Feedback - Rogue Hirelings

[Thoon]

Rogue Hirelings are now available for hire in the Lamannia eStore!

They are available to help you find and disable traps, to unlock chests and doors, and even assassinate some foes. After you have taken some time work with the rogue hirelings on Lamannia, take a few extra minutes to post some feedback for us.

We have a special feedback survey for rogue hirelings. Click here to fill out the short survey (it should take no longer than 5 minutes) and let us know what you think of these hirelings.

And as always, you are welcome to leave feedback in this thread.

[Vahyor]

Will these be available at the regular hireling vendors or are they planned to be store only?

They weren't too bad at doing rogue things and fighting without getting themselves killed instantly as far as hirelings are concerned (except that time one tried to disable an elite trap while standing in it). I don't think that they're that much more useful than other hirelings (healer, caster) to where they deserve to be a tp only item.

[SisAmethyst]

I will add here the Feedback I gave in the survey for others to read:

I took a level 4 Hireling and went into 2 Quests:
1. Dirty Laundry - Elite (level 4+2)
2. Gwylands Stand - Norm (level 7)

To Quest 1:
- The Hireling didn't told me that he can't pick the lock.
- the Hireling was unable to spot the box and the other side of the room, nor was I able to tell him to walk over to the other side (missing button on the toolbar)
- As I moved on the place infront of the Trapbox the hireling followed but keept standing inside of the trap. Gladly his reflex saves are high enough to evade it. He then was able to find the box and disarm the trap.

To Quest 2:
- The Hireling was able to find and disarm all traps which is a nice work for a level 4 Trapsmith in a level 7 Quest.
- The Hireling evaded the Force Trap at the stairs, as I had to follow the guard on top for the box.
- However the control of the Hireling is a bit too regular as you can't tel him to sneak to a specific position (missing toolbar entry) and search there.

The biggest difficulty is, that if the trap box is behind the trap, then you need an evasion character to deal with it. It would be nice if there would be instead of the boost button some kind of button to tell the Hireling to sneak and hold position at a certain spot, and there search+disarm.

[Calebro]

I will add here the Feedback I gave in the survey for others to read:

I think you've just explained why rogue hirelings took so long to arrive, and why they're kind of useless overall.

[butlerfamilywa]

They cannot swim. Useless in Operation: Blockade Buster.. the only reason I'd use them is for door picking, BAH!

Rogue, Level 20 Gold Seal Contract ~ Sullivan Tiehl
Assassinate DC ~ 13 Useless...


I'd say overall, this Hireling is an overall FAIL.


Great try though devs.

And I just noticed, the level 20 rogue, has not trained open locks at all.... he cannot pick locks.
Same with level 19 Tatyana ~ Mechanic
Same with level 18 Osrik Rivalis ~ Thief Acrobat
Same with level 17 Mariana ~ Assassin 13 DC

[Angelus_dead]

They cannot swim. Useless in Operation: Blockade Buster.

They can't drown either. Click the feet icon to bring them onto the ship with you after climbing the ladder.

[butlerfamilywa]

Most rogue hirelings tell me they do not have thieves tools. Swimming is important in that quest to unlock the hatches at bottom of ship

[RandomKeypress]

Tried a lev 7 and a lev 8 rogue hireling doing Tear of Dharkhan (sp?) - lev 7 quest

On elite: couldn't spot the box, couldn't find the box, couldn't reliably disarm the box (lev 7 blew up three boxes out of four attempts, and only got the fourth box on the fourth attempt. Lev 8 was one success for one attempt - couldn't be bothered to test further). Both could spot and search for secret doors though.
On hard; couldn't spot the box, could find and disarm it (no failures out of six or seven attempts)
On normal - could spot, find and disarm traps

Both rogues had the same search and open locks DC. You'd really want that to scale linearly.

Backstab damage seemed decent enough.
Lev 7 had two weapons - a staff and a dagger. Swapped to the dagger when fighting oozes for some reason. I like the two weapon approach - any chance you could give higher-level melee hirelings a second ooze-appropriate weapon (everbright, muckbane or even just a wooden club)?
I was disappointed that the lev 8 mechanic rogue didn't bring out a light repeater for use when ranged fighting was appropriate.

