Do Turbine ever ask what we want?

[Ragekiss]

We take in a lot of feedback. ... So we have a pretty clear picture of what players are saying and what they like/dislike.

This struck me as something sad - because I don't see the game getting any better for players. They know what we want, but are not changing the game to match this.

[Crell_1]

In terms of percentage of player base? Yes. All populations fluctuate over time, but PvMP and Raiders have held roughly the same position in terms of percentage of playerbase for a very long time. It's roughly the same base percentage as it always has been. It's on par (roughly) with PvMP in terms of overall percentage.

Lets just see what Sapience says.

He has in the past stated a 'single digit percentage' in relation to some PvMP metric. Read http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...17#post6781517 and the resulting discussion.

Could you please give us the actual single digit percentage? Could you talk about what qualifies a user as 'PvMP' player and 'Raider' to turbine? (Simply setting foot in the ettenmoors? gaining some level of renown in some predetermined period?, X time spent inside a 12+ man space?)

[bastiat1]

We take in a lot of feedback. The forums, twitter, facebook, certain third party sites, comments on game sites, guild sites, surveys, and the data pulled from the servers. So we have a pretty clear picture of what players are saying and what they like/dislike.

I was surprised when I cancelled my three accounts last week that you don't do "exit interviews" when you lose a subscriber. I would have thought that would be useful feedback- especially from someone that had subscribed without lapse since shortly after release.

In all fairness though, the feedback probably wouldn't have been anything you don't already know. I'm guessing at this point that Turbine knows its customer base exceedingly well. People need to understand that they make decisions with that knowledge in hand. It doesn't make sense for a lot of people but that's because they either don't appreciate the bigger picture, or just don't like it.

[Ferthcott]

Could you talk about what qualfies a user as 'PvMP' player and 'Raider' to turbine? (Simply setting foot in the ettenmoors? gaining some level of renown in some predetermined period?, X time spent inside a 12+ man space?)

Thank you. It looked like everyone was too happy to start that kind of discussion in the middle instead, one more pointless time.

I was surprised when I cancelled my three accounts last week that you don't do "exit interviews" when you lose a subscriber. I would have thought that would be useful feedback- especially from someone that had subscribed without lapse since shortly after release.

Oh, so these moved from "obsolete" to "non-existent" then? Good to know... or not.



Also, if reaching out to forum base eventually ends up in 100-ish people regurgitating the same stuff over and over again in every "tell community team" thread possible, maybe there's a lesson in that. A lesson that tells you not to reach to Facebook base, to random-site base, or, because coherent and in-depth feedback is obviously at its best there, to Twitter base. Same lesson could also offer a hint where to look, when you want to know what players think - how about a "place" where they actually... play?

[ColorSpecs]

LOL, yeah. Can't wait. :-)


And let me be clear. I'm not an fan boy and I'm certainly not making excuses for Turbine. I'm just illustrating that anyone can spin anything into a positive, especially when dodging certain questions.


I agree with you. I have seen compelling evidence on Gladden that raiders are leaving in droves... me included. And the reasons behind the exodus are clear and well documented by the many dedicated raiders expressing their opinion on these forums.

Yeah, I know what you mean. But I hope he answers those questions, or at least considers them. In PVP his numbers remain static because for every veteran lost, a f2p noob replaces him. They've made the fishbowl so small in pvp that those numbers don't really impact the overall game. Raiders do though because they don't just raid, the run all the other content, repeatedly. They're the ones maximizing those rep factions, grinding those LI's and Virtues, running those zones over and over again for alts. Not just to 20, but to level cap. So there's huge revenue implications to losing that kind of raider.

Now, I know Sapience used to be that kind of player, so he knows what we mean when we say "raider". So if he says that type of player is still playing LOTRO then we need to find out how they're getting those numbers.

PS, I see player council mentioned here. We should leave them out of this and hopefully they stay out of the thread. It'll just get it locked; and it doesn't pertain to them anyway.

[Namesse]

For those who recall the Tell the Community Team threads, three questions, every week, for a couple of years. Unfortunately those became a case of the same 75-100 people answering every week and rarely did we see any new answers from new people. We actually got to the point where we could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the general sentiment, typical response, and average number of responses to any question we asked.

Has any thing changed in response to the general sentiment? Or if the questions were re-posted today would the answers still be the same because nothing has changed?

