(Removed to protect the guilty. Tsk tsk, on whomever informed you of this falsity.) Will the Eglain the Travel [...] 
It seems that I was unclear in my statements in my previous blog and in truth I did muddy the waters some by introducing that little tirade in the middle
I enjoy crafting difficult challenges for players to overcome, but I like to provide them with as much information as I can on why the rules are being changed in a space - if they do at all. Barad Gularan does this well I think, and some of the skills in Grand Stair explain this too, but the cumbersome manner in which “hard-mode” - I hate that terminology - encounters were created made it difficult to convey information to players in a clear manner.
Plain and simple, exploits are bugs. Sadly, they can be bugs in our design that were not discovered until too late. Exploits almost always obviate the rules laid out in some arbitrary decision from the past.
In my mind, there should never really be one path to victory in any encounter, beat the mob(s) in whatever manner you choose. However, when there is something that is glaringly a bug (ie. not falling to your death jumping off the bridge, getting to a position where AI ceases to function, invoking anti-exploit, etc…) then you can expect that there will be a fix for that bug.
As to the reason that we do not call these out as exploits at the start… it’s pretty simple. When we screw up, we screw up and we have no desire to a) alert players to an exploit because invariably a few bad apples will emerge and b) we made the error and it’s hard for us to cry exploit immediately and bring out ban bats.
Ultimately an exploit is anything that ends up threatening the long term health of the game. The criteria for the long term health of the game was laid out a long time ago and is as immovable as Sysiphus’s rock. We can fight it on a case by case basis and may make headway toward getting it up that hill but the factors making up those decisions are often outside of our control or spheres of influence.
I love seeing emergent behavior unfold and I cringe when I realize that behavior exposes something that is going to need to be fixed. When that occurs I feel terrible because a) it exposed a hole in design or is clearly a bug which sucks to begin with and b) players are going to be peeved that we are changing the rules of a space for what seems to be arbitrary reasons. I am chastising myself as designer for not seeing the blatant holes in skill issues or for assuming when I should have followed up on my assumptions. The last thing that I want to do as an advocate of fun is change the rules because of my mistakes. Bugs I can deal with and I can remain unapologetic about, design flaws I can only learn from and do my best to not repeat again. My goal is never to impede a player, my goal is to challenge a player.
Hopefully that clears things up a little more.
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July 9th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Have you ever seen ‘emergent behavior’ lead to incorporating something new or cool? Have you ever had an example of this happening and thought “damn, that is cool and I never thought of that!”, and it inspired changes? Or do you generally view EB as negative in some part by default when you see it?
(excluding the clearly bug-based EM as opposed to group-dynamic EM)
July 9th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Yep. I have seen some pretty keen choices and ways to solve puzzles that have made me laugh hard. Honestly though, that was back in AC that I laughed. In LotRO they happen less frequently.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I think you have made some very interesting and fun challenges. The Library and School in Eregion are among my favorite instance designs.
However, I have to be honest and hopefully don’t come across as too critical, but I feel the design direction, since launch, has become more restrictive. The game has always been fairly directed and I realize that since we’re following the fellowship. The problem I have is that it seems that content is more and more intended to be handled in one way, two if we’re lucky.
I’m not telling you how to design at all. I just wanted to say that as I look back at the different games I’ve played the ones I’ve enjoyed the most have had more “sandbox” about them and less “do it this way”. I think back to the original 2D Lineage. It was open world pvp with a huge grind to gain gear to be able to pvp better. For all its flaws, limitations, and balance issues, the game still stands as one of the most fun I’ve played because I could just go do what I wanted, how I wanted.
Please conisder in future design considerations on how you can deliver the content you want while letting players do whatever they want (I’m obviously not including cheating or griefing here). Instead of funneling players into certain places or participating with certain elements by game mechanic limitations or rules, put reasons in place that draw them. I know it’s easy to “armchair develop” so forgive my over-simplification. It’s just intended as hopefully constructive feedback. I love the game. It’s good, one of the best.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I think most of us understand that bugs do get past the QC process and that emergent and unintended behavior will happen. What really gets to many players is the length of time it takes bugs to get fixed and that the bugs identified in beta testing still go live. When known bugs go live they can’t be blamed on emergent behavior. At present there are so many issues with lag, bugged insatnces,exploiting mobs, itemization etc… that never seem to get addressed or fixed. Playing Lotro has becoming an increasingly frustrating experience. Better QC and more frequent patching and fixing of bugs are clearly needed.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
“The criteria for the long term health of the game was laid out a long time ago…”
I’m curious to know what these are. Are you willing / able share them?
July 9th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Bad form, Orion. Bad form.
You have posted here, and in your last post that you are all for positive emergent behavior in this game. You also say that you’re delighted when someone thinks of a new way to do things. You also say that you’re sorry when you have to fix bugs that people exploit when they use their “new-found” strategy.
Then why on earth did you push to have all bosses immune to Crowd Control?
1) There’s nothing even remotely exploit-like about rooting, dazing, slowing, or stunning a boss. This is an example of you NOT wanting to limit our positive emergent behavior, but that’s exactly what you’ve done. You didn’t fix any bug. You limited what players can do.
2) What do you expect Lore-Masters and Burglars to do? They’re CC classes! That’s their job! That’s why people bring them in groups. Sure they do other things well, but they’re much better at CC than any other classes are.
