The new patch drops Tuesday!

[Stormwaltz]

Yeah, I definitely prefer this method to the horse race method.  It's no longer gated to 4 people per 10 minutes.  I wonder if this is what they were trying to do with the Spring Festival that broke.

I agree they're an improvement. They create a crowd. I had a great time the other night hanging out with a few people at the Hill, cheering and jeering at the tubby hobbits. A band of minstrels showed up. I got drunk in game and at the computer. Good times.

That said, I play so late compared to most that in the dozens of times I did the horse races, I only ran against another player once. (Of course, that was on Gladden. Brandywine seems to have crowds 24/7.)

[tmp]

Quite the opposite, if I click on the game form as it opens (right as the screen turns black) then I'm golden.  Clicking on the desktop gives focus to that form (desktop is a windows form also) and did not work for me.  Thanks to Tarami for the idea.

Wonder if that has something to do with switches in UserPreferences file (sits in the Documents/LotRO folder). They go like:

Code:

[display]
AllowFakeFullScreen=True
FakeFullScreen=True

and if i understand it correctly, they basically 'fake' fullscreen by making full-sized window with no border. Which doesn't seem to suffer from crash issues as i've been running with this setting forever without one. iirc this is not a default setting, maybe worth a try.

[Yegolev]

Hmm, I have ForceFakeFullScreen=False and AllowFakeFullScreen=True.  I will try adding FakeFullScreen=True and see what happens, then try Force*.  Although I really don't want it to run in a window so I might not.

[Soln]

I absolutely hate the new races.  They are a total failure in design.  The starting criteria for several players (because they are asking in /advice, /say, /regional for help) is to fail.  Once you fail and get frustrated, and then you figure out later what to do, then you can start the challenge. You have to fail first before trying the actual game itself.  It's a 3 quest cycle.  Or 4 step process, including failure and 2 hour wait.  It is not intuitive and the supporting instructions (e.g. "party Tree", "Thorin's Hall") do not explain where to go or what to do.

It's a fucking mess -- over-elaborate, unplay-tested.  It's not a big deal at all, but for such a failure in such a small bit of game design it makes me worried about the bigger stuff they are throwing at the wall.  People are cranky with Bk8 being in Moria and the continuing, growing emphasis on gear.  And the growing backlog of fellowship required quests.  I am starting to wonder about this game post-expansion, post Bk 9.

[Mrbloodworth]

I absolutely hate the new races.  They are a total failure in design.  The starting criteria for several players (because they are asking in /advice, /say, /regional for help) is to fail.  Once you fail and get frustrated, and then you figure out later what to do, then you can start the challenge. You have to fail first before trying the actual game itself.  It's a 3 quest cycle.  Or 4 step process, including failure and 2 hour wait.  It is not intuitive and the supporting instructions (e.g. "party Tree", "Thorin's Hall") do not explain where to go or what to do.

It's a fucking mess -- over-elaborate, unplay-tested.  It's not a big deal at all, but for such a failure in such a small bit of game design it makes me worried about the bigger stuff they are throwing at the wall.  People are cranky with Bk8 being in Moria and the continuing, growing emphasis on gear.  And the growing backlog of fellowship required quests.  I am starting to wonder about this game post-expansion, post Bk 9.

I'm sorry. I am not sure you were dong the same races I was.

First you are invited by mail, to visit a hobbit at the party tree. Once there, she gives you 2 tokens, and tells you to go up the hill (That also happens to be marked now with arches all the way up, right behind her).

Ones the race master is active (10 min between races) you simply talk to him, choose who you want to be on, then talk once more to confirm. That's it, just follow your hobbit around and cheer.

The timer is only for getting more race tokens, not for betting on the races, you can keep betting until you win 2 times, as I don't think the tokens are removed unless you win.

I think all of this is explained in the quest text, and the festival brochure you received in the mail. The only people who need to ask in /advice ETC, did not read the quest text, because it is clearly stated (Go up the hill behind me, and talk tot he racemaster).


Other than that, they have been adding solo versions of all the epic quests with each zone revamp....

WarCry:  Meeko: Any chance that some of the epic instances in volumn 1 will be eased as not so many people are around to group with who are interested in doing them... or a way to hire npc's to help complete them in future?

Orion: Funny you should ask this. Book 8 will see the first change along these lines. Chapter 11, Orthongroth is already set this way. Moving forward - post Book 8 - we are taking a different approach. My recent work has been focusing on providing both solo and group version of the Epic instances to allow players to choose the way that they want to complete the overall epic story.

