Thread: Dev Diary Feedback: Update 2: Instance Cluster Dev Diary

"As you all know, there are strange things afoot across the land. Mysterious forces are at work and, now that the Rangers have ventured south (something some of you helped happen I might point out), it falls to heroes such as yourselves to keep the peace."

Read more in the latest Developer Diary from TsiengLiu and post your comments here!

I'm missing the announcement

It looks to be fun and the rewards/deeds section also sounds good, as does the new barter coin acquisition sound, i'm looking forward to it and hope it will be as good as it is looking

Wait... so the devs decided to get us to stop farming one instance by inflating the price of armour and limit our runs to get rewards per week? That will totally help get groups together to do the content...

After reading your message 3 times i'm still in doubt if you are being cynical or not :P

I think a better sollution would be:
- Give 1-1-2 medallions for T1 (boss 1, 2, 3)/ 1-2-3 for T2 / 1-2-5 for T2 HM and the bi-weekly quest reward double or tripple these numbers. That way people still want to run the instance, otherwise you get this:
"sorry, i've done this instance already this week"

Give doing each one once much better rewards then farming 1 all the time, but give people rewards for doing it more often then 1 time

Given the current barter costs (2100 medallions going straight to T2 gear):

*TsiengLiu, amlug and jwbarry in a meeting*
amlug: you know, everyone is only ever grinding SH like theres no tomorrow, thats not good
TL: no man, thats not good at all
jwbarry: yeah, we should do something about it
*silence*
TL: I have the solution! Instead of making the players only grind one instance until they die of boredome, lets make them grind ALL instances until their brains fall out!


In all seriousness: who thought that the answer for 'grinding one instance is bad' was GRIND MOAR INSTANCES?

Like, really?

A couple of questions;

1) What days do the timers reset?

2) Are the First Age components available in both 3 man and 6 man instances at any Tier of difficulty?

Looking forward to these special deeds!

Originally Posted by FrenyaVictoria

In all seriousness: who thought that the answer for 'grinding one instance is bad' was GRIND MOAR INSTANCES?

Like, really?

Barter costs and quest locks aside. The answer fits the question perfectly

Looks pretty nice. I'm excited to get rid of my Lothlorien Warden's Shield! Some pieces of Jewelry from the 3-mans look nice too.

~Rae

Originally Posted by Gedachtnis

2) Are the First Age components available in both 3 man and 6 man instances at any Tier of difficulty?

Symbol of the Elder King is only available in the raid.

Originally Posted by Grampsaz

Tier I low chance
Tier II higher chance
Challenge mode 100% chance

Hate it.

If rewards only come once a week, what if people on the kin have different timetables? A kin finally got together, half of them have done it 4 days ago, so they wont get **** out of a run, Yeah that would totally help promote group content.

At least you could make a kinda reward as now the Marks of Triumph, for those willing to help in the instances while their timer is running.

---and why oh why this remind me the dangerous WoW system some years ago ....---(they actually changed it quite a bit)

Are you going the WoW way now ? it seems to me that you are willing to separate totally casual and hardcore players : actually Hardcore are helping a lot the casual but with your new system it will be totally impossible.

I don't care for the barter currency only dropping from the instance quests. It'll just be another Helegrod where everyone will have the gear, but most haven't actually completed any of the instances. :/

at least that's only possible with the tier 1 (purple) set.

Turbine...get your act together.

So you don't want people to grind SH...make them grind ALL the stuff

Quote: A cloak that will make the collective jaws of the tactical-based dps drop to the floor

Awesome, make RKs MORE DPS, and make minis not wanna heal. /clap

Quit empowering RKs so you can sell them to the FTP folks....lol

It will take us TONS of stuff to get the barter tokens, and we can only do a certain instance 2x per week? GL getting someone in a group who already has done that instance.../fail


/rageoff

I for one do not care for instances or even the so called armour pieces that drop from mobs or end of the game stuff. All that I ever wanted was to play until I saw the tower fall, but I has been four years this is the longest one year journey.

Now I would rather pick up/loot bodies for stuff, that I merge on my weapon or my armour. I do not want to have to change armour sets every time I go int a different zone I want my armour and weapon to grow with me. This is were the whole system collaspes. You have crafters crafting but not high end equipment, I ask why not.?

You should have your armour and weapon before venturing into any instance.

Honestly, I'd like to be able to trade down, too. I'd like to get a complete Moria set for instance, but my kin is currently all about the Halls of Crafting -- which gives rather useless Lothlorien medallions. If I could trade those Loth medallions for Moria medallions, even if it was at a 2/1 rate or some such, I'd do it.

I'm ambivalent about the locks issue; instead of encouraging people to go to different instances, I suspect it will simply lead to people waiting four days before going back to their primary grind (or doing their primary grind once on all their alts over the course of the week so they've cycled back to it by the time the lock is up). Players are notoriously perverse that way.

