Creep Movement.

[UselessSmurf]

I've almost exclusively been playing on creepside for the past few months, on my veteran characters and even on new creep alts with no maps. Moving from grams to the center of the map is a lot faster now than it was 6 months ago. It's slower than relying entirely on Good maps with 5m cooldowns, but it's not far off the movement times freeps have worked with since the game launched. How do you think that solo hunter got all the way to Isendeep mine?

Listen Onn, you seem to be more astute than your fellow devs, but why not give both sides maps? Give both sides ways to get to the fights faster. Who the heck wants to run around an obnoxiously huge map to find a fight?

This run speed buff/taking maps away is a step backwards, the players see it, but you Devs continue to justify it, no one cares about this speed buff, and no one wants it, so why continue to push it?

Listen to your players who actually go out and play 24/7 and stop trying to reinvent the wheel. No one wants what you guys are peddling, but you still try to justify it.

I always said lawyers and some police are the most arrogant people, but SSG devs are certainly making a case for themselves lol.

[upat12am]

please stop using words such as "significantly" and "Substantially" when you refer to the so called stat buffs you have so kindly given to creeps .

This!

[upat12am]

Sorry, I thought and must be mistaken, that killing the mayor in hoarhollow contributed to maps to lugz. Yes, greenies are picking up the "I've got a theory" quest at tr and "hoofing" it to hoarhollow to pick up food sacks and "hoofing" it back because they don't have maps. They are also picking up troll stone for those tr quests and wood they need for lumber camp. I only know of 3 stone troll locations off the top of my head that are located in the coldfells. Again, it's been a while since I've had to gather troll stone. Most of the time when groups get together to do quests, they aren't mapping, they are running a circuit "hoofing" it all the way. I'm not trying to be argumentative but the creeps that I regularly group with, and I'm rank 15 mind you, are "hoofing" it from one quest objective to the next and that is because they are working either on ranking up veteran creep classes or working on maps for new creep classes. I'm "hoofing" it across the map, following greenies, because I know freeps are hunting them in quest areas away from map ins. I'm not saying I'm not using maps, just that when creeps are in trouble in hoarhollow, its easier for me to get there to 'save' them if I can map gta rather than trying to "hoof" it from grams hoping the action is still there before mapping back to grothum to hunt the freeps doing quests there or waiting for creeps. I suppose this is your way of saying I need to change my game play strategy.

You will have to excuse me if I don't see the compensation here. I as a defiler player, can't dismount freeps from their horses since I have no ranged interrupt, nor can I catch them since mount speed is higher than march. I get knocked out of march the instant I am in combat whereas this is not the case for freep mounts. My maps are however on a 1-hour cooldown so I can no longer map ahead of freeps to catch them, or I have to hope that a warg or ba has an open map to catch them. I'm basically watching freeps just ride off into the sunset, avoiding death and pvp all together. This happens constantly.

Again, this. Do the devs actually play creep? Would seriously like to know.

[upat12am]

Call me odd or whatever but all of this would have made a whole lot more sense it you actually had a fix in place before you decided to break creeps ability to move about in the Moors. Maybe this should have been tested and feedback requested in a beta? Was there an exploit that needed to be immediately addressed? What changed that 15 year old travel skills had to be stopped immediately with nothing in place to compensate for the change? Now I am curious what is the time table to fix the broken travel time for creeps? Is it on the schedule for anytime soon or is it just another thing you will get to someday?

Not odd at all. Very good point!

[upat12am]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll admit that as a Warleader, I forgot March was even a skill. But is the new iteration of the WL group run buff Mobilize supposed to be in addition to March? Because currently, it replaces March as your current run buff, going from +155% to +20%, essentially making it useless. With how it's setup now, Mobilize should be an in-combat skill, giving you an extra +20% run buff for 10 seconds in-combat at the bare minimum.

But as a Warleader, I'm used to my skills being rendered useless, so I won't be surprised if Mobilize is RIP.

Yep, Mobilise was screwed up. Hey here's a thought, test it, makes sure it works, bring tested code over. How many attempts will it actually take to close the delving, or better yet, how about just shut off the delving buffs. That way the freeps/creeps that can't help themselves from exploiting at every opportunity possible can't still take the buffs that were supposed to have been gone 2 1/2 weeks ago.

[upat12am]

^ You are suddenly worried about Greenie Creeps being killed when questing? When Hunters were nuking brand new creeps coming out of Grams on day one of F2P with their absurd 50m range lol. That is such a backhanded comment.
I don't think you care about Freeps nuking Greenies, its just a talking point to justify your removal of maps.

Agreed.

[upat12am]

I used a stop watch and tested the creepside mount yesterday. It is not much faster than walking. Pretty much if anything looks at you it is back to slow walk speed. If you take the time to fast walk around everything that causes you to drop march it is the equivalent to a slow walk because you spend all your time avoiding things. This does not help newbies to the Moors.

The creep mount is not exactly close. The minute a freep hits a creep no more fast walk speed. A freep on a mount can continue riding away if a creep is nearby.

I highly recommend you try walking the map and avoiding things that cause you to drop the march speed. Also, there were no freeps lining the roads waiting to start fights.

