Feedback: Update 10 Mithril coins

[Vandervahn]

Some things spring to my mind on why these things are introduced.

1. Because the store is an utter &&&& to use and even trying to open and navigate it an entry barrier to the world of regular micro purchases.
2. As stated above, they provide another degree of Kevin Bacon... err, separation between monetary expense and ingame expense
3. With all thse mini-services available now, running all this through the store, generating additional menu points or even invetory items cluttering up every surface, the feature creep makes the game too unwieldy with the current system
4. It will lower the entry barrier and make it morecomfortable to use services on a whim, because you already have the currency necessary available, to use mmediately. Yes, we´re talking about mere seconds of difference compared to going to the store and buying the items. But thse seconds can be a show stopper for many (like me).
5. One additional problem of using TP for all this is that the TP system seems to be handled outside of the game itself, and even by a different company. The Mithril coins will be fully integrated into the game.

So, in essence, both sides win. The people predicting more doom and gloom over the game with this need to do a reality check. Just because you can now get premium services within the game instead of through a somewhat secondary source like the LotrO store doesnt change the underlying system of what is actually offered.

I´m not saying that Turbine wont expand their product portfolio into shadier regions because I. Dont. Know. But the reasoning some of you guys give for your predictions is more than naive.

Why is that I feel "stupider" and "stupider" owning 2 VIP Lifetime accounts since Open BETA? ... Where do I see the "ROI" in blowing $ 199.99 x 2 only to be on par with someone who plays for free...

Are you seriously claiming you did not get an excellent ROI for $200 spent six years ago?!? Hello reality? Just because the nature of the service changes in a way you did not anticipate when you bought these a long time ago does NOT change that you DID get your investment repaid in full, with a nice dividend. A dividend you continue to collect for the next years until the game shuts down for good - irrespective of whether you are satisfied by it anymore. You might have some argument had you bought your Lifetime a week before F2P, but (by your own words) you did it much earlier.

Nopt even speaking of your factual inaccuracy that your status is comparable with an F2P.

[JBomber]

Okay, I get that this is partly for streamlining services (unified currency that buys multiple things instead of having to buy a separate currency for each service) but in a way don’t we already have this with TP. Why not just make it so that rather than having to click the button to get a revive tome (current) or buy Mithril coins stockpiled/click a button to buy mithril coins to revive (future), have it the same way you showed in the new mithril coin UI for reviving but have it say how many TP it takes to revive and when you press the button it asks for permission (i.e. did you really want to revive) and bam, I am revived (or teleported, or whatever), no intermediate currency (revive tomes, Travel writs, Festival tickets, Mithril coins, etc.) just my TP.

Just my two Mithril coins :P

[Sapience]

I doubt you'll be able to guy TP anymore. Remember all those threads about not being able to find TP cards in stores anymore, now you know why.

Unrelated and not entirely accurate...

Not necessarily... I believe combo cards are coming & it's for either LOTRO or DDO usage.

... and that's why. This is currently the plan. Meanwhile TP can still be purchased as always through the LOTRO Store.

Sapience, you've answered every question except the most important one. What is the point of being VIP if every game perk is sent to the Turbine Store?

And just to clarify, P2P people do not expect EVERYTHING to be free... We do however expect that when updates are done and changes are made that some perk be given to p2p players as a token of appreciation for our monthy funds..

I'm going to have to admit to not fully understanding the question (though I do appreciate the sentiment). This change has absolutely 0 impact on VIPs. Nothing changes for you in any way. No new items are being added to the store, and no features of being VIP are being removed.

I'll ask what's on everyone's mind:

As a Metalsmith, will I be able to mint my worthless Mithril Flakes into slightly more valuable Mithril coins? I've got this great Dwarvish coining press that I've been just dying to try out.

Ummm... No.

I admit I, too, am finding it hard to see why there's all the negativity about this.

It just seems to give us flexibility. Instead of having to buy revival tomes, relic removal scrolls, travellers' writs, etc etc, I'll just get mithril coins instead and use them as needed/wanted, on the fly.

Now I can see how this might benefit Turbine. If I have Coins, maybe I'll choose to 'Revive' when I wouldn't have bothered to buy a revive scroll. So maybe, just maybe, I'll use a few more Coins than I might otherwise have done and therefore buy a few more TPs than I might otherwise have done. But that's down to us to choose.

If Turbine wants to extract more money from us, they don't need Mithril Coins to do it! They're already in entire control of the pricing of every single item in the store. If they decided to rip us off, it wouldn't be Mithril Coins that made that happen or not. They can already do that. And we can already choose whether or not to buy rip-off items (did that hobby horse ever make it into the store?).

