Economy: works much better now. Repair costs have been lowered and it should be more manageable for new players to advance and scale the economy. This is good.
Crafting: not really in great shape now. Needs a good bit of tweaking/reintegrating. The good news is Turbine is working on it, the bad news is that it isn't going to be fixed by launch in a couple of days.
On balance the leveling/adventuring game now works very well, and is very polished and well done. My feet are less cold. I think this one is going to be a hit ... quite a hit really.
As LOTRO lurches towards its release next week, I really have to confess a growing sense of unease about the state of the game. While overall the quest/adventure structure seems well done and ready to go (if a bit boring at times), I have significant and growing concerns about the economy of the game and real doubts about the ability of this economic system to be viable in the long term, in addition to the state of crafting professions.
First, the economy. Turbine has taken a different spin on how to manage money supply in the economy than has been the case in many other games. Turbine is clearly concerned about keeping the M1 money supply down in the game, which in itself is a laudable, if somewhat fleeting, goal. However, their approach to affecting this in the game is, in my opinion, odd, and I have doubts as to its long-term viability. Specifically, Turbine has decided to make what I would call “operating expenses” (that is, your day-to-day upkeep) the main money sink in the game. The most common context where this comes up is gear repair cost, but it also comes up in numerous other areas such as the price of vendor-sold crafting inputs, the price of transportation (horse rides) and the like: basic operating expenses, which are present as small money sinks in other games but not bank-breaking expenses are in LOTRO very expensive and indeed bankbreaking unless specific and strict money-saving strategies are adopted by players from the earliest stages of the game.
For example, gear repair cost is so high that many players adopt the strategy of simply not repairing gear at all, because it is far cheaper to break your gear, trash it, and then buy new gear than it is to repair your gear. (According to Closed Beta testers, this continues into the later game as well.) That is, of course, the kind of clever workaround that one would expect clever MMO players to come up with, but it smacks of unintended play – it’s extremely odd that it is cheaper to buy a new set of something than fix an existing set of something, and a game mechanic that actively discourages players from acquiring helpful gear is an extremely odd one at best. Instead of looking at a nice piece of purple gear as a performance upgrade (which it really isn’t anyway, according to LOTRO’s design … armor does not mitigate that much) the game encourages players to look at it as a money-sink due to its associated repair cost, and instead of equipping the item, one is incented to place it in one’s bank or sell it. Closed Beta testers will tell you that the situation does not improve at higher levels either – stories are rampant of people carrying around 4 sets of armor to change during adventuring because of broken gear, of level 40+ characters farming level 15-20 mobs for hours in order to farm repair gold and the like. In addition, the repair cost money sink is not at all evenly distributed among character classes, with tanking classes having substantially higher repair costs than other classes both because they take more hits (and hence more damage) and because their armor costs more to repair – yet they have no additional compensating sources of income or savings in other areas --- I suppose Turbine’s take is that tanks are just supposed to be an expensive class to play …
Now, of course, almost every MMO has some grinding for cash. But while most every MMO has some feature of needing to acquire gold for some reason, LOTRO makes you do it for ordinary operating expenses, which to me sets up a very odd game incentive scheme. In other words, it’s one thing to incent players by dangling a big carrot in front of them like a house or a flying mount or something like that – a visible, prestige big ticket item that they look forward to having and will grind towards and then spend the cash they have accumulated on. It’s quite another thing to expect players to grind on a regular basis to meet their regular operating expenses. This is, in effect, what LOTRO does, and in my view it’s hard to describe it as “fun”. The ironic thing is that many people will be joining this game thinking it is storyline and quest based, and to a degree they are right, but the way the economy has been designed, it’s also very much “grind-based”, and not the kind of grinding a casual player may forego (“Oh well, I just won’t get a house because I don’t feel like grinding for it) .. this is grinding you need to finance your operating expenses of your character playing the game normally, without any big-ticket purchases.
The ostensible reason for setting it up this way is to control inflation. By keeping even regaular operating expenses high, you really do keep a very tight lid on the amount of excess cash in the economy because the average player who is either not an extreme tightwad or an extreme grinder just isn’t going to have much excess cash. The cost of keeping inflation down this way, however, is twofold, it seems to me: first, the design is less “fun”. Most players don’t like grinding, and many won’t be expecting to have to grind simply to get by in this game, so there will be a letdown factor. Second, it plays almost directly into the hands of the gold farmers. That is, by making the normal acquisition cost of gold so high per the game mechanic of high operating expenses, this increases demand for out of game currency sales to a substantial degree. Instead of allowing the economy to develop a bit and then adjusting to clamp down on things, Turbine is placing extremely low inflation at the top of its economic agenda from the get-go, and the inevitable impact of that is the increase in value of currency, which creates tremendous incentives to purchase out of game currency. Of course people will buy out of game currency no matter what, but when an economy is designed so that the average player always feels tight on cash, you can bet that there will be a lot of currency buying going on, and that will completely undermine the economy as a whole.
