A MODEST PROPOSAL

Richard Bartle, a British writer and game designer, was the co-author of MUD, the first multi-user dungeon and according to Wikipedia, “one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry”. He is also the designer of the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, which uses a series of about 30 questions to determine the preferences of games players. Depending on their answers, player preferences are divided between the roles of Achiever, Explorer, Socialiser and Killer, with the score ranking indicating the principal thrust of a player’s interest. As an example, a pure non-consensual PvP game such as the recent Darkfall is clearly designed to appeal primarily (indeed, probably exclusively) to the Killer type of player.

A fascinating recent post in Pearls of Unwisdom argues that the current radiance gating debate in LOTRO reflects a long-standing conflict of interest between Achievers and Explorers: “Achievers and Explorers have been knocking heads together for a while now, especially with regards to gating of content […] Achiever types traditionally thrive in content gating situations […] Explorers [are] forced either to join the numbing grind, or to hang up their hiking boots and call it a day.” The post concludes by asking “given that Achievers and Explorers both seem to enjoy raiding, can they both coexist peacefully? Or is there a fundamental conflict between what they both want from the experience?”.

It must first of all be said that the Bartle test does not really fit in very well with a game like LOTRO, which has minimal PvP content – I tried the test, but kept being faced with questions which really had no application to the LOTRO experience, particularly as regards killing fellow players… More germane to this discussion is the fact that I can see a substantial overlap between Achievers and Explorer goals. However, what I found particularly illuminating was the recasting of Raiders as Achievers. The official Bartle definition of a pure Achiever goes like this: “Best, first and most are the favorite adjectives of the Achiever. They love comparison not only against others, but also with themselves. They enjoy setting goals, surpassing previous performances and hitting new milestones. They tend to have lots of high scores, badges, trophies and other concrete evidence of their successful endeavors”.

If the argument in favour of a very narrow gateway to end-content raiding, and therefore to the highest-quality gear, is that there must always be some concrete, strutting-around, high-status evidence of a player’s ability to eventually beat the hardest challenge thrown at him by the developers, there’s an easy way to achieve this without depriving everybody else (i.e., Explorers and Socialisers) from experiencing environments and challenges such as the Rift and Dar Narbugud.

Simple. Widen access to the big, multi-boss instances which everyone wants to experience, not by making the fights easier, but by providing several pathways into the instances: forget radiance gating, and offer alternatives such as crafted armour, drops from several different kinds of quests, and epic book rewards. At the same time, provide another 12-man raid which need not have more than one or two bosses, and which will not require spectacular new settings (scenery is for wimps!), but make it fiendishly, almost impossibly difficult. The rewards for completing this instance should be impressive, even flashy. They should immediately stand out in a crowd, offering instant status for those who crave it, but (and this is important) they must not be in any way functionally superior to the top rewards for finishing the other end-content raid.

Result? Genuinely rare, high-status display items for the Achievers, satisfaction for frustrated Explorers and Socialisers, and, at the end of the day, a level playing field for all.

ACHIEVING MINIMUM RADIANCE IN BOOK 8

As everybody knows, the two end-game 12-man instances at the moment are gated – that is, you need a certain minimum level of radiance in order to even enter them. Personally, I think this is a poor design approach, and it’s no secret that most players feel the same way. However, we’re stuck with this situation for the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, Book 8 introduced some new paths to achieving the minimum requirements, which are currently +50 radiance for the Vile Maw (the Watcher), and +70 radiance for Dar Narbugud. What follows are some suggestions as to how this can be achieved as expeditiously as possible. Keep in mind that raiding is a cooperative affair, and that in order to get anywhere you’ll need to join a Kinship, or at least find a reasonably steady group of players - solo play doesn't enter into the debate at all.

To quickest way of achieving the +50 radiance necessary for the Vile Maw is to complete the first two (and easiest) of the 6-man instances which drop a single BoA coin when completed in Hard Mode. These are the Grand Stairs (dropping a Platinum Coin of Courage, exchangeable for Boots) and Forges (Platinum Coin of Strength, for Chest). Each of these armour items gives +10 radiance, for a total of +20.

The two new 3-man instances each drop three Glistening Elf-stones every time they are completed; four of these can be exchanged for tier 1.5 radiance armour items, each of which has +15 radiance. Completing the Mirror Halls of Lumul-Nar and the Water Wheels of Nalad-Dum four times each will net you Gloves and Leggings respectively, for a total of +30 radiance. Add these to the Boots and Chest from the earlier 6-man instances, and you have the +50 radiance needed to enter the Vile Maw.

