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’.
16 Mar 2011
Now that I’ve put up my complete words from 2008, it’s time to re-evaluate the Lord of the Rings Online of today.
… there’s no doubt in my mind that WoW is a superior game. But when you’ve exhausted all of WoW’s content, and you haven’t written off the genre as a whole, you can do worse than to slum it out to LotRO.
Well, that’s an unflattering quote to start off with. It’s also not untrue. Basically the only times I’ve played LotRO have been when I’ve been bored with WoW. There’s never been a time when WoW was satisfying me that I thought about maybe playing some LotRO instead.
But this free to play thing changes the comparison. It’s no longer just about which game is a “better” game; it’s about which game gives you the most enjoyment for your time and money. I’m cheap enough to think about what $15 a month means to me. Okay, $15 doesn’t sound like much, but over a year that’s $180, and I don’t know if WoW is that much better than LotRO. Probably the hardest part for me is the knowledge that if I’m not playing the game then I’m wasting $15 a month. The flexibility LotRO now offers of being able to play as frequently or infrequently as I want is extremely compelling. And for my infrequent play style, LotRO may just be the better choice.
I’ll get more into the free to play details later, but for now I need to close the gap between 2008 and 2011.
World and Travel
Comparing to the fiction, [the game] basically only allows access to locations where events started to get interesting. There’s no Lonely Mountain, no Moria, no Isengard, and certainly no Mordor. Spending hours of your time grinding through a field that the Fellowship breezed through doesn’t exactly leave a heroic taste in your mouth.
Well, since I wrote these words there have been two large area expansions: Moria, and Mirkwood.
Moria is a huge labyrinth of underground halls and caverns. When you see the Bridge of Khazad-dûm you will find it cracked in half, as that you arrive after Gandalf’s passing. It’s an epic space that hits a wide spread of underground themes. It’s nice for awhile, but it wasn’t long before I felt the need for some fresh air and open sky. Thankfully when you’ve leveled your way through the content you emerge in the elven city of Lórien, providing a much appreciated change in scenery.
If you look on a map Mirkwood is huge, but the Mirkwood expansion only lets you poke around a small section of it. It’s an appropriately spooky forest, if a bit monotone. Sadly I can’t think of a single landmark that burned itself into my memory. So I rode around for awhile until I found a cool scary tree for a photo.
From a palette perspective you could just consider Moria to be the “mine” expansion and Mirkwood to be the “forest” expansion - with not a lot of variety within either. This is an ongoing struggle for LotRO. The fiction isn’t host to fantastical scenery. Pretty, absolutely; imaginative, no. What it lacks in inspiration it makes up for in quantity of historical locales, but here the slow drip of releases prevents me from achieving satisfaction.
For what it’s worth the next large expansion is scheduled to release this fall and will add Rohan. This should add key landmarks like Isengard, Helm’s Deep, Edoras, and Fangorn Forest - definitely many things to look forward to.
And this is where I think the license is working against the game: In trying to own up to the epic size of the world the developers have created an epic amount of work for themselves. If it’s taken this long to get us to the Misty Mountains, how long will it be until we’re at the steps of Mount Doom?
Apparently a long time. What’s released right now basically brings us to the end of Fellowship. It’s been four years (2007 to 2011), and that doesn’t count the development time prior to launch. The next expansion will officially start progress into the Two Towers. Insert some fuzzy math and at that rate it’ll be around 2019 before the core landmass from the trilogy is completed and we can /dance in Barad-dûr. By that point I expect to be able to play the game on retinal implants as I jetpack to work in the coastal Cascades.
What I can say is that what’s available is lovingly crafted, and I expect that trend to continue. But the rate of expansion remains maddeningly slow.
Next time I’ll talk about all the sorts of quests and various activities to do in this finely crafted Middle Earth.