Next Lvl Cap Zone

[Hallandil]

it'd be smart if SSG focuses on making a new expansion related to LotR's mainstream pop culture rather than very specific stuff from the books (without betraying the books),
they will be able to catch more players, which are the ones interested in movies and TV shows.
in contrast to focusing into a minority of very staightful and tight-### players that take the story too serious, like a religious practice.

That happened with Helms Deep, which speaks for how successful that was.

Still the worst expansion to date for the damage it did to LOTRO's playerbase and continued systematic problems with the game.

Not enough staff and not enough active players to fund the amount of hours needed to go back and undo the colossally BAD work done by that one expansion.

[Mithithil]

>>>LotR's mainstream pop culture<<<

I'm wondering what the OP thinks this to be.

Celebrimbor/Annatar slash fiction
Merry/Eowyn love story (hint, the one I read involved a bucket on which to stand)
Legolas/Gimli slash

and so forth.

Most of the time the word culture after the word pop suggests a Petri dish may have been involved when you see the above. Brawler excepted I think the game walks a fine line between lore nerds like myself and the consolebois desperate for some variant on GrandTheft Wagon Minas Tirith or Call of Duty Black Land 2. Both of these may be fun, but they would also not be true to the concept of Middle Earth.

There again, should Half Ling be relased, on PC with a decent interface, that may be fun, as long as the G(andalf) Man was voiced by Sir Ian.

[Arnenna]

>>>LotR's mainstream pop culture<<<

I'm wondering what the OP thinks this to be.

Celebrimbor/Annatar slash fiction
Merry/Eowyn love story (hint, the one I read involved a bucket on which to stand)
Legolas/Gimli slash

and so forth.

Most of the time the word culture after the word pop suggests a Petri dish may have been involved when you see the above. Brawler excepted I think the game walks a fine line between lore nerds like myself and the consolebois desperate for some variant on GrandTheft Wagon Minas Tirith or Call of Duty Black Land 2. Both of these may be fun, but they would also not be true to the concept of Middle Earth.

There again, should Half Ling be relased, on PC with a decent interface, that may be fun, as long as the G(andalf) Man was voiced by Sir Ian.

Ok, ya got me. I'll be giggling all night after reading this.

[spaltung]

That happened with Helms Deep, which speaks for how successful that was.

Still the worst expansion to date for the damage it did to LOTRO's playerbase and continued systematic problems with the game.

Not enough staff and not enough active players to fund the amount of hours needed to go back and undo the colossally BAD work done by that one expansion.

HD failed because it didn't have enough content and they replaced endgame dungeons and raids with epic battles.

epic battles were no substitute for endgame dungeons and raids.

mainly because it has no linear progression through bosses and you can't expect players to drop their endgame expectations just because.

but SSG has a history of not placing themselves in a player's shoes, so they just make sudden changes in a vacuum and expect that players will welcome it because they think it's a good idea.



if you check old posts about helm's deep, most players that weren't satisfied with the expansion were confused and angry about endgame being epic battles.

imagine if a huge game like world of warcraft decides that they won't do raids anymore, it will cause a huge drop on their population, and only players that don't care about raiding will continue playing the game.

the same thing happened to Lotro, most players interested in raiding left the game at HD, and players that continued playing the game were the ones that didn't care about endgame raiding (many hardcore RPers or people that were mainly interested about the story).

and therefore, endgame dungeons and raiding got perverted after that, to the point that it does not represent a big deal for SSG to produce that kind of content. so, they deliver incompleted 6man dungeons and 1 incompleted raid just to give the small amount of the current population composed by endgame raiders their fix.

if they didn't #### up with HD and endgame raiders were still on the game, SSG would probably pay more attention to endgame dungeons and raids, rather than deliver poorly.

this intensifies with the fact that each expansion just adds more content and levels to mid-game,

which means that each expansion creates more players that won't be able to experience endgame because it takes so long to get there, so, the amount of story players and hardcore RPers just increases with every expansion stacked on top of mid-game,

because hardcore RPers and story players don't care about going through ten thousand levels. meanwhile, players more interested in raiding do care about not being able to get there after many months.

