Tobold's Blog: First LotRO patch

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

First LotRO patch

No LotRO journal today, for the simple reason that I couldn't play last night. Tuesday is maintenance / patch day in Europe for LotRO. And this first maintenance / patch since the pre-order access started didn't go well. Apparently people were rubber-banding all over the place when they brought the servers up again, and so they had to do an emergency shutdown. Current estimate is that the servers might come back up at noon today, more than 24 hours late, and even that isn't certain. Not a good start. Especially as some of us paid extra for a pre-order box, basically paying for the 10-day head-start, and every day of downtime hits us extra hard.

I'm not sure if a patch broke something, Turbine is talking about "database hardware issues". There are no patch notes for Europe, but there *are* patch notes for the US, where a patch is due today:The following changes have been made in the April 18 patch:

Economy/Crafting:
Item damage upon defeat will no longer occur until the player reaches level 10. Once you hit level 10 all bets are off, but you get a free ride til then! Keep in mind that item wear still occurs during combat.
The repair cost has been lowered on some uncommon/rare jewelry, weapons, shields, and clothing.
Signature, Elite, and Boss monsters drop more money.
Pipeweed seed processing recipes now only give out 1 seed instead of 3, like they were always supposed to. (Farmers, please drop the pitchforks! There are changes coming to better your plight. More details to follow.)
Yes, making profit with farming was declared to be a bug and was "fixed". As the US server pre-order access started 2 weeks earlier than the European one, the US has a level cap of 15, which the European servers don't have. And as many players already hit that level cap, they were all trying to advance their characters in the only possible way: making money. Somebody on the US forum calculated that farming bandits was already at level 15 exactly as profitable per hour than farming pipe-weed, but that is only the case if there is only one player farming them. Farming mobs has diminishing returns the more players are around, farming pipe-weed doesn't. And so hundreds of players were growing pipe-weed, and Turbine decided to stop them with this patch.

Of course this change throws out the baby with the bathwater. It doesn't just reduce profits, but makes growing anything unprofitable, even Sweet Galenas at master expert level. The profit you used to get per field was less than the new added cost of having to buy more seeds. Furthermore this "fix" totally breaks the only way to get past artisan level in farming. To get past artisan you need to "cross-breed" seeds. Remember me talking about the rare, non-buyable, Sweet Lobelia seeds I had troubles multiplying? To cross-breed and skill up past artisan apparently you need hundreds of these seeds. And with one field now needing 6 seeds to grow and returning between 0 and 6 seeds, you can never get more seeds than what you started with. With no way to multiply seeds, you'd need to find all these hundreds of seeds you need to advance in rare treasure chests, which is bloody impossible!

I can only hope that in a future patch they are adding some sort of new recipe to multiply seeds. That would make it possible again to make money, but with twice the work, first growing the seeds, then growing the pipe-weed. Thus profits per hour would be much lower than hunting mobs, but at least you wouldn't lose money with everything. Farming is officially defined by Turbine as a gathering skill, and at least gathering skills should be profitable. Imagine if repairing your mining tool after each ore node would cost you more than the value of the ore, that would pretty much kill all metalworking. This is currently the case with farming and cooking. Lots of vegetables can either be bought from a vendor or grown by farming. But somebody on the US forums calculated how growing mushrooms cost him more money per mushroom than buying them, which completely destroys the raison d'etre of farming.

Well, at least they relieved the situation with the repair costs. Me not having an income any more from farming, maybe I'll be more annoyed by repair costs now. Apparently repairing magic items cost so much, that some people preferred wearing non-magic armor, which isn't really in the intent of a MMORPG. But all in all the patch notes leave a distinct impression that the game economy isn't balanced yet, which is a bit disappointing.
- posted by Tobold @ 6:48 AM Permanent Link

Comments:

I play on the UK non-RP "Snowbourne" server and have been setting up a farmer in recent days to farm some money as my main character went completely broke at level 13 (mainly because of magic item repair bills).