It seems like a simpler, more flexible system to me. Hopefully whether that's true or not will become clearer on Bullroarer.

Very well said. As others have pointed out this is about streamlining things.

For those asking, the current plan is for Bullroarer to be live sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Also, to the question of will these be available in game. As stated in the FAQ, not at this time.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Turbine has put a lot of energy into the system to shrink the Lotro Store by discontinuing products. Followed by a new currency that is not held by, added to, subtracted from or used to buy anything from the Lotro Store. Looking at it where I am sitting it appears that Turbine has decided that PlaySpan is charging too much to operate the Lotro Store. The goal is to minimize the dollars they pay PlaySpan by the following methods:

1) Reduce the number of different items on sale. Every item has a cost to put on the shelf. There is a daily cost to keep it on the shelf. Not moving the item. Stop selling it.

2) Typically there is a per transaction charge. Something like 20 cents + 4$ of the gross value. You want big sales. How this concept applies to funny money. No idea. You make customers buy a new Turbine internal currency. The number of transactions will fall. Going back to point 1 - They items supported by the Mithril coins are not sold in the Lotro Store.

There are potentially significant cost savings by moving some of the functionality to their own servers.

Perhaps the long term goal (if feasible) is to fully implement the item store internally. Thanks for all the fish PlaySpan. We are going to do it ourselves in the future.

[uvm.tp]

It seems like a simpler, more flexible system to me. Hopefully whether that's true or not will become clearer on Bullroarer.

^^this.

This shows poor planing, you cant bring out something NEW and then replace it right away.Means you didnt plan it out right from the start.

As someone who has been a product manager, I have to say this perspective is _just_fundamentally_flawed_. You have to adapt to what happens and sometimes from the outside it looks like you have multiple personality disorder. Often, this clears up in time and folks understand why certain things were done. Sometimes it doesn't because another curveball comes your way in the interim, so you end up with egg on your face. Been there myself.

It's possible that it shows the new travel window and thus the travelers writs were on a certain schedule and the new currency had to be delayed and couldn't meet that schedule, but they wanted to maintain the schedule for what they could.

...or it shows they are agile in that they introduced something, got feedback that it was creating inflexibility and managed to adapt in very short order to do a consolidation.

Why not just [] have it say how many TP it takes to revive and when you press the button it asks for permission (i.e. did you really want to revive) and bam

I can think of at least a few possible reasons:
(1) There are known issues with the store being browser based and therefore folks getting black screens, it not working for folks who run on Linux, or whatever reason you would like to have. There is also a typical lag associated with store purchases.
(2) This is building a perks-for-something system in-game that is newer (and therefore more in line with current design practices) that even if not literally used for destiny points would serve as shared code and/or a good framework for replacing that system (something they have talked about for some time)
(3) This creates a "local" currency for true micro-transactions. This means Turbine is building up its own "organic" capabilities of running a store and not relying as much on the current store. This could be setting up more moves into this new currency (all consumables?) or perhaps setting the stage for a fully Turbine-code store in another game or perhaps just avoiding certain per-transaction fees (or per-item-in-the-store fees) that they are paying. [Hat Tip to Yula who beat me to it and made this point while I was typing]

...there are others too, but I'll save the typing.

As others have pointed out this is about streamlining things.

For those asking, the current plan is for Bullroarer to be live sometime tomorrow afternoon.

+1 for your responses today Sapience. While I agree with some that the FAQ could have been more comprehensive at initial launch, you being here and quickly and clearly answering questions is greatly appreciated.

[Moochi]

These are being added to the game, and that's fine, I imagine there are people that will use them. I'll rarely, if ever, use them outside of Bullroarer. But if they make other people happy and make Turbine some money, great.

There is something that I don't care for about them, though, and thats the name. Mithril Coins? Why take one of the most precious resources of this world, and something that is unique to this IP (or at least had its origins in Tolkien's Middle-earth) and use it for mundane store services? To use them in this way makes Zigilburk seem like a cheap tin toy.

Please consider renaming these to something else. Perhaps Coins of Convenience?

[NickStern]

Yes Yes We know we just introduced Travellers Writs......

Yeah Yeah and Stable Master Writs.....

We realised what a waste of Dev time that was and so have decided to
waste More Dev Time On something even More Pathetic.

Yeah Yeah We Know You thought U10 was going to fix Bugs.

Welcome to Lotro.

I place a mithril coin under one of the 3 coconut shell halves.....
Watch Closely Keep your eye on it....
Can you guess where it is.....