[Stormwaltz]

The beauty of the new races, IMO, is that multiple people can win each one, and there's no direct competition between players. There's never a reason for one person to get angry at another -- blame the NPCs.

[Yegolev]

I absolutely hate the new races.  They are a total failure in design.  The starting criteria for several players (because they are asking in /advice, /say, /regional for help) is to fail.  Once you fail and get frustrated, and then you figure out later what to do, then you can start the challenge. You have to fail first before trying the actual game itself.  It's a 3 quest cycle.  Or 4 step process, including failure and 2 hour wait.  It is not intuitive and the supporting instructions (e.g. "party Tree", "Thorin's Hall") do not explain where to go or what to do.

I don't understand any of this.  Can you be more specific about the failing bit?  I have only done the race at Thorin's, and I failed that one time mostly because I didn't read the quest text very well.

[rattran]

I got my festival tokens (Go Gladdy you running vomiting machine!) and got my chit for a Summer Horse. Then had to bankrupt all my toons to afford the regular horse to exchange with the chit (and 6 more tokens!) to get it. Why make it take 50 tokens for the Fest horse chit, then make it 6 more at the traders? Why not just make it 56 to begin with?

[Ard]

It's probably a holdover from the old horse races more than anything, honestly.  You won the horse chit originally in a 4 person horse race which had no costs to enter, and then had to also have summer tokens from other events to trade in addition to the chit.

[Yegolev]

 

[Soln]

it's not a big deal, but the race design is frustrating and at least for me is emblematic that Turbine may be losing its focus. It's admirable to want to give players a better chance to win, but the current design is ugly.

You've got the following steps:

1) go to Race Trader, who is also a blue rep merchant for barter.  Not a unique NPC.
2) accept quest
3) find your way to race site (and at least in Hobbiton it's not obvious, but good idea with the gates.  Regardless, why not have the ticket vendor be 1 NPC, or at least have them at the track?)
4) click on Race Master, turn in quest, select new quest
5) then select a competitor, accept quest again
6) then, select the Race Master again again, to "pass" in tokens and accept an other quest (?)
7) then wait and watch for an idea of duration of wait
8) then get a quest update
9) then go back to Race Trader to turn in quest

Also, you have to read these quests on a timer. This is a race. So the anticipation of missing the race, and not knowing the timer (is it 10-15min?) does make people naturally in a hurry. 

so that does all that make sense just to play a micro game?

[Yegolev]

You know, I really do agree that there are way too many steps to perform just to bet on a race.  As you say, you get a quest from the guy in the tavern (Thorin's) and complete the quest by talking to him to get the tokens and another quest, or something similar.  Then you go outside and talk to the other dude to complete that second quest and pick a third quest (your pick to win).  I blame the tool, in that they are using the existing quest mechanism to do this and it's not really optimal here, and I blame the people who thought it was a good idea to have you truck back and forth between the race location and the guy who hands out tickets.

[HaemishM]

So what part of the summer festival is it that lets you win a mount? And how do you go about it? Because I'm not even halfway to mount money and goddamn, I need a mount.

[Jamiko]

You don't win a mount because you have to trade in your old mount to get the festival mount. You still have to pay for a mount no matter how you look at it.

[Yegolev]

To ride a mount you have to do the quests to get the skill, which are only available at lv35, then buy one for 4.2 gold (start saving now), then you obtain 50 festival tokens and trade those for the new mount voucher from the festival yay-hoo, then give the voucher and six more festival tokens (I am told) to the dingdong at Hengstacer.

It's a bit of a pain in the ass.  I might opt for the summer dress.

[Ard]

It's a bit of a pain in the ass.  I might opt for the summer dress.

Oh, but which one.  Every area has their own color variation.  It's ever so hard choosing between the blue and the green.  I'm not quite sure which goes best with the lumberjack song.

[Yegolev]

I find that I look pretty good in a basic dwarf dress (odd considering there aren't any female dwarves) so I was planning on getting the one at Thorin's.  Plus sun hat.

[rattran]

I got the festival bed as well, looks awfully small. Dwarf/hobbit bed, I guess.

And yeah, you have to shell out the 4.2G for a real horse. For as much travel as the game requires, horses cost too much money.

[Riggswolfe]

Maybe I'm a moron but I can't seem to finish the summer festival deed. None of the fishing parts of the deed complete despite me having finished the quest to go get fish from each of those areas.

[Bandit]

Not sure if it helps Riggs, as I got all mine a while ago, but noticed this on the forums after seeing your issue...