Yesterday the server was 3 hours down for scheduled maintenance, after which I jumped back on and things were working fine. I take it they still are. A friend and I were doing some farming and the seed yield was also unchanged, so maybe the US patch wasn't applied to Euro servers yet? Or it was applied first to your server, turned out to cause issues and then postponed for mine. Not sure. I certainly hope not, as I have so far spent 150 silver to skill up farming and am only now going to farm for profit.

Frankly I'm baffled by the economics of the game causing trouble. I have a Master's degree in micro/macro economics and head up a research dept for a living and it really ain't rocket science all. Economics 101 would do the trick. If those guys can't get it, then at least hire someone who did Economics 101 and listen to them.

Funny though the repair costs already went down. My first prophecy already materialized. Now for the my second one... that within a few months or so more quests can be soloed as there will be a lack of players in newbie areas to group with.

- Sveral

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 08:53

Correction to my comment above. The server is now also down for me. Guess that time window after the regular maintenance didn't last all day yesterday. Wondering if the patch was applied. If so I'm 150 silver out of pocket invested in farming, with no return and a friend to pay back whom I borrowed it from. Kneecap anyone?
- Sveral

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 09:24

oh dear, this sounds sooo much like the old Turbine I knew in Asherons Call 1.

Giant balancing patches were still being done years after the game came out. New flavor of the month character templates being made to adapt to the changes made continuously .... and then bots made, and alliance chains, to level them up ....

I really hope Turbine does better this time, but Asherons Call II for example was a total failure so I'm a bit weary I must admit. I didn't try Dungeons and Dragons Online because I like to explore anyway.

Lunedust

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 09:26

Dying 5 times in a row (the two strongest loremaster abilities don't work against undead... so every add will kill you) 50s -> 2s

I have absolutely no idea how to pay the next training costs.

It's a shame, this game could be great (roleplay on Belegar is great compared to most other MMORPGs) but it begins to disappoint me.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 09:47

Well, this does not seem to be Turbine specific.

First of all (sound like a fanboy now) I appreciate the smooth start of LOTRO. The early-early server opening was a great idea, which took the stress off from the login servers. I recall day one of WOW. Download a huge patch first (in fact the patch was rather small but it took ages to download due to the slow d/l server) then no chance to reach the account login page. Compared to that the first days of LOTRO for preorder customers have been pure vanilla. WOW also had major problems with server and startup at the beginning and in between.

Then, the patches to change ingame metrics like character balancing, economicals changes also apply for other major MMOPGs. Every now and then a major class change happens, sometimes a performance reduction, sometimes a performance increase.

Judging from Tobolds reports on crafting changes, I will concentrate on the gatheting side of the business first, even though I enjoy crafting quite a lot.

So far, money is no major problem if you choose to play carefully and don't invest all in crafting skills (and by the way, leveling up crafting in WOW e.g. leatherworker or blacksmith) was a very expensive thing too. Most players with experience choose gathering professions to start with and then switch to the true crafting ones which are sought after once the economics have reached a sort of equilibrium (which then unbalances the equilibrium when raids make it necessary to farm 30 dreamfoil a day).

This is far from being perfect. I would really enjoy sitting with my level 10 Char and be able to do the highend recipes as I progress my skill in crafting with a fair profit.

# posted by

TEM : 18/4/07 09:51

The earlier (beta) farming system was an absolute goldmine and an open invitation to gold-farmers and their ilk. Hopefully they'll be able to find a balance that encourages genuine crafters - it's just a shame they've left it so late in the day to make these changes (same applies to drastic repairs revamp).

As for the launch, after such a great mmorpg opening something just had to go wrong. At least it waited three days to keel over, else a very good game might have come in for some unwelcome and unwarranted bashing in the early non-US reviews.

The PR bods are making the odd "no news yet" post but a few more details about the actual problem wouldn't go amiss - and also what the delay is in fixing it. If they're literally waiting for a hardware replacement or something to be delivered, set up and tested, why not just say so?

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 10:16

I haven't tried farming yet but the situation you describe is ridiculous. If farming is to have any credibility at all it should meet two critria:
1. The value of the produce should be more than the cost of the inputs.
2. You should get back more seeds than you plant.
If these two requirements result in excessive profits then the way to balance this should be time - extend the time it takes for a field to grow so thst the total profits from farming are on a par with adventuring. Turbine have hinted at further changes so maybe the situation will improve in a later patch.

