What disappointed me..

Wolfenpride

After playing to 20 ive found the game to be..adequate overall, love the graphics combat and all..

However what really really really bugs me, is the lack of grouping *this goes for most of the recent/upcoming mmo's personally*

What im saying is yes, their are a fair amount of quest that involve killing 1 or a few tough mobs or crawling through the great barrows for some quest target.

However this has gotten i humbly say..very..very old in my 20 lvls as a guardian =/

Maybe its just because ive been hooked to FFXI lately, but ive found it to be impossible to get a group for anything beyond quest that require fellowships/raids and the Books/chapters instances. Ive even been rejected due to the fact that the quest was soloable on several occasions, and the idea of just a exp group sends others into shock apparently. Even when I do get a group for this particular mob, the whole group disbands after the kill, and im left again with either finding another one or mindlessly soloing quest after quest after quest and so on.

And not as bad as the grouping thing to me, not that its a colossal issue, is the crafting. Straight out of WoW if you ask me, it is i really hate to say it, extremely mind numbing in fact i walk away from the computer ususally during my crafting sessions.

Im praying that in future expansions they add more well...freedom to the game in terms of how we should progress and explore zones, as it is now ive basically been following the dev's carrot on a stick, down a road many other mmo's have taken, and i belive its fair to say that this extremely kills the "adventure" in the game.

 

Cabe2323

Grouping becomes more and more part of the game as you level.  At 29.5 about half of my 30 or so quests are fellowship quests.  My friend who is 38 says about 3/4 of his quest log is fellowship quests.

Wolfenpride

Good to know..still though all in all it still kind of..dampens the "adventure" feeling with the way they did the game. Im imagining that even at higher levels still people only group to those quest that only require fellowships, and so far when I join a group for anything, we did what we had to do, usually killing a signature mob or somthing, and then quickly disbanded all within 2-4 mins.

I loved the way a few chapters work, specifically 11 has been my faviorate so far, but the soloability was taken just a tad to far me thinks, not that soloing's bad or anything, just theirs no motivation to group

Liddokun

The higher you go the more fellowship quests you get. By the time you hit 40s almost every quest you get are fellowship quests.

Wolfenpride

I understand, but people will only group for to do those particular quest, anything beyond that is considered a waste of time apparently, exp groups, loot hunting, or just dungeon crawling for example.

 I cannot get a group to do anything other than quest, which from previous expirences anyways..appear to only take 5-10 mins at most. I have no problem with that normally, but typically afterwards the group disbands and I just go and find more quests, its almost like playing a scripted rpg.

I just prefer to have mmo's with more freedom I guess, or that at least encourage that freedom and grouping.

AgtSmith

Originally posted by Wolfenpride 
...its almost like playing a scripted rpg.
...

I very much agree with this statement - it is up tot he player what to do in the end but I feel that the whole game is very controlled in terms of your ability to really do anything unique.  It is like I am putting together a puzzle, the picture at the end is set - sure I get to put the pieces in however I want but what gets built is pretty much decided.  It just doesn't feel like I am building a character, more like i am just coming along as he moves through the script the DEVs made.

dand3

Joining a good kinship should help a lot with grouping.  Also try to make a friend or two with whom you can routinely hunt.

Not sure why crafting is so tedious doe you.  Gathering is not particularly fast, but the making of items seems to go quickly for me.

Halfmad

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Originally posted by Wolfenpride 
...its almost like playing a scripted rpg.
...

I very much agree with this statement - it is up tot he player what to do in the end but I feel that the whole game is very controlled in terms of your ability to really do anything unique.  It is like I am putting together a puzzle, the picture at the end is set - sure I get to put the pieces in however I want but what gets built is pretty much decided.  It just doesn't feel like I am building a character, more like i am just coming along as he moves through the script the DEVs made.

Most MMORPGs are the same and I suspect that LOTRO will add in less scripted content later on. I haven't played a game yet that didn't have a massive number of quests which ultimately came down to killing a named npc or X amount of a mob to collect hides etc.



WoW, DAoC and EQ were just as bad.

Wolfenpride

Originally posted by Halfmad

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Originally posted by Wolfenpride 
...its almost like playing a scripted rpg.
...

I very much agree with this statement - it is up tot he player what to do in the end but I feel that the whole game is very controlled in terms of your ability to really do anything unique.  It is like I am putting together a puzzle, the picture at the end is set - sure I get to put the pieces in however I want but what gets built is pretty much decided.  It just doesn't feel like I am building a character, more like i am just coming along as he moves through the script the DEVs made.

Most MMORPGs are the same and I suspect that LOTRO will add in less scripted content later on. I haven't played a game yet that didn't have a massive number of quests which ultimately came down to killing a named npc or X amount of a mob to collect hides etc.



WoW, DAoC and EQ were just as bad.

