Official Discussion: A letter from Kate Paiz 2013

[SabrielofLorien]

I think this is one of the best drafted communiques from WB/T in recent times.

All looks to be very good. Time will tell and implementations may change but all in all a good step forward.

I'm very much looking forward to the skill pruning. I've run out of fingers and toes and my nose can heal up from all the face-rolling.

Housing updates will be much looked too. Hopefully all the suggestion forums will have been gleaned for recommendations from all the years past. Lots of good stuff there if you data mine it.

[Trobon]

Don't be. There's a HUGE wasted revenue stream there for the Store.

Want another chest in your house? Sure, that'll be 645-995 TP.

Want more indoor cosmetic hooks? 150-295 TP should cover it. Same goes for outdoor.

Want access to services like crafting, legendary npcs? Ok, fork over 995-1295 TP.

Want a house wardrobe that allows you to store house cosmetics instead of keeping them in your vault/chests? 775-995 TP.

I'm just guessing on the TP costs, but you know that's why they are doing it.

If most people are like me, they will buy these things and Turbine will reap the rewards.

Indeed. And I personally agree with it. If they improve housing a little for free they can charge for luxuries. People will get improvements, Turbine will get money, the game will go on longer. Since I like improvements, am willing to spend a little (I buy an $8 pack along with my VIP each month), and want the game to last as long as possible its a win-win-win in my book.

[Ayrolen]

Don't be. There's a HUGE wasted revenue stream there for the Store.

Want another chest in your house? Sure, that'll be 645-995 TP.

Want more indoor cosmetic hooks? 150-295 TP should cover it. Same goes for outdoor.

Want access to services like crafting, legendary npcs? Ok, fork over 995-1295 TP.

Want a house wardrobe that allows you to store house cosmetics instead of keeping them in your vault/chests? 775-995 TP.

I'm just guessing on the TP costs, but you know that's why they are doing it.

If most people are like me, they will buy these things and Turbine will reap the rewards.

Precisely, and I say, good for them! I have close to 10K TP just gathering dust, ready to spend on more fluff that makes my experience more fun and more utility for housing.

[Eartholloth]

Don't be. There's a HUGE wasted revenue stream there for the Store.

Want another chest in your house? Sure, that'll be 645-995 TP.

Want more indoor cosmetic hooks? 150-295 TP should cover it. Same goes for outdoor.

Want access to services like crafting, legendary npcs? Ok, fork over 995-1295 TP.

Want a house wardrobe that allows you to store house cosmetics instead of keeping them in your vault/chests? 775-995 TP.

I'm just guessing on the TP costs, but you know that's why they are doing it.

If most people are like me, they will buy these things and Turbine will reap the rewards.

I have posted on here many times that any major housing upgrade will be a big cost to its players more then likely. As far as extra hooks go, if they are adding extras I can see those having a price tag after a dev here posted what they have to do to just add one extra hook to every house. I am surprised that they are even bothering with housing cause it could back fire with the amount of people buying the stuff in the store if thats the route there going. They might not make the profits there looking for. Just have to wait & see what happens.

[0Pinger]

Turbine had this program years ago before Lotro launched with advocates, sentinels and world overseers back when Microsoft ran Turbine games. There was a nasty lawsuit demanding pay for volunteer hours filed against AOL. The entire program was disbanded to avoid any possibility of a similar lawsuit. Not only would significant distraction and costs for a law suit. There were a lot of pay dollars on the table.

The big question is whether Turbine - Warner Brothers - Time Warner wants to dip their foot into this potential tar pool based on historical data. One way to solve the issue would be to dismiss all the USA customer employees. Locate customer service out of the reach of USA courts and laws such as Asia, I suspect part of the reason for locating the EU service in the USA to minimize EU entanglements. Europe would not be a good place to put the customer service department. Maybe Canada.

Googled it and finally found the info, have to say US lawyer culture "I will sue you". Funcom had a tight contract you had to sign. Volunteers got no benefits from doing it, no accounts paid for; no misuse of Ark powers; they couldn't tell anyone they are in Ark program. If AOL didn't have a contract with their volunteers then that was their fault and same for MS for the same if they thought they would be hit and pulled the plug.

Do you go to the local charity shop and expect to be paid for being a volunteer, no.

[Krindus]

Oh Turbine, how you continue to crack me up. After a year full of bugs and delays you can't even properly post a link on your own forums without screwing it up and applying a fix...

I'm not sure what I was expecting out of this "letter", but whatever it may have been, this post didn't hit the mark. The Player's Council sounds nice, but it seems it will only effect a handful of select individuals, so that doesn't perk my interest.

