In LOTRO, level 65 characters have a very limited selection of dungeons - three level-appropriate small group dungeons, a single full group dungeon, and a single raid. The early story of the EQ2 expansion is whether there was enough content to go around in an expansion that launched with fewer zones than the last expansion that raised that game's level cap. In that context, Ferrel asks why it's worth raising the level cap of an MMORPG. After all, these problems can be directly attributed to the fact that raising the cap "dramatically reduces valid and usable content for players at the max level." Why bother if all the developers aren't even going to offer new spells and abilities?
Variety is the enemy of consensus
One of the key reasons why the WoW automated group finder has been successful is that the system specifically pushes players to agree to run a random dungeon. If there are three players in the queue who insist on one dungeon, a single player who demands a second, and a third player who will only join something else, no one gets a group. The random dungeon finder may compromise on a dungeon that NONE of these players would have chosen on their own, but at least they're doing something instead of sitting around waiting for a queue to pop.
In games that do not have such a system in place yet, variety is the enemy of players ever actually getting to do anything that requires a group. The more options, the harder it will be to broker a compromise group. On top of that, player preferences will rapidly trend towards the dungeon that offers the best reward/time ratio, leaving the rest of the content underused and hard to find a group to complete.
This problem is further exacerbated by the not-so-horizontal progression that is the gear grind. Players have repeatedly demonstrated extremely limited interest in running content that does not offer their characters gear upgrades. So-called casual raiding guilds, whose less strict requirements are more likely to result in players with a wide range of dedication/attendance, are especially likely to get hit with this problem. The leading edge of the guild finishes a dungeon and decides that they don't want to waste progression time by leaving it on the calendar, as the lagging edge of the guild protests that they still need the old dungeon for the gear upgrades. Outside of guilds, this manifests itself in the form of demanding group members who overgear the instance in question to ensure a quick and smooth ride to the finish.
Ask not what your newbie can do for you...
What brings this issue to the top of developers' priority lists is the plight of the newbie. Players are especially disinterested in running content that their characters do not need for complete strangers. New players, unless they were brought directly into a guild by offline friends, are strangers to everyone on the server.
Ask yourself a question: how many hours in the last week have you devoted to running content that does not offer you personally any rewards with one or more complete strangers in your group? If your answer is non-zero, is it typical of your guild? Your server? If you (yes you personally) answered zero, then why should anyone else devote more time?
At the end of the day, telling players to be patient with camping the LFG channels all day in the hopes of finding a group that will not throw them out over their gear is not a viable solution to the problem of getting newbies ready for group content. I've spent entire evenings on such efforts, and it's really not any fun. The two options that developers have tried to date to try and cut down the size of this mountain are literal bribes (as with WoW's dungeon finder) to make raiders want to run the trivial content, or a deliberately induced bottleneck.
If you increase the cap and only have half a dozen dungeons available at the new one, everyone - veteran, alt, and newbie - ends up in those few dungeons, dramatically reducing the time it takes to get consensus on a dungeon run. That, more than anything else, is why games raise the level cap and remove content from circulation, even at times when they do not have enough content. Players will not take care of the newbie unless they are forced to, and that tragedy of the commons would ultimately leave group content to wither and die as players who leave through attrition cannot be replaced.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Automated Holiday Cheer-Finder
WoW.com made an interesting catch regarding WoW's temporary holiday bosses.
Remaking the Rare Holiday Loot Pinata
Currently, players must find a group for each boss the old-fashioned way (they tend to live in under-leveled dungeons, which max-level players cannot queue for in the LFG system). Once you get there, each player in the group, presuming that no one lies (you can verify this by checking your quest log to see how many groupmates also have the appropriate quest), can spawn the boss once for everyone's killing and looting pleasure. This would have caused problems for the random group finder, which does not currently screen out players based on who has or has not done a given daily quest.
