More Bugs Please

[Gedachtnis]

lol

They don't call me The Orkin Guard for nothin' ya know!

[gambitwareagle]

The sad part about this whole conversation is that nobody who matters is listening anymore...

Perhaps a dev might read this, but even if they do I think the message is very clear from them - Either they have orders from high above to stall this game as far as progress until further notice OR there isn't enough devs around right now to tackle many of these bugs...


hence the cold shoulder BG (and many of our posts) are getting from the devs

[LagunaD]

The sad thing to me is that there is a lot to like in BG too. Gauntlet is cool. They got the boss difficulty progression right, unlike DN. Lt 2.0 is not quite Thaurlach, but it isn't a letdown like the Mistress either. All three boss fights are more fun than anything in DN except the Blind One. The spaces are more visually appealing (unlike DN, which pretty much looked like Dark Delvings). About half of the trash mobs (sorcs, wargs, armored undead dudes) have moderately interesting mechanics (or would if not for the bugs).

But as a former kinmate of mine once said after a Watcher PuG wipe, there's not enough win to cancel out the suck:

1) too much trash
2) mind-numbingly awful time-sinks like the undead swarms and guldur lights
3) respawn timer too short
4) too many bugs
5) melee/ranged balance in Lt 1.0; to their credit, they fixed this, but gave us:
6) yellow eye + fear in Lt 2.0
7) fail loot

[wyldcyde]

win post

i agree
there is much i prefer in BG over DN, even rift, shock horror.

but polish and frustrating mechanics hinder it from being the success it could be. this does impact me personally even tho my kin is doing fine in BG because a raid that isnt successful means less pugs which i like todo with alts.

with the weak loot it was always going to need to be more fun and polished than any other raid imo, surely the devs saw that before release.

[rawlingsst7]

i agree
there is much i prefer in BG over DN, even rift, shock horror.

but polish and frustrating mechanics hinder it from being the success it could be. this does impact me personally even tho my kin is doing fine in BG because a raid that isnt successful means less pugs which i like todo with alts.

with the weak loot it was always going to need to be more fun and polished than any other raid imo, surely the devs saw that before release.

It's sad, really, because BG could be a lot of fun if there had been ample time to polish it, work out the bugs, balance the encounters, and playtest the heck out of it to maximize enjoyment. IIRC DN was pushed back from Book 7 release because of all the bugs/exploits in the Moria cluster, and the extra 3 months of work really, really showed. DN at Bk8 release was pretty polished. I can't remember any specific changes made to it in patches since then, other than the Mistress hitting harder. (Although I could come up with a very short list of improvements that could be made now, to elements that were affected by the SoM combat/stat changes.)

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that I'd rather wait a book and get a finished, polished product rather than get it right this second in a late-beta state. I know they must have been rushed to push this thing out the door because the 5 level raise (probably mandated by management as the only way to justify a paid expansion) pretty much required an end-game raid of some sort, and we as a community had been crying foul for having nothing but lair raids for the first 6 months of Moria. No BG at launch = no end game instance content other than SG/SH/WP/Dung. Fail. (also, heh, dung. fitting.)

[NameAlreadyTaken]

with the weak loot it was always going to need to be more fun and polished than any other raid imo, surely the devs saw that before release.

Of course the Devs saw this before release. They needed help getting BG tuned properly though, and there's a few bugs that need fixing, so it gets released and the serious portion of the player base gets to work everything out. After a couple rounds of changes, once the more serious kins have had time to beat it up properly and provide feedback, it will be a wonderful raid for the masses.

As was touched on above, there would have been a huge outcry if the raid didn't make it for release. The devs saw that too, so BG is what it is until it has had the time to be improved.

[Ender111]

Dont have time to read all 6 pages atm but. I Quit raiding with mirkwood mainly due to the fact that my kin broke up(rampage), but other reasons are the simple fact that once you clear BG you never want to see the place again, ever. The loot is horrible, the place is buggy as hell, what is the point of getting ****** gear when we can just get the rad required for the next raid(if there is a next raid) in like 3 hours from farming the new 3 mans. Or the way things are going maybe I will be able to get the new place holder set from soloing in skirmishes.

[Delirium]

Turbine has never EVER accounted for network propagation delay in their game design, if they did, they would need to redesign much of their code from the ground up, things like overblown character animations would have to be completely overhauled, and no it's not going to happen because it would be an extremely expensive proposition to go back and do it right, now. Likewise they do not account for the speed of your adsl, the boggle your isp's routers may incur over a ddos attack or the fact that Roov's mom may suspend his play time to make him clean his room in the basement.

You can only account for so many variables the real world throws at a virtual system, and Turbine has drawn the line squarely in their favor, we may not like it or agree with it, but there it is and there it will stay. They aren't likely to extend the grace period you have to down a boss because your aunt may ring the doorbell and you have to get up from your computer to answer it.

