U19.1 - Endgame Raid Jewellery will be obsolete

[RANA01340]

-snipped-

The competent raiders in Lotro are far better than what this pointless thread seems to imply.
They raid, because they primary like the challenge.
As long as other gear isn't substantially better than raid gear they will not throw a tantrum, because they know that the far more decisive factor to complete the raid is skill, not a 0.2% difference in stats on a few pieces of jewelry.

You are right in that competent raiders clear the raids given to them because they're interested in the challenge. However, most raids are pretty trivial after the first two or three full-clears. This means that in order to keep the player-base occupied, the more loot received from the instance the better. It is in Turbine's best interests to have their raid-content be as much of a time sink as possible. Thus, making what amounts to seven equipment slots from the raid completely worthless (in each raid I have been in since the update all of our jewelry drops besides pockets have been trashed by our leader) Turbine has cut down on the value of repeating their raid. This argument has nothing to do with allowing solo players to have better gear. Raiders have already gotten multiple sets of flower jewelry to replace their gear. This argument is about the health and longevity of the Throne raid.

Just to reiterate, nobody is going to stop running Throne solely because of this change. However, less worthwhile gear means that it will take less time for players to get everything they need from the raid, and therefor the number of runs that they participate in will drop as well. Whether Turbine is fine with this is up to them, but it doesn't seem like a solid development choice.

To counteract this, the raid jewelry could have as little as 5 points of each stat higher than its flower counterpart. It only has to be an infinitesimal upgrade for it to be a worthwhile, and then there would be seven (minimum) more slots that players must fill per character from the Throne raid.

[Marxlne]

Finally someone who got the point! I consider myself a raider and for me gear's ONLY purpose is to help me to get the content (T2C raids) done.
I don't have a hilt (i refuse to grind myself blind for 1% drop rate or whatever the drop rate is in SS), i don't have the best off-hand (T1 Throne is too boring for me, have done it only once), haven't upgraded my Throne armor and i don't have any Ithilien jewelry or essences (not gonna waste my time on "flower picking").
And guess what, i am doing absolutely FINE! And i still finish Throne T2C every week with my kin because it is still fun to get Mumaks/Unbroken/Gothmog down. Gearwise, only thing i want from raid are superlative morale essences, everything else is a vendor thrash for me.

Only whiners in this thread here are the absolute min-maxers who's goal is to get best gear. For me this is the fundemental flaw in mindset and the reason why so many kins and people are still having difficulties finishing T2C Throne.
The minimal stat difference from gear doesn't make a difference! To complete a raid there are much more important things to consider:
1) Your goal has to be beating the raid, not getting gear!
2) Know the class you play well!
3) Learn strategies and mechanics of the fights (lots of material out there now)!
4) Be a team-player and listen your leader!
5) Be well prepared by having all the necessary food and stuff (Defence Tomes, Tokens, pots etc) that make beating raid easier!

Anyways, as MasterofNothign said, most raiders don't waste our precious time in forums posting 30+ pages of nonsense. It's my first and last post in this thread, see you all in the game!

Let me put it this way:
The competent raiders in Lotro are far better than what this pointless thread seems to imply.
They raid, because they primary like the challenge.
As long as other gear isn't substantially better than raid gear they will not throw a tantrum, because they know that the far more decisive factor to complete the raid is skill, not a 0.2% difference in stats on a few pieces of jewelry.

If I were to take your arguments seriously, raiding is primarily gear-driven and the primary purpose is not to complete the challenge, but to get the best gear in game.
If some other gear becomes marginally better than raid gear, gear that was best before has become worthless overnight, simply because it is marginally less powerful than gear that is "more easy" to obtain.
Your focus is not on yourself or your pals completing the raid, but rather on *other* people's way to obtain similar gear.
That is your problem. If you would focus on the challenge, do the challenging content because you like to raid, you wouldn't have this problem.

[Joedangod]

But what would be consistent would be the time scale. Some have said "but it has only been 4 months and we haven't had value out of the current raid and so many people haven't got their gear (armour and jewellery) yet". So their argument over the short lifespan isn't valid if applied to a hypothetical new raid or hard instance cluster then? I don't actually think the timescale is much of an issue at all, if the flower stuff was introduced after 6 months or even a year in the same circumstances there'd still be an outcry.

Except with this case the throne gear wasn't made obsolete, it was turned into a stepping stone to help you tackle the new content. Flower jewellery made the throne gear obsolete and there was no new challenge introduced, Throne is still the toughest part of PvE.

With the hypothetical new instances progression changes to:
Crafted > FI/T1 raid jewels > T2 raid jewels > New instance jewels

Difficulty increases with each step, you need higher stats than FI jewels give to perform well in the raid and you would need T2 raid jewels to tackle the new instances and get those jewels. On the other hand flower jewellery just replaces the progression since, as has been said many times, it is the easiest, fastest and best jewellery to get.

