A new dev diary published on the official Lord of the Rings Online website details the reward system for the upcoming Skirmish feature to be introduced with the launch of Siege of Mirkwood next month.

LOTRO developer Brian "Zombie Columbus" understands that most players will play new content for the loot, explaining, "People play new content for the rewards. Sure, if the content is fun it is more likely to get replayed, but even if we made the hardest, most boring boss fight in the game drop the best loot, a lot of people would still play it. With that in mind, we've tried to design the Skirmish rewards system in as free-form a way as possible, allowing players to play the content they want and receive mostly equivalent rewards."

To accomplish this, players will earn Skirmish marks in a number of ways, and will be able to trade them in at vendors for their shiny rewards.

For the full rundown, read the dev diary here.

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

still lotro remains the closest thing to a traditional fantasy rpg  in the mmo market . its not perfect but its got a great community and gets an awful lot right . It will never be my main mmo but with alifetime sub its always something i return to again and again and again . opps did i just say it was nt my main mmo i suddenly realised it was .

how on middle earth did that happen ?

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

I think there are a lot of players who don't want LOTRO to be about loot. It really wasn't about loot in the beginning as crafted, quested, dropped or raided equpment were all pretty good.

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

What the hell are you talking about?

Skirmishes are for any group make up from level 30-65. can be any group number from 2 - 12, AND you can choose a difacuility mode to top it all off, and its random every time. Everyone gets rewards at the end, period. You can then go and trade in for whatever you want, and even playing 2 mans, you can trade up to get all the same gear as people constantly playing as a 12 man group (you will need to acquire the tokens for that though, however you want to)..Oh yeah, that's totally forced grouping right there.

Lack of loot? What game are you playing? Because it isn't LOTRO.

Speak for yourself.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

 

What the hell are you talking about?

Skirmishes are for any group make up from level 30-65. can be any group number from 2 - 12, AND you can choose a difacuility mode to top it all off, and its random every time. Everyone gets rewards at the end, period. You can then go and trade in for whatever you want, and even playing 2 mans, you can trade up to get all the same gear as people constantly playing as a 12 man group (you will need to acquire the tokens for that though, however you want to)..Oh yeah, that's totally forced grouping right there.

Lack of loot? What game are you playing? Because it isn't LOTRO.

Speak for yourself.

And on que, here comes Mrbloodworth flaming anyone that posts anything negative about LoTRO. Hey, you like the game and that's great. I like the game too. It gets pretty old watching you flame people that post what they don't like about LoTRO. What's ironic is that your second paragraph actually makes a good point, but it gets lost in the antagnostic attitude of the rest of the post.

There was no flame there. I was simply debunking his philosophical disinformation using the reality of the situation and the facts stated in the article that was not read. You are more than welcome to no like the game, But at least dont speak as if you are the voice of the entire community, and at least make sure your dislike is based in reality.

No loot? Forced grouping? Disconnect? Hyperbole.

Originally posted by Tolroc

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

 

What the hell are you talking about?

Skirmishes are for any group make up from level 30-65. can be any group number from 2 - 12, AND you can choose a difacuility mode to top it all off, and its random every time. Everyone gets rewards at the end, period. You can then go and trade in for whatever you want, and even playing 2 mans, you can trade up to get all the same gear as people constantly playing as a 12 man group (you will need to acquire the tokens for that though, however you want to)..Oh yeah, that's totally forced grouping right there.

Lack of loot? What game are you playing? Because it isn't LOTRO.

Speak for yourself.

 

And on que, here comes Mrbloodworth flaming anyone that posts anything negative about LoTRO. Hey, you like the game and that's great. I like the game too. It gets pretty old watching you flame people that post what they don't like about LoTRO. What's ironic is that your second paragraph actually makes a good point, but it gets lost in the antagnostic attitude of the rest of the post.

 

He was matching the tone of the first poster. Erictlewis could've said, "Sounds like a cool feature, but I don't think the loot is good enough. It seems like they're forcing people to group. That's what I think LotRO has always had a problem with."

Sounds nicer, right? But he didn't say it that way. So MrBloodworth matched the tone.

Anyways, Skirmishes sound pretty fun. I like how, in the Diaries, they explain each problem and their approach to solving it. A lot of these things certainly are tricky, but hopefully Turbine has figured out the best way to deal with them.

Seems cools so far.  Couple concerns:

1.  Will marks take up inventory?  He refers to them as a "liquid item... that are alot like gold".  yet every current "mark-like" item takes up inventory which bugs me... one of my biggest issues with the game.

