Pistoleer Archive

This is a direct rebuttal to the original post here:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pistoleer&message.id=12637

Well, I re-ran Samra's numbers (and a HUGE thanks to him btw for starting this and doing this inital legwork) and I thought I should share them with you. I tried to use a controlled set of equipment and used 2 vendors that make VERY similar stats and provide pre-sliced weapons. I used Ardath and Meridian on the Scylla server located outside of Mos Espa. I beleive Samra posted on the other thread he was familiar with both WS's and I think could agree with the statement I made above. So, lets start looking at some data.

First the weapons:

T21: 115-333 7.5 AR3
Laser Rifle: 38-373 6.0 AR2
Elite Carbine: 95-164 3.4 AR1
Laser Carbine: 41-258 3.9 AR2
DX2: 87-143 2.6 AR1
FWG: 48-178 2.4 AR0

Yes, I'm aware that the DX2 is currently bugged. But in reality that is a bug not a balance issue so the data is included and valid. I think everyone agree with that, cause remember, we are talking balance here.

Now, DPS straight:

T21: 29.8
Laser Rifle: 38.3
Elite Carbine: 38.0
Laser Carbine: 38.3
DX2: 44.2
FWG5: 47.0

Now DPS with Armor Piercing:

T21: 58.2
Laser Rifle: 59.8
Elite Carbine: 47.5
Laser Carbine: 59.8
DX2: 55.3
FWG: 47.0

All of these numbers were described in Samra's original post and feel no need to go about explaining it over again as Samra did an excellent job. Click on the other link to get the details if you wish.

Now lets start getting to the real fun stuff.

DPS with armor piercing and speed

Master Rifleman
T21: 242.5
Laser Rifle: 345.2

Master Rifleman/Marksman
T21: 436.5 (what a difference +5 speed makes)
Laser Rifle: 359.0

Master Carbineer
Elite Carbine: 67.3
Laser Carbine: 83.5

Master Carbineer/Marksman
Elite Carbine: 79.2
Laser Carbine: 99.9

Master Carbine/BH
Elite Carbine: 161.5
Laser Carbine: 233.76

Master Pistoleer
DX2: 88.7
FWG: 75.2

Master Pistoleer/Marksman
DX2: 109.7
FWG 94.0

Master Pistoleer/BH
DX2: 143.7
FWG: 112.8

Whew, in Samra's post he used the scatter pistol instead of the DX2 as a point of reference. In all reality, there not all that much differnce in the 2. So lets get to some observations:

1) What the hell are we all complaining about. Look at those poor Carbineers. They are getting the royal shaft here unless for some reason the Elite Carbine I looked at is complete and utter crap due to resources. They need some real luvin. In all reality, their elite carbine should be doing in the neighborhood of 133 dps. Because of this, I'm going to leave Carbine out any future observations.

2) Comparing straight master pistoleer to master rifleman things look about balanced. The rifleman in this scenario is dealing about 2.73x the damage as the pistoleer. Infer what you wish, but I seem to think that this coincides with the 2.5 melee damage multiplier that rifleman endure. Most games seem to have a offense/defense tradeoff, it seems to hold true here as well.

3) There is a problem with the Master Rifleman/Marksman. This combo has a 95 speed multiplier that essentially knocks any weapon they are holding down to a 1.0 weapon speed and begins to deal over 4.5x the damage compared to a pistoleer/marksman. That's out of balance. Perhaps at master marksman they need to get rid of the extra +5 speed and replace it with accuracy or something.

4) The flip side to number 3 is that currently the rifleman has no auxilary profession to attain to enhance their skills. A Pistoleer with just BH pistol would leave the rifleman doing just 1.68x as much damage and probably equal damage as a carbineer (remember, carbine are boinked).

5) I think that the easiest solution to this problem is to cap carbine/pistol speed at 80 (the BH limit) and cap rifle at 90. To accomadate this, there would need to be a bump in the T21's stats (not much, I'm not running the numbers on this, but the same weapon instead of being 115-333 would be 120-350ish give or take a few points). The reason for the for the bump would be pistols at 80 would be doing about 110 damage, T21 would need an according bump to get to about 275 (30ish points). Re adjust for carbines as well.

