PvMP Update and Changes

[???????]

Good luck with all your endeavours. You are a truly brave person to tackle such an unenviable bunch of tasks.

And thanks, if nothing else - it will be great to see the old camps back. I do hope you are bringing the old camps and not just moving the new ones because speaking for myself - that isn't what we want. Old camps in the old positions always gave great fights and having a place to jump out over the sides either led to a cool escape (sometimes) or was used to lure those following into a trap... good times...

I agree. there were a lot of solo players gathered and fought. and did not run GrAm-Luga or TR-GV. but sometimes Zerg came and it was necessary to reel in the fishing rods xD

[Hisdryt]

The issue with legendary servers is that none of these changes will actually occur, as all the new gear and loot is cap level content. If we did decide to support PvMP on legendary servers, it would be a sub-optimal experience, as it would be double the effort to make any meaningful changes.

But it would definitely bring back a healthy population to the game. I was hoping SSG was at least considering this instead of the usual cop out.

[???????]

and remember that it was difficult to take outposts. many gathered groups to capture the outpost. After the exit of level 85, this stopped and almost any player could take the outposts solo.

[Thorandril]

But it would definitely bring back a healthy population to the game. I was hoping SSG was at least considering this instead of the usual cop out.

It would definitely not do that. Being a green creep at any stage has exactly zero allure to it and compound with the fact that it would be added to a server whose populace have had nothing else to do but endgame PvE.

[Ben9619]

News looks like beatiful.

Did you hear about Orc Camp \ Elf Camp and rez points re-position, what do you think about it? (old map before Rohan Expansion)

I cannot agree more with this. The old OC/EC/rez points made for a much more fluid map. Can we get some more +1's on this so Fants knows how popular this idea is.

I'd also like to add-

- Remove back doors.
- Remove auto flips
- Be careful with audacity (the more damage reduction, the longer the fights... this has gotten quite ridiculous in the past. To the point where if your raid has 1-2 healers, you're basically invincible. It's not fun.
- Make CG/Tyrants difficult to kill like it used to be. It's currently laughable.
- Increase the drop-off in renown/infamy when you gain players in your raid. Currently, the drop of is barely anything so it encourages players to make 24 man raid which we all know the servers cannot handle. If you were to get 4-5inf/ren max per kill like you used to get in a raid (or maybe 8-10?) then people would be much less inclined to raid in groups of 24. The more you can encourage 6/12 man groups, the better in my opinion.

Please listen to what we want!! PvP used to be a huge part of this game and I'd love for it to go back to that

Cheers
Ben

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

- Be careful with audacity (the more damage reduction, the longer the fights... this has gotten quite ridiculous in the past. To the point where if your raid has 1-2 healers, you're basically invincible. It's not fun.

to put a finer point on this that I think Fantus is missing, assuming that "its been -30% for a long time now, so its fine":


There are a huge number of stackable minus incoming damage reductions for freepside across all the various classes, with almost no plus incoming damage debuffs available to creeps. Its very very easy for a freep group of the appropriate composition to reach high into the -80% incoming damage range, with some very viable mixed compositions reaching -100% for some players.


Concordantly, healing on both sides nowadays is insanely powerful compared to when Audacity was introduced back at lvl 75. Healing in general has never been more prolific, easy to execute, and distributed among multiple roles and classes.

Currently you will hear people complain about how high Defiler healing is or freep healing is. When people complain about high defiler healing, they are justified when they are talking about how hard it is to kill a creep with no +incoming damage debuffs, but when the same creep is fully debuffed from freep support classes in a larger raid setting with many different freep classes attacking, they melt like butter, because the difference in damage taken between a creep that has -30% incoming damage from base and +50% incoming damage from base is something like 250% more damage taken from the same attacks.

You can't balance healing when there's so much variation in how much damage a player can take given group composition and circumstances.

as long as this discrepancy exists, you will never see balance, and broken compositions will dominate the system while casual players get rolled into the dirt.

[ConsistentRager]

I cannot agree more with this. The old OC/EC/rez points made for a much more fluid map. Can we get some more +1's on this so Fants knows how popular this idea is.

