Commando Archive
Thread: 3rd Letter sent today 8/9/03
Believe me, nobody wants to see grenades work as much as I do. We get 80-some points left over after Master Commando - I invested mine in the Munitions line of Weaponsmith. Not because I love crafting so much, but because nobody else on Chilastra makes grenades in the kind of quantities that the Commando population will someday need. I'm stockpiling them for the time when grenades are useful for us to have.
But SOE is making it hard to keep it up. One of the growing requests on the Weaponsmith board is to shift crafting so that people in a class that can use a weapon have a slight advantage in making it. This is to diversify the crafting population, and reduce the number of people with multiple elite crafting trees. Yet the only class where that's held true - the Commando(we get/got grenade component schematics that made the weapons far more effective)- is now losing that capability. And Weaponsmiths don't pick up those parts to replace the ones that Commando is losing. So a lot of the power that was supposed to go into higher level grenades is now completely gone.
So from a crafting standpoint now, here's the deal. It costs me about 5650 miscellaneous resources to make 500(100 stacks) fragmentation grenades in a factory. It costs even more for advanced grenades, but this is our baseline. Now, tobreak even on averageon these grenades, including factory and energy costs, I basically have to sell them for 4 credits per resource, which comes to 22,600 credits. That's 45.2 credits per grenade, or about 230 credits per stack of 5 grenades. At a cost of 1000 more resources per 100 grenades, I can individually improve the stackswith grenade powerups at a cost of approximately 40 more credits per stack to get something like an extra 14-15 percent damage. So that brings the cost per grenade, including the inevitable crafting failures while constructing powerups, up to around 55 credits each. One of my heavily experimented, powerupped grenades is approximately equivalent to the baseline of the next level up in the grenade series.
No other profession has a skill tree devoted to using an item that costs them 45.2 credits per use MINIMUM, and that's just profoundly rediculous. Almost nothing justifies paying that much for a stack of grenades unless they're far more powerful than presently designed for. And the manufacturing cost curve grows much faster than the damage curve, so basically the fragmentation grenades become the best choice for cost:damage ratios possible.
Given that, it's obvious why I'm the only person on Chilastra stupid enough to mass-produce anything from the Munitions line of Weaponsmith - I mean, if I was stupid enough to be a Commando, why not this too? The schematics are all grossly inefficient, and for the most part the grenades that result are horribly overpriced. When other weaponsmiths do make stacks of grenades for their shops, I find that usually it's just an afterthought, turning scraps of junk into actual sellable goods.
What can be done to fix it? Well, if the stack size was increased to 10, that would drop the cost to about 22.6 credits per grenade, and the cost with powerups to about 30 credits. That's starting to get more reasonable, and a little closer to being in line with the normal wear and tear costs that come with other classes' weapons(about5 credits damage for every 3 shots, I'm calculating).
Ultimately, though, grenades will have to be much more useful to justify their high cost both for the Weaponsmith and the Commando. Believe it or not, I actually want to do more than break even in my Weaponsmithing, and most Commandos don't want to waste their money on something that gives no real advantage.
I'd appreciate it if you could pass this along to the devs, Garibaldi - an assessment of grenades from BOTH the crafting(Weaponsmith) and the using(Commando) side of grenades, out of practical experience. It's something that pretty much nobody else is doing, so I have somewhat of a unique insight into the full scope of the grenade discussion.
And now, back to my factories - gotta make another production run of 500 unsellable, useless grenades before lunch.
What!? Leaving!? Nooooo! We need you! You know what you're talking about and do research to back it up!!
I guess I can't talk, though. I got to the start of the 40k combat xp trail and suddenly replaying some old Playstation games didn't sound too bad. And with no quests to help that big grind of medicine go down.... Yeah, I think its time to see Cloud ruin the world and try to blame it on Sepheroth again. Hopefully the Commando will be sane by the time that's done.
Oh, one point from back in the thread....
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.
Well, I bet one of those is the Politician. That, along with player cities, was supposed to roll out with release. They had to disable the class because there were no player cities for them to rule. I bet most of the work was done on them already, so its not like they are ignoring the Commando class to spend days working on this class.
I've got another concern, what is going to happen once our weapons are fixed? Will the ones we have automatically be updated? Or are we going to have to buy new ones? Money for me isn't a problem, but I have no intention of running accross planet for another 2 weeks looking for the heavy weapon I should have had in the first place.
btw, as a heavy swordsman i'm doing upward of 1500 damage, easy, this is the kind of damage I expected from heavy weapons. If commando isn't fixed soon, or not fixed to what our first notions of it was, then whats the point? I can do much more damage, much more quickly with a sword anyway. And we always end up getting surrounded at close range with our crappy hvy weapons anyway.
You know, I hear they have pretty good heavy weapons in Planetside, and i'm seriously considering moving my buisness there. I WILL NOT PAY 15 BUCKS A MONTH TO TEST A BETA.
This is the way to go. I applaud the correspondent's efforts in this.
I had always aspired to have two lines in Commando in my end template (however, given the current state I am now mastering pistoleer in the mean time); and such an action like this should give the developers more incentive to get the Commando class in working condition.
I don't know many correspondents who would actually give up their elite position to make a statement for the developers, and that alone is worthy of praise.
It's been at least a month and yet the simplest things for our class have yet to be done.
Patience is a virtue, but **edit**.
Garibaldi_di_Alia wrote:
"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 Here Garibaldi
If they cant even bother listening to our correspondent that THEY appointed, why would they ever listen to one of us. Only way I can see them listening is drastic measures such as Garibaldi leaving SWG (I would hate to see that happen but im considering it myself) and NOBODY else accepts this token position no matter how much they offer it to anyone else. Garibaldi has writen very well thought out responses about commandos and proposed fixes and included many of our thoughts and concerns, however they have **edit** near ignored everything he has told them and basically told him "this is how it is and suppose to be, now deal with it and make the commandos happy". Its not Garibaldi's job to make us happy and force us to accept what they claim what a commando is. WE pay their salaries and we accepted certain things out of the commando profession and for that matter SWG in general and have yet to see the quality in which they promised through false advertisements and bait and switch tactics.
Garibaldi if you do leave man, I will not be far behind. If they force a good correspondent like him out of the game through complete lack of cooperation and communication, why would anyone else fair any better, and then why would I want to put money in the pockets of those who did it?
If Garibaldi's posts are continued to be ignored and he leaves SWG, I really do think we need to consider some action against SOE. Best way to fight back is fill the inboxs of all the gaming review sites and companies with our negative feedback of the game and specifically the broken class of commando and how our correspondent, who they appointed in the first place, was completly ignored.
A month and a half into the game and very little has improved since day 1. Which is starting to make me worry. Is what we are playing now SOE's finished SWG product? If it is, I see alot of people jumping ship and making the last scene of Titanic look pathetic in comparison.
Garibaldi, you've done great work on behalf of your commando brothers and sisters, and for that you get our thanks. SOE has tried to take ideas from other MMORPG games, including their correspondant ideas, and have completely dropped the ball on every single attempt. This time around they have proven their complete ineptitude, and have forced great players like Garibaldi to consider leaving the game in it's infancy. That exit door is going to be getting awefully crowded here soon....
Good post Garibaldi.
I'll give the game itself another 2 months since I paid for 3 at the outset. Might as well attempt to get my money's worth.
If they're not going to fix the profession in a timely manner (which i doubt since they've moved onto 2 new ones) I'd like the option to get my 40,000 combat XP back so I can join the hordes of bounty hunters... at least then I'd be a viable group member. Right now all i do is lag people's computers with my light show.