If you really want people to have to do the different instances, you're going to have to go back to the days when each instance gave a unique barter item. I hate the prospect, myself -- I have a hard enough time getting a Grand Stairs run, much less any of the less-popular ones -- but I really think it's the only way to achieve the stated goal.

-The Gneech

Really disappointed guys... I don't want to have to raid to get the best armor.. I don't mind dungeons or a token grind but it should be within reach to get the uncomparilble armor. Now you are limiting me by making me try to find 12 people to raid and my kinship doesn't raid and i don't have time to spend 8 hours wiping over and over to just get the higher armor. WOW did that guys and its still a broke mechanic. Find a better way...

You're also limiting me to 2 days a week to get the tokens i need to get the new armor and inflating the cost of the new armor. I don't care if you limit me but make it where in a couple months i have my armor. Not another 6 months to a year.

Not that this thread is going to matter, BUT I DON'T LIKE IT DEV'S! Make it easier for a casual player to get the better armor. I don't care if its a grind but you're going to force me out of the game because i can't afford to raid.

Originally Posted by Cerridwen

Symbol of the Elder King is only available in the raid.

That was what I thought too. However, TsiengLiu made a point of saying this diary only covered the instances and not the raid, and this diary mentions the Symbol.

I read that as they drop in the instances too, despite what seems to be the case on BR, either way some comformation would be nice. It would make running the instances while on lockout much more attractive if nothing else.

Originally Posted by Dutchie86

"sorry, i've done this instance already this week"

There will be a small percentage of groups who tackle this new cluster as you, the developers, intend; I suspect the vast majority of players will respond to groups in the above manner. Great Barrows, Annuminas, and Helegrod revamps allowed for more instances to gather max-level shinies, but most groups on Silverlode still only do the bare minimum of the Annuminas/Helegrod instances for those marks and School/Library/Thadur for superior 3rd marks. You may argue that only allowing quest completion twice a week would solve this attitude, but I don't see the people I run with saying to one another "oh well, we can't farm Helegrod marks EZ mode for 3 more days, let's run the raid instead."

I appreciate the effort to address the problem of easy grinding, forcing players to explore all the content you create, but most MMO players, like rivers, follow the path of least resistance. For many outside of the have-to-have-the-newest-shinies-first crowd least resistance will still entail running their one or two instances twice a week. As one who has never had a chance to venture into Warg Pens or The Dungeons, I sincerely hope the players' approach to the new content proves me wrong.

I'm only excited for these instances for the easily obtainable relics/loot in the 3-mans. I'm not even going to bother with the raid sets of armor... I'll stick with my Helegrod, and maybe get some DN down the road. IMO, the armor isn't worth the oh... 5 months it would take me to get it. And then you'll only have the armor for a short amount of time before ROI comes out. I'll just be making money so i can buy a 1st age LI, grinding my virtues, and grinding LI's and relics. Pretty much the same thing I've been doing for the past.... year. Maybe I'll get all of the epic book quests done too. So, yeah, the armor from these instances aren't worth the time, but hey, maybe I can get a few good tanking/dps jewelry pieces for my warden. If not, I'll just be back to grinding SG ceaselessly.

~Rae

Originally Posted by Kal_Dorrn

Hate it.

If rewards only come once a week, what if people on the kin have different timetables? A kin finally got together, half of them have done it 4 days ago, so they wont get **** out of a run, Yeah that would totally help promote group content.

You're not locked out. You can still run it for items out of the chests you just won't get the quests for the barter items.

I also have a question concerning the correlation between the grinding problem and the (huge) increase of the cost of armor pieces in medallions.

In the current Bullroarer build, hundreds (litterally) of medallions are needed to have one single piece of the set, in the Tier 1 version.
Why not cut this number by two, three, or even four, and cut the number of medallions gained in the quests by the same number?

This has only a psychological impact (not speaking of how the medallions stack - I look at YOU, tokens of the Wild and Bronze Feathers), but it is important: people are more motivated to collect 50 medallions 5 at a time than 200 of them 20 at a time...

This said, the problem of the "I've already run this instance and done the quest" may occur, if no interesting reward is given to player that re-run the instance...
You've got to have prepared very very very appealing loot tables to prevent this effect

Regards,
Skro

Originally Posted by cshamblin

You're not locked out. You can still run it for items out of the chests you just won't get the quests for the barter items.

They will have to put quite a large array of items in there to make people group for it I am afraid. And does this weird lock thing apply to all instance or just ones starting from next patch?