[BigLotroFan]

Lore wise...I object to the name "mithril coins". I doubt a common stable master would ever have been paid in mithril....

As far as feedback, I don't expect I'll ever be using this. I don't like paying in funny money. One currency of funny money is enough, I don't expect to go trying to figure out the real value of stuff through two layers of abstraction. I'd rather you just got rid of this and TP altogether and convert the lotro store to a cash store. I'd probably spend more money that way. Instead I just hoard TP until a big sale :P

[Tubalcain]

Well of course they will. 1000TP for a stack of 10 I bet, what a deal!...just kidding (but not really).

Im glad the devs have found the time and manpower for yet another way to try to leech TP out of everyone, while many bugs still run rampant throughout Rohan and Update 9. Maybe we'll be able to buy bug fixes with our mithril coins.

QFE! My thoughts exactly...

[Rufkin]

"Are there any ways to earn Mithril in-game?
Mithril can only be purchased in the LOTRO Store for now."

Once this is in game, will it be Turbine's intention to make all 'low-ticket' items purchasable with Mithril Coins.

Ultimately will Turbine be replacing deed rewards of Turbine Points with Mithril Coins, effectively forcing the currently free system into a half free and half purchase system? Thus gating the 'high ticket' (also known as high selling) items towards people willing to pay cash?

This is the only reason I can think of for making some brand-new features 'streamlined' into a new currency.

[Trobon]

"Are there any ways to earn Mithril in-game?
Mithril can only be purchased in the LOTRO Store for now."

Once this is in game, will it be Turbine's intention to make all 'low-ticket' items purchasable with Mithril Coins.

Ultimately will Turbine be replacing deed rewards of Turbine Points with Mithril Coins, effectively forcing the currently free system into a half free and half purchase system? Thus gating the 'high ticket' (also known as high selling) items towards people willing to pay cash?

This is the only reason I can think of for making some brand-new features 'streamlined' into a new currency.

There have been a number of theories postulated in this thread. I doubt they will be getting rid of the TP system myself. More likely, this is a combination of less shopkeeping that Turbine will have to do combined with getting people to spend the "mithril coins" on things they may not have otherwise. For example, you may buy revive books, but wouldn't buy travel writs normally. However, when you have 30 tokens and it only costs 1 to travel somewhere you may spend that one more easily.

[Silverangel]

This a an absolutely brilliant way to make things easier for people, reduce currencies while encouraging people to use the shortcuts more, and facilitate adding more store-shortcut counters to the interface. Congratulations. This is horrible, and I hate it. I don't want to see store-purchase counters on the interface while I'm trying to be immersed in the game.

[Trobon]

This a an absolutely brilliant way to make things easier for people, reduce currencies while encouraging people to use the shortcuts more, and facilitate adding more store-shortcut counters to the interface. Congratulations. This is horrible, and I hate it. I don't want to see store-purchase counters on the interface while I'm trying to be immersed in the game.

How did the UI elements immerse you in the game to begin with? They are, by their nature, non-immersive, functional menus that allow us to interact with the world in a way that would other be difficult. This isn't like EQ where you had to type out your response to start a quest.

The store counters can't break immersion. There's none there to break. What they can do is remind you that there is a store and that you can spend real money on it. They can remind you that there's a shortcut that would save you time, even if you dislike the idea of the shortcut. This can certainly be annoying and I can understand disliking it for those reasons (even though I don't). However, its no less immersive than what we have now.

[Jaliki55]

Gotta say this is a really bad idea. I like the half where you add a counter for our current inventory of XYZ items, but I feel its cheap to unify all these random things under one banner. First, I feel that the TP -> Mithril thing will be a bad conversion rate (knowing how you priced dye packs and other unnecessary luxury items), so that we'll have to spend relatively more TP than before for the same "item". While I like to bind-to-account change, I'd honestly rather see that with the items as they currently stand (and with a bunch of other cosmetic/decorations but that's another story). Secondly, the range of items this change seems to cover doesn't make much sense. Unifying teleport tokens, travel writs, and revive scrolls is unnecessary since the current system seems to work out just fine as it stands.

"This streamlines many services and lets you get back into the fun without interrupting the game experience." -----I don't feel it does. What interrupts the current game experience is bad content design, not an un-unified currency for perks. The focus for LOTRO should be on refining the leveling/content experience and working out the bugs (like Draigoch, which is more broke than it was before for some reason).

"Mithril Coins will replace some existing items, such as Revive Tomes and Stablemaster’s Writs. Our goal is to provide a simple, consistent interface for the services you already use. Ultimately it should be faster and easier for you to reset a quest, travel or quickly revive." -----You can provide a refined interface without implementing this change. This new Coin stuff is a new system, and has nothing to do with a UI change that you could implement for the current system of items.

