Q&A w/ Raninia on +Cord of the Rings - 6/18 @ Noon ET

[Raninia]

Hey folks, I'll be doing another Q&A on Cord's stream this Friday at noon Eastern Time, which you'll be able to watch here.

In preparation for that, if you have a question you'd like answered, feel free to throw it in this thread. I'll be starting the stream by answering as many questions in here as I can.

That said, a few ground rules on things I can't speak about, in an effort to save y'all some time:

1. I probably can't announce anything, including dates

That means no specifics about post-U31, or even when U31 is happening, or how exactly the Brawler will play, etc.

2. I can't speak to things that happened before I got here

That means basically anything before April 2021. Unless I was personally part of it - like my old play experience - I'm not gonna be able to answer your question. I can talk about how gamedev tends to work in general, but specific stuff that I wasn't part of I'm certainly not qualified to speak on.

3. I can't talk deeply about specific design or feature choices

Unfortunately, I can't give you the blow by blow for why Telling Mark got changed in U30, or which Guardian bleeds we're looking at changing in the future, or which roles we think Warden should or shouldn't have. General philosophical stuff is probably stuff I can speak to, however.

Everything else should probably be fair game, but if there's some other category of questions that crops up which I can't answer, I'll update this post.

Looking forward to answering your questions this Friday!

[DavidmeetHal]

Being a cosmetic vanity nut, I would like to ask two questions:

First, would there be any chance of increasing the number of slots in the wardrobe or revamping the wardrobe? There are so many different outfits now, and they pass the 310 slot limit.

Second, any chance of getting a 9th cosmetic slot in the character cosmetic panel?


Ok, I'm done!

[Joedangod]

Another Q&A?! You're spoiling us, friends of mine who stopped playing years ago are now suddenly optimistic about the future of LOTRO. It's terrifying.

As far as questions go, I'll try to keep them short and within the given constraints:

• Any updates in regards to plans to improve LUA functionality? Be it through bug fixes or expanding support.
• Are there any plans to update the UI in general?
• How's the lag-related work going?
• Are there any details you can give about how the LI rework will function?
• Any new details you can give on Shadowfax/Treebeard?
• Is there anything cool we've totally forgotten to ask about?

Edit: Bonus Questions

• Have considerations been made in regards to people potentially stacking the new LI system on top of the unimbued/imbued system with even more weapon swappies?
• Will crafting see catch-up gear added for those who just hit cap and want a quick way to get decent-but-not-great gear off the bat?

[wispsong]

Why are housing items locked behind lucky instance drops? Why only one way to get them?


Latest example, Agoroth and Woe of the Willow. There are quest chains attached to these instances, why wasn't there a choice for one of them after finishing it?

[Eowene]

My questions:

Due to a lot of interest from SSG's part and player interest on level capped kinships/experiences ranging from 0-75. I want to know if you are going to fix the difficulty on the instances at those level caps. By confirming interest in giving additional tiers to all instances & raids of those level caps.
For example tier 3 carn dum, tier 5 rift of nurz ghasu, tier 3 dar narbugud, tier 3 moria instances. and so on.
For me, the one thing I love more than anything in this game having played it for 14 years is living the nostalgia. However those level caps are a total mess when it comes to balancing. Our classes are too op, and instances/raids on the highest difficulty you can set them are Soloable.
I would really really like to see SSG Balance them.

So I just want to know if you are willing and able to balance them with additional tiers of difficulty, all 6mans/raids for level 50-75, giving tier 3 to those without tiers, and tier 5 to those that already have a tier 3?

Also and more importantly i guess

Would you ever be open to doing an instance/raid design competition where SSG would be open to accepting instance designs from the community and implement the winner into the game? I think this could be a truly truly amazing idea to do once a year, that would make the community feel more involved. And I know certain members of the community have insanely good designs/idea's for instance mechanics myself included that they would love to see in this game. Idk if this is ever a possibility, but I would really truly love to see it.

[Nubja]

How long until you destroy champions by removing weapon swapping?

[Eowene]

How long until you destroy half the classes by removing weapon swapping?

You should have asked about when will they nerf resistance essences since they are insanely OP :O

[cbfan14]

I have some questions pertaining to LM:

Vastin mentioned in the Bullroarer forums during the U30 preview that he was working on a change to frost lore's animation, agreeing that it was rather long. Will this change happen in a .dot update or is it coming with U31?
He also mentioned that he was going to be looking at LM pets, but it sounded as though it wouldn't be for some time. Is this something coming with U31 or is it still in the drawing board stage?


Finally, a general question, but one I imagine is a popular question:

Is a preview for the brawler class coming soon?

[istvana]

Legendary item changes.

1. Is it anticipated that legendary items will be made truly legendary, so that there will not be thousands of them for sale on every intersection in Moria and dropped by every goblin and orc? Perhaps by letting us get them in the Moria introduction and eliminating them as drops and merchant sales.

2. Is it anticipated that imbuement will be moved to a much lower level - perhaps 50 - so that we can work on our "friend for life" items not an endless procession of temporary "legendary" items?

