Bullroarer Update 30.3 - Early Beta 1 - CLOSED

[pinlu]

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.

That is great thank you for the response,my only other question is what will be the method to obtaining the new weapons when they go live? especially if you need multiple on some characters (e.g captain to tank/dps, minstrel to dps/heal etc)

[SingularityNow]

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.

The whole point of wanting an LI revamp was because the grind involved was a disincentive to players in a number of areas: Leveling to cap, creating alts, lapsed players returning.

The system was also poorly balanced and confusing sure. But if these latter two problems are the ones you're mainly tackling with your revamp, then you've missed the point.

[Spilo]

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?

Easily the best post I've ever seen on this forum.

You could make a very easy argument that the number one problem with SSG/Turbine's history is their unwillingness to take feedback/communicate. "Beta" has been a joke since I've started playing the game- they roll out with whatever is on beta 99.9% of the time, poorly balanced, buggy, controversial, and usually with a completely muffed up priority list of what the game needs/what players really want. It's a "corporate" (not sure it's big enough to call it that, but w/e) echo chamber that means nothing ever truly gets better, it just changes. LIs, essence system, class balance, PvMP, even Virtues are examples of this.

The funny thing about this is the game has a TON of apologists- people who truly just love Lord of the Rings, and who appreciate the developers time, so will desperately defend and support any steaming garbage that gets released. This has repeatedly reinforced horrendous decision making, leadership, and dev decisions in the last decade.

Of course, that's come at a cost- a huge % of the population has left, but there still remains a % of players who will pay for anything because they love LOTR and they love the game for what it used to be. Heck, I still PvP because I think the Warg class is awesome and not something I can replace in any other game I've tried, and there's a "raiding community" that hilariously still holds on to competition for a Raid that, what, half a dozen groups were trying for?

I don't think this will change. There will still be a % of players who will pay and single-handedly keep the game alive, but this game is going nowhere good unless there's a change of leadership. I don't blame the devs, necessarily. I certainly don't blame Cordovan. I blame the leadership- this game's philosophy has long been tarnished, and that won't change unless whatever individuals that are leading this take responsibility. I don't think that will happen as long as they can cash cow the poor fools who will pay anything because it's LOTR- Christopher Tolkien would not approve.

[SingularityNow]

reskin of the existing system

Nailed it.

[Strider5548]

Game should not be based to who have best weapon swapping rotation like it currently is. Yes weapon swapping has been available forever but it has recently become so important that groups who doesn't do it, cannot complete higher tier raids.
You can argue that everyone can do it, but it's never ment to be a thing everyone SHOULD be doing. There is no introduction to weapon swapping. And things do change over time. There was time when armour swapping was a thing and some 3-mans was done so that everyone stacked morale gear at start and when you lost morale, you just swapped more and more dps gear.

If you are unhappy that toy is taken away from you, then just leave and go play some other game. Champ will also be fine like every classes when things are balanced. All this changes are made so over game balance and class balance becomes more easy.

Uh I never mentioned weapon swapping in this thread, so I assume you are quoting something I wrote here but talking about something unrelated from other threads. Nobody is suggesting everyone should weapon swap, I've said multiple times an ideal scenario would be for the need to weapon swap to be diminished significantly, and swapping being a tool for fast-paced DPS classes to get out an extra 10-15% damage. I've even offered multiple suggestions to help make this happen, like only allowing different weapon types to be swapped (i.e. 1H to 2H), instead of swapping class items, bows, etc., or introducing/re-introducing stances that can be swapped with 0 CD and 0 animation mid-combat to maximize DPS.

That's cool though thanks for the suggestion to leave this game and play something else, really helpful and another great representation of the quality of the anti-swap community.

[Fegefeuer]

Easily the best post I've ever seen on this forum.

You could make a very easy argument that the number one problem with SSG/Turbine's history is their unwillingness to take feedback/communicate. "Beta" has been a joke since I've started playing the game- they roll out with whatever is on beta 99.9% of the time, poorly balanced, buggy, controversial, and usually with a completely muffed up priority list of what the game needs/what players really want. It's a "corporate" (not sure it's big enough to call it that, but w/e) echo chamber that means nothing ever truly gets better, it just changes. LIs, essence system, class balance, PvMP, even Virtues are examples of this.