# posted by

mbp : 18/4/07 11:02

If these two requirements result in excessive profits then the way to balance this should be time - extend the time it takes for a field to grow so thst the total profits from farming are on a par with adventuring. Turbine have hinted at further changes so maybe the situation will improve in a later patch.

I agree. If on designing a car you find that it runs too fast, putting in a smaller, less powerful motor is a good idea. *Removing* the motor totally and promising to install a smaller one at a later point isn't really a good method. Turbine's method of first breaking farming totally and letting us hope for a repair later doesn't instill me with a lot of confidence.

# posted by

Tobold : 18/4/07 11:24

Tobold, very much in agreement with you on this one. I'm not having big hopes of Turbine drastically changing farming to where it's going to be useful either. The whole method of declaring the current situation a "bug" also rubs me a bit wrong. I don't believe for one second it was a bug, they just don't like the end result. Which is fine with me, but then at least name it like that. And while you're at it, fix it in a better way then to make it unprofitable.

As said though, I played for a number of hours after regular maintenance yesterday and farming was still working in the "old" way. So not sure if they did the US style patch on European servers, or how the situation will be when they manage to get back online.

- Sveral

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 11:37

I'm going to play Devils Advocate here for a moment.

If you want a game where you farm and make money, play Harvest Moon. LOTRO is about fighting the forces of Mordor and Allies, not about growing pipeweed to see back to a fat lazy hobbit. I can understand why it has been "nerfed" as it is a risk free way to make profit only requiring a lot of time, and that isn't the game they want us to play.

Now I agree that Tradeskills need to be more fun, and ultimately be profitable. But from what I've read about Farming (I've been questing rather than farming) a lot of people have cottoned onto the idea of using it to make the cash to power level their other skills (and obviously afford the repair bills - another matter entirely though). Now Tolbold, I know you have a far greater knowledge of how economies work so you'll know more than I on this, but from what I understand it's not necessarily a good thing to leave easy money making abilities in a game that everyone can with a little time achieve because it injects more money into the economy, and as I understand it that drives inflation.

I remember Turbine made lots of fundamental mistakes in Asherons Call because they didn't understand the nature of an in game economy and how far players would go to exploit it. I remember after one patch players worked out that a vendor was bugged if a certain number of items was sold back to him (I think it was an overflow issue or something, long time ago now) - and all the servers were rolled back a whole day in order to remove the vast some of money that made it into the economy. I'm not saying that Farming would have had that big an impact, or that necessarily Turbine are correct to nerf now and promise a fix later.

Putting aside the Devils Advocate roll, of course I'm disappointed that it has been nerfed. Especially as I never had the chance to use the money making abilities to power up Farming and use the profit for Scholar and Weaponsmithing. And I am worried that this nerf and the patch issues could be evidence that Turbine are risking ruining what so far has been an absolutely excellent launch.

For me, I'm going to wait and see what these new "changes" will be before I pass my own judgement...I don't always want to have to be the Devils Advocate :D

# posted by

Wivelrod : 18/4/07 13:18

@Wivelrod - You mention "risk free way to make profit". It's kind of ironic that one of Tobold's main points was that this is a common misconception among game developers. One I wholeheartedly agree with. The alternative, you see, is to farm mobs. When farming mobs, you aren't going for those that are likely to kill you. Instead you go after the easy loot and farm them in an equally risk-free way. The argument that gathering professions shouldn't be profitable because they don't involve risk is therefore faulty. On top of that, profitable doesn't mean loads of cash. Farming until level 15 or maybe 20 made relatively good cash. But beyond that you'd probably make a lot more farming mobs. So this wasn't a big inflationary killer if you ask me. Even if it was, adjusting the time/effort needed would have been a better fix.

