Carbineer Archive

Currently, the Bounty Hunter attempting to pursue Investigations, their primary purpose, is having a difficult time even completing missions without some form of bug interfering with the gameplay. This is causing the single most difficult tree to advance up to be that much more difficult, and the progress is super slow. As a direct result of this, there is no immersive qualities to Bounty Hunter, and the player is forced to resort to other means to find that 'fun factor'. However, as you will see, that 'fun factor' is deliberately limited for this profession, and those limitations must be removed.

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  25 confirmed bugs in Investigations tree alone.
  
  
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  Each of these bugs has been outlined with as much info as possible in the correspondent forum to help development apply the necessary fixes. I can forward the link privately or in that forum at Thunderheart's request rather than post it here.
  
  
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  Fixes to the bugs themselves should iron out the return on missions experience.
  
  
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  Monetary reward needs a serious boost at all levels, not just top level.

There is a still a rather large community that is under the impression that the Bounty Hunter is too powerful in PvP combat. This simply is not true. In comparison to the other ranged combat professions, the Bounty Hunter is 2nd rate, and is only barely surviving in PvP. There has been too much attention on the effect of Bounty Hunter attacks in PvP, while the attacks of other ranged professions have been given upward boosts.

We are in a worse state than many others. The reason for this is the tremendous HAM costs of our special attacks. In fact they cost so much in health, that we are forced in most situations to go completely armorless. Considering ourtotal lack of defense, this places us in a very bad situation. It has always been assumed that the Bounty Hunter is sacrificing defenses for a powerful output. However, we are finding more and more that all other professions have just as much power, if not more variety in that power, over their skill point expenditures.

If that is the case, then it is pointless to expend 217 skill points on this profession.

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  The Bounty Hunter has no ability to effectively dabble in other professions to improve badly needed skills
  
  
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  New skills are required that allow us to survive solo given the above
  
  
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  A complete list of possibilities for these skills is also in the correspondent forum, listed in order of how many players wanted <certain> things. This also can be linked privately in that forum for review upon request.

In comparison toother professions, the Master Bounty Hunter MUST spend a minimum of 217 skill points to achieve. While the Bounty Hunter must do this, this limits our ability to dabble in other professional content to any greater degree than a full single line of skill in some other profession. Since our peculiar purpose forgoes any help, and neither does the EU support the concept of Bounty Hunters needing that help, we are forced to self-sufficiency of profession. No other profession has this problem.Many others have the ability toexpend skill pointsinto 3 full masteries, of 3 different professions, which when added up are significantlypowerful and offer everything the player would need to survive solo.The Pistoleer also has the ability to enhance their weapon of choice, pistols, in two unique other avenues of dabbling, Bounty Pistols, and Smuggler Pistols, should they choose not to pursue the masteries themselves. A master Pistoleer with these skill lines is able to max out their pistols speed. Although the Carbineer can also dabble in Bounty Carbines, there are no useful attacks in that skill line at the moment that they don't already have available, and there is no unique weapons certification for carbine. Pistoleer dabbling in pistols gains the powerful Scatter Pistol certification. This is an imbalance. Further, Rifleman have no avenue whatsoever of pursuing enhancements to THEIR skills at all. There is nowhere for them to go to gain those advantages that the Pistoleer does.

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  A possible recommendation here is to add a cold-based carbine cert
  
  
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  Also a Rifle cert, changing LLC line from heavy weapons experience to rifle experience
  
  
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  Applying the appropriate rifle skills to that LLC tree

Given the above, there is a better distribution of skills that can be gained from dabbling Bounty Hunter abilities across the 3 ranged elite professions, allowing better balance. It also helps alleviate some of the other probelsm in the BH profession.

The counter-argument to the above is that..Riflemen don't NEED any more skills. This isn't necessarily true since there appears to be intention to max out their speed mods at a much higher level than they are at this time. When this occurs, they will require further ability to gain skill in Rifles.

Versus PvE creatures, the Master Bounty Hunter, having only +24 ranged defense (mostly useless versus creatures), and only +2 melee defense, is extremely vulnerable. At this time on live servers, a Bounty Hunter (without a pet) is in it's worse situation versus a creature attack. This essentially removes Normal Missions from the inventory of Bounty Hunter abilities. Attempting to take creature missions at the level of a highly skilled Bounty Hunter generally has a negative effect. Once the insurance system goes live, no Bounty Hunters will be fighting PvE creatures.

