A focus on solo content
Mirkwood is the first time in my MMORPG experience that I have been able to clear out an entire expansion without needing a group. Moria had a healthy focus on solo content, but there was still the occasional group quest or instance that I would have to abandon, and it was not possible to complete key portions of Epic Volume 2 (which sets up the action in Mirkwood) solo. By contrast, it appears that literally all of the group content in Mirkwood has been tacked on to the optional epilogue at the end.
Part of the reason why Mirkwood gets away with this is because the soloable content is designed to tax characters to their limit. Allarond hit his hour-long emergency cooldowns and consumables pretty hard to survive, and many quests would still have been reasonably challenging with a second character. The content also contains great graphics and an impressive storyline, which I'd put head to head with any single player RPG out there.
The other part of the equation is the scaling "skirmish" system, which is used in every situation in which players would normally have to complete a group instance during the epic book. The skirmish can be set for groups of 1, 3, 6, or 12 players (though all of those players will need to do the solo-only instanced quests to unlock the skirmishes before being allowed to participate), and is probably the most time-efficient way of crafting this sort of story content without leaving anyone out.
Has Turbine chosen to concede the achiever demographic?
Though I can't argue with the expansion's efficiency - skirmishes can be used by all, and group-only leveling content tends to become a problem as games age - part of me wonders at the motivation for this dramatic of a shift.
Turbine has always struggled to keep pace with top end achievers. I originally left the game after reaching level 40, of its launch level cap of 50, a "mere" four months after the paid retail launch, only to find the content severely lacking. By a year later, Turbine had devoted its efforts to fleshing out that sparse stretch of content, where most developers would have moved on to the next paid expansion for max level players.
Today's max-level characters face the same challenges. Turbine has had to stick with a highly unpopular "radiance" gear grind because there simply isn't enough content to let players to move on to the next dungeon when the natural progression of their skill and gear would otherwise allow them to do so. This means that the system needs an incentive to keep players coming back even longer, after they have their radiance gear, to gear up newcomers. So the Mirkwood dungeons are also the source of new legendary item scrolls that provide players with yet another option for sinking tons of time into enhancements for replace-able "legendary" gear.
All of this would be a problem, perhaps a fatal one, if endgame players were the game's primary market. I can think of no reason whatsoever why I'd choose to grind LOTRO's three level 65 small-group dungeons over the other games I play when those games offer more choices (19 daily double dungeons in EQ2 and 16 random heroics in WoW), even before WoW effectively removed the unpleasant task of looking from groups with their automatic group finder. One can only conclude, then, that these endgame grinds are not what are keeping LOTRO in business.
Rather, I'm guessing that LOTRO's core market is the crowd that levels solo and, most importantly, slowly.
In perhaps the closest we're going to get for an apology for the disposable "legendary" item system, players have a brief conversation with the dwarf who was involved in the quest that granted players their first legendary item at the start of the Moria expansion. Turbine has the dwarf crack a joke about how weapons are meant to be replaced, as if Middle Earth was not a place where most characters' named weapons stay with them until they die. In an ironic twist to drive that point home, a separate questline in the epilogue has players returning a fallen comrade's named weapons to their home.
Moving Forward
My guess is that Turbine will never again require the use of group content to see the game's headline epic story content. While one part of Turbine's team was replacing all of the group instances in Mirkwood with skirmishes, another is in the progress of overhauling the launch game's "Volume 1" quests, adding in temporary buffs to allow players to solo the group content. That's a lot of work to invest in accessibility if the plan is to return to "LFG or forget the plot" in Volume 3.
The big question, then, is what exactly we will see when the new volume launches next month. Adding large amounts of landmass and content at the current level cap, when there's already plenty of content to use en route (you actually cannot complete the Epic book before 65, due to the minimum level requirement on the final skirmish) seems like it would just become redundant next (mini?)expansion. Also, if Turbine was in a position to deliver significantly more landmass than Mirkwood by February, why did they go ahead with a mini-expansion in December instead of a full-sized one now?
