Fixing Hireling Timers

Hiero_Glyph · November 2015

Hireling timers are really bothersome right now. With the previously horrendous load times (current on console), various login issues, generally problematic mail issues (requiring a zone change or relog), and having to switch characters the current hireling system is just a huge pain due to it's prohibitive 24/12 hour timer. Each time you are delayed you continue to be penalized for it (until you miss a collection and can go back to your normal collection time). Some of these delays are not even within the player's control, such as logging in a few seconds/minutes too early results in needing to zone/relog in order to even collect your mail (which can require several minutes). If there is maintenance that day then you pretty much lost a hireling collection either that day or later in the week as it will never be offset.

Compare this to the 20 hour rider training timer and other than requiring 6 months to max it is a mostly pain-free experience. For example, if you login later than normal one day you can still train your horse at your normal time the next day. If there is extended maintenance today, you can recover 4 hours worth of time the next day (and every day thereafter) until you are back to your normal login time. The 20 hour timer for rider training is perfect!

So how can we fix hirelings to make them as easy to use as rider training? Well, why not reduce the hireling timer to less than 24/12 hours to allow players to recover from slight delays? If hirelings have a 22/20/10 hour timer then you would be able to collect hireling mails even if you were delayed slightly. Better still, this would synchronize with rider training and allow players to manage their login times more easily. The idea is to incentivize players to login every day, not to penalize them for a change in their normal schedule (as some delays may be outside of their control).

The only negative to this would be that players could potentially collect more hireling mails over time, but if a player is that dedicated to logging in to ESO then shouldn't they be rewarded for their efforts? Personally I see this as a win/win since players would not be penalized as much for random delays (server issues, mail issues, long communtes, internet problems, time spent with family/significant other, etc.) and dedicated players would gain a slight RNG advantage.

ZOS, please reduce hireling timers so that players can collect them more easily.

Enemy-of-Coldharbour · November 2015

Agree 100% with this.

Nestor · November 2015

We have been asking for this since the Beta days on the PC.

Hiero_Glyph · November 2015

Nestor wrote: »

We have been asking for this since the Beta days on the PC.

Good to know that the easiest quality fixes continue to be ignored by ZOS. Seriously, what benefit is there for ZOS to penalize players in this manner? As was noted in another thread, they already nerfed the hireling drop rate for gold mats.

Rook_Master · November 2015

I've been asking for this since Day 1, and I can tell you it ain't happening. Someone at ZOS just really, really, wants 24-hour timers for hirelings for some reason.

Nestor · November 2015

I am hoping that Wrothgar is the dawn of a new age with ESO. Prior to this, the leaders of the dev team seemed to want people to level a character only one way, through content. Each and every grind spot was nerfed as soon as it was known about. Now, of course some of those spots needed to be nerfed, but not all of them.

Now, with Wrothgar, it is easy to grind on mobs to get exp and champ points. So, perhaps the person that was putting their foot down about the Hireling Timers is no longer holding sway over the decisions like this and we might get some reasonable timers on the hirelings. There are just too many reasons why 10/20 is the right thing to do with Hirelings. I mean, it's going to take 6 or 7 days of obsessive log ins to get 3 deliveries in one day with a 10 hour cycle, and that can only happen once a week.

hrothbern · November 2015

if the 24 and 12 would only be changed to22 and 10 hours, that would already be a huge difference.

It enables to fit in the 8 x loading screen in your private life, and catch up if you had, besides your job, social or other dates interfering

Moonshadow66 · November 2015

My characters (except for one) have all the 3rd hirelings tier enabled, although I knew I would only make use of the 2nd. Why? Because I want to login whenever I want and get my hireling mails right away, and not login some time later to check if the mails finally arrived. The 3rd tier I consider completely useless because.. I mean, who plays more than 12 hours a day OR could login again after 12 hours?

Xendyn · November 2015

Yes!!

Really ZOS it's Waaayyy past time to fix this relatively small QOL issue. I wouldn't think changing a darn timer would even require a patch. It's just changing some numbers, right?

Ezareth · November 2015

They've nerfed Hirelings constantly since day one it has only gotten worse. I wish they'd just change the entire talent to something like an increased chance to gain extra material when harvesting a node or something.

If they want to maintain the delivery method then it needs to not require logging into the character. I believe this has to be the case however due to the way all of their mail deliveries work (you'll never get PvP victory rewards on an alt if your main character is the one who earned them etc).

Frankly I'd be happy if they just made the timers every 10 hours for Tier 3 instead of every 12 so you wouldn't have to log in at the exact same time every day.

Hiero_Glyph · November 2015

Xendyn wrote: »

Yes!!

Really ZOS it's Waaayyy past time to fix this relatively small QOL issue. I wouldn't think changing a darn timer would even require a patch. It's just changing some numbers, right?

From an implementation perspective you would have to change the descriptions and timers for each level of the Hireling skill. It would require a bit of work as you would have to isolate the code and make the changes but it is not a complicated change, even if the game requires converting the time to minutes/seconds. So yes, it's just changing some numbers but it would require doing so across five skill lines each with unique descriptions, so 30+ individual items would need to be changed.

