Where do we go from here?

[subadar]

i didnt want an all new pvmp experience. i just wanted them to fix what we had.

its always 1 step forward 2 steps back for creeps.

it was like everything was looking pretty good with a couple issues remaining and they go and completely rework something no one asked for once again.

./shrug

[Grey_Havens_Taxi]

i didnt want an all new pvmp experience. i just wanted them to fix what we had.

its always 1 step forward 2 steps back for creeps.

it was like everything was looking pretty good with a couple issues remaining and they go and completely rework something no one asked for once again.

./shrug

Exactly this ^


To answer the title question. -----------------> Somewhere else.

[TearMaker]

i didnt want an all new pvmp experience. i just wanted them to fix what we had.

its always 1 step forward 2 steps back for creeps.

it was like everything was looking pretty good with a couple issues remaining and they go and completely rework something no one asked for once again.

./shrug

Well said ^^

BTW - Where is Orion? He hasn't posted in over one month. I would like to hear his thoughts on quite a few of these threads - not least the thoughts raised in this one. Also, what has been the impact of your changes thus far? I would bet my last dollar that there has been a massive drop in Creep logins first followed by Freep login to moors when they realise there is little or nobody to fight.

I am really resisting the urge to give a slow clap but that would be churlish.


So, much for keeping the flow of communication open. [Slow Clap] - aaargh darn it.... I broke my none mean spirited new years resolution

[SSG_Orion]

Yeah! Where has Orion been?

Right here. Working on stuff for the future releases now. Watching and lurking on the forums or in the game.

No, we are not mothballing monster play. As stated when I returned, there was a question out there about the viability of monster play – and we answered that with the positive steps that we made through the year. Yes, we are still experiencing some growing pains as we start moving toward the future.

We are not perfect.

Yes, we made a bunch of positive steps as we progressed through the year and then, with the release of Before the Shadow we had a couple of missteps. Yes, there was an outcry – and continues to be murmurs – over the changes to maps and to movement for the creeps, creep mitigations, and the relative strength of some player classes to monster player classes. Moreover, designing for the Ettenmoors is not one size fits all, as some have pointed out.

Now, I know I have been quiet for a while. The holidays were very busy and sadly communication was difficulty due to other personal goings-on. But, we are back, we are working and I wanted to speak to the Oliphants stomping through the Ettenmoors ahead of our upcoming roadmap and letter to the players.

This post is not going to be full of a ton of information but it should provide some broad strokes on what it is we are looking to do across the Ettenmoors in the coming year and attempt to explain a bit about the end of 2022.

Map and movement changes are here to stay, but they are not 100% set in stone.

Maps, will likely return in some manner – with both sides having them and being able to use them under the correct circumstances. Our goal with the change to maps, was to stop the behavior the creep’s ability to overwhelm freeps as we got closer to parity. Initially, we scaled the timers back for the release previous to Before the Shadow. We were still seeing the behavior with a number of creeps “porting” into a healthy fight and turning it into a massacre in a matter of seconds. We made the decision to push them back further to curb that behavior.

It certainly set up distinct battle lines. Sadly, these battle lines were on the forums and not in the game.

The second change, to March, we wanted to move until we found the right solution. There are technical reasons why we could not just set them to the same speed as a mount and we are continuing to address some of the backend portions of these changes. Sadly, what should have been a clear enhancement was bugged at release and a further an errant tooltip made the fix look like it had not gone in. It was frustrating from our side as well.
Now, there are still some small problems with the change, but we have made progress and movement is getting much closer to where we want it to be.

Further tweaks will continue, but a full reversal of the changes that we have made to the maps and movement is unlikely.

Creep Balance Changes

The addition of Blessings and reduction of corruption values is meant to be a new way to inspire to specialize your monster player. In a perfect world, this would have been better supported and communicated and turned into a much better and cleaner onboarding to the new normal. Sadly, this went about as opposite as that as possible. I screwed up. I rushed to get the change in and now it is in this weird Frankenstein’s monster state of being that really needs some help.
Help is on the way, fortunately. I will be revising the way that NEW monsters are directed to earn their blessings in a short-term and a better way to apply those permanently will happen earlier, rather than later.

