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Getting Cold Feet As Launch Approaches
Knightblast
Member UncommonPosts: 1,787
As LOTRO lurches towards its release next week, I really have to confess a growing sense of unease about the state of the game. While overall the quest/adventure structure seems well done and ready to go (if a bit boring at times), I have significant and growing concerns about the economy of the game and real doubts about the ability of this economic system to be viable in the long term, in addition to the state of crafting professions.
First, the economy. Turbine has taken a different spin on how to manage money supply in the economy than has been the case in many other games. Turbine is clearly concerned about keeping the M1 money supply down in the game, which in itself is a laudable, if somewhat fleeting, goal. However, their approach to affecting this in the game is, in my opinion, odd, and I have doubts as to its long-term viability. Specifically, Turbine has decided to make what I would call “operating expenses” (that is, your day-to-day upkeep) the main money sink in the game. The most common context where this comes up is gear repair cost, but it also comes up in numerous other areas such as the price of vendor-sold crafting inputs, the price of transportation (horse rides) and the like: basic operating expenses, which are present as small money sinks in other games but not bank-breaking expenses are in LOTRO very expensive and indeed bankbreaking unless specific and strict money-saving strategies are adopted by players from the earliest stages of the game.
For example, gear repair cost is so high that many players adopt the strategy of simply not repairing gear at all, because it is far cheaper to break your gear, trash it, and then buy new gear than it is to repair your gear. (According to Closed Beta testers, this continues into the later game as well.) That is, of course, the kind of clever workaround that one would expect clever MMO players to come up with, but it smacks of unintended play – it’s extremely odd that it is cheaper to buy a new set of something than fix an existing set of something, and a game mechanic that actively discourages players from acquiring helpful gear is an extremely odd one at best. Instead of looking at a nice piece of purple gear as a performance upgrade (which it really isn’t anyway, according to LOTRO’s design … armor does not mitigate that much) the game encourages players to look at it as a money-sink due to its associated repair cost, and instead of equipping the item, one is incented to place it in one’s bank or sell it. Closed Beta testers will tell you that the situation does not improve at higher levels either – stories are rampant of people carrying around 4 sets of armor to change during adventuring because of broken gear, of level 40+ characters farming level 15-20 mobs for hours in order to farm repair gold and the like. In addition, the repair cost money sink is not at all evenly distributed among character classes, with tanking classes having substantially higher repair costs than other classes both because they take more hits (and hence more damage) and because their armor costs more to repair – yet they have no additional compensating sources of income or savings in other areas --- I suppose Turbine’s take is that tanks are just supposed to be an expensive class to play …
Now, of course, almost every MMO has some grinding for cash. But while most every MMO has some feature of needing to acquire gold for some reason, LOTRO makes you do it for ordinary operating expenses, which to me sets up a very odd game incentive scheme. In other words, it’s one thing to incent players by dangling a big carrot in front of them like a house or a flying mount or something like that – a visible, prestige big ticket item that they look forward to having and will grind towards and then spend the cash they have accumulated on. It’s quite another thing to expect players to grind on a regular basis to meet their regular operating expenses. This is, in effect, what LOTRO does, and in my view it’s hard to describe it as “fun”. The ironic thing is that many people will be joining this game thinking it is storyline and quest based, and to a degree they are right, but the way the economy has been designed, it’s also very much “grind-based”, and not the kind of grinding a casual player may forego (“Oh well, I just won’t get a house because I don’t feel like grinding for it) .. this is grinding you need to finance your operating expenses of your character playing the game normally, without any big-ticket purchases.
The ostensible reason for setting it up this way is to control inflation. By keeping even regaular operating expenses high, you really do keep a very tight lid on the amount of excess cash in the economy because the average player who is either not an extreme tightwad or an extreme grinder just isn’t going to have much excess cash. The cost of keeping inflation down this way, however, is twofold, it seems to me: first, the design is less “fun”. Most players don’t like grinding, and many won’t be expecting to have to grind simply to get by in this game, so there will be a letdown factor. Second, it plays almost directly into the hands of the gold farmers. That is, by making the normal acquisition cost of gold so high per the game mechanic of high operating expenses, this increases demand for out of game currency sales to a substantial degree. Instead of allowing the economy to develop a bit and then adjusting to clamp down on things, Turbine is placing extremely low inflation at the top of its economic agenda from the get-go, and the inevitable impact of that is the increase in value of currency, which creates tremendous incentives to purchase out of game currency. Of course people will buy out of game currency no matter what, but when an economy is designed so that the average player always feels tight on cash, you can bet that there will be a lot of currency buying going on, and that will completely undermine the economy as a whole.
