Update 9 Developer Diary - Instance Cluster Feedback

[bastiat1]

I can't really explain why, but it really bugs me that the story of the instance cluster is completely unrelated to the expansion. It's breaking my immersion man. I'm in the end-game in Rohan, I'm progressing through the story, and now I have to time warp back. I know it's trivial, and it never bothered me with "Inn of the Forsaken" or "Halls of Night." I can only conclude that the fact that those instances were a free update and not tied to an expansion and new land mass has somehow influenced my position.

[Roufneck]

I use Chrome too, Fortinobrand. For some reason, I'm not encountering these errors from within the office. I'll try again when I get back home tonight.

Otherwise, thank you everyone for the information. We'll pass it along to the team tomorrow morning. Keep it coming if you can!

http://www.lotro.com/en/game/article...cluster-part-i
http://www.lotro.com/en/game/article...mbat-revisions

Both give me the forbidden error now. However the first one did work 15 minutes earlier (without images though). Surfing the web from Spain with the latest chrome on windows and android.

EDIT: Must be something with permissions on your site. The first one (riders of rohan instance cluster part I) does work in icognito mode or when logged out of the forums.

[silverblade5445]

I am actually lost on words on how to describe what I feel about the instance cluster.....


On one hand, I'm happy to be going back to Eriador and other previously visited places for the instances....I've sorely missed the magic of the previous zones.....Rohan is awesome....as awesome as it could be.....but I missed the variety and the interaction with the other races of Middle Earth.....Rohan is fully about the wars of Men, and I was beginning to slightly miss the elven and dwarven areas.....also, the instances look very interesting and fairly new and innovative.....love the idea of remote looting of chests


On the other hand, while revamps are good and help us enjoy those parts and zones of the game in times when we feel like it, I was really looking forward to instances in Rohan....we're in Rohan, one of the most story-rich and expansive zones in Middle Earth, and we have no instances for it?....Unless I've missed some part of the dev diary (i'm getting the 403 error) about any such instance in the cluster, we have no instances based on the Rohan story.....I was even hoping for a mounted combat instance maybe.....instances have always tied into the current on-going story of the game...that made them enjoyable for a roleplay/story oriented person like me who is not into extreme raiding....I enjoyed Dol Guldur, Carn Dum, Orthanc because they meshed with the story we were in perfectly.....these, although interesting and good, would be a significant break in immersion.....imho, there shouldve been ATLEAST one instance in Rohan....6-man or 12-man.....There is so much potential for it here....

So guess I have mixed feelings about the cluster....

[Osgril]

Turbine, is there a reason why you seem to only focus on 3-man instances?

All I've wanted for years is a return to the Moria-style instance cluster, with several 6-mans to choose from. Nobody I know prefer 3-mans over 6-mans, and to be perfectly frank, I know very few people who even enjoy 3-mans at all.

I'm glad you've scaled up Sammath Gul now though. To me that is the last really good 6-man you've done, and here's hoping there will be plenty more in the future!

[Ferthcott]

That means 1 Medallion of DG is worth 10 Medallions. Woot!

Now if you could swing out to Ost Galad I think it is and check the barter we'll have a better idea whats going on there..

The moria quest deed is for a brand new hub =)

Bah... I spent my stash on some useless junk so long ago... >.>

Ost Galadh vendors don't seem to realise DG Meds/Tokens are gone, they are going to be a bunch of very sad NPCs now, stuck in time

Thangulhad dailies & vendors still operate with golden star emblems. DG instances non-daily quests, however, are rewarding with common Medallions.



Waaaait... does that mean I need to re-do parts of grey Moria to calm down my OCD? I was so proud of having clear deed tabs - and I still have no idea why my toon is unable to tell Moria story in RoR epic. I blame MoL, but I can always multitask and blame someone who redesigned Moria too

[Pelethor]

For once i am excited! To be honest i cant think of any good rohan instance we could now in these areas we are except maybe fangorn. A view in such great regions like mirkwood lonely mountain together with the movie i just saw and felt like rolling a dwarf or something i cannot only but be excited!

