TURBINE PRIORITIES

On 16 April, players on Codemasters forum were asked to respond to the the following in the Talk to the Community Team thread: "You are given the opportunity to move two items to the top of our priority list. Choose two of the following items and assign them either first priority or secondary priority: Radiance, Legendary items, Housing, Kinships, PvMP, General itemization (loot, rewards), New Skirmishes, New Raids, Revamping old Raids/instances, Trait/deed revamp".

By the morning of the 23rd, 139 players had responded with the following choices:

• 89:  PvMP

• 52:  Legendary Items

• 22:  New raids and skirmishes

• 20:  Radiance

• 19: Trait/Deed revamp

• 16:  General itemisation

• 14:  Revamping old raids/instances

• 10:  Housing

•  9:   Kinships

That's a huge majority (of those responding, obviously) in favour of improved PvMP; many of those selecting PvMP didn't even bother to make a second choice. Next came Legendary Items, with dozens of different suggestions; the gist of these was "either improve the system or scrap it!". I was mildly astonished to see new raids come in a relatively lowly third with just 22 votes, but if you add the 14 votes for revamping old raids, it becomes clear that many players are unsatisfied with the level and quality of raids currently available. Those picking radiance as an item to be fixed were brief and almost unanimous: "scrap it".

Will this affect Turbine's plans in any way? I'm inclined to think that it will, given how bluntly the question was put: not "what would you like to see done", but the much more direct "move two items to the top of our priority list". It would be foolish of Turbine to be so upfront about soliciting input, only to ignore it.

LEGENDARY ITEM SYSTEM: HAVE YOUR SAY!

I was about to write a post about the current state of Legendary Items, when my attention was grabbed by the fact that the "Tell the Community" feature on both the Turbine (Stateside) and Codemasters (Europe) forums are asking for players' views on, of all things, the Legendary Item System!

This feature of the forums isn't all that familiar, and some of the people who do know about it have sometimes been dismissive in the past; understandable, in a way, given the inanity of at least some of the questions. However, the point is that unlike unsolicited player comments in forums and blogs, the responses to questions posted in these threads are very specifically those which the developers and publishers want to receive - so the odds are that such responses will at least be read, and very likely taken into consideration where it counts.

The relevant questions here are:
1. You are given the opportunity to make two changes to the Legendary Item System. What are the two most important changes you would make? Please limit your answer to only two changes.
2. Name two things about the Legendary Item System you enjoy the most.

I would urge everybody who has ever complained loudly about the LI system to take advantage of this opportunity and make their views known. Needless to say, this involves thinking a little about the questions and coming up with succinct and intelligent answers; snappy comments along the lines of "The LI system stinks!" or two-thousand word rants are unlikely to make a big impression... I'll post my own response here in a day or two.

TALK TO THE COMMUNITY TEAM

I suspect that not many players are aware of the fact that the Codemasters forum recently started running a section in which players are invited to respond to questions about the game and its design. Since these questions are usually quite specific, and presumably correspond to things the designers actually want to know more about, I would hazard a guess that somebody actually reads and takes note of the responses posted here - which is not necessarily the case with unsolicited suggestions and complaints.

The questions seem to change every couple of weeks or so; this is the current set:
Question 1: A friend who does not play MMOs asks you why you play them. What 3 reasons would you give them?
Question 2: Currently a hot topic among forum posters is play styles, so how would you describe your play style? Casual, Hardcore, or something in between?
Question 3: You're given the opportunity to pitch one new feature to the dev team. Go! (please be brief).

As you can see, some are probably of greater interest to players than others. Among the more relevant questions from recent weeks I would include "If you could change 3 things about LOTRO's User Interface, what would they be?" and "What three(3) features would you add to the Kinship system?".

In any case, if you have constructive views about the future design of LOTRO (as opposed to merely strongly-held views), it's worth your while contributing to this little feature.