The funny thing about this is the game has a TON of apologists- people who truly just love Lord of the Rings, and who appreciate the developers time, so will desperately defend and support any steaming garbage that gets released. This has repeatedly reinforced horrendous decision making, leadership, and dev decisions in the last decade.

Of course, that's come at a cost- a huge % of the population has left, but there still remains a % of players who will pay for anything because they love LOTR and they love the game for what it used to be. Heck, I still PvP because I think the Warg class is awesome and not something I can replace in any other game I've tried, and there's a "raiding community" that hilariously still holds on to competition for a Raid that, what, half a dozen groups were trying for?

I don't think this will change. There will still be a % of players who will pay and single-handedly keep the game alive, but this game is going nowhere good unless there's a change of leadership. I don't blame the devs, necessarily. I certainly don't blame Cordovan. I blame the leadership- this game's philosophy has long been tarnished, and that won't change unless whatever individuals that are leading this take responsibility. I don't think that will happen as long as they can cash cow the poor fools who will pay anything because it's LOTR- Christopher Tolkien would not approve.

100% agree, well written.

[Mirnir]

@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...

Surely it would be better and more enjoyable to fix captain DPS across the board, rather than reinvent this crutch?

[pinlu]

Surely it would be better and more enjoyable to fix captain DPS across the board, rather than reinvent this crutch?

I mean sure, but that is alot more dev work and unnecessary effort than simply adding bleed pulses, as a 10second bleed is somewhat stupid in comparison to other bleeds in the game anyway. It also dosent take into account how level 140 will look, and having to do it all again would be somewhat a waste.

[Raninia]

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.

Yeah, change is hard, scary, and difficult to understand, until one day, it's totally normal and people mostly stop thinking about it. We understand that every time that we make any kind of changes, anyone who feels like they're losing out is going to come out strongly against it, some folks will just wish it was different, and others are interested in seeing what happens next - generally speaking, the question is usually what the breakdown among these is, and how reflective they are of the wider playerbase.

I have no doubt that these changes fit into that cycle, and future changes will as well. I'm not terribly concerned about players "yelling at [me]," they're doing it because they care. I hope we can be civil and productive in these conversations, but if some folks don't wanna do that, that's fine.

I disagree a bit that the system doesn't give players choice. I can understand that there's gonna be a meta, and players are gonna decide amongst themselves what that meta is and then stick to it, but that meta is generally only going to be applicable for a small minority of people who play the game. Just because the top end players decide they don't have a choice doesn't mean we're not creating interesting choices for lots of other players.

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).

This is a pretty bad faith take, but to be clear, that's not what I'm saying. Lots of folks disagree for good reasons here, and we appreciate seeing and understanding those reasons, as it makes it a lot easier to make changes when we can see how they're practically impacting folks. If folks instead choose to just express a frustrated opinion - as the person I quoted did - we're not gonna evaluate that feedback in the same way. That doesn't mean their feelings are invalid, or that we only want to hear people gush about our work - it means that when confronted with someone trying to proverbially scream in my face, it's less likely that it'll achieve the outcome they're nominally attempting to effect. If you don't like that, I'm sorry, but I hope you can understand being in those shoes, perhaps in a different scenario, if that helps.

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.

Yeah, that's something we're sensitive to. We'll continue making updates and evaluate how things are looking for those players as we go, and make changes if those classes are having a profoundly worse time. I don't agree with the implication that's already happening, I think it's too early to say, based on the data we have so far.

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.

I think that's ok to start with. There's a lot of change right now and we're still doing more, so we need to let things settle down and get a better sense of the lay of the land before we make large swings in the other direction.

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.

Yep, there're lots of little changes that aren't currently documented. This is part of what I was referring to earlier with the "moving fast" stuff, that's having an impact on what is and isn't documented.

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.

This is something we're working on, and is specifically why I'm here. I don't think "listening" means "disappearing," but more like "engaging," if that makes sense.

I don't know specifically about historical stuff like the Warden, but I've broadly mentioned before, we do want to get all specs to be viable in high-end raiding, but that's a third priority behind 1) All specs viable on landscape; and 2) All classes viable in high-end raiding.

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.

So, actually, one of the things I was brought in for was to help create that sort of structure. It doesn't fully exist yet - technically, there's a list you can find, and technically, if you know how to read it, you can understand it. But the people who can do both of those things don't consistently have the time to explain it to the people that're trying to communicate it out to players. It comes down to, we've historically prioritized doing the thing over documenting the thing - which generally speaking, is ok - but we've done it to such an extreme that it's made it difficult to communicate about it.

