Bullroarer Update 23 (Build #1) - Preview and General Feedback

[Lord.Funk]

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I doubt it anyone will leave with this update as it stands now. From Mordor on we have been able to get good gear drops from loot boxes. If people were going to leave over loot box drops I think they would of already by now.

Or they might be stubborn and stick around (having invested years into lotro), hoping for things to change. Waiting for SSG to listen to the feedback and dislike of lootboxes/gambling/lotteries in games in general (I personally do not care if it is cosmetics, gear or whatever, I dislike lootboxes and gambling in any way shape or form and will not pay for it). Eventually they will give up for sure. Maybe now, maybe not yet. This might be the breaking point for some, it might not. I can't speak for others, as to when they have had enough or not and neither can anyone else but themselves.

[Vastin]

Don't be sweating the potion values over much. We'll be tweaking down the loot potions - I just jammed them in kinda late as a 1st pass with a ton of other things I was trying to get in for the update, so the numbers were caffeine addled. They should also have a 2m cooldown like the regular potions.

As for the crafting potions, the itemization progressions behind those haven't been properly updated in too long. I'm doing that now. They should be going way up shortly - they should compare reasonably well with each other in the end.

-Vastin

[elzeqq]

Don't be sweating the potion values over much. We'll be tweaking down the loot potions - I just jammed them in kinda late as a 1st pass with a ton of other things I was trying to get in for the update, so the numbers were caffeine addled. They should also have a 2m cooldown like the regular potions.

As for the crafting potions, the itemization progressions behind those haven't been properly updated in too long. I'm doing that now. They should be going way up shortly - they should compare reasonably well with each other in the end.

-Vastin

Thank you for addressing the 'not-so-important-stuff'

Now what about addresing the thing that people want to know the most?

• Instance locks
• Best in slot gear from lootboxes
• Pay to win itemization

[Jerguc]

I doubt it anyone will leave with this update as it stands now. From Mordor on we have been able to get good gear drops from loot boxes. If people were going to leave over loot box drops I think they would of already by now.

I don't want to go there, because we will just end up arguing and insulting eachother. If you think so then fine. But facts state otherwise.

[Fraushgrish2]

Don't be sweating the potion values over much. We'll be tweaking down the loot potions - I just jammed them in kinda late as a 1st pass with a ton of other things I was trying to get in for the update, so the numbers were caffeine addled. They should also have a 2m cooldown like the regular potions.

As for the crafting potions, the itemization progressions behind those haven't been properly updated in too long. I'm doing that now. They should be going way up shortly - they should compare reasonably well with each other in the end.

-Vastin

vastin the most important things in my mind rn is what elze said

Instance locks
Best in slot gear from lootboxes
Pay to win itemization

Add pvmp to the mix as it needs some small tweaks to become very nice and competitive

[Snoopy]

I don't want to go there, because we will just end up arguing and insulting eachother. If you think so then fine. But facts state otherwise.

I try not to insult, that's not my style but I don't think we have any "facts" to go by. I watch the login numbers just like everyone else and they usually go up around the time of updated releases and then dwindle back down. They slow pace of decline is just part of an MMO is my opinion. All games do it including the Juggernaut WoW.

[Jerguc]

I try not to insult, that's not my style but I don't think we have any "facts" to go by. I watch the login numbers just like everyone else and they usually go up around the time of updated releases and then dwindle back down. They slow pace of decline is just part of an MMO is my opinion. All games do it including the Juggernaut WoW.

That's ok, it's not my style aswell, but anyways we're derailing a thread. I just don't think the current system is any good. We all have our own opinions.

I just hope that something changes with the 2nd build.

[Theozor]

I hadn't noticed the lack of a craftable shield, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me since there was none in the previous tier either. I guess it'll be back to grinding Webs of the Scuttledells and/or Iorbar's Peak again until I get a lvl 120 heavy shield to drop, unless I get lucky and find one on the AH like I did for lvl 115. I wouldn't complain if one gets added as a quest reward either.

[BotLike]

They should be going way up shortly - they should compare reasonably well with each other in the end.

But the store/hobbit gift/lootbox or whatever ends up giving the potion will be better than the crafted one right ? ^^

Because this is Daybreak : d

[Beki_0000]

I believe I posted about this earlier. It's day two now and i still can't access the server. I uninstalled and reinstalled just to make sure it wasn't that. I am running Win 10 64bit with Intel i7 and my CPU is at 2.8Ghz with 16 G of ram. I realize that this thread is for feedback of game play, but how can one give feedback if they can't get in to see what all is in it?

[MAWorking]

I believe I posted about this earlier. It's day two now and i still can't access the server. I uninstalled and reinstalled just to make sure it wasn't that. I am running Win 10 64bit with Intel i7 and my CPU is at 2.8Ghz with 16 G of ram. I realize that this thread is for feedback of game play, but how can one give feedback if they can't get in to see what all is in it?