Glad to have a reason visit again Dol guldur its such an important place.
Not glad only with 2 things. First the gear speaking about the new armor sets. Wont even think of go after them. and the new travel to quest location. If you play star wars you can understand how important that thing would be there!! But here on lotro never felt the feeling of... oh now i have to go back...And also Middle earth is for traveling. So anyway dont going to even search for it .

Promise me this though turbine. plz make awesome the update 10!!!

[Galahadur]

So for those of you getting errors, was there an https:// prefix before the link, or was there a straight http:// link?

If it was the latter, then it was my fault when I posted the diaries. I quickly corrected it however. But, if it's not the https://, then let me know what browser you're on and I can pass that to the team. This is the type of information that they need to know so they can fix it.

http or https it doesn't matter. I'm using Firefox here.

I could see the Diaries the first time, but after i hit reload or tried to reopen the dev diary, i get the access denied page.

[Wanderv]

I'd like more Moria instances revamp. or other SoA. We played DG cluster too much in their time.

[Mar-Evayave]

I can't really explain why, but it really bugs me that the story of the instance cluster is completely unrelated to the expansion. It's breaking my immersion man. I'm in the end-game in Rohan, I'm progressing through the story, and now I have to time warp back. I know it's trivial, and it never bothered me with "Inn of the Forsaken" or "Halls of Night." I can only conclude that the fact that those instances were a free update and not tied to an expansion and new land mass has somehow influenced my position.

Neither of those two instances were free updates. They both must be purchased (or be VIP) to play.

Turbine, is there a reason why you seem to only focus on 3-man instances?

All I've wanted for years is a return to the Moria-style instance cluster, with several 6-mans to choose from. Nobody I know prefer 3-mans over 6-mans, and to be perfectly frank, I know very few people who even enjoy 3-mans at all.

I'm glad you've scaled up Sammath Gul now though. To me that is the last really good 6-man you've done, and here's hoping there will be plenty more in the future!

I agree with the reasoning behind your statements, but we will be getting our bigger instances early next year: 1 6-man and 3 raids.

----

For those who have complaints about how these instances don't have a thing to do with Rohan, I totally agree. I was looking forward to having Rohan instances with the Rohan expansion. Its obvious why they are doing it this way (with the first Hobbit movie having come out just last night), though. They are going to piggy-back on the movie (which makes sense, actually). And remember, we will (hopefully?) be getting West Rohan for our next expansion. I'm holding out hope that we'll get some really good ROHAN instances then. ^_^ Mounted combat raid, anyone? (and no, Bugud doesn't count)

[jchudz]

They could have avoided half the timeline issues if they had Elrond or maybe radagast be the ones who expressed their concerns...

And with eastern rohan there isn't really a good place for an instance anyway. except maybe some orc caves that are aluded to...

[Crell_1]

Bah... I spent my stash on some useless junk so long ago... >.>

Ost Galadh vendors don't seem to realise DG Meds/Tokens are gone, they are going to be a bunch of very sad NPCs now, stuck in time

The class NPCs using tokens (Dark hand... ) are fine for people who wanted to use them and already had them. I'm concerned about the non-BG mirkwood sets as I dont recall them being on the classic vendor. Heading over to BR to see if I can take a quick peek.

Edit: There is no sign of any of the 3 Piece Mirkwood sets on the vendor.

Does anyone know if these have unique appearances or if they're acquirable elsewhere? I can't even pre-grab them using existing currency because they're on 'restricted to class' barters.

Edit 2: By using a shot from CosmeticLotrO plus the L65 BG items in the skirmish camp I've been able to determine that these 3 piece sets have UNIQUE appearances.

Any chance someone can confirm these barters were tweaked for live?

