Orion Follows Up

Not directly to me, which would have been cool, but generally to the playerbase. He thinks some of his ideas were misleading or misread and wants to set the record straight on his opinion. Do check out his follow up post clarifying what he said in his last post.

The Perspective Dichotomy

Oooh, another fancy post name. Yes, I like fancy post names, and using my college accrued vocabulary. Anyhow, it's not mind-bending in any way, rather a look at the different perspectives between developers and players over game design, notably emergent behavior. This post is powered by Orion's latest blog entry on his MyLOTRO page. The post in and of itself is an excellent read and I found myself fairly captivated by the perspective offered.

Certainly we need to keep in mind his blog post is his own opinion and doesn't reflect Turbine's official... whatever. Still, a well-rounded developer in LOTRO will have influence over design directions (as admitted to in the post) and it's his opinion that directs his influence.

I want to do a comparison of his perspective on MMO design versus the perspective and perception of the players. There has been much talk about design philosophy, design direction, shifting priorities, ect in LOTRO by the various bloggers. Mainly this has been fueled by frustration over some of the end-game content. I think we as players would do well to read into Orion's post with an open mind. I don't think many of us understand the direction designers come from when approaching conentent. I think we take a more casual and biased approach to design. That is, each of us has our own opinion over what is good design, oftentimes not even awknowledging it in those words. Our opinion is framed more by what is fun for us, and it varies widely. The common thread, of course, is that whatever we find fun is the best design, regardless of other's opinions. Developers have to take a less self-centered approach. They know there will be a vast array of opinion on what is fun, so in order to remain sane and not jump on the endless treadmill of player satisfaction, they spell out design into a formal process, a set of guidelines to follow, principles to adhere to.

Where this fits into LOTRO is when Orion talks about the emergent behavior seen in the Moria instances, notably the Grand Staircase. That was his baby, so to speak. Emergent behavior is in a nutshell unanticipated player behavior - emerging on the scene with the content's launch into live. This type of behavior can be seen as strategic, innovatative, and creative, but on occasion, also exploitive. The latter, of course, is a no-no - you'll get banned if caught making use of exploits. So where is the line? One man's exploit is another man's creativity. This is where the different perspectives really shines. Orion arugues that in an MMO, most emergent behavior is exploitive because it takes advantage of a bug or error in the code. For example, being able to take a fall and still live, or using scenery to give oneself immunity from being hit but still able to hit back. And ultimately the developer has to be the one to say what is an exploit and what isn't, because they're the only ones able to access the code and give a difinitive data-supported definition.

We as players don't see this background data, or the original design intent, or any number of things that go into the operation of content. We're front end consumers, and yet we still want to be armchair designers. I'm guilty of that as well. I'm not saying our opinion doesn't count. It certainly has weight as we can choose to spend our dollars anywhere we please, but we as mature and intelligent people should consider that which we do not know or understand. Orion's post is an excellent opportunity to not only understand where a devloper is coming from on their design perspective, but also gives us the tools to frame our concerns. We can awknowledge a lack of data but at the same time speak to the matter with understanding.

I now have to ask myself, using an example from before, does the use of Enrage in the turtle raid contradict or negate the design philosophy of fun the developer had envisioned and put into that content. What was the purpose? What were the goals? What I saw as positive emergent behavior very well could be exploitive. Actually, in this case I don't think it took advantage of a coding error, but rather did violate the design principles behind the content. Same with the root immunity given to certain bosses in the Moria instances.

The one place where I feel Turbine dropped the ball, and this is based off of what I read in Orion's post, is not fixing the exploits quicker. He insists that emergent behavior requires, by it's vary nature, a swift address. The Moria instances went until Book 7 where they were truely fixed (for the most part). This created a set of false expectations and perceptions in the playerbase. Not only were we very tempted to use the exploits, we were learning the wrong behavior for those instances. We were enabled by the developers in our "bad" behavior.

I hope to speak to future concerns with more clarity and understanding now that I've gained a little insight into the mind of a developer. I again encourage all of you to read this article not only for the specifics about emergent behavior, but also for the different perspective. Two side of the same coin, if you will. One player, one developer, both wanting the best for the game.

