Thread: Turbine, play your game.

I think skirmishes are the last proof I need that no one who has any say on decisions in LOTRO plays it. NO ONE could play a skirmish for more then 5 minutes and go "yep this is 100% okay and nothing needs to be changed. My last skirmish was especially good, started off with the good old "soldier running in and pulling everything in sight" followed by the classic "stand there doing nothing the whole fight despite blowing my attack horn"(side note, can someone tell me WHY there is a 1 minute cooldown on this skill). Thats just a standard skirmish, but luckily i had this nice new bug to make things more exciting, a daywalker berserker knocked me up into an invisible wall, which caused a few seconds of spasms and then instant death + game crashing.

PS those raven summoners are actually THE worst designed enemies i have seen in a game, 5 minutes of sitting there waiting for him to summon a bird that you 1 shot? Sounds fun and challenging to me.

Originally Posted by pwnagemax

NO ONE could play a skirmish for more then 5 minutes and go "yep this is 100% okay and nothing needs to be changed.

Funny, I do this all the time. I play skirmishes a bunch and rarely if ever see anything broken.

Originally Posted by pwnagemax

My last skirmish was especially good, started off with the good old "soldier running in and pulling everything in sight"

Maybe you should use a soldier that isn't DESIGNED to stand in front of you. Try an archer or an herbalist instead of a warrior or protector. Alternately, stand further back.

Originally Posted by pwnagemax

followed by the classic "stand there doing nothing the whole fight despite blowing my attack horn"

Don't see this much except on the lieutenants you don't want your soldier automatically attacking.

Originally Posted by pwnagemax

(side note, can someone tell me WHY there is a 1 minute cooldown on this skill).

hu noes? common suggestion to get it reduced

Originally Posted by pwnagemax

PS those raven summoners are actually THE worst designed enemies i have seen in a game, 5 minutes of sitting there waiting for him to summon a bird that you 1 shot? Sounds fun and challenging to me.

yup

Originally Posted by pwnagemax

Turbine, play your game. NO ONE could play a skirmish for more then 5 minutes and go "yep this is 100% okay and nothing needs to be changed.

Although with your attitude, I have doubts that you want to help. I feel like you just want to rant against Turbine and that I've just wasted my time answering reasonably.

Originally Posted by Nakiami

Although with your attitude, I have doubts that you want to help. I feel like you just want to rant against Turbine and that I've just wasted my time answering reasonably.

Yes very reasonable answers, like this one right?

Originally Posted by Nakiami

Maybe you should use a soldier that isn't DESIGNED to stand in front of you. Try an archer or an herbalist instead of a warrior or protector

So its okay if its intentionally poorly designed?

The rest were not answers just pathetic attempts to defend turbine with "snappy" quips

With your attitude, I have doubts you wanted to help, you just wanted to defend Turbine at all costs.

Funny, I do this all the time. I play skirmishes a bunch and rarely if ever see anything broken.

Originally Posted by Nakiami

Funny, I do this all the time. I play skirmishes a bunch and rarely if ever see anything broken.

I am sure you play them "a bunch" but i'll take my word over yours since I spent the last month doing at least 3 skirmishes a day with a friend, and both of us have noticed the multitudes of problem too long to put in this post. Skirmishes are so primitive its sad really, there is a lot of potential.

I'll explain, then.

Some of the soldiers are designed to stand in front of you because that's their role. What use is a protector if he's behind you? What use is a warrior if he's kicking daisies in the rear? I don't think many would agree with your assertion that these are poorly designed, though likely all will agree that pulling too much is annoying.

You need to position yourself better if you want your soldier to position himself better because where you stand controls where he moves to. Or you can use a different soldier that stands behind you instead, like I said.

You haven't mentioned your class or soldier's class and your characters are not public, so I can't give specific suggestions.

The rest were not answers just pathetic attempts to defend turbine with "snappy" quips

Of the other four, two of them(!) I agreed with you on, and the other two were to disprove your "NO ONE" assertion.

As for attitude - like begets like.

both of us have noticed the multitudes of problem too long to put in this post. Skirmishes are so primitive its sad really, there is a lot of potential.

If you want to help, /bug these problems ingame (be very specific). If you've given up and are just here to complain, there's no point in continuing here.

@nakiami, When you see "pwn" and "junior" in the same heading your wasting your time.

While I rarely have "technical" problems with skirmishes, I agree they are FAR from good and fun to do additions to the game. In fact, I dislike them in pretty big way.
Some "features" are especially juicy - totally &&&&&&&& soldiers (warrior being probably a candidate for the winner), useless direct skill, some of the LTs, some OLD bugs etc.