One of the reasons I've pushed for this BR - and I wasn't alone, but here're some of my reasons - was that I wanted to see the process play out so we could see where we're not doing a good enough job. This makes it a helluva lot easier to then go to folks and say "Here's what we've learned from this, let's do it better next time." Now, I can't promise that we'll solve everything next time - in fact, I can promise we won't - but we'll definitely do better. For example, I was busy and sat on the sidelines of some of these conversations for too long; that's a learning for me that I can improve upon for next time. We'll have others that we'll use for the future, so next time we're doing stuff like this, I'm confident it'll be relatively better.

I look forward to it.

Me too!

That is great thank you for the response,my only other question is what will be the method to obtaining the new weapons when they go live? especially if you need multiple on some characters (e.g captain to tank/dps, minstrel to dps/heal etc)

Not sure, I'll see if I can get an answer from the team.

The whole point of wanting an LI revamp was because the grind involved was a disincentive to players in a number of areas: Leveling to cap, creating alts, lapsed players returning.

The system was also poorly balanced and confusing sure. But if these latter two problems are the ones you're mainly tackling with your revamp, then you've missed the point.

No, levelling to cap is also something that's been improved, we think, with this upcoming update. Early data is trending positive, but if you have info showing the opposite, I'd love to see it!

[Laurelinarien]

I just wanted to add that it was great that Vastin appeared on today's Cord of the Rings. If there ever was a critical moment for him to be heard by the playerbase, it's now.

So kudos for that.

[Raninia]

Not sure, I'll see if I can get an answer from the team.

Circling back, the two primary ways you'll get them initially are through the intro quest line, for new characters who haven't done it yet, or through the barter for those that have.

[SingularityNow]

No, levelling to cap is also something that's been improved, we think, with this upcoming update. Early data is trending positive, but if you have info showing the opposite, I'd love to see it!

Join a kin and read kinchat.

[Joedangod]

I disagree a bit that the system doesn't give players choice. I can understand that there's gonna be a meta, and players are gonna decide amongst themselves what that meta is and then stick to it, but that meta is generally only going to be applicable for a small minority of people who play the game. Just because the top end players decide they don't have a choice doesn't mean we're not creating interesting choices for lots of other players.

I say you're not giving players choice with these legacies as they don't really make a difference to gameplay. If I chose all the "wrong" legacies for a spec, I'd still be doing essentially the same things as someone who chose all the right legacies...I would just be getting lower numbers.

You're giving us choices, but those choices don't make a difference that we can actually see/feel outside of DPS/HPS/TPS meters. I guess that's fine if that's the goal for the system, I just personally find that such a goal doesn't endear the system to me in any way.

[SingularityNow]

Yeah, change is hard, scary, and difficult to understand, until one day, it's totally normal and people mostly stop thinking about it.

This attitude is what lost Turbine all its raiders during Helms Deep. We were not liking Epic Battles, we didn't like the Trait Trees. We were fed same line that is probably sincere from your perspective but horribly patronizing from here. And then a year later came the server merges. You're not listening to us on a core system. You really, really should.

[Fegefeuer]

This is a pretty bad faith take, but to be clear, that's not what I'm saying. Lots of folks disagree for good reasons here, and we appreciate seeing and understanding those reasons, as it makes it a lot easier to make changes when we can see how they're practically impacting folks. If folks instead choose to just express a frustrated opinion - as the person I quoted did - we're not gonna evaluate that feedback in the same way. That doesn't mean their feelings are invalid, or that we only want to hear people gush about our work - it means that when confronted with someone trying to proverbially scream in my face, it's less likely that it'll achieve the outcome they're nominally attempting to effect. If you don't like that, I'm sorry, but I hope you can understand being in those shoes, perhaps in a different scenario, if that helps.

Not really bad faith take but as a person with strong psychological knowledge and experience in game dev I can understand your point as company who want to make profits.

I also understand that the hard work that the LI revamp has taken is enormous and that obviously you are going to ignore (or whatever word you want to use) the people who say to discard this new system.

