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LotRO gains +500 faction with players due to improved reputation system

by Justin Olivetti on Dec 8th 2011 3:00PM

Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Game mechanics, Patches, Free-to-play

Among the many quality-of-life improvements coming to Lord of the Rings Online with Update 5 is a significant change to the game's reputation system. Previously, players would assemble entire stacks of items to turn into vendors for point boosts, but this will soon change. Starting with Update 5, players can simply click on reputation items and get an instant point increase, similar to using any other one-shot item in the game.

This change will render certain barter NPCs obsolete, with some being removed from the game entirely and others continuing to offer quests and tradable items. Turbine's also added special instant-reputation items to Moria to help with gaining faction with the esteemed Iron Garrison Guards and Miners.

The changes to reputation items along with the many other features of this patch will take effect when Update 5 hits servers on December 12th.

Source: LotRO dev diary
More coverage: LotRO official site

Tags: f2p, faction, faction-points, faction-system, free-to-play, instant-reputation-items, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, moria, reputation, reputation-items, reputation-points, reputation-system, turbine, turbine-entertainment, update-5

Reader Comments (24)

Part of me doesn't see this as a good thing.

Sure, it saves the players time, but it breaks immersion.

Players will still have to return to the cities to buy gear from the faction merchants, right?

@MtthwRddl

One step from what they tried in AC2 where you could simply turn loot you found into money without having to go back to town to sell.

Bout time. Maybe Rift and WoW will take a hint too and make the rep grind a little less tedious as well.

@MMOaddict

I didn't find the rep grind in Rift (when I played) to be tedious at all. It was actually very well paced.

As for WoW...seriously? It's a complete joke to get reputation now. Older reputations are still time consuming, but you can get all the new factions to exalted without even having to try. The one exception is PvP factions, which is fine because there is no real tangible benefit beyond an eventual title.

@edgecrusherO0

yes, seriously. BECAUSE I don't like having to do daily quests every day like a stupid job just to get rep. In every one of the games I mentioned every single character I have is sitting at honored or whichever the medium rep level is because that's when the main questlines that gave you rep at first stop. Then they expect you to do dailies like a job so that it elongates what should be a shorter time. It's just not a grind suited to my playstyle. Give me rep the same way I earn level xp, that's all I ask.

@edgecrusherO0 I found the reputation gain in Rift to be way too slow. By the time I got to a rep level high enough to purchase some new shinies from the vendor, I had already severely outlevelled said shinies. LotRO is finally playing catch up, because it suffered from the same problems Rift (and WoW, too) did.

@MMOaddict its called a mmo have to have some sorta of grind to keep you playing

@stephen09181981

Even more proof it's a big crock since it usually makes me end up rerolling a new character, if the game has enough alternate leveling paths, which Rift does not, or I unsub. So...if it's meant to keep me playing it's not doing a very good job.

Next time think about what you are saying. A good grind is one you never notice whether it's there or not.

I understand the reason for it, but there was something fulfilling about travelling to michel delving to hand in mathoms.

Yet another change in the name of streamlining and accesability that reaffirms themeparks are still on the downward spiral.

I don't see the point for rep items at all. It is a waste of bag space and a waste of time. I like receiving rep for killing mobs in instances for CD and URU and wish it was this way for all rep. If it's too "easy", just up the scale. It's just another time sink.

@nathanb Well, the difference is that you can still buy and sell rep via the items, some of which have historically given good coin for your grinding time. I understand why they would do this--to allow you to clear bag space and not have to deal with these items constantly piling up, but still agree with the immersion objection.

Just another case of dumbing down as far as I'm concerned. I'd favour a separate inventory screen for reputation items so as to free up bag space (being very limited in LoTRO), but I just don't see the need for this change other than to appease those players who want to complete a game with one click of the mouse. We need to stop pandering to those players and start getting the sense of immersion back into MMOs.

@Seffrid

Agreed. I'm more then tired and frustrated with people trying to change the mmorpg genre into other genre of computer games.

I took my warg out on a practice run after the fraud to play, pay to win fiasco quieted down, didnt like the change. A couple hunters i AlWAYS destroyed were out, so i went thunting to get my ettens fix in, bad idea.

in less than two weeks after the event the "new" breed of freeps was outfitted and lookng for blood, those two hunters? Got my hide several times while never dropping below half health, no matter what i tried, one on one was no longer viable for my class or level. Thinking i had just grown rusty i reviewed my skills and did not notice any difference, then i reviewed the freeps improvements, wow.

While i have a very, very large hard........drive, i still deleted the lotr from it, doubt i will venture out into it again with my MP warg only account as the devs in that game are the true brainless in this world.

My opinion of them, and it is forever my punishment for buying a lifetime way back then.

@Graill440

Odd, my warg found that he continued to dominate more so once they fixed the issue a bit ago where creep damage wasn't scaling correctly. Hunters aren't a problem at all, Rks and minis are.

That said LotRo pvp is a fail over all and always has been. It is an inbred cliquish oddity by the players.

@Celtar

Then it may have been me most likely. I never did buy any of the points skills they had for the creeps, though with 10k points i could have bought all of them, still, no need to weep over the latests losses as the game is a memory now (grin)

I think a middle ground would have been to just make it so that rep items don't take up inventory space but go into a similar wallet like your skirmish marks and so on (but with an ability to sell them to other players and so on). That way it'd still have a bit of RPing with going to the vendor to turn in the marks without having them tying up bag space.

This sux, instead of turning bunch of items with one click, I will have to be clicking like a moron 50 times to get the fucking repo... stupid turbine

Pffft this won't help Lotro at all, actually this kind of changes will just hrt immersion and hurt Turbine in the long-run.

Well Lotro is going down already so guess it does not matter much.

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LotRO gains +500 faction with players due to improved reputation system

Reader Comments (24)

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 3:19PM MtthwRddl said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 3:36PM SnarlingWolf said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 3:23PM MMOaddict said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 3:34PM edgecrusherO0 said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 3:54PM MMOaddict said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 4:10PM Lenn said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 8:26PM stephen09181981 said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 8:53PM MMOaddict said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 3:32PM Nerves said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 3:47PM Hipster said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 4:08PM nathanb said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 4:43PM Silverangel said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 4:33PM Seffrid said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 10:43PM Celtar said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 8:23PM Graill440 said

Posted: Dec 8th 2011 10:46PM Celtar said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 4:44AM Graill440 said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:40AM JoeH42 said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 3:34AM spamero said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 7:19AM smartstep said

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