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Lord of the Rings Online: Radiance: Good Intentions Gone Bad
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
A new developer diary from Turbine's Allan ‘Orion’ Maki discusses Radiance in Lord of the Rings Online. He begins by saying something along the lines of "our intentions were good but it went horribly wrong". From there, Maki discusses why Radiance has been removed from the game and opens the door on the possibility that reworked Radiance will be returned to the game at some future point.
Why cut it now?
We have bandied about ways to fix the current implementation of Radiance. We thought about tying it to deeds, or to completing the epic story quests. As we moved toward free-to-play there was even talk about selling Radiance in the LOTRO Store.
At that point we resigned ourselves to pulling out Radiance. We knew it was a failure and we wanted to no longer keep it in the game. We just needed the time to get it out of the game and there were other, higher priorities as we marched toward free-to-play.
Read more here.
Comments
Too little, too late, Turbine. We told you Radiance wasn't working when you came out with it, but you buried your head in the sand and ignored us, kept pushing more of it, kept compounding the fail.
Of course, now that they've managed to drive away and alienate most of the vet and lifetime players, their servers are full of people who don't know the long history of how Turbine screws its players, I suppose.
--
Michael
We told them radiance sucked and we've been complaining since day 1 about how bad the legendary items have been implemented...
When do you think they'll get around to fixing LI's?
Very much to little to late we turned the game into a gear grind from wow. Mot vest have left, and continue to stay gone.
Even though they told us they taking out radiance they went and hit LI's and now tied the the LI breakdown to the store. As in you spend tp now to breakdown you LI and get your relics back??
I'm a vet, I haven't gone anyplace, because the game isn't entirely about gridning or gear. It never has been. And there are ample old-timers still playing, just not ones that give a damn about gear. I have not done a single raid or instance to collect rad gear. In part because by the time I got to that level, I simplely had no burning desire to do the instances requiring it, thanks to RP, the great community, a bit of PvMP, and other things. I did think the gating idea stunk, and my avoiding Rad gear later was simply because it was annoying without purpose or gain. Since it was announced it was going away, I've further had no reason to even consider some raids. Once it is gone, everything changes. I'll complete the epic books, continue to scour the zones free of quests, and simply walk through Rad Gear. And I will laugh at anybody that told me I was being a wuss for boycotting it. If Turbine really did screw its players over, I hardly think there would be so many more playing it now than three years ago.
Comstrike
**************************
Founder, Leader, www.SonsOfNumenor.com LOTRO - SW.ToR (Yes, we are recruiting)
Not too sure what too little too late means - Lotro seems to be doing just fine.
As for vets leaving, Not see that now. Pretty much taken its course. Our Kin is doing just fine now. Since January we have had 5 former players restart their subs and another 3 come back as F2P (yes I keep track to the extent folks want to share)
RE radiance...about time....LI changes on way too..tho no dev diary out yet so other than not being able to get relics back on decon and their being only 6 tiers now with greatly reduced combine rate - not much more info that I have seen. (Oh yea and scrolls that take a wanted legacy off one item and put it on another under some conditions I have not fully figured out yet (again need the dev diary)
Given em credit for owning up. Rather uncommon these days and not just from developers.
As one of the vets who will never return to LOTRO, it seems a lot like too little too late to me. The game most assuredly degenerated to a gear grind for 99% of all players, with a very phantom few who did not engage in the "wow-esque" grind for rad items. PvMP was nearly dead on the Brandywine server because everyone had to have their rad gear so they could continue forward from the game.
Maybe some people don't recognize how unusual it is for ANY large dev company to admit they were wrong and apologize. I've been here since day 1 beta and still love it. They may have listened late, but they listened. Having played other MMOs, that's rare and welcomed. I agree with Comstrike, the game is SO much more than grinding or gear. If you want that, there are a lot of other alternatives. I for one am happy they saw the issue and corrected it. Less whining and finger pointing and a modicum of perspective is always a nice thing...
It's about time!
I never understood radience, and I understand gating even less.
The only gating MMORPGs require is death...
If you died, you aren't ready for that area.
------- END TRANSMISSION
I will Agree with randwill, I do not see a huge exodus of VIP and Life members after Rad and FTP. I see a much richer fabric of newbs and lower levels that are not the 6th alt of some 3 year player. It is exciting to help them and also to group with some new players that don't know where every mining node is in the Barrows. Radiance was like anything in the software world, a feature that was too complicated or not what the customer wanted. Turbine is like any other software development company, there will be times when waht they coded just doesn't fit, you dump it and move on. All persistant virtual worlds are evolving, and need a new revitalization of possibilities to keep the user base involved and interested. If what you got out of Rad gear was that you had to grind, then maybe you would have done that anyway. Grinders that are driven to achieve ultimate builds will grind ANYTHING to have the stat cap, in any MMORPG, not just Lotro, that speaks of their focus, not those provided by the world. They will certainly introduce more and less popular features, but each person will get out of them what they will. If they are not popular by the majority, then they will likely fade away, to be replaced with something new to fuss over. This is how the company keeps the product vital, instead of letting it die on the vine. They need to make money, as the servers hosting worlds are not free, and the balance between enticing usage and pissing off legacies is a thin edge. I have a life membership, so I literally do not ever have to pay. That model is not good for Turbine, as they make no money on me for maintenance or upkeep. I throw them $50 once in a while for Tubine Points, as I understand that all of those that keep the worlds up need to eat too, and I do not want my safe and cozy little hobbit hole to ever not welcome me after a hard day at work.
