Bullroarer Update 23 Preview #2: Release Notes and Feedback Thread

[Celebrawn]

In The grand scheme of things these graphical glitches or bugs might seem insignificant. However I guess all bugs counts and should be reported.

As I've not had much time in the middle of a week to test things on Bullroarer, last time not at all and today about 20-30 minutes. Not much time last night as it came up pretty late our time in Europe and before I had patched it was too late.

One of the first thing I ran into today however was that around the giant dwarf statue in Iron Hills (as far as I got in 20-30 min) was that the rocky hills around that area seem to have really whacky/glitchy collision perimeters. In many places You float above the rock and in other places half Your body walks inside the rock.

I think some dev need to walk around this entire area and check for collision perimeters and set them right.

Here are just two examples.

Location: r2 lx1334 ly1469 ox123.71 oy113.91 oz710.87 h281.3

In this location You float on the rock in quite a large area. Basicially on all the rock that is not covered by frills/bushes.





Here is another example.

Location: r2 lx1333 ly1468 ox104.73 oy95.36 oz701.16 h264.4

Here is a huge chunk of the rocks that You walk straight through. You stand with half Your body inside the rocks.





Then I had to log. Might have more time later tonight but not sure (already late evening here in europe). And if I understand correctly tomorow Bullroarer goes down again. Not much time to test stuff.

I have also submitted proper bug reports on these locations of course. However, as they might end up in some bug report cue, I thought it important to higlight this as these are things that are not on live yet and can be fixed before they go live. Not to end up in some cue to be fixed later like things on live servers.

And another thing. I really like, I mean really, really like the design of The Iron Hills with the red rust coloured Iron rock formations and such. It looks amazing. However I find that the bright green frills/bushes seem to be in the wrong tones/colours compared to the rest. I don't think You should remove frills, as that would look too barren and cheaper in a way, but You need to make them a bit darker green and more of them in reddish or brownish/khaki kinda dryer tones to fit the rest. Also perhaps not so tall as in an arid climate plants tend to save humidity, nourishment and such by not growing so high/tall. In most places the where as tall that my poor little dwarf could hardly bee seen sticking up above them. Look at for example places like in westerns with similar arid climate or Grand Canyon. Very dusty, red and brownish, sure some bushes might be green after some rain but not this almost neon (tennis ball) bright green. There were some dry bushes that looked great in Iron Hills but they often got hidden behind/among all the other bright green ones.

The Mordor landscape is still like this, mainly in Talath Urui. I think glitchy rock surfaces are the new norm.

[Fraushgrish2]

I'm actually of the opinion that the 3-man instance is exactly where it should be at t2, unless you intend to make t3 impossible for anyone other than the min/max players that are really the focus of the t3 version anyways. Please don't make it harder until people get the chance to see the next tier. Anyone reading this needs to understand that for players that want to RP and/or play their favorite class despite the class' strength could easily yet again be edged out of being able to run the new content on anything higher than t1 if the scaling were set to match live. I'd recommend anyone thinking that the new instances should work like some of the old three mans try Sunken Labyrinth now with the mitigation drops from the balance pass to stats. Even North Cotton Farms is extremely challenging atm.

Which T2 3 man are you talking about exactly? There are 2 atm, neither of them have any mechanics, how on earth could you possibly find them challenging? I'm not even making fun of you or anything I'm genuinely confused and curious as to how those instances are difficult...

A few thought

-I'm pretty sure yes the T3 is going to be meant for people who are min/max top kin players, and the T2 is supposed to be at the same difficulty that the old 105 T2 instances were (seregost doesn't count as a proper T2 instance because lets be honest its a joke)

-Second point is I'm sure SSg is aware that there is imbalance between classes rn...but that's something that we can't do anything about until they pick the classes balance work up again, mean while the out of meta classes are just gonna have to wait


Anyway players that wanna rp aren't exactly "built" for top tier content and there is a simple phrase that answers your whole post: get good. The simple fact is there are people in this game that are extremely skilled, and are amazing at playing their class and there are also some people who aren't aware of the very basics of their class, the best move would be to make content for people that are more skilled so that the less skilled players can get better and become better players, instead of making content for less skilled people that really good players just steamroll through



Edit small side note in case ssG devs are reading this me and my kin members did all the instance content in bR with 1 guardian 1 hunter and 1 rk (neither the rk nor the hunter even had proper imbued LIs since we literally came online and started doing the instances)

[Lord.Funk]

The Mordor landscape is still like this, mainly in Talath Urui. I think glitchy rock surfaces are the new norm.