3) How is this situation now balanced? CC is the primary role of the Lore-Master, and to some extent the Burglar. Sure, they can do other things, but to truly balance the classes vs. their primary role in a boss fight, you would now have to make ALL bosses completely immune to DPS and Threat Management, as well as make it so that no one can raise morale during a boss fight. So that the primary roles of ALL classes are ineffective.
4) Kiting is just as valid a strategy as Ping-Ponging and Tank-n-Spanking. What is different about kiting? Why does this one strategy piss you off?
5) You say that you’re looking to truly challenge us players. Why do THIS? There are LOTS of easier and better ideas that I, even as a lowly player, could have thought of to challenge players, other than eliminating CC across the board against bosses. Timers to prevent people from soloing the content, increased resistance against individual types of CC, and faster-running bosses are among the less complicated ones.
6) Here is a quote from your post entitled, “Thoughts on Exploits and Emergent Game Play”: “Rooting a boss in position or slowing them and having them get chased around a circle seems silly, it seems shoddy and frankly it pissed me off. I got on a very high horse and screamed a lot.” Why did it piss you off? I mean, I just don’t understand how OTHER PEOPLE playing a video game that YOU HELPED CREATE using a VERY WELL-KNOWN strategy could piss you off. I mean really… you screamed? You were pissed? C’mon, I know you’re more mature than that. And if not, how in good conscience can you call this a good decision? You were pissed off, screaming from a high horse. When has that EVER yielded a good decision?
I’m one of the most laid-back, casual players in this game. I don’t even play a Lore-Master or a Burglar. I only play a Rune-Keeper, with very modest CC skill that I would hardly ever use in a boss fight. But even I think this is grossly unfair to CC classes in the game.
It’s not a bug. It’s not an exploit. It’s a well-known tactic for defeating enemies, and has been LONG before Lord of the Rings Online. You could have done a better job at challenging us than this. The kind of challenge you were looking for needed to be surgically cut with a scalpel, and you beat it into oblivion with the largest club you could find.
Don’t preach from your high horse to us what is fun for us. Let us tell you what is fun. I’m sure that most Lore-Masters and Burglars agree that being able to CC bosses was fun. Feel free to manipulate the way the bosses react to CC, but don’t take it away completely.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I see what you’re saying. I think where players and dev’s clash on these things (it seemed like at the end you were specifically getting at Enrage no longer working on the turtle) is that it becomes very subjective. Devs design something one way, players see the problems and solve them in ways that weren’t intended, so Devs make adjustments to the encounter. Players speak out angrily because they were solving the encounter without “exploiting” in the first place and they feel forced into doing something a different way. I think the Turtle raid in particular was aggravating because Enrage is a skill in the players’ bag of tricks (no pun intended) that certainly wouldn’t count as an exploit.
A similar situation would be the Balrog. It certainly seemed like that encounter was designed (at the time before radiance) to require a loremaster to keep the raid from cowering. Had the dev team come in and made the changes to SoR after a few months I’m sure the player base would have responded in the same irritated fashion. But both situations are similar in that a challenge was placed before the players and the challenge was solved via non-exploitative method. But the dev responses to each were not the same. Was the Enrage solution to the Turtle just seen as making the encounter “too easy”?
I’m curious about your thoughts about boss fights and slows (and also kiting) as solutions to challenges. With DN we have seen slow immunity being put on all bosses rather than a mechanic to prevent kiting (such as high ranged damage, special skills that activate when the tank isn’t within a certain range, etc). Why the change in how that issue is being handled? Has ranged tanking and kiting become a problematic EB with LOTRO content? Have the devs considered that the slows available to players might be the root of the problem? (similar to how In Harm’s Way was adjusted since it unbalanced encounters too much) I don’t mean to be disrespectful but the immunity buff on the DN bosses just seems to be the “easy way out”, when perhaps some more time should have been spent on these bosses to give them skills to counteract kiting attempts.
I’m also curious on how EB impacts character population. I know in my own kin that the mechanics of the Balrog fight created a demand for LMs, but how much do the encounters and the way they need to be beaten effect class ratios? What is the current % breakdown of LOTRO classes? How has that changed since, say, The Rift was released? I’d love to see that data.
Anyhow, I thanks for taking the time to post this, its well worded and I see where you’re coming from. I agree that blatant exploits need to be fixed, while other situations must be adjusted as the situation merits “for the long term health of the game”. Unfortunately, not everybody is going to agree on how to go about the latter.
Also, off topic, but I am really looking forward to seeing your next redesign efforts, and I’m crossing my fingers that they let you design a way for us to major fellowship/raid instances at higher levels. The old instances like CD/BG/Uru/Helegrod/Rift/Fornost just aren’t the same when you’re blowing through them at 60. I’d love to be able to enter a separate version with level cap appropriate mobs for fun (and perhaps profit as well like faction reputation rewards to ease the grind).
July 9th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Stormy,
If I could, I would, you know that.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Perfect,
Allow me to counter your opinion with mine. Rooting/slowing bosses goes against the very fundamental of a boss fight - to me. If every boss can be rooted/slowed than the tactics for beating every boss will be to root/slow the boss to defeat the encounter.
As designers we need to take into consideration the roles of all the classes and ensure that there is still something for them to do other than DPS. Lore-masters in fights against bosses fulfill their class role of support by ensuring that their party members are topped off with power, that they are keeping the boss with relatively low power, getting rid of dangerous wounds, spot healing and dealing with any dangerous adds. Grand Stair allows for all of these these things to continue in the final fight against Igash.
Burglars primary role is not CC. It is really a unique role that also includes fellowship maneuvers. They both are able to fill their roles, but they have diminished affect with some of their skills.