I'd also like to add-

- Remove back doors.
- Remove auto flips
- Be careful with audacity (the more damage reduction, the longer the fights... this has gotten quite ridiculous in the past. To the point where if your raid has 1-2 healers, you're basically invincible. It's not fun.
- Make CG/Tyrants difficult to kill like it used to be. It's currently laughable.
- Increase the drop-off in renown/infamy when you gain players in your raid. Currently, the drop of is barely anything so it encourages players to make 24 man raid which we all know the servers cannot handle. If you were to get 4-5inf/ren max per kill like you used to get in a raid (or maybe 8-10?) then people would be much less inclined to raid in groups of 24. The more you can encourage 6/12 man groups, the better in my opinion.

Please listen to what we want!! PvP used to be a huge part of this game and I'd love for it to go back to that

Cheers
Ben

I agree on all these points. And yes make large grouping punished through lower glory point gains. The servers cannot handle 30v30 in one spot. If people are incentivized towards small group action the game will also perform better because less people will be in the same spot. #delete backdoors

[Wornstar]

Love the sound of these changes! especially the old OC/EC

Would love to see the TA bridges by those camps become flippable again. It should really centralize action on lower activity servers where finding action can be a long and dull process as well as create action areas for small action when neither side has the numbers for fighting in keeps even if one side has an advantage. Will the npcs be buffed at all?

Sounds like awesome work Fants!

[Snowlock]

I agree on all these points. And yes make large grouping punished through lower glory point gains. The servers cannot handle 30v30 in one spot. If people are incentivized towards small group action the game will also perform better because less people will be in the same spot. #delete backdoors

They have done this before. It doesn't work. They still congregate but solo. BA's and Hunters get all the points and as soon as a group organizes it's a gv/gramps camp against the solo zerg herd.

[ConsistentRager]

They have done this before. It doesn't work. They still congregate but solo. BA's and Hunters get all the points and as soon as a group organizes it's a gv/gramps camp against the solo zerg herd.

sorry bro but what. When have they done this since they changed it at 85. It used to be incentivized to small grouping and solo and then it wasnt. They have nvr tried going back before. And the action used to be better.

[Snowlock]

sorry bro but what. When have they done this since they changed it at 85. It used to be incentivized to small grouping and solo and then it wasnt. They have nvr tried going back before. And the action used to be better.

They did this in SOA and again in the early updates of Moria until they changed it because it wasn't working.

Edit: I think it was twice in moria. Jalessa was the dev I think?

The best way to incentivize small group action is to give people a reason to pve. Either side, doesn't matter. If one side is out questing and they diversify around the map, others will come to hunt the questers.

[J-Moneyforever]

My two cents. I know everyone is excited about the OC/EC reversion but I want to be clear. The average type of player that is PvP'ing today in Lotro will not migrate away from the backdoor shuffle unless you REMOVE BACK DOORS. Everything else is exciting. Looking forward to testing it etc. But ffs. The community has begged for years to have backdoors removed with no result.

[-Aran-]

Yes, it sounds good. Maybe you can consider doing something about the LAGGG

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

My two cents. I know everyone is excited about the OC/EC reversion but I want to be clear. The average type of player that is PvP'ing today in Lotro will not migrate away from the backdoor shuffle unless you REMOVE BACK DOORS. Everything else is exciting. Looking forward to testing it etc. But ffs. The community has begged for years to have backdoors removed with no result.

+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1

remove backdoors.

[Strider5548]

It would definitely not do that. Being a green creep at any stage has exactly zero allure to it and compound with the fact that it would be added to a server whose populace have had nothing else to do but endgame PvE.

Well by that logic then no one should ever start playing a Creep. Also, the point about 'whose populace have had nothing else to do but endgame PvE' is exactly the reason it should be added to the legendary servers. The servers already offer so little to do, removing a pay to participate part of the game on a VIP only server is just ridiculous. I do get the point of PvMP not being balanced at lower levels, but literally everything is unbalanced on the legendary servers, did that stop them from being launched?

