A friendly chat with Sapience (@ Gamescom 2011)

[MurkyMajare]

Any increased income they got from going f2p is going straight to WB. No doubt.
WB wants an immediate return of their investment, and Turbine probably has a poorer budget now than before the takeover.

WB bought Turbine to get the f2p technology that came with DDO and (at that time) implementation in Lotro.
Other than that Turbine is just a source of income for them. They already invested when they bought the company, so there is little to no interest to invest even further in Turbine.

As it is now, they just want their initial investment back as fast as possible. Even if it stall further growth.

I am wondering just how many people at Turbine is working on Lotro. I know things takes a lot of time to develop, but as a software developer myself, I cannot phantom there being that many people working on this expansion. They had close to a year, and even an average to poor developer should have come farther ahead in this time frame.

Which is why I suspect that not all that many people are working on this, and thusly that WB has lowered their budgets quite a bit.

It is my hope however that there will be a Hobbit expansion next year, which will actually be huge, and that most Turbine Lotro employees are actually working on that instead of the current content.

[Kerin_Eldar]

when they make the decision on where to spend the development dollar...do they spend it on something the minority wants?

Every time they build a 12+ raid they do just that.

[TheAsk]

Why do they spend time scaling instances anyway...Give us new instances instead. This makes me miss SoA times even more.

[Wibz]

Why do they spend time scaling instances anyway...Give us new instances instead. This makes me miss SoA times even more.

This one is simple to answer, not every player here was around for SoA / MoM / SoM, so there are many instances in the game that new players have never had a chance to play at level cap. I've been here for 2.5 years and never completed the Rift and I had only ever entered the annuminas instances once pre-scaling.

[Zohal]

AI am wondering just how many people at Turbine is working on Lotro. I know things takes a lot of time to develop, but as a software developer myself, I cannot phantom there being that many people working on this expansion. They had close to a year, and even an average to poor developer should have come farther ahead in this time frame.

Not an attack on you as I have no idea if you're good at what your doing (I presume so) but I see this sort of comments fairly frequently in MMO forums and it springs from insufficient experience. Typically the claimants have never worked on large-scale software projects on critical systems.

I have several times had the opportunity to ask people who could code fairly well how long time they thought so-and-so would take to write if it had to run on multiple servers with various network and security concerns (typical example is banking). They always underestimate the time it takes to finish projects by a factor of 10-100! (Except for some smart-#### who knows it's a tricky question).

Planning, designing, coding, documenting, deploying, QA, testing, etc. all take a lot of time. Sometimes the coding is the smallest bit. And for a MMO company you also have to test if what you designed was actually smart,- not just if it does what you designed it to do.

[Stadic]

Where have you read the instances will be part of RoI and not separately charged for .. because Sapience is reported to have refused to say precisely that.

If they're not 'free' then they're not part of RoI, which is what this whole argument is about.

I replied to a post listing two camps of people in this thread. I disagreed with the summation. I have no facts. I listed what I expected. Someone said:

1. Im happy with the expansion because I only craft/explore/solo and dont care about others.
2. Im not happy with the expansion because I have paid the same dollars as group number 1 but I would like to group/raid/"finally PvMP on a new map" but the content of the expansion does not include this.

I find that blatantly off base. So I said so.

[Khafar]

Why do they spend time scaling instances anyway...Give us new instances instead.

Because they can scale old ones faster than they can create new ones, by some large multiple - they've proven this to be the case. Because new players never experienced a lot of the older ones, and probably never will if they're not scaled. Because players have been asking them to ever since the first expansion for the game shipped, complaining about the loss of existing endgame content whenever the cap goes up.

Khafar

[Arbalister]

Every time they build a 12+ raid they do just that.

Yes. And every time they make any changes to PvMP they do exactly that. If they do anything to housing, or kinships, they do exactly that. Every time they make an improvement to the LUA API for plugin authors, or skin designers. Or look at new hobbies.

I didn't say they *won't* make that decision. Sometimes they will. Everything they do in development is budgeted for, and prioritized. Once in a while, things that are low on the list get bumped up, and added to the "to do" list. But those things are also subject to getting pushed back if something higher priority comes up, or ignored after they're completed, until they make it to a new priority list.

[matziq]

Thanks for the write up Hope you had a good time there.