I understand your opinion. You see nothing wrong with a boss fight that consists of the boss being locked down in CC while the fellowship tears through him. I understand how that is acceptable and desirable to some.
However, I have a directive that instance spaces are meant to be more challenging and to achieve that challenge I need the ability to create that challenge. It can be argued that the approach take is a chainsaw where some would use a scalpel. I choose the chainsaw because it provides me with a wider berth to provide that challenge.
Entering an instance space changes the rules. One can never know what knew challenge will await them, because if all challenges are alike then there is no challenge. Suddenly everything that was understood is on its ear and players must learn strategy to deal with difficult encounters.
It’s stacked against players. It is that way on purpose as the directive I have is to provide a challenge for players. Kiting is a very valid strategy one of my favorites when I play games actually. However, kiting without risk because you can apply a slow to a mob so that it will never reach you or you will have enough time to exceed its range or what have you leads back to that earlier statement of no true challenge.
I am also constrained by resources and technology as well. While some of your suggestions seem simpler, they likely have some restriction within the boundaries of my tool set that prohibit me from incorporating them in a timely fashion or without the need for some new tech to handle certain behaviors. There is more involved than, “this is so much simpler.” While it may be true in a general sense, it may not be true within context.
I am far less mature than you give me credit for and yet, I do understand and appreciate your opinion. As I said in my first blog I am unapologetic about the change. I am not afraid to say that at all. My directive on creating instances is clear - create something challenging. That challenge is made easier when I take some things away and fill the void with others.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Orion,
You keep returning to the “kiting without risk using slows is unbalancing” argument, but I think you’re missing the point.
If you really want to prevent kiting, have some reason why the group can’t do that. *Don’t* just say “The boss is immune to slow”. Instead, make it so the boss does steadily increasing ranged damage (Watcher solution), or make it so that the boss switches to random aggro if nobody’s in melee range, or have the boss do a big AOE attack if nobody’s in melee range, or have him stop and summon adds, or …
There are dozens of possible, interesting solutions to this problem. Some might even allow kiting but make it freaking hard- that would be great. (Perhaps the group can’t find a tank?)
I know that some of the more complex actions might be hard to program, but some of the above are pretty trivial and even implemented on other bosses
One of the biggest complaints about the changes in Moria is that most of the instances are DPS fests with little to no strategy needed. Crowd control classes took it the hardest since you simply didn’t need them- it was easier and safer just to nuke everything down. I had LM friends more or less hang up their mains since they weren’t wanted, needed or even useful in a lot of instances- take another hunter or champ instead. I’m a main healer- I can’t recall a single instance where I get *my* skills locked out, so why are other classes losing their raison d’etre?
July 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
One other quick comment- I’ve enjoyed the 3-mans in Book 8 just because they are so CC friendly. Hunter/LM/Minstrel is a really powerful group for them, and a good LM can make the hardest pulls smooth. Nice job!
July 9th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I really appreciate that you take the time to reply to specific posts. That’s awesome! I’m sure you get sick of some of the tone. So thanks for taking the time! I know I succummed to the DoT and slows of reading all the replies to your original post. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll have rezzed and finish them off.
I’m new, low lvl, have never run the GS and haven’t seen any changes to anything I ran before. I have no complaints about specifics in game.
My only “real” comment is that “exploit” sounds like cheating. So if Emergent behaviour doesn’t violate “in game laws of physics” (like mobs getting stuck or not pulling when supposed to, hiding in a wall, etc) I don’t think it should be called an exploit. I think an exploit is taking advantage of an error in coding, not an error in planning or design. If some emergent behaviour (ie strategies) arises that makes an encounter too easy, but not by breaking the in game laws of physics, then I think the dev’s should fess up and say, “Wow, you guys outsmarted us. We intended this encounter to be hard. You found an easy way to do it. Good job. We’re making it hard again.” That’s totally within your right and mandate to do as devs. Just don’t call it an exploit because that sounds like players are “breaking the rules” whereas they’re really just finding things the devs didn’t think of. A subtle but important difference. It also means giving credit where credit is due- that the players “outsmarted” or figured out the instance.
Players who play within the spirit of the game don’t want to be lumped in with clear “cheaters” who make use of coding errors. So please don’t use quite such a broad definition of “exploit” and just say you want to make something hard again. I think the players whose opinions matter to you will understand that.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:01 am
LOL Orion, thankfully you weren’t a designer in the now defunct Myst Online URU Live where one of the puzzles was to literally enter a room, push a button, and stand still for the next 15 minutes until a ladder descended.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:17 am
HI again
I gotta say, even though I don’t agree with some of your basic principles it’s so great that you are doing this and I hope it continues.
I’m a near full timer in what many of us view as your sandbox, the moors, so I’m a fan. Maybe a grumbling one on occassion (*cough* incurable warg slows are BS and you yourself say if an skill works better than its counter skill its unbalanced and must be fixed asap *cough*) but a fan none the less.
So from your previous blog you mentioned that you were the driving force behind all bosses immune to CC. I get your reasoning and I’m not going to go into the gear thing again.
But This: “That challenge is made easier when I take some things away and fill the void with others.” But you are only one dev. What happens when a less imaginative or less interested dev, forced under your No-CC directive is coming up with instances? They turn to pure dps fights, right? Which many find not very interesting.
Please don’t say you can’t comment on what others are doing because my issue is with the umbrella you popped that the other instance boss fights must now live under; not how to correctly live under that umbrella.
