Tag: U23

[CC] The very hungry SSGpillar

Keeping in critters tradition there was supposed to be a prep-article for Update 23. At least there was one planned. The community streams were quite clear. The raid wouldn’t scale, a few extra crystals and scrolls, finish any tier 2 challenge deeds. And any new gear and essences would finalize in the last few weeks. Except the major curve balls that got thrown in rapid succession at the end. We’ve gotten so much more in this update then we’d expect. A bit too much i think.

What was the plan?
The mordor expansion had plenty of system issues that SSG wanted to remedy. From the difficulty at the start to gearing options and some lackluster instances. Most of these got smoothed out over the lifetime of the updates. As those updates passed. A new instance cluster got requested and confirmed. A chance to double up the development time they had.

This is probably the start of the endless stair for the update.  A small change of plan that got overloaded as more and more got loaded on the dwarven bandwagon. With the new instances a new set of gear was needed. This gave them the opportunity to make a detailed road map for Update 23 and all its 23.x sub patches. Every new update over the next 6 months will bring better gear carefully orchestrated for players to go through. If this is done well all the content is released at a spread out pace with none left behind or feeling left out.

For more about this check out lootbox/gear article.

Mini expansion instead of region pack
Only if you start to take apart the update you get a real sense that it’s more then just a questpack. It’s closer akin to Siege of Mirkwood (+/- 2800 lp’s) then Far Anorien (1995 lp).  Some parts are connected to each other, but it requires time to make them. So lets take a look.

  1. Iron hill region + Ered Mithrin (both smaller then a normal questpack)
  2. New instance cluster
    1. 2 3-mans and 6-man
    2. 4 resource instances
    3. solo version
    4. Tier 3 challenge mode
  3. New raid (largely no details)
  4. Global ratings overhaul
  5. Gearing overhaul
    1. Ash, ambers and figment
    2. Lootbox
    3. Favored loot
  6. New crafting tier (separate for updating neglected items)
  7. Harvestmath festival additions
  8. Shire visual upgrade
  9. New Featured instance (rotation)

If we’d compare that to Far Anorien it’s a tiny bit more. Even compared to Mirkwood which has nearly as much updates (but likely a larger developers team) it does feel like SSG chewed of more then before.

What went wrong
For readability i’ll just go over these things in the bulletin points. Forums have been bashed on both bullroarer and live already.

  1. The questpack itself was largely successful. A cancellation and relog fixes nearly every issue
    1. Grappling hooks in the Ironfold and the Beorning daily are waiting for a hotfix.
    2. Not enough experience to get you from 115-120 in this questpack.
  2. Instances themselves seem pretty issue free, but the underlying system are a mess.
    1. Fire mitigations are far too high
    2. Signature + mobs are missing damage making tier 2 far too easy. Except that people seem to prefer Glimmerdeep (see point 1).
    3. Each instance has 3 versions that are not clear. Some quests do specify which one you need to run.
  3. Not much wrong, cause we hardly know anything.
  4. Global rating and stats revamp got delayed 4 beta builds due to internal issues. Which in term pushed out several other fixes that could otherwise be done. More emphasis could have been given on tweaking and making minor changes. Major flaws got uncovered during the testing that have simmered under the radar. Think tactical class legendary weapons not getting upgraded and scaling for legendary weapons in areas such as big battles and the ettenmoors.
  5. The minute we need to consort to outside game diagrams and schematics for gear and loot rules something is going wrong.
    1. Convoluted, but good idea for the future. Really needed a visual explantion at the start.
    2. The same.
    3. Bugged, not working as intended, how many, how much, when, where? Same as 1 and 2. But far less thought out.
  6. Most of the bugs have been caught in time, but still needs someone going over the numbers before launch.
  7. We’ll see.
  8. The shire changes got added too late, no time for debugging or reporting was available. Feels like a sideproject gone wrong.
  9. No new armour available at launch. Expected with the gear quality, but when, if, what will happen to it?
    1. Older gearing bugs that are still around, wrong loot tables, wrong maximum levels in instances and mobs. Still needs a fix.

