Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IC 1-9: Combat Roles; Pikeman
God I wish people would STOP bringing up the mount idea 
Its almost as bad as on live and people constantly bringing up
Bring back Miner profession
It isn't going to happen so accept it and move on LOL
So all knowing all seeing all important Thunderjoke (lmao just look at my sig to see how much he knows)
These were created 1-20-03. Was there a point to us the community to post the same stuff we have been telling you since lauch for the 15th time, or was this yet agian another "hey I start a thread get them to respond and keep them busy, they will forget.."
I know in the Pikeman Thread there are some really good ideas and Im sure there are good ones for the other threads as well.
Do you realize that you have little to no credibility with people anymore, Me for one you have 0, espically after your comment that is in my signature, no some may say thats petty and small.
However to me its not the fact that our main communication to the Developers thinks were are a Hybrid profession is embarrising for you at SOE, who did you hire? and there are many, many more comments by him to us Pikeman and others that make me and others question his purpose.
Ok now back to my original point, whats up in here is all this info just rotting away?..I'd Perfer JustG, or someone to anwser I have had about enough of Thunderjoke nonsense, and want someone who can actually anwser a question.
I hate when the edit button don't work...
SlasherZet wrote:
...You basically sumarized oneof the choices : ...
...I am trying to tell is that we need to have two options: tobe the one with astaff ...
... or tobe one with a lance - high damage, butnotas high as a Heavy Swordsman ...
...two weapons, two skill trees, two absolutely different fighting styles.
Akaria, you do show some good points, but with all due respect, you do not represent the whole Pike community, so you should not say "we". After all, this is concept thread, so it's clearly your opinion. But to the point...
Mount combat is a topic for discussion between all Pikeman, but I would like to expres my opinion about our defense.
WE SHOULD NOT BE THE ONES WITH MINIMAL DEFENSE!
Also, we should not be the ones with the highest damage output (or DPS, if you want). That is reserved for the Heavy swordsman. Like I pointed before, our skill trees should reflect that we have a "choice". You basically sumarized of the choices :
LANCE
But do not forget we also use staff. And it's used mainly for defense (at least it should be - in SWG). What I am trying to tell is that we need to have two choices:be the one with astaff - that means small damage, even smaller than fencer maybe, but high speed, that means more than a Fencer and also a very high defense (But, and that's important, not as high as a TKA. TKA should be most defensively orientatedclass in the game...) or be one with a lance - high damage, but as high as a Heavy Swordsman, low defense, perhaps the lowest of all melee professions and medium to slow speed, but again, not as slow as a heavy swordsman...
Remember - two weapons, two skill trees, two absolutely different fights. Again, that's my opinion, so be free to flame me.
LANCE
STAFF
Also, we should not be the ones with the highest damage output (or DPS, if you want). That is reserved for the Heavy swordsman.
Now, how does this translate into the game? One on one, a polearm is a fairly defensive weapon. You canblock with it, because it's well balanced. You can chop or stab with it and cause tremendous damage. But it's still not as fast as a good pair of rapiers, and people wielding a lighter weapon and wearing lighter armor can usually side-step your attacks with relative ease. Special attacks should revolve around knockdowns and AE knockdowns.Pikemen should have a longer attack range than most melees, and should have quite a few pikeman specific lunge type specials. One should forceably dismount any mounted or vehicle riding target, one should cause a target to stop moving or at least slow their movement rate for a short period of time (5 to8 seconds if there's an immunity timer, or 1-2 seconds if there isn't, preferably the latter as it's meant to impede the enemy's progress and not make them a sitting duck), and one should be the same as the current lunge, but with slightly more damage. They should have the lowest one-on-one damage output, but this is mitigated some by their AE moves, knockdowns, longer range, and unsurpassed tanking ability.
Defensively, the pikeman should have a fairly high block rate, and should be able to block any targetfrom anyrange. Their HAM costs should be tuned to encourage them to wear heavy armor (i.e. light costs per move, proportionately speaking). This may also be the best class to bring back the old version of block that was concieved but never implemented during beta, where a character could immobilize themselves while turning on their collision detection, thus physically blocking ranged shots and enemy movement. Another neat idea would be to add a skill cumulative group defensive skill mod that applies to other pikemen in the group (i.e., the more pikemen in your group, the more defensive each one becomes). Also, because block uses the weapon to absorb a hit, there should be a chance (albeit a small one) that each hit you block degrades the condition of your weapon. This chance should be based on the overall durability of your weapon. The more durable it is, the lower the chance that its durability is decreased. Thus, offensive pikemen will have to replace their weapons more often, while defensive pikemen can buy weapons with experimented durability, so they can save their money for better armor.