[Norwrei]

I have mixed feelings about the rewards. In one way its nice and in another it sort of takes fun out of the rewards.. It's fun to roll. I also like rolling on non traditional items sometimes, like agility or vitality, etc. when no one else wants it.

[Jaberman]

Very disappointed with the new loot system.

This caters to the casual groups/pugs with players that don't know each other as well. It harms kins that have developed strong bonds of friendship, trust, and/or useful systems of assigning loot equally and fairly. Now, the RNG will decide if one player gets 3 top quality pieces before another even gets 1.

You eliminate miss chance to eliminate some of the "luck" in the game, then introduce a loot system where only luck is allowed. This is hypocritical.

And how can you justify saying that, because someone has better luck with the RNG, they should give their piece to the leader to assign via DKP, etc.? A lot harder to do, than if the leader has the pieces before they show up in a player's bag, and certainly inconvenient this way if a kin assigns more than just 2nd (or 1st) age symbols via DKP. Some people value effort over luck...

Turbine...think first, please...this is a good option for pugs and groups formed with the instance finder, perhaps. But show some respect to established kins who want to continue using Master Loot. Why would you remove a valued option completely? And if you insist on using the new loot chances, then keep Master Loot and have 12 (or whatever number) hidden rolls for the potential for each piece to drop, but showing up in Master Loot, rather than individual player bags...

At the very least, I beg you to reconsider this for the end-game raid content in February. Almost only raiding kins will be attempting T2 content, if you do your job well, and I can't see them enjoying the divisions that this new loot assignment will cause.

[Ulanor_EU]

Very disappointed with the new loot system.

This caters to the casual groups/pugs with players that don't know each other as well. It harms kins that have developed strong bonds of friendship, trust, and/or useful systems of assigning loot equally and fairly. Now, the RNG will decide if one player gets 3 top quality pieces before another even gets 1.

You eliminate miss chance to eliminate some of the "luck" in the game, then introduce a loot system where only luck is allowed. This is hypocritical.

Except its BoE so you can still pass things round etc, no more luck involved than there ever was if you have a sensible group.


Instead what I am unhappy with is that this means we arent seeing Erebor unless we are part of a bigger instancing group which disappoints me greatly.

PLUS the fact they have turned the Dol Guldur 3 mans in to full groups, what about us small groups or dont we get to replay content ?

[Armaius]

PLUS the fact they have turned the Dol Guldur 3 mans in to full groups, what about us small groups or dont we get to replay content ?

They've turned one Dol-Guldur 3-Man into a six man, not all of them. It is my understanding that Dungeons was rather long and overly complicated for a 3-Man anyway.

[Lestache]

Very disappointed with the new loot system.

This caters to the casual groups/pugs with players that don't know each other as well. It harms kins that have developed strong bonds of friendship, trust, and/or useful systems of assigning loot equally and fairly. Now, the RNG will decide if one player gets 3 top quality pieces before another even gets 1.

You eliminate miss chance to eliminate some of the "luck" in the game, then introduce a loot system where only luck is allowed. This is hypocritical.

And how can you justify saying that, because someone has better luck with the RNG, they should give their piece to the leader to assign via DKP, etc.? A lot harder to do, than if the leader has the pieces before they show up in a player's bag, and certainly inconvenient this way if a kin assigns more than just 2nd (or 1st) age symbols via DKP. Some people value effort over luck...

Turbine...think first, please...this is a good option for pugs and groups formed with the instance finder, perhaps. But show some respect to established kins who want to continue using Master Loot. Why would you remove a valued option completely? And if you insist on using the new loot chances, then keep Master Loot and have 12 (or whatever number) hidden rolls for the potential for each piece to drop, but showing up in Master Loot, rather than individual player bags...

At the very least, I beg you to reconsider this for the end-game raid content in February. Almost only raiding kins will be attempting T2 content, if you do your job well, and I can't see them enjoying the divisions that this new loot assignment will cause.