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  Addition of further skills and abilities versus creatures
  
  
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  or a more effective current ability versus creatures
  
  
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  possible addition of dodge and counterattack skill mods to the Investigations tree

The above last bullet is consistent with what can be expected for defenses in the Bounty Hunter. Although we sacrifice defenses to gain offensive output, we are not completely helpless in the EU. Counterattacks and dodges are obvious and consistent additions.

Versus PvE NPC, the current state of the Bounty Hunter is entirely determined by their defenses, which are non-existent for all intents and purposes. Versus an NPC, this is the ONLY PLACE IN THE GAME where all the Bounty Hunter attacks actually work as intended. Versus both creatures and PvP, our attacks (alone among the professions) are reduced to a significant degree of uselessness. Bounty Hunter is entirely reliant upon 'control of the target'. This is what gives us any chance of survival at all. The current knockdown and dizzy rules, versus NPC, are fine and should be applied to both creatures and PvP combat. This means restoring our knockdowns and fixing the specials that reside in the master box to correspond to their attack power, and their special effects. Currently in PvP, the Bounty Hunter misses state change attacks on the average of 4 out of 5 versus those with defenses versus our attacks of any variety. This is the average that I am witnessing.

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  Restore knockdowns to creature and PvP fights at the same rate as others are able
  
  
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  Restore state changes to creature and PvP fights at the same rate as others are able

It's a Tankless job! The Bounty Hunter is about to be forced to rely heavily upon their own skills in all situations, without a tank pet to absorb the tremendous damage we take in combat. Bounty Hunter downtimes from situations that we SURVIVE is extensive. Often, we do not survive at all. The new insurance system will more heavily effect Bounty Hunter than any other profession, causing us even more expenditures from an already impossible profession to gain rewards in. We need a method of applying a reliable technological pet to the combat situations we face. This is consistent with the Star Wars Extended Universe to a limited degree. We would much prefer being tweaked towards solo action, without the need for any pets at all, but this seems to be not forthcoming as we are still accused of being overpowered somehow.

Either develop a Bounty Hunter only droid for tanking usage, that is reliable and tough...able to stand in a situation versus our unique targets that have 13k HAM and often will 1-shot kill us, or deliver to the Bounty Hunter Profession the power to stand in those fights alone.

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  Addition of a tanking pet in the nature of the pre-nerf probot to compensate for our lack of defenses
  
  
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  Skills for usage of that combat droid applied to Investigations tree

This is consistent with the concept of Bounty Hunter utilizing technologies to counter their weaknesses.

The Bounty Hunter IS a solo profession. Many people pursue it for that reason. Solo PvE is our primary purpose, yet without the tools to survive the encounters, the profession will fade away in its currrently broken state. A change of thinking, or philosophy, is needed here.

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  Addition of basic medical skills to Investigations tree
  
  
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  Addition of basic humanoid tracking to Investigations tree
  
  
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  Addition of gadets based upon EU Bounty Hunters

Since Development Team entirely determines the breadth our abilities, given we have little skill points to pursue enough other professional abilitiesto effectively survivesolo, the above are not unreasonable requests. 33 skill points to spend following mastery of the profession is not enough to gain independence of groups, which is required by our nature.

Mission Net Payouts arenot reasonable.The tremendous expenditures in downtime (medical and entertainment), the expense of weapons and droids for Investigation purposes, armor costs, and mostly the cost of travel itself on any given mission, cause us to actually LOSE credits over time when pursuing bounties.

In essence, there IS NO REWARD FOR PURSUING BOUNTIES. While others are free to work creature PvE missions, for the reasons above the Bounty Hunter is not capable of doing this. Therefore , those rewards are not forthcoming. Without the ability to enhance our credit making potential, under the current system which causes us to lose credits over time in our normal duties that we were designed for, the profession is gated.

The sole purpose of the Bounty Hunter, in the end, is to pursue bounties for MONEY, and lots of it. Even though those missions on the surface appear to offer great rewards, the expenses in each mission add up to a significant loss of credits over time. There needs to be a new method of applying rewards for completeing missions in the Bounty Hunter profession. In addition to these is the tremendous wait times for having to pass through several shuttle points to and from those targets. This too needs to change.

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  Lose the insurance idea until such time as combat system is ironed out fully
  
  
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  Lose the insurance idea until such time as there IS time to deal with Bounty hutner problems
  
  
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  Leave Investigation 0 payout the same.
  
