Developer's Diary – Delvings Update

[Cordovan]

Developer's Diary – Delvings Update

Hi, I'm Mitth, one of the systems designers working on the next update to the Delving system! I want to share more about how we see the current state of Delvings and what we are planning for Return to Carn Dum.

These changes break down into the following categories I'll be discussing:

• General Balance Adjustments: Lowering health, damage and alert difficulty modifiers for enemies across mid-to-high difficulty Tiers.
• Malices Changes: New Malices, adjustments to existing Malices, and a faster Malice rotation.
• Delving Gem Consolidation: Fewer gems for more inventory space.
• Reward Updates: More choice, better rewards, and removing the worst rewards.

General Balance Adjustments:

We are lowering the damage and health difficulty modifiers of enemies, particularly in Tiers 5 through 10. While we want Delvings to be challenging, the general difficulty in mid to high tiers ended up higher than we would like.

We are also decreasing the alert range of enemies at higher tiers. Enemies have a “perception” and a “call for help” radius that activates other enemies in the area once alerted, and these radius effects are currently too large, resulting in a “mob cascade” as nearer enemies alert mobs further away. We want careful pulling to be an important skill to execute, so we will be lowering the size of these radius effects.

Malice Changes:

We will be shifting the rotation of Malices from a weekly to a daily schedule and adding a sixth variant. This will increase variety and ensure that if you are struggling with today's combination, you can get a different experience the next day. We are also reorganizing Malices by type, and only putting one of each type into each variant per band. This prevents you from encountering more than one damaging hotspot, for example, regardless of the combination that day.

We are adding in new Malices that give you the ability to counter their effects, something we call “strong counterplay” in the game design space. We will be adding:

Epic Monster Skills – These are powerful but slow induction enemy Malice skills. Only one attacking enemy will be able to use these skills over the Malice skill's cooldown, that enemy will glow, and you can interrupt its induction. If you don't, the skill will complete!
Cursed Hotspots – These hotspots are cast by enemies on themselves to heal, do more damage, and get other benefits. You will need to move the enemy from its location to lose the effect.

We are replacing or reworking some Malices, particularly at mid to low Tiers, that do not have strong counterplay. Note that some higher Tier Malices like Vengeance or Hydra are not intended to be directly countered. We will also do a balance pass on some Malices like Fire-storm, which will be made weaker than it currently is.

Delving Gem Consolidation:

We are reducing the number and kind of gems the Delving system requires. We'll have four gems that can be used across 12 tiers, with each gem unlocking three levels of delvings (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12 once the system is expanded.) Gems will also no longer have cracked versions, and players will get the next gem when they successfully complete a delving. You'll get two gems when you are on the edge of bands, like 3 and 6, to get the current and next band's gems. Reminder that gems are unique, so you won't get a second gem if you already have one. If you fail a delving, you'll need to either buy a gem for coin or repeat the previous tier to get the next gem. The prices remain low to keep the purchase process painless. All current gems will be sellable, so you can get coin for extra gems.


Reward updates:

We hear you about wanting more Delving Writs more quickly! We will be adding two weekly quests to Delvings, one to complete a certain number of Delvings at any Tier, and one to complete a smaller number of Delvings on Tier 6 or higher. The rewards for these quests will be Virtue XP and Delving Writs.

We are also adding our first Instances to Delvings with the introduction of The School at Tham Mírdain and The Library at Tham Mírdain! These Instances will also have a small chance at a second, rare Delving Box with rare rewards, with higher Tiers having a better chance at getting the rare Delving Box.

We've also heard you about getting lower-level rewards at higher Tiers, so we've eliminated the worst individual rewards from the Tier 7-10 band and replaced random crafting boxes with a crafting picker box. We will also be removing the rotten fruit and lumps of coal from treasure tables throughout.

Thank you for reading!

We knew Delvings were an ambitious system when we launched it with Before the Shadow, and we knew it would take time to build, tweak, and adapt this system for the live game once players began using it. That's where you come in! What have you liked and disliked about Delvings? What has been your experience running Delvings? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Mitth
Systems Team, The Lord of the Rings Online

[SSG_Mitth]

Hi everyone, I'm Mitth! Here to respond to any questions or comments you may have on Delvings.

