23 Mar 2011
Well, this fourth part of my return to Lord of the Rings Online is maybe a bit more on the nerdy side. It’s not about what you can do, or where you do it; it’s about how you do it. The mechanics of the game.
Combat
Overall the combat in LotRO feels… okay. I like to move around a lot as I play. I’m not sure if that’s because I think I actually get some tactical advantage, or if I just like to keep things moving to spice up the visuals. Regardless, when I play this way in LotRO I can notice the differences between what the client sees and what the server is tracking. It feels a bit… floaty. I’ll often run up to a monster and realize that for a moment it’s still tracking some previous snapshot of what my location was. The whole experience looks good, but it’s not quite at the fidelity that I prefer.
“The average fight lasts around 30 seconds, which doesn’t sound like much, but is forever when you’re just trying to kill a freaking boar. The result is you never feel very powerful.”
This complaint seems to have largely been a result of the class I was playing. The minstrel is intended as a healer role, and at the time I wrote the quote above I don’t think they’d even added the minstrel’s battle form. But even with those enhanced offensive abilities a minstrel seems to be many times slower at killing stuff. Probably a poor choice for my play style.
Since coming back to the game I’ve been trying a new character class: champion. The time to eliminate a single opponent is more on the order of 10 seconds, if that. I find myself free to heroically run at many opponents simultaneously, which is far more satisfying. It’s a better fit for my playstyle, even if the melee combat does illuminate more of the latency issues.
It’s a bummer that for this type of game you don’t know whether your character class is a good fit for you until you’ve invested a lot of time in them. By the point you have enough data to make an informed decision it’s too late. You’re probably unwilling to start over, even if it’d produce a better long-term experience.
One thing that LotRO has that I’ve never seen in another game is the idea of a “fellowship maneuver.” Certain characters can initiate an attack where everyone in the party participates by clicking one of four icons: morale (health), power (mana), direct damage, or damage over time. If the group coordinates you can pull off specific combinations that trigger even more powerful attacks. Of course there’s always that one guy who’s not paying attention and clicks green at the wrong time, but when it works it’s a neat mechanic.
Items
The modern MMO is mostly just a vehicle for loot addiction. It’s all about the pursuit of making your character more badass. Leveling up is one obvious part of that, and the other part is stuff.
In general the gear you get in LotRO works exactly the same as it does in most other MMOs. But there are aspects that are themed to the fiction. Jewelry plays a stronger role (although you won’t be stumbling upon any of the primary Rings of Power). There’s also a pocket slot, which is a nice touch. But despite the fact that the stats on the items have different names and the rarity colors aren’t what you’re used to, it’s all very familiar.
And then you get your first legendary weapon.
A legendary item is an item that levels up, just like your character. As it gains levels you can spend points on different stats, slot it with gems and runes, and even give it a name. These items stay with you for a long time. As a minstrel I tried to give all mine musically themed names. Above you see the sword “Sharp Crescendo”. It’s predecessor was a mace named “Percussive Force”. These items become a deeper part of your character than just the normal gear your slap on. It’s a fun system that makes loot that much more fun.
The Action Bar
…they seem to have thrown too many options at you in an attempt to make it interesting. But instead most of the abilities end up blurring together and leaving you bogged down with your overcrowded quick bar.
I get a new ability about every other level. At first this was perfectly manageable. But after awhile I started to dread visiting the class trainer. Another ability? Where am I supposed to put this? This ability feels almost identical to another one I already have - when am I supposed to use it instead of the other one?
Yes, there is the possibility of loss of interest if what your character can do never changes, but this is taking it way too far in the other direction. Let’s get more specific. Here’s the action bar of your basic starting player, this one at level 6:
This particular character is a burglar. There’s a stealth toggle, a couple basic attacks, a debuff, a GTFO emergency button, and some health and travel items. A perfectly acceptable set of actions, although probably not enough to keep someone satisfied in this style of game over hours and hours of play.
