SoM Skirmishes: Rewards

Overview

Let’s be honest with ourselves. People play new content for the rewards. Sure, if the content is fun it is more likely to get replayed, but even if we made the hardest, most boring boss fight in the game drop the best loot, a lot of people would still play it. With that in mind, we've tried to design the Skirmish rewards system in as free-form a way as possible, allowing players to play the content they want and receive mostly equivalent rewards. This has its own pitfalls; players can find the Skirmish they believe is the easiest and replay it constantly, which can lead to different kinds of frustration. The system might not force a particular bit of content on the player, but the player’s attempts to maximize their reward gains could lead them to choose to play in an un-fun manner. With all that in mind, let’s get to it.

Monster Loot

In Skirmishes, we have special rules for treasure. Monsters won’t be dropping any items except for Skirmish Marks (more below), nor will they drop coin - with the notable exception of the Boss, who will drop a rather large amount of coin. We wanted to streamline gameplay as much as possible, removing some of the need to loot corpses as you go. Only Lieutenants, Bosses, and optional encounter monsters will have loot, which will be exclusively Marks. Experience and Item Advancement Experience will be gained as normal for monster kills. In addition, the daily quests will give a chunk of XP like most quests do.

Skirmish Marks

All Skirmishes will reward the player with Skirmish Marks. These Marks are barter items that can be traded at Skirmish Camps for a variety of rewards (more on that below). For now, just understand that Marks are a lot like gold. They are a liquid resource which you will redeem for the rewards you want. All rewards will have various Skirmish Mark prices. For example, a level 40 Sword may cost 50 SM (Skirmish Marks) while an IXP rune might cost 150 SM. There are a few points in a Skirmish run when SM will be awarded; each Control Point taken, each NPC ally that survives, and killing the final Boss. By awarding Marks in this way, you will gain SM even if your attempt at a Skirmish fails. We hope this incremental increase in your SM supply will allow you to pick a reward to aspire to and feel you are making progress towards that goal at all times.

The amount of SM you get in a Skirmish is dependent on a number of factors. It’s important to point out that SM rewards are not divided among fellowship members. SM rewards are calculated on a player-by-player basis. This means fellows in your group may get more or less SM as you play through a Skirmish. Each time SM is awarded, the settings on the Skirmish are considered for each player as follows:

Level - The higher level the Skirmish, the more SM Level differential - If a player is HIGHER than the level of the Skirmish, he will receive LESS SM. A level 65 player going into a level 40 Skirmish to help a friend will receive minimal amounts of SM.

Fellowship size - Larger fellowships receive more SM. This shift is not very large, and is mostly in place to keep SM/Hour rates competitive, as larger fellowship-scaled Skirmishes tend to take longer.

Difficulty - The higher the difficulty, the more SM earned. This shift is larger than fellowship size, as we hope to reward ALL sizes more SM if they play more difficult Skirmishes.

Lastly, it is important to point out that the daily quests (detailed below) do not use fellowship size or difficulty calculations when awarding SM.

Special Marks

In addition to the very liquid SM you acquire, there will be some more traditional barter tokens that drop. Some rewards will require an amount of SM, as well as a special Mark. Good examples of this are the "Veteran" items. The level 40 sword I talked about before could have a veteran version available which will have better stats, but require an additional Special Mark. There are two types of these Marks and each are acquired in different ways.

The first are the level/size tokens. There are a few versions of this token that are required for various rewards. These are found as drops from Lieutenants and Bosses in all Skirmishes. The level you have set for the Skirmish and the group size you are playing at will determine which specific Mark drops. For instance, in a level 50 3-man Skirmish, the token that can show up is called "Third Mark." Each Lieutenant killed in the space has a chance of dropping this Mark. The boss will have a much higher chance. The "Third Mark" can be traded for some fairly strong level 50 items. The tooltip for each of these Marks will tell you what fellowship size and level Skirmish is required to obtain them. These level/size tokens can be upgraded and downgraded at the Curiosities vendor.

The other special Marks are Skirmish Campaign Marks. We’ve grouped clusters of Skirmishes into campaigns and given their optional encounters chances of dropping these tokens. There are 4 campaigns for the initial Mirkwood release. These Marks are usually for cosmetic rewards, like housing, soldier cosmetic traits and clothing.

Daily Quests

So, we've got SM and special Marks accruing by playing Skirmishes. With the system as described, once a player has acquired all the Skirmish specific Marks they want, they will likely pick the most lucrative Skirmish and replay it forever. How do we address this and avoid our original issue of players opting to play in an un-fun way? We've hooked all Skirmishes up to daily quests that are a little different than other dailies in LOTRO. The quest does not gate access to the Skirmish like an instance lock. Instead, the daily quest will reward you with a significant amount of SM when you complete it, almost as much as a full Skirmish run! It is important to note the SM gains from completing the daily are in addition to whatever you gain while inside the Skirmish itself, making it quite a boon! Each Skirmish has its own daily quest, meaning if you wish to truly optimize SM acquisition, you will want to complete each of these dailies, as opposed to just replaying your favorite Skirmish over and over.

