Thread: Is anyone else tiring of the slaughter?

I don't know how many 'creeps' are left (at one time there were quite a few players who were dedicated to the creep side and even though they may play the other side they reserved their pvp for the creepside). But there has always been those who played both sides always choosing the winning side (even flipping to do so in the middle of a fight).(which is fine of course) but at it's heart creepdom was a brotherhood who fought on together no matter how out gunned we were. We relished in our deaths as much as our victories for we were the wretched corp of creeps.

Now after almost 5 years I returned for the 10th time hungering for the bloodlust of battle only to find that the moors had changed once more but this time to alarming levels of slaughter. Now, if you come back you find first of all that you face a stiff uphill path to fun where audacity is required to hope to survive a few more seconds in a fight against a freep side the strongest I can ever remember.

Now I've never minded freep power becaue I knew it takes that to draw many to the moors to live out the fantasy of the hero where you slash left and right laying waste to the evil denizens of the moors. This would be ok if the average creep had access to the some of the same damage output to at least put up a good fight. I can't say how close the higher ranked creeps with high audacity comes to this because I can see I'll most likely never reach those heights because once more in my 'moors' life I am once again the new fodder of the moors.

It was expected in the beginning but now at almost r8 (before you scoff this is my 4th version of mummy) and while not r12 or higher I have most of the skills of the higher ranks but not the audacity. To get this means hours of questing (something most of us 'creeps' came to the moors to avoid) and the countless hundreds if not thousands of deaths to be suffered while trying to do these quests. Deaths aren't so important but battle is and most battles last mere seconds for when you hear the 'shwing shwing' you know you are dead as 10k of morale will be gone in a flash.

But it's not just this as I know many are facing this for the first time and simply will give up and return to the stronger side and while I know there has to be an imbalance for the kind of pvp to succeed in lotro I see another kind of pvp being practiced that in my view shakes the moors to the core.

Just for instance, I saw a warden run into EC with a trail of creeps on him (I stayed out but had him targetted just waiting for the end of the vile freep to come only to see his morale reach near zero then magically reset to 12k while creep death messages flashed up the screen. The he simply jumped the wall, horsed up, and rode off into the sunset almost as good as new.

Another instance occurred later where a few freeps were battling in lug so I waited below as I have many times in the past for the inevitable escape jump which came complete with 3 strong npcs following the freep with one creep and myself all focusing on him while he was well below half morale when much to my surprise and a few 'shwings' that all 5 of us were dead and the freep ran off still breathing and relishing in his great victories.

Cool, I say. But how long before most will tire of easy victories and either join the creepside (doubtful at this stage) or go back to pve all the while proclaiming that the moors has been conquered. And many who play both sides casually proclaim that oh this one is using illegal means to gain more damage and that it's not that uncommon but since they may themselves use these 'tricks' they can't really complain too much.

I don't know if these claims are true but I've heard them many times over the years but even if they aren't true how long can there be a dedicated force of creeps left to fight a force of freeps (in my view 5 or 6 can do what used to take a full raid). Already, I can feel the difference in my fellow creeps who know longer seem to be there to fight on but more to kill their friends if they can and if they can't they can flip and do it from the other side when they come to creep.

Am I alone is this? If so, I will quietly retire from pvp or at the worst case use lotro for pve only. This statement is in no way an attempt to troll anything (I know of course that will be claimed) and I fully expect those who enjoy the slaughter to rush to protect their interests in not wanting*(corrected from wanted) anything to change. I can only wonder what rohan will bring to the table but as I don't buy expansions any more*(corrected from moor) I guess I will live through it somehow in any event.

Thanks for reading and double thanks to any that have some reasonable comments or criticism's of my words. Mummy.

Of course we've had enough. That's why most of us are going, or already gone, elsewhere.

I was in craids every night for the last week or so. Not sure what the problem is. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. We usually lost open field, and typically won in NPCs. Would be nice to win open field, but until our healing can match the freeps, it is what it is.