I mean, I’m fine with you finding imaginitive ways to play by your own rule (except for the grinding part), but don’t we suffer when others just go, “Meh, no CC, lets give the boss uber morale, uber dps and some adds and see how the little buggers do.”
July 10th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Hi Orion,
first of all thank you for your series of blogs. I even understand your problems and concerns and while I wished there would be other solutions I understand that there aren’t.
But I want to comment on this sentence of yours:
“The criteria for the long term health of the game was laid out a long time ago and is as immovable as Sysiphus’s rock. ”
While I accepted your form to use radiance as a gear gating I think with book 8 it starts threatening the long term health. I’m a player who has littlt time to play so I have no radiance gear. I don’t want to visit the raids so it’s fine for me. Now Book 8 is coming with an end boss that needs at least 5 radiance to fight him. So if you have any revival dread left over a simple Edhelharn token isn’t good enough. I always thought that the books were for everybody, not for raiders only. Now raiders have HUGE advantages over non-raiders in the book quests and instances. Take this as another hint on your “Shall we keep radiance as gear gating in Vol 3 or not” discussion that is probably running for quite a while at Turbine. I don’t expect an answer here but I expect a GOOD answer with Vol 3.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Orion,
I really appreciate you taking the time to post a little of what goes on in the creation process, and a huge thank you for taking the time to speak with the community and answer some of the posted questions.
I think this goes a long way in PR.
I just have two opinions I’d like to share. They actually have already been mentioned, so I am more just highlighting them.
1. Please always keep the books seperate from the reliance on other in-game events. As noted above, currently this would have to do with radiance. At no time do I feel that casual player who doesn’t raid could/would benefit from raiding to aid in completing the books.
2. I don’t ever believe a skill should be “not” usable (whether in PvE or PvMP). In the case of CC, I could understand (if instead of it being Immune) let their be a negative effect from using it. It just seems very generic if you can’t use this skill for the sake of it makes something too easy. Especially after someone has taken the time to gear up and work on a high level toon. I would much rather have feeling of “Oh wow, I guess I shouldn’t use that skill again” as opposed to “Well that stinks… it’s immune.”
I guess what I’m saying is, to me, all skills should be valid to use - and if it has an unwanted effect that the devs don’t want to see, just give the mob / boss / player a counter to it. A possible answer to appease everyone could be that if it’s a 99% fail chance… just having that 1% to succeed doesn’t invalidate the skill or make it meaningless, but also gives the devs the direction they want to head in.
At any rate, thank you again for your hard work and taking the time to be open, frank, and share some insight with us.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Sisyphus’ rock was not immovable, the problem was it rolled back to the bottom of the hill whenever he got it to the top.
Just thought I’d mention that so you are prepared for your next Sisyphean allusion.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Orion is right, Kiting is still a highly valid strategy.
Good write up!
July 10th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I have to agree with several of the posters above. Our CC classes have little left in their toolboxes as far as usability in boss encounters.
LoreMaster’s: Orion-”Lore-masters in fights against bosses fulfill their class role of support by ensuring that their party members are topped off with power, that they are keeping the boss with relatively low power, getting rid of dangerous wounds, spot healing and dealing with any dangerous adds.”
By this post a LM’s main functionability is…wait for it……a BATTERY! I have NEVER really NEEDED a LM to top off my toons with power. Learning to manage ones own power consumption and power regen is key as there is not always an LM available, especially since Book 8.
You also mention that the LM keeps a boss drained of power. C’mon, who are we kidding here? When has anyone seen a boss mob SO drained of power they could not get off their attacks on a fairly frequent basis?
Getting rid of dangerous wounds - Pot out of it, have your Minstrel keep the group healed. Wound resist foods, etc. I have yet to HAVE to bring a LM for wounds in Moria.
Spot healing -? If you say so. While a definite boon to the fellowship, the LoreMaster’s ability certainly does not affect the outcome of the encounter on a CONSISTENT basis.
Dealing with dangerous adds - By their CC? Hunter can accomplish this with RoT, Bard’s Arrow, Minstrel’s fear, and by the time they break said fears/thorns those skills have recycled.
I know I have pointed out that are solutions to every problem by using an alternate class (and the same argument can be made for ALMOST every other class - with the exception of a Minstrel) do you see where I am going?
What is the point of the LM in boss fights in Moria and especially post book 8?
DPS is king right now in Moria and appears to be so going forward in the future. Hunter’s, Champs, and RK’s are the new top dogs and everyone else is secondary. Not a pretty outlook going forward.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:33 am
From this….
“Ultimately an exploit is anything that ends up threatening the long term health of the game. The criteria for the long term health of the game was laid out a long time ago and is as immovable as Sysiphus’s rock. We can fight it on a case by case basis and may make headway toward getting it up that hill but the factors making up those decisions are often outside of our control or spheres of influence.”
Developers still need to learn that you can’t control the masses of players and their actions in-game, nor should you try. You can (and should) certainly develop MMOs that attempts to prevent exploits to some extent, but controlling these exploits after it is public is often a futile effort. Let me explain the reasoning behind this opinion of mine.
1.) Players are human beings who seek to put almost EVERYTHING to the test. Just like with our old friend Neo in the Matrix movie, curiosity and a desire to think past pre-established constructs is part of human nature. This is why we have hackers and those who enjoy reverse engineering things. Users will find bugs (and possibly exploits) regardless of how well you plan ahead. That is a given.