When the permanent solution is in place, it gives us more room to design better diversity and specialization for the monster players and should open a round of new potential for all players to experiment and find the builds that suit them best. Additionally, this will enable us to provide monster players with a little more to do in those periods where players are focused on moving from one level cap to the next and move away from the flat grind for rank.

On Potions, Quests, Glory, Renown, Commendations, Audacity, and everything else in the Ettenmoors

We want to take a holistic approach to the future of the Ettenmoors because we do believe that the area has merit. To that end, what can you expect will happen over the course of the year?

We will be looking to revise the quest rewards and how quickly players and monster players earn glory and renown.

Greater emphasis will be placed on direct PvMP over indirect or PvE play for quest rewards.

We will be looking at potions on the monster player and player side to ensure that they follow the current progression formulas and revising them as necessary.

We will be putting more emphasis on moving around the Ettenmoors looking for rare spawns, new cyclical events, and a little something special available to players and to monster players.

We will be revising Audacity again. Yes, again. This time, however, we plan on removing the emphasis on getting multiple forms of gear or expending massive amounts of commendations to get to a competitive level with Audacity.

The Ettendeep will transform. Into what? Well, think about what it might be used for it is empty.

All of these things are on a large white board, along with some other nuggets that we are not prepared to talk about just yet. We’re not committing to direct timelines as there is a lot of work and planning that still needs to be done. But this is a smattering of what is to come.

Silence, in this case, was not golden and I know that there are still going to be a lot of complaints and questions. We stumbled a bit at the end of the year. We have to pick ourselves up, dust off our monster play pants, put them back on, and get the whip cracking behind us to bring things back toward the parity that we are looking to achieve. As I have been fond of saying, this will continue to take time. Just know that we are watching, playing, listening, and reacting.

I will do my best to keep active on this thread over the weekend and into the future.

[elvenes]

you've not been quiet on discord tho XD

[Askelin]

Yeah! Where has Orion been?

Yea where has Orion been? You owe the forums fifteen new threads and 5 Hail Mary's for not spending every moment of your work time talking. How dare you work on the game?

For real though...
I don't think you should feel the need to apologize for what really amounted to a few weeks of slightly less than ideal creep march mechanics, especially when you already aply communicated that travel throughout the moors is something that will be improved on from both fronts.
In reality the entire change allows for a more equal playing field when it comes to actual engagements. Creeps are able to flank like freeps now, and catch up to a fleeing party without requiring a warg to be just in range to make sprint take a single mounted freep out or whatever. And honestly it has done a fair deal to prevent sudden maps into hotspots for an instant slaughter, and as a whole, movement speed on creeps is faster and you can get about the moors much quicker.

I get that you have further plans with the systems you've touched on, and honestly just knowing this fills me with a sense of optimism for the game in general. What I understand is that both you and OnnMM, the most vocal of the developers, actually share on your plans, and generally are transparent and open to discussion, it proves you guys are actually thinking about the bigger picture and are taking into account both a wide variety of player feedback and the future of the game as a whole. To be honest I was happy when I saw class updates on both Monster Play, even though we knew it was early work. And even outside that, class balances recently (and reworks to come) are more than just blunt bumps to numbers and stats. It is high time that an open and more thorough perspective is applied to the game as a whole. I'm happy for it!


I was under the impression that the blessing system was very early concept, and it was fairly common knowledge that the intention was to make it more in depth whenever the work could be done. As much has been shared on the forums already. A good compromise was given from the start to allow players to choose their blessing freely and without cost while it's still in its early stage. It technically has the intended effect of bringing new players up to a fighting chance quicker, I speak from experience as I have recently rolled a Blackarrow and Defiler on Arkenstone and while it's not ideal (especially on freep side with the commendation requirement for gear), I would never have even bothered investing time before the current changes for obvious reasons. The fact that it's being communicated that it's not finalized, and the promise of more in depth work on various systems 'soon' is good enough for me.

