Pikeman Archive
Thread: Correspondent you alive?
Opeth it would be nice if we could see some of your correspondent action here, e-mails answers plans for e-mails etc...
No kidding, although if he doesn't know any more than we do...
The more I dwell on this, the more I realize, Pikeman isn't broken. It's not like the things we can do don't work, like in some professions. All our stuff works. We are not broken, we are a crappy class.
biwan: MohrThere have been no dev responses to any of our issues. The combat dev who will be dealing with us just returned from vacation/sickness (on the 9th or 10th). And was in emergency mode dealing with the patch crisis, so didn't really give any responses to the NUMEROUS issues that the combat professions have brought up during the dev's absence.
Expect some dev communication to start next week.
I guess I can post some posts I've made in the correspondent forum, but like I said there was never any dev response, just discussion among the other correspondents.
Many pikemen are upset at the lack of attention paid to us with this publish.
We have a number of pretty major problems (weapon accuracy, broken specials, broken block (master pikemen counterattack more than block with +0 counterattack and +20 block--some masters havenever blocked), lowered toughness for no apparent reason--it's been asked if this lowered defense is on purpose or an overlook and got a "we'll look into it" over a month ago, but no response--a couple ofthese problemsseem like they would be extremely easy fixes.
For instance we have -55 accuracy on our best weapongiving even MASTERS poor hit percentages. It's been stated that this negative accuracy is inappropriate andwill be fixed. How much effort does a fix like that take??
"We’ll look into this and find the answer."
"We’ll make sure the Vibro Lance is in the correct place."
"This should be fixed."
"We’ll examine this, is it all special moves or certain ones?"
"This should be fixed."
Those are your 2 month old designer responses to the original correspondent report. As of today, zero out of five have been addressed.
I will be giving a full report of pikeman issues when the combat dev returns (get well soon, buddy, a lot of people are counting on you) and I will not allow you guysto continue to ignore pikeman. Broken promises of "we'll get back to you on that" are no longer acceptable.I will help you by presenting (again) our problemsin a straightforward manner, and you need to take action to address our simple--but debilitating--issues.
Later that thread:
"they'll all be answered in time" [again this is not quoting a dev, but another corre]
You act like that's supposed to be reassuring.
The truth is that shouldn't even be an issue; nobody should have to wait their turn for developer attention. It is very ambitious to make a game with the class/profession variety available in SWG, but it's not okay to turn around and use the expansiveness of the game as an excuse for failing to respond to player issues.
Making/updating/maintaining a huge, epic game is a choice the designers havealready made, and that choice has consequences. If you put thirty professions into your game, you're going to have to devote attention to all thirty of those professions. It really feels like the designers may have been too ambitious for their own good.
I honestly don't think it's fair to be told, "we didn't do anything for your profession in this publish because we were working on other stuff."
I'm a pikeman. I don't play as a CH or an Entertainer or an Artisan, so when you fix all those areas of the game, that's great for them, but MY game--the gameplay that I experience--is still broken. And I'm positive that cities will be an awesome addition, but it's really hard to get excited about player cities when you've been playing a broken class for4months.
Another thread:
A while ago berserk was changed from +100 percentdamage to +75 raw damage. First of all, I never understood the need for this change, was it making melee classes overpowered? (my conspiracy theory is that pets' enrage IS berserk and pets were overpowered using it so they nerfed pets and melee professions at the same time). Berserk really has no balls now and because it keeps the user from using special attacks, its negatives outweigh its bonus in practically every situation.
Second,my main point is that the change made berserk uneven for the different professions. Previously, berserk doubled your normal dps, which made equal to all the classes; however, after the changes, it adds a set amount of damage per hit. Can you see that this makes it a lot better for the faster melee classes than for the slow pikemen? A pikeman would need to be a master and using a weapon with speed < 4 seconds (whichwould require a speed slice; our best weapon is 4.5 speed)before it would equal for us.
Using no specials, Fencers and TKA can hit the speed cap EARLY, pikeman never necessarily hit it if we want to use our best weapon.
This issue was recently brought up on the pikeman forum, so I would just like to know your thoughts on why the berserk change was needed, and what you think aboutthe disparity the change caused between the different melee classes.
I posted that recently and should probably get some feedback soon. Like I said, expect communication to start happeningnext week.
From what I read here it does not sound like the pikeman will get much attention at all. All I want to see is maybe one or two issues for melee/pikeman handled with each big patch. This would show that we are getting some attention. There are so many things wrong with melee in general I see no logical reason for them in game. SWG all and all was not ready for release. Sad as it is Sony and the powers to be decided to put SWG on the shelves and in turn have disappointed many players and fans of the massive multiplayer game. How a team of talented programmers could goof up so bad following a great game like Everquest is beyond me. Sure Everquest had its bugs when it was first introduced and from what I can remember their were a few class’s that needed to be fixed, such as the rogue. But when they got their fix they became one of the most damaging class’s in all of Everquest.
Thanks for putting the time in to representing the pikeman who want to hang in there. Most of us see the potential pikeman have. I for one think it’s a great class, but in its current state I cant log in and play. Its no fun to log into a broken game. I want to stay with SWG as they fix the game and will continue to look for your responses Opethrebel. I also cant get excited about the next expansions to this game as long as the Pikemen class continues to stink up the galaxy.
Good luck sir,
Kapu
Master Doctor/Footsoldier on Ahazi
Opeth, I noticed on the combat dev's proposal that he said he was going to get this new stuff added before getting in and fixing our other issues.
Is it possible toconvince him to fix our basic (accuracy, ham, toughness) issues before this other new stuff is added in? It seems like a legit hotfix, and would help hold us over while we wait for a complete fix.
Right on, we're behind you 1000%. Let us know if we can do anything.
Opeth, Awesome.
It's really nice to see you sticking up for us, thank you.
Hopefully we'll get fixed eventually..
~Ald