*Edited* Some notes and expanded thoughts:

An important note on the new gem system:
I’ve seen some confusion on this - if you fail, say, a Tier 8 delving, you do not have to barter for a new gem. As long as you have the appropriate gem from the next lower tier (in this case, a garnet for Tiers 4-6) you can just run (in this example) a Tier 6 delving, and upon completion, you’ll get two gems (delving garnet and emerald) and then can run the Tier 8 again. The barter is only there for convenience, it is not required you use it.

Delvings up to Tier 12:
Yes, we are expanding the difficulty. Wait, no, hold your tomatoes! The current difficulty for Tier 10 will transition into the difficulty of Tier 12. We are doing this for a few reasons. Currently, the difficulty spike between 8-10 is very large. We’d like to make that a smoother ramp-up. We’d also like more classes to feel like they can do delvings in the 7-12 range and get the best gear drops, so we are dropping that mid-level of difficulty, as communicated above. Thirdly, we want players who are looking for a challenge to still be able to get that high level of difficulty- that’s what Tiers 11 and 12 will be for.

So Tier 12 will be exactly the same as current Tier 10?
Well, not exactly. We wanted something to up the challenge. So going forward, at Tiers 10 and 12, malices will be added, and none will be taken away. This means that there will be 6 and 7 malices active on these tiers respectively. This is a way to increase the difficulty, complexity and possible interactions of the malices for those who want the challenge, without affecting the play experience of those who don’t.

What does Tier 11 do?
Tier 11 increases the monster damage, health and perception radius, but does not introduce any new malices, keeping the existing 6 from Tier 10.

[Mithlanros]

In regards to the chart outlining the various effects, will you provide details of what they do and if they can be avoided negated?

[SSG_Mitth]

In regards to the chart outlining the various effects, will you provide details of what they do and if they can be avoided negated?

So both the counterplay and description charts exist, but I think its more fun to discover the effects and counterplay on your own and just tease them a bit here. I will say that in-game, all enemies have which malices are active listed in their tooltips, with detailed descriptions, so you'll be able to make plans and have that info while playing if you choose.

[Elmagor]

Being forced to complete previous delving or buy gem again (after fail) looks like unnecessary thing. You remove cracked gem and just add another problem?

About rare delving chest from The School at Tham Mírdain, t10-t12 have best chances to get it? Can you get "rare" chest from T1 The School/Library?

[ultimatemanwe]

The rewards are not actually getting all that better for the upper tier portion of the delvings from what we have now. The crafting material boxes are already selection boxes. The problem is, that you can run 200+ delvings T10 and never see any benefit except for a couple of extra writs in there. I already have plenty of crafting materials, I don't need clothing dye..... what I need is for the random drops to drop something useful every once in a blue moon. I would suggest either teal or gold random legendary traceries, or tokens, or gear, or even upgrade materials for delving gear to be added to the loot table, not crafting materials and clothing dye. Please reconsider the loot tables for this system. Thanks!

[Belnavar]

The rewards are not actually getting all that better for the upper tier portion of the delvings from what we have now. The crafting material boxes are already selection boxes. The problem is, that you can run 200+ delvings T10 and never see any benefit except for a couple of extra writs in there. I already have plenty of crafting materials, I don't need clothing dye..... what I need is for the random drops to drop something useful every once in a blue moon. I would suggest either teal or gold random legendary traceries, or tokens, or gear, or even upgrade materials for delving gear to be added to the loot table, not crafting materials and clothing dye. Please reconsider the loot tables for this system. Thanks!

Generally speaking my luck has been good with Delvings, but as someone who as been stung by RNG in the past, I can certainly empathise.

Perhaps a system where your bad luck eventually converts into guaranteed good luck would be in order? For example, for every bad pull you get, your chance of getting a good pull increases by 1%, resetting once you get something good (good being an armour piece, rare drop, LI token, etc.). This bonus chance could cap at 10% and be shown in a tooltip beneath your char. Seeing this would somewhat help take the sting out of bad RNG, as you know your bad pulls are contributing to higher chances of good loot (and a statistically guaranteed drop with enough runs). Alternatively/additionally, after ten bad pulls you're guaranteed to get a good reward.

