Lenwe: Welcome to the European IRC dev chat!
Liquilla: Good evening everyone and welcome to this month's (and last of this years!) European Dev chat!
Liquilla: Before proceedings get underway, don't forget that you can now take advantage of our great holiday pricing plan offer. To find out more head over to http://community.codemasters.com/fo...ad.php?t=241870
Liquilla: Ok, let's get down to business. With us tonight from Turbine we have the following people:
amlug: Hi I'm Jared "Amlug" Hall-Dugas and I'm a Content Designer on LoTRO. I mainly work on instances and raids but have been known to dabble in other areas of development as well.
DangerDan: Hi there! I'm Danger Dan and I work the systems team, including monster and class design. I help design new AI and boss behaviors. Recently I've been working on the Month of the Burglar and some upgrades to the Hunter class.
Denour_Turbine: Hello everyone! My name is Andy "Denour" Gillis and I am a Game Programmer working on Lord of The Rings Online. I am responsible for systems ranging from Auctions to Adoption. I can answer some of the more technical questions that you may have or questions about the interworkings of our systems.
Hakai: Hello! I'm Hakai and I work on the systems design team.
Hakai: I focus on combat, conjunctions, and the Guardian and Champion classes.
Hakai: I've been working on the Month of the Guardian.
PatienceTurbine: Hi everyone! Thanks for coming tonight, and to LOTRO-Welten for hosting us!
PatienceTurbine: We also wanted to thank everyone for helping us win Gamespy's MMO of the Year for 2007 as well as being named in their Top 10 PC Games. We couldn't have done it without all of your support!
PatienceTurbine: On behalf of everyone at Turbine, we wish you the happiest of holidays and a fantastic New Year. 🙂
Dethe Will be there(Book 12) a new task in the group/raid for the champion? Otherwise, the champion will superfluous soon...Hunter->best and efficiently(endless power) Singel-Dmg, can detoxify, port---Guardian->getting less dmg and! hold the threat---Champion->only Area Dmg but AE<Crowd-Controll
Hakai: Champion's have had a fairly major overhaul to many of their skills particularly their legendaries.
Hakai: While their essential role as sustained DPS with a focus on AOE hasn't changed we feel they will be
Hakai: more adept at filling that role once Book 12 goes live. We have also tuned their aggro transfer skills
Hakai: to improve their ability to manage threat.
CrazyHawk: when can we expect a better search engine in ah, currently we have to visit ervery site to see all usable objects..
Denour_Turbine: Auction searching is something that we will continue to iterate on as time goes by. There are some complications with a usability search, but it is something we will continue to investigate.
Nyadach: On the RP servers, will there be any dedicated events team actually becoming more active with live IC events? (no offense, but the one GM outside the Last Homely House running a OOC quiz doesnt really cut it)
Liquilla: Our GMs have a whole host of events lined up for 2008, and we've had some great ones this year! However we try to cater for everyones needs so the size and style of each event will differ greater each time 🙂
Liquilla: though we try to spread these out across all servers
Liquilla: and not just limit them to the RP servers.
Anonymous91 will there be any updates for houses e.g like a social centre like a inn which is player player run
amlug: While we are not planning to add social centres or inns currently, we have made significant improvements to housing for Book 12. We are adding the ability to rotate your placeable objects in your houses, allowing your alts to have access to your personal house, new color and NPCs to the area, and finally the ability to tell who owns what house while you are visiting them. We will continue to add improvements as we go forward for sure.
matteo could you possibly tell us more about the inprovements to the hunter and what of the upgrades to its melee moves
DangerDan: Sure! We've done a couple of things for the Hunter that's coming in Book 12. First off, we've done a number of things to boost the melee skills of the Hunter, in particular with a mind toward complimenting ranged skills and improving the Hunter's solo-survivability.
DangerDan: Here's an example: "Blindside" will deal more damage and add 3 Focus when you use it. That compliments ranged skills as it allows the Hunter to fire off a Penetrating Shot.
DangerDan: On top of that we're changing Fear so that pre-existing DOTs are unlikely to break it and that targets of fear will run more reliably away from the player.
DangerDan: Also, we've changed Merciful Shot so that it is once again usable when the target is below 50% health.
Anonymous36 news monsterplay book 12?
PatienceTurbine: Hi Anonymous36! In Book 12, we're introducing a new area called the Ettendeep. More information on it will be released soon. 🙂
Dwarftosser : First of all, my compliments on the ettenmoors. It's addictive and fun and keeps me playing 🙂 That being said, there's offcourse always room for improvements. More specificly I would like to hear if there's anything new coming for the reaver class, as this is the creepclass i have come to love (playing).. thanks"
DangerDan: I'm glad you enjoy the Ettenmoors, and, yes, there's always room for improvement. The Ettendeep holds a lot of secrets for players and monster players both. There are several things you can acquire in there that will benefit the Orc Reaver.
Eleniondir A lot of people i would say enjoy not questing nad just spending time in middle earth. What plans have the team to expand other activities besides questing? also a good idea would be contianer for beer etc that we could have at houses for parties etc
Hakai: We will continue to support social activities in Middle-earth such as the festivals.
Hakai: In book 12 we've added cosmetic items such as beer mugs for players to equip
Hakai: and usable items for housing. While tapping a keg in your house might not have the result you'd expect.
Irini It would be really cool if you could unequip an item (clothing) by quickbar-clicking it, just as you can equip items by doing so. Any plans on implementing that? Especially in RP it would IMHO be a nice little improvement, if you could quickly take off your hat, your gloves, weapons etc ...
