The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game - Definitive Edition News

Hail and Well Met!

Today we want to continue our discussion on the road from release to here, but before we do we wanted to announce that later today (sometime around 3:30pm Central US time, or 20:30 UTC), we will be releasing an important update.

This update fixes issues we've noticed since the release of Gundabad Awoken and carries over some of the minor fixes and optimizations we've made to the game in general as we build up to our console release later this month. To read more about these changes, please look at the Release Notes here.



Anyone who has ever worked on a video game knows that launch is a time of great nervousness on the part of creators. On one hand, you are incredibly excited about finally putting what is your creative baby in the hands of the public so they can see it first hand. On the other hand, you worry about every little thing—like the servers or game not working, or all manner of nightmare scenarios that run through your mind.

(The Looming Threat Awaits...)

So it was with great anxiety and excitement that we launched The Lord of the Rings™: Adventure Card Game a year ago. Both excited to see how fans would react and fearful that the entire endeavor would go 'poof' in our faces.



We launched into Early Access because we wanted to evolve the game with the feedback of fans. This is one of the great aspects of Early Access and we intended to embrace the spirit of it from the start by adding new features and content while utilizing the feedback of users to improve the game.

Direct Impact

We received quite a bit of feedback from users right away and we began to apply it. There were a number of elements that made it into the game either right away or over the course of the following weeks and months, with just a few examples including:

• Changing the Business Model
  
• Dropping the Palantír as it was
  
• Adding Save Games
  
• Creating The New Tutorial Campaign
  
• Individual Co-Op Features
  

(The reworked challenge screen, one element that arose due to your input)

Let's discuss each of them in turn:



Changing The Business Model

We're all gamers here at Fantasy Flight Interactive, and the greater discussion of the games industry and business models did not escape us. We began our game with a traditional free to play model but we struggled with what that meant and how it didn't really feel right for us. We changed the model over time to become more of a hybrid approach with less content being unlocked via what we then called 'Valor Points.' As the game play changed further, this model made less and less sense to us and didn't feel right as part of our first release as a studio.

(An early hero pack purchase screen)

We announced our Founder's Packs with included amounts of Valor Points that we intended players to use to purchase available content on the first day. We didn't anticipate that many players would hold on to those points rather than using them to unlock the content as we intended. We received complaints from players with enough points to purchase all of the available content at that time, that we expected them to pay real world cash for that content—this was not at all our intention.

Based on this feedback we decided that the game was far better off using a model more similar to the original table top game, with a core game and additional content releases (which is more like the traditional video game model, expressed as a core game and DLC packages).

(A later version of the Pack Unlock Menu)

We made immediate changes, giving away the full campaign as well as the initial hero packs and switching to a core set basis. We let the Founders' Packs sunset and switched to the core game as it exists now. We also decided to release additional free and unlockable content to offset this change, including:

• Two Vault releases of 17 cards each
  
• Three Encounters
  
• Alternative Hero Art
  
• Cosmetics
  

Dropping The Palantír
The Palantír was meant to be a reward system for play. It didn't work. Despite the system only offering rewards that could be earned elsewhere, some players termed it a 'Loot Box.' No amount of communication changed this perception. What's more, the rewards it offered didn't provide the reward incentive we intended.

(Remember this? We repurposed this sequence for the current rewards screen.)

We dropped the Palantír as it was, but laid the seeds of the reward system that was going to come in our major update in May. This included quest incentive rewards, hero rewards and in quest challenges.



Adding Save Games
Another item we didn't anticipate was that individual game sessions would last as long as some players were taking. Last week we mentioned that the game began in a much more systemic fashion, with short, but very random play sessions.

(Save games in MP)

With the drive toward a more narrative system with Fate and Threat events as part of the core experience, game sessions were taking longer. Most players were finishing quests within twenty minutes, but some took as long as an hour or more. This was exacerbated with co-operative multiplayer, where players typically obsessed over the best strategy to complete sessions, and with enemies having double the health.

For this reason we added save games for both single and co-operative multiplayer, which has been a great addition to the game, allowing players to rest up after each location and come back again.



Creating The New Tutorial
While we announced right away from the start that the old tutorial was a placeholder, but we had originally intended only to release a new tutorial that was better than the first.

After listening to users, we determined that the complexity of the game required more specific tutorials that aided a wider array of players. This lead us to break down the tutorial into discretely separate tutorials covering different aspects of the game and each building upon the other so that new skills were added and reinforced upon each other.

