Pikeman Archive

I hope that I don't over step my boundaries here, please forgive me everyone if this is not my area of expertise, but I have two friends who are Pikeman's and this one has gone a little too far.

I am a Novice Bounty Hunter, and as I stated, I have two really good friends who are Pikeman. Now I had not been online in about a week, and jumped on last night to join my friends only to find that they would be incapped or slain fighting mobs that they normally took out in 2 or 3 hits. Now whether the previous abilities available to them were set to high I don't know(nor do I think it was). What I can tell you is that I now have two friends who just spent over two months building their Pikeman class, ready to give it all up to become a Commando or even worse, completely steer away from any combat class whatsoever, and one is even talking about cancelling his account all together.

What I have noticed so far in this game, is that everytime the Dev's make a patch, they fix very small issues, some of which are important, such as previous vendor issues, factory issues, etc. At the same time they make these changes, the Dev's seem to also make changes that cause some huge uproar within the community at large becuase of how they nerfed or upgraded a class. Now I understand that it is impossible to make everyone happy when you have close to 300,000 registered users, but something needs to change here. It is beginning to look and feel as if the things that are getting changed within the game, are those things that people have whined about because they feel that their low-level character that they just started last week who has 1,1,1,1 in their Marksman skills completed should be able to take down a Dark Jedi or a Master Bounty Hunter who has spent over two months building that character. DEV'S PLEASE, PLEASE STOP LISTENING TO THE WHINERS, YOU CAN TELL WHO THEY ARE, AND PAY ATTENTION TO THOSE OF US THAT LOVE THIS GAME, WE ARE YOUR BET SOURCE FOR INFORMATION

Worse yet, I have seen people in PvP go up against a Pikeman and take him down with a CDEF pistol. Now call me biased, but last I checked a Master Pikeman should be able to beat a Novice Marksman. In PvP I have seen ranged weapons classes running from a Pikeman shooting over their shoulder, and hitting the Pikeman about 80% of the time. Meanwhile, the Pikeman is chasing him around unable to cause any damage to the individual because they are a Melee class and can't hit a ranged weapons player from any distance greater than 8 meters. Now with this new patch, Dev's, you have completely made any Pikeman useless to his comradeson the battlefield, unless he happens to possess Medic skills to heal us. My friends who are Pikeman now come to a PvP battle just to watch, they don't even enter in the battlefield. Kind of sounds like elementary school when the kids who were to small to play had to stand on the sidelines.

Obviously I could ramble on.....but I fear that the Dev's will ignore this, as they have many other valid arguments and concentrate on taking the money out oflittle children's hands and making them happy with their gameplay. No offense Dev's, but if you want kids to be able to kill anything that moves, send them a copy of Jedi Academy instead. Now here is a brief list of things that I feel will make the battlefield a little more even for allProfessions...

1) Most Important...Ranged Weapons need to have some sort of disadvantage in PvP. Any time I run and shoot my LLC, I should expect to have to stop before I can fire it, for about 3-5 secs would be reasonable. That way any Melee player will actually have a chance to hit me. I can understand running and shooting a pistol, but running and shooting a rifle? Go behind theDevelopment Building and try running with a pistol firing at a target, and then running with a rifle and firing at a target......Can't do it can you....hmmm.....get it now?

2) 30 secs is way to long to make a player waitbefore he can attack again,this waiting period should be dropped to no more than 7 secs. I don't see any NPC's that need to wait 30 secs when they attack me with a Melee weapon, so don't do it to my friends the Pikeman's

3) I agree that the Pikeman need to have a greater variety of weapons to choose from. If you are at a loss for what types of weapons to make, I suggest you open some books and read about the Medieval Times in our history, or for that matter watch the opening scene of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and watch the initial battle with Salron and his forces, and see the Pikeman in action first hand, and then tell these guys in here that they are too overpowered. Compared to that scene, the Pikeman in game now couldn't kill a fly.

4)A +50 Modifier to aranged weapon character while running and -50 modifier to a Pikeman when he gets up close to me is just way to far off scale. I really don't know what you were thinking here on this one, enough said.

5) And lastly, I truly believe that you Dev's need to read the context in which information is presented to you. It is quite obvious by my sentence structure in here that I am not a 12 year old kid playing games. I would like to see the Devs take a more serious look at the postings of the obviously older and more mature players that are on these forums. When you can't decipher what is being posted Dev's, ignore it, it obviously came from someone who just finished playing Sonic the Hedgehog and has yet to make it into Middle School. I can't tell you how hard it is to witness changes made because of bunch of 10 year olds have whined about how a Pikeman took them out in a Duel and they're CDEF pistol wasn't enough to kill the Pikeman.

