Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IC 1-17 Star Wars Galaxies Combat Profession Mix and Match
- Keep mix and matching, that allows to give to each character an unique flavor. At least we don't have characters that are clones, skills and powers wise.
- Rank up the most powerful abilities of each classe, to avoid savage mixmatching. Powerful must mean hard to get, and each branch of each profession skill tree must be attractive in int own way. No more TKA 4004 stigmata
- Mastering a profession should be a goal in itself, and bring a substantial advantage. Now in most cast it's just anecdotical.
- Rebs are a hodgepodge group of individuals, where lots of skills are needed, and often you have to do thing yourself because no one can help you to. Hence, Mix and Matching, making you a versatile individual, should bewell seen and encouraged.
- Imps, on the otherhand, are many, strongly hierarchised, have strict rules, and to stand out of the crowd, you have to be WAY better than the average guy. Thus, specialisation should be strongly encouraged, mix and matching should be allowed, but specialist should have at least ranking privileges. (You're the best in your field ? Lord Vader wants you on his flagship, congratulations, Colonel)
Ever wonder why there are so many TKAs out there? One reason is that TKA is one of the best combat professions with the lowest sp cost. If there was a way to separate combat skills points from non-combat skill points, it would allow players to have a "civil" side and a "combat" side of their abilities without having to sacrifice one at the expense of the other.
My suggestion is that they separate the skill point system for combat and non-combat skills. Any skill that is a non combat oriented skill such as crafters, entertainers, merchants, etc. should use up "trade points", while "skill points" would be used for combat skills. A profession like smuggler or scout which combines crafting and combat skills would split the skill points between the two point systems for the novice/master slots.
The issue gets a little more grey when it comes to medic skills. The crafting portions of medics creating stims and such should not be applied to combat skill points, however due to the ability to use medical healing capabilities in combat, they should be considered a combat skill. As a general rule (there will doubtless be exceptions, such as TKA meditate), any skill that can be used during combat should cost combat skill points. Any skill that cannot be used during combat, but is instead used to craft or plays some non-combat purpose in the SWG society should not take away from the combat skill point pool.
I'm sure the numbers of skill points would have to be adjusted to keep the game balanced. In the end, I don't see how having a master Tailor and a master commando or bounty hunter in the same character would unbalance the game. I love the concept of being able to choose ones own professions, and create a unique combination. Separating combat and non-combat skill points would ultimately enhance this aspect of SWG.
I second this post...couldn't have said it better myself.
meeuki wrote:
What do you think the strengths of professions mix and match are?
the strengths of profession mixing should lie in the original intent of the bounty hunter role. someone diverse, someone with access to a variety of weapons and special attacks to get the job done.
What do you think the weaknesses of professions mix and match are?
as a trade off for this versitily the jack of all trades should be devoid of the special bonuses granted to a person who has mastered their profession.
How do you think we should maintain the unique skillset flavor the game is built on?
first empower all mastery boxes appropriately. balance them equally against each other. past their masteries there should always be oppertunities to learn other professions to better their role in combat. professions bonuses should not stack with another profession's bonuses. but people who spend more points on combat should have more combat prowess than people who have not. however, they are going to have to utilize alternate weapon access and different specials at the expense of speed/accuracy/damage that would be obtained at mastery to beat their opponents, not on innate defenses.
What are some neat combinations that would be good for the game?
you mean not yet possible combinations? current combinations that are good for the game? right now there are tons of useful combinations and each player has the oppertunity to pursue them on his own to fit his own playstyle. imo the system works well now, but would work better if.
1. profession's weapons would be fixed, each doing the appropriate damage type.
2. certifications fixed
3. specials fixed
without these core profession systems fixed, how can anything be properly balanced? how can a person decide which mixing avenues to take unless everything at his disposal works? i might want to be a rifleman with some access to heavy weapons.... but the only one that really works is the flame thrower. get my drift?
Anything else you want to say on this subject?
no
- What do you think the strengths of professions mix and match are?
Obviously the strength is that you do not have to be just the healer, just the tank, you can do other things. This frees up a lot of hassle other games have where you were left out if the group already had a healer, etc. I am free to be a TKM and MD, if I can't get a group to tank in, I can heal people in Med Center or make a few bucks buffing people.
- What do you think the weaknesses of professions mix and match are?
I actually think a lot of the problem is with all the choices, there is actually very little difference. All the Brawler trees are basically tanks (warriors), all the marksman are basically distance fighters (wizards). There is a discrepancy between the requirements for some paths against others, to be a TKM I only need the Unarmed branch of Brawler, but to be a Doctor, I need to master the entire Medic profession. So the person who wants to be a TKM and something else has more choices than the person who wants to be a Doctor and something else. This was one of the problems with the Bounty Hunter as it was at release, anyone who mastered BH was left with somewhere around 19 skill points, since marksman and scout were already fully mastered, that required a new novice profession, using up 15 skill points (I've said before this is way too much for each novice profession) so basically every BH had the exact same template. The addition of one or two boxes inArtisan wouldn't makeany difference from the BH who had one or two boxes in Entertainer, the only difference was the BH with Medic skills, so most probably chose Medic and became clones.
- How do you think we should maintain the unique skillset flavor the game is built on?
I think there should be more skill boxes for elite professions, make all Novice profession cost 6 skill points (the way elite professions do, this would only change basic prof's) and move the really good specials and bonuses to the higher boxes in the skill tree. This would provide some bonuses for people who want to mix and match, but would provide great bonuses for people who are willing to sacrifice variety. In this way a combat class with specific specials that make them nearly unbeatable (knockdown/dizzy/eyeshot) would have to sacrifice the benefits of support classes like Doctor so they would be vulnerable to poisons for instance.
