What's wrong with this game?

[Signe]

I keep thinking, as I  and some others have said before, that I should be having more fun.  There are nice graphics, lots of quests and some are even clever, there's a story of sorts, crafting, (which will hopefully prove interesting as it gets more cooked) combat isn't great but it's not awful either, (with very few exceptions that's about as good as it gets with combat without mentioning CoH/V)....

Why am I not having as much fun as I think I should? 

I do understand it's beta... and just out of alpha, even.  Still, I've had great fun in some beta tests.  Shadowbane, WoW, SWG, CoH, to mention a few.  I haven't always stuck with the released game long due to all sorts of things... but I had good fun in beta and out.  LOTRO, however, has given me very little joy from almost the start.  I'm not saying it isn't entertaining at time.  I've had a little fun here and there.  But overall, I've found it rather "meh", even though it is well crafted and has all the ingredients for a decent game.   I was chatting to Xanthippe a couple of days ago and she said, basically, she feels like playing, logs in and then loses interest soon after.  I have the exact same experience... and it's not because I'm not trying.  I do TRY to have more fun.  Some games, not so many these days though, I don't have to try at all...  the fun just comes.

Anyway... I think I know one of the reasons WoW seems more fun than LOTRO.  LOTRO hardly has any dumbasses.  In WoW, wherever you go, people APPEAR to be having fun.  Dancing naked, hopping around, challenging each other to duels, spitting on defeated enemies, just plain annoying you for no reason....   There is hustle and bustle.  It's like the difference between New York City and Akron, Ohio.  There is so much colour and movement.  Even in beta,  things were always happening.  A lot of them annoyed me, but it was something.  In WoW I can stand at the auction house and lose myself in it for ages and then walk outside and people are in my face, almost any time of day.  More than two years later, there are still people dancing naked in the streets and attracting onlookers.  People are having nasty and mostly stupid arguments on the chat channels.  The characters and armour are weird and garish looking.  There is always something to look at.

Anyway, my solution to insuring a healthy game is more colour, (hot pink, lime green, candy apple red)  more emotes, (lots of dancing, nasty spitting and gestures, etc)  the ability to get as naked as your rating allows,  and gear the advertising towards dumbasses.

[WayAbvPar]

Other than the setting, there is really not much to differentiate it from any other similar game in the genre. There are definitely some cool little touches (I really like the achievements book), but the core gameplay is just way too derivative. No PvP really lowers the ceiling on how fun it can be as well.

[Cadaverine]

I think my interest began to wane after about 3 days of LotRO.  I thought maybe it was that it reminded me too much of DDO, but then I started playing a different game currently being tested, it kinda died on me after 3 days too.  I chalked it up to me being done to death with the same ol', same ol', but then I popped back into WoW last night, and enjoyed myself.  Though, in about 3 days, I'll probably be bored of that too.

[Yegolev]

I hate to say it, but it's rather vanilla.  The setting is the reason, but it manages to not be epic enough to grab me, which is what the LOTR setting should do.  It should be big and dangerous.  It doesn't really feel dangerous most of the time.  If the nazgul, like, got right in your fucking face right there at the beginning, I think it would add to the pulse-pounding that you should be feeling in that sort of situation.  Then, of course, you'd have the inevitable letdown as you are assigned to go kill ten boars in a flowery field.

[WayAbvPar]

But it is a damned pretty flowery field.

[Xilren's Twin]

Forgive me for asking if this is already a known thing but I've been wondering all along...

What exactly are this game's selling points/differentiation markers between it and it's competition in the market.  In other words, once you get beyond the setting in middle earth, what the intended hooks/cool stuff?

Xilren
(btw, if you'd rather i didn't post/read this forum until i actually get in the beta, let me know)

[Nija]

You just reach a point with these type of games where you really have seen it all. I think you're just now realizing that you're there.

Like with FPS games, I played the hell out of wolf3d and doom and those games, up until the quake 3 release. The last fps game that I really dove into was Quake2, and since then I've tried many - if not all of them - in demo or beta or some form, but I've just not been hooked. Especially Quake4, it was just laughable to me.

Dungeons and Dragons Online and LOTRO were laughable to me in the exact same way. Same with Vanguard, and even WoW.

Welcome to bitterness. Good luck with talking yourself into hitting the post button instead of deleting everything you have typed while saying, "nobody cares" out loud.

(I've hit the back button 3 times so far in typing out this post)

edit:

I'll go a little further with this since this is a private forum and all. Here is what I remember from LOTRO beta.