What it is not is to the level of hyperbole coming from some of you. Some of us creeping are doing more adapting than we are complaining. You should try it.

The moors will never be anywhere near balanced.
Freeps get stronger with every update while creeps get a slight morale boost.
Freeps get 3-4 new/update skills while creeps get 1 new skill & 1 nerfed skill.
Freeps get survival / support skills while creeps get single target debuffs.
Freeps strength isn't rank gated. R1 freep = same DPS as R15 freep
........got tired of pointing out obvious

Simple sounding solutions:
Remove use of LIs in the moors [Freeps must use crafted weapons]
Remove audacity
Remove 10k limit on commandations
Lower commandation costs on all creep skills/traits
Give both sides the same debuffs/buffs or disable those that aren't on both sides
Remove maps & horses and revise the flow of travel on the map [create more cliffs/paths; create more spawn points ect.]
Make both sides have the same total mitigations [decide which creep classes are light/medium/heavy and set a hard limit for both sides at 30/35/40% and dont let any buffs go beyond that limitation.]
Lower the crit chance and ensure both sides have equal chance to reach the cap.

Controversial changes:
Disable set bonuses on all freep armour sets
Make stealth last 30s with a 15s CD [yes; spiders still hate wargs]
Make Lie In Wait last for 2-3 minutes [yes; getting ambushed out of nowhere by 24 undetectable spiders sucks just as much as 24 wargs.]


End point of it all:
Remove super powers from moors so it is more of a normal war-like senario instead of an "everyday human vs Super Team Awesomesauce" cartoon.

Perma stealth is always OP definately. For both sides and should be removed. Different classes can have different durations and CD's, but never perma-stealth.

Crits and LI's are what really unbalanced the moors in the first place. Even if they could remove criticals only, it'd be a major help. But in removing them, they'd have to completely rework skills that are dependant on crit chains and that would be rough. Or make it so the crit still opens the skill dependant on it, but the damage is the same as a non crit. Devs should be outlawed.

As a freep I always hated LI's for so many reasons. The grind, the RNG, the TP costs, having to destroy completed weapons for 2nd agers, 1st agers, new level cap, do it all over again. I liked running instances to find cool weapons. I wouldn't want them to be crafted only, but I wish, even in pve, that they'd get rid of LI's.

Agreed again on making medium, light and heavy classes for creeps. Defilers should have their healing output increased, but become a light armor class like a minstrel. Charge should work in combat for reavers but they should be cc'able and they should have more AOE capability.

The penalty for healing in WS needs to return. Glory and all the buffs associated with it should be turned off in the moors. Hunters need a native skill to remove slows and provide slow immunity for a period of time.

All out of combat skills like rezes should require an induction and there should be a very obvious visual queue that the induction is under way.

Audacity should be removed. Its just radiance all over again.

I don't think creeps would want freeps having the same level of b/p/e, resists or mitigations unless they were also going to reduce dps.

I don't advocate mirror skills on mirror classes, though, its boring.

It's all about the crits guys, this is all it comes down to. Freeps having the ability to reach 25+ % crit and 10% devastate is just OP. It's not like creep mits are that broken (they sure need a boost) but on any freep, if you don't crit you don't do no damage (result of mits + audacity), my bigger skills on my guard for example, the tooltips say 800-1300 )fpr brutal assault & To the king) and they hit for 300-500 non-crit, when they crit/dev they hit between 900-1400. This is the only way for freeps to go through creep mits and audacity, crit which is accompanied by crit multipliers and stuff which is why when you put some hunts/champs/RKs together on one target this target gets blown up).

Creeps lacking the ability to crit is what makes Creep DPS seem so low and Freep Heals to seem so high. Now you will say, hey bud I got a reaver and I crit with ravage for 200. Yeah that's a result of lack of crit multipliers and big freep incoming damage reduction (mits + audacity + on buff). Just think about it, the warg can do some serious damage right now in shadow, why? because with the element of surprise traited they crit all the time.

