Bullroarer Update 30.3 - Early Beta 1 - CLOSED

[LadySelene]

And where are you getting this information from?

I have a gut feeling after I saw 4 different versions of Burn Hot.

PS.
Will any new advancement items be added for barter with festival tokens? If you get a horse, a dress and a pet (and Anfalas crystals eventually will go), there will be nothing to spend festival tokens on.

[Braer]

Really? Ancient Script currently capped?

Just to think of adding cap mechanics to Ancient Script is mind boggling.

[Derquin]

Tooltips for the new legendaries with traceries slotted are way too long to be displayed properly.


Which craft is going to make the brawler's stone? I haven't found any so far.

[Joedangod]

I have a gut feeling after I saw 4 different versions of Burn Hot.

Best to not spread misinformation. For all you know the progression track thingy they're adding might be what holds the higher tiers of these traceries.

[Calyniel]

Generally I feel like new LI's are going into right direction. However this is what worries me a lot.



We have 4 tiers of traciers and then we have matching enhancement runes. I'm afraid that we are gonna get hard grind with this.

Yellow = Landscape
Purple = low tier instances
Teal = Higher tier instances
Gold = Highest tier instances

Any of the enhancement runes currently works for example gold traciers, but it's most likely bug and in future you need matching rune. I read that you need 49 enhancement runes per tracier, I feel that it's way too much and it creates grind fest what this system promised to fix unless enhancement runes are something what drops like a candies everywhere.

Then there is this Word of Mastery traciers Max level restriction. SSG clearly wants us to start from bottom when we go past X lvl. In this situation it's 140. What happens when you go over that Max level? Does all traciers suddenly become non-effective? That is huge nerf to your dps suddenly when you are leveling.

And last consern what I have is that when you use enhancement runes to traciers, then unslot them, all used enhancement runes are lost.

This concerns me also, how will the different levels of Tracers be rewarded? Will you start with Yellow Tracers from landscape and maybe crafting, add matching runes to increase stats enough to participate in instance. Then get the next level Tracer from instances (hopefully not based on RNG) upgrade your LI with new tracers and start the grind all over with runes until you can now join higher level instance to gain a Teal Tracer and so on. This for all 12 or 13 slots on each LI?

It's hard to evaluate a new system without all the information. Also I'm not clear exactly how leveling up your LI from the start works.

On my Hunter I might be able to get by with one set of weapons but my RK will need a healer set and maybe 2 DPS, one lightning, one fire. The grind seems a bit overwhelming with this new system.

I like the option of placing any Tracer on either my bow or sword, but currently with 2 weapons Hunters and Wardens are short one word of power slot. Hopefully this will be addressed in future updates, otherwise this could be a problem.

[Sindhol]

The new LI system is disappointing. It doesn't help players, only SSG.

Legacy revisions are required for any successful LI overhaul—all the other stuff is incidental. If all the bad legacies had been properly reworked, players would tolerate the empowerment scroll grind (more). Not quite as important, but still significant, is the grind. If the grind had been reduced, players would tolerate the bad legacies (more). This update doesn't address either of these key points. In fact, the grind appears worse. There is no reason for a player to support this update.

It is possible that legacies or grind will be addressed in the future, but if that is the case, it should be made clear in the update notes. Anything not mentioned in the patch notes simply does not exist for the purpose of evaluating this update. We can't be expected to just assume SSG will make things right—not in the least because in the past, SSG has rarely made things right. The reasonable attitude is: this is it, no further work will be done, now is it good? It isn't.

This is part of a pattern: SSG does not communicate. SSG does not gather feedback at the conceptual/design stage. SSG percolates in its ivory tower. And lo and behold, an update magically appears on BR, with no documentation*, no developer commentary, not even a blue name participating in the discussion. And feedback flows in, but—guess what?—by this time, it's too late to revise the concept, no matter how bad it is. Some bugs will be fixed, maybe some rescaling, but the outline—that, you are stuck with.

Now, as Joedangod wrote, some of the back-end stuff appears to be improved. And that's good—an update that makes the system easier to work with might lead to better updates in the future. However, based on past performance, I don't think a back-end improvement is likely to translate into an improvement the players can actually feel. Even with a good system in place, you still need a developer willing to spend time going through every legacy and adjusting its effects. No significant legacy adjustments have been made during the past years (even though many people asked for them). SSG hasn't given any sign that they're planning to revise any legacies (even though this would be the perfect time to do so). There is no reason to believe that the most important LI changes will be made as part or result of this update. It seems that the only purpose of this update, then, is to make it easier for SSG to scale LIs and sell MCs in the future. That doesn't help players, it only benefits SSG.


