Pikeman Archive

Combat Proposal - Designer Notes Sept 18

The semi-famed post from the combat dev (Dan, the combat man) back in Sept. with such gems as the 3-second cap proposal, and quotes such as:

"I don’t think I want to make range a defining characteristic, as the range limitations cause playability issues for all melee classes. Fixing it for pikemen will leave the other classes with the same problems."

"I don’t like the negative ranges in the slightest bit. I’ll see what I can get changed from the weapon crafting side to negate these modifiers. It will probably be on new weapons only"

Lots of fun stuff...Just thought it would be good to post it here for others to see and keep it around as a good link to refer to.

antares

master pikeman

woah! I must read that later(hunting krayts atm), but one sentence caught my eye:

"Fixing it for pikemen will leave the other classes with the same problems."

wth?

But fixing it for TKA is cool with everyone.

antares
master pikeman

From what I picked up, they are trying to compare ranged professions to melee professions. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there supposed to be a difference between fireing a gun and hacking someone up with a sword? I really don't think that PIkeman should be a 'brother' profession to Rifleman ( considering Riflemen do Mind damage and Pikemen do Action damage ). Although I do agree that speed should trade off to damage, that shouldn't be the same for each pike. Ex: Some pikes take major damage, yet are slow, and other pikes are really fast, but don't hit for much.

Capping speed forprofessions is idiotic, in my own opinion.

I feel ok with the whole Knockdown thing, but not fully ok.

That's all for now-

-Ruka

Master Pikeman in making on Kauri

"All meleers - Please read the section at the top of this document. If you do not, you will look at these lists and say "THESE ARE SHORTER THAN THE RANGED SOLUTIONS! THE DEVS HATE US!". This is not the case. The reason these are shorter is that the problems with melee are more fundamental and global than ranged classes."

I've always loved their logic... somehow something that has more fundamental and global problems doesn't need any longer solutions than the oneswho are easy and simple to fix. In fact, such solutions needs to be shorter!

As always it's fun to see some ideas come to life and others not

I read the entire post and based on that it appears that the Pike profession will remain the least capable for the following reasons.

We do not do more damage than swordsman or fencer as it stands now but we are going to be considered the damage dealing class. How? If, based on your post, there are no changes in the damage output for swordsman and you are only slowing us down, how? We now hit once every 3 seconds while a fencer has hit us 6 times already. Hmm. I bet those 6 hits will amount to more damage than our one hit. Also, I bet of those hits one will be a blind and a kd or maybe just two hits, dizzy and a lunge 1 or 2. OOPS, guess i dont get to hit back after waiting for 3 seconds.

Yes, you have defined the pike profession now. We are the laughing stock and have been and appears that we will continue to be such.

Now, you gave Chefs thier "chef" hats, when do we get our jester hats with the little bells to make it plainly clear to those non-combat professions that WE are the joke and no one else.

Do I think the Dev's hate the profession? No, that is childish. I do believe they have a fundamental problem in their decision making that has been and will continue to be the bane of this game. It appears they take a profession out of its element, look at it and make changes. However, that profession does not operate unless it is in its environment interacting with other professions(keep in mind that the GCW is the ultimate goal and that means PvP)and therein lies the problem. The example with the fencer and pikeman can be with any of the other professions but in a melee profession this is magnified. We, as melee have a very limited range and during that 3 second time frame so much will have happened. Anyone who has participated in raids or large scale PvP knows of the chaos. This is a bad day for pikeman, its not like they get to lie down at 50m and survey the battlefield and take a pot shot. No, we have to run around in the thick of it getting shot at as well as hit by other melee and only being able to hit once every 3 seconds will ensure your only purpose is to attract attention and die. In fact you might not draw attention. since you only hit once every 3 seconds at best ppl will laugh at you. Someone will kd you and a fencer can pop dizzy on you at an amazing speed that he probably wont even know he did it.

So, am I saying nerf, hell no. Just a little common sense when making wholesale changes. Remember, these professions have to interact with other professions. As it looks now, there will still be those that are horrible and those that have merit.

I understand wheret they are going. They are trying to make the game so you have to fight in a group as in EQ and not solo. Hence the inherent weakness of the Pikeman. it can not and will not be able to fight alone, you will need one or two doctors to follow you around spaming heals and revives. (yes, that is a sarcastic remark.)

Roboute ... calm down, have some dip.

This was a very old post. Antares was posting it just to show you what the devs were mulling over back then and what actually came to fruition. This isnt the gospel according to devs, it was just a bunch of floated ideasby Dan the combat man.

Don't get your panties in a bunch just yet. Wait and see what comes up in the next big patch. If we get hosed again I'll be right beside you with a pitchfork and a torch as we go dev-hunting.

Well maybe not a pitchfork, that might be considered a polearm weapon and would therefore be useless. Maybe a nice board with a nail through it (would that fall under the fencer line)? Unless of course it was a sploited pitchfork that had been sliced several times and had 1.0 speed and low ham costs and ........

Leg, my time in this game is fast coming to an end. Each day i get more and more upset. I dont have the time to wait anymore. My playing days are coming to a close and I want to PUSH as hard as possible to see the Pike profession on equal footing with the dps of other combat professions.