I would kind of like to see something like this across the entire game, as the RNG gods require far too many sacrifices for my liking.

-Bel

[Belnavar]

Some further comments on the accompanying chart:

I like the new (mostly) systematic approach, but the fact that variants 5 and 6 have a couple of effects that don't match their type (creating those mis-matching colours) bothers me. Why not put For the Warleader from Variant 5 in tier 2 instead of 3? Move Stab At Thee to tier 7 of Variant 6 and rename Explosive Devastation I to just Explosive Devastation. You'll need a new Monster Affecting effect for tier 3 of Variant 5 then, but at least it would all be uniform then (and easier for players to understand and work with).

That leads me back to tier 11. The only malice type that doesn't reappear is the "On Death" one. Sure, we get "On Death Genesis Effect," but that's quite a bit different, so maybe you could actually reapply the tier 2 malices to tier 11 (either the same or as Diseased Foes II, etc. This would neatly open up space for Explosive Devastation II, which would otherwise be removed with my above proposals). As it stands, players who do tier 10 and above won't ever experience those tier 2 malices, so it seems like a bit of a waste -- especially when there's room for them at those higher tiers.

-Bel

[auximenes]

Being forced to complete previous delving or buy gem again (after fail) looks like unnecessary thing. You remove cracked gem and just add another problem?

I think you still can get new gems from the barter NPC, bartered for with bags of coins available for purchase from the same NPC.

Developer's Diary – Delvings Update

The changes look good, although I think the malices should rotate every 3 days instead of every day.

Hi everyone, I'm Mitth! Here to respond to any questions or comments you may have on Delvings.

Welcome, thanks for the Diary.

[SSG_Mitth]

Being forced to complete previous delving or buy gem again (after fail) looks like unnecessary thing. You remove cracked gem and just add another problem?

About rare delving chest from The School at Tham Mírdain, t10-t12 have best chances to get it? Can you get "rare" chest from T1 The School/Library?

The new rare chest will be available from tiers 7-12 in Tham Mírdain. The odds get better for each higher tier, yep. Missions at tiers 7-12 will also drop the new rare chest, but at a significantly lower drop chance.

[gildhur]

All excellent changes! Thanks for listening to our feedback on the first iteration of the system. Looking forward to trying them out soon.

[Belnavar]

Overall, great changes and great dev diary (and thanks for the additional explanatory notes, Mitth).

A few points:

1. I do like the existing difficulty, and wanted to see even more of that on higher tiers. Initially it looked like this was just a redistribution, so that tier 12 is the new tier 10, but the fact that malices will now be additive from tier 10 makes it much more interesting (and potentially difficult) at the higher levels. That is a nice, welcome, change for those looking for challenge.

2. I strongly dislike tier 11 having no malice of its own. It makes tier 11 uninteresting and unengaging. Just bumping up mob health, damage, etc. isn't enough. We've already seen player reactions to just that in the higher tiers of instance content. Players want new mechanics. I really hope you reconsider this and add new malices for this tier. Plus, from a slightly OCD perspective, seeing malice effects for tiers 5 through 10, then nothing, then 12, is going to gently bug me every time -- especially as a reminder of what could have been.

3. The reditribution of malice effects, so that there are no more than one hotspot is a good move (despite the fact that I did enjoy, perhaps masochistically, the challenge posed by having several hotspots thrown at me). This is particularly good for melee classes, who suffer more in Delvings than others.

4. I really welcome a new, sixth variant (and hope to see even more in future), but this presents a significant (in my view) problem, given the change to a daily rotation. As it stands, we have three days of missions we can do Delvings in. With the weekly rotation, we will get to experience every single mission (several times) on every variant. With daily, however, it locks variants to particular mission days, which reduces the variety. To make this clearer, we get:

Day 1, Variant 1.
Day 2, Variant 2.
Day 3, Variant 3.

Day 1, Variant 4.
Day 2, Variant 5.
Day 3, Variant 6.

Day 1, Variant 1 again...
and rinse and repeat

This mean we'll never get to experience the 14 missions of Day 1 on Variants 2, 3, 5, or 6. Likewise, we'll never get to experience the 13 missions of Day 2 on Variants 1, 3, 4, or 6. Finally, we'll never get to experience the 13 missions of Day 3 on Variants 1, 2, 4, or 5. This hugely reduces the variety and replayability -- which is, of course, the exact opposite of what you'd want to achieve by switching to a daily rotation and adding an extra variant.