Are you running the Bullroar client? It is an entirely different client then the retail client.
Can you list any errors you get/got?
Has the retail game ever worked for you? Has Bullroar ever worked for you?

[Beki_0000]

I use the "regular" client all the time. I have downloaded, uninstalled, and reinstalled the bullroarer client four times the last time the server was open, and twice this time. I have never gotten Bullroarer to work.

The error says: An update error occurred:
PatchCLientDLL CheckDatFiles failed (unable to decrypt and de-serialize the data downloaded form the server. It goes into a reload loop from there.

Are you running the Bullroar client? It is an entirely different client then the retail client.
Can you list any errors you get/got?
Has the retail game ever worked for you? Has Bullroar ever worked for you?

[MAWorking]

I use the "regular" client all the time. I have downloaded, uninstalled, and reinstalled the bullroarer client four times the last time the server was open, and twice this time. I have never gotten Bullroarer to work.

The error says: An update error occurred:
PatchCLientDLL CheckDatFiles failed (unable to decrypt and de-serialize the data downloaded form the server. It goes into a reload loop from there.

Sorry, I wish I had some useful info.

[joshuacgordon]

Have you even tried doing quest in the iron hills rn? its not hard its pretty easy tbh since regular people have 160% mastry which is almost close to cap





whats the point of even attempting to earn the loot when someone can just buy it? Its redicoulous that people actually want this game to be pay to win i dont get it, getting gear is wining in this game, you paying to get gear pay to win
The only point of this game and the end game grind is to get BiS gear, whats the point of grinding if one can just buy it? The raiding community in lotro was already shattered with mordor, if all these things go live i promise you that the raiding community will die(Arkenstone one of the most if not the most populated US server who had almost 10-12 raiding kins during throne is barely down to 3)

Maybe to you, getting gear is winning. So the loot boxes are P2W for you. But there are plenty of people (maybe even most?) who don't consider being uber-geared a win. I certainly don't. For me, "winning" is doing quests, seeing the scenery, getting through achievements, and enjoying the unfolding epic story. Gear is a means to an end ... to get into that next zone, I need some different gear. I get most through quests because I don't really do instances until I can solo them (and with quest gear, that means I'm 50 levels above the instance level).

I don't buy keys, but when they drop for me, I have loot boxes I can open. And if I get awesome gear, you bet I swap it out. But that doesn't affect your game play at all. In fact, the only reason you're upset about this is because someone else can buy what you earn (or hit the lottery, if they don't buy keys). More power to you in earning it through 50+ farm runs through the raid. I'll take what I can get. Before loot boxes, that was crafted stuff or rep trades. This just gives me one more option in which to get some good gear. And it doesn't affect your game play in the least.

[aljbookworm]

So it definitely seems that the Mac Bullroarer client has some sort of issue, i just re-downloaded the BR client and i still get the you do not have the current version of the client installed error. It had worked for the previous bullroarer pass.

[joshuacgordon]

If I simply bought an Olympic Gold Medal and never once participated in an event, have I actually earned anything?

If you built a car from the ground up, and I went out and bought the same car from a dealer, would you have a problem with that?

My having shiny bling doesn't change the game for you at all. None. Whether I bought it or had to run a raid 50 times before I got it to drop (btw, that's pretty much a lottery too, isn't it?), I now have the bling and that doesn't affect you and your game one iota.

Gear is the reward for putting in effort. A person who buys gear has exerted no meaningful effort. See above.

Actually, achievements are the reward for putting in an effort. Gear is a byproduct. If you run the raid, you'll get all the achievements for it and have the gear. If I by the gear, I still have the gear, but not the achievements finished.

I'd also disagree that someone who buys gear hasn't put in meaningful effort. They had to do RL work to get the money to buy that digital equipment. So their effort is just RL instead of digital.

The reason you don't understand the jealousy of his statements is because the statements do not contain envy, instead they display resentment towards SSG for creating a system whereby people can obtain a reward by inputting card details rather than by earning the reward. Casuals wouldn't know this but there is a very competitive sector of this community that plans on competing to be the first people to clear the new raid. If you allow people to purchase gear then you've essentially allowed them to pay for a competitive advantage in a competitive environment. I don't think LeBron James would be very happy if it were uncovered that his competitive rivals had paid the game administrators for an advantage before the competition began, would he?

I don't think LeBron would care because he knows he's still gonna school that boy when it comes to game time. That's a really bad example, tbh.

I also think that anyone who buys gear probably isn't going to clear a raid first. Even with BIS gear, you're still gonna get pwned in a raid if you can't play your toon well. You have to have a group that works well together for a long time to figure out how to clear a raid first. People who buy gear are the ones who look at YouTube videos to see how to clear instances.