Design-A-Horse

There's a new contest in the LOTRO world today - design your own horse. I think this one is considerably more thought-out than the kinship contest. Too bad I'm not an artist, or I'd attempt to submit a horse. Although I doubt I could be as garish as Massively's Schuster's Shooter even if I tried. This contest applies to both the US side and European side, so everybody is welcome to be the next equestrian Rembrandt.

A Middle-Earth Fourth

One of my few non-LOTRO posts... sort of. For the Americans out there, we all know what today is: Independence day. I wish everybody a happy Fourth of July. Enjoy the company of friends and family, BBQs and other good food. And of course fireworks (where they're legal). Middle-Earth of course doesn't celebrate an independence day, but I'll be lighting off some fireworks today in-game just because. And on a more serious and somber note, I leave you all with this touching video.

Forges of Khazad-Dum Video Guide

LOTROinfo.com has created a video guide for the Forges of Khazad-Dum. It comes in four parts, with the first on up now, the other three to come. It is an excellently produced video explaining mobs, strategies, paths, boss encounters, etc. They incorporate both an overhead map to explain routing and encounters as well as in-game video of specific encounters so you can see how it's done in the field.

I have yet to see a guide this well made and in-depth with video. Excellent work over ther eat LOTROinfo.com. I highly recommend checking it out if you're interested in running the hardmode instances in Moria. I also suggest going to the actual YouTube site as you can get the video in High Quality there, making it easier to follow the in-game action. My only criticism would be to turn off the floaty names while videoing. The advantage to the names, of course, is knowing where everything is at, but it can get cluttered and confusing at times with so much going on. Still, hardly a nic compared to the overall production value.

Summer Festival Guide

As always, the good folks over at Massively have kindly put together a guide to the summer festival. Interestingly enough, this year's guide is less necessary than last, considering we now have an in-game guide delivered to us by mail and which starts its own quest to seek it out. Cool stuff, but Massively always does an excellent job with their guides, so do check it out as well as the in-game, in-character, one.

Mobs of Middle-Earth

A delightful feature article appeared today on the official site, discussing the types and varieties of mobs found in LOTRO. If you're new to LOTRO, this would be a wonderful article to read before playing, giving you a taste of what you could see in the game. Or, you might just like to be surprised, and surprised you will be, especially when in the deep dark of Moria, where nameless enemies of all shapes and sizes await.

I think LOTRO receives undue criticism for it's bestiary. Many argue that the mob types are boring and repetitive. I think that's a side effect of being in the relative quiet part of Middle-Earth, Eriador. When we venture farther into the east, seeing more of Mirkwood, Rohan, Fangorn Forest, and closer to Mordor, I think the mob types will become more intimidating. And, we have Moria at this point. If you care to venture to the deepest places, you'll find some pretty unique mobs.

I highly recommend checking out this article. For the veteran, you have seen what there is to see in Middle-Earth thus far, but for the new player, it's a great read. A good way to get excited about the kind of evil you'll face in your LOTRO adventurers.

Post Book 8 Impressions

First off, I have done only one of the new instances given to us in Book 8, and that one bugged out. Haven't tried it after the hotfix. But I have been looking around at the revamped content in Breeland and Ered Luin, and I'm very pleased with the result. Not nearly so much running back and forth (which got annoying without a horse, if in such a small zone as Ered Luin), the quests are better written and more organized - they flow better. Great job Orion on the revamps. I particularly liked the tour of Bree, getting players familiar with the town. I remember being sent to the Prancing Pony and looking up where it was in my copy of the Lord of the Rings (kudos for putting everything in its proper place!) after I somehow managed to miss it. No missing it now with the pointer quest to the tour.

I've not participated in the epic book continuation either, as I'm a stickler for doing the books in order, and I'm currently on 2.5.5. Hope to catch up soon. Still, what I'm hearing is good. Rarely have I found an epic quest that sucked. They might have been hard, there might have been complaining, but the fact remains they're some of the most well-crafted content in the game.

