What's wrong with this game?

[Engels]

This was yesterday, before the stresstest. The land was all but vacant.

[Furiously]

Well - I got this email today...

Hello Furiously, We at The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ Beta Program Forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

[stray]

Y'know....

I take back everything I said about combat.

City of Heroes, WoW, GW....Whatever.....They all feel as slow and unexciting during the same early levels that I've played this. It's not a problem with Turbine specifically.

So....I apologize.

If I were newcomer to CoH or WoW "today", I'd probably quit within 10 minutes. They don't feel any better than LotRO.

So...Instead of saying LotRO's combat is shit, I'll just say that the combat from all of these games is shit. LotRO included.

For that, I won't apologize. 

[EDIT]

As an aside, games with power increases should still feel nearly identical in the early game as they do in the late game (i.e. GTA:SA, GoW, THPS, most sports games).

[Xanthippe]

I felt downright heroic right off the bat with CoH.  I felt like a superhero at level 1.

When I was talking about combat, I was referring to combat in similar levels.  WoW combat, while weak the first 10 levels, doesn't feel as weak to me as LotRO combat.  I don't know why WoW combat doesn't particularly bother me, yet LotRO combat does.  But it does.

[Venkman]

I think it's because in WoW everything is faster pre-10, from combat to XP to quests to quest bonus XP to regen to content simply being more close together (for everyone but Tauren ;) ). LoTRO is more hit or miss. Some quest XP bonuses are good. Some areas are compact (Humans for example). Some combat is fast.

Totally agree on CoH though. For LoTRO, I'm surprised we're not fighting off wave after wave of Orcs and Wargs right away. That, to me, is a big miss here. Wolves and spiders? Really?

[Riggswolfe]

City of Heroes, WoW, GW....Whatever.....They all feel as slow and unexciting during the same early levels that I've played this. It's not a problem with Turbine specifically.

So....I apologize.

If I were newcomer to CoH or WoW "today", I'd probably quit within 10 minutes. They don't feel any better than LotRO.

I'd have to disagree. WoW combat feels faster, and COH combat is fast and furious compared to both games. I also think COH went the right way by having no auto attack. I'd like to see something similiar in other games. WoW is probably the last game with Autoattack that I will excuse.

[sigil]

I disagree with the  negatives on the pacing of the  introduction. This fits in very well with the lay of Middle Earth before the war of the ring. Bands of marauders plaguing towns, shady operations run by  hidden, sinister groups,  Good folk clearing out the countryside so that the fields can be tended and the sheep may freely graze.,  It's not epic, but Rings didn't start out epic.

The Lord of the rings didn't start off with Aragorn  slicing Twenty Orc Necks with  Legolas dancing on their heads to finish the job. It was a birthday party.

Now, it may stay like this, and that would be a shame, but for the beginning, I don't have a problem with a little spider bashing in addition to beating down some Raiders.


But this three headed beast of a crafting system sucks eggs. Why do I have to be a weaponsmith if I want to be a scholar? I call bullshit on that, and there better an auction house or Vendor consignment or something at release.


yesterdays massive lag indoors nearly did me in for testing. Is it like that a lot?

Some of the stats make little sense, they need to brush up on their tooltips, but that's fixable.

[Cheddar]

<words>

But this three headed beast of a crafting system sucks eggs. Why do I have to be a weaponsmith if I want to be a scholar? I call bullshit on that, and there better an auction house or Vendor consignment or something at release.

yesterdays massive lag indoors nearly did me in for testing. Is it like that a lot?

Some of the stats make little sense, they need to brush up on their tooltips, but that's fixable.

There is a roadmap post somewhere on the official boards; an auction system will be added.  Lag has been wretched since they invited a gazillion people.  On a side note, I felt a tear fall down my cheek as I watched the official boards degrade to utter shit this week.  Poor Cal and Tiggs sure do have to put up with a lot!

[sigil]

I feel sad that I let this sit in my inbox for the better part of a month. Now I'm part of the great unwashed :(

I've just been reading the old threads. I'm afraid to read the new posts for fear of wanting to kill my fellow man.

[Venkman]

I think they have probably three times as many people trying to play the game as Arwen alone can handle. And probably quite on purpose :) Hopefully they shut down the Stress test accounts, to reduce signal/noise ratio on forums until they're ready for that many more people, err, "collaberating" in the test. But I fear they'll instead launch two more servers and let people drift away as they become disenchanted with an unfinished experience, making sure the world knows all about their unhappiness when they don't care about breaking the NDA.

[sigil]

They'll go with the second option, based on AC2 experience.

Damn shame, This game doesn't completely suck.