The blessing and the slight reduction of commendation costs and of course with the rank requirements for skills and traits being much lower for creepside does help with the new player experience. And yea further work is in order, I think the general feedback regarding the new player experience in the moors still not being ideal (who wants to grind for weeks or more just to get a fighting chance in pvp?) is still valid, and I am confident that further work will go towards levelling the playing field on both sides. I for one am excited to see what comes, because it's clear you have a genuine passion on making the moors and the game as a whole a great experience and I for one am happy knowing that the future will also bring further changes for both!

I sincerely hope you don't pay much heed to the posts that have been nothing but complaining about using a simple Discord server to communicate with players, it is your perogative as a developer to source feedback from wherever you see fit, don't let yourself be bullied by anyone demanding nothing but your attention and offering nothing but anger, regardless from where that mentality is coming from.

Also, please include a mention of Gandalf in the dev diary, I kinda made a bet with someone and I have 500 gold on the line, don't fail me! :^)

you've not been quiet on discord tho XD

I'm glad he hasn't been quiet, because it's clear the best intentions are in mind. It is a net benefit for a developer to source feedback from a wide range of players, both casual and experienced, and what they're probably looking for, more often than not, is for people to share their experiences with changes and new systems, to help them get an understanding of how players are recieving such changes. It's likely more productive instead of blindly demanding things as though it'll make the game perfect overnight.

[Neinda]

Moors on Landy were dead again last night. I did see one creep parked at Grams so I guess that is an improvement. There may have been people out there but I walked the whole map and in 30 plus minutes only saw the one creep parked at Grams.

Maybe offer creeps free transfers to Arkenstone?

[Elmagor]

Moors on Landy were dead again last night. I did see one creep parked at Grams so I guess that is an improvement. There may have been people out there but I walked the whole map and in 30 plus minutes only saw the one creep parked at Grams.

Maybe offer creeps free transfers to Arkenstone?

Having ALL creeps on all servers transfer to Arkenstone just one-way road. Where they go if Arkenstone will be deserted too? One of reason when Moors die on any server was bad (in terms of communication) people and exploit abusers. So basically they just kill Moors on their server and move to Arkenstone.

[Neinda]

Having ALL creeps on all servers transfer to Arkenstone just one-way road. Where they go if Arkenstone will be deserted too? One of reason when Moors die on any server was bad (in terms of communication) people and exploit abusers. So basically they just kill Moors on their server and move to Arkenstone.

Since PVP is sort of an instance why not just one game wide PVP location where you go from any server? It could have layers like Bree and the festivals? PVP is pretty much dead on the smaller servers. I suspect it is beyond recovery for those servers right now. If SSG could just route everyone in the Moors to the same server location no matter where they start from there would always be a chance for activity.

When I went out in the Moors around the holidays, people blamed the festival for the Moors being empty. The festival is gone and there is very little end game content and related activities so not sure how to get people back to the small server PVP raid nights other than a transfer to a more active PVP location.

[Elmagor]

Since PVP is sort of an instance why not just one game wide PVP location where you go from any server? I could have layers like Bree and the festivals? PVP is pretty much dead on the smaller servers. I suspect it is beyond recovery for those servers right now. If SSG could just route everyone in the Moors to the same server location no matter where they start from there would always be a chance for activity.

When I went out in the Moors around the holidays, people blamed the festival for the Moors being empty. The festival is gone and there is very little end game content and related activities so not sure how to get people back to the small server PVP raid nights other than a transfer to a more active PVP location.

I think if SSG consider this can work with lotro servers, they already try that. It can be great thing, but I don't see how they can make if happen in near future. I remember somewhere in the past Severlin say what cross-server tech for Lotro will be only in very far future, they don't have resources and time for that right now

[Vilan]

TA has been red on Landy for about a month now. A few nights ago was the first creep group I've seen lately, about 6-8. Got 6 freeps together, had our donkeys handed to us a few times, then the creeps disappeared and it's back to unmolestedly killing shadowmaw wargs in front of Grams.