In one respect, the players are guilty of thinking only incrementally for changes, and not generally for sweeping revisions, but I think that's a general human trait.

[Crell_1]

I was surprised when I cancelled my three accounts last week that you don't do "exit interviews" when you lose a subscriber. I would have thought that would be useful feedback- especially from someone that had subscribed without lapse since shortly after release.

I have been under the assumption for years that the exit interviews are easy to miss. Almost every time I hear someone cancel they don't manage to find the survey, if they were even aware one existed. You might want to file the information directly via the support commenting system since you didn't get the opportunity to do so at the time of your cancellation. Be sure to note sufficient details to verify that it affected all 3 accounts you canceled.

In all fairness though, the feedback probably wouldn't have been anything you don't already know. I'm guessing at this point that Turbine knows its customer base exceedingly well. People need to understand that they make decisions with that knowledge in hand. It doesn't make sense for a lot of people but that's because they either don't appreciate the bigger picture, or just don't like it.

It does help one consider that they may not have expected to learn anything 'new' from their Player Council members, they may simply have wanted an NDAed space where they could try and work up solutions as a result of being able to share more of the hows and whys.

[Sapience]

Has any thing changed in response to the general sentiment? Or if the questions were re-posted today would the answers still be the same because nothing has changed?

In one respect, the players are guilty of thinking only incrementally for changes, and not generally for sweeping revisions, but I think that's a general human trait.

In my personal opinion I believe there has been a shift overall and the number of new players who would potentially benefit and be interested in participating has reached a point that bringing back the TTCT threads would be beneficial. Which is sort of why I used those as my example.

To your point of incremental vs sweeping changes, I'd counter that most people tend to think in terms of personal desires and not overall benefit. This often leads to a "you never listen to us" when the reality is "you didn't listen to me". We may infact have listened to a majority, who did not agree with your sentiments. Again, as most players base the concept of minority and majority off forum posts, there's a disconnect there between perception and reality.

[Horseyboy]

Another way of finding out what people want: choose a number of different categories (wants) i.e. housing, crafting, pvp, mounted combat, cosmetics etc. then tell people they have 500 (or more/less) coins to 'spend'. They can put as many as they like into a category to improve it but they ARE NOT allowed to spend more than the amount given - so the more they spend on a category, the less they will have to spend on other categories. For example, do they spend all 500 on one single category? Or do they spend 100 coins on 5 different categories? Or 50 coins on 10 categories? THEN - the bigwig decision-makers see how many coins where spent by ALL the players on the different categories. Et voila - they get to crack on and give us what we want (Ok, I realise it's probably not that easy, but hey - it's another idea!)

[Brastin]

In terms of percentage of player base? Yes. All populations fluctuate over time, but PvMP and Raiders have held roughly the same position in terms of percentage of playerbase for a very long time. It's roughly the same base percentage as it always has been. It's on par (roughly) with PvMP in terms of overall percentage.

For some reason i just can't believe this. I am playing lotro for like 5-6 years since Codemaster started it. We had all sorts of raiding kinships. From 100 members we had like 40 active raiders from start (rift time) and like 5-6 pvpers and the rest was more casual and stuff. i have seen many kinships then and the numbers where almost the same. Ofcourse there where some PVP kinships aswell but nowhere near as much as we had in raiding. I dont know where u got your percentage and stuff sapience but i speak of my 5-6 years of playing your game experience.

I still cant believe why u guys cant see that raiding is very important in your game. If u give us a nice quality raid like The Rift i can almost say for sure the kinship i am in now will be bumped up from 6-7 active members a day to 15-22 active members atleast and i think many kinships will get bumped up again with active members. They got bored with the end game u delivered (The last Erebor raid cluster was tbh one of the worst raiding experience i got in my opinion) and u need to give our ex members (your ex players) some really high quality end game experience again to come back and if u do they will!!!.

[Crell_1]

Again, as most players base the concept of minority and majority off forum posts, there's a disconnect there between perception and reality.

In-game usage metrics often only speak to the current reality, and not the desired reality. As a result players only see the vocal feedback of what people either want to change or stay the same (as a result of significantly liking <X> or just in vocal statments of threads speaking <anti-X> as an attempt to counter.)

I'd love to see the TTCT threads return. I'd also like to see players driven there from the launcher so its hopefully more than just the 'forum regulars' participating.

There comes a point after all, where you probably don't need any of the forum regulars to tell you what their opinion is, often.

