Pikeman Archive

I'm trying to get some momentum goingsupporting a melee vs. ranged balance in the SWG Discussion Forum. We need to make a big enough noise so that the SWG team realizes that this is a problem that effects our playing experience (andwill even more so in the future when PvP is bigger.)Please support a melee vs. ranged balance and speak your mind and /sign on these threads.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=169827&highlight=#M169827

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=180299&highlight=#M180299

Good luck with that on this board. I screamed bloody murder about melee vs. ranged balance in the corrospondants post and all i got was ppl crying about toughness and weapon certifications, which is such a non-issue.

They need to fix PvP ive been saying it since i started pikeman. Its broken, its potentially a huge part of the game.

+6 TOUGHNESS ISNT GOING TO MAKE YOU ANY MORE EFFECTIVE! Being able to have a chance against a ranged opponent WILL!

Christ every other melee class board has at least long ONE post about ranged vs. melee balance. No one here cares, they just think that ranged should win. Talk about a cop out. Sad really.

I am all for balance in mechanics. My chance of hitting a moving (kiting) ranged target is about 1 in 50 this needs fixed. Not being able to hit while in motion needs fixed. Not being able to hit a target on the ground before they get up from a lunge needs fixed. The excessive cost of special moves need fixed. etc etc etc there are so many broken aspects of melee that I cannot resonably talk pvp or ranged vs melee. Its just too broken to know if the weapons I use or the scale of damages over time between the two are out of control. I can't see the forest for the sawdust im my eyes.

most of the ppl here agree that ranged SHOULD have the advantage over melee. Think about it in real life. who are you placing the bet on, theguy with a scimitaror Indiana Jones?

There's only two issues in PVP where things are out of whack.

Bleeding - Waaaaay overpowered for PVP, and far too easy to inflict. Also, why are classes with bladed or bludgeoningweapons exempt from this skill when classes causing self-cauterizing burns from energy bolts have it? It seems to me that the rangedclasses should be given the wounding ability that the meleeclasses currently have, and the melee classes given bleeding. Of course, realism based logic rarely dictates balancing decisions.

Inability to land attacks once in range - This is not something that's easy to fix. Between ping times, packetloss, server/client lag, it's almost impossible to guarantee that this won't happen occasionaly. However, careful steps need to be taken to make it happen less. There's already a solution to this problem by the way, but most people don't take the time to get it. If you want to be taken seriously in PVP as a brawling class, you MUST get master brawler to get lunge2 attacks. They knockdown at 15m, and believe me, once you have someone on the ground, they are going to die. It doesn't matter if they're in full composite armor, if you have master stances (speed upgrades), they'll die before they can get up again assuming you don't get incredibly dicked with misses. Again, this reads - <b>if you can get within 15m ofsomeoneand have lunge2, they will die</b>. That's not a horribly bad deal, and it leads to the following comment...

Anyone that thinks we should be able to consistently take out bounty hunters or other elite ranged professions when the fight starts out at 30m or more is not looking for balance, they're looking for an imbalance in favor of brawlers. I'm not saying we shouldn't have a chance (ranged knockdown/posture changeattacks should probably be tweaked), but a bounty hunter or elite marksman class SHOULD be able to kill you at range close to 90% of the time. That's what their skills are intended to do - kill single targets at minimal risk to themselves. If you want some kind of defense against ranged attacks, you need to get ranged attacks yourself.

By the way, if you're wondering what the point of even playing a brawling class is - we do beat the snot out of anybody else when it comes to dealing damage to creatures and NPCs, especially in groups. Pikemen are at their best when in the middle of 3 or more mobs, using their area attacks to knockdown, stun, dizzy, and beat the crap out of all of them at the same time. We can also deal single target damage much faster than anyone except our fellow elite brawlers due to berserk and the nature of our weapons. Whether or not we'll maintain this edge after they nerfberserk againremains to be seen.

The only real imbalance I see is that a lot of people will consider PVP to be much more important in the endgame than PVE. Thats the breaks, not everyone gets to be the best at everything. Choose a profession that fits what you want to be good at if you want to have a good time. Just be glad it's never too late to change in SWG.

I have two major issues with melee vs ranged.

1. The miss rate of being in range while they run. Its bugged and it needs to be fixed. I can be riding someone and continually get the message of out of range or just plain can't hit them.

2. Cover doesn't exist in this game. They can shoot me through walls, mountains, even each other. Line of sight is not needed once I'm targeted. **edit** is up with that? We should be able to hide and ambush or duck behind a building to lure them in. Currently, this does not happen.

Just a side note: Someone above mentioned bleeding damage from self-cauterizing damage. I agree. I've been making the same gripe to my friends who play as well. I have a BLADE on the end of my weapon, and you're telling me I can't make them bleed? A little common sense wouldn't be taken amiss here.

Zal Malkel