If SSG was serious about gathering feedback, they would provide an outline of what they're doing—what problems are being tackled and how—before they start building the system, so that people can provide feedback before SSG locks in their design choices. We could have avoided this fairly pointless reskin of the existing system, and developers could've directed their efforts at what actually matters—legacy revision. But that would require a lot more effort (taking in feedback is a job, people!), and nobody at SSG is interested in fighting for it. Maybe that is because it's hard to prove that it would benefit the bottom line, maybe they've got a comfortable routine going, and maybe there's no point rocking the boat for an old game that's been put out to pasture. Whatever it is, it's hurting the game and the community.


*Documentation, in this case, doesn't mean "superficial patch notes", but rather a detailed list of things that were changed, what they were changed to, what those changes mean, and why they were made. You'll note that the patch notes don't even list which legacies were removed—it's been up to the players to figure that out. It's not easy to test an update when you're not even sure where to look. Gathering feedback isn't just a matter of listening—you need to supply information, else how do you have a meaningful discussion?

[Raninia]

The new LI system is disappointing. It doesn't help players, only SSG.

Legacy revisions are required for any successful LI overhaul—all the other stuff is incidental. If all the bad legacies had been properly reworked, players would tolerate the empowerment scroll grind (more). Not quite as important, but still significant, is the grind. If the grind had been reduced, players would tolerate the bad legacies (more). This update doesn't address either of these key points. In fact, the grind appears worse. There is no reason for a player to support this update.

It is possible that legacies or grind will be addressed in the future, but if that is the case, it should be made clear in the update notes. Anything not mentioned in the patch notes simply does not exist for the purpose of evaluating this update. We can't be expected to just assume SSG will make things right—not in the least because in the past, SSG has rarely made things right. The reasonable attitude is: this is it, no further work will be done, now is it good? It isn't.

This is part of a pattern: SSG does not communicate. SSG does not gather feedback at the conceptual/design stage. SSG percolates in its ivory tower. And lo and behold, an update magically appears on BR, with no documentation*, no developer commentary, not even a blue name participating in the discussion. And feedback flows in, but—guess what?—by this time, it's too late to revise the concept, no matter how bad it is. Some bugs will be fixed, maybe some rescaling, but the outline—that, you are stuck with.

Now, as Joedangod wrote, some of the back-end stuff appears to be improved. And that's good—an update that makes the system easier to work with might lead to better updates in the future. However, based on past performance, I don't think a back-end improvement is likely to translate into an improvement the players can actually feel. Even with a good system in place, you still need a developer willing to spend time going through every legacy and adjusting its effects. No significant legacy adjustments have been made during the past years (even though many people asked for them). SSG hasn't given any sign that they're planning to revise any legacies (even though this would be the perfect time to do so). There is no reason to believe that the most important LI changes will be made as part or result of this update. It seems that the only purpose of this update, then, is to make it easier for SSG to scale LIs and sell MCs in the future. That doesn't help players, it only benefits SSG.


If SSG was serious about gathering feedback, they would provide an outline of what they're doing—what problems are being tackled and how—before they start building the system, so that people can provide feedback before SSG locks in their design choices. We could have avoided this fairly pointless reskin of the existing system, and developers could've directed their efforts at what actually matters—legacy revision. But that would require a lot more effort (taking in feedback is a job, people!), and nobody at SSG is interested in fighting for it. Maybe that is because it's hard to prove that it would benefit the bottom line, maybe they've got a comfortable routine going, and maybe there's no point rocking the boat for an old game that's been put out to pasture. Whatever it is, it's hurting the game and the community.


*Documentation, in this case, doesn't mean "superficial patch notes", but rather a detailed list of things that were changed, what they were changed to, what those changes mean, and why they were made. You'll note that the patch notes don't even list which legacies were removed—it's been up to the players to figure that out. It's not easy to test an update when you're not even sure where to look. Gathering feedback isn't just a matter of listening—you need to supply information, else how do you have a meaningful discussion?

I agree, our communication around this hasn't been enough. Part of this is we bit off more than we could chew, and a lot of work means that it's harder to get everything communicated effectively. Part of it is we don't have the bandwidth to do all the communication we should do, and certainly not enough to do as much as we'd like to. Part of it is we haven't done stuff like this in a while - this is a BR, but it's a helluva lot bigger than BRs we've done in the recent past, at least - and doing stuff like this requires practice. So it sucks that we dropped the ball here, and I totally take the blame for that - I'm taking notes on this for the future, because I actually think this was a pretty positive process overall. We premiered some pretty big changes to players, we've been getting a lot of really good feedback, and while some folks are falling in the "Why did you do any of this at all" camp, most folks seem to be engaging with it and seeing the potential. Now, it's on us to get more folks onboard, to respond to that feedback - particularly in-game - and get this system where it needs to be. A lot of that is gonna happen before the revamp goes live, but we know that our job won't end there. You're right, taking feedback is indeed a job, and we're working on getting better at it.