There is one thing, however, that I have to comment on, negatively. The names of all the food items have been changed to include a container or amount in the name. Like "Jar of Mint Sauce" rather than just "Mint Sauce". That means that everything at the vendor is completely rearranged and the alphabetical order is no longer logical. If there are Jars of stuff, it's all together, if it's Bottles, that's together too. But it could be a Jar of Mint Sauce and a Jar of Vinegar. Those should be near the m's and the v's respectively, as before. It's almost like alphabetizing books or movies with the word "The" at the beginning all in the t's. It doesn't make sense because it's not the significant word. I can't find anything anymore at the vendors... Of course, I'll eventually relearn the order of things, but someone got a little overzealous on their modifiers this time around.

All in all a good patch. Book 8 of course fixed a lot of bugs, and the patch notes were extensive for this. I hope to see continued quality, with a little more forethought in some areas, such as the food items, or the larger issue of raid/instance design/rewards/progression.

EDIT: This is becoming a bad habit, post post editing. Anyway, Yeebo's comment reminded me that I have spent a good deal of time fishing for the summer festival deed. I tweeted that I now have the title "Sunshine" (with the requisite "Hello Sunshine" replies) which involved fishing in four different areas, a little over an hour real-time commitment. And these timed fishing excursions are repeatable, meaning you can get summer festival tokens simply by fishing. An excellent way to invigorate the fishing scene again.

Evaluating Legacies Continued

Okay, I'm finally getting around to this post. Took a while. Book 8 and the hotfix got in the way.

One of the comments in my Evaluating Legacies post mentioned that many of the bonuses for Legendaries give you the most reward simply by having them on the item unleveled. That is, the biggest bonus is the first bonus, with the rest giving only marginal improvement. I decided to look at a few of those I use.

First on the list is a series of critical modifiers: Relentless Attack, Devastating Blow, and Pressing Attack. The first is a tactics skill, a buff. The other two are melee attack skills. All three start out with a +245 topping out at +397. For the melee skills, I cannot say what percentage the increase is to the critical chance because that number is hidden. However, for Relentless attacks, I get a 34% increase with the first ranking. This goes up to 55% at rank 10. That's a 1.8% increase each rank. So, indeed having the first bonus is a huge increase and everything after that is quite small compared to it. Now we need to look at over all crit percentages to see the complete picture. With Mines of Moria, those became hidden in the critical modifier numbers, but if you mouse over your character sheet, you can see the actual percentages. Without the critical modifier bonus to Relentless Attack, I have a 6.4% melee critical chance. With the fully upgraded critical modifier (i.e. the 55% increase) I get a 11.4% melee critical chance. 5% is still noticeable, but barely.

Now lets look at another one I use, this time gained from my emblem. It's an increase to Rallying Cry healing. This bonus is a lot more straight forward. The percentages are already on top. Initially I receive a 3% increase. The rank 10 bonus is 11%, therefore after the initial 3%, I get a .8% increase each time thereafter. Again, we're front heavy with the bonus, but not nearly so much as with the critical modifiers.

So, simply having the legacy on the item you're using gives you the biggest bonus. Any rank ups will give less of a bonus, but 11% healing or 55% increase in critical rating is still noticeable, so ranking them up is not a bad thing. What else are you going to do with those legacies? I think looking at the numbers gives more weight to using a crafted item, as the DPS on those tend to be much higher than all but an upgraded level 60 first age weapon. You'll miss out on the sheer number of bonuses gotten from the legacies, but if you're only looking for damage, you might consider it.

EDIT:

Thought I'd add a bit of info about what weapon I'm using. Currently it's a level 59 Third Age Halberd. I mentioned before I got lucky with this one, but even still, if it weren't for the runics and legacies, I'd use the Peerless Thain's Halberd I have in the bank for when I need something other than common damage. I think I'd be able to get the DPS on my Third Age up pretty close to the Thain's Halberd anyhow. I've also got a level 54 Second Age Emblem equipped, legacies I want close to max. I have to ask again, what would you do with the legacies anyway?

Raising the Shire Adventures

New blog alert! By chance I stumbled upon a new LOTRO related blog. Not the usual game analysis, but rather a set of relatively small posts talking about their adventures as a character in Middle-Earth. If you're interested in something different from your LOTRO blog, do check out Raising the Shire.