The main problem in this issue is that we as players have voiced the complaints about LI issues for many years and the worst thing you have done as a company is to keep the development of this new system in secret without even considering making a system that can be beneficial for players and the company together. You even pushed the tiered empowerment update even if whole playerbase was against that, and to this I can only assume that your take on this issue is "something bad must be done for a greater good"; and what is this greater good? preparing people for this incoming LI revamp that is basically like the tiered empos but with more grind. It just benefits SSG, as other person said and explained, because now you can balance legacies better and you will get more money from mithril coins. The LI revamp should have never been a secret until this point, you should have been very active with the suggestions of the players until reaching a mid point where players are happy and the company is happy. But you didn't do this. You just push unpopular updates and expect everyone to adapt to that... or leave the game.

Taking feedback at this point is just to fix bugs, not to change the development line, just be straight about it because you as a company who has worked in this for many months are not going to throw to the bin all this work. The only possible way to do this correctly is to make the playerbase part of the development from the very beginning. Ask for suggestions and be very communicative about the intentions of the new revamp even BEFORE starting working on it. Now you have developed a new system and you just expect everyone to agree with it just because why not? Not good job by the company and the communication. It's just like the housing in Kingstead. People complained about that for long and you didn't remove it, just did some fixes and that's all. You took the idea of the community, "we want Rohan housing", and then implemented in a very bad way, in the middle of the landscape and even not adding cheaper houses like in Gondor. It's just milking the playerbase because all that matters is profit.

I understand your position as... well, person who has to interact with the community. I understand you have to give a great image of the company and not really reply to "venting" comments. I'm not even saying that venting is the best way to write. But hey, you just assumed that in my answer I have "bad faith", when all I have is critical thinking and some experience. I don't care if you try to discredit me by saying that - I'm very sure that it's not just my opinion. And I am sure that there are many people thinking in quitting because this.

Do better job next time, if there is a next. It's not your fault. The fault lies - in my opinion - to the person/s who decided that LI revamp should be kept secret until this stage of development.

[jeffryl]

This attitude is what lost Turbine all its raiders during Helms Deep. We were not liking Epic Battles, we didn't like the Trait Trees. We were fed same line that is probably sincere from your perspective but horribly patronizing from here. And then a year later came the server merges. You're not listening to us on a core system. You really, really should.

We lost 10 percent of baby crying players. Not a big deal and no one saw the difference.

[Spilo]

We lost 10 percent of baby crying players. Not a big deal and no one saw the difference.

Except the raiders are the one who generally put up the loudest fight for class imbalance (they are the first ones to notice) and hugely invest more financially than the average player. You can't poo-poo a crucial part of a playerbase just because you aren't part of their group.

[SingularityNow]

Except the raiders are the one who generally put up the loudest fight for class imbalance (they are the first ones to notice) and hugely invest more financially than the average player. You can't poo-poo a crucial part of a playerbase just because you aren't part of their group.

Let him, he's also confirming that it happened.

[Spilo]

This is a pretty bad faith take, but to be clear, that's not what I'm saying. Lots of folks disagree for good reasons here, and we appreciate seeing and understanding those reasons, as it makes it a lot easier to make changes when we can see how they're practically impacting folks. If folks instead choose to just express a frustrated opinion - as the person I quoted did - we're not gonna evaluate that feedback in the same way. That doesn't mean their feelings are invalid, or that we only want to hear people gush about our work - it means that when confronted with someone trying to proverbially scream in my face, it's less likely that it'll achieve the outcome they're nominally attempting to effect. If you don't like that, I'm sorry, but I hope you can understand being in those shoes, perhaps in a different scenario, if that helps.

First off, really appreciate you taking the time to chat in these threads. I'm active in a bunch of LOTRO Discords, and seems folks are really enjoying the active discourse with you. Good stuff.

In regards to this point, I think the reason why there's so much hostility is the fact that for years (as I said above) these beta sessions were repeatedly covered with in-depth analysis/feedback that went completely ignored. That really ticks people off. There was a big PvP rebalance 4-5 years ago where they messed up critical magnitude, damage numbers, -inc healing, etc. pretty badly. I spent several hours running numbers on live and beta, and gave SSG the exact rebalancing numbers necessary to address the issue. It got completely ignored and was released in its current state, and PvP was dead for a long time because creeps were running around with 90% bonus crit magnitude.