The important thing to note here, however, is that the pikeman must stress defense above all else. While by no means a weakling due to their huge hits giving them good frontloaded damage, their specials are primarily used for applying their secondary abilities and not increasing damage, so their damage multipliers should be lower across the board. If possible, tune it so that at master, the pikeman has the highest single-hit damage of any melee class, but the lowest fire rate and DPS.
If they ever allow attacking from mounts, pikemen will become dually important. Not only will they get more mileage out of their frontloaded damage by being able to ride in and lay down a hit, then ride out, but they'll also be important in that they can dismount other riders.
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What defines thePikeman role in combat?
Frontline defensive tank.
What basic combat elements should they possess?
Block, AE attacks including knockdowns, longer melee attack range, special lunges, high toughness and melee defense.
What offensive abilities?
1. Their special lunges allow them more versatility in attacking in melee from a distance, due to their longer weapons. As described above, one lunge would forceably dismount an enemy player, one would slow the enemy's movement for a few seconds, and one would be similar to lunge 2, but with a much higher damage multiplier on it.
2. They would have a standard melee range 25% longer than other melees due to their long weapons.
3. Their weapons would be designed for high frontloaded damage, but long delays between swings. Most damage multipliers would be low compared to others, but this is made up by knockdowns and AE knockdowns.
What defensive abilities?
1. High toughness. Their toughness would be second only to swordsmen.
2. High melee and ranged defense. This would be among the higher melee and ranged defense bonuses, and the highest combination of the two among any profession.
3. Low cost special moves would give pikemen more flexability when wearing armor. Of course, low cost moves means low powered moves... but pikemen are primarily defensive rather than offensive.
4. The unique Block ability. This ability works two ways. First, in passive mode, it has a chance of negating some of the damage done to the pikeman. This % increases as the block skill goes up. Second, in active mode, block roots the pikeman in place (though he can still turn) and turns on his collision detection, but only against enemies.Because they are the only profession that can do this, and because it roots them in place and only collides with enemies, the performance hits caused by this would be minimal. The game probably calculates hundreds of times more collisions with rocks and city walls than would be caused by this change.
What unique abilities?
Block, as described above.
Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?
The best tank in the game, they're ideal for PvE hunting. They're also good for blocking access to defensive locations in PvP.
How could/should they interact with other professions?
Pikemen are more armor dependant than other combat professions, because they are less penalized for wearing it due to their low special move HAM costs. They require less healing than a swordsman, and are the first choice for main tank in any group.
What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?
Although pikemen are a great defensive asset, wars are not one by defense alone. Pikemen prefer to be grouped with a fencer, TKA, or swordsman to dish out damage, or better yet, a ranged fighter who can hide behind the pikeman while he blocks, and continue to dish out damage.
What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?
Their block ability and high defensive skills allow them to form living walls to protect their more fragile and tactically important characters from harm. Pikemen can work together to plug the entrance way into friendly faction bases, allowing allied ranged fighters behind them to fire without worrying about melees running in and killing them.
Shole
Master Pikeman/Master Bio-enigeer
What defines thePikeman role in combat?
I am in total agreement with some earlier posts which state that a pikeman's role in combat is determined by his weapon with the common ground being crowd control.
When weilding the light staff a pikeman would be mostly defensive.A staff would be fast, low damage, low HAM, very accurateweapons capable of blocking the majority of attacks directed at the wielder.
Next are the lanceswhich I see as a step above the staff. Capable of moderate damage (with light armor piercing), the lancewould be a little slower with a slight increase in HAM cost and a minor decrease in accuracy. A lance would be good defensively but nowhere near the effectiveness of the staff.
The LVA is a pure offensive weapon which would deal massive amounts of damage per strike (with medium armor piercing). The trade-offs with this weapon would be higest HAM cost of all pikeman weapons (but lower than they currently are), slow speed and low accuracy (again, a little higher than they are now). Also the LVA would be lacking in defense when compared toour other weapons.
I would also like to see a variety of weapons of eachtype with different damage types. Would be cool to be able to attach various elements to polearms to gain different damage type. For example, have a basic LVA and make attachments with different damage types so that we could adapt to each situation.
