Rifleman Archive

I've seen a lot of posts recently lamenting the fact that we Riflemen and women aren't the Snipers that our skill title or Master Sharpshooter title would indicate. As a soldier just returning (October, anyway) from Iraq, and someone who's toted a rifle around for 6 years, I thought I'd say hello to my fellow in-game riflemen and share a few thoughts on the matter.


It's safe to say we all agree on a few critical points:

-- 64m is laughable for rifles and carbines. A soldier in today's Army that can't hit targets 50-100m away will not even come close to qualifying on their weapon. They'll stay at the range and get beat up (and coached) by a Sergeant like me until they do it. The closest target ON the range is 50m, the furthest being 300m.

-- Our /takecover command is, currently, useless. There is NO incentive for us to go prone and take cover. This boggles my mind, as taking cover is the first rule, and instinct, of firefights. Having an ability to do this better than the rest is a great idea for a Rifleman/Soldier style class. The tragedy that it still doesn't work only serves to further remove us from the coveted Sniper role that most of you apparently signed on for.

-- There is no way for us to drop off of the radar or otherwise conceal ourselves from near-instant target recognition when we attack PvP. There was rumor that conceal shot does not bring up the victim's auto-target. While this is nice, I don't think any of us want to have to rely on conceal shot's damage as a staple for PvP.


So... that all being said, here are my ten cents:

-- Sony screwed up with the Sniper and Master Sharpshooter title. It makes us all want to be hidden badasses that snipe the hell out of things. Make the Master title be Master Rifleman (or woman), and make the sniper tree title be Sharpshooter. That alleviates the "false-advertising" that gets us all riled up.

-- Range. OMG what a mess. Sony either needs to publish that they are going to fix ranges and make them believable for the appropriate weapon types, or cop out and give a definite answer as to why not. (Blaster energy can't travel as far as kinetic slugthrower technologies, our bazillion dollar SWG platform can only handle out to 64m, you wouldn't be able to see your target at further than 64m and it would mess up the game, etc.) Do something or say something. We can only suspend our disbelief for so long. At least give me a Star-Warsy excuse to keep me going.

-- Taking Cover. When a bullet flies, people duck. When many bullets fly, people dive prone, and get as low as possible behind whatever they can put between their bodies and the bad-guy's bullets. It's absolutely ridiculous to have combat set up in such a way that everyone runs around helter-skelter like they do. People should WANT to be down in the dirt. You're harder to see. You're harder to hit. Mother Earth provides you a stable firing platform and takes some abuse for you.

Here is how I'd fix it:

-- When prone you should be much harder to hit than when up and running around. Much harder.

-- No AoE attacks should hit anyone when prone, except for commandos' flamethrowers/grenades. This way, people go prone immediately so they don't get mowed down by the high-damage AoE spray, and commandos have to live up their name. It takes balls to be a commando; make them be the ones to charge and flush out the enemy troops. Think about this for a second: When you're shooting at someone who is prone, you need to focus all your energy on targeting whatever part of them you can see. This also distinguishes combat medics, because being able to heal from a distance while prone will be huge. The Doctor that has to run around is going to get shot up on the battlefield.

-- In a way, going prone would be the common man's way of taking cover. However, when Rifleman take cover, it should be prone and then some. Like a hasty fighting position, a foxhole, a sniper hide, whatever you want to call it. It should take us off the radar and not allow us to be targetted via the TAB key. However, once the target figures out what's up, they simply have to click on us to target. Make them look around for us. Make our /takecover absorb a set amount of damage that increases as you progress up the line. Make it follow the same rules as shield generators, but with a cool little graphic. Make it do SOMETHING.

I don't know. All these ideas, and all the great ideas I've read by others in other threads (Azmodean, notably, but many others too) all require a lot of work by Sony. They seem to have their hands full just keeping ahead of bugs, glitches, exploits, and fixing classes that were/are FUBAR. So I guess this is all wishful thinking.


And since it is... let's just all enjoy the role of automatic rifleman, eh? My M249 SAW was my baby for 4 years. Being one of the guys your squad counts on to keep heads down is awesome. As it stands in the game, Master Riflemen put out some seriously respectable damage. Hell, I donno... pretend you're Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator... standing up and running around with a chain gun, laying waste. LOL. Have fun with and enjoy the Rifleman portion of our class, and don't look so much for the Sniper. And if you're dead set on the Sniper, try and roleplay it and look for combat ideas from some of the others on this forum.

I guess I just hate to see people complaining, and overlooking all the cool things about our class.


And for you SOE execs that read this (as if...) here's the bottom line:

The new combat system better be awesome. Or I'm packing up my non-Jedi ass in my X-Wing (that I'm not able to buy/build/fly/own/see) and waiting until World of Warcraft comes out. lol



Okay. I'm done.

Cambden Starduster
Rifleman/TKA/Jedi Boycot
Intrepid


P.S. Hats off to you early masters, and the riflemen on servers without T21 Resources that keep the faith.

Cool ideas, I agree with you a 100% expecially since i just got my ass wooped by stormtroopers while prone.

But anyway maybe...just maybe....they could make a branch off on rifleman so that when you master a part on the tree you could go off to being a sniper or whatever. Like pistoleer when you master the tree to get the title Deadeye maybe there should be a alittle tree for dead eye but weither or not people want to spend the extra points mastering yet another branch *shurg* or maybe they dont have to use points for this..*gasp* That would be revolutionary (sp?) that way people dont get bored out of there minds i mean pistoleer and rifleman are great proffesions but with so many bugs and such out I personally dont find the fun in them

Doh! *Edit* First paragraph should read, "just returned from", not "returning." I **edit** sure didn't have the time to play games while I was there, and I'd speak on behalf of the soldiers still over there that they don't either.

