Pit Fights are a total mess...

[Paranochat]

The idea was quite fun, but the fact it's a total coin toss each time you attempt it completely ruins the fun of it. Traits and levels barely matters, in the end it all comes down to pure luck. If it's supposed to be that way then it's an absolutely awful idea.

Having your guy wrecking the other to critical health and break him in 10 seconds, just to watch him standing still for the next minute, doing nothing but eating his opponent's slow strikes... That's painful to watch, and frustating as f*ck. At this point we might as well just toss random orcs in, without even a look at any trait that isn't lethal, luck will decide who wins anyway.

I'm not sure if the whole pit fight's design is messed up, or if it's just the terrible AI, but the result is unenjoyable and quite frustating, yet, I'm kinda forced to do them if I want to unlock their rewards. I'd rather just select a follower, and toss a coin that tells me "win" or "lose" instantly, it'd achieve the same without pretending your choices matter, and without wasting your time.

[LordBlade]

It's been reported on the official forums, so hopefully the devs will be able to fix it. Basically it's just a matter of broken AI. Your orcs don't fight the way they're supposed to for some reason. Many times they'll just do nothing all fight.

Honestly I wouldn't mind it if they just fought like the opponents do. Though being able to control our orc in the fight would be awesome. Only real issue with that is that it would basically be a guaranteed win at that point. :p

[Fringehunter7719]

I'm not sure if it's because item bonuses for 50% less damage taken / 50% more damage dealt apply to followers in pit fights, but my orcs almost never lose a pit fight.

Maybe that's something you could try.

On top of that having orcs with/without caragor mounts to fight enemies with a weakness to beasts/enrage to beasts helps, as does type matching (archers against ologs, not against defenders for example) and perhaps most important elemental weakness matching (use fire/poison/curse weapon against enemies weak to it and never let them do that to you).

[neutrino]

Originally posted by Fringehunter7719:

I'm not sure if it's because item bonuses for 50% less damage taken / 50% more damage dealt apply to followers in pit fights, but my orcs almost never lose a pit fight.

Maybe that's something you could try.

I wouldn't be surprised if that were true because my experience has been the exact opposite: my Orcs rarely win and I have no allied-rated buffs. (And, yes, I do match types and strengths vs. weaknesses, but still my Orcs sit there like dumbells and maybe yell a lot, but rarely do their swings ever cause any major damage.)

[Chama]

They taunt eachother so much. I had a legendary orc die because he kept taunting, and the other orc kept hitting him over and over because of it .

[David Davidson]

Agreed, the pitfight AI is broken, I once sat through the entire two minute timer as neither orc did anything.
Apparently after the fight I was awarded two skillpoints; when I checked my character sheet they weren't there.
I also had a really low level orc who's traits were against him kill a legendary orc who greatly outclassed him, why? Because pit fights are a dice roll. You can weigh the dice a little in your favour but it still comes down to luck.

Honestly the game feels like it was made by a few different development teams who had little communication with each other. Pit fights being one example, moving an orc from one fort to another requiring a connection to the marketplace being another.
Some aspects of the game are great, some seem rushed or like the development team was broken up and communication was poor, others like the marketplace for training orders (even though you don't have to buy anything) seem like business decisions made by the producers, ones that shouldn't be in a full priced AAA game at all.

[LordBlade]

Originally posted by Fear None:

They taunt eachother so much. I had a legendary orc die because he kept taunting, and the other orc kept hitting him over and over because of it .

Yeah, this is the bug that keeps being reported.

[OpenMind23]

Wierd. I have not experienced any of this at all. 95% of the time, my chosen orc wins the fight. I use maggot and Warrior a lot before I send one of the best to a champion fight though.

Maybe it is studying which fighter is best for the fight and really choosing the best fighter. Not sure though, maybe i'm lucky, but I have watched over 25 fights and won around 22 of them.