Some professions don't even have a unique skillset to maintain. What is the unique skillset difference between Swordsman, Pikeman, and Fencer? One hits Health, one hits Action and one hits Mind? One has a weapon that does Blast damage, one has a weapon that does Electricity and one does Stun? These are unique skillsets, TKM has unique skills, Smuggler, Doctor, Image Designer, all have unique skills that they share with no other profession. Maybe 32 professions was a few too many.
- What are some neat combinations that would be good for the game?
Weaponsmith/Artisan or Armorsmith/Artisan could make armed or armored vehicles.
Armorsmith/Architect could make armored buildings like factional headquarters.
Master Brawler/Master Marksman would be a great combat class like Assassin/Special Ops
- Anything else you want to say on this subject?
All in all it's a better system than previous games, but there needs to be more motivation to choose different professions. Why would I choose Pikeman when I know I can tank just as well with TKA plus I get the bonus of Meditate? There are unique skills ina dozen or so professions that I wish I could have at the same time, it would be better if there were unique skills I wanted from every profession.
What is the point of the merchant profession? If you are a master Merchant you get better vendors? It just seems like a do nothing profession, it's completely passive to the point where the merchant could spend most of the time they are leveling offline and not see a significant difference.
Has anyone seen a Squad Leader lately? I haven't even seen a squad lately, just a bunch of people soloing. Maybe if buffs and armor are toyed with there will be a reason to group up again and then there will be a reason for squad leaders again.
- Allows for a lot of different characters, could make PvP interesting once the current situation, where a few dablled templates are king of PvP.
- Allows people to experience many different sides of the game, and change their character then they feel like it without having to start over.
There are more, but these are my main ones right now
Con's
- Classes unblanced right now, every class should have a preset role in combat, a strentgh they can build on and then mix with other professions, allowing people to build more varied characters.
- Not enough professions really require people to master them, making the advantage of being a master too small compared to simply dabbiling the most effective templates out there.
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As it stands, mastering professions does not seem to give enough bonuses for all professions. Bounty Hunters are a good example here, there's really no major advantage to master that profession. So I hope with the Combat Revmap this will change.
The strengh of that systeme is that you're not stuck in one role only and that a good thing against bordom
What do you think the weaknesses of professions mix and match are?
The weakness of this systeme, as it is right now is that you can build a character that is self sufficient
What do you think the strengths of professions mix and match are?
You allow characters to be very diverse in what they can do as well as psuedo specialize with things like def. stacking.
What do you think the weaknesses of professions mix and match are?
Harder to balance. In a class based game you have a baseline set of characters to balance against eachother, you can specifically define roles for them, etc. In this game, you can, at best, take a ballpark shot at balance. You're not just balancing Riflemen vs. Fencers now, you're balancing Rifelment/TKAs vs. TKA/Docs etc. You allow a person to come up with thier own idea of what thier role is and create a template to best match that role. And any profession you change for a specific reason will indirectly effect any number of templates and "nerf" them. You're balancing templates vs. templates, not classes vs. classes. If you want to assign roles to professions, you should have just made swg a class based game instead of giving people the fredom to refine thier characters. So pretty much now you are seeing combat professions who have augmented thier character with say medic skills complaining that they are not nearly as good/effective as other combat professions who have augmented thier character with other combat skills (i.e. def stacking or ranged/melee combinations etc). They say, "Well I am master of XXXX profession, but the other guy who has a different template is better off then me!". IMO that's what we call trade offs.
How do you think we should maintain the unique skillset flavor the game is built on?
Try not to force any changes onto the playerbase that will limit thier choices in what they can/can't do, both for people who want to take advantage of dabbling to gain more utility or (what I would consider) the current means specializing in dabbling to stack skills.
What are some neat combinations that would be good for the game?
Can't say I have much to offer on this thought.
Anything else you want to say on this subject?
The way I see it, it is actually pretty balanced at the moment. IMO there is nothing wrong with dabbling to stack skills (i.e. def. stacking). Characters who do this give up other things in order to maximize thier effectiveness, i.e. specialize. Taking away from specialization options limits template choices which is a bad thing. The current system allows people who wish to be jack of alot of different trades to do so. It also allows for those of us who like to specialize do so to simulate a more class oriented role for ourselves. I think that any combat balancing needs to keep this in mind.
Message Edited by Grimror on 08-04-200409:59 AM
Message Edited by Grimror on 08-04-2004 09:59 AM
One: Players should ALWAYS get more for mastering a profession rather than dabbling in it to try and max out skills. Make the Master box matter. This is not currently the case. For example, mastering pistoleer is basically worthless, given that you get only moderate skill increases and two BROKEN specials. Lots of people don't master Bounty Hunter any more, because you can now simply dabble in the line that you need (pistols or carbines) and you really don't miss anything by skipping the master box. Actually, in a lot of cases you are rewarded by having more skill points to spend elsewhere. This goes into the HAM/Special revamp stuff (master specials need to work and be... well, special).
Two: Make it harder to level. With the current system I can grind some elite professions to master in 3 days. This is both good and bad. It's good in that it allows players to try many different professions. It's bad in that it creates exactly the sort of Flavor of the Month problems that we've been seeing. No one has any incentive to stick with a class and every incentive to drop something that's just had a "nerf" for the newest pvp ownage template. Hell, it may even be the case that when you change doc buffs and armor, this problem will go away.
Still, it would be nice if you could somehow implement more class specific content. Perhaps specialized clothing for certain classes, more class specific quests. You know, fun stuff.