Dev Diary Feedback: LOTRO Book 7 New Player Experience

[Clover]

Senior Designer Allan “Orion” Maki was given a daunting task for Book 7: Leaves of Lórien:
“As a game developer, I often find people asking me tough questions about the future… Recently, however, I have been spending my time peering into the past -- as if through Galadriel’s mirror -- reviewing early gameplay experiences. From this analysis we are making changes to better acclimate both those new to the wonderful world of Middle-earth and those new to MMOs in general.”

Read more about it in Allan’s developer diary and post your comments here!

[Fornost]

Still not a fan of most of the Ered Luin changes, for reasons I've explained in other threads. That said, I really do appreciate the time you've taken to explain your reasoning behind them at least.

[Lothloriel]

The comment that jumped off the page for me was, that as we move towards the future do not be surprised to see that the storyline becomes friendlier to solo and smaller groups of players. This will be the most welcome change I could ever imagine! The other changes such as not having to run back and forth so much and shorter times on gathering items are most welcome. I've run the starting areas many times and this makes me want to start a new character and try it all again. Bravo!

[GrorFoebane]

Played through the dwarf and man intros...changes to the dwarf intro actually made it more fun to play (for the sixth time, seventh?...lol). The dye reward was a welcome addition!

I also found the mail rewards a very nice surprise!

Celondim quests are GREATLY improved and the new locations made it no chore at all to go through all of them.

I'm looking forward to questing in Gondamon!

Great job guys!

[anwar]

I always thought this was needed, only complaint is that all my slots are full so won't be able to make a new charactor and experience it.

[CaptainSnark]

After reading feedback from Bullroarer players and now this Dev Diary, I may have to do something I've never done before and reroll one of my alts to play through the new improved starter areas! It sounds like it's really been improved a lot. Kudos to you folks.

[jeffm]

I'm a strong, strong supporter of captivating newbie experiences.

This comes from my experience as a manager and executive, where it quickly becomes obvious that new employees are the most excited and most open to learning on the first day of their jobs. Typically, it tends to be downhill from there. Too few organizations pay much attention to this and too often foist a new employee off on whoever is handy. They have no organized, carefully thought out new employee introduction plan. Sad.

So, I'm already a fan of the changes based on the dev blog. Keep up the good work!

Now, I need to create a set of new characters somewhere to test all this out!

ANWAR: Sure you can, do it on another server. Simple.

[Gillros]

While there are changes to the Man and Hobbit experience from Jailbreak through the end of the Shire and Staddle, they are less substantial than the changes to the Dwarf and Elf experiences. Still, it is important to explain the changes that have been made to all four new player experiences.

Did I miss the Man changes? I didn't read anything specific in the guide, save for the general comment about travel, etc.

Overall the changes seem nice, but it's a shame they weren't done in time for MoM, when we saw a lot of new players and also new RK/warden alts that would have experienced this.

[Thiranigor]

Two things leapt out at me as I read the Dev Diary:

1) One motivation for the change to Elf/Dwarf was quest completion numbers.
2) The reason the Shire is the not changed is because people like it - because they run it alot.

For me, the reason that all of my toons, regardless of race, run their early lives in the Shire (and why all of my high-level toons went back there) can be summarized in one word:

Innocence

As in, running 75 quests in the Shire gives you +2 Innocence. There's a point of Empathy in there too. Quest completion in Ered Luin gives Charity and Compassion, which are far less useful traits.

Want to increase Ered Luin quest completion numbers? Make it +1 Innocence for 40 Shire Quests and +1 Innocence for 40 Ered Luin quests.

Don't get me wrong - I like the idea behind the changes. But let's face it, the reason the Shire gets alot of action is that +2 Innocence.

[dee_fruz]

I'm glad Turbine is focusing on the experience in the low levels of the game YET AGAIN. Anyone who was frustrated by the first 15 levels of the game should probably not be playing games rated 'T'. I hear Hello Kitty Island Adventure is geared towards players needing a mindless fluffy experience.

Honestly, 1-15? the typical player gets that done in one evening and that's IF you stop and smell the roses as I know many of you do. Who exactally was struggling with this content that made them have to dumb it down?

Let's see some significant additions to pvp and end-game raiding in this game. That's the only was Turbine will retain it's player base the further we get away from MoM launch. Book 7 contains a few weeks, maybe a month worth of content at the level cap if you have multiple 60's. It will hardly be enough to tide us over to the Shadowed Cave in Book 8. What we need is content that is designed to be repeatable and still fun. For many this is the moors, but the moors haven't had any significant improvement since the defiler was added.

Give us a battle arena! Oh how much that would add to the game if freeps and creeps could battle each other in pre-arranged instances.

