So what do you guys think now?

[Redwolf]

I'm pretty bummed with LOTRO now. I have no problems with the new people. But the layers drive me nuts, I still don't like the Ueberpotions, login queues WTF (and VIPs do not get in earlier) and most importantly, Turbine is playing very dirty.

Sad puppy.

 

[Palantir]

I haven't "played/quested" for some time & have only been on once to check out AH sales since the F2P opening day (when all I did was check out the new area).

The LotRO game now comes down to each player making his own game & pacing within the game in my opinion. There's no game-setting incentive for accomplishing missions & gaining rewards from them when the newest player can simply buy & use what you spent time accomplishing- supposedly to enhance your ability to support the Fellowship on their quest to Mordor. The incentive for a community to come together to help each other gain items & do quests has been destroyed with all the solo enhancements and just buying top flight gear.

There's no "game" incentive to "work/quest" in the game storyline/situation to gain new equipment & items to help you when you can just buy them now.

So, each player has to have their own reason to quest for certain rewards (titles/Rep rewards) since questing & grinding for them is now the least effective way to help or advance the Fellowship.

I'll just forget about the world going on around me (the store & what other players are doing) and play at my own pace and stay with my own imagined storyline.

 

[Redwolf]

It's very hard to like the game right now. So I wanted to see what's left of my Captain after that subscription ran out. Not too bad, even some quests available 25+ if you stay on the epic storyline. Together with kill XPs you might be able to get to Moria this way.

But well. I woke up in an empty looking Bree. Annoying layer changes (stutter when crossing invisible lines). My herald gets attacked when it shouldn't, a threaten-only cat, but then the cat is confused and cannot find me and doesn't hit the herald either. Instructing the herald to come to me is rewarded with more confused people. So we are standing there, herald cat and I with ??? above our heads. Seems to be layer related as when I crossed another invisible lines things got unwedged. Except it shouldn't be a layer boundary as it was the middle of the fields west of Esteldin.

What I liked least apart from the layers is the reduced aggro rate of mobs. There are a lot of places where mobs have obviously been placed in a "scenario" with the aggro range in mind. Pretty much every single mountain pass has a couple "you must be this tall to get through" mobs of a certain level placed in front, and if you aren't on-level you have to take risks aggroing and running. Except not anymore. Now my superiour Dwarf Guardian "stealth" allows me to just walk between them. Likewise, many quest items and a lot of resources nodes have been placed in what originally was aggro range of a mob - and now you can go underlevel and just snatch it.

 

[Palantir]

All that was changed just to make it easier for the new players so they can "feel" they are doing well in the game and that the game is fast paced. (Also to allow them to catch up with veteran players) They also want to get the F2P'ers to some of the key named locations of Middle Earth ASAP (Weathertop / Angmar / Rivendell / Moria) & not have them stuck in Ered Luin or the Breelands very long.

I still dislike the idea of less-aggro from the mobs & not more aggro. The way to Mordor should be getting harder the closer we get not easier. You'd think that eventually Sauron would have his minions start looking at and standing on the roads not with their backs to them & sitting 50 meters away.

 

[Redwolf]

Renewal is up in two days for my last account. I don't want to pay because I'm pissed and I want Turbine to at least make statements on some of the problems (such as what's going to happen to the layers and why priority login for so-called VIPs does nothing).

But it would be idiotic to let it expire and then resubscribe a couple days later as that costs me the 500 Turbine points (effectively giving you half the subsciption cost in the 3-months plan back in Turbine points).

Meh.

 

[Dr Zaius]

It's Evil isn't it.

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

Do you lose your points if you put your account into suspense?

Not that long after LOTRO/SoA came out of beta I had to put my account into suspense, and when I reactivated a year or so later it was as if nothing had changed.

That was long before the concept of free-to-play became a reality, and I don't know how it would work now.

But if it works like it used to work, maybe what you might want to do is write to them and ask to have your account put into suspense until further notice. But be sure to ask them if it will keep your Turbine Points frozen in suspense as well.

