Potential PvMP Updates - U35 & Beyond

[SSG_Orion]

With the announcement of the Roadmap last week there has been some measure of response that there was not a lot of meat on that bone. We will be updating the https://forums.lotro.com/forums/foru...al-Discussions section of the forums with more details on items like crafting, class changes, etc... and we will likely even open up a more interactive back and forth between developers and players as we continue moving through the year.

There has been a lot of discussion in the https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...e-go-from-here thread and requests for more information before it gets to the servers. And, I want to open a thread that will speak to some changes, ideas, goals, and objectives that we have for the short, near, mid, and long-term efforts for the year.

I am going to present some of the ideas here and leave the thread open for a couple of days to get some feedback then close it down while we weigh all of the feedback and adjust.

Tower Changes

We made changes to the strength of the defenders at the keeps as a soft step toward something new, and a way to combat some of the potential lag that exists in the Ettenmoors.

We also want to revisit the way that the towers are attacked and defended so that there is a much more active push and pull around them. Here is how we are looking to potential achieve that:

Defend!

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that the entryways into the important parts of the towers and keep are just guarded by defenders. It would make more sense if there were doors erected to slow down the progress of enemies and provide the defenders an opportunity to, well, defend. So, we want to bring back doors to the towers and keep to slow down the progress against the commander of each location. This would mean that the defenders would have fewer guards outside and need fewer NPC guards inside. Getting in and out of the keep, when not under siege would require speaking with a a guard who would let the player/monster player into the main building or main battle platform. When under siege, there would be a "secondary entrance" reflecting tunnels that exist beneath the tower/keep accessible to the controlling faction that opens near the tower/keep that players can fight near or around but always allow the defenders to enter the apex of the tower or keep to aid in the defense.

Doors can be upgraded through quests to have more defense and staying power to further deter the attackers and assist the defenders.

Additionally, the ruins near the tower and keep gain some defensive capacity with quests that allow the controlling faction to station a siege weapon atop the battlement. This siege weapon would attack enemies and come in two flavors: ballista and catapults. Ballista would be powerful single-target slow shooting siege and catapults would be AoE siege that fires even slower but spread the damage out among the attackers. Of course, the attackers would rather see these targets destroyed so that the don't suffer against them so...

Attack!

For attackers, we would allow for the purchase, with commendations, and use of short-cycle siege weapons to add to the field when assaulting the towers and keeps. These new items would come with restrictions in that they can only be set up in certain areas around the towers and keeps, they can only attack the doors/npc defenders directly, but any splash damage done by the weapons will affect the defenders. These would come in three flavors: ballista, catapults, and the dreaded battering ram. Battering rams would only be usable on doors.

Attackers would also be able to scale the ruins outside of the tower/keep, destroy the siege weapons present and call the Marshals out of the main battle area. Then, they could set up a single siege weapon in the tower to rain down on the enemy. The goal here would be to allow for multiple angles of attack and support when trying to take a tower or the central keep.

On the Siege Weaponry

All siege weapons are attackable by the opposition and can only be set up when you control the appropriate locations.

Tutorial Changes

We need to change the introductory quest on the monster play side and on the player side. We should have done this when we made the experience free last year and we are hoping to get these new experiences together as soon as possible in the new year.

For monster players, the flow will take them from their initial greeter to the War-tyrant to the Emissary of Angmar, their clan blessing/corruption, visit the corruptor, visit the trainer and learn March!, visit the vendors, get the map to Gramsfoot, use the Map to Gramsfoot, talk to Uglash, try out a skill or two and then go to War-tyrant to complete the tutorial loop.

For players, they will speak with the initial NPC speak with the Captain-General, if at level cap be directed to the vendors, where they will purchase their Audacity gear for gold, get a map to Glan Vraig, and then return to the Captain-General.

On General Questing & Rewards

We want to revise the tediousness of the quests in the Ettenmoors and make them more rewarding. To do this, we are going to reduce the number of items needed to complete the quests, increase the rewards on infamy/renown and commendations, put higher rewards on quests that are for defeating opposing players. We also want to put LI experience onto the player quests in the Ettenmoors as we do want this to be another viable way to advance your LIs.