2.  "third mark", ie, some tokens that are based on number in the fellowship.  One, I REALLY hope THESE don't take up inventory, or that's potentially up to 12 new inventory slots taken(if based on 3,6,12 people, then still, 3).  Does it really have to get this complicated?

Other than that, I like what I'm seeing, and I like the philosophical direction he explains in his overview.  VERY much looking forward to this expansion.

Originally posted by Tolroc

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

 

What the hell are you talking about?

Skirmishes are for any group make up from level 30-65. can be any group number from 2 - 12, AND you can choose a difacuility mode to top it all off, and its random every time. Everyone gets rewards at the end, period. You can then go and trade in for whatever you want, and even playing 2 mans, you can trade up to get all the same gear as people constantly playing as a 12 man group (you will need to acquire the tokens for that though, however you want to)..Oh yeah, that's totally forced grouping right there.

Lack of loot? What game are you playing? Because it isn't LOTRO.

Speak for yourself.

 

And on que, here comes Mrbloodworth flaming anyone that posts anything negative about LoTRO. Hey, you like the game and that's great. I like the game too. It gets pretty old watching you flame people that post what they don't like about LoTRO. What's ironic is that your second paragraph actually makes a good point, but it gets lost in the antagnostic attitude of the rest of the post.

 

Thats OK I knew beyond a dought that he was going to be right on me like stink on well you know. I am use to it by now.

Posted right from the site (Ah, the age old MMO debate. I'd prefer not to spend too much time here, as it can strike up a war as brutal as Vi vs. Emacs. With Skirmishes, we have decided to make all rewards in the entire system available to all fellowship play sizes. However, the costs of rewards will be different based on what play size you participate in. This difference is regulated by the level/size tokens mentioned above. A particular Legendary Item blank may require a token that can be only found in 6 and 12-man Skirmishes. However, the Curiosities vendor has the ability to upgrade small group Marks into large group Marks. This upgrade will cost a chunk of SM, but means that any player can eventually purchase any reward in the system.)

So from what I read, if you go in groups you get the rewards quicker you do it solo you still get the same rewards it just going to take you a lot longer to get them and a lot more of the SM's to purchase them with.  So that was my take on it.   So yes your going to be foreced to group to get it quicker, however you can still do it solo it just going to take you a lot longer to get there.

Originally posted by erictlewis

So from what I read, if you go in groups you get the rewards quicker you do it solo you still get the same rewards it just going to take you a lot longer to get them and a lot more of the SM's to purchase them with.  So that was my take on it.   So yes your going to be foreced to group to get it quicker, however you can still do it solo it just going to take you a lot longer to get there.

It's going to take you longer BECAUSE of the SM's.  They are going to have an exchange system, where you can trade in the smaller fellowship SM's for bigger fellowship ones.  the bigger ones, I assume, are for better items.

I'm consider myself a pretty solo'ey player, and I have no issue with this, so long as it doesn't mean I have to run a skirmish, say, 20 times to get the equivelent of a fellowships' 1.

...and, like I mentioned earlier, if it doesn't take up yet more inventory space.

This game will either die or go free to play with RMT in a very short time. No game can hold for long with lifetime subscription equal to a year of monthly subscriptions. There were basically no free content updates since Moria (one raid dungeon which was announced to be shipped with Moria, one small zone which was also first announced to be shipped with Moria and 3 small dungeons each for about 30 minutes). And Moria has been released a year ago.

Just to illustrate these were the SoA free content updates (during a year and half between SoA and MoM release): 2 large zones, 3 smaller zones, 2 large raids, around 6 instances, housing system (4 large zones), lots of special events, reputations/factions system, crafting revamp, all classes revamp, 7 book quest lines, ...etc.

There is undoubtedly that very large part of the current players are already lifetimers. Money has been spent already, there is no money left now for the free updates. The game is basically turning into Guild Wars model, ie = free to play (for a price of 150-200$) plus 20-30$ expansions every year. Nothing in between.

Originally posted by Thillian

This game will either die or go free to play with RMT in a very short time. No game can hold for long with lifetime subscription equal to a year of monthly subscriptions. There were basically no free content updates since Moria (one raid dungeon which was announced to be shipped with Moria, one small zone which was also first announced to be shipped with Moria and 3 small dungeons each for about 30 minutes). And Moria has been released a year ago.

