Developer's Diary – Delvings Update

[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.

[Belnavar]

Agreed. I'll take a look at our mission cycling, we definitely want every mission to be playable with every flavor.

Excellent, glad to hear

Stay tuned...

Excited to see what these bring (though I hope new tiers don't repeat the empty tier 11 concept (which I still think needs to change).

No promises, but I'll take another look.

Thank you. This is the only part of the system that I think is objectively too grindy. Everything else is a lot more reasonable if you do them on t10 (and especially with the higher tiers and weeklies).

Yes! Tiers 11 and 12 will give 55 and 60 Delving writs, respectively.

That's a very modest increase, but I'll take it!

It does beg the question, though: will School and Library award the same amount of Delving Writs as a mission or will they award more? Maybe double?

If they award the same as missions, I really can't see people running School and Library with Delvings on a regular basis for just a chance at that rare extra box, even if the rewards in it are very good (because the box itself is still rare). Even at double Writs, it might not be enough incentive.

Perhaps the best way to incentivise players is to add a third weekly, which grants 500 Delving Writs for doing both School and Library one time that week on tier 6 or higher.

-Bel

[CaerArianrhod]

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.

Sorry, but IMHO the only challenge is, how long you can do the grind.
I would like to say "we will see how rewarding they will be", but I already know that.
The system is not challenging, it is broken. (see below why)

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.

I do not see any issues with that.
You see the malice effect on tier 11 too, it is just the same as at tier 10. I think it is a good idea since it will give players the opportunity to prepare for tier 12 (with mob health & damage), so they can decide it they are ready for t12 or not.
And please be honest: (since you say you are looking for challenges) how many times did you the current t9 (Except for BoD)? So you will not bother with t11 anyway.

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, [...]

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.

My evil twin told me to ask you, why did you have to mention this? He is thinking, it would have been fun to see failing the system again. (Sorry, he is really evil.)

The solution? Add a seventh variant also,

Or add a 4th day to the rotation, since the number of daily delvings remain 10, we will still have the "daily dozen" to choose from (with Bib & Lib).

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.

Absolutely agree with that.
But I am sure that SSG will not change that. To lower the grind and have more fun in the game is not on their to-do list. The argument will be either "you get more Delving Writs with the new tiers and weeklies" or simple the same as it was in the past "If you find the length of time to acquire some of the top end gear in the game then clearly this is not for you."

===
@SSG:

Why is the system not challenging, but broken?
Very simple. If you didn't do it yet, do high tier delvings with your melee DD class.
Like the current variant with Fire-storm, Pestilent Discharge and Explosive Devastation.
There are no delvings without ranged mobs and in many of the devlings you have very little space to kite them and in most of the delvings you have chained groups with at least one ranged. So if you pull a mob, you pull two or three. Even with a good tank, it is not a challenge, it is just a pain in the backside to do high tier delvings with melee classes compared to a ranged class.
Sorry to say: that is simply "broken by design". Sad, but a fact.

[DoRonRon]

Auto Virtue gains

I tend to treat the 21 virtues as a multi capping currency. I will cap the selected and the swap build ones but have others a bit lower to take up slack. Too often the ignored cracks in the deed log display means we get surprises anyway.

Those players always at max, likely have so from valar virtue tokens and even if from deeds and quests should have banked some of those valar pills along the way.

Having any currency that is important and you are balancing requires some slack to manage properly. Otherwise you just back yourselves into a corner in frustration.

I'd take the options suggested though.

Up to each of us to find how much slack to introduce in managing any currency but if you use pills as soon as the 85 cap dropped, take the consequences. Like those with massive over cap AS after Appraisals, no room to manoeuvre.

[Plidak]

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.

Item is BoA already, what are you speaking about ?

[Aranaan]

Skirmishes, missions, delvings... its the same #### with different wrappings and poorer rewards as they tweak old stuff, making us belive its something new.

