Thread: Old Content

After reading the article The Road to Mordor: Wish lists, past and future (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/12...st-and-future/) I thought about what my wishlist would be. All in all i agree with what Justin suggested, but I'd make one change.

I've been playing since the game went F2P (subscribing soon after), and have really enjoyed my time in the game. My chief complaint isn't about the new content that (I am still very much looking forward to) is coming out, but the older content. While all of his predictions improve the game, I'd have substituted 'mounted combat' for 'revamping older content'. Turbine's revamp of Evendim and making the Vol 2 epics soloable was a big, slow, first step. Alongside the older regions (which everyone starting a character still has to play through), there are also the older instances and raids (which no one does!). When I joined my kin, Moria and Mirkwood instances were all the rage. We spent about 20 minutes in Helegorod doing the daily quests there to help people get their armour sets (and that was a grind), but we never did a full Helegorod run. Rift I've never set foot in besides the Epic instance, and Fornost I've never done. There are also quite a few Moria instances that never saw the light of day (Skumfil, Dark Delvings).

I have 'housing' as my number 1 revamp as Justin did, but my number 2 would be for this older content to be scaled down and made soloable. I feel this is great content that they put a lot of work into, and while experiencing all the new instances is wonderful, they can get old. The Instance Finder helps to avoid that by giving a random skirmish to play, but there are a bunch of classic instances that have gone to waste. Turbine's done well to bring them up to the level cap, but their rewards are outdated (inexcusable with the new marks/medallions/seals system) and so are passed over for say Fangorn and Isengard Forges runs.

There is so much rich content that's already been produced, but from my experience in The Guild on Riddermark, even as (one of) the largest kins on the server, we don't do these older runs! And such a shame, IMO, for this content to go unplayed and looked over for what's new. As I said, I'm excited as much as anyone for Riders, but I still look forward to one day doing this older stuff.

well said.

Great post, couldn't agree more

Totally agreed

Originally Posted by Jaliki55

There is so much rich content that's already been produced, but from my experience in The Guild on Riddermark, even as (one of) the largest kins on the server, we don't do these older runs! And such a shame, IMO, for this content to go unplayed and looked over for what's new. As I said, I'm excited as much as anyone for Riders, but I still look forward to one day doing this older stuff.

I've been pondering this as well - I started playing over a year ago, but I level slowly and so I now have one lvl 35 character and three around lvl 20. (Told you I was slow.)

I've found that if I want to, I can get some people from my kin to join in for fellowship stuff, but they'll generally be at least 10 levels higher - possibly 50. (lvl 20 characters + level-capped kinmates). That pretty much means *blasting* through the content, and then I don't really get to experience it either.

Whether it's feasible or not, I don't know, but I'd like to see a way to scale down characters to any previous level. I imagine we'd need to keep our skills, because otherwise things get very confusing for the player, but damage, armour and resistance should be scaled down. (And the likelihood of mobs attacking you - you wouldn't be gray to them anymore.) There may be some issues with things that can't be scaled (stuns, rezzes) and I guess that affects balance, but I don't think that's all that important here. This is supposed to be a way to allow the user to choose how much of a challenge the content is; if you want to be more or less powerful, just go one or two levels higher or lower.

I reckon quest rewards should stay the same, and counting towards deeds should also progress as usual: kills always count and using skills against non-grey mobs also counts. The rewards will therefore be minor (not scaling down would always be more efficient), but you probably weren't doing this for the rewards anyway.

Of course, the scaling should not be permanent!

I don't think the character needs to be scaled to the instance, but the instance scaled to the character.

Turbine has already proven they can scale and adjust instances of all types for a level cap *increase*. For example, Helegorod was rescaled from 50-75 when Isengard came out. But who still runs Hele? The only reason that existed was to get your L65 armour set, but with the level bump, this is now a useless instance proving no tangible benefit for at max players. The skirmish marks are like 200% for a full run, but what group has time for 6 hours to do a complete run? Especially when the new raid provides relevant marks/medallions that can get players the best armour sets. So Hele doesn't get played. I'll assert the same for every Moria instance except Turtle.