I guess another idea would be to remove all wildlife in the Moors or make it all yellow so there is nothing that will agro when a creep walks by. The freeps were in the same old spots waiting to stealth kill and hide. Nothing much changed other than I realized taking over 4 minutes to walk back and die again was not worth the effort.

Well said.

[upat12am]

What class were you playing? What blessing were you using? What rank was your hunter?

While it's always sad to get killed like that, I agree with you that I think the bigger problem in that scenario is with range extension and the relative strength of the freep who attacked you. In this instance, even if you had an easy map back to the Isendeep Mine where you died, you would've likely still been killed by that player a second time without much chance. Or maybe you would've called it out in OOC, in which case any number of creeps could've mapped in just as easily, steamrolling that freep without you getting any credit. That would just be a bad experience for both you and the freep. We'd more focused on raising the combat effectiveness floor, while doing what we can to make it harder for overwhelming numbers to easily win any engagement.

By its very nature as an asymmetrical sandbox, the Ettenmoors will never have 'perfect balance' but we are working to close the biggest gaps between classes, ranks, and opposing sides as much as possible.

The balance was, for the time in a long time, pretty close to balanced, BEFORE this latest set of updates. Again I ask, do you actually play? Or do you just listen to the people in the Ghyniverse Discord for your feedback? Because I assure you, that feedback is NOT balanced.

[upat12am]

I've almost exclusively been playing on creepside for the past few months, on my veteran characters and even on new creep alts with no maps. Moving from grams to the center of the map is a lot faster now than it was 6 months ago. It's slower than relying entirely on Good maps with 5m cooldowns, but it's not far off the movement times freeps have worked with since the game launched. How do you think that solo hunter got all the way to Isendeep mine?

On his horse.

[UselessSmurf]

I've almost exclusively been playing on creepside for the past few months, on my veteran characters and even on new creep alts with no maps. Moving from grams to the center of the map is a lot faster now than it was 6 months ago. It's slower than relying entirely on Good maps with 5m cooldowns, but it's not far off the movement times freeps have worked with since the game launched. How do you think that solo hunter got all the way to Isendeep mine?

Here you are saying moving to a position vs mapping in after death. Freeps have a billion rezzes, creeps need a way to get back to the fight before Freeps wipe them, what part do you not understand? stop peddling your nonsense, we are tired of it and dont want it. You and Orion can take a long walk off a short pier, you guys are up your own asses. You play creep as much as I play freep, which is close to never.

Cordovan can shove his warning he will give me, he's about as useful as #### on a bull.

[Areyekuwe]

I've almost exclusively been playing on creepside for the past few months, on my veteran characters and even on new creep alts with no maps. Moving from grams to the center of the map is a lot faster now than it was 6 months ago. It's slower than relying entirely on Good maps with 5m cooldowns, but it's not far off the movement times freeps have worked with since the game launched. How do you think that solo hunter got all the way to Isendeep mine?

Ok, it's a horse, it's a bird, it's a superman.

Look, make it then 60% run speed that is not broken by agro. Only by some damage.

Then we could call it a horse.

I mean I can say give us 68% ran speed, but I know that will not happen.
So, at least 60% would have to be it.

Then WL buff has to be longer and stack on top of march.
Then warg should be able to march while in stealth.

[Areyekuwe]

March is now essentially a creepside mount. It's available to all creep classes, and while it's not quite equal to a mount in speed and function, but it's getting close.
.

It does sound very strange "it's getting close" Like if we run around a lot our running will get better? We will grow muscles on our legs for running?

Their speed is 68% (if not boosted) Our movement speed is 55% (and can not be boosted) also gets broken by anyone looking at that sideways.

[UselessSmurf]

Ok, it's a horse, it's a bird, it's a superman.

Look, make it then 60% run speed that is not broken by agro. Only by some damage.

Then we could call it a horse.

I mean I can say give us 68% ran speed, but I know that will not happen.
So, at least 60% would have to be it.

Then WL buff has to be longer and stack on top of march.
Then warg should be able to march while in stealth.

But its not adressing the absurd amount of rezzes that freeps have. Taking away the maps pretty much makes it a freep win by atrition. Thats what these so called devs dont understand, they are thinking about getting to the area of conflict, not what happens after.

[Areyekuwe]

But its not adressing the absurd amount of rezzes that freeps have. Taking away the maps pretty much makes it a freep win by atrition. Thats what these so called devs dont understand, they are thinking about getting to the area of conflict, not what happens after.

I devoted like a year of forum posts asking for in combat defiler rez. No worries that was all ignored. So, I know what you mean, I do.
We got blessings though and soon we will have missions. (you could travel to various location to do missions, without leaving grams!)

[auximenes]

March must be initiated out of combat, but will not be cancelled by entering combat

What was that sound? Was that a bunch of Wardens I heard?

[SingularityNow]

I do not care for removing maps. But I can see what SSG is trying to do. We hate shuffles, so they are trying to mitigate them by preventing half the shufflers to just map to the shuffle. The hope would be that we'd then have fights in other areas while moving to the shuffle and that makes sense to me.