[CmdrSlack]

It sucks that you need beta tests to market games successfully these days.  I almost think it'd be better without them -- except for the massive bug-hunting stuff.  Most people willing to beta have already played an MMO and are more likely to be ultra jaded....

Or mabye that's just this expanded community's trip, I dunno.

Aside from some of the "so what" moments that some of the combat has, I do think it's a pretty nifty game. 

[Venkman]

I think betas as a marketing tool are way overrated. Keep it small outside of Stress Tests, until the last month or so. Then the game is pretty much what's coming for launch, so let the players bang on it awhile. If you've done it right you shouldn't have fundamental parts still missing. If you did it wrong, well, you're better off just not having a beta :)

[stray]

Didn't one of the "Laws of Online Gaming" address that catering to jaded folks was a good idea? 

It's a stress test!....For game design.


....Or maybe I'm just imagining things.

[Venkman]

Stress test to hit concurrencies, not to have a zillion people restarting spiraling complaint cycles over issues long since identified and queued for correction. I swear these periods are the very essence of the "one step back" period in the two-steps-forward, one-step-back that has become public beta testing.

Didn't one of the "Laws of Online Gaming" address that catering to jaded folks was a good idea?

Heh, not the one's I've subscribed too :) Seriously though, if you can find in his Laws anything that sounds like that, lemme know. The only thing I can think of that's close is the bit that talks about trying to understand the opinions of folks who are leaving. And I think that one was a contribution.

[Phred]

I agree with many of the posts here, and I haven't even double-clicked the icon since a couple of weeks before the wipe.

Combat either needs to be sped up to much, much faster and let me use my abilities more often instead of waiting for cooldowns, or it needs to let me just hit auto-attack and let me type to my friends while we wait for the mob to lose via attrition. This middle ground LOTRO tries to straddle is really quite unfun.

I was thinking about this the other day and I think the big problem, or difference, between LoTR combat and WoW combat is the lack of instant attacks. With the queued system every attack happens on the next hit, and there's no involvement really. You can keep 2 or 3 attacks queued up and you just sit back and watch combat happen basically. With instant attacts especially reaction instants, there's more involvement with the combat. It was the same in early DAoC iirc, I remember being frustrated I couldn't cancel queued moves there.

I don't really know what's up but everywhere outside the dwarf lands the game runs like ass on my computer, a X64 3200 with 2g memory and a 7600gt 256 meg vid card. I can run full 4xaa, 16 aniso and high environment detail in the dwarf newbie land  but if I go anywhere near the shire or bree I get maybe 12fps and below. Updated to he latest nvidia drivers and that didn't help either. I went for a run to Rivendale the other day and the fps just got worse in every zone I went through.

[Phred]

This was yesterday, before the stresstest. The land was all but vacant.

It wasn't late at night was it? I logged in around 4-5 am the other night and it seemed like they were doing database management or something because anything associalted with server responce was in the toilet. I even had the high server lload icon up continuously for about 30 min.

[Sairon]

I played the first couple of levels a few days ago as a dwarf, and as some people already has stated, it's poo. I don't know if the art direction gets better later on, but at least as dwarf everything feels second grade. How the mobs are placed, how the area is designed, models, textures, everything has sort of second grade feeling to it. The use of lighting is almost non existant, the world feels bland as hell. So I start out with all of the cool dwarfs from Bilbo, and right in front me stands gandalf.

I'm not the kind of players who likes to read walls of text, so I head of to the first quest in a cave somewhere. It's the usual kill 3 of those, 4 of those and get me some hides from another bunch of foozels. In the cave there's an event where some NPCs are having troubles with a troll and gandalf comes to the rescue I recall. Anyway, since there's no moody music and no voice acting at all, it simply feels like slaying just another foozle.



I think this game has a fundamental problem, it seems like they want to make me a part of an ongoing story, however they haven't made it feel special in any way and frankly, that sort of stuff fits best for single player. What I think they should've done instead is to try and create atmosphere and mood, but they haven't, at least not as far as I came. AO is a very good example of this and accomplished it nicely. When you get into a town in AO there's small flying cleaner robots flying around making cool sounds. There's NPCs walking the streets having conversations with each other. There's huge speakers throwing funny commercials at you. There's diffrent music depending on where you're at. This game should try to do the same thing, create a feeling that you're in middle earth.

Also, I played a champion, and it didn't feel unique in any sense, it's just another melee DPS dude. Say what you want about AC2, but at least it had unique and cool classes, and this game is supposedly made by the same dev house?