[Arantha]

I translated it into german and made a report: https://funkenflug.ag/neue-ausruestu...ie-ettenoeden/

[Kate00]

sorry bro but what. When have they done this since they changed it at 85. It used to be incentivized to small grouping and solo and then it wasnt. They have nvr tried going back before. And the action used to be better.

Wait what? You must be doing a ton of Youtube research to know this only playing a month.

[ChaChaLoco]

The changes in the original post (quoted below) sound incredibly promising and I'm very keen to see how they play out. Some of these points I (and I'm sure many others) have been asking to be implemented for years. Some further comments below.

Hello all, I’m Fants (aka. Fantus) and I’ve been working part time on PvMP for the past year. In the past, I was on the world building team from Moria -> Rohan and I’ve returned to work on getting PvMP in a better state.

We understand that there are a lot of issues with PvMP in general, but the goal of these changes isn’t to fix everything all at once. We are trying to slowly right the ship in terms of balance and accessibility, while addressing longstanding issues.

The main goal of this update is to level up everything to the new level cap, create viable PvMP gear for freeps that is not PvE centric, and work on quality-of-life changes. In addition to the PvMP changes, there are several statting changes we are still working on - because of this we are planning on pushing the Bullroarer PvMP preview feedback to next week, likely 10/28. All of these changes are slated to go live with the Gundabad Expansion, though the higher level gear will be gated until the equivalent PvE content releases.

Very curious to see how the new LI implementation will impact PvMP and I'm hoping that the end result won't just be swapping a PvE Gear-grind for a PvE LI-grind. It would be unfortunate if the PvE LI-grind becomes unwieldy and ends up acting (or straight up acts out of the box) as a soft gate to participation in PvMP for Free Peoples players. I don't know enough about the new LI system though so I reserve judgement. I just hope we're not swapping one high barrier of entry for another one.

That notwithstanding, I fully agree with the sentiment that PvE should not be required to participate in PvP (other than whatever PvE is required to reach the level cap).

Audacity Rework:
Audacity was reworked to both provide more significant bonuses and to make it a soft requirement for PvMP.
We want to move away from having players required to do high end raiding to attain PvMP viable gear.
At the other end of the spectrum, we don't want PvMP gear to be best in slot across the board for PvE, so this is where Audacity comes in.

I fully agree with Audacity being a soft-requirement for PvMP. I remain of the view that it simply should not be possible to use PvE gear in the PvP zone, and that all gear-slots should be comprised of dedicated PvP gear which cannot be used outside the PvP zone. But I understand that may be difficult to implement from a development standpoint and Audacity may be an easier solution.

It is very nice to hear that the vision for PvMP is to move away from players being required to do high-end PvE raiding to attain viable PvMP gear. I would like to hear you go one step further, and say that in every case PvE gear will be categorically bad for PvMP compared to the best PvMP gear.

Regarding PvMP gear being BiS. Would the best solution not be to make it impossible to use outside of PvP zones (if that is viable)? Alternatively, what about giving the gear some sort of effect which applies a crippling debuff to the wearer if you aren't in the Ettenmoors or Osgiliath? I'm not sure what the best approach would be, but it's really much of a muchness if PvMP gear is worse than PvE gear that shouldn't be a problem anymore with Monster Players split off from NPC scaling, as we can just be balanced based on whatever the current PvMP itemisation is.

-Legacy gear will retain its audacity, but it will be suboptimal
-25 Ranks of Audacity added (now 50, from 25)
-Damage bonus is now multiplicative instead of additive, so it will increase all damage
-Damage bonus now scales from 2% to 50% at ranks 25 to 50 (was 1% to 25%, from 1 to 25)
-Incoming Damage reduction now decreased only at rank 25+
-CC duration reduction scales to -60% by rank 31 (was rank 25)
-Monsters are able to purchase audacity up to rank 50 (was 25)

These changes seem alright, but what is the cost of audacity ranks on Creep to go from 1 to 25, and then 25 to 50? Also, a 2% to 50% damage increase from rank 25 to 50 seems quite high? What is the cost of the best PvMP gear pieces?

