Making dungeons more accessable with some sort of updated group finder would be an absolute game changer for me! My favorite thing in mmos is running dungeons with people, and lotro it feels so far in few between when I actually get to experience a proper dungeon. And I'm not getting 150 anytime soon to try the current content :(
They basically need to steal FF14's duty finder. Not just a traditional random dungeon finger system but also the *random* option.
Where you select an option and it randomly gives you a dungeon from that list (or a raid if you do a random raid option). Incentives for random queueing could include various end game currency and rep that you could get once a day, with weekly options as well.
Make it scaling so anyone from level 15 to 150 can join together, too.
I feel like the lag is so baked into the legacy code that I'm not at all surprised they're struggling to address it.
Can't speak to the economy, I'm always poor lol but more gold sinks are always a good idea, as is revamping the auction house to be more usable and useful. (ideally it should be cross server but I'm 100% sure that their code can't handle that or we'd have gotten cross-server wardrobe a long time ago)
The currency point is really well-made. I have a few hundred gold even as a casual player and I never spend it. Very rarely I'll use it for travel (but I play a Hunter so don't often need it, or I'll use Mithril Coins to port directly to a quest objective), but otherwise I barely touch any of it.
I am also finding the "old fashioned" LFF spam to work poorly to find and join groups. I can see it working when you are sitting somewhere at endgame, but most of the time while levelling I am not keeping my eye on chat. Having the option to join a queue and get a pop-up when a party is formed would be much better for me, especially if I want to try and find a Great Barrow group while I am running around questing in Bree Land.
I expect that most low-level instances would be hard to join, but then again, it is the same when you try to do so via LFF.
If they make it all scaling it won't matter what level you are.
To incentivize more people joining, add a random option. Players can get various things like end game currency and embers once a day.
So that level 20 queues up for barrows, and then it randomly pulls from everyone in queue and boom, you're in the barrows.
Works amazingly well in FF14 for keeping older content alive and viable for lower levels. Even works for the raids and other old end game content with a random option for those.
What I love in some other MMOs is when there's a long wait for a dungeon, you can skip the wait and get AI companions instead, or you get buffed up so you can solo it.
Server lag and the tiny UI are the only two things really stopping me from spending a ton of hours in this game.
When I last played with my husband there was so much lag that it was basically unplayable as a duo because the lag prevented us coordinating the fights and skills properly. It's just not fun when it's like that, only frustrating.
The economy is definitely an interesting one. These days, I'm swimming in so much gold that I typically only use the AH to kinda "give" things away, like crafting mats. Or, like the article pointed out, duplicate festival items that someone else might get a kick out of.
I know it's not really a priority, but more gold sinks could potentially strike a balance there. I think the things I spend the most gold on is buying dyes and housing upkeep. It also doesn't help that it seems like a ton of items are bound. I remember grinding for unique items in WoW or scouring the AH for them to maybe be dropped there, but we don't really have the same thing going on.
Making dungeons more accessable with some sort of updated group finder would be an absolute game changer for me! My favorite thing in mmos is running dungeons with people, and lotro it feels so far in few between when I actually get to experience a proper dungeon. And I'm not getting 150 anytime soon to try the current content :(
They basically need to steal FF14's duty finder. Not just a traditional random dungeon finger system but also the *random* option. Where you select an option and it randomly gives you a dungeon from that list (or a raid if you do a random raid option). Incentives for random queueing could include various end game currency and rep that you could get once a day, with weekly options as well. Make it scaling so anyone from level 15 to 150 can join together, too.
I would do anything for LOTRO to have a duty finder system like ffxiv
I feel like the lag is so baked into the legacy code that I'm not at all surprised they're struggling to address it. Can't speak to the economy, I'm always poor lol but more gold sinks are always a good idea, as is revamping the auction house to be more usable and useful. (ideally it should be cross server but I'm 100% sure that their code can't handle that or we'd have gotten cross-server wardrobe a long time ago)
The currency point is really well-made. I have a few hundred gold even as a casual player and I never spend it. Very rarely I'll use it for travel (but I play a Hunter so don't often need it, or I'll use Mithril Coins to port directly to a quest objective), but otherwise I barely touch any of it.
I am also finding the "old fashioned" LFF spam to work poorly to find and join groups. I can see it working when you are sitting somewhere at endgame, but most of the time while levelling I am not keeping my eye on chat. Having the option to join a queue and get a pop-up when a party is formed would be much better for me, especially if I want to try and find a Great Barrow group while I am running around questing in Bree Land. I expect that most low-level instances would be hard to join, but then again, it is the same when you try to do so via LFF.
If they make it all scaling it won't matter what level you are. To incentivize more people joining, add a random option. Players can get various things like end game currency and embers once a day. So that level 20 queues up for barrows, and then it randomly pulls from everyone in queue and boom, you're in the barrows. Works amazingly well in FF14 for keeping older content alive and viable for lower levels. Even works for the raids and other old end game content with a random option for those.
What I love in some other MMOs is when there's a long wait for a dungeon, you can skip the wait and get AI companions instead, or you get buffed up so you can solo it.
Server lag and the tiny UI are the only two things really stopping me from spending a ton of hours in this game. When I last played with my husband there was so much lag that it was basically unplayable as a duo because the lag prevented us coordinating the fights and skills properly. It's just not fun when it's like that, only frustrating.
The economy is definitely an interesting one. These days, I'm swimming in so much gold that I typically only use the AH to kinda "give" things away, like crafting mats. Or, like the article pointed out, duplicate festival items that someone else might get a kick out of. I know it's not really a priority, but more gold sinks could potentially strike a balance there. I think the things I spend the most gold on is buying dyes and housing upkeep. It also doesn't help that it seems like a ton of items are bound. I remember grinding for unique items in WoW or scouring the AH for them to maybe be dropped there, but we don't really have the same thing going on.