Thread: Update 6: Developer Diary Feedback: Soldiers on Landscape

Ah, it's a store bought item not a feature of the game, got it.

I for one won't be wasting my hard earned TP on this store item.

I'll just add my voice to those who feel the idea is fun but the implementation with such a high cost puts it out of reach so that those who need it most are least able to afford it. I'm also disappointed that Turbine obfuscated the cost component of the new "feature" in all its announcements. Certainly makes one hesitant to get excited about anything else they have announced coming into the game, since we don't know how much we're going to be charged for it. I understand the need not to unbalance the game. If they didn't want soldiers out all the time, then they could have put a daily timer on their use. Instead they make it so expensive that it becomes a luxury. I cannot help but think this is being implemented this way as a test for future "features" being added through the Store, which makes me all the more hesitant to spend any TPs on something like this since I have no way of knowing what "features" of RoR will actually be Store items.

All I see is that more and more of LOTRO is being put out of reach of players without a lot of cash or time to spend.

Originally Posted by Mysterion

If you are going to copy features, try and get the best parts please.

I know! And can you believe they were so desperate to copy SWTOR, they did it two years before SWTOR ever saw the light of day?

Seriously now. The world does not revolve around Star Wars, anything and everything is not derived from it. NPC companions and brass fanfares weren't invented by it, no more than swords of light or swashbuckling. If anything, Star Wars (and SWTOR especially) is actually highly derivative in and of itself, simply combining and repackaging aspects that were in existence for quite some time beforehand.



Back on topic, I do have to agree that the barter cost for Skirmish Solder tokens is a bit high. 100 TP for an hour of Soldier time isn't that bad compared to other things, like the slayer acceleration tomes. But the barter costs are a bit too prohibitive, and especially compared to what we actually get. Within a skirmish, attacks come at set intervals and combinations, and soldiers are able to hold their own to some extent, but can be fragile against harder foes. Out in the landscape, this fragility is only exacerbated. While they can be helpful, certainly, they often end up stumbling into nests of enemies or just fail to survive multiple foes. And given as we can't even use them in instances, and anything stronger than a Signature will wipe them handily, the benefit just isn't there most of the time.

It doesn't help that we have so little control on positioning, and this whole "But but PET CLASSES!" is honestly as nonsensical as the whole "But enabling cosmetics in the moors would confuse Creeps!". Pets have commandable skills and unique talents, and their owners are built for supporting them and making them serious threats. Being able to tell one's protector to stop chasing and come back, or herbalist to stay put out of harm's way, or warrior to actually attack a target? None of it would come close to what a Captain and their Herald can do, or a Loremaster and their Animal. Especially if you consider that in the majority of group content (not counting skirmishes as EVERYONE has one there), ONLY the Heralds and Animal Companions would even be available.

Still, this is at least a start. Hopefully the system will grow and evolve over time. And if not, no biggie. We'll get by as we've always done as wayfaring heroes.

When WB bought Turbine, they should have pretended to have a company over-haul. Gone nuts. Change the name. Change all the legal stuff.


So at least it didn't look like Turbine (Powered by our Fans) did a complete 180 with the bipolar stance on the store and advantage and pay to win.


At least then, it would seem justified. Our beloved LOTRO got bought out and turned evil! Now it just all feels like a slap in the face.


Retroactive Turbine Points, retroactive Commendations, store-only armour, store only in-combat pots, store only power/morale pots, store-only LM pets, a skirmish soldier....

I know some of those don't offer advantage but please. At least let us earn it in-game.


And for that, you have to give them credit. At least this "advantage" is earnable in-game. Given, like all the other posts, at a ridiculous amount. I have over 100k skirmish marks, and I've invested 250k in maxing every skirmish soldier, skill, trait, and personal. I think if you play this game and subscribe, you should access to it.

So thanks Turbine. Thanks for making this "advantage" earnable in-game unlike other "advantages".

