Rifleman Archive
Thread: Rifleman Issues Designer responses
Hey Soko you ever use a pistol???? Every pistol I have used uses ACTION NOT HEALTH!!!! I am up to Pistol 3 in BH so I think I know what I am talking about. You have not seen how the other half lives. NO YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REST AS OFTEN WITH CARBINE OR PISTOL, RACE HELPS BUT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. IF YOU CAN USE A STIM TO HEAL WHAT HAM YOU USED IN COMBAT YOU HAVE FAR LESS DOWN TIME THAN HAVING TO SIT ON YOUR ASS. ALL OTHER RANGED WEAPONS USE ACTION, SOME CARBINES, THE EE3, USES MORE THAN 1 HAM FROM WHAT I HEAR.
I dont see why we should have the lowest DPS and the most down time. Their response to item 6 for example is complete wrong. Its telling us hey we know you dont do the damage you should. So if your in a group, you get the least. If you are solo you will do it slower then the rest and have a harder time doing it. I enjoy rifleman, I know you just have to think more with it than the other weapons. I just feel there shouldnt be such a big difference between them when it comes to damage. I think rifleman need a little love is all. Just because the majority of people go pistol doesnt mean the rest should be ignored.
I disagree.
"I have to say I would be very happy if they switched us over to Action for our shots. Pistols hit health, they do not use health to shoot. Why should we use mind to shoot because we hit mind. It makes no sense. Carbines and Pistols just need a stim to get back in the action. "
Pistol (Normal):Hits health.
(Special): Hits health.
Uses health.
Carbine (Normal): Hits health.
(Special): Hits action.
Uses action.
Rifle(Normal): Hits health.
(Special): Hits mind.
Uses mind.
And who cares if we use mind to shoot and hit mind...doesn't make a rats ass of a difference you still are going to have to regen whatever pool it uses.
If you picked rifleman then you should have thought of what race you are. I am Zabrak and i have tons of mind regen and i have no problem with that. Yes mind cannot be healed, BUT neither can it be healed for the people we target. So that is the trade off. I would rather have a skill people can't heal and keep my regen rate high than have everyone in the game healing my headshots.
It is give and take and the rifleman has it's benefits. Our shots cannot be healed. Now i think that rocks.
IMHO SOKO
That is why we use mind for our special shots...it is the trade off for not having our targets being able to heal themselves. If we give that up then they will have to do something with Pistol and Carbine to make it fair. Currently i can heal whaterver a Pistol or Carbine does but they can't heal me. Good trade off!
SOKO
Dateline 15AUG03 CNN News....
The US Army has announced that as of today, in a money saving move, all snipers will be issued 9mm pistols rather than sniper rifles. Studies based on the popular MMORPG SWG haveshown that pistols are just as effective as the more expensive rifles at long range.
I'm not saying that critters have to appear at a longer range. just if you start shooting and running away. You can keep shooting at a longer range. It doesn't have to be a whole lot, say 75-100m. The rate of fire is wrong also, we need a burst fire or something. The modern worlds greatest sniper rifle is semi-auto with a ten round clip. Firing 50 bmg rounds. It can fire all 10 in 2 seconds or so. and still be able to hit targets at 100m. Of course it's a monster of a gun. 30lbs. 5'9" long. 2600 fps muzzle velocity with a one pound bullet. It can pentrate quarter inch plate armor at one mile!!! I know we're not going to get close to that in this game, but just a little longer range would go a long ways.
That would be wrong, you forgot Pistol BHs. They drain action and do mind damage.
Soko08 wrote:
Where is the edit.
I meant to say....
Currently i can heal whaterver a Pistol or Carbine does but they can't heal shots from me. Good trade off!
SOKO
I didn't know that...but do they do as much mind damage as rifle? I would have to think no on that. If they do just as much as a rifle then that would be unfair.
SOKO
Ypiana please go here and look at the pistol acc:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=rifleman&message.id=6192
I'm sorry anyone who says pistols can't hit at long range are either not very far into the skilltrees or don't want thier pistol nerfed.
I have a couple of observations:
1. The Rifle/Pistol accuracy problem is indeed a tricky one. If you have comparable skills, the rifle should be more accurate at certain ranges, but these ranges are extremely limited as rifle accuracy will drop off dramatically from its ideal range. The major problem I see is that the rifleman will not have comparable accuracy skills. Most max pistol users are going to take both pistoleer and the pistol tree from the bounty hunter. Granted, they do have to spend the skill points to do this, but this gives them an incredibly large bonus to their pistol accuracy, more than enough to wipe out any negatives they receive for range. Rifle users do not have access tothat additional +50 to accuracy and +50 to speed to their weapon. So, if we look at it numerically, a master rifleman gets +57 to accuracy and +65 to speed, and a master pistoleer/bounty hunter (pistol tree only) gets +95 to accuracy and +99 to speed. That additional +38 to accuracy is typically enough to take care of any bonus that the rifle might give you due to range. On top of that, the +34 to speed means that the already faster pistol users will fire even faster. Plus, the additional specials from the bounty hunter tree allow the pistol user to act like a rifleman in PvP. True, pistols do not get much AP capability, but that only kicks in against certain mobs. Also, many mobs are vulnerable to acid damage, so the DX2 pistol will bypass the armor they do have. My suggestion to balance the skill issueout is to have bounty hunter pistols (and carbines) be a separate class of weapon (just like the light lightning rifle), and to make the bounty hunter specials only usable withthe bounty hunterweapons (just like the light lightning rifle). These modifications would need to be made quickly, too. As it is, with the sheer number of pistoleer/bounty hunters out there, there will be a lot of unhappiness if such a change is made, and it will get worse as more of the combat players migrate to this profession.
