Talk to the Community Team 24/08/09

[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. Are you a member of a kinship? If not, why? If so, what's your position in the kin? What size is the kin?

2. What is your favorite instance in LOTRO? Yes, solo instances count as do raids. Be specific!

3. You have an unlimited budget and no restrictions; name one feature you would add to LOTRO.

[Tomborn]

Hi all!

1. I am a leader of a german kinship with 15-20 persons. So, we have approx. 50 Characters in the kinship.

2. I think I'd like Skumfil. I’m not really sure if it’s my favourite, but it could be done fast and you have an opinion for 3 different ways to go. That’s a real benefit for this instance.

3. I would like to know if you are thinking about a different gear check for Dar Narbulug (even if it’s written wrong). We have been working on the watcher for a long time. Now 7 experienced member of our kinship (approx. 12 good equipped Characters) left us to go raiding in Dar Narbulug with another kinship. Now we have lost our chance to see the instance Da Nabulug due to the fact that we have to equip additional Characters with watchers helm and shoulders. And after many months doing this we don’t like him (the watcher) anymore.

And: What about the status of future content? When could you tell us some news?

[Cmax]

Originally Posted by Faya

1. Are you a member of a kinship? If not, why? If so, what's your position in the kin? What size is the kin?

2. What is your favorite instance in LOTRO? Yes, solo instances count as do raids. Be specific!

3. You have an unlimited budget and no restrictions; name one feature you would add to LOTRO.

1)Yes I am, I am an officer and we have 10 active players atm.

2)My favorite Instance/Raid is Dark Delving,DN and Watcher, but due to our small kin size we have the joy to run only instances atm.

3)I would design a new content of the game that Kins has to corporate each other!

[Toram]

1.: I am a member of a german kinship with approximately 30-40 members, cannot count the members ;-)

2.: Difficult and depending on characters/alts. My level 52 RK likes Carn-Dum a lot, my level 60 Champion loves the Moria instances (although never defeated the Watcher and never saw the turtle), my level 48 Minstrel likes fellowships more atm.

3.: I would add the following two (I know it's too much but both are extremely important to me!) things:
3.1.: An accesible port like data.lotro.com that kinships and/or players can easily get informations about characters, professions, ...! Like the US customers do have right now.
3.2.: A Website-kit that was promised right from the beginning of this game (!) and never was released. It's sometimes a real pain in the a.ss to create/find fitting images and/or fonts.

[Yuzzum]

Hi!
1. I'm an officer in a small kin. We have about half a dozen active players. Off course, we all have 4-5 characters, so we have more to choose our group setup from.

2. We Cannot Get Out. I liked it. Even if you we're ddomed from the start

3. If I had to choose one thing, it would be mounted combat. As a man of Rohan, it just doesn't make any sense to have to send my horse away before joining a fight

Cheers, Yuzzum

[Krystaline]

1. Are you a member of a kinship? If not, why? If so, what's your position in the kin? What size is the kin?

Yes, and the fools even let me be an officer! I think we have around about the 90 mark for players, although we probably have a few inactives in amongst those. Rather a lot more if you're counting alts, some of have more than we need :P

2. What is your favorite instance in LOTRO? Yes, solo instances count as do raids. Be specific!

It's really hard to compare a solo isntance with a Fellowship, then with a full raid.
My favourite solo is probable "We cannot get out". It's different and unique and especially for someone without a champion, it's feels like a different gameplay style.

My favourite fellowship instance is... really hard to pick. I very much enjoyed "Tomb of Elendil", but also all three of the Annuminas instances are great and much undervalued by players, I think.

Favourite raid is without a doubt the rift. Partly for the sake of Nostalgia (maybe I'll feel like this about Dar Narbugud a year or more down the line), and partly because it always felt like you were making progress, that it was well balanced and most importantly, it was emminetly accessible to a large portion of the player base.

3. You have an unlimited budget and no restrictions; name one feature you would add to LOTRO.

Hehehe, Unlimited budget and no restrictions? Actually, I'd change a whole heap of stuff given those conditions, mostly to do with longevity of content and scalability, and maybe a bit to do with equipment diversity.

I'd love to see Instances which either scaled automatically to the average level of the group going to the instance, or even better, a dialog box on entry that allowed the leader to choose the level that the instance scaled too. I know a great many people who Love exploring LotRO for it's lore and beauty, and would love to go into some of the big instances with less of a challenge, and don't care about the loot or lack thereof.

Lack of loot being considered, it would ALSO be really good if items didn't have preset stats. If that was the case, crafters could feel more useful, especially if you could pick what stats were put on items. I know that presently, my tinker feels somewhat wasted in that all the Tier 6 jewelery items seem to be a progression on the same theme. So the Khazad Copper is like sub-par Khazad Bronze, which is like a sub par Khazad Gold. A It might suit a specific class or role, but then aren't so useful for other classes. At least in Tier 5, the Etched Beryl bracelt and the Polished Beryl bracelet were quite different in stats. While the new Aureate set is nice addition, a guard might still look at them and say "Oh... but where is my might, and my block rating? Still not available in crafted jewellery then *sad face*". Also, if stats were attached to the item instead of the item's basic template, you could put scaling loot quality into scaling instances.

[Halrick]

1. I am a member of a moderately sized kinship. There are enough members to complete raids, but not so many that we can't identify eachother

2. Has to be the Rift. Theres a good storyline behind it and you can experience it with 11 other people. I enjoy the solo instances, but I prefer discovering the content with friends.