The more I have reflected on the economy, the more concerned I have become about it. While I recognize Turbine was trying to do something different by approaching it this way, I feel that this approach is fraught with problems and dysfunction, most of which has been brought in to keep inflation down, but which, rather ironically, at the end of the day will only encourage gold purchasing all the more, which will lead not just to inflation but potentially hyperinflation. As a result, I don’t honestly think Turbine has its arms around the economy at this point, and the game is launching next week. It’s very concerning.
Second, crafting. As Turbine has designed the game, crafting is a side activity. The intention is to create interdependencies between crafts so that players need to buy things from other players in order to create their wares. The issue with this is that in order for that to happen, players need to be selling things that other players will find useful, and the reality is that there simply aren’t enough useful items to incent people to buy from crafters, and therefore not enough incentive for players to spend the gold it takes to sink into leveling a craft for profit at later levels. As a result, many gatherers (who should be supplying to crafters) are simply dumping their gathered materials on vendors for cash (in part because this is a more reliable source of cash, and they are very concerned about stockpiling as much cash as possible before launch for the reasons I outline under the “economy” discussion above). In addition, whole crafting professions are essentially broken. Farming, something new which Turbine introduced in LOTRO, has been extremely problematic: it was making too much cash for people on vendor sales, so Turbine has now nerfed it so that it is basically impossible not only to make cash (because, as noted above, Turbine is focused like a laser beam on low inflation so cash is bad) but also impossible to level (not just costly, but impossible due to the lack of seeds required to crossbreed at higher levels). Admittedly, farming needed changes because it was too easy to make money with it, but instead of changing it to make it less lucrative, Turbine broke the advancement curve of the profession entirely – basically they “turned it off”. Shocklingly, in the aftermath, Turbine announced that they did not realize the impact this would have on crossbreeding and profession advancement (and this despite numerous announcements from players about this specific impact before the change was implemented). That, standing alone, is cause for grave concern from my perspective and indicates that Turbine “doesn’t get it” when it comes to their own crafting system and, more generally, is making some sloppy decisions in the run-up to launch. In any case, these changes were made because it is not intended for crafting to make money from vendor sales (even though miners and foresters can do so as well), and farmers are intended to sell their wares to cooks for cooking. That sounds well enough as a design, but the trouble with that is that cooks can acquire any item a farmer can craft from an NPC vendor instead of a farmer, and at prices that are less than the farmer’s cost to produce the item. So the system of interaction between farmer and cook is 100% completely broken. Turbine realizes this, and has announced plans to fix it, but the main dev focused on crafting has been pulled from crafting to work on launch, and any significant changes are probably not going to come until a month or so after launch … all meaning that LOTRO will launch with literally broken professions at launch. And, again, it’s telling that the reason why one of the professions was broken was … guess again, the economy.
So to wrap things up, I’m getting a very bad vibe from Turbine at the moment. The economy is shaping up to be very grinding based, and that’s really a terrible disappointment. For those who have not had the opportunity to grind up piles of cash in the Pre-Order phase, it will be a struggle to meet operating expenses without regular grinding, and to me that’s just a very unfortunate design decision by Turbine. I also believe that if the money supply is kept so tight in the game, gold sales will become very common in LOTRO, particularly if the player base is as large as some people expect it to be. And to top it off the game is being launched with professions being intentionally broken immediately prior to launch because of the economy. The achilles heel of the design of this game is the economy – it’s impacting pretty much the entire game experience. It’s quite a shaky design from the perspective of the economy, and as a result I’m very much getting cold feet as to whether I want to sink time and money into this game after launch.
Comments
Trolling and flaming aside, the OP has some good points. However, no MMORPG has ever been launched with a working, polished economy - that's just not how it works. A game needs several MONTHS before the economy balances itself out. Secondly, nothing is set in stone, and will be set in stone on the 24th, so whatever is broken, can still be fixed. Before or after launch.
I am a historian in LOTRO and I suffer greatly because of the unavailabilty of crafting mats (and the ridiculous prices), but once massive amounts of ppl will start selling these on AH, the prices will go down nicely. Broken links in crafting (like farmer+vendor) should be fixed. At least we can be sure that wherever there is a big problem, the community will scream load (it is starting already with repair costs!). So far, Turbine was listening...
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
Coming From someone that is obviously a lotro fanboy. And we should be surprised at the overall degradation of intelligence in our society?