The good part about that (if it works the way I suspect it does) is that if you decide you're comfortable with what's going on you can write to them to unsuspend.

The tricky part, though, is that you may be a bit too close to the rollover date for them to get their administrative ducks in a row. Maybe what you should do is send them an e-mail inquiring about the in's and out's of suspending an account under the current regime, and if they don't have some weird new policy in force plan on going into suspense in a month's time (and giving them a couple of weeks' notice when you do).

 

[Redwolf]

Do you lose your points if you put your account into suspense?

No, but if you lapse payment for 1 day you lose 1 month worth of free points.

Not that long after LOTRO/SoA came out of beta I had to put my account into suspense, and when I reactivated a year or so later it was as if nothing had changed.

That was long before the concept of free-to-play became a reality, and I don't know how it would work now.

But if it works like it used to work, maybe what you might want to do is write to them and ask to have your account put into suspense until further notice. But be sure to ask them if it will keep your Turbine Points frozen in suspense as well.

The good part about that (if it works the way I suspect it does) is that if you decide you're comfortable with what's going on you can write to them to unsuspend.

The tricky part, though, is that you may be a bit too close to the rollover date for them to get their administrative ducks in a row. Maybe what you should do is send them an e-mail inquiring about the in's and out's of suspending an account under the current regime, and if they don't have some weird new policy in force plan on going into suspense in a month's time (and giving them a couple of weeks' notice when you do).

We might have some misunderstanding here. All I'm doing, or decide not to do, is put my account back on auto-renewal before it goes out of payment.

I tend to resubscribe now because there's no reason to waste my time working around premium account limitations if I play at all. And I still want to see Moria, no matter how bogus the game around might be.

It's not that I don't have the money. I just want the pride of not giving them a cent before they answer to some legitimate questions.

It's also interesting that the company doing LOTRO for them in Europe has refused to upgrade to the new code and/or f2p.

 

[Redwolf]

It's Evil isn't it.

They put more incentives to spend real-world money than I thought.

All the storage is more expensive than I though. I thought my free loyalty points allow me to max out storage space but not even close.

Of course they are very active with sales to make people snipe whatever item they might buy right now before the sale is over. To bad they hadn't given me the loyalty points by the time storage was on sale

Then there are some very subtle tradeoffs between in-game money and real-world money and ways to exchange them. You can't straight buy in-game money with real-world money.

So they lowered the level requirements to get more vault space. Any level can buy all spaces now. But they left the in-game money price intact from before f2p. And there is pretty much no way that a low-level character can afford the 2 gold 700 silver (roughly 3x the price of a house) for a 20 slot chest that previously was 30 level min.

Then they offer you the chests instead of in-game money for real-world money (at least they intent to, doesn't work for me, but for other it does). So, since you can never buy in-game money for real-world money there is incentive to not waste the hard to get in-game gold on something that you can buy for real-world money. Once your in-game money is gone you can't refill it except through play time. So people let the in-game virtual money (which does nothing) on the virtual bank account unspent (which does even less) and spend real-world money instead. Cha-Ching!

To tip it off, my main earners of in-game money were my cook and my scholar. Which are both in the account that I *did* let run out of VIP and I think that probably disabled access to the crafting guilds and makes them useless as providers. Cha-Ching!

 

[Dr Zaius]

That's why I said it's Evil. I've always been a believer in the notion that if you give customers what they want, they'll love you for it and will keep coming back for more. But it almost seems as if MMO publishers are learning to thrive by throwing obstacles in the path of gamers in order to gimp the gaming experience. Why? The intent seems to be to frustrate players so they feel they have to dump more real world money into the system just to get a decent game experience. Now that may or may not be a good business model, but it's sure as hell not good game design.

FFS, I say just give gamers a great game and charge a fair price for it! All this money grubbing is like death by a thousand cuts.

 

[Redwolf]

Oh I forgot.