Back in mirkwood mits were around 15-25% depending on class (heavies,light,med) but the crit cap was at 15% for crit and 5% for devastate. To sum up, back in mirkwood your skills were hitting just a bit lower compared to what their tooltip said, now with all those fancy mits and audacity and stuff the only way around it is crit. this is all it comes down to.

I think if they would remove the mits for both freeps and creeps and reduce crit chance for freeps (and wargs) fights would last longer and there would be more ballance out there.

Originally Posted by Therealmvp

It's all about the crits guys, this is all it comes down to. Freeps having the ability to reach 25+ % crit and 10% devastate is just OP. It's not like creep mits are that broken (they sure need a boost) but on any freep, if you don't crit you don't do no damage (result of mits + audacity), my bigger skills on my guard for example, the tooltips say 800-1300 )fpr brutal assault & To the king) and they hit for 300-500 non-crit, when they crit/dev they hit between 900-1400. This is the only way for freeps to go through creep mits and audacity, crit which is accompanied by crit multipliers and stuff which is why when you put some hunts/champs/RKs together on one target this target gets blown up).

Creeps lacking the ability to crit is what makes Creep DPS seem so low and Freep Heals to seem so high. Now you will say, hey bud I got a reaver and I crit with ravage for 200. Yeah that's a result of lack of crit multipliers and big freep incoming damage reduction (mits + audacity + on buff). Just think about it, the warg can do some serious damage right now in shadow, why? because with the element of surprise traited they crit all the time.

Back in mirkwood mits were around 15-25% depending on class (heavies,light,med) but the crit cap was at 15% for crit and 5% for devastate. To sum up, back in mirkwood your skills were hitting just a bit lower compared to what their tooltip said, now with all those fancy mits and audacity and stuff the only way around it is crit. this is all it comes down to.

I think if they would remove the mits for both freeps and creeps and reduce crit chance for freeps (and wargs) fights would last longer and there would be more ballance out there.

It's not really just about crits even when we do crit or dev it doesn't come anywhere near the tooltip most of the time even against light armored freeps.i had tried running with a max damage build on my spider after i got 7 aud to see if it would help some but after having a dev crit for 163 on a cpt when the tooltip said around 700 so close to 80% of my damage was mitigated. I think its the combination of high mits+audacity that hurts creeps more than crits.It doesn't hurt a freep that much to stack mits in my mit build my rk may loose about 8k mastery but gains 2k+ morale and can still hit the occasional 6k ec on a creep while having near maxed mits(38.7%) and if u add in cpt buffs i can hit almost 10k morale vs the 6k in my damage build. yet if i wanted to stack any mits on a creep it would not only cost me damage but morale as well and then u have to hope u run into what u stacked mits for since not all freeps are using skills that are mitigated by tac mit like probably 90% of creep skills are (shadow/acid/fire damage)

Freeps should get a mit nerf in the moors, and a crit multiplier debuff. Problem solved!
...or maybe it isn't that simple

No it's not that simple Flankrat.

Well SSN that was pretty much what I wanted to say man.

The mits/audacity really hurt the creeps, because they don't have a way around them. Freeps do with their crits, all classes except the guard (I'm not complaining, just stating, it's not like I have a problem) have crit multipliers, freeps are set up for crits. This is what I was trying to state, if the freeps don't crit they do low dps because their damage is mitigated succesfully (Pen shot for example probably hits for like 700 I think non-crit which considering the amount of morale a creep has is not that big). Now the creeps can stack 14-15% crit defense without slick flesh which is another 3%, so an overall of 17-18% buffed. That leaves a good 7-8% crit chance for a freep that has capped crit. Most freeps though have between 20-23% crit unbuffed (excluding skills that have extra crit chance) so if you take away that slick flesh for a 1v1 let's say the creep is still exposed to crits PLUS his morale/mits drop since he traits full crit defense. So basically the freep wouldn't have to crit that much, this one or two crits he would get would be enough to make the difference for the fight.