Just for the record, although I did add a few quick flames in here for good measure, and to make a point, the context of this posting has not been for the purpose of flaming or whining. Although sometimes it seems neccesary to do both in order to get the attention of the Dev's, I am not going to try to shoot you down in a blaze of glory. I have very much enjoyed my experience with SWG so far, and very much look forward to the future this game has in store for all of us. I just find it so hard to believe that we are still in Beta 3 with this game. I know that I don't completely understand all the work that goes into a game of this size and scale, but I do appreciate all the work that goes into it. Someone once told me that the secret to a happy work environment is to WORK SMART, NOT HARD. Dev's put the pencils down, put the keyboards away, all of you gather in a conference room with a list of information of things that people want fixed. Look each other in the eye when you decide if an issue has any validity to it at all. I mean if someone says a Chef needs to be able to kill a Krayyt Dragon with a spoon, you know that is a little outrageous, so throw it away. But if someone has a legitimate gripe surrounding a profession, you should sit and determine how to fix it so all professions are happy with the change. Put yourselves in the players shoes, not the programmers shoes. Sometimes it feels like you're trying to hard, and because you're trying to hard it is taking forever for you to get things accomplished. You should stop all talk of what you have in testing, as well as all talk of Space Expansion pack until you can resolve these issues. If you stop worrying about the future of the game for three weeks, you could fix what is wrong with the game now.

What a great Aarano. I don't do much posting on these boards, but I do read them. That is quite possibly one of the greatest posts I've seen in a while. First of all, you were unbiased. You are arangedfighterand still admitted the brawler's disadvantage in PvP. Secondly, you reported the problems, but then also offered a solution to the problem, which is quite a rarity these days. Anyone can whine and tell you what they're upset about, but its the solutions you offer that make the biggest impression when reading a post.

I'm a Novice Pikeman on the Bloodfin server and a 3rd tier Polearm user on Starsider which I have just recently moved to. One major problem I have faced is the percentage of time I miss with my polearm at a distance of 3m, which should be the perfect distance. I'm not sure if this problem has something to do with the HUGE negative modifier placed on Pikeman, but man it sure is annoying! (By the way, what IS the deal with those -50 modifiers placed on Pikeman????) I will give an example:

Five minutes ago, I was somewhere between Bestine and Mos Espa fighting beetles which con'd yellow to me as a 3rd tier polearms user using the best weapon that is available to me (long vibro axe sliced 20%), going into beserk mode, and dying, all because I missed 75% of the time. I did the math!. A few days ago, I was going into beserk-mode as a 2nd tier polearms user using a lance (also the best for my tier) that was unsliced! I was easily killing yellows with close to 90% efficiency and having quite a good time doing it.

Does this mean that the higher up I go in the Pikeman profession the worse my accuracy will be? Because that is what it seems. And honestly, it pisses me off.

Even if you implemented such a minor change into the PvE scene as to increase the rate at which I can actually hit a target, I would be a much happier camper.

Just thought I'd add that to compliment Aarano's post.

P.S. My friend asked me the other day when he saw me fighting with a lance, "What'd you do? Mug a blind man and steal his walking stick?" Needless to say, much work is neededfor the weaponsin the polearm department. Why not include some halbarad or bardiche hybrids that look really Star Warsy. That'd be Aweseome!

I wish holo would respond to something like this

Does he even know there is a pikeman class in his game?

I'm a master, and I'm afriad to duel a NOVICE 0/0/0/0 TKA because if I use ANY special what so ever, that's about 200 life. 200x4=800...So that's like him hitting me for an extra 800 damage every single time I hit him.

And I hit much faster than he does...so the only way I stand a chance is to not use ANY specials at all...and just hope I can swing at him enough to kill him before he kills me with his specials...

Very good post Aarano. I am glad a ranged user actually sees our problems. My biggest gripes about how the game is currently playing are:

1) Pikeman are useless in PvP. I can deal with this. I try to adjust my tactics and look for new ways to help out if I can. Hate the kiting issue, but hey I knew what I was getting into.

2) Don't really like the missing issue. A TK is using bare hands, and can hit more accuratley than a man with a big stick.

3) Hate that pets are alot more useful than a Pikeman. Why should a group waste a spot on a melee that they have to heal every 5 seconds? KD used to give us some since of belonging in a group, but no more. Used to be if there was a bad pull, the pikeman could go solo on a MOBtil the gunners took out the other Mobs. Can't even justify being in a group anymore, sad

Those are my primary concerns about the Pikeman class. Some of those things I could overlook, but with the new KD timer, the class has gotten very unfun to play.

You nailed the pikeman right on the head. Along with everyone else.

The dev's don't even realize, the KD nerf may have been needed, but they should have given us a SECOND way to stop people from 'running', maybe a leg based stun that lets them still shoot but they can't run for 10 seconds, or something similar. It is totally pointless to be a Pikeman right now. We take just as much, if not more damage then ranged users in PvE, and we kill ourselves with our own 'skills', AND we can't stop enemies from running away, in any way shape or form.

Here here. My bro is a Pikeman. I really feel bad for both of our classes, but it is obvious that you got hit harder than me.I hope they take notice soon or they will lose another 2 accounts.. What you said about whinning is correct. However, they need to look at the mature posts that have reasonable complaints. I've spent too much time to go range when I dislike it anyway..

great post, i hope silver send this letetr to the devs since he is our correspondent.. isnt he? and i agree with you on everything, i went out and hunted last night with a group of players many ch some ranged and me the only pikeman/melee in the group, i spent most of my time during this healing myself and other vs getting any combat xp for my pikeman skills, which really frustrated me that im relegated to a medic position when thats not even my profession but taken to support my pikeman skills.

really do hope devs read this cause this timer issue has rendered our class useless now and hope they fix it.

Anyone notice any ham decrease/increased damage on sweep attack ?

Outiside of Mos Espa, Tatooine:

3:00 PM, exactly one minute before this post was made I missed a green baby epoie 9 or 10 times. Wow, that really pissed me off...