Commando Archive
Thread: What's up Commandos...
Also, Blix, we went from a one shot pony (Flamethrower) preCU to a no shot pony (removal of specials and busted AoE) after CU.
We've taken in on the chin too many times. We cant get up off the mat much more. We are horribly imbalanced, we are a contradiction to ourselves.
The whole AoE / built in states thing is just a BAD idea.
Are these going to be player crafted I hope?
Blixtev wrote:
We should see an increase in DPS for Commando weapons with Mustafar Commando weaponry.
Hey Blix, why not just copy a Live server over to your Dev cluster, and log in and play one of the toon's belonging to a Player who always has this problem? This way you guys will see exactly what the players see?
Blixtev wrote:
So generally we do get results from QA, the problem with the AOE damage is a tricky one as on our stand alone DeV servers it does work, 100% of the time. Jump over to Test and it works some of the time. If it was flat out broke all of the time it would be easy to fix. Since it works some times and not others, and works on our Dev clusters it becomes a difficult problem to track down the issue. Last time we went up against this issue we thought we had the fix since it worked on our stand alone servers.
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As you touched on we have already given up a ton of benefits other professions enjoy just for a 6m aoe of splash damage.
Rifleman also have high damage weapons, specials, recoveries, have all of their pre reqs in the marksman tree, stealth, scopes, lower SAC caps, and power ups. Great for them, sounds like fun.
Soon Rangers are going to have demolitions and ordinance, awesome I hope they all have a "blast".
Damage on our master weapon is barely better than a no cert cl 54 advanced laser rifle.
As it is our weapons draw a huge amount of agro from the AOE. Rather than a little bump in damage from the devs, I would like to be able to fire more than a couple times before my action runs out and the mobs are all over me. It just seems to me that heavy weaps were over looked for the use of power ups. I hope it wasn't intended.
Scopes are another thing I would like to see us use. Every heavy weapon I have ever fired had a sighting mechanism of some type available. Honestly I have fired more heavy weapons with scopes than I have pistols. Do you know why the Olympics has marksman events for pistols and rifles? Because no one would ever miss with a flame thrower.
Buku
Naritus
Blixtev wrote:
Ajo79 wrote:
2) Fix AOE. I say remove the innate AOE from the weapons. All weapons->One Target only. But give us a few AOE attacks instead that works with all weapons.
3) Fix grenades. Make them do lots of damage and make their speed say between 6-10 seconds so they gives us a extra damage-capabilites.
Also I find it mind boggling that you have to ask us, the players, about how the game works (like the AOE issue). You have to have the worst QA ever. Do they even play the game? I give you that it can't be easy to work with people like that.
So generally we do get results from QA, the problem with the AOE damage is a tricky one as on our stand alone DeV servers it does work, 100% of the time. Jump over to Test and it works some of the time. If it was flat out broke all of the time it would be easy to fix. Since it works some times and not others, and works on our Dev clusters it becomes a difficult problem to track down the issue. Last time we went up against this issue we thought we had the fix since it worked on our stand alone servers.
We should see an increase in DPS for Commando weapons with Mustafar Commando weaponry.
Grenades was always a tricky issue since the fear during CU beta was that they were too good, so we turned the DPS knob on them way down. Again another issue we always wanted to revist, just never had time allocated.
When the Production team givesDesign time to do tweaks to a profession, we try and make the best use of it, and get as much done as we can in the allocated time. Despite being Commandos please try not to "Flame" Helios for trying to get information. It is difficult for any one Designer to know everything about every profession.
Message Edited by Blixtev on 10-01-2005 02:58 AM
I don't want to sound like a prophet here but didn't this kind of exclusionary practice lead toa French Revolution? 
It's ok for you to mingle with the masses Blixtev. It is perfectly acceptable to come to ground level and actually learn your game. We don't bite
tacwraith wrote:
Splitting that up into 4 sections:
1) Ok so commando does work in dev clusters but not in live servers. You tried to go and fix it. You didnt. Then you gave up and moved on to something else leaving aoe in a non-working state. Did that pretty much sum it up? If so, would you be happy if you were a commando and saw this happen (time and time again)?