We will add random rare spawns to the Ettenmoors coming out of the depths of the Delving of Frór that will move around the map that will allow for players and monster players to get quests for defeating those monsters with a reward that is commensurate to faction being played. This will mean that the rewards for finding and defeating the rare monsters in the Ettenmoors will have the ability to drop Legendary Item based rewards, gear commensurate to PvE rewards for lower to mid tier raids, and gear normally acquired with commendations in the Ettenmoors.

For the monster side, new rare/long missing skins, and other boons for the other upcoming enhancements to the Monster Play experience.

Bonus events will happen on a rotating schedule to incentivize entering the Ettenmoors.

New discoverable experiences will allow for players to find a new style of pet that they will shape and develop over time.

Denizens of the Delving of Frór

The first Ettendeep boss to return to the Ettenmoors comes in the form of the Wintersebb Matron, Grodris! Players/Monster Players and her arrival will change the way that the Ettenmoors plays.

The Isendeep mine will no longer be controllable by the forces of good or evil. Instead, the matriarch will assert control over her brood and begin nurturing the next generation of hatchlings. Which of course means she will be available to summon through some means. Defeating her will grant the successful side with bonuses to earning infamy/renown, commendation, and provide a bonus to damage at the keeps for a period of time. She will not reappear until that bonus is expired and then the battle for her bonus can begin again.

Other Ettendeep bosses will make their presence known throughout the course of the year until they are all available for discovery and defeating on the Ettenmoors landscape.

On Consumables

Consumables in the Ettenmoors are in dire need of adjustment and we will be making those adjustments over time to make them more valuable and viable in the fights. They've been untouched for too long and are in dire need of updates.

On Incentives

Some ideas we have along these lines are weekly wrapper quests with a selectable range of rewards for both sides of the fight - whether those are LI rewards for the quests or a complete overhaul of the chests that use the tokens of valour - it is all on the table.

Closing this out for now...

This touches on some of the updates that we want to make to the Ettenmoors. Some of this is rather broad stroke ideas and some are more formulated and further along. This is, by no means, a comprehensive list of updates that we are planning over the course of the year. I didn't even touch on the enhancements and inclusion of potential "Allegiances" to the monster players as it is something that will support the monster player only community through the period when the players are moving to the next level cap. There are a host of ideas - these are just the portions of the iceberg that have buoyed above the surface.

I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these offerings.

HOW THIS WILL WORK

I will leave this thread open until Wednesday or Thursday (1/25-/1/26/2023) this week . I will do my absolute best to answer any questions that are asked here in good faith. Them, we will close the thread look at the feedback make necessary adjustments and rethink some strategies if need be and post another as we get closer to release.

I cannot address anything that is related to "fix the lag" etc... our engineers are working diligently on that and we are actively discussing other options.

Onward to 2023!!!

[Askelin]

First for B A L L I S T A!



Initial thoughts:
keep control at the moment is a bit lackluster... To be honest it's always been pretty underwhelming, just rush the group up to the top, make the lower NPCs reset and then fight the CG/Tyrant. Numbers inside the keeps just makes the process laggier. So it's nice to see a fresh perspective on how fights will play out. But I think without a solid incentive other than just the bonus you get from keeps and access to quests, people won't be spending the time to attack or even defend a keep when they can just ping pong from the nearest spawn to farm points. This has to come with a nice incentive, especially seeing as people may be spending commendations on siege equipment.
But hell it sounds fun!
Another note, what about the defenders? Are they going to be rewarded in an additional way for successfully defending a keep? At the moment the only real incentive for fighting around keeps is the "kill 10 enemies" quests which isn't all that great an incentive. That could be reworked somewhat I reckon.

Incentives and the rare spawns sound like a neat concept, one that I'm kind of looking forward to just for the ability to earn some new stuff! Hopefully it'll help people spread out about the map hunting these things down, it'll be nice just to have a pve run out there to hunt these creatures down, and if any pvp happens along the way then great!
I'm curious, nay, intrigued even to see what rewards may come from this. The idea of having freep gear possibly drop could help with the commendation sink the current system has. But I think that issue is something that has to be fixed in of itself. The amount of time to get a new character to a competitive level. On creeps it's not that bad, on freepside I would argue it is a straight up turn off right now.
The reason the back doors were removed in the first place was to stop horrific back door camps, in my opinion, with this keep overhaul, it's important to make it in such a way that this doesn't happen (EDIT: Nvm lol this was explained in a below post, actually a good idea to have it tied to an actual NPC who can be fought and killed)

If the attacking force has assaulted the keep, it should be for the purpose of taking it, not just standing at the quest room farming the defenders or vice versa.

