Roadmap Notes

[WeirdJedi]

Severlin Q&A - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1713106310 & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht8pSSSDugY

I have tried to condense and merge as much as I could from all the things covered within the hour.

Roadmap: Orion wrote it up but it is just an overview (3min). He is busy with his own workload as System Designer to fulfill the duties involved for Producer (28min). The word "biome" refers to how we divide certain arts - like trees, rocks, and grass - into separate buckets. It is what defines what an area is like a "swamp" or "mountain" when you enter one. As we move south, coastal areas have a different feel that makes it more diverse, with their environmental assets, than any other area (23min). There are things we don't include in the roadmap that allow us to decide when to work and release them in case something happens like river hobbits. Premium housing is another thing that might come middle in the year that would provide some "synergy" with the race (27min, 30min). A human avatar update along with a graphical update are a couple of other examples that were pushed due to the Pandemic. You might see some changes creep in around the Anniversary Event with things like hairs and heads (24min). There are clues about the new class in the letter (28min). Big landscape updates coming, not only for the expansion (5min, 33min). There will be Gondor updates and an interesting story that revolves around the problems that occur after a war (32min).

Update 35/Delving: Instance Cluster - The Return to Carn Dûm are endgame instances with new loot. Follow-up since Before the Shadow was for low-levels (4min). There will be Warden & Captain class updates. Developer Diary for each will be published on the forums, probably early next week. We intend to do a pass on every class before the end of this year (7min, 34min). Planning to reach Bullroarer in February and release in March (38min, 45min). More work on delvings expanding into Library & School. Size of the instance is not going to change simply because we add delvings to it. It will still only be for those at the level cap of the server. Due to our limited time and resources, we can only spread delvings so far at a time (11min, 13min). We added tweaks to the delving system, will work on how loot is distributed, and check on smoother difficulty transitions (5min). Cordovan: "I'm fine now until I'm not" (6min). They are looking into the loot and reward as part of Update 35 but the crafting material is only a more noticeable addition to all the other rewards you get (50min).

Crafting: Mix-and-match crafting. Split them up for more possibilities. You'll see more on Bullroarer and a Developer Diary, not next week, but soon (5min). We are looking into what it would take to make boats and "bopping around in water" (13min). We do want to support those who have completed crafting, but we will probably not allow people to have more than three professions. We will check the systems on whether we could support any more (29min).

Power: Severlin says, "We don't want people just sitting there to wait for power to come back." This is not something you normally experience in landscape. What we want to do is give every class a way to recover power so they must make a choice to either use a bigger skill and restore power or continue using various smaller skills (8min). This will only happen if you are pushing the envelope or raiding (10min). We want to make it a fun stat for people to pay attention to as there is no value to investing into the ability right now. If issues come up, we will rebalance them (11min). System team will address beornings separately (45min).

PVMP: Relay all questions to Orion (26min). There will be more information on the forums to how he wants to make changes in the Ettenmoors. This includes quality-of-life improvements and monster events (12min). We probably won't work on Heal-Forward-Targeting (HFT) since so many systems are built into the C++ code. We have no idea how much work it would take an engineer to do and we wouldn't want to invest in the work when there is a chance someone can bypass the change with an add-on (59min).

Legendary Server/Landscape Difficulty: We plan to offer people a chance to transfer to a server of their choice when a legendary server reaches the end of their lifespan. We will open up a new legendary server so more people can have a fresh experience (14min, 38min). There are some complications with the landscape difficulty system in POSTGRES, our database program, when it comes to transferring characters. We are looking at the problem which might open the way to allow paid transfers in the future (20min - 22min). We just smoothed out the difficulty and will continue looking at feedback to further balance for melee classes (48min). Hopefully come to live servers mid-year. They have live data and want to make a pass for it, certainly not release for Update 35 (40min). The biggest hold-up is making it more clear to the player, perhaps through some new UI, that the option is available and how it locks in your progress for the achievement (41min).