Summer Daze

So, looks like the Summer Festival is upon us, once again dropping useless (to level 60 players) platinum tokens... But I should really stop harping about those, and instead focus on the fun seasonal events Turbine throws into the game. The spring and summer festivals seemed to merge together this year with the inclusion of the 2 year anniversary celebration. Still, each one is unique. What I love about the festival this time around is that players are mailed (in-game) about the festival, which opens a quest guiding you to where you can find the festival events. This is a simple, yet genius way to direct players to some excellent content.

If you'd like to read more about the summer festival and all it's new activities, check out the dev diary explaining the events. Time to laze away the summer daze! Fun times had by all and happy festival adventuring!

Evaluating Legacies

I read a thread on the Captain forums talking about strategies and merits of using the Relentless Attack legacy. This legacy increases our critical rating for the Relentless Attack buff. Some argue that this legacy is one of the most useless because the returns hardly make a difference at all. Others will level this legacy only a little bit, saving their points for what they consider more useful legacies. I think the return on investment (ROI) argument is a little fallacious.

Every legacy operates on very small percentages. 12% increase is the highest I've seen for a fully upgraded legacy, and that was on a level 60 first age weapon. 12% to 100 is only 112, not a big difference at all. It doesn't matter what number you use as your "principle" either because the effects are already balanced for not being overpowered (generally), regardless of the numerical value. That means legacies cannot give too much of a bonus, or the skill would become unbalanced. So, if one does argue the ROI isn't worth it, you have to carry that argument to all legacies.

The legacies you choose to level are generally worth it because you feel they're worth it. It all depends on how you play your class. Certainly there are some legacies more useful relative to others within a class, but none of them are completely useless. The better strategy discussion would be to evaluate the merits of the legacies based on a playstyle, rather than dismissing any one as having a bad ROI. They all do, considering the time sink involved in the legendary item system.

LOTRO Overview

Looking for a good overview of LOTRO, not written by a professional gaming site giving artificial scores? Want some insight that only a game developer would have but one that isn't compromised by working on the game himself? Do check out Psychochild's blog post from earlier this month. It is a nice run down of all the basic features in LOTRO and gives a balanced perspective on the gameplay.

Book 8 Patch Notes Review

I mentioned before I would wait to talk about the Book 8 patch notes until they were finalized. That time has come. This is going to be a epically long post. You have been warned. The format will be as follows. I'll hyperlink the relevant note I'm discussing, summarize what's necessary, and commentate. I'll not be going over all the notes, of course. That would just be insane. Instead, I'm picking and choosing what seems to be of most interest to me. Therefore, I'll be skipping much of the class specific information (aside from captains, because I play one), and a lot of the minor bug fixes. "Major" news is the idea with this post.

Epic Book Continuation

There's no surprise here. Like always, I'll say the epic books/storyline is one of my favorite parts of this game. Sounds like this book will focus on small fellowships.

Summer Festival

The seasonal content is a nice diversion for a couple days. I think we'll still be seeing the token drops. Really long period of that. I'm no longer a fan of the tokens since they're not scaled to level 60. Now they just take up space in my bags, if I even choose to collect them. Still, festivals are always fun, and sounds like there will be new activities.

Lothlorien Gift Boxes

This has been an issue since Book 7. The drop tables weren't right or something. Looks like these will be more friendly, though chances of a first age are completely gone. I like the changes, but I'm don't really care about first ages. My current third age weapon will be hard to beat as it is. And I'm not really grinding legendaries at the moment either.

First Age Legendaries

They're acquired by barter items now, gained through the instances/raids. Much better system as it eliminates getting first ages for the wrong class. Good change here.

Vendor Stacks

We can buy partial stacks from vendors! Yay! I always hated filling up to a full stack by clicking one at a time. Nice convenience change that just makes our LOTRO lives better. Like it says, it's the little things that count.

Boat Keepers

About bloody time! That lake is beautiful, but swimming across Evendim multiple times gets tedious after a while. Just like a swift travel route. Nothing fancy, but oh so nice. More convenience changes. Gotta love em!

