Rifleman Archive
Thread: Worst Things About Rifleman
Okay, not that there is any SHORTAGE of these posts, but I want to throw up the absolute worst things about Rifleman right now. But I am going to try to do this while accepting some of the limitations that I just know are not going to change. Ever.
--== HEADACHES ==--
PROBLEM:Yes, we can hit to the mind pool, but we also DRAIN from the mind pool. Against PvE that's worthless because all MOBs have about the same size pool in all three bars. Against PvP it's useless because of the 75% reduction in PvP damage. I actually hurt MYSELF more than my opponents with /headshot3, especially wearing armor. That is utterly unacceptable. The 75% reduction didn't take into account the special situation of the Rifleman. I can accept that. But now that it's been brought up it needs to be fixed. Now.
SOLUTION: There are a few options. The first option is to change the way we drain our pools. Spread the massive Mind drain out across Health and Action. That way we can still be healed for our self-inflicted wounds, but the penalty will be applied (to a slightly lesser degree) to both of our pools. The second option is to make medicines or buffs for the Mind bars. Let the Doctors craft Asprin or something. Let Entertainers buff our Mind primaries and secondaries the same way that Doctors can do for Action and Health. I think a Focus and Willpower of 2000 would work out for me.
--== PUNCHING BAGS==--
PROBLEM: That's what we are, plain and simple. They might as well just activate our clones any time a red MOB gets within 10 meters of us. The 2.5 damage multiplier has to go. You at least have to REDUCE it, because getting hit for 3,000 damage by a Thug on Naboo that conned blue to me while wearing a full set of Rebel Armor (30% Kinetic) is utterly unacceptable. In fact it's embarrassing for the whole combat system.
SOLUTION: The idea behind this penalty was good. Riflemen are supposed to suck at close range. Well trust me, WE DO. Our chance to hit is -50 even if we aim. That means that whoever we are fighting will hit us more consistantly than we will hit them at close range. MUCH more consistantly. That causes us to take far more damage. We don't need that damage to be amplified. This has got to go, no questions asked.
--== GIMPED RANGE ==--
PROBLEM: Forget for a moment that Pistoleers seem to have perfect aiming from virtually any range. The fact is that the "concept" of the Rifleman that was used for this game was based around a long-range attacker. We have penalties and drawbacks in place set up for that concept of the Rifleman. But our reality is that of broken Pistoleer with lousy aim. The time it takes for a player or a MOB to close in on us from even our "maximum" range is no longer consistant with our ability to deal damage. It is now IMPOSSIBLE to kill another player at range, because we can't get more than one or two shots off before they close that range.
SOLUTION: Increase the range of the Rifle to be higher than the other weapon classes. I don't know why the Devs have a problem with this. Is it an inate form of OCD that everyone has to have the SAME range? Personally I don't see the Rifleman being a viable class with a range of less than 128 meters. Period. All of the Damage Per Second calculations fly out the window when Pistoleers, Carbineers, and ALL Melee fighters can just run towards us for 8 seconds and make us incapable of dealing damage.
--== UNSPECIAL MOVES ==--
PROBLEM: Compared to other Professions, our Special Shots are not that Special. Even if you ignore the fact that we have to DAMAGE our one un-healable pool to use them, they are still unimpressive. Because we have the slowest firing rate, we have the MOST need for Area Of Effect attacks. We don't have the luxury of nailing every target witha Warning Shot or a Knockdownin under 7 seconds. Yet our Area Of Effect attacks yield mediocre results compared to other classes. We also have no Knockdown attack, as everyone else does. It would seem to me that between the three classes of gun, being shot with a Rifle would be the MOST likely to knock you down, not the least.
SOLTUION: We need some different skills. It's as simple as that. The Rifleman should have two roles, really. Long-Distance Sniper (which we sort of have in place, but it's gimped) and Suppresion Fire Support, which we don't really have much of. Of all three gun classes, the one that MOST needs to be able to knock Melee attackers on their *** when they charge us is the Rifleman. We're the most logical one to have that skill. And yet we have nothing like it at all.