Lag: There are three types of lag: (1) Server Lag, (2) Network Lag, and (3) Client Lag (16min). We have been working on Phase #2 which is all about quests. The system wasn't designed for 16 years of content. We made it so it doesn't update every time and, from our charts, reduced the amount of hitches (17min). We found that the quest list updated every time someone logged in or in "points of interest" which is bad for those older characters with long completed lists. We made it so that it only updates at certain points but there is generally an issue when everyone wants to log on at the same time right after an update. We are working to make the process more effecient (18min). We have not put the changes in yet but there are some promising results from tests. These are the worst offenders and absolutely won't suddenly fix all lag (19min). Once that is done, we will continue with Phase #3 in working more behind-the-scenes from the server and database settings (20min, 48min). There is no way we can prevent things from turning into a slideshow when you jam 150 players in one area when it generally only permits 12 (50min - 52min). "I wouldn't like to deal with the lag" for making a 24-man raid again (57min).

Levels: Lord of the Rings Online is different than other MMOs and we don't want to "jam everyone at the end" even though some players prefer that. Our experiment with Shadowfax and Treebeard proves that there are more people who prefer the slower pace and influenced our decision on not changing anything, like in the case of a level squish. We will have to deal with the increasing numbers eventually but we have not decided on something like display abbreviations, "4K" or "100K" for example (34min - 37min).

New Launcher/2FA: We don't like how maddening it is when people have technical issues using our launcher. Since we are "deep in the bowels of development" there is no ETA on that (42min). Engineer working on 2FA needs the technology on our authentification system updated, which is set for the Spring, that includes the new launcher (44min).

New Forums/Discord: Archive the existing forums and start fresh on a new platform, solving technical issues and bugs we've had for years (46min). There is a challenge making an "official" Discord instead of a "community" channel that never stops running and needs to be moderated (47min).

Other News/Mechanics: Artists are eager to add more decorations for people (15min). We updated some of the libraries for 64-bit but "they didn't play nice" so there is still some additional work that needs to be done (15min). Two things I wish I could snap my fingers and make happen are scaling UI and scaling map improvements for 4k-support. We are going through contracting engineers to work on those type of things. Severlin: "As slow as I expected but slower than I hoped." (25min). Every instance was developed differently and revisiting older instances is maddeningly expensive. Just going back and touching them can be more work than making new content (49min). Fun part of the raid is figuring out for yourself. It is much better for us to create two raids with 1-3 bosses instead of one raid with 6 bosses for both development and player time (53min). Regarding the legacy servers, Severlin states "What a nightmare" as they are on old versions of a different database. Every time they tried working with them, there were bugs and instability issues. We will see what can be done when we revisit them (54min). He would personally really like it if tanks built up a "healing resistance" that lowered the effects of healing skills. There are more pressing things he would like to concentrate on adding to the game (55min). Expect VIP Discount for the next expansion (61min). We can check in with Bill about adding new instruments and whether we can add new animations for them (61min).

[Brinswith]

Great summary. Very much appreciated.

[Neinda]

Thank you for the summary. It is always appreciated.

[Whohaz_Duhrang]

Indeed Big Thanks., The Dwarves Im Sure Thank You

[auximenes]

Thanks for the summary.

[Aurora7]

WeirdJedi:

Thank you very much for this.


I do hope that this good deed (writing a summary) goes unpunished.


Regards
Aurora7

[Ethuilir]

This is very much appreciated.

[CloudCastle]

Great summary! Thank you so much.

[Elmagor]

A lot of plans and it will great if all of that happens in 2023, but amount of players on all servers decreased every year and after Gundabad many people leave Lotro. How they want to advertise game? No point for that new and imporved things if we don't get big boost of players

[cuclo]

Wonderful that you took time to compile and share this summary. Great work, thanks a bunch.

[AmazonPrincessDiana]

Nice one