[Decrepify]

Actually, achievements are the reward for putting in an effort. Gear is a byproduct. If you run the raid, you'll get all the achievements for it and have the gear. If I by the gear, I still have the gear, but not the achievements finished.

One never excluded the other. Achievement/title/whatever-you-place-here and gear have always both been driving factors for instance completion.
Suddenly saying that's not the case is spitting into faces of anyone who ever bothered to learn teamplay and worked hard for either/both.

I'd also disagree that someone who buys gear hasn't put in meaningful effort. They had to do RL work to get the money to buy that digital equipment. So their effort is just RL instead of digital.

Real-life effort is an effort whih in no way benefits the game itself, but benefits your own life. Which is why people are paid in money and not LOTRO points...
Anyway, no, point irrelevant, pulling RL into a game doesn't and shouldn't matter in such a case, as one doesn't represent the other.
But, you are willing to destroy any proper sense of achievement for people who want to grind out their gear under any excuse which can currently appear befit you. Guess another poster was right before, we play a game we deserved. So, keep on bleeding money, I won't.

[SinordLoresearcher]

So it definitely seems that the Mac Bullroarer client has some sort of issue, i just re-downloaded the BR client and i still get the you do not have the current version of the client installed error. It had worked for the previous bullroarer pass.

I have the exact same problem. Perhaps the beta period could be extended for us Mac users that can't come in?

[fireblaze737]

So I looked at the numbers on my hunter from live to beta and I discovered that my hunter's crit rating from live to bullroarer went from 75k to 55k. The scaling on live is still present on beta so i would need 72k crit to cap my crit % chance. I am uncertain if this was unchanged for a reason or if it is an accident.

[Arnenna]

So I looked at the numbers on my hunter from live to beta and I discovered that my hunter's crit rating from live to bullroarer went from 75k to 55k. The scaling on live is still present on beta so i would need 72k crit to cap my crit % chance. I am uncertain if this was unchanged for a reason or if it is an accident.

I experienced roughly the same. I keep my main hunter to test the content exactly as she is on Live, so no I&G gearing etc, just as is. She plays, roughly the same as on Live with the new numbers. I did roll a brand new hunter and leveled her up and geared her fully in the tavern with level 120 gear. The numbers are completely different than current stat numbers and will take some getting used to. Caps are difficult to reach across the board, even if not hitting the new 200% mastery cap. I've not played her yet however, so how those numbers pan out, is yet to be tested.

p. s. I played her through the Intro, to see what the extreme low level is like. It feels like it was when I first began playing, as if a new player would be learning a little something as they go.

[Harla]

I'm going to try to keep this brief, so it doens't turn into a long-winded rant... but historically speaking, that's something I'm not very good at, so we'll see.

To the people saying "It's not pay-to-win, because you can't 'win' in lotro, you can just get things faster";

Result of statement: You are making a statement that says that a game is not pay-to-win, by defining the complaint as being *literally impossible* to begin with. You are saying "It is not possible for the game to be P2W at all." If that was your intended statement, however, then it is without meaning in the context of the conversation. You are not actually attempting to engage with or answer the other poster's concerns - simply quibbling over a pedantic definition. At the same time, you are also not actively attempting to clarify that definition in a way that allows discussion. What the above people then go on to define as 'Not pay-to-win' is precisely what the others who are upset DO define as pay-to-win. It seems rather that the ones defending it as not so just don't have a personal problem with that situation.

This brings me to the other half...

To the people saying "How does Bob buying his gear on day one and having an easier time of it affect you? It doesn't, so relax!";

Here is how it affects others:

You are a member of a raid group, and you like to join pick-ups on the side fairly frequently. You are good at your class, perceptive, skilled and responsive, and you pick things up well. You're a decent to good player. You are not prepared to spend $500 in the first few days of a release to rapidly acquire all the best in slot equipment off the bat. You'll get it eventually, whenever the random roll fates decide... for now, there are group instances to run that might get you things, and the raid on the weekend has looked promising. Even if there's all these P2W complaints and lootboxes everywhere, you're still excited.

When you try to join those groups, however, you frequently get knocked back, because the randoms calling want someone with better gear, and lo and behold, it's only three days in, but there are several people floating about running instances that DO have far better gear already. They get taken, not you.

But that's Ok, you reason; you don't know these people, and you can't fault them for taking what looks like, on the surface, the strongest bet. There's still the raid on the weekend. Raid night comes, and lots of people are excited to get stuck into it. Enough that a number of people will need to bench for now, while the group figures stuff out. Your friend is also a good player, like you. They are experienced and good at their class same as you. Quietly, you think you've got the edge on them, just a little. Quietly they probably think the same. That's normal and healthy. Your friend, however, WAS prepared to drop $500 on the first three days to rapidly acquire all of the best in slot gear right away. When it comes to selections, the raid leader takes your friend, not you. You're both good, players, trusted and highly skilled, but your leader wants the strongest group they can put together for this, so your friend is the obvious choice. Not you. You are left sitting on the bench; if this was a competition for who got that raid slot, your friend won and you lost. Your friend won because they were prepared to spend more money to buy it than you were, or could. They won because they paid more. They paid, to win.

