Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Lotro needs to learn more from DDO how to make better hireling
Larry2298
Member Posts: 865
The hireling or you can call it soldier in Lotro is really a joke. Both games from Turbine, but it seems that either their designers are belong to different compnay or they do not cooperate together. The hireling in Lotro Skirmish is really poor quality, I suggest whoever design the hireling path in Lotro please take a look on DDO how they make a better hireling.
In Lotro, the hireling looks so panic running around without purpose and I have to rescue the stupid soldier everytime because the soldier stupid path. The soldier path is based on the player like a circle, so even you did not move but just chance direction then the soldier will run as a circle like a clock ahead of you.
For example, if you were facing east, and change direction to west, then the soldier will run like a clock ahead of you and facing west. Thats means the soldier always ahead of you to get trouble. So I have to turn my back to the mobs so the hireling will not run into the mobs.
Anyhow, the skirmish solo is really poor quality.
Comments
Im guessing youre talking about the captain class and youre banner carrier that fallows you. First i would like to say that i never once had an issue with how the banner carrier moved. But i could be wrong on what class youre talking about to. So if you could tell me the name of the class mabey i could give better info on it.
Yeah, they aren't too bright.
And unfortunately, they pretty much moved all the content developers to D&DO a couple years ago. I guess they have hired some more for LOTRO, but don't expect any radical changes any time soon. Indeed, I don't expect them to do anything with the Skirmish system. The lack of any new ones in over a year likely means they don't care too much about it...
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
You have to take skills before they become a bit better. Yes they tend to turn that way but the soldier can pair up with some classes like the runekeeper quite well since both do AOE. However even the guardian hench needs points and levels before they become better. Try experimenting with different henchies for the skirmish some say the healing one forgotten the name is it sage is pretty good since they heal themselves and the ranger one can be good.
I know that you will have to waste money to experiment but getting a good fit for your class is important for my Loremaster I went bannerguard and I took the taunt which together with my pet the bear was quite good in missions and I can take on the encounters pretty well especially the Tuckborough skirmish which is one of the harder ones. That bear encounter can pretty much tear your hench and pet apart. My runekeeper had the soldier.
With such quality, I don't think I am going to waste more money on experiments. But I already spent lot of skirmish marks on the warrior soldier. The more you spent the worse the soldier performs. Because the soldier just pick any agro, fight by his own will and died fast. A typical noob soldier style.
I have to say the general skurmish concept is brilliant like the Legendary thing, very creative and impressive. But the path finder is poor. You just turn west then the soldier start running towards west to be head of you, there might be a hill or house or any other thing block his way but the soldier still try to reach there and then he stuck.
You see every skimish instance is like a instance in DDO, There are too many to improve for people to spend more money on it.
Soldiers =/= hirelings
Learn how to use them and you will be fine
They are not supposed to work like pets or hirelings there was a dev diary back then detailing the desing behind them.
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
I really cant see any difference between skirmish soldier and hireling or even pets really. They all following the player and they all have one common feature, you can order them to engage certain mob.
There are 2 soldier command, one is summon the soldier, another is command the soldier to engage the mob.
But the problem is: the soldier picks any agro because silly path so the soldier is not fight by your side, he is fight on his own will. The soldier should protect the NPC so player will not lose skirmish mark if NPC alive. But the soldier always running wild because whenever you change direction, the soldier start running around you like a clock to get the position in front of you. When he starts running, he got agro immediately.
When you pulling the mob over to you, because the soldier ALWAYS 5-10 meters in front of you, so he would intercept the mob in half way. And he got agro from mobs but then the other mobs start attacking the NPC. How to commanding a soldier fight on his own will and path in a battle? Simply because the soldier is not well train, it's not commander's problem.
Since every skirmish instance is fixed, I hope Turbine will polish these instances. I found some NPCs just stuck at same place, it would be wise to give a point arrow on the map to indicate the encounter's position.
There is no reason to defend for the skirmish soldier, it's not a complicated thing or a conspiracy, just make it better quality of what Turbine is selling, that's simple.