6)Dan, the guy in charge of combat is a freaking moron. Complete and total idiot. We should all be thankful our guns fire in this game. In his proposal to move the firing speed to 0.5 for pistols and 3.0 for rifles, that would give master pistoleers a 177 dps assuming you could hit your speed cap. In order to keep current balance in the game, the T21 (pistols dps * 2.5) and assuming rifleman could hit their speed cap, the T21 rifle would have to be adjusted to somewhere in the neighborhood of a 500-800 weapon. HELLO, McFLY.....ANYBODY HOME!!!!!

Oh well, I'm too tired to keep going. I'll let all of you argue about what you see in the numbers.

Tilen
Scylla
Rifleman

Whoops, I boinked one. The Laser Rifle final DPS is 223 with master rifleman and 321 with rifleman/marksman...sorry.

Tilen
Scylla

I'm sorry - but you are assuming that the intention is to have (at the master level) rifles doing 2.5x or more the dps of pistols. Why? The infamous melee damage modifier???? (please ohh please give me a 600+ base damage pistol and the 2.5x melee damage modifier btw)

Rifles already get:

Better upfront damage - rifleman already routinely are able to one shot things that take me 5-6 shots or more to kill to say nothing of the 1-2 shot pvp kills

Targetted mind damage - key to pvp

Ranged DB - essential to large scale pvp and something no other proff can touch

So why does one (albeit painful) drawback entitle you to 2-3 TIMES the DPS of other classes? Last time I checked the intention was to have all professions roughly equal in DPS. The rifleman-pistoleer comparison was "supposed" to be rifleman doing massive damage in small number of shots - pistoleer equals out over a short period of time with greater number of shots.

Parting thoughts -

Yes rifleman have a ton of issues as well - giving them a melee defense move would be a great idea for one

Commando weapons doing "melee" attacks is a mistake - they have admitted as much, once thats fixed they won't slaughter rifleman quite as fast

No - the current proposed speed fix from the devs probably won't balance either - which is why we should be working on a better proposal. NEVER forget that the pistol at .5 spd and rifle at 3.0 spd was the idea of the CLUELESS dev who mucked up this whole combat system to start with - not us.

Yes, Carbineers are even more borked than pistoleers/rifleman - the posture change timer was basically the last nail in their coffin.

Hello,


First, your weapons are a bit under average on my server (Kauri) which isn't exactly the best one resource wise. Btw, here are some comments :

1) Speed cap isn't takent into account, makes a huge difference.
2) how exactly can we be Pistoleer (or carbineer / rifleman) without Marksman ?


Keep in mind the new delay cap proposed by SOE wasn't our intention, our scheme was to show how unbalanced things are (mainly due to speed / accuracy mods stacking from BH). BH is a SECONDARY CHOICE profession atm, I really don't think this was intended.

Btw, you are right, both Pistoleers/Carbineers and Riflemen have issues, the common one is the speed. Let's all focus on the speed thing before changing anything else and see what will happen.

I think that as long as Speed Mods (and NOT Delay) are not capped to Marksman+Elite Weapon Prof (said Pistoleer, Carbineer and Rifleman) speed, the game will be very unbalanced. Rifleman Speed Mods are much too high too and clearly not progressive as it should.


BTW, Devs are aware of everything everyone said (even those Dabblers sure they are meant to rule everything), let's see what they'll do.

I'm sorry to say, but I disagree with some of your points.

Taking AP into account is pretty iffy. What are you comparing it against? AR1 (any armored player)? AR0? Against something that is vulnerable to that damage type (in which case all weapons act like AP0 - it is the AP / AR / vulnerable system that is bugged, not the DX2 in particular. The DX2's bugs are in it's damage stats and range modifiers)?

But we'll use your numbers for now even though they're questionable and go down your list of points.