With the change, the holiday bosses will be available ONLY via the dungeon finder (can't have a level 80 boss up and running in a level 26 dungeon once you remove the spawn quest). As with the emblems for completing daily dungeons (and soon battlegrounds), players will receive a special reward on their first kill of the boss per day - a bag with a chance to drop the rare loot formerly held by the boss.
Instead of five shots at a five-way roll against your group, you will now have one shot at loot that is guaranteed to be yours. Statistically, it's probably pretty close to a wash, unless you were sneaking in more than five boss kills per day by some method (such as agreeing to tank or heal for a desperate group, with the understanding that you had already used your summons). It also has the side effect of reducing the sheer number of the boss' common loot drops (such as necklaces, trinkets, etc) that enter the world, as most players will only kill and loot the boss for their regular loot once a day - I think I ended up with the complete set of trinkets from Coren Direbrew last brewfest, including the melee ones on my decidedly non-melee mage.
Philosophical Implications
Beyond logistical convenience, the first thing that jumps out at me about this change is that it drastically reduces the penalty for failing the encounter. Under the old system, once you verified that everyone had their summons, it was in your best interest to quietly sit back and let someone else go first. That way, if your group proved incapable of beating the encounter and disbanded immediately, your summon would still be available.
Under the new system, the group can simply try, try again until they get it right. This could be viewed as reducing the already-low difficulty of the holiday bosses, or it could allow Blizzard to crank up the difficulty a bit more without unduly penalizing that hapless first player.
More broadly speaking, there is a clear message that WoW players now expect the convenience of the automated dungeon finder to come standard with as much content as possible. This is understandable, but how will it play with the system's general push towards easy content (to alleviate players' fears of fail pugs)? I'm not convinced that holiday events really are the place for difficult encounters, when they are already limited by both time and the random number generator to begin with, but what about elsewhere in the game?
At the risk of repeating myself, it is going to be very interesting how Blizzard balances the level 85 heroics when Cataclysm arrives.
Remaking the Rare Holiday Loot Pinata
Currently, players must find a group for each boss the old-fashioned way (they tend to live in under-leveled dungeons, which max-level players cannot queue for in the LFG system). Once you get there, each player in the group, presuming that no one lies (you can verify this by checking your quest log to see how many groupmates also have the appropriate quest), can spawn the boss once for everyone's killing and looting pleasure. This would have caused problems for the random group finder, which does not currently screen out players based on who has or has not done a given daily quest.
With the change, the holiday bosses will be available ONLY via the dungeon finder (can't have a level 80 boss up and running in a level 26 dungeon once you remove the spawn quest). As with the emblems for completing daily dungeons (and soon battlegrounds), players will receive a special reward on their first kill of the boss per day - a bag with a chance to drop the rare loot formerly held by the boss.
Instead of five shots at a five-way roll against your group, you will now have one shot at loot that is guaranteed to be yours. Statistically, it's probably pretty close to a wash, unless you were sneaking in more than five boss kills per day by some method (such as agreeing to tank or heal for a desperate group, with the understanding that you had already used your summons). It also has the side effect of reducing the sheer number of the boss' common loot drops (such as necklaces, trinkets, etc) that enter the world, as most players will only kill and loot the boss for their regular loot once a day - I think I ended up with the complete set of trinkets from Coren Direbrew last brewfest, including the melee ones on my decidedly non-melee mage.
Philosophical Implications
Beyond logistical convenience, the first thing that jumps out at me about this change is that it drastically reduces the penalty for failing the encounter. Under the old system, once you verified that everyone had their summons, it was in your best interest to quietly sit back and let someone else go first. That way, if your group proved incapable of beating the encounter and disbanded immediately, your summon would still be available.
Under the new system, the group can simply try, try again until they get it right. This could be viewed as reducing the already-low difficulty of the holiday bosses, or it could allow Blizzard to crank up the difficulty a bit more without unduly penalizing that hapless first player.
More broadly speaking, there is a clear message that WoW players now expect the convenience of the automated dungeon finder to come standard with as much content as possible. This is understandable, but how will it play with the system's general push towards easy content (to alleviate players' fears of fail pugs)? I'm not convinced that holiday events really are the place for difficult encounters, when they are already limited by both time and the random number generator to begin with, but what about elsewhere in the game?