Good to hear that they are aware of the proposal, it's just a shame that it can't get a higher priority. I appreciate that a large player base would like new instances, but an even larger amount of players belong to at least one kinship that would truly benefit from a revamp. If I've seeded the idea for them to work on then great, I just hope we can see some changes before Mordor.. Perhaps when they've finished working on LIs they can take on this project.

Dear Turbine. Hire Galuhad. kthxbai

[Khafar]

1.) Turbine is well aware of the rumours and speculation swirling among the community, including the dissatifaction, yet consciously chooses to remain silent and hide behind the NDA umbrella.

Sapience almost certainly does not have the discretion to spill the beans on whatever he wants to. Neither do various leads on the project. That discretion would fall elsewhere, like the live producer, the executive producer, or perhaps the marketing director. However, I agree that they've deliberately avoided responding to this issue - people have been asking about it since the announcement for the expansion. They've also been asking about an LI revamp/rework, a housing revamp, new classes, PvMP updates, etc. The only one they've "put out there" is the loss of the PvMP map, because that was something they'd announced - and then had to drop.

It could very well be that they have a policy of not discussing what's not in the expansion. I've certainly been scolded by my product marketing manager about telling a customer what's not in an upcoming release before - and would have been in real trouble if my comment had cost us a sale. They manage that sort of communication (or lack thereof). As a result, I simply don't talk 'futures' with customers. Ever.

3.) The true intent of the expansion is now clear - how do we charge VIPs who are supposed to get the content as part of their subscription costs?

Hmm. I've never had a level cap increase be part of an update, and I do really like those. One of the reasons I don't play my "endgame" characters is precisely because their character advancement has come to a stop, and this gives me a chance to finally be "unstuck" for awhile with each of mine. Is that worth $30? It is to me (although I'd like it better if I knew that would come with new skills too). It'll keep me busy playing characters I've largely had shelved this past year, for a month or two. YMMV.

Turbine supposedly still doesn't know what they are going to charge for TP for it. That is a bunch of horse-puckie. They know full well by now but choose to keep quiet so they can pull as many on the pre-order cash grab as possible.

Sure. So what? TP is discounted currency due to the ability to accumulate it at 500+ TP/mo like I do or grind it out for free, and they do want to make a profit here. Those who are willing to wait can spend their accumulated TP on it, and those who aren't will spend real $$. I expect they'll add it to the Store (and make an announcement about it) in the last week or so before the expansion ships - and perhaps on the very day it arrives.

Khafar

[Arbalister]

Where have you read the instances will be part of RoI and not separately charged for .. because Sapience is reported to have refused to say precisely that.

Where have you read that they will be charged for ... because Sapience is reported to have refused to say exactly that.

More to the point, isn't the most likely case that they'll do exactly what they did with the last bunch of instances? Free for VIPs and in the store for F2P. Personally, I think the only real question will be if it will be a part of the Isengard quest pack, or a separate store item...and we don't actually even know if there *is* a Rise of Isengard quest pack...there has been no official statement on what form RoI will take in the store, and in fact, has been a statement that that hasn't been determined yet.

So...how would Sapience be able to answer if the instances would be part of the RoI bundle if they haven't determined what that bundle will be. :-)

[Butlewald]

Ok thanks for the post and taking the time to write it OP.

Few points I'd like to ask, and yes I'm not happy about the news but I didn't order RoI so not going down that route although I have sympathy for those that did and feel let down.

1.) For weeks now these forums have been speculating about a lot of the points Sapience discussed with you. It sounds like Turbine has had the answers for a long time now so why didn't they come out and anwser the community?

Some say it wouldn't be great PR to advertise what's not in the expansion. But if you work in PR then your jobs is to make everything sound like a positive. Now if Turbine had said the following when announcing the pre-order;-
"RoI will launch without the end-game instances, however these will be released a few months after. This will give everyone time to begin the Epic new portion of our story and experience the amazing new zones whilst leveling to 75. You will also be able to focus on the new 24-man raid which is a pretty epic and challenging encounter. This will allow us time to concentrate 100% on the new instance clusters on the test servers, without having to fix a text error in quest 252 of the 400+ quests we'll be releasing with RoI, so that we can completley avoid the mistakes made with the exploits in the instance when MoM was launched. These instances will be released completley free for all those who have pre-purchased RoI expansion although we have yet to finalise the pricing model for RoI & instances distirbution via the Store"

I'm pretty sure although not an ideal situation most people would accept this as reasonable and would answer most peoples concerns / questions. Even if it was stretching the truth it would still be better than what a lot of people feel which is "Yea we're running late, haven't got the instances done but still wanted to fleece everyone for the pre-order by keeping silent about it".