1:
Master Rifleman - Laser Rifle: 345.2
Master Carbineer - Laser Carbine: 83.5
Master Pistoleer - DX2: 88.7

What do you mean poor Carbineers? 5.8% less damage is pretty negligible and well within the range that weapons can vary from different weaponsmiths. They're basically in the same boat that Pistoleers are here, but I wouldn't say they're any worse off based on this data. And obviously both are at a serious disadvantage to the Rifleman, who is doing about four TIMES as much damage.

2:
No, they're not about balanced. Master Rifleman is doing 4 TIMES as much damage (not 2.73x - nice job picking the lower DPS rifle for comparison...). This is horribly unbalanced, and is due to how poorly speed is implemented in this game. The melee damage multiplier has no bearing here. Why do riflemen get things like concealment and fast crawling and surprise shots and stuff like that? It's all to make them stronger at a distance, to balance the fact that they're weak up close (that 2.5x damage muliplier, which I agree is absurdly high and should be reduced).

3:
Right - because of how badly broken the speed equations are, at higher skill values small differences (like +5 from master marksman) can make a huge difference.

4:
You're cheating with your numbers again. You're saying that because Pistoleer can pick up BH for more speed, and Rifleman has no equivilant, things are unbalanced - "A Pistoleer with just BH pistol would leave the rifleman doing just 1.68x as much damage". Errr. Sorry. Your own numbers show that a rifleman with master marksman compared to a Pistoleer with BH pistol does 3.04x as much damage. Or did you mean rifleman without master marksman? Ok, in that situation it's 2.4x as much damage. You can't keep cheating and comparing the weakest rifle to the strongest pistol. But back to your FALSE numbers again - you think it would be unfair for a rifleman to do only 1.68x as much damage as a pistoleer that has spent 100+ extra skill points to pick up BH Pistol as well!? That's absurd! Someone picking up two professions that stack should do more damage. Whoever said that a rifleman should always do at least 1.7x as much damage as anyone else, no matter what skills they have !? That's just crazy.

5:
There are lots of fixes. However, one that involves then giving riflemen damage bonuses to put them back to the bugged level of damage they're doing now is not a valid one. I believe a correct fix would be this:
Assign an absolute weapon speed ability to different skill levels. For example, at Novice Marksman, your firing rate is 1, so you fire at your weapon's stated speed. By the time you get to a weapon specialist rank (Pistol IV, Rifle IV, etc... in Marksman) you have a firing rate of .8, so you shoot at your weapon speed * 0.8. Continue to decrease this as you go up the different elite professions, stopping at a firing rate of 0.5 at Master, so that you shoot twice as fast. This would be like capping the current weapon speed skill at 50. It would maintain class, weapon, and specials balance (meaning that you can make some do more damage, but be slower, and others do less damage, but be faster, without them breaking because everything goes to 1). This would also fix the issues with Carbine/BH and Pistol/BH stacking. Getting a Firing Rate ability of 0.65 at Grips II and getting a Firing Rate ability of 0.65 at BH Pistol II (just an example), would mean that you fire at 0.65 - no stacking - you just use whichever is better.

6:
That may be. I don't know this "Dan". I don't know how many decisions were made by others and he was just told to implement them, or how many decisions are his own. I also don't know how much he did alone, or how much was work done by a team. I'd rather not single out individuals, but I'm quite willing to say that much of SWG is very poor. This is a weak RPG with strong, but horribly unbalanced, FPS traits. It has good graphics and a Star Wars logo, but no content, incomplete classes, and tons of bugs. But at this point, all we can do is hope that by finding and reporting problems and making suggestions, that we can make it better. That or that another game will come out so we can jump ship

Yetil, do me a favor and read my first reply. Then post again.

Tilen
Scylla

Dan and Gray,

I dont know how familiar you are with MMORPG's, but there are certain things that always happen. There are classes good at taking damage, but weaker in delivering. And then there are classes better at dealing damage than they are at taking it. If you were under the belief that DPS's were going to be equal no matter what class's you picked, now would probably be a real good time to re-evaluate your decision and see if its the right one for you. No matter how much complaining, petitions, threating to quit, or whatever, nothing is going to change that fact.