At the risk of repeating myself, it is going to be very interesting how Blizzard balances the level 85 heroics when Cataclysm arrives.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Item Store Games Are Supposed To Require Item Store Purchases
Syp has a comprehensive roundup of the blog reaction to the Allods Online cash store. To recap in extreme brief, Allods is a pure free-to-play (no box fee, no subscription, just an item store) game that was getting very good buzz until the game's item store prices turned out to be an order of magnitude higher than expected - for example, an absurd $20 for a six-slot upgrade to your bag space.
This incident may or may not do irreparable damage to the game's word of mouth. Publishers can try price tag brinksmanship, but it may not be forgiven, even if prices are later reduced. The bigger story, though, is that there was a giant red flag that should have warned players that something would have to change.
You know your item shop is broken when....
Buried in Keen's recap of the incident is the admission that, as of the patch before the sticker shock and awe, there was no need for players to actually purchase anything from the cash store to complete all of the content in the game. That's a big problem.
Though it's technically possible to build a free to play game in which 99% of the players decline to pay, I'd suggest that this would not be a game worth playing. A game in which 1% pay is a game in which 1% of the players matter. If they want fluffy cosmetic pets, that's where development will head. Hardcore raids? Expect the hardest of the hardcore raids anyone has ever seen. Whatever the specifics, the end result will be a game that will, by design, not cater to the overwhelming majority of its playerbase. That might sound fine if you think you can squeeze yourself into the 1%, but why not just make it a niche subscription game and cut out all the middlemen? (This might, in hindsight, be what happened to Free Realms.)
The most equitable way to implement an item shop is to design it as effectively an hourly fee. You might allow players to "pay" in time (grinding in-game currency to trade to cash-payers for items, or somehow toughing it out without the use of items at some greatly reduced rate), but everyone must pay somehow. Everyone has room to win under this model - the infrequent player gets a top-notch product without having to pay the full monthly fee, while the hardcore player knows that their voice actually does carry more weight.
Where should the price tag lie?
The irony is, if you look beyond the absurd bag upgrade, Allods might not have been as far off as you'd think. Keen estimates that serious raiding/PVP would rack up a $50-75 monthly bill. That's probably double what it should be, but - if the game actually delivers (which its fans seemed to think that it did until this week) - it's not a 10-fold overcharge. If the market standard is that everyone pays $15/month, there should be a niche for a product that comes in the $20-25 range for players in the top tier of content, with service to match. If anything, it's better to put the prices at the highest rate you can imagine and then lower them than establish a price point and have to raise it later.
Whether the damage has already been done is a separate question - this incident is more than enough to kick Allods to the bottom of my list, for "wait and see how this shakes out before wasting any time on it". That's unfortunate, because they might have gotten more right than the market gives them credit for.
This incident may or may not do irreparable damage to the game's word of mouth. Publishers can try price tag brinksmanship, but it may not be forgiven, even if prices are later reduced. The bigger story, though, is that there was a giant red flag that should have warned players that something would have to change.
You know your item shop is broken when....
Buried in Keen's recap of the incident is the admission that, as of the patch before the sticker shock and awe, there was no need for players to actually purchase anything from the cash store to complete all of the content in the game. That's a big problem.
Though it's technically possible to build a free to play game in which 99% of the players decline to pay, I'd suggest that this would not be a game worth playing. A game in which 1% pay is a game in which 1% of the players matter. If they want fluffy cosmetic pets, that's where development will head. Hardcore raids? Expect the hardest of the hardcore raids anyone has ever seen. Whatever the specifics, the end result will be a game that will, by design, not cater to the overwhelming majority of its playerbase. That might sound fine if you think you can squeeze yourself into the 1%, but why not just make it a niche subscription game and cut out all the middlemen? (This might, in hindsight, be what happened to Free Realms.)