I level like you do Annariel and I'm not that quick about it. I was at L65 for a few months before Isengard came out, and due to RL I've not been able to play as often, so here we are almost halfway to Riders of Rohan's release and I've only progressed a few levels. By the time I hit L75, the new content will come out and then no one will be running Moria instances or Mirkwood for that matter, much less anything from pre-Moria!

The Epic story uses the "Inspiration bonus" to help solo players get through the fellowship quests. The applied the same to Volume 2 instances in Moria. This, taken together with the fact they can scale *up* instances, strongly leads me to believe they can either provide a similar (or stronger, for raids) bonus to the player, or conversely, scale down the instance. Skirmishes (not Classic) have this already built in. You can run Siege of Gondamon solo, duo, small fellow, fellow, or raid. Classic instances deserve the same treatment.

As I said in my OP, this is content that saw a lot of man-hours put into it and the content deserves to be played. Unfortunately its no longer relevant compared to the new content that's coming out quick enough, but still should have its 2-minutes of fame, if you see what I mean. As new expansions come out, new players will just be trying to play catch-up to level a character to do the new content and will miss out on what can be a wonderful experience in the sub-level cap instances.

tl;dr: Instances are scalable, Turbine you've proved that already! Please scale the instances down so they are soloable or give solo players the inspiration buff to allow them to run this great content. If you want to update the rewards too, that'd be even better, but don't let those runs you've put a lot of work into go to cobwebs.

Originally Posted by Jaliki55

tl;dr: Instances are scalable, Turbine you've proved that already! Please scale the instances down so they are soloable or give solo players the inspiration buff to allow them to run this great content. If you want to update the rewards too, that'd be even better, but don't let those runs you've put a lot of work into go to cobwebs.

The primary issue never changes. It costs money to update old stale content. Turbine does not have the money.

A sizable percentage of the customer base is no longer interested in the older instances. Been there. Done that. Bored with it. Please provide new instances. Stop recycling old tired content. That was a big complaint with the Rise of Isengard launch. All we get is more Library at Tham Mirdan?*? Why not put those resources to finishing the new instances?

New players do not get the opportunity to experience the older content that isn't boring to them. They have not done it 50 times.

I do not what the realistic solution is. One that will get people into these instances and an affordable cost for Turbine.

Thanks for your post Yula!

Maybe the best, easiest, and cost effective solution is to just give players the inspiration buff. This means the instance's mobs don't need to be scaled (maybe the bosses still do, I wouldn't know for many instances), and the inspiration buff already provides any class with the power to complete an instance. *shrug* its really food for thought, and with F2P, I genuinely feel newer players have not nor will be able to experience otherwise great content as they progress to the level cap.

Scaling content up may help to keep it (sort of) relevant to higher-level players, but it doesn't help low-level players who want to do group content. What level do you scale to if a lvl 20 character wants to do something and need one or more lvl 50+ (let alone 75) characters to make up a full group?

If the solution to keeping old content relevant is to scale it up, it seems to me that the consequence is that one won't get to experience this content until one hits the level cap. That would only increase the 'rush to level cap' spirit...

On the other hand, while making (pretty much) everything solo-able would satisfy my 'want to experience everything' tendencies, people would be a lot less likely to do any group content while they're still leveling. To me, that's a negative, but I guess it's not related to the original issue.

Personally, I just want to be able to play the entire game, including the lower levels, the way they were intended to be played. That would require a lot more low-level players, and even then the end-game would be luring them away, so I realize it's not going to happen. I hope we can get a bit closer, though.

(Note: Based on the game mechanics, I feel that the intention of the game is for people to form fellowships on a regular basis, both for landscape quests and for instances. These mechanics are changing, so maybe the intention is changing as well... but I like the old concept that we're all fighting a common enemy and of course we'll group up whenever we can.)