It seems that whenever Turbine creates something that makes me consider really investing my time back into this game somewhere in the text for the update there is fine print that completely removes the point of playing. I have been singing songs from the mountaintop about how fun it would be to have some help out in the field when soloing content for some of the classes with the skirmish soldiers on land. It seems, however instead of making a game, Turbine has decided it doesn't even want to put a tarp over the pay to ride hamster wheel that it has turned LOTRO into.

LOTRO has always been one of those MMO's that I try to play but end up stopping because of some stumbling block in its core design that removes me from that moment when I get lost in Middle Earth and just dive into pure enjoyment. I'm not against the item shop at all. I have bought several mounts because I support cosmetic and fun items that are optional. While these soldiers can be considered optional they are being pitched as a major feature that the game will have.

When I beta tested this game I remember the first time I logged in. I was astounded as Middle Earth opened before me. Tolkien's masterpiece beckoned me to explore, to be free and to fight for the freedom of its inhabitants. Now, the denizens hang out on street corners wearing torn fishnet stockings and the streets are saturated with middle American mall boutiques, the ones you try to walk by without making eye contact with the clerk so you don't have to hear their tired pitch. It seems that as we traveled east towards Moria, the Dourhands rose again and have polluted Middle Earths waters and spread disease amongst its animals. They have corrupted the hearts of Middle Earths keepers and turned them into the very thing they were supposed to protect us from. Now, there is more than just a mountain that is lonely.

So far, about 80% of people who posted in this thread probably didn't even bother reading the whole dev diary.

Come on, people, it's written there in plain text, are you blind? YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO STORE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND ANY TP AT ALL. YOU CAN GET THE SAME FROM SKIRMISH CAMP!

You keep citing the same arguments over and over. "Evil Warner Brothers, greedy Turbine, evil Store, the game is now the Store, they want us to pay for basic gameplay features, the TP cost is too high, VIPs should get it free, will never use that feature, yada-yada-yada". Did you expect it to be available instantly with no conditions at all? They don't want us having soldiers all the time, as that would make content trivially easy, so they come up with a timed token. And it's totally, 100% available in-game: they add a Worn Symbol to skirmish camp and every player cheers in joy, they add a soldier token and you lay all possible curses upon it. Where's the logic?

Since my marks get shared across all characters on Monday, I estimate I probably have about 110-115k of them between them all. See how many soldier tokens I could buy at once? At since they only expire when soldier is out, I will only use him in really tough situations - Limlight Gorge probably - and expect one token to last me for days and weeks. I don't actually need it - nobody actually needs it. But it's a choice and choice is nice and THE STORE DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT WHATSOEVER, CHEEZ!

Originally Posted by Malachi108

So far, about 80% of people who posted in this thread probably didn't even bother reading the whole dev diary.

Come on, people, it's written there in plain text, are you blind? YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO STORE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND ANY TP AT ALL. YOU CAN GET THE SAME FROM SKIRMISH CAMP!

You keep citing the same arguments over and over. "Evil Warner Brothers, greedy Turbine, evil Store, the game is now the Store, they want us to pay for basic gameplay features, the TP cost is too high, VIPs should get it free, will never use that feature, yada-yada-yada". Did you expect it to be available instantly with no conditions at all? They don't want us having soldiers all the time, as that would make content trivially easy, so they come up with a timed token. And it's totally, 100% available in-game: they add a Worn Symbol to skirmish camp and every player cheers in joy, they add a soldier token and you lay all possible curses upon it. Where's the logic?

Since my marks get shared across all characters on Monday, I estimate I probably have about 110-115k of them between them all. See how many soldier tokens I could buy at once? At since they only expire when soldier is out, I will only use him in really tough situations - Limlight Gorge probably - and expect one token to last me for days and weeks. I don't actually need it - nobody actually needs it. But it's a choice and choice is nice and THE STORE DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT WHATSOEVER, CHEEZ!

Hey mr. Tallyman, Tally me banana.

Its a waste of marks & medallions, you dont spend such massive amounts on something which should be free.

