In Update 2 Turbine has made a change to the way in which the barter tokens are earned. In previous zones, you could run an instance as many times as you desired a day and would get the Dol Guldur or Moria tokens every time you defeated a boss. This allowed you to run one (maybe the fastest or your favorite) instance a few times a day to earn your tokens.
In the new zone, you will get a quest upon entering the instances. Upon completion of that quest you will be rewarded with your tokens. You will not be able to earn any more till the locks reset. The standard 3 and 6 man instances will be on bi-weekly lock cycles. This means you will be able to run any instance you like but will only get the Tokens on the first run through and cannot get any more, from that instance, for a few days.
The reason for this change is so players will not be allowed to burn themselves out on one instance in the quest for their high end gear. You will now be forced to run all the instances in order to max out your Token acquisition.
This ignores one big aspect of how many people play LOTRO. Once the book content has been consumed all there is to do is the repeatable stuff. The reputation quests for barter items, the Skirmish Runs for Superior Third Marks, the instances for Tokens of Moria, or Lothlorien, or DG. I actually enjoy logging in and watching GLFF waiting for a group to run one of these. Other than raid night, these repeatable instances/skirmishes are the highlight of my gaming week.
Now, imagine GLFF if the School and Library of Thaim Mirdain skirmishes only gave Superior Third Marks once per week.
I mean really imagine it.
They would be run far less often, and probably only on the first day or two of the unlock. GLFF would be dead if this were extended to GS, and Sword Halls, and SG, and the Barrows Skirmishes.
People would run them on the days of the unlocks and them abandon the game till the locks expired.
Now hopefully they will only do this to the new instances tokens and won’t get any bright ideas to expand it to Superior Third Mark acquisition. I was just using that as an example of how this can adversely affect the game.
This new system almost seems to be encouraging people to not play. You got your marks… Go do something else till the locks expire.
What they should be looking into is balancing the amount of tokens per time among the instances. The reason GS and Sword Halls were run to death is that they gave more Tokens per hour of play time. If Fil Gashan rewarded 4 times the tokens it would be worth running it.
The other aspect is time. Shorter instances are more popular because they are bite sized. I am much more likely to have 20 minutes to spare for short run of a GB, or School of Thaim Mirdain than an hour for SG or Forges (when it was on level). Shorter instance are going to be run more even if they reward the same tokens per hour, just because people have time for them.
And then there is fun. Sword Halls is much more fun than Warg Pens and Dungeons. I just want to go in blow stuff up, none of this sneaking or puzzles….Although maybe that’s just cause I’m a Champion…ignore that one.
Anyway, the point is, Turbine, if you want us to play your game, you have to let us… play the game. Make the instance rewards proportional to the time, make them fairly short (20-30 minutes for three mans), and make them all fun. Then you won’t have to worry about players running one of them into the ground. If you find out what people like about that one instance which they have locked onto, then you can replicate that in all of the instances, rather than locking up that favorite instance.
March 29, 2011 at 8:16 am
very well said haakon! As always
March 29, 2011 at 8:58 am
I completely agree. It is a game and it sounds really strange that the game developers want to teach us and force us playing ALL content.
March 29, 2011 at 9:05 am
I would agree with everything you’re saying there, Haakon – with one minor exception. I can’t agree that SH is more fun than either Warg Pens or Dungeons – both of which are favourites of mine…maybe it IS a champion thing…or maybe it’s just me
As you say though, WP and Dungeons cough up way less tokens per hour than SH – the major reason for their unpopularity, I suspect.
March 29, 2011 at 9:43 am
When viewed on it’s own, yes, this argument holds up.
Fortunately this is not the case. The other content still exists, we still have the sup 3rd mark instances and the mirkwood content to play at-level as well. I think that turbine, in this case doesn’t want people to move on from the old content en masse. The fact is that you can still run 1-2 of the new instances per night, and get the token rewards. I personally was dead set against the multiple Sword halls runs in an evening. It wasn’t fun, but people are always hungry for expedient rewards, or were unable to complete the other content.