The most equitable way to implement an item shop is to design it as effectively an hourly fee. You might allow players to "pay" in time (grinding in-game currency to trade to cash-payers for items, or somehow toughing it out without the use of items at some greatly reduced rate), but everyone must pay somehow. Everyone has room to win under this model - the infrequent player gets a top-notch product without having to pay the full monthly fee, while the hardcore player knows that their voice actually does carry more weight.
Where should the price tag lie?
The irony is, if you look beyond the absurd bag upgrade, Allods might not have been as far off as you'd think. Keen estimates that serious raiding/PVP would rack up a $50-75 monthly bill. That's probably double what it should be, but - if the game actually delivers (which its fans seemed to think that it did until this week) - it's not a 10-fold overcharge. If the market standard is that everyone pays $15/month, there should be a niche for a product that comes in the $20-25 range for players in the top tier of content, with service to match. If anything, it's better to put the prices at the highest rate you can imagine and then lower them than establish a price point and have to raise it later.
Whether the damage has already been done is a separate question - this incident is more than enough to kick Allods to the bottom of my list, for "wait and see how this shakes out before wasting any time on it". That's unfortunate, because they might have gotten more right than the market gives them credit for.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The WoW Dungeon Finder And Future Difficulty
Tobold writes about the second demise of Naxxramas. Structurally, nothing about the dungeon has changed or broken since its heyday a year ago, when even non-raiders like myself were pugging it. Its current disuse is purely a failure of the incentive curve.
Easier 5-man content currently gives equal or superior rewards. Because the only real penalty for failure in a MMORPG is loss of time, choosing to do something that offers sub-optimal returns for your time means that you have already failed, even if nothing else goes wrong.
The Leeching System
The dirty little secret of WoW's dungeon finder is that the system is built on trivializing content. Icecrown raiders can easily triple the DPS I was doing a year ago when I cleared all the heroics for the first time, so even a single raider can literally carry two empty slots' worth of DPS through a five man group. Tobold himself titled a post describing the system "Sometimes you just have to leech" just a week ago.
But why would overgeared players want to do this? The answer is that they didn't until Blizzard offered rewards that were absurdly out of line with the difficulty of the content. This simultaneously made success worth the raider's time and nigh-guaranteed success by ensuring that groups would be filled with at least some similarly overgeared players.
Both side of this equation are crucial - without rewards, players won't want to run content, but it doesn't matter how good the rewards are if players believe that the attempt to get them won't be successful. This was the problem that made Blizzard attempt to raise the ante for the unpopular Oculus.
(The same principle holds true for leveling dungeons - players aren't as likely to massively overgear these dungeons if they don't have heirlooms, but character power has increased significantly since 2004 due to more powerful talents, glyphs, etc. The result is that appropriately leveled characters are more powerful than launch-era dungeons were balanced for, especially if you consider that players who voluntarily opt into group content repeatedly when they could solo instead are likely more experienced and competent at running in groups.)
Implications for Cataclysm
Tobold says that the current massive rewards for use of the group system were necessary only to convince players to give the new system a try. I am less convinced. There was a non-trivial period of time (at a minimum, the entire 3.2 era) in which it was very hard to get groups for 5-man content, even though that content was likely to be easily cleared, because none of the rewards were relevant to current tier raiders.
Raiders are generally among the most active group players in WoW, and I am not convinced that the current level of demand for the dungeon system is sustainable if Blizzard fails to provide motivation for raiders to participate. The random dungeon rewards in Cataclysm will certainly start at least a tier below the top raid rewards at launch, but I would be very surprised to see them stay there beyond the expansion's first content patch (or, at most, two patches in). The bigger concern is that, as I mentioned above, there's a second side to the effort-reward equation. It does not matter how good the potential rewards are if players are not confident that they will receive them.
The real test of the automatic group finder will be seeing how it tolerates the early months of the expansion, when few players will be overgeared, making the content relatively more difficult. The dungeon finder may have expanded the demographics of players interested in group content, but many of those players now equate dungeons with quick, easy, and highly rewarding content. Blizzard will have a lot of unhappy players on their hands if the competent players that make the current ease of the dungeon system possible decide that only pre-made groups are viable due to the increased relative difficulty of the content.
