By now I imagine many of you have tried out the new Skirmish system. I purposely avoided a lot of the more detailed information on Skirmishes and was able to go in pretty fresh. My general thought? They’re awesome.
In a lot of ways many of them feel almost like a Tower Defense game. You have areas to protect, while random groups of enemies and leaders make their way in to push you back. It’s quite action packed and I think it finally gives PvE players a sense of being in an actual war. Plus, it’s just awesome to see familiar areas in different situations. Bree covered in tons of snow and being invaded by brigands is not something you’re used to seeing.
I especially like the amount of control you’re given over the system. Once you complete the entry quest (which is relatively simple, but kind of a downer) and the tutorial, you can join a skirmish at pretty much any point. These can be adjusted by area, level, difficulty (there’s three tiers of this). The way it’s designed, there’s almost no real way to get tired of it aside from overexposure. Considering there are some additional skirmishes that were in the beta but are still being worked on (as noted at CStM), I think we’ll have a good amount to do for a while.
The Skirmish Marks you receive during these battles are barter tokens. You’re given a soldier to help you out and these tokens can give them new abilities. You can trade for all sorts of items for your characters as well, including class quest items. There’s some unique items as well, some of which I’ve got my eye on. Even so, I’d certainly recommend making your soldier as strong as possible early on. The stronger the soldier is, the easier it’ll be to amass those marks.
Casual Stroll to Mordor also has an excellent post with answers to common Skirmish questions. I really suggest you check it out if you find yourself confused.
How has everyone else’s experience with this been so far?
Tipped off by my kinnie Havborn, I have come across an exclusive album of Siege of Mirkwood screenshots at The Madhouse Tavern (a European LotRO fansite). I strongly recommend heading over to the site to peruse the pictures yourself as they reveal a lot of small but relevant tidbits relating to the Mirkwood region and skirmishes! Some of the most relevant information includes:
Hunters and Wardens will be able to port/muster to Mirkeaves if they gain acquaintance reputation with the Malladhrim.
Carn Dum and Urugath class items (e.g. Putrid Slime of Helchgam) is tradeable with Skirmish Marks
Skirmish marks can also get you a lot of crafting materials including shards (e.g. Mithril Flakes and Ruby Shards). The crafting section also includes ‘Tomes of Middle Earth’ which may be new crit-items or ingredients for crafting items between Lvls 60 – 65.
The in-game menu has been updated and includes a more colourful layout with more options. Our character panels will also be subdivided into tabs based upon our mitigations and damage-output. Minor but positive changes!
At least 3 skirmishes will be based in Mirkwood / Dol Guldur, and are designed for those at the new level cap of 65.
The latest, and penultimate developer diary for skirmishes, was posted a short while ago on the official LotRO website. The article can be found HERE.
Some of the information the diary conveys has already been covered in part by interviews and developer comments, but is still worth a read. In summary: Read the rest of this entry »
Along with the date, Turbine has also posted up a few more developer diaries concerning Siege of Mirkwood. They’re really worth checking out.
Skirmishes
Zombie Columbus has a two-page diary that covers the new Skirmish system. It will be followed by even more Skirmish-related diaries in the weeks to come. Be sure to read the whole article (it’s not too long and I found the second page to be especially interesting), but here’s a bit on their vision for the system:
To cut right to the chase: Skirmishes are short, accessible, randomized, scalable, story instances with incremental rewards. Why Skirmishes became this can best be explained by discussing what the designer’s goals for the system are. Everything we added to Skirmishes was done with a high level “vision” in mind. By sharing this vision with you, I hope that you will see why we made the choices we did, and how we ended up where we are now. Our goals were to:
Create finely crafted instance content that can be played by different group sizes and levels.
Keep play-time short, allowing Skirmishes to fit into other activity cycles. Internally we’ve called them– “Pop-corn” experiences. If one is short and good, why not try another?
Add randomized elements into Skirmishes to keep replays interesting.
Encourage a rotational play of Skirmishes, to keep them fresh and prevent them from overshadowing existing playstyles. Skirmishes should complement the game, not alter it!
Set up an incremental reward structure, like the instance barter systems.
Allow players to feel that any amount of play time was a step closer to a desired reward.
Give players a feeling of participating in epic struggles, and of being leaders of small armies.
I like the idea of Skirmishes. In some ways, it’s like having a Legendary NPC in addition to a Legendary Weapon. I’m always big on randomization in MMORPGs and I hope that Turbine considers using it in more additions in the future.
Storage
By now you’ve probably heard about the addition of Shared Storage, but Turbine is offering more details (and some images) of the system in action. I like the overall convenience of it, especially because the it hooks into the existing Vault system. You can transfer items to and fro as you please. It can even handle bound items, although as you may expect, only the character who that item is bound to will be able to see it.
Shared Storage in Action
Mounts
This change is a big deal, in my opinion, as it really opens up a lot of future potential for mount use. The Developer Diary on these changes is the most interesting to me, especially because it gets a bit heavier into how and why Turbine makes design and usability decisions.
For those interested in the end-results, the new system most directly offers the following:
