Pistoleer Archive

First off, before I say anything else, I just want to say that I have dealt with Jaegen outside of the Rifleman/Pistoleer issue, and he was very reasonable and friendly. In fact, he went out of his way to be of assistance, and was a great help to me in providing some information about Pistol stats. I don't think he is being vindictive and I don't dislike him. I honestly think he is just trying to defend his profession's slice of the pie. Isn't that what we're all doing, to a point?

Now, that being said, I want to come on here and talk to you guys because I think I know where most of the animosity towards Pistoleers comes from. First off, I'd like to say that it's not JUST in the Rifleman forums. Carbineers and just about all of the Melee folks I have talked to think you whoop up on them. About the only two combat professions that DON'T fear you are Commando and Bounty Hunter. Now I'm going to leave Commando alone for a moment because I don't have ten days to sift through the debate there. Let that be someone else's thread.

I do want to talk about Bounty Hunters. And NOT about nerfing them. In fact, what I am going to suggest is that Bounty Hunters get ANOTHER cool aspect added to their profession. A third gun. A Bounty Hunter Carbine. Call it whatever you want (and judging from the name they gave the Carbineer's "Elite Carbine" that name is going to stink). In other words, give the Bounty Hunters one profession-specific weapon for EACH combat tree. So you would have:

Light Lightning Cannont
Scatter Pistol
[insert name of Carbine here]

Now here's the thing. Let them earn unique XP in each of these guns, and let them earn special mods for each of these guns THAT DO NOT APPLY to normal pistols and carbines. So the skill mods in the BH Pistol tree would only work on Scatter Pistol. The skill mods in the BH Carbine tree would only work on the BH Carbine. Pretty much exactly the way the LLC tree is now. There's a reason for all of this. In fact, it's quite simple.

The truth is that most of the "cheap Pistoleers" and "cheap Bounty Hunters" that other combat professions complain about are one and the same. People who are moonlighting in both professions in order to get an OUTRAGEOUS accuracy/speed boost that no sane Developer could ever have intended. I mean, "profession defense" is one thing, but stacking ALL of those skill mods is something of an overstep.

That being said, and as someone who has played as a Smuggler, a Bounty Hunter, a Pistoleer, a Carbineer and a Rifleman (not all at once, obviously) the mechanics of the game favor Pistoleers somewhat. But I think that is mostly at lower levels, Pre-Master, and could be dealt with from WITHIN the trees. However, they favor Pistoleer/Bounty Hunters to a disgusting degree. But I think if the Bounty Hunter bonus were changed (READ: NOT REMOVED) so that it only benefited Bounty Hunters, it would make the game better for everyone. Well, no. It would make the game worse for 133t d00dz. So, you know, it would make the game better for everyone with a soul.

Separating the weapon mods would prevent people from moonlighting for skill mods. It would also give Bounty Hunters access to another "cool weapon that they spend 217 points earning!" It'd be good for everyone, and most of the "cheap pistol users" would suddenly be gone from the game, as would the "cheap carbine users" and the "cheap bounty hunters". Because all of those groups are really moonlighters using the Bounty Hunter skill mods to increase their effectiveness beyond their profession's limits. The reason Riflemen complain the loudest, obviously, is that there are no rifle skill mods in Bounty Hunter.

But I'm glad to hear it. There shouldn't be. There shouldn't be cross-professional skill mods that can stack like that for any combat class. They are unbalancing, and can have dire results. They've turned entire groups of dedicated gamers against each other, because no one really understood that it was a subsection of the gaming community that are "tweaking" their way to uber-osity by abusing the Dev's oversights.

It's BAD for Pistoleer because it makes everyone resent you. It makes people call out to nerf you. And many of you aren't even USING these extra mods. It also forces you into a severe "cookie cutter" scenario, where you HAVE TO take all of Marksman, Pistoleer and Scout, as well as one of the trees in Bounty Hunter. So in order to gain this tweak (and thus stay competative) you are robbed of your originality and your character decisions. The same thing goes for Carbineer.

Some of the Bounty Hunters, Carbineers and Pistoleers are going to scream high holy murder over this idea. However, the people who are really dedicated to their profession should APPLAUD this idea, because it will bring everyone discussed to a comperable level of battle efficiency and maybe, just maybe, I will be able to open up these forums without scorching my eyebrows.

Thank you for your time, and for reading this far.

Oh, and if any mean-spirited Riflemen make snide remarks here. . . I didn't send them over. I'm not even posting a link to this on the Rifleman forum until I have time to discuss it here with the Pistoleers. See? I'm trying.

I agree and support the idea here, it's well written and would actually removeInsane Bonuseseffectively...

It would also make Bounty Hunters Unique.

The only thing is... Good luck posting that in the BH Forum....

Many of us agree with you. Many of us have been forced to take the BH line to compete. There are problems with doing that, Bh ending up with low mods for the special weapons because they don't stack with marksman mods, for instance. It would be nice of they could be separate though...

Doing what you propose I meant. And no I didn't go BH, I stuck with SL...

Excellent post. Aden, you should also post this on the bounty hunter forum. This is probably one of themost well written posts I have seen to date on this board.The ideas aren't outlandish and they are feesible for the devs to inact.

Kudos to Aden for being level headed and constructive. Let's hope the devs read this and take it into consideration.

Squad Leader. . . oh you poor thing. The only nice thing about having to re-roll my character (thanks, never-ending stat reduction bug) is that now I am free of the bonds that Squad Leader held over me).