[Engels]

Every game out there has WoW-itis, Sairon. Its all about the NPC with the question mark above his head. The days of yore where the world came first and activities within the world were 'stuff to do' within that world are gone. Gone with AO and SWG. There's a perception that there's no market for a Fantasy Sand Box, and that folks just want to connect the dots in a crazed accumulation of exp via whack-a-foozle quests.

All that considered, I think that LoTR's graphics are pretty good, especially on higher graphical settings. The weather changes, the reflection of the stars on the water, the beautiful rendering of smoke, all seem make the world rather beautiful to me. But if you'r running an older rig, fuggedaboutit. It'll look a palsied sub par game.

However, at least its all playable, unlike another beta game I am quickly burning out on.

[Sairon]

Gave it another whirl today, had the game decide gfx settings for me and it looked pretty good technicaly. The humans starting area is really tons better than dwarfs. It was pretty enjoyable in fact. However, just as Engels going at, it tries to be WoW, and I don't think it will manage to survive because of it.

[Arthur_Parker]

It's going to do very well I think, there's a lot of content compared to something like AC2.  Try to get to stick it out till level 10, go to bree (which is worth seeing anyway) and visit the monster controller near the mud gate on the west side of the town.  The whole Dwarf/Elf starter area might get another polish, it's a fairly new zone, Rivendell and the Shire are worth a visit as well, even if you don't like the gameplay.

[Mr. Right]

Is there any vision?  I can't find a preview where they say what they want to do with this game.  What's the planned end game?  Any good info on the personalised story we are supposed to get?

Some random impressions from a lvl 7 minstrel (I'm trying to be positive since I'm playing for free):

- Deja vu
- Monster play seems interesting (I hope I'll be able to try it)
- Suffer the same identity crisis has other quest driven mmorpg : you talk to a NPC to start a quest while an other players come back to him to end the very same quest.  Been there, done that.  Still doesn't make sense.
- Quest grind
- Having played AC2 for 2 weeks ans DDO for 3 days : same interface & engine.
- Minstrel sounds like a nice class, but why am I killing mobs with my lute?  It's odd when you're fighting at range but it's just sad when you're in melee : my character does a strange atk chain where he plays the lute while swinging his sword (from auto-atk) in between the lute atks.  I guess it would make more sense with a tank in front of me, but solo it's really silly.
- Why does my sword magically floats 2 inches from my waist in 2007?  DAOC had better graphics for equiped weapons ages ago.
- How will the community and economy develop.  The only interaction I can see is crafting and monster play.  Anything else?

[palmer_eldritch]

I'm enjoying it.

- Pretty graphics - nice sky, nice water. I like the atmosphere of the towns
- Regular cinematic/scripted quests, where the NPC leads you into a special dungeon or whatever
- I like the way the characters carry the weapons on their backs. They really look like they are equipped for a journey into dangeropus territories. I think WoW does the same thing but it's less noticeable for some reason.
- Nice music.
- Yes there are quests to kill boars and bears but there seems to be a reasonably high proprtion of interesting quests - go kill the boss, go steal something, go burn something etc. I'm not saying these are groundbreaking but they are more fun than go kill ten of whatever.

Overall it is not groundbreaking but I find it fun. It seems to rip off EQ2 more than WoW, but it's EQ2 done well.

Bad points:

- No housing? Dunno if this is actually in or will ever go in. Having said that, I can do without an instanced room in some inn anyway. Few games seem to do the kind of housing I like, which is UO/SWG style, where you actually place a house.
- Tolkien fanatics telling people off over the broadcast channel for not knowing every detail of the books.
- Storyline quests are cool but of course it makes no sense for you to do something important only for the NPC to tell the next PC that comes along that it needs to be done again. Don't think there is any answer to this in a game based on pre-written quests though.

[Sairon]

Okay, so there's obviously some features here that's not in your average diku MMO, I think it would be wise of trubine to try and give the player a little taste of what makes LotRO the game to play in the really early levels. I hadn't read up on the game before I started to play, which I think is pretty common for the average customer. The first 10 levels hints very little at for example monster play and other intresting concepts. Now I haven't even tried monster play, but by the sound of it, is there any reason for why it can't be present to some little extent in the newbie experience? I have another friend who's in the beta outside of f13, and he didn't get all that excited by what he saw. Yes it's only a beta so you can't really draw any real conclusions, but I think it's cruical for any MMO to really impress in the first logon a player makes, that is the very first few hours.

[Murgos]

I logged back in again over the weekend and started a new character on the new server.

The only thing I have to report at the moment is that it plays pretty smoothly with settings on high on 1920x1080 on an AGP Radeon x1600 and 3ghz athlon 64 with 2mb RAM.  Which honestly is pretty impressive to me.  Much better than it was a few months ago.

