Official Discussion: Helm's Deep NDA Drop.

[Palentian]

Why would the poster need to purchase HD to experience the creep changes?

(S)He wouldn't. They're coming along anyway. Purchasing HD would be for the quests and BB(EB). But (s)he asked about PvMP, also.

[Sthrax]

The vast, vast, vast majority of players don't post on the forums. So I'm not surprised that you can find a ton of people who dislike the changes who don't post on the forums.

It's also amusing that you state this like it means anything. If you think it does, I'll sit you down and tell you all about my insanely hot girlfriend from Canada some day.

That was exactly my point. And yes, my statement is as unsubstantiated and unverifiable as his was. It was deliberately meant to be so.

[Crell_1]

(S)He wouldn't. They're coming along anyway. Purchasing HD would be for the quests and BB(EB). But (s)he asked about PvMP, also.

Making the acquisition of some trait points part of completing HD content makes the purchase and play through effectively required for Freeping, where Freeps before could get by on leveling with existing purchases of scaling content.

[Rufus_T_Fyrfly]

This is only the case for a fairly short while. As is mentioned above by Aidus, once you hit 95 you should be in a pretty good position to have some hybridization in place.

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but if I want to try to hybridize, I have to purchase HD and reach cap? And from what I understand, it's only a few points.

Sounds like I was right about the MMO trinity being alive and well.

[Andthelion]

When people say "no one asked for this", they overlook how many times people have made this same type of comment that you're making here. It's something we had seen a lot of in various forms. Everything from there are too many skills, to the skills felt weak, or when we increased the cap there were complaints that there was nothing new just unexciting 'enhanced' skills or that when people took a break they came back to a screen filled with skills they couldn't remember how to use.

All of that feedback sent a very clear message.

So why couldnt those players just remove those skills from their skill bars and leave the rest of us to enjoy all our skills?

[frickinmuck]

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but if I want to try to hybridize, I have to purchase HD and reach cap? And from what I understand, it's only a few points.

That's one way of looking at it. Not how I'd personally view it. For one thing you won't necessarily need to purchase HD to reach cap. You can level other ways. And as far as character development goes, I am excited about having goals to work toward this expansion. I don't view that as a negative at all. Quite the contrary, I view it as a massive, massive positive. It's literally been YEARS since I had any excitement about where my end-game characters could go from here.

The non-hybridized character is still fun and playable. The more hybridized character may be even more so, and it's well within reach.

[Palentian]

Making the acquisition of some trait points part of completing HD content makes the purchase and play through effectively required for Freeping, where Freeps before could get by on leveling with existing purchases of scaling content.

Oh, I suppose it will be helpful, but not required. You're talking about 5 or 6 points (I think. Could be wrong. Might be 7) Again, if you don't want to buy don't. If those couple extra points are that important then I guess you'll be buying. Seems rather silly to do it just for the points, though.

[Andthelion]

The post was in no way snarky in the least but is something that people like yourself constantly claim while spitting out vile garbage yourself in the defense of this horrid offense. Quite frankly attitudes like yours is WHAT s wrong with this community, claim what you will but anyone with a brain in their head would know otherwise. Quite frankly you all act like an bunch of overly dramatic, overly emotional little children who take no responsibility for whatever venom they spit out or who they splash with it while doing it as long as it suits their needs and conveys their message the heck with whether it is correct. its amazing how posters like yourself can never say anything wrong or hurtful get the dev crew and the players that feel they have been poorly treated are nothing but vile little butt kissing creeps with no grip on realitry.

Been a gamer for over 35 years and one of the main things that is wrong with this game now is the commiunity .. its dead...

You do realise that every single one of your posts is full of this hate , venom and vile you keep speaking of, dont you?
But I guess thats ok

You have been a gamer for 35 years you say, so its safe to assume you are 35 then, may I politely suggest you act with a touch more maturity when on the forums and speaking to other people, because your attitude so far is abismal.

[Sthrax]

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but if I want to try to hybridize, I have to purchase HD and reach cap? And from what I understand, it's only a few points.

Sounds like I was right about the MMO trinity being alive and well.