[Joedangod]

Finally someone who got the point!

Sadly you missed it.

This is not about min/maxing, it is about the fact that rewards are not distributed based on the effort required to receive them. In this case the difference is indeed mild but it is skewed against those who put more time/effort into the game. In fact, min/maxers would actually be somewhat pleased with flower jewellery being better since it just massively reduced the amount of time that it takes them to max out a toon, then again, some of them like the challenge of having to work for each piece of gear. You've shown that you think it's ridiculous to complain about this now but you didn't actually come up with any arguments as to why flower jewellery should be superior to raid jewellery; you're just telling people to give it up and forget about it.

[RANA01340]

Sadly you missed it.

This is not about min/maxing, it is about the fact that rewards are not distributed based on the effort required to receive them. In this case the difference is indeed mild but it is skewed against those who put more time/effort into the game. In fact, min/maxers would actually be somewhat pleased with flower jewellery being better since it just massively reduced the amount of time that it takes them to max out a toon, then again, some of them like the challenge of having to work for each piece of gear. You've shown that you think it's ridiculous to complain about this now but you didn't actually come up with any arguments as to why flower jewellery should be superior to raid jewellery; you're just telling people to give it up and forget about it.

Nope. It has nothing to do with min maxing. It has nothing to do with the effort involved. I'm quoting myself because I literally outlined the only thing that matters in the entire argument. It's about the longevity of Turbine's content. If Turbine wants to go back to 95 cap and devalue group content, it's their game and they're welcome to do that, but it doesn't serve them to try to do both things at once. It simply makes their development hours less worthwhile.

You are right in that competent raiders clear the raids given to them because they're interested in the challenge. However, most raids are pretty trivial after the first two or three full-clears. This means that in order to keep the player-base occupied, the more loot received from the instance the better. It is in Turbine's best interests to have their raid-content be as much of a time sink as possible. Thus, making what amounts to seven equipment slots from the raid completely worthless (in each raid I have been in since the update all of our jewelry drops besides pockets have been trashed by our leader) Turbine has cut down on the value of repeating their raid. This argument has nothing to do with allowing solo players to have better gear. Raiders have already gotten multiple sets of flower jewelry to replace their gear. This argument is about the health and longevity of the Throne raid.

Just to reiterate, nobody is going to stop running Throne solely because of this change. However, less worthwhile gear means that it will take less time for players to get everything they need from the raid, and therefor the number of runs that they participate in will drop as well. Whether Turbine is fine with this is up to them, but it doesn't seem like a solid development choice.

To counteract this, the raid jewelry could have as little as 5 points of each stat higher than its flower counterpart. It only has to be an infinitesimal upgrade for it to be a worthwhile, and then there would be seven (minimum) more slots that players must fill per character from the Throne raid.

[siipperi]

But what would be consistent would be the time scale. Some have said "but it has only been 4 months and we haven't had value out of the current raid and so many people haven't got their gear (armour and jewellery) yet". So their argument over the short lifespan isn't valid if applied to a hypothetical new raid or hard instance cluster then? I don't actually think the timescale is much of an issue at all, if the flower stuff was introduced after 6 months or even a year in the same circumstances there'd still be an outcry.

Time doesnt matter one bit when something gets replaced by harder content. There is still progression to be made towards it.

[Joedangod]

Nope. It has nothing to do with min maxing. It has nothing to do with the effort involved. I'm quoting myself because I literally outlined the only thing that matters in the entire argument. It's about the longevity of Turbine's content. If Turbine wants to go back to 95 cap and devalue group content, it's their game and they're welcome to do that, but it doesn't serve them to try to do both things at once. It simply makes their development hours less worthwhile.

In a way it does involve the effort involved since content that requires more effort will require more playtime because of the additional effort that is needed. By making the rewards for the content that requires more effort obsolete you are reducing the reasons to run such content and are thus reducing the longevity of said content. We're on the same page, more or less, we just have slightly different understandings of the system. Admittedly my perspective on this aspect is probably a bit more incoherent.

[siipperi]

Nope. It has nothing to do with min maxing. It has nothing to do with the effort involved. I'm quoting myself because I literally outlined the only thing that matters in the entire argument. It's about the longevity of Turbine's content. If Turbine wants to go back to 95 cap and devalue group content, it's their game and they're welcome to do that, but it doesn't serve them to try to do both things at once. It simply makes their development hours less worthwhile.

Hes basically saying that just in different form.... What he says is that this is ruining gearing path by skipping it totally with superior flower gear thus less grind for players, thus less time needed to spend in game for the best jewellery. And thus no need to do 18.0,.1,.2 jewellery gearing.

