Because of my recent playing of CoX, and chit-chat with Margie, I found this set of lists slowly growing, so I thought I’d toss them out there. Your mileate will almost cetainly vary.
Comparison caveats:
- I’ve played a lot less LotRO than CoX. I’ve only gotten up to the mid-20s with my highest on the former, vs. running two toons to 50 on the latter. So my full experience with LotRO is a bit limited in comparison, and CoX is the “baseline” against which I judge.
- I am a huge LotR/Tolkien fan — not quite as fanatical as I was back in high school or college, but still madly in love with the Rings Trilogy.
- I play LotRO mostly duoing with Margie.
Things I like about LotRO (particularly in comparison to CoX).
- The scenery. The exteriors are just incredibly gorgeous, imaginatively but effectively evocative of Tolkien’s books, but further fleshed out. The interiors aren’t shabby, either. The world and environment have been lovingly crafted, and is the real star of the game.
- The epic, heroic story line. Part of that is the books, but the game has done a lot to incorporate that without getting players too on-stage for the books’ tale. When LotRO is being heroic, it’s great.
- Mission variety. Margie disagrees (or, rather, seems to think it’s a wash), but I feel like CoX has a much more limited number of sets (interior/exterior) and mission types than LotRO. Maybe it’s the ability to take multiple missions at the same time, or the lush scenery that they take place in.
- More shops. You can sell stuff practically anywhere to anyone, rather than spending a lot of time jumping around town to get to the one Nat Store when you’re in Indepndence Port.
- I love time-not-logged-in credit on experience for characters.
- I think I prefer the “Defeated, a Bit Worse for the Wear” mechanic of LotRO to the “Back to the Hospital, gaining experience more slowly” mechanic of CoX.
- The PUG/LFF/general chat environment seems a bit more positive than CoX.
- The crafting ingredients, so to speak — the stuff you pick up to do things — tend to be more controllable and makes more sense than the crafting system grafted onto CoX. Heck, the whole Inspiration bit always seemed a bit lame (“Wait, are these actually little pills, or concepts, or karma points, or what?”). And the who-remembers-their-names origin-specific DO/SO stuff is either underplayed (no actual game effect) or too complicated (trying to pick things out from the stores) for CoX’s own good.
- The general mechanisms around buying/selling/crafting — recipes and loot and auction houses and crafting halls and sellers — and the interfaces to them are, by and large, quite a bit easier to use in LotRO than in CoX. While I feel like it’s still a huge time sink in LotRO, it’s a lot easier to figure out what something is worth, and a tad easier to figure out if you should sell it or auction it, in LotRO. And while I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time running around in Bree between Craft and Auction Houses, it’s trivial compared to even the most convenient of setups in CoX (i.e., Steel Canyon, where the University (crafting), Wentworths (auction), two stores and a variety of contacts, plus the Vault, are all within a relatively easy distance (except you need a travel power to make it such), and I still end up spending several orders of inordinate time making it work.
- I like that you can take a large number of missions in LotRO, and that world tends to send you to clusters of missions — rather than the Steel/Skyway or Talos/IP shuffle, for example.
- I like that you can see what level you are at all times.
- I like that there’s no kill-stealing in LotRO.
- It may be because of the preponderance of outside zones, but the distribution of bad guys (plus their “wandering”) feels more organic and natural than, say, CoX’s standard spawn points within each interior map and standard spawn groups for each type of foe. Plus it’s believable that there’s hostile wildlife all over the place, except for pockets of habitation (towns, camps, lairs, etc.) — while it’s not believable that the whole of Paragon City is actually overrun by street thugs and crime gangs.
- I love that auction results are mailed to you, rather than having to revisit the auction house.
- I love that you can send stuff (money, items, raw materials) to your other alts.
Things I dislike about LotRO (particularly in comparison to CoX).
- The teeny-tiny freaking radar/map. It’s smaller than it should be by an order of magnitude. The amount of time one has to spend popping back and forth to the “big map” is proof of that. I don’t expect an entire CoX zone map, but something bigger would be very nice.
- Too many missions that, well, aren’t heroic. “Can you go run back and tell Fred that I have the money I owe him?” Dammit, Jim, I’m an immortal elf huntress from Lothlorien, not an errand boy!
