Interview with the Turbine Staff

[Inkfinger]

I hate the sound of my voice.

Aww its okay ZC, we wub u anyway (>^_^)>

[Darkheart06]

Current state of LI's is satisfactory. Possibly minor tweaks in the future, but items are where they should be now.

This is an unsatisfactory statement.

[Fortinobrand]

And thats because those people simply didnt try enough

I dont believe people (and none should) who say that they havent get done some quests/instances because they require a group
Its because they dont try, what do you expect from soloers?soloers hate group content, so they just skip it and then they cry that they havent done it because they cant get a group...
yea,right.. So far i had no prob getting a group for all the fellowship quests, yes some times there was noone around but that doesnt mean its over, i was trying again later or next day and always was getting a fellowship

I don't know what server you're on, but I play on two smaller servers and I am a group player, and I play 7 days a week for at least 4 hours a day. 3- and 6-man are my preference. There are some instances I have had to give up on because I can not find a group. Battle of Lothlorien comes to mind -- I've actually been told that some people have put me on ignore because they don't like being "spammed" with adverts for "pointless" group runs.

Carn Dum/Uru? I've done them with over-level groups of course, but in levelling 7 lv 65's I've never been able to get a group in at-level to do the content with some degree of challenge. Same with Rift, etc.

Turbine has dumbed the game down and made it more and more solo-focused because that is what the player base asks for each and every day with their actions.

[Kerin_Eldar]

Current state of LI's is satisfactory. Possibly minor tweaks in the future, but items are where they should be now.

So, yet another plan announced long ago is ditched .. there is to be NO 'second phase' to the LI re-work they talked about way back, LIs are and will remain forever a huge grind unless you're prepared to pay Turbine cash.

[Wanderv]

I want to ask people that complain "dont break" and "dont scale" old instances. How often do you visit Rift, Barad Gularan, Fornost and so on? How often did you visit Great Barrows before it's got revamp? Nearly never and dont even try to lie that "sometimes i was there!". I will dont beleive because i lvled some alts and saw that groups gathered very very rarely and usually there were some 65s to steamroll group to bosses.

Nearly all old not scaled instances (except CD\Uru because of class quests) are dead. And i like how they revamped classics (however some mistakes in Helgrod). And MOST people vote for this scaling. Yes, MOST. Because they do them every day. And dont say that they just 'needed' to go there. As it is now it's not needed.

The choice is: dead but beautyful-in-somes-opinion instances or living but not-so-beautyful-in-somes-opinion instances. Of course second choice is right.

Good job Turbine. Thanks to yours revamping we have a lot of options what to do on levelcap. Dont listen 'complainers', they will complain EVER on EVERY CHANGE. That is the nature of some people that like to sit on forums and complain, complain, complain endlessly. They are minority, very loud minority, but MINORITY which can never be satisfied.

When devs listen to those people they make their game less and less attractive (WoW with its declining) or even kill the game (like SOE with SWG did).

[Fin.]

How often do you visit Rift, Barad Gularan, Fornost and so on? How often did you visit Great Barrows before it's got revamp?

Of course nearly never, why would lvl 65 go do lvl 50 content for lvl 50 rewards?

You don't understand. People don't protest these instances were scaled. Hell, if they were not what would we do in game? Some people just don't like how the scaling was executed.

[Lestache]

I want to ask people that complain "dont break" and "dont scale" old instances. How often do you visit Rift, Barad Gularan, Fornost and so on? How often did you visit Great Barrows before it's got revamp? Nearly never and dont even try to lie that "sometimes i was there!". I will dont beleive because i lvled some alts and saw that groups gathered very very rarely and usually there were some 65s to steamroll group to bosses.

Nearly all old not scaled instances (except CD\Uru because of class quests) are dead. And i like how they revamped classics (however some mistakes in Helgrod). And MOST people vote for this scaling. Yes, MOST. Because they do them every day. And dont say that they just 'needed' to go there. As it is now it's not needed.

The choice is: dead but beautyful-in-somes-opinion instances or living but not-so-beautyful-in-somes-opinion instances. Of course second choice is right.

Good job Turbine. Thanks to yours revamping we have a lot of options what to do on levelcap. Dont listen 'complainers', they will complain EVER on EVERY CHANGE. That is the nature of some people that like to sit on forums and complain, complain, complain endlessly. They are minority, very loud minority, but MINORITY which can never be satisfied.

