Commando Archive
Thread: 2 bothersom things from tonight's HOC chat
I appreciate what those of you from other forums are trying to do. You're intetnions are noble. And I'm sure you can see that for those of us that predicted exactly this after we realized what they were trying to implement, it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We've already seen one complaint right here in this thread that they might make the knucklers Commando only. Any one want to take a bets it's only the first shot in the next big issue? I.E. "Why can Commandos use their weapons and mine, but I can't use theirs?" And all of it is arguing about where to rearrange the deck chairs as the ship continues to slip deeper in the water.
Hasun wrote:
except for the accuracy mods, just becauseI can pick up a flame thrower doesn't mean i can hit F'all with it. You've just described what grinding up through Commando with flamethrower, the only weapon in our entire arsenal that was even close to being usable, was like with it's horrible accuracy.It's vital that people who haven't experienced that are aware of this to understand why Commando patience is at an all time low.look at Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo used a lightsaber but "my god he didn't do the padawan trials".
I was shocked at first but having thought about it, real life, I can pick any weapon and use it butI bet someone with training would be able to use it better than me. You advertise in your sig you're a commited Bounty Hunter. You aren't defined by your weapons. Your defined by your ability to take Bountys. And a quick trip to the Bounty Hunter forums shows some very heated opinions of Bounty Hunters who hate the idea that people have been able take Bountys with a minimum of Bounty Hunter skills. What would the Bounty Hunter forums have been like if the announcement had been that all players of a certain level will be able to Bounty Hunt without a single skill poiint in the Bounty Hunter profession? If I, as a Commando, had popped over and tried to explain to you how it was really good idea would it have made you feel better? I appreciate your intent, but your premise was wrong.
When grinding a profession this opens up many doors and stops a lot of grinding problems. Not for Commandos. Now they've created a situation where Commando will be the slowest grinding profession in the game once again. It's one more clumsy, fumbling attempt to sidestep the real issue thats creating all this chaos. And it will be like this as long as level based combat with skill based characters is their goal.
Commando weapons will be Skill box + combat level.
So if the particle beam cannon is x2xx and lvl 22. Does that mean if im x2xx and lvl 19 i cant use it?
If so then that will p** me off so much!
I have defended the CU so far... but even this is a step too far to defend!
1. This is a change to the CU during CU *testing*. Not Live, testing. Not only are they feeling out the effects of the change, it's very likely that they've made some outright mistakes. I would wager that the commando problems are one of these. Perhaps they started by switching all weapons over to level-based certs, and then did a pass over them to set certain ones to other criteria. That's the way that I'd do it. If so, then perhaps they overlooked Commando weapons on accident. Perhaps the person working on the Commando weapon recerts didn't quite make the TC update deadline. Perhaps there was some other glitch at play. The point is, don't assume soemthing they just patched in is intentional and staying that way. Ditto for the Launcher using pistol mods and giving Pistol XP. We've all done jobs where we have a whole stack of things to deal with, and we just run through the list. Possibly the person assigned to the pistols just noticed the "pistol" in the name in a rush to get done and it was overlooked. This is *why* we're testing. To catch these things. If it makes it to Live, *then* you can do all this complaining. But let's not put the cart before the horse. If you can't deal with a testing environment... DON'T TEST. I know you care about your profession, but try to keep some perspective, or you do NOONE any good, least of all your profession.
