Ending Enedwaith

My LOTRO champion hit level 70 this week while clearing out Enedwaith - a zone that now sits as an alternate leveling track through the early-mid 60's that was added in between the Mirkwood and Isengard expansions. 

The LOTRO ding graphic is now a giant incarnation of the White Tree of Gondor.

The level number makes it obvious that, as a premium player who pays by the zone, this was a very skippable chunk of content.  I was over-level when I started it since I used the last of the Mirkwood content to advance beyond 65 before moving on, and now I'm going to be even more over-level for the Isengard content I have yet to reach.  That said, if I erred it was in opting not to purchase and complete this content when it was in the correct level range, as it was high quality material and it would have been a shame to miss it. 

For better or worse, I'd imagine that most LOTRO players already know how many of the storylines are going to play out.  That said, Turbine continues to do a good job working around this challenge by weaving stories that are interesting in the spaces between the lore we know, while adding some original characters to give them some more flexibility. 

Bonus rewards

One final tidbit concerns Turbine Points and deeds.  In the course of completing the content, I completed many of the zone's deeds, awarding a grand total of 75 TP and 4 virtue upgrades along with some titles and exp runes.  Many deeds remain, and, judging from the past kill deeds in my tracker, I will never complete most of them.  (Two that I might snag are the reputation deed for kindred with the Grey Company and the Algraig.  Each grants 20 TP, and the latter also grants access to a teleport back to the zone.  I'm around 10-15 or so daily quests away from each.) 

If I had done the Epic book story and passed through the zone without paying for the quest pack, I would have completed some of these requirements and not received credit.  Instead, I paid 528 TP for the quests (after some sale discounts) and got back a small but non-zero rebate.  Those numbers would be even more appealing if I ever anticipated getting another character this high into LOTRO, but so far that has not fared so well.  Still, it's a reasonably good value for the money, and a nice little bonus to save up for the next paid content update.

Monetary Value of a Mistake

I've been wrapping up the old Enedwaith content in LOTRO - if nothing else, I'm embarrassed to show my face at the Turbine booth this weekend if I'm two years behind on content - and one of the epic quest chapters awarded a Second Age legendary item for my rune slot.  This should have been a huge upgrade - it was a ten level jump in quality as I had been using a level 55 rune from the Moria era, and a jump in quality from purple to teal (LOTRO's equivalent of blue to purple, or legendary to fabled).  Instead, it proved a bittersweet learning experience.

Cash Undo
LOTRO's legendary item system provides six slots for items, and it is generally advantageous to have items - even if they are low quality placeholders - in all six slots so that they can gain exp and transfer it to better items as you obtain them.   The shuffle to break down some old items for legacy scrolls and exp runes to kit out my new rune led to the predictable result - I slotted two tier 6 relics in a throwaway placeholder item that I put in the slot to bank exp. 

Something about this pairing does not go together.

Many LOTRO players have probably screwed this up at some point, and for the first few years of the system it was a relatively easy fix - you could pop your relics back out of your item every ten levels as part of the re-forging process, and you could recover all the relics when destroying a max exp item.  Turbine argued that this had to go due to relic inflation - everyone would eventually end up with maximum quality relics.  They're not wrong on this point, but their motives were called into question by their decision to implement a cash store scroll to replace the previously free-in-game unslotting feature.

In many games, a bone-headed mistake like this one could be sent to customer support.  Not so for the non-subscriber to LOTRO - customer service access is limited to 30 days after the paid purchase of Turbine Points. 

Which brings us back to the cash shop.  The relic removal scroll costs 195 Turbine Points.  The value of Turbine Points varies widely depending on how you obtain them.  Some VIP subscribers think of points as "free", even though they are part of the subscription package and are used to purchase things that would otherwise cost the player real money.  The smallest quantity of points Turbine will sell you in a bundle is 500 TP for $8, which would value the TP at $3.12, while there are larger bundles (for those willing to pay their "micro"transactions in $60 increments) and sales that can drive the exchange rate.  Then there is the ability to earn points in game, for those who value their time at pennies per hour.  Suffice it to say, the undo button for my mistake costs less than three dollars. 

Want to sell compromise on our principle against relic inflation, PST Turbine with your credit card number.

I could write more on this topic, but it ultimately boils down to this.  The relics that were in my inventory were gone.  I can buy replacements from the store for 195 Turbine Points, or I can save those points for something I actually want, such as new content.  The fact that the "replacements" are only available for sale at that price because I screwed up does not change the fact that I don't pay money for this sort of thing. 

