Changes to Motes/Ember/Figments

[JH15547]

Positives:

- Significantly increasing the cap on embers and motes (although one wonders why it wasn’t removed entirely for all 3 currencies)

Negatives:

- Increased cap likely to mean increased prices, with limited sources of embers
- Instance gear no longer converting to embers, reducing numbers of routes to get embers
- Trying to force players into buying black steel keys to open loot boxes
- Resetting the embers cap at every item level increase - this is just nuts. Fine if you want to reset at a level cap, but if you don’t want people to be able to immediately barter for new gear at a new update, why not put a deed requirement on the gear? (Like must completed raid t1, etc.) - this has worked before, so not sure for the reasons for changing it. This is particularly bad for those who are more casual, and who might have a couple of thousand embers stored up from one or two weeklies, but no more than that, meaning no access to newer gear (such as the upgraded off-handlers, for example).
- Getting rid of the barter between embers and motes, and motes and figments. I don’t get what the purpose of this is. Embers are the most valuable ones, so if people want to convert to get figments for cosmetics, or use them to bolster a lower level alts’ gear, what is the purpose in stopping them doing this?

A silly change like this is going to cost you all of the good will that you’ve managed to build up over the last few months through producing good content and improving communication. Sure, lag is a problem particularly at the moment, but I was generally quite positive about the game direction, until this was proposed.

Please get it straight in your heads that the way to get END GAME GEAR should be through playing the game, NOT THROUGH P2W LOOTBOXES.

Couldn't have said it better. It's sad - Raninia said they were looking at making monetization more "up to date with current standards". Unfortunately, they meant mobile game standards, not successful MMORPG standards.

And honestly, get rid of Figments if you're only going to make them available from lootboxes (cause festivals give you so few). Just put the cosmetic stuff in the store. At least you would get some small credit for being honest.

[Neinda]

Food for thought. I don't think this is the best way to make a profit. I understand that profit equates to more content and game improvements but restricting embers to only those who farm is not going to get you a profit.

Under a system where you need keys and turning in weeklies to obtain embers you are empowering the farmers in the game. Those individuals are the ones who make characters, level them in the starter areas, delete the characters after lotro points are earned only to repeat until they can buy the expansions and game content. Now they will do this for keys.

Why would anyone pay for VIP and expansions when you cannot get armor unless you buy keys and turn in weeklies from old areas?

Under this system, there is no reason not to farm lotro points, buy keys, barter and hoard armor boxes so that the boxes can be opened at the next cap increase.

Please rethink all of this. Those of us who pay for VIP and buy expansions will be at a disadvantage.

[Feoh]

Is it April 1st?

[JH15547]

But that's not what they're addressing here. The currency cap already solved that issue--all they had to do (and I'm pretty sure they did) was make it so that any hoarded disenchant-able items changed to award Motes instead of Embers whenever there was a level cap increase. They could even go so far as to turn existing Embers into Motes upon cap increase, and most people would understand even if they weren't happy about it.

What they're doing now is not only turning Embers to Motes at cap increases, they're doing it for their arbitrary "Lootbox item level increase" updates (which are what drove most of the people I played with away from LOTRO at L120 cap). So you earn/buy Embers at launch, barter for a few pieces of Ember gear, then a month or so down the road they release the same gear only with slightly better stats so you go back and buy more keys. And, as someone mentioned before, if you were saving Embers to get a piece of raid or 6-man gear, and then their arbitrary update comes along, your saved Embers become Motes, but the raid/instance gear you were saving to barter for still costs Embers.

On top of that, they're removing the one group-content avenue for obtaining Embers (disenchanting unneeded instance drops), making it so that only weekly quests (boring soloable missions, repetitive soloable dailies) and L120/130 node farming (they haven't even added a L140 version of Ember-Worthy Crafts) award Embers--which is the primary currency for group content rewards.

The best part is they announced these changes BEFORE the LI Reward Track has been released.

It's just poor strategic decision making from a business perspective. If you're going to do something like this, don't announce it until your other critical system is 100% done. People were already anxious about the LI Reward Track and now they are worried about Embers and gearing too. Just freaking stupid from a business point of view.