Larry is pretty much spot on. Its not the design or idea behind skirmishes thats so bad, its the execution of it. Couple examples:
1. The herbalist heals you by reflecting negative damage from a hostile towards you(WTH?). I.e. he hits a mob with a invisible missile, which then reflects back to you and heals you. This is bad because a) you need to be in combat to get heals and b) the soldiers are scripted to not attack certain enemies without you explicitly telling them too(usually because they get buffs for damage while still having allies etc). Which means you get no heals when fighting them unless you tell your herbalist to attack them, which is stupid because the herbalist does not have any "attacks" and will not trigger the buffs on enemies like the other soldiers.
2. The protector is plain broken, he has no awareness of his surroundings at all. Its not a problem when he starts the battle in the mids of an bunch of melee mobs, he will "accidentally" hit them with his AoE taunt/attacks and "accidentally" hold aggro on more than one. However thats usually not the case, usually he goes 1on1 with some stupid mob while the 6 other mobs make a beeline for you. This is only a problem because of:
3. You can only give an attack command every 30 seconds. Combined with 1. and 2. it just aggravates people. So the soldiers are stupid and you took away our ability to micro them? How is that supposed to be fun? And yes i know the design "idea" behind them, what a coincidence that this design idea basically means they have to spent no time at all actually developing even the most rudimentary AI.
4. Horrible pathing. Not petlike horrible pathing but much worse, they can get stuck on an empty slope. Not to mention you can only call them every 60 sec or something and not in combat. Again a broken system, made worse by bad implementation.
Larry, the soldier's class determines what position they try to stand in relative to you. Not all soldiers will try to stand in front of you, some of them will even stand behind you (such as herbalist). IMO this is a good thing, if I have a warrior soldier I want him to be in front of me so he can get aggro first if a group of mobs approaches. If I have an herbalist soldier I want her to be behind me so I can get the aggro. So whenever your character moves, the soldier tries to maintain their position as designed, either in front or behind you.
I agree there's not as much you can do with them as hirelings in DDO, and the pathing is not as smart. Turbine designed them as pretty much a "dumb" assistant, rather than an NPC you could entirely control that could be useful as a replacement for a real player.
Basically, if you have a warrior soldier with you, it is not necessary or a must to intercept your target or run away to create another battlegrounf different from you. The death of soldier has high probaility to bring your death penalty as well because the skirmish is balanced with you and your solider. Furthermore, the concept of the frontline soldier does not apply the fact because there might be obstacles at your location, so the soldier iappears to have very strange spot, secondly, the mobs are not always come from your front side.
For example, The RIft skirmish, at third torch nod, the large rock block the stair so the soldier is not possible to run up to the platform, the mobs will come from both sides. So where you want your soldier to tank? If the soldier stands in front of you then he will turn out to be lower ground, if mobs came from the other side, then the soldier just can't find his path and stuck at lower ground.
In the end fight, the soldier just ran into the lave to fight, if you try to get agro back then you have to go into the lava and the lava will damage you. More important is, Counir ran away and cast certain buff on the ground. With this kind of disorder soldier, you will never able to pull the boss to the location, Not only the soldier path is great problem, the instance itself also with many bugs. So who will want to play Tier 2 or Tier 3 while Tier 1 got so many problems?
Doing The RIft skirmish will earn 700 reputation from The Eldgang, but I ran 2 times, it never happen as it supposed to be.
I was playing Lotro years ago with 2 accounts, and now I am F2P, however, with this poor quality, I am more care about every dollar to spend in this game.
I have no clue what you mean by horrible pathing?! Are you taking short cuts that your NPC needs to walkaround to get to you?
I do skirmishes almost daily (5 days a week) and have never had my ally do something "stupid" that "I" didn't cause by trying to save time or take a shortcut. IMO, the system works tremendously well.
LoL, I supposed you never play Tuckboroug skirmish to say "shortcut". Not all skirmish are paced by road like The Battle in Tower. Please get a clue about all skirmish first.
I think Skirmish Solo needs more incentives, the trash mobs dont even have a single drop, and the encounter mob drops something useless and still removed after ext the skirmish, the trash mob didnt drop anything. I think playing Solo Skirmish is more likely to punish yourself.
You're incorrect. I have played Tuckborough many times - that's the one I generally start out with because of the large number of NPC's and I can go at my own pace. As I said, all I need to do is use a little bit of common sense to avoid having my Herbalist or Sage get stuck. If "I" have a hard time finding my path, I fully expect my NPC to have a difficult time as well.
