Commando Archive

Well, this is really the fastest turnaround on questions that I've ever gotten, so here's what I had in my mail box when I got home.

Responses below (DEV2). I hope this helps.

~Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara
Community Relations Manager
Star Wars Galaxies
Sony Online Entertainment



-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 6:13 AM
To: SWG, Correspondent
Subject: Re: RE: Commando


Responses to the Dev's replies.
>
>
> Week 1, Dated 7/24/03
>
> Seems, by me having ISP woes, I'm a day late, as some other correspondent
> sent info in for the Commando. But, I sending this anyhow. Please let me
> know if you need to see any of this ingame, as it would be quite easy to
> demonstrate some of the problems.
>
> 1.) Weapon Cert for Heavy Acid Rifle and Beam Rifle. Currently, whenever
you
> try to use one of these 2 weapons you get the message saying that you are
> not qualified to use this weapon, and the end result is 10 to 14pts of
> damage per hit.
>
> DEV: This should be fixed on Test Center currently.
RESPONSE: This is good news, will people have to aquire new weapons or will
the existing ones be functional?
DEV2: Existing
>
> 2.) Poor stats on the Heavy weapons, basically the 0 ideal range, the
> severely unbalanced range mods, and apparent lack of accuracy of the
weapons
> in general. This is for the Flame Thrower and HAR (Heavy acid Rifle), dpm
in
> the range of 1200 which considering that you cannot use marksmen skills
with
> the heavy weapon, you just point and shot, and wait for the mob to die
with
> no real tactics, these weapons should be in the 1800 to 2200 dpm,
otherwise
> there isn't really anything "heavy" about them.
>
> 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).
Response: You do realize that the special moves take a 10 to 12 sec
recovery? If I miss with my all powerful special move (which I do more
often than not) I'm basically dead, or going to get 0 exp in group due to
the group exp split being based solely on damage.
DEV2: Because these moves are very powerful, and have slow recycle times, we
will investigate the miss/hit ratios. If they're still too high we will make
these commands easier to use.

>
> 3.) Insane delay time to recover from the special attacks. With Flame 1, I
> have clocked 12 to 15 sec delay to recover from using this special.
> Considering the affect is not nearly as good as healthshot2, this seems to
> be a huge penalty to use one of four commando specials. In comparison,
> Healthshot2, hits the target for 400pts, no damage initially, but ever 15
> secs or so, the target takes 400pts of health damage, over an approximate
> 1.5 min time frame. The recovery time to fire the next shot, is a sec or
two
> more than the fire rate of the pistol. Where as with the flame1, it does
say
> 300pt of fire damage initially, then does 150, the does 75 then does 35,
and
> the stops, all this in about 60 secs, However it takes, a full 13 or more
> secs to recover and be able to execute any commands or return fire.
>
> DEV: We're investigating this. With increased damage of special moves (see
> above), the delay should be appropriate. Try it on Test Center and if is
> isn't, we will tweak them.
Response: How can I check this on the TC? Do I not have to create a new toon
to play on test center? Unless I can just jump on the TC with my currect
toon, there is no way I can test this without a month of grinding and
powerlevel.. which btw is very boring.
DEV2: Good suggestion. I've taken it to the Producers to get their thoughts
on doing something like this.

>
> 4.) The extreme difficulty in getting resources for the weapons which
> totally gates the profession. Not only do commandos have to wait for a
> master weaponsmith, they have to wait for a whole gambit of rare
resources,
> that have not spawned once, or they have only been present for one day in
> the beginning of release. Seems this is abit harsh considering the 2
primary
> heavy weapons (HAR and Flame Thrower) are the only thing we can use to
gain
> HW exp and this appears to be true on all servers. What most would like
to
> see, is a few of the specific items required be changed to a general item,
> for example, instead of Class 3 Liquid Fuel for the flame thrower, it
> should be simply Liquid Fuel. The weapons shouldn't require more than one
> or 2 specific items to craft, much like the other firearms in the game.
>
> DEV: We do want these weapons to be more rare than other weapons because
> they are more powerful, but we'll look into this more. On Test Center,
we've
> made some changes to the Launcher Pistol that should help Commandos adance
> in heavy weapons.
>RESPONSE: Problem is, people do not view Commando as a part time
profession. They feel gated that the weapons are not available the vast
majority of the time. If the Launcher Pistol is being "fixed" will it still
be able to use pistol moves/skills?
DEV2: Yes they will.. launcher pistol will use all pistol special
moves/mods, but grant heavy weapons xp.


