Patch tomorrow

[littlesquinky]

Gee, how awful, for a company to want to earn more money. Do you even understand how business works?

I do. More than you understand politeness. Pissing off players by removing barter items by night without some days notice is a bad business practice, as you can easily check looking for the feedback they received on forums, twitter, facebook, reddit, discord and every other medium. There are plenty ways for SSG to earn more money by selling commodities in the store, without introducing on purpose inflated grinds and then sell time cutters for money, as they do.

[TesalionLortus]

Still loving the radio silence from SSG.

As expected.

That thread about Russia got closed though... so Cordovan was here :P

Gotta admit, this looks pretty bad, even though as cruel as it sounds (and reflecting badly on their community manager) I do get the dilemma of the company who thinks they gotta do something unpopular so there will be inevitably online ravings and commotion. That being said, an official stance of any sort would have been better. They don't even need to outright state "yes, this model earns money, so we'll go ahead with this suckers" which sounds uncool and is bad rep but... idk? A short list where Cordovan answers a couple of the most reasonably put reasonable issues raised and whether they have plans to fix those. Including the ones that will hit the new players as well, the ones I mentioned in my previous post, since they can't even hide behind the argument that it's only veterans (who are used to old stuff) who are getting affected here

[Neinda]

I suspect most people will go with skipping the rep. I cannot think of any rep that is worth grinding missions over and over and over again. Missions are the most tedious and boring part of the game for me. Even with the rep scrolls I don't have max rep with any of the mission factions. No reason to get it and no reason to run missions.
For the most part in the older areas all rep gets you is a return to skill. Not really necessary and not worth spending actual money on something like that. There are stables that can be used currently. If the purpose of this was to punish the lotro point farmers, good luck. Most people don't go past the starter areas for lotro point farming. I would consider putting a limit on how many character deletes an account can have and that would probably cut down on the point farming in the starter areas.

SSG should look at what happens when a business decides to take away from customers and punish the customers in an effort to pinch pennies. Think back a few years ago when J.C. Penny decided to do away with sales and how well that ended for them. When a company takes away from customers in an effort to force customers to spend money in a specific way like this, the company tends to lose.

[Arnenna]

I suspect most people will go with skipping the rep. I cannot think of any rep that is worth grinding missions over and over and over again. Missions are the most tedious and boring part of the game for me. Even with the rep scrolls I don't have max rep with any of the mission factions. No reason to get it and no reason to run missions.
For the most part in the older areas all rep gets you is a return to skill. Not really necessary and not worth spending actual money on something like that. There are stables that can be used currently. If the purpose of this was to punish the lotro point farmers, good luck. Most people don't go past the starter areas for lotro point farming. I would consider putting a limit on how many character deletes an account can have and that would probably cut down on the point farming in the starter areas.

Its not the missions rep that is the issue. It's Gundabad rep. It was set as high as possible, meaning "celebrated", for any alt to be able to hand in silver coins of Gundabad for embers - once a week. Not to mention also that those Gundabad coins are not that easy to accumulate in a week either, unless you're willing to grind your backside off on dailies that you do not need long after passing the wrapper requirement, or . . . . you happen to have a special toolkit from the higher Gundabad expansion pack.

[Vilan]

If they were worried about farming, they could just remove LP rewards from Bree/Shire/Ered Luin deeds.

SSG, how about adding something useful to skirm camps? Essences would be a good one, there's level 100 ones but nothing further. At least the yellow and purple ones so casual players could slot something cheaply as they level. Essence gear as well, the kind that drops on landscape below level cap... the drops are so rare they might as well not exist. Tracery removal scrolls. Maybe yellow/purple traceries and enhancement runes. Some cosmetic items from within skirmishes, be it gear or housing items. None of these should be terribly hard to implement and shouldn't impact store revenue.

[Elesthor]

Its not the missions rep that is the issue. It's Gundabad rep. It was set as high as possible, meaning "celebrated", for any alt to be able to hand in silver coins of Gundabad for embers - once a week. Not to mention also that those Gundabad coins are not that easy to accumulate in a week either, unless you're willing to grind your backside off on dailies that you do not need long after passing the wrapper requirement, or . . . . you happen to have a special toolkit from the higher Gundabad expansion pack.

I mean... IT IS the end-game. I can see grinding for it as being acceptable. You can live with 500 less embers a week before you reach it, it's not the end of the world.

[Neinda]

Its not the missions rep that is the issue. It's Gundabad rep. It was set as high as possible, meaning "celebrated", for any alt to be able to hand in silver coins of Gundabad for embers - once a week. Not to mention also that those Gundabad coins are not that easy to accumulate in a week either, unless you're willing to grind your backside off on dailies that you do not need long after passing the wrapper requirement, or . . . . you happen to have a special toolkit from the higher Gundabad expansion pack.