I understand the historical pessimism around changes and feedback, and I get that there's a lot of folks who are jaded by it. That's fine, your feelings about it are valid, and I'm not interested in telling you otherwise. My job is to make sure that stuff happens, and happens consistently. It's one of the reasons why I was brought onboard to help. I can't promise that everything will happen as fast as folks would like - hell, I can't promise it'll happen as fast as we would like - but I can promise that we'll be doing a lot of iteration. We understand that we need to spend more time listening, more time testing, and more time iterating, and we're doing the work behind the scenes to make progress on those things. They're not outwardly visible - but at some point I'd like to talk about them, once we have a better sense of how they are or aren't working - but they're happening. You don't have to trust us, but you do have to wait.

To address some of the more specific concerns here:

We're gonna continue tweaking traceries. We're moving really fast on that stuff right now - which is why the documentation isn't as specific as we'd like - and I expect more changes to keep happening. Again, changes will keep happening even once things are live.

The grind concerns have been heard loud and clear, and we're hoping that once more of the sources of traceries and enhancement runes show up - some should already be in, afaik - y'all will have a better sense of how things will look and can give us more actionable feedback where it's not working right.

[WeirdJedi]

The new LI system is disappointing. It doesn't help players, only SSG.

Legacy revisions are required for any successful LI overhaul—all the other stuff is incidental. If all the bad legacies had been properly reworked, players would tolerate the empowerment scroll grind (more). Not quite as important, but still significant, is the grind. If the grind had been reduced, players would tolerate the bad legacies (more). This update doesn't address either of these key points. In fact, the grind appears worse. There is no reason for a player to support this update.

The new LI system is a vast improvement over the old system. Just think about all the stupid things we have to keep telling new people:

• The differences of a major or minor legacy and how one doesn't replace the other
• Sorting between three ages or being ridiculed if we don't have a first age
• What a legacy's rank means and how high it goes
• How certain legacies only fit a weapon or an item
• What level you should deconstruct a legendary item
• Having to find level-appropriate LIs in the world
• Filtering through a ton of random dropped LIs
• How to retrieve legacies from LIs
• The process of breaking down legendary items
• The need of XP Runes
• The process of getting Star-lit crystals
• What changes with the imbuement system

Some of these things aren't necessarily being removed but refined for the better. I personally like the fact that you pretty much have a legacy for every skill you have, regardless if a person finds them "effective" or not. The Scrolls of Empowerment grind was vastly improved from last year, or should we ignore the fact that you can level up one legacy from base to max doing Vales dailies four times a week? Or ignore how you can obtain motes and scrolls from doing missions that are now available to all levels?

You are right. They don't reveal everything at once. Maybe because they want people to test certain aspects at specific times. If I recall, Update 25 had at least 4 test phases. People constantly ask them to smooth over the process. I think they've succeeded in doing just that. Anyone who equips their legendary equipment with the most basic items are now going to be able to get through the landscape. If people want to squeeze out another percent here-and-there, let them work for it.

[Nubja]

I agree, our communication around this hasn't been enough. Part of this is we bit off more than we could chew, and a lot of work means that it's harder to get everything communicated effectively. Part of it is we don't have the bandwidth to do all the communication we should do, and certainly not enough to do as much as we'd like to. Part of it is we haven't done stuff like this in a while - this is a BR, but it's a helluva lot bigger than BRs we've done in the recent past, at least - and doing stuff like this requires practice. So it sucks that we dropped the ball here, and I totally take the blame for that - I'm taking notes on this for the future, because I actually think this was a pretty positive process overall. We premiered some pretty big changes to players, we've been getting a lot of really good feedback, and while some folks are falling in the "Why did you do any of this at all" camp, most folks seem to be engaging with it and seeing the potential. Now, it's on us to get more folks onboard, to respond to that feedback - particularly in-game - and get this system where it needs to be. A lot of that is gonna happen before the revamp goes live, but we know that our job won't end there. You're right, taking feedback is indeed a job, and we're working on getting better at it.