2. Cover being broken. This must be addressed for the rifleman to be a truly viable character. As I am sure other professions can also claim (after all, I'm also a Ranger and have broken high level traps), having one tree of your profession be utterly useless is not a lot of fun. Until this is fixed, the rifleman is just going to have a hard time. I am assuming this was supposed to balance the lack of knockdown capability for PvE hunting. After all, if the creatures can not find you to attack you, you can shoot to your heart's content. That is how a sniper is supposed to work. Fixing this would go a long way towards making the rifleman a more viable PvE combatant. Also, if someone could post a detailed description (or a link to an existing discussion) of how cover is supposed to work, I'd be grateful.
First off an M16 a rifle mind you is accurate to 416yards it has a range far in excess of this number. How is it that a space faring race doesnt make a rifle thats atleast as accurate as something created just before the first moon landing? A Pistol will never be able to shoot anywhere near as far or as accurately (unless we're playing a game that doesnt work right yet)as a rifle plain and simple.
Third the Bowcasters condition is only about 110 as well so please fix this when you fix the sg. Having to repair a weapon after you kill a coupledozen things just doesnt make any sense and having to throw it out after a few days use if your main role is that of a fighter is silly to say the least. My main profession is armorsmith so i only fight when its necessary to get at my mines and even then i usually just run away.
Thx
FYI by accurate i mean that a proficient shooter can consistently strike a target within 3 inches of the chosen bullseye everytime. In the RL therifle isa superior weapon the only reason to carry a pistol is because it's lighter smaller and more easily concealed in all other aspects related to fighting it is an inferior weapon.
Yep, Darkshot, you are correct. I didn't include the Marksman skill bonuses for pistol and rifle since they cancel out. I only included the elite profession bonuses. If you include the Marksman bonuses, both weapon types get an additional +60 to accuracy and +30 to speed. I also didn't include any specific bonuses for attacking while moving (pistol should outclass rifle here) or for attacking in different postures (pistol also gets an accuracy bonus for firing while standing).
I also don't know of a Bounty Hunter specific carbine, only pistol and "rifle".
I experimented with carbine yesterday just to see what the differences in the weapons are (I had already tried some pistol). It was enlightening, to say the least. From this experience, I would say that the following are the 3 biggest problems now for using rifle (and rifle only) as a weapon:
1. Cover is broken. For rifle to work the way the devs envisioned it (because of the other disadvantages rifle was given),cover must work. Otherwise,it's game over. I have Ranger training, so I can use traps to cover some of the deficiency, but not all.
2. Rifle drains the mind pool. My carbineer friend was telling me about how his character fought, and it was like listening to someone from a different planet. I couldn't fight that way because I couldn't use stims to regenerate my capability to use my special attacks. This doesn't just affect downtime after combat, but downtime in combat. A pistol or carbine user with novice medic can use way more special moves than a rifleman before running out of gas. In groups, the effects of their specials can be healed by the group healers. Rifle just has to sit down and rest to recover. Oh, and it is much harder to heal your own damage as a rifleman since you are draining the same pool as your specials. Strangely enough, the only saving grace early on was the slow rate of fire of your weapons. I know this from trying to use specials with a spraystick. I really think it should be called a deathstick since you still take x3 damage in melee for having it out and you drain your own pools so rapidly if you actually use specials. And, since you've typically put almost all of your damage to the creature to the mind bar at long range, you are forced to use your specials to finish it off before it munches you. As has been posted by others, because rifle specials attack the mind pool, once you start using them, you can't stop. Head shots from normal attacks seem to be rarer than body or leg shots (which come with close to the same frequency, although body may average slightly more), so you will be using your head shot special to finish things you've damaged at range. I don't expect to see the rifle attacks tweaked, though, since theywill bebalanced for PvP, but it does make rifle less effective in non PvP settings.
3. The x3 melee damage. This really hurts. Once a creature charges you, it is actually safer to put your weapon away. No other class has to do that. With the occasional lag teleport of a creature to directly on top of you, this often results in instant death as many creatures can one-shot you. This also requires you to have a secondary support weapon to rifle to finish things off up close (if they can't be killed before they charge you). However, rifle really doesn't play well with most other weapons since it damages the mind pool most heavily. You are limited to the Bounty Hunter Eye Shot, 2 handed swords, higher level unarmed combat, or (in my case) Ranger traps to open up the range so that you can use your rifle again.