When devs listen to those people they make their game less and less attractive (WoW with its declining) or even kill the game (like SOE with SWG did).

Other than leveling alts, I hadn't bothered with the SoA instances at all until the revamp, you're correct. (Deed runs aside).

While I appreciate the folks who want to experience as much of the game as possible - I'm of that ilk myself - and while I do feel bad for folks who joined the game after MoM launched and thus never really had the chance to experience Annuminas, Uru, BG, GA, CD, GB, the Rift, and Helegrod on-level, my opposition to scaling instances is simply that I would prefer Turbine's limited resources be put towards other things.

I'd prefer the developer time be put in to developing new content, or fixing bugs in existing content, or further developing some of the parts of the game that have fallen by the wayside, like kinship privileges beyond rank 10, housing, hobbies, and so forth.

I just didn't see the point of scaling the instances other than for these two perspectives: one, the players who were nostalgic for the "good ol' days" of SoA, and; two, the newer players who never got to experience the instances on-level.

For the nostalgics, I'm sure that they enjoyed running GB, Annuminas, and Helegrod at the level cap again, but how long does nostalgia last? Once you've "relived" each instance again, your nostalgia is gone.

For the newer folks, it's nice that they get to experience the instances on-level, but how many times are they running the instances and feeling that joy of a new experience? (And, frankly, it's not like it's impossible to see and experience the instances at their original level - more difficult than finding a group of level-capped players, sure, but certainly possible.)

For both groups, after the nostalgia or novelty wears off, the instances don't have much to offer. They don't have much to offer anyone beyond the first run or two. The rare drops were removed in favor of skirmish marks. The mechanics of the fights are simplistic compared to the mechanics of the newer instances.

Heck, it didn't take long for people to gravitate (as always) towards the easier instances, or the instances that offered more SMs for less time - I always see people looking for GB Trio, or Palace (never Tombs/Garden), or (ugh) "Hele Mark Runs". All this time, money, and technology were invested into trying to make Helegrod more accessible to a much wider audience, and most people never see any of it beyond the first few spiders/drakelings/whatever because all they're interested in is getting their gear the easiest way possible.

I apologize for this post turning into a mini-diatribe. My main point is that I think that developer resources could be far better spent than on figuring how out to refurbish old instance content. If even a fraction of the time that's been spent on scaling old instances had been spent on something like bug fixes, perhaps we wouldn't have bugs that go unfixed for months (Baingrist clicky, Moria instance exploits), or even years (not a single one of the original 4-trait bonuses for RKs worked for two years - in the end, the "fix" was to just change them completely.)

Oh, and it's not a bad thing if older instances sit largely unused. Ignoring the fact that the current medallion barter system means that, ultimately, even current end-game instances are largely unvisited, is it such a bad thing that the game progresses? We don't seem to mind so much when our car, or clothes, or phone, or television, or computer becomes obsolete - why feel differently about instance content in a video game?

[Isy]

Thank you for the interview!

[Hildilas]

Please don't cut Rift into pieces It should be a normal 12 man raid with IDs.

[LadyDena]

Instead of revamping Rift and BG, which are NOT broken, why not fix the ones that are? You know, the level 65 instances that people rarely rarely run? Yep, there is a reason why you rarely ever see Dungeons of Dol Guldur being recruited for. The design is down right broken, because people are not willing to carefully do the dungeons PERFECTLY for an hour, only to have a poorly designed, unfair and cheesy boss ruins all their work in 30 seconds coupled with moronic npc combat AI (if you are a prisoner why zerg the boss with your fists instead of go hide?) Yes, I'm well aware that there are people who have completed the deeds there, but without question the overwhelming majority of the population do NOT run that instance for very obvious reasons. Why not fix broken design like that? An apology for it might be appropriate too.

[Jennifern]

First off, want to say a massive thank you to DocHoliday for sorting out this interview and the turbine staff who participated. These sorts of things go a long way to showing that we have a good community and I really appreciate the effort being put in.


Second, for me, the whole interview basically boiled down to one thing: lack of content. No matter what they say about sales, rankings and all that, for my playstyle (semi-hc endgame focused) there is simply too little endgame content in this expansion to keep me playing. 1 new endgame instance which is a lair raid is a disgrace. So, I'll be leveling to 75, downing the dragon then quitting. I've already pre-ordered TOR and was only gonna leave once that was released, but now I'll be leaving as soon as dragon is dead.


