Development Cycle Archive

Hey, TH - how about a few words to the BE community about the cut and paste job from our FAQ that you called an Advanced Guide.
This so called effort took months of hard work according to yourselves, when in fact we cant see that you did anything at all - other than add pictures - it wasnt even proof read.
It contained out of date information - loads of spelling errors and repeated sentences from the original guide.

Hey TH has there been anythingbrought upabout bounty hunters?

i feel that we need some love

as far as the dual/twin pistols idea i think that master BH should also gain this as it was seen in the movies

maybe have a special type of pistol that has maybe a slightly lower max dmg to be allowed as dual pistols

and with the def vs thing i do understand grabbing some pistoleer def but we use all but 33 skill points i do

think it should be more rewarding after all you get a profession that can dizzy and KD and your a gonner

dont want to sound like im crying about this but please give us some L O V E

Keep up the great work devs you rock!!!

---

BabyRancor wrote:

This post is likely going to run long anyway, so I’ll keep the intro to a minimum. Seeing that the Dev team is still discussing the implementation of the Combat Rebalance I thought I’d throw my two cents in from here in the peanut gallery.

Issue #1 – HAM system

I didn’t get a chance to explore the system fully when it was on Test, but in concept I think the system where special use deducts from the max value of the primary pool is a good solution.

If I recall correctly the question at the time was whether secondary stats had any effect on the new system. IMO, the best implementation would be to have the regen stats (i.e. Willpower) affect only the regeneration of damage to the Primary Stat, while the cost stats (i.e. Focus) continues to affect the Primary stat deduction (deducting from the max value of the primary pool rather than the current value). The regeneration of the max value (in other words – recovering the cost of specials) would then best be a flat rate, which would allow easier balancing.

This change allows mind stims to be introduced, as currently a mind stim as powerful as the existing H and A stims would remove the cost of the stim itself, resulting in a never-ending cycle broken only by running out of medicines.

Issue #2 – Armour

The current situation with armour is that pretty everyone wears one of two types (ubese and composite) for anything other than looking good. In addition, you’ve got people like TKA’s and Jedi armoured head-to-toe in composite because it’s simply the best all-round armour there is. I think a critical part of a rebalance would be to make the rest of the armour types needed again.

I’d propose a tiered certification system something like this:

Existing personal armour would be sub-divided into three classes (light, medium and heavy – nothing to do with their Armour Rating).

Light – Bone, Mabari, Wookiee Ceremonial,

Medium – Chitin, Ubese, Tantel, Wookiee Hunting, etc

Heavy – Padded, Composite, RIS, Stormtrooper, Rebel Marine, Wookiee Battle (guessing here on the last one).

As the divisions have changed, so would the resists have to change. Bone, Chitin and Composite would be strong against Energy and Mabari, Ubese and Padded would be strong against Kinetic. As other armours get introduced, more esoteric damage types could be added. Each armour could still be layered as they are now to provide more protection. For balance, light armour effectiveness percentages would be hard-capped at 50%, Medium at 70% and Heavy at 90%.

Each class would then be certified to wear an appropriate weight of armour for their class focus. Anyone could still wear any type of armour, however the penalty for wearing non-certified armour is a reduction in skills depending on the type of armour and how much is worn.

Light Medium Heavy

Chest (50%)12.5% 25% 50%

Legs (25%)6.25%12.5% 25%

Helmet (25%) 6.25%12.5% 25%

Boots (25%) 6.25% 12.5% 25%

Shoulders (2.5% each) 0.625% 1.25% 2.5%

Bracers (2.5% each) 0.625% 1.25% 2.5%

Gloves (5%)1.25% 2.5% 5%

25% 50% 100%

So therefore, a Novice Marksman (no armour certs at all) wearing a composite chest and ubese legs would see all his combat skills (speed, accuracy, defence vs. – everything except damage pretty much) penalized by 62.5% (50% + 12.5%).

To prevent everyone dabbling in certain skills just to wear the heaviest armour, the certification would be broken up into 4 and placed in the four 1st tier boxes of the appropriate elite professions (see below). Achieving each box would reduce the certified armour’s penalties by 1/4, being completely negated once all four are achieved. Furthermore, I don’t see a reason that Medium armour certification shouldn’t also apply to Light as well, but balance testing might say otherwise.

This would increase the variety of armour made and sold, the variety of combinations possible, and the tactical choice involved in wearing armour at all (shield generators are fine as is I think).