The more I have reflected on the economy, the more concerned I have become about it. While I recognize Turbine was trying to do something different by approaching it this way, I feel that this approach is fraught with problems and dysfunction, most of which has been brought in to keep inflation down, but which, rather ironically, at the end of the day will only encourage gold purchasing all the more, which will lead not just to inflation but potentially hyperinflation. As a result, I don’t honestly think Turbine has its arms around the economy at this point, and the game is launching next week. It’s very concerning.
Second, crafting. As Turbine has designed the game, crafting is a side activity. The intention is to create interdependencies between crafts so that players need to buy things from other players in order to create their wares. The issue with this is that in order for that to happen, players need to be selling things that other players will find useful, and the reality is that there simply aren’t enough useful items to incent people to buy from crafters, and therefore not enough incentive for players to spend the gold it takes to sink into leveling a craft for profit at later levels. As a result, many gatherers (who should be supplying to crafters) are simply dumping their gathered materials on vendors for cash (in part because this is a more reliable source of cash, and they are very concerned about stockpiling as much cash as possible before launch for the reasons I outline under the “economy” discussion above). In addition, whole crafting professions are essentially broken. Farming, something new which Turbine introduced in LOTRO, has been extremely problematic: it was making too much cash for people on vendor sales, so Turbine has now nerfed it so that it is basically impossible not only to make cash (because, as noted above, Turbine is focused like a laser beam on low inflation so cash is bad) but also impossible to level (not just costly, but impossible due to the lack of seeds required to crossbreed at higher levels). Admittedly, farming needed changes because it was too easy to make money with it, but instead of changing it to make it less lucrative, Turbine broke the advancement curve of the profession entirely – basically they “turned it off”. Shocklingly, in the aftermath, Turbine announced that they did not realize the impact this would have on crossbreeding and profession advancement (and this despite numerous announcements from players about this specific impact before the change was implemented). That, standing alone, is cause for grave concern from my perspective and indicates that Turbine “doesn’t get it” when it comes to their own crafting system and, more generally, is making some sloppy decisions in the run-up to launch. In any case, these changes were made because it is not intended for crafting to make money from vendor sales (even though miners and foresters can do so as well), and farmers are intended to sell their wares to cooks for cooking. That sounds well enough as a design, but the trouble with that is that cooks can acquire any item a farmer can craft from an NPC vendor instead of a farmer, and at prices that are less than the farmer’s cost to produce the item. So the system of interaction between farmer and cook is 100% completely broken. Turbine realizes this, and has announced plans to fix it, but the main dev focused on crafting has been pulled from crafting to work on launch, and any significant changes are probably not going to come until a month or so after launch … all meaning that LOTRO will launch with literally broken professions at launch. And, again, it’s telling that the reason why one of the professions was broken was … guess again, the economy.
So to wrap things up, I’m getting a very bad vibe from Turbine at the moment. The economy is shaping up to be very grinding based, and that’s really a terrible disappointment. For those who have not had the opportunity to grind up piles of cash in the Pre-Order phase, it will be a struggle to meet operating expenses without regular grinding, and to me that’s just a very unfortunate design decision by Turbine. I also believe that if the money supply is kept so tight in the game, gold sales will become very common in LOTRO, particularly if the player base is as large as some people expect it to be. And to top it off the game is being launched with professions being intentionally broken immediately prior to launch because of the economy. The achilles heel of the design of this game is the economy – it’s impacting pretty much the entire game experience. It’s quite a shaky design from the perspective of the economy, and as a result I’m very much getting cold feet as to whether I want to sink time and money into this game after launch.
This so called logic of Turbine holding back the money til the game is released is nonsense. This just doesn't wash. The game is cheap with the cash it offers it's players plain and simple but that's the way of most games out. WoW is probably the worse at doing this as that games missions don't pay anything, period. Just a very small portion does but that's it.
Repairs in Vanguard are just like they say here, they're expensive and you need repairs very frequently. All these games seem to be cut from the same cloth. They're all the same in just about everything they offer, this is why players get bored quickly.
This is why you see constant posts of players asking for new games and saying they're bored. They wait for the next game hoping it's something new but when they finally begin to play the game they've waited for they find out it's more of the same. People waited on this game and now most of them are complaining and waiting on the next one. It's like a circle with no end.
Whatever they have here now is what they're planning on bringing out. "they're waiting for the game to go live to release money and better things," yeah, you keep belieiving that.
On the EU side being without a softcap on anything the economy seems stable, we have certain players monoplising certain items (on Snowbourn) and with the comming chane with repear costs it's seeming a lot less heavy on the wallet, skill costs tho are another matter.
Cafting side of this Scholars are being hit the hardest atm, they have no tracking what so ever for thier resources plus they also pop up as random drops which players want rediculus prices for, it took me about 3 days to complete tier one of prospecting 4 days for jewel crafting and it's been almost a week and i still havn't managed to even to come close and it's not even a common craft..
Farming, Cooking AND Scholaring need to be looked at, the resource cost and time outweighs the product value for these trades, I hope they get to scholaring quickly otherwise players will be paying 50s+ for teir 1 items based on the 'value' of the resources
I've been following the OP's debate on the Official forums. It is rather aggressive and vindictive to come here to MMORPG to continue the debate about something that is being worked on by Turbine.