- Too many suicidal NPCs, esp. of the type where you go and rescue them and they wander around, blundering into every bad guy in the immediate area. Granted, CoX had a few of these with the more recent issues (waves at Fusionette), but not to this frustrating extent. Too many cases where I just throw up my hands and say, “Screw it — let the orcs have him.” On the other hand, CoX has a lot more static NPCs (never-ending purse tug-o-war, police perma-cringing from gang members), and more mute NPCs (the perma-cringing cops are more vocally thankful for help than the AI cops you help against the AI villains in the newer zones).
- Running around. Yes, the game compensates for it some (clustered missions, compressed distances, horses/stables), but CoX travel powers just simply rock. (I’m not sure how LotRO could get around this given the setting, though.)
- Limited character options. I’ve only gotten into the mid-twenties with one set, and into the teens with another couple of toons, but I feel I’ve now “done” half the archetypes and most of the races. One elf hunter is a lot like another, it seems (heck, two hunters are pretty close, once you’re in the same territory). Yes, there can be subtle differences depending on traits, professions. etc., but those differences are trivial compared to what you can do in CoX with its plethora (and growing) of primary and secondary powers, a larger set of archetypes (if you consider CoV), and much more interesting cosmetic effects (character design).
- Limited storyline options. Within the caveats of the limited experience above, it feels in LotRO that “journey” for any given character is going to have much less variation than CoX, limiting replayability.
- More logistical busy-work. I loathe encumbrance rules in any game. And between profession “hunting” and looting and selling and auctioning and crafting, it seems fairly easy to spend at least a third of your time or more doing stuff other than thwomping orcs. And, as far as I can tell, it’s really pretty much necessary to do so in LotRO (vs. CoX, where the crafting stuff was grafted on relatively recently, and theoritically is still fully optional).
- Squishy characters. LotRO characters may be heroic, but they are easily overcome by numbers (or, rather, more easily than CoX characters).
- What level am I? I know what level it says — but did I level since I last visited a trainer? I know there must be an easy way to determine whether you’ve gone and leveled, but I haven’t found it.
- I think I prefer the instanced mission arrangement of CoX to the common zones of LotRO, where other heroes might be running past picking up your treasure, making you wait for re-spawns (or letting you slip past without opposition), etc. It’s a bit of a toss-up, though.
- Tell me again why I’m collecting Neeker-Breeker Wing Slime? And why someone will pay for it? And why I care
- I miss @names. I like being able to globally hook up with a friend (esp. when it’s my wife).
- I don’t like looting bodies. It’s realistic (using the term lightly), but it’s an annoyance. Even with auto-loot turned on. (This was one of the greatest reliefs when I played CoX this past weekend.).
- I dislike that if I want to give something to someone, I have to open up (and wait for) a trading window. I really like the CoX drag-and-drop (optional) interface.
- Facing is a wash. It’s, um, realistic. It can also be a pain in the neck.
- Having to trudge back to the mission contact is a pain. I don’t know how to mitigate that, given the setting — though a number of missions could be handled, for example, by just mailing a postcard back to the mission sender. And, yes, some missions don’t require returning.
- I dislike that there’s no incentive (aside from being a nice guy) to help someone who’s in over their heads. That’s the flip side to the no-kill-stealing mechanism. (Perhaps a “the encounter owner / first damager gets full credit, while other damagers get a lesser credit” rule might be the best.)
None of this means I plan to not play LotRO, or that one game is the clear winner over the other. And, as I noted above, a lot of the above is my own play style and preferences. But, then, it’s my blog, and I’ll whine if I want to.
Still like the EQ2 Broker Method better than the WoW or the WoW copy of Auction Houses on LotR.
Ahhh, WoW map Syndrome. I hate(d) the Map on WoW and spent a lot of time looking for a addon that Functioned more or less like the CoX map. I am sure that by now someone will have done the same for the LotR map. Go and take a look around for one, it may make you very happy. And Yes, I did the same thing in EQ2 kind of and added the EQ2 Maps add on that mapped out things like “This where X item is found” which makes getting around much easier when you do not need to memorize everthing on a map. Another addon I got for WoW is one that allowes me to mark things things on the map…a great headache reducer.
~snort~ Welcome to WoW escort missions. I avoid them unless it is a group thing. Worse, for WoW it spawns monsters where there were none. Yep, Hate them.