One thing that people seem to gloss over with the "we'll get more points every level cap increase" is that the devs specifically said that in the future, they would probably add more ranks to existing parts of the tree as well as add new tiers to the tree. When I have seen this done in other games, the goal is to keep the same ratio of spec/off-spec points- in other words you may never get above 10-15% of your points in an off-spec if you want to do your spec well. I very much doubt we'll get much in the way of more points without being given a lot more things to spend them on in-spec to specifically keep us from going off-spec. The whole point of the penalty is to keep us from utilizing off-spec skills.

[Sapience]

this why feedback in beta was laughable cause they were not even willing to discuss the 2 point penalty not to mention stuff like deadly precision stuck behind a wall of needing critical eye to even get deadly precision and 504 critical rating is laughable which critical eye now has 5 ranks now

So why couldnt those players just remove those skills from their skill bars and leave the rest of us to enjoy all our skills?

For the same reason the doctor doesn't tell you, "oh just pretend you're healthy." It doesn't solve the problem.

[Crell_1]

Oh, I suppose it will be helpful, but not required. You're talking about 5 or 6 points (I think. Could be wrong. Might be 7) Again, if you don't want to buy don't. If those couple extra points are that important then I guess you'll be buying. Seems rather silly to do it just for the points, though.

Lets say its 5 or 6 points out of a stated max of 65. That's 7 or 9% of your base effectiveness. Certainly seems like it'd make an impact in PvMP.

[Rufus_T_Fyrfly]

That's one way of looking at it. Not how I'd personally view it. For one thing you won't necessarily need to purchase HD to reach cap. You can level other ways. And as far as character development goes, I am excited about having goals to work toward this expansion. I don't view that as a negative at all. Quite the contrary, I view it as a massive, massive positive. It's literally been YEARS since I had any excitement about where my end-game characters could go from here.

The non-hybridized character is still fun and playable. The more hybridized character may be even more so, and it's well within reach.

Ah I see. Thanks for replying hehe *sheepish grin*

I guess all we can do now is wait until the 18th to try it out.

[Palentian]

Lets say its 5 or 6 points out of a stated max of 65. That's 7 or 9% of your base effectiveness. Certainly seems like it'd make an impact in PvMP.

I didn't say it wouldn't be impactful. I said it wasn't REQUIRED. Impactful or not, it still seems rather silly to buy an Xpac just for a few points. Now that I think about it, I think those extra points are for CLASS deeds, not zone deeds. If there are a couple for zone deeds (slayer deeds, for example) I'm not aware of them. The extra class deed points you'll get anyway.

[Andthelion]

Actually, Sab's point about polls is valid. The "polls" that occurred during Beta were put forth as "Wholly accurate" at some 300 opinions. I don't have actual player numbers, but Facebook shows 285,000 "likes". If even half those people play, and half of THEM were in Beta 300 doesn't really count for much. This is why these polls are inaccurate. Heck, if even 10K were in Beta 300 is not so much.

According to the log in graphs readily available no beta phase ever reached 50000 logins for a whole week only about 40k to be more accurate, now if every one of those 40k logins were individual people and each person logged in just once a day that make 5714 beta players, but if you expand that and say that its more likely that people would log on more than once a day lets say twice, that now leaves 2857 players, 300 out of 2857 = 10.5% and 10.5% is a pretty damn good sample size.

http://lux-hdro.de/images/live/weekly-logins-us.png

[Aidus]

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but if I want to try to hybridize, I have to purchase HD and reach cap? And from what I understand, it's only a few points.

Sounds like I was right about the MMO trinity being alive and well.

I believe how effective and at exactly what level will really depend on class and what you are trying to accomplish. For example, on live I have a trait/gear set up that can get my swift bow induction down to 1.3 seconds. I like fast inductions and trait to decrease inductions and cool downs regularly. So I decided to see how close I could get to that one my Beta Hunter. At 85 it was nearly a waste of time, by 91 I was able to get 1.5 second induction without gutting everything.

I don't mean to imply that the true utility classes (LM and Cappy) will ever be able to function as they did in the past. In some ways they are more powerful at the cost of the being completely able to do multiple things well at the same time.

[Andthelion]

No, but expressing a negative opinion about out-of-spec trait points in a thread about the Edoras epics (just to give an example, I'm not literally claiming that this happened) is derailing. Thus the usefulness of a centralised thread where people can go to register their negative opinions.

There was no such thread though. There was and still isnt an official discussion thread for the trait tree system, which by the way was is mighty strange considering it is the single biggest change in this expansion, there is one for crafting, one for regions, but not one for the change that causes huge upheaval to every single player in this game and no-one has ever said why.