Also, I dont have that much faith in the Dev's to be honest. Who are they and what are they? Just a bunch of younger ppl who dont understand decision making or project management. They can right code and that is about it. For proof i point you to a game commonly refered to as SWG.

What are your reasons for quitting the game?

I mean if they are anything other than content, sorry to see you go. But if you're quitting because of game content thats just not right. Every game of this ilk goes through growing pains and has to struggle to find its own niche.

The devs have just catered too much to the noobers in an attempt to get as many people to continue playing the game as possible. Once the kids all get bored of not being able to get jedi or having their jedi die all the time and move on to the next game in which they will bitch and complain to get what they want, then all us grown-ups can get down to the business of enjoying this game.

After SOEs desire to have as many people playing as possible subsides, the devs can then start looking into fixing whats broke.

Every nerf up until now has been in some way related to pvp. Every one. All nerfs are a result of some stupid kid who bought the game taking his brand new cdef pistol out to shoot some imps/rebels and got his ass handed to him, went on the boards and whined until changes were made.

Why have classes like pikeman, chef, droid engineer, etc. been ignored up to now. The answer of course is because none of these profession pvp on a frequent basis. Suppose in some bizarro world pikeman was one of the better pvp classes, believe you me the devs would have fixed us by now.

I do believe our fix is coming. If I didn't, I most likely would have quit myself. I think we are now starting to turn the corner where the whiners have left or are leaving and the people who really want to play the game are left. Now that the devs have stuck pacifiers in the mouths of those others they can start to look at the broken stuff.

Stick it out, I think it will be worth it.

The game content is disappointing /agreed

I too was at a point where I was strongly considering quitting the game for the likes of EQ2 or Horizons. You know what? Its going to be the same thing over again.

I think I'm going to stick it out until the space expansion at least. With that we'll see what happens. You never know, there could be some sort of compelling content and reason to play. If you're like me and care little about FS (if you get it, awesome, if you don't thats fine as well).

I agree that all major nerfs were a direct result of PvP. I really do think some of the changes should have applied directly to the PvP system verses say PvE playability.

- - - When I see things like the ideas that Dan was throwing around. I thought he probably was in ghost mode following folks around OR looking over his 10 yr olds shoulder while he/she played.

I really hope that the caps aren't EVER implemented. Something like that would be a horrid mistake. It is HIGHLY disappointing to see the TKA in the state its in and the pike (or any other class but pike #1) in the state its in.

Bottom line is that not many folks choose our path. That has since changed with this bandaid known as the holo.

Remember the glory days of launch? When everyone was just out exploring the worlds. Most people were nice because they were some uberfied punk trying to push off getting kicked around at school to a game platform for modern day counceling? That was sweet.

I'd like to see a time when that could happen again. Where everyone interacts with one another without an uncomfortable silence at a shuttle port. As it stands now, professions are more of a dividing line. Where the noobish (I hate that word, but so be it) folks with super loud voice cry for a nerf, find out that because of the nerf X (insert profession for X) they need to migrate like fleas or roaches to the next profession and parasite it down into the ground.

Anyway - I'm ranting - sorry - just my opinions.

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Saeleck wrote:

Remember the glory days of launch? When everyone was just out exploring the worlds.

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I really hope that they dont throw in that speed cap... that would be utterly gay...

I get hit by a master Fencer for like 500 damage6 TIMES before I ca swing once... that mean, with mitigation, that Ill swing twice and he swings 12 times... 3 swings for me, 18 for you... lmao... we better be able to one shot everyone if thats the cause... armor or not, we better do like 2000 per PvP swing if we only swing every 3 seconds... thats reallly dumb... Why do they insist on breaking broken classes? What about OUR HAM costs... this guy aint making sense... I am starting to understand how we got this way in the first plac.e..

Hrm... meant to say weren't (in regards topeople being nice)- guess i didn't get too much sleep.

I find that it was always about the content with me. The combat andcrafting (in my humble opinion) borked. It requires no tact - if you're crafting its experimentatino skill tapes, if you're combat its the profession that didn't get the nerf. Pretty well crashor burn if you know what I mean.

What I found exciting (as a change) were weapon schematics and the likes of someday finding a legendary or exceptional weapon.

The spot the devs are in is a perilous one, for sure. I say that because they are now trying to make up for the poorly laid out ripples of skills in combat professions. FOR SURE PIKE NEEDS SOME SERIOUS LOOKING AT. I would hope that its not the usual "We looked, its working as intended". I feel like an 8086 in a GHz world in this profession. Then again, I don't mind it so much because its a challenge. For sure we are not the melee on the move (maybe that will change when I hit master, who knows). What I mean by that is when on the run, the accuracy . . well you know.

Its not that I mind not being melee on the move either - however - if we aren't, we need the appropriate range. I'd be willing to entertain a trade off if I had a TKA accuracy while standing still, for sure. Just at sometime, knowing I need to land this next hit or I'm toast - having to roll a 6 on a 6 sided dice with 5 sides painted 1.

I mean please use the dice method where-ever possible.

So lets take some bets - how long do you think it would actually take to tweak a schematic? Short you'd think - did you know the spraystick CDRM dmg experimentation was broke since launch and was just recently fixed. Good thing rifle got popular I guess and/or Weaponsmith.