The solution? Add a seventh variant also, and make sure the total number of variants in future can't be neatly divided by three. I fully accept that we're likely too close to U35's release to add a seventh variant, but perhaps this could come in the not too distant future.

5. I hope to see more delving tiers added in the future -- perhaps up to tier 15.

6. I very much welcome the new weekly quests. These add huge value to the system and will encourage me to run Delvings more often on more characters.

7. The rewards changes sound good, but I'd also like the following.

a) Top-tier morale/power pots dropped in place of crafting mats on higher tiers.

b) More items to barter for, including at least purple tier essences.

c) A barter option for Ancient Script (which can sometimes be very hard to get in game). Alternatively/additionally, some AS added to the weekly quests or as part of an additional weekly quest (perhaps to do 1x School and 1x Library run a week).

d) A reduction in the amount of Lumps of Brilliant Silver required to upgrade the SV necklaces. Currently we need 5, and each costs 2,500 Delving Writs, for a total of 12,500, which is an insane amount (especially for just upgrading something to teal). I think a more reasonable number would be 3 Lumps. Alternatively/additionally, increase the drop rate for them, especially for tiers 11 and 12.

8. A question: will we be getting more Delving Writs for tiers 11 and 12 than we are currently at tier 10? I presume (and hope) so.

9. Looking to the future, I hope there will be a way to add more of the unique-style missions we got with Gundabad (like the mirror puzzle), even though I recognise that it will require adding a decent amount of mobs to retain some difficulty. I really enjoy the current Delving system, but having missions and other content that aren't solely about combat would be very welcome for breaking up the monotony of gameplay.

-Bel

[shazbaat]

Being forced to complete previous delving or buy gem again (after fail) looks like unnecessary thing. You remove cracked gem and just add another problem?

They really just need to get rid of the gems all together. Put in some deeds that once you complete a Tier N delving you unlock Tier N+1. If you want to keep the story of the gems, just make it so now the NPC's trust you to try and fix/evolve/empower (whatever we are doing) with their gems, and will provide you one when you choose the delving tier in the mission. This will get rid of the gems in our inventory, the bartering, and the need remember to click the standing stone twice, or fail the mission.

I get that they were trying to add a story and engaging mechanism with the gems, and I appreciate that they do that, but it just doesn't work. It's time to just rethink the whole thing.

[Elmagor]

What I really don't like about current delving system - it's so easy to screw things at start. Make few steps forward - stone disappears and you just get your regular mission. Forget to put gem inside - same story.

In situation when you talking in discord or have lags it's so easy to screw things, especially when you duo missions. That's why I prefer to complete them solo. Maybe we need some sort of warning window, like "if you step forward, you turn delving instance into normal instance. Are you sure?"

[Belnavar]

They really just need to get rid of the gems all together. Put in some deeds that once you complete a Tier N delving you unlock Tier N+1. If you want to keep the story of the gems, just make it so now the NPC's trust you to try and fix/evolve/empower (whatever we are doing) with their gems, and will provide you one when you choose the delving tier in the mission. This will get rid of the gems in our inventory, the bartering, and the need remember to click the standing stone twice, or fail the mission.

I get that they were trying to add a story and engaging mechanism with the gems, and I appreciate that they do that, but it just doesn't work. It's time to just rethink the whole thing.

I was discussing this with another player I run Delvings with regularly and they suggested something similar: just axe the gem requirement entirely and let players pick any tier they want.

I think every solution has its own new problem, however.

PROBLEM: The current gating mechanism is cumbersome, takes up bag space, and can be bypassed with coin (making it largely arbitrary).

SOLUTION: Keep the gems, but reduce the number and the cracked versions (as proposed).

NEW PROBLEM: This removes a lot of the progression (though that could already be skipped before) and now there's no backup if you fail (forcing you to re-enter the progression system or buy gems again).

SOLUTION: Remove all gating entirely.

