Friendly discussion

**Alexander Eolo** · July 13, 2017, 10:31 AM

hello guys, first of all thank you. Thank you for dedicating your personal time for such beautiful project. Every now and then i check the forum and if i'm lucky i get to see some beautiful updates and pictures of new units, but is not as often as i'd wish. I understand this team is working focusing on the quality, you guys take a big deal of time trying to give us the perfect looking unit and although i only saw them in pictures i have reason to believe they could pretty much outshine Creative Assembly's unit for the care in details and quality. Now, with that said we need to look at the other side of the coin, without a professional team behind it would take realistically years (if not forever) to design and create every lord of the rings unit as it is planned now. i'm saying this just by looking from the outside, obviously i'm not part of the team nor i know what's going on inside it. i'm writing this only based on my personal impressions and the idea i made from them. But at the same time i'm patiently waiting for this outstanding project i see another mod out there, the Seven Kingdom mod, which is being extremely productive lately and is having a great leap forward, i don't know how they are doing it but i believe they are lowering a little bit the overall quality (but mind me, when i saw them i was still left mouth hanging!) preferring more quantity. As this wasn't enough the approach they made was actually one of the smartest i have seen and i do believe you could actually get a hint from them. what they are doing is releasing the mod piece by piece (as if they were some kind of dlc) they did the North, they did Essos, they did the Walkers, ecc.. What basically i'm saying is that as soon as they finished a faction they released it to the public, which is a very good move (again that's my opinion). now, closing the seven kingdom parenthesis let's go back to the Rise of Mordor mod. This mod has been around for years, with up and downs and only two factions completed basically. As astonished as they are, there are still ten or something factions left and if we have to consider an average year per faction that means ten year! Guys i love you, and i understand you need more people in the team and i understand you are doing it for free and you have lives beside this project but from my point of view this is the wrong approach i'm afraid :/ you can't expect to have the same quality of a creative assembly unit while delivering the same amount they do, i know i sound as a total DICK saying this, and i'm sorry, but you don't have the same resources they have. perhaps you could think about releasing the mod bit by bit as soon as you have enough factions (3 or 4 for start, maybe) and then moving from this base, working over the next group of factions.
Again i'm sorry for such a long post, but i hope we could start (as the title says) a friendly discussion over this matter and perhaps find a solution who would please both parties

I have a great respect for each and every one of you guys and admire your work so much! that is the reason for this post, I love your work and hope to see it accomplished one day!
But until that day, my best wishes!

**Alkar** · July 13, 2017, 02:08 PM

Originally Posted by Alexander Eolo

hello guys, first of all thank you. Thank you for dedicating your personal time for such beautiful project. Every now and then i check the forum and if i'm lucky i get to see some beautiful updates and pictures of new units, but is not as often as i'd wish. I understand this team is working focusing on the quality, you guys take a big deal of time trying to give us the perfect looking unit and although i only saw them in pictures i have reason to believe they could pretty much outshine Creative Assembly's unit for the care in details and quality. Now, with that said we need to look at the other side of the coin, without a professional team behind it would take realistically years (if not forever) to design and create every lord of the rings unit as it is planned now. i'm saying this just by looking from the outside, obviously i'm not part of the team nor i know what's going on inside it. i'm writing this only based on my personal impressions and the idea i made from them. But at the same time i'm patiently waiting for this outstanding project i see another mod out there, the Seven Kingdom mod, which is being extremely productive lately and is having a great leap forward, i don't know how they are doing it but i believe they are lowering a little bit the overall quality (but mind me, when i saw them i was still left mouth hanging!) preferring more quantity. As this wasn't enough the approach they made was actually one of the smartest i have seen and i do believe you could actually get a hint from them. what they are doing is releasing the mod piece by piece (as if they were some kind of dlc) they did the North, they did Essos, they did the Walkers, ecc.. What basically i'm saying is that as soon as they finished a faction they released it to the public, which is a very good move (again that's my opinion). now, closing the seven kingdom parenthesis let's go back to the Rise of Mordor mod. This mod has been around for years, with up and downs and only two factions completed basically. As astonished as they are, there are still ten or something factions left and if we have to consider an average year per faction that means ten year! Guys i love you, and i understand you need more people in the team and i understand you are doing it for free and you have lives beside this project but from my point of view this is the wrong approach i'm afraid :/ you can't expect to have the same quality of a creative assembly unit while delivering the same amount they do, i know i sound as a total DICK saying this, and i'm sorry, but you don't have the same resources they have. perhaps you could think about releasing the mod bit by bit as soon as you have enough factions (3 or 4 for start, maybe) and then moving from this base, working over the next group of factions.
Again i'm sorry for such a long post, but i hope we could start (as the title says) a friendly discussion over this matter and perhaps find a solution who would please both parties

I have a great respect for each and every one of you guys and admire your work so much! that is the reason for this post, I love your work and hope to see it accomplished one day!
But until that day, my best wishes!