Easier 5-man content currently gives equal or superior rewards. Because the only real penalty for failure in a MMORPG is loss of time, choosing to do something that offers sub-optimal returns for your time means that you have already failed, even if nothing else goes wrong.
The Leeching System
The dirty little secret of WoW's dungeon finder is that the system is built on trivializing content. Icecrown raiders can easily triple the DPS I was doing a year ago when I cleared all the heroics for the first time, so even a single raider can literally carry two empty slots' worth of DPS through a five man group. Tobold himself titled a post describing the system "Sometimes you just have to leech" just a week ago.
But why would overgeared players want to do this? The answer is that they didn't until Blizzard offered rewards that were absurdly out of line with the difficulty of the content. This simultaneously made success worth the raider's time and nigh-guaranteed success by ensuring that groups would be filled with at least some similarly overgeared players.
Both side of this equation are crucial - without rewards, players won't want to run content, but it doesn't matter how good the rewards are if players believe that the attempt to get them won't be successful. This was the problem that made Blizzard attempt to raise the ante for the unpopular Oculus.
(The same principle holds true for leveling dungeons - players aren't as likely to massively overgear these dungeons if they don't have heirlooms, but character power has increased significantly since 2004 due to more powerful talents, glyphs, etc. The result is that appropriately leveled characters are more powerful than launch-era dungeons were balanced for, especially if you consider that players who voluntarily opt into group content repeatedly when they could solo instead are likely more experienced and competent at running in groups.)
Implications for Cataclysm
Tobold says that the current massive rewards for use of the group system were necessary only to convince players to give the new system a try. I am less convinced. There was a non-trivial period of time (at a minimum, the entire 3.2 era) in which it was very hard to get groups for 5-man content, even though that content was likely to be easily cleared, because none of the rewards were relevant to current tier raiders.
Raiders are generally among the most active group players in WoW, and I am not convinced that the current level of demand for the dungeon system is sustainable if Blizzard fails to provide motivation for raiders to participate. The random dungeon rewards in Cataclysm will certainly start at least a tier below the top raid rewards at launch, but I would be very surprised to see them stay there beyond the expansion's first content patch (or, at most, two patches in). The bigger concern is that, as I mentioned above, there's a second side to the effort-reward equation. It does not matter how good the potential rewards are if players are not confident that they will receive them.
The real test of the automatic group finder will be seeing how it tolerates the early months of the expansion, when few players will be overgeared, making the content relatively more difficult. The dungeon finder may have expanded the demographics of players interested in group content, but many of those players now equate dungeons with quick, easy, and highly rewarding content. Blizzard will have a lot of unhappy players on their hands if the competent players that make the current ease of the dungeon system possible decide that only pre-made groups are viable due to the increased relative difficulty of the content.
Future Proofing Expansion Experience Curves
EQ2 got its latest expansion on Tuesday, which meant that, inevitably, it got its first characters to reach the new level cap (90) on Tuesday.
This isn't especially unique to EQ2, even if the time involved was unusually short (reportedly as low as three hours after the servers came up) due to some of the game's quirks. First off, there are seventy five slots in player quest logs, not counting collection quests. This allowed players to "bank" an unusually large amount of exp to redeem immediately on launch day. On top of that, there are a variety of experience bonuses (recruit a friend, paid exp potions, and unpaid veteran reward exp potions) that are fair game even on expansion launch day. All of these added up to some very quick leveling.
Personally, I picked up nearly half a level in an extended launch night session. Judging from past experience, I will probably hit level 90 in about a month and be "done" with the solo quests, tradeskills, and reputations for Lyriana in around two months (plus or minus depending on workload and how beefy LOTRO's Volume III patch ends up being). That would put this expansion approximately on par with the time I've spent on other recent AAA expansions (WoW's Wrath, and LOTRO's Moria expansion), before working on alts or serious "endgame" content.
