Thread: Lower Commendation Prices on Low Rank Traits/Skills

I just recently bought the Warg class, and as far as playstyle goes, I love it. There's just one problem. I'm r3 (Close to r4) and I've only been able to purchase 3 skills. (Shadow, Hips, and improved stealth)

Right now I'm getting blown up by freeps because I can't afford to buy traits for more morale, and I'm barely acquiring the "necessary" skills to get by as a warg. Until just a few hours ago, I still hadn't gotten Hips, and now I'm sitting back at almost 0 commendations again.

I don't think that Turbine intended for things to be this way, but with the slow rate at which commendations are acquired combined with insanely high costs for low rank skills, low ranked creeps have taken a huge punishment. By the time I hit r5 I doubt I'll be able to buy all my r3 and under skills and traits.

Keep the drop rate as is if you like, but for goodness sake lower the price of skills for the lower ranks. Because right now we're having to grind for something which ought to be coming easily to us. And you may as well throw the thought of Audacity out the window. I'm not sure if the conversion rate is simply lower in terms of DP to Commendations gained, but I never had trouble buying any of my skills as a lowbie Reaver.

/Signed

They made it even harder for lower ranked creeps in the moors. Lower the commendation price.

But im sure Turbine will fix this whole problem by selling commendations in the LOTRO Store.

They need to significantly lower the cost to obtain skills, or change what you use the get skills/traits/passives ect.

Creep audacity needs each ranks cost to be reduced by 1k. Currently costs 42k commendations to get 7 audacity on a creep, and 35k on a freep.

Brands as well, as least the lower rank ones. 5k comm's for ranks 1-4? wat

One of the problems I see is also with the trait costs. They are very expensive for each trait and an all new creep might not know which traits would suit her/him best and atm they're really too costly for any mistakes.
I think being able to buy traits and try out which ones work best with one's play-style is essential when lvl'ing a new creep, but it's largely hindered by the commendation cost.

There really needs to be a "scaling" factor with the cost of skills based on rank. The higher the rank, the higher the cost (but anymore than 5k for a skill would probably be a bit excessive). And while I'm thinking about it, the price of appearances is utterly absurd. The fact that it really adds nothing to our game play (other than giving us something different to look at as we grind) does not add up to the fact that it is a stupidly steep price of 7500 commendations (quick math here telling us that if you start with 10k commendations when you pick up a new skin, you will be left with 2500 - only enough for ONE skill). If a r3 warg can't even buy all the skills necessary for themselves when they rank up, there's something seriously wrong if they're also expected to be able to have enough "spare" commendations to get a new skin. They're a perk, make them available for DP like they used to be. Or better yet, just put the dang things in the store and be done with it.

It seems set up to force Creeps into buying their skills from the store... sucks, but it is what is.

/signed seriously turbine..you raise the prices so that people are either forced to play without skills or buy them from the store. That is even lower than what you have been previously doing. The prices should scale as you rank.

The whole system needs some tweeks..

1) lower costs for r1-3 creeps

2) re-introduce a 30min-1hour lockout both sides

3) increase commies from pvp, decrease from pve

4) consumables should be bought with cash, not commies

/have a noice day

Originally Posted by jadacakai

The whole system needs some tweeks..

1) lower costs for r1-3 creeps

2) re-introduce a 30min-1hour lockout both sides

3) increase commies from pvp, decrease from pve

4) consumables should be bought with cash, not commies

/have a noice day

You are spot on for points 1, 2 and 3.

Regarding point 4, i may add this: the *barter* system in LOTRO, even for the smallest things like consumables, killed the economy and crafting. Most LOTRO veterans have a lot of money, but nothing to spend it on. Which result in having the whole money system useless. Money in LOTRO have no meaning anymore and thats not right.

Originally Posted by Rhedry

It seems set up to force Creeps into buying their skills from the store... sucks, but it is what is.

This.


In Turbine's eyes everything is working as intended.

Save your commendations for Audacity. Spend your real money (Turbine Points) buying your skills from their store. Music to Turbine's ears. I hope the guy or gal that thought this up got a nice raise

As a Creep you have two advantages over Freeps

1. Your Map Quests reward commendations, and not few
2. Farming Hobbits in Hoarhallow or Dwarfs near Isenmine rewards 4 Commendations for each NPC killed

Right now it´s easier to farm your PvP Armor on Freepside by getting all Maps for Creep alts you don´t even play, than by actual PvP

Has the development team thought of bringing in a math tutor?

Rank 1 corruptions should cost 80 commendations, because they are #### once you replace them with rank 2.

Rank 0-3 skills and traits should cost 100-200 comms at a maximum.

You can get a bit pricier at the top end, but the low end stuff is NOT optional, and not being able to afford both needed skills/traits AND audacity is a huge handicap currently on lower rank creeps.

