LOTRO Reporter Podcast
LOTRO Reporter Episode 225 - Cari Flies Solo
Cari is flying solo this week. She’s got loads of news like cosmetic pets, a new class, and the end of another LOTRO Fansite. The chatroom was awesome thanks for helping me out.
Audio Version:
What We Did in Game
Cari
Kin Party
Working on Virtues
News
Bullroarer Preliminary Patch Notes Update 13
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?&postid=7120230#post7120230
Region Revamps
The following regions have revised and adjusted
Misty Mountains and Goblin Town
The North Downs
The Trollshaws
Moors level scaling and free player access
F2P and Premium players may now take their Freeps to the Ettenmoors by purchasing a temporary moors pass from the stable master using Mithril Coins.
The Free Peoples may now enter the Ettenmoors at level 20 and have their characters scaled up to level cap.
Resource Instances
New level 95 resource instances have been added.
Mail Update
In-game mail sent to you by players on your ignore list will now be returned to sender, along with any attached money or items.
You may now attach up to 10 items or stacks of items to your mail.
VIP players may now open their mail directly from the notification icon wherever they are on the landscape.
Certain items purchased in the LOTRO Store may now be emailed to others for a small Mithril Coin fee.
Player Avatars (character models) adjustments.
These adjustments can be seen best by comparing a live character to its copied version on Bullroarer. In character creation, these adjustments will change the results of moving the adjustment sliders – ratios of shoulders to waist and general model bulkiness – will be visible. You may also notice changes in the locomotion of your characters.
Housing
The Housing Foreclosure grace period has been reduced to 30 days. Once lapsed, the amount of time until a house is foreclosed on has been reduced to 90 days.
We recently spoke with the Free Peoples Housing Authority (FPHA) and have re-negotiated fairer storage fees for additional storage with all housing in Middle-earth. Additional housing storage now costs less gold!
Saruman’s Orrery housing item has been shrunk again
Kinships
Kinships are no longer automatically disbanded for not having enough members.
Festivals
Spring Festival – The quest “”A Fistful of Flowers”" can no longer be cancelled.
Anniversary Festival – Existing Gift Box tokens will be converted to 30 Marks each. This year will see a simplified gift box system that only uses the new steel token!
A New Dye Color
http://materialmiddleearth.blogspot.com/2014/03/what-new-dye-color.html?m=1
Taking the Hobbits to Isengard
Vilya
Vilya pulls out a stunningly fast time! 47 minutes and 32 seconds!
Age-old question, “if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump tooâ€
As Sapience leads several players over a cliff in Bree-land, that seems to be a resounding YES.
Are things still on track for the Council applications to open up on the 14th
Actually they’ve been pushed back one week to the 21st. They are planning on announcing the council during the Anniversary, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to have 5 or 6 weeks of applications. This way he can read them all while he’s on vacation and uninterrupted by other things.
When will Spring Festival start
After the Anniversary Festival (Anniversary happens in late April)
When will we see the next 20 questions
He mentioned it on Twitter for those who follow, that they will be doing it more toward the end of the month. While he’s on vacation he will give people a chance to post questions, and the answers will come after that. It will be helpful to give people a chance to see U13 on Bullroarer before they ask questions so that they don’t ask questions that will be answered by seeing the update.
Bullroarer
Guests for this run: HoarseDev, Jinjaah, Aaron Campbell aka Rowan, Raina (bringer of pain), a quick MadeOfLions cameo for one question
Will housing changes allow us random placement, or will we still have hooks
HoarseDev – Right now they’re prototyping how the new system will work, so he can’t say for sure how it will function, but that is something they will be looking into while prototyping.
Any word on keymapping for trait presets
HoarseDev – Working on that right now. They had an internal discussion about how they would want it to work – whether they wanted to allow them to function basically as superstances, but right now they are just working on an elegant way to get it working for all players. They had the opportunity to sort of hack it in as a /command type thing, but instead they’re focusing on finding the right place to make it fit.