At a personal level, THIS is how P2W culture and design affects those who don't want it.
It's rarely about "The no-skill noob who bought all their stuff" Vs. "The highly skilled and experienced player who didn't". It's almost never about that comparison. It's usually about two skilled players of equal value in game, one of who paid for gear, and the other of whom did not, and has not yet been blessed by the random dice fortune.

At a more macro level, as others have described, support of P2W culture and design encourages increasingly shoddy design... There is not a single instance where it has not, and LotRO is not showing itself to be an exception the longer this goes on. The visuals of this game might be stunning, and the story-telling might be great, but the game itself, as a game, mechanically and functionally, has done very little but go downhill over the past several years.

We can put up endless pages of feedback where the greater majority of it is posters and testers decrying, begging, pleading, demanding and otherwise arguing for a cessation to gamble-box design and other pay to win mechanisms, but it has only gotten worse and worse, despite that.

To the developers, a theoretical: What would it actually take, in terms of data (which we know only you can see), or uptake, or feedback, or any other variable, to cause SSG to decide to abandon lootbox culture and cut out the majority of their gambling and cash-driven incentives? Other games succeed without such things, and limit their extra cash incentives to non-impactful fluff: In a purely theoretical sense, what would be necessary, for that to be a game development decision that was actually put on the table? There must BE a scenario where that could happen, theoretically; what would it be? I know that's not likely to be something that any of the SSG forum mods and reps are going to be prepared to put a response to, but I'm asking anyway, just in case, and with the hope that a few people in your offices at least think about it a little more. Most of the feedback in this thread is railing agaisnt it, after all, even if that only represents a fraction of the player base.

[Knight.]

Don't be sweating the potion values over much. We'll be tweaking down the loot potions - I just jammed them in kinda late as a 1st pass with a ton of other things I was trying to get in for the update, so the numbers were caffeine addled. They should also have a 2m cooldown like the regular potions.

As for the crafting potions, the itemization progressions behind those haven't been properly updated in too long. I'm doing that now. They should be going way up shortly - they should compare reasonably well with each other in the end.

-Vastin

Thanks for update/clarification.

Have you also given any further thought about Light of Elendil and how to avoid players being cornered into carrying an additional armour set / build specifically for Mordor content?
Are there plans to add LoE to armour sets 116+ or to grant us some kind of passive with 200 LoE?

My understanding is armour/jewellery/weapon boxes from Abyss currently open up to give scaled gear up to level 120. Is this being fixed (I would hope so) or a deliberate design decision?

[Nonde]

These new morale and power pot stats are a first pass and you'll look at crafted pots? Why is it that so many "first" passes are so off the mark? . . .

This is mystery to me also. How is it not noticed prior to wasting resources on coding that:

- stats on Doomfold crafted items are worse than on Anorien items? eg, first minstrel instruments, food etc (and re: food why is it regarded better to spend resources on nerfing Anorien regen food and making meaningless changes to Anorien trail foods than appropriately scaling Doomfold food?)
- Crit and non crit crafted Doomfold items have the same name? And how can they fail to see that that this creates problems for both buyers and crafters - and facilitates scamming? Buyers rightly assume that same name = same item and opportunists price fails 5s less than crits (I've had my fails bought out and repriced), and crafters have to mouse over every item and manually price items as the AH also assumes the item is the same and the price defaults to that of first item posted.
- there are multiple items with the same name and different stats? Eg, medium shoulders have 4 variants: agility or might and crit and noncrit for each
- there are multiple items with different names and the same stats? Eg light armor chest

Surely it is cheaper to have someone pick up these obvious errors prior to coding them?? Scratching my head too Macdui, I just don't get it either.

[Aleziana]

I saw some maps in the forum and i have to ask: Why the Iron hills are so close to Erebor and instead not make a road like the one that connects Forochel and Eventim? and is there any road that connects the northern boarders of mirkwood direct from grey mountains to the forest? also why did you hurry to make both grey mountains and iron hills and not separate them into 2 different quest packs with different updates? Now we will never see the actual Iron hills area and only a small part .

[Dorri_Hammerfist]

I use the "regular" client all the time. I have downloaded, uninstalled, and reinstalled the bullroarer client four times the last time the server was open, and twice this time. I have never gotten Bullroarer to work.

The error says: An update error occurred:
PatchCLientDLL CheckDatFiles failed (unable to decrypt and de-serialize the data downloaded form the server. It goes into a reload loop from there.

Please check this:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...-failed-error&
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...tFiles-Failed&
maybe it helps