[Ranebow]

HD failed because it didn't have enough content and they replaced endgame dungeons and raids with epic battles.

epic battles were no substitute for endgame dungeons and raids.

mainly because it has no linear progression through bosses and you can't expect players to drop their endgame expectations just because.

but SSG has a history of not placing themselves in a player's shoes, so they just make sudden changes in a vacuum and expect that players will welcome it because they think it's a good idea.



if you check old posts about helm's deep, most players that weren't satisfied with the expansion were confused and angry about endgame being epic battles.

imagine if a huge game like world of warcraft decides that they won't do raids anymore, it will cause a huge drop on their population, and only players that don't care about raiding will continue playing the game.

the same thing happened to Lotro, most players interested in raiding left the game at HD, and players that continued playing the game were the ones that didn't care about endgame raiding (many hardcore RPers or people that were mainly interested about the story).

and therefore, endgame dungeons and raiding got perverted after that, to the point that it does not represent a big deal for SSG to produce that kind of content. so, they deliver incompleted 6man dungeons and 1 incompleted raid just to give the small amount of the current population composed by endgame raiders their fix.

if they didn't #### up with HD and endgame raiders were still on the game, SSG would probably pay more attention to endgame dungeons and raids, rather than deliver poorly.

this intensifies with the fact that each expansion just adds more content and levels to mid-game,

which means that each expansion creates more players that won't be able to experience endgame because it takes so long to get there, so, the amount of story players and hardcore RPers just increases with every expansion stacked on top of mid-game,

because hardcore RPers and story players don't care about going through ten thousand levels. meanwhile, players more interested in raiding do care about not being able to get there after many months.

This part really spoke to me
"if they didn't #### up with HD and endgame raiders were still on the game, SSG would probably pay more attention to endgame dungeons and raids, rather than deliver poorly.

this intensifies with the fact that each expansion just adds more content and levels to mid-game,

which means that each expansion creates more players that won't be able to experience endgame because it takes so long to get there, so, the amount of story players and hardcore RPers just increases with every expansion stacked on top of mid-game,
"

There are definitely too many levels and that is likely in part (if not heavily influenced) by Spaltung said, that instead of end game content you'd expect, you get more and more levels
This creates quite a challenge for persons who are trying to catch up, have not played in some time and/or simply cannot play all the time

I understand that with LOTRO compared to some other games, that it's less a them park and more a journey which is wonderful (well it was in Shadows of Angmar and maybe some Moria, took a downturn after that). However there should be a little more balance of solo /exploration content and group content (which only seems to really exist in instances/raids, and no longer open world)

That might go a long ways to help bridging the gap between person already at end game and those somewhere in between


Speaking for me personally I played till end of Angmar and remember Carn' Dum and the game when they didn't have a raid, then The Rift got shoehorned in
Then I take a break, Moria comes out and while I start a little late, I get through it all - mostly alone with smattering of instances and a few Watcher raids
Take time off again, do Mirkwood, again alone sans a few six mans
More time off, then around Great River time it just felt like things were moving along too quickly level wise and it's been difficult - every few years coming back to it, maybe spending a month getting reoriented with everything and understanding all the sweeping changes

And now, the game is so far ahead I don't see how anyone reasonably catches up
I cannot even get my bearings really on how to carry on - and about the only real enjoyment is travelling around some zones or opening the map and seeing how far it's been expanded zone wise. But actually playing and making some inroads, very unlikely


I wonder if something such as level squish or halving as Blizzard did with their Warcraft Shadowlands expansion, might breathe some life back into non high level areas.
Or maybe for now just stop adding more levels. Content is content, e.g. you don't have to add 150 lvl monsters , just add new lower level ones and tune things accordingly

:shrug; I don't know that's what I got for the moment, though between Spaltung's comment above, this thread and the comments in about 'we're a long ways off from things,' and my recent realization that the official expansion map on the wiki is pretty damn large (meaning we have lots to open yet) - I'm exhausted at the idea of how anyone can catch up; and mind you that's a beta era veteran who did virtually everything in vanilla, and Moria and a few things after that on multiple characters - Imagine what it's like for an actual new player


And that's all quite a shame because not many thought the game would last this long and I bet there's a lot that never did or will see the end of the story, at least the one they all started and presumed would end in Mordor. For some of us that's all we were expecting, and even that seems out of touch now

[Skyfoot_A]

As of update 33, you will be able to run a character from Ered Luin to Mordor, with the only loading screens being the inter-territory teleports (between Eriador-Rhovanion, Rhovanion-Gondor, Gondor-Mordor)...