A not-so-legendary epilogue
Having written off a pair of high quality relics, I sighed and proceeded to apply some scrolls from my bank - it wouldn't ordinarily make a ton of sense to invest in a level 65 item when the cap is now 75, but all of these scrolls were obtained from previous expansion items and capped at the lower level.

The good news is that the new rune, once scrolled and reliced (with my second choice relics), had all the legacies that I had on my previous rune. The bad news is that swapping out legacies leaves the new legacy at tier 2 out of 6, which greatly increases the cost of purchasing higher ranks.  The end result of this shuffle is that I ended up with a worse item than the massively out of date one I had, because I ran out of upgrade points much sooner. 

I suppose the only silver lining is that it will be that much easier to write this level 65 item off for the inevitable level 75 version.

I had assumed the new rune would be an upgrade due to double the base incoming healing rating and a bonus legacy that reduces power cost of some skills.

PVD @ PAX

I've been following news at the major gaming conventions since there has been enough of a world-wide web.  I still remember the days when my issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly was worth the purchase even though I'd seen the info six weeks earlier online, because dial-up bandwidth meant that downloading high quality screenshots was a nigh-prohibitive activity.  This weekend, I'm finally going to actually attend one in person, thanks to a confluence of events that made it vaguely sensible to travel to Boston at the same time as PAX East. 

I'm primarily going to be at the show on Saturday, with some time on Sunday depending on how my schedule shakes out (and how much stuff I feel I missed out on during the more crowded middle day of the show).  I may not go to a single panel or stick around for much of anything that has a long line.  If anything, I'm more interested in community events, such as Turbine's annual shindig, the MMO tweet-up, and Ferrel's book signing for the The Raider's Companion.  If, incidentally to these activities, I happen to pick up swag from some major titles or details of some minor ones I haven't heard of, that will be a bonus.

That said, if anyone reading this has an event they would like to promote/recommend - either your own product or something that you've heard of elsewhere - feel free to leave a comment.  There's a lot of stuff on the map of the floor, and I can't promise I'll get to everything, but I won't complain about a suggestion or two. 

P.S. My only regret concerning my travel schedule is not being present for any creative protests at the Mass Effect 3 panel.  I have no desire to attend said panel for its own sake, but I can only imagine what creative mayhem players may inflict on the developers, who probably had no idea what they were in for when they booked the timeslot. 

A Tale of Two Captains

Narilya, my Klingon Defense Force captain in Star Trek Online, hit level 50 today.  Given how I've spent my time in game, I've taken to joking about how impressed I am with the cosmetic ships and the ship/ground combat minigames attached to the vessel that I use to fly my duty officers around the galaxy looking for missions.  (The joke is that said "minigames" are actually the entire game of Star Trek Online as it existed prior to the most recent patch.) 

That said, as I've spent more time with the system, its flaws are beginning to show through.  Much as I enjoy it and find it unique, comparing the progress of these two characters has made me feel like my main is not getting all that much for a vastly greater time investment.   

The Federation Main
Vice Admiral Green Armadillo has made a lot of progress though the duty ranks, with a minimum of rank two in every commendation category, one rank 3 complete, and half a dozen more closing on that number.  I have completed around 2/3 of the assignment chains in the game (21 chains complete, 13 in various stages of progress, and only one chain that I'm aware of but have yet to encounter).  

In order to reach this this plateau, the Faydwer routinely makes 2-3 circuits around the Galaxy daily, in search of the best missions its crew can complete.  Earlier on, this process would take around 30-40 minutes, though it has started to take less time now that I have improved travel options and less need to travel to destinations where I've already completed the main missions.  Typically, my priorities are:

• Missions that advance assignment chains.   
• Missions that recruit more duty officers.  Sometimes I'll pass on one if I'm really close to hitting a milestone somewhere else, but in general these are the longterm investment that keeps the quality of the crew expanding.  
• Missions that award better than normal commendation advancement.  Typically these occur less frequently, require additional/more specific officers, or in some cases cash/commodity items to begin.  
• Other priorities, which vary.  If there's a sector reset looming, I might take the shortest missions available so they will be complete and out of my log when the new missions come up.  If I'm close to the next rank in a commendation category, I might focus on that.  Earlier in the leveling curve, I made an effort to advance crafting, while now I'm more likely to use excess slots on Gamma quadrant commodities (which tend to be used in the better-than-average and/or story missions).  

As a result of all these efforts, the DOFF crew of the USS Faydwer includes 180 officers (including the active duty folks - I paid 580 Cryptic points to boost the cap on this character by 100 from the default 100).   Of these, 14 are "very rare", 27 are "rare", and over 100 are "uncommon" (33 are "common" and I wasn't bored enough to count the greens).  I have 2-4 of most specializations, with larger numbers in some of the more frequently used callings (for example, 11 security officers, only one of which is common quality). With this contingent is pretty rare that I'm NOT able to put together an assignment team with at least a 75% chance of success. 