[Arnenna]

The best part is they announced these changes BEFORE the LI Reward Track has been released.

It's just poor strategic decision making from a business perspective. If you're going to do something like this, don't announce it until your other critical system is 100% done. People were already anxious about the LI Reward Track and now they are worried about Embers and gearing too. Just freaking stupid from a business point of view.

But, now they've done this, when the really bad reward track hits, people will think, this aint so bad, it could have been much worse, like when they revamped embers.

Pfft. I can't be bothered with it anymore to be honest. Looks like my decision to play less - came at the right time.

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

It's easy for whales to quickly get to the next cap and start bartering embers, it's the casual player that is, again, being intentionally harmed. While the cap was too low, casual players rarely hit it. It's nice to know I can get some embers that will hang around until I'm through the new material. Immediately exchanging all to motes is cruel. In fact, tying back to the original mention of exchange, what should happen is that people can exchange embers for motes if they want to, to continue earning that level of gear.

But, oh wait, they've already changed it so that gear is tied to your level and not the level of the area, making even that more useless.

Instead of focusing on how to attract and keep more casual players, SSG continues to focus on the whales for their income. Pathetic.

[Khelek-EU]

I come back to the game.
I experience poor service.
I read the forums.
I want to quit....

Every time.. I dunno why I even bother with this game or games in general at this point.

[auximenes]

We're also losing the ability to turn gear into embers and motes outside of gear that we need lockboxes or embers and motes to obtain. And that's about it.

I think there's a communication error here, as so often happens. I don't think they're taking away the ability to Flame current cap-level rewards into Embers. If that's the plan then why bother leaving in Ember Worthy Craft recipes and weeklies which generate Embers?

[Baritone]

It's really not that big of a deal...traceries are the main means of customization now. Gear and essences have taken a back seat especially with vitality stacking finally gone. The LI reward system is much more important

[road.rage]

I think there's a communication error here, as so often happens. I don't think they're taking away the ability to Flame current cap-level rewards into Embers. If that's the plan then why bother leaving in Ember Worthy Craft recipes and weeklies which generate Embers?

Quoting Cord's post: "The only gear in-game that will disenchant into Embers will come from Adventurer's (level cap) Lootboxes."

You can still spend them, you can still generate them in game, but the increased cap smells of inflation so you'll need forever and a day to get anywhere and at any point they can now declare it "new content" and turn anything red into greens.

[CloudCastle]

Can someone answer a question for me? What does "Adventurer's (level cap) Lootboxes" include? Are those ONLY the ones that are opened with keys, or does that include the level cap boxes you buy with embers? Just a small thing that I realized I wasn't sure on.

[BigLotroFan]

Can someone answer a question for me? What does "Adventurer's (level cap) Lootboxes" include? Are those ONLY the ones that are opened with keys, or does that include the level cap boxes you buy with embers? Just a small thing that I realized I wasn't sure on.

The ones you open with keys.

[Braer]

Quoting Cord's post: "The only gear in-game that will disenchant into Embers will come from Adventurer's (level cap) Lootboxes."

You can still spend them, you can still generate them in game, but the increased cap smells of inflation so you'll need forever and a day to get anywhere and at any point they can now declare it "new content" and turn anything red into greens.

I still can't quite believe someone actually came up with that quoted text and it was passed on with a comment that they are "looking forward" to our feedback. Some combination of sadomasochism I suspect. Will have to see if anyone can be bothered to play on BR to see the reality of it.

[Montjoy]

I still can't quite believe someone actually came up with that quoted text and it was passed on with a comment that they are "looking forward" to our feedback. Some combination of sadomasochism I suspect. Will have to see if anyone can be bothered to play on BR to see the reality of it.

Insert: Alfred, "Some men just want to watch the world burn." meme here

[Arnenna]

Can someone answer a question for me? What does "Adventurer's (level cap) Lootboxes" include? Are those ONLY the ones that are opened with keys, or does that include the level cap boxes you buy with embers? Just a small thing that I realized I wasn't sure on.