I absolutely second the comments of Comstrike and Randwill! No, there's been no huge exodus... some (vocal) people left, but the game is doing fine... those of us who never cared about gear/radiance/etc. in the first place never left!
Yep.
Same here. I have been playing since 2007 and will continue to play Lotro until they shut the servers down.
Games playing: Lotro,Fallen Earth,Star Trek Online.
Games playing casually: CoX,Guild Wars,FFXIV,Champions Online,DDO.
Games Played: WoW,DR,L2,RoM,FFXI,Earthrise,EQ2,DAoC,WAR,Rift,Alganon,EVE,G&H Rome Rising.
Waiting for: Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
PC Specs: Intel i7 990x 3.5ghz, 6gb ddr3 Ram,EVGA GTX 570 SC FTW,EVGA x58 Classified 4-way SLI MB, 2TB HDD 7200rpm, 60GB Intel SSD: OS Drive, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, Westinghouse 21 in. 1680x1050.
If it was about gear and grind, I wouldn't be playing it, let alone calling it my favorite.
It is nice they recognize their error. But after so much time they did not find other solution than to remove the whole mechanics. They did not have to wait so long for that.
Imo, it was not bad idea, just the implementation was bothersome. This is the sad part about Turbine and it is not limited to radiance: good ideas, unable to devote resources to make them work, due to being too centered on business at cost of fun.
Ultimately, the problem with radiance was that it replaced stat progression on gear instead of supplementing stat progression (eating some stat budged but not all); I know this was disputed by devs (basically it did not east any budget because the gear did not have higher budget in first place and radiance was tacked on). Removig it is not solution and directly negates the first paragraph in the devblog - if they wanted to keep radiance for fun they would just remove excessive gating, not remove the fun.
Boy could SOE use a page out of Turbine's book. I read that they were looking at removing it. Nice job
The thing is that unless you are part of a raiding kin, gear really doesn't mean much.
There isn't an overwhelming difference using one type of gear over another. I think the core players have always known this. There are raiding kins and I'm sure this might be an issue for them, but it feels like the core players were never pvp or raid player even though there are pvp and raid players in game.
I don't understand the too little too late comments. Most game developers never admit they made a mistake and there really isn't a big deal to this. There really aren't a lot of radiance encounters in the game so there was/is plenty of content for players who didn't want to get their radiance sets.
For me it was fun to get them but I would rather just not have it at all.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
what is
Radiance ? what lvl player use it ?
You have no idea whether this statement is true or not. Why even make such an unverifiable claim?
I'm a vet, and I haven't left.
from the article it seemed turbine made a brave move, from the reactions here it seems it took them awefully long to do that. difficult for an unknowledgeable observer to judge.
First of all, I agree with Turbine: It was a good idea. Gating happens whether it's Radiance or not. It happens in every game. Gating happened in EQ1 through gear alone. Perhaps because the gating was so obvious in the system of Radiance, people rejected it. But make no mistake -- with radiance gone, gating will still happen.
At least with Radiance, the best gear in the game didn't have to come from, or be required for, Raids. You could give out great loot for solo quests sans Radiance. It was a mechanic to differentiate solo and raid play. I think that was a great, innovative idea.
I've said it before on other LOTRO posts and I'll say it here - Radiance caused more hard feelings and kinship breakups than anything else within the game. It split kinships (especially the one I was in) into the "haves" and the "have-nots". Horror stories from friends who were in other kinships showed that it wasn't an isolated incident.
When Radiance came out all other apects of the game were shoved into the background. No one wanted to do anything else. Trying to find a group to do the Epic Book quests? Maybe work on deeds? Good luck with that. The majority of players were in Moria spamming the channels looking for rad groups, which gave birth to the wonderful paradox known as the rad syndrome - no one would invite you to a group if you didn't have rad gear but the only way to get it was to join a group.
While it is nice that the devs finally admitted that radiance didn't work, nonetheless it still caused a lot of problems. I just hope that the devs will learn from their mistakes if they plan to bring rad gear back.
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
Well--- I'm a vet... and I have the radiance gear. Not a l337 player but love endgame group stuff.
I'm wondering what stats my radiance gear will have now... the same just minus the radiance?
I'm a bit frustrated at working so hard for something (don't really have 6-7 hours a day to play so my radiance has been sloooooowlllly earned) only to find it now gone.
And I'm wondering what mechanic is now in place to keep the difficulty level the same in the instances that relied on dread to slow ya down. I mean... how much fun is SG gonna be when we don't cower before Gor when that wonderful burning eye shows up and smacks us all with dread?
On the plus side - it would be really nice to see folks stop endlessly running Grand Stairs for radiance gear tokens and maybe even explore some of the other content the game has to offer :-).
I'm cautiously maybe a bit open to what is next. Now's the time to wow us Turbine!
crap, sorry about the double posts...
But it's more popular now because it's FREE TO PLAY. And it went free to play because the subs weren't enough; to many of us went Lifetime and not enough new-blood came in over the years. Remember lifetime subs last only about 13-months ($199 deal) before YOU start costing the company. And that's what most of the Lifers went for.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising everytime we fall.
I never liked radience and I'm happy to see it go.