How long should an expansion run?
Though a single month or two may seem short, even in the context of an expansion every year, it's worth remembering that this figure represents a month just to get from the old cap to the new one. If you're joining the game from scratch, as I did about a year ago, you've got far more time ahead of you before you get to the level ranges where most of the players are.
Where you could make an argument is for a slightly tougher experience curve at launch and reduced requirements as the expansion ages (especially if the next EQ2 expansion does not increase the level cap - the game has only been raising the cap every other expansion for a few years now). However, what purpose would that really serve?
Having the steepest experience requirements on launch day, which is typically when there will be the least content available, runs the risk of leaving players without enough to do. Indeed, SOE had to spend a significant amount of time this patch adding content to the 60's because that level range relied too heavily on group content that players can no longer count on being able to complete. Moreover, if you ultimately do opt to speed the leveling curve at a later date, your latecomers may actually end up at a disadvantage in terms of less time to obtain gear and cash before their next level.
At the end of the day, experience levels are an arbitrary number. What matters is whether the expansion provides players, of whatever level, with enough to do.
This isn't especially unique to EQ2, even if the time involved was unusually short (reportedly as low as three hours after the servers came up) due to some of the game's quirks. First off, there are seventy five slots in player quest logs, not counting collection quests. This allowed players to "bank" an unusually large amount of exp to redeem immediately on launch day. On top of that, there are a variety of experience bonuses (recruit a friend, paid exp potions, and unpaid veteran reward exp potions) that are fair game even on expansion launch day. All of these added up to some very quick leveling.
Personally, I picked up nearly half a level in an extended launch night session. Judging from past experience, I will probably hit level 90 in about a month and be "done" with the solo quests, tradeskills, and reputations for Lyriana in around two months (plus or minus depending on workload and how beefy LOTRO's Volume III patch ends up being). That would put this expansion approximately on par with the time I've spent on other recent AAA expansions (WoW's Wrath, and LOTRO's Moria expansion), before working on alts or serious "endgame" content.
How long should an expansion run?
Though a single month or two may seem short, even in the context of an expansion every year, it's worth remembering that this figure represents a month just to get from the old cap to the new one. If you're joining the game from scratch, as I did about a year ago, you've got far more time ahead of you before you get to the level ranges where most of the players are.
Where you could make an argument is for a slightly tougher experience curve at launch and reduced requirements as the expansion ages (especially if the next EQ2 expansion does not increase the level cap - the game has only been raising the cap every other expansion for a few years now). However, what purpose would that really serve?
Having the steepest experience requirements on launch day, which is typically when there will be the least content available, runs the risk of leaving players without enough to do. Indeed, SOE had to spend a significant amount of time this patch adding content to the 60's because that level range relied too heavily on group content that players can no longer count on being able to complete. Moreover, if you ultimately do opt to speed the leveling curve at a later date, your latecomers may actually end up at a disadvantage in terms of less time to obtain gear and cash before their next level.
At the end of the day, experience levels are an arbitrary number. What matters is whether the expansion provides players, of whatever level, with enough to do.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Battle For the 70%
Much digital ink was spilled last week over the revelation that only 30% of WoW's free trial accounts reach level 10. Like Elder Game, I find that number remarkable only in that it is surprisingly high. Even if you presume that security lockdowns have made the accounts unpalatable to spammers, and ignore the occasional throwaway account for non-newbies (I once made a trial account just to invite my alts to my bank alt guild) there has to be some portion of potential players who just aren't as interested in a 3rd person MMORPG.
More interesting, though, is the apparent belief amongst the major games that this number can be improved. Blizzard's Cataclysm expansion will deliver less new solo content for max level solo characters, to free up dev time for that old world revamp. Turbine has Orion steadily working away at revising the game's entire array of launch content. SOE made a new starting area - the game's sixth - and revisions from 20-70 a priority on its expansion plate, though the new area ultimately failed to make the expansion launch.