I understand the historical pessimism around changes and feedback, and I get that there's a lot of folks who are jaded by it. That's fine, your feelings about it are valid, and I'm not interested in telling you otherwise. My job is to make sure that stuff happens, and happens consistently. It's one of the reasons why I was brought onboard to help. I can't promise that everything will happen as fast as folks would like - hell, I can't promise it'll happen as fast as we would like - but I can promise that we'll be doing a lot of iteration. We understand that we need to spend more time listening, more time testing, and more time iterating, and we're doing the work behind the scenes to make progress on those things. They're not outwardly visible - but at some point I'd like to talk about them, once we have a better sense of how they are or aren't working - but they're happening. You don't have to trust us, but you do have to wait.

To address some of the more specific concerns here:

We're gonna continue tweaking traceries. We're moving really fast on that stuff right now - which is why the documentation isn't as specific as we'd like - and I expect more changes to keep happening. Again, changes will keep happening even once things are live.

The grind concerns have been heard loud and clear, and we're hoping that once more of the sources of traceries and enhancement runes show up - some should already be in, afaik - y'all will have a better sense of how things will look and can give us more actionable feedback where it's not working right.

hello peeps any champ buffs

[Raninia]

hello peeps any champ buffs

I don't have any specific champ buffs to call out - I'm not the class designer, which is a good thing I promise

We're aware that champ looks pretty rough compared to a lot of the improvements other classes are seeing. We pretty much need to bring everything in line still, so more work is coming.

[Joedangod]

We're gonna continue tweaking traceries. We're moving really fast on that stuff right now - which is why the documentation isn't as specific as we'd like - and I expect more changes to keep happening. Again, changes will keep happening even once things are live.

How are you going to be tweaking traceries is my question.

Are traceries really just going to be the old legacies that we already had? Because almost everything there was deeply flawed. Look at Champion as an example here, pre-100 it is notably behind other DPS specs, as soon as 100 hits the obscenely high % ratings on legacies jump it straight up to being a top DPS. Champs on live feel useful, Champs on legendary servers feel awful. These old legacies made different classes scale at wildly different rates and I can honestly say that there isn't a single enjoyable aspect to them. You don't get to do anything new or cool when you obtain them, you just hit a bit harder with the affected skill. It can even get awkward at points when skills that don't have legacies attached start to fall behind, Thrash is one of the most used Beorning skills but it gets progressively weaker in relation to the rest of skills list post 100 as it just doesn't have a legacy to specifically affect it.

You definitely seem to be fixing a few of the major flaws with the old system but that just makes the flaws you're keeping around even more glaringly obvious.

[Nanganark]

* Currently I have to say that in general all classes do less damage than before..., especially the Brawler is on top of the list in terms of outgoing damage....

* I don't know if it's currently due to specific things that this is so..., but as we surely all have noticed, among other things many other traceries are missing. Also that in the (Current Early Beta) we can not yet craft weapon titles on our weapons...

* What I also wonder is why all these Legendary items are purple instead of gold?

* With the Enhancemnet runes I'm not sure what to make of it..., excited in any case not..., I'm of the opinion, everyone must eventually come to all Enhancement runes and especially to the golden Traceries .... Can't be that only the MEGA RAIDER have the best stuff and the others are allowed to look down the tube ..., especially since the golden ones we currently see on the beta are almost the exact and partly even the exact image of the live server traceries ..., just because of that I find this change not quite fair to other players ... so please reconsider ...

* How are we supposed to get all these fonts etc.... get to us to exchange these traceries?
I have seen that there is a new place in Rivendell something with traceries..., hardly traveled in I was teleported out again? So also something else that needs to be done.

* On the whole you need to rethink the whole thing again, in my opinion... because as I said it would not be fair to other non raider players....

[Laerthan1997]

I agree, our communication around this hasn't been enough. Part of this is we bit off more than we could chew, and a lot of work means that it's harder to get everything communicated effectively. Part of it is we don't have the bandwidth to do all the communication we should do, and certainly not enough to do as much as we'd like to. Part of it is we haven't done stuff like this in a while - this is a BR, but it's a helluva lot bigger than BRs we've done in the recent past, at least - and doing stuff like this requires practice. So it sucks that we dropped the ball here, and I totally take the blame for that - I'm taking notes on this for the future, because I actually think this was a pretty positive process overall. We premiered some pretty big changes to players, we've been getting a lot of really good feedback, and while some folks are falling in the "Why did you do any of this at all" camp, most folks seem to be engaging with it and seeing the potential. Now, it's on us to get more folks onboard, to respond to that feedback - particularly in-game - and get this system where it needs to be. A lot of that is gonna happen before the revamp goes live, but we know that our job won't end there. You're right, taking feedback is indeed a job, and we're working on getting better at it.