Denour_Turbine: Hey Irini - Its something we can look into, sure - we'll get that added to Thunderdome! In the meantime, we have extra tabs coming to the Character Panel to support cosmetic inventory items, which should help even more with roleplaying opportunities.
Berndorin will there be a christmas event?
Liquilla: Hi Berndorin, at present you can take part in the christmas Yule quest 😀 one or two things may be happening over the christmas break in terms of events, but it wont be anything huge this time unfortunatly! 🙁
Ithilmar Is there any chance we'll ever get to see Dwarven Captains, either in a book or expansion?
PatienceTurbine: Hi Ithilmar! LOTRO's class/race combinations were very carefully thought out and chosen to fit best with Middle-earth's lore, so at this time we don't forsee making the Captain class available to Dwarves. Personally, I really want to be a hobbit Lore-master. 😉
Tovak Any Information about the Month of der Guardian ?
PatienceTurbine: Hakai is typing up the answer, sorry for the delay 🙂
Hakai: The Month of the Guardian has a number of improvements to the Guardian's current tank role, and the addition of a new DPS focused stance.
Hakai: The stance is designed to be used with 2h weapons, but can also be effective with a sword and shield.
Hakai: It will also open up several new skills for the Guardian's to use while in the stance.
Hakai: The Guardian will also be gaining the ability to protect a single target by transfering all incoming damage to themselves, and some new taunting abilities.
Hakai: A dev diary will soon be available covering all the changes in more detail.
Vince Can you tell us something about the changes of the Burglar in book 12?
DangerDan: Yes, I can!
DangerDan: I think I mentioned this in an earlier Dev Chat, but in the "Month of the Burglar" we're looking to add a bunch of skills enhancing or reinforcing the versatile strengths of the Burglar.
DangerDan: Here are a few examples:
DangerDan: One of the big new skills we are adding is called "Mischief". It's a toggle skill that which emphasizes the Burglar's Tricks and Crowd Control. Mischief does a couple of things, one of them is to reduce the recovery time of your Riddle from 60s to 30s.
DangerDan: We're going to add "Fellowship Manoeveur" response skills that Burglars can use after their group pulls off a successful FM that help you use more skills.
DangerDan: Also, we're looking into a skill that would let you take a friend into Stealth with you... with some restrictions.
DangerDan: Many, many more details are coming in a Dev Diary soon!
Leirah Are there any plans on adding mini-games or other social activities that don't count towards PvE or PvP (apart from playing music in major towns, chatting around and the fun-quests we have seen in the recent festival)?
amlug: I personally love the mini-games and social quests in our game. I know we will continue to support them as much as we can in the future, so stay tuned...
Tadira: Are there any plans to improve Guardians in PvM. Their threat abilities are of no use there. I would wish somethin like "bodyguard" which would allow to protect someone effectively in your close vincinity.
PatienceTurbine: Hakai's typing again, please hold. 😉
Hakai: The Guardian's new ability to shield a target will work in both PvE and PvMP, and should allow Guardian's to fullfill their protector role in the Ettenmoors.
Kamios i was wondering why is the thorin house cave look like goloum cave not like thorin palace i think the dawrf are proud people and the cave should look like the rest of the dwarf work ??? any change comming?
PatienceTurbine: I'm relaying this answer from lead World-builder Scenario:
PatienceTurbine: There are a number of reasons for developing Thorin's Hall Homesteads on landscape as opposed to in a dungeon space. The first (and most important) is performance - on landscape we can spread out the space over multiple landblocks (and multiple servers if need be).
PatienceTurbine: We also wanted to try something different with our landscape that we haven't done too much of before. We've done some landscape caves, but nothing on the scale of the Homesteads.
PatienceTurbine: The results we've achieved with Thorin's Hall Homesteads have driven some exciting new tech developments that you'll be seeing in the coming months. And it is a great way for us to practice before we get to a certain other big cave. 🙂
Spltr When can we await the new book?
PatienceTurbine: Hi Spltr! Book 12 is in testing now and will be out after the New Year. We can't be any more specific than that yet!
Masta23 will there be any improvements to emote such as when you type hug you actually hug someone. Things like that would make roleplaying even better and would be more immersive.
Hakai: We would like to have more interactive emotes, but they aren't without a number of technical challenges that we need to overcome first.
Hakai: The most basic hurdle being you are taking control of another person's character with an interactive emote and all of the rules associated with permission to take control, breaking permission, and failure need to be resolved.
Lenwe: this will be our last question for today. So please don't send us anymore questions for today, thanks! 🙂
Mich-666 We all thank you for making truly great and immersing game. Just one question for all: What is your favourite in-game NPC and why? 😉 And of course - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
amlug: Who's my favorite NPC? Why Sara Oakheart, of course! Who else could there even be? Happy Holidays!
DangerDan: My favorite NPC? Tough one... I really like the Riddling Loremaster in the middle of the lake in Evendim. He's funny and surly.
PatienceTurbine: Happy Holidays to you too, Mich 🙂 Colbert the Mad is, of course, my favorite. 😀
Liquilla: Amdir for me <3 he's always sprawled across the floor whenever I see him =)
PatienceTurbine: Thanks for coming everyone!! Have a wonderful holiday and we'll see you again in the New Year 🙂
DangerDan: Happy Holidays! Thanks for coming out and asking some great questions.
* PatienceTurbine waves to everyone.
* Denour_Turbine waves
