Well, it turns out that the Great Bounty Quest Bonanza is, indeed, the result of a miscalculation by the developers. Responding to complaints on the US forums about overcrowding at the bounty sites, Vastin, a member of Turbine’s online team, admitted as much: “It might surprise you to know that rewards are handled separately from quest design. Our content team designs quests, estimates how long they'll take, and then the systems guys designate the rewards that they will give out. In this case we overestimated how long the quests would take to run, and our systems folks overshot the reward a bit, and both factors combined to provide a hefty dose of IXP love for you folks”.
Whoops. Nice to know just how these things happen, plus it’s a relief to discover that the devs will cheerfully admit to the occasional all-too-human cock-up.
What next? Still according to Vastin, “I'm considering various fixes to reduce the crush at them. The easiest and most logical short term fix would be to increase the length of the quest timers on them to 3 days or so, so that's the front runner at the moment. […]We don't have another patch scheduled for a while yet, so it'll likely stay as-is for a time”.
So gather ye rosebuds whilst ye may. Personally, I would much prefer the other solution Vastin proposed, namely upgrading the two group quest targets to massive, Arch-Nemesis-on-Steroids class, but I think that was tongue-in-cheek. Too bad.
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I would have rather seen the reward nerfed than get yet another cooldown attached to a seemingly-overlengthy grind.
"Oh, it's okay that it takes forever, because once a week you can have a huge boost on a cooldown."
Doing the quest twice as often means that you solve the problem by playing the game. Leaving the reward at double the intended level and attaching a cooldown feels like a tacit admission that they're just trying to string you along for more subscription fees.
Also, I wish they would steal Blizzard's idea of shaving an hour or two off of any 24+ hour cooldowns, so that players who are on at the same time of day don't end up pushing the time when the cooldown becomes available later and later each cycle.
I would have rather seen the reward nerfed than get yet another cooldown attached to a seemingly-overlengthy grind.
Agreed - that would be a much better short-term solution. Making the fights extremely difficult, virtually mini-raids, would be better still, and provide more entertainment.
Here are the developer comments you refer to in their entirety, from Vastin:
Sorry about the crowding on the Bounty quests. My original intent was to have a fair number more of them and randomize them a bit to spread people out more, but time did not allow. We also underestimated their draw.
I'm considering various fixes to reduce the crush at them. The easiest and most logical short term fix would be to increase the length of the quest timers on them to 3 days or so, so that's the front runner at the moment.
Alternatively, I could upgrade the two group quest targets to massive, Arch-Nemesis-on-Steroids class opponents to force you to raid them. That would get more of you through per run at least... *evil grin*
But seriously, there are a number of approaches I'm considering, assuming that the crowding doesn't disappear on its own in the couple weeks as the novelty of the quests wears off.
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It might surprise you to know that rewards are handled separately from quest design. Our content team designs quests, estimates how long they'll take, and then the systems guys designate the rewards that they will give out.
In this case we overestimated how long the quests would take to run, and our systems folks overshot the reward a bit, and both factors combined to provide a hefty dose of IXP love for you folks.
Not a major concern game play-wise, as we'd been meaning to speed that up some in any case - but it does mean that this particular quest line is being run heavily and becoming crowded as a result.
We don't have another patch scheduled for a while yet, so it'll likely stay as-is for a time. Enjoy.
There is some (unintentional?) irony in the title of your blog post. You use that quotation to refer to a state of uncoordinated effort when in fact it refers to the moral imperative to help others, which is exactly what the full text of the comments reveal was the developers' intention with this change. His concerns were focused on the "crush" to do these quests as an issue, not the level of the rewards. You also omitted a statement that is crucial in interpreting their stance on the IXP rewards: "Not a major concern game play-wise, as we'd been meaning to speed that up some in any case".
I would prefer the difficulty stay where it is. Moving them out to three days resolves any concerns over crowding and IXP balance without changing the fellowship requirements. Raising the difficulty means more selectivity in fellowship formation, instead of the open, inclusive pickup fellowships you see now.
Re. the blog title, it is well-known that the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
More seriously, Vastin's proposed intervention (and comments) were indeed provoked by complaints of overcrowding on the US servers, but I was more interested in the fact that he also concedes that the rewards proved excessive. On the other hand, the grumbles about overcrowding at the spawn points seem a little excessive to me, given the incredibly fast respawn rate.
How the heck would reducing rewards and leaving the cooldown the same reduce the level of grind? To me, an increased cooldown is the superior solution of the two. Doing the same thing for a smaller reward means doing the same thing more to obtain an identical reward, which is the definition of grinding in an MMORPG. If you leave the reward the same but stretch the cooldown out a bit, you're making it so that players don't have to be in-game doing the same exact thing every single day.
(And even if you increase the mob difficulty, Wardens will still solo them. :p)
Ah, something I forgot in the last post. Our poll currently running at the LOTRO Vault is showing that players pretty overwhelmingly like the new bounty quests -- and the consensus I'm hearing is that they like them because they reduce the grind. Increasing the grind again would probably just upset these people.
I could be wrong, though!
The Vault poll is pretty overwhelming - 48-7 in favour of reduced grind at this point, and who could argue with that sentiment?
I don't actually disagree. The point I wanted to make from the start was that this sudden influx of huge quantities of ixp has seriously unbalanced the whole LI process. The developer's approach to legendaries was, at least to my mind, seriously flawed from the start, and now the entire system is badly skewed. Maybe it can be fixed, and maybe not. As I said in the previous post, if we're lucky this could lead to an entirely new system with the next expansion...
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