Rifleman Archive

I've been really impressed by a lot of the people I've gotten to know on the Rifleman forum over the past couple of days. I must have made something like 150 posts in just the last day or so, going back and forth in discussions with Riflemen, and after some of the nasty disagreements some folks had in the past I think it was good for us to share ideas and work together. Based on what I've read, I probably agree with 90% of what Rifleman posters say and vice versa. A number of people have started threads where folks from all three elite ranged professions can post to discuss, and I think those discussions are going well.

Butright now I'm extremely disappointed. I thought we were starting to work together and make progress on ways to make our classes better in way that was balanced. ButAldeon is still pushing as his #1 issue on Correspondent Forums a major nerf to Pistoleer, so we'll be highly inaccurate unless we're at short range. He hasn't responded to any of the threads where we've discussed other Rifleman issues and alternatives to that request(like making rifle more accurate, lowering HAM costs, unnerfing T21, etc) and has made it pretty clear that he is going to push for this nerf no matter what is said here.

I don't think this is the right attitude to take. I think we'd all be better off if we could work together to get rid of the Dev's stupid speed cap idea and instead adopt some changes that would really help riflemen (there were tons of good ideas from riflemen on those threads). And I think that the issues that are pushed for on the Correspondent Forum should come from the players, not from a single person. But Aldeon apparently disagrees.

I don't know what to do about it. What Aldeon says and does on your behalf is an issue for all of you to discuss amongst yourselves. But I know that if he's just going to go off and push for major nerfs by himself no matter what is said here and isn't interested in working together and trying to define some roles and abilities for our classes, then there's no point in bothering to discuss and work together any more.

I hate "nerf wars," but I feel like Aldeon is making it so there is no alternative. I guess I'd better go back to my own forum and think up some exciting new limitations to put on Riflemen.Aldeon shouldn't bepushing for nerfs as his #1 issue no matter how much other broken stuff (HAM costs, 2.5 melee, heavy weapons as melee, etc) there is with your class. I think we'd all be better off working together to get rid of the Devs speed cap idea than to try to nerf each other, but it looks like Aldeon has made your choice for you.

You started this game, now have the dignity to finish it. For the sake of proportional balancing, it has been enacted that Rifles will fire at 1/6 the rate with 3/2 the damage; thus it would make sense that Pistols, for instance, would have 1/4 the range. Or be changed to do 1/6 the damage per shot. Which would involve capping the maximum damage on most Pistols at 70-80 at the highest. Or is balancing only desirable when your class may be subjected to the treatment you pushed upon others? Very reminiscent of an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan whining about limitations on his speech and civil rights. Except I've not heard of any so shameless.

If you read my post, you'd see that I suggested that we both work together to convice the Devs to get rid of the stupid "speed cap" idea.

That wasn't my idea, so please don't compare me to the Klu Klux Klan. That's really uncalled for.

No offense meant, but when I see logs of a pistol user missing twice out of over 60 shots at our ideal range, and I as a rifleman can be prone at 60 and miss 3 conceal shots in a row on multiple occasions, that points out a major red flag to me.

If you make a rifle accurate at close range it's moot because

A: 2.5 melee so how many shots will we really get?

B: It just makes us slower firing pistol users then.

If every gun is equally accurate at every range (which a short range rifle increase would be part of) Then you don't have "balance" you have vanilla. If I see the gun I know is accurate at any range (which pistols are) and has the lower hams and better overall dps thanks to less missed shots over therifle which now has about the same accuracyeating mind like no tomorrow and downright terrible run and gun mods then which am I gonna pick? the pistol without a doubt.

I'll be honest I'd much rather see the other issues (2.5, ham costs, and the T21) dealt with first, but the simple truth no matter how you slice it is pistol users are more accurate at a riflemans ideal range then a rifleman is right now. And the acc difference between pistol at long and rifle at short is nowhere near what it should be if the guns were designed right.

As for the topic of improving our acc, to look at it in a slightly different light, you ever heard of the powergamers dilemma? It's a term used in roleplaying more, but what it boils down to is this.