I miss Teleport and Recall Friend greatly. Though, in EQ2 I have found a Druid with Speed of Wolf the Druid Rings (Muti-zoned group teleport) and Evac (get me out of trouble now or Lets all go back to the Entrance) paired with a Summoner with Call of Hero (Recall Friend) to be great for getting around quickly and easily.
Yep. Correct on all accounts.
Depends…For me I like that part and in both WoW (to a lesser extent, but I do love bombs for Pally’s) and in EQ2 I have an Alt with many different crafting skills since I can move Harvested items to the correct toon and make stuff for alts, the Guild of for cash dollars. And also to save cash by making stuff for other alts instead of buying it.
Hmmm, Don’t know what to tell you. Is this all classes or just the types that you are playing that should be squishy like hunters?
I know that WoW is Horribly balanced between classes and so far Pally was the only one to me that didn’t feel “Squishy”…but having seen how some of the other classes get in the upper levels it seems that is how things are balanced.
In Eq2 several of the classes start of as a PITA to solo, but are scary if paired up with the right other class as a Duo. Most you can solo with no real problem for the entire game with types that should be squishy (Melee and Ranged DPS) being squishy in melee.
Oh…god…yes. I complain about this all the time when I make a new toon and have to copy a huge list of friends alts…on other servers even….just to keep in contact with them.
Love Auto Facing in EQ2. Tab closest, and you turn and whack them, easy peasy. I hate having to hit tab, right click, find the thing I am attacking in a mass of bodies and then pay attention to a bunch of red letter saying I am facing the wrong direction. Grrrrr.
Hrrm…
Well, considering that LotR sounds like it pretty much cloned WoW I am shocked that you can’t do like is done in WoW of whacking the monster anyways, or healing the PC. You do not get any credit, but you can help out a stranger. Odd.
Eq2 Encounters are either “Locked” or “Unlocked” depending on the settings of the Group leader or you solo. Unlocked is like how things are in CoX, folks can heal you and so on, but you run the risk of Kill Steals. Locked is just that…and no one can help you.
It appears to be true globally. You’re heroic, not super-heroic. The whole thing with Boromir? Totally believable in LotRO.
Oh, you can — you just don’t get anything for it other than a hearty thanks (optional) from the player you just saved.
It’s particularly annoying when someone takes on a group, and for some reason they aggro on you as you run by. Result: you have to fight ’em (lest they gack you), but you get zilcho for it.
Ahhh, okay. So it is the same, gotcha. 🙂
Can’t you just keep running until they stop chasing you?
Saturday on EQ2:
Mobs are simular to CoX, except that you attack one you get them all (I do miss the skilled Blasters being able to pick off a mob one by one though. 🙂 ). This mob was spread out over a wide area, mingling with other mobs that were doing the same in a jungle enviroment. Someone else attacked a second before me and they had the encounter locked…but I was a big huge aggro magnet and the mob went after me instead. Since I wasn’t getting credit I ran until they no longer were chasing me…and the other player had decided to attack another mob just as the first one decided he was all that and a bag of chips. He was not long in dieing.
Assuming you are running by — as opposed to in a more constrained space where you need to get from A to B, or somehow just can’t continue sprinting onward at full speed.
Well, that sucks.
On that note, I read through LotR forums and it says that Turbine was very stupid and banned third party Add-ons and it is stated in the EULA. So, looks like you are going to have to live with the stupid map until Turbine grows a brain.
As I can’t disagree with anything in your first list, I’ll restrict my replies to your second list.
At first I thought you were referring to the physical size of the map. That can now be changed in the UI settings. Upon rereading it, I realized you may have been referring to the size of the area displayed in the mini-map. If that’s so, I can only shrug my shoulders and say that I haven’t really thought about it. You’re correct, though, in that I do keep looking at the big map to ensure that I’m heading in the right direction.
For the love of Ilúvatar, stay out of the Shire! Delivering pies or the post and qoing back and forth between a farmer and the girl he likes would drive you batty.
Defend and escort missions often seem to understate their difficulty. Avoid them unless you have several fellows with you, and/or are well above the stated mission level.
I dearly miss CoX’s travel powers. Rather hard to justify flying or teleporting around Middle-earth, though. And the devs have had to say “no” too many times to players asking for eagles as mounts.
Very true. My hunter has the same skills as every other hunter of that level. The main way to differentiate the characters is through traits and equipment, and even that tends to just tweak the stats a little bit. No real difference.
