No Cord of the Rings today?

[Cordovan]

I should clarify: I am not talking about a second person joining me every week (although I plan to lean more heavily into the news side, meaning probably more guests), but rather a new show from someone interested. I suspect people will be pretty happy about it when we're in a position to get started, which should be...soon.

[Brinswith]

I should clarify: I am not talking about a second person joining me every week (although I plan to lean more heavily into the news side, meaning probably more guests), but rather a new show from someone interested. I suspect people will be pretty happy about it when we're in a position to get started, which should be...soon.

I really hope it might be Orion. He would be sure to be able to provide the same kind of fascinating insights into the game that Scenario has been able to with his walks through each area.

[blacknazgul13]

Ooooo, yeah, I loved those casual strolls, and I especially liked getting that non-instance view of Fornost, that was cool. You have a pretty nice view of just Wraith of Shadow from the tower in the instance, but it's cool being able to see all the rest of the instance places from at tower not in the instance. It was also cool seeing all those abandoned dungeons or other projects that just never made the cut, and the mystery of wondering what that person had in mind when making it. Did he skip the Misty Mountains, though? Or does he not count those as part of Eriador? Since in the most recent one he said they were done with Eriador and moving on to Moria, and I looked on YouTube and didn't see a Misty Mountains casual stroll.

[Daemonikal]

The ability of players to farm these accelerators with essentially no time or effort forced this change.

Removing them without a solution is just creating another problem because of your shortsightedness.

And blaming the community for it is a *REALLY* bad look on you.

[Frisco]

We are aware of the community's feedback on this change, but at this time we have no plans to add these accelerators back to Skirmishes. The ability of players to farm these accelerators with essentially no time or effort forced this change. We will be looking at ways to make sure there are plenty of in-game opportunities to earn these accelerators, but we did have to make this decision for the long-term health of that particular item.

This is obviously not your decision, but what's with all these panicky "fixes" before there's an actual solution in place? There was the (thankfully retracted) ember change, now this. Add to the list the rep item barter change (which has given us the neverending "You are doing that too fast" issue) without adding the solution to barter in stacks, and we're looking at a string of ill-considered QoL reductions.

This rep stuff has been around and easy to obtain for a LOOOONG time. What was so urgent that it needed to be changed quietly (relatively) and immediately? And before adding in the "plenty of in-game opportunities"? Or even LOOKING INTO those opportunities? If SSG wants them to be store-only perks (which admittedly would suck, merely because it just encourages devs to create more inconveniences to drive people to the store) then just say so.

[Fegefeuer]

We are aware of the community's feedback on this change, but at this time we have no plans to add these accelerators back to Skirmishes. The ability of players to farm these accelerators with essentially no time or effort forced this change. We will be looking at ways to make sure there are plenty of in-game opportunities to earn these accelerators, but we did have to make this decision for the long-term health of that particular item.

The only solution is that you can get maximum reputation by just questing, excluding dailies, but we all know this is not going to happen. Always funny to see these kinds of answers.

You took x years to remove rep accelerators for the health of the game? Ugh.... fishy, very fishy.

Anyway thanks for keeping doing changes to this game to prevent me to return. So sad. But always amazed about these answers.

[DoRonRon]

"no time or effort" a phrase our CM has applied to learning the game's various systems that he avoids like they are infected with leprosy.

Mark and Meds are the by produce of skirmishes (that rehash of an event with a BiS that's trotted out every year) and On level Instances (the places where you actually earn usable LI drops). You guys frigging threw us on the pyre and are charging anyone who comes near with a bucket of water. And considerable time and effort on the part of participants.

Utter nonsense. From someone who achieves NOTHING of merit in game. Makes me /heave. Ironically a festival deed reward he actually did work towards for once but I very much doubt he attained. Lacking any context his epitaph. The architect of his demise the co-host.

All the production values of David Copperfield can't polish this mess.

[Echoweaver]

You took x years to remove rep accelerators for the health of the game? Ugh.... fishy, very fishy.

If I had to take a guess, it would be that when we could get stuff to advance our Legendary Items from skirmish camps, the farming of rep accelerators wasn't a big problem. We can't advance the new LIs with marks.

We are aware of the community's feedback on this change, but at this time we have no plans to add these accelerators back to Skirmishes. The ability of players to farm these accelerators with essentially no time or effort forced this change. We will be looking at ways to make sure there are plenty of in-game opportunities to earn these accelerators, but we did have to make this decision for the long-term health of that particular item.

So my biggest gripe with this change is that I think the reasoning is backward. The reason we farm rep accelerators with skirmish marks is that we get a lot of skirmish marks in this game, and you very quickly reach a point where there's nothing else to do with them. If we had other fun things to do with skirmish marks, we wouldn't be dumping all of them into rep accelerators.

The obvious thing I see is just to increase the price of the accelerators. The better thing to do would be to make more fun stuff available to buy with marks.

Stuff that comes to mind:
- Enhancement runes, even just uncommon ones
- Essences higher than level 7
- Special crafting ingredients higher than Compendium of Middle Earth Vol V
- More housing items (ok, that's just because I love housing items)
- Boxes of festival tokens, like in festival token exchange
- Boxes of ancient script

I guarantee that if we could get a few things off that list, we wouldn't be farming rep accelerators.