Oh, I have not noticed that. Mainly as we've not played through Mordor yet, been to the area but had a friend, Arnenna, guide us through as efficiently as possible. Not strayed much. Just so my son and I can get through it and move on. We have only one area left now, finally. Really not a fan of Mordor and alot of what it brought with it. Huge stat increases, LoE, new more invasive lootboxes etc. However that is beside the point for this topic.

Hmmm, this does not sound promising, as we found this all over the Iron Hills area. Even in Járnfast. Not just in some odd locations but almost everywhere where these reddish awesome looking iron rock formations were present. I figure they have a new more varied shape than old SoE rock formations (which looks fantastic), making it harder to set collision perimeters to match every small bend. However huge chunks and areas was totally off with either floating above or sinking through the rocks with half Your body.

[Belnavar]

Yes! There is currently a change planned for U23 that will give all races a passive trait at level 116 that will grant a certain amount of Light of Eärendil, with that amount increasing by the time you reach level 120. This is a brand-new thing added this week, with the current development numbers sitting at 20 Light at 116 and going up to 100 Light at 120, but those numbers are NOT final.

Love this! I remember this kind of thing being mentioned years ago as an idea for Radiance.

Question: Does this mean new gear won't have Light of Earendil on it? We'd need to keep old armour (or go back and earn it) otherwise for things like Abyss.

-Bel

[Cenifh]

I'm actually of the opinion that the 3-man instance is exactly where it should be at t2, unless you intend to make t3 impossible for anyone other than the min/max players that are really the focus of the t3 version anyways. Please don't make it harder until people get the chance to see the next tier. Anyone reading this needs to understand that for players that want to RP and/or play their favorite class despite the class' strength could easily yet again be edged out of being able to run the new content on anything higher than t1 if the scaling were set to match live. I'd recommend anyone thinking that the new instances should work like some of the old three mans try Sunken Labyrinth now with the mitigation drops from the balance pass to stats. Even North Cotton Farms is extremely challenging atm.

No. The t2 is exactly supposed to be hard content with good rewards. If you want to complete an instance for a deed or just to see how it is, you have t1. Remember t3 is not going to arrive until a later date, which means that you have all the time to prepare for it, running t2 and gearing, just how progression is supposed to work. Run t1 with your friends for story and roleplay purposes, or run t2 for extra challenge and to prepare for t3 release.

Once t3 releases you will have better gear and be ready for harder content, so don't worry.

Also, at level cap you can kill the cauldron before any hobbit reach the tree, and this is with regular gear from instances or questing gear with few low tier essences on it. You can join the pug Northcotton farm runs the week it is FI. They go really fast with any class make up.

On topic, please increase the difficulty of the new instances for their appropiate tier. T2 is supposed to be hard and challenging. Right now they are not challenging at all. Get some mechanics there please.

[Silmelin]

- Finally, we have been paying close attention to your feedback on Instance chest locks. We are working on making changes for these Instances to allow people to play with others at their preferred pace and schedule, while maintaining a healthy gear acquisition rate. To that end, we are looking at a system which offers Favored openings of a chest and Standard openings of a chest. A Favored opening would be a dramatically higher chance of getting desirable rewards, and be limited to a certain number of times within a certain time frame. A Standard chance of getting these rewards will happen during subsequent openings of the chests. The Favored status would be by character, independent of other characters in your party, so if you've opened the chest a lot, you'll have a standard chance, while someone in the group with you might have a Favored opening of the chest. It is likely the system will also have different numbers based on Instance difficulty, with more Favored chest openings on easier difficulties, and fewer Favored openings on higher difficulties, in proportion to the higher quality of the gear rewarded by difficulty. We are working on implementing some kind of visual effect that displays for you to let you know whether you will have a Favored Chest pull or not. We are still working on some of the details of this system, so names and numbers might well change.