That being said, the fact that there are no repeatable rewards for the instances bothers me. I would prefer them to reward the silver/gold tokens of the wild instead if you’ve already completed the bi-weekly quest on that cycle. If you can use these to get empowerment scrolls/ relics / ixp, then there will be a reason to help out friends and kinmates who want to complete an instance we’ve already gotten our tokens from.
March 29, 2011 at 9:59 am
Totally agree. Seems like they want it to take longer for us to acquire new gear, while we wait for Isengard.
March 29, 2011 at 10:04 am
There is a thing on the lock though. I mena, there is a lot of content, so you’ll always find something to do. I would prefer the lock to be toned down to a week, so, for example, a more casual raider would be able to play his weekend. THe hardcore raiders are suffering Turbine’s decision, but I don’t think it tells you not to play the game.
Second, I just played Grand Stairs for the First time and, even though my team was lost, we ended it in less than 30 minutes. This sepaks more of a poor level design (yes, I know there is this 10 minute challenge), since they didn’t think about the possibility that the instance would become a “favourite” because it is a quick one to get a lot of barter currency. Maybe a little revamp on those quick instances would also help.
I’m not totally against the lock, maybe what they need is to look at it again and make it a bit different.
March 29, 2011 at 11:07 am
Actually, it’s semi-weekly, not bi-weekly, so it resets twice a week. The casual raider will be able to play every weekend.
March 29, 2011 at 10:27 pm
Oh, ok, then I msunderstood all the time. Now I don’t get why the people complain. It’s perfect then and gives a bit of time to try each instance. I don’t see anything bad in this lock.
March 29, 2011 at 12:07 pm
I don’t think it will end up with no groups running the instances on subsequent days. Not everyone can or will, log on the night the raid locks reset and run all instances. You’ll ms up with groups being set up throughout the week except this time it won’t always be sword halls etc it will be a mix of content. I think it will probably be an improvement. Time will tell though.
March 29, 2011 at 12:42 pm
People already mentioned arguments why the lock is bad or not so bad, so I just want to emphasize one aspect:
The slowdown is intended. This content must last till Isengard, Ladies & Gentlemen!
But the Token and the Token Traders are awful as usual: They should have made ONE guy for each class and well…
… everyone who was at Harndirion and checked out the Token Exchange there could probably thing of many better ways how to set this exchange up. It is convoluted. I finally got it, but that does not mean the way they did it is perfect or at least adequate at all.
March 29, 2011 at 1:29 pm
I agree, however I think balancing the rewards is trickier than it seems, largely because wipes can really slow a group down. So either Turbine will balance to accommodate that, meaning groups that have learned Warg Pens can blaze through and get disproportionate rewards, or they won’t balance to accommodate that, leading everyone to run Sword Halls anyway because it’s easier and more sure.
As an example, Forges of Khazad-Dum arguably provided token-per-time rewards equal to Grand Stairs, but people didn’t run it, because the risk was greater.
I don’t think balancing based purely with rewards will work. I agree with your concerns about using locks, though. The hardcore players will run the instances right after they reset, and won’t form groups later for the casual players to join into.
March 29, 2011 at 1:40 pm
I want to run the new instances at least once, but don’t really want the gear. I suspect I may have trouble running them because most of the people I run with are in different time zones. Chances are if they are 8 hours ahead of me, they probably already did the dungeons. Hopefully that won’t happen.
March 29, 2011 at 2:11 pm
I’m the running the new instances because they’re fun, not to get their rather sub-par gear. The Helegrod set is still waayyy better for Burglars, and the Moria set still better for grouping Burglars.
March 29, 2011 at 2:19 pm
I wanted to repeat what I thought was a great suggestion from the podcast: at the very least, unlock these instance quests again when you’ve completed them all.
That is, if you want people to play more variety, remove the locks once they’ve completed the whole set. This way, they can play as much as they want for the rewards they want, but don’t farm a particular instance with unbalanced rewards.
March 29, 2011 at 2:50 pm
This suggestion is the best of both worlds.
March 29, 2011 at 6:48 pm
I like this idea.
March 30, 2011 at 3:14 am
I like this idea best. It seems to compromise really well between the main 2 arguments here, Haakon’s and JJ’s. (and they both have very valid points) Lets the hardcore raiders run content for rewards as much as they want, but pushes the players through all of the content to do it.
