UPDATE 11:45am PT: Systems Designer Barbara "Tybur" Thompson addressed the player feedback on the forums, pulling back some of the issues surrounding the proposed change.
"We will be removing any max level limits on these tomes, but we do want to make the acquired tomes bind. So, after 28.3 Small Reputation Acceleration Tomes bartered from skirmish vendors will be bound to account on acquire (no other changes). We recognize that there are significant reputation ‘grinds’ throughout the game, for example with crafting guilds, where these scrolls are beneficial, and limiting acquisition by player level is not needed in this case."
Tybur also addressed issues from players in terms of being able to fully level legendaries if they've not bought the latest mini-DLC, stating: "Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment (without tier caps) will continue to be available from a variety of level scaling and group content sources such as Featured Instances, epic battles barter, skirmish camp barter, PvMP barter, Gift Giver’s Brand barter, and many our our three- and six-player instance chests as well as raid chests."
Ta, CondarFreed
Original Story Below:
A new update to the Bullroarer test server in Lord of the Rings Online brings changes to the rep accelerators which will now bind to characters once acquired, and will feature a max usage level of 100. The community reacts.
You can check out the full patch notes here, but the interesting bit is the part about rep accelerators:
“Small Reputation Accelerator Tomes offered on Skirmish Vendors now Bind to character on acquire and have a Max Usage Level of 100.”
Some in the community have already responded in the forums coming out against this, claiming that this would make people purchase these from the store,
“Hey so you are level-locking the skirmish camp rep accelarators ? Nice way to force people to purchase them from the store. You'll not get me, I'll purchase a lot of them so I have all I need for the foreseeable future, but congrats on being a ####ty company always searching for ways to milk as much money as you want from your customers.”
A more in-depth response was posted here, detailing why this may be “SSGs next PR disaster.” The argument goes that SSG is removing something without offering a replacement in return,
“With regard to the proposed changes to the Small Reputation Accelerator Tomes, this is another example of removing a benefit without an equitable replacement. The barter currencies used to acquire these items are accessible across your account. Therefore a player could use marks earned by a high level alt to buy a rep booster for a newer, lower level alt. Making these items bind to character diminishes their benefit. Again, there is naturally a store alternative.”
Sound off with your thoughts below.