Instead what they've done is stick their heads in the sand and allowed people to speculate as to whether instances were included. Considering it is usual that Instances in expansions then by their silence they have indirectly encouraged their customers to purchase a product based on inaccurate information.

A lie of omission is still a lie. Turbine knew they'd be no instances in RoI. They were repeatedly asked by their customers to confirm and they just kept silent until the general public saw for themselves. Their PR guys could have easily put a positive spin on it but didn't. So my conclusion is they are either incompetant or deceitful.

If a customer asks me a question and my answer isn't good I still have to give them that answer. I can't just ignore them until they find out the hard way.

2) Secondly I see a lot of the glass-half full people saying that they're fine if the instances aren't released until Nov/Dec. Now I don't see anything in Sapiences responses that actually give this as a release date. The best indication is that "or maybe even before Christmas". Now call me cynical but Turbines track record with releasing instanced content when they plan for it isn't the best so these instances could be ready the same time that new PvMP area is e.g. how long is a piece of string. We don't even know how many are being developed, what stage they are at - are they still being planned / designed / tested etc. Putting my tinfoil hat on I think before Xmas is unlikely as I would think they would be more enthusiastic about talking about them. My gut feeling is that earliest we'll see them is Feb. Thats a long time with no capped content which isn't a large raid... for everyone.

3) Why do we keep putting people into groups? People that do group quests like soloing. People who like soloing also join in with group quests. I've never met anyone in-game who doesn't enjoy a bit of everything so let's stop with this "oh well I'm alright mentality" because if a certain segment don't play because they are disatissfied then everyone will lose.

Meh I'm done. My dear old mother plays the game, she's the definition of a casual player and often avoids grouping like the plague (but loves doing 3-mans with my Wife and I) and she's pre-ordered RoI. I was round hers for Sunday dinner last week and she asked me if I knew any of the details of the new Xpac. I tried to put a good spin on it as knew she'd spent good money on it already but all I came up with was 10 more levels, a new landmass and a crafting update. Even she was underwhelmed and she seems the perfect target audience for this "expansion". So if 95% of players don't visit the forums to complain I'm sure there are just as many who'll stop playing without a word as those who will carry on playing without a word.

[Reniannen]

Each guard at the entrance of Isengard has 998k morale, there are two guards so almost 2 million morale (and we haven't seen INSIDE Isengard), that seems a lot of fun to me...

Those might have been there just to prevent people from entering at the demo.

[Brya]

I like how the 'there's no way they're releasing an expansion without instances, they just haven't told us about them!' people are smoothly reverting to 'well of course there aren't any instances, after all they haven't said there will be!'. At least try being consistent in your arguments.

Give me a month and I'll like how the "RoI is going to end LOTRO" people actually say "Hey, this is actually pretty good apart from the lack of instances at launch"

Anyway, the instances are there. Haven't made the deadline, granted. But then this just brings us back to the earlier argument:

Release early, no instances, time to savour the content until update 1 - But people moan about lack of instances
-vs-
Release late, instances at launch - But people moan about the delay in release.

[Sapience]

HI everyone! I'm just back from Gamescom and I wanted to take a couple of minutes to clear up some of the comments and hopefully tamp down some of the conspiracy theories they created.

First off, thanks to LowJ for bringing the questions to the show floor on behalf of the community.

Let's talk about a comment I see a lot, "I hope Turbine understands". We do. Believe me we do. In fact we take a great deal of time generating real numbers and real data to help us understand and make decisions. What's always a challenge is explaining to the community that we do understand, especially in light of the fact that an issue may appear large in the forums, but is not as large when one looks at the entire player base. Remember, the forum community is ony a small percentage of the whole. We don't ignore any group, but as I mentioned in the discussion at Gamescom, we do have to decide where to spend our development dollars and usually the majority will win out. That doesn't mean we don't try, or won't try in the future to address the concerns and desires of all players in all groups, it simply means we have to prioritize. AS Arbalister pointed out, sometimes we put community requests and small items of interest to some players into the cycle because they're small enough to slip in to the process. We also, as with LUA, occasionally put items that the community has reuqested that developers take on as pet projects in their own time working nights and weekends to build them.

Instances. Yes we are shipping instances after Isengard releases. That's all the information I can share right now. We'll have more to say about this after PAX this weekend, and if I can slip out some info from the show floor I'll do that too.