The way it will work is by character, so for the example you gave, player X would get a Favored opening of the chest if they meet the criteria, and player Y would get a Favored or Standard opening of the chest based on what criteria they meet. That way it doesn't matter who opens the chest when; whenever you loot the chest, the loot available to you will generate based on what criteria you meet. The trade-ability of loot in the chest does indeed mean some folks who get a Favored chest opening could instead give their reward to someone who has already opened the chest a lot within that time frame, but we've had a LOT of discussion on this subject (as have you!) in recent days, and this still seems to be the best way forward. Please remember, though, that this system is very much being worked on, so things could change by the time Update 23 is released. We'll endeavor to let you know what those changes are as soon as possible, if anything changes. Once we get closer to the release, it's likely we'll be able to provide far more detail about names, numbers, and frequency.

I really like the sound of this! I hope this or at least something similar ends up on LIVE

[XbammyX]

That transitions into the next issue, the unintended consequences of the stat changes. Classes that are heavily crit dependent are having issues right now on test if you check the parses if they aren't using agility (the I-win main stat). Why? Its because without getting crit rating galore from stacking agility, they have to try and up crit with only the few essence slots available. Unfortunately there aren't enough slots to let them catch up. Also with all the evade and parry agility grants they can afford even more stats into physical/tactical mitigations and can be nearly as durable as a tank while putting out top in class dps. Making agility, like the other stats give less contribution helps with this, but the stat is still too good. Honestly it might be time to just get rid of the main stat contributions altogether and just make mastery contributions be a separate stat on gear and mix the stats up again like it was in Shadows of Angmar. That or make might give more contribution to mastery than agility and even will since it doesn't give nearly as good stat contributions to dps classes as they don't use shields.

Not going comment on difficulty as many of us will have differing opinions on "difficult" and that will lead to more bickering, but I will address agility. Agility is by no means an "I-win" stat. I currently have the best possible gear you can obtain for hunters on Bullroarer (4 slot armors, Big Battle crit set, etc.) and I've dedicated enough mastery to cap myself out at 200, every other slot I have available has had a crit essence allocated to them and I am still at 18% (23% with trait) crit rating, which is more than you can get if you are using the sets from lootboxes. What that means is that out of the ~30ish essences I'm using, I have 0 vitality, 0 mitigations, 0 finesse, about half mastery and the other half crit, and am still 7% below cap, with the raw number sitting at something like 85k. This is a universal issue and agility is not in any way an "I-win" stat. The simple solution here is to lower the crit cap down to something like 30k (this would be in line with the finesse changes) and allow for the crit essences to give something like ~2k per essence. This would send us back to around 100 cap Gondor levels where the gap between Might and Will classes vs Agility wasn't so massive in regards to crit rating while simultaneously allowing agility to have its intended innate advantages. Don't forget that Will awards Tactical Mitigation for free the same way that Agility awards crit for free. If you want to nerf Agility's passive bonuses then you need to adjust the passive bonuses of Might and Will to compensate.

[Arveduie]

Or perhaps players should you know... test... on a test server. With a blend of purple landscape and teal t1 gear, my yellow guard was being hit for 68k at the maximum by the adds in NCF T2 at level 120, compare that to 18k on live from the same mobs while seeing a modest dip in overall morale at 120 due to having no free slots for vitality. I lasted less than a second in Sunken Labyrinth with the first 4 adds after Pledge expired. Until players exploit loopholes with 3 and 4 slot scaled drops to hit 180k mitigation in both tactical and physical, get used to being hit much much harder by older scaling content.

To Cordovan, while this content was still completable, it did seem overtuned for a featured instance. Is this working as intended and we should expect a substantial step up in the difficulty of scaled instances, or is it a scaling issue with the new stat system?

And to the above commenting about expectations of these t2s being comparable to Quays etc, no I would not expect that considering the +150% damage boost from live server tier 2s is disabled in the Grey Mountains mountains tier 2 cluster. I would expect that and perhaps a more advanced AI to be enabled for tier 3, though perhaps Cordovan can confirm that?

tl;dr Please actually test conditions as they exist on Bullroarer before flaming players for perceived skill level. Its counter-productive and makes it far less likely that Cordovan continues the productive dialogue with the community.

