[CC] Developers Diary – Beorning 2.0 – Commentary

After the news that SSG would team up with Fantasy flight games to offer a Beorning founders pack for their Digital cardgame Lotr LCG early access. They announced that a developers diary would come soon, but that it would contain more new then just that partnering. And boy it does. We’ll take a look at the different sections of the dev diary and i’ll give my thoughts about it. *Disclaimer – im still playing a beorning after all this time.

Developers diary: Beorning-(lands)

sir Beorning a lot
First and foremost we’d like to apologize for the level of support the beorning class has gotten since its launch. Over the past few months we’ve verified, after extensive internal testing by multiple developers, that the Beorning class in its current form has fallen behind expectations to relatable classes.

Suprised it took that long. Beornings never were bad, but always felt that something was missing

New loading screen?

While we feel that a multi purpose class should not outpace a designated class. The build-in sturdyness of a Beorning as compared to other classes does not outweigh the handicaps we build in their skill trees in most scenarios. While most reports we get from people about Beorning skills are what we consider functional. We accknowledge that the Beorning different class lines dont differntiate enough. But as Sir mix-alot once said, we like big Beornings, but development time is a scarce commodity.

Seems they do like their big beorning butts. Puns are always welcome. While i might disagree about handicapping an entire class in favour of overall balance. Balancing a non-tank spec to not be better then a designated tank spec like a guardian or blue captain.

But it’s time for the Bear to shine again.

*/Roar

Update 22.2 Beorning class rebuild
While we knew we’d go to North-Mirkwood and heard your grizzly cries about the beorning we had to wait to announce our plans. As of update 22.2 we will introduce a new Beorning. A better Beorning. We’ve rebuild the class from the ground up. Cause over time it became clear that a few tweaks or new skills wouldn’t be enough.

*/Roar harder

Looks the same, but also a lot of new options

The decision to rebuild the class with a different design philopshy was made. Each traitline will feel more unique with the sturdyness removed. Each traitline will have a unique set of skills as opposed to a skill changinng depending on your traitline. Half of the trait lines will be active abbilities and half will be passive traits.
Each passive trait will be focussed on its respective trait line. Red line passive will boost physical skills, yellow line will boost tactical or ranged and blue line will boost defensive skills. In early levels this will give the class a focussed play style. With later class skills unlocked it will allow each beorning to match their playstyle and grouping options.

If this succeeds this would such a great class. Having passive boosts to a beorning will allow us to build a true-swiss army knife. Running a 3-man and missing some dps, but also a heavy. Mix a tank heavy with some red passives. Or a yellow bear that can keep going into the fray in a melee fight. Like a donkey, lets hope we don’t get hit with a rock a 2nd time around.

Update 22.3 Beorning lands
Sterkist and langash quest chain for our Stronghold of the north update ended at the Forest gate, for now. In update 22.3 we’ll introduce the beorning lands as a free content region to every player that has bought the Beorning class. This update will feature a new class-quest chain that will give the Beornings their missing class point and a new armour set that scales with your cub as you level through Middle-earth.

The choice to limit content to beornings only makes me think it would be a smaller quest chain. Our missing allegiance quests for the beorning race? Scaling armour sounds works the same as the High-elven jewelry.

Assault on the beorning lands

To challenge your Beornings versatility there will be a new instance that scales with the number of Beornings in your party. This instance will feature the growing onslaught unleashed by the goblins from the Misty mountains. Mix your bears and defend your home lands in a skirmish of epic battles.

Essentially a Survival of the Barrow downs that has build in scaling. Discussion about allowing other classes to also access this, but this would be great for other classes as well. Deeds are in place for Beornings, but having 3 wardens or 6 minstrels go toe-to-toe would be great as well. Function over flavour i’d say here.

All your cubs belong to us
After each class or skill revamp we have reset a players trait points or legendary weapon to allow players choose their new plan of attack. This is the first time we’ve redone an entire class though. After thorough discussion between the developers and Palantir group we’ve decided to give each Beorning class a free Aria of the valar and a set of the scaling armour and jewelry depend

ing on the level as of update 22.1. In addition each Beorning will be reset to level 14. We believe this allows every player to choose what they would like to do. Relive the questing experience with a fresh class and all the options avaialble at their paw tips. Or get their Beorning to level 105 with sufficient options to get their old Beornings back to level 115. If you decide to use the aria of the valar you will be given a level-reset token that is valid for 14 weeks.

No Beorning news would be complete without some controversy. I’m sure we would need to train our bears again, but starting over from level 14? Why 14? Allowing us to Valar our bears makes up for a bit i guess. Not happy with the valar, reset-token? But why give it a date stamp for 14 weeks?

Overall thoughts
A great and much needed effort to trim the fat of the bear. If eveything works out as we hope it will bring the beorning to the forefront without off-staging other classes. See you all on Bullroarer to make these patches a roaring success. First beta build should open up on 01-04-2018.