Originally Posted by Malachi108

So far, about 80% of people who posted in this thread probably didn't even bother reading the whole dev diary.

Come on, people, it's written there in plain text, are you blind? YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO STORE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND ANY TP AT ALL. YOU CAN GET THE SAME FROM SKIRMISH CAMP!

You keep citing the same arguments over and over. "Evil Warner Brothers, greedy Turbine, evil Store, the game is now the Store, they want us to pay for basic gameplay features, the TP cost is too high, VIPs should get it free, will never use that feature, yada-yada-yada". Did you expect it to be available instantly with no conditions at all? They don't want us having soldiers all the time, as that would make content trivially easy, so they come up with a timed token. And it's totally, 100% available in-game: they add a Worn Symbol to skirmish camp and every player cheers in joy, they add a soldier token and you lay all possible curses upon it. Where's the logic?

Since my marks get shared across all characters on Monday, I estimate I probably have about 110-115k of them between them all. See how many soldier tokens I could buy at once? At since they only expire when soldier is out, I will only use him in really tough situations - Limlight Gorge probably - and expect one token to last me for days and weeks. I don't actually need it - nobody actually needs it. But it's a choice and choice is nice and THE STORE DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT WHATSOEVER, CHEEZ!

I'm happy for you that you are swimming in skirmish marks, but the general population of this game does not have that much.

The idea for the skirmish soldier on landscape was nice, but the execution is terrible. Only mark hoarders or excessive TP buyers can use this feature on a regular basis.

I hope the devs are reading this topic and see that the responses are mostly negative and will act accordingly.

HINT: if you really want to milk this - allow us to buy from the store a permanent unlock of the soldier and do it account-wise, not character wise - then most likely you will get some nice income (and you can even keep the silly 100TP/hour token for those who think it's worth their money)

I like the implementation. I didn't like being mislead.

Even as part of an active raiding kin, ~1000/75 marks/meds is a pretty steep cost for an hour of skirm soldier help. I can only imagine what that cost looks like to a solo-er who has already invested a lot of marks into getting their soldier up to snuff in the first place.

I think the solution is simple: either add a daily quest that rewards the landscape tokens or give time to players for playing skirmishes (a la rest xp for being offline, though lower mark/med costs is fairly representative of time spent skirming). Of course I don't expect either to happen, given the anti-store implications; it's just worth pointing out that the system has an easy fix they're ignoring.

After reading all this I believe this OPTION should not have been put forward to be implemented in either way.
Not putting this OPTION forward in game would:
1.Prevent rage against store;
2.Prevent rage against non casual players;
3.Prevent the usual self victimization of one self just because things are not done to suit your exact needs.
4.Prevent "I don't want to make an effort to "play" (fight/kill/quest/grind/...) this game. I want them to die just because I deserve it even if I haven't done anything to earn it i want all stuff available in this game" kind of views.

If you dont have time to play the game do not blame others and expect everything to be handed out to you on a plate just because you feel like it.

If you want to kill mobs do it yourself or find players to do it with you.

If you dont want to "play" the game, beat the chalenges in the game then go hang FaceBook. You do not have to make an effort and you can socialize and be entretained all the time... Who knows you have it in you to be an hardcore farmville player.

No soldiers in landscape!!!!

A: We want to preserve the gameplay of our pet classes. You skirmish soldier is there to give you options in filling out your abilities. Summoning one outside of skirmishes will certainly do that. Giving them a bunch of command controls would start taking things a little too far and encroach on the territory of some pretty great classes.

This made me laugh. Are you serious? It's not a funny joke that for some reason I'm not getting?

Well, as a very happy Loremaster I'd be even happier if I could control my pet soldier in tandem with my bear, than seeing it aggroing a large area because of the lack of a passive mode or a retreat button, or not being able to send him straight to the best target because the attack skill is on 1m CD, and the elite is on me while he's dueling with some minion...

In the end, to preserve my gameplay you really have to give us an expensive manic puller? I'd call a second pet in my full control an addition to my gameplay, don't preserve me from that!