[Rimenuir]

Or perhaps players should you know... test... on a test server. With a blend of purple landscape and teal t1 gear

Not to be that guy, but if you're gonna test t2 content, go into it geared for t2. Purple gear is not t2 ready.... Go into NCF t2 on Live with purple gear and same thing will happen.

[XbammyX]

Or perhaps players should you know... test... on a test server. With a blend of purple landscape and teal t1 gear, my yellow guard was being hit for 68k at the maximum by the adds in NCF T2 at level 120, compare that to 18k on live from the same mobs while seeing a modest dip in overall morale at 120 due to having no free slots for vitality. I lasted less than a second in Sunken Labyrinth with the first 4 adds after Pledge expired. Until players exploit loopholes with 3 and 4 slot scaled drops to hit 180k mitigation in both tactical and physical, get used to being hit much much harder by older scaling content.

To Cordovan, while this content was still completable, it did seem overtuned for a featured instance. Is this working as intended and we should expect a substantial step up in the difficulty of scaled instances, or is it a scaling issue with the new stat system?

And to the above commenting about expectations of these t2s being comparable to Quays etc, no I would not expect that considering the +150% damage boost from live server tier 2s is disabled in the Grey Mountains mountains tier 2 cluster. I would expect that and perhaps a more advanced AI to be enabled for tier 3, though perhaps Cordovan can confirm that?

tl;dr Please actually test conditions as they exist on Bullroarer before flaming players for perceived skill level. Its counter-productive and makes it far less likely that Cordovan continues the productive dialogue with the community.

Looks like miscommunication to me. Gormiot and Fraugrish are possibly under the impression that Chagace is referring to live NCF T2c and not the post-U23 new scaling. T2 scaling from non-120 instances (i.e. everything before U23) is currently massively overtuned, and is almost 100% unintended. Basic mobs in Silent Street and Dome of Stars T2c are hitting full BiS guards for 200k (out of 230k) auto attacks. These instances are certainly possible but I wouldn't expect the current scaling to remain the same. The current versions of T2 at 120 would be a good template for T3 though, imo. Would be plenty challenging for those of us who would like to see some overtuned content.

[Mirhaen]

Some updates:

- We've adjusted the Tier 12 Crafted Morale and Power Potions. There was a number scaling issue, which led to the (awesomely but overly) large numbers in this preview. They will, however, still be quite nice.

- We are considering further differentiating the item level of new Lootbox gear from Tier 1 Instance reward gear, perhaps by lowering them another few levels. We are also looking at renaming the new lootboxes, and will revisit the flavor text on them.

- Older gear being available with the new vendor is a bug, and not intended. The older gear will be available with the older vendor, and the new gear with the new vendor, when Update 23 is released.

- Finally, we have been paying close attention to your feedback on Instance chest locks. We are working on making changes for these Instances to allow people to play with others at their preferred pace and schedule, while maintaining a healthy gear acquisition rate. To that end, we are looking at a system which offers Favored openings of a chest and Standard openings of a chest. A Favored opening would be a dramatically higher chance of getting desirable rewards, and be limited to a certain number of times within a certain time frame. A Standard chance of getting these rewards will happen during subsequent openings of the chests. The Favored status would be by character, independent of other characters in your party, so if you've opened the chest a lot, you'll have a standard chance, while someone in the group with you might have a Favored opening of the chest. It is likely the system will also have different numbers based on Instance difficulty, with more Favored chest openings on easier difficulties, and fewer Favored openings on higher difficulties, in proportion to the higher quality of the gear rewarded by difficulty. We are working on implementing some kind of visual effect that displays for you to let you know whether you will have a Favored Chest pull or not. We are still working on some of the details of this system, so names and numbers might well change.

Thanks, sounds much better! Looking forward to see new loot system.

[Rimenuir]

Looks like miscommunication to me.

I know I'm not one of those two mentioned, but I apologize for being "that guy"

[BinaryTertiary]

Indeed, I got misled and thought Chagace was referring to a live version of NCF. My apologies to you.

[Hallandil]

The Mordor landscape is still like this, mainly in Talath Urui. I think glitchy rock surfaces are the new norm.

With Talath Urui, it’s because the place is like looking for a thumbtack in a needlestack.

