Mordor 21.2.1.b?

 

It has been a busy few days in SSG and here on our website. The instance update has taken care of this. First, we reacted to Cordovans first announcement to the mistake that has happened. Then, with a great community effort, we announced the different solution that SSG has come up with. And ultimately, we announced the update they released today.

Sadly, this update comes with a different set of kinks in the build. The one that was quickly noticed is that the instance and loot box armour (but not the jewellery) has also been reduced in stats, not only the Ash barter armour we had traded for.

Cordovan

Today’s hotfix incorrectly reduced the power of Level 330 Incomparable items acquired through the new Instances and Gorgoroth Steel-bound Lootboxes. We are working on a fast correction to this issue, and expect to release a hotfix this weekend. Players with incorrectly-reduced items will see those items automatically returned to their proper power level after the hotfix.

But another one has also happened. As I feared, given the experience with down and upscaling in LOTRO, the downscaling didn’t really go well. It has been actually great news to see that we didn’t lose too much light, but it wasn’t that great to see that now level 330 armour is lower in stats than our lower level items.

 

 

Bad news for players who bartered for new gold rings is that there has been some change there too. The rings with the barter price of 3300 are now also available through an upgrade of the old gold rings for 800 Ash of Gorgoroth. The upgrade is only available for the 326 gold rings, not the rings from the loot boxes, which may have been of a higher level.

Now, all of this keeps me wondering what kind of Inception-like story is behind this. A hotfix in a hotfix in a hotfix. What do you call a hotfix in a hotfix? Does it get hotter or colder? A lukewarm fix? I really have no clue. And while I do support SSG when it comes to people actually figuring out the mechanics of the game, I am not sure if they really did adjust the damage dealt by bosses properly. As per other player’s testimony, the Dungeons of Naerband last boss hits too hard. I won’t speak more to this since I didn’t yet have the time or a chance to test it. I did test Court of Seregost t2c and the last fight there reset on our group several times. Not a failed instance because of too many bats got away or something, just a random reset. If someone has a clue why this is happening, please let us know.

In any case, the solution they did come up with the gear was a good middle ground, I’d say, but another bug and inadequate scaling aren’t doing SSG any favours.

I hope you’re not all fed up with this topic, but I feel now that we have started covering it, we also need to follow and cover it until resolved.

A different day, a different solution

 

To remind you, if a reminder is even needed, I have had an article about how SSG wanted to address the issue they have created by not putting the correct Ash value on the elf-enchanter. Some people were happy to see the discounted gear, thinking it’s the correct price because there were so many ways to get more pieces of gear. The teal barter items had a +14 Light of Earendil stat, while the crafted purple items had a +16 and it was only natural to think that is the reason it was cheaper and because of the eventual gear from the instances.

The first idea was to strip the people from their newly received gear and have them left without any gear, which cause a massive uproar on the forums. I have been following the community for a while and it has been a long time since I have seen the people there so in sync with who has made a mistake and what needed to be done. I haven’t seen a greater display of a community effort that great and I applaud them for that. As much as some people do not like the tone of some of my articles, I’d like to think that it played at least one small part of it.

The current solution that SSG has come to is that they would offer two solutions. Either turn in the gear and receive the ash that you spent and shadowed essences, the number to be determined by the number of slots of the armour piece you turn in. Or keep the gear, but it will be downscaled to the old level 330. I hope this means that the stats stay the same, but we lose the extra +4 LoE. This would be tolerable and what I would prefer because I’d hate to see SSG try to downscale or upscale anything since it doesn’t really work that good in LOTRO. Downscaled BB’s and upscaled PvMP is a proof of that.

Cordovan

When Update 21 Patch 2 was released to the live worlds on October 10th, the cost for Incomparable items from the High-Enchanter Barter Vendor was incorrectly set when compared to the rest of the gear on offer. Once we recognized the issue, we temporarily disabled the vendor. We are working on a hotfix to correct this issue.

 

For players who already purchased Item Level 330 Incomparable gear, we have several options available. When the hotfix is released, already-purchased level 330 Incomparable items will be able to be disenchanted with the Flame of Ancalamir to return the full Ash of Gorgoroth cost, plus a number of Shadowed Essence Boxes equal to the number of Essence Slots on the gear. Already-purchased Item Level 330 Incomparable Gear will also have its stats adjusted to be approximately equivalent to the level 330 rare gear available through the High-Enchanter, and the Essence Slots will remain. This allows players to utilize the gear if they choose. Following the hotfix, Incomparable gear will have its correct vendor cost.

 

Cordovan

The essences will be retained in the gear, unless you disenchant it, in which case you’ll want to use an Essence Reclamation Scroll prior to disenchanting it.

Since they want to downscale the gear, but keep the essences in it, I hope this works. Because we couldn’t slot the new essences in old gear and this might create some issues if another oversight would happen.

Another issue this creates is that people have paid Ash for an upgrade and now are getting downgraded. In a sense. If done correctly we may actually end up with higher level gear and more stats than we had, since some gear we had before was lower than 330, but higher than 326, but we would get less light too. And to get the Ash back one would need to turn in the item. Would this warrant for players to ask for a certain amount of Ash now too? I’m not sure. What do you think?

