Commando Archive
Thread: 3rd Letter sent today 8/9/03
"Letter was sent this morning.."
First, Iwould like to start off by saying that I am a little disappointed. After the first weeks letter, its took 2 weeks to get a response. We've not gotten a response to the 2nd letter, and I've delayed sending the 3rd because we've been waiting for the updates that were promised. We have no way to log onto the TC and pick up a flame thrower and test it, we cannot use the HAR or beam rifles due to unrecognized weapon certs, and people keep asking me to say the same thing over and over. So I am sending this 3rd letter, as my final submittal. I'll relay the responses I get from the 2nd and this final issue, but I think you should select a new correspondent, as I am seriously considering leaving SWG. Why has it taken 3 weeks to fix the weapon certifications?
Here are the 3rd letter topics.
1) Clarification on Ideal Range settings on all HW's. Also the range modifiers. These are intended or out of wack? All heavy weapons have an ideal range of 0.0, which means? either no ideal range, or its really 0, which is suicidal. Also the range modifiers are horrendous, 0,-57,0 for the flame thrower, which still misses far too much for amount of skill points it takes to acquire the weapon. We’d also like a clarification on the Beam Rifle's fate. Is it going to be removed from the crafting tables, or are we going to get a cert and how's it going to work.
2) Grenades. Ham cost on the action pools are over 100, the blast area will most likely do more damage to the user than the target. Ppeople still miss alot. The cost to craft these weapons, makes it impracticable to buy and they offer very little utility. Most people believe the grenades shoulddo AOE damage, but at the moment theydon't. They can only damage multiple targets if the targetsare aggressively attacking the thrower, and are standing directly ontop of each other, and of course, the user is also considered a target at 5 to 8ms. The delay to recover from a throw is also a concern.Grenade stacks are also a problem, for the amount of materials it takes to craft one stack of cyrbans, you can make a decent intermediate pistol. Except the grenades do less damage, have higher ham cost, and can only be used 5 times, of which you will miss 50% of the time.
3) Improved Cannon and Rocket Launcher damages. If we're going to have charges, these weapons need to do more damage than body shot 2. Otherwise, the thought process on charges needs to be reconsidered. Such as, an option to "recharge" the weapon. We've been playing with the heavy particle beam cannon. I've personally fired it 7 times, 5 were misses at 30m and 2 were decent hits of 690 to 700. For something that has 75 to 160 uses and cost an arm and a leg to craft, this seems unbalanced. Rocket Launchers are even worse. You have to craft proton grenades to make this weapon, which drives the cost way up, and iswithout adoubt the most complex weapon to craft. For the limited usage that does no more damage than the heavy particle cannon, this seems insanely imbalanced. Unless you seriously intend to make this 1000x more affective, then its totally useless.
4) Commando is the only hybrid class that receives next to no defense mod bonuses. Commandos should have some range and melee defense stats that are on par with Bounty Hunters. Also, Commandos are the only hybrid class that lacks any stall or knockdown move. We all know, SOEintends to make the special moves dosuper damage, but to be honest, unless its several thousand pts, its not going to be any more affective than a good FWG5 using body shot 3, except they (the pistolier)can knock you down with their "melee defense move". People are really frustrated that they spent all that time, and tied up all those skill pts to get a profession that is both less affective than marksman, andfar less playable thanany other elite class or hybrid.
5) (REPEAT/Improved) Accuracy of the Flame Thrower, HAR, and cannons. If the specials have the same accuracy of the HW's, then you force people to powerlevel to get half way decent. Accuracy bonusshould be redistributed to a +20% steps from Novice to Tier 3, then +15 at tier 4 and +15 at master. Or, a +10/+30/+20/+15/+15/+10 for Flame and HAR. Cannons have 3 different mods and are poor totals, why not have one mod for the 3 cannons and rocket launcher, that end in a 80 or 90% or 100% total at Master?
Biggest pet peeve that people have, is the availability of weapons. Everyone is furious that the dev's consider the commandos as a secondary profession, and that the poor performing weapons are to be considered super rare. Commandos are purely based on the availability of heavy weapons. Without heavy weapons, there is no commando. Commandos cannot use standard issue weapons to progress in their class. And even though the official word is launcher pistol will give HW exp, the availability of that weapon is just as hard as the flame thrower. What I was always lead to believe was that the quality of the resources would be rare, that the types or classes of resources. On my server, its easier to buy a T-21 that can headshot 2 for over 1200pts, where as my super rare flame thrower (thats about to be repaired for the 2nd time and most likely go poof) does what? we don't know.. plus I know 5 other novice commandos that have not recieved one hw exp pt in the last 3 weeks.
Also, people would still like an updated vision of the Commando Role in SWG? Everyone pretty much feels like, they've wasted weeks of their life for a profession that's very disfunctional. All of us in the commando profession, could have been 8 to 10 boxes into Bounty Hunter by now, or Master Creature handler, or Near master any elite profession. Everyone wants to be apart of the solution to fix the game and make it fun as a commando, but people are getting severely fustrated. Still feels like Beta for commando players.
Anyway, I look forward to your responses to this letter and the 2nd weeks letter. Also, when is the patch coming through that address the 1st weeks letter?
