Commando Archive
Thread: First response to the Week 1 Report.
Manufacturing in this game is a grind unto itself. We're combat goons. We blow stuff to shreds, or want to, in spectacular ways. To most, crafting would be mindnumbingly boring.
If you want to tinker with grenades, take Weaponsmith as a side profession.
Commandos are supposed to be good at taking out the big stuff from what I understand. How can you possibly take out the big stuff when you are forced to use special moves that are very HAM costly? Most of the big stuff can kill you in about 2 hits anyway, make that definitely one if you use your special twice. Basically, expensive specials just cause you to eat your own life away as fast as your mob opponent (granted you deal more damage to the opponent than to yourself, but he's got 10x the HAM ... or more in the case of AT-ATs and AT-STs)
The reason you see grenades on the bazaar for that cheap, is prolly for 2 reasons..
1) grenades drop as loot. SO a looted stack of grenades is only worth about 100 crs or so, so thats good for us, but its a limited supply item.
2) people grinding, make 100's of stacks of grenades, and after they realise they cannot sell them for what they cost, they just try to get rid of them as fast as possible.
When you see the schematic for Thermal Detonates or Proton Grenades.. they cost a few thousands of credits just to craft, not to mention 0 profit for a stack of 5. So to stay in a steady supply of good quality crafted items, you better have a super close buddy to make em for ya, or you'll have to go into the mining profession to collect your own resources to offsit the price tag. They will be expensive.
I have a flamethrower with 277 damage and an Acid Rifle with a huge 173 damage. Now explain to me exactly how these high damage, rare resource requiring weapons do insane amounts of damage? I person using a 120+ damage scout blaster can out damage me, a person with a laser rifle can out damage me, a person with a laser carbine can out damage me. This class is so **edit** gimped it's not even funny. I am 75k from flame 2 but what's the point? so I can do 100 damage area of effect to creatures and have a 12-15 second down time while the mobs beat the crap out of me?
These weapons are secondary so the devs say. Exactly how are they secondary? I kreetle will aggro me before I am even in range to use a special. I am seriously getting to the point of dropping this gimped class for something I can use to actually kill mobs. The damage output is to **edit** sporadic, I hit anywhere from 42 to 800+ damage, I mean 42? come on!! Go try it on TC they say, what are tehy going to actually instantly make me a commando? I am not spending a month grinding XP to make commando on a server that has player wipes and to basically be a paying beta tester.
I appreciate the hard work garibaldi, I'm sure we all do.
My main beef with the dev is we are only a special case weapon, **edit** is that. Im only good in certain situations, and i suck the rest on the time, im only a part time player. pfft, if thats the case why the hell be a commando.
Sizzle
Corbantis
Whats worse is the comment that was made about these are secondary weapons really means that we are worse then a secondary class. There are rare uses in the devs eyes for any of the heavy weapons and thats all we get... This is just not right. To spend this many points on a combat class we better have a primary means of doing at least as much if not more damage then any other advanced weapon profession with something on a regular basis.
A master pistoleer spends a lot less points then a master comando does. But yet pretty much in every case the master pistoleer does more damage. Oh and i don't think the specials are going to change much cause in PVP if we can one shot anyone with our specials even if we nearly kill ourselves in the process its going to get nerfed. At this point even with this response it appears as if commandos are useless eye candy.
I'm sticking with commando but this response from the dev team that occording to Q on the radio chat last night was suppose to make us happy seems to make us sick instead.
Just throwing my 2 credits worth into the fray...
1. I would be VERY happy to have the weapon certs work
2. Seeing how this is the 2nd time they have taken away something from usand what do we get in return? Nothing? Should we not be given something else as a compermise? I just paid over 20K in skill enhancers to make gernades too LOL 
3. Weapons are powerful and should be rare? So I should have to spend over 100K for a weapon that does less DPS then a FWG5? (My FWG5 does 174 damage at 1.9 speed for 8K, I sliced the damage) Now if my heavy weapon does 300 damage every 6 seconds... it's almost half the FWG5. So my opinion is that the dev has some sick logic or I missed something.
4. If a weapon should be rare... that means that the main resource should not be anywhere in the known galaxy? (Radiant)
5. Dont get me wrong, I am most pleased to hear that they are at least looking into commandos and even starting to test stuff on the TC, this is great news to me.
6. "We do want these weapons to be more rare than other weapons because they are more powerful"and my response to this statment from the Dev... ROFLMAO! 
It becomes so very clear that the Devs have never even used on of the heavy weapons before...