How does such a well thought out post by the OP turn into a "YOU ARE!", "NO, YOU ARE!" debate within a matter of minutes?
*sigh*
Well from someone who has actually played LOTRO beta, it doesn't, as the above poster regurgitated, "suck." I agree with the initial poster that the economy and crafting needs tweaking, but the rest of the game that I have experienced has been pretty impressive. To suggest that the entire game "sucks" based solely on the economy and crafting is a bit shallow and thus reinforces the stereotype that you (Maddie) are simply a WoW-phile who's intolerant of other games. I hope that is not the case.
Anheuser - who has a level 70 Pally on WoW.
I've seen no evidence that Turbine wants to punish us over the long term, but I do understand why they'd want to control things (like our levels or cash) prior to launch.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The OP created a post about this on the Official Boards as well. And there he refused to accept the fact that the game is still in beta and Turbine is introducing changes to make Farming a viable professions.
Here is the link to where Turbine has stated some of hte planned changes already:
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=44886
Here is what it says:
Thanks for bearing with me while I got the info about farming I promised was forthcoming. I appreciate the, er, patience!
I know there’s been a lot of confusion over the role and purpose of the Farming profession. After speaking with (and harassing, they'd say) many members of the team, I’m happy to have some clarification to report.
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!
-Meghan
The economy is not a big problem. Death is painful. It can be very painful if you die a lot. I have never had a repair bill I couldn't afford to pay. The most my repair bill has ever been was 25s and that was after 3 deaths in a row without repairing. Turbine has already made some tweaks to the repairs to make them more manageable. But really the only people that have issues with repairing are people who don't understand how to run when they might get defeated and so they die alot.
Also, the people not wearing their armor or deciding to not repair it at all is due to the fact that we are capped at level 15 currently. Level 15 armor doesn't due much for you at all. As we get higher in level armor makes a huge difference in damage mitigation and also in adding stats to your character. No one is going to run around with no armor or not repairing their armor at higher levels.
Honestly there isn't a big problem with the economy. You have people like the OP who was a farmer complaing about the costs to raise their trade skill. But they are raising beyond what it should be at level 15. Yeah so it might take 1-2 gold to reach Grand Master Farmer., but guess what that is the level of crafting a level 50 should be at, not a level 15. There are 5 teirs of crafting and guess what teir 3 is for the 20's, so it should be extremely expensive to raise your skill that high at level 15.
Another point. Mobs drop a lot more silver as we level up. Right now level 15 mobs don't drop more then 3 or so silver each at our level. If there wasn't a level cap, I would of probably only died 1 time up until now and I would still of been leveling. So my income would of been greatly increased per mob since I would be a much higher level.
All the doom sayers are not keeping in mind that most of these issues are caused by the fact that we are such lower levels.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Meridion
I never got why Turbine made the economy like that, maybe it's because the game is so carebear with no real challange they had to throw in a rench in there somewhere. I don't know why they would do that, like it truly matters within a month you're gona have farmers selling Lotr money on Ebay. Turbine is afraid of inflation, ok granted but you can't combat inflation in that manner; the supply of money will continue to grow and once the gold farmers will get in on it prices will skyrocket.
I think turbine needs to think about more content instead of thinking that by cutting off the player money supply with time sinks will give them more time and longevity before they're ready to release other parts of the middle earth.
I had a level 45 champion in closed beta and I never had trouble with money, including after mobs' payout was reduced. The only big hurdle was buying a mount.
I repaired my armor always, I supported a crafting grind--all with just normal day-to-day questing and adventuring. I did not often sell things on the AH because it was just more convenient (given that I would have to go to the AH, which is not in every zone) to sell things there. As you go up in level, you end up farther and farther from any AH and often bank, so unless you have something special, it's often not worth the trouble.
Before Turbine made that economic change, the price of Rowan wood, for example, was up to about 4g for a bundle of 50. Money was much too easy to make at higher levels, and not easy enough at lower levels. That meant that prices would rise drastically (as they did) and lower-level players would get priced out of crafting profs.
At the end of closed beta, high-level players weren't starving and prices on the AH were coming down quite a bit. It was difficult to tell how much an effect the economic change would've had in the long run because people gradually stopped playing as the big wipe was coming.
I'm sure they will continue to tweak the economy--every MMO does. As for crafting--I tried almost all of the crafting profs--and the only two that had troubles were historian (because of the difficulty of getting to their resource nodes and the rarity of such) and farming, which had gone through a pretty drastic change recently in its viability.