Just to illustrate these were the SoA free content updates (during a year and half between SoA and MoM release): 2 large zones, 3 smaller zones, 2 large raids, around 6 instances, housing system (4 large zones), lots of special events, reputations/factions system, crafting revamp, all classes revamp, 7 book quest lines, ...etc.

There is undoubtedly that very large part of the current players are already lifetimers. Money has been spent already, there is no money left now for the free updates. The game is basically turning into Guild Wars model, ie = free to play (for a price of 150-200$) plus 20-30$ expansions every year. Nothing in between.

"undoubtedly".  Yep.  LOL!!!  What evidence, exactly, are you basing this indubitable declaration on?

"It ain't what you know that gets ya, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

Originally posted by Robsolf

 

"undoubtedly".  Yep.  LOL!!!  What evidence, exactly, are you basing this indubitable declaration on?

"It ain't what you know that gets ya, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

 

Pretty much a logical deduction. Lifetimers expected to stay with the game for longer than a year when they paid for the lifetime. It's been three years now since release. The longer the game will last, the more lifetimers will there be. Lifetime equal to a year of monthly subscriptions is not a good business for the company unless they expect to just pull the plug within that year or start releasing paid expansions and move your dev team away to do something else (re-release DDO? + new game in works??)

Offering lifetime payment option means you will not get any sort of money from players that EXPECTED to stay with the game for a longer time (logically, when they paid the lifetime right?) If I think about it, what other game apart from Lotro and Hellgate London ever offered lifetime subscription?

LotrO is doing better than ever but still some people always likes to spread doom and gloom !

There were som issues with MoM but most was fixed in book 7 and SoM seems to make it even better + The skirmish sytem sounds awesome!

Since people are still buying lifetimesubs I dont think they are very worried about that :)

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

 

I think there are a lot of players who don't want LOTRO to be about loot. It really wasn't about loot in the beginning as crafted, quested, dropped or raided equpment were all pretty good.

 

From my experience, all the gear you could craft was crap, except for the tools and jewelry (I haven't play Moria, so this might have changed) and the raid drops that I saw were marginally better than the high end story rewards. Loot is not what a game should be all about, that mechanic works well for WoW and failed miserably for WAR, but there needs to be some reason to get people to do instances more than once or twice. Finding groups in LOTRO was pretty painful sometimes and I had difficulty getting anybody to do them more than once. Some better gear drops, or even some cool clothes to deck out your toon would definately help

Originally posted by Papadam

LotrO is doing better than ever but still some people always likes to spread doom and gloom !

There were som issues with MoM but most was fixed in book 7 and SoM seems to make it even better + The skirmish sytem sounds awesome!

Since people are still buying lifetimesubs I dont think they are very worried about that :)

Lotro is doing better? Lotro is going extremly fast downhill. Aside lorien (announced to be shipped with mom and the raid) and 3 small dungeons that takes up to 40 minutes were the only content added during the last year. THAT IS actually LESS new content that what Vanguard recieved for the last year. And Vanguard has 4 devs working on the new content.

Originally posted by Astralglide

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

 

I think there are a lot of players who don't want LOTRO to be about loot. It really wasn't about loot in the beginning as crafted, quested, dropped or raided equpment were all pretty good.

 

From my experience, all the gear you could craft was crap, except for the tools and jewelry (I haven't play Moria, so this might have changed) and the raid drops that I saw were marginally better than the high end story rewards. Loot is not what a game should be all about, that mechanic works well for WoW and failed miserably for WAR, but there needs to be some reason to get people to do instances more than once or twice. Finding groups in LOTRO was pretty painful sometimes and I had difficulty getting anybody to do them more than once. Some better gear drops, or even some cool clothes to deck out your toon would definately help

The problem with SoA was that crated gear was much better than drops from instances so it was indeed very hard to find groups for anything. In MoM they made drops from instances more important so it became easy to find groups but all the solo grinders became upset :(

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by erictlewis

So from what I read, if you go in groups you get the rewards quicker you do it solo you still get the same rewards it just going to take you a lot longer to get them and a lot more of the SM's to purchase them with.  So that was my take on it.   So yes your going to be foreced to group to get it quicker, however you can still do it solo it just going to take you a lot longer to get there.

 

It's going to take you longer BECAUSE of the SM's.  They are going to have an exchange system, where you can trade in the smaller fellowship SM's for bigger fellowship ones.  the bigger ones, I assume, are for better items.