The Tutorial Quest Detail Screen

This also gave us the chance to move forward the Deck Builder Tutorial as well as to create a 'tutorial quest' where players could put all their skills together in a starter quest.

Without your specific input on how to best craft the Tutorial, we would have not been able to deliver such a comprehensive new set of Tutorial Quests.



Co-Operative Features
Adding Co-Operative play was a blast for us as a team. While testing, we found that we were playing far more than necessary just to test because we were having so much fun just playing. That's always a good sign.

(A Cooperative Game Screen)

Despite how happy we were with how co-operative play turned out, you had some great suggestions that we brought to bear as soon as we could.

First, there were the aforementioned save games, but we also added new ways to handle individual cards (such as reward cards to only one player, while allowing other cards to be awarded to both). We also initially designed the game with separate Fate meters, but quickly switched to a shared Fate meter based on your feedback.

We added Ping (have you tried it? Just hit Control/Left Mouse Button (Cmd/Left Mouse Button on a Mac) in a multiplayer session so that players can indicate areas of the screen to one another in a session.

Co-Operative play started out good, but became even greater with the input of you, our players.



That's it for this week. Next week we'll discuss more aspects of the game since launch and a few other surprises we will announce...



If you happen to experience any issues or need technical assistance for the game, please remember that if you don't see the answer within the forums or on discord, you can always file a Helpshift here:

https://asmodee.helpshift.com/a/lord-of-the-rings-acg/


There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.

You can check it out here.



Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.

Our next stream will be tomorrow, Wednesday, August 14th.


That's all we have this week. We will be back next week with more. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!

Hail and Well Met!

Today we want to talk about the evolution of The Lord of the Rings™: Adventure Card Game, how it came to be and how we got to where we are now, but before we do, we have some news to share...

Full Release Now Set for August 29th

A few weeks ago we had announced that we were going to come out of Full Release on August 8th. That's this Thursday. We decided to delay that date as the console release has been slated for August 29th and we feel that it's important for us to coordinate between all platforms and to share the optimizations we've incorporated into the console versions of the game into full PC release, making the game more stable, smaller in size and with an increased frame rate.

We understand this will be frustrating to some, but we would prefer to delay the release slightly to ensure a more enjoyable experience for players at launch and to coordinate our marketing efforts so that they have the greatest impact across all platforms. Prepare for a grand journey through Middle-earth where you can forge the new legend that will go down in the annals of history!

We'll have more to say about Full Access just prior to that date, so keep your eyes peeled for more in a future news update.

The Road To Release

On August 28th, we released a game then known as The Lord of the Rings™: Living Card Game from development onto Steam as an Early Access Game. We called it a Living Card Game and released it into Early Access as our plan was not just release the game and then move on, but rather to treat it as a living entity that we would continue to develop, support and change over time with the help of you, the gaming audience.

Upon release, we had just the five quests of the first campaign, The Shadow's Reach, 31 initial player cards, and four hero pack expansions with another 16 player cards to unlock. We hoped that from this humble beginning an audience would emerge and give us feedback to help us improve. We got great feedback, some positive, some negative and some requesting new features or quality of life improvements. We thank you all as you have been so great in your feedback. You've had a huge impact on the game, and on our development team.

Since the time of that first Early Access release, we changed our sales model from a more complex free to play hybrid to a more traditional one that is closer in style to the table top FFG games you know and love. We've also added a lot of new content including:

• Our first premium expansion, The Shadow's Fall, with four new heroes, 16 new player cards and a whole host of new locations, encounters, hazards and enemies.
  
  
• Three Free Encounters, The King of Carrion, A Feast For Trolls and Gundabad Awoken, which are new quests balanced to be a bit harder than the standard quests. Each of these new quests featured new locations, behaviors, enemies, hazards and objectives.
  
  
• Two Vault Expansions with 17 new player cards each.
  
  
• A Brand New Free Tutorial Campaign with an all new Free Quest Flight Through Darkness. This tutorial walks you through various aspects of the game and gives you access to pre-constructed decks for you to use on your own adventures.
  
  
• A Revamp of the UX and First Time User Experience that adds new hero, quest and campaign rewards as well as new avatars, alt art for hero cards and quest challenges to achieve every time you play the game as well as save games for both single and multiplayer games.
  