Also true. Elves and dwarves get very different starting quests than the others, but once you hit level 15 or so, your characters are all going to be doing the same quests. It’s most annoying if you jump between characters pretty evenly, so that most of them are in the Lone Lands, the North Downs, and/or Evendim at the same time.
If you’re not crafting, you can significantly reduce this by dumping everything at a vendor. You make a little less money, but it may be worth it if you find busywork to be quite tedious.
Hmm… Been away from CoX too long to really compare. Certainly any class except for Guardian can be easily overwhelmed by sheer numbers. I know I solo my hunter as I did my blaster: pull one or two, fight, rest, pull one or two…
For me, it’s “Did I train?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a trainer to find I had three levels of skills to buy. At least once, I would have survived to get my level 10 badge if I had just trained that skill at level 9!
Well, there have been plenty of times where I’ve been standing there looking at the scary things I need to kill, and somebody else runs up, stops, and starts looking at them. Often we’d team up, and I’ve made some friends that way. Of course, there are also times that somebody has sniped the boss I needed to kill as I dealt with his underlings. (Tip: before you mez somebody you need to defeat, do some damage to him so nobody else can kill-steal him.) As for node-jackers… /rude is about all you can do. 🙁
I think they’ve done a pretty good job of justifying grinding these things. Of course, it’s not terribly heroic to be sent out for such tasks (unless you’re a hobbit).
One of my first forums posts was in the Suggestions forum, where I pleaded for this feature. I’ll try to remember to bring it up in a Dev Chat (I’ve had three responses so far, though never the one I was hoping for).
I don’t mind, especially now that we have different choices for the looting system. Of course, I lost every bloody Need roll I made today, but…
They’re finicky, too. Don’t move, make sure you have open slots for a two-way trade, etc.
Not too much of a problem for me. I have my melee characters set to auto-move to target, so they’re in the right spot more often than not. I also have a toolbar slot for the /follow command which helps when I have to be facing an object (use in conjunction with the Delete key).
I always try to complete as many missions from one cluster of quest-givers as I can before trudging back. Of course, questing with a high-level hunter helps. 😉
There’s a disincentive, actually. Helping somebody by attacking their mob reduces their experience. The first time a stranger yells at you for helping him, you learn to leave people alone unless their defeat is imminent. Of course, “drive-by heals” are always welcome, and may get you a word of thanks.
So… Your second list is longer than your first by two entries. I hope that the things you love outweigh the things you dislike (and I notice that you didn’t say “hate”)!
Yes, that’s what I meant.
It’s particularly annoying in town (in Bree, at least).
Plenty of mishes of that sort in and around Bree and the Lonely Lands, too. Are you saying they go away later on? (“Aragorn and I are deeply in love, but my father doesn’t approve. Can you take this flower to his camp over on the other side of the river to let him know I love him?”)
I agree with them, and with the difficulty. The best thing I could think of would be a “paragraph break” sort of power/function, where, hey, now I’m at the mission in question (or in the general vicinity) — not unlike horse travel. Or else, really seriously drop the horse costs, or introduce horses earlier, or something.
Which reminds me, another dislike: vague directions to people and/or locations. No, it’s not realistic to know where the Orc Cave is automatically. But it’s still annoying trying to figure out when “south of Weathertop” actually means over a couple of valleys to the southwest of Weathertop.
I think the new costume slots are an attempt to do more of this, by giving character the option to adopt a “look” — but the ways of doing so still seem to be too limited, and that’s really “just” cosmetic. In some ways, I think this is the most serious drawback to the game.
I do, but I also am still trying to find the sweet spot. So I like being a scholar (minimal crafting, and on the spot, for useful bits), and there’s at least one other that’s okay (*not* farming), but I keep having a sense of “opportunity loss” when I *don’t* mine every chunk of ore or don’t pluck every cabbage I run past, or dump all those usable hides on some vendor. Still working through this.
That’s actually what I meant. It would be easier if the trainers weren’t so rare on the ground, or (as in Bree) scattered to the four winds.
Node-jackers?
Actually, I was referring less to the (unheroic) missions than just fighting critters on my way and feeling like I really need to loot the bodies in order to get the few coppers (or occasional nice bit) that will accrue.