PvMP Gear:
We are introducing several new gearsets to be released in line with PvE content.
These may be purchased from the respective armor quartermasters in Glan Vraig.
Most pieces will have lower stats overall than a PvE ilevel equivalent, however the audacity damage bonus should make up for this.
The base sets are intentionally not itemized perfectly, however higher tier sets have more optimal statting.
The first set is purchasable with Gold, with the higher sets purchased with commendations.
These sets all have audacity on them, the baseline set has 25.
In addition, there is also now audacity jewelry.
PvMP Rank cloaks have been updated to level 140. If you have already purchased a rank cloak, it should automatically update.

Again, seem alright. Do the PvMP cloaks also give Audacity? Are any of the Audacity ranks applied as a set bonus such that players will be required to wear all pieces in the set to get the Audacity?

PvMP Essences:
There is a new type of essence, called Essences of War, which are PvMP exclusive.
These may be purchased from the Coldfells Quartermaster in Glan Vraig.
These may only be slotted in PvMP gear and can be bought rather cheaply for commendations.
These will be released in waves with PvE content and will be Rank gated.

Do the baseline PvMP sets have essence slots? I am concerned less experienced players may stat their gear incorrectly which will warp/skew their experience in PvMP towards claims of the game being unbalanced when in reality they are not slotting their gear correctly.

Bugfixes:
-Fixed an issue where Monster Players could sneak into Glan Vraig
-Fixed an issue where Gaergoth could be pulled into a state where he couldn't attack
-Increased most Monster Player melee skills to have a 5.2m range, to be on equal footing with Free People.
-Fixed several stuck spots, and line of sight issues around Glan Vraig and Gramsfoot

Nice to see changes like these also be covered.

Overall, well done! Most promising PvMP-related progress I've read about since I started playing this game in 2010.

[ChaChaLoco]

These look like some very promising changes, thank you. I hope this will somewhat stabilize the core of PvMP as a (scalable) system.
There's already been plenty of discussion on balance, landscape changes (EC/OC) and general moors mechanics (backdoors, auto flips, zone buffs, etc.), so I'll be skipping this for now. I also do assume these are already on the radar of the team.

A different point I'd like to bring up is renown/infamy gains and distribution over large groups. There used to be a time where point distribution was based on your contribution to a fight and then distributed over all group members involved. Players that were too far away from fights would not gain any points at all, the 80m rule so to say.
This all has been thrown out of the window many years ago with the Rohan update. Now everyone who even tagged the opponent, and to extend anyone within the group of that player (regardless of participating in the fight), will get a base 10% of however many points this opponent was worth.
This means when scaling to large groups (10+) you're essentially printing points out of thin air as anyone involved in the kill, or anyone in a group with a person involved, will gain 10% of the opponents worth, no matter the total amount of players that participated.
This has IMO been a huge contribution to the zerg culture we see today and have seen for years already. There is essentially no downside to scaling groups beyond 10 players as far as point gains go while at the same time overwhelming numbers guarantee you a victory.
It also hurts smaller groups as they are taking more risk, yet gaining about the same amount of point per kill whilst having a lower amount kills per fight. For solo players it's even worse as if a single player with a group tags your kill you see all of your points evaporate and flow to that group.
With the current point distribution system you end up rewarding and actually encouraging the zerg mentality whilst punishing most other group sizes.

From the Rohan patch notes:



In light of the many changes that are going to require commendations I'm afraid that the whole zerg mentality is going to be exacerbated as it will be the fastest and most efficient route to gaining commendations and thus the new gear/essences and audacity ranks.
I'd like to propose to revert the changes made with the Rohan update to the point system. This would promote more small scale action and (with the right landscape changes) across the map for strategic points and objectives such as keeps and outposts.

I cannot emphasise enough how much I agree with Urundus' post above. The removal of that 80m rule also made it even easier for rank farmers to get away with it. The hard-minimum on the amount of points you gain has absolutely led to their being no disincentive to create a huge raid and zerg the entire map (see the numerous updates where raids have been formed to camp the other side at Gramsfoot/Glan Vraig to farm points).