3. If anything along these lines is being worked on is it anticipated for the rollout that you mentioned might occur fairly soon or are these longer term possibilities?

New servers.

1. I understand that more information will be available soon - perhaps around the end of June if not earlier. Is it anticipated that the servers will be rolled out at that time or will that come later? If later, in a matter of weeks or will they take longer to be ready?

2. Is the current plan to have them similar to Ithil and Anor when they release - with both having a level-cap of 50 and the main difference between the two being the speed at which experience is earned and new content is released?

Character names..

Currently names that have not been used for a year or more can be taken away by a player that transfers a character with the same name to the server - even if the incoming character is level 1 and has never been played. But creating a new character on the server cannot take away any names even if those names have not been used for over a decade and the player never paid a penny. Some think that this is an unintentional result of the transfer system. Others think it is deliberate as a device to encourage players to spend LOTRO points for transfers in the hope of getting a desired name. Is there any plan to rationalize the system so that transfers and new character creation will be more comparable in how they affect existing names.

[Brolad]

Can we expect the next big raid's (Gundabad) loot to be planned differently from Remmorchant's loot (can we expect to have different drops from different bosses and worse or different drops from sidebosses than from the rest of the raid)?

[Oelle]

Can we expect the ILI rework that allows latecomers to skip all the grind from the last 4 years and make ranks depend on characterlevel anytime soon?
Is there hope to one day get back to the game and not face insurmountable grind?

[AlagorianAndCo]

Hi Raninia!

Glad to have you join the team and loving the communication you've been providing us so far!
A couple of questions that are generally about the same topic: what are the current obstacles the team is facing in terms of updating the way kinships work in game? Is it a technical issue or simply not a priority?
With the size of a lot of kinships getting exponentially larger and (more than likely) a new player surge expected when the new LOTR series is released, can we expect any updates to the way kinships work in terms of organization, custom ranks, kin banks etc?
Kinships are a core part of the game for all players, be it the PvMP player base, landscapers, progression raiders or any PvE players and kinships havent had any love in a long time.

This proposal was made eons ago but has some good ideas if you're looking for inspiration:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...hlight=gALUHAD


All the best!

- The Doctor
[Commander General - Audacity] Arkenstone - discord.gg/QXnpg2gkKJ

[OghranNasty]

I'd like to hear about the reasoning behind currency caps, I don't think we have ever had those explained before.

Also: what level of caps SSG considers reasonable? In case you are not aware: the main currency for level cap gear is Embers. It has a cap worth just under 3 gear pieces or 1.3 Tier 6 essence, account-wide.

[BadJuju]

Is a classic server possible?


Is there interest at SSG in creating more difficult zones on live servers , perhaps with fellowship quests and challenging elite masters etc.?


Will impactful gold sinks ever be added to the game so that wealth-accruement can feel meaningful again?

[Bludborn]

What are some ways that SSG can modernize LOTRO's approach on how it handles its content creators and its use of social media in general?

[Bhoris_they_spider]

QUESTION

Current and past executive producers and developers have often stated that there are many great ideas suggested by the player base that they would like to see implemented, but are unbale to do so because they are large pieces of work that they would not want to compromise the release of other content (a kinship revamp is the most pertinent one). For these ideas, would you entertain trying to green light them from a developer perspective using crowd funding? Such a model would allow long time supporters of the game to show you which content they would be willing to support the development of from a financial perspective. If the minimum level of funding from a development perspective is not met then the content will of course not get made. It seems like a low risk but potentially high reward new model for funding the future of LOTRO.

[Hephburz-2]

It was somewhat suggested that there would be further class-work between now and U31, whilst what we saw during U30 was definitely a leg-up in terms of class-work to what we've had for the past year or so, it still left us with more unanswered questions than not.

Are you guys, at some point, (hopefully between now and U31) planning to do any more class-work, and if so, what classes & what trait lines will you be looking at?

Wardens & LM's on the whole, as classes need to be looked at...
Red Beorning, Blue Captain, Blue Guardian (less-so than before), Blue Champion and Blue RK (I'm sensing a theme here lol), could all also do with some fine-tuning to bring up their viability.

[Hallandil]

Hey folks, I'll be doing another Q&A on Cord's stream this Friday at noon Eastern Time, which you'll be able to watch here.

In preparation for that, if you have a question you'd like answered, feel free to throw it in this thread. I'll be starting the stream by answering as many questions in here as I can.

That said, a few ground rules on things I can't speak about, in an effort to save y'all some time:

1. I probably can't announce anything, including dates

That means no specifics about post-U31, or even when U31 is happening, or how exactly the Brawler will play, etc.

2. I can't speak to things that happened before I got here

That means basically anything before April 2021. Unless I was personally part of it - like my old play experience - I'm not gonna be able to answer your question. I can talk about how gamedev tends to work in general, but specific stuff that I wasn't part of I'm certainly not qualified to speak on.