[dee_fruz]

Two things leapt out at me as I read the Dev Diary:

1) One motivation for the change to Elf/Dwarf was quest completion numbers.
2) The reason the Shire is the not changed is because people like it - because they run it alot.

For me, the reason that all of my toons, regardless of race, run their early lives in the Shire (and why all of my high-level toons went back there) can be summarized in one word:

Innocence

As in, running 75 quests in the Shire gives you +2 Innocence. There's a point of Empathy in there too. Quest completion in Ered Luin gives Charity and Compassion, which are far less useful traits.

Want to increase Ered Luin quest completion numbers? Make it +1 Innocence for 40 Shire Quests and +1 Innocence for 40 Ered Luin quests.

Don't get me wrong - I like the idea behind the changes. But let's face it, the reason the Shire gets alot of action is that +2 Innocence.

Since Moria, it's far easier to do other innocence deeds (merrivail in moria for +2) than it is to do 75 freaking pie and mail run-arounds in the shire.

Compassion is far more useful for minstrels btw, it's often archer baddies that don't get tagged by the dps/tank in a fellowship that peg the mins, as opposed to melee baddies. I agree that in general Innocence is fantastic though

[YippyJoe]

But let's face it, the reason the Shire gets alot of action is that +2 Innocence.

I don't even pay attention to that.


The dwarf starting was my favorite before, but it did have a lot of running (gear quests are especially evil). I'm excited to see what they've done, I'm definitely starting a new dwarf when it's done.

It sounds like it might actually be fun playing an elf now, too. I've started more elves than any other race, and gotten anywhere with fewer of them. I got one to level 20, it's a miracle I didn't cut my own wrists.

[MithrilSoul]

First off, to Orion (and the rest of your team), a huge THANK YOU! Sounds like you did an amazing job, and the dev diary was really well-written in terms of explaining what the goals were and how you have accomplished them. I'm so excited for this that I am actually planning on deleting my (current) lvl 11 elven RK so that I can re-create him after Bk 7 goes live and test all of this stuff out myself.

Now, one thing I will add, is I agree with MeSoHappy's comments a few threads above 100%. After MoM launched I created an elven warden and though I did a few quests in Ered Luin, I did most of my newbie questing in the Shire. Not because I particularly like the Shire (I mean, it's fine and all, great for hobbits but...I'm an elf), or because quests are easier, better rewards, nothing like that. It is purely because of that Innocence +2 you get for the final Life of a Bounder deed. For any melee class, you basically need to get this deed, which means either doing 75 quests as a newbie (where you might actually benefit from the experience and some of the rewards as well) or else you are gonna end up doing 75 quests in the shire when they are grey to you (like I did on my first character), and it's almost mind-numbingly-boring to do 75 quests in the shire with a lvl 48 elf. Yet...for a lot of people, even high level folks, that seems more appealing than killing 360 worms in Forochel, or 100+ elite trolls in Carn Dum, or whatever some of the other options are.

The other thing I would point out is that Ered Luin is still the only starting area (that I know of) where you get no meaningful reputation for doing quests at the early levels. Humans starting in Bree get "Men of Bree" rep, hobbits in the Shire get Mathom rep...but elves & dwarves doing quests out of the elven/dwarven areas don't get any rep for doing so. I wonder if it might not be possible for the elven quests to give Rivendell rep and the dwarven quests to give Thorin's Hall rep? They wouldn't need to give a *ton*, even if they only gave 100 or 150 per quest, at least it would be a little bit of a head start. Just a thought.

[abrahamL]

Nice changes. I agree with the post about captivating newbs early on, that is a great idea and should make my next role a little better. I always chose Archet because I hated the Ered Luin missions. Nice to see that they are concerned with these early areas so I am guessing that they will be going from area to area by level so maybe there is hope to one day see more in the Trollshaws and perhaps Lake Evendim will either get a Mercury outboard or we wont have to traverse it so many times. We are not all Michael Phelps ya know?

[gildhur]

Great writeup. I will be joining others and rerolling my lowest level character and starting over in Ered Luin to see these changes (conveniently, my Dwarf RK). Very exciting.

One error in the diary presentation, though. One screenshot on this page of Thorin's Hall/Gate is actually a photo of Gabilizan in the Misty Mountains.

[Arep]

I like the updates. There's been a reason that most of my slots are humans and hobbits. Looks like that's going to change.

[NotYetMeasured]

This was a well-written diary, but I have to question the decision to revamp starting areas for Book 7. As was pointed out above, the MoM launch was probably the best chance looking a year back and a year forward to do this and actually have an impact on a large number of new players. I suppose this is an attempt to lock in the people that started with Moria and are wondering whether to roll some alts?