Here is my champion’s action bar at level 28:
There’s a lot going on there. The bottom row is all pure attacks. The next row up contains my personal buffs, some occasional use skills and health items. The rows above that have very infrequent use skills, plus my mount. The attack skills are roughly arranged in advancing order (this class builds up momentum as “fervor” points), with area of effect attacks bumped towards the right side.
As you can see I’ve already filled up my primary 12 key row. The next time I get an attack skill, it will have to go above that.. somewhere. It’ll become harder and harder to organize, until eventually it’ll be pure chaos. So I present to you the action bar from my level 65 minstrel:
Yeah, and that’s not even everything. In addition to this here I have another vertical row of 12 skills on the right side of the screen. As for this core mega-grid, I can’t even tell you what all those abilities are. The bottom row is my frequent use stuff, the tier one ballads (minstrels build up three levels of “ballads” that unlock “anthems”, and then the cycle repeats), war-speech abilities (the minstrel’s battle form that I’ve mentioned before), and some heals. Above that goes the rest of the ballads and the anthems, plus some more heals. Above that… um… the next two rows are mostly gibberish. I can pick out my craft skills and that’s about it. Apparently I never use any of that crap.
Some of that probably doesn’t need to be there. There’s technically a skill window that I could use to access all of those abilities, but if it’s anything that I might need in the heat of the moment then browsing the menu for a skill is a non-starter. So everything goes in a big clump at the bottom of my screen.
A few of those could be removed by making fixes to other game systems. For example you’ll see three craft tools on that bar (Alt 1,2,3). Those are there because you can’t use a craft skill unless you have the associated tool equipped. This includes gathering skills, so I’m constantly toggling between my prospecting pick axe and my woodcutting axe. It’s dumb. To work around the dumbness I have to eat up three quick bar slots of permanent screen real estate.
Other icons on my bar could be removed with more integrated UI elsewhere. I have two icons pinned for tracking resources: ore and wood. That could easily be integrated into the map widget (as it is in WoW). It wouldn’t even be that bad to set from the skill window if my tracking mode didn’t reset every time my character died. So there are problems here that are partially due to game systems, and partially due to interface. As you can see we’re once again encroaching upon my favorite topic…
Next up I’ll just cut to the chase and rant about user interface.
21 Mar 2011
My last article about Lord of the Rings Online focused on the solo activities one could undertake in Middle Earth. This article will focus on the “Multiplayer” part of the MMO acronym… probably what the rest of you play these games for.
Instances
I didn’t talk about the dungeon instances at all in my previous posts. That’s because I didn’t really run many of them. I know, ironic given that my main character was a support class. I seem to assume a singleplayer stance until I feel confident enough to group up with others and know I’ll be valuable to them. Maybe I’m just too proud to risk being that guy that doesn’t know what he’s doing and gets everyone killed.
This second time through I’m running far more dungeons. But it’s not because I’m more confident, it’s because they’ve implemented instance level scaling. You can now run the Great Barrows with any group from 20 to the level cap of 65. This makes it far easier to find a group, and far easier to balance the difficulty for a group’s skill level (if it’s too hard, just reduce the target level one or two). The instances have also been broken up into multiple shorter sections, making it less of a time commitment to do a run. Considering that LotRO has an older crowd these are very important concessions.
It’s unfortunate that the game still lacks a quality matchmaking service (like WoW’s new Dungeon Finder). There’s an in-game tool (pictured above), but nobody uses it (similar to earlier incarnations of WoW’s Dungeon Finder). Instead you’re stuck relying on either regional chat channels, or the unofficial global “looking for fellowship” channel. I’d assume that fixing this problem would be the natural next step for the development team, but I also felt the same way about WoW and it took them five years to deliver the feature. And unfortunately I have far less confidence in LotRO’s interface designers. It’d greatly improve the experience, but I’m not holding my breath.
Skirmishes
Level scaling for instance is a actually a new feature for the game. It came about as a side effect of development for something else entirely: skirmishes. Where a dungeon instance is a handcrafted adventure, a skirmish is more of a random large scale battle. There’s some overall scenario, but every time you play a skirmish it will be different. There are varied squads of enemies, random lieutenants, and boss battles.