[Aidus]

According to the log in graphs readily available no beta phase ever reached 50000 logins for a whole week only about 40k to be more accurate, now if every one of those 40k logins were individual people and each person logged in just once a day that make 5714 beta players, but if you expand that and say that its more likely that people would log on more than once a day lets say twice, that now leaves 2857 players, 300 out of 2857 = 10.5% and 10.5% is a pretty damn good sample size.

http://lux-hdro.de/images/live/weekly-logins-us.png

When was Beta open for 7 days in one week? It seems it was mostly 4ish IRC...

[Andthelion]

Forgive me if I've missed it over the course of the thread. But for someone like me who enjoys PvP and tough group content is there ANY reason to pick up HD?

I see a lot of talk about trait trees and big skirmishes, but what about actual challenging group content?

For PvP to early to say your gonna have to wait for the freep classes to be finished and balanced properly first, after that the creep classes will need attention.

As for challenging group content, that is a resounding and absolute no, if that is a major draw for you in MMOs, HD is not for you(or me) I am afraid,

However get yourself a beta key from facebook and check it out yourself, you may find something for you.

[furtim]

Difficulty is in the eye of the player. In general, epic battles pale in difficulty to the classic instances (as they've LAUNCHED) we've gotten used to over time.

I want to mention here that I went back and edited my post while you were responding. I changed "epic battles" to "the Deeping Wall raid".

The solo spaces are, I'll freely admit, fairly simple to complete. I think that's ok for solo content. Platinum medals are harder than facerolling through crafting instances or Gondamon skirmishes, and that's about all we need from solo stuff.

The raid is genuinely quite hard, though, by almost any definition. I haven't heard of anybody getting higher than an overall Silver completion on it yet, and I think most kinships are going to need several attempts before they even get an Iron medal.

They are bound, so no trading. But they don't seem to reward doubles, either. At least, not in the testing I did.

I've heard others report that they got repeat items from the reward boxes, but I didn't see that myself. I suspect it's possible, just unlikely to happen until you've collected several medal reward boxes already.

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but if I want to try to hybridize, I have to purchase HD and reach cap? And from what I understand, it's only a few points.

Whenever discussions of hybrid builds come up, I'm reminded of the parable about the blind men and the elephant. In the parable, each of the blind men is feeling different parts of the elephant and therefore each thinks that he is looking at a completely different kind of animal.

The problem when discussing the idea of hybrid builds poses essentially the opposite problem. Everyone is using the same term, but I strongly suspect it means completely different things to different people.

So, I look at the fact that I can split my points in half and get the Tier 7 capstone from my spec and a Tier 4 trait from another one, and I say, "Yeah, hybrids are looking good". Others are seeing the same thing and saying, "Hybrids are impossible". Neither of us is really wrong, we're just working from different definitions of what a hybrid is.

I feel the same when people talk about "support" classes. Some people say the Captain is not a support class after the changes. I say it still is. That's not because either of us is lying, it's because "support" is not a well-defined term, and we're using different definitions of it.

I didn't say it wouldn't be impactful. I said it wasn't REQUIRED. Impactful or not, it still seems rather silly to buy an Xpac just for a few points. Now that I think about it, I think those extra points are for CLASS deeds, not zone deeds. If there are a couple for zone deeds (slayer deeds, for example) I'm not aware of them. The extra class deed points you'll get anyway.

There are 5 points to be had from class meta-deeds. I have not personally seen them either, but evidently there are deeds within the Helm's Deep zone that grant 5 more trait points. I believe they're associated with Book 13 of the Epic, but don't quote me on that.

[frickinmuck]

I've heard others report that they got repeat items from the reward boxes, but I didn't see that myself. I suspect it's possible, just unlikely to happen until you've collected several medal reward boxes already.

Well, and in some cases repeats may be desirable. For example, if it dropped me a really awesome bracelet, ring or earring I may want two of some (or all) of those.

[Andthelion]

For the same reason the doctor doesn't tell you, "oh just pretend you're healthy." It doesn't solve the problem.

But the doctor doesnt then go to a healthy person and start giving them needless medicine either.