I have had quite a bit of fun with skirmishes since they were released with mirkwood, from solo 'speed runs' to full raid size. Overall I think they work pretty well for content which is scalable by level, difficulty, and group size. Because of they are highly customisable they will never be perfect in terms of balance but I think Turbine did a good thing by introducing 2nd age drops and decent jewellry in to them with the release of RoR.

I do agree with the original poster that they still need some work, especially the soldier interaction. In fact I think it is a shame that they havent really been improved in any way since the system was introduced. I do think that there is no need for the soldier to have a CD on his attack order... Also I have no idea why I can only order him in to battle from 30m away from the enemy when 40m would make more sense.

Originally Posted by Nakiami

I'll explain, then.

Some of the soldiers are designed to stand in front of you because that's their role. What use is a protector if he's behind you? What use is a warrior if he's kicking daisies in the rear? I don't think many would agree with your assertion that these are poorly designed, though likely all will agree that pulling too much is annoying.

You need to position yourself better if you want your soldier to position himself better because where you stand controls where he moves to. Or you can use a different soldier that stands behind you instead, like I said.

^ THIS!

I got a warrior soldier for my champ and soon learned that if I don't want the soldier to pull (the next wave of mobs), I simply turn around and face away from the mobs, but turn the camera to see what's 'coming in from behind me' ... then I target what I want to pull and use my bow (Let Fly) to tag it. Soldier runs to the tagged mob that attacks me, I can AOE/aggro other mobs.

Agreed on the Birdie Lieut ... utterly annoying!

Originally Posted by pwnagemax

I think skirmishes are the last proof I need that no one who has any say on decisions in LOTRO plays it. NO ONE could play a skirmish for more then 5 minutes and go "yep this is 100% okay and nothing needs to be changed. My last skirmish was especially good, started off with the good old "soldier running in and pulling everything in sight" followed by the classic "stand there doing nothing the whole fight despite blowing my attack horn"(side note, can someone tell me WHY there is a 1 minute cooldown on this skill). Thats just a standard skirmish, but luckily i had this nice new bug to make things more exciting, a daywalker berserker knocked me up into an invisible wall, which caused a few seconds of spasms and then instant death + game crashing.

PS those raven summoners are actually THE worst designed enemies i have seen in a game, 5 minutes of sitting there waiting for him to summon a bird that you 1 shot? Sounds fun and challenging to me.

I agree completely with you Pwnagae.

The solider AI in skirmishes is so bad I really don't see how the developers could even play it for even 5 minutes without realizing how terrible it is. I literally will not even step foot into many skirmishes because of it.

There is no good reason why there is a minute cool down on the direct solider skill either. It's just unnessassary and stupid - so agree completely with you on that also.

The Raven Summoner is lame too, but I can deal with that. My solider getting lost, stuck on everything, or randomly going ape&&&& is a different matter though.

i skirm a LOT, especially with my friend and i dont see any problems at all, except for when my teammates do stuff like stunning the falconer when there are no crabans left

Lotro's pathing AI is terrible in general, similar complaints about LM pet-pathing have been around for ages (and every new LM quickly learns: Put you Pet on Passive and use MANUAL CONTROL!). The Soldier AI trouble is just an extension of this (but without the Passive option). As far as I understand it's not Turbines own code so they can't change much about the pathing itself, just the interaction with the environment. For example they've spend months smoothing terrain patches all over the place after they adjusted the AI to deal with Moria's height differences, instead of just fixing the AI to be able handle small bumps in the terrain.

Second, the 'Direct Soldier' cooldown reduction has been so heavily requested that they figured they could make a nice bit of coin by selling it in the store instead of giving it away for free (simple economics: if many people request it, it's worth a lot of money).

For starters, there is plenty of other things to do in the game besides skirmish.


I am a completionist. So I do every, single deed in the game and try to finish everything.


I'm not sure if anyone has as much skirmish experience as I do. From solo, duo, fellow, and raid. I love speed runs and keep a rigorous chart of fastest runs for my kin. I finished every skirmish LT deed. There are a lot of fight and LT mechanics to learn and master on different sizes and tiers. I like the different aspects.



For the wretched Falconer, I'd just kite him along as you progress thru the skirmish. Do AoEs or single-target the birds as they spawn. Whatever you do, don't stun him because that just delays it even longer. I do hate them too. They ruin speed runs

Skirmishes are garbage ( my opinion) i don't play them in less I am forced to for the Epic line. they are a cheap trick for content in a MMO. they are very boring and very repetitive. they lack real story and fun. I would rather grid deeds than do skirmishes. some of them are just planned out so poorly.