It's certainly taking away some of that "buy a rank 0 creep up to powerful status" introduced by RoI, but it's overdone on the lower end skills and traits.

What should have happened was an automatic acquisition of commendations from deeds that were already completed, pre-U6. The commendations I would have gotten from crude map deed completions and slayer deeds could have boosted my commendations pool. From such a theoretical commendations gain from alternate creep characters, I could have reinvested in my main creep character, at the very least.

However, I do agree that an underlying problem with commendations is that lower ranked characters DO suffer more. When U6 hit, I had my Weaver at rank 5. Now, at rank 6, I STILL need 2k commendations for my last rank 6 skill. Only then will I actually be able to save up specifically for updating my audacity rank. Not to mention, getting new skins at each rank is now made much more difficult, with the absolutely RIDICULOUS 7.5k cost for each!

After R6 you shouldn't have much of an issue, I do feel Audacity items/traits need to scale as you gain more...but that would create Freep QQ about what pieces are cheaper. I think the best solution would be to increase commendation gains from kills by 10-15%.

I am fairly new to PVP (creep side) in LOTRO. All I can say at this point is, after this update, I've stopped playing creep-PVP. The skills/traits are impossible to afford for newbies. The devs clearly are focused on high rank players, and don't see the damage they've done. If this isn't fixed, there will be little to no new players coming into PvP (on the Creep side).

/signed
Either Turbine was too lazy to fix the costs or it really is a plot for more Turbine point purchases.

They need to rethink this specially since they remove destiny points....

I don't understand why creeps can't buy their skills with ingame coin.
After all, the Freeps can and they have a much bigger area to quest in than creeps do.

You can't strickly PvP when you first start out anyway because you can't kill any freeps, or enough of them to get enough commendations to make purchases.

I have to agree now that I've started a new toon. Even with doing most of the dailies on my main creep and my alt I still only have a few corruptions and skills for my new toon, making it harder to play. I don't want to spend weeks grinding commendations, and I'm sure new players don't either.

Creep skills are already gated through ranks, there isn't really any good reason to make them cost any commendation at all on top of it, you earn the rank, you should get the skills.

/signed

I just created my first new creep in a long time & it feels like the worst time ever to be rank zero. Definitely worse than the green-dot days of yore. I would be surprised if brand-new players trying creep-side stuck it out for more than a day or so as it's that grim. The toons are feeble in PVP and the commendation grind seems badly out of proportion. Much, much lower commendation costs are needed for the first few ranks at least. Those are the ranks that seem to have the biggest burst of new skills/traits being available and it's the toughest time for grinding out commendations.

Also - 7,500 commendations for a Rank 1 appearance? Seriously? C'mon.

I suggest an increase of skill/trait/audacity cost per rank.

E.g
Audacity
Rank 1 - Free
Rank 2 - 500 Comms
Rank 3 - 1k Comms
Rank 4 - 2k Comms
Rank 5 - 4k Comms
Rank 6 - 6.5k Comms
Rank 7 - 9/10k Comms

Appearances should be 1.5k Comms for each rank!
Brands should be maximum of 2k Comms for each rank!

Better idea is to not have creeps have to earn extra coms for their skills. How about you treat us like freeps and let us buy ours with silver?

Originally Posted by Aedon

Better idea is to not have creeps have to earn extra coms for their skills. How about you treat us like freeps and let us buy ours with silver?

Like this idea.

/signed

/sign

it cost are way to high.
The veteran creeps who did already a lot of deeds missed the rewards,
ppl only buy skins anymore if they are lower Ranked becouse they can't pay. looks boring,. in battle.

ir lower the prize, or increase the droprate from freeps & quests rewards.

The Audacity/Skill system is working as intended. Turbine developed a way to make players buy skills from the Store and save the Commendations for Audacity. Next up, you can bet Commendations will magically appear in the Store.

It's a good thing the Devs can think of ways to extract the last pennies from a dying game because they sure as Hades can't develop new workable content.

Originally Posted by jadacakai

The whole system needs some tweeks..

1) lower costs for r1-3 creeps

2) re-introduce a 30min-1hour lockout both sides

3) increase commies from pvp, decrease from pve

4) consumables should be bought with cash, not commies

/have a noice day

/signed 1234

Yes please.

To give my story;
I recently started my Weaver (recently and recently, a few weeks ago) I recently hit R6, about 2days ago and I STILL do not have all of my skills/corruptions/traits that I wish I did. Including 2 active skills. (I am R2Audacity however. But even if I would have spent that 6k on the skills/traits I'd still be missing some.) To keep up with my Weaver from R1-5 I have quested on my;
Warg, Warleader and Weaver(duh) Gotten a few maps on all 3of them...

And then I mean that EVERY day I did the basic quests for all keeps, including ID.
It's a bit out of hand...