[Crell_1]

For some reason i just can't believe this.

It's likely the fact that Turbine's definitions are different than our own, which is why I'd like Turbine to share them.

Raider-
PvMPer-

The other possibility which is easily believed is that general population is down such that the kinds of players you notice leaving are equally represented by the other kinds of players leaving.

[Thermight]

Turbine has skewed its own data with Hobbit Presents. "Wow look at all the raiders still logging in!"
The login numbers are intentionally padded now in the equivalent of a media site trying to up its Comscore ratings by giving incentives to visit each day.

Now the so called end game raiders like myself just login once a day on a toon that actually has space, grab hobbit present, logoff, go back to RIFT or other game. That will last probably 2-3 weeks for me then I'll fill up bag space on all my chars and not login anymore.

[Ragekiss]

For some reason i just can't believe this. I am playing lotro for like 5-6 years since Codemaster started it. We had all sorts of raiding kinships. From 100 members we had like 40 active raiders from start (rift time) and like 5-6 pvpers and the rest was more casual and stuff. I dont know where u got your percentage and stuff sapience but i speak of my 5-6 years of playing your game experience.

Maybe the reason the percentage is still the same is that as Raiders left - players in all other group also left in the same proportion. So it's not that Raiders have left and somehow the percent of players raiding is the same - it is this: raiders and all other types of players have stopped playing and left the game.

[Erlessa]

Sapience said raiding population has stayed the same but I wonder how is it even possible to know that. Unless they have a player database tagged RAIDER then it's not really possible considering there's little to no link between actual completions (or attempts) of raids by the general population and the raider population. Unless they only counted running t2 raids which... no, not even that. Not this time. (Unless you didn't count Smaug T2c, then you could possibly get actual info).

What I'm getting at is I doubt this is true when a lot of servers report raiding kins shrinking or disbanding, I know it's happening on my server at least.

Farming t2 smaug isn't raiding. It's farming.

[Namesse]

I suspect that Turbine includes anyone as a raider who does a T1 raid or a skirm raid; technically they are raids even if the content is easy to complete. It's my hope that some of them want to some day take on the bigger challenges in the tougher raids, but I'm not sure what their reaction will be when they can't just walk in to a T2 raid and down the boss because there has been little challenging content to prepare them up to that point, or if there was a challenge it can easily be bypassed in their leveling journey.

[Schinderhannes]

For those who recall the Tell the Community Team threads, three questions, every week, for a couple of years. Unfortunately those became a case of the same 75-100 people answering every week and rarely did we see any new answers from new people. We actually got to the point where we could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the general sentiment, typical response, and average number of responses to any question we asked.

I just want to add here that you cannot really expect a high number of different players/forum users to use these threads but that shouldn't result in feedback thats not relevant or representative because:
1. Some, especially those who are not the first aware of these events, may feel represented by answers already posted and don't feel the need to post the same argument again. Just in other words.
Some may feel the need to just "/sign" comments but then it just feel weird to behave like that.
2. Or the fact people reappear very often could also mean, that they really care alot and put much more effort in their thoughts. Some may have spoken with a lot of other players, or others just have a lot of play experience that results in well founded opinion.
3. New players cannot really have those kind of intentions. They are just experiencing/learning the game, therefore less demands loaded and pointed towards people like you.

Everyone avoids people that behave very demanding... I can understand this. But please, don't let the game suffer from this.

I know, again someone who's demanding things on the forums. I just desperatly want to improve the game.
If TtCT are coming back, I'm becoming more quieter, maybe...

[Seschat]

Not to be fanboyish, but in my short experience, I've found Turbine to be one of the better companies when it comes to responsiveness to customer feedback. Close, but not hitting the mark set by Paragon Studios in their last years before the shutdown, but well ahead of Square/Enix, and leagues beyond the service level provided by Cryptic/Perfect World Entertainment. So hurrah for Turbine!

[Darlgon]

In terms of percentage of player base? Yes. All populations fluctuate over time, but PvMP and Raiders have held roughly the same position in terms of percentage of playerbase for a very long time. It's roughly the same base percentage as it always has been. It's on par (roughly) with PvMP in terms of overall percentage.

Sorry boss, but... you mean they are so small as to be microscopic, just like they have been for the last few years? Because I know very few real raiders who have stuck with Lotro, and even fewer PvMP. Matter of fact, in other games I play, they point to Lotro as the EXAMPLE of FAILED PVMP and raiding.