While I'm glad the devs are trying to create more incentive for playing a variety of instances, I do not see the change to a twice-per-week barter drop as being particularly helpful. Think of a new level 56 who wants to start working on their Moria set. They are going to want to grind GS until their eyes bleed, as that's all they have available to them. Forcing them to string things out over several weeks or until they can hit 60 just to get the first couple pieces of armor does not seem encouraging. Also, this will make losing HM a HUGE deal. If I recall correctly, HM usually grants at least one more token than not. This could cause a lot of strain on a fellowship.

My suggestions:
- Make the barter coin lock kick in at lvl 60.
- Make the barter coin lock reset daily.
- Make the gate be 2 times on normal mode or whenever HM is completed, so that players can choose between conquering the challenge or running the instance again, or if they missed HM the first time, it gives them another shot at it.
- FIX THE FELLOWING PANEL!!! I think the very fact a dev quoted glff is sad. GLFF is NOT where we should have to go to form groups. There needs to be an intuitive system in place for seeing what groups are forming FOR INSTANCES/SKIRMISHES. That should be the instance panel, but it needs a significant overhaul and a tutorial for using it when new players leave the Intro zone.
- All of the armor sets through the whole game should be re-examined. If you want people to run more instances, make the rewards desirable. Stats or ok, Resistences are meh, but what I look for in armor sets are the skill-based bonuses. Go back and rethink everything from Angmar, Moria, Lothlorien, and Mirkwood, and give each armor set some unique skill-based buffs that would make it truly desirable to go get. So many of the current bonuses fall short of usefulness that we end up with just one or two valid sets to be interested in.

Originally Posted by Gedachtnis

That was what I thought too. However, TsiengLiu made a point of saying this diary only covered the instances and not the raid, and this diary mentions the Symbol.

I read that as they drop in the instances too, despite what seems to be the case on BR, either way some comformation would be nice. It would make running the instances while on lockout much more attractive if nothing else.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...37#post5250537

Originally Posted by Sapience

The Symbol is not a Symbol of Celebrimbor, it's a new one. It is found in the new raid.

Originally Posted by cshamblin

You're not locked out. You can still run it for items out of the chests you just won't get the quests for the barter items.

Yeah, except there are only a handful of pieces of loot that are really great. This isn't unlike other places, but here's how I'm gonna have to play:

1. Farm the heck out of them for the loot for the first 3 weeks
2. Do the weeklies twice a week for all eternity.

For a casual player, this makes the new armor available about the time ROI comes out, which is probably how they can get away with the stats.

You will NEVER find pugs for new stuff. I'm certainly not going to run it with a pug when I already ran it for the medallions and I already have all the loot. I can do it for the IXP and Relics I guess? But SH isn't going away so...

Turbine is creating a detraction factor by not re-giving the quests. It makes me think "Well this is alright, but if I waited I could get more for my time". This is of course after all the newness and challenge wears off.

Originally Posted by Kal_Dorrn

... does this weird lock thing apply to all instance or just ones starting from next patch?

This only applies to the instances coming with the next update.

Originally Posted by Cerridwen

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...37#post5250537

I'm familiar with the thread, and I know that, like Sapiance said, it drops in the raid. What he didn't say is it only drops in the raid or at least not that I know of.

Things change, we know that, so it's possible that on live the intention is for it to drop in the instances. Either way a clarification would be appreciated.

I've already decided anything you get with medals isn't worth my time. I was considering grinding out the basic set for cosmetics, but twice a week? Seriously? I get punished for having the time to do a run more than twice? Screw that. I don't need Big Turbine Mama telling me I can't have any Northcotton Ice cream until I've had my Stoneheight vegetables.

All because some players get the sads if they "fall behind" and "can't play as much."

yep, my main concern is that instead of a lot of people grinding the same instance, you'll have people stop doing those instance entirely...

why would people want to waste time to do instance that give them nothing? what this would do is that big kinship will again gets all the rewards, and solo player/small kinship wont have anything, since it'll be very hard to get a pug to do those instance after a few weeks.

Originally Posted by TsiengLiu

This only applies to the instances coming with the next update.

Thanks, at least I know now the new barter thing is something ignorable. Spending 5 months trying to maintain a pseudo-raid schedule twice a week just to make sure I am on when my kin is doing the run does not seem to be very smart. I am sticking with the old armors, at least they are attainable.

I didn't think it was possible, but I think i might grow to hate the barter wallet, as it means more tokens in all directions. Given the previous system of dropping actual pieces of raid gear, I'm only finding this new system marginally better as it now encourages the same grindy behaviors as before. And instead of changing that mechanic, there's now a limit on how often I can run the content? How does that make sense other than from a "our players burn through content too fast, how can we make it more painful and slow?"

Originally Posted by Kal_Dorrn

Thanks, at least I know now the new barter thing is something ignorable. Spending 5 months trying to maintain a pseudo-raid schedule twice a week just to make sure I am on when my kin is doing the run does not seem to be very smart. I am sticking with the old armors, at least they are attainable.