2.) As the computer and gaming markets continue to grow, we’ll see more and more players over time. Some may be spending their time in other MMOs, but in general, the numbers will continue to grow. It will be more and more difficult to handle this on an individual basis. You mentioned “ban bat”, so I seriously hope Turbine doesn’t ban accounts based on using exploits? (only gold farming patterns should be identified and eventually banned).
3.) There’s nothing wrong with patches to fix exploits, and I’d fully condone that without any need to announce it (or announcing it as you’ve done in the past with vague statements is fine). But please stop assuming all exploits are negatively impacting the health of a game. Just because someone finds an alternative way to complete something or defeat a boss, and just because it wasn’t the way you intended, doesn’t mean it has to be treated as an exploit and “fixed”. Fix the real exploits (ones that are obviously affecting the community in a negative way) and leave anything involving player ingenuity alone. I’ve seen patches put in place to punish and prevent ingenuity of situations that were never “exploits” because they were never negatively impacting the health of the game. One good example is you guys nerfing the ability to slow/root bosses. Instead of going back and making changes, learn from your oversights and change future bosses if you like.
4.) The expectations of a gamer are changing with a focus on more player control and less game control. This is seen in WoW, and this was seen in past MMOs like Ultima Online. But guess what? Instead of buckling down with an iron grip on game progession, the developers of these MMOs loosened their grip with very clever changes to allow more player control while providing more protection to the game’s health. For example, if an “exploit” is found with a certain boss that Turbine feels is letting people farm an instance, then don’t try to grip harder by making changes to prevent that “exploit”. Curtail farming by making the rewards less valuable overall. Or, add ‘difficult modes’ like you did with the Radiance gear instances. Perhaps earning that reward requires defeating the boss without the “exploit”, and thus negating any desire to farm it via the “exploit”?
In short, I encourage you and the Turbine team to be creative and push the boundaries of MMOs with LOTRO. Don’t just do things on par with MMO-expectations. Innovate. Use WoW as an example of both expectations and frustrations and push past that. Don’t play catch-up with WoW; pass them up on innovation. As a more nimble development team, you have the potential to shake things up a bit.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Orion,
First the disclaimer: the following is my opinion formed from playing this game for 16 months. I have 4 toons at level cap, 2 of which were at cap for several months before Moria came out. I have only been raiding since April. I have my radiance gear on 2 toons. But I have 3rd age LIs because I’m bored with the LI system and 1 toon that will never have radiance gear just because I never want to do the Moria instance grind again.
There is a disconnect between class development and content/instance development. You and your content team have asked (maybe demanded?) for changes to class skills in order to accommodate content/instance design. To me that is exactly backward. I want content and instances to challenge the players, make them use ALL their skills in a manner that is fun and reliant on player ability.
I was unaware that stepping into an instance meant all that I had learned and mastered in the “landscape” as you put it was off the table, that entirely different type of play was going to be required. I’m okay with that, if that play is in fact a more challenging use of my skills, not a negation of them.
You say in your followup that you want players to solve puzzles in different ways, yet there’s exactly one way to do the hardmodes. “In my mind, there should never really be one path to victory in any encounter, beat the mob(s) in whatever manner you choose.” But kiting a boss makes you furious. There’s exactly one way to fight the turtle. No slowing and kiting, no guardian’s shield wall, no burglar’s FM or enrage…your rule book continues to expand. And when players find alternate methods, you “swear up and down hallways and call many designers to the mat.”
Emergent gameplay and exploits are two sides of the same coin, you said, and so emergent gameplay must be dealt with immediately. Bad players! How dare you exploit my instances! Honestly, that’s the attitude when the “fix” for emergent gameplay is a nerf to a player skill.
The 6 Moria hard mode instances turned off a lot of players. You see it in the forums; you see it in the OOC/GLFF chatter. For too long, they were the only thing to do if you were at level cap. And you had to do them to raid. They are work, they aren’t fun, because there’s really only one way to do them. So of course players are going to look for shortcuts. Don’t penalize the behavior, change the reason for the behavior.
I can’t see fun in the Moria instances, I can’t see fun in the LI system, I can’t see fun in the crafting system. I find myself more and more just hanging out in Bree, listening to the OOC and regional chat, and talking to my kin, because the people that play this game are still fun. Maybe you all need to appoint a player group to be the Fun Monitors.
- Clarysta, Lovely Lady Captain of Arkenstone
July 10th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Roots and slows don’t prevent a boss from attacking or using skills. Roots break on damage, too. I can understand a boss being fearless, and mez immune. I can reluctantly accept a boss being immune to stun (although I still think blanket immunity is stupid and lazy). But I still don’t think roots and snares were so overpowered that every boss fight devolved into using those skills as the only mechanism to victory. Not gamebreaking, not by a long shot… but taking those abilities off the table definitely makes my role in a boss fight less interesting.
I can accept that I am going to be ever bitter about [b]Orion’s Great Root Nerf™[/b] … it’s obvious when I read any comments I’ve made on the subject, including the previous paragraph.
Still, I can’t help but think it’s an easy and efficient (or when I’m bitter, stupid and lazy) way out from a coder’s perspective. There are ways to limit the effectiveness of those skills without just making IMMUNE pop up every time. But that would take a lot more development effort than just eliminating those class skills that make programming challenging content so difficult.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Thanks again. This second post clarifies things even more (although the first entry seemed pretty clear to me as well).
“I love seeing emergent behavior unfold and I cringe when I realize that behavior exposes something that is going to need to be fixed. When that occurs I feel terrible …”
Don’t feel terrible–nobody is perfect. And I don’t know a lot about programing and such, but it seems to me it’s inevitable because no one can really predict what people will do with 100% certainty.