Wildermore and the Expansion will also be nice, but we've already known these were coming for a long time. I am excited for the Hornburg, but it is going to take more than a huge battle to keep me interested. Lotro is starting to show its age (as expected, it's an old game), so I am more concerned with the little experiences offered than the grand Helm's Deep battle at the end.

Housing, now this will be a make or break. The hook system needs to be scraped, but if it can't be, then this revamp is going to take a lot of work. Some other things to look at include: the ability to sell a house for a refund, kinship or another group-related filter for neighborhoods (I want to live around people I know, not foreclosed homes), and more features to the neighborhood (crafting, mini-games, stables, etc). Of all things planned for 2013, this is probably the one I am more excited about.

Then Class Changes - not sure what to think on this, mostly because there is so little information available. Just what is it that takes so long to write up these little "letters" when they provide nothing we didn't already know anyway? Personally, I have no problem with my class or its skills right now - I use them all quite regularly. Be interesting to see where they go with this.

[Morat]

Fixed the link for you guys. It was directing to a secure page instead of the public one. Should be good now.





We've paid very careful attention to what others have done and where it has and has not worked as well as they'd hoped. We're making every effort to avoid those pitfalls.

I'm am far less worried about the politicking here because I feel the LOTRO community has shown time and time again to be one of the best, and most mature, in the games industry.

still sending me to a 'Forbidden' page. the suspense...

[Darkheart06]

I'm looking forward to Helms Deep and "epic" battles just as much as the next guy but I was also looking forward to mounted combat and look how that turned out.

Meaning, we all want these huge "Epic" things but it's obvious the LoTRO engine can't handle them. Mounted combat is the most unoptimized, unresponsive thing ever introduced to LoTRO and there's been little, if any, optimization done to it sine Rohan launched.

The engine and net code can barely handle 24v24 in the Ettenmoors and I consider it a good day if I can run top speed across the landscape on my warsteed longer than 5 minutes without hitching or rubberbanding multiple times, so I'm both looking forward to and dreading "thousands of orcs".

I hope Turbine is aware of the massive work that still remains to be done in the optimization department in both current aspects of LoTRO and future.

[Elenni]

Very pleased to hear about a housing revamp, though as others noted, I hope it is not entirely TP-based. With some add-ons like crafting instances, a more versatile hook system, kinship neighborhoods, and the ability to craft more decorations, I'd be willing to put some money into the TS to make improvements, but if it's just "pay for hooks, storage, and goodies" I doubt I'd invest. It really needs a bigger revamp than that, so I hope that's what's intended.

From the viewpoint of the "social" player (which can be a large customer-base and source of revenue), I was disappointed not to see anything mentioned about a crafting revamp, or player stores to supplement or replace the AH system. I love LOTRO for a lot of things, but the features for those of us who come for socializing and crafting etc. really fall far behind other games. We need more reasons to craft...we need a way to make a profit (or at least not lose money on the things we craft,) and from an adventurer's perspective, Turbine needs to make it worthwhile for crafters to make the things we need for gameplay, and a way for them to be available to us on a regular basis -- the AH is just not conducive to providing crafted items as a viable and necessary service. Will this ever get looked at? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this year :-(

Insofar as the Player Council, as others said, could be good, could be bad. What I suppose I would ask is, wouldn't it be very low-cost and high-reward to cull the forum posts and threads in the specific areas for improvements, suggestions and ideas? And even to respond once in a while? This, to me, seems like the no-brainer way to encourage people to communicate, to create a two-way street, and to make sure you're getting a good cross-sampling of comments, ideas and opinions. We all play this game for varying reasons, and we all have our areas of expertise or specialization. I just would like to think that the devs and product managers read the posts that people take so much time to make, and I'd love to see them participate on the forums more often. Responding to posts now and again, asking for more info -- that's the quickest public win-win you could get. Then it's not just a select group of users getting/giving feedback, and who gets to see it. We all do, and everyone is excited to (publicly) see that you care.

[Delaney]

With things like the recent dev chat, the U10 announcements (good and bad), and now today's letter, I am relieved and pleased to feel like communication is starting to open up at least a little bit. Thank you, and I hope it continues.

In that vein, I am happy to see the announcement of a players' council. There are undoubtedly all sorts of concerns as to how such is constructed and run, but overall, I think it's an awesome idea. Part of my personal frustration with the game's development in the last few years definitely had to do with feeling like players weren't being heeded very much. I will be looking forward to more details on this with great interest.

