Stop hitting yourself! No worries i’ve my mits capped. Only for tier 1 ratings though. Now it’s time for some serious talk, cause this change in the Mordor update is what could impact you’re gameplay the most (hopefully).
All stats lead to Rome
What does “Rating” do?
Rating is the math the game does to connect all your stats and gear to actually how hard you defend or hit your enemies. It takes all your different sources of critical hit chance and turn it into a single easy picture. This way if you don’t like your crits. You can get more of any possible source of crit chance and see you’re number go up.
What number you eventually need to get that 33% crit chance is what is the rating system is about. At this moment you need about 7350 crit rating for a 15 % chance at level 105. If a single boss in a raid crits too often they can change his crit rating. Rating is calculated with a difficult formula which not only takes your rating in consideration, but also your level, the enemies, difficulty settings like tier 1 or 2.
Summary: Stats determines how much cash you have. Ratings decide what price you need to pay for the same product.
What if everything has too much?
Rating is just a system. It part of the balance that decides how easy or hard the game is. But one of the most heard complaints about the game is that during leveling the game is too easy. You want to be able to solo things meant to solo. But when most people can go toe to toe with 4 mobs and several signatures the balance might be a bit off. To rebalance the entire game would take a lot of work. They have two ways to go about it by changing everything (What is everything?)
Everything has less stats
Everything need more stats
Changing everything to have less stats is the option SSG won’t go with. Since this is an ongoing battle since there will be more everything in the future. Each new region would require finding a new balance that works for people starting in that area to people running around it fully geared. So that leaves them with option 2. Change how much rating you need for the same result.
The new rating system being build
Seems the rating system didn’t have the flexibility needed to make these changes. Over the past few months they have been building the tools that would allow them to change the rating system more easily. My guess is that there was a single formula that covered everything leaving them unable to tweak specific level ranges, species of mobs or any special place in the game. I expect to have them build a system with more control over the areas that a rating handicap can be applied. Want easy 50-60, tweak it, give 105 a harder time in tier 2, tweak it. Want to create a new difficulty, make tier 3. Now they will be able to (hopefully)
Rating system sneak peek – level range tweaks
We’ve seen a sneak peek in the last update where every mob above 105 was hitting people 3 times harder than before. This was cause they had forgotten the 105+ mobs were actually already in the game in the Throne of dread terror raid. Here you also see what happens if they turn the nobs too far. Since they upped the requirements without having access to gear that could provide the stats.
The only part we’ve seen so far is that they can change the numbers for specific level ranges. Since 105 was completely fine and 106 was insane. And it was also outside the raid.
What other parts are possible?
Here its time for speculation. What other parts are possible? Everything. It’s not realistic of course, but now that they are rebuilding one of the core tools for the game. Lets hope they update it to the best possible item. A short list they might now be able to tweak more easily.
Landscape mobs vs instance mobs
Mobs vs bosses
Tier 1 vs tier 2
Being the same vs higher level than the mob
Scaling in big battles and pvmp
Normal mobs vs elite mob
Old foes are back
What it can mean for the game
We haven’t seen the new system yet. And with nearly all math behind the game we can only deduce it from practical experiments. This is how each crit/mitigation or dps rotations is figured out in lotro compared to other games with a plugin system that has deeper access to the games core mechanics. So below are my fantasies and nightmare for the new rating system/tool.
The fantasy – With a new tool to tweak every little facet of the game you could go two ways. Make everything scale to your level. Have every zone be a zone to level like Guild wars. This is a bit of a fantasy, cause there are a lot more systems needed for such a thing.
The dream – The system is so easy to use and quick to implement that the team of SSG has gotten in the groove and rebalanced instanced areas. Fixed some horrible scaling that was present in the game. Old Eriador instances like Great barrow and annuminas are real easy compared to the later instances released in lotro’s lifetime.
The imbuement story – Everything released in the expansion has been tested and tweaked to be a really good mix of solo, group and challenging content. Besides a few mishaps nearly all of the content released since osgiligath has been of good quality challenge wise. They had more plans, but it all took a lot longer then they thought it would. It’s a good place to start and they will fix the last few things in the next patch.
The essence promise – At the ground level it functions. All high levels are excited, but the new area is gated behind a freaky new system. They had plans to make the system go all the way back to level 10. But we know they will not look back to it. Loose hooks hanging in moria for a new tiered instance finder.
The Obi Wan – It’s buggy, they spent so much time building the system there wasnt any time to actually make content or patches for it. Time will be our only hope, but it will be an Epic Battle to fix it all.
Challenging for all
What i hope it can bring us
More and a better scalable experience in the instances and raids. No longer will there be only Tier 1 and 2. A lot of the later instances are too easy on 1 and a really challenge to pug on tier 2. I’d love to be able to choose a tier 1,5 or make it 3 tiers with a nice middle ground.
Have a revamped skirmish or Survival of the barrow downs that scales endlessly. Each waves of adds gets stronger over time or you can select a level of the instance. The Rift system in diablo 3 was introduced after the game was launched and currently it’s the single biggest reason people are playing it. Is it really good lore-wise. Probably not, but i’d play the heck out of it.
Better scaling than currently available in big battles or the Pvmp. Being able to fine tune classes and levels to be on a more even playing ground could bring back a lot of vigour for these parts of lotro. Anything below level 80 is currently having a really hard time in these places. And i’d say 75% of it is due to stats not scaling as they should be.
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