I am also glad you mentioned this: “we made the error and it’s hard for us to cry exploit immediately and bring out ban bats.” It’s always been a question/concern for me.
I tend to think outside the box a lot and love to come up with cleaver plans (I used to be the bane of PnP RPG game masters). I am one of those players who asks, “what if I did this, THIS way?” and then try. I sometimes worry that what I see as innovative might seem glaringly wrong or unintended to you. I also sometimes wonder if things I “figure out” weren’t actually intended all along. I am just this way to 1) Be different 2) test my limits 3) see if I can figure out the uber way to solve the puzzle (yeah, I hone in on riddle/puzzle quests like a bee to honey). I am the type of person who can end up with a group of three minstrels, a loremaster, a burg, and a champion in GS and say, “we can figure out a way to make this work” even though most people would say, “it’s unbalanced.”
Anyway, has Turbine ever considered doing a focus group of players and actually watch them work though an instance? Maybe this could be done remotely somehow on Bullroarer as well as the live game (not with the idea of banning people, but with the idea of learning from behavior)?
July 10th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
MysterX,
If a boss is rooted or slowed and players in the encounter move away from said creature and a burglar has enrage slapped on the creature so that the creature loses it’s ability to use ranged skills and attempts to attack a different target at random and cannot reach those targets because they are far enough away and he reaches his next decision point in a fight and chooses someone new because there is no threat there is only Zuul! All those wonderful dependencies work together to create an encounter that has the boss attempting to get to a location, failing and choosing somewhere new, failing and choosing somewhere new and failing…etc…
Let’s take enrage away and apply the root/slow scenario. The players move away and use the layout of the room against the creature. Most skills - including creature skills - execute at certain ranges. Exceed that range and the skill will fail to execute. Slowing a boss enables this happen more easily. I have nothing against kiting it makes sense. I employ in my gameplaying, it is emergent and fun. It enables me to kill creatures without getting him and that makes me feel like I am doing something cool. I do not expect boss mobs to act the same way. Roots, same thing. Yes, they break on damage but a creature can be stopped giving players enough time to root and move, root and move.
Is the solution heavy-handed, yes. Is it stupid and lazy, everyone has opinions, no opinions are wrong because they are personal. The decision was made that this was the right course of action. You can feel free to be bitter at me and think that I am lazy and stupid - that is your choice.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
So… if you don’t like the term “Hard Mode,” what would you prefer that we use?
July 10th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I don’t think you are stupid and lazy. I think blanket immunity is. But I am realizing that I can’t discuss the subject very objectively because I am definitely still upset that I lost some skills that formerly had a function in boss fights.
Does enrage and sticky tar somehow prevent bosses from using Tactical Skills too? Kiting is valid against bosses but root n’ scoot isn’t? It still seems like being forced to play a certain way. I don’t mind having certain skill taken away from me in a given fight. Krankluk is one of my favorite fights in the game because I have to manage my power completely differently than I am accustomed to. Not being able to EVER use a skill just because it’s a boss with no adds is irritating, especially when that skill previously helped the group. There are better (albeit more resource-intensive) solutions than blanket immunity, in my honest opinion. Diminishing returns on root duration, for example.
At least I’ve heard good things about the new raid and creative ways they have programmed around using excessive CC. This is what I would prefer as opposed to completely negating skills that could be used to prevent a wipe or save a squishy when there’s a crisis.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Hey Orion,
Good set of posts.
The problem I see here with the radiance instances/emergent gameplay is that there simply becomes one strat to deal with everything in order to get gear. It becomes simple, repetitive, and dull. I saw so many fellows in Moria running an instance repeatedly until everyone had their gear.
Because of this, I became very fond of Dark Delvings in Foundations of Stone where you would get random groups adds. It forced us to think on our feet a bit and success was never 100% assured until we got that rythm down.
The hard modes had offered some very unique challenges that way, including figuring out what hard mode was.
I think Hall of Crafting may have rectified a lot of the hard feelings toward CC immune becuaes a little CC makes life a whole lot better in there.
Immune to slows, etc. does not prevent a valid kiting strategy … it does however make it more challenging. I also like how you worked with the proximity immunes .. as in Grand Stairs. It forced us, unless we had dual tanks, to keep the devoted away from the archers.
What I would like to see however, and this does go beyond instance generation, is for the LOTRO crew to develope valid alternatives to the raid gear. Right now every 60 hunter has mostly the same gear. And that particular gear set is required for the gated instances. In the end, this does not force, but recommends a certain trait set for each of the classes. And in the end reenforces the “one true strat” mentality which always leaves some classes out in the cold.
Systems wise, Turbine has developed a fairly solid trait system. I would like to see some more of those alternative traits become more valid with boss strategies and see more concrete gear to support them without overwhelming the abilities of other classes.
For example, (and this goes back to the CC Immune and touches on one of the most underused hunter lines … trapper of foes … My main is a hunter and I have the most experience with those) if a boss, let’s say Igash (who would be a terror rooted btw) had a CC reduction of let us say 65% which is where a level 60 toon is capped, and the hunter/LM whatever is doing CC has a trait set and possibly a single item which would kick his/her CC rating to 70%, this would grant a small, but possibly fair chance of rooting you boss mob, make the class traiting for such more viable, and possibly grant alternative capabilities for customizing ones character. Furthermore, since success is not 100%, it would keep the encounter challenging, and enable us to avoid the “one true strat” mentality and maintain an elemnt of chance which forces players to think on their feet.