Just state it as it is: you just added a new store item with minimal added coding, and adding controls would have required scarce, expensive dev time and deprived you of some chance to sell store items that help controlling soldiers. That's it

Pretty much I see this as a revenue source for Turbine, and not really player feature.

Soldiers on landscape sounds great, aside from balancing concerns it naturally creates. Resulting in restricting it.

1000 Marks and medallions for one hour is going to turn people off. I probably won't get a token anytime soon.

I have learned from my MMO experience that if something is on a long cool down or has restricted/limited use (i.e. Soldier on landscape), I just never learn to use it in my routines. Like a spell that has a 30 or 60 minute cool down - doesn't even get a hotkey slot from me. Just figure, why bother?

What other mechanisms were explored? How about 1000 marks + X medallions for a 5 minute "skill" like a horse, on a 60 minute cool down? Call soldier for 5 minutes, and then use him again in an hour. Or maybe tier it, 1000 marks = Tier One Soldier: 5 minutes 120 minutes cool down.

After that require Turbine points (for the bean counters) to purchase Tier Two (499TP), Tier Three (1199TP), etc.

T2: Soldier: 10 minutes, 100 minute cool down.
T3: Soldier: 12 minutes, 90 minute cool down.
T4: Soldier: 15 minutes, 75 minute cool down.

Most pointless change I have ever heard

Not gonna bother using this, ever, unless I happen to get some tokens for free somewhere

I find the prices far too expensive. I suggest giving players a limited use of skirmish soldier on the landscape and paying for tokens when they want more. I will be largely ignoring this feature in its present form.

Originally Posted by VentoPT

3.Prevent the usual self victimization of one self just because things are not done to suit your exact needs.

This sums up the issue rather well dosent it? One might add that this is a world turbine built and we all choose to play in it, but im sure we know how that will go....

Anyway, ive yet to see any evidence that the soldier on the landscape is necessary and hence my prior position as advantage is begining to move more towards convienance. If I needed this soldier to complete an area, yep get the pitchforks ready, but after reading through bullroarer that dosent appear to be the case.

So the store is making things convienant, WAI and thats fine. I would have loved to have this option when i was grinding those worms in Forochel, anything to make it go faster. We've had other things in the store that are advantage, thats a problem. Im not seeing this one in that realm, however a good argument could persuade me.

I have a strong sense of Deja Vu here .. seems to be just like Legendary Items, the initial 'promise' the feature had ('promise' as in potential for being good, not as in a statement of intent!) evaporates when the reality of its implementation sinks in.

Stupidly high cost and absurdly short time make it a very disappointingly lame feature.

Originally Posted by Jadzi

I know! And can you believe they were so desperate to copy SWTOR, they did it two years before SWTOR ever saw the light of day?

Seriously now. The world does not revolve around Star Wars, anything and everything is not derived from it. NPC companions and brass fanfares weren't invented by it, no more than swords of light or swashbuckling. If anything, Star Wars (and SWTOR especially) is actually highly derivative in and of itself, simply combining and repackaging aspects that were in existence for quite some time beforehand.

Release date of raid/instance cluster/u5 coincides with release of swtor

PVP stat audacity

PVP Commendations

Landscape soldiers

Barter wallet (all commendations in swtor fit in your currency tab of your inventory)

-------------------

If you don't think SWTOR is "helping" Turbine's decisions then I have some cases of snake oil to sell you. I don't remember having landscape soldiers two years ago. Maybe it's just a coincidence that we're getting them on the landscape now and that was their plan all along. Maybe we'll see dual spec and family trees in the next update too or pvp warzones, that would be fun.

Originally Posted by Mysterion

My SWTOR companion can sell my junk loot while I'm still out questing. .

They also craft for you, basically Bioware made them into semi-official 'bots' to save you using a third-party hack program.

Also, FFXI had this feature 5 or more years ago, the 'NPC Fellow', Turbine can't even copy that mechanic without screwing it up and turning it into a blatant revenue stream.

