Skip to main content

Did Lotro Screw up in its Implementation of Titles?

Some time ago in a post about artificially creating value I discussed the way that Guild Wars dangles hard to get titles in front of players as carrots to keep them motivated while World of Warcraft dangles epic gear with uber stats. At the time I felt that titles and other vanity rewards were a better way to go because they don't create an unbridgeable gap between hard core and casual players.

Lotro has gone in for titles in a big way. Just look at an incomplete list of titles you can get within the game here. It seems that you cannot trip over the corpse of a dead wolf in Middle Earth without earning some new apellation. Some titles do indeed represent major achievements like defeating a raid boss but there are so many glorious sounding titles for minor achievements that all titles have become devalued. Many players don't even bother to display their titles and fewer still care what the various titles mean. Contrast this with Guild Wars where titles are harder to come by but are genuinely valued by players.

Its probably too late to change now but it seems a pity to me. In my opinion Lotro has missed a real oportunity to make titles a desirable goal. They have managed to devalue all titles by making too many of them and making most of them too easy to get.

Comments

Thallian said…
Some of the killing quest ones later have very cool appellations and are not easy to get, but require a large grind. That said I don't think grinds are good and I totally agree with you.
mbp said…
Hi Thalian, I have been thinking about this again and perhaps they should colour code titles just like they do gear. Go from common or garden grey up to uber orange for the really hard to get titles. That might give hard to get titles back the cachet they deserve.
Green Armadillo said…
I definitely agree on the topic of LOTRO titles - I've long maintained that Turbine shot their system in the foot by requiring players to unlock most of the best titles en route to traits. Guild Wars may or may not have gone too far on the hard scale, but LOTRO's are definitely too easy. Maybe a title rarity system would have helped, but I agree that isn't something you can tack on after the fact.
mbp said…
High Green Armadillo, welcome to mindbendingpuzzles. Good point about traits. Titles have become a nuisance that you "have through" in order to get the trait later on. All in all it devalues what could be a nice part of the game.

Popular posts from this blog

My First Gaming Mouse: Logitech G300

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button.  4. Extr

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p