F: Developer Q&A

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Updated Mon, Jan 05, 2009 by Ralsu

Developer Q&A

Compiled by Ralsu

Recently, the Turbine developers behind Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO) have been taking time from their busy schedules to answer a barrage of questions from forum users at Turbine's LOTRO site.

With the Q&A thread now in excess of 20 pages, I have sorted out the questions that received an answer and compiled them into a handy format for you. Simply click on the question that interests you to see the answer. Then click on "Back to Questions" to come back and pick another one.

First, I want to highlight why the developers decided to be so open with comments at this time. Lead Game Systems Designer Nik "Mithral_Miser" Davidson offered:

A lot of us went out of our way to get clearance to talk about more than we were able to before.

Ask me any one question you want, and I'll answer it. Pull no punches. This isn't a PR exercise, this is us excited about really getting a chance to talk about the game that we've been pouring our lives into.

Finally, before we get to the meaty stuff, Miltral_Miser had this to say about the questions that don't get answered by Turbine:
" If we don't answer your question, it doesn't mean it's not a good one, or that we're hiding something, or that we hate you. There's just a lot of them."

All answers come from Mithral_Miser, October, and Scenario of the Turbine LOTRO development team.

Questions

A. Beta/Release

When does beta start?
When does the game come out?
How do you feel towards the people who have doomed this game to oblivion? It seems that the majority of the mmo population thinks this game will fail miserably.
How do you think LOTRO will do against the tough competition out presently?

B. Character Customization

My biggest question is if you're going to model your character creator after DDO's or if you're looking into a more expansive or less expansive creator?
Are the actual avatars going to allow us unique individual[ly] as well?
Are there different cloaks with hoods up and down, or can you toggle it?
Can the tallest Hobbit be bigger than the shortest Man?
Does character age affect character appearence and height?
I'm assuming armor has some kind of racial looks - i.e. elven armor will look different from hobbit armor in terms of styling?
If I'm an elven armorsmith, I make a helm and sell it to a hobbit, will it look elven or hobbity when the hobbit puts it on?
What lengths will be available for hair, and will race affect that at all? I don't recollect many elves with buzz cuts.

C. Classes

About loremasters: will elves and humans have a different set of loremaster skills, or have similar skills but gain them differently? In short, will human and elven loremasters be different from each other?
Much discussion has been made of Jeff Steele's comments about the Loremaster having a vial of oil as a lore appropriate alternative to the Sorcerer's fireball. Does the loremaster have something like this as an offensive, direct damage weapon?

D. Crafting

Will the race of the character influence crafting at all? Such as elves making more durable long lasting items, but dwarves making stronger armor, etc.

Because there isn't race-specific crafting, does that mean every race can make lembas or nobody can?

I'd like to know whether or not it is going to be feasible to be a crafter/gatherer without ever having to engage in combat - EVER - or to have to enter areas for crafting/gathering purposes where combat is going to be nearly impossible to avoid.
Do you suppose there will be any opportunity down the road for, say, a Master Crafter to be able to have an Apprentice or two (either NPC and/or PC)?
Will a crafter be able to defend him/herself?
Will we be able to personalize our crafted items via Maker's Marks?
Can crafters ever supply the town smithy, he resells their goods and takes a cut of the profits?
Will crafting involve animations of any sort?
How much customization can a crafter put in with regard to the way items look? Can we add decorative embellishments, like script on a sword, inlay on plate armor, etc?

E. Faction

Is faction still in? If so, can you elaborate on it more?

F. Game World

Can our characters sit on chairs properly?
Are there balrogs in-game and if...wings or not?
Will we see such common fantasy monsters / bad guys like Vampires and werewolves, even though they are loosely mention in the Silmalirion? Or are they a no go?
How many...giant bugs are there?
Are stone Giants going to be in the game/future expansions?
If you could see one feature added, but it isn't actually possible to fit it in due to current hardware limits or lore boundaries, what would it be?
In the [Asheron Call games] you couldn't run off high areas and fall to injure yourself without trying (ie jumping off). In DDO i found that unless I was careful I could fall off high spots easily (due to lag problems)....Question is, which model is LOTRO following?
When you are defeated, how are you revivied in combat? As in, how would a player revive another player in combat if they are instantly transported to a safe place?
There is mentioning of the seven initial regions and I have some questions regarding those:

Do those regions together form the full first installment?
Are there loading times between those regions or are there 7 regions (and further subdivisions) simply for the ease of distibuting work?

How is this done? Just like in the real world by making some areas more level and others more hilly, some more dry and some more wet and by having differences in flora and fauna?

When running the longest distance (e.g. from North-West corner to the South-East corner), how much time would that take?
When running that distance, is there a lot of mandatory meandering to increase the distance or can we almost go anywhere cross country only being deviated by the occassional mountain, deep lake or fissure?

What would you say has been the hardest location in Eriador to design?

G. Housing

Housing (both private and fellowship), what is your timeframe on it?
Is the player housing still using the system which was described a long time ago? In that system the inside of a house was instanced and technically removed from its surroundings.