  
• Co-Operative Play, allowing you to play against Sauron with a friend and overcome his challenges and the ability to communicate through emotes. {We even added the ability to 'Ping' a player; just use Ctrl Left Click (Cmd Left Click on a Mac) to ping anywhere on the game surface.}
  

There are now several hundred cards in the game with many more to come.

On top of all that, we've added a variety of other enhancements—large and small—based on your feedback, as well as things we wanted to improve. Though we intended to be just 3-5 months in Early Access initially, we feel that the changes and additions have been worth the time and made the game more robust, deeper to play and offered a variety of different quests for you to try and we don't intend to stop there!


If you haven't played in a while, we urge you to check out the game again. It's very different (and we believe greatly improved) from the game we released just twelve short months ago. We've evolved a great deal and will continue to improve the game, even after Full Release.




Just like Bilbo took stock of his journey and wrote down his stories upon returning from his adventures to The Lonely Mountain, we've been on a long journey with this game and wanted to share some of its development with you.

While the game was first announced back on December 9th, 2017, and not released into Early Access until August 28th, 2018, the project existed long before either of those dates as various people and teams worked to come up with a way to bring a new Middle-earth card game adventure to the digital screen.


Christian T. Petersen, company founder of Fantasy Flight Games and former CEO always had a strong passion for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Growing up, it was his favorite series of books, and Fantasy Flight Games has put out a number of games over the years taking place in Middle-earth.

(Early Work In Progress Prototype)

Nathan French, famed LCG designer at Fantasy Flight Games designed the original table top experience based on Christian's vision, which released in 2011. Caleb Grace picked up the reigns and led the game through a fantastic run of expansions, nightmare decks, convention decks and scenarios and the full Saga mode.

(Early Work In Progress Prototype)

Way back in 2016, Christian asked the team at FFG, including Caleb, famed designer Corey Konieczka, current head of FFG Andrew Navaro, and VP of Interactive Keith Hurley to create a digital game inspired by The Lord of the Rings™ Card Game, and capturing the feel of it, but not a direct translation of the table top experience. His vision was not to simply replicate the table top experience, or to compete or replace it, but to create a game unique in its own right but reminiscent of the table top experience and drawing up on the amazing art that game had accumulated over the years.

(Early Work In Progress Prototype)

They came up with a number of iterations on paper, exploring different concepts, but without a dedicated team, trying to come up with something they felt would meet their vision. They went through a number of designs and proofs of concepts over about 18 months while also working on their regular projects.

(Early Work In Progress Prototype)

These early designs featured a number of approaches and layouts, and they created bare bones interactive prototypes of each, finding flaws and issues with them all. After much trial and error, they came across the layout currently within the game, with one player at the bottom of the screen, another at the top, and Sauron in the middle, each laid out horizontally. At this stage, the prototype looked like a very rough prototype of what we have today, but without a lot of the fine nuances that were to come.




By early 2017, the team at FFG decided they needed to take a different approach. Though they had a working prototype, they realized that bringing that game to fruition and meet their vision would require a dedicated team who could devote themselves to it. Christian reached out to an old friend, who had more than twenty years in the games industry making games of all sizes from massive AAA console games to the smallest games for the web and mobile phones, your humble writer.

(Early Production Screenshot)

Christian is a great persuader, and the team at FFG are second to none. I couldn't say no, and Fantasy Flight Interactive was born. FFG brought us on board to shepherd the design that FFG had begun as well as to evolve it into a final project. They also brought on the great development team at Virtuos Shanghai, and Caleb and I flew out to China to meet with them and kick off the project. Friendships were born, teams drew together, and the project took shape.

(Early Production Screenshot)

With a small team in Madison, the support of the interactive team under Keith Hurley in Roseville, and the development team in Shanghai, we embarked on bringing The Lord of the Rings™: Adventure Card Game to life. Asmodee Digital, already part of the Asmodee Games global group become the publisher, but also a partner as we worked to evolve the game.

(Early Production Screenshot)

As a testament to this new influx of energy and focus, by November of that year we had a playable early draft of the game that covered the aspects of the original FFG design. We set the announcement for December 9th and planned to release the game to the world in Early Access in late January.

We got to mid-January 2018 and had our initial Early Access Candidate nearly ready for launch. We sat down with Christian and the FFG team one more time to evaluate the game and authorize for launch.

At that time, there were was no Threat meter, no Fate bar, and the game played very differently. The game played in a more truncated version of the cycle from the table top game. You had a Planning Phase, an Adventure Phase, an End Phase, and an UpKeep Phase. In Planning, you played all the cards you had resources for from your hand, and in Adventure Phase you played all of your cards you had played out to the table. At that time, you played all your cards, and then Sauron played all his cards.

