Rifleman Archive
Thread: Proposed marksman changes that would greatly affect your class
Yeah, if you want to see our little debate, head over to the Marksman forums. It's spread throughout a whole bunch of threads though, so I can't link to just one. I have made the point about technical difficulties and the fact that the topic is a little irrelevant as combat still works decently for these professions. I think it will be overlooked for now, but when they fine-tune the game it will be included.
I hope you can forgive me for this but I am a Pistoleer, Commando, and Master Marksman. I know how most of you feel about pistoleers, but I do agree that pistols should be the opposite of rifles. I'm not exaclty agreeing about them being totally inaccurate, but it does seem odd that I hit so often from farther distances as opposed to how many times I miss with a rifle at close distance, even before I took Pistoleer...
However, back to the topic, I will probably end up suggesting that they either increase rifle and carbine a little too or decrease pistol and carbine. Also, it doesn't seem that hard for NPCs to be able to acquire a target from over 64m. They can easily follow an acquired target at 100m, and I don't think it would be that hard to change. Oh well, I guess all I can do is ask.
My memory may be failing me, but I am pretty sure rifle range used to be 128m, and it was nerfed back to 64 almost immediately after release.
Approaching to 64m then backing off and still being able to shoot (I would suggest 96m as an immediate compromise and see how things go) would be a welcome change. Of arguable value in PvP, especially single person encounters, as any observant opponent would simply rush you and not let you choose your own time/distance to attack.
I think it's more important to get the existing effective ranges right. Riflepersons get serious disadvantages on to-hit a short range, but there doesn't seem to be any sensible counterpoint with Pistoleers/BH's at long range.
Other suggetions:
Improve the Rifleperson concealment line for PvP. Some have suggested it should allow a stealth mode (invisibility), butI very much doubt the Sony devs would be that courageous. Instead, Cover/Concealshot skills might add significantly to Ranged Defence, so shots at us miss at some frequency.
We need better crowd control. Flurry/Startle (two special moves, one not Rifleperson) shot is no comparison to the single Knockdown move that several other combat classes have. We need at least amove that will lower posture to complement Flurry (dizzy). Crowd-Control is probably more important to our class than any other combat profession, due to our poor defence and consequent need to try and keep opponents in our effective range, yet our is one of the weakest. We also havezero defence vs Knockdown.
Knockdown is stupidly over-powered. Increased HAM cost don't mean that much when it only has to hit once for an almost guaranteed kill. Reduce Knockdown times so the victim is only down for 3-5 seconds (still allowing at least a couple of free shots). Put a 10-15 second timer on it. Reduce damage multiplier against targets that are already prone (isn't being prone enough?). Some combination of above.
I think that TekDragon is right. If we look at the range situation realistically, the chances that the devs would change the whole range configuration just to balance out a few classes is slim to none. However, I think that the devs would probably agree to the decrease in max ranges for carbineer and pistoleer. No pistoleer or carbineer with half a mind could say that the decrease in ranges doesn't make sense.
Lekor Kuras- Chilastra
If I remember correctly, the rifles in beta 2 and before, had ranges greater than 128. They had to nerf it after that for technical reasons, so I doubt we could get a range increase. A range decrease on pistols and carbines would work fine for me, but it would probably anger alot of people who don't read these boards, and don't understand or care why.
If we cannot recieve a decrease on the carbines and pistols I strongly suggest that the penalties for firing outside your range should be increased dramatically. This would affect us at all because we already suck at close range, but it would help. The problem I have is that there is already a penalty in place, and it seems to work on the carbines and rifles, but not the pistols. So perhaps finding that bug may fix alot of problems.
I would like to see the max range on certain weapons decreased. Pistols should have to go closer to shoot so that they are more of a risk against melees. A large disadvantage to the Rifleman is that if they go prone at 60-64m it would be easy to just run out of range. When things run away this is also a problem because you don't get exp beyond that range anymore. Pistols and Carbines should not be able to shoot at that range. Of course they may be able to do this in real life with a pistol but we have to think balance now. The rifle needs to be the dominant weapon when it comes to range. We are supposed to be murderers from the range but we aren't.
I'm going with TekDragon on this issue.
My biggest issue with the 64m max is that in pvping, 60m is the ideal range to be, but with two steps your opponet can be outside of your range and perfectly safe, waiting for you to eaither crawl or stand up and move closer. the ideal range doesn't need to change just the range at wich they can't be affected anymore.
Cayn Magenta
Flurry
"History is rarly made by resonable men" -Terry Goodkind
I'll toss my 2 cents in here.
I agree that moving the Rifle out just 10-20m would be the best solution, for all players concerned.
However, if it appears that decreasing the ranges of Pistol/Carbine is the only option that seems viable, you must take into account, the aggro range of the NPC's. If they reduce the range on all Carbine/Pistol.. they would also need to tweak all the aggro radii of the NPC's to allow these people the ability to engage the target without getting ripped too shreds by early aggro.