H. The Industry

What's your take on the current market sitution of skyrocketing production costs vs increasing consumer demand. Do you feel this stifles creativity and shut outs many from even entering the market place? Many niche gamers feel they are being toseed aside because of need to recoup production costs, do you think a future market will be large and diverse enough to once again satisfy them? How do you see the industry coping with this in the near and distance future? Do you think that out-sourcing (domestic and otherwise) development options such as engine licensing or art is a smart and viable option?

I: Regional Servers for Australia

Any chance of a regional server, or downtimes alternating so patching/server downtimes aren't aways impacting during OZ/NZ peak evening gametimes?

J: User Interface

Will there be any filters (aside from language) in the chat boxes, such as disallowing numbers (for leet) or use of excessive characters such as exclamation and question marks, and also constant capital letters? Or will it be "anything goes"?
How are you showing clickable objects in the game? Exaggerated, cartoony stuff (like in DDO, EQ2) or something completely different? Here, I'm refering to chests, harvestable resources, etc.

Answers

Beta/Release

[Editor's Note: Turbine was unable to state a date for beta]
[Editor's Note: Turbine was unable to state a date for release]
How do I feel toward the "doom and gloom" crowd? I feel hopeful. What I mean by that is this: I know this game's been in development a long time. We went though some major changes. I don't feel we handled the news about PvP or raids very well, and some people are pissed off. I don't blame them.

But I feel hopeful. Why? Because I know the game's good. I've worked on a few and I've played a ton and I know the game's good, bottom line. I played in the alpha last night, and I talked to real people running around having a great time. We have a ton of work to do, but at some point in the not too distant future, people are going to get a chance to make their minds up for themselves, not based on what some random malcontent on a forum was ranting about, but based on their own impressions of the actual game in beta.

I feel hopeful. And if those people [who are negative about LOTRO now] change their minds once they get a chance to play (and I know that given a chance, the most vocal detractors of the game would eagerly jump into the alpha right now to see if they're right or wrong) then they won't owe anyone an apology. Them having fun would be all the thanks we'd need. And if those people get a chance to play the game and still don't like it, then I'll respect their opinions all the more. Hopefully there's something we can learn from that too.

Back to Questions

Character Customization

Well, if you count all the possible color combinations and option configurations, I could quote you some impressively large but ultimately not terribly useful number about how many different visual character combinations you could create. Practically speaking, you get a pretty good amount. If you want to compare and contrast with DDO, we're experimenting with some size-scaling things that DDO didn't have, and we're doing a neat thing where we're tying color palettes (allowed hair colors, skin tones and such) to a character's Nationality. Men from Rohan tend toward the blonde and fair, while Breelanders tend toward darker hair.
Most of the visual customization options in LOTRO are all in the face, the hair, eyes, facial features, that sort of thing. As you might expect, you lose some of that as soon as you put on a helmet, or even as soon as you zoom out the camera a bunch. Then it becomes a question of how unique and cool the armor sets are. My take on it is, your character customization is mainly for you, the player to see - the world is big, faces are small, helmets are shiny. (And yes, we're likely to have a "don't show my helmet" option so your Legolas-style prettyboy hair can be seen by all.)
Some cloaks are hoods up, some are hoods down. Can't toggle it, though.
Nope, hobbits are wee.
No.
Yes.
Elven, I should think.
Hairstyles are all race-specific, and range from bald to a bit past shoulder-length. No elven buzz cuts.

Back to Questions

Classes

Same set of skills. However, the racial accomplishments that different race loremasters can complete will give them different traits and specializations. Loremasters of different races will be different from one another, but those differences will tend to manifest later in your adventuring career.
I hate to contradict El Jefe, but the loremaster doesn't currently throw burning oil at people. He's not a nuker class. He has a "Burning Embers" skill that involves throwing burning pinecones at people - that's the closest analogue I can think of.

Back to Questions

Crafting

The racial crafting traits are things we've talked a bunch about, but it's not in right now. I'm going to give that one an "unlikely for ship" answer.

That's what it means. Which of those two options it means remains to be seen. I'd love to keep something as iconic as lembas accessible to players, but I want to tread carefully around that one. So I'm leaning toward "everyone can," but without a ton of conviction.

All of our character classes are adventuring heroes. Combat's at the core of the game, and is required to get through the tutorial. There's this little war brewing, and we call pacifists "NPCs."

That being said, would it be possible/practical for an adventuring smith to "retire" after a while and focus exclusively on trade, crafting, and commerce? Probably.

In the distant fuuuuuture, nebulous, shifting and unformed, anything is technically possible.
Everyone gets to be a crafter in addition to their character class. None of the character classes are purely crafters - everyone can train a crafting vocation.
Yep, your name is attached to every item you create.
Not exactly. (That was a bit of a loaded non-answer, for those keeping score.)
Yes, Avatars will have crafting animations.
I don't know.

Back to Questions

Faction

Faction isn't nearly as big a deal as it was back in the mists of time. There will be faction-related accomplishments (do enough quests for the people of Breeland, and they'll start to appreciate it) but it's not the system of old.