Of course, restricting armour must be accompanied by re-evaluation of each profession’s defensive abilities.

Fencer – should be the defensive tanks, the ones that are lightly armoured but really hard to hit. Therefore they should be certified for Light armour and rely mostly on their Dodge ability (which would probably need to be increased a tad).

Pikeman – should specialize in AoE state effects. They should be cert’d for Medium armour (as they will get hit), but rely on Block to take most of the damage away (i.e. Block should either half or quarter damage – I’m not sure it does that properly).

Swordsman – they should be the offensive tanks. Certified to wear heavy armour and rely on high damage output to save them, their counter-attack skill works just fine in this role.

TKA – a special case. Like Jedi, martial artists wearing armour doesn’t really sit well with me. I’d rather see TKA receive a natural 25% set of resists at the master level and no armour cert at all. These natural resists would have to be over-written if the TKA did put armour on. Beyond that they should be able to rely on their unarmed toughness and defensive bonuses – Defensive Acuity should be replaced with Dodge to keep in line with the idea of a lightly armed fighter.

Jedi – like TKAs they shouldn’t want to wear armour. I think it would be reasonable to give increasing protection as they advance though. Say 25% resists at Padawan, AR1 and 50% resists at Knight, and perhaps AR2 and some % resists at Master? I’m no Jedi, so my knowledge here is limited. They could just rely on Sabre Block if it’s effective enough.

Pistoleer – similar to Fencers, they are short-range, lightly armed fighters. They should have Light armour certification and keep their dodge skill. They should probably also have some melee toughness to recognise the fact that they are often in the thick of the fight.

Carbineers and Riflemen – I’m thinking that Light armour is all that should be required for all these fellows, but some alteration in the way ranged professions play is warranted (see Issue #3).

Commandos – like Swordsmen these guys are offensive tanks, but instead focus on taking out defences and ultra-heavily armoured targets. They should have Heavy armour certs and I’m okay with only commandos and BH being specially certified to wear Mandoralan Armour.

BH – though a hybrid combat profession (half of the tree is based on scout after all), BH should be an all-out offensive profession. They should be cert’d for Heavy armour as their only truly defensive tactic.

Smugglers – I’d wait on the revamp details first, but probably Light armour only.

Issue #3 – General Ranged combat

Currently ranged combat (especially in PvP) consists of running around at top speed hoping your shots land. Setting up in a prone prepared position is pretty much suicide, as a melee class will close from max range to melee distance before they can be taken down. This is pretty much the reverse of what should happen – if someone charges me in a prepared position with my rifle ready they are not going to make it to me.

By logic, the first instinct of someone being shot at should be to dive for cover. Currently it’s to run at full speed at the person firing to get closer than ideal range.

I see two necessary changes. The first is cover. Currently cover provides some defensive bonus, but is very seldom used. Cover should also provide a noticeable increase in damage as well to give the possibility of dropping an attacker before they reach your position.

Second is reaction to fire. Players that come under fire should want to hit the dirt to return fire, and melees should have to work against that compulsion. Carbineers and Riflemen should get a new attack that forces a target to prone and everyone else should get a defence vs suppression or something similar.

Issue #4 – Ranges, Speed and Damage

Melee range is okay as is. Pistol range needs to be hard capped at around 20m, carbines should be hard capped at 40m and Rifles should get to shoot out to 64m. Point blank mods are ok now, as are penalties while moving (Rifles could even stand a tad more IMO).

Speeds and Damages are really the things that need the most work. Currently pretty much every master elite hits the 1 sec speed cap regardless of damage. This renders pistoleers and fencers at a large disadvantage and overpowers Swordsmen and Riflemen.

This is where mathematical balance needs to happen. Assuming perfectly made weapons (i.e. max stats for speed and damage) wielded by elite masters of their professions, all weapons should have the same Damage per Second. That DPS should be calibrated such that a Blue-con mob can be taken down quickly using only auto-attack.

From this common baseline you could then re-build the specials by damage multiplier, recovery time and HAM cost.

Pistols should come in at one shot per second under baseline conditions, carbines at two seconds, and rifles at three (just to pull numbers – play-testing would be needed of course). Fencers, pikes and swords should match those numbers respectively.

