Commando Archive
Thread: What's up Commandos...
To add my 2cr:
Our DPS is roughly the same as other classes, and the only real "advantage" is that our weapons have inherent state effects and AOE. However, these two abilities are of, IMHO, of limited utility.
First, with State Effects, they have an EXTREMELY low chance of sticking (less than 20% by some accounts). Other classes have specials that stick state effects 90%+ of the time. Other classes do states better and more reliably than commando, so this is more of a disadvantage than an advantage. Additionally, the fact that each commando weapon has a different state effect leads to a weapon switching NIGHTMARE. Other classes can stick several different effects just by using different special moves (all with ONE weapon). We have to actually switch weapons several times to accomplish this. Pair that with the fact that many state effects have a very low % of sticking, and you get a coordination nightmare because (1) you have to watch carefully for the state to stick, (2) then quickly switch weapons, rinse, and repeat, and (3) by the time you get the 2nd effect has actually stuck, the first has expired. No other class has to go through such hassle (as their state effects stick 90+% of the time and their state specials now work with every weapon).
I think all commando weapons should be split into 2 classes:
(a) General Heavy Weapons - Have ONE group of effects for ALL heavy weapons that I will call "Blast Radius" for the purposes of this thread. Every mob that is hit (i.e. damaged) by a commando heavy weapon is within the "Blast Radius" and has a 25% chance of being blinded, stunned, dizzyed, knocked down, fired, armor breaked, etc. (a separate 25% dice roll for each one). None of the effects may stick, some may stick, all might even stick (highly unlikely, but possible). No matter what weapon a commando uses, there is a chance that multiple, or no, effects will be applied.
This would allow commando to use ONE weapon per encounter (likely chosen by damage type and/or DPS) but have the opportunity to apply several state effects through multiple shots on the mob. After 4-5 shots, chances are the mob will be effected by multiple states. This is the same effect as the current system WITHOUT all the annoying weapon switching.
(b) Grenades - Should be modified to have a 90% - 95% chance of causing ONE (and only one) state effect. This would be the commando's option when they want to be sure a certain effect gets applied. Gives grenades an actual purpose, without pure redundancy with other weapons. (NOTE: the delay on these suckers also need to be cut in half).
Message Edited by Daker-Naritus on 09-30-2005 06:25 PM
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...
1) Go play Republic Commando. Make us more like those guys. Now those are commandos; they kick ass, they blow crap up, they raise hell, and they serve an actual purpose. Currently, our only purpose is to be the Court Jester of all combat classes.
2) For the love of God, please listen to our correspondents more. That's a huge issue; you guys ignore us. We've been trying to get you guys to address commando for years now, and we kept getting told "wait for the combat upgrade." We did, it came, it went, and we're still broken, and you guys are just now coming back and noticing that we're not happy?
3) Change or justify our profession pre-reqs. UA4 currently serves no purpose whatsoever other than to be a skillpoint sink, and why do we need a skillpoint sink? It's not like we're on par with any other hybrid profession like BH, or even close. Hell, I'd be happy to go back to having Master Marksman as a pre-req if you guys power up this profession enough to justify spending that many skill points just to get novice.
Finally, to note, the commando profession should never be considered a "tool box" for other professions to make themselves more powerful. If real commandos worked like that, wouldn't more people march down to the nearest boot camp, do the special training that comes with being a true commando, and then leave, all without ever really joining the Army? Commando is a profession, not a toolbox.
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...
3 things.... my ones would be..
Message Edited by SirCoolDog on 09-30-2005 07:31 PM
I dumped Commando shortly after CU started.
1. Grenades, grenades, grenades. These should be on a 30 sec timer max at masterwith powerups helping out to reduce the time to throw again to max 20 secs. 3 or 4 grenades in a minuteshouldnot beout of the question when weapons fire 30+ times a minute. And they should reflect the damage any ranged/melee class can do in the same time frame.They need an increase in damage and a better chance to stick the special attack (IE stun). Actually, there should be a roll for aggroing the tosser. At least that wayMOB groupswon't completely aggro and either kill you or KD you. I meanif you throw a grenade it shouldn't mean you take all aggro from all MOB's. I know there should be some tactics, but tell me this. If someone throws a grenade in real life combat, how would they aggro everything with all the other stuff going on? Maybe it should be an aggroroll by proximity of the tosser? Like within 5 meters a guaranteed aggro, 10meters a 33% aggro, 20 meters a 50% aggro and 30 meters no aggro. That would be awesome!