I'm consider myself a pretty solo'ey player, and I have no issue with this, so long as it doesn't mean I have to run a skirmish, say, 20 times to get the equivelent of a fellowships' 1.

...and, like I mentioned earlier, if it doesn't take up yet more inventory space.

Well the way it read it sounded like it was going to take a huge chuck of turn ins. So I am worried that it is going to take you many many runs vs a few runs with a 6 or 12 man.  Thus the entire reason why I said forced grouping.  Or maybee I should say encoraged grouping.

Originally posted by Thillian

Originally posted by Robsolf

 

"undoubtedly".  Yep.  LOL!!!  What evidence, exactly, are you basing this indubitable declaration on?

"It ain't what you know that gets ya, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

 

 

Pretty much a logical deduction. Lifetimers expected to stay with the game for longer than a year when they paid for the lifetime. It's been three years now since release. The longer the game will last, the more lifetimers will there be. Lifetime equal to a year of monthly subscriptions is not a good business for the company unless they expect to just pull the plug within that year or start releasing paid expansions and move your dev team away to do something else (re-release DDO? + new game in works??)

Offering lifetime payment option means you will not get any sort of money from players that EXPECTED to stay with the game for a longer time (logically, when they paid the lifetime right?) If I think about it, what other game apart from Lotro and Hellgate London ever offered lifetime subscription?

And now we have this post http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3192553/thread/258147#3192553

Saying they are extending the pricing plans, my guess is not enough folks converted to the new pricing plans.  We still got month to month hold outs.  I know of 3 in our guild who are founders and wanted to keep the 9.99 a month pricing. 

Originally posted by erictlewis

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by erictlewis

So from what I read, if you go in groups you get the rewards quicker you do it solo you still get the same rewards it just going to take you a lot longer to get them and a lot more of the SM's to purchase them with.  So that was my take on it.   So yes your going to be foreced to group to get it quicker, however you can still do it solo it just going to take you a lot longer to get there.

 

It's going to take you longer BECAUSE of the SM's.  They are going to have an exchange system, where you can trade in the smaller fellowship SM's for bigger fellowship ones.  the bigger ones, I assume, are for better items.

I'm consider myself a pretty solo'ey player, and I have no issue with this, so long as it doesn't mean I have to run a skirmish, say, 20 times to get the equivelent of a fellowships' 1.

...and, like I mentioned earlier, if it doesn't take up yet more inventory space.

 

Well the way it read it sounded like it was going to take a huge chuck of turn ins. So I am worried that it is going to take you many many runs vs a few runs with a 6 or 12 man.  Thus the entire reason why I said forced grouping.  Or maybee I should say encoraged grouping.

Just ask Ihmotepp: You need more rewarding group content because it takes more incentive to group. You wouldn't think so (who would not want to get rewards faster, right?) but it's true. With a group you have to deal with other people. That's not always fun. Sometimes they have to go AFK, sometimes they're clowns, sometimes they try to steal loot, etc. That's why solo is so popular. That's why Turbine allows people to do Skirmishes either way... but they need to give people incentives to group up. Yes, it's encouraged, because if it wasn't, few people would do it.

Originally posted by erictlewis

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by erictlewis

So from what I read, if you go in groups you get the rewards quicker you do it solo you still get the same rewards it just going to take you a lot longer to get them and a lot more of the SM's to purchase them with.  So that was my take on it.   So yes your going to be foreced to group to get it quicker, however you can still do it solo it just going to take you a lot longer to get there.

 

It's going to take you longer BECAUSE of the SM's.  They are going to have an exchange system, where you can trade in the smaller fellowship SM's for bigger fellowship ones.  the bigger ones, I assume, are for better items.

I'm consider myself a pretty solo'ey player, and I have no issue with this, so long as it doesn't mean I have to run a skirmish, say, 20 times to get the equivelent of a fellowships' 1.

...and, like I mentioned earlier, if it doesn't take up yet more inventory space.

 

Well the way it read it sounded like it was going to take a huge chuck of turn ins. So I am worried that it is going to take you many many runs vs a few runs with a 6 or 12 man.  Thus the entire reason why I said forced grouping.  Or maybee I should say encoraged grouping.

I read ya.  And I had to read it a bunch of times to get an idea of how the system as a whole was to flow.  If you look at it from the perspective of where they WERE to where they are GOING though, you can see a change from gating content from all but groups and the most suicidal, to finding ways where you can be inclusive of all styles of play.