Downloaded the game, installed but I wasn't allowed to play for a few days. That made me irritated, and I didn't mark the date that I could play on the calendar or anything - I just remembered that I had it about 5 days after I could actually begin playing.

So I fired it up again, patched a bit of data (quickly, no complaints about patching and the front end. it seems really solid, especially for a beta) and fired up the game.

I forget what character I tried to make at first, but it wasn't allowed / wasn't in the game. That kind of made me irriated so I made a female (something, hobbit I think) bard. I don't even think the actual class is called bard, and it's only been 2 weeks or so and I've already forgot that.

So finally I'm in the game and it's this pretty interesting newbie experience / handheld quest on rails thing. It's presented well enough that it doesn't piss me off. I go along in this for about 15 minutes and then I get to a part where I have to clear out some spiders and advance with my NPC buddy, but the spiders never spawn and my buddy is sitting there, frozen, shaking in fear from all these spiders that never spawned. I log out in disgust, not seeing any way to exit the tutorial and get on with it.

Forget about the game for another week.

I log back in and fire up my female bard and she's sitting in the area surrounded by spiders, and my NPC buddy is still hanging out, shaking in his boots. Cool, I whack the spiders and we go onward. The quest actually 'fixed itself' once the crap spawned. That's good enough I guess. I finally complete the tutorial (took me like 8 days to actually do this 20 minutes of gameplay) and i'm out in the real world in some city.

It runs like crap, I'm loading and loading and then a few dozen player characters that all look exactly alike swarm my screen. Fuck I hate newbie cities. So I lag around the main city trying to run to a different area, I get outside the main gates and it's nothing but fucking wolves as far as the eye can see.

Now, I don't know about you guys but I actually had a wolf-dog hybrid for a pet. If a stranger came to my house and stepped out of his car, there is ONE THING that he wouldn't see - and that would be Panamon, the wolfdog. So I see all these people boringly autoattacking wolves, and I mean like 20 people within about an acre if I were to judge it. "Great" I think - the very first REAL quest in this game and I guarantee it's a KILL 20 WOLVES quest, just like Lineage2 or something awful.

So I head to the right, kinda following the road to see what other zones I can get to that don't have people LOLZ'ing in shout and 2 PCs for every pixelated wolf that is standing in plain site in the middle of the plains while there are trees all over the place, and I get to what looks like a zone boundary/ change in scenery. Oh, I can't go that way. It was blocked for some reason that I don't recall. Either it was down for maint. or it was because I was too low level, or I didn't meet some requirements. Fuck.

I turn around and keep the road within sight and follow from the OTHER side, running by some cool looking ruins and I run by - get this - more fucking wolves and some SPIDERS. Yes, spiders and wolves. I bet there are beetles somewhere that I'm missing, because every awful fucking newbie zone needs BEETLES.

So I evade these big spiders by running STRAIGHT THROUGH their big webs. At least most of them aren't physical boundaries, but some of them are. It would be great if they trapped you or slowed down your character by a bit, and the more you moved the more you slwoed down and the more you ALERTED THE SPIDER WHO SET THE WEB HINT GAME DESIGNERS ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING SPECIAL IT'S ALMOST 2007.

Anyways, I get past all these spiders and I see this wall, and it looks like I might have went in a candy-cane like path, where I looped around at the end and this is the back-entrance/exit to the town that I started in, and there's this little crack in the wall, about yay high, perfect for a fucking hobbit bard. Can I go through it? No chance. It looks perfect, but of course it wasn't meant to be.

So I turn back around and look at all the spiders and shit that I have to run through to find another zone exit and I just don't feel like doing it at this point. I log out.

A few days later I log back in, still staring at the spiders and webs and shit. I log back out after a few seconds and uninstall the game.

THE END

[Yegolev]

I back out of posts all the time, never posting lots of things.  Anyway...

I guess I need to get back in there and play a bit more before I comment further.  Credence and whatnot.

[Signe]

It is pretty, I agree.  I don't dislike the game at all.  It's just that nothing jumps out at me that makes it all that special.  But, who knows what's to come?  In most games, I don't see a huge amount of difference from beta to release.  Polish and finishing bits and bobs but there could be several huge patches that might inspire me.  I'll definitely stick around to find out.  I just wanted to pass along my hot pink/more asshats idea.  It seems to work for WoW.  I'm even antici.....................pating the Burning Lesions expansion!  I wonder what sort of dance the Horde Elves will do?