PS Make grenades equally special when experimenting on them. Make it so the grenades are viable depending on the situation like current weapons are. Make it so you need speed for some instances, damage for others, and SAC for others. Likewise make the powerups do the same. Also, have special attacks that are for grenade use only that actually make grenades worthwhile. Like a superior ranged toss that makes it so you won't draw aggro, but takes a minute to cool down.And make lootable components that increasethe damage, range, and accuracy(if accuracy will ever actually work!) or another cool component.
Grenades can make a very fun difference in the game. If you make it so!!!!!!!!!
2. Make and advanced version of the Launcher pistol. I mean really!
3. Increase damage of weapons overall and reduce SAC. I mean you should be able to nail 82 SAC for Commando weapons. Commandos should be more effective than a rifleman strictly due to the variety of weapons we use. For instance I could see a trade off for SAC if the Commandos weapons were better for greater distances. Like a Commando pistol hits at 50 m but has a higher SAC. That would be a decent trade off. They should have a decent first strike inclusive of distance with cybernetics too.
Basically, Commando should be a jack of all trades and one that can do damage and some cool attacks that will make them viable as a class and extremely valuable to a group.
I dumped Commando shortly after CU started.
1. Grenades, grenades, grenades. These should be on a 30 sec timer max at masterwith powerups helping out to reduce the time to throw again to max 20 secs. 3 or 4 grenades in a minuteshouldnot beout of the question when weapons fire 30+ times a minute. And they should reflect the damage any ranged/melee class can do in the same time frame.They need an increase in damage and a better chance to stick the special attack (IE stun). Actually, there should be a roll for aggroing the tosser. At least that wayMOB groupswon't completely aggro and either kill you or KD you. I meanif you throw a grenade it shouldn't mean you take all aggro from all MOB's. I know there should be some tactics, but tell me this. If someone throws a grenade in real life combat, how would they aggro everything with all the other stuff going on? Maybe it should be an aggroroll by proximity of the tosser? Like within 5 meters a guaranteed aggro, 10meters a 33% aggro, 20 meters a 50% aggro and 30 meters no aggro. That would be awesome!
PS Make grenades equally special when experimenting on them. Make it so the grenades are viable depending on the situation like current weapons are. Make it so you need speed for some instances, damage for others, and SAC for others. Likewise make the powerups do the same. Also, have special attacks that are for grenade use only that actually make grenades worthwhile. Like a superior ranged toss that makes it so you won't draw aggro, but takes a minute to cool down.And make lootable components that increasethe damage, range, and accuracy(if accuracy will ever actually work!) or another cool component.
Grenades can make a very fun difference in the game. If you make it so!!!!!!!!!
2. Make and advanced version of the Launcher pistol. I mean really!
3. Increase damage of weapons overall and reduce SAC. I mean you should be able to nail 82 SAC for Commando weapons. Commandos should be more effective than a rifleman strictly due to the variety of weapons we use. For instance I could see a trade off for SAC if the Commandos weapons were better for greater distances. Like a Commando pistol hits at 50 m but has a higher SAC. That would be a decent trade off. They should have a decent first strike inclusive of distance with cybernetics too.
Basically, Commando should be a jack of all trades and one that can do damage and some cool attacks that will make them viable as a class and extremely valuable to a group.
Ryubushi wrote:
1) Go play Republic Commando. Make us more like those guys. Now those are commandos; they kick ass, they blow crap up, they raise hell, and they serve an actual purpose. Currently, our only purpose is to be the Court Jester of all combat classes.
QFE. Republic Commando sets the perfect image of a commando. The perfect mixture of stealth and deadliness. They have melee and ranged attacks. Maybe as specials, we have a consumable called "Anti-Armor Addon", which is used everytime you use the special, making the attack unable to be resisted. Sniper addon. 1 attack bonus to range (20-30m) and bonus to accuracy. I would find those two things to be great to have. Republic Commando shows what we should be, and since I have played it, I have not been able to play SWG for more then 1 hour without being thoroughly disguisted. I hope a fix will come...