[RANA01340]

In a way it does involve the effort involved since content that requires more effort will require more playtime because of the additional effort that is needed. By making the rewards for the content that requires more effort obsolete you are reducing the reasons to run such content and are thus reducing the longevity of said content. We're on the same page, more or less, we just have slightly different understandings of the system. Admittedly my perspective on this aspect is probably a bit more incoherent.

Right, it's true that it's one of the factors, it's just not the effort involved that's the main focus. It's that it causes Turbine's raid to be less of a time sink. Sometimes I think that bringing effort into the argument totally inflames non-raid players because they're being told that their playstyle requires less effort, which ends up being detrimental to getting the main point across. Even if it does take fewer hours to get the flower jewelery, it's still better to avoid telling a good chunk of the player base that their efforts are worth less than ours :P

That being said, what you're saying is completely valid, just not well-liked on this forum. In order to make our point, I think it's better to just beat the "LESS PLAYER TIME CONSUMPTION FOR TURBINE'S EFFORTS" signage into the ground. It's something that is irrefutable, and also to Turbine's advantage to listen to.

[Joedangod]

Even if it does take fewer hours to get the flower jewelery, it's still better to avoid telling a good chunk of the player base that their efforts are worth less than ours :P

True, but then they tend to gloss over the fact that raiders generally do all the landscape content anyway.

That being said, what you're saying is completely valid, just not well-liked on this forum. In order to make our point, I think it's better to just beat the "LESS PLAYER TIME CONSUMPTION FOR TURBINE'S EFFORTS" signage into the ground. It's something that is irrefutable, and also to Turbine's advantage to listen to.

Thanks for the input, I just hope this angle on it doesn't face the same fallacious arguments that most of the other points people raised in here received.

[Catburg]

That being said, what you're saying is completely valid, just not well-liked on this forum. In order to make our point, I think it's better to just beat the "LESS PLAYER TIME CONSUMPTION FOR TURBINE'S EFFORTS" signage into the ground. It's something that is irrefutable, and also to Turbine's advantage to listen to.

Is it though if more people are actually raiding (well that's what they claim)? Do they look at it in terms of customer hours as being development time well spent. Perhaps there are a lot of people raiding over a shorter period of time as opposed to a few people raiding over a longer one? A raid that "lasts" for 8 months as opposed to 4 might appear to be twice the value but if twice the number play for 4 months then it has equal value and more than twice it has greater value in terms of customer hours played. Plus if you have a larger player base developing then it strengthens the argument for more raid/instance development time in the future.

[Catburg]

Player effort and "fairness" are extinct anyway now with store bought things like BoV, GoV, stat tomes, virtues, slayer accelerators etc. I'm not complaining about this stuff in fact I would encourage everyone to go into the store and buy as much stuff as possible fluff and non fluff to keep the game going.

I also don't think it is accidental that the flower stuff has higher stats nor do I think it will do for very long. There is a purpose and Lotro know their market in the broadest sense more so than any of us can presume to guess. Who might this flower stuff upset? The subset of a subset if the raid purists don't care about absolute min max (as one has declared on this thread), pure min maxers will be cheering for a quicker way to mix max (as has also been suggested), most others not really caring but enjoying a fuzzy glow for 15 mins which they know will soon expire but won't be bothered to kick off about.

The era of "fairness" and getting what you worked for ceased to exist years ago.

[Joedangod]

Is it though if more people are actually raiding (well that's what they claim)?

The claim that raiding had increased since the release of the flower jewels came within 1 lock reset, there simply hasn't been time to draw any accurate conclusions. Siipperi summarised this point well earlier:

I dont need assume anything when I know it. Top raiding kins kept their strategies and videos hidden until multiple kins were succesfully completed the certain boss so release of any kind of t2 guides took till september or so, after this vid video material available and summer season ending we have see a lot more activity on completions. And most kins who still trying to beat the raid use these strategies written/shown for increased success rate. Raw Gear stat increase itself doesnt help help that much (since its most than likely less than 2% increased overall raid dps, thats all), set bonuses do and reference of what is happening helps the most. It will usually take for average good t2 group about 1.5-2 months to complete this kind of the raid anyway. And one of harder bosses can easily take several weeks for a bit worse group.

Also lastly any informed person will know you cant draw conclusion after 8 days of data collection and compare it to 4 month data, ffs there have been just one lock reset, so saying completion ratio has increased is just total random selection of tiny amount of time which is not accurate at all. So as I wrote earlier, its time of the year and guides that make 99% of the reason if there is increased rate this week.

So yeah its his job to speak nicely so nobody gets pissed off but as I said calling that after a week conclusion of stat increase (that is minimal) is simply not very believable when we take account typical MMO factors like I wrote above. And I just wanted to point out these facts so devs get perspective into what they potentially thinking of these changes.

