[Update 17 Beta 4] Patch notes

[Vyvyanne]

I know they are late and my apologies for this, but for those curious about what had changed on this past weekend's Beta test, here are the notes:

More bug fixes and polish, especially regarding performance and decorations in Minas Tirith.
The cap on Epic Battle promotion points has been raised from 236 to 256.
The Rangers of Ithilien barter vendor now lets you barter for T10 crafting items.
The main quest reward boxes for the Minas Tirith Epic Battles give three times as many Stars of Merit as other reward boxes.
Morgul Crests can now be exchanged for Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment, at a rate of 5 Crests per Scroll.
The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.
There are four class trait points that can be earned playing the content in Update 17

[Wibz]

The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.

Has the mark acquisition rates been dropped for just these 2 instances or all scaled instances?

[matalan]

Has the mark acquisition rates been dropped for just these 2 instances or all scaled instances?

Just those by the look of things. The big question is by how much?

[Pavlosh]

I know they are late and my apologies for this, but for those curious about what had changed on this past weekend's Beta test, here are the notes:

0) More bug fixes and polish, especially regarding performance and decorations in Minas Tirith.
1) The cap on Epic Battle promotion points has been raised from 236 to 256.
2) The Rangers of Ithilien barter vendor now lets you barter for T10 crafting items.
3) The main quest reward boxes for the Minas Tirith Epic Battles give three times as many Stars of Merit as other reward boxes.
4) Morgul Crests can now be exchanged for Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment, at a rate of 5 Crests per Scroll.
5) The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.
6) There are four class trait points that can be earned playing the content in Update 17

0) Always good to hear.
1) Very sensible.
2) Sounds like a good plan.
3) Sounds good - I hope the new Gold Cloak does not drop in FAIL non-plat boxes
4) Well, this is great news for good players... Speed runs in RC will possibly be the quickest way to get ASEs
5) I always hated running those anyway - the slightly more challenging fornost cluster might be the next farmed instance
6) Good Stuff.

[matalan]

3) Sounds good - I hope the new Gold Cloak does not drop in FAIL non-plat boxes

Who says it drops in Epic Battles at all?

[Levanas]

Dear Vyvyanne, BR is closed after the test but you said, will be open untill Monday. Is there will be a test chance for B4 or must wait for the Build 5?

P.S. There is so many personal advice for thr U17, which I have many to give/say but it's already too late I believe, eh? Especially for new BB's.

Thank you. :-)

[Pavlosh]

Who says it drops in Epic Battles at all?

Where else is it going to drop. With Teal and Gold variations, this is the new 'Pela Ring'.

[Coeprandua]

5) I always hated running those anyway - the slightly more challenging fornost cluster might be the next farmed instance.

OE is faster than Gling and it gives almost the same amount of currency. It is definitely the next farm.

[DiogoVP]

I know they are late and my apologies for this, but for those curious about what had changed on this past weekend's Beta test, here are the notes:

More bug fixes and polish, especially regarding performance and decorations in Minas Tirith.
The cap on Epic Battle promotion points has been raised from 236 to 256.
The Rangers of Ithilien barter vendor now lets you barter for T10 crafting items.
The main quest reward boxes for the Minas Tirith Epic Battles give three times as many Stars of Merit as other reward boxes.
Morgul Crests can now be exchanged for Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment, at a rate of 5 Crests per Scroll.
The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.
There are four class trait points that can be earned playing the content in Update 17

Hey Vyvyanne. Thank you for posting this. I think 256 promotion points will still be very easy to achieve with the new epic battles, any chance you guys would incresae the cap to 300 promotion points or more?
And also, when are you guys planning on releasing the next Bullroarer build?

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

I know they are late and my apologies for this, but for those curious about what had changed on this past weekend's Beta test, here are the notes:

More bug fixes and polish, especially regarding performance and decorations in Minas Tirith.
The cap on Epic Battle promotion points has been raised from 236 to 256.
The Rangers of Ithilien barter vendor now lets you barter for T10 crafting items.
The main quest reward boxes for the Minas Tirith Epic Battles give three times as many Stars of Merit as other reward boxes.
Morgul Crests can now be exchanged for Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment, at a rate of 5 Crests per Scroll.
The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.
There are four class trait points that can be earned playing the content in Update 17

Some great changes, thanks.