This.

Rather than encouraging me to run your new instances these locks actually put me off even bothering that much.

Apart from making the devs feel better about themselves when they see people running the instances they created (because they are forced to if they like them or not) I can't honestly see what this achieves to improve the game experience for the player.

This will only work with a diverse and strong loot tables

If loot tables have only one or two items, its not gonna be run except for the bi-weekly lock.

If loot tables have only weird items, like hammers with tact crit rating or non-LI spears, they are vendor loot and instance will be only run bi-weekly.

My Suggestions:

Give a way to barter the new medallions with old medallions. Like 5-1 ratio or something.

Tie the quests to boss kills. No more Hele/School/Library quest runs when everybody drops group before we kill the boss.

Good and diversified loot.

Chance of 1st Age Symbol (or at the very least a big chance of a 2nd Age Symbol) dropping from T2 Challenge.

Good ideas with one potentially serious problem for the later loggers

/k hey guys lets go run that thing
/k sorry dudette, we did it a couple hours ago, and we'll do it again next week for tokens a couple hours before you log in, go pug it
/k i don't pug, i only kin, but hey there's some nice jewellery in there isn't there?
/k vendor trash, want to join our moors group instead?

This could make the game unplayable for some of us
/weep for the late loggers
Some of us depend on the obsessives that run these things 30 times a day
Take them away from us and our whole support network evaporates

Do you realize that your game is being propped up by a relatively small number of very obsessive people, that the rest of us tag along with? What happens to the rest of us when the obsessive compulsive instance runners have been locked out of their precious tokenses and have all the jewellery they want?

Other than that potential disaster, looks creative.

Sounds good overall but it is indeed a slight concern to have no* incentive to re-run an instance more often that once every 2.5 days.

Also, I really hope y'all do a pass to make all baterables in the whooooole game consistent. It's gotta be confusing to newbs. Hey remember those tokens for redoing vol1 and vol 2 group instances? looool. And to make the instance gating/reward mechanics consistent. It's getting there.

*assuming that the loot drops are, as in the past ever since barter-based rewards, almost completely uninteresting

What I want to know is how many new tokens you will get from each instance, assuming you complete all the challenge modes. Four instances, rewards available twice a week...how many barter tokens can I earn in a week? I also want to know how many tokens you will get from the raid, assuming a best case scenario of beating each boss and completing the challenge mode.

The new Tier 2 raid set costs 300-400 barter tokens per piece. How fast you dole out the barter tokens when everything will be on a raid lock schedule is important.

1. Not all instances are created equal. Not everyone enjoys being forced to run every instance in order to acquire something, and it sounds like we might be forced to do that with this change. If an instance is dormant and people don't visit it regularly then there is probably a pretty good reason why. Sadly, with all due respect to the designers, it is most often because the instance is a drag. Too long, too hard, too little reward, too reliant on a single class, etc. etc.

2. If you really don't want to see "Looking for GS HM, need Mini & Tank" type stuff in chat then implement a system that allows a character to register for an instance, nominating if they are DPS, Tank, Healer, etc. The party is then put together automatically by the system based on whatever criteria is required (3 person, 6 person, etc.) and transported to the instance. Hey presto, no more LFF spew in the chat channels. Additional benefits include; lower wait times for an instance group, wider choice of instances to join, ability to get on with the daily grind whilst waiting for the group to form "hands free".

3. If you could implement it cross-realm then so much the better, but why not just start local and get the ball rolling?

4. Timers are as bad as gates. They simply penalise people for playing. What it appears is that there is a view that it should take 'X' amount of time to get an item, regardless of how much time a player may be able to spend in game. This looks like a heavy-handed attempt to slow down the rate at which new items enter the game. So it doesn't matter how good your team is or how much you can play; you can only get items at the rate that someone thinks is "reasonable". To be honest, this looks more like a attempt to stall and draw out the content at the expense of the ability or availability of the player. Perhaps it will not be too much of an imposition, but without details I am always wary of things like timers being introduced as they are rarely something that is good for a player.

If you truly want more people to experience more of the instances you develop, and participate in Raids to those instances suitable, then implementing a system to enable groups to be automatically formed from a pool of folks registered for those instances is the most effective solution.

Wow, RK ftw cloak. Seriously, FTP has 2 premium classes, how about we cater a bit to the warden class. Would love a warden update, or bonuses on our armour that actually is inline with how we play (ranged threat bonus? 1 hit useful per fight).

Man, this feels like a badly broken record.

All of the new instances are fun and well done so I plan on running them regularly with my kinship regardless of the locks and restrictions. Although with the restrictions the number of barter coins should be adjusted.