I understand the historical pessimism around changes and feedback, and I get that there's a lot of folks who are jaded by it. That's fine, your feelings about it are valid, and I'm not interested in telling you otherwise. My job is to make sure that stuff happens, and happens consistently. It's one of the reasons why I was brought onboard to help. I can't promise that everything will happen as fast as folks would like - hell, I can't promise it'll happen as fast as we would like - but I can promise that we'll be doing a lot of iteration. We understand that we need to spend more time listening, more time testing, and more time iterating, and we're doing the work behind the scenes to make progress on those things. They're not outwardly visible - but at some point I'd like to talk about them, once we have a better sense of how they are or aren't working - but they're happening. You don't have to trust us, but you do have to wait.

To address some of the more specific concerns here:

We're gonna continue tweaking traceries. We're moving really fast on that stuff right now - which is why the documentation isn't as specific as we'd like - and I expect more changes to keep happening. Again, changes will keep happening even once things are live.

The grind concerns have been heard loud and clear, and we're hoping that once more of the sources of traceries and enhancement runes show up - some should already be in, afaik - y'all will have a better sense of how things will look and can give us more actionable feedback where it's not working right.

You've got to be kidding me. You do realize that this new system in its current form has all the flaws of the old one or worse (actually nerfs champions by quite a bit and you don't seem to have thought of it beforehand? but I'm not surprised, everything SSG has ever done really screams improvisation and a severe lack of forward thinking, especially when it's thinking about how the players will react to their main characters or ones they have worked really hard on being reduced to nothing by incompetent developpers that can't understand anything about how the changes they are implementing will actually affect the game) and so is just a spit in the face of everyone that has fully maxed-out LIs in the current system, even more so if you have them on multiple characters and for multiple roles on said characters. And you say : "The grind concerns have been heard loud and clear" ? You do realize that the nearly existence of this new system you put out proves exactly the opposite ? And that all the people that say why did you do anything at all are right ? Are you all just that dumb at SSG ?

[Raninia]

How are you going to be tweaking traceries is my question.

Are traceries really just going to be the old legacies that we already had? Because almost everything there was deeply flawed. Look at Champion as an example here, pre-100 it is notably behind other DPS specs, as soon as 100 hits the obscenely high % ratings on legacies jump it straight up to being a top DPS. Champs on live feel useful, Champs on legendary servers feel awful. These old legacies made different classes scale at wildly different rates and I can honestly say that there isn't a single enjoyable aspect to them. You don't get to do anything new or cool when you obtain them, you just hit a bit harder with the affected skill. It can even get awkward at points when skills that don't have legacies attached start to fall behind, Thrash is one of the most used Beorning skills but it gets progressively weaker in relation to the rest of skills list post 100 as it just doesn't have a legacy to specifically affect it.

You definitely seem to be fixing a few of the major flaws with the old system but that just makes the flaws you're keeping around even more glaringly obvious.

Yeah, I get that. I imagine there's some diversity in thought among players about what kind of traceries y'all prefer, but for the initial step we intentionally wanted to limit halo by starting with stuff that already existed. Stuff that wasn't the best but worked was a better place for us to start than reimagining additional pieces - too many moving parts make it a lot harder to accomplish anything useful. Our approach will be to adjust stuff as we go, and in the future introduce new types of traceries that players haven't seen yet and/or in a while. We had hoped to include some of those initially, as a tease, but the process of converting/creating traceries ended up being an unexpectedly larger chunk of work than we'd hoped for at first - which, coincidentally, justified our desire to not add a whole mess of new types of effects and such.

Anyways, all this to say, we're gonna tweak stuff that exists, we'll mess with stuff that doesn't exist, but we're focusing more on the former in the short term and the latter in the long term. Hopefully we'll see some of the latter in Gundabad - probably not at launch - but that's not pinned down yet.

You've got to be kidding me. You do realize that this new system in its current form has all the flaws of the old one or worse (actually nerfs champions by quite a bit and you don't seem to have thought of it beforehand? but I'm not surprised, everything SSG has ever done really screams improvisation and a severe lack of forward thinking, especially when it's thinking about how the players will react to their main characters or ones they have worked really hard on being reduced to nothing by incompetent developpers that can't understand anything about how the changes they are implementing will actually affect the game) and so is just a spit in the face of everyone that has fully maxed-out LIs in the current system, even more so if you have them on multiple characters and for multiple roles on said characters. And you say : "The grind concerns have been heard loud and clear" ? You do realize that the nearly existence of this new system you put out proves exactly the opposite ? And that all the people that say why did you do anything at all are right ? Are you all just that dumb at SSG ?