One question I did have though is whether, now that t10 has arrived, we will be able to craft supreme essences of morale, as we can for all other essences?

[Ethrildar]

Love how disconnected Turbine are with the state the game is in. They think that what we need after the addition of a further 20 empowerment scrolls per LI, is making it more difficult to get them. Currently it's two Gling runs per scroll, so ideally 16 minutes with a good group (for 2 runs/1 scroll). This doesn't seem at all unreasonable, I'd even say that it's not enough. Why should it require 160 Glinghant runs JUST to get Empowerment scrolls for LIs? The grind is immense, I play 4-5 lvl 100s, this isn't at all achievable for me anymore.

Edit: Unless the two new BBs are dropping an emp-scroll worth of SoMs every run I dread to think of the grind that ensues.

[matalan]

Some great changes, thanks.

One question I did have though is whether, now that t10 has arrived, we will be able to craft supreme essences of morale, as we can for all other essences?

So far you can barter for a purple morale essence in MT - but there is no corresponding recipe to make use of it. Perhaps a work in progress, or maybe an oversight including a purple morale at the barter guy?

[spelunker]

The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.

Have you given any thought to instituting an end-game system in this game that doesn't encourage mindlessly grinding that thing which is most efficacious in acquiring currency needed for the various 'grinds'? You nerfed the most popular spam runs (this is about the 3rd time its been done to Sambrog, which should be a good hint about something), but have done nothing to fix the actual issue. If Sammy and Gling aren't the best way to farm marks, people will just do the same elsewhere.

There are four class trait points that can be earned playing the content in Update 17

Have you given any thought to what types of build options this opens up, and what that does for the games already awful skill balance? We're now to the point where classes can unlock their main trait line's capstone, at the same time as 4 points into the 5th tier of a secondary trait line. Back when there was 69 trait points to be used, there was a relatively decent cap on what was available out of spec to a given class. We're at the point where most everything from 2 different trees are available at once. Coupling these extra points with trees that seemingly weren't designed for trait point expansions, and were impressively poorly designed to begin with is leading down a pretty ugly path.

You've stated that your 'team' continuously monitors the state of game balance between updates. I wonder if you or some member of the team could chime in with some of the new trait setups that will be 'unlocked' with this change (that you surely must be aware of) and how you have vetted them to determine that the new builds are appropriate for overall game balance?

[Ethrildar]

Have you given any thought to...

Have you given any thought to...

Let me just answer these for you:

No. They haven't. lol.

[Dadislotroguides]

I know they are late and my apologies for this, but for those curious about what had changed on this past weekend's Beta test, here are the notes:

The main quest reward boxes for the Minas Tirith Epic Battles give three times as many Stars of Merit as other reward boxes.

This may help to address concerns of cost to barter SoM for SoE and Crystals.

[spelunker]

This may help to address concerns of cost to barter SoM for SoE and Crystals.

How does this really help? The change is only for 2 of the instances, which means earning them in all other BBs (even if you somehow like them) will still take as awful an amount of time to acquire them as in the previous patch. They don't like people farming Sammy/Gling, but are perfectly fine with it when its something just released (that is an instance type that the community has panned) because it creates a false reinforcement that people want to run these instances ad nauseam.

[Oelle]

How about fixing RC one day? Its not meant to be speedrunned, still, its the most effective way to do so, ignoring most of the instance and by large most of its enemies. If it was intended to skip the whole instance, you could just create an instance like watcher or filikul, where one gets morgulcrests.

[kickman77]

Wow... So to get people to run these 2 new battles you need to increase the Star of Merit rate and was it not mentioned earlier in beta that essences will have an increased dro rate there...

Seems to me you guys know people wont run tham and are trying to herd us into running them with these "Incentives"

If the content is good, you dont need an incentive gimmick to run it, just sayin

[Baredur]

Have you given any thought to what types of build options this opens up, and what that does for the games already awful skill balance? We're now to the point where classes can unlock their main trait line's capstone, at the same time as 4 points into the 5th tier of a secondary trait line. Back when there was 69 trait points to be used, there was a relatively decent cap on what was available out of spec to a given class. We're at the point where most everything from 2 different trees are available at once. Coupling these extra points with trees that seemingly weren't designed for trait point expansions, and were impressively poorly designed to begin with is leading down a pretty ugly path.