> 5.) General components that we craft are in the wrong line, and basically
do
> nothing to improve the actual grenades. The grenade certs are in the acid
> skill line, and they are only used on grenades. Plus I've had a
weaponsmith
> craft me 10 cryobans with compositions, and 10 without, and there are no
> differences, even though I used high quality parts, that gave a 15 to 20%
> experimentation on the composition. Commandos being combat classes get
very
> little experiment pts to make these, if they require 50%+ on
> experimentation, its never going to happen.
>
> DEV: Commandos should not be crafting anymore. Beta testers did not like
> that commandos were crafters so we moved the grenades to the weaponsmith.
> The remenants of that system should be cleaned up on Test Center.
Response: Ok.

> Only pet peeve I have, is that when I use my flame thrower, things con
less
> than when I use my Launcher Pistol (which gives pistol xp btw), but I
cannot
> kill anything with the thrower at the same efficiency as I can with my
> knucklers or my pistol. I miss my target 50 to 70% of the time with the
> thrower, and the damage is sporadic, so I have deal 50% more damage to
kill
> something, for example, a mob with 1000 health requires on average 1500
pts
> of damage to kill. At 1100 dpm (ave), it takes over a min to kill
> something. Same mob with a knuckler can be killed in 10 secs, in 4 blows
or
> less. If the HW cannot target HAM then they need to have far better dpm to
> be on par with other contemporary classes.
>
> DEV: Try it with the improved special moves. Remember these are your
special
> case weapons; they are not intended to be your primary in all
circumstances.
Response: What should be my primary in most cases? The rarity of the
weapons, combined with the insane decay rates, makes it very difficult to
get heavy weapon exp. At the moment, we are basically forced to solo to get
decent gain. With group exp being based on damage, (regardless of what
Holocron states, it is..) the poor performance of the weapons plus the
specials not being what they are on the TC and the fact that the delay is
death or wasted time when you miss more than 75% of the time, the class is
very much gated it feels. Many people are going to ask me, why can they not
hotfix the specials and weapon certs? When will we get the fixes? And, how
can I gain exp while I cannot buy the weapon? I know many people who have
been commando novice for over 3 weeks, and have had 0 HW exp in that time.
DEV2: The launcher pistol, the fixed certs and the drastically improved
special moves should help. We might need to investigate how the flame damage
works related to xp as well. Additionally the acid rifle might need to be
sped up as it does not apply a dot effect.

Let me clean this up a bit, my mail services adds a bunch of garbage.. In my excitement I forget to do some editting for readability.

Responses below (DEV2). I hope this helps.

~Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara
Community Relations Manager
Star Wars Galaxies
Sony Online Entertainment





Week 1, Dated 7/24/03


1.) Weapon Cert for Heavy Acid Rifle and Beam Rifle. Currently, whenever
youtry to use one of these 2 weapons you get the message saying that you are
not qualified to use this weapon, and the end result is 10 to 14pts of damage per hit.

DEV: This should be fixed on Test Center currently.
RESPONSE: This is good news, will people have to aquire new weapons or will
the existing ones be functional?
DEV2: Existing

2.) Poor stats on the Heavy weapons, basically the 0 ideal range, the
severely unbalanced range mods, and apparent lack of accuracy of the weapons
in general. This is for the Flame Thrower and HAR (Heavy acid Rifle), dpm in
the range of 1200 which considering that you cannot use marksmen skills
with the heavy weapon, you just point and shot, and wait for the mob to die
with no real tactics, these weapons should be in the 1800 to 2200 dpm,
otherwise there isn't really anything "heavy" about them.

