LotRO: Developer Diary - Anatomy of a Cluster
The Lord of the Rings Online has released a Developer Diary: "Anatomy of a Cluster" -- you may read this article on Turbine's Web Site or continue to Read More for all the details right here at LotRO Stratics!
Developer Diary:
Anatomy of a Cluster
Welcome back, all! It's been a while since you last heard from me. We've been busy working hard on providing you with many more instances and lots of new content. Hopefully, you're anticipating the arrival of new and exciting experiences, and we're equally eager to have you see them! I want to talk a little about our approach to Moria instances, and raids. We've learned a lot from our live experience with The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ and now we are getting ready to unleash a much-improved instance system for Mines of Moria™.
When sitting down to plan the Mines of Moria, we realized that we had come far in our game, but there were still improvements to be made. We read the forum posts, heard the feedback, watched the competition, and came up with a system for our instance and raid players that we think will be to your liking. Gone are the days of behemoth instances that take fifteen hours to complete, with people begging on the LFF channel. Welcome to a new era of fast, exciting instances that provide lots of loot, lots of challenges, and a steady growth pattern in which players can learn, adjust, and gain tactical skills.
One of the things we haven't had a chance to do with our instances in the past is establish a sense of progression. The instances got more difficult, yes, but they also lacked the ability to train players to become better, and they did not encourage players to use the skills they learned to defeat the next bosses. We also simply did not have enough of them at the highest levels to support people who were capped. Being able to create a sense of what's next and help guide players from one instance to another is really important. We're going to be doing this in Mines of Moria through progression, clustering, "hard mode," and yes, loot.
Read Full Article
The Lord of the Rings Online has released a Developer Diary: "Anatomy of a Cluster" -- you may read this article on Turbine's Web Site or continue to Read More for all the details right here at LotRO Stratics!
Developer Diary:
Anatomy of a Cluster
When sitting down to plan the Mines of Moria, we realized that we had come far in our game, but there were still improvements to be made. We read the forum posts, heard the feedback, watched the competition, and came up with a system for our instance and raid players that we think will be to your liking. Gone are the days of behemoth instances that take fifteen hours to complete, with people begging on the LFF channel. Welcome to a new era of fast, exciting instances that provide lots of loot, lots of challenges, and a steady growth pattern in which players can learn, adjust, and gain tactical skills.
One of the things we haven't had a chance to do with our instances in the past is establish a sense of progression. The instances got more difficult, yes, but they also lacked the ability to train players to become better, and they did not encourage players to use the skills they learned to defeat the next bosses. We also simply did not have enough of them at the highest levels to support people who were capped. Being able to create a sense of what's next and help guide players from one instance to another is really important. We're going to be doing this in Mines of Moria through progression, clustering, "hard mode," and yes, loot.
Read Full Article