The mine being held by Drake, nice idea assuming her entire fight is reworked in some degree to not just make it easy to ninja. There's a number of cheese points in the Mines that I'm a little concerned with. But from what I've read, it seems that the idea is for people to go North to get the drake bonus for an advantage before attacking keeps, rather I can see raids go "screw it, takes too long" and go for whatever keeps that aren't defended. Going back to the first thought, the incentive has to be there, additionally I think the actual balance of keeps will have to be tested and it's hard to establish some raid v raid fights on Bullroarer. I can see this being one of those things that have to be balanced over time.
Something to consider, how much effort is required to assail an undefended keep vs one that is defended with equal forces? How much extra man power do you need to assault a keep? Generally speaking the defender may have the advantage... Except the addition of siege weaponry on both sides may impact that, then it's a case of "how much of a difference do they make?" If the entire raid just brings siege weaponry, how much stronger does that make them? Will there be limits? Stuff like this are kind of open questions at the present time, it'll have to be tested.
It's high time the rewards across the moors were updated, so that is a wholly good thing I think.



TLDR:
taking and holding keeps should have an incentive, both for attackers and defenders.
how powerful will siege weaponry be?
I like the idea of roaming bosses and further rewards across the moors
Mine needs to be valuable enough for people to trek up there to kill it before assaulting and should have other incentives.

[Elmagor]

Looks very promising, but...

1)How that affect on lags?

2)How much grind it have?

[bohbashum]

siege weapon

This all sounds great!

I've forever asked for map redesign and doors in keeps so it's good to hear. Having a better backdoor will be great.

[Strider5548]

Thanks Orion for taking the time to write all this out. The tower changes sound really interesting, keeps have been kind of a joke for far too long. It'll be nice to add some mechanics, challenges, and incentives to taking them over. I don't know what to think of siege weapons since they didn't do much to make epic battles enjoyable, but maybe it will be different in PvMP. One benefit of having new forms of combat like this will be additional dimensions to adjust class balance within the moors without affecting PvE. For example the splatter damage you cited will clearly hurt champs, but they already excel in straight combat in the context of PvMP so it's a nice trade off.

I like the idea of rare mobs and even the change to Isendeep, I just hope that any changes like this that fundamentally change the moors experience don't make old deeds unattainable (and to an extent quests but this is less realistic).

Overall I like everything I'm reading here, but I will say I am disappointed there's no mention of level scaling. We know that PvMP is struggling on smaller servers, and it's non existent for legendary servers. A big part of this is that there is a massive multi-year grind in front of every Freep who wants to partake. It would be hugely beneficial to the overall level of PvMP activity (and selfishly to the health of legendary servers) to allow all players at or above a certain level (50 for example) to be properly scaled into the moors and engage in PvMP in an effective way. The biggest challenge standing in the way of this is the current LI system, but having a simplified PvMP LI system or even basic PvMP weapons (no LIs in moors) would make this possible.

[SSG_Orion]

Looks very promising, but...

1)How that affect on lags?

I mentioned that I cannot really speak to this in the OP.

2)How much grind it have?

Which piece are specifically referring to so that I can answer more completely?

[Thorebane]

1)How that affect on lags?

Pretty sure Sev said on the stream the other day, anything they add majorly will slowly add to it over time. Although they were working through bits that *may* fix patches of it over time, over the year..

[TearMaker]

Oh Orion....

It's great that you do listen and are outwardly showing at least that crucial difference from all those years ago.

I was always in two minds when they mooted ballistae etc. in EM when Helms Deep shipped but I am open to the possibility and making the keeps seem more than a ruined camp and something of a place to make a stand kind of follows our story as we have been here so long now that we would have at least spruced the place up a little.

For the love of all that is good... DO NOT bring back the back doors. This will be a huge mistake. If you want players to be able to get back inside then give the faction holding the keep a port in from out of combat. Any in combat dodging into keeps is just a boring exercise in futility.