The current crit defense for creepside in useless. I'm not sure if it works in 1v1s, against my guard it is succesful cuz my damage is bad and I have to crit in order to win. In RvR it ain't worth it, no way, low morale, low mits so even though you have high crit defense, some crits would get through and you would drop. Now if the creeps could build 20%+ crit defense I am not sure if it would ballance things out or if it would be OP. Maybe it wouldn't change much, maybe the freeps would stop building high crit and build more mastery and it would kinda work because the creep mits/morale would be low (since he would be traited for full crit defense) so basically the freep wouldn't have to crit. So maybe creeps need a boost in both their crit defense and base mits. Or maybe they should make 2 separate Corruption traitlines for creeps, 1 for Offense (damage/crit) and one for Defense (Morale/mits), so basically revamp creeps and set them up for crits. If they set the creeps up for crits though the pace of combat would REALLY fasten which sucks, it would basically come down to who gets big numbers first in 1v1s and RvRs would be about blowing up the enemy ASAP, it wouldn't any longer be about skill. So maybe this whole mit system should go away and turbine should come up with something new cuz it doesn't work out, it makes freeps OP because they don't take damage but they can still do big damage by critting.

And yeah it's true that since they introduced the new mitigation system with RoI things got really unballanced. My guard runs around with 59% mits and 7 audacity unbuffed, this according to the formula a total of 71.3% incoming damage reduction WITHOUT the ON buff which I have most of the time, with the ON buff it's 75.318% inc dmg reduction. I just did the math and I realised as you can see that ON buff reduces inc. damage by 4%. I remember it was 4% back in mirkwood too. Anyway, 75% inc damage reduction man, lol back in mirkwood that was the amount of damage I was taking with a cappy bubble on me. And I still have 10k morale, 19k mastery (which is a +100% melee damage increase with overpower on) and a good 20.1% critical chance. Creeps can't do that, creeps can't have all 4 main stats that high (This is my aspect of any build atm: Defense = Morale + Mits, Offense = Mastery + crit). Maybe it's because creeps are set up differently i dunno or maybe it's pure ignorance/underdevelopment from turbine's side.

I know one thing that's for sure, I can't just say: Pimp creep crit defense or put some DR on freep crits cuz there would be other side effects too. But what I'm gonna say is that they should just revamp their entire freaking useless combat mechanics cuz after all this talking this is the only conclusion: THEY SUCK.

Too many walls of text.




"Speak plainly, and in as few words as possible; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood."
~ William Penn

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
~Mark Twain

Originally Posted by jennirich

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
~Mark Twain

I like this one too..

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
― Mark Twain

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― Oscar Wilde

Originally Posted by CraterMaker

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― Oscar Wilde

haha!

Ehh...what can I say without sarcasm? I haven't played this game long enough as others around here, but I can difinitely say that LOTRO have the most unbalanced pvp system of all other online MMORPGs. The problem is there is method to this madness.

1) Real life money. Turbine needs money and all of players on freep side have to pay to PvP. You can't just piss off your lifeblood of the game that pays for it's sustenance just to make less minor group happy such as us creeps.

2) PvP mechanics are way too sensitive to balance correctly. I may get crit for 9k damage with Epic Conclusion. I may get slashed with some Brutal Strike or Penetrating Shotted for 4k, or have Thyke laugh his &&&& off when he keeps clicking his insta over half life heal and bubbles everytime he is close to dieing. I may even have Tangrog who never probably hits any of his melee abilities but keeps using Auto-attack and the rest of it spent hearing that annoying flute sound until I want to stick that flute up in his rl asian &&&&.... yet still the pvp we have isn't excatly impossible and I've seen shares of victories be it 1v1 or RvR massive scale fights while still being r7 gank farm special reaver. It is kind of hard to revamp the whole current system without tipping scales one way or another. Turbine put too much weight on the scales for PvP here and removing even a feather now may collapse the whole system.