Is Rohan housing a possibility in the near future
HoarseDev – They’ve considered other places, and it’s on the table but he wouldn’t say it’s in the near term. Right now they’ve got a lot of considerations to make about whether people will be allowed multiple houses, what the process would be in moving from one to the other, and there’s also asset creation. So they’re just trying to get 13 out the door, looking fresh, and handling some more immediate priorities right now. They’re looking at difficulty of the game which obviously is pretty easy right now, so they’re taking the nerf bat out, to fix that up a bit. So they have looked at Rohan housing but he can’t say yes or no right now, and it’s not in the immediate future.
Are First Agers going to be in U13, or 13.1
HoarseDev – They’re putting them in the BR build on Monday, so they should be ready for U13. They’re looking at dropping them in T3 skirmishes, some of the classic instances, and then potentially as a platinum drop in Big Battles. So there will be several places to get them.
What about having multiple characters on one account on the same server have more than one house
HoarseDev – This is part of the complication with having housing in different regions, will people have to foreclose on their house in one region to move to the other, what would that look like – they’re hoping to come up with a slick solution to handle all that. Some of the changes that were made to the system at the end of last year, even though they didn’t get as much housing stuff done as they’d wanted to, those changes facilitated moving that along. That and having a more modular housing inventory system – those are the things that have worked as interim steps toward getting that off the ground. Toward potentially – no promises – enable other housing down the road.
Are there any plans to make the 3rd trait slot configuration free, or will it remain a store purchase
HoarseDev – They’ll play it by ear. It’s not currently on the docket to change, but in a lot of cases what they do when something’s been up there for awhile is they put it on sale or get more lenient with it. So he can’t really speak to that “in fact†but it’s something they’ll consider.
Any changes or fixes for the Minstrel
Jinjaah – There aren’t really any specific major changes coming for any classes, but they are trying to sort out some issues under the hood with classes in general and how their primary stats contribute to their secondary stats, how mitigations factor in – stuff they need to clear up before they can nitpick on the individual classes.
HoarseDev – They are always doing fixes here and there. The devs do read the forums pretty thoroughly, for better or for worse, and they are constantly making fixes. He sees bugs come through, suggestions come through all the time and they assign them, but right now they are definitely looking at the difficulty of the game, the stat contributions, and trying to build challenge in across the board. Now that they have the classes systemically at a place where they are a lot easier to work with, now they want to make sure that the challenge of the game gets to a point where people are happy with it. And from there they can really start digging into very individual skills and start picking them apart.
Is it true that F2P players will be able to go into the Moors – can you tell us how it works, when they can go and at what level
Jinjaah – Visiting your stable master when you see the travel path to the Moors you will see a buff that you can buy for Mithril coins that will last for 6 hours, that enables you to enter the Moors at will. You can stack the buff if you’d like to stay longer, and it will work similar to Big Battles in that it will scale your gear up to an item level that’s on par with your main level. There are also three new vendors at the Freeps base where you can buy gear that level scales a bit differently than regular gear. It will actually maintain its max 95 level item level for 10 levels instead of just one. Those are statted in such a way as to make them comparable to an actual 95 version of their class with that character wearing PvMP armour.
HoarseDev – It’s important to keep in mind that this starts at level 20 so at level 20 you can go there but the gear is statted in such a way as to really promote you moving forward and getting XP in the Moors (if that’s what you want to do), but it’s not going to be the best gear in the game. Even though it’s statted for PvP so you can hang on and contribute, but the goal isn’t for someone to come in at level 23 and be as powerful as someone who is at cap and has gone through all the rigours of the Moors.
Jinjaah – He’s been reading the forums and getting tons of feedback, the council forums have been great in giving feedback too on how level scaling is working right now. If anyone has a BR client he really encourages you to get out there in the moors and try it out and give feedback on how you think it’s working.