There was a sentiment expressed that I really want to address directly. The suggestion that we had made a "screw the community decision" or words to that effect. Never. We think (and I KNOW) we have the greatest MMO community and probably the greatest game community, period. I can say in total honesty that whenever a feature has to be omitted, cut, or re-scoped (changed from our original vision) no one is more dissapoointed than we are. Remember, while we are a business and have to make decisions that make the most financial sense, we are also gamers and there is nothing our dev team enjoys more than making new, exciting, and interesting systems and content. Just like players get excited about playing new things, our team gets excited about building them and when those systems, content, or items have to changed or removed, it's always a painful process.

As I said, I'll talk more after PAX and when we get back next week. Of course, if you're headed to PAX, please by all means come by the booth and say hello and I'll answer anything I can for you.

One last note, if you will be at PAX, drop an RSVP to our player party on Friday and we'll send you an inviation. RSVP@turbine.com. Just make the subject PAX PRIME PARTY 2011 RSVP.

[Arbalister]

HI everyone! I'm just back from Gamescom and I wanted to take a couple of minutes to clear up some of the comments and hopefully tamp down some of the conspiracy theories they created.

Hey! Welcome back! Now that you're over the horrible grind of all that travelling, meeting and greeting, and you know, drinking and eating...isn't it nice to be back at work where everything is comfortable? :-P

[Stadic]

Anyway, the instances are there. Haven't made the deadline, granted. But then this just brings us back to the earlier argument:

Release early, no instances, time to savour the content until update 1 - But people moan about lack of instances
-vs-
Release late, instances at launch - But people moan about the delay in release.

Agree with this.

Obviously we will see instances. It was just a question of release in Sept w/o, or release later with.

Personally, 10 levels, crafting bump, virtue bump, and new areas are something I'll enjoy more than waiting with nothing to do.

Turbine would have taken flack either way.

[Darethelion]

Instances. Yes we are shipping instances after Isengard releases. That's all the information I can share right now. We'll have more to say about this after PAX this weekend, and if I can slip out some info from the show floor I'll do that too.

Yeah, so we will have all new "content" cleared in like 5-6 days, reach lvl 75, finnish up the book and than enjoy your 2-3 months of old instances grind while we work on new instances.
That is just bad way to conduct buissnes.
Plus, Turbine failed to deliver what they promissed on 1st place.

Will we have to pay extra for those new instances we will be getting in the future?

[PypeRings]

~vapor~

Well, at least it didn't contain a non-denial denial. I guess that is an improvement.

[Butlewald]

Instances. Yes we are shipping instances after Isengard releases. That's all the information I can share right now. We'll have more to say about this after PAX this weekend, and if I can slip out some info from the show floor I'll do that too.

There was a sentiment expressed that I really want to address directly. The suggestion that we had made a "screw the community decision" or words to that effect. Never. We think (and I KNOW) we have the greatest MMO community and probably the greatest game community, period. I can say in total honesty that whenever a feature has to be omitted, cut, or re-scoped (changed from our original vision) no one is more dissapoointed than we are. Remember, while we are a business and have to make decisions that make the most financial sense, we are also gamers and there is nothing our dev team enjoys more than making new, exciting, and interesting systems and content. Just like players get excited about playing new things, our team gets excited about building them and when those systems, content, or items have to changed or removed, it's always a painful process.

As I said, I'll talk more after PAX and when we get back next week. Of course, if you're headed to PAX, please by all means come by the booth and say hello and I'll answer anything I can for you.

One last note, if you will be at PAX, drop an RSVP to our player party on Friday and we'll send you an inviation. RSVP@turbine.com. Just make the subject PAX PRIME PARTY 2011 RSVP.

Well great, information coming soon(TM). But tell you what we still expect people to spend their money without being able to make an informed decision because of some Mysterious Reason (aka the Marketing Department).

Honesty is the best policy. Perhaps Turbine have forgotten that?

[Stadic]

There was a sentiment expressed that I really want to address directly. The suggestion that we had made a "screw the community decision" or words to that effect

As I used that phrase, I hope you noted the context implied that I didn't believe that would ever be the case = )

[Brastin]

HI everyone! I'm just back from Gamescom and I wanted to take a couple of minutes to clear up some of the comments and hopefully tamp down some of the conspiracy theories they created.

First off, thanks to LowJ for bringing the questions to the show floor on behalf of the community.