He even leaves out factors such as a new update in general bringing players back for a short time and the possibility that people got the flower jewels, ran the raid at T2 and only got obsolete jewellery as a reward (since they have flower jewels). Absolutely no reward for exploring outside their comfort zone in that case, does that really inspire such people to continue working on that content?

There wasn't really a reason to put the flower jewels above the raid jewels, I don't think anyone has disputed that. The flower jewels should preferably be slightly less than the raid jewels and at worst, equal to the raid jewels. They should never have exceeded them. On the off chance that this thread is still being monitored by staff I think we should observe that an easy fix to the complaints would be to just bump the raid jewels to being equal to the flower jewels for now. Landscape only players don't care and it means raiders aren't pushed into dull grinds in order to maintain their gear. Hopefully nothing like this will happen again.

[RANA01340]

Is it though if more people are actually raiding (well that's what they claim)? Do they look at it in terms of customer hours as being development time well spent. Perhaps there are a lot of people raiding over a shorter period of time as opposed to a few people raiding over a longer one? A raid that "lasts" for 8 months as opposed to 4 might appear to be twice the value but if twice the number play for 4 months then it has equal value and more than twice it has greater value in terms of customer hours played. Plus if you have a larger player base developing then it strengthens the argument for more raid/instance development time in the future.

I think the numbers they're seeing are more due to the current climate surrounding the raid, with multiple guides being posted, competition being less stiff, information about downing bosses being transferred more readily. On top of this, at least on Landroval, some of the older raiding kins that were lacking members when the raid opened are finally seeing enough people coming back/getting geared to down bosses reliably.

Regardless of this swell in raid activity, I don't see any reason why there would be "twice the number" playing for four months. There's no evidence to support that any changes that Turbine have made would lead to such a burst in play, only that their changes will lead to a decreased replay value. I also think that the number of raiders in this game is relatively static. Though I have seen a few old faces return on Landroval, most of the kins that were clearing Throne from the start have been around for quite a while. They may have taken on new members, but there weren't enough to do anything like double the number of existing raiding groups.

That being said, even if this were the case, I would also assume that it's less profitable for Turbine to have bursts of play rather than prolonged play with a raid. Any subscription based players that leave at the four month mark instead of the eight month mark might drop their VIP status after unlocking the raid, and the more time left without anything for raiders to do makes it more than a certainty that some of them will leave entirely during that long period. Raiders are also buying things like Tomes of Defence, store hope, etc, so the more Turbine can extend the replay value of the raid, the more profit they will make off of these transactions.

[RANA01340]

The era of "fairness" and getting what you worked for ceased to exist years ago.

I have never cared about fairness. At 100 cap I ran about 75 Ruined City runs to get both of my three-slot bracelets, and when Minas Tirith came out they were replaced by crafted jewelry that didn't even require a shard component. However, those crafted pieces replaced three slots of gear for non-glass builds only, over 6 months after the instance cluster in question had been farmed to death and back again. Turbine did not waste any development efforts in that case.

I don't care about fairness, or people's play-styles being catered to, even my own. What I do care about is game health. I do not think that Turbine has ever made this much instance loot obsolete just as the majority of their raiding population has begun to clear their content. That, in my mind, is what's important here. Nothing else. Currently, for certain classes who have no use for, or minimal use for the T2 raid armor, there are at most three item drops they need from the entirety of the 6 raid bosses. Captains, for instance, need two pieces of armor and their standard, then they're done. Burglars set bonuses are ####, they just need their insignia, or whatever their gold item is. Minstrels need their instrument and at most (I'm unsure what the set bonus is) two pieces of the T2 set, since they MUST use the instance-finder set while raid-healing.

For some classes, they can currently be done with the raid in under two runs if their Kinship has a DKP system in place, or if they're lucky. Before the jewelry devaluation, every class needed at least seven more items from the raid, which is the minimum without swaps for mits, morale, mastery, and crit. To put it in perspective, my champion has twenty Raid jewelry pieces sitting in his vault. Had I not had to waste DKP going for those from the start, I would have been done with my gear set in about three weeks of raiding.

Remember, this has nothing to do with bitching about my hard work being worthless. I got my twenty flower jewelry pieces in under two days and I'm enjoying the mastery boost. It's about game health. It's about making sure that the increased raid participation that Turbine is seeing doesn't drop off the moment the Kinships that are just getting into the raid get the bosses on farm.

We all want this game to be successful, so that Turbine can expand their development into each of our preferred playstyles. The best way to do that is to keep as many aspects of the game as possible healthy.

[Arnenna]

I think the numbers they're seeing are more due to the current climate surrounding the raid, with multiple guides being posted, competition being less stiff, information about downing bosses being transferred more readily. On top of this, at least on Landroval, some of the older raiding kins that were lacking members when the raid opened are finally seeing enough people coming back/getting geared to down bosses reliably.

