Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IC 1-17 Star Wars Galaxies Combat Profession Mix and Match
I love how you can mix and match your characters skills to how you want to play. Very unique and keeps it interesting as you do not have to start completely over to try out something new.
One of the biggest problems, if not the biggest, is SWG rewards the dabbler. That's why defense stacking is causing problems. A dabbler should not have the advantage over a master as far as pure strength. They should be the "jack of all trades" the master of a profession should have the upperhand.
I would think that if you change master bonuses to give more strength and add unique abilities to the master slot you would have more people in a defining role. This still allows people the opportunity to customize their character and if they want to be a dabbler with lots of different abilities they are free to do that too.
Having your strength come from finding the best hybrid template is the wrong approach and makes it extremely difficult to balance classes. Because you have to examine and scrutinisewhere each and every skill goes at what level and it turns out to be impossible to do evenly (as we are finding out now)
So the whole point of this post is this: Reward the master and you get defining roles as you do in other MMORPG's. Keep the flexibility for those that want hybrid "jack of all trades" just dont give them more power than a master of a profession.
Quote:
The part of stacking that is bad is when people can have multiple professions but not master them and be better than someone who mastered two at something that was particularly related to those two the second person mastered.
You are talking about a person picking and choosing certain trees without mastering professions right? I still don't think that is a bad thing IF everything is balanced right.
Let's say most combat professions have 4 types of trees: 1 Combat Specials Tree, 1 accuracy tree, 1 defensive mods tree, and 1 speed tree. You are saying that players should not, for example, be able to pick up only the defensive trees in each profession (so that they are really hard to hit). Respectfully, I disagree.
Yes that person is choosing a combat templatethat makes them hard to hit, and spending all their skill points on defensive mods. However, by doing that, that same player would not be as accurate, as fast, or as powerful (specials), as a player who actually mastered the whole professions together. IF PROPERLY BALANCED, the high defensive mods vs. the higher accuracy/speed/extra damage, and the low defensive mods vs. the slow regular damagewould counteract each other.
Similarally, if a player dabbled and picked up the specials (ONLY)out of several professions, that player would have powerful moves, butlow defensive mods.
What is important is skill points. If both the dabbler and the master spend the same number of skill points on combat,the battleshould be a toss up. Mastery should NOT be required, it should be one of MANY routes that a player can take.
That is my point...the ability to mix, match, and ESPECIALLY dabble need to be preserved. Devs are taking the easy way out and killing dabbling by eliminating stacking. What needs to happen is a major combat balance that balances all damage and defensive mods against each other, and let players choose their path without dev interference.
I would love to see the Skills set up as follows:
1. We pick a Job - Skill cost Nada/Zip/Zero - Lets say BH
2. We Pick up Skills - Anything we want!!!!!
3. If we want to be a Pistoleer or a chef its up to us to pick what we want to do our job.
Why I like this is if If I want to be a Pistol shooting Chef BH I can be...this give me the freedom to be a individual.
As it stands now for BH they get 33 skill points after they master BH - So its BH/Novice Medic or BH/Novice Ranger etc etc.
You could have the following skills avail (note short List not all listed for time)
Pistols/weapons -4 trees and as many lvls to the trees as you want
Ranger/scout - same
Chef - Same
CH - Same
In a game that is skill based and not CLASS based I still feel confined to one class my sugestion would allow people to explore and be an individual
What do you think the strengths of professions mix and match are?
Professions mix and match allows players to not be locked into one single facet of the game. I can be a pistoleer, yet have the ability to fire a rifle well, and be a medic at the same time. It provides for a more well rounded character that better meets the vastly varied playstyles of subscribers, which makes for happier subscribers, and therefore a better game and more revenue.
What do you think the weaknesses of professions mix and match are?
The way SWG has currently implemented so-called "hybrid" professions has undermined this system. For example: the fact that in addition to 'pistoleer', smugglers, bounty hunters, and other professions have trees that grant pistol skills or skill modifiers that affect pistoleer performance in effect mandates that a 'pistoleer' to be effective HAS to in fact be a pistoleer/BH/smuggler/whatever combo. These same issues exist for most professions. Skills for a certain profession should exist ONLY in that profession. If I wish to obtain rifle skills, I should get them solely from the rifleman profession, etc.
How do you think we should maintain the unique skillset flavor the game is built on?
It was a nice coding convenience to only have 4 trees for every profession, but I think it's becoming obvious that in fact, some professions need more than 4. Some don't really have enough content for 4. The skill system needs to be tweaked to allow for whatever number of skill lines are appropriate.