Stats on the crew of the Faydwer - note that you can temporarily have more than 20 assignments due to injured crew in sickbay, which appear on your "in progress" list and award some medical commendation xp but do not count as real assignments. 

The Klingon Alt
As a Klingon faction character, Lieutenant General Narilya started out at level 20, but my Federation main actually had the far greater head start because he had several weeks to collect duty officers while earning the required 25 levels to unlock Klingon play.  Additionally, as an alt, this character was always a lower priority. 

For the majority of her career, Narilya's ships never went more than a lightyear away from the Klingon homeworld of Qo'nos.  I simply logged in with her for maybe 5-10 minutes to accept any missions her more limited crew was able to complete.  This often meant low quality missions with less impressive rewards, and higher failure chances due to a lower quality crew. 

With fewer trips to the locations where missions occur, this character has never completed an assignment chain, or even gotten more than two steps into one.  Her commendation ranks sit at mostly 1's and 2's (though a few of the 2's are surprisingly far along because those mission types were more common on the Klingon side). 

(The IKS Kunark, which is capped at 100 reserve officers plus the 10 active slots, currently has a contingent of 97.  This includes only one "very rare" officer, from the DS9 questline and 7 rare officers, though the majority of the crew - 60-some - are uncommon quality.  It may be worth noting that the Klingons offer frequent and profitable rewards for executing white quality officers, which definitely helps with staying under the cap.) 

The Smaller Gap
Despite this massive different in time investment, the rewards weren't as different as one might expect.  The way the duty exp curve is set up does not award anywhere near the premium that one might expect for lengthy missions.  A common mission that takes 20 hours may only award as much exp as an uncommon mission that takes two hours. 

By logging in and taking a bunch of short duration missions, Narilya sometimes completed more missions in an individual day than Green Armadillo could, with most of his slots tied up in 20 hour story missions.  In her five minute session, Narilya would pick up 10 missions, while her Federation counterpart might spend 30 minutes looking for the most profitable use of his last two slots. 

Meanwhile, the dramatic difference in the size and quality of the respective crew is mitigated by the cap on active assignments.  Any given task requires from 1-5 duty officers, and you are limited to 20 no matter how large your crew is.  The Faydwer generally has 50 or so out doing stuff, while the Kunark generally has 30-40 officers on assignment, and generally cannot take multiple copies of lucrative missions, such as military offensives, for lack of personnel, but both ultimately cap out at the same number of assignments. 

There is definitely a difference in rate of advancement -  both characters have been able to advance at a rate of nearly a level per day if I really focused on running missions for regular exp, while Narilya's cruise control approach netted more like a level every 2-3 days.  My main also has way more money - around 20 million energy credits - due to obtaining stuff that he can sell on the exchange, along with higher quality officers for his active duty slots and more transwarp teleports earned through diplomacy.  It just seems that the difference isn't that satisfying given the vastly different effort I'm investing on one character over the other.

Looking forward
One thing that will be very interesting to watch is whether Cryptic adds the ability to obtain additional assignment slots to the store.  This would be a popular seller, as it's an oft-requested feature and it would allow more dedicated players to leverage their larger and more skilled crew (and, in turn, encourage players to pay to get a larger crew).  However, it also poses a challenge to the rate of advancement - already players are arguing, for better or worse, that this system awards too much exp too quickly (especially if you actually combine it with playing the traditional game).   

Meanwhile, some of the changes they are making seem to further diminish the value of focusing on the Duty system, by increasing the variety of missions available to the five minute captain.  A patch last week added mission NPC's to the interior of player ships.  The NPC's now always offer certain basic missions (which no longer take up slots on the exterior mission list), and can also provide extra options for the captain who does want to duck in for five minutes, fill up their log, and not think about the system again for a while.  At the moment, the bad news is that this requires zoning into each deck of your ship and running around, but this will soon be moved to an "intercom" button on the department head UI. 

Overall, as they flesh the system out more and make it more accessible, it's beginning to feel more like a minigame than a game in itself.  In some ways, this is a good thing, to the extent that it encourages focus on what they still view as the core game. 

That said, I was focusing on getting the second character to level 50 while the one month of subscription time I paid for was live, to take advantage of subscriber unlocks.  The issue for Cryptic is that I probably won't turn around and spend the excess time playing STO's regular missions.  Instead, I'll log in to my main for the requisite 10 minutes every day or two and then go play something else that rewards me more proportionally for my time investment.