The maximum number of regular vault slots is 120. But at some point they had a sale (again before they gave me the points I am entitled to) that goes to 135. Now the sale is over and you can only go to 120.

What do you want to bet that the next time the 135 extension goes on sale, at any price, after people filled up 120, is a bestseller?

 

[Palantir]

I've pretty much avoided the Store & anything Turbine introduced that goes with it but then, I haven't "played" beyond some AH since the changes. I figure once I start playing again I'll just continue as if the store didn't exist. aperbag:

What still irks me is all the in-my-face "Turbine Store" logos posted everywhere on my screens. :blab:

As I've said before, the core of the game is still the fellowship & playing with other players something that I need to do more of despite the Dynamic Layering handicap.

On a different note- I talked to a player I didn't know before- he owns the house across from my Kinhouse. Seems I was the only other person he'd ever talked to / seen in the neighborhood- EVER! {I know he owned that house before I "moved in" so that could have been a year or more} Besides MD who owns the house behind mine this guy is the only other player I've ever seen in my neighborhood beyond someone in my Fellowship(s). More the pity that Turbine didn't make some changes to their housing system.

{Edit- btw I did start an EVE trial account, I'm not much into PvP but I'll see how it goes.}

 

[jwb3]

But it almost seems as if MMO publishers are learning to thrive by throwing obstacles in the path of gamers in order to gimp the gaming experience. Why? The intent seems to be to frustrate players so they feel they have to dump more real world money into the system just to get a decent game experience. Now that may or may not be a good business model, but it's sure as hell not good game design.

I haven't touched LOTRO but lately I've gotten heavily into Dungeons & Dragons Online, also by Turbine and also recently switched to a free-to-play model. I would probably never have touched it but for the F2P model, and I have so far resisted spending any money at all on it -- but it is good enough I could see paying some money for it on a one-time-only basis (i.e. not a monthly fee).

All of which is just background to presenting the DDO equivalent of what Don is talking about here. There are things in DDO called "collectibles", which are basically just McGuffins; you run into them in the dungeons, you accumulate sets of them, and then you give them to a very specific NPC in exchange for an item. For example, NPC A requires 3 of item a, 2 of item b, and 1 of item c in order to give you a potion which cures disease. There are at least a dozen different NPCs and at least 36 different collectibles.

Now, the game gives you a free "Small collectibles bag" which takes up a single inventory slot, and can hold up to a dozen different types of collectibles. Anything beyond that, and you are taking up inventory slots at one slot per collectible, until such time as you get a set and can turn it in... by which time you'll undoubtedly have extras of one or two of the three components. It doesn't take many hours of game play before you're at the point where deciding how to clear your inventory of these things starts turning into a hassle.

Or, for the low low price of only ___ DDO points at the store, you can get a Large collectibles bag, which will actually have room for the amount of collectibles you're going to be coming across.

As good an example of what Don is talking about as I can think of.


John

 

[Redwolf]

Fine. So I resubscribed two accounts for 3 months each.

<== spineless twig

I want to see Moria and to do it with minimum time I need the two accounts, to have characters from the second account in the world to dump items on and to hang out in the AH on a second screen to make cash. That would kinda work with the Premium status on the second account it turns out that the current Linux launcher does not know how to deal with premium, only with VIP. While I could probably hack that up in a reasonable timeframe it's just not worth it for $30, only to then sit there with the regular non-VIP restrictions.

I'll also pay whatever the hell they want for extra shared vault and maybe the wardrobe. The extra per-character vault chests cross the line, though. It is $4 for one chest but as opposed to the shared vault you buy this isn't per-account or per-server, it is per-character. At 6 chests for 8 characters on 2 servers that would be just short of $400.

Moria better be good. I already read mad bashing of the legendary items mechanism...

 

[Palantir]

Fine. So I resubscribed two accounts for 3 months each...I want to see Moria and to do it with minimum time...