TKA are unique again, in that currently their VK damage apparently adds on top of their unarmed damage. This bug should be fixed such that VK provide a smaller bonus to damage and AR 1. TK speed should be increased if possible to lower than 1 second per hit, in order to keep up with the baseline DPS. If that’s not possible, they should receive a bonus to applying state effects – essentially filling the role of a "debuff" class. A novel attack at master that temporarily reduces armour values (an "armour break" if anyone’s played Final Fantasy games) would be a good way to promote that notion.

Damage types would need redistribution too. Essentially pistols and fencers should get a wide array of damage types to offset the lack of AP weapons (max of one AP 1 weapon), Pikes and carbines should have 4-5 damage types available that range from AP0 to AP2, while rifles and swords should be restricted to 2-3 damage types (Kinetic, Energy and one unique one each) to offset the higher AP abilities (AP 1-3).

AP vs AR could be reworked too. Originally the idea was that AP>AR lead to a reduction in resists, not an increase in damage. That makes more sense and is easier to balance, as players will never do more than the max damage afforded by the weapon + the special (no need to balance for additional damage due to AP). This also eliminates the problem some classes have with being completely useless in encounters with 100% resist mobs. This would still promote grouping, as that would be the more efficient way to take down a mob like this, but would still let players contribute to encounters with high-end mobs.

Several things remain to be addressed. Combat medics in PvP (probably solved by making craftable air filters providing bonuses to resists), the relative power of doc buffs and how they make encumbrance and HAM costs irrelevant (still an issue even with the system sketched out above), and all the issues with the GCW (group TEFs, etc). I’ll sum up here though. For your consideration.

---

Thunderheart,

Sir,
You seems to be one of the only ways that ANYTHING posted on these forums gets "through" to the Devs. While what I'm about to post may be out of place here, I ask that it be looked at and taken into consideration. It has already been deleted twice by forum admins who are visciously trying to curb and control and maybe hide? the fact that most pikeman are extremely upset over the state of their profession.

Not ONCE as far as I am aware has the pikeman Dev or ANY Sony representative higher than our player correspondent EVER bothered to respond in person to any of the issues/posts brought up on the Pikeman forums. We're sick of it. With all due respect we know that SoE has alot of things they're working on, and other problems in SWG to fix. But Pikeman have been waiting patiently for 8 months... and to be frank its seeems that since we simply don't have the "numbers" in terms of people playing the profession to recieve any attention at all from you. SoE continues to provide more and more content for the most popular professions while many things in the popular AND less popular professions broken. It has reached the point where new content is becomming irrelevant because the blatant ignorance we feel being applied to the known issues surrounding combat and pikeman in general (and some other combat professions too) is greatly detracting from the pleasure we recieve from playing this game. I can't tell you how many people have already quit because they're fed up...but we're still here because we care and want to see this thign through, and come up with a resolution that benefits the entire SWG community as a whole.

Also sir, I am aware that you may not personally be aware of the exact issues that have been plaguing SWG pikemen since launch because as I said "maybe this isn't your department". Well sir I'm asking you to take this on because as I said, you seem to be one of the only people in SoE actually willing to listen and respond to player feedback.

I am posting the following so that you can be aquainted with the issues with our profession and the exact things that we need to have looked at. Please excuse the langauge at times - we have become very passionate over this, reposted the same problems and suggested fixes again and again and again with no response...Detailed, intelligent, and insightful (clean) posts have been nothing but dead ends. Frankly alot of people are tired of being polite.

We're tired of the utter ignorance we have recieved outside of a single tweak towards our accuracty mods and the addition of the extremely rare energy lance - a weapon that on many servers no pikeman has ever seen and if they ever obtain is completely outclassed by not only EVERY other profession's "uber weapons" but by any well crafted Long Vibro Axe from any decent Weaponsmith....a weapon we obtain in the BRAWLER tree....

Sir, the pikeman community wants a reply, having waited for SoE to get their act straight for 8 months with NO significant fix to our plight. We have a GREAT player correspondent and after that NO ONE higher up seems to be taking our concerns seriously. We have heard the tales of this "magical combat pass" that will fix everything but why should that satisfy us when it has been put on "indefinite hold."

We want to know NOW what exactly is going to be done to help us and when. Not an IDEA, or some PROJECTION, we want to know what SoE is DOING for us.

I hope anyone who missed it the 1st and 2nd time will take a good look @ this summation of our struggles as a NEGLECTED community within this game. For clarification on any of the issues described I hope you will please VISIT our forums and READ - maybe even RESPOND to the data, and specific concerns we have addressed there in much greater detail.

