Talk to the Community Team 08/06/09

[Faya]

It's time to talk to the Community Team!

How it works:

We'll be asking you questions, and here in our thread, you tell us: What comes to mind; what you think; how you feel; etc, as it relates to the question(s) at hand.


Ground Rules:

Before we get started, let's lay down three ground rules if you're going to participate in the thread. These ground rules also have a few samples to help clarify participation:


#1 - The single most important rule to remember while participating in this thread is:

No personal attacks.

If you disagree with the opinion of another participant, that's fine, but no one can make anyone agree to their opinion. Thus, please refrain from commenting on the personal qualities of others who offer their responses to the question(s). Personal attacks go against forum guidelines. Questions asked will be subjective, and some users will have a lot to say related to their opinion, while others may only define things in short phrases. All forms are acceptable.
Hypothetical Example:
Faya "Do you like ice cream?"
Player 1 "I hate ice cream because it's too tough to scoop"
Acceptable "I like it. It's not that bad to scoop once you let it sit on the counter for a little bit before you try to dip it Player 1."
Acceptable "I like it but I have the same problem as Player 1. What brand is it Player 1?"
Acceptable "I don't think it's too hard, I never have any problem with it. I like ice cream."
Unacceptable "That's cause you're a noob..."
Unacceptable "You don't have enough experience with scooping to be talking about how difficult it is"
Unacceptable "How about you back that opinion up with some numbers. If you can't prove it don't bring it here"

Everyone has the right to offer their response to the question(s), whether they have scientific data to back up their feelings, or they simply just "feel" a certain way towards the question(s).


#2 - Participate as well as discuss.

If you would like to join in the discussion, please be sure to offer your response to the questions as well, in addition to your conversation with any other thread participants
Hypothetical Example:
Faya "What's your favourite colour?"
Player 1 "Blue"
Player 2 "Green"
Acceptable "Purple... hey Player 2, how come you like Green?"
Unacceptable "hey Player 2 how come you like Green?"

Please be sure to take the time to offer your own opinion of the question(s) before you engage in a discussion about other people's opinions in the thread.


#3 - Don't recycle the above hypothetical examples in your responses as it spams the thread.

-------------------------- Let's Get Started! --------------------------

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?

2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?

[Silirien]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?
If I would to answer about the aesthetics (hail LotRO art team!), I like Evendim and Lothlorien the most, while disliking Angmar for it's barren wastes. But that's how it was supposed to be, so in the end... well... art team has done a great job!

When it comes to content, I must say I dislike the most... Lothlorien. Too much grind for reputation, for items... And too many solo quests. Maybe it's due to the fact that White Forrest has been opened way after Mines themselves, if they were open simultaneously, it would make for a great haven and place to rest from all that heavy content, but as it cme out, it was just a week+ of soloing in MMO game... Not good. Grind in general simply, not good.

The zone I like the most: I must say it's quite hard to say... But I think Eregion, it has a good ballance between solo and fellowship quests, a lot of things to discover for both Tolkien fans and regular players.

2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?
Legendary Items grind..!
I don't mind leveling my weapons, but getting decent ones is simply impossible with the odds. The reforge mechanism on one hand helps as you can add legacies to LIs and upgrade them, but on the other is even more frustrating because you have no control over what will be added.
Also relic system is way too grindy. Turbine dev said somewhere that "it takes just 3xx t1 weapons to deconstruct to get t8 relic". Well if that's your idea of 'just'... please take into consideration that it takes 10s to identify an item, 1s to deconstruct it, and than many silver to combine relics. Apart from getting those 3xx items (just... lol...), you need like 5g to achieve that! And than, when you finally get to t8, you get an useless relic. Or two useless relics. And when you combine the two, you get just one back and guess what, it can be the exact same you just combined, so you'll just loose out on one! ...
Also, deconstructing higher level weapons should be more rewarding. No matter what lvl weapon you deconstruct, t4 relics is as far as you get. It doesnt make sense if I can get same amount of same tier relics from deconstructing 3 lvl 2 LIs (that take one mob to kill to lvl them to lvl 2) or a lvl 30 LI that I was leveling up for weeks!

I have many ideas on how to revamp LIs. Best idea imho would be something Turbine already said they will not do, namely changing the system completely. I think the best way would be to remove legacies tiers 1-3 and just leave 3-6 in and to let us choose from among all the remaining legacies upon reforge. Or give us a different possibility to add exactly the legacies we desire to our weapons.

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities (e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?
I'm not fun of Fluff much... I don't mind but I just don't have time for them. But I'd like to see more cosmetic options!