The new Rohan areas, large and small, sound great. RoR has been the best expansion since Moria for me and I look forward to there being more to enjoy.

A housing revamp is another bright spot. Going into the kinhouse provides a mini-history of some of our battles through the display of their trophies. Likewise, the decorations in my own house provide a record of my main's travels through Middle-earth. Being able to do more with these spaces will be welcome.

I do have some mixed feelings about the class adjustments, though the main response is optimistic fear. From an overall game standpoint, a judicious review doesn't seem amiss and could hopefully provide a good refresh for them all. The main concern here would be that class skills aren't over-simplified. I think that having different options and different ways to build one's character is a great strength. Making things too cookie-cutter would be detrimental in this respect.

On a personal level, my main is a burglar, and I can't imagine having another primary class. But in my opinion, while other classes have been greatly expanded from their original SoA roles, the burglar has not been. In addition, their primary utility role seems to have been negated/neglected while they were patch-worked into a single target DPS-dealer. Now the interim between U10 and U11 looks like it will result in an initial nerf for my burg with a large loss of crit (apparently until new armour is obtained to replace the recently-obtained Hytbold sets *sigh*). For the rest of the time in between those two updates, I have the oddest feeling that it will somehow be a period of limbo. This is only my gut-feeling mind you, with regard to my own play, and certainly not fact.

It's been suggested that the U10 stat changes are a precursor to large class changes and I can only hope so. The interim effects are not at all good for a few classes, which in all honestly will likely be something I find unpleasant for however many months in my own play. But I can at least try to hope it will lead to something amazing. I would be beyond thrilled to think that the class adjustment for burglars could bring back more of a debuffing/utility role (as the character creation screen *still* claims they have) that would be utilized in the game-play to come.

There is apparently a lot going on in Turbine's offices and a new (visible) infusion of energy into the game. It seems like things at least theoretically could be going in a good direction again. We'll see, of course. I'll hope it turns out well.

[Morat]

I welcome this, if done well, particularly on the warden. Because we can have so many gambits, Turbine just keeps adding more as you level, never actually replacing lower-level ones, just giving us longer gambit builders needed to make them. Recently, Turbine has taken the approach of trying to keep lower-level gambits 'relevant' by forcing us to use them in very specific orders from lowest to highest to get the biggest bang out of the buck. Personally, I find this approach mostly wrong-headed, forcing our rotations onto rails, and I would be pleased as punch to see weaker gambits supplanted and made stronger.

My biggest concern for the class is Turbine's statement that they want the warden to 'return' to being an avoidance tank (which it never really was, it has been a self-healing tank to compensate in part for weaker mitigations). As I've stated elsewhere avoidance tanks don't really work, because avoiding 9 out of 10 hits is great until that 10th comes and you're dead.

I hope and actually believe, that Turbine learned its lession with the fiasco (inadvertant as it was) of RoI, and will do everything possible to avoid a repeat of a multi-month breaking of the class, followed by a scramble to cobble together a hodge-podge of fixes. Here's hoping!

[Eartholloth]

Very pleased to hear about a housing revamp, though as others noted, I hope it is not entirely TP-based. With some add-ons like crafting instances, a more versatile hook system, kinship neighborhoods, and the ability to craft more decorations, I'd be willing to put some money into the TS to make improvements, but if it's just "pay for hooks, storage, and goodies" I doubt I'd invest. It really needs a bigger revamp than that, so I hope that's what's intended.

From the viewpoint of the "social" player (which can be a large customer-base and source of revenue), I was disappointed not to see anything mentioned about a crafting revamp, or player stores to supplement or replace the AH system. I love LOTRO for a lot of things, but the features for those of us who come for socializing and crafting etc. really fall far behind other games. We need more reasons to craft...we need a way to make a profit (or at least not lose money on the things we craft,) and from an adventurer's perspective, Turbine needs to make it worthwhile for crafters to make the things we need for gameplay, and a way for them to be available to us on a regular basis -- the AH is just not conducive to providing crafted items as a viable and necessary service. Will this ever get looked at? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this year :-(

Insofar as the Player Council, as others said, could be good, could be bad. What I suppose I would ask is, wouldn't it be very low-cost and high-reward to cull the forum posts and threads in the specific areas for improvements, suggestions and ideas? And even to respond once in a while? This, to me, seems like the no-brainer way to encourage people to communicate, to create a two-way street, and to make sure you're getting a good cross-sampling of comments, ideas and opinions. We all play this game for varying reasons, and we all have our areas of expertise or specialization. I just would like to think that the devs and product managers read the posts that people take so much time to make, and I'd love to see them participate on the forums more often. Responding to posts now and again, asking for more info -- that's the quickest public win-win you could get. Then it's not just a select group of users getting/giving feedback, and who gets to see it. We all do, and everyone is excited to (publicly) see that you care.