March 29, 2011 at 4:06 pm
If Turbine’s goal was to give people an incentive to play all of the instances rather than to just make this content last until Isengard, there are several preferable methods that would accomplish this goal other than a hard raid lock. Additionally, if you goal is to have your paying customers play all the instances rather than just one over and over again, use incentives rather than punishments. Create a repeatable quest or deed that awards a bonus of X tokens for completing each of the new instances before repeating any of them. Alternatively, have the raid locks reset once a person has completed all of the new instances. The only reason I see to impose a hard raid lock is to slow down player progression and stretch out the amount of time it takes to get through the new content .
March 29, 2011 at 6:19 pm
I know people don’t want to hear this but works of Warcraft. Have this set-up but tgiers is slightly differant. They limit the ammount of high end marks per day/week but you can gain marks that are a substantial to buy gear/weapons which are slightly worse. This makes farming just as fun but with daily/weekly locks work. For this to work though turbine would have to create some sort of high end tier armour sets which you could only get it over a long period of time and keep the system we have now. Some people might understand this lol please comment if it need phrasing clearer.
March 29, 2011 at 6:44 pm
If instances are fun, well made and have a reward that matches the time/effort/challenge, people will run them. These locks would be no problem at all if not for the huge increase in amount of time it takes to get enough medallions for the set. It seems most non raiders in LOTRO think all raiders are very hardcore and play non stop to farm the best gear. Thats not true and the problem in my eyes is that a lot of people who run the raids will win the barter coin for a piece of the set but not be able to use it because they don’t have the time to farm these instances every week for months and months. Its not likes a couple months after BG was released everyone had 6/6 bg set, atfer 16 months its still rare to have full bg set. It takes long enough to win an armour piece from raids when there is 11 other people after the same thing, making another requirement that is very time consuming is completely unnecessary
March 29, 2011 at 8:12 pm
They increased the amount needed but they increased the amount you gain. In between repeatable quests, deeds, the “in your absence” story line, double T2 challenge rewards you can amass a good number of these medallions pretty quickly once you start beating this content. It’s not nearly as bad as it looks at first glance.
March 29, 2011 at 6:45 pm
personally i like the new gating. nothing i hate more than running the same instance over and over. pretty hard to get a group together for any helegrod runs that aren’t drake wing. (as an example)
March 29, 2011 at 8:10 pm
It seems like I disagree with almost everything you write Haakon, including this. everything turbine does has pros and cons. on so many of these issues you take the lowest common denominator cons that people instantly latch on and complain about but ignore the benefits.
Your fundamental argument that turbine should just perfectly match up time and reward for all these instances misses the fundamental drawbacks of such a system. It leads to cookie-cutter instances which have the same type of length, strategy and difficulty, because if these things are at all different, players will gravitate to the easiest, quickest and simplest strategy one regardless of potentially higher rewards in the more difficult content bc of the chance of failing. see: skumfil HM or even Forges HM versus GS for a perfect example of this. Both the Forges and Skumfil HM have better time/reward payoff than GS when done right and have some nice teal jewel pieces to boot (esp forges) but no one does them because of the chance of failure and the necessity for a bit of strategy. Once you introduce different elements, different levels of difficulty, different lengths the players will gravitate towards the one that (right or wrong) is seen as giving the best/most certain/easiest payoff. And then they will do it. Again and again and again. And then they’ll complain that there’s no content even though there’s half a dozen other instances that they could be running.
Also a point JWB brought up in an interview which is really good is that if you can do everything daily or whatever then you feel pressured to do your easiest run daily every time you log in. The example with the school/lib vs annuminas/GB (esp now that sambrog is fixed) is apposite. you aren’t going to run the ones that have a higher chance of failure (even though GB thadur probably takes about the same time as the school/library) while your daily rewards for the easier ones are up. Players take the path of least resistance, so they do their school/library every day and don’t do the other content.
This constant repititon of the path of least resistance instances leads to player burnout. GS, Sword halls, School/lib, helegrod drake wing@L50 – I hate these instances with a burning passion because that’s all the player base wants to play. And that’s because they hit the path of least resistance and nothing else.