[Namesse]

Sorry boss, but... you mean they are so small as to be microscopic, just like they have been for the last few years? Because I know very few real raiders who have stuck with Lotro, and even fewer PvMP. Matter of fact, in other games I play, they point to Lotro as the EXAMPLE of FAILED PVMP and raiding.

OTOH, most of my kin PvP's; for some, that's all they do in Lotro and pve doesn't even register. Some of the top ranked creeps keep their freeps in kin, so both sides are represented. This really just points out perception, I could easily say that 80% of people I know pvp at least once a week.

[NukeTheLag]

We already know how Turbine defined “raider” when they picked the Player’s Council, and, at best, it seemed to mean someone who ran Skraids and the occasional T1 Smaug.

The bottom line is that raiding in LOTRO is collapsing. (This is separate from questions about whether this is good or bad from either an aesthetic or financial POV). I don’t know if Turbine's data-mining is flawed or whether this is corporate spin, but it is preposterous to claim that there hasn’t been a significant decrease in the number of raiders.

When I began playing on Arkenstone about 4 years ago, there were about 3 hardcore raiding kins and about 8-10 more casual raiding kins. Right now, there is not a single hardcore raiding kin on the server. There are maybe about 4-5 kins more casual raiding kins. From what I am able to garner, this is pretty much the same pattern as the other servers. Also, even those kins that are left are finding it harder to put a group together. The days of 20 people signing up on raid night and figuring out who doesn’t make the cut are gone. Now it’s 8 people show up on raid night, PUG the rest and keep our fingers crossed.

(And for the inevitable argument that I can’t possibly know what everyone is doing, actually with raiding I can. The hardcore raiders know each other. They are in competition with each other. (Or were when there was something to be in competition over and enough people to compete). It was news when Kin X beat such and such wing. Or when so and so left Kin X to go to Kin Y and so forth.) Within a reasonable degree of certainty all of the raiders who have been all over these forums on this subject for the past 6 months know what they are talking about when they say that raiding is completely falling apart in this game).

And this is before the release of Helm’s Deep. Once people have to plop down $50 for the next round of content, even more people are going to have a reality check about the state of the game. Also, there are some people who might like to stick around, but have seen enough of their kin and other raiders move on to greener pastures. Eventually it just reaches a point of critical mass.

[welden]

I am reasonably certain that there have been many ideas put forth in these forums over the last 6 years that have been openly discussed at Turbine. Some have in fact, been implemented no doubt. But the majority are probably on a list of things that "we the developers will unlikely be able to do".

I wish more resources could be allocated towards this game so that more things could be done on the actual dev's 'wish list'. I would give all my hobbit presents just to see what they have on it...

Welden

[ShadowKidd]

2) If the population level has remained stable then why is there less and less content to support that player base? It makes sense that there's less content if there were less players. But same amount of players and less content doesn't compute.

This, frankly, doesn't make any sense to me. To say that there is less raiding content now than at any other point in LOTRO's history just doesn't compute. How long did we go with the Rift and Helegrod as the only raids? And CD and Uru as the only 6 man content? Open up your instance finder today and see how many scaled instances and skirmishes there are and you will see my point.

Is there 1 'new' raid right now? Sure. Has there always only ever been 1 'new' raid at a time? Yes. Except now we have a lot more raid content to go back and play, on level, then we have ever had.

[Steppenwulf]

In terms of percentage of player base? Yes. All populations fluctuate over time, but PvMP and Raiders have held roughly the same position in terms of percentage of playerbase for a very long time. It's roughly the same base percentage as it always has been. It's on par (roughly) with PvMP in terms of overall percentage.

This scares me. What I take from this is Raiders are as important to WB/Turbine as PvMP players are. We know how important these guys are around here. Just saying.

[SavinDwarf]

I'm not sure why people just can't accept Sapience's statement about the percentage of raiders and PvMP being about the same and that as a percent of the total things are pretty stable, Why would he not tell us the truth? Ignoring conspiracy theorists who are out there, if this statement is true then what has changed?

The answer, at least to me, is obvious. Its what happens in every MMORPG game. When the game first comes out we are concentrated into a few zones and leveling together. As the game gets older we have a lot more zones/areas and players are starting alts so we are spread over a lot more levels and a lot more areas. Even if the population was the same we could expect to see about a 90% reduction in average density with occasional spikes for new content.