You've stated that your 'team' continuously monitors the state of game balance between updates. I wonder if you or some member of the team could chime in with some of the new trait setups that will be 'unlocked' with this change (that you surely must be aware of) and how you have vetted them to determine that the new builds are appropriate for overall game balance?

Agree, and note that this is a problem that will only continue to get worse.

When trait trees were first implemented, the dev diary said:
"What happens when you keep mixing different paint colors? You get an underwhelming sort of brown color. The same could be said of too much mix and match for class roles within a class.
We really want you to feel the effects of how you decide to spec out our character. If you go for DPS, you should really be doing significantly more damage than someone else who is choosing to spec as a tank in the same class. Likewise, that tank should be able to take much more punishment and be able to defend their fellows much better."

Five updates and many trait points later, it seems that 'an underwhelming sort of brown color' is all but unavoidable.

Likewise the alleged 'skill bloat' that was used to partly justify the trait trees also returns as more and more skills are unlocked with the additional traits points.

If we continue to have trait points added moving forward, the trait trees themselves really need to be recalibrated based on the newer caps.

[Rakanor]

Please reduce anfalas scroll of empowerment barter costs across the board, the grind will be bearable for those of us with already maxed LIs. However for anyone that is new to lvl100 or has multiple alts the grind will be a nightmare and very off-putting.

Reduce mark/medallion cost by 15-20%, DA silver/gold token cost by 50%, RT brand cost by 2/3, stars of merit cost by 50%, commendation cost by 50%.

Also fix RC so people can't skip everything up to the last boss, then reduce morgul crest barter cost for empowerments to 3.

We are taking a look at this. I cant give any timelines on when or what can be done about it, but we are investigating.

Also Vyvyanne is the champ skills fix on any sort of timeline yet? If it's not or is more than 3 months away could champs get one of the following:

• A red line specialization passive, something like -20% attack duration and -10% strike skill damage. (Think how red line feels with captain routing cry attack speed buff, this would be slightly faster than that.)
• Wild attack, swift strike and devastating strike turned into fast skills.

I think either of these would make red line game play bearable until the proper fix is given at which point whichever one of these changes is made can be removed.

[Gardhik]

Well... i have 48 points for BB that are waiting to be used since... a long time.

Could you rise the cap more please ?

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

So far you can barter for a purple morale essence in MT - but there is no corresponding recipe to make use of it. Perhaps a work in progress, or maybe an oversight including a purple morale at the barter guy?

The oversight is that Turbine haven't yet added a crafting recipe for morale essences in over a year - its rather like the shameful failure to add in might medium armour for Beornings.

[Dumbali]

yes i want this

[Coeprandua]

I know they are late and my apologies for this, but for those curious about what had changed on this past weekend's Beta test, here are the notes:

More bug fixes and polish, especially regarding performance and decorations in Minas Tirith.
The cap on Epic Battle promotion points has been raised from 236 to 256.
The Rangers of Ithilien barter vendor now lets you barter for T10 crafting items.
The main quest reward boxes for the Minas Tirith Epic Battles give three times as many Stars of Merit as other reward boxes.
Morgul Crests can now be exchanged for Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment, at a rate of 5 Crests per Scroll.
The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.
There are four class trait points that can be earned playing the content in Update 17

Anyway, judging by these patch notes, I presume the update can go live next week.

[siipperi]

How about fixing RC one day? Its not meant to be speedrunned, still, its the most effective way to do so, ignoring most of the instance and by large most of its enemies. If it was intended to skip the whole instance, you could just create an instance like watcher or filikul, where one gets morgulcrests.

This, and while they are at it, please boost mark/medallion gain 100% both in osgiliath instances.

Wow... So to get people to run these 2 new battles you need to increase the Star of Merit rate and was it not mentioned earlier in beta that essences will have an increased dro rate there...

Seems to me you guys know people wont run tham and are trying to herd us into running them with these "Incentives"

If the content is good, you dont need an incentive gimmick to run it, just sayin

I'm quite sure BBs wont be best time-reward ratio to get emp scrolls even after the update.