Lootboxes are opened with keys. Both Adventurer's and Travellers. What we barter with earned currency - is coffers.

[Calding]

Can someone answer a question for me? What does "Adventurer's (level cap) Lootboxes" include? Are those ONLY the ones that are opened with keys, or does that include the level cap boxes you buy with embers? Just a small thing that I realized I wasn't sure on.

The items that come from ember purchased boxes are also tagged as Adventurers and currently still disenchant to embers on Bullroarer.

[Strider5548]

I have bought 1 key to see what the hype about the boxes all is about when they came out. I still have 9 earned keys in my inventory. And you are right, it is the players buying these keys who encourage SSG to go this route instead of direct store sales. It is the players buying the extra hobbit wheel turns with MC that encourage SSG to go the gambling route instead of direct store sales. They might get more key sales but if nothing new and interesting is added to the store itself I don't see any reason to buy LP. I went over what I bought last year:
3 house stables (2 for premium houses) and this for me was the best purchase. The anniversary round trip was so much better. I bought the 4th just for deco reasons when they were on sale.
75% off account journeyman riding during summer sales.
50% off housing writs to get a Belfalas kin house during winter sales.
A few other housing items.
Crafting carry-alls when they were on sale.
MM highest edition in the market although I bought the content in the store because I wanted the carry-alls and the pets, and the price seemed just right to get it.

I would buy the Rohan crafting stations but have no desire for the other items in the pack.
I would buy 2-3 housing carry-alls but they are never in the store.
I would buy some of the special hobbit gifts, some in multiples, in the store.
I would buy some figment barter items, some in multiples in the store.
I would buy MC/writs for elven and hobbit premium housing, the ability to change seasons and more housing slots.
I always check for new items in housing, pets and even mounts and buy xpacs/quest packs there.

But I will not buy keys or any items that promote gambling.

So again, it's the players who buy keys who encourage SSG to go this route and if key sales increase then the change will be considered good.

Yea totally agree. I easily spend over $1,000 a year on this game but I have never and will never buy a key. Give me something useful in the game and I will gladly pay for it, but I can not support this slot machine system of loot boxes. This game should be better than that.

[road.rage]

I still can't quite believe someone actually came up with that quoted text and it was passed on with a comment that they are "looking forward" to our feedback. Some combination of sadomasochism I suspect. Will have to see if anyone can be bothered to play on BR to see the reality of it.

Have you run this through the PR-bullsh.. translator? * "looking forward" to our feedback * means "cry all you want, this is coming anyway".
As I said somewhere else, they might pull back a tiny bit to make it look like they care.

[Crell_1]

Disenchanting to motes, but not letting players buy with motes decreases the willingness to swap gear with other players who might 'need'/'have more immediate use for it' than you.
1.You can't get an equivalent value in exchange
2.If you ever even remotely might want the piece in the future there's no 'fast' way of getting the currency to do so short of paying $$.
This leads to less people willing to run content with their classes that don't need the gear decreasing the amount of players able to find/fill groups.
I've been running HoRT3B2 with my burglar repeatedly, even willing to do so locked because people would in theory be willing to trade stuff. I already know people who only run if stuff can drop to them which they need. They're the people who won't be running as much after this.

[Fresuvi]

I mean, people are probably going to disagree with me here but I don't think it's going to be all that different from what we've been doing for the past few years. You don't NEED embers to get gear. The content itself drops gear more than good enough to run it. Then you can run higher tiers and get better gear. Too many people have been spoon fed by 130 cap requiring a single raid deed(which most people didn't even earn themselves they just bought raid deed clears for in game gold or IRL money *gasp*). If you want the best gear, do the content that drops it. Adventurer gear is and always has been subpar to T2+ raid gear. I REPEAT: YOU DO NOT NEED TO BUY KEYS TO EARN THE BEST GEAR AND NEVER HAVE. Simply complete the content and earn the rewards from it.

Guess people can still buy raid deeds and pretend like they did the content, they'll just have to spend a bit extra on keys to get p2w gear.


