Connect08: LotRO Q&A with Jeffrey Steefel

Here at Connect08 we've just spent an informative hour participating in a roundtable about all things Lord of the Rings Online. Executive producer Jeffrey Steefel was on hand to answer audience questions covering a wide range of subjects, from technical issues to crafting and kinships. So without further ado, let's get stuck in!

Initially Jeffrey showed a demo of some Book 13 content and a quick run-through of existing high-level content that many audience members hadn't seen -- several players were impressed with Jeffrey's deft hand at death-touching and cavalier attitude to barriers ("Since I can't go through this door, because I haven't done the quests, I'll just delete it"). The floor was then opened to the audience.

Q: UK and European players can't use the Turbine website to access lore books, as it needs an American serial number. Any plans to authorize non-US players?
A: We're aware of it, and looking into a way to make this content more available to players worldwide. It's very cool.

Q: Likewise, the test server is open to US players but Europeans have limited access.
A: Not sure what the technical answer is. We try to provide people with access to server. Some technical challenges that make it problematic.

Q: Housing areas - people love the looks of housing areas but they all say they feel dead. There's nothing to lure players in. The RP angle is great, but Spring Festival events and so forth could have been within housing areas to liven up areas. What ideas are planned for housing?
A: Our intention is that all game aspects are released in a series of stages - the ultimate big step for housing is neighbourhoods. Housing was built and released so that the functionality is there - it's a matter of priorities, we have to work on everything at once.

The next step is definitely neighbourhoods, stuff like event system integration. Also player-based events triggered on things like activities neighbourhoods do together. It's just a matter of "when".

Audience member gave an example of a "grow the biggest vegetable competition"
A: Great idea. The sandbox is there, it's like most housing in most games, people spend time in their house not the neighbourhood. There are definitely future plans for it.

Q: Are you looking at more crafting in the expansion?
A: Yes.

Q: What about changing paths? If you're a Scholar, you can drop that and become a weaponsmith. Are you thinking of doing that for occupations like minstrel to guardian, or even creating battle-minstrels?
A: The deeds and traits system is the solution to that. It's one of the key points of the system and people are using it for that purpose. One of the things we're working on is that the D&T system isn't visible enough to the players. Not everyone knows how it fits in. Part of our job is to make that really clearly apparent, part of the gameplay. Then they'll understand thats how you diversify and change your build.

Q: Book 13: Any cinematic, unique content (like Gollum) planned?
A: Certainly in books 13 and 14 the epic story continues, we'll have more adventure instances that have a bit more of that dramatic feel. Moria will have a substantial amount of that. It's one of the things we know differentiates the game - we have a story to tell.

Q: Any plans to modify the kinship management system, like kinship banking? Any plans to combine kinship and housing management so the kinship pays upkeep?
A: Kinships is another system like housing that we have a roadmap for and a lot of stuff we want to do - just a matter of when.

Q: Making a kinship member list is really hard, it should be simple to add an export function?
A: Understood, things that always seem being easy are hard and vice versa, you're right it's quite simple and that's the sort of stuff we want to make available, but there's a larger effort of data accessibility in game - game-web data bridging - we're building in some technology as we speak that works with that.
Leaderboards/achievement boards are part of this, once the game and the web have access to data freely, exports would be a lot easier then. I'm hoping some of this is "this year" timescale. We definitely want to make it easier for kinship managers, they create content for the game every day.

Q: I'd like to see the auction house improved, maybe adding a sales pitch to your items.
A: The auction hall is in a "complete, but could be a lot better" category, it's definitely something we're designing some changes to. Some of it is more facility with information, some of it navigation/search/sorting. We're in the process of addressing that right now.

Q: Any interface changes such as a better, bigger craft window planned?
A: The interface is good, it's very clean, but there's a lot of functionality we would like to add. We've been building some of this for 14 years, it's very robust and mature so we can focus on making the game better. There are huge advantages but the downside is we have old systems. The UI system was first written in 1997!
It evolved over the years but it's reached its limit. We're completely rewriting and replacing the UI system and that'll give us a tremendous amount more flexibility in the game. In the short term we've done little things - the character screen has changed from book to book. There's a long list of things we want to do - we call it the Thunderdome. We do as many as we can each update.

Q: Will it be easier to customise the UI?
A: That's one of the big changes planned -- you can skin it now, it's a pain but the best we could do. The question is how much configuration to allow. But the answer is yes, it will get better.