My three would have to be...
1.) A fix to our AoE to ensure it doesn't stop working shortly after a server reset. ( resulting in elemental +1 dmg ) And perhaps a easier to understand system for how it effects different kinds of weapons, something like radius weapons = 100% area damage like the Lightning beam cannon, cone weapons = 50% area damage like the flamethrower.
2.) A master level kinetic weapon, commandos should always havethe answer when it comes to hitting something hard, as a result should be able to access every damage type in a primary type weapon. A level 54 launcher pistol with a sac cap of 65, and damage cap similar to the FWG5 with a small elemental bonus and 6m radius would realy hit the spot... preferably this would also have a 45m range
3.) Much larger stacks of grenades, and fix the enhancment slots on imperial detonators, thermal detonators and proton grenades so they will accpet Acklay Venom, this would realy revitalize grenades and fix an issue where enhanced lvl22 grenades by far outdamage lvl54's on a regular basis. ( the dot effect on thermal detonators and proton grenades could be higher also. )
-Smo'ki
Message Edited by tacwraith on 09-30-2005 11:14 PM
1. Fix AoE. And if it isn't going to be 100% area damage to all targets, main and splash, give us an explanation why not. An alternative to this would be to rethink the current focus of Commando, because we really don't match the 5-star offense focus from the pre-CU docs. At this point, the best utilization of Commando is arguably stacking commando AoE weapons with crowd-control skills of Smuggler or Pistoleer, which makes commando a good CC prof rather than a nuker. Some time should be spent thinking about exactly what the direction of Commando should be before anything gets done.
2. Commando currently cannot "stand alone" like other ranged professions. I don't necessarily think this is a terrible thing, SL (even new-flavor SL) and proposed-revamp ranger are similar "must be stacked/supported by something else" sorts of professions. However, if we stay like this, we need our weapons and skills to serve a good purpose and ideally have a content-driven role. Using our AoE weapons to apply area root when stacked with pistoleer is a good example of something that currently works, but again that is somewhat counter to our originally intended focus (in my opinion, anyhow).
3. Fix and improve grenades. Grenades could be a good way to add something that makes Commando stand out. The state-type grenades (Imp Det for KD, Cryoban for snare, Glop for blind) should be very effective at inflicting their intended states, and they should be high-power and long lasting -- currently the states wear off way to fast. The damage oriented grenades (especially proton and thermal with fire DOT) should pack a pretty intense wallop, comparable to slighly less than rifleman sniper shot but with the AoE blast radius. I also think that the timer needs to be tweaked. I think there should be a medium to short-length warmup timer (2-4 seconds) and a cooldown timer that affects grenade throwing ONLY of 10-20 seconds.
Finally, the fact that we've been asking, begging, and complaining about the broken AoE for... well, ever since the CU went live and your post here shows that you didn't even know about it is discouraging, disappointing, and quite frankly pretty infuriating. I have personally submitted in-game /bug reports on it several times. So, here's a big NUMBER ONE thing to do that would benefit all professions:
Please, please, please utilize the correspondent system you set up, the test center server you set up, and the bug reporting system that you set up. I realize that filtering through thousands of user posts to find problems and information would be a near-impossible job, but the correspondents that I know of seem to do an excellent job of finding the concerns of a profession, compiling them and forming a clear, concise, and direct list of concerns, and submitting it to devs with the slim hope that maybe they will be noticed. In other words, they perform a tough, thankless job that SOE could easily be paying a Customer Service / Customer Relations team to be doing, for free. The least you can do to thank them is read the information they give you!
And sorry if it seems like I'm flaming or just stirring the pot, but I really intend for this to be constructive criticism.
---Edit for spelling correction---
Message Edited by LecheHombre on 09-30-2005 10:17 PM
Helios_SOE wrote:
TheTemplar2 wrote:
1) Better (Full?) AoE damage from weapons (currently it is elemental + 1).
Can someone give me a detailed explanation of this issue along with an example?
Don't you have some kind of a bug-collecting team who should be relating this stuff to you? It's described in pretty much all of the bug/issue threads since the CURB.
What's happening with the "official" feedback channels and why do regular forum posters once again have to "work" with a single dev when there's an entire Correspondent team and dozens of very detailed feedback/wishlist/bug threads?