Lotro

tl;dr: The Joxer won't like this :)

Great news.

pibbuR who observes that while it's great news for him, others would think it belongs in the "things you don't need to know" thread, or antoher trashcan.

PS: Yes, I like some MMO's. And LOTRO is on the top of my list, and the only one I'm playing regularly. When I'm playing. Which for some reason (I blame differential equations and C++ programming) I don't do much ATM. DS.
 
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I totally get it - for nostalgia, but it is harder and harder for me to play the game seriously. This post on general LOTRO forums sums it up and also makes me feel sorry for those players - there are the usual haters who are always in every MMO, going against community, but sadly they are those who are on the roll now:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showth...-just-endgame-but-instances-low-level-events&
I wish players outside would be able to support those who somehow suffer from such oppressive behaviour of management rather than keep telling everyone the version of PR department :(.
But I know that players in MMOs complain so much, it is hard to tell when it is important.
How far they will go until you say enough? It is different for everyone.
 
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I won't play LOTRO, because I prefer to have my - as I call it - "head cinema" (German "Kopfkino") from the books.

Quoted from your linked thread :

ultra focus on endgame

destruction of any rewards from old instances (if you think this is ok, see "ultra focus on endgame")


It imho basically boils down to this : https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanderingToTheBase


This is what I don't like of DDO as well, but I think it's there rather because of the forums being dominated rather by end game folks.

I have noticed something like that happening many years ago, and I call it (perhaps i took that from another site ages ago ?) "content rot".
This term means, that meanwhile end game is usually pushed into being better and better content, old content gets neglected for ages, or, as in DDO, "epicified", meaning : overhauled for end content.

In DDO, this had led to some instances of "epicified" level 3 quests ("Catacombs" chain) which has lost a lot if not all of its former charm by totally reworking the quest line. Everything is far more obvious now, and "the thrill is gone", imho. In all fairness I must admit, though, that they added a few interesting new points into the story.

The jump in terms of quility is imho quite noticeable towards higher level quests, but equally I must say that the situation has become a bit better through SSG releasing quests for BOTH end game AND low level folks. These aredifferent instances, with the stats of enemies and of obstacles just being different

I understand, however, that I might be a niche within a niche - playing mostly for story, not for socializing, so to say.

Even in SWTOR; a few bits of lowest level content has been made prettier a bit.
They destroyed LOTS of that when they had made KOTFE, and for it, wanted EVERYONE to be forcefully pushed towards then endgame (KOTFE was end game then) as fast as possible.
 
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If someone is happy with LOTRO now - don't read further - this is my complaining, I don't want to upset anyone.

Yes, it will be one of those gaming good advices :( sadly 90% times the usefulness of those advices is questionable. The worse version of those advices is that it is adviced by managers from other studio of an MMO you don't play because of their great ideas, then they come and give their advices free of charge.

I have nothing against good changes - SSG made a lot of those actually, but those are ordinary devs, doing great job. But then comes those "professional" advices which can kill any game.
How making players angry will push them toward endgame?
isn't better to find out why players don't play endgame and have content around that? Or change what is hindering them? But when you tell them why as a player - you are called "entitled", but when some managers give them advices who have no knowledge about the game - they are the professionals?
it seems like the only and "professional" advice from gaming industry available is to cut the content, give it for free to players who don't like it even.
So first SSG was pulling out one expansion after another, then after good advice they gave it for free - I don't see the logic. And I'm not there anyway.

the same with festivals - LOTRO used to have the best and funniest festivals, so as a popular feature, SSG decided to enlarge it, but then those certain players came and demanded endgame content because they don't like funny events as serious players, so they added boss fight into an existing event, then the next time they added new rewards for them, the next time they removed one existing festival - as "too many of them" - where is logic in that?
Or maybe someone told them that is it "professoinal" to have an event with boss fight?

I'm sorry to complain - but that is out of desperation. That is the problem of MMOs - they can change to worse for you and then you can complain anywhere else but on their official forums and reddits.

