Adios al Radiance!

A Good Idea

Radiance was supposed to be a statistic that had both appeal and function for players. We wanted to not only itemise this statistic, but also tie it into skills and deed paths. We wanted to provide players with more character customization and differentiation as they moved into the upper portions of the game. Further, by tying Radiance more intimately into the progression of the character, we wanted to remove strict gear dependencies and provide a more encompassing and meaningful statistic for characters. In essence, the idea of Radiance was a large and inclusive statistic that provided players with something functional and inherently desirable to their character.

The intent was there. The desire was there. We knew what we wanted to do and we knew that it was not a bad idea.

Poor Implementation

As you can see, our intentions were good. We wanted to do something new for the game and not create a new grind mechanic that ultimately resulted in running the same content over and over to acquire a “key”.

Somehow, this is exactly what we ended up making. None of us were pleased.

How could something like this happen? If intentions were so noble and the idea was so sound, how on Earth did we end up with a “key quest” instead of a system?

Sometimes it’s difficult to shine the interrogation lamp on yourself and find out what exactly went wrong. Thankfully, our failures are simple to explain -- poor communication was the main culprit. Our original proposal for Radiance could have been written better than it was. Because of this, some assumptions were made and our follow-up had not been diligent enough. The system arrived in a state that satisfied only one aspect of the original request.

The request for Radiance was also made late enough in the Moria cycle that we left no time to respond appropriately to what was delivered. Quickly, we began to slap-patch the system into something that resembled what we originally desired. This lead to the addition of enhancements outside of instances which we hoped would be enough incentive to drive gear acquisition. This was a poor compromise. Despite the protests of some team members we forged ahead, confident that we would not be making a mockery of the original intent of Radiance. Once we verified that the system was functioning, we resolved ourselves to its release.

Champions of the cause spoke in favour of the new system. We highlighted the benefits that Radiance offered in an attempt to gain more supporters. We thought we could salvage the work we put into Radiance and have the system gain acceptance. As it turns out, we were wrong – very wrong.

You, the players, hated Radiance. In fact, there has never been such a polarizing and definitively poorly received implementation as Radiance. We struggled to find a way to make this system, which we wanted to rely upon for future raids and content development, work for us. Yet, many issues surrounded our implementation. The benefits it offered proved to be too good, Radiance gear proved to be too easy or too hard to acquire, and exploits plagued of the early days of the Moria instances. (Some still have issues!) Radiance was flailing.

We knew that the system had potential and we clung to that belief. We could make it work. Quietly though we began to realize that the horse we rode into town on was not really a horse. It was more of a cardboard cutout of a horse, poorly painted with watercolour paints – and it was raining.

We simply pushed too hard to change the fundamental pieces of our raiding game too quickly and without enough communication across teams. We cut corners to get the system to resemble the desired implementation and found ourselves struggling to justify our decisions.

Clearly, continuing on with Radiance was not our best decision.

Why cut it now?

We have bandied about ways to fix the current implementation of Radiance. We thought about tying it to deeds, or to completing the epic story quests. As we moved toward free-to-play there was even talk about selling Radiance in the LOTRO Store.

At that point we resigned ourselves to pulling out Radiance. We knew it was a failure and we wanted to no longer keep it in the game. We just needed the time to get it out of the game and there were other, higher priorities as we marched toward free-to-play.

Conclusion

Radiance was not a bad idea. In fact, many of us still feel that if it had been designed correctly it would have been successful. As it turned out, however, we created nothing more than an arbitrary gating mechanic that forced players to get “keys” in order to enter raids.

Good idea; poor execution.

I believe I mentioned that Radiance would be looked at for revision or removal well over a year ago in one of my blogs. I am happy to report, finally, that Radiance has been removed from the game.

With any change there is going to be some measure of dissatisfaction and anger. We know that the removal of Radiance, while likely to be cheered by the majority, is also likely to cause some measure of discontent. However, this is a point where we need to admit that we made a mistake. And with that mistake in mind we shall forge ahead, mindful of the error that we made and fuelled by a desire to never repeat it again.