[ConsistentRager]

Wait what? You must be doing a ton of Youtube research to know this only playing a month.

its my new form account. I lost the info to my lost one lul. I been here since 65.

[sapienze]

That notwithstanding, I fully agree with the sentiment that PvE should not be required to participate in PvP (other than whatever PvE is required to reach the level cap).

I can agree with this. The more separated the better.

Regarding PvMP gear being BiS. Would the best solution not be to make it impossible to use outside of PvP zones

This is almost mandatory. There is no reason to have one system affect the other.

Again, seem alright. Do the PvMP cloaks also give Audacity? Are any of the Audacity ranks applied as a set bonus such that players will be required to wear all pieces in the set to get the Audacity?

Hopefully there will be no gear set bonuses allowed in the Moors.

Overall, well done! Most promising PvMP-related progress I've read about since I started playing this game in 2010.

It is a good start. I'll wait to see if the words match the reality.

[ithinkiamserious]

yes make large grouping punished through lower glory point gains....If people are incentivized towards small group

I agree with this, though I understand Snowlock's point.

The problem is that only incentivizing reasons to roam the map doesn't address the fact that there are already groups (usually raids) that will regularly form on creepside just for questing that will zerg solos they encounter and comment about how much infamy they made off the player -- these raids are weekly, or, at certain times of the season, daily and lasing for several hours at a time as players cycle through alts. There is already a very strong culture on creepside of completing all, or most of, the quests.

This is not found on freepside, though the possible reasons for this are many.

It seems most likely that freepside doesn't have the same approach to questing as creepside is because freeps don't have maps. I think this because most freeps will grab all the quests at gv, will regularly go to OR for the quests from three npcs that require mats easily obtainable from flipping keeps (note: they are not usually completing all the quests from OR), and usually only grab and complete the quests from keeps for oil and for kills at the keeps. Apart from that, you don't see freeps running around the map trying to grab items or complete the npc quests. My guess is there are lots freeps that would attempt all the quests if not for the fact that it's difficult to get around the map to work on the quests and yet still be able to easily get back into the action if there is a callout.

The only solution to encourage freep questing would be to increase the incentives for them or give them maps. If neither of those happen, you are unlikely to see an increase of roaming simply due to a change in questing alone because questing is typically not as fun to pvpers as pvping (otherwise they'd be in other zones) and the people who do these things just for renown are unlikely to get as much renown from quests as they would from pvping (or, in many cases, as unlikely to survive the attempt to ride across the map solo to complete the quest as they would from grouping or following other players from GV to the various keeps).

Whatever the case, punishing large groups (this penalty would need to discourage callouts as well, since calling out solos or small groups would still be off benefit even if not grouped) would be helpful as the constant zergs are one of the biggest annoyances to people who already prefer roaming the map.

[Ben9619]

Additionally, you can make maintaining the balance in the moors much easier for yourselves if you just made it impossible to use PVE gear/weapons etc. in the moors.

Currently, the damage/health we have at the end of an expansion is 3-5x more than what we have at the start. This is a gradual increase across the whole expansion so maintaining the same balance is near impossible. I understand that this audacity armour/jewels will encourage players to not use PVE armour but I imagine as we get later into the expansion there will be more and more set bonuses etc. that will just be more powerful so why not just ban them? You could also have PvP-only weapons with some unique traceries and a damage output that does not change across the whole expansion and thus, you can get the balance right, the map right and then just leave us to it. No maintenance at all.

Cheers,
Ben

[Daenirion]

Welcome Fants!

I'm happy to see that the accessibility issue has been acknowledged and adressed! I would take it a step further though. PvMP should truly be a minigame inside the game. You should be able to get everything you need FOR PvMP FROM PvMP.