Even on a 61" screen though the graphics seem to be missing something though.

I stopped playing last night when I zoned into an instance of the Inn in Archet and got stuck because apparently it was the wrong instance to be in.  The door out was barricaded but I was not on that quest yet and there was some other random guy stuck in there with me.

[CmdrSlack]

I stopped playing last night when I zoned into an instance of the Inn in Archet and got stuck because apparently it was the wrong instance to be in.  The door out was barricaded but I was not on that quest yet and there was some other random guy stuck in there with me.

Before or after the town burns down?  I know there was some bug with people getting stuck in teh wrong version of Archet a month or so ago.

[Murgos]

Well before it burns down.  I just did like the third quest where you go kill a spy and come back and tell the commander dude about it.  As I recall the quest where the thing burns down is much later.

I assume that if I log in later it will sort itself out.

[CmdrSlack]

Yeah, I think the bug I was thinking about took people from post burn to pre burn Archet.  It'd be interesting to see if that was related somehow, though.  I don't think you can access the inn in post-burn -- I guess your inoperable door comment made me think of it.

[palmer_eldritch]

Actually, I think this is a fairly common bug. I have had this a few times - you enter a place and certain parts (usually doors, sometimes NPCs or useable bits of furniture) do not load. Re-logging fixes it.

[Arthur_Parker]

There really does seem to be a problem with the early game in LOTRO, it's nice and all but doesn't grab you as much as it should.  I think it's a lot to do with combat not being as interesting and items being fairly bland.  It improves post 20 but having just hit 43 again last night, it really improves again after 42 or so.  I can now take on 4-5 mobs of about my level at once, it really adds to the danger/fun as, thanks to slaying weapons and greater damage mitigation, my AOE skills are now approaching useful.  I had to grind for a while as there's a lack of quests in the mid 30's but grinding mobs is now actually fun, I'm grouping and helping lower level players out with quests and still making good exp with the new rest bonus.  I left bat country and joined a fairly active guild as well.

I think the whole combat system is going to give them long term problems, take my Guardian as an example. For a Guardian the stats I value most on items are in the following order, Block > Parry > Evade.  If an item has one of those stats I will choose it over virtually anything else, might is nice but an extra 1% miss makes a big difference if my understanding of the system is correct, the only exception being weapons, as always dps > all.

Currently equipped
Two bracer's that give 1% Block each (Both quest rewards)
Necklace that gives 2% evade (quest reward)
Pocket item that gives 1% block & 1% Parry (quest reward)
Light shield that gives 2% Block (quest reward) (I actually dropped about 300AC just to get the 2% Block instead of using a heavy shield)

So that leaves my two ring slots to fill and your standard armour slots that you get upgrades to via quests/drops.  I already have my eye on a quest reward ring that gives 1% parry, so after that I doubt I'm going to be able to improve my non armour slots much.  This means crafting, loot drops and even quest rewards now have little interest to me, there seems to be very little chance of anything dropping that's going to be an improvement.

The solo exception is weapons, but again thanks to having a nice cash pile I have been able to stock up from the AH in addition to the generous quest rewards.
My standard highest dps weapon, a purple sword that also has 1% parry (AH purchase) I use this for any mob type I don't have a slaying weapon for, at the minute that's just beasts & dragonkind
Axe of human slaying (/ooc purchase)
Dagger of insect/spider slaying (quest reward, I obtained this at level 36 from a level 43 quest, used it as my main weapon for 5 levels as the standard dps were far better than anything else)
Hammer of Ancient evil slaying (a drop)
Club of Orc slaying (Quest reward)

So I'm not sure how they can make items much better at level 50 for a Guardian, I have seen plenty of level 50 crafting items necklaces but nothing compares to 2% evade as they don't have block, parry or evade.  The same goes for bracer's, the only thing better than 1% block is 2% block, parry or evade.  +10 might, +20 vitality, I just don't care.  This 100% system combined with class traits that can reduce damage mitigation just means any Guardian with any sense is going to pick the same equipment and very similar traits. 

I'm not sure how they can fix it, I'd far rather have had a bell curve system like AC with character templates, at the minute I suspect  any similar level Guardian to have 90% of the same equipment and traits equipped as I do.

[Yegolev]

There really does seem to be a problem with the early game in LOTRO,

I have only just now come to the definite conclusion that this game needs voiceover.  The intro sections that I have seen are impressive visually and lorewise, but I can't watch Elrond or a ringwraith while simultaneously reading text.  It's great that they made it more readable and added floating text, but while I'm reading text I am missing the Dread effect, or worse, some other piece of text that's important.  The only solution I have been able to come up with is VO, at least for the hectic intro areas (elf starter battle or burning Archet come to mind).  I don't think it's necessary for most other things, like "go get me some boar meat".

