There’s a poll up on the LotRO forums regarding radiance gear be sure to register your opinion or you don’t get to complain later. Thanks to Casual Stroll to Mordor for the heads-up.
I voted to remove radiance completely. Of course, I don’t think it’s likely that Turbine will really do that, but hope springs eternal. The second most popular choice (and there’s a large gap between second and third place) was to make radiance deed based. If radiance has to stay in the game, I would prefer deeds over gear. Partly, I think it is more in keeping with the spirit of the lore, after all the books were about the triumph of spirit than who had the coolest sword. Still, deeds will have their own issues, especially if are tied to some stupidly high kill count, but that’s an article for another day.
Copy of my comment from Casual Stroll to Mordor:
Remove “Radiance” entirely. The whole concept is about making people grind for gear to progress, in order to keep people busily playing and subscribed.
The already have a new kind of “grind”, like running skirmishes over and over to get the much wanted legacy upgrade scrolls for legendary weapons.
They shell out lifetime subs for low to EU players at the moment.
There are no reasons for Turbine or the players to keep/want radiance in any way.
While I don’t personally like radiance as a gating system, I see turbine’s idea and do not think it is as terrible as everyone seems to portray. Yes, it was terrible in Moria, but no longer! It literally took me about 5 3-hour sessions of playing to get my radiance on my latest alt.
If you’re not willing to spend a mere 15 hours preparing for a raid, what makes you think you have a shot in hell of winning? just curious.
Before radiance, I would argue that it took longer to prepare for a raid, but that’s just me.
The new raid is obscenely hard even for those who are willing to prepare.
I’ll admit to not having raided much, but in the instances I have done were well known, so my only preparation was bringing pots and following directions. From what I’ve seen in kinchat, learning a new instance is trial and error, radiance has zero to do with it. Radiance is purely for gating content, but unlike the quests to access the skirmish system or Moria or Mirkwood, the radiance system isn’t very accessible (or fun). Plus, for me, 15 hours is not a small amount of time.
Thanks for the heads up Blue K!
The difference is being forced to spend 15 hours in a specific set of instances to gear up, or having the choice to gear up doing whatever you enjoy, be it crafting, PvP, faction grinds, or group instances (or a mixture thereof).
I’m with Longasc, it’s an artificial grind put in place to extend the extremely thin endgame of launch MoM. It’s no longer necessary, and not wanted.