I have a feeling it will balance out now at R6, however. But R1-3 was absolutely horrible. Started to get better at R4 and had most of the skills/traits/corruptions by R5.

Originally Posted by jadacakai

The whole system needs some tweeks..

1) lower costs for r1-3 creeps

2) re-introduce a 30min-1hour lockout both sides

3) increase commies from pvp, decrease from pve

4) consumables should be bought with cash, not commies

/have a noice day

I agree with everything except #3. I think that the values on inf/comms for quests is good, but I think that you should only get these values if you are r5 or r6 or lower. That way, low rank creeps can use them to get inf/comms and get their skills, but higher ranked creeps won't get any bonus, thus decreasing pve.

Originally Posted by zalladi

I suggest an increase of skill/trait/audacity cost per rank.

E.g
Audacity
Rank 1 - Free
Rank 2 - 500 Comms
Rank 3 - 1k Comms
Rank 4 - 2k Comms
Rank 5 - 4k Comms
Rank 6 - 6.5k Comms
Rank 7 - 9/10k Comms

Appearances should be 1.5k Comms for each rank!
Brands should be maximum of 2k Comms for each rank!

Good idea, but those high rank costs are too high. Even at r7 - r9, we're getting more than one skill/trait and it would suck to have to grind 20k+ comms for skills/traits.

My suggestion for skills and class/racial traits would be:

r0 - 100 each
r1 - 300 each
r2 - 500 each
r3 - 1k each
r4 - 5.k each
r5+ - 2k each

T1 traits - 50 each
T2 traits - 200 each

the traits that have 6 total would start at 100 for the first and increase by 100 for each after so:

1 - 100
2 - 200
3 - 300
4 - 400
5 - 500
6 - 600

so a total of 2.1k for all of them.

I can see appearances being 5k each (since they're not required) and maybe put brands at 3k or so since you don't need them as much as skills/traits.

I have to agree with this rational. Just rolled a defiler and got to R2, but WTH. I had 3k comms from my freep, but only gained just under 2k on my creep and they want 2k a skill...really?

a defiler is already hosed and only good with groups now I can't even afford my skills to help. I guess you gotta grind or spend the tp...$$$=Time.

X

Originally Posted by Samus1111111

Good idea, but those high rank costs are too high. Even at r7 - r9, we're getting more than one skill/trait and it would suck to have to grind 20k+ comms for skills/traits.

I think zalladi was just referring to audacity with those numbers. Rank 7 would cost between 9 and 10k.

Originally Posted by fallat

I think zalladi was just referring to audacity with those numbers. Rank 7 would cost between 9 and 10k.

Ok, if that was just for audacity, then I can get behind that since it's less total and allows people to get it faster since it's less in the beginning.

couldn't agree more, not only is this new currency poorly implemented the costs for every little thing are extremely high compared to the gains making lower ranks even more so useless.

and while you are at it turbine please throw Audacity into the trash - torch it and toss it out of the window alongside with the dev that thought it up.

I honestly don't think they need lowering that much(aside from the skins and possibly brands), the cap on commendations could be raised a bit though.

Originally Posted by Daec

I honestly don't think they need lowering that much(aside from the skins and possibly brands), the cap on commendations could be raised a bit though.

Have you rolled a brand new creep since U6?

If you don't buy anything from the store, it's murder. I think the calculations were that you had to hit r6 or r8 at least before you were actually able to afford all the skills up to that point (just the skills, not counting brands/skins).

For low ranks, the cost needs to be reduced (the devs did say that we were supposed to be able to afford every skill and trait at each rank). This does not apply to higher ranked creeps (r8+) since we earn more comms per rank since each rank requires more and more inf.

Originally Posted by Samus1111111

Have you rolled a brand new creep since U6?

If you don't buy anything from the store, it's murder. I think the calculations were that you had to hit r6 or r8 at least before you were actually able to afford all the skills up to that point (just the skills, not counting brands/skins).

For low ranks, the cost needs to be reduced (the devs did say that we were supposed to be able to afford every skill and trait at each rank). This does not apply to higher ranked creeps (r8+) since we earn more comms per rank since each rank requires more and more inf.

Acquiring rank 6 with all maps nets you what, 30k+ commendations, how many do you need?

Its pretty much the same as when you had to buy all your basic passives with dp at ranks 1-4, unless you had a large stock pile from leveling characters / other creeps. I don't really remember people throwing too many tantrums about that.

Here's a balancing mechanism for you:

Let freeps rebuy their skills for comms to unlock them in the ettenmoors...

Originally Posted by Fendir

Here's a balancing mechanism for you:

Let freeps rebuy their skills for comms to unlock them in the ettenmoors...

I would have no problem with turbine allowing me to roll a new freep at level 75, giving me a few skills and basic stats/armor. Then having to pvp for the rest.