I WAS able to register early from Kuwait on the trip back home, tho! Shhhh.... hehe.

I'm now back safe with my fiance', thankfully. I've been home long enough for her to decide she doesn't like SWG stealing any time away from her. lol

Thanks again, guys.


Cambden Starduster
Rifleman/TKA/Jedi Boycott
Intrepid

BabyRancor,

Thanks for the insight. That, sadly, does make perfect sense. It just seems that SOE shouldn't make decisions based on fear of cheaters. Every MMORPG that I've seen has had to contend with some "crystal ball" program that would tell you where the rare spawns are, which mob has the rare drop, etc. I can see how, if not implemented in concert with the new combat system changes, exploiters would quickly bring the nerf bat down upon us. Perhaps the issue could be solved with a self-induced delay when you come out of cover. Hey, it takes 5-10 seconds to climb out of a foxhole and be combat effective again. Maybe that would anchor us to prevent any invisible running and gunning.

I suppose the bottom line is that we're not broken enough to really warrant such drastic changes. When the space expansion comes out, no one will care anymore anyway. We'll all be pooling resources so we can go get tangled up in dogfights around star destroyers and such. The poor folks who worked so hard to get their Jedi slot will be crying because no one will want to play with them planetside. We'll all be zooming around space. Hehe.

It's a shame they couldn't have just made a few more big changes when testing the game. Hell, the number one trouble sign I see right off the bat, is that I'm a rebel, and don't in the least bit feel oppressed by the empire. If anything, I kinda like them, because they just seem like a more organized, disciplined military outfit. Rebels should feel OPPRESSED. I mean downright scared. Stormtroopers with covert scanners should just sweep through cities on a regular basis, AT-STs in tow. I guess the dynamic events that are happening are going in that direction,this is all for an entirely different forum.

Playing a rifleman in SWG right now is SOO close to capturing some of that Star Wars magic... but some of the logic faults force it to come up short. Oh well. It's fun kicking butt anyway, for a while.

Oh, another thought I had:

How about a crew-served cannon like the Snowtroopers used in Empire Strikes Back? Make it come in three components (tripod, barrel, power generator). Each rifleman can only carry one, but can assemble it on a battlefield in five seconds or so and operate it together. Almost like a portable turret, or an M60/M240B. I suppose it's far-fetched, but hey... I'm just full of good ideas for riflemen! lol

Okay okay... I'm really done this time.

Cambden Starduster

Intrepid

I really like you Ideas, especially that of the AoE attacks not hitting while prone. This would add a huge tactical aspect to combat and the special moves you can use.

As it is now I keep spamming ss2 or hs2 and hope the enemy drops before I run out of mind. If something like the foxhole idea would be implemented you couldeffectively use concealshot in PvP, too, because there will not be an autofire response from your target. And him looking for you would give you someprecious secondsto squese off a couple of extra shots.

Hm, well it would be a lie if I said that I'm looking forward to the new combat system, I'm sure they willscrew something up there, but I am eager to learn the exact changes they will make/have made and absolutely hope that there will be some more tacticsadded to combat

Nearly all great ideas - but I can answer the radar point for the Devs (as I saw the question come up pre-beta).

The problem with disappearing from radar is that the day after they put that in, there will be a program available that will sniff the datastream coming from the server to display any hidden characters. The server has to send the info on concealed folks to your target'scomputer so thatitcan be displayed when cover is removed. Making the target able to click on a concealed rifleman is a neat concept - but cheaters wouldn't be fazed by it.

The only way it could work is if concealed rifleman's positions were not sent until cover is broken. Unfortunately - because of lag - the rifleman would effectively be invisible, untargetableandmobile for some period of time. The cries of nerf would soon follow.

Of topic - be careful over there Sergeant. Come home safe.

wow lot's of ideas and i love them all! now if we only could get the DEv's to listen (ahem correspondant do your duty lol)

btw - carry on sgt, make up proud

Careful now 'ninjajedi', klawlegna has been doing quite a fine job so far and I'd imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find many who disagree. You have to realize the Devs can be a bit.......slow at times. We'll get where we oughta be, just not right now

Checkmate2, that was the e-web heavy repeating blaster, which I would love to see be a player weapon in the game. Heck, according to the pen-&-paper RPG, the T-21 is a light repeating blaster rifle.

Message Edited by Gaijin42 on 09-30-2004 12:48 PM

IMO I think this is what the T21 should have been for, a slow gun (actually way slower than the T21s for Masters - somewhere around 10-15sec for non masters)that is powerful enough to take targets out in on or 2 shots from a distance - but I think there should be another skill tree to get that much power.

I like the way master is now for the purposes of PvP - we not only stand a chance, but can do very well.

To respond to the lack of range issue, to increase the range much more starts to make it more of a hardware problem for some players (less than uber video cards/ computers). I know I have a Radion 9600 Pro with a gig of RAM and still turn my settings way down with all the new vehicles and stuff. I don't think I'd be able to see much at 100m.

Haz

Gorath

I think the range issue is more of a server side thing. Between the database being pounded and the bandwidth already being used, all of this would increase with us having increased range. That's why I think this is the way it is.

Though it doesn't explain why CMs were able to through further than 64m before the vehicle patch.

Totally agree on every point. Even waiting for WoW!