As far as the changes, most of them sound good, but apart from not being quite as interesting as Archet I didn't have many complaints after running the EL starter several times. Were people really quitting the game because they had to run from Breghold to Frerin's? The Gear quests are a pain, but the fact that they are spread all over Ered Luin is appropriate for the quest line story.

I do look forward to someday getting an 8th character slot so that I can roll an Elf Hunter and see what has changed. I just wonder what other improvements (brand new content, bug fixes, balancing, etc.) could have been made with these resources instead.


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[NotYetMeasured]

The comment that jumped off the page for me was, that as we move towards the future do not be surprised to see that the storyline becomes friendlier to solo and smaller groups of players. This will be the most welcome change I could ever imagine!

Same here. The Epic Line is the only content I have not completed that I really want to.


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[thegneech]

Very interesting to read the thought process behind it all, and I admit I'm looking forward to trying it all out. I'm probably also going to be one of those "reroll a lowbie alt" types -- in my case, an elf warden.

-The Gneech

[Kentelyoo]

I seem to remember (I don't have alts, so its been a while) that the early Epic storyline about the ranger becoming a wraith is structured in such a way that you have to create a character of each race to get all the parts of the story. I remember being confused and feeling that some parts were missing.

I don't know if something has been changed about this. Anyway, do you know what I mean ?

[NotYetMeasured]

I seem to remember (I don't have alts, so its been a while) that the early Epic storyline about the ranger becoming a wraith is structured in such a way that you have to create a character of each race to get all the parts of the story. I remember being confused and feeling that some parts were missing.

I don't know if something has been changed about this. Anyway, do you know what I mean ?

I think the only racial epilogue that addresses it is Man (including the tutorial and Archet). That's where most of the Amdir story occurs. Then all races get to see the final chapter of the story during Volume 1, Book 1.

The Dwarf and Elf racial epilogues currently start separately then merge together (they follow this approach twice: once in the tutorial/starter and then again when you hit the main world), and the Hobbit epilogue is completely independent. The Hobbit tutorial does feature an Amdir appearance, but I don't think it has much to do with his story.


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[Merciful_Death]

When were we ever, as elves post-tomb, a "full minute out of (Celondim)"?[page 3]
Was Orion measuring the distance by crawling backwards with both eyes closed???

[Merciful_Death]

I seem to remember (I don't have alts, so its been a while) that the early Epic storyline about the ranger becoming a wraith is structured in such a way that you have to create a character of each race to get all the parts of the story. I remember being confused and feeling that some parts were missing.

I don't know if something has been changed about this. Anyway, do you know what I mean ?

From the Man, and to a lesser degree the Hobbit, line you get the Amdir side of the transformation.
From the Dwarf, and to a fairly similar degree the elf Line, you get the Skorgrim and the undead baddie side of the story.

When you put that all together, then you get the full picture. So yes, that part of the story is told with a few different "once upon a times"

[Adder]

Very good write-up. The changes discussed definitely sound great and I will be creating a few new characters on different servers to experience the changes ( because I just can't bring myself to delete any of my curent seven on Brandywine).

That said though, those of you who don't understand the reasoning in revisiting starter areas over adding to the end-game, you are overlooking something very important in Turbine's strategy here - the upcoming Eastern market. With Turbine expanding into the Asian markets, they need to rethink and rework a lot of the game so that those players can advance through the game quickly and fluently, or to put it bluntly, zip through as fast as possible (which is the preferred play-style over there).

This is why the starter areas are being revamped to flow more smoothly, interaction timers are being lowered, the experience needed for advancement is being adjusted downward, Epic Storylines are going to be reworked for easier completion and to be more solo-friendly, PvMP is getting a lot of attention (because the Asian market lays a heavy emphasis on PvP as well as solo play), quest locations are being indicated on the mini-map along with arrows so that you don't really need to read the dialog (or just quickly skim it) because these upcoming new players prefer quests with accurate directions rather then a storyline, and basicly, the whole game is getting dumbed-down because the Asian player doesn't like to be challenged with details. They just want to play and fight through as unhindered as possible in order to get to the high-end game.

Some of these changes are good for everyone such as these starter area revamps which really did need it, but don't for an instant believe that this is being done solely for our benefit. We here in the west are experiencing these fundamental changes to the game because Turbine is preparing to accomodate the preferences and play-styles of the Eastern market. Plain and simple.

[SeigneurDude]

Great job Orion!

Thanks for reducing the number of quests that have you run from Moscow to Paris only to have you run right back to Moscow and then back to Paris, etc. If we wanted to be perma-gophers, we would probably be playing 'Hello Gopherland' instead of lotro...