Yeah I am not for this select group giving feedback. I dont know why it needs to be that way.

[Wanderv]

Wildermore - sounds good, I always love the Spring update as the epics and landscape quest lines, such as the Eorlsmead one, are some of my favourite bits of the game. However, as Western Rohan is smaller than the East, and you're splitting it into two pieces, will we therefore be getting less landmass with the expansion? (or will there be many quests in a smaller area, southern-Evendim/Moria style?) Slightly disappointed this wasn't the Eastfold, but I hope we'll get to see Aldburg and the surrounding area en-route to Gondor (unless we go round to western Gondor... but this is rather early speculation )

West Rohan - really looking forward to seeing this too, though as mentioned above, the smaller size is an issue... unless there is lots of focus on Helm's Deep and proper city quests for Edoras (don't just make it a hub in the way that we've seen before with Bree/Caras Galdhorn etc - this should be a truly large city (especially considering Bree is a town).

Wildermore isn't in Western Rohan, it's Eastern

[Nyrion]

Insofar as the Player Council, as others said, could be good, could be bad. What I suppose I would ask is, wouldn't it be very low-cost and high-reward to cull the forum posts and threads in the specific areas for improvements, suggestions and ideas? And even to respond once in a while? This, to me, seems like the no-brainer way to encourage people to communicate, to create a two-way street, and to make sure you're getting a good cross-sampling of comments, ideas and opinions. We all play this game for varying reasons, and we all have our areas of expertise or specialization. I just would like to think that the devs and product managers read the posts that people take so much time to make, and I'd love to see them participate on the forums more often. Responding to posts now and again, asking for more info -- that's the quickest public win-win you could get. Then it's not just a select group of users getting/giving feedback, and who gets to see it. We all do, and everyone is excited to (publicly) see that you care.

The problem with this is the people who frequent this forum are oftentimes utterly self-absorbed. You can look at topics like Housing, Kinships, the recent forced emotes shebang, Wardens, Hunters and Burglars in general for that kind of attitude.

Personally I'd rather a slightly more closed off form of feedback(to an extent) so certain issues don't get prioritised over others simply because people yell so much louder about them here.

[Wanderv]

Guys did you mention that Western Rohan mentioned in the same category as Wildermore and wasn't called actually an expansion?

Sapience could you clarify this?

[ElldintheWise]

I would like to see substantial changes to permissions and the introduction of kin house chest transaction logging. It would be nice to be able to implement item withdrawl limits to prevent kin members from robbing the kinship blind as well as see who is taking out of the chests.

Other games already have this implemented, but LoTRO seems to be behind the times with Kinship management tools and permissions.

Just my opinion.

[Haradim]

Yeah I am not for this select group giving feedback. I dont know why it needs to be that way.

It's generally easier to listen to a few specific people who (seem to) know what they are talking about than it is to acknowledge everyone. A few respected players "representing" different parts of the community is, theoretically, more likely to result in dialogue than flamewar, not just between Turbine and those players, but between players and those council people.

[ElldintheWise]

Really, just look at glff on any server then talk about maturity.

Yes.

Truth.

[Sapience]

Guys did you mention that Western Rohan mentioned in the same category as Wildermore and wasn't called actually an expansion?

Sapience could you clarify this?

Reading a little too much into it. If you check the previous comments we've made Wildermore is part of Update 11 (as currently planned). The additional comments are about future plans, towards the end of the year. With more detail being provided later.

[Trobon]

Reading a little too much into it. If you check the previous comments we've made Wildermore is part of Update 11 (as currently planned). The additional comments are about future plans, towards the end of the year. With more detail being provided later.

Oh god. Sapience just confirmed it IS an expansion. I know because I read the perfect amount into this.

I kid, I kid. :P

[Tailborn]

All around a nicely written letter! After the Twitter chat I leapt in-game to inform some of my kinnies and they were as happy as I was overall Particularly happy about the announcement of the Housing Revamp and as nice as more of Rohan sounds I actually haven't even stepped foot into the Eastemnet, and I payed for it months ago! ^^

Only thing I would have liked to see would be information on a possible Kinship revamp! But I especially enjoyed hearing about increased relationships between Turbine and the players, pretty integral I should think

[Maebious]

Firefox user. Link broken. Message 403 Forbidden.