What basic combat elements should they possess?
Again, the pikeman in combat is defined by their weapon. I would like to see the pikeman as a situational master. Depending on the circumstance the pikeman could easily switch between speed, balance or power. Also, I feel they should be the crowd control experts. Pikeman should have the ability to engage and/or control multiple targets with graceful ease.
What offensive abilities?
Pikeman should be geared towards crowd control while still being a capable combatant in one on one confrontations. I like the variety of sweeps, spins, and area attacks the pikeman currently has. There should be some minor adjustments as far as similar attacks are concerned however.
Our accuracy combined with the double posture change cancelation (ex. sweeping an already KD'd target allows them to stand up) is a major hinderance. Sweep 2 is a great move but when it only KDs one target in a surrounding group it becomes useless. If our accuarcy was fixed (more than the trifle amount the upcoming publish will give us) sweep 2 would generally KD more than one target and would be significantly more usefull.
Our most powerful attack and the only one aquired at master, polearm hit 3, should be a x4 attack (currently x3) as are the master attacks of all other melee professions. The posture change on this special must also be revised, either remove it or cancel posture change if opponant is already KD'd.
To me, the biggest problem with pikeman combat is our attacks generally hit the health pool making our bleeds to action pool almost pointless. We should hit the action pool with greater regularity as I see it.
Finally,pikemen should have the greatest range of all the melee professions. It just isn't logical that an unarmed fighter has a greater range than someone holding a 7 ft. pole. I don't think a vast difference is called for but some distinction is needed (switching them all around is fine with me).
What defensive abilities?
I believe that our defense is all in our weapon. The type of weapon equipped determines our defense. Staff= best defensive weapon, lance = moderate defensive weapon, and LVA = worst defensive weapon.
It is beyond me why an unarmed fighter (TKA in this case) should have the best melee defense. Blocking a strike with a weapon is significantly better than blocking it with one's own body. Our melee defense should be behind fencer only as I view them as the pure defensive class. Our toughness should maybe be boosted a bit but I don't think we should be the best in this stat. I would give that to TKA as they would have to have high toughness to counter the fact that they have no weapon to block with. Fix pikeman's block so that when block is successful no damage is done.
What unique abilities?
Crowd control. Basically, anything that would allow pikeman to control the battle and/or engage multiple opponents should be considered.
I like the idea of a pin/hold move (which would allow us to delay the movement ofour target) in theory but I see some flaws with it. As I have seen it explained(pikeman would holdtargetallowing others todeal the damage),in a group it would be invaluable but in solo combat it is useless. If we are granted this ability it should also allow us to do some damage to target being pinned.
I would like to seea move comparable to the brawler skill lunge 2 which would allow us to hinder a fleeing targets getaway. A vault move has been mentioned in this thread which sounds promising.
Area bleeds would be great. As would an area warcry (would act in a circle rather than a cone).
Lastly, NO MOUNTED COMBAT 
I feel this would give pikeman an unfair advantage over other melee professions. It would basically allow us to be effective melee kiters.
Should add what advantage or asset in group combat?
A pikeman should make an effective tank in group situations. They should be able to occupy the enemy with little to no consequence to other group members. I also envision the pikeman as an effective shield for 'important' group members (doctors, combat medics, non-combat oriented professions).
I like the idea of pikemen receiving a bonus when grouped with other pikeman, creating in effect a phalanx.
How could/should they interact with other professions?
A pikeman should have heavy interaction with a number of other professions. The obvious being the weaponsmiths (weapons and powerups). Depending on your playstyle interaction with armorsmiths (armor), chefs (food), smugglers (spice), doctors (buffs, stims, heals), entertainers (mind buffing/healing and battle fatigue healing), tailors (general and bio-enhanced clothing), bio-engineers (pets and bio-attachments for clothes), etc. (you get the idea) would happen frequently.
What interaction / dependencies should exist with other combatants?
While engaged with opponent(s) a pikeman would depend on other combatants to help drop said opponent(s) in a timely fashion. Pikemen would also require heals from other players.
What should be their unique role in the Galactic Civil War?
I could see pikemen occupying several roles in the GCW.I think the ability to take missions as bodyguards to important NPCs would be great (something like the final Act 3 rebel mission in which you must defend a base from attacking stormtroopers). Pikemen could serve as frontlines(dealing massivecasualties to advancing enemies)as well as last lines of defense (protecting terminals) against base assaults.