  
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  Boost Investigation 1 payout by 5%
  
  
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  Boost Investigation 2 payout by 10%
  
  
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  Boost Investigation 3 payout by 15%
  
  
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  Balance Investigation 4 in line with the first 3
  
  
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  Boost mastery payout by 20%
  
  
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  Addition of a free 1-way teleport to the largest starport on the target's planet upon identification of the target planet

This last above allows a great boost to Investigations reward, in the form of not having to pay for the shuttle trip to the target planet, reduces the wait time at shuttles (a VERY touchy item concerning gameplay issues with our profession), and allows quicker experience return on missions int he Investigations tree. Since it helps to somewhat alleviate all three of these problems, this may be the solution.

Thislast can be removed upon the arrival of Space Expansion.

Player Bounties. Player Bounties is the reason most people joined this game to play as Bounty Hunters, and the lastcomment heard was...they are too difficult to implement. This is the top issue after mission payouts. This is the reason that many players started Bounty Hunters, to hunt players for money. This is where the PvP immersion can be found in this profession. More immersion can be located with the addition of the 'Bounty Hunter Guild'.

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  Institute an immersive and rewarding Player Bounty system.
  
  
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  Addition of the 'scorekeeper' system to track kills/killed/success/failure/ and so forth.
  
  
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  Addition of the Bounty Hunter Guild
  
  
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  Joining the Guild adds you to the 'Scorekeeper' System.
  
  
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  The Guild offers items (gadgets) that can be purchased with either excess Investigations experience at Master, or with guild faction points associated with it if we want all Bounty Hunters to have access to those gadgets

These areconsistent with the EU. Although the 'Scorekeeper' was a religion for the Trandoshans, it is reasonable that this could be applied across the game for Bounty Hunters.

Dead or Alive. More immersive mission content, as well as a method of being able to stop and capture a bounty for retrieval and return them to the Bounty Hunter Guild for a larger reward, are needed. This one is a given, along with Player Bounties.

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  Addition of 'Dead or Alive' missions
  
  
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  Weapons and gadgets associated with taking a target into custody
  
  
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  Apply these to player bounty PvP as well, so that it is possible to return a player to the person initiating the bounty, alive

Conclusion: There is a significant amount of work to be done here. This profession is already set up in a system that could allow immersive gameplay that is closely related to what STAR WARS is all about. The concept of the Bounty Hunter is fully viable, all the bulleted possibilities above add immersion and playability to a profession that is currently in a bad state. It is not so bad, however, that it cannot be repaired, balanced correctly, and made FUN to play with a little effort.

This was from Wepps the former Bh Correspondent......Glad to know there so underbalanced...Soon where going to have hundreds of Bounty Hunters running around......Oh wait we already do.

Whapleto -Tempest

I don't get what you're so speechless about. This was the state of profession statement by the correspondent at the time and all of those points were valid.

I only skimmed it, but I think posting a complaint about high specials costs on the carbineer forums is funny.

Looks like some valid points, but the ones I agree with apply to more than the bh profession. Especially needing a tank to survive - sure I can solo stuff without my pet, but it's touch and go. I need buffs so I can spam specials, and if my knockdown misses at the wrong moment I'm toast.

You have hundreds of pistol line BH's running around, pretty much covered in that post. I thought it was well thought out and it included the need for a fix to the high HAM cost of carbines which I would think includes your profession of choice.Yes I am a Bounty Hunter and the only reason I check your board is to see what is going on with a profession I will prolly someday persure mastery in, I love my BH carbine, high HAM or not it is my favorite weapon by far. Grab

I'm not sure why this post would leave you speechless.

Most master and aspiring master BH's have moved past the infatuation with the scatter pistol and now treatthe pistolas a close quarters side arm. These same BH's treat the LLC as a weapon to be used in very specific circumstances. What that leaves is a core group outside of the carbineer profession that views the carbine as their primary weapon. This group of players (which I feel I belong to) are going to offer nothing but support for the carbineers, since we've also felt the pain of taking down a target whilenever getting hit yet having our HAM bars down to a 1/3 of their max.

BH's are your allies in getting carbine fixes, not your enemies. I'd venture to say we're even your allies when it comes to carbineer-specific fixes. When I learned that a master carbineer only get +60 to carbine speed, I was stunned. There are more BH's than you know that are like me - we'd go to bat for the carbineers any day.