My point is skill bloat is a personal problem not a gamewide one I loved having all my skills and used them readily on all of my classes. I needed no medicine, I didnt even ask to go see a doctor

[Damojo]

I'll make this one post on Beta, and I'm done with discussing it. We all know where this thread is headed and personally I want no part of the ritual Turbine-bashing some people find so entertaining. Because it's (a) pointless, (b) pointless and (c) pointless. It won't change the game, force Turbine to sell it to another developer, cost people jobs, or force WB to invade Boston and bang heads. It's venting, pure and simple.

My memories of beta, in no particular order or level of importance:

Turbine didn't listen to us.

Untrue on many levels. Where they didn't respond is when people called for the outright removal or postponement of the trait tree implementation. There were threads on this subject long before beta, and as I posted then I don't think this was ever on the table. Turbine have been pretty clear on this all along, that some people thought they would just cancel the whole thing after beta one is frankly ridiculous. I wonder how many people would expect Blizzard to drop Pandas from Pandaria, or in fact any developer of any MMO to just scrap months of development on the say-so of a group of players in a beta test? The feedback that was given, on the content and composition of trait trees (amongst other things), caused a lot of changes from beta one to now. Of course, not every suggestion was adopted, it would be unrealistic for this to happen, but to characterise this as some sort of stonewall is factually wrong.

We couldn't give feedback on trait trees.

Apart from taking over the general discussion forum as a whole? If the beta forums were visible people would see just how untrue this is.

Turbine staff were rude and sarcastic

Hmm, really? Saying that staff members should be "shot in the face", "incompetent", "be sacked" etc. etc. is pretty damned rude too. And those who can read the beta forums, the sarcasm level is pretty high throughout. Should Turbine staff follow different standards to players? Some people clearly think/thought so, personally I don't subscribe. Holding others to arbitrary standards which I don't feel constrained by would be the height of hypocrisy, which is why I'm not going to do it. Sapience posted (paraphrased) "Trait trees are coming. Period.". This was apparently rude, unprofessional, insulting and demeaning. Or a very straightforward statement of fact. Which you read it as depends on where you sit on the "We hate Sapience" question, if indeed you have an opinion at all.

Which leads to - we weren't allowed to be negative, we were howled down by Fanbois

Monumentally untrue. There's negative and positive feedback in abundance on the forums. And those who were positive didn't exactly have a great time, being told they were "unskilled", "didn't know how to play their characters/classes", and my favourite "because you don't know how to play your class you are not allowed an opinion, leave beta now". Both sides of the argument had their supporters who went too far IMHO, "too far" to me being the complete loss of rational civil discussion and the adoption of personal insults as a way to prove their points. Reading this thread I imagine most can see these attitudes even now.

Hyperbole

Loved by forums and the enemy of real discussion. One recent thread had a poster saying "half the players will leave on the 18th". Had this poster spoken to half the players? Doubt it. Not to be outdone, a few posts down we got "No, two-thirds of players are leaving". Wow. And so it continues, each post attempting to be more strident and eye-catching than the last, and we end up with (from memory on the specific classes) "ALL Guardians, Lore Masters, Champs and Minnies are leaving". All of them. Really.
This was the story of the beta forums, bellicose inflated claims repeated over and over as people found out that saying "I'm leaving" didn't cause too much of a stir. Not that it would, we hear it too often. We've heard it over and over from people still posting and playing now. For all that some people will be leaving (as in delete account, walk away, anything else isn't "leaving" at all), we know from past experience there are people who will threaten to do so, and then not leave.
The casualty of all this brinkmanship and grandstanding was as always calm rational discussion, which got swamped, certainly in "General Discussion". Spirited discussion is one thing but "MY way or I'm leaving" really does accomplish nothing.

Trait trees

Are a damned sight better now than they were at Beta 1. For which you can thank those who instead of just threatening to leave worked hard, analysed, discussed and prompted, causing a lot of changes in their content. And no, I'm not including myself, RL work has been extreme since August, and I've found myself without the time and concentration remaining to do what I would call a proper job of beta testing. Having said that, I have Hunter, LM, Champ, and Guard at level 85 and I've found viable and enjoyable builds for each. YMMV. And check out the player-authored guides, they're pretty good and unbiased. Something else I wasn't involved in, but a lot of hard work was done and the authors deserve thanks.