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).
Response: You do realize that the special moves take a 10 to 12 sec
recovery? If I miss with my all powerful special move (which I do more
often than not) I'm basically dead, or going to get 0 exp in group due to
the group exp split being based solely on damage.
DEV2: Because these moves are very powerful, and have slow recycle times, we
will investigate the miss/hit ratios. If they're still too high we will make
these commands easier to use.


3.) Insane delay time to recover from the special attacks. With Flame 1, I
have clocked 12 to 15 sec delay to recover from using this special.
Considering the affect is not nearly as good as healthshot2, this seems to
be a huge penalty to use one of four commando specials. In comparison,
Healthshot2, hits the target for 400pts, no damage initially, but ever 15
secs or so, the target takes 400pts of health damage, over an approximate
1.5 min time frame. The recovery time to fire the next shot, is a sec or two
more than the fire rate of the pistol. Where as with the flame1, it does
say 300pt of fire damage initially, then does 150, the does 75 then does 35,
and the stops, all this in about 60 secs, However it takes, a full 13 or more
secs to recover and be able to execute any commands or return fire.

DEV: We're investigating this. With increased damage of special moves (see
above), the delay should be appropriate. Try it on Test Center and if isisn't, we will tweak them.
Response: How can I check this on the TC? Do I not have to create a new toon
to play on test center? Unless I can just jump on the TC with my currect
toon, there is no way I can test this without a month of grinding and
powerlevel.. which btw is very boring.
DEV2: Good suggestion. I've taken it to the Producers to get their thoughts
on doing something like this.

4.) The extreme difficulty in getting resources for the weapons which
totally gates the profession. Not only do commandos have to wait for a
master weaponsmith, they have to wait for a whole gambit of rare resources,
that have not spawned once, or they have only been present for one day in
the beginning of release. Seems this is abit harsh considering the 2
primaryheavy weapons (HAR and Flame Thrower) are the only thing we can use to
gain HW exp and this appears to be true on all servers. What most would like
to see, is a few of the specific items required be changed to a general item,
for example, instead of Class 3 Liquid Fuel for the flame thrower, it
should be simply Liquid Fuel. The weapons shouldn't require more than one
or 2 specific items to craft, much like the other firearms in the game.

DEV: We do want these weapons to be more rare than other weapons because
they are more powerful, but we'll look into this more. On Test Center,
we've made some changes to the Launcher Pistol that should help Commandos adance
in heavy weapons.
RESPONSE: Problem is, people do not view Commando as a part time
profession. They feel gated that the weapons are not available the vast
majority of the time. If the Launcher Pistol is being "fixed" will it still
be able to use pistol moves/skills?
DEV2: Yes they will.. launcher pistol will use all pistol special
moves/mods, but grant heavy weapons xp.


5.) General components that we craft are in the wrong line, and basically
donothing to improve the actual grenades. The grenade certs are in the acid
skill line, and they are only used on grenades. Plus I've had a weaponsmith
craft me 10 cryobans with compositions, and 10 without, and there are no
differences, even though I used high quality parts, that gave a 15 to 20%
experimentation on the composition. Commandos being combat classes get
very little experiment pts to make these, if they require 50%+ on
experimentation, its never going to happen.

DEV: Commandos should not be crafting anymore. Beta testers did not like
that commandos were crafters so we moved the grenades to the weaponsmith.
The remenants of that system should be cleaned up on Test Center.
Response: Ok.

Only pet peeve I have, is that when I use my flame thrower, things con
less than when I use my Launcher Pistol (which gives pistol xp btw), but I
cannot kill anything with the thrower at the same efficiency as I can with my
knucklers or my pistol. I miss my target 50 to 70% of the time with the
thrower, and the damage is sporadic, so I have deal 50% more damage to
kill something, for example, a mob with 1000 health requires on average 1500
pts of damage to kill. At 1100 dpm (ave), it takes over a min to kill
something. Same mob with a knuckler can be killed in 10 secs, in 4 blows
or less. If the HW cannot target HAM then they need to have far better dpm to
be on par with other contemporary classes.