Third, the rankings. Read the small print. That percent is based purely on time spent playing the game. So, one hardcore lotro player who plays 12 hours a day is worth more than 10 console gamers who come home and play GOW3 for 1 hour each. So, in other words, the rankings are meaningless. It has no bearing on how popular a game is, how many people play it etc. Its pure hours played.


Finally, the Rift issue. People need to get it into their heads that there are three things being discussed here: scaling, splitting and revamping. They are NOT the same thing, and when Turbine approaches instances they can choose what they want to do. For me, scaling is a no-brainer. Take rift, make everything level 75ish and hit harder so that difficulty is the same as it was at 50 (i know this is hard to do...) and 90% of people who love the Rift will be happy. That is scaling in its basic form and I dont think many people would complain. It takes less resources than developing brand new content so its worth while doing if done well. As to splitting up instances, that has pluses and minuses. I dont think any of us really have a problem with splitting up instances, you can still do every part of the raid if you want, or skip to the bit you need to do. As long as splitting is literally just that: split the instance at sensible points. Splitting doesn't / shouldn't involve changing anything. For rift, its already split into zones, that why you have to port/zone through portals every now and again.

The big issue everyone has is the revamping. Revamps of great barrows, revamps of GA, revamps of hele. Mostly, we've disliked the revamps as they've trivialised the content, reduced the "epicness" of the content and in most cases, introduced daily quests which kills the fun. When revamping content, Turbine really need to take a closer look as to why they are revamping it. In general, Turbine revamp because the content isn't being run on level, like GA. If an instance genuinely isn't being run on level and they aren't going to scale it either, then by all means revamp it. However, if you are going to scale it, don't revamp! The main detractor for repeating instances is lack of loot, so if you scaled something like CD/Uru/Rift/Fornost etc to the level cap, they will not need revamps as long as you have decent loot. Hell, even if they don't have decent loot, they'd probably be run more in original form than if you revamped them! So please, stop revamping old instances. Scale them, yes please. Split them, sure. Revamp? No thanks.

[Nickysmom]

DocHoliday, thank you for sharing this interview with us. I listened to the whole thing once and will run through it again for better comprehension. I am most interested in what other content will be part of Update 5 (besides the instances) and in what that tweak to LI's will be.

[elvyen]

As to the fan-bois rant, I'd just note that your posts seem to come off a little skewed as well as many of theirs do, just in an opposite direction.

Thankyou for posting that. I had prepared a long rant in response to that poster, but thought better of it. You put it far more succinctly and effectively than I could have

(oh and also, thanks for the interview Hudson7, enjoyed listening)

[PypeRings]

Third, the rankings. Read the small print. That percent is based purely on time spent playing the game. So, one hardcore lotro player who plays 12 hours a day is worth more than 10 console gamers who come home and play GOW3 for 1 hour each. So, in other words, the rankings are meaningless. It has no bearing on how popular a game is, how many people play it etc. Its pure hours played.

I don't think we should begrudge them their glory. This game is getting long in the tooth as these things go, and to hold any kind of popularity is an achievement.

F2P has brought and continues to bring a ton of new players. And yes, its a churn and many just leave in a few weeks. But some to stay, and to them, its all new content. All the things we have done ten times are new and fresh to them.

One only has to look at this expansion and the associated content to see the pace of development as it applies to long term players and, more specifically to each of us individually. I think we can all see pretty much what is there now and what is coming and make our own judgements, just as they have made theirs. For some, perhaps many, it is just time to move on.

[Gedachtnis]

Couldn't spaces like the Rift be split and left whole at the same time?

After each boss create a "safe zone" with no mobs, might require removing a trash pack and/or patrol, and install a "portal" that functions as a spawn point for the Instance Join Panel to drop the group.

That way the entire raid could be left whole for groups that wanted to run it as such, or specific bosses could be targeted if desired.

Use the deed system like Hele to make each previous boss need to be completed before opening up the next boss through the IJP.

Not sure if the tech would allow this, but it would open up alot of ways to play through the space during a lock period.

[WinterStar]

Q : Is Rift already been broken in beta? and will it be broken when RoI launches? Or its something that Turbine wants to do in future updates? if so then at least i got time to do Rift as it is (i am lvl 50) and enjoy the content the way it was originally designed by the developers and then when it gets revamped i will have already atleast run it once ( i dont run instance many times, i run them just for the experience,the story and the challenge)

[Gedachtnis]

Nothing has been done to The Rift as of yet.

[hucklebarry]

Nothing has been done to The Rift as of yet.