The people I do feel bad for on the other hand, are people affected by the figments changes. There is no reason to remove that conversion other than forcing people into the store for cosmetics. I mean I guess if that's what they want to do, that's their prerogative. It's just not my cup of tea.

[Echoweaver]

I read about half the thread, but I think that's all I have in me.

I'm sure SSG is monitoring this thread, though, so I'll toss in.

If I understand correctly, I think the embers-to-motes conversion is to prevent players from bartering for this releases top gear with the embers farmed in the previous release when the player already had the previous release's top gear. Everyone has to earn the current release's top gear playing the current release's content. I'm not in the category of players who are majorly affected by this.

I'm super-distressed about losing the figments conversion. I like festivals, but on the level of getting one character halfway through the wrapper on two servers. At that rate, it'll take me a year's worth of festivals to get a medium-sized figments item. This stuff, especially the housing items, are the big trophies for me. Top gear doesn't interest me that much -- I like the challenge and sometimes play undergeared on purpose.

[Raninia]

Alright, gonna go ahead and see if I can provide some answers and context on stuff here. I was the big driver of this change, so any frustrations or questions can be (politely) directed at me and I'll do my best to address it. Any successes are the team's. I don't ever really remember to look at my Private Messages, so I encourage you to keep responding to this thread, and I'll continue to read and respond as I'm able.

I've picked out a few consistent concerns and questions I've seen, and resp

From the Announcement we can't tell what are your intentions, for something that sounds rly stupid at first read.

I think it's fair to say we could've done more to indicate our intentions, so let me do so here. There were a few different reasons we wanted to make these changes:

Embers:
- The purpose of Embers was to act as a way to mitigate being unlucky with RNG. However, what it turned into was the fastest and best way to get the gear. We don't want players to run things that aren't the content the gear comes from as their primary way of getting that gear. In looking at why this was happening, the disenchanting of gear from any tier of any group instance was obviously where the bulk of Embers were coming from, in a way that really pushed players to grind to maximize their time. And especially, grind lower tier content to get higher tier gear. So that's why we removed the gear disenchant option to Embers. We'll have more ways to earn Embers when this goes live, and we'll be balancing around how many Embers a player can earn without opening lootboxes, as that's how most players play and we want to make sure you're still able to consistently get the gear you want... but the way we want you to get most of your pieces is by running the content where it drops.

- Embers being barterable into Motes and Figments never made a lot of sense to me, and in discussions with the team and observing player interactions, led to a lot of unintentional consequences we didn't like. Most players were converting into these other currencies because they were hitting the cap so often, and didn't really value them. This is generally ok for Motes - I'll explain why below - but less so for Figments - which I'll also explain below. Removing the ability to losslessly barter these currencies allowed us to feel much more comfortable raising the caps dramatically - of everything besides Figments, which I'll explain below. Breaking apart this relationship meant that we could better tailor rewards to players and give them good amounts of each of those things without having to worry that we were giving them game-breaking amounts, for example, so now we have the opportunity to give you Embers in places where it makes sense you'd care about them, and know that you're going to use them on the cap-level gear.

- The versioning is important for a few reasons:
1. It gives us a lot more flexibility to raise the currency cap, because if something goes wrong in a particular cycle and we give out too many sources of Embers, we can be comfortable that we haven't wrecked progression for Updates to come.
2. Similarly - and the reason the cap existed in the first place - Embers were a currency that only ever increased in value as you kept it. The best times to spend it were either when you were capped out or in the next Update, because the gear in the future would generally be better than the gear in the past. That turned it a completely different thing than we wanted it for. As mentioned above, the goal for Embers is to give you a way to mitigate bad luck, but if spending it is often the wrong move long term, it doesn't feel great no matter what you do with it. Versioning Embers into Motes lets us make it clear what Embers are for and give you lossless value without making you want to hoard it forever.
3. One of the issues we ran into was that in order to properly price new gear, we had to keep moving the price up and up until you basically needed to have Embers capped to spend it. This wasn't exactly a great experience for players. Versioning lets us maintain more consistent pricing, limits how much we need to increase prices as we roll out smaller content updates, and make it such that we can set them more sensibly in general. Even though we're increasing the cap by an order of magnitude, prices won't increase to match.
4. Versioning specifically Motes also lets us re-establish Motes as the catch up currency - more below - and lets us move gear that won't be top-end into Motes at that time, so it'll be even easier for players to catch up.