This didn't age well, especially given how horrible the game performs. Maybe we need more loading screens. What we currently have clearly isn't working.

[Foxmaiden14]

The Scouring feels like a South Farthing Affair, and not something we're going to be dipping into quite yet.

When you get to finally doing South Farthing and the Scouring, I really really hope you don't trash the zone. Or maybe even do phasing somehow. I want to explore South Farthing without it being on fire and filled with evil Men and orcs. Find balance between needing to show the Scouring and letting us see more of the Shire. You managed to give Yondershire a good story without filling it with orcs and stuff.

[gildhur]

When you get to finally doing South Farthing and the Scouring, I really really hope you don't trash the zone. Or maybe even do phasing somehow. I want to explore South Farthing without it being on fire and filled with evil Men and orcs. Find balance between needing to show the Scouring and letting us see more of the Shire. You managed to give Yondershire a good story without filling it with orcs and stuff.

Scouring absolutely needs to be a South Farthing zone with higher threat level than the Shire and then a Shire Besieged instance zone that shows the full war come home.

[Ryvick]

end of Angmar and remember Carn Dum and the game when they didn't have a raid, then The Rift got shoehorned in

Just an FYI this is wrong. Yes the game didn't have a raid to start with, however the FIRST raid added was the 40 man HELEGROD raid. The Rift was added several updates later.

[TesalionLortus]

I wonder if something such as level squish or halving as Blizzard did with their Warcraft Shadowlands expansion, might breathe some life back into non high level areas.
Or maybe for now just stop adding more levels. Content is content, e.g. you don't have to add 150 lvl monsters , just add new lower level ones and tune things accordingly

What about the game's story? I always cringe when I hear about the level squish from WoW. :P

First of all, WoW was never THAT linear with its subsequent content and expansions. Nevertheless, not everyone and especially not here is just a hardcore cap player so all it takes is one look at reddit to see the insanity effect of this level squish in WoW and even pre-Shadowlands was already quite insane full of retcons because that's how WoW operated... so they didn't care to begin with. The way WoW is set up right now just seems to me like an insane cap press-up devoid of context or any real lore flavor. How should that work in LOTRO? You allow players to level up through SoA and then randomly drop them in Mordor or Gundabad? Or Rhun in the future? Without a single character or plot thread they would be familiar with? Then, basically the entire world and 90% of the important storyline is already grey for them, effectively discouraging from exploring and even if you were to choose what part of the game you want to play you're still missing out on context and character build-up no matter what you choose because most of the game's zones are heavily interconnected plot-wise. So it would discourage literally everyone from bothering with text quest to begin with, in most of such zones. It would be like destroying everything good that LOTRO actually has to offer, to be honest... So a level squish is simply UNFEASIBLE and incompatible with LOTRO's lore and storytelling, the effects would have been disastrous...

If anything, ESO's level scaling (and then lower cap) would work much better here. Because it allows you to explore on level, so even if you're technically at cap, it's still possible to enjoy the content in somehow meaningful or challenging way, either in required order or in whichever order you wish. But they've said this many times - that's something very difficult to achieve, so they may not have the resources and time to do it. Also, ESO has something LOTRO doesn't - more landscape content that doesn't force into any specific path and let's you simply take in the world - and then just jump into another region which scales to you and still run into some of such activities freely in the wild or settlements with no particular prerequisites for them, since they're fully standalone quests. So these two aspects work impressively well together, but for those who wish to explore all stories in full that's also an option and viable, rewarding playstyle.