What amazes me still is that we are the only class to even get a response from the Dev team. (Even if that response was to please log on to the test center and spend 2 weeks making a Commando to test our game for us.)
W.T.F. is the purpose of the correspondent program if they don't ummmm, correspond with you guys? 31 other classes have submitted 3 weeks worth of issues without one response THREE WEEKS! I have been hovering at the edge of unlearning commando and all other prereq for the last week. Because I almost had faith that SOE was going to actually communicate with all the classes with this program. I guess I was wrong on that point.
This whole Correspondent program has turned into a "please tell us everything wrong with your class and we will eventually fix it in a couple months to a year". I was really really shocked that they would actually tell the public last night that they are working on 2 NEW professions with the existing 32 other professions have so many issues. This company just amazes me, I guess I should have learned from playing EQ for 4 years but I guess not.
Good job, Gira. Hopefully, things will get changed soon. At least that's my hope. I didn't want to play a bounty hunter. I don't want to go that route. But, if Commando doesn't get the attention it deserves, considering it's still a beta-class, and most likely *will* be, then it might be time for a change of class. I'd rather not change, but, getting to Master Marksman, and Unarmed IV and 40k combat xp wasn't too bad. I had fun getting there, but now? My fun's kinda petered off and seems nominal. I don't mind the wait, as long as what I'm getting was worth it. I'm staving off my frustration until the patch. If we *still* suck afterwards. I'm just prolly going to go a different route, and lose the 6 skill creds and keep my little novice commando tag. =)
Might as well! We earned it.
Thnx for all the help you're providing our saddeningly useless class Garibaldi.
I myself got pretty frustrated that I can't do much as a commando at this point after the game's launch. Yes, I too would consider us to be a beta class still, but there's no excuse for the length of time it has taken the devs to make contact with the community of commandos let alone FIX us. It would appear that the devs are more concerned with landspeeders and politicians -_-.I'm one of the few that has managed, after a few great pilgrimages, to obtain a few heavy weapons. Currently I have a flamethrower and launcher pistol and I'll tell you what, in a real battle situation we are useless. I tried using them on the Corellia battlegrounds and it's disgusting how quickly you get taken out. For God's sake, my scout blaster does better in a real combat situation than one of my "heavy" weapons does. The only thing I can suggest to my fellow commandos so that maybe we can hold out until these fixes pull through is to take up a few side professions so you can at least have some fun in the game. I took up pistoleer and creature handler and my novice commando cert sits there idling, waiting for the devs. I realize that it may be a long process to revamp the code and find out what's wrong so that at least we'll be on a level playing ground with other hybrid professions such as BH, but come on, this should have been an issue resolved in beta!
Hello.
First post into the Commando community.
I'm a novice commando, and i have been for about 2 weeks. i group regularly with 2 bounty hunters (they made BH about a week or so before i hit commando, as i picked up smuggling as well).
They have already made it to Tier 4 of Carb/Pistol, and i have FT Spec 1 and HW Spec 1.
That is 250k of Heavy Weapons experience, and i'm suprised i even managed that.
Out of all that, i have gained about 23k in combat exerience. Does that seem right to you? Getting 1 pt of combat experience per kill should be re-evaluated, considering how crappy our grenades are.
Just a thought.
Looking forward to the changes, hopefully the turn out alright.
"I am sending this 3rd letter, as my final submittal. I'll relay the responses I get from the 2nd and this final issue, but I think you should select a new correspondent, as I am seriously considering leaving SWG. Why has it taken 3 weeks to fix the weapon certifications? "
That my friend is the best way to get your point across. I too am thinking of quitting, not just because commando could have been fixed 2 weeks ago, but also there is no content, cant hunt, etc..
Maybe the'll think a little more about the profession with the correspondent threating to quit
*claps for gar*
Garibaldi_di_Alia : You've got it nailed down.
We've discussed virtually everything on these forums from fixes, to ideas, to having logical reasons of why our weaponry and skills should be different (IE "Why cant rocket launchers be 'recharged' with new rockets?).
You, JediQuic, Ivoni, and Countless others (which I'd like to include myself in) Have wrote tons and tons of constructive commando posts and we get nothing back AT ALL.
Im glad you are starting to show anger at them for this crap they put us through. We're all clearly past the "Lets sit down and discuss" stage and are heading into the "Screw this" stage.
We're angry that we're being Turned into Overqualified Pistoleers
We're angry we're being Turned into a Secondary Class
We're angry that we get no Logical Developer Feedback
We're angry that the things We were promised haven't gone live
We're angry because The first promisedfixes dont help us
We're angry that we've Done so much grinding and get no reward
We're angry because we've Spent weeks waiting for a change
We're angry because Almost everything we have is bugged
We're angry because We've spent long hours working our way to Novice Commando
We're angry because We dont have our weapons
And most of all
WE ARE BETA TESTERS
*claps for Nyte*
Thank you for reading my mind and putting my angered thoughts out there for me. However, I think at this point all of us commandos feel the same. I'm about to hit the "Screw this crap" point and jump on the BH bandwagon because at least they can fend for themselves and don't have to group constantly to get their xp and creds :/