Hmm, how about... a Hobbit NPC theater showing up some pieces from time to time on that big stage near.. I think it was Hobbiton?

[cameltosis]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?


Zone I enjoy the most is the north downs. Theres tons of quests and what not, but the difficulty of the area caters for everyone! Theres a lot of really easy quests from all the main quest hubs, plus some easy fellowship quests to get people used to grouping up, but it also gets quite a bit more difficult when u head to Dol Dinen, and later to fornost. Mostly though, I love the north downs for the scenary. The place looks amazing, some really diverse areas, but most of all its colourful, not dreary and depressing. Shame some of the quests and mobs got nerfed, but its still a nice place.

Zone I like the least is the lone lands. I've never liked this zone, its dull and dreary, the mobs arent interesting, the landscape is pretty aweful. There are too many killing boars quests too, and boars are often (during peak times) hard to find which is a pain. Also, you nerfed Retake Weathertop, probably one of my favourite instances in the whole game! Cant forgive you for that, especially as it was the one redeeming feature of the lone lands and now its too easy to give u any sense of accomplishment.


2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

Legendary Items. As im sure many have already pointed out on both sides of the pond, and as many will no doubt point out in this thread, its just too random to be enjoyable. If you get a bad ID on a LI, then ur stuck with a bad weapon.

You can make the changes as big or as small as you want to legendary weapons. My immediate suggestion would be that, upon each reforge, you can choose to "re-roll" legacies that you dont like. What would happen is, for example, you'd select "+% bleed damage" as a legacie you'd like to replace with ur reforge. You reforge your weapon, and that bad legacy gets replaced by a random one from the remaining legacies available for your weapon. Might mean u end up with another bad legacy, but at least every weapon then has minimum 5 chances for getting the legacies u want.

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?


Hobnanigans!!!!
More chicken stuff (please let me take my chicken to teh moors!)
More shire drinking
Pub crawl races against other players
Music lessons (most people dont know much about music in lotro - myself included)
Something to do with housing

[Scappydog]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most?

Any of the big open air zones, but if pushed Forochel. A beautifully scenic area with a good set of quests.

Which do you enjoy the least?

Mines of Moria.

Although the graphics are very well done, for me it just doesn't fit the picture I had in my head of what Moria would look like. To much went wrong with the whole game design here, monster types, rideable goats, armour designs etc. It destroyed the feeling that I was in Middle Earth and hence the reason I was enjoying this game so much.


2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

Torn between two, the Crafting and LI systems, but since I find the LI system so badly implemented, I will pick that. Crafting could I think be easily sorted, but the LI system needs a major rethink and total reworking.

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?

I'm not a 'Fluff' lover and would rather Developer time be spent on other areas of the game which I consider to be a higher priority, but I know many others enjoy it and will have some good ideas.

[Callia]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?

The zone I enjoy the most is undoubtably The Shire. It's very pretty, filled with Hobbits, and most of the quests are helping them just get on with things, rather than generic 'kill an arbitrary number of something' quests. Also, there's a lot of humour in The Shire.

If instances count as zones, then the ones I enjoy least are all the 'solo-only' instances in Moria, purely because of the solo-only flag. The instances themselves are fine, I just hate soloing, I like playing my three. Drop the 'solo-only' flag, and I wouldn't have an issue with them.

If you want actual zones, then Forochel (and the newer, eastern part of Misty Mountains), purely because of the snowstorms. They give me a headache, so I tend to avoid them. If I had the option to turn off the snowstorm effect, then I wouldn't have an issue with them.

2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

The Legendary system. Sorry, really not a fan of all the randomness and reliance on luck.

Instead, I'd much rather see us 'find' (in an instanced quest) an ancient weapon, which we can then earn points to customise as we wish. We should be able to put almost anything on there, but at rapidly increasing cost and huge limits. Thus we could build a good weapon in a month, a great weapon in a few months, but to get a truly Legendary weapon could take years. Each subsequent expansion would add more things we could add to the weapon, to keep the system going.

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?

I'd most likely be interested in any fluff you added, I have been so far 8-)

The main 'fluff' activity I'd be interested in though would be a greatly expanded housing system (see here). The current system has been a lot of fun, and I've poured months into it, but it could be so much better 8-)

Fluff that then plays into the Housing system (and the Cosmetic system) would be wonderful. Non-combat stuff that just rewards decorations and outfits, for example:-

A long, rambling 'treasure hunt' type quest to find all the bits of a suit of armour, which are scattered across the world. Rewards a housing decoration.