--== SIPER WANNABES ==--
PROBLEM: Even if you ignore all of the other problems we have with Sniping (unrealistic range, low yield damage, ease of being rushed) the truth is that we're not Snipers at all. Snipers strike from a distance, silently and deadly. I can understand the Dev's desire to NOT make the Sniper class Uber (as it is in far too many FPS games) but the solution is not to make them gimpy Pistoleers lying on the ground.
SOLUTION: We need some way to hide ourselves from both MOBs and other players. We need to be able to disappear off of Radar. Give us some skills for that. What we REALLY need is a specialty Sniping Rifle. There is a rifle mentioned in serveral of the EU books called the Xerrol Nightstinger. It's a Sniping Rifle that fires a blaster bolt not visible in the normallight spectrum. Put that in the game. Take out the Jawa Ion Rifle or the SG82 that no one is going to use because of the lame AP. Give it a depressinglybad attack speed, but allow it massive damage and true stealth. THAT'S what we signed up for.
The Punching Bag issue is absolutely the most critical thing affecting rifleman IMO.
Not the T-21.
This needs to be our #1 issue.
With the questions regarding movement speed with ranged weapons (see main page). I see a continuing trend against the rifleman. We already suffer HUGH penalties for a concept that currently does not work, the idea of a sniper. I think the 2.5 kick to the head would be much more exceptable if we simply had the range to do the damage we are intended to do. A riflemans main bonus is RANGE. So why as riflemen do we fire from 64m?!
MAX range:
My sugestion is Hand2Hand = 5m, Pistol = 64m, Carbine = 84m, Rifle = 104m.
Give us the range we pay for currently!
I like the 2.5 melee damage and strongly oppose it being removed in any way. Every class is meant to have weaknesses, this is one of ours.
Agree on the HAM costs, at the moment it's just a bit OTT.
Range:Anything over 80m would make us so overpowered it wouldn't even be fun.
Special moves: Too many good moves in the marksman tree, it's a shame we get our best mind damage attack there. I think they should reverse the ham cost, HS1 should be very hard on the mind where as HS3 should be light.
Disagree on the AE thing, the fact we have any at all is wierd to me. Again agreed on the mind use, we use too much mind to do too little mind damage.
Saying the Jawa Ion is lame is insane, it's one of the best PvP guns in the game, unless they added stun resist to comp armour while I wasn't looking.
If they put all your proposed changes in we wouldn't last a week, do you know how easy it would be for us to kill anything in the game?
False, one of my points exactly. Snipers are supposed to attack from AFAR. From outside the normal attack range of their targets. That's the whole point of being a sniper. Sniping from inside of your target's firing range is called suicide, and it's currently the fate of Riflemen in SWG.
I defy the Devs to play any FPS style game. I would suggest the Day of Defeat mod for Half-Life because even though it is a WW2 simulation, it does an outstanding job portraying the strengths and weaknesses of the pistol, rifle, and submachine gun (carbine) classes. I defy any of them to try to use a Sniper Rifle from pistol range. Most of us have probably logged plenty of hours of DoD or CounterStrike or Medal of Honor and know how the weapons ought to behave. Time for the Dev team to catch up.
Seflyn, well, that's a wish list. I know and you know that if we're lucky, we'll get a third of that. Shoot for the moon and you might just reach the sky. I've had very mised experienced with the Jawa Ion Rifle, honestly, and maybe I am prejudiced against it from Beta. But surely the SG82 can go. I say move the Jawa Ion Rifle DOWN the tree (it always struck me as silly being so high up) to where the SG82 is and give us the NightStinger up at the top, where it belongs.
We're in stark disagreement on the melee damage thing. My main complaint about it is that it makes no SENSE and is a redundant penalty. We're already penalized enough at close range. Or if you're going to give us a melee damage increase, how about some bayonettes? Heh.
I figured some people woud disagree on the AoE comments. I guess it just depends on how you view your role in the fight. Like I said, I see the Rifleman in two roles. Sniper and Support. As a Sniper, the AoE doesn't matter. But as Support personel, AoE attacks become crucial. Mostly I think they need to be there to compensate for the fact that we can't stall more than one attacker at a time. They should NOT be high damage, just high effect.