The only thing as creep I want to get fixed is lag issues. This is annoying when you rollerskate to your target sllllloooooowwwllllyyyy in the middle of huge melee, only to realize ... "oh wait I am kind of almost dead". There games with way better graphics than LOTRO that have less lag issues. Those lag problems also tend to favour ranged classes who keep shooting with gusto while melees are mysteriously keep scratching their heads why in the world of Middle Earth everyone swinging swords suddenly got frozen still or found the invention of teleportation to (at times even overshot past their targets) with half morale mysteriously dissapearing. I have broadband digital internet with T1 strength and I still lag like it is dial up at times during combat.

Everythig else seems just kind of worthless to complain about. Creep and Freep classes no matter how someone beats the dead horse for balance, will swing those scales like a ship in the middle of perfect storm one way or another. I've seen way too many complains about imbalances from pretty much every other mmorpg thus I think it is pointless since frankly not a single one of mmorpgs with pvp element in it have yet to find good resemblance of balance.

Originally Posted by Baarrr

Everythig else seems just kind of worthless to complain about. Creep and Freep classes no matter how someone beats the dead horse for balance, will swing those scales like a ship in the middle of perfect storm one way or another. I've seen way too many complains about imbalances from pretty much every other mmorpg thus I think it is pointless since frankly not a single one of mmorpgs with pvp element in it have yet to find good resemblance of balance.

That is because companies are scared to fine tune their environment out of fear.
They are scared the easymoders will stop playing wargs and leave the moors entirely instead of trying to use skill to outmatch/outwit your opponent.
Companies like classes to overpower the others. I am exactly sure why.

If they don't have their own developers that are confident to change things for the better; they should pitch us ideas and let us choose what route we should take that would lead to the most fun/competition.
I.E.: Hey guys here is a poll; pick one of these options:
New Class
2 New skills for each creep class
5 new skins for each class
Redesign of stats for creeps

Then let the community decide based on votes what should happen.
Then they don't get blamed for ruining the game. They can shake their head and point at someone else.

Simplified for Meregash:

Creeps die too quick

Freeps have fun

creeps have no fun

many creeps leave

freeps fight each other

Moors empty

Turbine doesn't care

No money in moors

could be money in moors

if turbine could see just a bit farther down road (sorry..got long there).

Mummy no play (just a message for my ego).

Mummy, I don't know what you trait or the like but before quitting I would recommend:
A) Staying the couple weeks it takes to get your audacity (easily doable through slight pvp and decent pve) You get several thousand per map if you work on a couple greenie toons making a full 7 audacity a several day job through pve alone.
B) Traiting correctly. You are under 10k morale. Keep one toon, stop re-rolling and build for more morale and crit defense.
C) Playstyle, the last 10 times I've killed there you sat 10 meter from me and just took the hits, no burrow, no webs, not even damage, just backed up. Maybe play some faster beat music in the background to get that body moving.

Over the last few days I've been hitting ranked spiders for as low as 300x high or 400 low penshot with dof pots. Thats getting to near 1/4 of my tooltip. I'd recommend asking them how they do it, I don't know as I don't play spider.

As for the 5 creeps that were chasing your freeps, they were probably the equivalent of 5 voaites being eaten by slyc or snoopey. Fish in a barrel. Theres like 80% low ranked creeps out now adays, ranked creeps can hold solo or small group, raid v raid is still obviously outbalanced if the freeps are good.

If giving more damage and finesse per rank would make freeps even more OP they should sutract nearly all you have on entrance to moors equivalent to a greenies then raise it like the creep rank finese health and damage making them at r15 maybe 3% better then pve and at r12 the same as pve. This would make low ranked freeps easier to kill and give freeps motivation to rank high.

Originally Posted by YesMaam

Keep one toon, stop re-rolling...

Good advice, no point wasting your effort repeatedly.

"If the words "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on."
- Terence McKenna