3. Hmmm thats a tough one. As I enjoy the social aspect of the game, I'd have to say something like MyLotro. I was looking at it again the other day and its definitely a feature I'd bring to the EU servers.

As I'd have an unlimited budget and no restrictions (one feature?! pfft!), I would hire thousands of staff to fill my new warehouse complex thats been kitted out with every bit of high tech equipment I could dream of. I would then finance the creation of the rest of Eriador. I would not be in need of any other capital, so I'd release all of the areas simultaneously in one big free content update! YOU ASKED!

[Perandir]

Originally Posted by Faya

1. Are you a member of a kinship? If not, why? If so, what's your position in the kin? What size is the kin?

2. What is your favorite instance in LOTRO? Yes, solo instances count as do raids. Be specific!

3. You have an unlimited budget and no restrictions; name one feature you would add to LOTRO.

1) Yes, I'm an officer in a finnish kin. I'd say we have approximately 40-50 members. Though the numbers vary greatly between patches and the time between.

2) My favourite instance of all times has to be Ost Elendil. Reasons why it is have to do with nature of that instance, there's a few puzzles, cool bosses, length is fine and there was a chance to get some "epic-loot"

Also, because you had to capture controlpoints to open the way there, finishing that instance felt even better.

3) Daily routines for about everything.

[Larington]

1. Are you a member of a kinship? If not, why? If so, what's your position in the kin? What size is the kin?

Yeah, I'm a very lowranking member of a kin, most of my characters don't exactly feel bound to the kin though as their group activities involve level 48+ raids and my highest level char is 40. I'm kind of focused on crafting equipment for my chars so I'm not keen on levelling one char beyond the others either.

2. What is your favorite instance in LOTRO? Yes, solo instances count as do raids. Be specific!

Hmm, I'd have to say the first minstrel solo quest, its short and very sweet.

3. You have an unlimited budget and no restrictions; name one feature you would add to LOTRO.

Well, the following selection of change(s, sorry) occur to me at the moment:
Make a repeatable coal mine solo quest instance. Starting at level 30, there is a repeatable quest you can pick up from the Dwarves involving clearing out a coal mine that the Dwarves use to fuel the forges of war. The character level of the monsters adjusts to the players character level and depending on the char level (In increments of 5 or 10) moves the position of cave ins and other features around so that the instance has built in variety. Striking parts of the interior of the coal mine not might be accessible the first visit, but would later (Such as one room with a deep pit, another with massive tree roots reaching down, another with a monolith and undead, etc). The coal mine instance serves two purposes, in that it provides a reliable source of coal (Containing coal/rich coal nodes) so that players don't have to spend a small fortune in later weapon/armour crafting, whilst also providing a selection of monsters that will reliably drop dwarven reputation/faction items.

Additionally I'd like to make some other small adjustments, relating to crafting. Firstly increase the max stack size of dyes to 100 so my vault isn't clogged up by the efforts of my scholar.
Secondly, to make some adjustments to the guild armourer/tailor equipment so that the armours, robes, leggings and shields require medium/large guild reputation markers (As they currently seem to do), but the boots/gloves/helm/shoulder guards require the smaller markers - Primarily because at the moment if you compare production times for light/medium/heavy armours versus a lot of the other guild equipment, the times are a bit, well, out there, if you get my meaning. The requirement of shards is pretty heavy in itself, we don't need a massive time requirement on top, surely?

I'd also love a tick-box in the auction house that stops 'one use' recipes from displaying (Or a 3-way toggle: All, not one-use, only one-use).

I'd also be tempted to embark on a scheme of re-evaluating the usage of 'elite' mobs in all the non book quests below the current games max level. As in, replacing elite mobs with difficult signature mobs that are quite defeatable with a 3/4 man group instead of requiring the full 6 people and communicating this change to the players obviously. Probably around 20 levels below whatever happens to be the current max level. The change would purely because of the difficulty of getting a group together for a quest when most people have levelled way beyond you - It might be discouraging to new players which is a problem if you continuously want to bring in fresh subscribers.

[Meeraen]

1. Are you a member of a kinship? If not, why? If so, what's your position in the kin? What size is the kin?
Yes, I am an officer in a kin. It has approximately 40 unique members

2. What is your favorite instance in LOTRO? Yes, solo instances count as do raids. Be specific!
Carn Dum. It is flexible, a great challenge at lvl 50, very good looking, a great place to learn (more) about your role in a team and a great night out And at lvl 60 it's still great to do imho.

3. You have an unlimited budget and no restrictions; name one feature you would add to LOTRO.
Something similar to MyLotro.com, with all thinkable options: information about your character, your gear, your stats, your inventory, crafting level, reputation, deeds, housing, kinship and so on. Make this available via api style thingies (i've got no clue how this works but i think this is possible?) so that kinships can use this information on their website.

Since i've got no limitations i'll just go ahead and post a few more ideas' :P i would like to see mounted combat pretty please, and a big housing revamp, and maybe some adjustments to crafting too. oooh and i'd add more achievements. I tried out WoW for exactly 2 hours (Didn't like it a bit) but i got a fuzzy feeling inside when i discovered the achievement window. I love achievements. I know we've got deeds and titles which is pretty similar, so i'd be very happy with a lot more fluff deeds (hidden or not).
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