Bullroarer Update 23 Preview #6: Feedback Thread

[CaerArianrhod]

1 hour ain't that much, you put in 2 hours of work and you'll have all the jewels within 4 days easy peasy

Let's talk about that "easy peasy" when it is on live.

[Mukor]

Why did you decrease the raise per rank of some legacies (rend armour reduction, parry/block ratinc from shield tactics and so on).
They already get nerfed cause their less worth cause of the increase of the stats.
Their raise per rank must be increased to 1000 per rank to balance the statincrease.

[CaerArianrhod]

If assuming by "you" you mean "the people who actually fix bugs and other issues", then yes, we are not releasing Update 23 this week.

Thank the gods!

Naming of motes and asches of enchantment in german language is confusing. For one is the word "Asche" and for the other one "Aschen". Same word, just singular and plural versions for it. Please, change one if to something else.

/Signed.

I said this already in B#5.

[Herwegur]

300 Motes for clearing all deeds in a zone is too low, given the effort. 500 Motes is a more reasonable amount for completing a regional metal-deed.

Please also consider adding Motes for completing Explorer and Slayer meta-deeds per zone (they currently award some marks and rejuvenation potions, looks ideal to add some Motes here too).

[Geremir]

Concerning Mitigations
First of all this picture. In this picture you can see what my mitigations are in both DPS/Tanking specialization. Remember that blue specialization on the Guardian gives on the first passive bonus +10% armour rating.
In my DPS specialization I have (18 physical mastery essences slotted - purple ones from earlier beta build) and you can see that I end up on ~300k mastery(which is still 3k below the actual cap). You can see however that my tactical mitigation, physical mitigation and critical rating are nowhere to the cap. As a matter of fact I run around with ~13% ish tactical mitigation. Keep in mind that this is with the green essences and with items with a item lvl of 370 or above for all pieces. You can call that my own choice, but even with we get golden essences in the end I don't see how we are gonna overcome this gap of stats. Even though I am convinced that mastery/crit essences are on the right spot, mitigation essences are most definitely not! (For DPS in general you have to find a balance between a bit of DPS and having some mitigations in the process as well, at this stage fine, although mitigation essences will need a little boost.)

What is the problem?
If you look on my tanking spec you see I end up with around ~212k physical mitigation and about ~152k tactical mitigation. Currently I have 7 tactical mitigation essences slotted(purple ones, so better then the green), 1 physical mitigation, 2 finesse and 6 vitality essences. If I deduct the entire amount of mitigations from the essences I have actually slotted + the tactical/physical mitigation perks from the store I come on a total of ~202k physical mitigation and around ~95k tactical mitigation. If you decide to cap just your physical and tactical mitigation for T2 instances(246k mitigations required) then after a little calculation you will have need of ~6 physical mitigation essences and about ~22 tactical mitigation essences to actually cap all my stats on the Guardian.

Of course there are classes that give alternate buffs to tactical/physical mitigation, like Guardians Ward, Anthem of Composure etc. but that doesn't rely on the fact that you need way more essence slots even to cap out only TWO of your stats. Keep in mind you have up to a maximum of 20 essence slots with the current new gear and necklaces/pocket items only have one instead of two essence slots, which makes older pockets in the game more usuable then those new ones. My Guardian also ends up with a morale pool, way way lower then currently on live, about 140-150k. Keep in mind for a captain that mitigations can barely be reached, since they don't have access to a heavy shield at all(my current shield is also 8 item lvl's higher then the ones you can get) and apart from that you start with even worse gear from scratch. I think the mitigations concerning a cappy were already mentioned before in this topic, but you would need about 35 essences just to cap your mitigations only there, that does not make sense!

For the new instances you don't need to cap all your mits necessarily if you have a good group, but you will need alternate gear depending on which instance you are running. Glimmerdeep is like a full common damage instance, so no tactical mitigation is here required. Caverns of Thrumfall got lots of tactical damage and the opposite is very possible here. As for Thikil-Gundu it is a bit of both. Imagine that it would take even way more time and inventory space to get different sets of gear for each instance in particular for capping only TWO stats!

Similarities with other classes
Now to get to my point in general. Since level 85 and above I have always managed to cap out physical mitigation through terms of armour rating on Guardian and similar through heavy/tanking classes. With this update this is far off, which makes me believe that there is something wrong with the armour values on armour in the first place, or the mitigation caps are way of then they are supposed to be. The fact that you need ~36 mitigation essences to cap your mitigation stats on captain makes me believe that something is wrong.

