Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Why The Way Speed Works In the Game is STILL Screwed Up
Most of you have read my original post about why the way speed works in the game is screwed up and disadvantages Pistoleers in a big way, which is a sticky post on this forum. If you haven't, here's the link:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pistoleer&message.id=12637
Earlier today a Rifleman decided to gather his own data, and run his own numbers. I support that because more knowledge is a good thing. I've run the numbers 100 times so I'm very confident that the speed equation is screwed up. As expected, he came up with similar results, even using some questionable weapon stats. But he tried to hide the results in an extremely misleading post. I suggest you all take a look at it:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pistoleer&message.id=16601
This is my reply to that post. I thought it needed its own thread. As I said above, his calculations confirm my original conclusions, but he buried the results in a long post and made sweeping conclusions that aren't supported by the data.
What conclusion would a casual reader get from his post? That speed _isn't_ broken in the game, as his title suggests. Of course that is 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 he admitted to me in private last night.
What is his 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 his reasoning is buried after a lot of neat-sounding numbers. So let's look closer at what he did:
First of all, as others have noted, the stats on his weapons are questionable. I also question the stats on his rifles because my newb rifleman on another server has a far better Laser Rifle than he used in his calculations, and I didn't shop around. But since he's on my server I can just check with the weaponsmiths myself, so it's no big deal.
Also, as another poster mentioned, he likes to compare the best pistol to the worst rifle. And he also likes to use the DX2 as his basis of comparison 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 Rifle (borked accuracy) as my example of how rifle is balanced.
But in any case neither of those issues are not the major problem, which is his slanted presentation.
Now let's look at the numbers, using the weapons in his post. I reran the numbers (he 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 he buried these results in the middle of his post, and explained why this is "justified." His 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 he neglects 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 still spits out 387% more damage than him.
But let's leave out the Master Marksman issue. What is his answer to the fact that a Master Rifleman has a 322% higher DPS than a Master Pistoleer, based on his own numbers? According to him, 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 he talks about? If he's referring to defensive bonuses, none of them work now anyway. If he's 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 darn 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 his analysis confirmed my conclusion about how screwed up speed is. It's his slanted and misleading post that covers that up. So don't be misled by what he wrote.
Bravo,
Nice work.
I swear they should hire you guys to be devs.
Dashai
Amazing work! Thank you for the time and thought you have put into this.
/bump
Wow, excellent post! Too bad I feel stupid for wasting my time on master pistoleer.
Have no fear though... or actually we should fear, that none of this will be fixed? Why? Because the devs are busy working on things like mounts and player cities. Oh ya, real important stuff!
/sarcasim
Why is it so hard for them to see that the game has massive mistakes?
--Oh ya, cause they don't play it... so why do we?
PS flame it all u want... i'm not going to read it again anyways so it's in vein
Excellent post, again, Philosopher1976 
I love reading your stuff, when I get the time.
As I understand it, DEV team is looking to drop the Pistoleer speed mods to fastest in game, to 0.5 instead of 1.0 as a professions bonus, and boost it for Rifleman?
Also, sometime soon (after the publish comes) I'd like to get together with you and Jaegen88 if possible and hash out some hard numbers on Bounty Hunters and Pistoleers. There needs to be a final concensus between the professions arrived at, as to what advantages each should have at Mastery, and also test the new mods with different variables.
Your excellent reports, as well as Jaegen88's, should finally give some hard data on the YOU versus US issue and we can give that data over to DEV team for analysis, if you're interested. Honestly, I hate to even consider PvP until our professions get everything working as intended and the bugs squashed, but that might not be for a while. Up to you, CUsoon
Thanks for the kind words, Wepps.
The Dev team is looking to lower the speed cap to 0.5 seconds for pistols, while raising the cap for carbines to 1.5 and the cap to 3.0 seconds for rifles. Jaegen and I both feel that this is a bad solution -- it doesn't deal with the underlying problem of the speed equation being screwed up. It's dumb that our speed slices are worthless or that you can spam Last Ditch once per second.
I'm sure Jaegen and I would both be happy to talk to you and help you collect data. Just send him a PM ... the two of us are in touch a lot so he can fill me in.
You're right Grimm. It does hurt rifle DPS and increase pistol DPS -- only for high level players who hit the cap, obviously.
I think the speed cap changes were a bad idea, and I replied to Holo saying so. We don't need the caps changed ... we just need the underlying equation changed so all of us aren't plagued by its stupid effects.