The "hybrid" professions of smuggler, BH, and commando need to be completely rethought, as they shouldn't actually exist at all. To be a BH or a commando, I should be mixing and matching skillsets from the straight combat professions along with the defining characteristics that makes the class that class. Every character in the game is really a "hybrid", that's what skill systems are. BH, for instance, is really solely Investigation. The weapon skills should exist in the pistoleer, carbineer, and heavy weapons professions and should be mix and matched for what suits that particular characters playstyle. Not a seperate piece of a BH profession. Smugglers should be all about smuggling, there shouldn't be a combat line in their skillset, it should be in pistoleer. Maybe I want to be a master smuggler who uses a carbine? Why should I be stuck with a pistol line? Maybe I want to be a smuggler with an LLC, or a flamethrower? There should be a seperate 'Heavy Weapons' profession that has lines for all these weapon types. Seperate out weapons skills from these classes.
What are some neat combinations that would be good for the game?
I wouldn't even try to imagine combinations. The good of the game will be served by adding more professions and skill lines and letting players try out the combinations. For instance, instead of BH's irrationally having their own weapons trees, why isn't one of those weapons trees a people trap tree? It's more fitting to their profession.
Anything else you want to say on this subject?
It's a good system, that allows for alot of customization with alot of give and take. However, the lines need to be moved from professions where they don't fit into other ones, maybe new ones, where they do.
You pretend that mixing and matching is something you promote-- yet you NERF CH trees and anything else that comes along when people start "dabbling" in various professions to gain various abilities--
SO YOUR MIX AND MATCH CONCEPT IS NOTHING BUT LIP SERVICE
What do you think the strengths of professions mix and match are?
It allows for player creativity. Since there's little benefit for mastering some professions, that frees up players to think outside of the linear box other games force.
What do you think the weaknesses of professions mix and match are?
Balance. It's nigh impossible to ever get it perfect. There will always be an overpowered profession that has to get nerfed, which then shifts the overpowerment to a new profession.
How do you think we should maintain the unique skillset flavor the game is built on?
Compel more hybriding and remove some of the mastery requirements. What does a Bounty Hunter need with Camps? Why should someone who wants to make vehicles be required to host a vendor and survey for resources? Why are there entire professions that offer four skill lines that essentially do shades of the same things?
I understand that there's a 2-3-4-5 and 5-4-3-2 system of skill boxes, but I think rigidly adhering to that is holding the game back. For example, CHers were redesigned purportedly because many folks were using uber pets when just doing 4-4-0-0 CH. So the +Creature Level mod adjusters were spread across all four lines to make it more expensive. Why? Why not just change the points of the firs two tiers of CH? Instead of 5-4-3-2, it could have been 9-8-7-6. I actually proposed a quick overview of this in the Creature Handler IC thread. You can imagine the response
Reducing the Mastery requirement will compel more hybriding. This will diversify players and highlight flaws within specific features.
What are some neat combinations that would be good for the game?
Jedi/Ranger, Jedi/Healer, Jedi/Engineer, Jedi/Smuggler. Add some flavor. Jedi come in many varieties with specialities from their pre-Jedi lives that got enhanced by their force sensitivity. Obviously this should come at the expense of pure combat abilities.
Advanced Entertainer. Someone who can do some Dance and Music but also Vocals.
Miner. Let's face it, I think this is going to be required very soon. People can make money hand over fist with an investment of 29 skill points, and only assuming they see Survey IV as a critical requirement (experienced resource farmers don't need it). There's alot of money in resources (and energy) and it's mostly from abilities that exist entirely outside of the skill tree structure that holds some professions back. It was deemed as "un fun" way back in early beta. Well, people have an amazing tolerance for un fun when there's gobs and gobs of money to be made.
As a former Master Architect/Artisan, I dabbled in Merchant so I could effectively sell my wares, but also dabbled in Scout and Marksman in order to retain some sense of sanity. If I hadn't put skillpoints aside for Scout/Marksman in particular, I would have easily burned out with just endless crafting and selling. It allowed me to be dragged off, sometimes by force, by friends to go adventure for a bit and stay away from the mind numbing crafting.
Where I see a problem is when some players are buying an additional account so they can maintain a crafter type for crafting (to make money/items), then a separate account with their "real" personna to adventure and have fun in the Star Wars universe. While two accounts mean more money to SOE/LucasArts, this seems to be a broken model from a play perspective.