The 100 TP cost for each skirmish token does not bother me as much as the set marks/medallions cost. 1000 marks and 75 medallions?!? Oh my gosh! Isn't that a bit excessive?

I usually run a skirmish or two each time I solo play. At that rate it will take me about a week of playing every day to earn the sufficient marks and medallions just to have access to one of my toon's soldiers in the open world, for one hour!

No way in H...E...Double toothpicks... am I going to spend that amount of my hard earned marks/medallions on a feature that I have gotten by without since day one!

I can understand the 100 TP cost for the store bought token, but I don't get the the high mark/medallion cost at all unless, Turbine is covertly trying to force us to use their store by making select items just too costly to obtain through normal game play.

This does not seem fair to me and has done more to damage my view of Turbine's handling of their game than anything else I have seen.

Nuff said,

Welden

IMHO, SWTOR nailed it and STO nailed it (both with bridge officers and duty officers).
Not so much with LotRO. Just my .02 credits.

Still pissed off about the way they handled this feature.

I'd really like to come back to LotRO after playing through my character's story in SWTOR. I like the idea of having a companion out -- like the marketing-speak says, sometimes it gets lonely out there.

However, I'm not going to pay a high-priced hooker for five minutes of help with a hard fight.

This is shameful. At least EQ2 got mercenaries right, and that's where I'll be going.

Put me down as not a fan.

When I want to group it's with other human beings.
When I want to solo I don't want to have to manage or depend on a pet. Otherwise I would play a pet class.

Heck I know I'm probably in the minority but I don't like soldiers in skirmishes.

I would rather see more effort put into legendaries and their development than pets. But again that's just me.

First things first. Before soldiers are allowed on landscape, their AI should be fixed/improved. It is really bad.

Plus the 1min on attack command skill makes it nearly useless when you quest etc, where you are killing mobs every few seconds.

My personal grip with soldiers: As hunter I start most fights from 30-40m range. Mine archer soldier(same with warrior or bannerman, I guess that it is the same for all others) which I spent about 30k marks on will start attacking only when the mob gets in melee, since soldiers attack radius is under 10m. By that time the mob is on about 10% morale, ie 2 or 3 seconds from dieing. Result: My soldier is useful only once a minute, when I can use attack command.

Also I was wondering why Turbine introduced these 40k and 100k morale mobs in the U6 region. It makes more sense now. I am curious if they will be of any importance (loot/quests/etc). Some classes can solo these mobs, but not every class.

Another subtle cash-grab in my opinion. Get everyone interested in the feature for the last few weeks and then spring the cost on them at the end.

Originally Posted by Fin.

Also I was wondering why Turbine introduced these 40k and 100k morale mobs in the U6 region. It makes more sense now. I am curious if they will be of any importance (loot/quests/etc). Some classes can solo these mobs, but not every class.

It's my understanding that Limelight Gorge is the sole source of rep drops for the faction that has the best faction rewards. Weaker classes, like I suspect hunters who can basically be two-shotted by them, would benefit hugely from having their soldiers if they chose or were forced to solo it.

I don't see myself ever using this feature as I solo on my own just fine. I also don't see any problem with the way this is implemented currently.

If there is absolutely no challenge to this game it becomes boring. Mowing down everything on landscape and never being in any danger in my opinion makes for a very bland experience and a few pockets of danger here and there add excitement and interest to the gameplay. (And I truly mean only a few, I am not saying the entire game should be harder). I see people using the skirmish soldier in this way: they try a dangerous area once or twice or three times without success, they bring out their trusty soldier to help them and then tell him to go away. Used like that a one hour token should be good for many encounters.

I think the cost is good, otherwise everyone would have their soldier out all the time, making the game trivial and boring. The cost is there to discourage people from doing that, Turbine wants us to experience the game the way we have all along, either solo or with other people, and they provide this soldier as an added bonus to help us get through some of the most frustrating parts only. If I try a dangerous area or quest and fail, go back and succeed I feel a sense of accomplishment. They still want us to have that and I agree with them. We should try to get through all the content on our own (or with other players) first - and only when the going really gets rough should the soldier be a consideration.