LOTRO with ESO's scaling but no such content provided would have been a bit of an anomaly and wasted potential - you can jump from region to region but in each region it would be pretty linear all the time, so you gonna have awkwardness like crossing between region A to region B at specific point that takes you to totally empty side of region B, with nothing to find there, so you gotta get to the opposite side and only then start the quest chain and progress in a specific order while uncovering extensive story that sometimes may require context from region A (something a player was probably trying to take a break from... if they wanted to cross over, right?). So technically ESO's solution solves the problem we have with too much levels but still a bit lame because it can't fully benefit from the true appeal behind the ESO's system. Well, unless they take care to include such activities first - so not a bad idea going forward. And they might be just forced to try and do the scaling someday, out of necessity, so having the groundwork built for some of that juicy ESO's appeal wouldn't hurt in their massively big open world.

There are definitely too many levels and that is likely in part (if not heavily influenced) by Spaltung said, that instead of end game content you'd expect, you get more and more levels
This creates quite a challenge for persons who are trying to catch up, have not played in some time and/or simply cannot play all the time

That's true but what's even worse is that the game is confusing and frustrating if a player decides to "skip" content and would like to explore places in a more free-roam way. They'll suddenly run out of activities to do because they would be roaming through empty landscapes, with no activities offered, which may kinda "kill the mood" if you're a newbie and the perspective before you is... 140 levels of questing exactly as you're told! You've heard of this cool expansive Middle-earth online but you can't even lvl up to some of these iconic spots such as Rivendell/Moria/Dunland at your own pace, without the game forcing you to do it all a specific way on a specific route. New filling-in-the-gaps regions should really focus on bridging the gaps between lvl ranges, such as between Eregion and Enedwaith so not everyone is forced into Moria. But that alone doesn't make such a big difference for everyone so you gotta have something in place for landscape that allows someone to lvl up if they wanna free-roam a bit, without being endlessly tied to story quest chains. So they can free-roam if they wanna see the famous spots within their reach and still run into some viable activities that progress them towards cap. And if they ever manage to do the ESO's scaling (which they say they would love to do if they could) that already takes care of the groundwork for what makes ESO tick as an open exploration game (even though it's not technically as open as LOTRO is!).

And now, the game is so far ahead I don't see how anyone reasonably catches up
I cannot even get my bearings really on how to carry on - and about the only real enjoyment is travelling around some zones or opening the map and seeing how far it's been expanded zone wise. But actually playing and making some inroads, very unlikely

and my recent realization that the official expansion map on the wiki is pretty damn large (meaning we have lots to open yet) - I'm exhausted at the idea of how anyone can catch up; and mind you that's a beta era veteran who did virtually everything in vanilla, and Moria and a few things after that on multiple characters - Imagine what it's like for an actual new player

For new players who are all like "I wanna be cap!!!!" there is always a Valar, so really, it shouldn't be about accommodating players who have no wish to engage with the world - but at the same time SSG should make the entire journey feel less like a chore of 15 years of specific, linear content. Because that may 1) not appeal to everyone 2) be a scare at first, even if it might appeal to someone later on. And this all can be done by providing more freedom of progression within its open world, which as you said - is impressively vast and getting bigger. Imagine if you were able to have this "real enjoyment of travelling around some zones or opening the map and seeing how far it's been expanded zone wise" and still you would run into activities so you can gain exp. Which would make it more viable for you to traverse off the beaten path and explore in new places. I guess more rewarding of a player's time and more encouraging to try to slowly progress forward... than the big utter "either that or nothing" we have right now (dedicate yourself completely "on the designated path" or be completely stuck in your open world experience, with no prospect of ever reaching these distant places).

And that's all quite a shame because not many thought the game would last this long and I bet there's a lot that never did or will see the end of the story, at least the one they all started and presumed would end in Mordor. For some of us that's all we were expecting, and even that seems out of touch now

And that's also true... so in essence, they should take care to make the game and its expanding open world exciting and feasible enough to explore without a huge baggage of the extensive storyline looming above a newbie/returning player, but also... without holding some of the older players "hostage" over Frodo's storyline of the books! (which, narratively speaking, seems like a good thing to be done with it anyway... else everything that's to come within this world in the future will be just... extremely off-putting narratively and that's not a good storytelling and worldbuilding feeling and they do pride themselves on storytelling after all)