FM Change

Hmmmm, I don't know if this will really affect things much. I don't play in fellowships often enough to really see what causes a FM induction - stun, knockdown, or on purpose (burg skill for instance). I guess it's not so nice we have one less option for FMs, but then again, we can induce them ourselves with the right class(es).

For your convenience (word of the day it seems) I've linked to each class's patch notes:

• Champion
• Guardian
• Hunter
• Minstrel
• Captain
• Burglar
• Lore-Master
• Rune-Keeper
• Warden

Captain Commentary

First on the list that interests me is we can once again rename our banners. Yay! I'm all for fluff changes and I like naming things. I miss it now that I no longer use Heralds (Ruth is so lonely).

Our Cry of Vengeance skill will now have a 10 second window of use and longer range. This is a very good thing. Nearly 2/3 of the time I use that skill, I'm either too late, or not in range of the downed player and it's completely wasted. Very helpful change, especially since the In Harms Way nerf. Makes up for that just a little bit.

Lastly, we can once again use Gleaming Striker, Flashing Bane, and Shining Star scrolls from the solo legendary instances in the Dolven View. When I saw that we couldn't use these post Book 7, I was annoyed. There was no longer anything to modify the Emblems. That was a mistake, obviously, not an intended change. Finally we're getting the fix. Good deal!

All in all I think the captain changes are good this time around. Repeated nerfs will wear on you.

User Interface

I'm happy to see that there is now a /ui command that saves your ui, which you can then load as a new character. Seriously, this is such an awesome feature. I hated going onto my alts (not that I did very much) and having to rearrange my ui all over again. I've done so many tweaks to it on my main that it takes way too long to change it all over again with another character. And then I don't even remember where I put half the stuff that's not visible all the time. Good stuff here.

More skinning options. I don't use skins, finding the default look satisfactory to my gameplay. But many people do, and unleashing the creativity of the player base is always a good thing.

Effect icons will once again pulse properly when running out of time. I don't know when they stopped pulsing, but it became hard to see when an effect was almost complete as sometimes the icons would stay opaque, and sometimes they would stay transparent. Makes it hard in high stress, distracting activities like instances or raids to quickly see what's going on. And that's important - getting the information to the player as fast and as efficiently as possible.

Quest Guide

Indicators on the map now pulse. I always made them pulse manually by moving my mouse on and off the item in the quest guide so I could more clearly see where it is I'm supposed to be looking, especially when I have multiple, large-area quests active and overlapping each other. Nice to see refinement like this.

Housing

Lockout fees will increase each week a house is in lockout (from not paying your bills, lazy bums!) until it reaches 90% of the purchase price. Not so bad for you normal house people, a bit expensive for the deluxe house. I did loose my house once before they were unloosable (That is not a word, I know) but I got my money back from that. I learned my lesson - pay my bills on time. Or rather, log into the game at least once per week to check on it. I got distracted by my school work at the time so I have a legitimate excuse for getting evicted!

Raids

Exploit fixes here. Good to see they're still working on this issue. I wish they had been faster at fixing the initial problems with the radiance instances post MoM release. Let's hope they've learned from that situation and will rapidly develop hotfixes for major issues like that.

Crafting

We're seeing a lot of changes to crafting here. The basic system stays the same, but things have been much more streamlined, such as use levels, crafting materials, tool tips, etc. There was an excellent dev diary talking about the changes, so check that out rather than these notes for the scoop on crafting re-vamp.

Adding a "make all" button is a good refinement, as well as fixing the stupid default to 0 thing. That is annoying.

I've included links to specific professions for your convenience:

• Farming
• Scholar
• Prospecting
• Cooking
• Weaponsmith
• Jewler
• Tailoring
• Metalsmith
• Woodworking

Jaxom the Yeoman

Jaxom is quite happy to see the critical items for farming have been reduced to 1 instead of 3. This does come with a price increase, but that's understandable. Nice to use stacks of mats up equally.

Jaxom is also happy that farming fields produce optional critical cooking ingredients. Looking forward to trying those out.