Character (or in this case profession) A feels it's weaker, and can't compete. So he finds a way (or in this case the devs do) to make himself stronger, to the detriment of profession B

Profession B about to have none of this, is getting annoyed at profession A powergaming him (in roleplay terms it's like a character in god mode) so profession B has to pull some cheap tricks or make himself blatently overpowered to take profession A on.

This leaves profession C (which looks to be the carbineers in our lil example) Totally out in the cold cause no matter which side of the fight they were just on doesn't matter since both professions A and B are now so powerful C doesn't stand a prayer of being able to dojack. (in roleplay terms a guy with a pitch fork deciding if he wants to take a shot at the dragon on one side, or the lvl 20 wizard on the other) So to make things fair C is raised up to the level of A and B.

But, and here's the problem, now that all three classes are "balanced" again suddenly we discover that unless it was done perfectly, (and is it ever?) One of the three probably ended up more powerful, one wants to now match that one again, the third has to be raised again, and wash rinse repeat to every class is so overpowered playing becomes next to pointless cause we all 1 shot krayts.

Ok so maybe that's a bit extreme but do you see the point? And that's just using three professions as an example unlike all the ones swg has.

Just simply raising ouraccuracy and calling it even won't solve any underlying issues, if anything it puts rifles one step closer to flavor of the month status cause then we have the ultra accurate evil mind damage, and sometimes 1 hit wonders hitting from any range? This is my biggest beef with pistols why would I want it?

Rifle's should be long pistols should be short, and I could live with how pathetic my to hit at 40m and below is and maybe even run and gun modsif I knew that at 40m and above pistols had the same problem.

The gun in swg terms is not meant to be hitting this well at it's long range. You can call it a nerf if you want but as has been said you can't have the cake and eat it too.

Well first of all, aren't you getting the 2.5 melee damage removed? I thought you guys wanted that.

I have no problem with pistols being less accurate than rifles at long range, as I said in other posts. I think it needs to be balanced out with an accuracy BOOST for rifles at short range, though, so that we have a significant but not huge advantage at short range and you guys have a significant but not huge advantage on long range. If we are extremely inaccurate at long range we'll just be kited and we'll also have a lot of trouble killing mobs since we'll need to get up close to them before we can hit them.

In any event, that wasn't the point of my post. My point was that Aldeon is calling for nerfs privately in Correspondent forum and doesn't care about discussing the issues here or coming up with a set of fixes that will work for both classes. Personally I don't like the stupid cap rule -- I don't think anyone does -- and we'd both be better off working on a better speed thing instead.

I just don't like the way he's going about it. Instead of working together, it's about pushing for the biggest nerf possible in private. All that does is get the other side to ask for a big nerf of their own. And that just screws both of us compared to the other combat classes in the game.

You need to take a step back, Samra. You know where i stand on things, so I'm not going to go over it again. It could be very easily argued that while a pistoleer is doing less damage in compared to a rifleman (the 2.5ish which I calculated) that the added accuracy thats hard coded into the pistoleer specials is allowing for a closing of the gap so to speak. You may disagree with some of this, but look at it from my point of view and you will see this is a very reasonable request. In which case something needs to be done. Theres a very fine line to walk between calling for nerfs and trying to bring your class to God mode and Aldeon is walking that line. You need to respect that.

And you need to stop coming here with news from the correspondent forums. You arent posting news or updates, almost all of your posts are very slanted towards getting the rifleman community rallied against Aldeon and in turn pump up pistols. This has to stop.

Tilen
Scylla

I read somewhere that there was an idea of

if the rifleman goes Prone he gets 20 more meters on his range ONLY IN PRONE.

This might be something to look into if possible.

i know we had a good discussion yesterday but in a way im with Ald on this you guys got the speed advantage which should of been yours always.

But we the rifleman dont have any range advantage which should of been ours always.

Tilen,

I understand your point of view -- we've talked before. You think pistols are much weaker but are instead more accurate to make up for that. It's fine, I understand and respect your point of view.