Much of Turbine's focus as usually comes from the US servers. There they implemented an ill-advised level cap of 15. So the whole server is now 15 there and bored to death. The only way open there is to create alts or farm money for when the game truly goes live and the cap disappears. Hence the urgency to close this farming gap. For anyone with the option to level higher than 15 farming is fun for a few days to get some cash to advance your low chars. After that it's better to farm easy mobs with your level 25 char.

- Sveral

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 14:29

Right now servers are not populated enough to make grinding mobs difficult.

I wanted to at least get my Eagle's Nest seeds before the patch so that I had a chance, and I still spent one freaking gold on crossbreeding. I had 1.3 gold at the end i had only 70 silver.

My guardian explorer has about 700 silver from grinding mobs and also has all rare heavy armor that he commissioned due to being a rich bastard.

And players were whining about rich farmers?

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 14:47

Sorry for double post, but regarding repair bills:

Even on my guardian with all heavy rare armor - the most expensive - I had no problem paying repair costs. Vendor trash sells for a lot as long as you are killing humanoids, and I always made more than my repairs. This does not include ore or wood or drops, just the vendor trash. So while annoyingly expensive, I never understood the outcry about it.

I think the problem stems more from people wanting it to be like WoW and plunging ahead and dying over and over. Instead of changing their behavior they keep dying and complaining. I figured out the first time I died that Dying Is Bad! I avoid it now, I run away if I get too many adds (in WoW I never bothered running away). I don't take chances but grind what I am able to. (And as a guardian I can take on lvl 17-18 mobs routinely) The only bad part is it makes me wary of helping people, since apart from that first time the only time I died was when I was trying to help people who were playing dumbly.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 14:56

LOTRO is about fighting the forces of Mordor and Allies, not about growing pipeweed to see back to a fat lazy hobbit.

Sacrilege!
:)
Actually I think growing pipeweed, participating in pie eating contests, and the other silly things you can do in the Shire are a huge part of what makes the game so magical, and really makes you feel like you're there.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 14:58

Yes, I very much enjoy the non-fighting activities of LotRO. Growing different sorts of pipe-weed making different shaped smoke-rings, without giving any game stats? Brilliant! Every MMORPG offers fighting monsters, that isn't really a selling point any more.

On the danger of having "easy profit" from tradeskills, I don't think the solution is making crafting a money-sink. The solution should be balancing the ease of making money with the amount of money earned. If killing mobs for one hour earns you twice as much as farming pipe-weed for one hour, you won't find many Chinese gold farmers on the pipe-weed fields. I wouldn't have minded Turbine halving the profit on Sweet Galenas, and at the same time replacing the losses you incur at lower levels with even tinier profits. But an economy where the water and fertilizer and seed costs more than the produce from the plants you grow in the best possible circumstances can't work.

# posted by

Tobold : 18/4/07 15:24

LOTRO is about fighting the forces of Mordor and Allies, not about growing pipeweed to sell back to a fat lazy hobbit.

Then why include it in the game to begin with? For that matter, why even have gathering or crafting skills?

You're a soldier in the war against Mordor! Not a freakin' Tailor! You want to learn Fishing??? You don't have time to fish!!! You've got Orcs to kill!!! Now get out there and die for your country, soldier!!!

Truth is, if LOTRO was solely about fighting the Orcs and defeating Sarumon then that's all the game would let you do and Middle Earth would be filled with people who want to do that, while the people that enjoy the laid-back, social, "farming" side of the game would be playing Harvest Moon Online instead.

# posted by

Cap'n John : 18/4/07 16:09

My risk free profit comment maybe needs a bit of expansion :)

Farming in the form we're discussing here was risk free in the sense that you couldn't really lose money. There's no risk involved, you invest some money and after while get a guaranteed return on investment (though I suppose there is a risk in this in that the activity gets nerfed before you get the return *grin*).

That isn't fun. It's mundane grinding which as Tobold said in one of his posts he could do whilst reading, watching telly or playing WoW! As rightly suggested, trade skills need some injection of life, a risk vs reward mechanic would spice things up surely.

@Yunk, I agree, pipeweed and the other things you mentioned are important to the Lore, so apologies if I suggested there's no need for Pipeweed in the game. I just don't think we should be rolling character to spend hours toiling the fields when there's Orcs to hunt. Get those Fat Lazy hobbits in Staddle to do some work (and woo their own women!).