And Jaxom is elated to see food can stack to 50, and crafting ingredients stack to 100. Less trips to MD for cooking as he can store much more food on his person. Must have one of those portable coolers.

Legendaries

Happy to see that auto-combine on runics will pull from the most populated items rather than randomly. That way mutiples are used up first. Just common sense here, but something easily overlooked. Glad it has been changed.

Loot System

Rare Lothlorien monsters now drop Mithril Flakes. About time! You mobs better look out. There's a whole host of levle 60 players that are now gunning for you... er, swining their swords and firing their bows.

Rolls on keys will only apply to players who have not added the key to their ring. Why someone would purposefully roll on a key they already have, I don't know. Accidentally, well, that makes more sense. Glad to see this "fixed".

Graphics

Elated, yes, elated to see the lighting issues in Moria have been cleared up. They were visually annoying, having the ambiant light at your feat and partially through the ground in certain places. I'm a oogler of nice looking graphics, and when things don't look quite so good, I get cranky. Well, not really, but I love it when things do look nice, and LOTRO is a nice looking game.

Creature Pathing/AI

The only reason I bring up this bit is because here we find the lovely humor of whomever it is that writes up these patch notes. I will, for lack of a name, attribute this to the company as a whole. Turbine has a wonderful sense of humor:

"Moose in Forochel will no longer stand around and allow themselves to be turned into Moose-burger."

"Burrow Mobs Take 2! Once again, monsters which "burrow" (Cave-claws, Shades, Dark-waters, Neekers) will no longer do so when they are near death, because that's annoying. Our first attempt at fixing this was equivalent to a 9mm; it should've been enough to get the job done, but it wasn't. *This* time we’re pulling out the Desert Eagle .50, that outta stop these jerks."

Conclusion

Yay! I'm done. Whew! What a set of notes. I heard one comment that LOTRO patch notes give EVE a run for it's money. I assume that means EVE has long patch notes. I've never played it. I don't know how helpful or entertaining this was. Probably not much. On the whole I'm quite happy with the Book 8 changes. It doesn't address some of the larger overaching concerns I talked about in the last couple of days, but that's not something you see in a free patch. More like an expansion scale, or over a longer period of time. And I think that's what needs to happen with a lot of the critiques - Turbine needs time to look over the data, feedback, etc and come to the conclusions themselves. I think they will, considering the past track record with this game.

I'm looking forward to the patch. I really need to get back into the game for the epic quest, which I'm currently sitting on 2.5.5, I think. It's been that long since I looked at it. The only "new" content that I would participate in this time around is the epic storyline. I don't raid, and I haven't gotten any radiance gear anyhow.

Keep up the good work, Turbine. Glad to see the effort in this patch.

Kinship Contest Complete

Looks like the kinship contest has been finished and the winners are in. Were my predictions and pessimistic comments true or was I full of it? Let's find out...

What did I predict would happen? That a kinship created purely for this contest would be the winner. That it would be filled with characters created for the sole purpose of winning the contest, and completely defeating the purpose of a kinship. What really happened?

The overall winner was Order of Middle Earth on the Brandywine server. The kinship was created on 2/25/2008. Clearly not created exclusively for this contest. Neither were the second and third place kinships, the Old Timer's Guild on Gladden and Lords of Evening Twlight on Meneldor respectively (I wonder if that's a purposeful misspelling of 'Twilight').

Strike one for Jaxom...

What could be the case is that existing kinships were used to leverage/power level new players for the express purpose of gathering lots of points. Is that the case? That's impossible to find out. We just don't have access to the date when certain characters were created if their player is anonymous. If they're not anon, we can guess by scrolling through their character log, looking at the level up section, and going all the way back to the level 2 level up.

Strike two for Jaxom...

I of course didn't look at every kinship on every server that won... the MyLOTRO site takes so long to load pages for me that it would be time prohibitive to check them all out. Let's call that:

Strike three for Jaxom...

I'm out on all accounts. Indeed, the contest was a success, and while I still believe that that power-leveling new characters probably happened, if kinships were created only for this contest, they didn't win. I've thus eaten my own words. Congratulations all you winning kinships! And congratulations Turbine for being successful despite my cynicism.