NEW PROBLEM: Having no gating mechanism means there's no sense of progression (one of the original aims) and players are more likely to get thrown in the deep end.

SOLUTION: Add an intro quest or deed/s that gate the tiers, forcing players to progress through them once (but only once).

NEW PROBLEM: Players will complain about the tedium of having to do this for every alt (like they complain about the intro quest for skirmishes).

SOLUTION: Only require this on your first character, with no gating on alts.

NEW PROBLEM: This would presumably require new tech (and engineering time), annoy completionists who will be missing the deed on alts, and potentially remove an opportunity to feel progression on a different class (where, for example, a Champion will have a very different time in Delvings than a Minstrel or Hunter does).

I think a single progression via deed is probably the most elegant solution, even if you have to do it once per alt, but I recognise that some players won't like even that.

-Bel

[maartena]

Hi everyone, I'm Mitth! Here to respond to any questions or comments you may have on Delvings.

@Cordovan, make this guy blue! It's a easy to get confused on who is and who isn't a SSG staff member....

[Elaelin]

I have a question for an SSG blue name. Is the goal with delvings and missions to develop a Diablo type system where people can just repeat the same instances over and over again at increasing levels of difficulty? I would ask with delvings, missions and whatever is added to this system that you have a central location(s) where someone can go to find all the different places and options to participate in this content. I have not run any delvings to date and not the biggest fan of missions. I have no idea where to go for most of this content and it is not readily apparent what is available if I ever decide that this type of game play in lotro has my interest. I believe there might be missions in the latest expansion but nothing points me in that direction so I would have to ask here or go online and look it up. I have seen enough on the forums to know that the delvings are in multiple locations and one has to figure out where to go on different days. Since this system is here to stay for the moment and appears to be expanding, why not set up a centralized point where people can go to participate in the content? You could set up a room in one of the houses in Bree where there are portals to all the various mission and delving areas. Maybe something like the task boards in the housing area? Click on the board with the desired content and travel to the correct location? Another idea would be to give the mission/delving quest givers an instance finder. Open the mission/delving instance finder and you are ported to the appropriate quest giver.

If you wish for this system to last more than a couple of expansions maybe making it more accessible in game (easier to find) would be helpful for the player base. In Diablo there is one NPC that sends you to all the mini instances. It is a very simple and easy to understand system. LOTRO could use something like this to simplify the whole mission/delving system.

[auximenes]

I'd like to see all Missions from a particular region available at all of the Mission-givers. This would be better than moving them all to one Mission-giver.

I went to the 2nd beta test and there the reward for weekly quests was including 1000 virtue experience. Could you turn this into an account tradeable item like regular mission weeklies? Please, because some characters have all virtue pumped and they do not need experience.

Maybe I'm missing something, but that tooltip says 'bind to account', not 'bind to character'. Isn't that what you mean when you say 'account tradeable'?

[Gnagerwine]

Could you make the Deeds to complete Delvings of each tier also advance by completing Delvings of all higher tiers? It is quite a grind doing lower tier Delvings just for the sake of the Deeds.

Edit: Could you also give Delvings their own Deed tab? It is annoying having them clogging up the Swanfleet & Cardolan tab, and won't make sense when they are expanded to other content.

[Zvim666]

We knew Delvings were an ambitious system when we launched it with Before the Shadow, and we knew it would take time to build, tweak, and adapt this system for the live game once players began using it. That's where you come in! What have you liked and disliked about Delvings? What has been your experience running Delvings? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Mitth
Systems Team, The Lord of the Rings Online

I was looking forward to Delvings when they were first announced, I was a bit disappointed in how they turned out but appreciate it is a complex system and it will take time to tweak.

I honestly do not know what purpose the gems serve, how would Delvings differ if they didn't exist and you could pick whatever tier you wanted at the stone and it ran out at 10? I still haven't seen an explanation as to why they exist or what purpose they serve. It seems like the stone in the mission where you select the tier is the only thing that should matter.

My "major" issue is it is too hard to balance this to be challenging or equally challenging, I have vastly different experiences depending on which character I play. A lot of people I know just take a hunter and zerg it. It is generally not a fun experience as a melee character. I used to do these at T10 solo but when the damage/morale was jacked up after the last Bullroarer test, it was WAY too time consuming as a 10x daily type thing. This might be good content for someone who has a lot of free time, and by a lot I mean no life at all, with all the other repeatables there, I fear the game is heading down a dangerous path which WoW went down when they burnt out their playerbase with excessive repeatable content.