- We're going to add more sources of Embers. Some of those will be new repeatables, but we can now also do more one-off grants from different sources, such as landscape quests - the Epic, for example - and the Reward Track. One-off grants will generally be bigger than any of the repeatables, but now they'll be valuable and won't feel nearly as bad to get, where before a one-off could've easily overwhelmed your capped amount. Similarly, we won't be just multiplying the pricing by 10x as we did the cap, so you'll still gain value from these.

Motes
- The purpose of Motes was to essentially be a catch up currency, either for yourself or for your alts. You can also use it to get gear that has cosmetics you value. Now that we'll be versioning more consistently, we can do a better job of shifting stuff over to Motes more often so catch up is easier, and it gives us the opportunity to do more consolidation.

- With Motes no longer being barterable, we can also add more catch up things to it, like the Enhancement Runes mentioned in the announcement. This is something I'm personally pretty excited for, as it opens up a lot of great possibilities for improving the pre-cap experience. We're discussing more ways of taking advantage of that, and will have more to announce in the future.

- Motes are going to still be available to disenchant from gear because we want to maintain the Motes sourcing, even when you're doing max content. Motes will be pretty easily and reliable gained from multiple sources.

- Because of all this, we want to make it easier for you to hold onto a lot of Motes, so we've dramatically increased the cap to match. There's also an element of protection here to make sure we don't accidentally overdo it, but we're not versioning Motes to anything else.

Figments
- We're looking at the pricing structure we currently have. Giving the player a bigger cap will make it a bit easier for us to adjust pricing, but we're not planning to double the cap and then double all the costs, there's no value in doing so. We aren't increasing or changing Figments as dramatically because they're still an eternal currency in this model - however many you earn today is as many as you'll have until you spend it. And similar to how Embers are, whenever we add new cosmetics to the barterers, they're available for Figments directly, so your Figments have nominally infinite value. Of course, cosmetics tend to be a bit more subjective than power comparisons, so we expect that most players will get a bit choosier in terms of what cosmetics they prioritize. This is definitely trickiest for players who liked to collect 'em all, but we'll keep an eye on that and see what we can do.

- We're also going to add more sources for Figments, just like are with Embers, again such as with landscape quests and the Reward Track. We'll keep an eye on how acquisition looks for those, as we want to avoid the problems that caused us to make the change for Embers.

Of course what shines through is Pay2Win.

We can certainly debate this, but I don't think that's what the end result will be. If we find that players can't acquire gear consistently by playing the game, we'll adjust to improve that.

How do you get Embers now? Are the weeklies still working?

Yes, the current other Ember sources will continue to work. And as mentioned above, we'll continue to add Embers in more places.

Also why increase the caps if you can't get it anyway ?!

I mostly explained this above, but caps give us flexibility for pricing while also giving us protection in case we make sourcing that currency too easy. That's why the caps have been low for these currencies until now (and why it remains lower on Figments).

Technically this will also make people run less instances, so a decrease in motivation and endgame... Perfect!

I don't think that's what'll happen, but we'll see how it plays out. Part of the goal with this is to increase the value of running the instances that have the gear you want, and to make that the primary way to get gear. Right now, Embers are the best way to get the gear you want, not playing content.

So far this is: Increase prices for everything, but takeaway normal ways to get ressources.

So this certainly isn't true for Motes, based on what we described. It's less true for Embers, though of course we are removing some of the "normal" - by which I assume you mean "current" - ways of getting them, but as I've said above, we're adding new ones with 32 and beyond. Figments are definitely in the trickiest position here, but we'll be adding new ways to earn them as well. We'll see how that plays out and adjust as needed.