I might actually take this to the Bounty Hunter forum later today. There will obviously be some minor re-wording. But I find that if you post things there from the perspective of:

"This will HELP Master Bounty Hunters and STOP Bounty Hunter Dabblers"

you will get a decent reception. Most of the "moonlighters" aren't on the forums because they are too busy r0xx0r1ng j00 n00bz! Or, you know, sniffing glue and drinking paint thinner. Whatever 1337 d00dz do in their spare time.

You're absolutely right. Many people here have been trying to convice the "nerf Pistoleers" crowd that it's Pistoleer/BHs that they are really upset about and not people that are just Pistoleers (like Pistoleer/Docs). Jaegen suggested the same sort of thing a month or two ago if I recall. I even thought the same thing when I realised that Pistoleer skills and BH Pistol skills were stackable. BH weapon trees should have been done in a manner similar to the way Commando have turned out; i.e. being unique to BHs. The BH weapons could be used with Pistoleer/Carbineer specials and vice versa the way the Launcher Pistol is. It's just the skills that shouldn't stack.

All in terms of PvP of course. When I was a rifleman I was buddybuddy with my PvE pistolblastin friends. You don't see PvE riflemen whining about their pistoleers in their group.

This is a good idea BUT...(Yes there is always a but)

If the mods do not stack, from the marksmen line, then BH's will be grossly underpowered....(I will explain)

The total pistol mods in the BH tree are +60 +50....If these mods are only toward our scatter, and do not stack with our marksmen pistol, then the BH would only have +60 accuracy and +50 speed with thier scatter, which is a huge deficeit in comparison to any other class...(Remember Pistoleers/riflemen/Carbs get to keep thier skill mods from marksmen.)

The solution can be two fold...

1.) Increase the mods and make them weapon specific, to be in line with how we are now, we would need 120 accuracy (total) and +80 speed....Of course this also makes our entire mastery of the marksmen tree useless...Which would suck .

2.) Make the BH skill mod for pistols not stack with normal pistol skill mods...

IE Pistoleers=Pistol speed......BH="BH pistol speed"

The game could use which ever is higher...But they would not stack....

Taewyn, that is a reasonable and well-thought addition to my idea and I agree with it. As I said, I don't want to NERF ANYONE with this idea. Bounty Hunters should have the same +Skills as Pistoleers or Carbineers in their respective trees when they are done. I am not as intimately familiar with the numerical values of those +Skill mods, but if what you say is true then I agree that those mods must be altered to accomidate the +Skill shift.

When I bring this to the Bounty Hunter forum (may heaven have mercy on my soul) I will be sure to work that into the post as not to receive any knee-jerk "HE'S NERFING US!" reactions. I can understand how someone who DOES know the math better than I did might see it as an attempt at a stealth nerf.

I completely forgot to add:

And yes, Taewyn, it would suck that all of the mods you get in Marksman do not stack. However, you would end up with the same totals, and that lack of natural progression would just be, well. . . the price you pay for Bounty Hunter.

My adjustment to Bounty Hunter, the way I see it, is to add up all of the Pistol and Carbine +Skill mods you get up to Master Marksman, and give the same mods in Novice Bounty Hunter. I don't know the numbers (and would love to have specifics if anyone wants to share), but, for example, if you end Master Marksman with +30 Pistol Speed, you start Novice Bounty Hunter with +30 Scatter Pistol Speed, and just call it an extension of what you already learned in Master Marksman. So for a true Bounty Hunter, you would not see ANY shift in +Skill mods.

My problem here isn't with Bounty Hunters. It's with people ABUSING their skills. Heh.

My adjustment to Bounty Hunter, the way I see it, is to add up all of the Pistol and Carbine +Skill mods you get up to Master Marksman, and give the same mods in Novice Bounty Hunter. I don't know the numbers (and would love to have specifics if anyone wants to share), but, for example, if you end Master Marksman with +30 Pistol Speed, you start Novice Bounty Hunter with +30 Scatter Pistol Speed, and just call it an extension of what you already learned in Master Marksman. So for a true Bounty Hunter, you would not see ANY shift in +Skill mods.

Most BH's would have no problem with that ....

I wholeheartedly agree with separating the weapon skill mods. It would truly allow SOE to finally fix PURE pistoleer and carbineer professions. Once they do this they should have an easier time fixing riflemen too in comparison to revamped pistoleer/carbineer.

I'd like to see this post go on the dev board and actually get some dev feedback.

Look how many commandos there are and they start from scratch with heavy weapons. The marksman pluses are kept, but they don't have much bearing at all on heavy weapons. They have rather severe accuracy issues, but they seem workable - at least with flamethrowers. Most seem to use the blast pistol to get their early experience as they can use the pistol specials, but I can see this changing in future.

Givingboth commando and BH more speed and accuracy mods within their trees for their specific weaponry to keep things a little more balanced if the mods didn't stack like they presently do.

Of course these are just ideas, but there must be SOME way to keep the already unbalanced bounty hunters from reaping the benefits of NEEDED and OVERDUE changes to the pure pistoleer/carbineer professions.

For the BH of course they will cry but really, if the mods in the BH trees were increased, they'd still perform quite well with THREE different weapons and might actually find a reason to use this flexibility on a situational basis.

I am sure everyone saw Holo's recent state of the game post where BH was in the top five LEAST mastered professions. This alone, with the huge number of BH in the game should be enough to make the devs sit up and take notice.