Overall: I can understand a hireling rogue struggling above level, but they really should be able to spot the box if they can search and disarm at that DC. I don't like that the search and OL DCs don't go up linearly with level, but it should be okay in most circumstances. AI is what I'd expect. If I didn't have a rogue for my group, I'd take a hireling, but only if I was doing normal difficulty or if I knew exactly where the boxes were on hard. Taking one on elite would require that the rogue was a higher level than the quest - fair enough.

[Digita]

Took my lvl 18 Ranger 1 rogue, and hired the lvl 19 Rogue. Went into Necropolis2, Tomb of the Shadow Knight (the one with all the traps, and optionals for finding traps and more traps.) So, lvl 8 quest, i put it on hard only.

We searched side by side (i let him go first). He would reveal the trap, but sometimes the control box and sometimes not. I would reveal trap AND box. This happened time and time again. I was wearing Crystallized Widow's Eye (+10 spot), and Int goggles with only a +3 search.

So, based on the lvl of the quest, difficulty, the fact we were standing side by side... the results were hit or miss on his part.

Also, it was described the rogue could "range ahead" and stuff. However, i don't know if a control is missing on his hotbar, or what, but whether i put him on active/defend, etc. he would not utilize his skills, except for "attacking" if he was put on active.

[Astria]

I took a level 16 rogue into Sins of Attrition on normal to see how she handled traps in an over level quest. She wasn't half bad in combat involving one enemy. She applied STR damage to the first red named, which was a nice bonus. Damage wasn't bad for a hireling. As soon as I got past that, she was way too squishy to take into combat due to multiple orthons cleaving all over the place. I parked her back a ways, cleared until I came to a trap, and brought her forward once the coast was clear. She spotted, found, and dsiabled all of the hallway traps. I agree with the comments of others, it would be nice to be able to tell the rogue to scout ahead, or use the cursor to select an area up ahead to scout like when aiming ray spells.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Just give hirelings bindable movement keys, problem solved.

[butlerfamilywa]

Maybe I was doing something wrong then, but I had nothing but hassles out of my paper rogues... Ohwell, great try either way.. it's nice to see the Dev's putting for the effort required to train an AI to work as a rogue... we ALL know even human's have a hard time at it, in this game

[SisAmethyst]

Hehe, if I read all the comments I probably stick with the lvl 4 Rogue that was even able to find and disarm lvl 7 traps

[Angelus_dead]

soon as I got past that, she was way too squishy to take into combat due to multiple orthons cleaving all over the place.

The majority of level 20 player characters are also too squishy for that... (although it's because of Barbazu, not Orthons)

[Osma77]

Most rogue hirelings tell me they do not have thieves tools. Swimming is important in that quest to unlock the hatches at bottom of ship

Um, i only ran it once, but i ran it as a mechanic rogue. Every hatch i checked said you cant pick it, at least from the outside.

[chrisgina39]

stupid idea youre making the unique classes in to hires
soon people will solo with store hires and get full xp all traps all monsters not a good idea

[y0himba.net]

Personally this is one of the best bits of news I have heard. I solo a lot since I have a hard time finding people who want to do all optionals, break everything, and investigate everything. Most folks just run in and zerg, expect me to be their own personal healbot, or are compete elitist jerks who start barking out orders then die.

Having a Rogue with me to disarm and detect, BRILLIANT. That way I can solo play until the few that I have added that I know like to complete everything and take every challenge.

As for it not being good that folks will solo and get full XP, why is that a bad idea. They are still playing, and paying for DDO points or VIP to get hires.

[RandomKeypress]

I consider the rogue bots to be a bit like the heal bots - if you really need one, it'll do in a pinch but is nowhere near as good as the real thing. Which is how it should be.
Heal bots are actually better than humans in a very limited sense - they're very attentive to one character's health and as long as they can keep up and not get agro, you'll be fine.
Rogue bots will never run out of tools (or at least start out with a decent number of them), never try to spot / search / disarm with the wrong gear and will come when called (eventually). Otherwise, a decently built PC will have superior skills, better agro management, more HP and can go past a series of traps to find the box.
I'd say the devs have done a great job. Making the rogues search ahead would be a necessary change for some quests though.

[Wren666]

Here's looking forward to reclaiming those 2 Levels on most of my made-to-solo characters.

[Robai]

I hope that Rogue hirelings WILL fail.
Otherwise I will have to abandon my Rogue