Think of it this way too. If soloing is hard, one has to take a look at their equipment, traits, virtues etc and figure out how to improve themselves so they can solo better (and a well geared, skilled player has almost 0 issues soloing). If the soldier were available all the time, the content would be so easy people would not learn how to gear themselves, how to select traits and virtues, how to play their classes the most efficiently, and when they reach endgame it will be even more difficult for them to adjust to the much harder than landscape instances.

On it's own this idea doesn't do much, but in combination with marks/meds/seals being account-wide it does get interesting. I could see farming up the marks on my main and purchasing this on alts to help with grinding out slayer deeds when they reach end-game.

Overall though, this gets a big "meh" from me. I really don't think it was worth the dev time.

I do not see myself taking advantage of this. But they HAD to cost it at something, or else all non-instanced content from L20 on up would have to be revised to take into account the availability of soldiers, and then the same people complaining about how there's a cost to it (and at least you don't HAVE to pay TP for it!) would be back complaining about how they're being forced to skirmish.

My 2 cents, they just ruined loremasters and captains. They were both unique in the aspect that they could summon a pet to assist them. Now you can just take a champ or hunter, much higher DPS, and have the benefit of picking the perfect pet to go with it. This is a horrible idea.

--quote from the dev diary--
Q: I wish I could tell my soldier exactly what to do all the time… kinda like Lore-master pets. Why can’t I do that?
A: We want to preserve the gameplay of our pet classes. You skirmish soldier is there to give you options in filling out your abilities. Summoning one outside of skirmishes will certainly do that. Giving them a bunch of command controls would start taking things a little too far and encroach on the territory of some pretty great classes.
--end quote--

hahah does this mean that they will never fix the ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE soldier AI??

they should have done that first.. this is just gonna get you killed faster with an idiot running around aggroing mobs..
and then because of the 'attack command' cool down you both get wiped because you cant direct him to work WITH YOU

actually the so called 'attack command' is already lame ENTIRELY BECAUSE OF THE COOL DOWN
skirm soldiers NEED a command tree that better resembles the pet command tree..
HEY! I barely skirm NOW just beacuse the soldier AI/pathing is so, so lacking .... ok ok maybe I should just write a post about this and my ideas on that

back on topic... I WILL NOT BE USING THIS FEATURE

Originally Posted by Gilean-EU

I thought I would be using this feature quite a lot for soloing,

The problem is that if they made this feature free or extremely cheap, then the balance of the game would change. All the fights would be made tougher and suddenly you would have to have a soldier up to be competent. Those players who do not like to do skirmishes or who haven't spent the time to earn marks and increase soldier competence would be at a severe disadvantage. When this feature was announced some players were very concerned that we'd be forced to use the soldiers or be at a disadvantage.

As is this option is here for those few times when you're just stuck and can't find someone to help you. Expensive enough that you don't use it all the time, but not so expensive that it's pointless.

Originally Posted by Lohi

As is this option is here for those few times when you're just stuck and can't find someone to help you. Expensive enough that you don't use it all the time, but not so expensive that it's pointless.

I wonder if the prices (esp. ingame) will get adjusted down the road. It's probably not too far off the mark to suppose that Turbine wants to monitor the strain our soldiers in the open landscape put on the servers.

For now I can't see myself using the soldier because both my burglar and my guardian have generally no problem with normal landscape mobs which food, scrolls an maybe a hope token couldn't take care of (of course not counting special areas like Dol Dinen or soon the Limlight Gorge).

Horrible idea unless you want to make this a single player game.

All lower content is do-able solo right now. There is no need of a companion that can not interact with you in any real way. All higher content is either solo-able or easy to find parties for (At least on my server).

Originally Posted by Noromir

Not big on this addition to the game. Having played pet class, I'm pretty busy with one additional guy to worry about.