I have pretty much given up on end game for the most part. SSG has made it so difficult to even do anything group wise unless you are one of the dedicated elite raiders that I don't bother. I run the occasional HH T1 pug because it really doesn't matter what armor I have. The landscape and solo instance drops are sufficient.

I left for a bit and came back for the anniversary thinking that SSG had seen the light and modified their hammer type approach. This change proves that they will not only use a hammer on the players, they will do it in the dark of night and sneak in the changes. SSG has changed. They now just ignore the customer base and sneak in changes and go on vacation. The money and time I spent on other games recently is probably money well spent. SSG has been using shakedown tactics for a while now. I really wish I didn't come back during the anniversary. I wish I had not filled the reward track only to throw away boxes because I had no room to store them (silly system). They pretend to give us things all the time knowing they have extortion plans in the future. My guess is that all the rep items and the essence scrolls will go the way of the dodo soon enough. I suspect they will take away our reward track boxes if we don't use them on the spot. Unless of course our business manager finds a way to charge us for it. Those in charge of the business side of SSG really do not understand the majority of their customers. Or more likely they only really care about keeping those that will pay like this is a mobile game. For now, I see no need to spend any money here when I get nothing in return. I am old school that way. If you want my money, you have to provide me something in return lol.

[Dorri_Hammerfist]

The fact that no blue name has shown up to defend this most brave idea is telling. Removing rep acceleration items is indefensible.

[Hephburz-2]

The fact that no blue name has shown up to defend this most brave idea is telling. Removing rep acceleration items is indefensible.

Hit the nail on the head there.

[littlesquinky]

REP grinding is trivial with boosters, that's a fact.

Not really, depends on what you think is trivial. Host of the west, defenders of minas tirith, fangorn, at least these cannot be maxed by doing all the quests in an area with boosters on. They need repeatables, lots of them. And many need the same tokens both for rep and barter items, think far anorien.

Given the fact that the game showers you with Marks, even the most casual of the players always had rep boosters on.
Removing the tedium of having to buy hundreds of 1000p boosters "veeeeery slowly" and making the REP grind non trivial is hitting two birds with one stone really.

Yesterday night I got 500 tomes in ten-fifteen minutes by clicking each second. While it's surely tedious, it doesnt require much time.

The only REP that matters anyway is the end-game Gundabad one allowing you to trade for embers, and with boosters you could get to max before even hitting 140, lol.

This is generally false. It's true from the perspective of an end game player who only cares about cap gear or figments stuff. Many people are interested in cosmetics, pets, housing items, and several barters offer good items, when you reach the maximum status. While this change does not impact much 15yo veterans, the poin

[TheTwoTrees]

Unnecessary change.

Fairly sure SSG is just not responding anymore on these topics since the Ember debacle from some time ago (and the previous rep accel proposed change).

Easier to just let people hate on it here until the topic dies a slow death...

Really wonder when they're going to realize they desperately need to improve their comms.

[Curuer_Bauglir]

No one is going to explain the decision because the explanation will make players angrier, not placate them. They removed the rep accels because they aren’t happy with the amount of LP players earn from rep. Anyone can see that. It’s silly to think a blue name is gonna come post that on here.

Reputation is an inherited system for the new people at SSG and it appears they don’t like how it fits into their revamped f2p model. I’m sure they would love to remove LP from rep, but that would cause a riot, so they instead made it harder to earn.

[JiiPee]

Can any bluename comment why this change was made? Nobody wanted this. You keep destroying game economy. Gold is already quite much useless. Nothing to really spend gold anymore because most of the stuff we need is account bound.
Now it looks like marks / medallions is next to hit by axe. Only thing what is left for now to barter is reputation items for new toon, this is one time thing and don't require you to spend that much marks/medallions. Then there is essence reclamation scrolls what I personally think is next what is removed.

Yes we know that we can get acceleration tomes by doing missions. But ques what? After doing missions x times, they becomes very boring and amount of acceleration tomes requires is so much that what you can get from missions is quite much meaningless + there is also other stuff you may want to get from missions.
Because lot of new region barter stuff is gated behind reputation, you are quite much required to run accelerator or you are later forced to do mindless daily grind to get reputation. That is, if you don't quest whole region start to end what I don't wanna do 12 times.
Previous caps you wasn't even able to do dailies unless you finished quests meta deed. So I ques that is a plus at gundabad...

Did you even think how many people would download AHK because of this 1-day notice change? And now that they have realised what it can do, they may leave it installed and start using it to other stuff also? I believe AHK is one of the worst nemesis for you guys at SSG, even that you don't publicly admit it. So well done getting more people to use it.