Solutions
In this case there are a few things you could do:

• Raise the armour rating stats on current T1/T2 armour(imagining that T2 armour is the best armour until this stage), just enough until heavy armour classes are about 10k below the mitigation cap of 246k, which means about a 10-15% increase of armour rating on the current armour.
• Raise the mitigation essences with a fair amount, since this also help with getting some mitigations in DPS spec. You should aim for a raise of around ~4k per essence at minimum (so 12k for weak, 13.2k ish or something for purple mithrin essences). Even with this raise you are still way off to reach a cap on all your stats(which should be presumed by having empowered teal essences or golden essences in future)
• Decrease the mitigation cap. This one seems most unlikely, because I can imagine how much time it would cost to actually reform the stats once again!

*Note that reaching the mitigation cap is one thing, reaching orc-craft mitigations is going to be even harder and take even more essences as of now!

It's not that I feel the necessity for having capped stats as soon as possible, but there are also limits concerning reaching the cap. In it's current position you are on a tanking cappy nowhere close to even reach the given mitigation cap for T2 or above (246k mitigations for heavy), keep that in mind! For my feeling mastery/crit/finesse essences are all in the right spot now!
Even if golden essences in future have double stats then the weak essences you are still uncapable to cap everything at that stage!

Miscellaneous

• Captain banners are still bugged, Ironfold Banners have less morale stats then Doomfold ones! (Fix it once and for all!)
• Map filter notes have finally been added to the Ered Mithrin maps, additional other maps are finished, ty for that!
• Question here for Vastin/Cordovan/Tybur: Have loottables already been added? For my own feeling they have not, I see no difference between a favoured chest or normal chest, nor any difference for any chest at all. I have a feeling that loottables have not been included at all just yet. Please let us know whether that is the case or not?
• Concerning the latter point also purple jewellery or similar items from instances are impossible to dissenchant. People will have in future no use for 5 chest pieces and 0 shoulder pieces., similar for jewellery. It would be nice if you can disenchant that gear, which you don't need. This point is entirely dependent on whether loottables have been fully inplemented yet though.
• Creep stats are being worked on that is nice to hear. Hope we see some good changes to them soon! I have faith in you Vastin, you deliver a nice job so far!
• Runekeeper/Champ LI DPS being worked on is good to hear. Also class changes coming for RK, Capt, Beorn and Burg in a dot update later I hope?
• Reduce the amount of materials you need for additional recipes. Some of these recipes are not even best in slot and 50 ingots can easily be reduced to about 20 ingots. Still a fair amount don't you think? For people that have to craft Ember-Worthy Crafts every week it sounds more then fair to me, since you need quite some materials for these as well!
• Might essences/food has different amounts then agility/will food/essences and need to be fixed. Also keep in mind that the amount of mastery gained from a might/agility/will essence is still nowhere close to the physical/tactical mastery essences itself. This is already mentioned in many posts here before.
• Bosses in the 3-mans reset properly, thank you for that!

There is probably more, but I cannot think of anything else at this particular moment. In case I notice something else I will mention it for build #7.

I will add more information concerning the instances later today. I was unable to finish Thikil-Gundu this build, due to the 2nd boss(Fror) bugging out after a unfortunate reset. As for the third boss(Anthramoth) in build #5 there you done a pretty nice job. As for the last boss I hope other kins have additional information or insights for you. Otherwise I am up for testing it once more

Sincerely,

Aegiys

[Ardollas]

Help me understand how these things get "overlooked" seemingly often and "we accidentally introduced a bug" into champion damage mechanics when trying to fix the skill delay that's been present for quite some time now. So many things in this game do not work properly or are not scaled properly.

Give me a reason to keep spending money on LotRO as opposed to going elsewhere.

If you are easily upset by bugs and defects, beta testing probably isn't for you.

[Lanhalt]

Assuming an ingot weights 20 lbs, it will take 1.000lb (453kg) of ironfold to craft a single bracelet.

That's probably the heaviest bracelet in the history of video games!

You probably haven't played to L2.

(This crafted item is better then anything you can barter via embers)

That's a very thing. Crafting had become more or less useless for armors and weapons.

Guess that is exactly what these limits are for. To prevent people to rush the content and cry out for more after day one.

yeah, but you have to watch out to not push people off. landscape ores will be farmed, it's gonna be a pain since everyone will do it. And don't talk about the ambiance in those zones, that kind of amount will only push people to be dicks to each other. I'm not against about a few of those mechanic, but when you add it to the daily instances that seem to take forever for now, the cap in landscape token to force you to not play the content or use point for items you don't really needs, the decrease of DPS by 40%, etc... it looks like daily activities will last 3 hours per character for month. I'm sorry but for a good part of non high endgame players, it's gonna a great turn off.