Give the changes time, see how the players ACTUALLY react to them rather than hypothesising (guessing really) that nothing will ever get run based on a week of live experience. See how you feel once the pressure of doing that easy daily run is off you and you find that you actually end up learning, experiencing and playing a good proportion of the new content.
March 30, 2011 at 1:17 am
“it’s semi-weekly, not bi-weekly, so it resets twice a week.”
how long do I have you wait, where do I see this in the game?
March 30, 2011 at 2:50 am
I think all instances should be short they should have only 1 group of trash between bosses after all if I fight lots of hard hitting mobs in a group I would like some sort of reward like make all trash drop skm also all new instances should drop s3m and you should have a small chance at the new first age component (higher chance in 6 man t2) my second problem with the new instances is that in t2 the bosses have a really high chance of one-shooting me and that is wrong, I successfully healed the first 2 bosses in BG, full DN, watcher and turtle and I don’t remember ever getting killed from random circumstances this much I thought the whole point of the new instances was to eliminate luck well I don’t see that for example the shards debuff at cold bear in t2 does 2.5 k damage per tick my hp is 3.5 k (my power is 5k)
March 30, 2011 at 3:21 am
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I have another aspect what is bad about the lock. It surely will make people play some different instances than just their favorite one(s) but …
… than there is my situation. Im a fresh 65 on Hunter on one of the “new” servers (Dwarrowdelf) – and the problems there is, that there are not so much players around.
I often see people getting together (after hours of getting a 12-men), start the instance and than fail big time in the beginning, which often leads to many players leaving the instance after like 10 minutes cause of frustration and “sorry – i gtg – no time. good luck”. And its nearly impossible to find new guys to replace them. So the instance failed and than we have wait for the lock to disappear.
All i want to say is that it sucks if you have to abort an instance because of lacking players and than not be able to repeat it right away.
(Yesterday i took a peek in Ost Dunhoth to see what will expect us there. And now i have to wait for another week to enter it again.)
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March 30, 2011 at 4:03 am
I think the approach of Turbine is not a bad one … but not the ideal one.
They should reward the instances based on they time needed … so that it makes no difference if I run instance A or B.
the locks force people to run all of them … but … the locks are to long. the week has 7 days … open the locks on Saturday, Monday and Thursday … this should work better: The weekend-players would have Friday and the weekend … the players under the week have two possibilites, too.
This approach is typical Turbine: The idea is basically a good one … but the realisation is not a finally discussed topic.
March 30, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Lol the locks don’t force me to run more content at all. All they do is inhibit me from running the new content. My barrier to content is imposed by my timezone and my server population (firefoot). All I really have time for on a daily basis are 3mans. If I am lucky I will get in one 6man a week. I liked the way it worked in Moria. If Turbine wants people to run more than GS make some loot worth having drop from the other instances. But don’t punish folks by reducing reward if I ran NCF successfully yesterday, now I get no coins…
Locks on the raid are fine with me. Locks on the 6man and 3mans are silly. I log in, usually an hour or 2 after my kin(s) have started a raid. Sucks to be PST. So I don’t get to run them unless someone bails midway. I try and get some kinnies to run the new 3mans with me once raid is over. Or on nights when there is no raid. I usually get maybe one kinnie to run with me, or I pug it. The new content is hard for pugs, and kinnies on tier 2 the only level that drops any loot worth aquiring. It still takes an hour to for a clean NCF tier 2 run.
How long does a clean run of the temple take? I just don’t have the time to run the temple, or the Forochel 6man. I would love to, but would probably have to PUG it. All the locks do for me is mean I earn very few barter tokens, when that does become my motivation for those runs, as right now I am running them for fun, and for a nice caster bracelet that drops from Stoneheight T2. It will mean I run them much less.
I agree with Haakon on this. The new lock system is just silly. I wiped plenty on SH initially, and on dungeons and warpens. So I don’t think difficulty was the real reason people didn’t run those intances, it was time. Dungeons in particular took alot more time than SH. Again I agree with Haakon, 3mans need to be fairly quick.
And good grief 230 tokens for one piece? A piece I don’t even really want! Lol! So far I have 70. I will definately just wait until cap increases, becasue I will never earn enough for the set. At least I can use those coins for SOEs…