Back to Questions

Game World

Not right now. Yeah, I know. Beat up Floon about that one.
You know, I had never even heard of the great wing debate before I started working on the project. When I read the books for the first time as a wee lad, I imagined the Balrog with wings. Who knew it was such a religious issue? No, I didn't answer your first question. I'm a big cheater.
Anything mentioned exclusively in the Silmarilion is verboten for us.
We've got some giant bugs. I think animators really like giant bugs for some reason. Must be all the legs.

Also, when you're mocapping a spider, it's hard to get all the little ping pong balls stuck on. (If you've never seen a "mocap", or motion-capture session, that joke probably didn't make much sense. It's funny, trust me.)

I'm going to try to avoid answering "Is [X Piece Of Content] in the game?" just because I don't want to steal the thunder of the artists and content designers who haven't told you about their cool stuff yet. But it's a universal rule = a monster is ten times more fun when it's ten times bigger.

100x bigger? 100x FUN!
I'm only half-kidding. Heh.

I have a system of advanced weapon customization that has been pushed post-ship. It's way cool. I would really love to un-push it, but such is life!
We're following AC2/DDO. If you happen upon an cliff, you will find yourself falling off it if you aren't mindful.
There is a period of time in which you lay incapcitated on the ground (you can chose to skip the timer and go to a Rally Point). During that time, you may be revived.

[7 Initial Regions]

Yes
The latter

Our environmental artists and worldbuilders layout a series of references images and concept art and build areas based off those. Terrain textures, trees and frills are designed around the reference and concept pieces.

For towns, we typically decide on a theme for the town and build the town around that theme. For example - Scary is a quarry town, so much of the decoration is themed around that. The buildings look more run down than a normal "plaster and a hill" hobbit hole and stacks of quarried rock lay around the entire town.

I haven't done this myself, but I think That number has been posted elsewhere.

I would say that we lean more to the "go anywhere" side than the "meandering" side.

Right off the top of my head, I'd say one of the most unexpected challenges is making different green wooded areas look distinct from each other. A lot of Eriador is made up of green fields with trees. Having recognized this was the case, we have a guy on the team who is dedicated to making each of these areas look unique and separate from each other. Hopefully, when we are done you will be able to take a screenshot anywhere in the game, show it to someone else who is familiar with the game and he would be able to tell you what region the picture was taken based on the sort of trees, grass, rocks and dirt you find there.

Back to Questions

Housing

Post-ship. I'd be more specific if I knew, but I honestly don't.
There is no housing for the release of this game. It is possible that we will add it in an update or expansion.

What I wanted to talk about was the considerations for housing that needs to take place... Housing is like adding another player race to the game, one that needs a bunch of systems that are unique to it and it alone. Like players, it is desirable to have it customizable, only it needs to be customizable in the outside AND on the inside. Any of the things you would want to put on the facade of the house and the interior needs to be made. Even if you use existing objects for decorations, those objects aren't generally made to be placed in the world by players, so even existing objects would need some attention.

Also, the houses should have race based appearances... a hobbit hole should look different from an elf home. This causes other issues... can an Elf build an Elf house in the Shire? Can an Elf own ANY property in the Shire, Elf styled or Hobbit styled?

I'm not saying what the right or wrong answers are for these considerations are, I'm just saying that housing is a huge task and it's importantly that we do it right, or else why do it at all?

Back to Questions

The Industry

This is a tough one. Costs keep going up. Way up. Which leads the industry toward really being "hit-driven". I sometimes envy indie developers that can succeed without cracking the top-ten seller lists just because their costs are low. Then again, they don't get to work with awesome licenses like LOTR. It's all tradeoffs. Personally, I think that outsourced engines and frameworks (like the PopCap Framework) will lead to a renaissance of "small" games again. Maybe it's more "hope" than "think". Big publishers have become very risk-averse, which might mean that smaller-budget games will see a comeback in the next few years. We'll see.

Back to Questions

Regional Servers for Australia

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I will at least commisserate. I know Kiwis have basically gotten shafted by the MMO world so far, and I really hope we can do better.

Back to Questions

User Interface

I once tried to devise such a filter. It, er, didn't really work. Language's a weird thing, and there's a lot of combinations of characters that don't seem useful, except that sometimes, they happen. Heck, imagine you're typing fast and instead of "Heal me!" your finger slips and you type "He3al me!" If we filter that out and display "***** me!" to your party, you might get a different reaction than you had hoped.

With character names, we can be a lot more selective, and yes, we have exacting rules for character naming. Chat, however, we have to leave to its own devices. (Minus an obscenity filter, naturally.)

Largely, these are being represented by objects that are unique looking. Not neccessarily cartoony or exaggerated, but distinct and noticable.

Rowan Branches, for example, look different from the rest of the foliage in the area to make them visually stand out, while still falling within our art direction.

Also, you will notice mouse over changes in your cursor and if you have name labels toggled on, you will be able to see the name of the item hovering above it.

Back to Questions

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