But that would suggest the game is being manufactured in a way to annoy/bore/frustrate and generally pee off the players, just to push them into spending cash in the store to by-pass it, and that cant be true.

It's like this since mordor. Except this time it's even more aggressive, and there is no more people to defend the update, as there were in mordor. I have a feeling the game doesn't fit in its budget anymore. MMO are done so they can't run under a certain number of paying players, so they have to push people to the shop. But with every update, it's worse, since it push casuals more and more away, and I'm not sure the majority of paying user are high endgame content. If that's true, it's only gonna be worse and worse. You can chose to blame low paying premium or F2P, but it's a non problem, the majority them would not be there if it was sub only, and would just leave if it became full sub again. And sadly most of the decision they take only catter to whales, and will have the opposite effect than the one wanted : push people away from the sub, or only taking it the first month of new content.

To me, if they want to push people to sub (if that's their plan, because cash shop can be more profitable than sub), they have to stop to go in the current direction, and change the subscriptions advantages. To me, one way to do that would be keeping the lock for dungeon content at one time a day for f2p, going to 3 or 5 a day for subscribers would be a good thing : everyone would have acces to everything (you could keep your F2P status), but paying users would actually have a real advantage (because right now, there is only to thing a F2P can't access. transfering money to another character and the fast travels. Everything else is available with time and farm). You could also add some scroll to be able to do an instance one more time so premium could also have more than one run if they want it, with a max of the number the VIP have.

We have heard your feedback on this, and it is not our intention for you to earn tokens and not be able (have the required reputation) to spend them before reaching a cap. For now, the team is going to increase the cap for Marks of the Longbeards to 400.

If I may, that may not be a solution. Last zone, I got to ~520 token when I finished the quest. Except as a heavy armor wearer, and the erebor reput was the one that gave the less reput, the last to come, and the one giving heavy amror, I should have used my token in useless items to not lose token. If there is a cap, it has to be higher than what you can get by doing all the quest and/or all the interesting stuff has to not be on the last reputation level. I got it right, the having to use tokens on lower grade reput is not present in this update, but if you implement it now, it's probably to implement it in the following updates.

[Tybur]

@Devs could we also have an update on;
- Why are might items significantly lower than both agility/will items?

There was a bug in the might progressions (they were referencing an incorrect value). That has been addressed internally (but was not fixed in time for today's Bullroarer build).

[Arnenna]

300 Motes for clearing all deeds in a zone is too low, given the effort. 500 Motes is a more reasonable amount for completing a regional metal-deed.

Please also consider adding Motes for completing Explorer and Slayer meta-deeds per zone (they currently award some marks and rejuvenation potions, looks ideal to add some Motes here too).

Oh dear. I can't help but think - they're kidding, but I know . . . they're not.

I remember when meta deeds were something special - something worth doing. You got a steed, or something real nice. Now, you get a fraction of what you "could" get, with a click of a mouse with a lootbox.

They want our feedback, well here's mine on this.

RIP meta deeds.

[Oelle]

I like caps that are so high that one cant reach them.
imo, caps are annoying anyway and just streamline everything to be the same. DR on all stats is simply better.
Therefore, I really like these new statcurves and the gear which results in the amount one gets.

What I dont like is mainstats being so weak, that most stats on gear are near useless and gear only being good if it has many essence slots or just a tiny amount of mainstats. That needs to be changed. Either, the mainstat slices need to be much bigger or mainstats need to give more secondary stats or secondary stat slices need to be down. All essences should be viable and all equipment should be good. There shouldnt be a simple decision like "the more essence slots something has, the better it is" like before Mordor.
Essences should be finetuning, not the only viable base to get stats from.

Lets say, I'd find some gear with many essence slots in old scaled instances.
It might look like 3-4 essence slots, plus some morale/vitality/mainstat. The way its calculated would be Itemlevel and quality results in a certain amount of stats. Minus 3-4x worth of one essence results in the amount of morale/vitality/mainstat. With mainstat being useless, that part of the gear is useless. But as that part was small, because there were 3-4 essences in the calculation, that piece is still good.
Now compare that to some new item. Same quality, higher itemlevel, but only one essence slot. now, the amount of mainstat on that item is much higher, but its still useless, rendering the whole item far worse than that old scaled item.
This is simply the wrong approach. And it can easily be avoided, if all slices were balanced.