None of these measures are purely for the benefit of newbies - veterans who choose to make a new alt pay the same monthly fee that brand new accounts do. Likewise, a steady stream of new players may be necessary to keep endgame group content viable. Even so, none of these measures are without cost - specifically the opportunity cost of working on older areas over new content for existing characters.
Setting a revamp of old leveling content as a priority ultimately represents a bet that this will be the best use of the studio's limited time, even though many of them pointedly have NOT been focusing on early game content over the years until now. I don't know whether it will ultimately work out, but this battle over the 70% of players who wander off sooner rather than later is rapidly shaping up to be the major trend of 2010.
More interesting, though, is the apparent belief amongst the major games that this number can be improved. Blizzard's Cataclysm expansion will deliver less new solo content for max level solo characters, to free up dev time for that old world revamp. Turbine has Orion steadily working away at revising the game's entire array of launch content. SOE made a new starting area - the game's sixth - and revisions from 20-70 a priority on its expansion plate, though the new area ultimately failed to make the expansion launch.
None of these measures are purely for the benefit of newbies - veterans who choose to make a new alt pay the same monthly fee that brand new accounts do. Likewise, a steady stream of new players may be necessary to keep endgame group content viable. Even so, none of these measures are without cost - specifically the opportunity cost of working on older areas over new content for existing characters.
Setting a revamp of old leveling content as a priority ultimately represents a bet that this will be the best use of the studio's limited time, even though many of them pointedly have NOT been focusing on early game content over the years until now. I don't know whether it will ultimately work out, but this battle over the 70% of players who wander off sooner rather than later is rapidly shaping up to be the major trend of 2010.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Turbine Asks An Obvious Question on LOTRO Legendary Items
Turbine has a "tell the community team" exercise up on their forums, with a focus on changes to the legendary item system.
It's a strange exercise for two reasons. First, usually game devs (including Turbine's, on recent podcast interviews) tell players to tell them the problem and let the devs do the job of finding the solution. Second, and more to the point, the entire questionnaire seems a bit disingenuous.
The overwhelmingly most popular complaint is that the system places more emphasis on being an unending timesink than either gameplay or lore. Middle Earth is a world where characters (both Tolkein's and Turbine originals) carry their named weapons until the day they die. Basically all of the suggestions boil down to "less randomization" and "don't require players to replace their items". Judging from the way the questions are phrased (and how Turbine has developed the system over time) an overhaul of this magnitude simply isn't on the table. It sounds like they're actually looking for "what minor and easy things, like letting you make your weapons green, can we do to make you happier about the fundamentals of our legendary timesink?"
That said, those who don't vote don't get counted, so here's my attempt at playing along with their rules.
________________________________________
Question 1
You are given the opportunity to make two changes to the Legendary Item System. What are the two most important changes you would make? Please limit your answer to only two changes.
A) Deconstructing a legendary item should return most or all of the scrolls used to enhance it (level/legacy increases). The amount of player time investment returned when replacing a weapon is inappropriate given the frequency with which weapons are designed to be replaced, and serves as a disincentive to using the system.
B) Slayer Titles should have a separate slot from damage type titles. For me personally, the handicap of being stuck doing common damage against all other creatures is enough to prevent me from ever using single creature type bonus scrolls.
Question 2
Name two things about the Legendary Item System you enjoy the most.
1. The concept of making customization choices that have a meaningful impact on characters. It would be nice if the system was more about "what do you want to improve" and less about "what did you get lucky enough to get".
2. Use of barter systems for obtaining LI's and upgrades. This allows players to choose how they want to work on their LI, and provides a way of rewarding players for running dungeons with their friends.
Question 3
A two part question!
Name three things you enjoy most about LOTRO.
1. Solo questing (especially the epic book storylines!)
2. Exploration (the landscapes are excellent)
3. Skirmishes (convenience, accessibility, and variety)
Name three things you enjoy the least or do not participate in.