Is there a way to access the Entwood from the Fangorn area without completing Vol 3 B 13
MadeOfLions (via Sapience) – He believes so, it should not be gated by the epic
Any plans to expand the horse trait trees, or earn extra points for your steed
HoarseDev – Part of the reason they brought mounted combat in was because we’re going to Rohan and it’s a very iconic thing – you basically can’t go to Rohan without having mounted combat. As we get to Helm’s Deep it’s very much “time on the wall.†If you think about where the story is going, he’s very hopeful that there will be more opportunities for MC. There are a lot of big fights coming up where when they get into the meat of the conflict there will be a chance to build encounters and spaces with MC in mind. So, yes we will be continuing with mounted combat.
Are there any planned changes to kinship management
HoarseDev – He’s a big fan of kinships, and he’s looking at adding some new things to kinships to give people more reasons to work together, more reward for working together in a kin. More value to being in a tight kin. As they work on this there will be more management needed just to get these new systems working, and hopefully along the way they will be able make it easier for kin leaders and officers to do more with their kins.
Raina cackles and cheers as she manages to wipe most of the raid, along with Hadacar, via her many nefarious monsters. HoarseDev crosses the office to Raina’s desk to give her a high-5
Is there any chance that we will get war-steed appearances of kindred faction mounts in the future
HoarseDev – Can’t really speak to that much, it needs to go to the Art crew in terms of what they have cooked up. They do look at places where there is a theme people have enjoyed and they try to carry that over, but he doesn’t really know what’s on the docket for that in the near future.
In years gone by there were random teal drops from landscape mobs. They were extremely rare and you had to grind for hours to get them. Is there any possibility of something like that returning
HoarseDev – He is a big fan of extremely rare but awesome drops on landscape. Over the years they’ve moved away from that. There are really two schools of thought on the issue. On the one hand there’s the view of, “Is that lottery pull really really awesome†which he personally believes, and on the other side there’s, “Will everyone want it but not be able to get it.†He tends to lean more towards cool things from as many places as possible, but sticking to rarity. So he’s working on it, but it has to fit in and it has to be comprehensive across this huge game world. He doesn’t want to make it so that people just farm the areas so much that it’s hard for people to complete quests there. But philosophically he’s a big fan of that exact thing.
Is there any chance we will get an improved LI system that enables us to truly level one item with us, instead of having to scrap it every 10 levels. Is there any talk happening around that type of approach
HoarseDev – They’re going to try something else first – something that is not specifically attached to LIs – and see how that flies. It is a big big undertaking to pull the engine block out of the LI system and change it. But he’s always thought philosophically that if you find a legendary item, you should be leveling that pretty much permanently, with finding other things to make it better being the drops you get, rather than having a hockey bag full of items you are grinding. They can’t crack the LI nut in the immediate future, but they are looking at other ways to involve other gear to get things to a point where that may be a possibility. He’d personally love to see a change.
Is any thought being given to scaling skirmishes around the chosen level to negate the ability for higher levels to slaughter lower level skirmishes
HoarseDev – They haven’t really talked about that specifically, no. He hopes that the paltry rewards for killing low level skirmishes are enough to deter that, but they’ve been doing a lot with level scaling, so in terms of the technology they have now, it brings them a lot closer to having something like that on the table. The main work of building the Big Battles was in making it possible for players of any level to be able to get in and play. The flipside of that is being able to cater other content to scaling in a more pleasing manner. But right now they are focused on scaling in the Moors, and getting that as right as they can. When it comes out there will be a lot of feedback and they’ll want to tighten that up a lot before looking at other things.
Up through Mirkwood there were shard-droppers and then warbands were touted as the replacement for that. Is there any chance of shard-droppers returning to the game in areas where mounted combat is not allowed, so that we can have tougher on-level mobs running around those regions like before
HoarseDev – Loves this kind of thing. Loves questing and seeing some big scary thing show up that he can get his kin together to fight for a good drop. We’re at a point in the timeline of the story of the game where bigger threats are moving into areas where they didn’t before, so it makes sense to do stuff like this. So he thinks it’s more than a possibility that this will happen in the future. Right now it’s high on his list. He’s hoping later this year to get more really tough mobs out there that the average person would not be able to solo.