3. I can't talk deeply about specific design or feature choices

Unfortunately, I can't give you the blow by blow for why Telling Mark got changed in U30, or which Guardian bleeds we're looking at changing in the future, or which roles we think Warden should or shouldn't have. General philosophical stuff is probably stuff I can speak to, however.

Everything else should probably be fair game, but if there's some other category of questions that crops up which I can't answer, I'll update this post.

Looking forward to answering your questions this Friday!

Here are some of Questions I'd like to ask- and afraid they'll get skipped over thanks to Timezone differences I cannot ask them myself

• Can items tables, drops and reward structures (specifically levels 66-105) in the game get a serious look at? As much as the producers/developers in the past have expressed not wanting to touch old content; A core part of the RPG Gameplay Experience loop is the rewards and items bestowed from doing content in this game. In having over a decade of content, Skirmishes, Scaling Instances as well as Crafted Gear, Raid rewards and items from 66-105 need a serious look at as they do not reflect with how Stats, Classes and the new Universal Currency systems now work.
• Does the team plan to do crafting fixes, stat updates and fixes to NPCs/Currencies for Treebeard/Shadowfax? One big complaint with the Legendary Servers was the lack of active support for each level cap by SSG across each rollout. Over the years items have been stipped and currencies removed so players were left with pieces of content that were not to the same standard as a proper progression server would allow.
  

[Hephburz-2]

Here are some of Questions I'd like to ask- and afraid they'll get skipped over thanks to Timezone differences I cannot ask them myself


Can items tables, drops and reward structures (specifically levels 66-105) in the game get a serious look at? As much as the producers/developers in the past have expressed not wanting to touch old content; A core part of the RPG Gameplay Experience loop is the rewards and items bestowed from doing content in this game. In having over a decade of content, Skirmishes, Scaling Instances as well as Crafted Gear, Raid rewards and items from 66-105 need a serious look at as they do not reflect with how Stats, Classes and the new Universal Currency systems now work.

On this subject, the lv85 class gear that dropped... Any chance we could see those again (perhaps not in the forms which they were in at 85 as some would be out-dated/broken), but loot like this, is the type of loot we like to see! But I am fully in support of the old loot tables being looked at & potentially reimplemented!!

[Omen_Kaizer]

For the next level cap, how many new raids/dungeons' worth of development time would it take to update damage/morale numbers of and create new loot tables for existing scaled raids & instance clusters like BG, OD, Erebor, etc. Theyve been undertuned and nonrewarding for a while and it's such a shame. I know yall dont want to divert attention away from new content, but if like a 3rd of BIS items in the next expansion came from legacy raid and instance clusters I think you could have your cake and eat it too. Like Sev says, better for people to a lot to do vs nothing to do.

On this subject, the lv85 class gear that dropped... Any chance we could see those again (perhaps not in the forms which they were in at 85 as some would be out-dated/broken), but loot like this, is the type of loot we like to see! But I am fully in support of the old loot tables being looked at & potentially reimplemented!!

Hell, SG could drop gold malledrim class essence boxes (perhaps 2 legacy instance class essences per character so you make a choice between the drops from ITA, Mirkwood, Erebor, Eriador, etc). Then it doesnt compete for jewelry and armor BIS presumably provided by the native Gundabad raids and such.

[Crimthann]

One of my biggest complaints over the past few years has been a lack of communication from the team. Is there anything you are working on or know that is being worked on to improve communication in the future?

[BadJuju]

For the next level cap, how many new raids/dungeons' worth of development time would it take to update damage/morale numbers of and create new loot tables for existing scaled raids & instance clusters like BG, OD, Erebor, etc. Theyve been undertuned and nonrewarding for a while and it's such a shame. I know yall dont want to divert attention away from new content, but if like a 3rd of BIS items in the next expansion came from legacy raid and instance clusters I think you could have your cake and eat it too. Like Sev says, better for people to a lot to do vs nothing to do.

+1 for this. Imagine how brilliant lotro would be if they merely scaled the loot of all the scale-able raids, or added relevant loot, and upped the difficulty of them as well. It would feel like a new game without the devs having to even develop new content.

[GDonWall]

I know there was talk after the recent purchase of improving overall game graphics and maybe even the graphics engine.
Was wondering if a 4k resolution fix could be something done before the "great graphics" overhaul? I'm loving my new 4k monitor; but having problems with the client / UI. I have to resize and reset some elements of my screen every time I login.

[Crimthann]

I know there was talk after the recent purchase of improving overall game graphics and maybe even the graphics engine.
Was wondering if a 4k resolution fix could be something done before the "great graphics" overhaul? I'm loving my new 4k monitor; but having problems with the client / UI. I have to resize and reset some elements of my screen every time I login.

+1 to this. I have the same problem. Please note this isn't asking for 4k textures but rather proper 4k resolution scaling.

[OghranNasty]

One of my biggest complaints over the past few years has been a lack of communication from the team. Is there anything you are working on or know that is being worked on to improve communication in the future?

How about this thread, and this producer? Or the Severlin Q&A sessions?
They are clearly making a concerted effort to change that image.