Now I had some respect for the OP until this. Basically you have someone who is pissed off about the farming changes, then asks for the devs to 'nerf' naked prospecting in a self-admitted attempt to punish prospectors in a tit for tat battle.
But now we see a sudden backtracking by the OP...hmmm. Suddenly the game has gone from dismal failure to most assured success in the matter of days. If this doesn't speak of overreaction, I don't know what would.
In short, I wish the OP would take 100 deep breaths, step away from the game for a week or so and get some perspective. The devs are tweaking crafting and farming (they've said as much). Please try to internalize that.
_____________________________ Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
I've been following the OP's debate on the Official forums. It is rather aggressive and vindictive to come here to MMORPG to continue the debate about something that is being worked on by Turbine.
No. This is a more important community to me, personally, than the community of LOTRO's boards. I post here so that people who are here, and curious about MMOs, can see the same issues. If you don't like that, that's your problem, mate. I think people who aren't going to the o-boards have the right to see the issues discussed here as well. If you don't agree, sue me.
Suddenly the game has gone from dismal failure to most assured success in the matter of days. If this doesn't speak of overreaction, I don't know what would.
Where did my OP say anything about dismal failure? Projecting much?
My OP spoke of "concerns" and "cold feet" --- if you think that means "dismal failure", then I can't help you. As for "overreaction", crafting is still broken in my opinion, and not just farming. It's an issue, and everyone has to decide if that is enough of an issue to preclude them from playing. It's an individual choice.
In short, I wish the OP would take 100 deep breaths, step away from the game for a week or so and get some perspective.
*laughter* When I want advice from you, I'll ask. Go any steps further and you will be reported for personal attacks, and I'm not kidding.
On the EU side being without a softcap on anything the economy seems stable, we have certain players monoplising certain items (on Snowbourn) and with the comming chane with repear costs it's seeming a lot less heavy on the wallet, skill costs tho are another matter.
Well that's good to hear. I think that skill costs are expensive, too, but then again that seems more reasonable to me, as each one of them is something that has a significant value to the character. I see training, as a result, quite differently from repairing, which to me is just an ongoing cost of doing business.
Comments
Economy: works much better now. Repair costs have been lowered and it should be more manageable for new players to advance and scale the economy. This is good.
Crafting: not really in great shape now. Needs a good bit of tweaking/reintegrating. The good news is Turbine is working on it, the bad news is that it isn't going to be fixed by launch in a couple of days.
On balance the leveling/adventuring game now works very well, and is very polished and well done. My feet are less cold. I think this one is going to be a hit ... quite a hit really.
This so called logic of Turbine holding back the money til the game is released is nonsense. This just doesn't wash. The game is cheap with the cash it offers it's players plain and simple but that's the way of most games out. WoW is probably the worse at doing this as that games missions don't pay anything, period. Just a very small portion does but that's it.
Repairs in Vanguard are just like they say here, they're expensive and you need repairs very frequently. All these games seem to be cut from the same cloth. They're all the same in just about everything they offer, this is why players get bored quickly.
This is why you see constant posts of players asking for new games and saying they're bored. They wait for the next game hoping it's something new but when they finally begin to play the game they've waited for they find out it's more of the same. People waited on this game and now most of them are complaining and waiting on the next one. It's like a circle with no end.
Whatever they have here now is what they're planning on bringing out. "they're waiting for the game to go live to release money and better things," yeah, you keep belieiving that.
On the EU side being without a softcap on anything the economy seems stable, we have certain players monoplising certain items (on Snowbourn) and with the comming chane with repear costs it's seeming a lot less heavy on the wallet, skill costs tho are another matter.
Cafting side of this Scholars are being hit the hardest atm, they have no tracking what so ever for thier resources plus they also pop up as random drops which players want rediculus prices for, it took me about 3 days to complete tier one of prospecting 4 days for jewel crafting and it's been almost a week and i still havn't managed to even to come close and it's not even a common craft..
Farming, Cooking AND Scholaring need to be looked at, the resource cost and time outweighs the product value for these trades, I hope they get to scholaring quickly otherwise players will be paying 50s+ for teir 1 items based on the 'value' of the resources
Bring on the WARRRRGGHH!
I've been following the OP's debate on the Official forums. It is rather aggressive and vindictive to come here to MMORPG to continue the debate about something that is being worked on by Turbine.
Now I had some respect for the OP until this. Basically you have someone who is pissed off about the farming changes, then asks for the devs to 'nerf' naked prospecting in a self-admitted attempt to punish prospectors in a tit for tat battle.
But now we see a sudden backtracking by the OP...hmmm. Suddenly the game has gone from dismal failure to most assured success in the matter of days. If this doesn't speak of overreaction, I don't know what would.
In short, I wish the OP would take 100 deep breaths, step away from the game for a week or so and get some perspective. The devs are tweaking crafting and farming (they've said as much). Please try to internalize that.
_____________________________
Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO
Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Find the Truth: http://www.factcheck.org/