When are the changes to Radiance coming?We are currently working on the changes and should have them ready for the Book 9 release. No clear promises yet, but that is the plan.
Will radiance overwrite the gloom incurred on defeat?No, radiance will not overwrite gloom incurred on defeat.
When fighting SOA mobs/bosses that give dread, will the radiance set still counteract the dread as it does now?(Edit) The answer is no. Dread will need Hope to counteract the effects. Radiance will only cancel Gloom.
Does this mean that you can get a full set of +10 radiance gear without ever setting foot in (Insert name of undesirable instance here)?Yes.
Can we barter for the items from The Watcher too?If I am not correct on this answer I will edit it later - my understanding of the changes leaves the acquisition of the items that you get from The Watcher as is. You will still need to get them from The Watcher.
What are these challenge quests you speak of, how do they work?I will answer that at the end of this post. If you need to know right now jump down to the heading New Tech Revealed.
You took away our radiance bonus on landscape - are you revising the sets to make up for this?No, the decision and implementation of the changes to the way that radiance worked outside of raids was made before we began the adjustments to the distribution. It was a necessary decision for the long-term health of the game.
Why did it take so long to get here?As I stated in my previously blogs the hardest part of coming to solutions like this (mind you, this is an iteration on a previous plan that we had and still not the optimal solution that we all wanted and no, I cannot talk about that but I like making you wonder so I put it in my posts anyway) is identifying the problem first. We had multiple symptoms but it took a while to drill through the symptoms to identify the core problems and then find a solution that would do the least damage to the various aspects of the player base.
As you can see from the responses here:
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=285446 this is not going to be universally hailed as the greatest thing since the Internet. We have to weigh solutions carefully and do our best to ensure that we make the right decisions when it comes to hot button issues like this. Whether this choice is ultimately the best one remains to be seen as there are still a lot of concerns with the balance of it all.
Why not make exclusive instance barter drops so that people have to run the specific instances to get the specific items?I am going answer this one by first asking another question. Is there a concern that players will focus on one or two instances and only do those to access their radiance gear? Fear? No. Expectation, sure. Our challenge is to now create some other incentive for those harder instances. There has to be a reason for players to go into those spaces or they will become even less popular than they are now. Will it be easy? No. Will it have something to do with gear? Very likely. Will it have something to do with deeds? Possibly.
Why not make the drops instance dependent? We identified one of the symptoms of the system being the instances themselves, not everyone enjoys every instance that we design and if our goal is to make a system more accessible to folks, then placing another restriction that would drive them into spaces that they dislike would be viewed as a negative. Thus, we remove the restrictions and let players choose their own adventure through the spaces to acquire the gear. Choices.
How will players be prepared for the Watcher and DN? How long before these spaces are made easier?Some players may not be prepared for The Watcher and DN raids. Raids are going to remain the pinnacle of difficulty and we have no current intention to change this. Access to the raids so that players can attempt them and learn them at their own rate is our goal with these changes.
Can we buy 1st Age Weapons with these new tokens?
No.
Tell us about the expansion?Not yet.
Okay, questions answered is now in the done column, let’s move on to the real reason for my blog this morning. (drum roll on a little toy drum)
New Tech Revealed*sound of one hand clapping and a single party favor blowing*Making mountains out of molehills is fun! See, I am not certain that this tech is going to make all of you as happy as it makes me. I have been a gamer for a very long time and like most gamers, I like options. I like the option to do something unique in a space. I like challenges and variety in challenges. I like puzzles and exploring and learning more and more about a game until I break it down into the ones and zeroes that form the game and…well you get the point. Since I have been designing I have been very interested in making as many options as possible for folks. I also really like to make things clear for folks.
With this new tech we can do a host of wonderful things for players in instances. I have been trying to write this out for about ten minutes now and finding that there is no way to make this sound super cool. Thus, I will provide you with examples.
A fellowship of four enters the new Garth Agarwen - Arboretum instance for the first time today. As they enter, they all notice something strange pop into their quest tracker:
Amlug sees:
Optional Objective: Wights (Daily)
Challenge: Grimbark (Daily)
Orion sees:
Optional Objective: Locations (Daily)
Challenge: Grimbark (Daily)
Floon sees:
Optional Objective: Bog-lurkers (Daily)
Challenge: Grimbark (Daily)
Scenario sees:
Optional Objective: Darkwater (Daily)
Challenge: Grimbark (Daily)
As with all quests, there is some level of reward for doing these. For the Garth Agarwen cluster - Eglain faction is the featured reward. Faction will likely be a mainstay moving forward through the remainder of the instances as it makes the most sense. With the challenges we can distribute the barter tokens that will be used to obtain some manner of gear for the efforts put into these.
ChallengesA challenge is something difficult that once completed nets rewards. Those rewards will typically come in the form of some token in addition to whatever the other rewards in the space may be (faction, coin, etc…). They will communicate, clearly, the reasons behind the challenge and the manner in which the challenge is achieved. It is no wonder then that this will replace the clunky and, personally, hated terminology for hard-modes.
Optional ObjectivesThis is where I see the greatest enhancement with this tech. We can put a little incentive into the instances to complete optional objectives and increase the reasons to play them. We can tie new deeds into the game for completing all the objectives and target classes, races, heck even vocations inside of these spaces with a variety of quests!
It may not seem like much, but this is something that I have been looking forward to getting into the game for a very long time. Now, it is here and with it, we hope to continue providing players with an even wider variety of opportunities than they have ever had before!
Happy Friday!
Author
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