Regardless of this swell in raid activity, I don't see any reason why there would be "twice the number" playing for four months. There's no evidence to support that any changes that Turbine have made would lead to such a burst in play, only that their changes will lead to a decreased replay value. I also think that the number of raiders in this game is relatively static. Though I have seen a few old faces return on Landroval, most of the kins that were clearing Throne from the start have been around for quite a while. They may have taken on new members, but there weren't enough to do anything like double the number of existing raiding groups.

That being said, even if this were the case, I would also assume that it's less profitable for Turbine to have bursts of play rather than prolonged play with a raid. Any subscription based players that leave at the four month mark instead of the eight month mark might drop their VIP status after unlocking the raid, and the more time left without anything for raiders to do makes it more than a certainty that some of them will leave entirely during that long period. Raiders are also buying things like Tomes of Defence, store hope, etc, so the more Turbine can extend the replay value of the raid, the more profit they will make off of these transactions.

I agree with what you say. Its the same for all play styles - they all need reason to play and things to work for within their play style area. Raiders need stuff to be kept relevant in their raids, so they will keep replaying them. If Turbine don't have the resources to ensure they keep up with raiders that work at a faster pace than others (let's face it ,some are extremely fast when the race is on), then they need to put other incentives in place inside the raid, for those players. It will help to keep them going in, and hence, taking others in with them, that are still after the general loot. Example here - once a raider has depleted all gear reward, and it's all equipped, double their general rewards - Ithil Coins, Empos, essence drop rates, nice gold allowance for completion of the bosses. Create some system whereby the raid can recognise returning players, based on times run, and reward it. We get nice rewards for completing X a certain amount of times out on landscape, why not reward the raiders when they do Throne x amount of times too?

The same applies to casual players. They too need things to work for. Most that I know, haven't had that sense of "I'm going to grind that gear out" since DA. MT dailies awarded gear, but for most people who already had characters geared in DA gear, it wasn't worth the grind at all. Good for alts that were hitting level 100, because it was one less essence slot to worry about, than grinding DA gear - but that was it. Far Anorien hit, and that was, simply put, completely useless to casual players. They too, will eventually walk, when they are faced with no reason to run content. If it gets so bad, they start un-subbing or taking long breaks, it can take a pretty big carrot to make them change their minds. Smaller carrots - regularly, would be better than one big one, thrown in to save the day.

[RANA01340]

I agree with what you say. Its the same for all play styles - they all need reason to play and things to work for within their play style area. Raiders need stuff to be kept relevant in their raids, so they will keep replaying them. If Turbine don't have the resources to ensure they keep up with raiders that work at a faster pace than others (let's face it ,some are extremely fast when the race is on), then they need to put other incentives in place inside the raid, for those players. It will help to keep them going in, and hence, taking others in with them, that are still after the general loot. Example here - once a raider has depleted all gear reward, and it's all equipped, double their general rewards - Ithil Coins, Empos, essence drop rates, nice gold allowance for completion of the bosses. Create some system whereby the raid can recognise returning players, based on times run, and reward it. We get nice rewards for completing X a certain amount of times out on landscape, why not reward the raiders when they do Throne x amount of times too?

The same applies to casual players. They too need things to work for. Most that I know, haven't had that sense of "I'm going to grind that gear out" since DA. MT dailies awarded gear, but for most people who already had characters geared in DA gear, it wasn't worth the grind at all. Good for alts that were hitting level 100, because it was one less essence slot to worry about, than grinding DA gear - but that was it. Far Anorien hit, and that was, simply put, completely useless to casual players. They too, will eventually walk, when they are faced with no reason to run content. If it gets so bad, they start un-subbing or taking long breaks, it can take a pretty big carrot to make them change their minds. Smaller carrots - regularly, would be better than one big one, thrown in to save the day.

I agree totally. I think a system like that would be very difficult to implement, however awesome it would be. I could possibly see it if Ithil coins and the rest came from an individual chest, or if there was a third chest available for players who had done the full raid on T2C. Regardless, it would be a lot of work for Turbine, but something that would be great in terms of keeping people around! That being said, I don't think that's likely to happen in the near future. For this raid, the only real option is to make the raid jewelry very, very, slightly better than its landscape competitor. As other people have posted previously, I think it's better to move the raid jewelry up an item level rather than nerf the flower jewelry. This way solo players are not penalized for the benefit of raid players.

You're totally right that it's the same way for solo players. One of the things I dislike about the flower gear is not the time involved, which I think can be pretty significant given the number of alts people generally need to run through, but the fact that there's no pacing factor as there was with the DA dailies. Even though I spent roughly ten hours or so getting all of my gear, I got it all done in two days. Were I primarily a solo player, and happy with purple or blue essences, I could be geared in under a week! That's not exactly good for keeping people occupied over the course of months.