[Yegolev]

I don't dislike the game at all.  It's just that nothing jumps out at me that makes it all that special.

You can tatoo that on my ass and call me Shirley.  I agree with the rest of what Feet said as well, up to and not including the hot-pink part.

Please don't add wacky colors or huge boobs.

[Signe]

How do you figure hot pink and huge boobs are wacky?  OH!!!  You mean "whacky!"  (NNWWSNM)

[Yegolev]

Hot pink is wacky.  Huge boobs are usually not wacky.  If I had mentioned the boobs first, would you have asked me why I thought hot pink was huge?

[Signe]

For you!!!  For no reason at all!!!




At least it's better than my usual hobbit pr0n.

[Yoru]

See, I like boobs and all, but whenever I see game models with disproportionate whoppers, it doesn't serve to spark my interest or even elicit a guffaw. No, it reminds me that the game developers are twelve years old and just found daddy's Playboys.

As for the game itself, I've mostly said my peace in other threads. There's nothing that's jumping out, grabbing me, and yelling "OMFG PLAY THIS GAME THIS FEATURE R4WKS" in my face. It's not quite accessible enough for the true MMO newbie, I think, and I don't know how well an 2nd-MMO ex-WoW addict will like it. I think the audience here is representative of the burned-out veteran demographic, so...

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm enjoying LOTRO, it needs a lot of work but the foundations for a very successful game are there.

[vex]

It seems like no one is there.  There are these really nice towns and I'm the only one in them so it's a lot of soloing.  I'm sure that will change in time though.

Overall I really am enjoying it.  I am a bit perturbed at the fact that I can't do the main quest line though.  I ran into a bugged quest really early on and can't get past it that point.  Some of the quests are pretty good but without the main story line and no other people I feel like I'm wandering aimlessly.

vex

[Xanthippe]

Maybe you should try roleplaying in general chat. 

[Signe]

We could roleplay Night Elves wearing hot pink thongs.  Less Killing, More Dancing!

I am not above being one of the dumbasses I talked about, you know.

[Strazos]

Forgive me for asking if this is already a known thing but I've been wondering all along...

What exactly are this game's selling points/differentiation markers between it and it's competition in the market.  In other words, once you get beyond the setting in middle earth, what the intended hooks/cool stuff?

I asked this a few weeks ago, and never got an answer.

Anyway, just like a few others here, I cannot say the game is bad, but nothing really hooks me into playing. There are plenty of things that I believe are well-done at this point...but nothing that urges me to play.

Also, we need some PvP to play with. At least as a Captain, I can see a lot of oppurtunities for group synergy, and it would be more fun in PvP to try these things out.

[Azazel]

Just some minor observances:

Why is there no seamless way to rotate the camera around your character to see what they look like from the front?
Click-to-move as an option also feels like it should be there, but isn't.

To be rather blunt, a lot of theinterface feels lifted straight from WoW, so you might as well get the little things like that as well


The female hobbit /dance emotion is pretty pathetic. If you called that animation /clap it would be ok.

[Xanthippe]

Just some minor observances:

Why is there no seamless way to rotate the camera around your character to see what they look like from the front?
Click-to-move as an option also feels like it should be there, but isn't.

To be rather blunt, a lot of theinterface feels lifted straight from WoW, so you might as well get the little things like that as well


The female hobbit /dance emotion is pretty pathetic. If you called that animation /clap it would be ok.

Pretty sure that if you use the arrow keys on your computer, it rotates the camera around.  Can't recall at the moment if it's the keypad arrows or the arrows but one of those does it.


[Edit: moved the end quote thingie so my response doesn't appear in the quoted part]

[Arthur_Parker]

It's keypad arrows, but when have positioned the camera to the front and you right click to change an item of clothing, the right click action resets the camera angle, that's annoying.

[Azazel]

Thanks for the heads-up, but mmm.. un-needed awkwardness in the controls.

The crap /dance is the same for Dwarfs as well.




I was thinking about what Signe wrote up top... the lack of dumbasses has got to be pretty heavily related to the fact that we're in early Beta, and that it appears that a lot of the Beta invites have been given to large guilds and the like rather than randoms. I mean, I got into the wow stress test beta, but there were about half a million of us by that stage.