As you said, Aldeon is walking a fine line. I guess I feel like I can do nothing about what he's asking for since it's in private. So I posted here, hoping to get him to talk about it so we could work something out.

No offense, though, but I'm not here trying to "pump up pistols." Frankly I think there is a lot of good changes that could be made to help rifles, and I understand that there are important differences between our classes and that all of us have different views about what they should be.

It's just that the way Aldeon is going about things rubs me the wrong way. You yourself acknowledged in a post just a second ago that his methods haven't been perfect and could just some improvement. I'm basically asking him to work with us and have a discussion about this stuff.

No one, including me -- and I think you know this -- want _any_ God class. Maybe you and I have different views of what the strengths and weaknesses of different guns should be, but neither of us wants our weapon to be uber or anything like that. I'd just prefer that we figure out what roles our classes are supposed to play (not easy, because the Devs haven't given us much guidance) and try to come up with some sort of overall balance instead of just asking for nerfs back and forth.

Raloorn, fair enough. Although frankly I don't like the way the speed thing was changed -- 3 seconds versus .5 seconds? That's not the way it's supposed to work. It's supposed to be based off the weapon speed and profession speed, not some lame hard cap.

I would just rather see AA and Jaegen working together to get rid of the dumb speed change and replacing it with something they can agree upon ... but that's not going to happen. I guess they can't get along or whatever, but it's just dumb.

/shrug..In my opinion, reducing the range of pistols isn't a "nerf"..its a "fix"...pistols should never have been shooting (and more accurately at that) from a rifleman's ideal range...unless its with extreme modifiers like a rifleman shooting up close is at. The solution you (Samra) propose of upping a rifleman's accuracy (and leaving pistols as is) is just belaboring the issue that pistoleers want their cake and eat it too.../shrug..in my opinion. Kudos to Aldeon for sticking to his guns (rifle as it were).

The melee penalty might be justified if we have a distinct advantage at long range. Which we do not. Even if we are 100% at max range pistols still will do pretty well themselves. Its the distinct advantage that is necessary. I think Aldeon is doing the best thing. We probably should get our speed capped....But only if we are the absolute kings of long range. We just aren't right now. And no amount of Rifle accuracy will fix that. Not to mention most Pistoleers seem to hate the idea of increasing our range because they don't want to be "kited"....

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Philosopher1976 wrote:

No offense, though, but I'm not here trying to "pump up pistols." Frankly I think there is a lot of good changes that could be made to help rifles, and I understand that there are important differences between our classes and that all of us have different views about what they should be.

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Man, I've seen what you support as far of the rifle class. No 2.5x modifier, better accuracy, better HAM costs, basically the class disadvantages. If those go, either pistol has an EXTREMELY compelling argument towards higher dps, or an EXTREMELY compelling arguement to nerf rifle damage to hell and back. So yeah, you are pumping up pistols. You dont take away class disadvantages and leave the advantages, that just doesnt work for balance.

And yes, I definately disagree with some of the things Aldeon has handled some things. And while you may think you are just asking him to work with you, you are coming entirely differently. Maybe its just one of those things that you can say in words much better than you can type.

Tilen
Scylla

Well you're right that I support getting rid of the class's disadvantages. I don't see anything wrong with that. I thought most riflemen felt the same way about the 2.5 melee damage and HAM costs. If you guys want that stuff to remain, then keep it.

I just brought that stuff up as alternatives to nerfing us as your #1 issue. I thought, given these other problems, that we couldn't be your #1 concern ... especially since we aren't your problem in PvE and frankly aren't your biggest problem in PvP (that's the BHs).

If you guys like your disadvantages, great. I don't think you should read anything nerfarious into my suggestion that that stuff be removed. It's just the stuff I thought was wrong with the class. I mean it's not entirely clear that having insane HAM costs is a good thing, is it? I think you need to cut me some slack, sinceI have the feeling that a lot of riflemen would agree with me on that one.