They understand that it will take years. Part of that I think is wanting to wait for a better historical title to realize the mod in, as the one currently could only have a limited campaign. Also, they are working on creating the core good and evil factions, after which they will release a more or less stable version for testing and improvement.

**Mr.Jox** · July 13, 2017, 02:38 PM

First release wasn't meant to be full release. We just think releasing Dale and Gondor only is not enough for public release. We have a list of followers that were granted access for their loyalty to the mod.
Mod may be released for the public as soon as we have at least one siege map and at least 2 more factions.

**Commissar Caligula_** · July 13, 2017, 07:20 PM

There are a number of differences between us and Seven Kingdoms that let them pump out way more content than us.
Firstly (and I'm not

on Seven Kingdoms), but basically each Seven Kingdoms House has about 3 or 4 different unit variants. In comparison, we've got about 11 variants for Gondor alone. This greatly increases the work we have to do.
That said, Seven Kingdoms has about 30 Houses so obviously has done way more work than us even with the lower number of variants per House.

Secondly, Blick Mang (Seven Kingdoms leader, who made about 90% of the models) has managed his time better and has been continuously working on the mod for the past 18 months pretty much. We're hampered by university, real life obligations and barely anyone new joining the team and actually creating content. In the past 18 months, at least 20 people have joined the Rise of Mordor team and promised to help us create models, only to go inactive and disappear without creating anything.

Thirdly, Seven Kingdoms draws on the TV show and other visual sources, so for the most part they know exactly what to make. In contrast we're making up quite a lot of the units from scratch with barely any references.

I do agree with you wholeheartedly that we're taking way too long on Rise of Mordor, and I reckon we should make less units per faction so we can pump out more stuff, then go back to them when everything else is finished.

**Mr.Jox** · July 14, 2017, 01:34 AM

Originally Posted by Caligula

There are a number of differences between us and Seven Kingdoms that let them pump out way more content than us.
Firstly (and I'm not

on Seven Kingdoms), but basically each Seven Kingdoms House has about 3 or 4 different unit variants. In comparison, we've got about 11 variants for Gondor alone. This greatly increases the work we have to do.
That said, Seven Kingdoms has about 30 Houses so obviously has done way more work than us even with the lower number of variants per House.

Secondly, Blick Mang (Seven Kingdoms leader, who made about 90% of the models) has managed his time better and has been continuously working on the mod for the past 18 months pretty much. We're hampered by university, real life obligations and barely anyone new joining the team and actually creating content. In the past 18 months, at least 20 people have joined the Rise of Mordor team and promised to help us create models, only to go inactive and disappear without creating anything.

Thirdly, Seven Kingdoms draws on the TV show and other visual sources, so for the most part they know exactly what to make. In contrast we're making up quite a lot of the units from scratch with barely any references.

I do agree with you wholeheartedly that we're taking way too long on Rise of Mordor, and I reckon we should make less units per faction so we can pump out more stuff, then go back to them when everything else is finished.

I would add one more difference (it doesn't have to do anything with the SK mod itself). If you look at different armies at the show you can see them sharing same assets. Same gorgets, same pauldrons, same tunics. In modular term it decreases the amount of work.
Also don't forget, we have different races and different skeleton structures -> gotta make new animations for them ;p

**Alexander Eolo** · July 14, 2017, 09:39 AM

i do believe creating a troll or a dwarf is a bit different from a regular medieval soldier

mind me, the Seven Kingdom mod was just a parenthesis , the main focus of my post was about the way you were approaching the development of the mod, i absolutely understand the structural differences between the two mod and you absolutely have no need to justify it to me, i understand there are several key area which they don't need to worry about while you definitely do. I'm really glad to see you were planning already to release the mod after a minimum base for the gameplay as you said, with the 4 factions and the siege map. Now i guess i'll just have to patiently wait in a corner until that day!

I also hope that in this very moment of the development you'd consider a slightly different trade off between quality and quantity (Just for the secondary factions perhaps (?)) but again,that is none of my business!
in conclusion, always, thank you for your efforts and best wishes!

**Mr.Jox** · July 14, 2017, 03:08 PM

Dunno about the others but I much improved since I started working on Gondor. I didn't want to rework old gondor assets but I feel a little ashamed coz of lower quality I did in past.
Now when I know better ways and techniques I just can't let myself do worse assets. Me and enpremi are perfectionists and can't make half quality;p