Another one of my good friends was a Burglar wizard, and when discussion came up years ago of how to address some of the issues with balancing the class, he spent a weekend balancing numbers and brainstorming ideas, and came up with some great ideas. He put up a beautifully written post with hard numbers- completely ignored, and the changes that SSG implemented instead completely dumbed down the class and busted it. The class still has retained several of the silly OP aspects that SSG threw its way.

Even recently with the whole PvP gear situation- people about flipped out when Vastin started giving PvP attention, did some rebalancing, was engaging in discussion, etc. There were promises of "finishing the job" and PvP gear very soon! Then Vastin just drops off the face of the earth, and we hear nothing for months. That was over 6 months ago.


So, sadly I sympathize with you and what YOU are doing, because it's appreciated and you are doing the right thing. But the father's sins are being visited on the children right now. Either way, thanks for (at least temporarily, I remain skeptical) changing at least a little of the culture.

[Strider5548]

We lost 10 percent of baby crying players. Not a big deal and no one saw the difference.

No one saw the difference? The game almost completely died. Who knows how much better the community would be today if we had all those players still. SSG would be in a much healthier financial position and wouldn't be so dependent on us whales which would make for a better experience for everyone.

[J-Moneyforever]

Appreciate the discourse. My personal thought is that it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be because we still lack crucial information. With that said, the best feedback I've seen is that this feels too much like a reskin of the previous system which is quite irritating.

I'm sure it's too late to ask this now because I know once something hits beta there's no chance of a change as drastic as this. But, did you and the team ever consider removing LIs completely? It seems they create a never ending balance and grind nightmare that the team has been dancing around for years with no real answer. Simply removing them and then balancing classes around the actual kit the class has feels much more appropriate. There would certainly be outrage from those who had put 100s of hours into their LIs but any MMO player that plays a game with vertical progression understand that your work can be nullified in a new level cap. (Looking at you WoW). And I would happily sacrifice the work I did in the name of the game getting markedly better. Again I understand at this point that isn't a realistic option but I'm curious if you ever considered it?

[gaara908776]

This attitude is what lost Turbine all its raiders during Helms Deep. We were not liking Epic Battles, we didn't like the Trait Trees. We were fed same line that is probably sincere from your perspective but horribly patronizing from here. And then a year later came the server merges. You're not listening to us on a core system. You really, really should.

Glad I’m not the only one here who was feeling a bit of deja vu. To the guy who responded that it was only 10% and only raiders left, that isn’t true. Elendilmir(my former home) was one of the highest population servers the game had at the time. The active population of the server dropped almost 75% between the end of Rise of Isengard and the start of Helms Deep.

I also think Raninia seems sincere. However, it’s difficult not to be disappointed that the LI system seems largely the same, aside from the word of power traceries.

[J-Moneyforever]

We lost 10 percent of baby crying players. Not a big deal and no one saw the difference.

This is such a bizarre and commonly held take in lotro. A weird thing where "casuals" hate "elitists" and want them to all leave. Which is odd because it's casuals who usually insert themselves into discussions about stuff that affects raiders way more often than raiders insert themselves into discussions that affect casuals. Raiders make up a minority but they tend to drive the economy and a lot of the content on a server because they will be the most active players. They help crafting economy because they need huge stacks of consumables. They drive daily content because they need loads of marks and meds and whatever other daily drops from chests, so they run the daily pugs of 6mans/3mans.

Raiders are the loudest in class discussions because class balance/capabilities affect their ability to play their preferred content the most. Whereas landscape content is virtually always doable regardless of balance decisions. With a few notable exceptions raiders are generally happy to let casuals play the game as they please and go about their business. Unclear why that can't be reciprocated.

[Raninia]

I say you're not giving players choice with these legacies as they don't really make a difference to gameplay. If I chose all the "wrong" legacies for a spec, I'd still be doing essentially the same things as someone who chose all the right legacies...I would just be getting lower numbers.

You're giving us choices, but those choices don't make a difference that we can actually see/feel outside of DPS/HPS/TPS meters. I guess that's fine if that's the goal for the system, I just personally find that such a goal doesn't endear the system to me in any way.

That's fair. We're mostly focused on that aspect right now, certainly, as it's a lot easier for us to action against things we can measure than things we can't. I think we can get to that point with this system, but I don't think it's gonna be there at launch.

This attitude is what lost Turbine all its raiders during Helms Deep. We were not liking Epic Battles, we didn't like the Trait Trees. We were fed same line that is probably sincere from your perspective but horribly patronizing from here. And then a year later came the server merges. You're not listening to us on a core system. You really, really should.

