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Helms Deep class changes
Nadia
Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/10/09/turbine-defends-lotro-class-changes/
There were several reasons given for the class changes. The devs felt that skills were losing potency the more they were added, there were many skills not being used, class builds were too much alike, the combat tempo needed more pep, animation times were sometimes too long, and it was just taking a lot of time for the devs to try to keep everything in balance.
"These are big changes," the devs state. "They take some getting used to. We know this. We also know that for the good of the game and its longevity, we sometimes need to make big changes."
forum discussion
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?527125-Dev-Diary-Trait-Trees-in-Helm-s-Deep
Comments
While I think to a degree that's true, that's also true in many MMORPGs. LOTRO actually had fewer skills than more EQ-style games. Most my characters I can get by with just the one skill bar, as opposed to 2 and 3 in other games.
And I think the idea that the class builds are all alike and this will fix it is a farce. You could play what you wanted to play. It was flexible. Skill trees are not. All the good stuff is usually at the top, the bottom is full of filler. You only have enough points to reach the top in one area, and in any event, they were very linear.
The current trait system is not linear. You can pick and choose from any trait you've got. This is just going to lead to cookie-cutter builds, like in every other game with a skill tree.
Let's be honest - all the good developers have moved on from this game to Turbine's new and upcoming project. Apparently we're stuck with people just out of college or interns, people who have never played LOTRO for any great time, but played a lot of WoW and want to re-make LOTRO in its image.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Maybe the saddest dev diary so far...
"The biggest question I get about the class changes is… Why?" of course you get it a lot, the signs telling that you have some very weird insights of a great game... and guess what? Your diary shows only that you really have no clue.
That paragraph about skill bloat... "Having a zillion skills carries a lot of overhead." wait, so you're culling the skills because you're lazy cheapskates?
"Many of those skills were redundant, unexciting and worst of all, not really getting used." to you maybe, but many players love versatility. If you don't use a skill at every playing session doesn't mean that the skill is redundant or unnecessary. And I don't even get the unexciting and the too long to execute part... who would skip a skill just because it's too long to cast or the animation is not exciting enough? lol
Homogeneity aka dumbing down: LotRO's classes had some nice unique features so far, thank you that in your great wisdom you'll dumbing it down to 3 straightforward (and easy) lines. "if you go for a hybrid build" - you mean between those 3 branches? wow, what an awesome level of hybrid indeed
And what's even more disheartening, is the trend where you're trying to get: "We want skills to pop." "Each skill play should have a strong impact on a fight. make the tempo of combat more exciting." "Ground targeted skill, AoE, Ground target heals" "brand spankin’ new animations and effects to speed things up." "focus on making really cool skills" Wtf, LotRO is not one of your average action mmo's, for Eru's sake...
I don't want to be rude and make suggestions what this HoarseDev should do with a special part of a horse
I think they still don't understand, why they get so many of those WHY? questions. And if this dev diary is all they can answer to it (lots of skills are expensive to us and we want to turn the game into an easy action-combat one), well, then the situation is much worse than it seemed...
Just today i restarted lotro...
and after some 20 levels i was thinking how great these plethora of skill mmos are, just love the minstrel, started a new one on a populated server, all i can remeber is that ever skill has its uses... Most are quite simple and forward... No hard to remeber mechanics...
I really hope they dont change to much, last time they did a full minstrel overhaul i hqd to quit..
they keypoint behind their vision seems to attract new players, instead of keeping current players happy.. People to sticked to the game off and on over years because they realised that lotro combat was unique and had its place in the mmo market, its own identity, with classes that all where kind of swissarmy knives in a different form, i think that is the charm of lotro, all classes are kinda jacks of lots of trades...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I wish it was. I've never liked LOTRO's skills and having 4 hotbars.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Thats why you dont play it and people that do like this are playing it, to everyone his own.....
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Wow... any SWG players experiencing flashback moments? The only debate really is whether this will be Turbines CU or NGE (Moria was another disaster)
Lotro is Lotro, well it was before Moria and it had an audience. As the CU and NGE debacle has shown, you can't chance a games fundementals and then expect to keep your old customers while attracting new ones.
But like SWG I think this game is dead anyways, they are unlikely to get a new license for the IP so they might as well go out in a blaze and try out somethings for their next project.
It just that you would have to be rather a fool to invest any money in their next project since you never know whether the game you bought isn't going to be changed at a devs wim.
Would you buy a magazine subscription for a game review magazine if at any time it might turn into a movie review magazine?
Really? Really?
Well I am currently subscribed to "two" mmo's and LOTRO is one of them.
Yes, yes I know it's not normally possible to criticize a game one plays therefore your error is very understandable.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Moria was great.
LOTRO is without a doubt sluggish, but why change it now after all these years? MMOs its age dont attract new players.
No, there best bet is trying to make all previous players return whenever they add new content to their story line... Thats about the future for Lotro...
On top of that, the sluggish feel does not come from their abbiltiies but from their annimations.(my opinion) and mob AI, so i dont think changing abbilties on the player side is a sollution for this.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
To the topic, I'm not saying LotRO is perfect and there's no place for improvement, only that they started to "fix" parts which were ok in the first place. There's the LI grind for a start, when will that removed or culled? Rhetorical one, I know Turbine loves the grind, it has a lot of selling potential in the store...