Level 85 focus

Especially with reference to trait trees, this was too high. People were concentrating far too much on what their traits would be NOW, how many points will we have NOW....and usually just ignoring the players at the previous 84 levels. Using my hunter as one example, it would have been better for me when leveling to get a trait point for that class skill, to put towards a trait spec I was using, rather than a trapper line trait which i would never use (I've never liked the line, whether it was within a tree or not). These changes affect everyone and give them real choices and options at lower levels. All of which was pretty much ignored. Maybe we should be given the option to use synthetic builds for beta tests, at differing levels? At least that way we would have to consider what the effects would be at level 25, 30, 35....

The other stuff

Landscape is predictably very well done, as are the Epics, and even the quests, although as in every MMO you still need to kill ten rats sometimes. Didn't spend much effort on BB/EB so I'll not comment on those, it wouldn't be fair. I'm taken by the story, the atmosphere and the characters. So yes, I'm looking forward to the 18th.

Going forward

Every single player regardless of level can experience the trait trees and some other changes on the 18th without spending a copper penny. I would advise anyone who hasn't been in beta to stick around for ten days and try them out. What have you got to lose? Opinions are just that, opinions, you may find you agree, you may not. Trying it out for real is the best way to go IMHO.

So, too long and rambly, but that pretty much sums up Beta for me. And yes, my money has already accompanied my opinion and I've bought HD, for which I am apparently "stupid", so be it. For those continuing to Mordor, great, see you along the way. For those not, happy trails, enjoy your other game(s).

[Rufus_T_Fyrfly]

I believe how effective and at exactly what level will really depend on class and what you are trying to accomplish. For example, on live I have a trait/gear set up that can get my swift bow induction down to 1.3 seconds. I like fast inductions and trait to decrease inductions and cool downs regularly. So I decided to see how close I could get to that one my Beta Hunter. At 85 it was nearly a waste of time, by 91 I was able to get 1.5 second induction without gutting everything.

I don't mean to imply that the true utility classes (LM and Cappy) will ever be able to function as they did in the past. In some ways they are more powerful at the cost of the being completely able to do multiple things well at the same time.

Well to use my main as an example, I play as a champ and I find myself currently using both single target and AOE (shing shing) traiting a bit of red and yellow hybrid. But with the changes I'll have to sacrifice something and go either deep red or yellow. I looked at the changes and a part of me wants to run red. But the new yellow looks like more my playstyle. So in a way, Im forced to pick one of two paths for a majority of the game. I know you can hold at least 2 builds and swap them, but I don't relish the thought of battle,swap,battle,swap repeated ad nauseum.

This probably is better posted on the champ forum, but I just wanted to show some of my thoughts about the changes. I am cautiously optimistic about them, sure. But I'd feel alot better if I were to see them myself, ya know?

[Brom_Ironfist]

As someone who's been playing the game for four years, I didn't participate in the beta because, with a toddler at home, I could't commit to having the time to play through the design changes and provide meaningful feedback.

I originally started reading this thread hoping to get a good understanding of the changes coming from those who experienced the beta themselves. Instead, it's been like watching a train-wreck in slow motion. I know that I shouldn't keep reading and yet was unable to pull myself away from the fiasco that is this thread. The condescension and attacks upon other players is utterly astounding. Now that I've finally made it through to the end (as it is now) I can say that I've learned little and will instead rely on the guides in the various class forums for that information.

My last comment would be this: Be nice. Disagreement is fine, but please don't put something in writing that you wouldn't tell a friend to their face. Please don't use 'passion' as an excuse for bad manners. LOTRO has always boasted that its community is one of its best features. You wouldn't know that by reading this thread.

[Andthelion]

When was Beta open for 7 days in one week? It seems it was mostly 4ish IRC...

Ok well lets use 4 days then and lets look at that graph closely(its hard to see the exact figures) but using a ruler and paper those BR figures only reach halfway to the 50k line so thats 25k, but lets be generous and say 30k.

30k logins / 4 days = 7500 logins per day, again lets assume each one of those logins is a different account i.e 7500 players, thats if each of those logins was a different person and each of those only logged in once a day, is that at all likely? no.

so lets say each person logged in on average twice a day again thats now - 3750 players, and 300 of that = 8% and that is still a very good sample size.

The reality is though I am willing to bet that average logins from each player is above 2. Given that on the first 2 stress tests on GLFF at prime time when all players could win a lifetime sub for just being on was never any more than 800 people.

so 10000 people in beta? not a chance.