I don't see the point of the DoF any more. We don't need that extra space. But, bringing the bosses and adds out onto landscape in rare spawns could be quite interesting but there would need to be a good reason for them being there because we have to remember this is a pvp zone and not PVE.

Audacity gear - I'm assuming that the gear Freeps will purchase will give them the same as an entry level Creep?

[Askelin]

Just updated my initial post

[SSG_Orion]

For the love of all that is good... DO NOT bring back the back doors. This will be a huge mistake. If you want players to be able to get back inside then give the faction holding the keep a port in from out of combat. Any in combat dodging into keeps is just a boring exercise in futility.

The intent here would be as follows: An NPC at the front gate until the location comes under attack. Then, that NPC shifts to a different spot (the tunnel) to allow the defenders an opportunity to mount a defense - I bet you can figure out where maps factor in with this too - once that NPC is engaged in combat they would not be able to "lead" defenders through the tunnel to the defense room, likewise if they were dead.

I don't see the point of the DoF any more. We don't need that extra space. But, bringing the bosses and adds out onto landscape in rare spawns could be quite interesting but there would need to be a good reason for them being there because we have to remember this is a pvp zone and not PVE.

DoF will have a purpose again. And it should be pretty clear that there are definitive PvE aspects to monster play. Yes, it is primarily a PvMP zone, but there is still a healthy amount of PvE. We want to inspire more direct conflict and wandering bosses that reward loot for both sides seems like a good way to inspire fights.

Audacity gear - I'm assuming that the gear Freeps will purchase will give them the same as an entry level Creep?

I'll discuss a little more about Audacity in a later post. We are planning to make one more adjustment. We hope.

[SSG_Orion]

Overall I like everything I'm reading here, but I will say I am disappointed there's no mention of level scaling. We know that PvMP is struggling on smaller servers, and it's non existent for legendary servers. A big part of this is that there is a massive multi-year grind in front of every Freep who wants to partake. It would be hugely beneficial to the overall level of PvMP activity (and selfishly to the health of legendary servers) to allow all players at or above a certain level (50 for example) to be properly scaled into the moors and engage in PvMP in an effective way. The biggest challenge standing in the way of this is the current LI system, but having a simplified PvMP LI system or even basic PvMP weapons (no LIs in moors) would make this possible.

When I go into greater detail on Audacity, in a future post, I hope to address some of these concerns.

[Elmagor]

Which piece are specifically referring to so that I can answer more completely?

1)Cost of siege weapons. Can we capture keep without them? Just slower, or we need big advantage in numbers to win without them? And siege looks like great idea, but I hardly imagine how weaver or warg can use siege weapon

2)Events in The Moors. Can they bring something valuable to pve players? Like titles, or cosmetic? Or just rewards for pvp players?

[hanswurst13]

That Keep fight, will favor long range classes, i see the meeles can fight arround the 2nd entry, but champs can port party members into the fortress and only use range

once the door gets broken we need a short hallway where the defenders use their meeles to defend, epic movie sceens from lotr , the trolls crushing doors,
but this part of the battle will get very messy and laggy,

reward for taking the keep, the team or kin who did the most to take the keep should get a world buff, maybe tax some income, give a rare title ect.
i lkie something really rewarding.

the attackers should be having a quest series where they have the possibilty to sumon an army to help storm the door since the dmg there from the long range classes will be insane,

or it will become a camp fest where attackes and defenders do all the jobs with the catapults and balistas


unique bosses make them like 12 give titel for killing all, make a server world message - xy spawned- xy killed by xy
make it hard, give really nice drops for freeps here, since this will be way harder than any pve contet they ever expirenced.


creep rewards, skins ok, but we need some other things, mounts, pets, maybe housing ? at first kin houses.


keep fight again , is the keep big and you die during the fight how do you get back in? spawn points ?
is it the same as now, then burglers wargs will cut of any reinforsments

and we need currently like two new creep classes to balance all the new freeps

add a goblin and one that can match the bear or brawler, one more something like a lm, maybe lock them behind a grind wall for creeps.


overall love the effort, but keep balance this a sege right now would be a freep fest with all their tanks and advanced range attacks and heals.........