Let's talk about a comment I see a lot, "I hope Turbine understands". We do. Believe me we do. In fact we take a great deal of time generating real numbers and real data to help us understand and make decisions. What's always a challenge is explaining to the community that we do understand, especially in light of the fact that an issue may appear large in the forums, but is not as large when one looks at the entire player base. Remember, the forum community is ony a small percentage of the whole. We don't ignore any group, but as I mentioned in the discussion at Gamescom, we do have to decide where to spend our development dollars and usually the majority will win out. That doesn't mean we don't try, or won't try in the future to address the concerns and desires of all players in all groups, it simply means we have to prioritize. AS Arbalister pointed out, sometimes we put community requests and small items of interest to some players into the cycle because they're small enough to slip in to the process. We also, as with LUA, occasionally put items that the community has reuqested that developers take on as pet projects in their own time working nights and weekends to build them.

Instances. Yes we are shipping instances after Isengard releases. That's all the information I can share right now. We'll have more to say about this after PAX this weekend, and if I can slip out some info from the show floor I'll do that too.


There was a sentiment expressed that I really want to address directly. The suggestion that we had made a "screw the community decision" or words to that effect. Never. We think (and I KNOW) we have the greatest MMO community and probably the greatest game community, period. I can say in total honesty that whenever a feature has to be omitted, cut, or re-scoped (changed from our original vision) no one is more dissapoointed than we are. Remember, while we are a business and have to make decisions that make the most financial sense, we are also gamers and there is nothing our dev team enjoys more than making new, exciting, and interesting systems and content. Just like players get excited about playing new things, our team gets excited about building them and when those systems, content, or items have to changed or removed, it's always a painful process.

As I said, I'll talk more after PAX and when we get back next week. Of course, if you're headed to PAX, please by all means come by the booth and say hello and I'll answer anything I can for you.

One last note, if you will be at PAX, drop an RSVP to our player party on Friday and we'll send you an inviation. RSVP@turbine.com. Just make the subject PAX PRIME PARTY 2011 RSVP.

I hope PAX 2011 will shine some light then cuz even after this post it doesnt make me feel better... Why the secrecy about the instances for ROI? There wasnt any secrets on it on Moria/Siege of Mirkwood but why now? And u can also say what u want but i dont believe that a majority doesnt want instances and only the forum people that wants it... Its just so dissapointed.

And i have spoken with u about PVMP on Gamescom and u say that there where even more Roleplayers then PVMP and maybe u are right... But was that also on the launch year? Many people where leaving when there where no decent PVP updates anymore so its not that crazy after 4 years that there are more RP gamers then PVMP gamers cuz of the lack of improvements on PVMP.

Anyway ROI looked impressive and u answered all of my questions i did appriciate that Gamescom 2011 was fun and hope to see u guys next year

[Darethelion]

I think Sapience should consider career in politics. That post was clear way to write a lot, and say so little.

Realy big disapoitment.

And I will ask again:

Will we have to pay for those "new instances" which we will get no one knows when?

PLS answer it, even if it is just some random "i dont know" style!

[Crell_1]

HI everyone! I'm just back from Gamescom and I wanted to take a couple of minutes to clear up some of the comments and hopefully tamp down some of the conspiracy theories they created.

I realize this thread has latched onto your instances comment, but I'm actually wondering if you could get permission to talk about PvMP a little.

You seemed caught off-guard by my F2P/Premium Freeps Moors access question, and I'm wondering if this is something that simply isn't finalized yet?

It seems to me that the community knew a whole lot more about how Freep characters were monetized this close to F2P launch, and we know hardly anything about what kinds of things Turbine is doing with the Moors. The moors being the 'major systems overhaul' that I expected with this update, because you were bringing it to all account types. Instead, press releases have focused on the Dragon (content which was originally delayed for technical reasons), the epic story, and landscape, which we've all come to expect.

I'm sure the Runekeepers of the community would also like a glimpse into any changes for their class, as the only class I can think of that doesn't even have a developer pre-blog post, let alone a Dev diary.

Thank you again for taking the time to engage so passionately with this community about a game we all have come to love.

[Runesi_EU]

I'm sure the Runekeepers of the community would also like a glimpse into any changes for their class, as the only class I can think of that doesn't even have a developer pre-blog post, let alone a Dev diary.

One thing I have come to understand with Turbine is that good news is conveyed to the community very quickly, bad news is always conveyed at the last minute.... I smell a nerf...!