ALL games I've played encourage grouping.  It's telling that encouragement is required beyond the standard benefits of being in a group in MMO's, but it's pretty apparent.  I remember seeing bonus XP for groupers in SWG, maybe even before.  They also encouraged it by gating the highest level/best paying contracts to big groups.

Like I said, if it's largely a case of 6 to a half dozen on time per loot, or even a bit to a groups advantage, I'm good with that.  But yeah... if it's ridiculously skewed, I'll be right there with ya.

Originally posted by Comnitus

Just ask Ihmotepp: You need more rewarding group content because it takes more incentive to group. You wouldn't think so (who would not want to get rewards faster, right?) but it's true. With a group you have to deal with other people. That's not always fun. Sometimes they have to go AFK, sometimes they're clowns, sometimes they try to steal loot, etc. That's why solo is so popular. That's why Turbine allows people to do Skirmishes either way... but they need to give people incentives to group up. Yes, it's encouraged, because if it wasn't, few people would do it.

On the other side of the coin, I don't like making people wait for me to empty the dryer, take bio breaks, or get dinner/drinks.

Originally posted by Astralglide

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by erictlewis

And yet once again we go with lack luster loot.  Forced grouping to get better loot.   One thing that Lotro has always had a problem with is lack of good or even epic loot.

I think there is a disconect between the devs want to give the players vs what the players want from the devs. 

This is a path they continue down, and it is sad.

 

 

I think there are a lot of players who don't want LOTRO to be about loot. It really wasn't about loot in the beginning as crafted, quested, dropped or raided equpment were all pretty good.

 

From my experience, all the gear you could craft was crap, except for the tools and jewelry (I haven't play Moria, so this might have changed) and the raid drops that I saw were marginally better than the high end story rewards. Loot is not what a game should be all about, that mechanic works well for WoW and failed miserably for WAR, but there needs to be some reason to get people to do instances more than once or twice. Finding groups in LOTRO was pretty painful sometimes and I had difficulty getting anybody to do them more than once. Some better gear drops, or even some cool clothes to deck out your toon would definately help

Are you familiar with crafting guilds?  Very rarely have I picked something up that's better than a quest or crafted item.  All the way up to 60.

Dunno.  It seems like on one side of the fence, you're complaining that crafted gear sucks, then complaining that instance gear is overshadowed by crafted gear and thus isn't enough incentive for a PUG.  Are you saying that instance gear double-suxx?  :)

I think the problem for PUG's has been that one person gets the ultra cool shiny uber loot, and everybody else gets "meh", so there's little point in trying especially if you already got the one shiny fat lootz.  I think using the SM system, everybody gets SOME benefit from each visit to the instance, so it should encourage more PUG participation.  Though groupers would argue it won't, since solo'ers can do the same skirmish(in this case) and not die.

Originally posted by Thillian

Originally posted by Robsolf

 

"undoubtedly".  Yep.  LOL!!!  What evidence, exactly, are you basing this indubitable declaration on?

"It ain't what you know that gets ya, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

 

 

Pretty much a logical deduction. Lifetimers expected to stay with the game for longer than a year when they paid for the lifetime. It's been three years now since release. The longer the game will last, the more lifetimers will there be. Lifetime equal to a year of monthly subscriptions is not a good business for the company unless they expect to just pull the plug within that year or start releasing paid expansions and move your dev team away to do something else (re-release DDO? + new game in works??)

Offering lifetime payment option means you will not get any sort of money from players that EXPECTED to stay with the game for a longer time (logically, when they paid the lifetime right?) If I think about it, what other game apart from Lotro and Hellgate London ever offered lifetime subscription?

More lifetimers, yes.  Making them magically a majority of the LotRO population, no.  Particularly when you can play for 10 bucks a month.  Your logical deduction is correct, but wholly exaggerated.

Another lifetimer?  Champions Online.  But I suspect, in a few months, that will be a bad example.  :)

Seeing as how, by your very declaration, LotRO has been giving lifetime subs from the very beginning, and is still around some 3 years later, that's gotta say something about how having a hybrid payment model is doing.

We'll see, though.  If DDO is doing well enough to open a new server and that's equating to big buxx, they may go micro with LotRO whether forced to or not.  It's all about the bennies.  But from a "inside the game standpoint" the pops are good, and I doubt they're all, half, or even significantly lifers. 

And, it's just doesn't seem like the behavior of an economically troubled game to announce 2 $20 items, then give one away to people that are already on a 3 month sub.