This is making assumptions but the issue with the dwarf statue is that the game’s navmesh has a resolution smaller than the level of details the boulders have. So you end up having a large square that’s out of level with the visible terrain.

[BotLike]

On topic, please increase the difficulty of the new instances for their appropiate tier. T2 is supposed to be hard and challenging. Right now they are not challenging at all. Get some mechanics there please.

I agree but i am also afraid t2 will end up being the new t1 and t1 will end up being similar to pre-mordor FIs which you blazed through blindfolded.
I hope i'm wrong , ideally t2 should maintain the overall difficulty of CoS in Mordor , then t3 should only be doable with the best gear available when its released..
Otherwise it's pointless , might as well keep t1 and t2 only...

T3 can provide a challenge this game desperately needs.

Reward wise , i am expecting t3 to help you gear alts faster since you put in more effort to complete it...

[Fraushgrish2]

I agree but i am also afraid t2 will end up being the new t1 and t1 will end up being similar to pre-mordor FIs which you blazed through blindfolded.
I hope i'm wrong , ideally t2 should maintain the overall difficulty of CoS in Mordor , then t3 should only be doable with the best gear available when its released..
Otherwise it's pointless , might as well keep t1 and t2 only...

T3 can provide a challenge this game desperately needs.

Reward wise , i am expecting t3 to help you gear alts faster since you put in more effort to complete it...

mhm i pretty much agree, thing is rn all the 120 T2c instance are pretty overtuned and really difficult (not 100% sure if theyre undo-able yet) so I think T3 should be close to the difficulty of T2c at 120 on br rn, while T2 120 content should basically be like CoS t2c

[Thurinuor]

Some updates:

- We've adjusted the Tier 12 Crafted Morale and Power Potions. There was a number scaling issue, which led to the (awesomely but overly) large numbers in this preview. They will, however, still be quite nice.

- We are considering further differentiating the item level of new Lootbox gear from Tier 1 Instance reward gear, perhaps by lowering them another few levels. We are also looking at renaming the new lootboxes, and will revisit the flavor text on them.

- Older gear being available with the new vendor is a bug, and not intended. The older gear will be available with the older vendor, and the new gear with the new vendor, when Update 23 is released.

- Finally, we have been paying close attention to your feedback on Instance chest locks. We are working on making changes for these Instances to allow people to play with others at their preferred pace and schedule, while maintaining a healthy gear acquisition rate. To that end, we are looking at a system which offers Favored openings of a chest and Standard openings of a chest. A Favored opening would be a dramatically higher chance of getting desirable rewards, and be limited to a certain number of times within a certain time frame. A Standard chance of getting these rewards will happen during subsequent openings of the chests. The Favored status would be by character, independent of other characters in your party, so if you've opened the chest a lot, you'll have a standard chance, while someone in the group with you might have a Favored opening of the chest. It is likely the system will also have different numbers based on Instance difficulty, with more Favored chest openings on easier difficulties, and fewer Favored openings on higher difficulties, in proportion to the higher quality of the gear rewarded by difficulty. We are working on implementing some kind of visual effect that displays for you to let you know whether you will have a Favored Chest pull or not. We are still working on some of the details of this system, so names and numbers might well change.

So damn good news! I hope some of the people here like the new changes, stop complaining and start looking foward to the Grey Mountains!

[Skyfoot]

- We are considering further differentiating the item level of new Lootbox gear from Tier 1 Instance reward gear, perhaps by lowering them another few levels....

- Finally, we have been paying close attention to your feedback on Instance chest locks. We are working on...

Progress, which is good to see. Although, I'm not a fan of "considering" or "perhaps", it should just simply be we are going to do X. You'll never get another dime from me as long as loot-boxes are in the game, but the concessions you've made are good enough for some of the players so it's not a total loss.

[Thurinuor]

Progress, which is good to see. Although, I'm not a fan of "considering" or "perhaps", it should just simply be we are going to do X. You'll never get another dime from me as long as loot-boxes are in the game, but the concessions you've made are good enough for some of the players so it's not a total loss.

They are actually in development for U23. They can't give promises at this point and they shouldn't. Otherwise people would complain again if something changes: "But they promised I will get everything for free...*whine*"

[Hildilas]

Any word on skirmishes?