What we have now:

• Armour
• Essences
• Jewelry
• Potions/Food

What is missing:

• LI advancement
• Virtue XP
• Skill Points

There's a lot to grind and the barrier of entry is still an issue. Once you have the full armour set, there's not much you can do with your commendations. Allow us to barter for Virtue XP and LI advancement stuff like the new Runes or Ancient Scrolls for example. Virtue and Level scaling already exists. Scaling Virtues to slightly below whatever the max is (so people who actually maxxed their virtues have a slight advantage) could also be an alternative.

I would also suggest to grant 1 skill point per PvMP rank. So 15 in total. Farming skill points is a nightmare. Or, again, scaling.

A different point I'd like to bring up is renown/infamy gains and distribution over large groups. There used to be a time where point distribution was based on your contribution to a fight and then distributed over all group members involved. Players that were too far away from fights would not gain any points at all, the 80m rule so to say.
This all has been thrown out of the window many years ago with the Rohan update. Now everyone who even tagged the opponent, and to extend anyone within the group of that player (regardless of participating in the fight), will get a base 10% of however many points this opponent was worth.
This means when scaling to large groups (10+) you're essentially printing points out of thin air as anyone involved in the kill, or anyone in a group with a person involved, will gain 10% of the opponents worth, no matter the total amount of players that participated.
This has IMO been a huge contribution to the zerg culture we see today and have seen for years already. There is essentially no downside to scaling groups beyond 10 players as far as point gains go while at the same time overwhelming numbers guarantee you a victory.
It also hurts smaller groups as they are taking more risk, yet gaining about the same amount of point per kill whilst having a lower amount kills per fight. For solo players it's even worse as if a single player with a group tags your kill you see all of your points evaporate and flow to that group.
With the current point distribution system you end up rewarding and actually encouraging the zerg mentality whilst punishing most other group sizes.

From the Rohan patch notes:



In light of the many changes that are going to require commendations I'm afraid that the whole zerg mentality is going to be exacerbated as it will be the fastest and most efficient route to gaining commendations and thus the new gear/essences and audacity ranks.
I'd like to propose to revert the changes made with the Rohan update to the point system. This would promote more small scale action and (with the right landscape changes) across the map for strategic points and objectives such as keeps and outposts.

You already beat me to it. ++++ from me.

The changes to the reward system introduced with Riders of Rohan were on of the worst changes for PvMP in the history of the game. We need to incentivize small group and solo fights instead of huge zerg trains. It's just an infamy farming simulator now without any substance.

@Fants Here are the Patch Notes of Update 8. The reward system needs to be reverted to a pre U8 state. I'm sure there are backups of every major update.

https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Upd...tober_15,_2012

If you're unable to do that short term, then please:

• Remove healing as a valid contribution or add a multiplicator of 0 to healing for the time being until it can be removed entirely from the code
• Re-introduce the 80m distance limit. The whole healing system is buggy. You can heal someone in Glan Vraig, go afk and receive points if that player kills someone on the other side of the map. I still can't wrap my head around this. How could anyone think "this is fine" and allow it to go live. That was almost a decade ago btw.

Also, if you want to make life easier for yourself, please use the Monster Play buff to balance freep skills for PvMP.



Every Freep who enters the Moors has this effect. If they leave, it's gone. You could adjust/fine tune problematic skills for PvMP without affecting PvE balance at all.

You'd be surprised how many people still haven't given up on the idea of decent PvMP in LOTRO and would return in a heartbeat. I remember a time where people would PvP during content droughts. Instead of playing other games, they kept their subs going just to PvP. Player retention is one the most important metrics of any game. PvMP is player driven content due to it's sandbox-y nature. If you provide a decent framework, there's a lot of fun to be had. This is your chance to correct the mistakes of the last decade, so don't squander it. There won't be many

[venyos]

I cannot agree more with this. The old OC/EC/rez points made for a much more fluid map. Can we get some more +1's on this so Fants knows how popular this idea is.

Read some previous threads PvMP feedbacks or type “oc/ec” in search forum text box.
There are 1:3 posts is talking about reverting old Ettenmoors map (with old positions, with no backdoors, with 5th plains op)

And also read this thread.