A similar treasure hunt for the pieces of a pattern. Rewards a cosmetic outfit (ideally a pretty dress!)

The ability to tame certain wild (non-combat) animals to use as house and garden pets. Some things like foxes, rabbits and squirrels are already in, but more could be added, particularly some birds for the garden. You leave some food out in your garden in the morning, and it may or may not attract an animal (what it attracts depends on the food left out, eg bird food can attract one of several types of bird). If it does attract one, and you like that one, then you leave the food out for several more days and it turns up more and more often, until it eventually stays. If you don't want to keep that one, miss a few days of food (or leave out a different type) and it won't come back. There could (in fact should!) be a few really rare animals with very low chances to attract, a couple of special birds, a fox with special markings, an albino squirrel, etc.

(continuing above idea, paragraph got a little long!) You should be able to have a few 'pets' per garden, and a couple inside the house (not birds though, obviously). There should also be a method to release them back to the wild, if you wanted to tame something else, but it should be something you can't do accidentally.

[Anáwiel]

Originally Posted by Faya

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?

I love almost all zones in Shadows of Angmar (the only exception being Forochel, for its ever-night bug), but my favourites are
- Garth Agarwen for its bloody atmosphere and great story
- Old Forest for the scary music, creepy settings and the chance to meet Tom Bombadil and Goldberry
- Weatherhills, because it looks so out-of-the-books, loretrue
- and of course the Shire for being so hobbitish and Rivendell for its beauty and elven feeling

I quite dislike Moria, it lacks chained quests with a deeper storyline and it looks soulless. It's just a heap of quests with no connection between them, which makes you feel like an errand boy, dwarven servant or simply a side character with no importance.

Originally Posted by Faya

2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

The LI system of course. I'd remove the weapon levelling, make the legacies freely selectable and would make the basic relics quest rewards, which can be later again through quests upgraded.

Originally Posted by Faya

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?

I love the festivals, but would love to see their rewards remain unique and if possible, unbound. And if possible, a new unique activity like the maze in the Festival grounds or fence run in Brockenborings. And if the facilities should be kept, I'd like at least new or modified quests and new rewards.
And please enhance the role of the Inn league society, they offer the same old stuff and are no fun

[Trojras]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?
There's not really a favourite or least favourite zone as all have pluses and minuses. A universal plus is the world design of every area. It's a stounding and blows away everything i've experienced in the past. If i had to pick a favourite it would be the Shire, it just feels like home (even though i'm an Elf). Both Evendim and the Misty Mountains are rather frustrating as the travel between quest centres is slow and laborious. Another reason i'm not too keen on the misty mountains is the large flat areas densely packed with mobs. When you look out at them, all evenly spaced and idle, serving no purpose other than to be aggroed by you, it's a jarring slap to any immersion.

2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?
Just one? The quests rewards system needs changing imo. We're given too much and it cheapens the whole experience of improving your character's equipment as, combined with the fast levelling, you know something better is probably only an hour or so away. It also undermines the crafting system and the economy. I think people would be much more likely to spend money on equipment if they knew it was going to last them more than a couple of levels.
What i propose is to remove all loot rewards for small quests (like delivering bread to Dwarves) and confine them to the final tier of a quest chain or the full fellowship quests. Not only do you "earn" the items but you give extra incentive to do the fellow quests and not just continue soloing to 60. You also start to make crafting viable and boost the AH market as more people look to kit their toons out with crafted gear.

I couldn't just do one. This may already have been done in the revamp but I found the spawn times in a lot of areas to be far too fast and punishing. I can undertand the motivation for setting the timers low when the game was new and traffic through those areas was heavy. This is no longer the case and having to kill the same mobs over and over when you're trying to fudge your way through a small fellow quest on your own isn't much fun. One area in particular that stands out as being bad was the stockade in Dol Dinen. Even with a full fellow the mobs we'd just killed were spawning behind us before we'd dealt with the next set. This resulted in a few bad pulls and a couple of, unfair and frustrating, wipes. It wasn't really as if anyone made a mistake like letting their pet off the leash or tab targetting and pulling the wrong guy. It was simply standing back from the action within aggro range of a spawn point of a monster killed a minute ago. Very harsh!
If you're looking to improve and smooth a new players route through the game then trying to balance the spawn times in relation to current traffic would make a big improvement.

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?
I would like to seee community focal points and pub games would do that. If you can incorporate seem cheap, Middle earth, riffs on popular games like tetris, bejewelled and maybe some competitive card games or dice, that'd be great.
Perhaps some sort of dedicated duelling arenas would be good. I never spar but i'd enjoy going and watching people pair off and perhaps gambling on the outcomes.

