As we barrel toward the September 10th release date of LotRO's Volume III Book 2 update and F2P craziness, Turbine's devs are rushing to cover as many of the changes as possible in their detailed dev diaries.
The first diary covers the changes to the metal-clad captain class, which is receiving an overhaul thanks to player feedback and extensive fine-tuning. Ken Burd explained the rearrangement of two traits lines, Leader of Men and Lead the Charge, which have been reworked into tank and DPS specialties, respectively. Burd also discussed the changes to heralds, standards and armaments.
For everyone else who isn't a captain (and, OK, captains too), games systems engineer Ransroth gushes over the improved vault system. In an attempt to make the vault easier to peruse, Turbine is changing the bank UI to resemble the shared storage UI, which results in an easier-to-read interface. When beta testers responded negatively to the new vault interface, the devs worked to find a solution to mimic the old structure of multiple chests. Vaults 2.0 also come with a number of spiffy tools, such as dynamic filtering, sorting, automatic stack merges, and searches.
Both the captain revamp and the vault improvements are scheduled to hit the servers in a little over two weeks.
Reader Comments (5)
Posted: Aug 26th 2010 9:33PM Theeinferno said
I can't wait until f2p, and I'm happy to be a Captain.
Posted: Aug 26th 2010 9:49PM (Unverified) said
An mmo developer who listens to their customers' feedback and makes changes for the overall enjoyment of the game, others should follow Turbine's example in this regard.
Posted: Aug 27th 2010 4:55PM EdmundDante said
You mean all the work they did on Housing, Hobbies and PvMP?
Reply
Posted: Aug 27th 2010 7:23AM (Unverified) said
Yea cappie changes are very nice as this class was really stale with only one viable traitline(one "talent tree" for those not into LOTRO). Changes will bring more variety and set-ups for solo/small groups/raids and that's always a good thing. Still the class remains slow paced with mostly pre-active buffs and could use a lot more love.
Also what annoys me a bit is yet another % cap. Seriously I've never see any game with so many capped stats which more or less kills any variety in building Your character.
Also what annoys me a bit is yet another % cap. Seriously I've never see any game with so many capped stats which more or less kills any variety in building Your character.
Posted: Aug 27th 2010 11:58AM Tom in VA said
Played a captain to lvl 53 or so in LotRO. I absolutely hated the heralds: Worst. AI. Ever. Dumber than stumps, the heralds make WoW ranger pets or Guild Wars heroes look like geniuses in comparison.
I do like LotRO. It's an OK MMO, but Turbine is going to need to do a lot more than this (and going F2P) to draw me back into this game.
I do like LotRO. It's an OK MMO, but Turbine is going to need to do a lot more than this (and going F2P) to draw me back into this game.