Plus, the prices of the stuff in the skirmish camp already doesn't seem to make much sense to me. You could probably standardize prices across the board to line it up with the rate at which we earn marks. Or you could reduce the amount of skirmish marks we earn.

What's not fun is continuing to earn a currency we don't want to do anything with.

[DoRonRon]

SSG not maintaining the skirmish camp and all else besides for years is our fault?

[WorrBinpike]

The first thing i want to see when Cord of the rings shows up again is this:

Make a toon up to Gondor and then grind the rep up. I guess in the show it would last a year or so without rep tomes....

This was so a lot of an #### move from SSG. And last sec Patch-Note change made at night, so EU players mostly hadn't a chance to bunker some more.

Thx for nothing...

[Nonde]

We are aware of the community's feedback on this change, but at this time we have no plans to add these accelerators back to Skirmishes. The ability of players to farm these accelerators with essentially no time or effort forced this change. We will be looking at ways to make sure there are plenty of in-game opportunities to earn these accelerators, but we did have to make this decision for the long-term health of that particular item.

There are players below level cap + many at cap who don't grind instances for marks . . . test how long it takes to earn 25 medallions and 250 marks on a sub lvl 100 char and on a post 100 char who doesn't grind instances. It is obvious to players and I'm sure to you as well that the purpose of removing them is to push store sales as if ease of earning accelerators were the actual issue SSG would nerf/remove marks from the allegedly "no time or effort" instances. SSG would also have considered the entire player base by testing as above to see if they were in fact easy to earn for the majority of players but per usual SSG designs for the hard core minority/whales and throws the rest of us under the bus.

You were set the impossible task of trying to spin this obvious store grab - wouldn't have your job for quids - but ''The rep accelerators made us do it as lest their health suffer!' is rather a stretch, albeit a creative one!

[Arnenna]

There are players below level cap + many at cap who don't grind instances for marks . . . test how long it takes to earn 25 medallions and 250 marks on a sub lvl 100 char and on a post 100 char who doesn't grind instances. It is obvious to players and I'm sure to you as well that the purpose of removing them is to push store sales as if ease of earning accelerators were the actual issue SSG would nerf/remove marks from the allegedly "no time or effort" instances. SSG would also have considered the entire player base by testing as above to see if they were in fact easy to earn for the majority of players but per usual SSG designs for the hard core minority/whales and throws the rest of us under the bus.

You were set the impossible task of trying to spin this obvious store grab - wouldn't have your job for quids - but ''The rep accelerators made us do it as lest their health suffer!' is rather a stretch, albeit a creative one!

The health of the rep acels - nonsense indeed. They essentially just killed them off.

Rep items will be next to go. Their health will matter too ;P

[DoRonRon]

Really only harms those with some goal to achieve in the game. So not the likes of Cordovan. There's no business with just show business, however.

[Seregthol]

The first thing i want to see when Cord of the rings shows up again is this:

Make a toon up to Gondor and then grind the rep up. I guess in the show it would last a year or so without rep tomes....

This so cracked me up when I read it. I'm guessing it would be three weeks, tops, and then an outburst of, "This is horrible! I'm heading back to DDO!!"

[Asterus]

We are aware of the community's feedback on this change, but at this time we have no plans to add these accelerators back to Skirmishes. The ability of players to farm these accelerators with essentially no time or effort forced this change. We will be looking at ways to make sure there are plenty of in-game opportunities to earn these accelerators, but we did have to make this decision for the long-term health of that particular item.

This is a cop out. And I don't believe it for an instant. If this was true then SSG would also have removed the ability to purchase these rep accelerators from the LOTRO Store for the very same reason.

If a player was to accumulate many rep accelerators ingame, or was to purchase many rep accelerators by purchasing them from the LOTRO Store, the effect is the same, that is, the player would have many rep accelerators. And according to Cordovan's explanation, the ingame option forced the change to remove the abilty to get them ingame, for the long-term health of that particular item. Rubbish!

After many years af having the rep accelerators, how has that in anyway affected the long-term health of that particular item? Just man-up and say the real reason: the rep accelerators are a good revenue source, by removing them from the Skirmishes it means players who want to accumulate them will need to "farm" them from the LOTRO Store.

Sigh.
__________

From the LOTRO Store:
+5000 Enhanced Reputation Supply: 250 LOTRO Points
+5000 Enhanced Reputation Supply x5: 1000 LOTRO Points (max of 5 of these per transaction = 5000 LOTRO Points)

[Creah]

Ooooo, yeah, I loved those casual strolls, and I especially liked getting that non-instance view of Fornost, that was cool. You have a pretty nice view of just Wraith of Shadow from the tower in the instance, but it's cool being able to see all the rest of the instance places from at tower not in the instance. It was also cool seeing all those abandoned dungeons or other projects that just never made the cut, and the mystery of wondering what that person had in mind when making it. Did he skip the Misty Mountains, though? Or does he not count those as part of Eriador? Since in the most recent one he said they were done with Eriador and moving on to Moria, and I looked on YouTube and didn't see a Misty Mountains casual stroll.

That's weird, I was there for the MM casual stroll and I remember it. I double checked to see if it just wasnt placed in their playlist but nope, they never uploaded it to YT!

[blacknazgul13]

That's weird, I was there for the MM casual stroll and I remember it. I double checked to see if it just wasnt placed in their playlist but nope, they never uploaded it to YT!

Ohhhh okay. Yeah, I wasn't here for all the strolls so I only know what's on YouTube