[Drizzels]

I agree aswell that you should not be able to cap anything at the start, neither mits no matter if pve or pvp.
Next to that there is no content where it is even needed to cap anything.

Main stats should provide more mastery/point and essences less.

[Raymore]

Not 50, not 20, but 5 Ingots. Just admit it was an error instead of making up some tale that it was planned. Even considering wastage in making a bracelet of a few ounces, 1000 lbs of material is just over stupid.

And the Character Bound Sturdy Steel Keys from the Anniversary Boxes. You should be converting any in Inventory to Bound Black Steel Keys. You give the impression early on that Motes or Embers will be awarded instead. People open those Anniversary Boxes and get the Sturdy Keys, which will now be all but worthless and then decide to award Black Steel ones instead.

No Landscape Token Caps. Is that why you are moving Festivity Tokens to Landscape, to 'justify' it when people state that there was never a Landscape Token Cap. Now you can say but well there is.

[Derquin]

...


yeah, but you have to watch out to not push people off. landscape ores will be farmed, it's gonna be a pain since everyone will do it. And don't talk about the ambiance in those zones, that kind of amount will only push people to be dicks to each other. I'm not against about a few of those mechanic, but when you add it to the daily instances that seem to take forever for now, the cap in landscape token to force you to not play the content or use point for items you don't really needs, the decrease of DPS by 40%, etc... it looks like daily activities will last 3 hours per character for month. I'm sorry but for a good part of non high endgame players, it's gonna a great turn off.

...

It's like this since mordor. Except this time it's even more aggressive, and there is no more people to defend the update, as there were in mordor. I have a feeling the game doesn't fit in its budget anymore. MMO are done so they can't run under a certain number of paying players, so they have to push people to the shop. But with every update, it's worse, since it push casuals more and more away, and I'm not sure the majority of paying user are high endgame content. If that's true, it's only gonna be worse and worse. You can chose to blame low paying premium or F2P, but it's a non problem, the majority them would not be there if it was sub only, and would just leave if it became full sub again. And sadly most of the decision they take only catter to whales, and will have the opposite effect than the one wanted : push people away from the sub, or only taking it the first month of new content.

To me, if they want to push people to sub (if that's their plan, because cash shop can be more profitable than sub), they have to stop to go in the current direction, and change the subscriptions advantages. To me, one way to do that would be keeping the lock for dungeon content at one time a day for f2p, going to 3 or 5 a day for subscribers would be a good thing : everyone would have acces to everything (you could keep your F2P status), but paying users would actually have a real advantage (because right now, there is only to thing a F2P can't access. transfering money to another character and the fast travels. Everything else is available with time and farm). You could also add some scroll to be able to do an instance one more time so premium could also have more than one run if they want it, with a max of the number the VIP have.

If I may, that may not be a solution. Last zone, I got to ~520 token when I finished the quest. Except as a heavy armor wearer, and the erebor reput was the one that gave the less reput, the last to come, and the one giving heavy amror, I should have used my token in useless items to not lose token. If there is a cap, it has to be higher than what you can get by doing all the quest and/or all the interesting stuff has to not be on the last reputation level. I got it right, the having to use tokens on lower grade reput is not present in this update, but if you implement it now, it's probably to implement it in the following updates.

I'm certainly not defending the kind of chore and sometimes battlefield the game already has become. Or this mad run through a new region to get all one needs and then start crying how the content needs to be nerfed for those who follow... We got hit by the aftermath in The Wastes and Mordor with loot drop nerfing while not having taken part in the first rush. Yeah I know - mea culpa for not doing it, too. ^^

If that is all the endgame is about they can keep it.

I really am annoyed about the way this game has changed over the last updates and if they are not reacting to negative feedback (key mess, motes/embers/figments, astronomical amounts of crafting resources, no cap on festivities and other tokens and the like) then it must be vote by the wallet. I have enough game content left for far more than a year of my playstyle and our own stories have been put on hold to go through Mordor at least once for the dailies before they are nerfed.


I'm definitely not an endgame player (running around the same char at level cap, redoing the same quests again and again, makes me itchy) and not 'awesome' enough to buy keys to support them (^^)

I even wouldn't consider myself a whale without any data to compare but I have spent quite a lot of real money on subbing, quest packs, expansions, wardrobe, inventory, housing items, cosmetics and the like for far more than one account over eleven years.

But enough is enough. I won't buy the new region for a long time if at all. My little dwarves survived without new housing items and cosmetics this long, they can wait or go without altogether.