7. Last but not least, Thank you Garibaldi
Ok, just my opinions and view but looking on the bright side at least they have taken a step towards helping us
DEV: The default attack of these weapons are not impressive. These weapons
shine with special moves. The Update on Test Center increases the power of
special moves. With greater power comes the need for balance (hence
requiring special moves for the good stuff)
Does this mean that were going to still hit for 35 with a default attack?
That's totally unacceptable.
Customer service, and indeed customer satisfaction, is about managing expectation. If the developers' vision for the Commando is a resource-gated, infrequent-weapon-using seconday class, they should have said that up front. No one would have bothered making one, and the Commando would be where it is now - broken, unplayed, and well within the vision of the designers. But at least we wouldn't be sitting here waiting (futilly) for some semblance of repair so we can actually play the characters that we've primed for this profession.
I'd like to know why the developers are making game design choices. Coders are not game designers. It's a conflict of interest to entrust the balance and function of a game (and the decisions that go with it) to the people who have to do the actual work. Of course they are reluctant to accept problems - it requires them to do stuff. There needs to be an additional layer of analysis, definition and design on top of their development team that actually gives half-a-hoot about gameplay design. Near as I can tell, this layer does not exist (or has no power to make changes). What a crappy development shop...
I'd also like to know if anyone who works at SOE actually plays the game. I challenge someone in "development" to log into Tarquinas, make a Commando, reach Novice, then find a way to advance in any tree but Field Tactics (hardly worth it anyway). Then, call me on the phone and make the argument that the class works in any reasonable manner.
I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. *rubs eyes*
Ugh this pisses me off, not so much because of the game, but because of the principle. I can't imagine you people getting paid for this level of apathy and naiveté.
(On top of all of this, my two tickets got deleted, without response.)
If im my flamethrower is going to be a secondairy weapon im so dropping this class. whats the point of paying 15k for a weapon (starsider) that gets outdamaged by a scoutblaster
Hell 4 kreetles almost killed me with my flamethrower out cause i hit like 4 for 35 damage
i want the base bottom damage to be at least 150-200 and the high damage to be from 300-400
and the charges for the heavy weapons are just plain gay IMO im not going to pay 20k (starsider again) for an acid stream launcher that has 100 shots in it
Garibaldi, please gleen all the senitiments in this thread, the actual way Commando's work, the excessive HAM costs, what Commando's SHOULD be, and roll it all together in a second reply and hit them squarely between the eyes.
It's absurd that throw-away weapons that do less that 2000 points damage are so expensive.
It's absurd that grenades, another throw away, are so complex to craft, and so horrid on damage dealt.
It's absurd that Commando's don't do the absolute highest damage in the game, bar none. What the heck is a heavy weapon if it doesn't do heavy damage?
It's absurd that we MUST use specials to get even DECENT damage from weapons that spew fire and acid.
It's absurd for them to ask us to test Commando's on Test Center ... /boggle
It's absurd that the resource requirements to make heavy weapons are so rare as to be NON-EXISTENT on some servers.
It's absurd that I can easily kill something faster with my FWG5 pistol doing body shots or my Laser Rifle doing head shots, and suffer far LESS HAM costs.
They need to quit thinking in terms of making Commandos LIKE other professions, and realize the vision for a Commando is SLOW FIRE RATES doing GROTESQUELY MASSIVE DAMAGE.
Lodacai
To tell you the truth I am very disappointed with the responses from the dev's. They did not address a single issue that was brought up in the first week's report, just skirted the issues.
1. For the lack of damage we do: The dev's response was that the improved specials will fix that. How? What good is a special if you couldn't hit anything with it? Its just flat out embarrising to hit on average 30% of the time with a weapon only you are certified to use. What makes this worse is that there are no real bonuses at novice. +10 accuracy on grenades, HAR and the flamer? That is an insult since we are basically starting from scratch.
2. Our weapons are rare... fine. But rare doesn't mean non-existant due to lack of resources.
Garibaldi you really need to push the 0 range and weapons accuracy issue. I mean push like you never pushed before. I dueled another Commando friend of mine last night, he used his flamer and I used my fwg5 pistol. I gave him 5 freebee shots before I started fighting. Not once did he hit me. I put 3 bodyshot 2's into him and guess what. I won. He hit me once.... once! For somthing like 160 to 180 damage. In my opinion the weapons issues are the biggest thing and they need to be pushed and pushed hard to get fixed. As it stands now commando is a waste of time, which is a shame because this class has so much potential.