This too many requests cooldown is just annoying as ####. I did barter 100 stacks of acceleration tomes and it took like 3h!
This same annoying as #### cooldown is present quite much all barters, good example is yellow enhancement rune barterer. You need so many of thouse runes per LI pair and it get very boring when you click them 1 per second rate. This is so annoying as #### that it has made me think of quitting this game MANY MANY MANY times. I just get very angry when this too many requests pops in.

This is NOT good end user experience. This will just piss people off and eventually turn them off the game. So please do something for this very bad design. We got similar situation when relics master was a thing and we had to reforge? lower tier relics to upper tiers. We finaly got there system where we could convert, was it like 1x, 10x or 100x at once.
How hard it would be for you guys to implement similar system for all barters? Just add: Barter 1 item, Barter 10 items, Barter 100 items. Or same system what vendor has where you can alt + click and then enter quantity how many you want?

SSG you really need to wake up and realise that you need us, end users. Without us your business will end. We don't need you, we can always walk a way and go play something else and take our money to some other company.

Anniversary rewards was this time very very good. I was like "Wow! Did we really got all this???" I and I think quite much everyone else was so happy of all that rewards we god. I have not heard anyone say that we didn't get enough stuff.
1 month later and you think you can start ####### us? We deserve it? You have right to do so because we got something and you can now take away something from us?

7 pages already on this topic so I think I am not a lone with my opinions.

[JiiPee]

No one is going to explain the decision because the explanation will make players angrier, not placate them. They removed the rep accels because they aren’t happy with the amount of LP players earn from rep. Anyone can see that. It’s silly to think a blue name is gonna come post that on here.

Reputation is an inherited system for the new people at SSG and it appears they don’t like how it fits into their revamped f2p model. I’m sure they would love to remove LP from rep, but that would cause a riot, so they instead made it harder to earn.

I do not think it's anything to do with lotro points we gain from reputation. Lotro points farming via reputation has been "fixed" already and last time when I did a math it was cheaper to barter direct zone reputation items and cap your reputation than barter acceleration tomes 1st and then use reputation items.

Month ago I took a 1 month ViP because I saw value on it with some extra goodies. I used that time to task-board level 8 of my toons, gained quite much gundabad tiers on each toon. I went from 5713 lotro points to 6953 so in month time period I gained 1240 lotro points. But it was not all just from reputation deeds I finished. That same time period I also finished lot of other deeds where I earned lotro points. I finished for one toon gundabad all meta deeds for example.
So lets say 1000 lotro points came from reputation. That is 125 per toon. But I think 100 lotro points per toon is closer to reality. There is not much you can buy with 100 lotro points. With 800 lotro points sure, but to gain that, you need 8 toons. And it is one time income.

[Neinda]

SSG will not respond to this or any posts on the rep tomes because management at SSG does not really care about us as customers. They are interested in pleasing the investors. They look at numbers like money spent per active player. If this change drives players away, they don't really care. It probably makes their statistics look better. Eventually they will close this and all related posts without addressing the issue or responding. Next update something different will be vectored to the real money store and this will continue until you need to pay every time you log in. The business manager has a goal of turning this game into a mobile game where people gamble and spend money daily. I am honestly surprised they have not implemented a pay system where the purchases go directly to your credit card or bank account. This is like the time the cable repair person told me that their goal is to make the investors happy. They don't really care if we have functional internet or not. The investors are the priority customer. Consumers are just consumers and don't deserve anything special. I suspect the real goal is to nickel and dime as much as possible before they shut the game down. I don't really see any actual improvements discussed or planned in the posts.

If you really want to make a statement to SSG, I highly recommend you log on regularly and don't spend a penny. The more active players we have not spending money, the worse their statistics will look. That might get enough investor attention to make some management changes at SSG.

[Arnenna]

I mean... IT IS the end-game. I can see grinding for it as being acceptable. You can live with 500 less embers a week before you reach it, it's not the end of the world.

Depends on how many alts you're running an how many you intend to kit out for end game.

The whole concept of the game is or was, based on doing content to earn reward to enable more difficult content. The grind has become so bad that by the time players have achieved that, were onto the next update.

It's not a question of whether it's the end of the world. It more about how long players will stick around for it.

[Oghran]

I disagree with the decision just like the next guy, but what strikes me as particularly unfair is to drop the bomb at a day's notice.

That gave the forum and social regulars a chance to salvage at least some value from a once valuable resource, which people that don't do that on a daily basis just saw evaporate.
Very unfair. And it bodes ill for the wrap up of the legacy LI stuff: prepare for more write-offs of once-very-valuable stuff.

The more communicative and player-friendly wind that blew after Raninia's first appearance (which really upped my hope for this game) seemed to have dissipated.