# posted by

Wivelrod : 18/4/07 17:10

I guess this patch kind of sucks. I really started getting into Lotro. I'm level 10...planning on taking up crafting at level 15...guess it wont be farming....which seemed really cool, and there are tons of people at the farm....seemed fun.

# posted by

Unknown : 18/4/07 18:09

a risk vs reward mechanic would spice things up surely.

Spice things up, but at the same time be nothing less than infuriating. Almost all high value results require a large initial investment, either via time farming up the mat or mats, or just a large monetary investment. The chance that upon attempting to craft there's failure is nothing short of soul crushing. And I'm not talking about theoretically. Going back to to FFXI again, in their crafting system there is always a chance for failure, no matter what your skill level is. Nothing is worse than attempting to craft a costly thing using a single very costly material, only to have it fail and lose that material and lose thousands or millions of whatever the game's money is, with nothing to show for it other than your tears.

And if you're going to suggest having it so that materials are never lost, and you just have to start over then there's no real risk, and instead we might as well just increase the time spent doing an action.

# posted by

Kaziel : 18/4/07 19:15

To change the seed returns, rather than reduce the price NPCs will pay for weed, is so nonsensical and in fact more difficult that I have to believe some other changes are coming down the line. Like reducing seeds per field, or something more drastic. It simply doesn't make sense, and honestly believing the developers hate their customers is foolishness.

Can anyone confirm the seed change only affects pipeweed? I was hearing rumors you could make similar money growing cauliflower at master level.

# posted by

Anonymous : 18/4/07 19:28

Here's the official comment by Turbine:

First and foremost: Farming is not intended to be a “money button.” If you find yourself making money consistently by executing recipes and selling the proceeds to a vendor, do not expect that scenario to last. Farming is intended to be interdependent with other players, not vendors (see below).

Second, there are changes planned in the near-term that will highly incentivize Cooks to use Farmed goods. Cooking recipes and products are being adjusted to be a lot cheaper to make, and farmed goods will be much more important in that process. Ultimately, Farmed materials are intended to be sold to Cooks (and it’ll make sense for Cooks to seek out Farmers, unlike the present vendor-focused situation) with enough leeway for both the Farmer and the Cook to make a profit. These changes have actually already been made and are about to begin testing on our Isengard server.

Third, there’s beer, coming soon. Yay for beer!

Last (for now) but not least, new special effects are going to be hooked up to the higher-level pipeweeds to make them much more of a fun toy than they are today (we hope this makes our role-players smile).

With these changes (and more new content to come) we expect a Farmer’s lot in life to improve drastically. Ultimately, you shouldn’t expect the highest heights of fame and glory to be found in a vegetable garden… but a bit of pastoral fun? Absolutely!

They're also taking an immediate look at the crossbreeding situation. We shall see...

# posted by

Anonymous : 20/4/07 07:58

The problem with farming is twofold.

Too expensive for starting players.
Huge costs unlike Armsman and Armourer for example. Go out at low level mine for free, make for free - sell.

Farmer spends more money to get the seeds, get the waterand fertilizer and big costs for a new set of recipes (45s for the recipes for a single starting level crop).
Way too much for some lvl 1-10 character.
So at low levels it is a major money sink.

Come Expert Master and you start to make money. Grind it and it is good maoney.
But mobs ARE better and just as risk free if you go for same/lower level mobs. Sorry to burst your 'risk' bubble but you have to be a complete muppet to die farming mobs. Get adds/elites then you run and farm when they run back.
It's the lvl 15 cap that makes the US servers a farmer grind for cash.

To me they should have made low level stuff cheaper, higher level less profitable.
That would have solved the issue simply and effectively.
As long as mobs give better income then it is them that wil lget farmed not the fields.

That will leave us farmers able to make small, slow but steady profit from our time investment in mastering farmer.

And yes, 1 seed will kill crossbreeding completely so please scrapthat Turbine.

# posted by

Anonymous : 22/4/07 14:10