One of the best parts about skirmishes is that you get a companion character to go into battle with you. You can customize the class and powers of this character, and level them up over time, but you don’t get much tactical control once it’s time to fight. This helps makes the battles larger (a 12 player raid actually results in 24 combatants on your side) as well as rounding out your weaknesses (you can spec your companion to heal you while you focus on dishing out pain). The whole skirmish system scales to different party levels and sizes (you can even do skirmishes solo, with just you and your companion). It’s all very flexible.
I wouldn’t recommend only spending your time playing skirmishes, but in moderation they’re great. It’s best with a big group of people for good chaotic fun, but it’s also good times just by yourself.
PvP
I only tried it once
I still haven’t tried it since that one time. And you know what, it looks like it’ll stay that way. There are only a few things that are restricted to paying subscribers, and PvMP (Player vs. Monster Player) is one of them. So if I want to play a Warg and go for the throats of poor little Hobbits I’ll have to shell out a monthly fee. Sad. Oh well, I don’t think the Lord of the Rings setting is one that would really fire me up to pwn other players. It’s probably for the best.
Next time I’ll be talking about the game’s combat system as well as ranting more about the user interface.
18 Mar 2011
The last post focused on the world of Lord of the Rings Online, because that’s the first thing you’ll see and care about. This post delves into the details of what to do within that world, once again comparing to my various quotes from three years ago.
Advancement - Deeds, Traits, and Levels
It’s impressive how enticing the deed system is considering how minor the effect is on gameplay.
I was a fan of the deed system right away. But the more time I’ve spent with it, the more impressed I’ve become. It’s much better than an achievement system. It’s a sophisticated layered incentive system that will keep you coming back for the silliest little things.
I’ve never found myself playing a game like this and doing so many things that give me no experience. That’s a testament to how compelling completing these deeds can be. Sure, I could go do more quests and level-up… but it might be more fun to just poke around and find these ruins in order to get another rank on my Wisdom virtue. Oh and while I’m there maybe I can kill enough brigands to earn a title and maybe an upgrade in my Justice rank.
Having variety in this sort of game is a really good thing. I’m not exactly sure why it is that choose we spend our leisure time being overwhelmed with too many things to do. Maybe it’s because these are things we can actually accomplish and check off our list? Regardless, it’s a good thing to feel like there are lots of valid ways to spend your time. There are deeds for finding landmarks, killing specific types of baddies, completing quests in an area, using specific abilities a lot… you complete deeds constantly. Sometimes you get a title, sometimes you get a virtue rank (which can be slotted for a little stat boost), and always you get a couple Turbine Points (the real money currency of the game). It’s just fundamentally more exciting than your average completionist-focused achievement.
And as that the monsters in each region go up in level with me, it’s not like I ever get the satisfaction of feeling more powerful. So what are the levels buying me?
I kind of went off on a mini rant about whether levels are really helping anything (perhaps derived from this article from Raph Koster). It’s not that I think levels are bad, it’s more that I think perhaps they represent too strict of a divide. I joined a group of fellow adventurers to run some content five levels above me, and I was useless to them. At least half of my attacks missed. I should be less powerful than them, sure; but what seemed like a small numerical spread apparently represented total incompatibility. Is that fun?
This complaint isn’t leveled at LotRO but the MMO genre as a whole. I think the only game I’ve played where this wasn’t a problem was City of Heroes, where effective player level could be bumped up or down while in a group. This meant that the pool of people to play with was actually everyone online. Extremely liberating. I wish more games thought harder about how to unite players instead of separate them. Oh well.
Quests
Pretty standard MMO fare
Yep, the quest design in LotRO is status quo. Kill X Angry Baddies; gather X McGuffins; escort helpless Mr. X. The flow of quests has seen a definite improvement over the past couple years (less back-and-forth than I remember), but there isn’t a terrible amount of variety in what it is you do. And this would be more of a problem if there weren’t lots of other things to do that aren’t strictly quests. There are deeds and tasks and skirmishes to fill up your time. It’s easy to truck along and forget about your quest log for awhile, so it doesn’t really bother me that the quests are vanilla.