Skirmish Camps

Until now, we've talked about the existence of Skirmish Camps in purely lore terms. Gameplay-wise, Skirmish Camps will act as the hubs for Skirmish play. While you do not need to be in a camp to create and participate in Skirmishes (more on that in the upcoming accessibility diary), you will need to visit them to access the various Skirmish vendors and other Skirmish NPC's. Skirmish Camps have 12 important NPCs (perhaps more in the future). It doesn’t matter which camp you visit, you will find all of them in each location. First is the Skirmish Captain. He acts as the "bard" for Skirmish traits, allowing you to slot and un-slot them as you like. Additionally, he will have the Skirmish tutorial quest. Next is the Skirmish Trainer, who will allow you to buy and rank up all of the Skirmish traits. The other 10 all act as vendors, selling various kinds of rewards. There will be 12 Skirmish Camps when Mirkwood lunches. They are all outside major cities or destinations.

Rankable Traits

I quickly mentioned rankable traits above, so it's best I explain what they are. All Skirmish traits have a rank associated with them (Ranks 1-20 available in Mirkwood), much like Virtues. When you purchase a trait for the first time, the rank of the trait will be 1. You may talk to the Skirmish trainer to spend additional SM to upgrade the rank to 2, then 3, and so on. Each rank has a level associated with it, which is displayed on the trait’s tooltip. This level is not a prerequisite; it only represents the approximate power level of the Rank. There are 4 categories of Skirmish traits:

Attribute - Define your Soldier’s role and cosmetic appearance.
Skill – Role-specific traits that grant your Soldier new skills.
Training - Grant various passive bonuses to your Soldier, like increased critical rating.
Personal - Grant various passive bonuses to YOU, but only function inside of Skirmishes (as all Skirmish traits do.)

All four of these trait types get stronger as you increase their rank. Some traits will need to be unlocked by purchasing special training scrolls from the Skirmish vendors. These traits can be ranked up as usual once you've learned them. The best examples of such traits are the "Ultimate" skill traits. Each role has two “Ultimate” skills. They represent powerful capstone abilities for the role. You may learn as many of these as you like, but may only equip one on your Soldier at a time.

Lastly, there is the issue of SM cost. Each rank costs more SM than the one before, but this creates a problem. A level 65 player who has never played Skirmishes would need to spend a lot of time grinding SM to get appropriately ranked up traits. We prefer to have Soldiers be inexpensive (SM wise) at average potency, but expensive at above average. To solve all of these problems, we made rankable Skirmish traits scale their cost based on player level. So, if Rank 5 of a trait is equivalent to level 40, it will cost less SM to a level 50 player and more to a level 30 player. Long story short, the higher your level is, the less ranks will cost.

Rewards!

And lastly, what kind of rewards are on those 10 Skirmish vendors? I'll go through all 10 of them soon, but first a bit about the philosophy behind the selection and prices. As has been mentioned earlier, Skirmishes are meant to complement, not overshadow, the rest of the game. As such, the rewards are usually slightly less powerful than those found through endgame instances or top tier crafting. Skirmishes make up for this lower power by being highly predictable. You will never be subject to the whims of loot tables and random drops or the unpredictable availability of items at the auction hall. If you have enough Marks, you can buy any Skirmish reward in the system. We intend the rewards to fill in the holes a player might have in their gear sets, to grind up IXP, and to collect special crafting ingredients.

Solo VS. Group

Ah, the age old MMO debate. I'd prefer not to spend too much time here, as it can strike up a war as brutal as Vi vs. Emacs. With Skirmishes, we have decided to make all rewards in the entire system available to all fellowship play sizes. However, the costs of rewards will be different based on what play size you participate in. This difference is regulated by the level/size tokens mentioned above. A particular Legendary Item blank may require a token that can be only found in 6 and 12-man Skirmishes. However, the Curiosities vendor has the ability to upgrade small group Marks into large group Marks. This upgrade will cost a chunk of SM, but means that any player can eventually purchase any reward in the system.

Vendors:

So, at long last, we come to the Skirmish Vendors. The same rewards are on all Skirmish vendors and are sorted by new pull-down menus so it's not just 1 big long list!
Armour Vendors (Light, Medium, Heavy) - Full sets of light, medium, and heavy armour plus shields are available for levels 30, 33, 37, 40, 43, 47, 50, 53, 57, 60, 63 and 65, as well as some stronger endgame level 65 items. At each level band, there are a few "Veteran" items. These cost additional Marks and have better stats than the others at the same level band. These items will be about as strong as quest items of the same level, with the Veteran items being a bit stronger.
Jewelry and Cloaks - Same as Armour, but jewelry and cloaks! Weapons - Similar to Armour, but the selection shifts at level 50+ (when Legendary Items become available) and only off-hand items are sold.

Legendary Items – Blanks (Unidentified Legendary Items), runics, IXP runes, scrolls, and various new goodies that are being added to Legendary Items (See the Legendary Item Dev Diary for more info).
Crafting - Scroll cases, optional ingredients, and some new special components being introduced with Siege of Mirkwood. Cosmetics - Housing, cosmetic items and Soldier cosmetic traits.
Curiosities - Reputation items, various items from old quests (you'll see), and Mark upgrades. Basically, he's got all the weird stuff that didn’t fit anywhere else and a number of goodies you didn’t expect to see again.
Provisioner - The Provisioner will allow you to sell and repair items as well as purchase various potions with SM.

Future plans:

The highly fluid nature of the SM economy means that as we release content updates, we can add new items to any of the vendors. Keep your eyes open for details!

That's it (For Now at Least)!

Next time we will be talking about Accessibility, the way in which you will get into Skirmishes. There will be a few odds and ends in that diary as well. After that, we’ll be ready for the final Summary diary! Mirkwood is getting close….

FUENTE: http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/514-developer-diary-som-skirmishes-rewards