And I want it to be CLEAR we are NOT asking for anyone to be NERFED - we're asking for OURSELVES to be FIXED!

Thank you in anticipation of your time and a thorough, meaningful response,

Sincerely,
Laetitia

- If you wish to contact our Plyer representative(s) in person, please talk to our correspondent Gunman21.

- The following post can be credited to ArkMindSpear
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Its time for some medicine.....

*deep breath*
So what the **edit** is the deal with the TKAs getting new weapons and the combat pass being pushed back till forever?
I'm sick of this crap. Everyone says be positive, but i'm sick of that **edit**, therte's no point, becouse nothing positive ever comes of anything, moreover ntohing comes from us discussing stuff in these forums.
No one gives a **edit**, if they do they are too lazy to do anything about it.
Pikeman have been the joke of the galaxy since launch. We have been the queens of missing, getting the ever loving crap beat out of us. We have the short end of EVERY stick. There is just about no aspect of pikeman that isn't better in every other combat proffesion.

We get screwed in this many ways.....
Speed
Damage
Damage Multipliers
Damage gap
Mitigation
Toughness
HAM costs
Melee/ranged Defense
Damage Types
Accuracy
No special Skills
KD timers ruin our best skills
We attack Action...whoopty **edit**in doo
Our unique, uber hard to find, harder than any other weapon in the game to get weapon is a peice of **edit** that i only use to intimidate people with my pathetic desiese that dosen't **edit**ing matter becouse every one and their **edit**ing moms are TKAs.
Our Special Moves are practicaly all the same we have about 11 special attacks, 4 of wich you might actually use at master. (Spin Attack 2, Polearm hit 3, Lunge 2, Sweep 2)

The only people we stand a chance against in PvP are other melees becouse ranged people kite us, and on the whole we just have to be 2X better players to beat a swordsman 4X better players to beat a fencer and 5X better players to beat a TKA.

Some of us have spent about 9 months batting at the air and doing under 1K damage with our hit 3 consistantly. We have a posture down move on our uber-elite-super-awesome hit 3 that literaly **edit**s us in the ass every time we try and use it. Making us scream, "Why DEVs!?! WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYY????" do you not see **edit** is going on here???...is it not apparent to even someone as blind as a pikeman that this just isn't right????"

Jerks like to say that "you just have to learn how to use pikeman if you want to do well with it, you and every other pikemna across all of the galaxies are just wrong, if i had it i would do just as well as i am now with master TKA."
They say..."Pikeman do WAY more damage than TKAs." To that i say BS. We hit for less than a tka more often than we hit for more, they hit three times faster and we miss 1/3 of the time at master.

They say, "pikeman arn't made for fighting single targets, they are made for fighting multiple enemies." To that i say, "Bull **edit**, every melee proffesion has area attacks, i can personaly testify that TKAs and swordsman are at least 2X as powerfull, and on top of that....are you suggesting that; we shouldn't beable to fight a TKA, or swordsman, or fencer, or rifleman, or commando, or carbineer, or pistileer, or bounty hunter, but we should try and take on MORE THAN ONE!?!

We have less defense than ANY other melee!!!! WE can't stand between so many things that outdamage su so compleatly!!! that makes no sense you retards!!!
Thats fine...i can deal with having the least defense....i can DEAL with that, it's called armor.
I can deal with the HAM costs, its called buffs.
But we can't do good amounts of damage incomparason to other proffesions. On top of that we miss consistantly even at master.
So not only do we have less defense than the person(s) we are fighting but they are steadly dealing more damage to us than we are to them.

People think we are great at area attacking, becouse we have three differnt area attacks. Well guess what? Every one of them sucks. 2 of them are practically the same move, one can only be used every 30 seconds, it has KD. If you are trying to fight multiple targets, and you need them to be all knocked down and you use Sweep 2, you might knock down half of them, but when you try and knock the other half down it will litteraly MAKE the ones who maybe knocked down and dizzied stand up!!!

And the TKAs who say they are not made for multiple targets, becouse they only have 1 area move, obviously haven't tried, becouse that thing fires off 3 times faster than the pikemans BEST area attack, AND does as much or even a tinsy bit more damage......