I'm sorry if someone here is one of those endgame players - but I just wish all groups could have fun in MMOs if it is possible, so if there are funny events and they are popular - why change it to an event of a group who don't care about events?

Another one - they added daily/3 days/weekly/3weeks to festivals, in order to have dailies with enough of rewards they made it grindy, so I wouldn't play festivals anyway, maybe they spoiled for me anyway. I think that was another reason why they removed 1 festival - less players played festivals for some reason.

Someone should write list of the most horrible MMO management decisions. But maybe MMO groups would start argue over it.
 
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but then those certain players came and demanded endgame content

"Content Locusts".

It's exactly the same in every MMO, and that "end game crowd" is called at TV Tropes a "vocal minority". They are 99% of all active persons in any game's forum, meanwhile they are only 10 % or even less of ALL the established player base.

So, it's like that 1 % shaped the whole game via that too great influence on developers via the forums - it's exactly descroibed in that linked article called "pandering to the base" - and it's ALWAYS THE SAME in ANY MMO.

Which is why you shouldn't put your hear too much into any given MMO - because sooner or later this "vocal minority" will destroy it - if they get too much influnce, that is.

And if developers remain resilient to their outcries, then you can be sure that badmouthing through reviews will happen - or even worse things, Mass Effect showed me the worst side of self-proclaimed "gamers", who were too ready to bully people out of the dev team.
 
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I still don't understand where they come from - I knew some players from raiding community a bit, who could say about themselves that they are hardcore, but I didn't hear them demanding anything except new content - they were usually very nice, helping others. But I didn't know anyone from WoW community, which was bigger.

You have to take what I say with grain of salt, because my assumptions can be so wrong ofcourse, but when I was still watching their streams, it seems to me that they first attacked the community manager - he is a bit clueless, but nice, and he did the mistake of saying that he is casual player and disagreeing with them. It caused wave of hate toward him and the next time they were praising the producer, who was suddenly changing course and catering them. Also when they sold the game to their publisher, they don't have to care anymore I guess, they just follow orders. Maybe it is more safe to have a publisher even if it does mean less of control over your game. I wonder how much control do you have anyway, maybe really devs are tired of all those MMO groups fighting with each other, demanding something all the time?

I believe a lot of youtubers are honest and nice, but the problem is when they have inner circle where they share their opinions first, then they have one and only opinion in public, it is worse in areas which aren't their expertise. They just repeat what they have heard from "trusted" sources.
It worked well in fight against lootboxes, but does work badly in subjective things and with youtubers who does have strong agency=demanding group behind them.

What did happen with Mass Effect?
 
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I actually never played Mass Effect, but there were one or two writers bullied by self-proclimed "gamers".
 
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So I returned to LOTRO with anniversary and I have to say that their narrative, audio and graphic team did amazing work with the great wedding festival. It almost makes you forget about all the newest things you didn't like about the game.

And I quite like the new brawler class, because it feels like half profession - like a local pub brawler, a problematic person, so I can roleplay it (I go to pubs a lot now). I miss CCs and medium armor, but I think I understand why they did it. And also I understand now why they changed the festivals.

On the other hand the nostalgia is almost painful - you never know for how long the game will go on, just that you can enjoy the work of good nice devs and wish them the best.
 
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This is nice review about LOTRO - only I don't get what was his "clumsy" problem with tab targetting combat in LOTRO and why he said that quite similar combat in SWTOR with clicking on quickslots was OK, but he didn't mention much more clumsy spinning camera there - but maybe they fixed it. I agree with the rest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZshgYbtUmM
 
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Also I was thinking about the console version of LOTRO combat with a lot of skills and I realized that a lot of skills are: do this basic attack 3x and choose something more powerfull from 1-5 options, maybe it would be possible to to do it in the more modern way - where the slot on the quickbar remain the same, first skill you choose the starting skill (like hit with defence/or offence boost), then the two other will be changing based on how many times you clicked on them and the last 2 will be finishers. and second quick bar will be accessories/utilities, and breaking from stuns could be done with combinations of keyboard/mouse/console buttons, where you don't need a slot for it.
 
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