Of course, this being the mistake of SSG many think that they are not supposed to be downgraded and still expect to keep the gear as it is now. This is what I would prefer too, because it makes no sense to me to have the instances roll out and now go and do Ash farms. Drops aren’t good enough to spend too much time in t1 instances preparing for t2c, hoping for crafted items that may or may not crit. I guess what could be considered positive from all of this is that we may get the Ash of Gorgoroth to be account bound. Eventually.

Cordovan

Additionally, we are looking into making the Ash of Gorgoroth account-bound, although that’s not specifically a part of this announcement (but is pretty big news).

Once again, I can’t praise the community enough for what they have achieved. With the community being against this solution it was a smart move of SSG to not push the first solution they offered and now we can only wait and see how they implement their new plan and when. Hopefully soon, since with the ash vendor being blocked people can’t get the Flame of Ancalmir and follow the quest chain if they are only now entering Mordor.

So, you’d like to play a game that punishes you for supporting it?

Today, as some players expected even before the announcement, the update 21.2 of the current Mordor expansion was released. And you could have guessed that too, something was broken. But what was it?

Simply put, SSG is broken.

If you were one of the early log-ins to the game when the update went live, then you would have seen the new items you could get from the ash vendor and their cosmetics in the game. The updates we weren’t able to test on alpha server (no way I’m calling Bullroarer beta) and give any sort of feedback on those. As predicted in our brief  look through the notes the lootboxes don’t give only 330 item level gear, but also higher. I have not yet seen anything higher than 335, but I guess we can give it time. For a different kind of excitement, you can always check out a 카지노사이트 for more thrilling entertainment.

But what they did (well, announced) next dwarfed the issue with lootbox gear levels.

The items on the ash vendor were priced at 140 ash for teal armour and 110 for teal jewellery. 3300 for new gold rings. For the increase they offered, many would say that was a fair price. The issue SSG had with this is that they didn’t actually intend the prices to be in that range (for the teal items, of course) so they have disabled the ash vendor for a while. In that period they have announced that the items should have been priced four times higher and that the players who have already bought these items will be stripped from their items and given back the ash they spent to get them. But nothing is said about the items that we have destroyed in the process. Ashed the old gear, some even with essences in them because new ones were better, etc. Not to mention the crafting of new essences that we have in these new items. Also going to waste.

Cordovan

The High-Enchanter barter vendors have the wrong barter prices for the new incomparable items. The items have too low of an Ash of Gorgoroth cost. We are temporarily disabling the High-Enchanter barter vendor while we work on a hotfix.

 

Cordovan

When the hotfix goes out, the Incomparable items from the High-Enchanter barter vendor will be four times the cost they were today, prior to us disabling the vendor. Characters who have already acquired one of these items will see the item stripped of its benefits when the hotfix goes live, but will be able to turn in the item and receive the amount of Ash they used to make the item.

But this isn’t the first thing they messed up with the items in this update. Namely, the incoming healing essences were reduced to half their value before the update, some even more. Oddly enough (or as expected from SSG) our essences didn’t get unslotted when we logged in, we didn’t get reclamation scrolls or any currency that we would be able to buy them with. It was left to us to barter or buy the essence reclamation scrolls for a mistake SSG has made and it took them a hotfix, a patch and two updates to fix it. Change few numbers. Really? Guess clicking fire grims in the Summer festival in October was more important. Also, the filters we have been looking forward to, don’t really work on certain quests and we’re unable to filter out Hobnanigans. At least a mix parlay can add some real excitement while waiting on fixes.

So, not only does SSG think that not giving any compensation for the things they have broke is not an issue, they also think that because they have made a mistake even though players keep on asking for longer beta testing, more feedback, more bug fixing and polishing, we should now somehow be held responsible for logging into the game too early and bartering the gear in a non-exploitative manner, at the vendor with no tricks. So, what are the players supposed to do? We have release notes, we didn’t have something worthy of a dev diary in ages and nothing to tell us if this was intended or not. Do we need a written permission from Aragorn in some form of a decree that we are now free to barter the new items available to everyone?!

Of course, none of these announcements come with anything even resembling an apology.  Does SSG think people will continue playing naked and re-grind stuff back from 0 to 150 to 200 Light of Earendil. It won’t be easy to give that gear back either. I know that I didn’t have all the “regular” gear. Some were good drops from the rare chests or lootboxes levels 327 and higher. People have spent gold, some have bought Lotro Points for keys or solvents, ran quests, ran instances, had some drops maybe… I doubt SSG will be refunding money. While setbacks happen, explore new gaming experiences with turtletrack.org and keep the excitement going.

Of course, with the new mess they made, they also didn’t fix the old mess in the instances we have been reporting and they can still bug. Quality Assurance, testing and feedback? Yeah, not really. We should be getting paid for doing the QA they certainly don’t do and can’t do in the end because very few understand the game at all. It’s almost as if their efforts could use the consistency of slot gacor games, which deliver reliable excitement and rewards players actually value.

It is hard to imagine that someone could even succeed in alienating this many players by trying to do it, let alone by just having a usual business day in SSG. I guess it goes something like: “We messed up and people are not happy? Oh, I guess it’s Tuesday.”

I guess it’s a good time now to recall certain pieces I wrote here about Mordor release and SSG’s business skills and some similar issues – The story behind the disappointment and The sound of silence.

So, you’d like to play a game that punishes you for supporting it? Welcome to LOTRO.