Of course, such a holistic and cohesive approach would take a LOT of work in systems, content, art and QA to ensure that it does work as intended. Would something like that be worth it in terms of time, budget and scheduling?
July 11th, 2009 at 1:12 am
NOTE: just /ignore this if you don’t want some jerk telling you how to do you your job.
1.Does this followup mean that you have looked at my suggested fixes for GS/HoC that I made in your other previous blog entry? If yes, I have made a ton of new enemies. If no, then get to fixing it!
2.You don’t have to make blanket immunity to stun/root/enrage for every boss. You did a fine job in the forges of preventing people from doing that. Rotating flames: the final boss has no problem with the fire but if HE can not come to YOU then YOU lose. Here, fire and light immunity for the final boss fits too. Good job in creating a believable scenario for sticking such immunities on a boss. The immunity to LM power drain however, does not fit despite the mouse-over text sounding good, but whatever, overall very nicely done instance.
3. Fil Gashan. Are orcs really dumb enough to let someone that looks like one of their superiors start reviving a bunch of people that they just killed? If yes, then this instance is WAI. If no, then healing/reviving should draw immediate aggro from them and/or remove the disguise from the person wearing it. Force people to find all of the costumes before moving to the next stage. Other than that, this was another good instance despite the last boss being immune to all but his own traps
Some more random things (aka lame suggestions):
-Hitting CC classes with the nerf-bat in instances only leads to fan aggro. Do I NEED CC in GS? Only if I am doing it the turkey way with 4 or less people. Do I NEED a LM in Forges? Only if the mini I am with does not know how to manage their power well. Do I NEED a Burg/Hunter there? Nope, but the second boss will be a huge pain without one. What about Skumfil? Only one person in the party needs the ward so this becomes a dps-fest. Make it like the statues in Angmar: no ward = instadeath.
-Radiance should not always be bar to pass when doing a post-SoA raid. The turtle is nice 12-man that needs no special gear or strategy (just 2mini, 2capt, 1 guard and a dps-fest). VM and DN? Each needs progressively more radiance just to walk in and I don’t like that idea… unless they were designed for hardcore players and/or raiding kins but then they should be even harder than the hard-mode instances that were required to get the right gear.
-Having gear from the instances should not be a requirement for doing the epic line of quests; radiance or otherwise. I think someone above mentioned this too but I have heard a number of complaints from people doing vol2 book8 that with their current, non-instance gear that book8 is too hard. However…they could just be bad players. I don’t know, I am just venting a bit with this item.
-Put the nerf-bat down. Adjusting is one thing, but a -30% to incoming healing is another. If you don’t want me to use a skill in an instance or group just disable it when I go into the area (ala PvMP Zone). A debuff that reads “Dev Rage” or something to let me know why it was disabled will do just fine
July 12th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
[...] This post was Twitted by Codepilots [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
I’ve read both of the posts regarding emergent behaviour and people’s replies to them and I agree to disagree on many points.
My gripe is when these “hardmode” instances came out, they were unbelievably monotone. It was all the same random kitefest I’ve disliked from previous games. The Stairs, the 16th hall, Fil Gashan, the DD bosses. Noone wants to run around in a circle, kiting the boss, while he’s burned down via ranged dps. But at the time it was the only viable option you developers left to us players. Sure there were some kins that could tank and spank the encounter like you had wished it to be but you, the developers, forgot that the majority of us players came into MoM with only average gear. Add to that the relatively low healing power of minstrels before their screams were answered by some healing output buffs, and they were nigh impossible for all but the most hardcore players. All the while, those average-geared players like myself, were absolutely trounced into oblivion time and time again by ridiculous CC/Conjuction immunities, scaling corruptions, and random AOE damage.
I ask, how can something be fun if you get stuck with 4-5 hours of running into a brick wall with nothing to show for it but a 4-5 gold repair bill? And yet this is exactly what you posted you were trying to avoid. Doesn’t this say to Turbine that perhaps another method should be tried out?
In order to make these new instances challenging, Turbine took away the effectiveness of our CC classes, left us with poor armor defense, and low healing output and then even gave trash mobs massive aoe damage. Well we quickly learned that if we wanted to survive, we’d have to kite the heck out of every single mob/boss fight. That’s not emergent behaviour, that’s a lack of options. Let me explain:
If we have no capability to mez, daze, stun, slow mobs, then we have to tank all of them at the same time.
If our armor defense and healing output is too low, then we cannot tank all those mobs all at the same time for too long.
If there’s a time limit on our ability to stay alive holding all those mobs, then we must increase our dps in order to burn them down faster.
=
So of course the players did what the path they were being herded along forced them to do. Kite the mobs/boss and range dps from afar.
But kiting led to another problem… the overlooking of the guard class. It soon became apparent that stacking a group with dps classes was far superior than any other group makeup and I soon felt terrible for all the guards in our kin that were falling by the wayside. Where had the challenging instances, like the Balrog, gone that required them? Where had the effectiveness of the LMs and Burglars gone that shined so well in that 12 man instance? I compare these new instances to the Balrog because I believe of all the instances in lotro, it was by far the most challenging and fun for a group to accomplish.
We had to escort an npc, we had to pull levers, we had to interrupt the everseer and his aoe shadow damage while killing darklings, we had to tank the balrog and cure disease/poison, and all the while sustaining enough dps to down him before we were all wiped.