Well it's nice they're raising some caps - usually it's the other way around though I can't image how you would ever get 100k embers unless they plan to make them ridiculously easy to obtain.

We expect that most players won't hit the Ember cap like they're used to, but that's ok, because we also expect them to more consistently use their Embers as well, which is the goal. We certainly don't plan on making them ridiculously easy to obtain, but we are going to add more ways to get them.

No mention on how you're supposed to obtain figments with this update (other than the existing pay to open lootboxes).

Figments will still be available from Festivals, and we'll be adding additional sources in 32, such as with the Reward Track. We'll do landscape quests in the future, not sure if any of those will reward Figments in 32.

You are saying, that can only disenchant Adventure gear into Embers in the note and I hope you just forgot to tell us that we can still disenchant engame instance loot (violet, teal and gold) into Embers as long as it is the current endgame gear...

No, these'll be disenchantable into Motes, not Embers. Only Adventurer's Gear will disenchant into Embers.

I just hope that embers will be pretty easy to obtain. Like, just from running an instance, and a bosschest gives like 1000 embers or something. That way it will not change much, except that you don't have to destroy gear for it.

Repeatable sources of Embers will be more frequent, but I don't think we'd put that amount on boss chests.

So...

Embers, Motes, Figments will now only come from:

Weeklies, Festivals, Lootboxes and disenchanting lootbox gear/items.

Plus additional sources we add.

Gear that's bad/useless/outdated (a huge chunk of LOTRO loot by design) will no longer contribute in any small way towards Embers/Motes accrual.

It'll still contribute to Mote accrual, but not Embers.

The caps are getting raised substantially, which probably means that the barter prices for items will be raised substantially.

We'll see some price growth, but Ember prices will probably stabilize at 2-3x of current prices. We'll see how that plays out. Mote prices probably won't change at all. Figment prices are more variable, but we're not talking about a 2x increase there.

This is just.. pretty clearly done with the goal of pushing people further towards Black Steel Keys.

To be clear, that's not the intent. We still want players to get the game and get the gear. But we want y'all to play where that gear drops more, as opposed to farming easy content to get the hard gear after earning the deed.

I'm just tired, man. I enjoy this game largely due to the people I know, and the world/lore being something that feels like an MMO home. That's all getting harder and harder to enjoy with the horrific instance server lag, painful customer service, unfinished group instances and clear design changes intended to further push people towards store for character progression.

I've played FFXIV off and on since ARR (2.0), but always come back to LOTRO as my 'home' game. Getting harder and harder to justify that.

More power to ya. Enjoy your break, we'll be here when you're ready to come back.

I'll try and come back to this thread periodically over the next few days!

[Fureo]

I don't think that's what'll happen, but we'll see how it plays out. Part of the goal with this is to increase the value of running the instances that have the gear you want, and to make that the primary way to get gear. Right now, Embers are the best way to get the gear you want, not playing content.

I can see what you are trying to do, but the Lootsystem is not made for what you are trying to do. It's another point why the player base is complaining so much.
I already run an instance as much as possible. Unfortunately this is once per tier 4/5 per week T3 is more or less irrelevant at that point. Well with so much trash gear floating around it's often pretty demotivating to get the right stuff. Especially escalating this into a raid situation. The primary way is already to run instances to gear up. Barters are only so popular because the Loot is so bad and you cannot get good gear.
Another big problem is right now, that there are only such few instances to do. If we could only run old instances for usefull purposes, this would be much less of a problem.

Change the Lootsystem and probably it will be better. Leave it and i bet satisfaction will go down the drain.

Thanks for the answers anyway.

[BigLotroFan]

The purpose of Embers was to act as a way to mitigate being unlucky with RNG. However, what it turned into was the fastest and best way to get the gear.

Maybe because the gear in these boxes is better than the gear from the content? This gear should be cheap and have baseline stats for people that don’t want to endlessly grind. Not be raid ready as they were at 130.

[DavidWe]

Alright, gonna go ahead and see if I can provide some answers and context on stuff here.

I know it's impossible to keep everyone happy, but replies and communication like this are very much appreciated by me.