Can't you just go F2P and still see Moria? There’s no reason to have 2 accounts just to go there and look around but you'll need to be @56th level to see it all, higher if you actually want to complete the quests (minus the "special" instances that require radiance gear - which will take you months on end to collect the special tokens & then see: which I refused to do)

There's really no big need to collect any money via the AH if you just want to see Moria then quit, you'll earn enough in vender trash while there to keep your gear repaired. And why are you even spending real $$ for more bank space or bother with the extra wardrobe?

Moria better be good.

I'd suggest looking at all the Moria screenshots to get an idea, once you see them then you have "seen" all of Moria. Experiencing it is another matter and it depends on what your expectations are. Based just on the "looks:" I was expecting well travelled corridors to be "finished" passages, endless sturdy mining lines, extensive yet still rough mining tunnels with some vaulting "buildings" and a FEW grand living communities (which Jackson got right) not the continual ad nausea massive passages & even larger caverns and massive structures around every corner. It’s true that there are a few areas meeting what I thought it would be like but they are few & far between. Most of Moria was designed simply for the impressive graphics not any sense of what a realistic mining race would do. Again- the dwarves weren't daft, they were hardworking, and cared little for "looks" so why would they carve out 50’-100+ tall passageways and thousands of 300'+ tall statues & areas when they are only 4' tall? I've always wondered why the mountains don't collapse as hollow as they are represented to be inside.

The combat aspect I would say is better overall in Moria as the mobs are everywhere (harder to simply stroll by casually on a sunday walk) and because of the many choke points leading into the large areas. They actually act like they are supposed to be watching for intruders & not sleeping standing up or completely blind!

I already read mad bashing of the legendary items mechanism...

Has something new developed with the LI's or just the usual LI issues? Once Turbine makes it so that YOUR chosen weapon advances with you then the LI system will be worthwhile. Although I have a feeling they are delaying that simple request so they can come up with some way to tie it in with the Store & screw everyone out of even more money. Obvioulsy just eliminating the fact that everyone has to go thru 500+ weapons at least (for real) just to find a decent one and then do it all over again every 5 levels would be too much to ask. Unless you do skirmishes & buy LI advancements (which might explain why my 65 Hunter still has a level 59 but wonderful bow in hand)

 

[Redwolf]

Some aspects of the game are just must faster if you have two accounts.

My first day as double-VIP was very bad, though. And I mean bad.

So my wife walks into my room and sees me hammer on two computer keyboards, just the "1" to "6" buttons. Just hand up and down dang dang dang. Two keyboards, two computers, two accounts, both actively fighting on-level mobs. The number keys are my basic combat keys.

• "What you doing?"
• "Playing LOTRO"
• "Oh I better don't distract you so that you don't die"
• "No chance of that, the game is too dumbed down"
• I could then have a perfectly fine conversation with her while fighting two accounts...
• ... because I discovered that I don't have to bother hitting skills. Just hitting '~' to get autoattacks is entirely sufficient to finish all fights with on-level mobs at > 80% health.

What had happened?

One account was rolling a new character and the new intro area is ... downchallenged. I can live with that.

The second account was in an epic quest with the so-called "inspired greatness". That boost is about 10x as strong as it should be. I never dropped below 80% health even when doing nothing but autoattacks.

So you can just "play" with a single keystroke...

 

[Palantir]

... because I discovered that I don't have to bother hitting skills. Just hitting '~' to get autoattacks is entirely sufficient to finish all fights with on-level mobs at > 80% health.

I'll have to give that a try when I play next but I doubt the tougher mobs will die from doing just my lowest damage attack over & over.

and the new intro area is ... downchallenged. I can live with that.

I can't imagine they "down-challenged" it even more, you could sail through to 20th easy enough. But that goes back to Turbine wanting players to get hooked on the game ASAP by leveling fast, getting a mount quickly, getting to travel everywhere mentioned in the books quickly...

The second account was in an epic quest with the so-called "inspired greatness". That boost is about 10x as strong as it should be. I never dropped below 80% health even when doing nothing but autoattacks. ...