What I think a lot of it comes down to, is that everyone loves the feeling when they get a shiny, awesome piece of loot. People will play through well-designed content a few times, but generally speaking they'll play through it many, many more times when there're great rewards waiting for them! I think it's very possible to have all play-styles feel rewarded for the type of content that they enjoy running, through various types of itemization and set bonuses.

A good way to do this is to have one or two unique "best in slot" items available from solo play. For instance, a unique ring and earring pair that is FAR superior to raid jewelry, but together they only take up two slots and require a daily grind to acquire. This gives solo players something to work for that is better than raid drops, but still doesn't nullify the significance of raid jewelry because of the small number of slots it takes up. Raid earrings and rings would still be worthwhile and will avoid the trash bin because they will be needed for one of their two potential item slots, and so a situation like the one we have now would be avoided. It's a good way to keep everyone happy and the game healthy simultaneously.

[Kostas2112]

I agree with what you say. Its the same for all play styles - they all need reason to play and things to work for within their play style area. Raiders need stuff to be kept relevant in their raids, so they will keep replaying them. If Turbine don't have the resources to ensure they keep up with raiders that work at a faster pace than others (let's face it ,some are extremely fast when the race is on), then they need to put other incentives in place inside the raid, for those players. It will help to keep them going in, and hence, taking others in with them, that are still after the general loot. Example here - once a raider has depleted all gear reward, and it's all equipped, double their general rewards - Ithil Coins, Empos, essence drop rates, nice gold allowance for completion of the bosses. Create some system whereby the raid can recognise returning players, based on times run, and reward it. We get nice rewards for completing X a certain amount of times out on landscape, why not reward the raiders when they do Throne x amount of times too?

The same applies to casual players. They too need things to work for. Most that I know, haven't had that sense of "I'm going to grind that gear out" since DA. MT dailies awarded gear, but for most people who already had characters geared in DA gear, it wasn't worth the grind at all. Good for alts that were hitting level 100, because it was one less essence slot to worry about, than grinding DA gear - but that was it. Far Anorien hit, and that was, simply put, completely useless to casual players. They too, will eventually walk, when they are faced with no reason to run content. If it gets so bad, they start un-subbing or taking long breaks, it can take a pretty big carrot to make them change their minds. Smaller carrots - regularly, would be better than one big one, thrown in to save the day.

I agree totally. I think a system like that would be very difficult to implement, however awesome it would be. I could possibly see it if Ithil coins and the rest came from an individual chest, or if there was a third chest available for players who had done the full raid on T2C. Regardless, it would be a lot of work for Turbine, but something that would be great in terms of keeping people around! That being said, I don't think that's likely to happen in the near future. For this raid, the only real option is to make the raid jewelry very, very, slightly better than its landscape competitor. As other people have posted previously, I think it's better to move the raid jewelry up an item level rather than nerf the flower jewelry. This way solo players are not penalized for the benefit of raid players.

You're totally right that it's the same way for solo players. One of the things I dislike about the flower gear is not the time involved, which I think can be pretty significant given the number of alts people generally need to run through, but the fact that there's no pacing factor as there was with the DA dailies. Even though I spent roughly ten hours or so getting all of my gear, I got it all done in two days. Were I primarily a solo player, and happy with purple or blue essences, I could be geared in under a week! That's not exactly good for keeping people occupied over the course of months.

What I think a lot of it comes down to, is that everyone loves the feeling when they get a shiny, awesome piece of loot. People will play through well-designed content a few times, but generally speaking they'll play through it many, many more times when there're great rewards waiting for them! I think it's very possible to have all play-styles feel rewarded for the type of content that they enjoy running, through various types of itemization and set bonuses.

A good way to do this is to have one or two unique "best in slot" items available from solo play. For instance, a unique ring and earring pair that is FAR superior to raid jewelry, but together they only take up two slots and require a daily grind to acquire. This gives solo players something to work for that is better than raid drops, but still doesn't nullify the significance of raid jewelry because of the small number of slots it takes up. Raid earrings and rings would still be worthwhile and will avoid the trash bin because they will be needed for one of their two potential item slots, and so a situation like the one we have now would be avoided. It's a good way to keep everyone happy and the game healthy simultaneously.

Great posts both of you.

+10 rep each.

[Catburg]

The flower gear, armour and jewellery, is an extraordinary happening.

Even putting aside that flower bling is "better" the whole thing of needing no rep, needing no area quest pack and so on suggests that it is a radical response to something. Even if flower bling were marginally less than raid bling (and I don't think it is accidently) it is rather curious as to why it is available in such a way. We're all here pontificating "players will do this" "players hate that" yet in honestly we're all just guessing. The only people who know customer and player patterns are Turbine and they aren't ever going to tell. It is the silent masses that hold the key. I don't think we'll see such a radical intervention again for a while and as to whether it is the solution to whatever the problem is who knows.