They should turn all of them into the delving system, but drop the stones. There are no need for them and the entire setup around them is rather pointless.

And as sombebbody pointed out... the grind is rather silly.
But there is a reason for that from the SSG side.

Im having a decent income and one work hour for me, can get me a huge number of black keys.
So for it me, if we compare income/working hour vs hours to grind enough tokens to get delving gears.

Its rather obivous what I choose to get my gear. Instead of spening MONTHS! on grinding, I can afford to sacrifice 1-2 hour of salary to buy black keys and get even better gear.
Yup. I pay to win to use that silly term. I win by not wasting hours on grinding, which is SSG wants ofc :-)

[Maedol]

Item is BoA already, what are you speaking about ?

This item is not included in the new weekly rewards. The only reward there is experience. I would like them to add this consumable item item instead of mere experience

[Rannhund]

The funny part in the actual Delv system is the challenge in higher tiers and the variability of situations but once you have completed all the Tiers 10 Delvings , regarding of the global poorness of awards ( because those T10 are so much 'Time requierant' compared to a T9 with quite the same awards and sometime worse ) ... you prefer play T7-9 than T10. So far the idea of delving is good but the overall balance is not good ... Hope that the changes will be a nice enhancement.

[Elmagor]

I hope they introduce new loot, like delving jewelry, because we already get most of gear from Before the Shadow mission, and why we need it farm right now? To get upgrade (7500 delving scripts or 12500 delving scripts) for cloak and necklace? Ok, maybe IF necklace and cloak from Carn Dum instances would be weaker when delving items. But if it will be weaker, why we must farm Carn Dum instances?

[Maedol]

I hope they introduce new loot, like delving jewelry, because we already get most of gear from Before the Shadow mission, and why we need it farm right now? To get upgrade (7500 delving scripts or 12500 delving scripts) for cloak and necklace? Ok, maybe IF necklace and cloak from Carn Dum instances would be weaker when delving items. But if it will be weaker, why we must farm Carn Dum instances?

Do you expect that there will be another variation cloak at lvl 140? After the cloak from boxing for esh, from Naruel, from HoR, from the raid, from the skirmish... I hope this will not happen again. We would add something unique, for example, a golden class item and off-hands

[Elmagor]

Do you expect that there will be another variation cloak at lvl 140? After the cloak from boxing for esh, from Naruel, from HoR, from the raid, from the skirmish... I hope this will not happen again. We would add something unique, for example, a golden class item and off-hands

We have 6-man instance and raid instance in Angmar Reborn instance cluster. Sure they have some cloaks. We already huge amount of different off-hands in skirmish/SV. Like RK have no drops in all because he don't have off-hand weapon

[DoRonRon]

My three weeks feedback:

Having to slot a gem before knowing what I'm to face is, err, unpleasant:

1. Stifles taking on a higher tier that could be doable to only find the set presented is beyond the skills of the class I have entered with.
2. As is taking on a lesser tier in fear of a the combo that my class it totally unsuited to and then find it one that's a walk in the park.

Attempting a solo delving and finding it too tough and then enlisting help (or setting the gem before arrival of a fellow) means the helper is not able to gain any reward for their efforts but will use up their 1/10 for the day (still advancing on the weeklies though).
Telling the helper to quit the fellow before the end so as not to waste their chance of loot in a higher tier ain't good for friendships either. Luckily for me it's my alt account char taking one (several) for the (main) team each day.

Seems odd to also allow a helper to join instance then port them to their milestone if they don't pick up the relevant quest or have already completed it.

Just a pity we can't have the challenge fit the classes and the skills we bring with them. No wonder peeps roll a new char than struggle on with their lone melee class.

Certainly stimulating and getting me exploring all sorts of tactics though. Dot, fear and hot is tiresome for those that can when facing 45% reflect. Why the jump from 15 and removeable to 45 and not though? Or is this not how it's supposed to be? Did the hike in morale and mitigations reach delving signatures, seemed like a much tougher week playing Delvings?