I can't speak to the Helms Deep situation; I've read about and heard from lots of folks about it, but that was well before my time. I can't say for sure if this is moving in that same direction - I sure hope not, and I don't think it is, but the truth is, we don't really know. I understand that you feel strongly that this is a bad change that's going to hurt the game, and we don't really see it that way. We think that most of the concerns that folks have brought up are based on fears of things they haven't seen yet; those fears are valid, but we think people's minds will change once they seen how those fears actually pan out. Some of the concern is broader than that, certainly - it seems that you, for example, don't like the direction of the work at all. And I'm sure there're lots of folks who agree with you. But from where we stand, we think that many of them will change their minds once things are further along and they've had a chance to get a better understanding of the new system.

Not really bad faith take but as a person with strong psychological knowledge and experience in game dev I can understand your point as company who want to make profits.

I also understand that the hard work that the LI revamp has taken is enormous and that obviously you are going to ignore (or whatever word you want to use) the people who say to discard this new system.

The main problem in this issue is that we as players have voiced the complaints about LI issues for many years and the worst thing you have done as a company is to keep the development of this new system in secret without even considering making a system that can be beneficial for players and the company together. You even pushed the tiered empowerment update even if whole playerbase was against that, and to this I can only assume that your take on this issue is "something bad must be done for a greater good"; and what is this greater good? preparing people for this incoming LI revamp that is basically like the tiered empos but with more grind. It just benefits SSG, as other person said and explained, because now you can balance legacies better and you will get more money from mithril coins. The LI revamp should have never been a secret until this point, you should have been very active with the suggestions of the players until reaching a mid point where players are happy and the company is happy. But you didn't do this. You just push unpopular updates and expect everyone to adapt to that... or leave the game.

Taking feedback at this point is just to fix bugs, not to change the development line, just be straight about it because you as a company who has worked in this for many months are not going to throw to the bin all this work. The only possible way to do this correctly is to make the playerbase part of the development from the very beginning. Ask for suggestions and be very communicative about the intentions of the new revamp even BEFORE starting working on it. Now you have developed a new system and you just expect everyone to agree with it just because why not? Not good job by the company and the communication. It's just like the housing in Kingstead. People complained about that for long and you didn't remove it, just did some fixes and that's all. You took the idea of the community, "we want Rohan housing", and then implemented in a very bad way, in the middle of the landscape and even not adding cheaper houses like in Gondor. It's just milking the playerbase because all that matters is profit.

I understand your position as... well, person who has to interact with the community. I understand you have to give a great image of the company and not really reply to "venting" comments. I'm not even saying that venting is the best way to write. But hey, you just assumed that in my answer I have "bad faith", when all I have is critical thinking and some experience. I don't care if you try to discredit me by saying that - I'm very sure that it's not just my opinion. And I am sure that there are many people thinking in quitting because this.

Do better job next time, if there is a next. It's not your fault. The fault lies - in my opinion - to the person/s who decided that LI revamp should be kept secret until this stage of development.

I think it's fair to point out that we could've communicated around this better. But the idea that the only way for us to work is by completing opening the curtain and showing you all of our work as it's happening... that's not a terribly realistic plan. I've seen studios attempt this approach in the past, with varying degrees of success - I've never seen a studio maintain this approach for more than a couple years. I think that you look at this right now and go "All of these decisions are bad, if they'd brought it to us sooner, we could've stopped it!" and I would counter with the fact that whenever we'd brought this to you, that concern would still be present. We never could've shown this soon enough, and we certainly couldn't have shown you stuff before we started working on it. At that phase, we were gathering feedback from the innumerable threads on these forums and other parts of the internet where folks were talking about their issues with the old LI systems.

I can't speak for past things that we've done, I can only learn about them. You're right that we've made mistakes in the past. I'm sure we'll make more in the future. I'm not convinced this is one of them, but time will tell. All I'm saying here is that there's ways for us to communicate effectively, and ways for us not to. It's fine if you choose the latter, I'm just trying to explain how we'll tend to approach that.

First off, really appreciate you taking the time to chat in these threads. I'm active in a bunch of LOTRO Discords, and seems folks are really enjoying the active discourse with you. Good stuff.