And then the patches came, where minstrels’ healing output was buffed and by this time most of us had gone through all these instances 100+ times each. And so relatively well geared and with the added boosts to healing, we could simply blender our way through all the trash mobs to make the instances go even faster. Wouldn’t you be tempted to do that if it meant that you didn’t have to spend twice as much time running the same instance for the 101st time?
And so we continued to blender our way through trash mobs and bosses without penalties. But again, it falls to the developers… what other avenue was open to us if we were being forced to dps through mobs in order to beat a timer? You can’t very well ask us to slow down when everything in the game coding was pushing us to speed up. The turtle instance is the perfect example of this. A massive hp sponge with ever increasing dots. The entire turtle instance just screams “More DPS, More DPS!!”. And so we the players did what we were told and followed the yellow brick road and threw on more and more dps. And then the balance team came along and said… “Hold on a sec, you’re not supposed to do that!” And whap whap went the nerf bat on the hunters. And whap whap went the nerf bat on all weapon dps. And whap whap went the nerf bat on the champions. And again the average-geared player got trounced into oblivion, but this time it wasn’t from the in-game mobs, but from Turbine themselves.
Where the developers might see emergent behaviour, I see downtrodden players looking for a way out. A way out of monotone kite-fests, a way out of running the same instance 150 times, a way out of the path they are being forced down. The class skills we have are sometimes used in imaginative ways, ways that were never thought of as possible. This isn’t gamebreaking so much as it is out-of-the-box thinking to difficult problems. There are exploits like using the doors in the instances and those are outright bugs. But crowd controlling mobs in an end game fight is not. Sure, you can increase resistances to such for the bosses but don’t slap on outright immunity on them and every single one of their mob helpers too.
If you want to create a challenge, then make the instance use all of the different class abilities and skills to their fullest. Trying to create a challenge by negating certain skills only limits our options as players and starts a chain-reaction of events that only leads to frustration.
How about killing certain trash mobs in order to defeat a boss? How bout pulling a lever across the room at a certain time during a fight right after the boss throws out a massive slow on players? How about using in-game items at certain times of a fight like in Barad Gularan? How about defeating a boss through healing per second instead of damage per second? It doesn’t all have to be about a boss throwing out massive damage, or players inflicting massive damage as fast as possible, or fighting against a timer. And when you create the instance, make sure it’s designed to challenge the average-geared player and not a player using all the max items in game.
In the end, the emergent behaviour I wanna see is the following:
-let the guards tank
-let the wardens off-tank
-let the burglars throw conjuctions/debuff
-let the loremasters use crowd control/debuff
-let the champions melee and aoe dps
-let the hunters range dps
-let the runekeepers range dps while kiting
-let the captains buff/save the fellowship
-let the minstrels heal/buff
July 20th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Alright, posting for the first time here. First off, I have loved what I have seen of the book 8 content, it has moved back towards the multi-faceted encounters of the Rift and similar spaces before the release of Moria. In regards to the ways in which you choose to deal with emergent behaviours, I have this to say: it would seem to me as a player that the options and ways of approaching encounters were becoming less flexible (for the most part) than were encounters in Shadows of Angmar.
First, a disclaimer, the two characters which I spend most of my time on are a warden and a burglar. From Moria release, I played with the Gambler line almost exclusively (despite its faults in book 6) because I liked the concept and the feel, and hate “min-maxing”. Now things have been adjusted, so at least we have seen positive changes, but I am saying this now to try to avoid similar periods of extreme frustration in the future.
I play a burglar not to DPS, but to have a handle on how the overall fight goes. Debuffing targets, crowd-controlling others, remaining aware of when I can use every tool in my bag of tricks to the best advantage of the group. Imagine my surprise when I logged into Moria, and found, time and again, that a large portion of my tricks (not just the skill type:tricks) were of no effect. In fact, the biggest frustration of all, personally, was the apparent randomness of all the immunities (and I am not just talking about boss encounters here) to large portions of my skill set.
I noticed that for a Gambler in particular, certain of our gambles would never apply (as the monster was immune to stuns, Startling Twist for example would not fire. Huge numbers of monsters, for absolutely no apparent reason, would have “immune” pop over their heads when I used one of my FM starter skills, yet would still be vulnerable to a break defenses FM.
These are just a couple of examples. I really hope that you do take into account that: #1: you are setting an unfavourable precedent when your method of creating more difficult content involves blocking skills of multi-faceted classes, obviating a classes’ primary role (ala Guardians), and approaching things with a blanket approach that makes whole skillsets largely useless.
#2: That the QC phases have either failed to discover, failed to alert you the developers, or failed to address discovered issues where parameters applied in specific (and now in at least once case, all boss encounters) are causing the same effect of skill debilitation outside of said instanced space.
For me, the biggest problem I had with the direction of design in Moria was the shift to DPS focus only for all classes in Radiance instances, and the sheer randomness with which the immunities you applied to specific encounter spaces affected all spaces within Moria. (ie: two orcs of the same name, standing side by side, in non instanced Moria, one is immune to mezzing, or to FMs, the other is not)
This was a large issue, and I do not know whether it was intended or not. It seemed to me and to a number of others to make absolutely no sense.
Also, with classes that require certain skills to be used in certain orders to certain effects, it can be extremely detrimental if a blanket immunity stops the skill that is a step to another skill.
Obviously I am speaking primarily from a burglar perspective, and I hope that that bias does not interfere with the points I am trying to make.
I understand you have a difficult job in creating content that is challenging and fun for players of different skill levels and equipment levels, which are hopefully not driven into obselescence soon afterward.
Thank you for your time.