(“These midges will drive me mad!” Samwise cursed. “Be certain you pluck the wings of any of them that you swat,” advised Strider. “They fetch a pretty penny in Rivendell.”)
I was thinking of applying weights to each item and scoring it, but thought that would be silly. 🙂
Node Jackers.
I will assume that it is the same as in WoW or EQ2 where someone comes up and starts to mine, etc. a node (Node being a resource item from which you harvest some form of raw material that is used in crasfting) while you are doing the same when you were there first, or say you needed to get a monster off it before you can harvest it, and you are staning on the node and someone comes in and harvests it *while* you are fighting.
Or, for a visual repersentation here and here
Ah. Yes, bad joss that.
Well, there are no more of the post/pie quests, and while you do have to trudge back and forth between people on some later quests, there will typically be something to do in addition (such as the dwarf who has you kill crawlers to add to the stew that another dwarf complained about – it’s not just running back and forth talking to them).
Well, they did add the Bree-steeds at level 25 for us Founders and lifetime members. Perhaps they’ll expand the offer someday. 🙂
Node-jacking used to be a more serious problem. Higher-level tools were faster, so somebody with a better tool could jump on a node you were harvesting and finish it first, leaving you with nothing. Now, once you’re harvesting, nobody else can harvest that node. We are still left with the problem of somebody jacking your node while you’re fighting the mob that was effectively guarding it. I’ve been thanked by people for asking them if they needed a nearby node while they were fighting, but not everybody is so considerate. Oddly enough, the other day a guy ran up to a node I was harvesting, stopped, gave me a rude gesture, and ran off. I guess it was inconsiderate of me to start harvesting without waiting five minutes to see if anybody else who needed it would come by. 😛
Heh heh heh. Of course, in CoH, you had to justify running/jumping/flying past a purse-snatching without stopping to help.
Surely the elves will long sing of such derring-do in the lands of the Uttermost West … 😛
IMO, if it’s not something I can imagine one of the Fellowship doing, it just doesn’t thrill me. Which is, perhaps, too high a bar, but …
Long a peeve of mine, to be sure.
One of the things that make the hunt mission feel more repetitive is the reuse of the 6 basic animal forms – Boars, Wolves, Bears, Birds, Flies, and Spiders (and to a lesser degree Lynx, Worgs, Aurochs, Wights, Neeker-Breekers, Toads, and Bats). They have the same basic look and attacks. And I would really rather kill X pigs than collect X pig tails that serves no purpose other than taking up room in my pack and giving them an excuse for me to hunt them in the first place.
Here is my solution. Ask me to get you pig tails, track them in the mission tracker, leave my pack alone. And while I am on the subject of the overfull pack, drop only usable material (resources, trophies, weapons, pies…). Give me a bit more silver per kill and call it good.
So, they took that bit of annoyance from WoW as well, that sucks. I really hate that since there have been times that it’s been some random number over the 20 item stack limit, so that now means that there are two slots taken up by something that should not be in my packs in the first place.
Thankfully 99% of EQ2 quests do not do this unless it is an item you have to turn back in with the quest, or something that is going to carry over for the entire quest chain.
Surely you can imagine Merry or Pippin doing just about any silly old task. 😉
This has been suggested more than once on the forums. I certainly don’t know of any players who wouldn’t support the idea. Apparently the devs are looking at increasing stack size to help with the pack issues, but that doesn’t help a whole lot when you’re collecting small amounts of boar hides, hooves, stomachs, meat, and tusks, all at the same time (though it is nice that you can get drops for all three quests off the same boars).
Oh, and when Evendim was added, they put in a quest just for the people who complained about the staggering number of boar-hunting quests. It’s quite amusing, really.
Sometimes. Sometimes only boars in area X will give you the tails you need. Sometimes only X% of boars have tails (apparently). It’s … odd.
Of course, it’s also a bit odd that elves spend so much time willy-nilly killing things, even predators, just to collect tails, or intestines, or snouts, or whatever. It just doesn’t feel quite right.
Honestly, the encumbrance/packs in LotRO are really annoying. Nobody’s going to actually carry all the stuff you can actually carry — but there’s so much stuff that you have an opportunity to carry, that the packs manage to be simultaneously underkill and overkill.
For those who weren’t reading PvP at the time and didn’t buy the Deluxe edition of CoH: http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2007-2/1246407/pvp20040613.gif
Heh. Yeah, I remember that one.
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