There’s a primary story quest line that adheres to a higher quality bar, letting you follow the path of the ring without contradicting the fiction.
The game has always had this quest line that connects you with the big names in the Lord of the Rings fiction. You meet Strider in Bree, you’ll track down Black Riders, you’ll rendezvous with the Fellowship in Rivendell and go hunting with Gimli and Legolas. It’s great stuff. But the problem was that it required an extremely varied mix of solo, small fellowship, and instance quests in order to progress through the books. It was very hard to find the help you needed to work through the whole epic quest line. But since I last played the developers have gone through and tightened up the experience so that the whole storyline can be played solo. This makes it so that everyone can enjoy their best content, a smart move.
Tasks
I’m not positive, but I think Tasks exist because someone realized that there needed to be something for non-subscription players to do if they weren’t willing to pay for quest packs. Tasks are repeatable quests that use the junk you’d normally sell to vendors. So instead of trashing that “Orcish Tea Cozy” you could instead turn it in for a small amount of experience and reputation. It’s not glamorous, but I think the effect on the game is quite positive. It turns an uninteresting part of the game into a decision: do I prioritize experience growth or economic growth? The repeatable quests are gated to five per day, so if you’re going to turn this crap into experience it’ll take some storage space and patience. If you’d rather just have the cash now you can sell them all as before. It’s a simple clever system that basically has no downsides for the player.
Crafting
I don’t think anyone would consider the crafting system a critical feature for MMO. It’s exclusion probably wouldn’t cause anyone to pass on a game, but every MMO still seems to have one. LotRO has a perfectly passable crafting system that even has a fair share of innovative ideas. Like others it probably economically makes more sense to sell everything you find and buy crafted goods from others, but the system is there for those who enjoy this sort of thing. I think I’m one of them, but I’m always wondering if I really do or if I just feel compelled to participate.
Unfortunately finding recipes on the auction house is laughably difficult due to poor UI.
The auction system categories are constantly getting refined, which does make the experience better. It’s easier to drill into the right recipe section, for example. However it feels to me like they’re going about it wrong. Maybe it’s just the fact that they put Usable as a sort instead of a checkbox. This makes it fussy to do something perfectly reasonable like find cheap upgrades for your current gear. Ah, but this is a complaint with the interface. The mechanics of recipes are perfectly fine. I like the one-use recipes, I like how you can sometimes choose different output flavors, and I of course like the nice surprise of the crafting critical that gives you an awesomer version.
the game lacks a friendly way to craft in bulk (I should never have to click a plus button 60 times just to smelt all my ore).
Fixed! I’m not sure why it took so long to add a “Make All” button. Oh, again this was an interface complaint. It’s almost like there’s a trend here… More on that later.
In my experience the stuff you can make is generally not of value by the time you can make it (given either the time to gather ingredients or the prohibitive cost of those ingredients on the auction house).
Aha! A real comment on crafting. Well, it’s worth saying that I’m having a little better luck with my second character’s crafting experience. Knowing the basics of the system helps you plan ahead. I’ve definitely been able to create good upgrades for myself without having to spend too much time rounding up the ingredients. Part of this was knowing to stop screwing around on the auction house and just vendor trash certain professions’ components. I’m sorry scholars and cooks, but you’re not willing to pay enough to make it worth the trouble.
Another thing that’s contributed to a smoother experience is the introduction of Bounty quests. These are three times repeatable quests that reward you with a big pile of crafting ingredients and patterns. This helps take a bit of the pressure off of rounding up some of the more obscure components.
Overall I think I like LotRO’s crafting system. It gives me something else to do besides obsessively leveling, and that’s probably for the best.
Next up, stuff to do with other people. Yes, the ‘M’ of MMO. Um, more specifically the second ‘M’.