In order:

1. As others have pointed out, the new system doesn't, in fact, contain "all the flaws of the old one or worse".
2. We knew this was gonna affect champs. We said so ahead of time. We also said that we'd work on it. We still are.
3. "Just a spit in the face of everyone that has fully maxed-out LIs" is a pretty strong statement to make, and would be quite a large spit. I'm sorry these changes are making you feel this way, I hope that once you spend more time with the system and more pieces of it become available on Bullroarer, you'll have a better experience. Regardless, this isn't the most effective way to give feedback to us if you actually want us to act on it - it's not terribly specific, actionable, or clear. But, if all you want to do is vent, that's fine, I just won't treat it like it's stuff you want us to do.
4. We hear players complaining of too much grind in the current system, and of the potential for that to be matched or exceeded by the new one. If you were hoping for something with no grind in it, I'm sorry, but you weren't listening when we said that there would be grind for endgame hardcore players still. The specifics of that are still unclear to players atm, since we haven't seeded the economy fully, so while we hear the feedback and are being mindful of it, it's not something we'll be able to directly address until those pieces are in place and y'all can mess around with them.
5. I mean, we're human, so we're not perfect, but I happen to think we're all reasonably intelligent

[Mephizto89]

This iteration of BR should have better stayed on Palantir for more leaks or in the head of the developer bringing this clownfiesta up in first place.
As this has already passed the Palantir you have some serious issues there besides those continuous leaks.
Get some players that know the basic mechanics of this game on palantir at first and kick those 24/7 festival-chars that are obviously there now.
With this new LI system nearly every class is broken in a special way, some for the good (hunt, burg) and some for the bad (obv. champ).
The only balanced classes are those that doesn't have good legacies on live or good traceries on BR. <-- this should let you think about current and future LI system
My recommendation for this, back into designphase and behave like this iteration on BR never happened.

[Laurelinarien]

I know this is low priority compared to the actual slottables... but, is there any chance you'll reconsider the current weapon/item panel?
Our LIs have a good way of displaying legacies & their advancement, not perfect but good. This new panel mimics a gear tooltip so it's very vertical and when we're done slotting things, on a standard 27'' monitor, the strip of information runs top to bottom.
Again, I know it's a minor thing and I'm sure some ppl love it.. but I'll miss the old panel.

[Laerthan1997]

Yeah, I get that. I imagine there's some diversity in thought among players about what kind of traceries y'all prefer, but for the initial step we intentionally wanted to limit halo by starting with stuff that already existed. Stuff that wasn't the best but worked was a better place for us to start than reimagining additional pieces - too many moving parts make it a lot harder to accomplish anything useful. Our approach will be to adjust stuff as we go, and in the future introduce new types of traceries that players haven't seen yet and/or in a while. We had hoped to include some of those initially, as a tease, but the process of converting/creating traceries ended up being an unexpectedly larger chunk of work than we'd hoped for at first - which, coincidentally, justified our desire to not add a whole mess of new types of effects and such.

Anyways, all this to say, we're gonna tweak stuff that exists, we'll mess with stuff that doesn't exist, but we're focusing more on the former in the short term and the latter in the long term. Hopefully we'll see some of the latter in Gundabad - probably not at launch - but that's not pinned down yet.



In order:

1. As others have pointed out, the new system doesn't, in fact, contain "all the flaws of the old one or worse".
2. We knew this was gonna affect champs. We said so ahead of time. We also said that we'd work on it. We still are.
3. "Just a spit in the face of everyone that has fully maxed-out LIs" is a pretty strong statement to make, and would be quite a large spit. I'm sorry these changes are making you feel this way, I hope that once you spend more time with the system and more pieces of it become available on Bullroarer, you'll have a better experience. Regardless, this isn't the most effective way to give feedback to us if you actually want us to act on it - it's not terribly specific, actionable, or clear. But, if all you want to do is vent, that's fine, I just won't treat it like it's stuff you want us to do.
4. We hear players complaining of too much grind in the current system, and of the potential for that to be matched or exceeded by the new one. If you were hoping for something with no grind in it, I'm sorry, but you weren't listening when we said that there would be grind for endgame hardcore players still. The specifics of that are still unclear to players atm, since we haven't seeded the economy fully, so while we hear the feedback and are being mindful of it, it's not something we'll be able to directly address until those pieces are in place and y'all can mess around with them.
5. I mean, we're human, so we're not perfect, but I happen to think we're all reasonably intelligent

Which flaws are you exactly adressing ? Because as far as I know, this new system is the same as the old one, traceries are pretty much the same as current legacies, all you do is giving it a new name, give new ways to acquire them, and more grind, to get pretty much the same end result. Oh and remove weapon-swapping at the same time. I fail to see what exactly you are improving, at least from an end-game perspective. All you are giving us i more grind.