It was fast, but didn't feel like a game of reason and tactics. You slammed Sauron, he slammed you back, and often it felt like back and forth punishment with your best laid plans thrown into disarray because you couldn't react, only play cards and hope. All damage was reciprocal, so it hurt to attack just as much as it hurt to be attacked.

The game was designed to be much more random, with the story serving only as a starting point and the card play being much more systems based and resulting in a very random experience from there. If you are curious to see the game as it was played then, you might still find some of these early sessions from our Twitch streams on the internet.

(Early Production Screenshot)

Christian liked the game the game at that point, but felt it could be so much more. Being such a fan of the books, he really wanted the narrative to be front and center, and wanted to refine the look of the cards further. As much as it made the team groan at the thought of delaying, we agreed with the changes and collectively decided to delay the game to explore these features further and make these changes. We sat down with Corey and Caleb and Keith and rethought the game from top to bottom.


Over the next couple of months, the team went and made a host of changes. First up, we went to an igo-ugo system. There was no more planning stage—you either played a card from your hand, or you played one of your cards already. This instantly fit better with our AI Sauron and made the game feel much more tactical. Sauron could now react to you, and you could react to him.

Since you couldn't play all of your cards at once, we had to tweak the numeric values of all cards, as they no longer made sense in a reactive play system.

We refined this play for a couple of months and redesigned Guard about a dozen times, and added and removed universal reciprocal damage as well as changed a bunch of other parameters. Each time we made a change, we'd have to sit down and play through the game painstakingly to review the effects as even small changes could have huge impacts on play.

Corey, Caleb, Keith and Christian spent many a day at our offices and theirs walking through these changes and making suggestions and playing through the differences. Somewhere in there we added threat events and then the full threat meter and expanded the scope of those events.


Each of these changes created an impact on our business model for the game, and what had started as a fairly standard free to play model became a very complex hybrid free to play model. This was something that we didn't account for fully at the time as we were more focused on the game mechanics, sowing the seeds of our eventual switch to a more traditional sales model post launch.


By now it was late June and we all felt we finally had the mechanics down, announcing an August 28th Early Access launch. However, in early July Christian called me one last time with a thought. He felt that the game just wasn't quite there yet. He loved the mechanics and the balance was getting there (though he wanted it to be even harder to appeal to the hardest core table top gamers, and still does!).



He still felt we had room for more narrative elements. Our initial campaign 'Wilderlands Adventure' we'd played to death on our Twitch stream, and despite the new mechanics, we still had room to bring the story to life in a richer way. We had already delayed the game more than once, and I was adamant that we not do so again. I had been through Early Access before, and wanted to get the game into the hands of the players to give us feedback as soon as possible, since we knew the game would evolve anyway. However, Christian was right, and it was clear that there was more we could do.

We had one last design session in mid July 2018 at our offices where Tim Cable, myself, and Christian dove into the game to craft the narrative focus you see today. It was a testament to the editor and tools we had that we were able to add these elements quickly, and to the development team who were able to adapt so quickly to get these new features in before launch.

Several new features were introduced in that final month of development. There was previously no way to do multiple narrative slides before and after a location scene, and we had no post game narrative screen, or any way to show narrative elements within a game location. Just prior to these changes, we had finally added the fate meter and fate events, but there was no way to make location specific threat or fate events. We added all of these features in short order, and Christian brought out all of his reference books, maps and resources to personally draft a new story that was worthy of a Middle-earth adventure.

There were some changes to characters, too. We wanted Bilbo to be part of the story in a more active way, and to bring in some other notable characters from the books for players to related to. We wanted our starting heroes in the core set to be more appropriate to the time period. Out were Frodo and Sam (though they will be back later), and in came Tom Took and Dwalin.



We had a lot of fun putting together the final campaign elements. Christian wrote the narrative for The Shadow's Reach (and had so much fun he also wrote the narrative for The King of Carrion), acting out all of the parts for us and taking our feedback (he does a killer Gollum by the way).

Keith and Corey gave us further feedback as we went, and Keith pulled together all of the voice actors in short order to deliver amazing performances (to this day I don't know how he does it so quickly with such great reads by the actors).

