Pistoleer Archive

This is essentially what I heard while I was waiting for a shuttle on the Gorath server yesterday. After just having missed the shuttle and being forced to wait for another ten stupid minutes, I just started eaves dropping on all of the other conversation going on at the port. While there was the usual mix of talk, one coversation that stuck out was from a pistoleer.

A novice pistoleer (who's name I shall omit) was talking to another pistoleer (a gunslinger i think) about how strong a Jedi should be. The novice honestly seemed shocked and actually annoyed. He started complaining that Jedi would unbalance the game. He actually said that if the jedi could block laser fire, he would never get the chance to knock him down with pistol whip and wouldn't stand a chance.

Now while the more sensible gunslinger was trying to defend the reason for a jedi's power, this novice began saying that he hoped the first few jedi to appear should signal the devs for a needed nerf. Apparently he thought that a class who has to work additionally hard to earn his skills should not be more powerful than someone who has to work only half or even a quarter as hard.

Now this led me to my second observation: Pistoleers are a notoriously easy class. Perhaps the path to becoming a master is long and therefore considered difficult, but when you consider that you will only use something like 90 skill points to become one, you realize that you also have the ability to master another profession and dabble in a third! A pistoleer in my opinion is ridiculously powerful. Not just in the sense that they possess awesome damaging potential, but that they can take on so many other skills to aid them.

Its is nessesary for people, not just pistoleers, to understand that proper balance appears when additional power comes with additional effort. I have seen far too many flames about BH on this board and in this game. Their class must dedicate the majority of their available skill points to a profession that yields powerful benefits. Yet these benefits are constantly critisized. There is no account for the fact that their paultry 33 remaining skill points can't even buy them decent healing skills, or crafting skills or any other type of skill. Equally, there is no accountfor the notoriously difficult bounty missions they must endure to reach master status.Perhaps a BH is more powerful, but at a cost, and people should realize that. Whether it is a jedi or a BH or any other profession that demonstrates such power, people should realize that there is a time and commitment cost to justify it. Only without such costs, can a profession be called unbalanced.

The only exception that I can make for this argument is when a player merely enlists in a powerful profession for a specific branch of that profession's skil. Such as when I have seen pistoleers or carbineers who have obtained the BH status only to pick up their additional weapon benefits. This may be unfair, or perhaps even a legitamate loophole that the devs won't bother with. But to cry nerf for a powerful profession with legitamately difficult requirements is unfair and immature.

To all players who read this. Please take things in stride and consider any complaints you may have from all possible angles before dedicating your energies to them. Thank you.

Furion Irenicus

Master Bio Engineer, Novice Pistoleer, Novice Creature Handler

Additional power with additional effort.. not a bad concept on paper except for the fact that an MMOG can last an indeterminate amount of time. If it takes X class 6 months to max out and Y class 9 months by your logic Y class should be 1.5x more powerful than X class. However if your average lifespan of a character is 3 years (36 months) then that's 27 months of time that Y class is overpowering and imbalancing the game for just 3 extra months of effort. One must think of the long term game balance. 2 years from now no one is going to care that you worked an extra 3 months to gain more power "back in the day", they are going to care that you are imbalancing their game NOW.

Let's digress this this a bit and put it into game context. Common exmaples, bounty hunters vs. pistoleers. A pistoleer has to master just one marksman branch and the entire pistoleer elite prof. Bounty hunters have to master 2 base professions AND bounty hunter. The translation is that it takes almost all of the BH's skill points to do so, whereas, already mentioned a straight pistoleer is using less than half of his. The BALANCE here is that the Pistoleer can then go and master another profession, and even part of a third, in the end, for roughly the same expenditure, both end up "in theory" balanced. Arguably a straight pistoleer isn't "finished" leveling their character because they have so much extra room.

The balancing factor to Jedi's is that they are perma death characters. They will not be invincible, not by a long shot. Though no one really knows just how powerful they'll be until we see some in game. My hunch is that balancing these guys is going to be ridiculously difficult for the devs. There will be some crying for no perma death, others crying that they are too powerful, yada yada. It will be THE most sensitive subject of the game once they are in game for the rest of the games life. Garaunteed.

Well as to how powerful they may be....to paraphrase a dev from during beta: "A Jedi master should be able to successfully, by himself, defeat a group of 20 elite/hybrid combat profession masters". So yes they will be powerful, but as mentioned, they only have a couple of deaths then thats it...should someone even make it to Jedi Master then try and grief players, all they'll ahve to do is band together and take the sucker out once or twice, then he'll be a non issue again for a few months.

Will a Jedi master be able to cause serious damage? Heck yes, but will they be willing to risk it?

How did ur post go from talking about Jedi to Pistoleer v. Bounty Hunter? You lost me at "Hello".