Overall I just see this change as absolutely unnecessary, and will only make complicate the current relationship between the player-base and the store by introducing this third currency. The biggest unknowns are still what the conversion rate will be for existing items, and the relative cost of the coins vis-a-vis current store prices. I honestly doubt this change is in favor of the players and will just add yet another level of complexity; besides which the time and effort should have gone into more critical changes such as refining the leveling and content, fixing bugs, bringing the forums out of beta, refining the store and improving its UI and response time, fixing lag issues/disconnects/client crashes, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

[Eartholloth]

besides which the time and effort should have gone into more critical changes such as refining the leveling and content, fixing bugs, bringing the forums out of beta, refining the store and improving its UI and response time, fixing lag issues/disconnects/client crashes, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

I doubt the people who work on bug fixes, lag, client stuff, etc dont work on stuff like this.

[trancejeremy]

The thing is, with things like "Writs of Passage" or "Tomes of Revival", you could at least pretend that they weren't cash shop items, but in world things that gave benefits.

With mithril coins, that's all out the window.

What made LOTRO special was its immersion into Middle Earth. Since we've gone F2P, that sense of immersion has been chipped away steadily. LOTRO has often been designed as a theme park game, but that's more and more becoming trough - Middle Earth land, now with magical funny money you can spend. Just another Insert Coin advertisement.

Pretty soon, we'll start hearing "Elf Needs Food" when characters get low on hit points, like the old arcade game Gauntlet, urging you to insert more coins.

And I don't think simply having a UI precludes "immersion". If it's just telling you basic things, it's something that you notice but doesn't distract you. Like taking a scenic drive - does the car dashboard ruin the immersion? Or even the GPS? But it might if you started seeing ads pop-up on it

[Sapience]

I doubt the people who work on bug fixes, lag, client stuff, etc dont work on stuff like this.

This is a very good point and one that can't be emphasized enough. The LOTRO Team is made up of many different teams working on many aspects of the game. There are teams dedicated to art, core engineering, animation, quests, world building, systems, Instances, UI, and other aspects of the game. For the most part teams are responsible for their own bug fixes. You probably don't want the MTX team working on the instance team's bugs any more than you want me working on engineering's bugs.

[Deledrius]

Turbine has put a lot of energy into the system to shrink the Lotro Store by discontinuing products. Followed by a new currency that is not held by, added to, subtracted from or used to buy anything from the Lotro Store. Looking at it where I am sitting it appears that Turbine has decided that PlaySpan is charging too much to operate the Lotro Store. The goal is to minimize the dollars they pay PlaySpan by the following methods:
[...]

If your (and uvm.tp's) hunches are true, it gives a much more positive perspective on this whole thing. I'm still wary of the the nature of the change, but if it allows them to solve those issues it would definitely be worthwhile.

[Crell_1]

While you're eager to point out that it likely didn't affect the development of content I'd love to know what team or teams worked on this project? MTX? Systems? UI? Database/Engineering? Art? (In-game-Assets.)


Certainly I think of things I'd want almost everyone but MTX to be doing instead.

[QueenTiy]

Currently you'll be able to purchase stacks as small as 5 mithril coins and as large as 250.

Please enlighten us about the price in TP for these 'stacks'. And what 1 or 10 or 20 or 50 MC will buy us? These are the obvious pieces of information 'conveniently' missing in this story.

Am I very mistaken when I expect that the bigger stacks will be less expensive per MC than the smaller stacks? Which makes it more attractive for the players to buy bigger stacks? Which causes them to always have 'some' left over? And an automatic way to replenish them?

More accurately you'd buy Mithril Coins that you could use to either pay for travel or revival. You decide on the fly which you need when

It sounds really good..... the catch is in 'on the fly'....

it allows for having opportunities/ways of spending MC directly on services in game, which a player couldn't/didn't want to/didn't spend TP on before.... because the necessary item was in the store and because some players opted to stay out of the store altogether. So now those MCs bring 'convenience' to the players.... they might not even require a trip to the store to find them, when you click on them, the store automatically selects the requested options, just as with the traveler's writ.... conveniently, without interrupting game play...


I find this deplorable. It sounds very nice, all those ideas about streamlining the game etc. but it is meant to get people spending more and more on things that they didn't know they wanted, and for which they no longer have to visit the store, e.g. when the game offers to revive them or when it's possible to travel to an npc.... because.... 'ah, who cares, I still have some MC left'... 'oh darn, not enough' ... 'let's get some more'... 'it's such a quick sale nowadays'....