Nice reminder. Its in a backlog of things they want to do. We KNOW that they are focused on the expansion and update 5 for the remainder of the year. I wouldn't expect this anytime soon... if its something we even see.

Personally, I think the devs should post their long list of items on their "todo" list Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend and just let the forums percolate for a while

[Silchas]

Nice reminder. Its in a backlog of things they want to do. We KNOW that they are focused on the expansion and update 5 for the remainder of the year. I wouldn't expect this anytime soon... if its something we even see.

Personally, I think the devs should post their long list of items on their "todo" list Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend and just let the forums percolate for a while

Fairly evil suggestion.

[BakaNiNaru]

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insight...deo_games.html

Number 2 MMO possibly, but even with those limited numbers I do not see number 4 PC game in there. That is only the top 10 making it difficult to know how far it would slip, but even out of just the top 10 it is only 7th in market share (it is only 4th by total hours played).

[Comstrike]

I hate the sound of my voice.

I know the feeling. Myself, I can't be on voice during raids, my chocolatey Barry White voice has been known to make entire raids swoon and wipe.

[Adalas]

They are not deluded. The are using this sites for ratings. The same site also does TV programs and is one of the most respected sites of it kind

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insight...deo_games.html

These figures are amazing. So we know that there are about 5 million active WoW players in EU and US. Now take this figure, multiply it with the LotRO share 1.354 and divide it by the WoW share 6.304. This would lead us to a bit more than a million players. While we can muse if the rate of active players in LotRO is higher than in WoW (and I don't see a reason why they should differ that much) we might have a first good guess at the number of LotRO players.

[heatherjewel]

Ahh now that I look at the numbers it makes them even more irrelevant.

It isnt based on the NUMBER of players, but the amount of time played by the number of players they have.

So a dumb system totally misused by people who still try and claim Lotro has a lot of players. WoW, according to their system has almost 4 times as many players as Lotro, at least in their coverage area. Wow is a sub game, Lotro is totally free. That alone blows any claim to fame as it pertains to player numbers for this game out of the water.

The best one could surmise from this is Lotro has a small loyal fanbase that plays a lot of minutes a week on average.

If they want to tout player base list the top shareholders I doubt Lotro would make the top 20 PC games, it might crack the top 10 MMOs in the small area neilson covers.

Basically all this shows is the people who play lotro have more time on their hands than most other gamers. Or they are more willing to admit they play a lot.

[Barrynor]

Ahh now that I look at the numbers it makes them even more irrelevant.

It isnt based on the NUMBER of players, but the amount of time played by the number of players they have.

So a dumb system totally misused by people who still try and claim Lotro has a lot of players. WoW, according to their system has almost 4 times as many players as Lotro, at least in their coverage area. Wow is a sub game, Lotro is totally free. That alone blows any claim to fame as it pertains to player numbers for this game out of the water.

The best one could surmise from this is Lotro has a small loyal fanbase that plays a lot of minutes a week on average.

If they want to tout player base list the top shareholders I doubt Lotro would make the top 20 PC games, it might crack the top 10 MMOs in the small area neilson covers.

Basically all this shows is the people who play lotro have more time on their hands than most other gamers. Or they are more willing to admit they play a lot.

No, if you read the fine print you will see that the SHARE is based upon (and TMP% is based upon...):
Source: Nielsen Games - GamePlay Metrics™. Share is the percentage of the gaming audience measured that played the title. Overall TMP% represents the percent of total minutes played from the Top 100 non-casual/pre-installed PC games measured.

So they measure both how many individuals play in their sample group, and their average playtime. The number of log-ons a bit irrelevant without the amount of playtime really. In other words: Lots of people play, and they play a good amount of time. Of course, calling a system that's perfectly ok for statistical analysis "dumb" does show your ability and knowledge of statistics. Just putting it out there you know ;-)

[Arbalister]

These figures are amazing. So we know that there are about 5 million active WoW players in EU and US. Now take this figure, multiply it with the LotRO share 1.354 and divide it by the WoW share 6.304. This would lead us to a bit more than a million players. While we can muse if the rate of active players in LotRO is higher than in WoW (and I don't see a reason why they should differ that much) we might have a first good guess at the number of LotRO players.

That's about the ballpark I've always put it, just by the number of forum accounts since the change to F2P - my user-id in the forums (which has always been very low) changed to 1134. From the "First Impressions" forum, a poster "Colossus874" with a join date of this month has an id of 1,456,903.