2. Two days ago, it seemed everyone and their brother were complaining how hard it was to level a new profession once you were in an elite. They don't want to just drop the level system they've got. I don't blame them. Frankly, i think a lot of it works, and I don't *want* to suddenly drop to novice combat ability just because i switch weapons. I don't want to go back to hunting Nunas just because I switched weapons to soemthing new. If I can hunt stuff at my elite level, it's much better. i'm rewarded for my elite profession with a faster grind through my next one. This is basically good. But the way it was prior to this, it was impossible to do it because of the level system's XP rewards. I had to fight even elite cons with a novice weapon. As many people complained, this is not good. And now that they seek to fix it within a system they feel is better than the old, all we have to say is everything we think is bad for it. Without even playing first. The least we can do is try it. Is it the weapons that differentiates a class? In some cases, maybe. In most, I would say no. It's the way the weapon is used that matters more. The proficiency with it. In any case, after they try something new to fix a complaint that MANY of us had, the least we can do is see how it pans out. Test it. We may like it. We may find nothing to complain about. It may be a lot of fun.It may give professions more common ground without actually taking anything away. But we won't really know until we actually play with it.
3. Finally... I find the manner in which this feedback is given apalling. How many here have complained about never hearing anything from a Dev? In JTL Beta, we learned that many Devs are *scared* to talk to players. Everytime a dev does what we want, IE: speak to us about this work they're spending so much time and effort on, we do what to reward them? We mob them, scream at them about what they don't like, tell them "you don't even play the game" and "you're not an X, you don't understand our issues" and everything BUT a response that will encourage them to come back and speak to us again. You want devs to talk to you, listen to your concerns, share what they're thinking and have a dialogue with you? Show a little respect and gratitude for what they're trying to do. Treat them like you think they may actually care about the game. You want a dialogue, well, that implies TWO people talking. Yelling and insulting doesn't count. Talk to them, they'll talk back. Yell at them and raise an uproar, and you'll be lucky if they *ever* spek to you directly again. Why slave away at code all day just so A Commando or a BH or a TKM or a Doctor Or an ID can scream at you when you try to share the work? At some point, that dev's going to finish with this or that, and ask themselves "Okay... I can go let everyone know what I did today... or I can work on more code. What would I RATHER be doing?" You want that answer to be "Tell the players what's up", you better make sure it's not an exercise in pain the likes of which game coding can never attain.
That's my 2 credits. Take it or leave it. I hope it gives some of you some food for thought. I'll be happy to eat some in return, as long as it's not all sour grapes.
djkav wrote:
Okies, I loved the CU.... but even now i'm concerned!
Commando weapons will be Skill box + combat level.
So if the particle beam cannon is x2xx and lvl 22. Does that mean if im x2xx and lvl 19 i cant use it?
If so then that will p** me off so much!
I have defended the CU so far... but even this is a step too far to defend!
Kav im with ya buddy i have been 100% postive about this whole thing, and i have been there a lot defending it and standing up for it. but these drastic changes even make me the only commando in my guild, rethink commando. Devs why not just kill the proffession and give the guns to the others?
ok ok so your going to re-cert them oops bug, i think in the end what would save a lot of griefing from the Development team to the players who are WORKING FOR YOU and DOING YOUR JOB btw would be a litte more information. ok we found a bug, you get the reports, check it and POST something about it so we dont all flip out and get mad and create posts like this one and thousands of others. As for us who are in there testing it, defending it, giving it our all... the Development team needs to acknowledge this and give something back to the community that gives them so much....instead of giving someone who has yet to prove them selves more goodies....BARC speeder my @#$!
Professions will still have "Iconic" weaponry that will be certed, a la commando weapons, to a CL + Skill box. Lots of weapons out there are generic granted, BUT Its safe to assume DE-10's would be for pistoleers...that smuggler pistol...smugglers...the SL pistol...SL...the T_21, rifleman...etc etc.
Does that mean an Adv Laser Rifle will have that? Probably not...but weapons that define and individualize a profession will most certainly have a CL + Skill box requirement....
StarNick wrote:
Holy freaking cow, you guys got too much free time on your hands
Professions will still have "Iconic" weaponry that will be certed, a la commando weapons, to a CL + Skill box. Lots of weapons out there are generic granted, BUT Its safe to assume DE-10's would be for pistoleers...that smuggler pistol...smugglers...the SL pistol...SL...the T_21, rifleman...etc etc.