Another factor might be the types of fans that each of the two IPs attract. WoW has what my brother used to call "battle.net kiddies" which Schild calls "Blizzard fans". LOTR on the other hand, and this is just from my limited experience on their boards pre-beta, seems to have a lot of people in it who seem like LARPers. There was one long thread complaining that the female leather armour wasn't covering enough, and a long discussion as to whether a patch of brownish-tan pixels in a screenshot were leather or in fact bare skin!. These are the people who go to roleplaying stores wearing their elf-cloaks. They are utterly humourless when discussing the way they feel things should be in "their" middle-earth. They act a lot like the VG fanbois, actually, only their reverence is for their own internal depiction of ME instead of Brad's underpants.

[Yegolev]

For you!!!  For no reason at all!!!




At least it's better than my usual hobbit pr0n.

Hehe, you know what Daddy likes.

I don't want that in LotRO, though.  I'm not a LARPer like what Azazel talks about, but I'd like to think that LOTR is more serious than WOW.  Kind of what I thought DAoC might be until I zoned into Tir na nOg.  Anyway, armor that actually covers the body makes sense and helps immersion.  Everyone being disproportionate in some way, especially in some way that is a cheap attempt to give me a chubby, does not help immersion.

[Azazel]

fuck shit board ate my post.

quick version.

it turned out that the texture was leather, not skin but some humourless cunts thought it was and started a multipage whinefest because they thought she had some armpit skin showing between her small covered-up boobs and armoured arms.

Signe's OP example might be extreme, but there's a space between the massive stupidity of WoW's playerbase and people who are so deathly serious about their chosen make-believe world that anything that doesn't match their personal (or PJ's) vision of it is heresy.

[Arthur_Parker]

Played quite a bit over the weekend and my Guardian Hurn is now level 31.

Negative Points:
Crafting system seems to need a lot of work so I'm keeping my drops on an alt for now.
Combat against Elites takes too long and if only a single elite it can be boring.
A few quests are bugged, a horse route from Bree to North Downs doesn't seem to exist (Beta so no problem)
Although there's plenty of other quests, I really don't like the fact that a few quests still exist for crap mobs above level 20 (boars mostly, but there's also a single sickle-fly quest in north downs as well).
Directional sound can be a bit iffy, sometimes I'm fighting one mob and the sounds indicate I have an add to my left when there isn't.
Loot is fairly uninspired and it seems like not much of it has been created.  (I'm using a purple shield and have an uncompleted quest that gives this same shield as the reward).
Vendors can be confusing, from a quick glance double handed and single handed weapon vendors look the same. 
Vendor Items should sort on level requirements not type.
It's easy to get level requirements and armour value mixed up when comparing items (to what you have equipped) at a vendor as both values are close together.  I'd change the armour value figure or level requirement to coloured text.
Right clicking resets the camera, makes it annoying and difficult to visually compare items of equipment.
One achievement is the title "Bog-Hunter" that may sound fine in the USA, in the UK it has a dual meaning of "Toilet-Hunter".
I took my first class trait at level 30, I get more energy on a success block, not sure this is working, it might be but if there's a visual clue when I get the power boost I constantly miss it.

Positive Points:
Music, very spooky in certain zones and it really adds to the atmosphere.
Zones, 
Lone lands is ok, probably my least favourite zone and I'm not sure why.  Weathertop is excellent, not had any quests for top myself, probably due to the current bugged epic quest in the marsh.
Bree lands are fine, not great, it's a welcome surprise that Bree town is so large, though I'd expect more quests to start or finish there.
Shire - excellent, only went once but it seems to capture the feel of the place really well.
Old Forest, I expected to dislike this zone as I hate getting lost.  Got lost and spent a few hours wandering round in circles, loved the zone, honestly not sure if paths actually changed or not.
Barrow Downs, again excellent, very spooky and well done, it's a real surprise to discover South Barrow Downs.  Looking forward to exploring the Great Barrow instance, not tried past the entrance as yet.
North Downs, my favourite zone, I have completed about 50 quests and have maybe another 50 to go.
Some quests are really well done and have been a lot of fun to solo.
Combat against multiple mobs works well as a Guardian, some real touch and go moments when fighting 6-10 lower level mobs at once.
Traits seem like they might work well, providing they actually make a difference to combat, run speed etc.
The whole book idea for achievements, exploring, number of quests, titles etc is excellent.

The success of the game is going to depend on what happens during the rest of Beta and I doubt I'll level up this high again if they do a character wipe.  It's unclear if they will nerf the main Guardian skill as it seems pretty good compared to the others and I really don't think Guardians are currently overpowered.  Some 30+ quests are unfinished, some 30+ mobs don't have combat animations (Earth-Kin).  Lots of items need unique icons, in fact there's a massive amount of artistic work still needed.  The numbers of elites concern me and I fear that the end game will be largely based on raiding for loot.  The game badly needs a decent crafting system and more item loot, no idea what pvp (monster play) will be like, big question marks on what the level 35-50 content will be, as I seem to have seen most types of monsters from the books already.