[Baradorion]

Yeah! Where has Orion been?

Brilliant question, although you wanted to reduce creeps mapping into a fight, you now have all creeps regrouping in one place (Which now can only be avoided, once per hour) to go to the same fight.

No raid leader can avoid people following them, and this I assume will now cause more lag? (Not the maps which freeps moaned about and got nerfed may I add) as noone on EN is using the maps.

Trying to balance run speeds is all well and good, but the issue with that is your servers lag us out that much, we get close enough to use a skill, disable march and the target is then out of range due to lag.

I wouldn't personally focus on making pvmp better, i'd focus on upgrading your servers to reduce lag and you'll see a massive increase in PvMP.

But that's just my opinion.

Neinda

Maybe offer creeps free transfers to Arkenstone?

This too, why Arkenstone? Evenight is just as active, why not transfer to us?

If all active are on one server, if that server dies it's the end of lotro PvMP, that's why there's no free transfers.

[Neinda]

Neinda

Maybe offer creeps free transfers to Arkenstone?

This too, why Arkenstone? Evenight is just as active, why not transfer to us?

If all active are on one server, if that server dies it's the end of lotro PvMP, that's why there's no free transfers.

I can go with EN. Just let those on the dead PVP servers go where there is a possibility for some fun.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

[gildhur]

Oliphants stomping through the Ettenmoors

You heard it here first, folks: Oliphant creep mounts coming

[Hierona]

You heard it here first, folks: Oliphant creep mounts coming

Mumak class. Heavy single target damager.

[Elmagor]

Mumak class. Heavy single target damager.

As heavy as troll?

[Neinda]

Yeah! Where has Orion been?


We want to take a holistic approach to the future of the Ettenmoors because we do believe that the area has merit. To that end, what can you expect will happen over the course of the year?

.

It would be really helpful if the devs would come to the small servers and look at what has happened to the Moors and maybe talk to people on those servers. The smaller PVP servers are at the point of needing a whole new group of people to join and participate vs retaining people (no one left to retain). Asking people to wait a year before things are working again is not helpful when the server population is small or in many cases currently nonexistent since the last round of changes. I am confident if you announced it here ahead of time people would log into the Moors to provide feedback. Maybe hold PVP townhall type events on the other servers. It is a very different atmosphere when the freeps and creeps are coordinating raid nights to make sure the activity is balanced and everyone who joins will have an opportunity for a bit of fun. The people that used to organize raid nights worked very hard to keep things fair and balanced. All of that has been lost.

I wish SSG could focus on making PVP not reliant on the server as some of the servers are dead now after those last changes. It was the age old system of punishing the many to stop the few and it worked as well as many would have predicted had there been advance input or a test.

Please take small servers into consideration when you make these changes. Not everyone had the same problems you saw or heard about on the more populated PVP server. In fact, the only time I recall Landroval having more populated PVP server like problems was when the big server creeps came over as a group to farm people on Landroval for reasons unknown but they did eventually leave so all was good.

If you can't consider the small servers when you make changes then consider finding a way to move the small server PVP to a central PVP server so the entire game population has the opportunity to participate.

Whatever happens, please test the changes before they go live.

[botoo]

This too, why Arkenstone? Evenight is just as active, why not transfer to us?

Unless thechnical things changed you cannot transfer from NA server to EU server or vice versa. Arkenstone is NA and Evernight is EU.

[botoo]

Additionally, this will enable us to provide monster players with a little more to do in those periods where players are focused on moving from one level cap to the next and move away from the flat grind for rank.

Do you mean you'll be given creeps a time-sink to grind things they simply need?

We will be looking to revise the quest rewards and how quickly players and monster players earn glory and renown.

I can only hope you mean infamy here and not 'glory'.

We will be revising Audacity again. Yes, again. This time, however, we plan on removing the emphasis on getting multiple forms of gear or expending massive amounts of commendations to get to a competitive level with Audacity.

