Antokin
Back in the Early Days of LOTRO from a Former Turbine QA
Read the thread from a former employee at Turbine about LOTRO
From Aylwen:
I was LOTRO Systems QA from Book 14 SoA until shortly before F2P went live, returning for a few months after RoI launched (before departing a second time after experiencing the 'new' Turbine in Needham under WB rule...I'd seen enough). For most of that time I was the QA guy responsible for PvMP and in fact for about two years Jen Gordy (Jalessa) and I could be said to have constituted the PvMP 'team'. And neither of us, particularly Jen, could devote our sole attention to PvMP. Jen became Systems Lead and I had other Systems (combat, classes, IA, etc) that I had to look at.
After the debacle (PvMP-wise) of Book 6 MoM and the post-MoM layoffs (with the attendant hiring freeze), it became pretty clear we were not going to be able to do anything ambitious in the Moors. Firstly, sheer lack of bandwidth: not enough bodies, not enough engineering time, and a lack of interest from the producers. Secondly, Book 6 suggested that trying to force in changes was at least as likely to hurt as help. The PvMP system, just by dint of how it was built (a whole story in itself), defied 'fixing'...however one wanted to define that and everyone who played including me had different ideas. We're talking about a system where one side are literally playable NPCs (remember how CJs could stun charging Reavers? Sadly unavoidable at the time: they had to conform to the same rules as NPCs in pve... disassociating Creeps from those tables and mechanics was a huge change when it did happen). Our consensus basically became: hold the course. Most of what we implemented was 'quality of life' stuff...things like trying to tamp down the CC (which was absurd in SoA, something often forgotten in nostalgia). Mostly it was an arms race: the class devs weren't required to consider the effects of their changes vis-à-vis PvMP (and might still be checking in changes at the 11th hour) so each update was kind of a gamble when it came to tweaking Creeps. Buff too much and it's a GV camp 24-7 (ala earlier this year), too little and it's Book 6 again. Even if we managed to get a timely picture of freep changes (rare), testing was problematic. As said, I was the only QA guy assigned to PvMP or who even had ranked toons on Live. If I was lucky I might get 10 or 12 people for testing for a few hours on a Friday afternoon. Beta was not very helpful as a rule either. I found that most of the people who showed up for events were at best casuals. But consider that even on Live it usually took a few weeks for us as players to really determine which way the pendulum had swung. I did the best I could under the circumstances and as a rule played whichever side came off worse as my private mea culpa if it went bad. I missed some doozies (the 1-shot killing BA firedot and the keep flip flag exploit were about the worst).
by Antokin on 2015-03-09 08:26:11
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