Q: Any housing changes like plans to expand the number of hooks on the inside of the house or the number of items you can craft inside?
A: We need to watch what's going on with housing. We went with what we thought was the right amount - diversity but not cluttered. Now we have a better idea of what it's like we can change it.

Q: When maintenance comes up for payment, can you send an out-game email? Not everyone logs in all the time, people lose their houses.
A: There will be some changes to the way all that happens in the game, it's going to be much less painful when upkeep runs out. Maybe a book 13 thing? It'll be in dev diaries soon. The other thing is, ironically, the linkage between ingame and outgame email is like the previously mentioned web/data stuff -- we need to build the connective tissue. When game servers can talk to real email server it might be possible.

Q: Also in houses, can we get a forge? Can you buy or make stuff that you can craft inside your own house?
A: We had this huge debate before launching housing. There's no real reason not to do it. Probably yes. But how much is enough or too much? We don't want to put too much functionality in a neighbourhood and drain social centres.
We don't want to make crafting too accessible (forges everywhere) and don't want people to take undue advantage of it. Could make them hard to build and more rare. Still weighing the balance.

Q: Peripherals. How much of the game can you play through gamepad?
A: Currently you can play the game with xbox controller, I wouldn't say we support it. We don't have major plans. Always talking to hardware manufacturers and potential partners. If it'll hit a large group of players we'll look into it.

Q: Any plans to put in a way to figure out what PC usage the game is taking up. Is it using my xfire cards? I can't tell.
A: We want to know too! Looking at platform itself - letting the client gather and communiate some of that information so we have a better understanding. It's a logical step to communicate some of that to players.

Q: Crafting - I love some of the sets but are you planning to introduce staggered set bonuses?
A: I honestly don't know, designers probably thought of it but I don't know

Q: I'd like to see a facility to repair goods in the auction house.
A: That's interesting.

Q: When talking to a GM, I've found 80% of the time I've just started some battle. While talking to the GM I've been wiped and sent miles away. Can't the GM stop the battle?
A: You could use that to your own advantage. But I can see that when our queueing system gets more robust letting you say "I'm willing to move down the queue so I can finish this battle".

Q: Book 12 had a lot of problems and bugs. Anything to address better quality control?
A: We were pretty happy with the quality of release system in general. 12 wasn't our finest hour for lots of reasons. As you grow as a franchise you start trying to do more -- we're growing the team -- but it's fair to say we were not at the level of polish we wante to be at 12. Pretty committed to a tighter polish now, growing QA team at same rate as dev team.

Q: Moria and the new level cap. Theoretically could someone go back and solo Nazgul at 60?
A: In any game you can do this sort of thing when the level cap raises. Arbitrarily levelling up elites isn't really a solution. if that's how people want to spend their time, then let them.
Audience member suggests a level cap on earlier books, so a level 60 can't help level 10 with early book.
A: We could do that but hey, if those people want to do that, it's up to them. It's not really an advantage that we care about. Where do you draw the line? Stop high levels helping low levels altogether? It's an interesting point.

Q: In other games they have a mentor system so you can join in but you artificially mentor down to the newbies level. Could you look into it?
A: We've talked about someting similar a number of times. Mostly around things like the world changing instances we do, how does someone participate if they're different levels, something like a mentoring system we've talked about as a solution but eventually you'll still have to do the content properly. At the time it was too much work to justify what we'd get out of it but it's still on the radar.
Audience member notes that a guild might have endgame players and midlevel players, then grouping through an instance all the mobs are grey because highlevel person isn't mentored down. This would solve that problem.
A: We understand the desire for it, have discussed it a lot, maybe if we can find a way to do it.

Q: Do you plan to upgrade the game engine and video engine - reflections and graphics - with new expansions?
A: We're constantly doing it, we feel we have the highest level of fidelity in a MMO. Turbine is a technology company, we're evolving and will continue to do so.

Q: Crafting - the rift set throws crafting out of the water. Monster classes don't match up. Where is the focus for game rebalance?
A: Balance is something we're constantly working on, it's very difficult and very complex. Raising the level cap is sparking all kinds of design discussions and planning, how is that going to affect monster play? We'll open it up and do some more balancing I hope. I can't say what we're looking at right now.

That concludes the Q&A session -- we'll have more Q&As from other Codemasters games as Connect08 progresses, so stay tuned!