'removing the emphasis on getting multiple forms of gear or expending massive amounts of commendations' Does this mean all the hard work on audacity is -again- wasted?

[LabadalofDorlomin]

you've not been quiet on discord tho XD

I hope he hasn't been taking to much stock of the Palantir forums either. They are heavily weighted in conversation by casual pvp players - mostly Freeps and of very little use.

I don't like all this watering down of conversation by spreading them across many platforms. Pick one and stick to it.

My preference is the Forum but I am happy to use any other as long as it is the exclusive place for discussion.

[Kate00]

you've not been quiet on discord tho XD

WOW...
Not everyone uses that discord nor are they going to. Infact, the majority of players don't.





WTB A RANGED INTERUPT and MOUNT SPEED. Literally tired of freeps getting away all the time.

[DSBoomer]

All of this is pointless if you don't fix the damn lag! We are seeing more and more people on Ark since you've pretty much killed PVP on smaller servers. This means the game is just about unplayable when groups converge. You can expect a good 5 second delay on any skill. Forget trying to hit a moving target cause they will likely be out of range by the time the skill goes off. You don't even have to be in the same zone as the raids to be affected. And it doesn't matter if you're in a raid, fellow, or solo. The BS lag is everywhere.

[Neinda]

All of this is pointless if you don't fix the damn lag! We are seeing more and more people on Ark since you've pretty much killed PVP on smaller servers. This means the game is just about unplayable when groups converge. You can expect a good 5 second delay on any skill. Forget trying to hit a moving target cause they will likely be out of range by the time the skill goes off. You don't even have to be in the same zone as the raids to be affected. And it doesn't matter if you're in a raid, fellow, or solo. The BS lag is everywhere.

Unfortunately, Ark and EN are the only real PVP servers now. It is easier to make creeps to play on a new server than it is to make and level a freep, gear it up and so on. I expect many of us are making new creep homes on Ark and EN. At least it won't be boring. Since SSG cannot make a PVP only server location, Ark and EN win just because they currently have PVP populations that support activity and raid groups. This is pretty much where SSG has pushed everyone. The devs favor Ark so the player base will naturally follow the devs. It makes sense to play where the devs play.

[Breguilas]

"Maps, will likely return in some manner – with both sides having them and being able to use them under the correct circumstances. Our goal with the change to maps, was to stop the behavior the creep’s ability to overwhelm freeps as we got closer to parity. Initially, we scaled the timers back for the release previous to Before the Shadow. We were still seeing the behavior with a number of creeps “porting” into a healthy fight and turning it into a massacre in a matter of seconds. We made the decision to push them back further to curb that behavior."


- Totally understandable. It is very appreciated that this is being looked at. Getting used to having maps on a long cd doesnt take that long.


"Creep Balance Changes

The addition of Blessings and reduction of corruption values is meant to be a new way to inspire to specialize your monster player. In a perfect world, this would have been better supported and communicated and turned into a much better and cleaner onboarding to the new normal. Sadly, this went about as opposite as that as possible. I screwed up. I rushed to get the change in and now it is in this weird Frankenstein’s monster state of being that really needs some help.
Help is on the way, fortunately. I will be revising the way that NEW monsters are directed to earn their blessings in a short-term and a better way to apply those permanently will happen earlier, rather than later.

When the permanent solution is in place, it gives us more room to design better diversity and specialization for the monster players and should open a round of new potential for all players to experiment and find the builds that suit them best. Additionally, this will enable us to provide monster players with a little more to do in those periods where players are focused on moving from one level cap to the next and move away from the flat grind for rank."


- I'm glad you're taking additional steps to clarfiy for new creeps how the blessings work/will work. After all its those players thats gonna have the roughest experience out there.
It is also extremely exciting that you have a vision to bring out diversity among the creep classes and what seems like the ability to go deeper into a certian role on any creep class and a sense of progression for your character that wasn't previously present to Monster Players.
I am looking forward to read the roadmap for a wider understanding about the vision. I understand that these things arn't always easy to communicate to the playerbase and really appreciate these info-bits.

Keep it up!