Achieving +70, however, is harder. You will need to either complete the two toughest 6-man instances of the tier 1 series, namely 16th Hall (Iron Coin of Fortitude, exchangeable for the non-set Shoulders) and Dark Delvings (Iron Coin of Knowledge, for the non-set Helm), each worth +10 radiance, or acquire either of the two tier 1 set armour items which drop from the Watcher (Helm or Shoulders, each worth +20 radiance). Note that with the exception of the Dar Narbugud bosses, Gurvand, final boss of the Dark Delvings, is reckoned to be the toughest fight in LOTRO to date.

One further short-cut is to complete the Filikul instance (Nornúan the Turtle) as often as possible, since he sometimes drops Platinum coins exchangeable for tier 1 armour pieces. Nornúan is something of a pushover, and can easily be downed by even a halfway competent PUG (pick-up group).

Finally, it must be emphasised that +50 radiance for the Watcher and +70 for Dar Narbugud are the minimum necessary to avoid cowering; you will still have dread, with the resultant reduction of morale and skills. The more radiance you have, the better; this includes the extra +10 you can buy with Destiny Points, which stacks with whatever you get from your armour.

RADIANCE FROM THE 3-MAN INSTANCES

Agreed, the 3-man instances in Book 8 are well-designed, fun and repeatable, as well as offering another path to achieving the +50 radiance necessary for squaring up to the Watcher or the +70 essential for the new 12-man raid in Dar Nargubud.

However, one thing puzzles me: these instances drop Elf-stones exchangeable for three tier 1.5 purple armour items with +15 radiance each, a +5 radiance increase on equivalent items from the earlier set. So far, so good; acquire all three and you have a total of +45 radiance. Problem is... radiance rounds downwards, not up, so that +5 is essentially wasted, and +45 in practice becomes +40. In which case, it doesn't take long to work out that it's a waste of effort acquiring all three items, and that if you're only going for two, the ones to choose are the leggings and gloves (at a cost of 4 stones each), rather than the chest-piece (at a cost of 7 stones).

In practice, this means that the best way to exploit the 3-man instances as far as building up your radiance is concerned is to replace the original leggings and gloves (+10 rad each) with the new ones (+15 rad each), giving you an overall increase of +10, and leave it at that. Which makes me wonder whether the developers got their sums wrong in the first place. Why go to all the trouble of creating a three-part tier 1.5 set of radiance armour when only two thirds of it will ever be useful? Indeed, why bother rounding radiance up (or down) at all in the first place? Mysteries, mysteries...

LEGENDARY ITEMS LATEST

In the course of the 3 June developer chat, developers were by and large as wary as ever of making definite statements. However, sorting through the whole transcript, I found that a number of answers addressed the vexed question of Legendary Items, a frequent source of complaints and grumbles. Pulling these together, it seems as though we can expect some positive developments in the near future.

Perhaps most importantly, the devs acknowledged that there are indeed problems with the LI system as it stands today: “Are there any plans for redesigning the Legendary Item system? Completely redesigning it, no. It took a lot of work to get the various systems in place to create the LI system. However, we’re definitely monitoring the complaints and seeing where we fell short with our goals. So in that regard, we’re going to be making some solid changes. The details haven’t been completely solidified yet, but our main goal is to make it feel less grindy, to better maintain the feeling of advancement and progression”.

Other specific promises include a method of resetting the legacy points on a maxed out Legendary Item, to come “very soon”, and the ability to exchange legacies on LIs; the latter is probably more of a mid-term project, since they apparently haven’t decided exactly how to implement it.

On the question of crafted Legendaries, the response was “We definitely want to bring crafters into the LI system more than we have… this is a very large complaint we’ve heard and we fully intend to remedy it” - but no details were provided.

Finally, a crucial detail concerning the upcoming 12-man instance in Book 8 was dropped: “Some very special mobs (please see certain mobs in Dar Narbagud) are completely immune to Common damage”. This is very far from a minor point; if we are to come up against monsters immune to common damage, the implication is that either special weapons or else special titles for weapons will have to be acquired before these mobs can be attempted. So will this in practice turn out to be a weapons equivalent to the radiance armour – i.e., the instance will prove to be impossible without specific items? It certainly sounds like it…

The complete transcript can be consulted on Kill Ten Rats.