Then again, perhaps the revamps of the 40's and 50's suggest that Turbine is not afraid of breaking a few metaphorical content eggs with some redundancy. Either way, the content has been well worth the visit so far (with the caveat that the best stuff starts 50+ levels into the game, a bit removed from newcomers). Time will tell whether this model can ultimately pay off.
I have fallen into a pattern of taking long breaks between sessions of playing Lotro for a few months at a time. The move towards solo-ability suits my play-style and I do appreciate that there is still a decent challenge involved. I do miss grouping - I fondly remember the heady days about a year after launch when the game was over-flowing with un-gated level 50 group content. I am now so far behind the "raiders" in my kin that there is no point in even trying to catch up. They are a friendly helpful bunch and will take the time out to help a straggler through a difficult group quest but I don't like abusing their generosity too much because there is nothing I can hope to give back in return.
ReplyDeleteApologies for the long and rambling comment but I want to talk a bit about the future of the game. While it is important for Turbine to hold on to existing players, in the long run having a steady stream of new players is even more important to the survival game. The lore is a huge advantage at tempting new players to try the game but Turbine has to absolutely ensure that a new player starting today, who perhaps has never played an mmo before has an enjoyable experience even though groups may no longer be available at his or her level. I think they recognise this and the revamps of the lower levels combined with the moves toward soloable (but not trivial) content is the result. I personally would love to see them come up with a clever way of re-connecting newer, slower and more casual players with the hard core achievement focussed raiders but perhaps this is no longer possible.
It is moderately clear that Turbine believes LOTRO has room to grow - I've seen a ton of Moria and Mirkwood advertising on WoW-related sites. Still, even with the (slowly) ongoing revamps, there is a lot of not-so-great quality content in between nearly players and the great-quality content of Mirkwood. Will new players tough it out? Will they be offset by veterans like us who have decided to use LOTRO as a vacation spot rather than a permanent home? That's the question I'm wondering about for the future.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be their new direction, I am looking forward to the next major landmass addition. Till then, there is not much to do.
ReplyDeleteTo speak bluntly, the solo levelling/questing experience in Mirkwood was AWESOME. But the endgame content is 3 instances of which obw, the "farmhall", gets, well, farmed for Dol Guldur medallions. I have too many of them by now.
My kin is not able to raid, and I am no raider anymore either. Running SG and hoping for a Celebrimbor symbol drop is another activity that I could do besides the daily quests. Daily quests are IMO a crap pseudo content idea they unfortunately copied from WoW - doing the two or by now three "star" quests over and over causes me to burn out.
So yeah, I am taking a LOTRO break and playing Star Trek till new content comes along.
I'm happy that Turbine is continuing to revamp old content. There are still book quests I've never gotten done. Even in an established kinship, it's rare that six of us are on the same steps. There are also odd level gaps in the quest chains.
ReplyDeleteA large series of group only quests that have to be done in a particular order just isn't a well thought out design, particularly in an MMO that trys to cater to casual players as much as LoTRO. That's content a big hunk of your playerbase is never going to get through.
I say they are going to make skirmishes dot each of the new books and hopefully they will skirmishify book 1.3 instead of just adding the solo buff. "LFG or forget the plot" will go the way of the dodo eventually. Except if you really want to experience hard content you have to do 6 man CD all the way, or 12 man Rift at lvl 50. Or Dark Delvings... Or just raid where its artificially hard because of dread.
ReplyDeleteMy kin is barely a raiding kin, and on usually a timezone ahead of me so I don't do the raids. In addition the time commitement to raids is usually beyond my ability.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am a HUGE fan of being able to solo the story line! Part of what brings me to this game instead of WOW or other MMORPGs is the lore, the story. I have left the majority of the books unfinished because I could not find a group to finish the group quests with. So I hope they keep this feature, for future expansions.
I also am a little worried about the farming focus in Mirk, with the reputation, the gold stars, the dg coins, etc. While I like the coin feature for armor, I also wish they would do something similar for the 2nd age barter item in SG. When I am lucky enough to PUG through that instance, I have to be even luckier to win the roll on the item. I don't mind rolling for jewlery but the 2nd age barter item is the primary reason to run that instance everyone who completes it should at least be able to earn a something toward the second age and not just the lucky roller.