Gecedion, well, I know up until recently for every point of experimentation you put into a weapon, it would lower the HAM penalty by ONE. On the flip side, one point of experimentation could increase the damage exponentially. So if you had the choice between a Laser Rifle that did 15-150 with a Mind Cost of 35 or 35-450 with a Mind Cost of 42, the choice is obvious. We have to figure on more than Damage Per Second. We have to figure on Damage Per HAM.
The Devs recently said that all HAM cost can be experimented away on the "additional" weapons parts. Special scopes and barrels and such. As far as I know the main HAM costs are still pretty persistant. Do keep in mind though that if they start experimenting the HAM costs away, the damage and the speed of our guns will get worse.
Aden_Nak wrote:
Seflyn, well, that's a wish list. I know and you know that if we're lucky, we'll get a third of that. Shoot for the moon and you might just reach the sky. I've had very mised experienced with the Jawa Ion Rifle, honestly, and maybe I am prejudiced against it from Beta. But surely the SG82 can go. I say move the Jawa Ion Rifle DOWN the tree (it always struck me as silly being so high up) to where the SG82 is and give us the NightStinger up at the top, where it belongs.
We're in stark disagreement on the melee damage thing. My main complaint about it is that it makes no SENSE and is a redundant penalty. We're already penalized enough at close range. Or if you're going to give us a melee damage increase, how about some bayonettes? Heh.
I figured some people woud disagree on the AoE comments. I guess it just depends on how you view your role in the fight. Like I said, I see the Rifleman in two roles. Sniper and Support. As a Sniper, the AoE doesn't matter. But as Support personel, AoE attacks become crucial. Mostly I think they need to be there to compensate for the fact that we can't stall more than one attacker at a time. They should NOT be high damage, just high effect.
With the regards to the shoot for the moon idea in my opinion the Devs could well just right this off as someone trying to make their class the best. I don't think it is that type of post but I feel they would be more receptive to more balanced ideas.
I'm not trying to flame this post, it seems you put thought into it and I agree totally with the HAM cost issue.While a lot of these changes are warranted fromthe roleplaying a sniper perspective I feel they would make us far too powerful.
I agree on the new guns thing, having all our guns by novice rifleman is stupid, this goes for pistoleer and carbineer as well.
I like the 2.5x melee damage, it makes us different. It might not make sense, but I enjoy having to think about what I'm doing rather than just stand there spamming melee knockdown. The main problem with the pistol is it has no perceived weakness, 2.5x melee is ours.
Are these forums being very slow for anyone else?
Seflyn, contrary to feeling flamed, I'm glad there's some dissenting opinion in this thread. That way the Devs DO understand that we're not all out to Uber-ify ourselves. Though I hope that, should they read this thread, they note that I never call for the ability to score harder hits or the ability to shoot faster. I think most of the problems with Rifleman are in the execution, not the concept.
As for the Melee Multiplier being forced on us, I'llwork from the theory,for a moment, that maybe we need it to define our class. If that's the case, then where are the relative penalties to the other fighting classes? I doubt we will see a Ranged Multiplier applied to all Melee Fighters more than 50m away. Although that's really what Riflemen need. Heh. And how about Pistoleer and Carbineer? I know in a perfect world not everything is equal. But if our damage has to be equal and our range has to be equal, well then our penalties ought to be equal. I think that, more than anything else, is what is wrong with the Rifleman. They can't leave our ADVANTAGES the same but make our DISADVANTAGES greater.
And incidentally, this forum has been dragging some major *** for me all day. This is the second time I am typing this post out, in fact!
Feynan, actually, you are illustrating a more general point that I think we need to make. In fact, I think that what this thread SHOULD have been about were not specific things (not that they don't need fixing) but a more general concept that the Rifleman doesn't WORK the way he is supposed to. He is supposed to be a Sniper, and yet he can't hide or shoot from afar. He is supposed to throw consistant, heavy damage from afar, but he can't because of his HAM restraints. He is supposed to dominate at extreme ranges, but he can't because there ARE no extreme ranges and other classes surpass his distance shooting.
I think that THAT more than any one specific issue is what the Devs really need to understand. That everything unique about the Rifleman has been stripped from him, and all he is now is a gimped up Pistoleer with mediocre range and inconsistant HAM attacks.