(Almost There!)
The net result was a more evocative, more exciting and much more narrative game for release. The game had fully transformed from a more systems driven random game to a more immersive story driven game but with the ability to replay that story with new heroes, new cards and retaining the deck building aspects that we wanted to be a centerpiece of the challenge. The rest, as they say, was history- which we will cover a future news update...

(The Game Today)

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
We get a number of questions here and on the discord channel, and we wanted to answer a few that come up frequently:

What else are you working on?
Once we are in Full Release and have been able to sync up releases on all platforms, we will be making a comprehensive review of our content and deciding what is next. People have asked for a number of features, and we have to weigh what is easy to make and what is not, and what we can delivery quickly vs what will take a longer period of time.

Additionally, we want to provide other ways to expand the game content as well as more ways for you to spend that hard earned Fellowship. We have a number of concepts in the works, but we have to evaluate their feasibility before we make any announcements.

When will you add more languages to the game?
We have a number of languages we want to add to the game, but it comes down to expense and time. We're evaluating these now and will make an announcement in the near future.

Will you be able to cross play between platforms?
That's the plan, each console platform willing.



If you happen to experience any issues or need technical assistance for the game, please remember that if you don't see the answer within the forums or on discord, you can always file a Helpshift here:

https://asmodee.helpshift.com/a/lord-of-the-rings-acg/


There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.

You can check it out here.



Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.

Our next stream will be tomorrow, Wednesday, August 14th.


That's all we have this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!

We are currently encountering a server-related issue, preventing our users from accessing our games.
Please note that our teams are currently working to fix this as soon as possible.
We are deeply sorry about this.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.

We are currently experiencing an Asmodee.net outage that is preventing people from playing the game live. The engineers as Asmodee Digital are working on this now and we expect to have the this issue resolved soon. We will post an update once this is resolved.

Hail and Well Met!

This afternoon US time (late evening European time) we will release Gundabad Awoken for you to play. This free Encounter gives you the chance to explore the ancient home of The First Forge, now overrun with Goblin hordes.

We hope you enjoy this new adventure!





Along with this new Encounter, there are a number of fixes and adjustments. You can learn more about these over at the latest Patch Notes.





Legend holds that in the distant mists of the First Age, Durin, father of Dwarves, built his first forge within Mount Gundabad. Alas, in time Orcs seized control of the mountain stronghold. Though the Dwarves drove them out repeatedly, the Orcs always returned. Even unto the current times of the Third Age, their foul presence remains a constant blight upon the Dwarves' sacred place.

The threat of Orcs—and worse—is on the rise once more. Reports claim that Gundabad swells with increasing numbers of Orcs, evil Men, and other miscreants. The corrupted fortress stirs with renewed purpose… though to just what purpose remains a mystery. Heroes are needed—brave souls who will venture to this desolate place and discover what draws forth the minions of darkness.

In this Encounter your Heroes are faced with a mystery: many Orc factions, as well as evil Men from Carn Dûm and Rhudaur, assemble within Gundabad. Someone—or something—calls to them, but to what purpose? To learn the truth, stealth and guile are called for. Your journey to Gundabad is a search, not an assault. You must use disguise and subterfuge to infiltrate the enemy stronghold and glean its secret, but that's only the beginning! To find the source of the dark siren song, you'll need to navigate the depths of the labyrinthine mountain fortress. Should you overcome the obstacles along the way, you'll face a foe unlike any you've encountered before.

Choose your deck carefully, for you'll need both wits and combat prowess to defeat the foul power that rouses Mount Gundabad and its denizens.



In a previous news update, we previewed a few new Goblins. In Gundabad Awoken, you will need to infiltrate the mountain in disguise, and might have to rely upon the assistance of Goblins to complete your quest. Depending on how you proceed, you might face these Goblins across the field of battle, or, relying on your disguise, make use of these Goblins to proceed. Let'd compare these Goblins, both as Allies, and as Enemies.

First up,

Goblin Sneak

or,

The Ally Goblin Sneak



Now, the Pit Goblin


or,

The Ally Pit Goblin



These are just two of the possible Goblins you'll confront. You won't be able to pick your allies, so you'll need to weigh your options carefully as you proceed in this unique challenge.



If you happen to experience any issues or need technical assistance for the game, please remember that if you don't see the answer within the forums or on discord, you can always file a Helpshift here:

https://asmodee.helpshift.com/a/lord-of-the-rings-acg/


There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.

You can check it out here.



Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.

Our next stream will be tomorrow, Wednesday, July 31st.


That's all we have this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!