First, while I'm not very active in the commando profession, one of my toons is a MC.
Check the sentance I highlighted above. That is spot-on. This is EXACTLY what happens to about 98% of issues with this game. Until they find the methods to improve their internal processes or realize that fixing problems is in fact more important than adding expansions and such, we (as in all players) will continue to suffer.
Wasn't the Correspondent system set up to deal with this exact issue?
No one (seriously) expects every Dev to know every detail of every obscure aspect of the game, but there is already supposed to be a system in place for the developers to find out exactly this kind of information, should it be required.
The issue is that the developers rarely ever make even the most necessary of fixes to professions, and it usually takes a concerted effort by the playerbase and the appointed correspondent before we can even get an acknowledgement that the issue is known.
Now, perhaps the Commando Correspondent is woefully incompetent and that is why you can't get this information. I've honestly no idea who the current one is, as I don't play a Commando anymore.
But if that is the case, only SOE can appoint a new correspondent. So appoint one! -_-
*returns to lurking*
Blixtev wrote:
We should see an increase in DPS for Commando weapons with Mustafar Commando weaponry.
Helios_SOE wrote:
If, hyptothetically speaking, I were to say "If you could snap your fingers and fix THREE (3) things with your profession right now, what would they be?", you would answer with...
This is going to be a bit long but I really hope you take the time to read it.
Unfortunately it may not even be as simple as "fixing 3 things" for commando. The reason is the one that many people have already mentioned, unlike every other ranged profession commando has no ranged specials. That causes some big balance issues for the professionright from the start.
I think you need to understand some of what commandos were, and what we hoped to be after the CU. This is only my interpretation, other commandos may or may not agree. Although I think at least most of the commandos involved in the GCW would agree.
Pre-cu:
For a brief time, before jedi and after turret HP were increased, commandos actually had a distinct role in the GCW. Yes, much of our profession was broken..but we at least were the only ones who could do blast damage against turrets. This gave us a real purpose in the GCW.
Against mobs and NPCs, commandos were quite powerful. Combined with TKM, I could swim into crowds of mobs hit flamecone 2, flamecone 1 and destroy them all. At a time when buffs were considered required, I could routinely run maximum level missions solo..unbuffed.
In pvp well, that's where our problems were. 90% composite would have our 10k+ flame damage reduced to 100 or so per shot. We were a joke in pvp.
In reality, we only needed a few fixes to at least be functional. From that point on things like new weapons etc could have been added.
1) PVP: A fix for composite armor - so that our 10k+ flame damage would not be reduced to ridiculously low levels.
2) Acid Rifle: The acid rifle just needed to be brought in line with flame thrower. The same stats etc just a different damage type: acid. Alternatively, a different weapon entirely.
3) Grenades: Needed a significant damage bump up, and to remove the LOS requirement. Grenades do not require LOS.
4) GCW role: Blast damage worked wonderfully in giving commandos a distinct role. The only problem was the foolish mistake of making lightsabers more effective against turrets than blast. It is stupid to have jedi fill the role of turret destroyers. To fix this, all that needed to be done was to make turrets as 90% resistant to LS damage (as they are to all others but blast) and leave them at 0% against blast. Instant role for the commando in the GCW.
Post-cu:
Unfortunately the commando profession was made far, far worse off with the cu than we were before. That isthe reason that I havent played this game in the past4 months, and have just now came back to give you one more chance to fix my profession.
After the CU,we were severely weakenedin pve to the point of uselessness.We becamedependant on having another ranged mastery (no other profession is dependant on having another). By getting rid of blast damage and not otherwise compensating for it,our role in the GCW was entirely destroyed.
The onlyimprovement we did have (arguably) is the ability to use AOE specialsfor mez/dazeeffects. So that means the only actual improvement made in the professionis tied to another profession (pistoleer/smuggler). However that cannot actually be counted as an improvement for commando.