If a player is feeling the skill numbers are "bloated" then simply drop them from the bar and play with only a few of them. But not deleting them from the game entirely... Why is it disturbing that players on the other hand use all of those skills? Not to mention there's already a solution for it, in the form of the upgraded versions of earlier skills, Turbine uses it since years. But ok, they're admittedly lazy, don't want to spend their time on the skills - I think it's BS but at least it's a somewhat justified reason.
However, trait trees? It has nothing to do with skill reduction, or long animations or anything... and the only, idiotic reason for that is "What happens when you keep mixing different paint colors? You get an underwhelming sort of brown color." Really? That's your answer? LotRO was all about versatility, it was the core what made it different from the horde of skill tree-based wow clones. How will help the game if you'll dumbing it down to "clear classes"? A tank who is indestructible but cannot kill a fly, a glass-cannon dps and a healer who can't even protect himself? Not to mention the options are there today as well, anyone can trait himself / herself fully to one specific role... so why erasing the option for the others who doesn't want to do that?
And what's with poor old Gammer Took and her fellow bards, you'll fire them as well? Since anyone can switch among the pre-saved trait setups, I guess the services of a bard won't needed anymore...
One of the good things about thos game was its extensive skill and unique trait system which required more thought and strategy than most MMOs. This sure sounds like a dumbing down "because when you press a button, something awesome has to happen!" Just when I was feeling nostalgic for LOTRO, even though their F2P model is IMO trash. *sigh*
I won't be such doomsayer. Can speak of myself, my Champion (every my toon is a Champion). Yes, there are many many skills that I never use, they just take space and make me wonder "what this cool colourufull thing does?". If they reduce skills that are very rarely used - it won't be bad.
Skill tree is kind of two-edge sword, bot h good and bad. Having very clear idea what does what is good. Reducing choice is bad. At the same time making less quantity, but more quality is good. The only thing I dislike in trait tree is "invest 3 points to this skill to get the skill you really want" thing.
So, if they do quality tree, I see no evil in that. Every player could invest points into other trees and skills, so if tree is big - we may get even bigger choices. All we have to do is wait for skill tree to appear (November 18) and then provide Turbine with a feedback.
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com
Champs are cool, everyone loves them, especially after this famous post: https://www.lotro.com/en/forums/showthread.php?283276 shing-shing
(I have only two, and none of them are among my mains though)
"If they reduce skills that are very rarely used - it won't be bad." - if only... the plan is allegedly to left around 20ish skills - champs have 16 skills when leaving Bree, without the passives. Twenty-something skills at lvl95? Sounds really tempting...
"The only thing I dislike in trait tree is "invest 3 points to this skill to get the skill you really want" thing." - exactly that's how it will work. Additionally you can forget your present versatile status (being a tank, or off-tank, or a full-wide dps, or mixing those and still doing great), you'll be either off-tank with reduced dps, or single-target dps, or AoE dps without much defence. Period. If you try to mixing those, you'll gimp yourself heavily.
But hey, at least Ardour and Fervour become passives, and get some boost as well, yay, thanks Turbine, you're way too generous...
I think the issue is having specific skills that not only don't scale well but creating encounters that even need those skills in the first place.
I know, in game that has "skills" I would much rather have an initial limited tool bar and then have skills "open up" as I go.
Having a skill or a few skills that have very rare applications is like having a story where, if you cut out a character it wouldn't make one bit of difference.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
That link was hillarious and made my day
with my naga mouse and G15 keyboard, i can actually efficiently shortcut and use 68 skills.. So i really love a plethora of skills games like lotro, while my basic rotations consist of only a few skills, all other skills are situational, and actually on my 4 classes Minstrel, Loremaster and warden and burglar, i use all the skills, on a situational base..
I think people only using a few skills are lazy and not good players, really they are, because they could be so much better..
and now not only Lotro but also many newer games are moving away from this extra tactical layer... Playing games with fewer numbers of skills like gw2, neverwinter and dcuo made me realise how much more i like the plethora of skills games like lotro, wow and eq2.... If most players get away with using only a few skills, its because of the content not demanding it... Which is where the developers go wrong...
lotro is the ultimate tactical combat game for me... It allows people to shine if they really know their character and use those skills..
please no seccond NGE...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
This might actually help me somewhat. I have found after going back to the game that there are many skills to relearn. This is not a big deal and doesn't take long but sometimes it feels like feature creep to me.
I don't mind it being reduced as long as it isn't dumbed down like SWG CU etc.
Might have to check it out.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I guess what they could do is make multiple skills that are balanced and do similar things but in visualy different ways. That would be fine with me. I don't really care about balancing classes either. . the differences is what gives them flavour.
It does usually end up that there is a certain cycle of skills that maxes out damage etc. but I have found that knowing when to deviate from that depending on the situation is what makes for a good player. If they narrow the skills down too much this element will be gone.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Well, so far i noticed that minstrells willl now be able to play the support role (there are 4 roles, offense, defense, support and healing) To bad they didn't add any more roles to other classes, like a loremaster being able to play like a healer, in my vision that would really complete the class..
most classes can still only play 2 roles, strange thing is that captain even after the patch will be able to play as all 4 roles...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I wrote it after the first news and the dev interview, sorry to brought it up, but it seems others are feeling sorry for her as well:
http://lostmathom.org/threads/gammer-took-party-tuesday-3-december.1753/
I think I'll have to /dustoff my hobbit on Laurelin
LOL great community in this game!!
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!