Many people won't split up their skillpoints as I did to put some sort of balance with crafting and adventure. What I suggest is to make it so skillpoints originate from three different pools -- crafting, combat, and entertaining/medical. The point pools would be dynamic (you couldn't be a Master Weaponsmith, Master Doctor, and Master Swordsman, for example), so as you made choices, the other pools would shrink. In the end, however, you would still be able to take up SOME combat skills if you were mostly a crafter for example.
Another idea along the same lines that might not be as complex is to make it so EVERYONE begins with a skillpoint free profession called "Lifeform" (sorry, couldn't think of a better name!). The first skill branch would consist of basic combat skills that would make the player semi-useful in group combat situations (aka get them away from the crafting station). The second branch could be basic crafting (give them some semi useful, semi useless things that every player could use to give them a taste of what crafting is like). The third branch could be entertainer/medical (give the player the ability to dance without any healing capabilities, and for medical let them use Stimpack A's). The forth branch could be movement speed increases or maybe what is necessary to get a new player from having 0 available lots at creation to 10 lots total. Through these no skillpoint cost skills, players would get a taste of the various professions (without taking away from them), be able to adventure on occasion (although not as well as a dedicated combat profession), and dance/heal minimally enough to get a taste for it.
Move the weapons grant higher into the elite combat tree so you don't have so many people just dabbling to get good attacks/weapons. LLC is the weapon of choice for a bounty hunter, but they should have to work their way up the tree some to get it. Even if it is just one block.
Commando same thing, give them a basic heavy weapon at novice and then make them work their way at least to flame 1 for flame thrower, acid 1 for acid rifle, etc.
Also the better attacks should be higher in the tree. Eye shot is something that should go high in the tree if not to master. Same for big bleed attacks.
My 2cr.
Gydeon
Leave defense stacking+add accuracy stacking= balance
If you are tough to hit, you are tough to hit no matter what weapon you use.
If you are a good shot, you are a good shot no matter what weapon you use.
Limiting specials to fitting weapons makes sense since your not going to spray napalm out of a scout pistol.
Limiting speed to the given weapons make sense since you arent going to fire a RL as fast as a scout pistol, so really, you could drop speed modifiers and leave that to the weapon schematic.
There are the distinct combat roles in fantasy, which do apply to SWG: Tank, Ranged Damange Dealer, and Healer. What throws this off a bit is CH, which can be two of these things, or even three.
Tanks should be melee class, good at doing damage up close, very high melee D and mediocre range D. Ranged should be the opposite defense wise, high range D and lower melee D. Pistols, however, should have a higher melee D (though not as high as any of the melee classes) and lower range D, make them sort of a jack of all trades. But,their range should be limited to either 45 or 50m - a pistol should be able to fire at the same range as a rifle. Rifles, in turn, need to have the lowest melee D among the professions, and the highest range D.
Offensively, I'm of the belief that all melee classes need to be pretty much equal in damage out put, just what HAM they attack and rather they do it in one hit or many should matter. In addition, each melee class needs a form of TKA Meditation - call it "Pikeman, Fencer, Swordsman Kata" or something like that. Melee classes strength should be more in their defense power than offensive output. Also, each class needs a form of crowd control and each need a knockdown. It should be a challenge to kill a melee'er. In addition, defensively, while melee D should be higher than ranged D, each melee class should have a good amount of each, and high resists to dizzy and knockdown (50 or so), especially since they can't attack at any othe position than standing.
Ranged classes should have more offensive power, but lower defense than melee classes. Pistoleers should fire the fastest of any prof, but have the shortest range. Rifleman should have the longest range (longer than any CM can throw!) but slower firing, and Carbines should be in the middle. In addition, carbines should be the ONLY ranged class (BH are another matter) that have a ranged knockdown. Each special in each prof needs to be useful - and needs adddressing.
BH and Commando are difficult to add in the mix. BH need to have a ranged knockdown, WAY more defense than it currently has, and a BH only carbine. Also, it's specials needs a little reworking, and some minor status defense put in. One way to do this is to put more defenses in the marksman tree.
Commandos balancing need to have crappy range and crappy accuracy, as they can effectively one shot things.
I can go on for a while about balancing - but I'm going to stop here. Many of these are changes which I recommended in Beta, but weren't addressed.
"What do you think the weaknesses of professions mix and match are?"