[Yegolev]

Last night I rolled up a hobbit guardian (Tarragon) and made it to level six, trying to do those pre-searing quests again.  The game is coming along nicely.  The thing I really noticed, gameplaywise, is that playing a Guardian is fun.  By that, I mean quite unlike a Loremaster.  It's probably a combination of being tougher and having more to do in combat.  Maybe a loremaster is a "different" kind of fun... if that's the case, my loremaster should be able to do library/research quests rather than combat.

I had three special skills right off, and while I had about that many when I was being a loremaster in Alpha, I'm actually enocouraged to use all of these for two reasons: first, they are effective and the timers are set such that when I have fired off #3, #1 is ready again; second, I like the new odometers A LOT.  I love me some odometers.  Hit creatures 2500 times to get a mini-ding?  Kill 30 brigands to get a title?  Sold.  One of the things I liked about EQ2 were the collections, and I'm glad to see Turbine pursuing this route with such zeal.

The hobbit introduction is nice.  Definitely had a creepy feeling as I walked alone down the road.  Still had the nazgul-behind-the-fence problem, however I did actually get a twinge of danger right there at the end.  I just think nazgul should be really scary.

Now for the funny part.  My wife "caught" me playing at 0230 last night, apparently I had the sound volume too high.  I forced myself to bed at 0330.  This morning she asks me what I was playing, so I tell her.  "But you're not supposed to know that," I said.
"I saw the bill last month, I know you are playing it."
"No no, that was something else..." and I proceeded to tell her about being in the beta (like she has anyone to tell even if she would) and how I was in the alpha.  Apparently (!) she is really impressed with this and the conversation ended with her telling me that I should go upstairs and play tonight.  She never tells me to do that.  Hoooray for Bat Country!

Another weird thing: we were watching the WoW episode of South Park and she says, "Does the real game look like that?  That looks awesome."  It begins!

[stray]

First Impressions (I'll just post 'em here):

The client is nice. Better than SOE. Though I said this about DDO as well.

The graphics haven't totally turned me off. Looks like they're going for a slightly stylized look....Which is probably for the best. I also welcome the fact that I can roam and see the world (unlike ddo).

The music is cool, but this game needs more environmental and combat noises. Needs voicework too (is that planned?).

I like the quests so far. Things are scripted, as opposed to completely static pez dispensing. Thought it was cool that a survey pop ups after completion too. Every beta should have that.

The interface, while understandable, feels very cluttered. Buttons and icons are too small as well.

Combat is another ho hum, hotkey affair, but I can tolerate it for the time being... Everything else about this game seems better than DDO (or AC2 for that matter).

[Furiously]

I got in last night along with another buddy of mine so we made two humans and after we ran a couple quests we stopped for a smoke break.

I think we were both unsatisfied with the introduction. I'm supposed to rescue someone from a series of fences and kill 5 people? I'm going to light the whole place on fire!!!! Muhahaha! Oh wait, there is a black rider.. intro done....

So we decided to make a few other characters. I rolled an elf. And wow - talk about a much better intro. I felt like I was in the world for a few seconds, holy heck - That's Agent Smith! Err Elrond.

If there isn't a 40 man raid zone with a 1000 orc siege force you have to destroy the game has no hope.

Speaking of which, redo the human intro so you are captured by orcs, have Merry and Pippen save you. I mean you have all this IP to work with, SHOW IT! BTW is there a war on? What am I doing here? Oh I'm killing pigs in a field. I forget the part in the books and the movies where the characters did that?

[stray]

Yeah, I started out Elf, kind of liked it....Went human...Kind of meh. Might just stick with the elf character after all.

Plus, the human males look like a cross between Fabio and George W Bush. I really hope that isn't the model they're settling on.

[Furiously]

the models in DDO look better - why the step back?

[Cheddar]

My human has a ZZ Top sorta beard going on.  I think its a nice touch!

[stray]

That's about the only way to cover the Fabio jaw. But I'm playing a Champion. I don't want to look like a hobo.

The eyes are all GW though. I hate them.

[Signe]

Everything seems to be a bit slower and staggier... why?  WHY?

[Furiously]

I keep making the observation that gravity in Middle Earth must be like the moon, or my character should be a pro NBA player as their hangtime in the air is just awesome.