Have you ever used the difficulty (tier) option solo? Doing it all on Tier 1 is the same as "easy"...bump it up. I honestly feel Turbine has done an amazing job of scaling their skirmishes - difficulty, level, Solo, Duo, 3 person, 6 or up to 12 - I've done them all and NEVER thought it could be better. I truthfully don't understand for a moment how you think it could be better without making solo play favored, which is a mistake for an MMO.
And the tokens don't disappear when you exit, they move to your Barter Wallet and can be exchanged for a ton of various things - they can be used for armor, weapons, cosmetics, crafting, jewelry, reputation items, Legendary items, skirmish marks to train up your ally...they're tremendously valuable and flexible.
The banners you loot from the EXTRA encounter does disappear, but that's to encourage you to challenge yourself during the fight. You don't even have to do most of them.
Well, first of all, I make a decent amount of money in skirmishes I play the higher lvl skirmishes with my guardian. Quite frankly that's how I make money now, I just repeat those as i like combat and would rather do that then work the market.
Secondly, of course they don't drop anything. That's not how they were intended to work. Your reward at the end of completing the skirmish takes into account what you have been killing.
Besides the skirmish marks and whatever else type of marks one gets I usually clear about 350 to 375 or so silver.
That might not be huge potatoes to those who are working the market and crafting but I get skirmish marks and a steady supply of silver. Over a weekend I went from having 3 gold to 29 gold. admittedly that was pretty hardcore play and I was solely interested in getting money.
I hate crafting so this for me is a better way to earn "cash".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Pet pathing AI in LotRO is pretty brutal. Yeah, the Tuckborough one I end up having to resummon my soldier multiple times because he gets stuck.
I know OP is talking about skirmish soldiers, but regular pets are pretty bad, too. I mean...how does a frickin bird get stuck on terrain?
Meh I played both games and while I can agree that the hireling in LOTRO wasn't as bad pathing as the lotro soldier in skirmish it didn't seem to be worth much fuss, sure if Turbine can make the soldiers work a little better it would be great but it's not a deal breaker or anything for me.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
The Skirmish only gives Skirmish Marks, nothing else. It'd better to just go around in the map slay anything you see and it is much faster to making gold in this game. Compare making gold from Skirmish and random killing, I'd suggest random killing better because you have chance to get something drop off and sell them at AH. Skirmish only gives Skirmish marks and whowill care about cosmetic suit for soldier? You only see your soldier in Skirmish Solo.
I ran Skirmish everyday, not every encounter or lieutenant would drop guardian or veteran coin, I think it is maximum 2 veteran coin, and 3 guardian coins per run. More or less, so it is around maximum 300 silver. But you also need to realize one thing, the repair for each run would cost you least 100 silver, it will be more if you died.
The soldier only works for Solo so if you have friends or kinmen to play with, the soldier could be useless for you.
Larry,
Higher level skirmishes give silver. Battle in the Tower, go play it. (edit) come to think of it I think lower level skrimishes give silver as well, just not a lot.
Secondly I'm not giving advice on how to make money fast, I'm syaing that "I" make a decent amount of money doing them as "I" find them a better more concentrated way to make money "and" skirmish marks at the same time. I've spent a good part fo a weekend farming silver and skirmish marks and went to 29 gold. So if people want to make some money and get skrimish marks then there is some incentive there. More so at higher lvls.
As far as "not every encounter drops a some sort of higher coin", sure, that's correct but doens't matter to me. That's the luck of the dice. I find it acceptable to "not get something" as long as there is a chance "to" get something. Too many players have their hands out in my opinion. "Give me", give me give me". It always seems to be about rewards all the time. In the past, when Iv'e needed a specific coin, I would run a skirmish several times. I would eventually get the amount I needed.
My repair for each is far less than 100 silver. I think they are like 34 silver.
I'm off for the holidays but if I need to start taking screen shots I will.