Balance wise, defense stacking is a major weakness. It makes the individual characters too powerful, which is a big problem in this game. Some professions in this game are unbalancing. Combat Medics have a greater range than ANY profession with devastating, area effects. There are also HUGE griefing bugs associated with this, which have been documented and NEED to be fix. Creature Handlers have been toned down, but they need to be accoutned for in the balance to ensure melee classes are obsolete compared to a pet grauler. Giving melee classes an ability to gain or lose aggro at will would be helpful towards this. Finally, probably a huge problem is with Doctor buffs. From a balance stand point, they are way too powerful. For two hours, you have triple the HAM that regenerates awefully quickly! That is very overpowering in PvP, and makes the game MUCH shorter for the serious gamer. While I love them, they need to be toned down by at least half.
"How do you think we should maintain the unique skillset flavor the game is built on?"
Not sure what your asking here. But if I understand correctly, don't let defenses stack. Give each profession and unique ability other than just specials (Dual wield for pistols, Human traps for BH's, etc.). To give the game flavor, add REAL content. Profession specific missions!!! Everyone will love this! And you provide us with something to do, rather than we make our own fun. This is a game after all, and we pay to be entertained. The ACTS in Cries of Alderaan, but they don't come every month, and they typically are short. There need to be more of these missions, and after bug fixes, unloading about 200 of these onto the server would be great.
"What are some neat combinations that would be good for the game?"
I would love to see a Squad Leader/Doctor combo. Someone who actually is designed for group combat, and has a lot of bonuses to boot. But this would mean that groups need to be more important in the game. Ranger plus anyting - there need to be more of 'em!!
"Anything else you want to say on this subject?"
Remove Defense Stacking! I think this has already been said, but I'm just going to reitterate it. It is unbalancing.
Cut Doc buffs in half. Make the game harder - literally, bring it!!
Fix Combat Medics range and make disease and poison heals easier to craft and more potent. 3 applications of a disease heal C to remove a lvl B Disease should not happen. Disease is an insta-death in this game.
Carbineers and Pistoleers need more accuracy, and carbineers needs more speed.
There are other melee classes out there other than TKA's! Swordsmen and Pikemen need more Melee Defense - MUCH more. Riflemen should not have more melee D than Swordsmen or Pikemen.
BH's need more bounty hunting abilities. Fix tracking bugs and add traps and restraints to their investigation line.
Pistols need to fire faster - best way to do this I think would be to give them dual wield if possible.
Carbineers special need lots of reworking and looking at.
Lower Rifle Melee D, if you add a speed cap to them then allow them to do more damage at the SAME HAM cost.
More Missions, More Quests, give us an Dynamic Quest that is hard, difficult, takes a long time, and does NOT revolve around Jedi's!!
Just allow everyone to make a Jedi character, put perma-death back in, make crystals easier to get. Let all Imperials have the ability to get Jedi hunting missions.
Make ATST's harder to get, Emporer didn't just hadnthem out to anyone who said "I like the empire."
FIX THE TURRET BUGS!!!
Get to work, and have fun playing the game with us. Looking forward to the imperial crackdown. Oh - can you give us an update on the Space Expansion?
Gantoris
The system is what sets this game apart. From the beginning and even in the original manual the Devs stated that the right combination of professions would/could be very powerful. So, now that players exploit this system is not suprising.
The problem I see and experience is a "Dabbler" can not just be more powerful in combat, but be Uber in combat. There is no real reward for Masters in game atm. Class distinction needs to be made where the players that work their way to Master in a combat professions will have weapons or skills that sets them apart and make them distinct from any other mix 'n match template. For example, the Master Carbineer (notice spelling btw) would be one hell of a crowd control warrior or Master Rifleman would be one mean sniping machine from even farther out than 64m like everyone else. But, those that decide to just run up different trees can pick up the specials and taste the distinction but will not BE the distinctive warrior.
If all specials work as intended across all professions then the Masters will be destinctive enough to be worth achieving. All the while, those that decide to stack different branches of professions will have all the defensive bonuses, but lack the specializations and true perks of those that are pure pros.
This can bring on the problem of finding that right template of multiple professions to Master creating the Uber Warrior again. But, it could be that there is even one skill level above the Masterery we have now. Something like Professional Swordsman or Professional Fencer that the player can only invest in ONE at any given time. So, no one will give up Master Pistoleer or Mastrer Carbineer in this system, but they will have to decide which Professional Level to choose from to get ALL the perks mentioned above. If the Player decides Professional Pistoleer isn't where they want to be at the moment then give it up and once they achieve Mastery of another profession then they can choose to become Professional in that job then.