Mm..I slighty agree and disagree, excluding Wow due to it was kind of quest heavy, but Daoc and eq were geared more towards grinding and exp groups, at least before..eh certain expansions

I have no problem typically with questing, but thats all people seem to want to do here, and it feels like theirs the lack of freedom in that as stated above.

Halfmad

I was thinking that last night, I'd sometimes like to just camp mobs for a hour rather than quest. It is possible and I did start messing about with pickpocketing (I'm a burglar) which was a laugh.



The thing is there are times when xping is far faster than questing for xp even in LOTRO!

Mossburg

Originally posted by Halfmad

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Originally posted by Wolfenpride 
...its almost like playing a scripted rpg.
...

I very much agree with this statement - it is up tot he player what to do in the end but I feel that the whole game is very controlled in terms of your ability to really do anything unique.  It is like I am putting together a puzzle, the picture at the end is set - sure I get to put the pieces in however I want but what gets built is pretty much decided.  It just doesn't feel like I am building a character, more like i am just coming along as he moves through the script the DEVs made.

Most MMORPGs are the same and I suspect that LOTRO will add in less scripted content later on. I haven't played a game yet that didn't have a massive number of quests which ultimately came down to killing a named npc or X amount of a mob to collect hides etc.



WoW, DAoC and EQ were just as bad.

 

I really disagree with DAoC being just as bad.  The only quest you really had to do in that game were the epic quest, which was like 1 quest every 8 levels and sometimes longer or shorter.  DAoC was the biggest group friendly game, but you did have to grind a little bit more in that game, but they somehow made it not so bad.  I really think some of these new games should take a page from their book on how getting exp should go.  I agree with the creator though, i'm not a big fan of  HAVING to do quest to get exp/items. DAoC you could log on at 7 am in the morning and have no problem finding a group to hunt with.  Not now of course....game was ruined by bad expansion packs

different

Agree pretty much 100% with the OP. I played 2.5 months of beta and the pre-order 10 days (EU) and it always felt like a single-player game online. Groups would come together for a few minutes and while someone was stil  in an instance or quest others would leave and rush on to the next quest NPC before disbanding without a "cya" a couple of minutes later.



I'll probably upset a few folks now but I felt this was the worst community I've experienced since Guild Wars. I'm not saying the players are all l33t kidz but I felt no sense of community. In contrast the playing VG community at least on Galenia was/is awesome, whatever other faults the game may have.



After cancelling my pre-order I've since re-ordered the standard retail box but will go on the dedicated RP server and take a different, slower approach to this game.

batpuppy

I have had a difference experience in the game from the OP. My main character is a champ only level 26 as I in no hurry to level.

Each night I usually end up joining or forming a group. Usually with the same group of people. I assume the OP is joining random groups?

 We usually do various quests but not always. Sometimes its quests that I need myself, sometimes its ones that I have already done. It does not matter as I am in no hurry to level. The key to having a good grouping experience in any of these games be it EQ, DAoC, WoW , LOTRO or someother game, is finding people with similar attitudes and play styles and sticking with them. I had good luck in all those games except for WoW in finding my "group". Perhaps it was that games fault or perhaps I was just unlucky.

Kyleran

Its the nature of quest driven games, of which LotRO has taken to the nth degree.  People really only want to group if they share the same quests to complete, and since rarely do they share multiple quests (certainly not the whole group) its more efficient to break up and reform with other people who have your quest.



Take last evening for example.  My son and I duo a Guardina/Burgler in lockstep, doing the same quests together always.  Last evening we were completing a "kill the orc warlord" quest and came across 3 people ahead of us.  Our two groups helped each other kill the warlord, but then one of the other folks said he wanted to go do Retaking Roundtop.  Well, my son and I had to 1st go back to one npc, then travel half way back to the other end of Bree to visit a 2nd npc, then back to original npc in lonelands.  Because I had a 25 minute map timer going, it was well over an hour before we were ready to go.



We weren't interested in running Roundtop w/o having the quest first, and the other guy wasn't interested in waiting an hour for us to get it ready.  Which is all part of the game design.



This is quite unlike the older games like DAOC where most leveling was done by gathering a good group, finding a good camp for your level/combination and pulling the heck out of it for 3 hours.  Then you had big incentive to stay together for long periods of time.  But in a quest driven game like WOW or LotRO.... it makes more sense to form more temporary relationships.



One way around this is to join a Kinship where people help each other out to complete quests, regardless whether they need to complete the same quest.  That takes a fairly alturistic person, and truthfully, since I rarely ask someone to go out of their way to help me, I'm not too keen on doing the same for others. 



I only need groups to accomplish game goals/objectives, and its easier to just find people who need the same quest as I do.



I suspect later on when fellowships migrate into larger scale, more coordinated raids there will be a need to group up with a regular bunch of people, and that's when being in a good Kinship will be very important.  Does this model sound familiar...yep, just like WOW.... only even more so in my opinion.



Right now in addition to my son I group up with 2 or 3 other folks who take the time to coordinate our quests with each other, can't imagine expanding the boundries much beyond that.