Obviously it is too late to go back to the way things were pre-cu. So that leaves the question: where do we go from here? There are two options, and unfortunately each requires you to do more than "three things".
Option One: New Specials
1) Give commando thier own special attacks, for ranged and melee. This would make us cross compatible with melee professions and would give justification to the brawler pre-requisite.
2) Fix AOE damage. Has been stated hundreds of times already, this has to be done no matter what route you choose in fixing commando.
3) Give commandos a GCW role: to do this you must either bring back blast damage or do something similar to give commandos a distinct and vital role in the GCW. This is CRITICAL to giving the profession an identity of it's own. I would suggest bringing back blast damage, it did a great job of setting commandos apart.
Also along these lines you should make AT-STs highly resistant to all damage except blast. That would give an additional incentive for rebel commandos. Later on during the GCW revamp you could figure out a way to offset that for imperial commandos.
4) Give us a commando knife to use our melee specials with.
Option Two: No New Specials
1) Change commando weapons so ranged profession specials cannot be used with them at all.
2) Increase commando weapon damage...big time. We are talking about double what they do now. Make them slower if you want, but they should do MASSIVE damage if you dont give us any specials.
3) Fix AOE damage. With the increased damage of commando you will want to make the splash damage scale. Meaning, at the center of the blast the target takes full damage and goes down as you get further out from the center.
4) Give commandos a GCW role: this is the same as in Option One. This could also help fix the GCW. I still think bringing back blast damage is the quickest, easiest way to go.
5) Either give us a commando knife with a decent damage output and an innate special(because we obviously wont have any melee specials) or change the brawler line requirement tosomething from thescout line(to at least be cross compatible with SL, Rangeror BH).
I personally believe that option two, even though it's 4 things, is the easier way to go. Giving commandos specials would take a HUGE amount of time. But there you have it, to make commando on par with other combat professions you have a lot of work to do. The good thing though is that in the process of fixing commando you could also fix some of the GCW problems.
Either way you choose it wont be easy...
Message Edited by JezabelleSWG on 10-01-2005 09:10 AM
2. Grenades, make stacks bigger, give em some punch. they are underpowered. PS with enhanced grenades with +700 ackley enhancement that show 1500 damage only hit for 800.
3. Powerups on heavy weapons, make em work please.
Honestly a commando should just give Helios their login info and let him see for himself.
Helios_SOE wrote:
cooperly wrote:
[Combat] [Combat]
21:52:21 Cooperly attacks a spineflap handmaiden with Ranged Shot using Krayt Flame Thrower and hits for 344 points (303 points of energy damage and 41 points of heat damage). A spineflap handmaiden's armor absorbed 306 points out of 650 possible points of damage.
21:52:21 Cooperly attacks a spineflap handmaiden with Ranged Shot using Krayt Flame Thrower and hits for 42 points (1 points of energy damage and 41 points of heat damage). A spineflap handmaiden's armor absorbed 35 points out of 77 possible points of damage.
21:52:21 Cooperly attacks a spineflap handmaiden with Ranged Shot using Krayt Flame Thrower and hits for 42 points (1 points of energy damage and 41 points of heat damage). A spineflap handmaiden's armor absorbed 35 points out of 77 possible points of damage.
21:52:21 Cooperly attacks a spineflap handmaiden with Ranged Shot using Krayt Flame Thrower and hits for 42 points (1 points of energy damage and 41 points of heat damage). A spineflap handmaiden's armor absorbed 35 points out of 77 possible points of damage.
21:52:21 Cooperly attacks a capper spineflap nest with Ranged Shot using Krayt Flame Thrower and hits for 77 points (1 points of energy damage and 41 points of heat damage).
Serial number 6lc0f0h4 Slice speed lvl 1 Damage lvl 3 Critical Hit lvl 1 Attack speed 2.86 Damage 312-753 Elemental Damage 76 Accuracy Bonus : 1 WOund : 27.99% SAC 104 EBDPS : 212.75
What's the character/galaxy for this weapon? Is the weapon currently in your inventory?
Message Edited by Helios_SOE on 09-30-2005 01:05 PM