[Raninia]

I know this is low priority compared to the actual slottables... but, is there any chance you'll reconsider the current weapon/item panel?
Our LIs have a good way of displaying legacies & their advancement, not perfect but good. This new panel mimics a gear tooltip so it's very vertical and when we're done slotting things, on a standard 27'' monitor, the strip of information runs top to bottom.
Again, I know it's a minor thing and I'm sure some ppl love it.. but I'll miss the old panel.

We're definitely gonna keep an eye on how folks respond to the UI. How people interact with the system will affect their experience with it, so we wanted to try something a bit different than what we previously had. I think a lot of changes are for the better, and it's not all in yet, but I do get the concern around the vertical scrolling. We're gonna stick with the vertical stuff for now and give it a bit of time before we make any decisions, but if we're seeing a lot of player frustration, we'll re-examine.

[Nubja]

We're definitely gonna keep an eye on how folks respond to the UI. How people interact with the system will affect their experience with it, so we wanted to try something a bit different than what we previously had. I think a lot of changes are for the better, and it's not all in yet, but I do get the concern around the vertical scrolling. We're gonna stick with the vertical stuff for now and give it a bit of time before we make any decisions, but if we're seeing a lot of player frustration, we'll re-examine.

just throwing in that i too hate the new UI, it's cramped into that tiny window and it's really awkward to mofidy your Li in it (at least the monetisation is easily accesible!)

[pinlu]

@Raninia Is there any plan to add a Bleeds pulses legacy to captain and perhaps scale the bleed damage? It is the main dps source of red captain currently (and also performs very well in AOE). With the loss of the current Bleed damage multiplier on live and also grave wound pulses (unimbued), to keep captain from becoming solely a buff AFK support role? Or perhaps changing grave wound to a tiering up effect , as i remember there was a stage where devs were trying to cut down on having 5 million effects on a boss target for multiple reasons. Another solution could be to remove the noble mark legacy (as it does no damage anyway, and make that something for grave wound.

There is also some very useless class traceries, or some that bring only a negative impact on the game, such as :
Charge Speed,Make Haste speed,Sprint Speed, Muster courage resistance (Negates a whole damage type) as some examples that could be changed (as they really provide 0 use to pve and only damage pvp/pve to an extent)

Other than that, there is a setbonus on the stat traceries (crit,mast etc) that you see when you equip the weapon. what is the goal for these to provide in the future?

[Raninia]

@Raninia Is there any plan to add a Bleeds pulses legacy to captain and perhaps scale the bleed damage? It is the main dps source of red captain currently (and also performs very well in AOE). With the loss of the current Bleed damage multiplier on live and also grave wound pulses (unimbued), to keep captain from becoming solely a buff AFK support role? Or perhaps changing grave wound to a tiering up effect , as i remember there was a stage where devs were trying to cut down on having 5 million effects on a boss target for multiple reasons. Another solution could be to remove the noble mark legacy (as it does no damage anyway, and make that something for grave wound.

There is also some very useless class traceries, or some that bring only a negative impact on the game, such as :
Charge Speed,Make Haste speed,Sprint Speed, Muster courage resistance (Negates a whole damage type) as some examples that could be changed (as they really provide 0 use to pve and only damage pvp/pve to an extent)

Other than that, there is a setbonus on the stat traceries (crit,mast etc) that you see when you equip the weapon. what is the goal for these to provide in the future?

I have no idea what specific traceries may or may not be coming, so I'm afraid I can't answer that.

As for set bonuses, we're working on making the UI for that more functional, so that you can tell more easily what things have set bonuses, what the sets are, what you get for the bonuses, etc. The initial version of these is probably gonna be fairly simple to start with, but like with traceries, we'll add more complexity later.

[Joedangod]

Yeah, I get that. I imagine there's some diversity in thought among players about what kind of traceries y'all prefer

100%, and that's where my concern comes in. Most people in these forums just seem to want what they had, in cases where they barely had anything they want what others have. Generally speaking the players aren't going to be creative here, they're mostly going to be thinking entirely within the box which is totally fine...but it does mean that for the most part, it falls to the developers to actually push for meaningful change in the system.