[Cwendeolyn]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?

I enjoyed The Shire the most, it's beautiful, wide-open, has great detail, feels like Middle-Earth, and it has varied and interesting quests that were fun to do.
Eregion would be in second place for many of the same reasons, plus it had a very smooth flow to levelling, with few speed-bumps. However once you're into Moria, it's just too isolated. A shame that such a nice area is so disposable.

I disliked the Lone-Lands the most. It's bleak and barren, which is what it should be, however the the quests could have offset that by being more interesting - too many of them are just grinds. All the love in the area seems to have been devoted to Agamaur, which largely gets ignored due to the fellowship requirements.
The pre-Tal Bruinen Trollshaws would be second - large areas of landscape elites, and too many fellowship quests in out-of the way areas. The same can be said about the Giant's Halls in the Misty Mountains, but it didn't close-off the region nearly as much. It worked well in the old end-game Angmar, but please don't create more wonderful landscape that we can't explore.


2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

While Legendary Items are not all that they could be, crafting is badly in need of an overhaul - most crafts are basically useless. Perhaps an expansion to crafting could also be used to solve some of the problems with LIs?


3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?

More session play - perhaps in groups, perhaps historical (more depth! more lore!) perhaps within the older zones (reuse those older assets, give us reasons to return) perhaps even related to the otherwise abandoned older reputation factions.

[Xandarien]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you
enjoy the least? Why?

Would have to be Lothlorien, both as far as artwork and quests go, unlike it seems a lot of people, I really liked the more 'lore' style quests, where we weren't just killing 10 orcs, but talking to people, finding items, being told about the history etc.

The one I least enjoy? There's not one single area that I actively choose not to go to, the Trollshaws irk me due to the low density of quests, but thats it...Annuminas as a level 50 I found a tad annoying due to mob density, but the history of it and the 3 6 man instances I liked, so I really don't have an answer to this I think.

2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

I would like to see the Legendary Item system more how it was originally envisioned (I believe the original dev left?), where instead of having random legacies given to us it works more on an Elder Scrolls basis and gives us legacies based on the skills we use.

3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?

I'll have to throw my hat in the ring for more Session Plays, but honestly I enjoy any fluff, be it chicken play, the maze, etc, its all good and welcome.

[Mostlysane]

1: Which zone do you enjoy the most? Which do you enjoy the least? Why?
Most: Evandim. Riding over the hill from Oatbarton and seeing the ruins and landscape. Having said that the crossing the lake is sooo tedious. Glad someone out there is finally learning to build boats in book 8. Waterworks gets an honourable mention. It looks awesome. Almost like an Escher painting

Least: Zelem-Melek and some of the other zones in Moria. Trying to find anything or get anywhere can be so frustrating. You spend the best part of an hour battling along a corridor to find the quest item is actually on the other side of a brick wall. Or the respawn rates on mobs are so high it's almost impossible to get through to where you need to be (Balin's camp anyone?)


2: If you could choose one game system to revamp, what system would you choose?

LI's what can I say that's not already been said before. Relying on pure luck to get a decent weapon with decent legacies is wrong. And don't even start me on the grinding involved. And the mats for the crafted ones makes it a pointless exercise to do. How about making it so the crafter gets to choose the legacies from a list of 4-5 when crafting. And what about letting us craft 2nd age or indeed 1st, though i don't think you'd like that.. Make them boa if you're worried about the market being flooded. With a long cd between each make.

On a secondary note. Please redo the raid interface. It's dire. It looks like it's something that was bolted on to the client at the last minute. It's lacking several bits of functionality that are essential for raiding. Dust off your company wow account and have a look at the ora2 addon. That and grid are truly excellent raid ui's

On a tertiary note. The riding system can be irritating to say the least. Having to ride up to an arch (like at the bree homesteads) dismount, walk through the arch to leave the instance then mount up to continue is pointless. We should be able to ride into an instance boundary, then appear on the other side still mounted, or on foot if it's an indoor location. And i'm sure we should be able to talk to people (quest givers, merchants etc while mounted?)


3: What sort of "Fluff" activities(e.g. Tag, festival dances, etc) would you be interested in?

I loved the maze, thought it was a great idea. How about kin competitions. Something that kins can take part in to compete against each other for fluff titles and rewards. The racing in book 8 sounds good, what about treasure hunts, tournaments, a mini Olympics type affair with races of various sorts?