I wish your soldiers were your alts, rather than some sort of weird generic NPC. Now that would give a far greater fellowship feel to the game, and benefits can be shared between characters.

Lol, I named my Skirmish Soldier Alrahi, (Alt's name) and gave him same hair, clothing style, gender, race and class (Hunter - Archer)

Originally Posted by Freahelm

Will we still be able to summon our skirmish buddies for free in housing instances?

This is my question as well, and seems to have been largely ignored in the pages of rants.

As for the skirmish soldier, not too upset by it, since they had something similar with mercs in DDO. And most of my characters fall in the lowest price bracket (150ish Marks and a handful of Medallions, I think it was) so I'll be able to snag them fairly easily if I so chose.

I'm actually glad they aren't a permanent feature because that would mean "solo" content would suddenly be balanced for duos.

When I said I was going to use this feature a lot, it wasn't because I need help, it was because it would have been FUN feature to have your skirmish buddy tagging along with you.

Fun is what this game is about. But it is not fun to grind several hours (just try how long it takes to get 75 medallions and 1500 marks BY SOLO MEANS) just to get our soldier out for one hour. The same soldier you have already paid hours and hours to get enough marks to get it ranked up.

I just have to wonder WHO exactly this feature is meant for?

(casual) soloer? They would probably find this feature useful, but they don't have any reasonable way to get enough marks and especially medallions.
(non casual) grouper/raider? They would have enough marks and medallions, making this feature not expensive, but they are well-geared enough so they are not needing this feature.

Originally Posted by Gilean-EU

(just try how long it takes to get 75 medallions and 1500 marks BY SOLO MEANS) just to get our soldier out for one hour.

I think that's the idea....to leave players with little choice than to spend TP in the store.

my soldiers need a buff to boost their brain power- they aren't very bright. Until now I have only used them in skirmishes and haven't "needed" them on the landscape. I don't plan on using them unless I need too- they tend to aggro way more than I want them to.

And I am getting rather sick of spending Turbine points on everything.

Originally Posted by Gilean-EU

I just have to wonder WHO exactly this feature is meant for?

(casual) soloer? They would probably find this feature useful, but they don't have any reasonable way to get enough marks and especially medallions.
(non casual) grouper/raider? They would have enough marks and medallions, making this feature not expensive, but they are well-geared enough so they are not needing this feature.

I think it's rather obvious: it's meant for people with more money than time, most likely a subset of the casual soloists.

Me, for example: I don't have that much free time, and when I do get to log in, the number of other players of a level similar to mine is often quite limited. 100 TP for a dozen shots (5 minutes each) at content I can't quite manage on my own seems quite reasonable, and I can see it being a win-win situation: Turbine gets money and I get to progress along quest lines that I don't want to simply cancel.

And as usual (or at least, this is how I see it), Turbine has provided an alternative option for people with no money to spare but plenty of time. (Normally, that option is: grind the TP, but in this case, there's a third option... perhaps because TP is hard to grind when you're already at the level cap?)

I completely agree with all the other posters that this is *not* what I was picturing when we were first told we'd be able to bring our skirmish soldiers out into the landscape, and I think Turbine pretty much messed up on that one - they gave us the wrong expectations and now people are disappointed, and understandably so.

However, if I try to forget those first teasers and the predictions that followed, and just consider what's now being offered, it seems quite reasonable to me.

Originally Posted by Talaina

If there is absolutely no challenge to this game it becomes boring.

For you.

Originally Posted by Gilean-EU

When I said I was going to use this feature a lot, it wasn't because I need help, it was because it would have been FUN feature to have your skirmish buddy tagging along with you.

Exactly, thank you.

Everyone is so tied up in the challenge factor of the game that they forget two things:

1) Not everyone plays for challenges. This is the exact reason that ME3 has a "Narrative Mode". Too bad Turbine doesn't have BioWare's foresight.

2) Why do you care if an *optional* system makes the game easier for *other people*?