[Laerien]

The Turbine CM said T2 raid numbers haven't decreased, even increased... some don't like the statement then start arguing. Excuse me but, if you don't believe an official clear and simple answer, what are you doing here in forums? Have a little decency for God's sake.

This sort of deja vu every times a CM makes a statement about numbers...

----------------------
Btw, of course after the "strategies" and videos are released, more people will attempt to complete the raid. Thanks captain obvious

[siipperi]

The Turbine CM said T2 raid numbers haven't decreased, even increased... some don't like the statement then start arguing. Excuse me but, if you don't believe an official clear and simple answer, what are you doing here in forums? Have a little decency for God's sake.

This sort of deja vu every times a CM makes a statement about numbers...

----------------------
Btw, of course after the "strategies" and videos are released, more people will attempt to complete the raid. Thanks captain obvious

As I wrote it has nothing to do with ones stance on that statement but fact that he's using one lock cycle statistic (which is basically one dot in the pool) vs long period of time (averages on assumption), so there is nothing to be gain but miss leading statistics and false assumption of the trend.

[RANA01340]

The Turbine CM said T2 raid numbers haven't decreased, even increased... some don't like the statement then start arguing. Excuse me but, if you don't believe an official clear and simple answer, what are you doing here in forums? Have a little decency for God's sake.

This sort of deja vu every times a CM makes a statement about numbers...

----------------------
Btw, of course after the "strategies" and videos are released, more people will attempt to complete the raid. Thanks captain obvious

I think you misread my post

I absolutely believe that Turbine's numbers are showing that more people are completing the raid. I'm not arguing that point whatsoever. I'm simply trying to look at the why's and how's of that data point. Given that it's only been two raid cycles since the flower jewelry was released, we haven't seen the effect of it yet on our raiding populations. Likely, we won't see the effects of it for another couple weeks, or perhaps even until these new groups have gotten the raid down to the point where they've progressed as far as they can and are getting burned out on the Unbroken One.

Also, I may be captain obvious for pointing that out, but that detail wasn't posted alongside our CM's bit about the current raid participation numbers, and it seems likely that it is the primary, if not sole factor in the level of participation that they're seeing.

[Joedangod]

Great posts both of you.

+10 rep each.

Ironically those posts are pretty much the normal response to this situation when Arnenna isn't harping on about some raiders selling loot. **Wulfdur came up with the barter system a while back and at no point has any raider said casuals don't deserve any new gear, they simply said that so many raid pieces should not be made obsolete in the way that they were.

As for Rana's post, it mostly just echoes earlier comments about there being better ways to implement new jewellery, from what I recall there were several raiders who pointed out that a Limlight Gorge style situation would be a perfectly fine way to give out a few better-than-raid pieces. Ironically Cordovan himself was pretty specific that non-raid items could be slightly better "in one or two very specific cases". ***We even offered a list of ways to implement new jewellery to replace the flower jewellery, of course discussion stayed on "Some raiders sell loot" rather than explore that avenue of thought.

***From what I see there are multiple ways of adding new jewellery to surpass this flower jewellery, these suggestions are as follows:

• 1. Put new earrings/necklaces/rings in the raid to match the new bracelets.
• 2. Put new earrings/necklaces/rings on landscape and lock them behind reputation or daily instances/grouping (Much like Great River jewellery)
• 3. Put new earrings/necklaces/rings into T2C featured instance runs (although preferably in a non-RNG kind of way, perhaps earning golden long-lost coins)
• 4. Put a new necklace in an epic quest (I say only necklace since it would be a pain if you couldn't have matching best-in-slot essence rings/earrings.)
• 5. Mix and match options above.

How do the rest of you feel about these suggestions?

*We like motivating raiders to get gear, and our current offerings do so, even if in one or two very specific cases the numbers are slightly better in a non-raid-acquired item than a raid item as post-raid updates are released.

**would be very nice to implement a reward system where u can only pick either of 2 option, "armor/gear" or "hefty gold/barter coins" (Ancient Ithil Coins in this case, as long as they can be bartered for grind items, like starlits, emp scrolls, essence recipes, solvents etc. everything that people usually spend gold anyways That way would still have incentive to run the content as much as possible). People would pick armor if they can use the armor, or pick gold/coins if they don't need.

Easiest way to implement this atm would be adding barter option of "armor", "jewellry", "class item" to hefty "Ancient Ithil Coins". @Devs please consider this if you want your content being run as long as possible. If this was implemented, we would not bother selling the loot at all, I think.

If you cut out the whole "Some raiders sell loot" nonsense you'd find that a lot of people were being very reasonable and looking for a solution to this issue.