[Senfear]

Worst idea ever. Dreadweaver will never shut up now.

[Neinda]

Actually looks interesting. Thank you for the update. Please keep in mind that there are small servers without the numbers you see on Ark and EN when you set this up. Will we be able to use the siege weapons to knock holes in the walls for entry? Will the siege weapons be craftable? This could be a whole new crafting profession. Being able to craft something like this could also make the player economy something again for people that enjoy that part of the game.

[Rinri]

The potential and probable changes look great! Thanks so much for working hard on those and updating the Moors! Gonna be fun to experience.

[SSG_Orion]

1)Cost of siege weapons. Can we capture keep without them? Just slower, or we need big advantage in numbers to win without them? And siege looks like great idea, but I hardly imagine how weaver or warg can use siege weapon

Still to be determined. Most likely you will need to purchase "Plans" with commendations - non-prohibitively then "build" the weapon in the right location in the field. That will require time. There may be ways to speed along building - so on and so forth. Since we are looking to make this a part of the siege experience the cost should not be overly prohibitive.

2)Events in The Moors. Can they bring something valuable to pve players? Like titles, or cosmetic? Or just rewards for pvp players?

I believe I mentioned that the goal for the reward shift is to make it better for the PvE aspect - though you are participating in PvMP.

[Phiolin]

Tower Changes

We made changes to the strength of the defenders at the keeps as a soft step toward something new, and a way to combat some of the potential lag that exists in the Ettenmoors.

We also want to revisit the way that the towers are attacked and defended so that there is a much more active push and pull around them. Here is how we are looking to potential achieve that:

Defend!

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that the entryways into the important parts of the towers and keep are just guarded by defenders. It would make more sense if there were doors erected to slow down the progress of enemies and provide the defenders an opportunity to, well, defend. So, we want to bring back doors to the towers and keep to slow down the progress against the commander of each location. This would mean that the defenders would have fewer guards outside and need fewer NPC guards inside. Getting in and out of the keep, when not under siege would require speaking with a a guard who would let the player/monster player into the main building or main battle platform. When under siege, there would be a "secondary entrance" reflecting tunnels that exist beneath the tower/keep accessible to the controlling faction that opens near the tower/keep that players can fight near or around but always allow the defenders to enter the apex of the tower or keep to aid in the defense.

Doors can be upgraded through quests to have more defense and staying power to further deter the attackers and assist the defenders.

Additionally, the ruins near the tower and keep gain some defensive capacity with quests that allow the controlling faction to station a siege weapon atop the battlement. This siege weapon would attack enemies and come in two flavors: ballista and catapults. Ballista would be powerful single-target slow shooting siege and catapults would be AoE siege that fires even slower but spread the damage out among the attackers. Of course, the attackers would rather see these targets destroyed so that the don't suffer against them so...

Attack!

For attackers, we would allow for the purchase, with commendations, and use of short-cycle siege weapons to add to the field when assaulting the towers and keeps. These new items would come with restrictions in that they can only be set up in certain areas around the towers and keeps, they can only attack the doors/npc defenders directly, but any splash damage done by the weapons will affect the defenders. These would come in three flavors: ballista, catapults, and the dreaded battering ram. Battering rams would only be usable on doors.

Attackers would also be able to scale the ruins outside of the tower/keep, destroy the siege weapons present and call the Marshals out of the main battle area. Then, they could set up a single siege weapon in the tower to rain down on the enemy. The goal here would be to allow for multiple angles of attack and support when trying to take a tower or the central keep.

On the Siege Weaponry

All siege weapons are attackable by the opposition and can only be set up when you control the appropriate locations.

Have you even thought about the amount of lag can all this changes make in a map like The Ettenmoors?
I mean, we can´t barely move when there are 2 craids up, how did u think would be good idea to bring new systems, mechanics, items, and hope for have fun?

Just remember what happened with Osigilath map. You tried out new things, we ended up leaving that map forever ( Or using it to Clubbing ofc!).
Why don´t you listen to the comunity the only we want is to play with ( If no lag is imposible, atleast) wayyyy less lag, being reduced by a half!

Like, what are you gonna say when after 2 weeks of use, everybody else get mad in forums flaming you about this changes and unplayable map?