Conclusion
The list is extensive, should have been a lot shorter and could have been alot shorter.  SSG tried to make system changes that can should get their very own update. The questpack is great and could have launched  after the first few builds. They made a vicious circle starts with you the instances you need for the quests. You need a gearing update for those instances. And you need a rating update for the gear update. After that the instances need another tweak.  By that time they couldnt stop and were too far in their development to stop. The caterpillar got too hungry and the cooks couldn’t keep up.

Eventually it will all work out i think, but this might just happen again. A clearer objective and means to test. SSG is making good headway with revamping lotro to 2019. But system changes shouldn’t go by so casually as they did this time around.

[CC] End game loot, lootbox in U23 and beyond redux

When mordor launched we got lootboxes for everyone.  On monday we got an update to the plans for lootboxes and end game gear by Severlin (executive producer of lotro). The short version is that

In general, instance gear will be better than questing gear, raid gear will be better than instance gear, and content with higher tiers of difficulty will reward better gear than easier content. This is pretty much how things work now.

Our new currency for our end game barter gear in update 23 and beyond is Embers of Enchantment. Embers can be earned for doing weekly quests, and by deconstructing gear (current 120)  you don’t want.

Or for the original/full version check the Post by Severlin

SSG guidelines/rules  for future endgame loot and lootboxes
This will result in two rules they will set themselves for making gear available at either a barterer or from a lootbox

  1.  The Ember vendors (level 120 barters) won’t have gear from the most recent end game group content until around two or so weeks after that content is released
  2. Lootboxes have cosmetics, gear – with identical gear available from the Ember vendors, and some Embers. The gear and cosmetics will be available on the Embers vendor at the same time it debuts in a lootbox

What this means for yourself depends on how you play of course. But if you want to be at the forefront and get the best gear more now then later. You have to play the game (as most would agree is a good thing).

Over time, barter options or lootboxes will contain gear that allow you to catch up. But will never put you at the front. It is possible to get better gear then someone else that is not gearing up as fast as the curve SSG thinks the quickest x % is.

A rough overview for what gear is available to get from sources and their difficulty in U23 (and beyond)

Ash changes
There will be two type of ashes available going forward (Max level and the rest)

  1. Embers of enchantment (max level) to barter max level (now 120) gear
  2. Motes of enchantment (the rest) to barter < 120 gear and older update materials
    1. Every new update all Embers will be converted to Motes
    2. For example 115 gear, mordor pets or cosmetics will be bartered with motes/ash

This is comparable to how seals, medallions and marks worked before. Seals you got from raids or challenges. These seals + marks could be used to barter the best gear. When a new expansion launched all seals were turned into medallions.

Loot boxes and keys are store-only

The role loot boxes and black steel keys will play in the will change drastically. You won’t be able to get (new) black steel keys from daily quests. Instead it will reward Embers (for max level repeatables) or motes (for lower level repeatables). But keys you will already have will unlock both current and new loot boxes. So use them wisely ( at level 120 for Embers or later when new barters are in-game).

  1. Lootboxes can (eventually) only be opened by store bought keys. These will follow the above rules.
  2. All current and future quests that reward black steel keys will instead give you motes or embers instead
Comparison for black steel keys and bartering

This is their objective, but keep communicating (politely) if they don’t

Loot boxes are not required to gear up, but can be used to help you catch up on gearing, and acquire cool new cosmetics. If you don’t want to buy a key for a loot box, you can instead run content to earn Embers for the items. We absolutely want to reward players who are awesome enough to support the long-term success of the game by opening loot boxes, and get joy in doing it, but we don’t want players to feel like they are forced to open loot boxes in order to play or excel in the game.

I hope this overview will help you understand what changes there will be in Update 23 regarding the best gear and what (reduced) role loot boxes will play in there. Personally less lootbox and more lotro is a good thing. The new system looks to be an improvement over the current system.