[Nebu]

I keep going back to this game wanting to really like it.  Instead all I get is that it is just another PvE mmog.  Nothing draws me in.  Nothing compels me to play it compulsively like I have other MMOGs.  I keep logging on trying to put my finger on exactly what it is that the game is missing... but I'm just not finding it.  It's so... generic in a gameplay sense despite how good it looks. 

[Murgos]

Well, I logged in again last night and fortunately the door to the inn reappeared so I could get out.  The quest I was on said I needed to run to the hunting lodge and talk to the guard dude's son.  So I get over there and I see on map thingie that there is a quest inside the building.  Guess what was missing?

Having doors stay where you put them is pretty important I think.

So, more disappearing doors.  Also, whatever idiot decided that noobs should be subjected to 10 minutes of shaky screen and blurred vision for dying should be taken out and executed.  If I had payed for this game 10 minutes of that would have me bagging it to return to the store.  I am serious about this.

[Xilren's Twin]

I keep going back to this game wanting to really like it.  Instead all I get is that it is just another PvE mmog.  Nothing draws me in.  Nothing compels me to play it compulsively like I have other MMOGs.  I keep logging on trying to put my finger on exactly what it is that the game is missing... but I'm just not finding it.  It's so... generic in a gameplay sense despite how good it looks. 

Yeah, that's my take on the player early player experience too (have only made the mid twenties thus far).  The classes, mobs, quests, loot, crafting of the early game are just not that exciting for people who have played these style games before.  The best part of the early game is all the traits and titles you can earn, and the instance chapter quests; that part I like (and seems directly inspired by CoH badges taken further).  It's not BAD, it's just hard to see how this game will be able to draw people away from existing games with that early play experience.

Monster play is pretty good since it's a short jump to end game pvp (getting to level 10 with a pc can be done in about 3-4 hours for an experienced mmorpg player), but the new abilities and choices come with their own rank 0 to rank 5 grind too.  The guys playing monsters this morning said the pc's won last night purely due to having more rank 4 and 5 guys then the monsters, not a disparity of numbers of players.  And the non pvp parts as monster have their share of typical diku grinding.  example, we took back the lumber camp yesterday at lunch to switch it to monster control.  Had ~22 people raid it and took it in about 30 mins (mainly waiting to coordinate of course), but the final boss battle against the captian general who controlled the camp for the good team reminded me why some of this design drives me nuts.  As a level 50 spider with just a few purchased enhancements, i have about 3600 HP (morale, i know) and my standard biting attack can do ~110 damage plus 30-40 dot damage so call it 150.  The captain general we had to take down to switch the flag had 134,000+ HP and was hitting some players for 2000 a shot; god knows what the armor and defense ratings she had.  That's close to 40 times the health of a player, and 15 times the damage per hit.  It's just a stupid escalation of numbers.  So of course, we use standard npc strategies to separate out the mobs 1 by 1 (including the "1 person shoot the boss then run her around while we kill the lieutenants bit") and just dogpiled on her to wear her down and out.  20+ plus people all standing on top each other swinging at this 1 npc; you couldn't even see her in the crowd, and just had to watch your health bar to figure out if you drew aggro.  It's just stupid.

I know that's not unique to LotRO by any stretch but the whole elite mob escalation thing just drives me nuts in these games.  We have normal mobs, signature mobs, elite mobs, elite elites, elite elite elites, arch nemesis mobs, etc etc and the only difference is an exponential increase in health and power, not strategy or tactics.  (On the other end, I also hate raid concepts where you have to follow this contrived series of steps perfectly to even make the boss fights winnable, i.e. "destroy these 4 columns/generators/magic obelisks all within 30 seconds of one another to then kill these lieutenant mobs in a certain order, to trigger a portal that only left handed females should go through, etc etc.  Both of those options suck from a design standpoint.)

I think the game overall will work fine (compared to say VSOH), i just don;'t know how many people will switch to it.

[Sairon]

I agree with Xilren & Nebu, this game could from a game design pov been great a couple of iterations ago, however just doing a diku and slapping on a couple of extra selling points isn't cutting it no more. The coming generation which LotRO is competing against is much more intresting and ground breaking. Of course those could flop, but LotRO isn't necessarily better than WoW and directly tries to compete with it. It might do OK though, since the majority of the market isn't as burned out of these type of games as the majority of us are.