FOMO is a thing, it helps "engagement" and keeps people logging back in every day, but it also burns people out when they realise their entertainment activity is more grindy/repetitive than their paying job.

I think balancing risk vs reward and challenge vs fun is a difficult thing to do, I get it is challenging to just unload a tsunami of debuffs and effects on players, it will create challenge, but to me at least it isn't fun gameplay to be constantly micromanaging crippling debuffs/effects.

I will put this out there, I don't like the malice system as it is. I think LOTRO has had an issue for a long time in so far that mobs are pretty basic, most hit you with a basic attack and some do something annoying like drop a debuff on you. Generic gameplay was never that exciting, it has been kind of... automated. Moving has always been kind of janky in this game, you can easily make ground effects vanish if you hit the wrong graphic setting, they are often very large and spread like diarrhea, other mmos which were designed to have a more... engaging combat system where you have to dodge out of effects, etc are designed from the ground up to play that way... we have no inherent action mechanics to dodge, we don't have combat movement skills in general to leap out of the way of things and in my experience the stability of the servers wouldn't make for a good experience. The server issues would need to be resolved to make it a better environment for more interactive combat imo.

I am glad you are adding new things and hope they make it more interesting. I just hope it plays well.

I don't know where the obsession with debuffs came from by the developers but if something puts a debuff on me that reduces my outgoing damage by a modest 75% and I remove it with my cleanse (which has a 20sec cooldown) and it is re-applied right back immediately after I cleanse then this isn't fun to me and it is a lot worse for melee characters as these are given out like a closing down sale. I just wish there were better systems in place to make fights challenging or interesting without giving mobs a excessive morale points, immunities and a tsunami of debuffs and ground effects. I just feel I am wading through a swamp playing any of my melee characters.

I like that this is an alternative way to gear characters, but there is no jewellery or cloaks so people still have to raid to get the missing pieces or do high tier instancing.

I am not sure about how others feel, I am not a huge fan of the box of mediocre rewards at the end, I normally take the crafting box for extra scholar mats but I stopped picking up crafting material in the game a long before Delvings when I filled up my carry bags with them. It is deflating getting those low reward boxes, particularly when you are doing higher tiers.

In summary, I think Delvings can over time become a really good system, I think you need to approach it by sitting down with the other devs and asking each other how much time on average does someone play, how much time do you think it is healthy for them to be engaging with repeatable content and which ones and strike a healthy balance so people do not burnout. I found FFXIV in terms of repeatable content that game runs out of things to do, there isn't a lot of repeatable content and people generally do not need alts as a character can play every "class" so people tend to go on hiatus between content updates and they are fine with that, they encourage their players to play something else and have a healthy balance in life. I think we have the opposite issue, we have a ton of alts and too much repeatable content and it has the potential to lead to burnout unless you are on top of managing it and a lot of people aren't aware they are grinding themselves into an early exit from the game.

Making the challenging parts more of a grind I think accelerates the burnout problem. I don't have answers and different people have different thresholds they can withstand, but there is a massive increase in repeatable content in dailies/weeklies for current tier rewards than there was with Minas Ithil and they are more grindier. There is a lot of grind, you added the raid on weekly ember treadmill, you need 100 silver gundabad coins and you are not going to get them doing the dailies so that is more grinding if you want to do those and now we have Delvings with BiS gear and it is another heavy grind. I am not sure we have the right or healthy balance.

I like challenges, it would be challenging walking anywhere if someone with a fire hose was spraying me, I wouldn't like it if he was following me everywhere I go. We can't tweak how casual a run we feel like doing without gimping the trickle of rewards. I think having fun is important for a video game. Challenge is important but I feel for those who struggle to do these and those of us who didn't really need the teal pieces to begin with just cheese it out just zerging the content with raid geared ranged dps. I am not sure who this difficult is skewed for, those who do not have the gear you can barter for or those raid geared?

I think it has missed it's mark as a mechanism to help those who do not raid to have an alternative pathway.