Yes, the "Superman stone" takes a huge chunk out of the challenge & excitement department that once made SoA so incredibly great. Which is why I tell everyone to NEVER do the Epic Quests the first time through using that stone it's only for running through with your 3rd+ alts. The only hard part about the inspired greatness is any NPC escorts you have to protect, they're still brainless & never act according to the class strength thats escorting them. They just run themselves into more trouble now.

 

[Redwolf]

I'll have to give that a try when I play next but I doubt the tougher mobs will die from doing just my lowest damage attack over & over.

I meant in the two particular situations, intro and not-so-inspired greatness.

I can't imagine they "down-challenged" it even more, you could sail through to 20th easy enough. But that goes back to Turbine wanting players to get hooked on the game ASAP by leveling fast, getting a mount quickly, getting to travel everywhere mentioned in the books quickly...

It's not quicker, you just can't die unless you really can't figure out how to do a single whack on the mob to get into autoattack.

They took out Old Bloodtusk for christ's sake.

Yes, the "Superman stone" takes a huge chunk out of the challenge & excitement department that once made SoA so incredibly great. Which is why I tell everyone to NEVER do the Epic Quests the first time through using that stone it's only for running through with your 3rd+ alts. The only hard part about the inspired greatness is any NPC escorts you have to protect, they're still brainless & never act according to the class strength thats escorting them. They just run themselves into more trouble now.

NPC escort quests are much easier now because they make the aggro range much less and didn't adjust a single thing. So the NPC walks into what it thinks is a death trap and starts screaming and cowering all the while the mobs stand there dumb fat and happy not noticing a thing, along with the foot-tapping player. But the quest is coded to only continue after you kill the mob so you gotta figure out who's a volunteer for the pre-nerfed quest and whack him.

 

[Palantir]

I killed some time on the Turbine Forums (I know bad idea- /smackhead :argh: ) but what a bunch of whiners the new players are there now. The older players really don't like the changes.

Before it was mostly how to improve the game, now it's all about how to make the game yet still easier. Plus how "they" love how easy it is to get from A to B without having to fight anything now (with the reduction of Aggro). It seems those mean old aggro’ing Mobs were getting in the way of resource collecting & wandering around.
{Btw- I had no idea that the starting areas were now almost zero aggro areas.}

Anyone posting for the "good ol days of SoA" seemed to be out posted 10:1 by the easiness posters. Anyone complaining about too easy or killing immersion was hit with the “realism” rejoinders like: “so do you think fast riding is immersion etc.” to explain the changes.

Some staffer posted that the aggro range was reduced to ease the server load since having multiple mobs chase players across the landscape (who didn't want to stop and fight them) was a large burden. How about just shortening the Mob's pursuit distance instead of dropping the aggro range?

One poster tried to use the "scale" reduction of the world to explain the reduction of the aggro range: a range of 40m in-game was actually 400m or 1400m to Turbine so if you're 40m from a Orc you were actually 400m away and thus, he couldn't see or hear you since you are so far away. Which is why you have to walk right up to mobs now for them to react to you. :crosseye:

Another guy didn't like all the travel time, he wanted a map "point & click" travel method- no more walking or riding required. Yet another guy was complaining that he had to actually dismount his horse to do stuff & that should be changed... :angry:

I miss the pre-F2P world of LotRO. We can hope that after some evaluation Turbine will "re-do" some of the changes in the next patch.

 

[Dr Zaius]

What a bunch of whiners the new players are there now. The older players really don't like the changes.

Before it was mostly how to improve the game, now it's all about how to make the game yet still easier.

And this is exactly why I don't like the f2p MMO model. It steadily changes a game from being about achieving personal goals and doing something significant into the worst sort of grind for more "stuffs." And since the game has been reduced to that, the new players continually whine to get the gameplay dumbed down even more so it requires as little effort as possible. In my experience f2p inevitably leads to an environment where all game decisions are based around maximizing real world profit from selling in-game items rather than enhancing gameplay for the sake of making a better and more fulfilling game.