Fix please.

[PKCrichton]

Players Council
This has the potential to be a very good thing depending on the players selected to take part in these roundtable discussions. There are many of us who have come up with very detailed ideas on ways to revamp a number of the games systems to make them more lore appropriate, more open for all players to take part regardless of casual or raider status and many other aspects of the game for revision. One issue is how is this any different from Palantir? Isn't that the point of that program to get solid player feedback and discussions?

Western Rohan
I really look forward to seeing more of Rohan and with it the expansion of more Mounted Combat which I find quite enjoyable. I loved when we first got into beta build 1 and were riding around finding all the hidden places of the world like the Monument to Eorl.

Housing
This is something I've been looking forward to a revamp of since shortly after the system was first introduced. I love the housing concept. I even lost my house and all its contents once or twice when I took a break from the game before you changed it so houses simply get locked instead of abandoned. One of the most important things here is how you decide to handle the players who take a break and come back. Its one thing to lose your house but escrow has you lose all contents 28 days after the house is abandoned. This really needs to be changed to be either permanent escrow or 28 days from your next character login if the house is abandoned while you aren't online. This escrow aspect is one of the most important problems with housing as it stands. Another aspect thats important is if you keep the hooks system then you should really basically triple the number of hooks in every home, make it so if a piece of furniture fits in Thin then it also fits in Small, Large and Special, same with exterior if its Small it fits in Large and Huge. More interaction with housing items, we should be able to pull up and sit in any chair, hammock, bench, stool, bed there is. Housing Guards was a GREAT addition but they need their own special slot and more variety. Items like the armour from Fil Gasha that we wear over our gear as a disguise would be great, something like Robes of a Cargul. Kinships with housing need more control, you should be able to set things what rank/person has access what features of housing from chest1, chest 2, chest 3, decoration, etc. It shouldn't be all or nothing as it currently is. The same should be the case with Deluxe housing and chest 1 and chest 2 as well.

Class Adjustments
I play 3 classes 2 of them at end game Runekeeper and Loremaster two of the more complex classes. I started the playing with Shadows of Angmar as a Loremaster and he is still my primary character. Both of these classes are quite diverse and I really feel there isn't much when it comes to skill adjustments that needs to be done on them. The side of the game that needs work when it comes to our characters are their companions the Captain Herald and Loremaster Pets. These are the two aspects of these two classes that has been overlooked forever. We keep getting new Herald armaments and a new pet once in a while but really it doesn't address the horrible nature that these two have. The dps minimal, most of the skills are really weak, any aura granted is still the same weak aura its been since SoA days when we had max 4k Morake and Power. Yes our classes have a lot of skills but for the multiple roles that we play while soloing and then grouping up for other content this diversity is needed or we will be pigeon holed into one role which shouldn't be the case. Runekeepers I only have one real issue with and thats Resurrection skills. In combat you have only a preemptive resurrection skill that dispels any time you and your target go out of combat. Because of how highly limited our res is we try to come up with who is the best target to put this on from the start of a fight so if its a long one we can get another for use later in the fight as when things are in dire need. A number of raids players go down so fast no matter how good you are at healing. You really need an in combat res that you trigger post mortem. These are the only changes to these classes that I personally would endorse and enjoy as things currently stand. Its very dangerous to say you are going to streamline skills as honestly for my classes they have already been streamlined and I don't see how you can do so again and not dumb down the classes or remove roles. Doing so will lose you players who enjoy the game and the requirements of the classes.

[Rapunzel666]

I am grateful that housing and a player council are in the make, despite housing probably making a dent in my wallet !
oh, concerning player council: I hope players from each server and timezone will be considered, not just us american players (which might be considered favoured, due to language, timezone and one law system)..

[Nightwisshark111]

Player council:
sounds interesting, but maybe a bit too narrow. It will basically be a group of herdcore players stating what they want in the game. I believe a mailbox system would be better, in wich ideas can be sent to turbine directly, and they'll be reviewd there, after wich they can choose weather it should be implemented in the game. (I know there is something like that on the forums, but I don't get the impression turbine does anything with that or even reads it).

New Regions:
Sound great, although I will have to wonder what the costs are going to be. I would love it, if done like Great River, with many quest reward designs from older areas. Or design new armor, but make sure there is variation in the rewards (one of my biggest letdowns of rohan). Besides that I hope turbbine will take a look at cosmetic weapons, since that is something (as a person who loves outfitting in LotrO) I really want to see in the game.

Fingers crossed the devs will read these pages and think about what is said here