Dryiel

1) The speed caps were taken into consideration.
2) When I went with Master Pistoleer/Marksman that means they mastered marksman as well as Pistoleer for the extra +5 speed it gives

Tilen
Scylla

I am a smuggler/pistoleer, and I'm fairly neutral on most pistoleer issues (I just want proper replacements for disarm shot 2 and multitarget shot, or at least make them work properlyonce more). I also have a rifleman character.

Riflemen are balanced by two factors right now: 1) the melee multiplier, 2) the inability of people to heal mind damage, except over time. We're going to see some interesting developments in the future, since the devs have said that they want to give some ability to heal mind damage (what form this will take is up in the air) and in the latest chat log found on SWG Vault they said they wanted to tone down the melee multiplier. That's going to change the whole balance of the rifleman class. For good or for bad? Who knows.

The carbineers that I know use either the laser carbine or the DXR6. As a smuggler I've sliced penty of weapons, and those are the only ones I see, generally speaking. Elite carbine is not something people bring to me for slicing, if they do buy it.

One more thing you need to keep in mind is what happens when you run up against armored targets (light or medium). Game balance is a nebulous thing, and the more I think on it, the more likely it seems that it will never be achieved.

Oaktree,

I read it quickly and will re-read later when I have more time.

I'm currently working on a big post to the devs on the corr forum that details what was wrong with speed, and what should change.

Basically it agrees, I think, in spirit with what you are trying to show. Indeed, speeds at lower leves weren't a big freaking deal, only at cap was there a problem. And yes, the cap impacted balance across the board, not just between rifles/pistols, TKA had +115 speed (duh), and polearms had +75 and could never reach cap. It was also messing up special ability balance..those that were balanced because of a huge delay (last ditch) suddenly become godly at 1.0 seconds.

No one was hoping to change balacne at low speed, we just want to see the cap not be attainable. Does that match what you're trying to show?

Why the devs chose to change speed drastically, and not for the better, I do not know. Maybe with a new post showing WHERE specifically it was messing up, will help guide them.

If I find use for the above numbers, can I cut/paste them?

Thanks, I think we all are on the same page with this.

You're wrong too in your estimating of what the caps should be.

I can still cap a pistol 1.7 speed even using last ditch, at 80 speed (power up speed).

Rifles..lol, you just need a 6.0 speed weapon and a powerup to cap flushing volley.

See, that's still a problem, that doesnt' solve anything..nice try though

I do agree with your general premise though, that the devs suggestion is NOT what everyone was thinking needed to change.

Lol, I'll go for there in a row.

The reason it's hard is becuase of the calculation. You can get 1.0 crafted pistols, and we'd need to figure out the min crafted rifles too, with powerup, with speed slice.

Note, with a VERY good speed slice, enhanced weapon parts, and a speed powerup, you can, i'm sure, get rifles MUCH lower than 6.0 speed. Right? So we'll always have the problem as long as the calculation works like that, and/or as long as speed is higher than say...50.

1.0 speed weapon 2.0 special attack still caps at 50.Ouch. What would happen if speed was nerfed back to 40? Could we still PvE well? would it be fun? I don't know...but it woud be more balanced...unless the **edit*** calculation changes.

Maybe we can investigate an absoulte cap based off weapon delay, special delay, that varies...thinking..

I looked at your new numbers, and they're still wrong.

You're going to need to further explain how you're taking into account speed and DPS, because something isn't adding up to how I would do it. It doesn't appear to work for either reasonable scenario (assuming the weapon is used against AR0, or against AR1).

But regardless of all of that... there is a basic theme here:

Speed is BROKEN and it breaks class balance, weapon balance, and specials balance.

I must say that I'm extremely disappointed in this post, particularly since it is far different than what you told me in private last night. You're a smart guy and seemed fairly even-handed last night, but this post is extremely misleading -- intentionally so. You should be embarassed by it. Your calculations confirm my original conclusions, but you bury the results in a long post and make sweeping conclusions that aren't supported by the data.