But the problem is, removing maps created this vacuum in terms of quest rewards that makes it even less important to move about the map! Fill the vacuum, and you'll get what you want. BUT it'll have to be very attractive. 50 comms or some such bs to do the mayor no one is going to care about in and of itself. 1000 coms, 500 or 250 maybe. Or make comms tradeable for Ancient Script or Delving Writs... Then you might have something.

[OnnMacMahal]

But the problem is, removing maps created this vacuum in terms of quest rewards that makes it even less important to move about the map! Fill the vacuum, and you'll get what you want. BUT it'll have to be very attractive. 50 comms or some such bs to do the mayor no one is going to care about in and of itself. 1000 coms, 500 or 250 maybe. Or make comms tradeable for Ancient Script or Delving Writs... Then you might have something.

We agree. Quest rewards in the Ettenmoors are in need of some attention, for both freeps and creeps.

[Neinda]

We agree. Quest rewards in the Ettenmoors are in need of some attention, for both freeps and creeps.

Would you be willing to explain to us why the maps had to removed without testing, without input, without consideration for small activity servers and no replacement plan or date to fix things in place? The system has worked ok for 15 years. Another couple of months to implement a proper and complete change would not have caused harm and would not have caused more people to be upset and frustrated with the state of lotro. Fixing the run speed so creeps can move almost as fast as freeps (or just a tiny bit slower than freeps to keep the freeps safe) is a nothing burger when the whole system is now in need of a complete overhaul due to the map changes. Creeps need a reason to leave Grams. Creeps need in combat rez. Creeps need a whole lot of things now that they lost the ability to map. Also, keep in mind most times when a creep retreats to run back to fight they don't drop combat at the rez circle. That needs your attention also. Keeps in general need to be toned down to fellowship quests because raids don't get quest drops so having a raid that provides no drops is sort of useless. All kinds of changes needed now.

Please help people understand why there was an immediate and urgent need to shut down creeps ability to map in the Moors. Balance is always good but this particular change does nothing to expedite or enable more battles in the Moors. It enables and encourages stealth play and pounce on the last person in line over and over again. I expect on raid nights the burgs and hunters will camp the rez circles and kill any creep who retreats before they can run back. Any class with range could do the rez circle camp these days especially because the creeps have no other options to move. This is a perfect setup for that form of PVP. Creeps, especially lower level and new ones will be freep food. This does not happen the other way around because freeps have a vending machine for rez's. No need for freeps to retreat. Best part here is that many times freeps can still kill the creeps while they are in the rez circle.

I honestly believe it is time for you to make one PVP server and transport everyone in the Moors to the same server location. This change does not help smaller population servers. This has the very real potential to be Osgiliath 2.0. The map is too big for random encounters on most servers.

[SingularityNow]

I honestly believe it is time for you to make one PVP server and transport everyone in the Moors to the same server location.

OMG the lag! They need to provide free transfers off Ark and Evernight and DIVERSIFY the pvp across servers, not consolidate it.

[Neinda]

OMG the lag! They need to provide free transfers off Ark and Evernight and DIVERSIFY the pvp across servers, not consolidate it.

Arkenstone and Evernight will have too many people and the other servers will be the opposite. I expect more people will move to those servers when they can. On a positive note it will be crowded enough for those random encounters.

[SingularityNow]

Arkenstone will have too many people and the other servers will be the opposite.

huh?

[LabadalofDorlomin]

We agree. Quest rewards in the Ettenmoors are in need of some attention, for both freeps and creeps.

OMG !!

This is a PVP - yes PVP zone... not PVE. Forget about quest rewards FFS.

If you want to make quest rewards then create a PVE zon of the ettenmoor and add it to Cardolan but if you are serious about PVP yes "PVP" then please concentrate on the fight between creep and freep. nothing else!

[Neinda]

huh?

Arkenstone will get more people because smaller servers don't have the population to support free roaming random encounters. For that type of system to be effective you need enough people to be out and about. The smaller servers have raid nights and the rest of the week is spent doing PVE with the hope of running into someone. If I go back to the Moors my plan is to just roll a creep on Arkenstone. The smaller servers are not worth it now. I suspect many others also feel the same way about transfers or just starting over.

[SingularityNow]

Arkenstone will get more people because smaller servers don't have the population to support free roaming random encounters. For that type of system to be effective you need enough people to be out and about. The smaller servers have raid nights and the rest of the week is spent doing PVE with the hope of running into someone. If I go back to the Moors my plan is to just roll a creep on Arkenstone. The smaller servers are not worth it now. I suspect many others also feel the same way about transfers or just starting over.

I said free transfers OFF arkenstone and evernight.

[Neinda]

I said free transfers OFF arkenstone and evernight.

With these changes Arkenstone and Evernight are the only viable servers for PVP. I don't think you will see many people willing to take a free transfer to a low activity server. This is sort of what the SSG changes will lead to in the end. No PVP activity on server A-move to Ark, etc. If the server is active, it is easy to rank up. Arkenstone and Evernight are the only viable options for creeps now with all the changes. Safety in numbers.