What are the item level numbers on equipment used for. Is it a future development thing
HoarseDev – The item level gives them a way of differentiating the potency of an item when compared with another item. For example if you are level 85 and can wield an item that is in the low hundreds, there may be many items in that range that you can wield. This gives you another way to compare them to decide which will be better for you. Item level tells you how much juice the devs put into a particular item. It’s not a future development thing so much as just another way of differentiating items. As part of getting difficulty level on track they need a broader variety of items available than simple equip level and rarity could provide.
Executive Producer Aaron Campbell aka Rowan joins the chat
Is Kate’s surprise now your surprise, and are you willing to give us a hint of what it might be – there are cookies to bribe you if need be
Rowan – One of his duties is to provide ale to the team, and he just bought some in and put it between HoarseDev and Jinjaah for later. On the surprise, yes, it’s his surprise now, and he’s waiting on Jinjaah and HoarseDev to give him the go-ahead to talk about it because they are the two who will be working on it.
HoarseDev – Gives the go-ahead to talk about it
Rowan – They are working on adding a new class, for later in the year.
Could you expand a bit more on group content and how it’s being looked at moving forward
Rowan – It’s about focus. Right now focus 1 is on building story content and great new landscape content, expanding on the world. And focus 2 is to ensure they’re sustaining and developing systems they’ve produced, taking a hard look at epic battles and polishing that off, and adding more epic battles to the game, and more group content through that mechanic.
Is there any chance of having a creep invasion of Freep maps
Jinjaah – It’s something that they’ve thought about, but who knows. He likes to think that the players think it’s some giant lever somewhere in the building that is under lock and key and heavy security, and he has to find a way to break through and pull the plug so that creeps just pour out of the Ettenmoors.
Rowan – He knows where that lever is, and he and HoarseDev have talked about it.
Jinjaah – Thinks maybe Rowan can pull some strings and distract some people
HoarseDev – As he’s said a few times in this dev chat, they’re at a point in the story where things are pretty miserable all over Middle Earth, and the enemy is encroaching. He’d love to see it but there would be a lot of hoops to get through to get it to work, but maybe they’ll accidentally flip that switch some weekend and see what happens.
What kind of active role do you take in development – what exactly does an Executive Director do
Rowan – He spends most of his days looking at spreadsheets and lists of features, and talking to lots and lots of people. No one wants him coding. That would be a bad idea.
Sapience – Is glad, that means someday he can be an Executive Producer, because no one wants him coding either. But he’s not good with spreadsheets either.
We understand there will be no focus on new raids or instances – what about the scaling of old instances
Rowan – It’s a question of approach. Where do they get the most bang for their buck, basically. There are a lot of different kinds of group content that exist in LotRO, they need to find the ones that make the most sense, that give the players the best experience, that the team can do the most efficiently and with the most quality. That’s how that balances out. They’ve used scaling in the past, they’ve used skirmishes obviously, there are so many options.
Will hunters ever receive pets, even non-combat ones
Rowan – He thinks Sapience already answered that one with a Twitter pic he posted the other day.
Sapience –Says go check out Twitter and his little friend there. He can say the easy answer to that is, yes. There is a longer answer they will probably talk about in future updates, but for U13 there is a little friend for anyone who is fortunate enough to find him and earn him.
Rowan – There are three versions, too.
Did You Know
Tales of Arda Deed Maps
http://toarda.com/guides/deed-location-maps/
Community
And then I see this:
Tales of Arda is Leaving the Game
CMP Issues and Questions for Turbine
http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/turbine-events-and-competitions-a-few-outstanding-questions/
Contact Information
Email: lotro.reporter@gmail.com
Twitter: @lotroreporter
Facebook: LOTRO Reporter
Voicemail: 616-666-6778 or the widget on the right side of the screen when you visit the site.
YouTube: Â http://www.youtube.com/user/mmoreporternetwork
Cari  Twitter: @thecarimac
Layanor  Twitter: @Layanor
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