DEV: Try it with the improved special moves. Remember these are your
specialcase weapons; they are not intended to be your primary in all
circumstances.
Response: What should be my primary in most cases? The rarity of the
weapons, combined with the insane decay rates, makes it very difficult to
get heavy weapon exp. At the moment, we are basically forced to solo to get
decent gain. With group exp being based on damage, (regardless of what
Holocron states, it is..) the poor performance of the weapons plus the
specials not being what they are on the TC and the fact that the delay is
death or wasted time when you miss more than 75% of the time, the class is
very much gated it feels. Many people are going to ask me, why can they not
hotfix the specials and weapon certs? When will we get the fixes? And, how
can I gain exp while I cannot buy the weapon? I know many people who have
been commando novice for over 3 weeks, and have had 0 HW exp in that time.
DEV2: The launcher pistol, the fixed certs and the drastically improved
special moves should help. We might need to investigate how the flame damage
works related to xp as well. Additionally the acid rifle might need to be
sped up as it does not apply a dot effect.

So, as I read this, I take it the Launcher Pistol is to be our primary, it will give hw exp, and use pistol moves.

The Flame Thrower is the only DOT, and the HAR looks like their going to speed it up to improve its dpm cause it's specials are not DOTs

This actually makes me happy.

Also the part about be able to transfer your main to the TC to test the weapons, seems like a possible idea. Truely its the only real way to test the adv classes, if you want immediate results.

Now that I've had a chance to fix my chair, I've penned a repsonse and sent it to SOE. This is what I said, the numbers refer to the items 1 thru 5.

All fine and good if were supposed to be using Launcher Pistol and it will give HW XP then but...

DEV On Crafting: Commandos should not be crafting anymore. Beta testers did not like
that commandos were crafters so we moved the grenades to the weaponsmith.
The remenants of that system should be cleaned up on Test Center.

Hooray for the beta testers. Since crafting didnt actually effect our advancement and just supplied us with something to throw. Just because those select few who got into beta and decided to play commando and decided they didnt like crafting anyway DOESNT MEAN THAT THE LIVE PLAY COMMANDOS DON'T WANT TO CRAFT THEIR OWN GRENADES. READ THESE FORUMS AND YOU CAN TELL THAT WE DO WANT TO CRAFT OUR OWN GRENADES

I mean seriously. Comparatively speaking beta commandos are a Minority and theMajorityLive Playcommandos. I dont even mind if they are just "modifiers" to grenades like Stocks, Scopes, Barrels, Grips, or Muzzles.

Garibaldi

Can you ask them about the huge explosions on the Launcher pistol? It's a very group unfriendly weapon, especially now that they are saying we should be using this weapon most of the time.

And can you ask if since the Launcher pistol is going to use Pistol specials if the Acid Rifle is also going to use rifle specials also?

I suppose now all we have to do is sit back and wait for this stuff to go live to do some DPS reports...

Not really much to argue about on these forums anymore as we all generally agree and have came up with good solutions. These soon to be fixes eased alot of that pain I suppose... I just hope the Launcher Pistol gives good HW XP and that they do make the "Special Use" weaponry atleast VERY ACCURATE and POWERFUL.

Im feeling good right about now. I do know however that lots of people who are commandos are utterly disgusted for whatever reason... I say its time for the angry mob to disperse and see what these initial changes do to us in game.

Looks really promising.

So our primary weapon will be the launcher pistol (as said before), with the flamethrower and acid rifle being used for special occasions? Personally, I would like to see each commando have a different primary weapon.....like a flamethrower commando, Acid rifle commando, etc.....but if I'm mistaken, please correct me.

I like the fact that they are looking into migration of our commando into the test center to see what they have designed for us. (please let it be good). But when do they plan on implementing these changes to the different galaxies/servers?

Looks really good and hope these changes steer our profession in the direction where it's supposed to go.