[RANA01340]

The flower gear, armour and jewellery, is an extraordinary happening.

Even putting aside that flower bling is "better" the whole thing of needing no rep, needing no area quest pack and so on suggests that it is a radical response to something. Even if flower bling were marginally less than raid bling (and I don't think it is accidently) it is rather curious as to why it is available in such a way. We're all here pontificating "players will do this" "players hate that" yet in honestly we're all just guessing. The only people who know customer and player patterns are Turbine and they aren't ever going to tell. It is the silent masses that hold the key. I don't think we'll see such a radical intervention again for a while and as to whether it is the solution to whatever the problem is who knows.

Sort of. I think it's fairly easy to see what trends work and what trends don't when looking at the history of the game. It's also easy to tell that sometimes the developers aren't making decisions from a place that necessarily is good for the game. While I appreciate what they've been doing for the game lately, and have found that there's been massive improvement in both their overall balancing, itemization, and response to player feedback, it still sometimes feels like they make changes via a blindfolded darts competition. The recent Guardian red-line changes are an example of that. My sentiment on that, of course, is not me hating the game or the development team. It's the opposite. I recognize their efforts to make the game that I've stuck around for almost ten years to play better, and any criticism I may have towards their decisions comes from a place of wanting this game to be the best and most successful that it can be.

While this change is indeed radical, I'm not entirely certain it's in response to anything in particular. It may simply be a miscalculation, or a change for changes sake. We all know that Turbine sometimes has a history of fixing things that ain't broke, as the saying goes . The fact that requires, as you said, no rep, quest pack, or grind, makes it a complete outlier in terms of what we know to be business as usual in the scheme of in-game itemization. Unless we're looking at a level cap increase within the next few months, nullifying both the raid as well as all landscape content, it simply doesn't make much sense, regardless of any under-the-radar statistics that Turbine is privy to. I also think that they may not have as much of a "key" as you think they do, and to a certain extent they're trying to figure out what works just as much as any of the rest of us are.

In that case, it's our job as players to try to give them the most unbiased, well-thought advice that we can, with the good of the game in mind. I think everyone who's posting here shares my love of this game, and I hope everyone can keep in mind that it's not about any one group of players or another, but rather what we can do to keep this game active and successful.

[Laerien]

As I wrote it has nothing to do with ones stance on that statement but fact that he's using one lock cycle statistic (which is basically one dot in the pool) vs long period of time (averages on assumption), so there is nothing to be gain but miss leading statistics and false assumption of the trend.

So yeah its his job to speak nicely so nobody gets pissed off...

A euphemism to say that he is lying.

I think you misread my post

I absolutely believe that Turbine's numbers are showing that more people are completing the raid. I'm not arguing that point whatsoever. I'm simply trying to look at the why's and how's of that data point. Given that it's only been two raid cycles since the flower jewelry was released, we haven't seen the effect of it yet on our raiding populations. Likely, we won't see the effects of it for another couple weeks, or perhaps even until these new groups have gotten the raid down to the point where they've progressed as far as they can and are getting burned out on the Unbroken One.

Also, I may be captain obvious for pointing that out, but that detail wasn't posted alongside our CM's bit about the current raid participation numbers, and it seems likely that it is the primary, if not sole factor in the level of participation that they're seeing.

My post was not directed to anyone in particular. However, lets see:

We fundamentally disagree with the philosophy that only T2 raiders should be allowed to get access to the best loot. It will often be the case that this is so, but to make some kind of permanent rule on it is something we simply will never do. We like motivating raiders to get gear, and our current offerings do so, even if in one or two very specific cases the numbers are slightly better in a non-raid-acquired item than a raid item as post-raid updates are released. Ultimately, if we were seeing a drop in the number of people running Throne of the Dread Terror, that might be a data point we'd take into consideration, but since the actual numbers are showing that more individual people are completing the raid on T2 difficulty more frequently since we released the flora system, the numbers don't support some of the arguments in this thread.

If a bit of my perfect reading comprehension in my own language translates to english, I think Cordovan said that more individuals (not the same dudes)completed T2 after the flower jewelry was introduced. Moreover, he added, "more frequently", which means the raid is being completed more and more (not more times -since 2 locks- by the same players).

Whatever, who or why is irrelevant, the point is the numbers have not decreased but increased. That is proof (unless you don't believe Cordovan's word)enough that the raid is not being affected by this flower jewelry, at least not in a negative way (I do not think the new jewelry may have an impact in a positive way either).

Of course one could argue something like: "if the flower jewelry was not better, them maybe the numbers would be even better" but that is counterfactual fallacy.

Finally, the implied doom story about the raiders not doing the raid because this flower jewelry is simply not true. For the recods, within time the numbers will decrease, another obvious statement. You are welcome.