I would not hesitate to say that TKAs spin attack 2 is more damageing that Swordsman Area Attack 3...it's totaly disgusting

Our hit 3 has a posture down attack.....
so if we dizzy and knockdown some one in PvP....and they are thinking in their heads, "oh **edit**, I've falling and i can't get up, he's gonna kill me"...rest assured we will not becouse our highest damaging move that isn't even all that hight damaging, is going to make you stand up and start spamming spitting rawl or something and we'll be dead before YOU **edit**ing hit the ground.

I understand we have problems and they take time to fix.....9 MONTHS!!!! I mean COMMON!!!!

Our super-awesome-kick-you-straight-in-the-nutts weapon sucks compared to every other melee's new weapon.

Swordsman get a fast swinging good damageing weappon, fencers get more stun but this time with good damage ...YYAAYYAYAYyYYYYYY.......TKAs get MORE **edit**ING DAMAGE EVEN THOUGH THEY ALREADY OUTDAMAGE EVERYONE except maybe rifleman.......

Also all the ranged proffesions are getting more, and ours is 10X harder to get than any of theirs....

ON TOP of ALLLLL that, the new TKA weapon requires Nightsister vibro moters.
Do pikeman really realize how screwed we are now? Our super rare, not all that great weapon, will dissapear all but compleatly. You will NOT get vibro moters if thay have anythign to say about it.

And their schematic is much easier to get, so they will be all over the place, beating the ever loving crap out of you.

oh...it's only heat damage...boo frickin hoo...it's more than you deserve!
You guys have +250 damage already, so youa re getting a weapon that does MORE!!
MORE MORE MORE!!!
thats all you ever do, is get more, despite the fact that the only thing you do as often as getting more and spamming mind hit 1, is complain and cower in fear that you are going to get nerfed into oblivion....when each chance they get you get even more!!!!

Every time you get new crap i read, "OMG now we are gonna get nerfed SO bad" and then next month you get new stuff.

I don't know what the DEVs are doing, but we have been complaining about this for months and nothns and they have even aknowlaged that we need help on great occasion, right before leaving us high and dry and rasiing TKA's unarmed damage.

ITs BS they have been PROMISING us for months. If 5 months ago when the game really panned out and people were reashing their potential, they told you you would have to wait 10 more months before the next time they say they may or may not fix your class, i bet you'd tell them to kiss your ass and go suck a lightsaber.

I feel like i am in outrspace screaming this as i type it becouse i know they will NEVER read this. And IF THEY DO, they are going to ignore it because of all the hostility in it. But they should know that 100% of my hostilty has been fuled by their repeated neglect and utter disregard. If they gave a **edit** they would have done somethign by now. There CAN'T be a pikeman desighner who is currently working on it. I know this becouse IF there is and in 9 months all he/she coudl come up with was one weapon and +25 accuracy. I want that **edit**ing job. Common guys. If that is enuff not to get fired...i would dazzle you! I would be your "Kinght in Shinning RIS." Or at least give me a hamer and point me at the TKA developer. PLEASEEEEE!!!!

Okay...screw it....i have taken enuff time writing this for the knowlage that nothing i say really matters to set back in and now i can go about my day a drone again.

Take my nightsister vibro moter...
get a schematic and find a weaponsmith....
then stick a Razor knuckler in me...
I'm done

Greetings officer Thunderheart,

I have a humble request that you would let the Imperial Technicians put some more work into our stormtrooper armor, at this moment I, as a mere trooper, feel that many civilians has vastly armor then the ones provided by our beloved Empire. Also, I have the ambition to one beautiful day progress to become a scout trooper, do you think that the administration would allow this? Or am I doomed to die, with inferior armor, to a rebel separatist?

-Unit RK-IIO

Thanks for answering some of the questions above, I have a few more..

1. Will the jedi log off/on exploit be getting fixed soon?

2. Will Bounty Hunter Clone camping be getting fixed soon?

3. At the moment Bounty Hunters on paper do less Max damage than 5 other professions. And have no defences at all. Can Bounty Hunters get a temporary balance until the full combat rebalance is launched.

If you are not a Jedi, and have mastered X number of professions then some level of advancement through the system will be included based on how many professions you completed.

Question: Are you talking about holo professions or all professions? If all how are you counting them? By badges? Well I have completed a few before the badges came in game. If some how you keep track of profession before the badges...can I have the badges for the profession now? lol

It's not the combat revamp being pushed back that has us upset. It's the promised profession fixes that we have been literally begging for for months now that are IN the combat revamp being pushed back as well that has us upset.