Crafting in itself was not always terribly useful across the board, so I would recommend not spending a lot of time on it unless they've changed the product quality (that is, drops and rewards were just about always superior). Historian however had a good income from dye-making since everyone at all levels like to dye armor and clothes (conversely, historian was the hardest to level because of the aforementioned node issue). Cook was also useful because the bonuses gained from food and drink were also useful at all levels.
LotRO does definitely have some economic issues, but if I liked the game otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it. The economic issues are almost wholly involved with crafting--which is not a necessary part of the game and, for hardcore crafters, not a reason to subscribe anyway. This is a quest/combat/exploration game--not a crafting or economic game. As a full-on combat profession at level 45, I had no trouble with making enough money to comfortably proceed in leveling and even support tradeskilling.
Edited for:
Forgot to add--the main thing that impressed me with LoTRO (though I won't be subscribing) was Turbine's listening skill: When a change was made and there was a problem, they would actually go back and look at it. If I were subscribing, I would have confidence in them as a team that they will not adopt the all-too-common attitude of "you players don't know anything--it's our game."
Turbine (at least in this game) listens and studies issues in the game. If there's a problem, I would trust them to actually try to fix it and not just ignore the players. I hope that continues after launch.
Apply lemon juice and candle flame here to reveal secret message.
I miss DAoC
A closed beta cannot fully simulate the economy of a released game, because of the sheer player quantities. We are talking about a possible 1:100 ratio, in player numbers...
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
A closed beta cannot fully simulate the economy of a released game, because of the sheer player quantities. We are talking about a possible 1:100 ratio, in player numbers...
DB
Plus players of a closed beta are more likely to test multiple parts of the game. Without trying to play the economy much. Most people won't attempt to make the most money they can, because they know their character was going to be wiped. That is why Turbine was watching the economy closely during this open beta stage. So they could make the appropriate changes necessary to have a healthy economy in the long run.Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
A closed beta cannot fully simulate the economy of a released game, because of the sheer player quantities. We are talking about a possible 1:100 ratio, in player numbers...
DB
Plus players of a closed beta are more likely to test multiple parts of the game. Without trying to play the economy much. Most people won't attempt to make the most money they can, because they know their character was going to be wiped. That is why Turbine was watching the economy closely during this open beta stage. So they could make the appropriate changes necessary to have a healthy economy in the long run.Thank you for the explanation.
As this game begins it's life as a viable MMO, the gaming economy should be fairly well established. I wonder as does the O.P. whether not enough fore-thought went into the planning and developing of in-game economy.
Gamers are some of the most creative and resourceful people out there. It remains to be seen whether LOTRo gamers will be able to develop an economy the is free-floating, growing with the game itself.
Unfortunately for Turbine, if this is not addressed soon, especially crafting, many will come, play for a couple of months, then leave, never returning. Now, that will means a drop in real revenue for Turbine.
Economy and development of a strong economy is crucial for this game or any game.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
I agree with you there. Economy adds so much extra depth to the game, makes it more like a real working world. Its a shame that they didn't spend more time on this aspect.
-Citron
This will be one of the hardest Economies for any gold farmer to blend in becuase he will stick out like a soar thumb .
I find the economy good, I always have silver and able to get the things I need. I will add that some items do need a bit of a tweak , but for the majority, I find nothing wrong with the current set up.
I like pie !
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
To the OP - good post. You highlighted issues that quite a few players are worried about right now - especially with crafting.
I'm hearing good noises coming from the Dev forums about the crafting issues though. As a previous posters mentioned, they are working to fix the crafting issues.
As for repair costs... well the jury is still out on that one. Yes the costs are harsh when you die, and I noticed while playing pre-release that death also damages the items in your pack too - so carrying around other sets of armour doesn't work anymore. I think that death should have a cost though and should hurt to some degree, if only to go some way to enforce real excitement in battles, or real fear when you're exploring places like The Old Forest at level 10. It further enforces that death really is a bad thing and should be avoided, rather than having a carefree attitude to it - where death isn't such a big deal after all. If things start to turn bad - I run away. If I need to enter a fort packed to the brim with Goblins and Orcs, I look for other people to help me.
The system of harsh repair costs does have its good points. I don't find myself having to grind away on mobs, as the quests generally lead to some of that anyway - with often decent rewards too. That being said, I'm not rich yet at this stage of pre-release play, but it's early levels yet and I make enough to get by, buy my skills, repair my stuff, buy the odd item and work a little into the Armsman profession.