Oh, here's someone's explanation on doing skrimishes with a lvl 30 rune keeper who indicates that "money" has increased and "repair prices" have decreased.
http://lotroreporter.com/2010/05/17/skirmish-experiment-the-beginning/
As far as the soldiers go, my Healer is hit or miss. She either heals me too much or not enough. I don't know if that's just because she heals on a regular basis (as there is an outgoing healting rating) and that I"m just not lucky to catch the cycle at a good time or if there is another issue.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
This is incorrect... I have been healed and so has my friends by my herbilist between fights. What you are possibly thinking is happening is that you get a decient buff to your in-combat moral regen if your within 7m of a herbalist. obviously that goes away if your not in a fight but that buff shouldn't put you above you non-combat moral regen so you shouldn't notice the difference.
It's true, herbalists will heal a party member. There is a skill that one must train to incrase that healing. They will also give power to a party member. Though again, i can't speak for the efficacy.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
OK, I just keep closer eye on the silver I made for skirmish, I got few hundred silvers. But after doing it so so often, I started wondering what was the fun for Solo Skirmish? My soldier almost reach max level as well as his skills, trainings and personal. In addition, he got a racial trait and chainmal cosmetic, now I am working on the Rift helmet for him. But then what? There is no legendary item XP and no exchange to outside world.
I got many titles from skirmish, as well as completed many lieutenenat slayer deed, and met all encounters.
But what was the fun and you get nothing from solo skirmish.
Mine can keep, myself, a champ and a Warden up fairly well by herself. As long as there aren't a lot of AOEs hitting your group your pretty well set. However if damage is getting spread around she's not a good as a really person who can make the judgement calls on who needs to be healed and who can be left to thier own devices. Which for an NPC that isn't supposed to be as good as a player is fine.
As for pathing I generally say its not too much of a problem with one exception, the tents/lean-tos in tuckbourgh, but even I get stuck on them ocassionally. I'd rather the damn things were closed off so you couldn't enter them would make me happy.
You do get IXP off the daily quest for each skirmish. Big surprise like most lvlv based MMOs there really isn't ever much reason to do stuff solo at lvl cap. It usually ends up with rep grinding, crafting grinding, achievement grinding for solo players. And not a big shot Lotro starts breaking down into that at 65. Don't need XP since I'm 65, my 4 LIs are maxed, so that leaves me with going back and polishing off my virtues and maxing out all my reps. its why you will find very few lvl 65 players with out at least one alt because you need something to do when your not grinding group play stuff.
Then group up for it. Nobody is asking you to do them solo.
And the tokens you get (1st Mark, 2nd Mark etc) CAN be redeemed for tons of shit, as can the skirmish marks themselves:
weapons
buffs
rep items
armor
legendary stuff
jewelry
cosmetics
crafting supplies and abilities
Just because no big item "drops", doesn't mean there's no value to doing them...in fact, I'd rather have the skirm marks so I can PICK what is valuable to me over some random gaudy helmet or another worthless weapon I can sell for 8 silver.
Heck, I've started trading skirmish marks for relics for the legendary items. Beats collecting and deconstructing weapons.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I have invested on my soldier for many marks point, currently got lv69 atm an max out all skills, training etc, but one thing I cant put up with the stupid AI of my soldier. During the combat, the soldier won't continue to fight another mob, and he still looks like he is fighting, and it was a bunch of group mobs even in the solo skirmish to distract me to pay attention on the stupid soldier to instruct him the next move. Furthermore, there are many objects in skirmish needs to be polished, my solider got stuck so often. Turbine really need to do hire more people to polishing the skirmish. Besides, the game getting more expensiveto play than p2p. You cant always copy and paste the contents.
Larry, maybe you're bugged buddy, but your issues are not ones I've seen. Pathing is based on where YOU go, so that's all on you my friend, not the Devs. My soldier engages in all the battles I'm in and she stands behind me (Sage or Herbalist depending on what I'm doing) and always engages. Now, if you happen to be using an Herbalist, they'll NEVER fight, all they do is heal. Maybe that's your issue?
And how is the game getting more expensive than P2P Larry? At most, players will pay $15 on month to month memberships (the average price I might add), but it's entirely OPTIONAL! I have 2 guys in my Kin who are totally F2P and they do everything with us except for Moria (an expansion and only 38 and 36).
Also, the ONLY thing the lotro store sells right now is convenience and cosmetics Larry. NOTHING in there makes you "better" during a fight or alters your stats enough to make any difference. If you're spending $ in the store (which I have), it's because you want to do something quicker, not because the game "requires" you to.