And not counting the amount of bugs you are gonna bring, and the amount of exploits players are gonna find with this system ( we always find ).

For real..... be realistic for once, and tell us in real termns how much money would you need to fix the lag in game either with new servers, or fixing the code, or paying new devs to change everything. So we can have an idea about why didn´t you do it already.

[SSG_Orion]

Actually looks interesting. Thank you for the update. Please keep in mind that there are small servers without the numbers you see on Ark and EN when you set this up. Will we be able to use the siege weapons to knock holes in the walls for entry? Will the siege weapons be craftable? This could be a whole new crafting profession. Being able to craft something like this could also make the player economy something again for people that enjoy that part of the game.

I am planning, for the initial pass to make the siege weaponry not require a player to control the weapon once it is built. The "team" that controls the weapon will know what it can and cannot attack and will simply target what it can.

No, it will not knock holes in walls - yet.

Yes, crafting might have something to help with the construction.

[TesalionLortus]

OMG. Well, with Moors becoming an outright siege arena, I might even visit myself, even if just to enjoy the show. (I almost forgot it's all free now too, lol)

[TesalionLortus]

@Orion Could there be a portal and a functional path on Hoarwell on Trollshaws map to casually transition into Moors on your little boat with a mini-balistae attached and start shooting at the creeps? River offensive incoming!

I guess you could give the creeps a goblin class to employ mines and fields of poisonous gases in exchange :P Turn the Moors into War of the Three Peaks might be a solution

[Neinda]

I am planning, for the initial pass to make the siege weaponry not require a player to control the weapon once it is built. The "team" that controls the weapon will know what it can and cannot attack and will simply target what it can.

No, it will not knock holes in walls - yet.

Yes, crafting might have something to help with the construction.

And don't forget. With siege weapons we now need the ability to dump vats of burning oil on those trying to knock the doors down. This will be an unpopular opinion but honest to goodness keep battles can be a blast.

Maybe as an incentive let tribes and kins fly custom flags over the keeps they own?

At least something like this will cancel out the movement problem currently in the Moors because random encounters will no longer be the main focus.

[Jusinh]

My response, thanks for the post: https://youtu.be/i4f2DLhC0Gs

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

Very solid 100% good ideas on the table.... just one issue.


Concentrating players causes unplayable lag. by my estimates, it starts to become unplayable when more than about 30-40 players are in a single battle WITHOUT any NPCS. With NPCs that number becomes far lower.


In the absence of lag, these ideas are fantastic and 100% look like a ton of fun.... but if we end up with a large number of people fighting in NPCs-filled areas, it WILL become an unplayable and unenjoyable experience for everyone


Unless you intend to have some kind of mechanic or incentive structure that STRONGLY discourages everyone in the map from converging on a single fight location inside or near a keep with NPCs, these changes may not lead to any kind of fun action as everyone will be stuck waiting 1-5 seconds for their skills to go off. Throwing out some little distractions here and there isn't going to cut it , the moors needs a STRONG disincentive for having too many people in the same fight.


also... what about Heal Target Forwarding....

[Phiolin]

Very solid 100% good ideas on the table.... just one issue.


Concentrating players causes unplayable lag. by my estimates, it starts to become unplayable when more than about 30-40 players are in a single battle WITHOUT any NPCS. With NPCs that number becomes far lower.


In the absence of lag, these ideas are fantastic and 100% look like a ton of fun.... but if we end up with a large number of people fighting in NPCs-filled areas, it WILL become an unplayable and unenjoyable experience for everyone


Unless you intend to have some kind of mechanic or incentive structure that STRONGLY discourages everyone in the map from converging on a single fight location inside or near a keep with NPCs, these changes may not lead to any kind of fun action as everyone will be stuck waiting 1-5 seconds for their skills to go off. Throwing out some little distractions here and there isn't going to cut it , the moors needs a STRONG disincentive for having too many people in the same fight.


also... what about Heal Target Forwarding....

You already lag out sometimes, and takes literally more than 40 seconds to hand in one quest in Gundabad, wich is PvE area.... imagine trying to use a Ballista or catapult, and having to wait 1 min or more in moors for the induction to works out.... QQ, not counting the times will bug with some strange effect.... sigh*