1. Travel times. The amount of time players are expected to non-interactively watch characters travel is unreasonably high given the frequency with which players are asked to travel, and is a big reason why I have never been interested in making alts. I didn't like the Hunter class best at launch, and always felt that I was being punished with long travel times for not finding a way to make that class work for me just for access to teleport abilities.
2. Crafting. The amount of time spent non-interactively watching the progress bar advance is unreasonable given the number of combines needed to advance your crafting, and the items that you produce in the process of doing so are virtually unsaleable because everyone else is also making dozens of the same items.
3. The fact that the last quest in the extremely lengthy solo Evendim/Anduril line requires a group. Cheers to Orion for revamping Volume 1 to allow solo players to complete the content. I hope he will finish Volume 2, and tackle this supremely irritating quest in Evendim. Mixing solo and group content in the same questline is never fun for either type of player, and it becomes especially problematic when we're talking about content at the very end of the level range for a zone - the only players ready to complete the instance don't have anything else to do in the area while they look for groups.
It's a strange exercise for two reasons. First, usually game devs (including Turbine's, on recent podcast interviews) tell players to tell them the problem and let the devs do the job of finding the solution. Second, and more to the point, the entire questionnaire seems a bit disingenuous.
The overwhelmingly most popular complaint is that the system places more emphasis on being an unending timesink than either gameplay or lore. Middle Earth is a world where characters (both Tolkein's and Turbine originals) carry their named weapons until the day they die. Basically all of the suggestions boil down to "less randomization" and "don't require players to replace their items". Judging from the way the questions are phrased (and how Turbine has developed the system over time) an overhaul of this magnitude simply isn't on the table. It sounds like they're actually looking for "what minor and easy things, like letting you make your weapons green, can we do to make you happier about the fundamentals of our legendary timesink?"
That said, those who don't vote don't get counted, so here's my attempt at playing along with their rules.
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Question 1
You are given the opportunity to make two changes to the Legendary Item System. What are the two most important changes you would make? Please limit your answer to only two changes.
A) Deconstructing a legendary item should return most or all of the scrolls used to enhance it (level/legacy increases). The amount of player time investment returned when replacing a weapon is inappropriate given the frequency with which weapons are designed to be replaced, and serves as a disincentive to using the system.
B) Slayer Titles should have a separate slot from damage type titles. For me personally, the handicap of being stuck doing common damage against all other creatures is enough to prevent me from ever using single creature type bonus scrolls.
Question 2
Name two things about the Legendary Item System you enjoy the most.
1. The concept of making customization choices that have a meaningful impact on characters. It would be nice if the system was more about "what do you want to improve" and less about "what did you get lucky enough to get".
2. Use of barter systems for obtaining LI's and upgrades. This allows players to choose how they want to work on their LI, and provides a way of rewarding players for running dungeons with their friends.
Question 3
A two part question!
Name three things you enjoy most about LOTRO.
1. Solo questing (especially the epic book storylines!)
2. Exploration (the landscapes are excellent)
3. Skirmishes (convenience, accessibility, and variety)
Name three things you enjoy the least or do not participate in.
1. Travel times. The amount of time players are expected to non-interactively watch characters travel is unreasonably high given the frequency with which players are asked to travel, and is a big reason why I have never been interested in making alts. I didn't like the Hunter class best at launch, and always felt that I was being punished with long travel times for not finding a way to make that class work for me just for access to teleport abilities.
2. Crafting. The amount of time spent non-interactively watching the progress bar advance is unreasonable given the number of combines needed to advance your crafting, and the items that you produce in the process of doing so are virtually unsaleable because everyone else is also making dozens of the same items.
3. The fact that the last quest in the extremely lengthy solo Evendim/Anduril line requires a group. Cheers to Orion for revamping Volume 1 to allow solo players to complete the content. I hope he will finish Volume 2, and tackle this supremely irritating quest in Evendim. Mixing solo and group content in the same questline is never fun for either type of player, and it becomes especially problematic when we're talking about content at the very end of the level range for a zone - the only players ready to complete the instance don't have anything else to do in the area while they look for groups.
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