To me it seems that this is why the traveler's writ and the stable writ were introduced recently.

If the MC was already in the works (and it must have been) when the traveler's writ was introduced, why not introduce it all at once? Because the behavior of players with regard to the traveler's writ was going to be a means to gauge how easily people use the traveler's writs, once they have a whole stack of them without having to open the store themselves? The traveler's writ was to test this mechanism out?


I am with those above me who point out that the MC is one more step removed from real $$. This makes it easier to spend TP on MC, after all, some of those TP we earn in game.


And finally, calling this token 'Mithril' is just wrong.

instead of being locked into those 100 writs when you really want to revive.

Don't make it sound as if a player who bought 100 writs realized he/she didn't have enough tp to buy a revive made a dumb purchase when buying those writs and that Turbine is doing us, the players, therefore a favor by giving us the Mithril Coin..... It's not smart to make customers feel dumb for buying a product you offer.

However, it might be a proven way to encourage the player to buy everything the MC can buy.

[Sapience]

Please enlighten us about the price in TP for these 'stacks'. And what 1 or 10 or 20 or 50 MC will buy us? These are the obvious pieces of information 'conveniently' missing in this story.

Am I very mistaken when I expect that the bigger stacks will be less expensive per MC than the smaller stacks? Which makes it more attractive for the players to buy bigger stacks? Which causes them to always have 'some' left over? And an automatic way to replenish them?

Update 10 goes to Bullroarer tomorrow. As with all things on Bullroarer pricing and final stack sizes are subject to change. We welcome your feedback after seeing the system in action.

It sounds really good..... the catch is in 'on the fly'....

it allows for having opportunities/ways of spending MC directly on services in game, which a player couldn't/didn't want to/didn't spend TP on before.... because the necessary item was in the store and because some players opted to stay out of the store altogether. So now those MCs bring 'convenience' to the players.... they might not even require a trip to the store to find them, when you click on them, the store automatically selects the requested options, just as with the traveler's writ.... conveniently, without interrupting game play...

As we pointed out in the screens included with the FAQ, the 'currency' might be changing but the process is not. You will still need to choose to use the travel and revive options. It's not automatic nor forced. Remember you'll still need to purchase the Mithril coins in the LOTRO Store, so you'll still need to decide to buy them before you can spend them. So if you don't purchase coins, the game can't use them and you haven't spent anything.

And I'll restate that the existing free revive isn't going anywhere, so you can still use that.

[Reximus]

This seems like a benefit for us to me, not a disadvantage. I don't know what everyone's complaining about.

Welcome to MMO Forums.

If Turbine announced that they were sending us all solid gold ingots with Durin's Gate etched on it people would complain.

"Why isn't it platinum???"

"Should be Orthanc!"

That said, not all critical feedback is complaining.

[Bicyclerepairman]

So basically the first thing about which there is a Q&A is something thats unique to the store and only can be attained by cash... Shocker that...

[Lazlo_Hollyfeld]

Calling a 2nd level of fake money "streamlined" is ridiculous on its face. Just remove this 2nd level of currency and use turbine points. Why is this difficult?

[Rufkin]

There have been a number of theories postulated in this thread. I doubt they will be getting rid of the TP system myself. More likely, this is a combination of less shopkeeping that Turbine will have to do combined with getting people to spend the "mithril coins" on things they may not have otherwise. For example, you may buy revive books, but wouldn't buy travel writs normally. However, when you have 30 tokens and it only costs 1 to travel somewhere you may spend that one more easily.

I don't think they will get rid of the TP system at all. I look at an update like this from the point of the business. They have a serious issue that they will have to address at some point, at the moment people can already play this game for free. The longer the game runs, the more deeds that will be available to allow people to accumulate more TP for free. So, how to resolve this issue is a simple matter, introduce a new currency into the game that can be used to by all the items that are hard for them to sell. Include the quest packs so that they can continue to claim the game can be played entirely for free. Then switch the deeds that offer Turbine Points as a reward to Mithril Coins instead. Finally, keep all the high sellers in the store for TP. This cuts the F2Pers out of getting the big sellers unless they either buy points, or subscribe and get them with the sub...

So I will ask my question again; Is it the goal to change the reward for deeds to this new Mithril Coin currency?

I think this is the case, and it doesn't anger or frustrate me. I understand that they are running a business and I will happily continue to buy TP when I need them. However, I also enjoy occasionally running deeds and accumulating a few TP to buy something without making a cash purchase. I just would like a fair warning so I can run through some of those deeds before they no longer provide something useful to me.