If you have people in your kin who end up with BoE jewelry that they refuse to allow be distributed via DKP as per your rules, then at the very least you'll now have a way to ferret out those greedy folk and set them free to find another kin.

Yes, it'll be slightly more of a hassle, but that's it. It won't change loot distribution for end-game raiding kins unless they have people who are only in it for themselves.

[Ulanor_EU]

They've turned one Dol-Guldur 3-Man into a six man, not all of them. It is my understanding that Dungeons was rather long and overly complicated for a 3-Man anyway.

oh i see, I read it as dungeons not Dungeons. Trouble is its the Dungeons my friends need LOL, and I didnt find it that difficult just long, and doing 6 people through there makes me shudder.

[Crell_1]

Except its BoE so you can still pass things round etc, no more luck involved than there ever was if you have a sensible group.

The GOLD quality loot is still bind-on-acquire

[Darth_Carl]

Yes but all the stuff each player gets will be specific to their class in itemisation, so some odd builds aside there is little reason you'd ant to move it to anyone else. Obviously if 2 of the same class are in a group and they get varying loot that's a different matter. But it should be possible to code for them getting the same loot so even that's only a possible issue.

p.s. @ Devs: any idea on when we might see this new loot system go game wide?

[BirdofHermes]

um... is he still Gandalf the Grey at this point in the story? I know the setting for these 3 mans is pre-fellowship time, but the second half seems to be set in Return of the King times...

So how will this work? We are going to meet Gimli and co, but then meet them again when we arrive at the various instances through the book quests?!

The storyline really is falling apart isn't it, and it was this games strongest asset not so long ago. It seamlessly fit into the books, now it steps all over them in a vain attempt to correlate it into every aspect of the book.

I hope you are modifying the book quests to reflect these new instances.

That's adorable, you both think they actually care about storylines or consistency.
These 3 instances are about milking The Hobbit films, nothing more. Heck, even the new Stone Giants are actually made of stone, like in those movies.

The Devs aren't really invoking timelord powers in this cluster as far as I can tell. In LOTRO, time is dependant upon area, hence, Lothlorien is always frozen at that one date (can't remember, but it's feburary). Bree and Rivendell are earlier. Since these instances are scalable from fairly low (20?) to max level, they should not be viewed as the next step in the plot of the Epics, but rather a new plotline that starts earlier (like I.4.1) and continues onward. So to new characters, there won't be any odd timing.

Can you explain to these new characters how they wound up in Mirkwood and back? They never passed Moria or the Gap of Rohan. :P

[Idiotvillage]

Can someone please tell me turbine point cost of instance hub? Also does this price include the second half of the hub to be released next year?

[Migtus]

Will the lieutenant still be unbeatable? It's kind of pointless for you to make the instance scaleable to a HARDER level if the challenge is already nigh impossible, if not completely so, already!

As for the other instances, I look forward to seeing new content (especially Iorbar, which I actually found a bit more fun than Goblin-town), as well as getting to run SG again at 85. Thank you Turbine!

[Lestache]

Will the lieutenant still be unbeatable? It's kind of pointless for you to make the instance scaleable to a HARDER level if the challenge is already nigh impossible, if not completely so, already!

As for the other instances, I look forward to seeing new content (especially Iorbar, which I actually found a bit more fun than Goblin-town), as well as getting to run SG again at 85. Thank you Turbine!

0.o? Unbeatable?

[Daec]

Iorbar's Peak is pretty easy.
Goblin town is easy enough, challenge is a bit of a pain to get if you don't have the right class make up.
Scuttledales .... impossible

[0987654321]

this new loot system is such BS. people can just buy any loot they want now. this is the first change that has made me want to quit this game. i put up with P2W in the moors, i put up with no instances at rohan release. but this loot change...if it doesnt go back to how it was, i dont expect ill be playing this game much longer