In regards to this point, I think the reason why there's so much hostility is the fact that for years (as I said above) these beta sessions were repeatedly covered with in-depth analysis/feedback that went completely ignored. That really ticks people off. There was a big PvP rebalance 4-5 years ago where they messed up critical magnitude, damage numbers, -inc healing, etc. pretty badly. I spent several hours running numbers on live and beta, and gave SSG the exact rebalancing numbers necessary to address the issue. It got completely ignored and was released in its current state, and PvP was dead for a long time because creeps were running around with 90% bonus crit magnitude.

Another one of my good friends was a Burglar wizard, and when discussion came up years ago of how to address some of the issues with balancing the class, he spent a weekend balancing numbers and brainstorming ideas, and came up with some great ideas. He put up a beautifully written post with hard numbers- completely ignored, and the changes that SSG implemented instead completely dumbed down the class and busted it. The class still has retained several of the silly OP aspects that SSG threw its way.

Even recently with the whole PvP gear situation- people about flipped out when Vastin started giving PvP attention, did some rebalancing, was engaging in discussion, etc. There were promises of "finishing the job" and PvP gear very soon! Then Vastin just drops off the face of the earth, and we hear nothing for months. That was over 6 months ago.

So, sadly I sympathize with you and what YOU are doing, because it's appreciated and you are doing the right thing. But the father's sins are being visited on the children right now. Either way, thanks for (at least temporarily, I remain skeptical) changing at least a little of the culture.

Thanks, my goal is to continue to engage, but it's gonna wax and wane as I have the time. I get the skepticism, and I don't blame folks for feeling it. I have every expectation that you will all at the very least keep us honest, and some of y'all will do even more than that My goal is to help us do a better job of explaining where we're coming from, what we're trying to do, and why. Some won't believe those explanations, and that's their prerogative, but I'll hope to keep plugging away.

Appreciate the discourse. My personal thought is that it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be because we still lack crucial information. With that said, the best feedback I've seen is that this feels too much like a reskin of the previous system which is quite irritating.

I'm sure it's too late to ask this now because I know once something hits beta there's no chance of a change as drastic as this. But, did you and the team ever consider removing LIs completely? It seems they create a never ending balance and grind nightmare that the team has been dancing around for years with no real answer. Simply removing them and then balancing classes around the actual kit the class has feels much more appropriate. There would certainly be outrage from those who had put 100s of hours into their LIs but any MMO player that plays a game with vertical progression understand that your work can be nullified in a new level cap. (Looking at you WoW). And I would happily sacrifice the work I did in the name of the game getting markedly better. Again I understand at this point that isn't a realistic option but I'm curious if you ever considered it?

That was one of the things I asked about when I joined and got intro'd to this effort, actually. You mostly got the hesitation correct - this was seen as a bit of a middle road. I think some of the things that you're referring to there - like WoW's Artifact system - aren't perfect comparisons for us, since we frankly don't have the resources to constantly introduce whole new systems we'll deprecate on that kind of time scale.

I think we ended up with a pretty good solution, but the devils in the details, and we'll keep working on those.

[J-Moneyforever]

That was one of the things I asked about when I joined and got intro'd to this effort, actually. You mostly got the hesitation correct - this was seen as a bit of a middle road. I think some of the things that you're referring to there - like WoW's Artifact system - aren't perfect comparisons for us, since we frankly don't have the resources to constantly introduce whole new systems we'll deprecate on that kind of time scale.

I think we ended up with a pretty good solution, but the devils in the details, and we'll keep working on those.

Cool I appreciate the transparency. And yeah I was referring to WoW's trend the last 3 expansions of borrowed power in general that are huge time sinks and are then dumped at the new expansion. I think my general thought for lotro was more the idea of going back to the SOA style of progression with our weapons being dropped from dungeons/raids (and occasionally having special procs/effects) and crafted variants being maybe 90% as effective. I think it might have been a greater initial effort but it would have made long-term balancing significantly less of a hassle. With that said I recognize that LIs have been core to Lotro for almost 12 years now so that was always an unlikely path. And it's all moot at this point in development. As for the current system I certainly won't pass total judgement in such an early iteration til we have more information about where we get the enhancements/traceries and how class balance tweaks will affect future content. But I certainly understand the trepidation that some players have due to the past few years of ignored feedback on Bullroarer, with that said the increase in communication certainly lends itself to increased optimism.