Does that mean an Adv Laser Rifle will have that? Probably not...but weapons that define and individualize a profession will most certainly have a CL + Skill box requirement....
Well said. That makes it a lot easier to bear. I am glad to see how this was resolved as it makes more sense, why make everyone a commando because they can use their heavy weapons that are that prof's specials built it... just minus our mods. This made me feel a lot better on that.
Now Stern *cough* how about a nice thread on how with 249 SP spent on my live toon, but penalized (not by choice) to have master marksman and may have to regrind after the CU. I think grinding and testing is enough grinding if you already had a fully templeted toon. They could bypass this by having BH/Commando have a little more weight on the respec so we are not penalized for having to master a novice prof and not allowed to have spent more in elite profs to stay in our "hidden" current CL.
jefmes wrote:
Novock wrote:We wanted to stand out in the Cu guys well we are now. We are the ONLY combat class that gets 0 weapon certs, 0 specials and 0 counter moves!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woot woot everybody will be standing in line to add commando to their template now.DID YOU PEOPLE THINK BEFORE YOU DID THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I'm so peaved i can hit cancel right now. I just cancel preoder on both my accounts as who knows what tomorrow will bring.My god...drama people! You all love drama!!!
Ya think they didn't think about some of this before it went in??? Patience my friend, weapons can be tied to professions as well, this just opens up the play space to other professions as well - doesn't mean you can't still use your favorite weapons!
Assuming that someone has dealt with every detail in a complete combat system rewrite rushed to market with only 2-3 weeks of large scale testing is a bit much to assume. It takes a QA team in a fortune 500 company a few weeks to test a *website and find everything. This game is a little more complicated than a website.
Message Edited by Figu on 04-14-2005 05:09 PM
Brannoc - *RRR187* How will crafters place harvesters on planets now, since creatures kill low level characters so quickly?
Helios_SOE If you wish to gather resources in dangerous areas, you should either get a PSG or you could also hire some other players to protect you in the wilds.
I have friends that are pure crafters and if it were necessary to get someone to protect them while placing and checking harvester, they just wouldn't do it. They would either quit or play a combat character instead. This is really a big issue and the DEV's need to rethink their response.
Brannoc - *Kampher* Are we going to be able to switch between the old and new interface? Many people dont like the new icons, and would like to switch back to the old ones. Will this be possible?
Malakaren - No.
This one is a really big problem for me. I detest the new interface. I stopped testing it after a week or so, but I hated looking at the new interface so much. SOE either give us this option to switch or go back to the orignal icons.
Brannoc - *Colbius* According to the polls on the SWG forums there seems to be a dislike for the new system are you getting similiar results from the feedback?
Rogue_5 - We are not seeing that level of aversion to the communicated changes. What has actually been pleasantly surprising is that the in-game exit polls and the forum polls have continued to move to the positive every day. It appears that most of what was driving the negativity at first was just that it was a 'change' to the current game-play systems that we all know so well. Once people continued to play through it and joined with friends.
I obviously don't know what the in game exit polls are results are like, but the forum polls have not gotten better. This is a flat out lie and it undermines the Dev's credibility. For example, today's poll has 73% rating it as 1 (poor). That is the worst rating I believe we have seen yet.
jphillips1868 wrote:
Brannoc - *Colbius* According to the polls on the SWG forums there seems to be a dislike for the new system are you getting similiar results from the feedback?
Rogue_5 - We are not seeing that level of aversion to the communicated changes. What has actually been pleasantly surprising is that the in-game exit polls and the forum polls have continued to move to the positive every day. It appears that most of what was driving the negativity at first was just that it was a 'change' to the current game-play systems that we all know so well. Once people continued to play through it and joined with friends.
I obviously don't know what the in game exit polls are results are like, but the forum polls have not gotten better. This is a flat out lie and it undermines the Dev's credibility. For example, today's poll has 73% rating it as 1 (poor). That is the worst rating I believe we have seen yet.