They could just add essence slots to the existing gear and scale it up. Skirmishes were a nice space filler now and then and a time consuming activity to tweak our characters. Of course these items should not be part of the ash system to prevent ash grinding...

[Skyfoot]

"But they promised I will get everything for free...*whine*"

I think someone needs a time out.

[chrisoxmo]

A Favored opening would be a dramatically higher chance of getting desirable rewards, and be limited to a certain number of times within a certain time frame. A Standard chance of getting these rewards will happen during subsequent openings of the chests.

Translation :
Favored opening = Today's CoS droprate
Standard chance = Dramatically lower chance of getting desirable rewards

Tell me if i'm mistaken ?

[Siddharta]

Also , all the items i saw in the database ( including a gold pocket i glimpsed somewhere ) seem to be created by an algorithm that spawns hundreds of items with very little effort.
As a result , all loot in the game has 0 identity and due to lootboxes , 0 sense of achievement.
It will be the same as Mordor , you expect us to spend time and money on copy pasted gear with slightly higher item level.
0 fun in that , i don't like it.
That was never the case in the past , it started becoming the rule when Mordor launched...

This is the reason i don't even want to log in sometimes, worst itemization LOTRO ever had. And i don't really care if it will drop from lootboxes or not, because it has 0 sense of achievement, well said.
Apart from that 5 ilvl difference between lootbox and instance loot doesn't matter a lot, because this is still the same gear. The difference must be at least purple vs teal in this case.

The difficulty of the Instances is something we are looking at. Appreciate the itemization feedback, but it isn't likely we will completely re-do the U23 gear to align with your suggestion. Hopefully in the future we'll offer the unique items you are looking for.

I hope you understand, that at least new 6-man (imo the only instance that has a potential to be really good) must not be another fail like Naerband, because we didn't see any viable six man for 2.5 years now.
New 3-man instances look awful visually and that's really bad. Also 3-man boss areas are too small to have some good mechanics involved, so idk how you are going to deal with it. Now it feels like Hytbold resource instances and i bet it will stay +\- same.
When you say 'Heavily instance based update' i see something but not this.

PS: Devs, check the outgoing damage curve for scaling instances like Silent Street (Harlond, Black Serpent), CoS, maybe Dome of Stars and etc, because i had some reports that it is overturned.

[Thurinuor]

Translation :
Favored opening = Today's CoS droprate
Standard chance = Dramatically lower chance of getting desirable rewards

Tell me if i'm mistaken ?

I think this is correct. But poeple can now play the instances with their friends and have no lock anymore.

[Hzn]

Some updates:

- We are considering further differentiating the item level of new Lootbox gear from Tier 1 Instance reward gear, perhaps by lowering them another few levels. We are also looking at renaming the new lootboxes, and will revisit the flavor text on them.

- Finally, we have been paying close attention to your feedback on Instance chest locks. We are working on making changes for these Instances to allow people to play with others at their preferred pace and schedule, while maintaining a healthy gear acquisition rate. To that end, we are looking at a system which offers Favored openings of a chest and Standard openings of a chest. A Favored opening would be a dramatically higher chance of getting desirable rewards, and be limited to a certain number of times within a certain time frame. A Standard chance of getting these rewards will happen during subsequent openings of the chests. The Favored status would be by character, independent of other characters in your party, so if you've opened the chest a lot, you'll have a standard chance, while someone in the group with you might have a Favored opening of the chest. It is likely the system will also have different numbers based on Instance difficulty, with more Favored chest openings on easier difficulties, and fewer Favored openings on higher difficulties, in proportion to the higher quality of the gear rewarded by difficulty. We are working on implementing some kind of visual effect that displays for you to let you know whether you will have a Favored Chest pull or not. We are still working on some of the details of this system, so names and numbers might well change.

Wow.
If the "standard" drop rate is like Seregost at the very beginning, it's fine for me.

On another note :
- The animation delay with multiple gambits is still not fixed on BR (you said during a stream that it will be fixed during the beta)
- Scale the heals of the warden between 105 and 120, it's getting ridiculous, Restoration (Tier 4) healing for 4k HP without crit is really low
- There is other concerns for the Warden that you can find on this post here