1. The economy problems are slightly amplified now with the level cap. People with weeks to play at max level and nothing to do but make mo money. This will end at release. HOWEVER, it fires back up again when everyone hits 50. So the problems now may be some indication of how the endgame is going to look... giving Turbine a little time to figure something out i guess.
2. Operating expenses money-sink. It is high and disproportionate. not good. Melee classes spending sometimes twice what others have to spend. Lower levels spending tons on travel while higher levels have the mount. And if it turns into grinding required to pay bills... well, game over... cause that's real life and I'm trying to escape that mode of operation by playing.
3. Crafting. Lags behind adventuring too much. By the time you can make X, you are wearing something better, or almost as good. The level advancement quests are too high level (for some professions). I have heard that crafting yields the best stuff at the highest levels, so it might be better then. FINALLY, crafting-interdependancy is a myth....consider the trade-profession breakdown:
There are 10 PROFESSIONS (tailor, weaponsmith, cook, etc).
Then there are some number of VOCATIONS, each having 3 professions.
It is possible to create 5 total characters on a server.
It is possible to cover ALL of the 10 professions by picking the correct vocations with 4 characters. (left to student as exercise to figure out exactly which vocations to choose... hehe)
So ultimately, you can craft ALL things yourself on a server.
4. And I close with a slightly novel idea, (because I can't think of any other game ever doing this).
What if the price of items was a function of the supply and demand that existed at any point in time on a server. I'm talking about what the NPCs give you. The server knows the total supply on the server of commodity X. There are Y number of NPCs that 'buy' it (let's keep it simple and let them consume what they buy). So the price they will pay for it is some function of X and Y.
As for pure operating expenses (like repair and travel) give that over to the players, i.e. have a repair skill tree people can work up, then sell that service. The free market would then get the price of that repair operation to be in balance, changing thru time to fit the supply and demand that exists at any point in time. I suppose something for travel could be done as well. Some skill / profession where players run a stage-coach type of thing, or rent out horses etc. Players can adjust to price based on what they can get away with charging. They charge too much, they don't sell. And they have some small operating expense themselves (or investment) which makes giving away travel for free hard to maintain...
(just a thought)
Economy suxs... but try to think of it as playing in hard mode, until it is fixed
Crafting suxs... again, try to think of it as hard mode
Combat/grouping... is awesome
The game is boring with the level 15 cap.
But I had an awesome time playing lotro in close beta (which didnt have the lvl 15 cap).
So, I have pre-ordered and waiting for release.
While the game is still pre-launch and all characters are capped at lvl15, I think it's waaay too early for anyone to speculate how the economy will turn out. Quests and mobs will increase in monetary rewards as people level after launch.
So far, I think Turbine is doing a fantastic job at trying to control the economy. They listen extremely well to their playerbase. I'm sure if the economy is too tight after launch, they'll address it then... even more so than they are addressing it now.
_________________________________
JonMichael
Currently: AION, an MMO Beta under NDA
Played: WAR, LOTRO, Hellgate: London, CoX, GW, SotNW, DAOC, EQ2, SWG, WoW, AO, Horizons, Second Life, There, TSO
Beta'd: There, Second Life, EQ2, DAOC:LotM, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, Gods and Heroes, Hellgate: London, Requiem:Bloodymare, AoC, WAR, DDO, Fallen Earth
The crafts indeed need work. If your craft uses wood, metals or hides and you are able to harvest what you need yourself, then the progression rate is fine and a small profit can be made. If your craft requires other ingredients, or requires wood/metals and your trio of skills doesn't provide the way to harvest them yourself, progress is very slow, expensive and a money sink.
Scholar is one of the worst, the rate at which the ingredients for your main craft can be obtained is very slow and progress can not keep pace with leveling. Weapon crafting with out prospecting becomes a huge money sink. With patience and a fairly sizable investment of time and coin Farming could make you a profit at higher skill levels before the patch, but not really now. Scholar thus is the most broken, but similar problems exist in other crafting packages. Crafting definitely needs work.
As far as the overall economy, I agree that this pre-launch period is probably not at all an accurate indication of how it will be after launch. I am sure there will need to be further balancing (the repair cost balance was a good step in the right direction).
Any MMO economy will need adjustment after launch, because there is no way to properly simulate the retail community buying. selling, trading and money farming habits pre-launch. People approach a beta differently than retail, even in a game where pre-order characters (with the lvl 15 cap) can carry over characters to retail.
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