What conclusion would a casual reader get from your post? That speed _isn't_ broken in the game, as your title suggests. Of course as you know and admitted to me in private, that's not the case. Under the current speed formula, once you hit the cap you can fire _any_ weapon with _any_ special attack once per second. That means a Smuggler can spam Last Ditch once a second, and that someone with +100 speed ignores the speed rating on their weapon and gets mad when they get a speed slice. It also means that damage per second (DPS) is fairly balanced at zero speed, but goes bezerk at high speed, which is what you admitted in private last night.

What is your answer to all of this? Speed is great right now, and the insane way that it enables a Master Rifleman to fire a T21 faster than a Master Pistoleer can fire a FWG5 is okay too. Why? Well your reasoning is buried after a lot of neat-sounding numbers. So let's look closer at what you did:

First of all, one of the previous posters questioned the stats on your weapons. I also question the stats on your rifles because my newb rifleman on another server has a far better Laser Rifle than you show here, and I didn't shop around. But I can just /tell Ardath or Meridian tonight to verify that, so it's no big deal.

Also, as another poster mentioned, you like to compare the best pistol to the worst rifle. And, as I told you last night, you also like to use the DX2 even though it is wildly inaccurate, the AR doesn't work, and it's rarely used by Pistoleers. That's like me using the E11 as my example of how rifle is balanced.

But in any case neither of those issues are not the major problem, which is your slanted presentation.

Now let's look at the numbers, using the weapons in your post. I reran the numbers (you made small calculation errors):

Damage per second against an unarmed opponent:

Master Rifleman + Master Marksman (T21): 437.5
Master Rifleman + Master Marskman (Laser Rifle): 321.1
Master Rifleman (T21): 243.1
Master Rifleman (Laser RIfle): 222.99
Master Pistoleer (FWG5): 75.45

Okay, so what jumps out at you from these numbers? The Master Rifleman has a 322% higher DPS than a Master Pistoleer with a T21, and a 296% higher DPS if he uses a Laser Rifle. If the Master Rifleman gets Master Marksman as well (34 additional skill points), he spits out 580% more damage than the Master Pistoleer with a T21 and 426% more damage if he uses a Laser Rifle.

But you bury these results in the middle of your post, and explain why this is "justified." Your answer to the fact that a Master Rifleman can spit out 580% more damage than a Master Pistoleer if he gets Master Marksman (34 additional skill points) is that the Master Pistoleer can spend 145 additional skill points to get the Bounty Hunter pistol line. What you neglect to mention is that even if the Pistoleer gets the BH line (which leaves him with only 13 skill points afterward), the Master Rifleman/Marksman combo spits out 387% more damage than him.

But let's leave out the Master Marksman issue. What is your answer to the fact that a Master Rifleman has a 322% higher DPS than a Master Pistoleer, based on your own numbers? According to you, the 322% differential is completely justified by "the 2.5 melee damage multiplier" and an "offense/defense tradeoff." First of all, what does the 2.5 melee damage multiplier have to do with balance versus a Pistoleer? Pistoleers aren't melee. What is this "offense/defense tradeoff" that you talk about? If you're referring to defensive bonuses, none of them work now anyway. If you're saying that "someday" that this insane damage will be balanced out, how is that? Let's look at defensive bonuses:

Rifleman:
+20 Melee Defense
+18 Ranged Defense
+80 Cover
+20 Block
+30 Defense Versus Posture Change
+10 Defense Versus Stun/Blind/Dizzy

Pistoleer:
+13 Melee Defense
+5 Ranged Defense
+20 Defense Versus Stun/Blind/Dizzy
+20 Defense Versus Posture Change
+30 Defense Versus Knockdown
+30 Dodge

What about these bonuses is supposed to justify the fact that a Master Rifleman has a 322% higher DPS than a Master Pistoleer? Not a **edit** thing. None of them work anyway, so it's like me using the rifleman Block skill to justify a nerf to Rifleman.

The bottom line is that your analysis confirmed my conclusion about how screwed up speed is. It's your slanted and misleading post that covers that up. You should be ashamed of yourself.