rep requirements for some of factions. Given the pushback the community gave them over the proposed changes to Embers and also the response to the original changes they wanted to make to rep tomes (Usage capped at level 100 and BTA). You have to start wondering if this change and the less than 24 hour warning of it was absolutely a deliberate move. Especially given this was tacked on to a xx.x.x update and not something placed on BR for people to get advance notice of.

For European players this was totally blind sighted. Announcement was made late in the evening, so people in Europe either wont see the announcement before servers go down or they don't have time to log in since servers are already down when they get back from work.

[Sovereign50]

Not the final straw to break the camel's back, but it has certainly helped me to experience zero regret in very recently deleting every single one of my toons and cancelling all my subs. I no longer have hope for the direction of this game.

[Elenluin-Menelloth]

Ahhh LOtRO community, you never cease to amaze.

Two separate things. Not sure where you got the idea that it's streamlining anything.

[Mithithil]

A thing you may not have known

80500 bonus rep is the cap:-)

[Gilean-EU]

I bought 2200 rep boosters this morning before work, and boy that took time, thanks to one item at time -thing and "too many requests, slow down"... Never been a grinder but I still had plenty of marks and medallions to spare, thanks to the fact that there hasn't been anything useful to buy with them (in additon to rep accelerators), for a long long time. Still, that isn't even much as 11 characters will have only 200 accelerators each.

At least they announced the change a day before (if that), and didn't just sneakily remove the item from skirmish vendor, but stupid decision still in my opinion.

[MourneBlade]

This just reminds me of my days in the USN.

CO passes the word "Ice cream night on the mess decks for all hands"

All Hands-"Yay"

Next day:

CO passes the word- "Todays port visit for 3 days is cancelled because" (reason redacted)

Context- Been at sea for a month during a 6 month deployment

Yes I realize SSG gave away a ton of free stuff, it is appreciated.

How about a little more warning next before you hoodwink us!

[Arantha]

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.

that is over the years the style of SSG, don't like it at all

[Arantha]

@Cordovan
@Raninia

LISTEN to YOUR playerbase!

/sign

[Arantha]

@Raninia said once, that the caps as much as possible should be freed, the grind should be as much as possible minimized
Gundabad: Zhelruka/missions, Erebor the same - just grind grind grind if you d like to buy something from the barter. Same with the new reward track and the cool stuff only once for one character per account avaiable. No mithril sales, and so on ...

the playerbase will not take all such decisions without any reactions and losses, communication should be the main target for SSG

[Thurinuor]

- Pets only in lootboxes
- mounts only in lootboxes
- emots and pets just for ONE character in the reward track
- removing the rep tomes from the skirmish camp
- not many EU players do know about this change because the release notes came up late at night and are NOT available in german or french.
- still a ugly UI for the reward track (no sound effects, no notifications when you reach a new level, not scalable, etc.

All of them are horrible decisions for the playerbase. SSG got a lot of new and returning players. Now they will lose them.

Cancelled my plans to buy lotro points this evening and to subscribe for VIP for my second account.

[the7hing]

That's about the funniest or most naive statement I have seen in gaming in years. Blizzard only cared about one thing and that was subscriptions. They allowed the Chinese to subscribe for the equivalent of $3.15 per month while North America was charged a minimum of $15.95 for a single month. Catered to Gold Farmers until they too "abundant".

Great laugh of the day for me.

Thanks...

As 16y wow player i can comfirm this is false.
I dont like the removal of tomes, but i do believe they have their reasons (ssg)
Hope is for the good of the game. Time will tell

Atleast they menage to bring life to skirm camps