Highlights
- Lord of the Rings Online's development team plans to revisit aspects of the game, such as the war steed system and crafting, to provide a better gameplay experience.
- The war steed system could benefit from improved handling and less distinction between war steeds and regular horses to enhance player enjoyment.
- The crafting system will undergo a revamp to make it more accessible and useful at all levels of play, allowing players to create competitive gear and engage in crafting as an interesting gameplay element.
Lord of the Rings Online is one of the longer-running MMORPGs on the market today with a 16-year history spanning numerous massive expansions and dozens of major updates that have kept the game's dedicated players engaged for well over a decade. That being said, as an MMORPG, the work is never truly finished, and the Lord of the Rings Online development team is interested in revisiting many aspects of the game at some point.
In an interview with Game ZXC, Lord of the Rings Online executive producer Robert Ciccolini spoke about features in the game he feels could use additional tuning. In particular, he expressed a desire to revisit the war steed system introduced in the Riders of Rohan expansion as well as the planned revamp for crafting that'll be arriving with the upcoming expansion taking place in Umbar.
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Lord of the Rings Online's War Steeds Need Some Work
Ciccolini pointed out that the war steed system from the Riders of Rohan expansion doesn't feel too great when starting off. Before players have unlocked any of the relevant skills, the mounts are rather difficult to control, and investing points into better movement only brings them into slightly better territory. One idea the team has is to somehow readjust this so that war steed handling progresses from good handling to better, rather than from poor maneuverability to merely acceptable.
The inertia of the play feels bad when you first start it, and then you get skills to make it feel better. We'd like to relax that so it feels good up front, and then feels really good later. We'll probably play with those numbers.
In addition, I think the distinction between war steeds and horses needs to go away. I would like to see your horses and your warhorses be more of the same like you can interchange them more. We just want to make sure the players don't feel as though we're taking something away, because one of the reasons they like the warhorse is they're slightly faster, and one of the reasons we don't like the warhorses is also that they're slightly faster.
What happens is the warhorse’s extra speed gives the server a little trouble keeping up with that extra speed. We probably don't want to take the speed away, but we do want to be careful about when we combine the two, if we combine the two.
Something that's been long-requested by players is a more interchangeable relationship between war steeds and standard mounts, and that's another thing that Ciccolini wants to see as well. Since war steeds are considerably faster than other mounts, players feel obligated to use them over many other potentially more exciting mounts in their collection like the Winter Elk or Rescued Steed of Agarnaith.
Lord of the Rings Online Is Getting a Crafting Overhaul
Ciccolini also recognizes that the game's crafting mechanics have gradually fallen by the wayside for endgame gearing as there are generally much better options available to players from group content. To solve this, Lord of the Rings Online will be revamping its crafting system in the Umbar expansion so that it's both more accessible and more useful at all levels of play. Professions will no longer be tied to vocation choices, and players will be able to fill at least some of their end-game slots with competitive player-made gear if they choose.
We are revamping crafting so that your professions and vocations are no longer tied together. I think if we do that right, and we can provide enough crafting support, crafting is going to become an interesting gameplay element in itself and the revamp will be like “Okay, I think that I can really make good gear with my crafting.” It's not just an afterthought. I think that even though that's a core system, it will feel new enough and some people will re-engage. In some ways, I would rather reinvent the systems the players already know rather than introduce new ones on top of it and leave crafting languishing.
It's great to see that the developers of Lord of the Rings Online appear to be listening closely to player feedback and are thinking of ways to work on the game's lingering pain points. Although Ciccolini doesn't promise specific changes to systems like war steeds or hobbies in the immediate future, players can almost certainly expect the game to continue improving as more major updates keep rolling out each year.
Lord of the Rings Online is free to play on PC.