Porting over the existing legacies makes sense from a conversion standpoint, you get people right into the new system with as few differences as possible. But now players are going to expect those ported traceries to stick around, as an example if you don't keep the "Induction Bow Damage" tracery available at 140 you're gonna get yelled at by a bunch of angry Hunters. Doesn't matter if the nerf of removing that tracery is warranted or not, they're gonna be yelling at you. More to the point, every single future tracery you add is going to be compared to those you ported. Doesn't matter if you introduce a tracery with cool niche effects that revolutionises how you play the spec, if it isn't as numerically strong as the flat damage stuff a lot of people will consider it a complete failure.

You're dealing with power levels that are just really hard to manage here and you're not really producing a system that gives players choice. It's all numbers stuff, so people will only be slotting the biggest numbers. That's not particularly engaging and if the system isn't engaging people will only recognise the grind involved.

[Fegefeuer]

Very interesting comments by Raninia. So, if you "engage" with the stuff and "say feedback" (that is supportive to the stuff), then it's fine. But if you don't agree with the stuff, then you are just venting and not taken seriously.

I am really amazed by these comments. People venting should throw red flags to you, that something you are doing is really bad. You know that there are more players that don't post in forums but that they are disliking this new system, right? For 1 person who "vents" in here, there are many who don't vent but just because they don't use the forums.

So you only take seriously the comments that support the new stuff, noted. Even if the comments say about changes, they will only be listened if they are supporting the new stuff. I wish this would have been said like many years ago and not now. At least now players can know that disagreeing with new stuff is basically ignored (we already knew this but at least now it's pretty much confirmed).

[Brolad]

For me it seems, at least from the limited amount of information we have atm, like almost all of the flaws of the old system that I personally cared about remain. Just as an example:

If what I heard is correct and getting a second set of LIs will be much harder than getting your first one, classes like minstrel, guardian, captain, runekeeper, etc (basically any class with more than one group role or with a non-dps role in group content) will face much harsher grind than regular dps classes. The former situation was slightly different in this aspect, as the disadvantaged classes were mostly those with too many swaps required, but the problem remained the same - different classes need different amounts of LIs for group content and therefore many new people will still be unprepared for runs.

Old legacies with silly effects, for example Muster Courage Fear Resist or others (several of them are listed in this thread: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...acies-Feedback) somehow seem to have made it through the selection and are allowed to live on. Moreover, the top tier of the traceries has an even higher value than is on current legacies, which increases the problem by an additional, albeit small, margin. They are also joined by the increased attack range legacy, which is unlikely to find any use in normal gameplay. However, if kept this way it will be used for some underhanded "tactics" in pvmp, like easily killing oneshotters.


Another problem on BR is that some classes perform differently from live servers with the same gear they have on live servers. There seem to be undocumented changes on BR that prevent us from testing things properly.

[Sindhol]

I agree, our communication around this hasn't been enough.

I didn't expect such a prompt reply, nevermind agreement. Thank you.

We understand that we need to spend more time listening

No, spend more time talking! The more information you provide, the more focused our feedback can be, and the more efficiently you can gather it up.

We have no idea what specifically you plan to do. When you post an update, we can't tell what's intentional and what's broken. For example, wardens make terrible tanks in higher-tier content and raids. We don't know whether that's accident or design, because we don't have access to the design—we can only see the design as filtered through the implementation. Which usually means it's murky, because it's an old game with a lot of updates layered on top, and a lot of things that make wardens bad tanks are probably the product of historical accidents, not design. If Word from Above told us that wardens are not intended to be raid tanks, then—sad though it would be—we could at least stop evaluating every warden update along the scale of "can it raid tank now?" (and the class selection page could be updated to reflect that), and we could start giving useful feedback on how it performs its intended role.

For the LI revision specifically, we need information on legacies. For each legacy, we would like to know:

1. What it currently does (some don't match their descriptions).
2. What it's currently supposed to do (some clearly don't achieve what they're supposed to, assuming they're supposed to do something, e.g. the Shield Tactics Tactical Mitigation legacy doesn't really do much of anything).
3. What it's currently supposed to balanced against (i.e. How much of a DPS boost is the captain light damage legacy supposed to give? Should it be a larger marginal gain than the warden light damage legacy? Should it increase the importance of light-damage skills compared to physical damage skills? Should it synergize with the light damage trait or not?).
4. How (2-3) have changed since (1) was implemented (if at all).
5. What changes will be made for (1) to meet the parameters in (2-3) as adjusted to take into account (4).

I realize it's a lot of work to put that together at the drop of a hat—I'm not suggesting that you post one for this update. But I assume that there's some sort of list for internal use; it'd be really useful to make it a bit less internal for future updates. Don't be afraid to get technical, and please bring lots of numbers. A spreadsheet would also be nice.

They're not outwardly visible - but at some point I'd like to talk about them

I look forward to it.