Mav never said it was not a problem that affected his kin, he said it was a problem we were able to overcome, for the most part, and it is, we fully realize everyones mileage will vary. The DG trash is not particularly difficult once you've run it a few times, but it does remain time consuming, recognize it for what it is, simply another artificial difficulty mechanic just like rad-dread gating, neither are particularly clever at this point in Lotro's history but they are to an extent, necessary.

The 3 hour period is arbitrary enough, 4 would have been better but then so would 5 or 6 or none at all, at least from the standpoint of making it easier. Of course maintaining the challenge was a key factor in this raid release, especially in light of the limited amount of new content, Turbine obviously felt they needed to extend the life of this raid by maximizing the challenge and making it easier DOES NOT work toward that goal.

If you say "but this is boring and contrived difficulty, I was expecting something much more fun and interesting", then I would whole heartedly AGREE WITH YOU 100%, but we got what we got. This raid could have been exceptional but like so much Turbine does now, was either cut short due to budget constraint, or simply was the victim of poor design oversight, probably a combination of the two.

This raid could have been so much better in my mind, simply by making the difference in hard and easy mode actually feel like something was there, and then making the reward for both comparable. A raid set worthy of being "teal" along with a hard mode trunk full of rares and symbols along with a title that would keep casual groups striving to attain the more difficult reward. Less emphasis on trash and rad gating and more on difficulty mechanics of bosses would have achieved the same time sink but actually made it fun for all to attempt.

What concerns me more that it didn't happen is that apparently no one at Turbine saw this and did anything about it before it was to late, that and the fact that they saw skirmishs as some sort of universal panacea plants a large seed of doubt that they actually know what the hell they're doing. It's no wonder the serious raid players saw this earlier and many opted out before wasting the timesink. Arguing about the more trivial issues of this raid plays in to Turbine's hands and takes the focus off of the bigger picture, ie why is the content so minimal and where is the effort that we saw in the SoA releases in terms of both scale of quantity and of quality.

.

[cwswim03]

or the fact that Roov's mom may suspend his play time to make him clean his room in the basement.

Ah, really clever. More animus magic. I'm starting to remember why I disliked you all. Ad hominems.

[Delirium]

Ah, really clever. More animus magic. I'm starting to remember why I disliked you all. Ad hominems.

Look in the mirror, see yourself on the other side. .

[Delirium]

Ah, really clever. More animus magic. I'm starting to remember why I disliked you all. Ad hominems.

You're a fool. End of message.

For someone so thin skinned maybe you should consider exposing a little less of it. Now go count your rep points and pretend someone actually does like who you are.

[cwswim03]

Snip

You and Mavery rarely have points of argument. Just insults, telling people they suck. It's funny.. then sad.

[Delirium]

You and Mavery rarely have points of argument. Just insults, telling people they suck. It's funny.. then sad.

Again accusing others of your own behavior, and you say we are elitists. lol

[cwswim03]

Again accusing others of your own behavior, and you say we are elitists. lol

"I do not see a problem, therefore one does not exist."

[cwswim03]

The day you actually become a sincere advocate for casual players and not just an argumentative ahole, I will stop posting here and stop playing Lotro forever.

And I should care what your opinion of me is.

[IGolbezI]

The sad thing to me is that there is a lot to like in BG too. Gauntlet is cool. They got the boss difficulty progression right, unlike DN. Lt 2.0 is not quite Thaurlach, but it isn't a letdown like the Mistress either. All three boss fights are more fun than anything in DN except the Blind One. The spaces are more visually appealing (unlike DN, which pretty much looked like Dark Delvings). About half of the trash mobs (sorcs, wargs, armored undead dudes) have moderately interesting mechanics (or would if not for the bugs).

But as a former kinmate of mine once said after a Watcher PuG wipe, there's not enough win to cancel out the suck:

1) too much trash
2) mind-numbingly awful time-sinks like the undead swarms and guldur lights
3) respawn timer too short
4) too many bugs
5) melee/ranged balance in Lt 1.0; to their credit, they fixed this, but gave us:
6) yellow eye + fear in Lt 2.0
7) fail loot

and

8) as usual, RKs are OP

[wyldcyde]

and

8) as usual, RKs are OP

yes in part because their design filled class role gaps.
lack of ranged dps... rk
lack of burst corruption removal... rk
lack of main healers... rk

then the goodies
absorb massive boss attacks
can be main dps and heals in the same encounter
dps on the move
passive healing through hots

[IGolbezI]

yes in part because their design filled class role gaps.
lack of ranged dps... rk
lack of burst corruption removal... rk
lack of main healers... rk

then the goodies
absorb massive boss attacks
can be main dps and heals in the same encounter
dps on the move
passive healing through hots

yep I'm going to form a kin consisting of 2 captains and the rest RKs.

no more waiting around for other classes to get buffed or geared up while Turbine pretends to nerf RKs

[LagunaD]

This raid could have been exceptional but like so much Turbine does now, was either cut short due to budget constraint, or simply was the victim of poor design oversight, probably a combination of the two.

Well, at least they had time to prototype several versions of Player vs. Shrew combat and get it carefully tested in time for the Spring Festival.

I can see how fixing the centerpiece of their almost non-existent endame content would take a backseat there...