[Mirhaen]

I disagree with the decision just like the next guy, but what strikes me as particularly unfair is to drop the bomb at a day's notice.

Not even a day's notice for people in other time zones. It was 1am for me, when info was published, and I saw it one hour later. Solely thanks to the fact that I had to pick my husband from airport that late. Plus, on a working day, when one can expect that most people are in bed. I hardly have words to describe my feelings :/

[StinkyGreene]

SSG will not respond to this or any posts on the rep tomes because management at SSG does not really care about us as customers. They are interested in pleasing the investors.

They dont have managers. It’s a random collection of a few people that used to work for Turbine (or WB) that wanted to keep the game alive. You all make it sound like a publicly traded company that answers to investors and bean counters. That is not reality.

They are game developers. They are doing what every dang American company is doing right now because no one can figure out an alternative to global inflation, raising prices. They just aren’t capable of communicating worth a darn.

[Dulco_Brandywine]

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.

I think i calculated before, for wildermore, we need more than one month to get to kindred, 5 daily per day. a month. None of my toons finished this.

I would love SSG answer this, how many days would you endure repeating totally same quests?

and wildermore is only one of these kind of factions.

[Dulco_Brandywine]

true, SSG is a studio for developing game contents. And Day break is a company for marketing/sales/ earning money, which is owned by EG7.

sometimes i miss Turbine, they are studio who are aiming for gameplay, and this SSG period, it's like , they are aiming for monelization. Yeah, it's understandable, but their stratgery/marketing technics have shown much more signs of their ignoring gameplay and players (or even p2p sometimes). which, makes me sad.

They dont have managers. It’s a random collection of a few people that used to work for Turbine (or WB) that wanted to keep the game alive. You all make it sound like a publicly traded company that answers to investors and bean counters. That is not reality.

They are game developers. They are doing what every dang American company is doing right now because no one can figure out an alternative to global inflation, raising prices. They just aren’t capable of communicating worth a darn.

[Arantha]

The fact that no blue name has shown up to defend this most brave idea is telling. Removing rep acceleration items is indefensible.

1. Take a decision
2. wait till the storm is over
3. respond with: We see what people are saying and looking for a solution
4. Change something irrelevant

[Brinswith]

With 9,990 views as of time of writing. This thread is now the 20th most viewed theread in General Discussion & Feedback of all time when you sort by number of views. it has reached that in 2 days. That a blue name has not deigned to post here is very telling of the current culture at SSG to just shut up shop and hope the noise goes away.

The initial idea back in Jan 2021 (to make them BTA and have a level usage cap of 100) was met with the same distaste from the community and a similar 5 page thread was created here. Heads up - scrolls and reputation tomes - next update (lotro.com) That time we actually got a week to prepare. This time they have said nothing but a footnote in the patch notes a day prior to it going live. They already knew it was unpopular and would cause panic at the skirmish camps. They already knew people would be vocal against the change. They just did not care.

It's a really sad day when the community manager can be seen to be active around other parts of the forums and yet ignoring the largest most active thread. At the very least a blue name should have come in to offer an explanation of why this change was made.

[DoRonRon]

How is it that there is never anyone in the room or zoom call capable of saying "Do you know what ~~~~ storm this is going to cause?"?

Knowing that all but the last content patch has been assigned "do not resus" perhaps they just use the max Valar and plod along to cap and call it playing the game. I do wonder who is their go to guy/gal for gameplay advice/feedback?

[Arnenna]

With 9,990 views as of time of writing. This thread is now the 20th most viewed theread in General Discussion & Feedback of all time when you sort by number of views. it has reached that in 2 days. That a blue name has not deigned to post here is very telling of the current culture at SSG to just shut up shop and hope the noise goes away.

The initial idea back in Jan 2021 (to make them BTA and have a level usage cap of 100) was met with the same distaste from the community and a similar 5 page thread was created here. Heads up - scrolls and reputation tomes - next update (lotro.com) That time we actually got a week to prepare. This time they have said nothing but a footnote in the patch notes a day prior to it going live. They already knew it was unpopular and would cause panic at the skirmish camps. They already knew people would be vocal against the change. They just did not care.

It's a really sad day when the community manager can be seen to be active around other parts of the forums and yet ignoring the largest most active thread. At the very least a blue name should have come in to offer an explanation of why this change was made.

They'll bunker down and wait for the thread to lose momentum. We've seen this before, more than once. Ignoring it makes it all better, but what's said on the forum isn't the measure, what happens in game is. Vote with your wallet.

They don't get to see a lot of what is being said, because most of it is said away from here. They are none too popular at the moment. Even some of the players that usually support them have nothing good to say. But hey - If all else fails - stick head in the sand.