Beesting · November 2015

Haha i thought this was a necro post too

Nobody on pc bothers with hirelings anymore

dodgehopper_ESO · November 2015

I would rather the hireling gave you a full day's worth of services 1/day. Each rating in hireling would simply improve production. The current system is far more hassle than it is worth. If all I do is load up and get my hireling mail, it takes 2 minutes per character, assuming the game doesn't crash at load (which happens plenty). Feeding horses is not without flaws either. The game seems to like to crash when I feed horses fairly regularly, and this is the only merchant that seems to cause this problem. I've sent in dozens of feedback about this, but nothing seems to have been done yet. Nowadays, I don't really bother with hirelings very much anymore. 1 Rubedo a day might get me a piece of v16 armor in a half year, two pieces of armor in a year. I'd consider that fairly worthless and certainly not worth the 3 skill point expenditure. The game has atrocious lag times and load screens as it is, there really isn't a reason to waste an hour twice a day just to pick up some loot you could go farm Wrothgar/IC for.

Hiero_Glyph · November 2015

@dodgehopper_ESO

I think that is entirely reasonable as well. Currently, having a hireling deliver items twice a day is more of a way to get around the bad timers, but if they reduced them down to 20 hours and improved the quality then I could see that being a better option (quality > quantity).

FilteredRiddle · November 2015

Yes, yes, yes!

Hirelings should be automatic. Have them send at 1200, period. When people unlock the two per day, have them send at 1200 and 2400, period. Don't base it on ones ability to connect to the server, or any of that nonsense. Make them be automatic passives.

RAGUNAnoOne · November 2015

And give us an alchemy hireling!

Moonshadow66 · November 2015

RAGUNAnoOne wrote: »

And give us an alchemy hireling!

I gathered so many Alchemy Surveys from writs that my inventories are bursting (I just don't want to run through Craglorn anymore for hours everyday), but.. they're bound! If they weren't, I'd gladly give you all my Surveys!^^

Hiero_Glyph · January 2016

Considering that scheduled maintenance running longer than intended is causing many of us to miss a hireling collection, I figure this is a good time to bring up this issue again.

AlnilamE · January 2016

LOL! I was just thinking that.

I guess I should have just stayed up late last night?

Hiero_Glyph · January 2016

Yeah, there really isn't any reason why hirelings should not have 22/20/10 hour timers at this point.

UrQuan · January 2016

Beesting wrote: »

Nobody on pc bothers with hirelings anymore

My 80 daily hireling mails disagree with you. Every week I refine multiple stacks of mats that I didn't have to bother gathering (on top of the mats from the nodes I grab while I'm playing) to get upgrade mats of all colours, and every couple of weeks I use up all of the excess provisioning mats, vendor the food/drinks I make, and come out 30-50K richer. Aside from VR15-16 potencies, the prismatic essence, and kuta, I've got a full stack or more of every rune, without ever worrying about gathering them. Heck, I've got about 70-80 kuta too (although probably at least half of those came from writs).

To OP: you're preaching to the choir. What I'd ideally like to see is hireling mails always sent out at midnight (and noon for those with enough points in the passive to get 2 daily mails) every day rather than be on a timer like they are now. They could build up in your mail for a maximum of maybe 4 mails or so (in order to avoid the situation where someone doesn't play the game for a year and then comes back to a ridiculous amount of hireling mails). That would require more coding changes than just reducing the timer to 20/10 instead of 24/12, though, so I'd be happy with reducing the timer like that.

ADarklore · January 2016

UrQuan wrote: »

Beesting wrote: »

Nobody on pc bothers with hirelings anymore

My 80 daily hireling mails disagree with you.

I agree with you as well, especially with the new V15/16 crafting mats and how nodes work. I have my hirelings bringing me top level mats while I work on leveling my characters at which time I'll need those mats. Also good source of income to sell top level mats that you aren't going to be using.

Jura23 · January 2016

Next time I respec I will fire all my hirelings.

KaleidoscopeEyz · January 2016

Get rid of your hirelings. Problem solved. I got rid of all of mine because I thought there were a total waste of a skill point except for my enchanter hireling.

UrQuan · January 2016

ADarklore wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Beesting wrote: »

Nobody on pc bothers with hirelings anymore

My 80 daily hireling mails disagree with you.

I agree with you as well, especially with the new V15/16 crafting mats and how nodes work. I have my hirelings bringing me top level mats while I work on leveling my characters at which time I'll need those mats. Also good source of income to sell top level mats that you aren't going to be using.

Yeah, I've only got 5 of my characters with all skills maxed to 50 & all skill points (and a 6th with Clothing maxed, and I'm working on leveling and getting skill points for the others), but I get more Rubedite, Ancestor Silk, Ruby Ash, and Rubedo from my hirelings than I do by grabbing nodes in Wrothgar and deconstructing gear. Now if I was actually grinding for VR15-16 gear or spending a whole bunch of time dedicated to farming nodes, I'm sure I could exceed the amount my hirelings bring me, but this way I get the top tier mats without having to grind for them, and I can spend my time in-game doing whatever I want.

WalkingLegacy · January 2016

Probably designed by the same person who wants us to wait 150+ days just to max a horse out.

Hiero_Glyph · September 2016

Well, it's been 9 months so I guess now is a good time to see if ZOS will listen.

smacx250 · September 2016

It's been a lot longer than 9 months! It's been asked for since this hireling mechanism has existed, and.... nothing!

Pyr0xyrecuprotite · September 2016

Gotta say, my 30 or so hireling emails per collection run have been very good for income. I collect about 10-11 times per week (instead of 14), but it's still better than just once daily. And with the third point in each hireling, comes an increased chance of gold mats - I get at least one type of gold mat (or kuta) each time, somewhere in the collection run. Must say that I turned off my provisioner hireling mails in my last respec tho...

Hempyre · September 2016

I also have 3 on most of my toons. I would rather not have to log into each one to get the mail though. And I sure dont see that many golds. Maybe 1-2 per month...

Reverb · September 2016

Years, literally years, we've been asking for this.