Q. I just wanted to ask, I seem to be having problems fishing in Bywater in that I keep getting normal fish and no deed fish. I fished for an hour and recieved not one festival fish NOR does the fishing deed (Fish in Bywater) clear. Am I doing something wrong?

A. You have to complete "Stocking the Pond" from the quartermaster in Bywater. Essentially, you have to get 3 particular fish from Thorin's, Celondim, and Bree-Land, then return. After that's completed, you can go back to those areas for a further (and daily repeatable) 20 min quest which will count towards the Sunshine deed. (Bywater is also repeatable, but is only 10 min.)

[tmp]

(odd considering there aren't any female dwarves)

Well, technically there's no dwarves with apparent tits. But since --per lorelol-- they're not specifying the gender of dwarves, then if you see one in a dress it just may be a female. Or a trap.

[Ard]

Maybe I'm a moron but I can't seem to finish the summer festival deed. None of the fishing parts of the deed complete despite me having finished the quest to go get fish from each of those areas.

You have to do the initial quest to find all 4 fishing areas, and bring 3 fish back from each, and then another quest opens up in each location, to fish for either 10 or 20 minutes.  Run out the timers on all 4 of those (you don't actually have to fish) and you'll finish the deed.

[HaemishM]

Has anyone else noticed a drop in frame rate since the patch? It usually hits me after about half-an-hour on my Vista machine at work. Feels like a memory leak. Haven't noticed it so much on the XP version at home.

[Ingmar]

Finally got around to playing since the patch and the Bree-Land revamp is nice, although its a bit weird that you have to run all the way out to Buckland to start the new 'track'. Well unless you're coming from the Shire.

1.5 levels to Undying and then I can stop being so paranoid about signatures. \o/

[Soln]

Has anyone else noticed a drop in frame rate since the patch? It usually hits me after about half-an-hour on my Vista machine at work. Feels like a memory leak. Haven't noticed it so much on the XP version at home.

yes I did last night.  It was chunky.


FWIW, I've taken the new ui load tool to save settings for my 1200x768 res for duo'ing, and an other at 800x600 for raids.  With EVERYTHING, like all particles and any indicators at 8x6 I can survive.

[Sjofn]

I find that I look pretty good in a basic dwarf dress (odd considering there aren't any female dwarves) so I was planning on getting the one at Thorin's.  Plus sun hat.

You don't KNOW there aren't any female dwarves. After all, it just says "dwarf," not "dwarf (male)." 

[Ard]

Unless things changed since launch, the devs stated way back then that they were very careful to make all pronouns relating to dwarf players gender neutral.

edit:  dev chat log that mentions it:
http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/devchat/4649-Lord-Of-The-Rings-Online-Developer-Chat-Log

[Sjofn]

In early beta, they WERE all male. A bunch of us bitched them out for it, so they changed it. 

[Yegolev]

In early beta, they WERE all male. A bunch of us bitched them out for it, so they changed it. 

I somehow missed this.  Probably I just didn't notice the neutrality.  Now I'm going to be looking for this in the books.  Sigh.

It is actually a dwarf-make dress, not necessarily a dress a dwarf might wear, so that may explain why my hobbit-cans look so huge in it.  Can't say I've seen a dwarf in a dress, to be honest, but I don't really hang out in that part of Thorin's Hall.

[Ingmar]

In early beta, they WERE all male. A bunch of us bitched them out for it, so they changed it. 

I somehow missed this.  Probably I just didn't notice the neutrality.  Now I'm going to be looking for this in the books.  Sigh.

It is actually a dwarf-make dress, not necessarily a dress a dwarf might wear, so that may explain why my hobbit-cans look so huge in it.  Can't say I've seen a dwarf in a dress, to be honest, but I don't really hang out in that part of Thorin's Hall.

Appendix A:

They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a
journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other
peoples cannot tell them apart.

[Yegolev]

I suppose, then that there would be some gender-specific references in the book (damn you Appendices) but I will be looking for them anyway.  I will also keep my eyes out for a dwarf in a dress... then again I can always put one on Dwuli and say she's a girl.

[Sjofn]

I thought about making a lady dwarf, but I never did. Maybe I should on Brandywine!

[Soln]

I see dwarves wearing dresses in game all the time.

[Ard]

But is this because you already had a predilection towards looking for short bearded women in dresses?  I think this says more about you than you want.   

[Sjofn]

Alright, I got someone in the Brandywine kinship. Her name is Harlean and she's an adorable widdle hobbit warden.