Now, if they pull the distance out for Rifleman, they apparently have issues with NPC's aggroing/firing back, etc...
..that's kind of the point, and not a valid agruement on their side. The Rifleman is at a pretty nasty disadvantage: 1.) Slow Rate of Fire 2.) Prone dependent stance for special moves 3.) Mindpool is drained by special moves (only thing that can not be healed in the field) 4.) Slow to move when the target engages (getting up from Prone to Standing and getting out of Dodge isn't exactly a speedy process) 5.) Shooting 1 target will run a large risk of aggroing an entire camp, Covered or not (especially Melee NPC's apparently)
As such, extending the range of the Rifle out, 10-20m, and there by giving the Rifleman the ability to be out of range of NPC's initial "Return Fire" phase, is the entire point of having a Rifle and Long Range Accuracy. This requires tweaking to only the Rifle's.
If they are discussing a "Return to base" aggro issue, IE. Mobs will return to the base if aggro'd after a certain distance, I know it sure as hell isn't 84m.
I would be interested to see why they say they can not extend the range of the Rifles to be more practical.
And FYI.. 64m is about70 Yards if I'm not too horribly mistaken.. that's about 210 feet.. Anyone here play Outfield in Baseball? I'm guessing you can THROW A BALL 210 feet and hit a target with relative accuracy.
As well.. that, melee NPC's hitting you at anywhere from 0m to 20m crap.. is fricken annoying.. I'd like to meet the man with 65 foot long arms and/or can whip around a sword that long..
a friend of mine had an idea about how to increase the range for the rifle. it involves basically a scope. it increases the range of the rifle while not nerfing the pistol or the carbine. this is a pretty rough idea, so don't flame on, i am pretty much just "thinking out loud."
let me explain. the reason that the range is capped at 64 meters is that for what-ever reason or another the game mechanics cannot support more than 64 meters of environment being engageable for various technical issues (or so it has been explained by the devs before.)
that in mind, in the game you can select and even examine a target that is over 64 meters away, you just get a "--" to hit modifier. that means that the game mechanics allows your computer to know what selectable objects are within your "immediate" area. my friend's reasoning was that the game could lock your avatar in one spot and "zoom" in to a targetable range. making the shootable range for the rifle 128 meters. the game mecahnics should allow this.
the idea is that as you zoom in, your feild of view narrows and therefore the amount of information that each individual pc has to keep cached is reduced while zooming in on a target. as you "zoom" in to the target, your "awareness" of the immediate surroundings should go away. if any of you have played the sniper in ghanytactical shooters, you know kind of what i am talking about.zooming in with a scope allows you to target effectively objects very far away, but it also would give some penalties. there would need to be some conditions and penalties that would need to be applied as well.
1.youmust have an un-obstructed line of sight to the target
2. you must be prone
3. there must be a time delay that would hinder your ability to get out of this position, allowing targets to possibly make up the distance to engage you. otherwise rifleman becomes uber-powerful and reigns as a god dealing death from afar.
4. there is a time delay between switching targets
5. while in this position rifle speed is hindered (maybe goes to basic rifle speed without the plus granted for rifleman experience?)
6. while in this position, no mobility and a huge melee damage modifier
7. requires at completing the entire first tier or rifleman or entire sniper tree? thus eating up enough skill points?
8. maybe only works on battlefields? only pve? only pvp? (any discussion on this idea would be appreciated)
but on top of the idea there also needs to be some upgrades to the game. the ai would need to be increased on mobs, so when individuals start dropping like flies the rest of the mob tries to engage. this ability would need to be granted to all the "marksman" targets such as the npc guy i saw "iben workan: imperial marksman." this would allow riflemen to keep targets in their optimal target zone for more than 1 shot. could increase the accuracy of the carbine to the 64 meter range. it is a win win win situation
anyway... it is just an idea, not fully fleshed out, but i thought i would bring it up none-the-less. i apologize if this is an idea that someone else has mentioned and if i am re-hashing something that has been knocked around a bit. let me know what you think
And FYI.. 64m is about70 Yards if I'm not too horribly mistaken.. that's about 210 feet.. Anyone here play Outfield in Baseball? I'm guessing you can THROW A BALL 210 feet and hit a target with relative accuracy.
As well.. that, melee NPC's hitting you at anywhere from 0m to 20m crap.. is fricken annoying.. I'd like to meet the man with 65 foot long arms and/or can whip around a sword that long..
The problem is that we can't have reality, so lets try to fix the fantasy. We all know that 64 meters isn't realistic at all, niether is a planet that is only 15000 or so meters wide. The constraints of the game are such that 64 meters was the best for everything, PvE, PvP. They couldn't move it back farther because of mobs not noticing the players, and because some Players were too laggy to see other Players, from what I understood in beta.
The whole 20m crap is due to server lag. You see the creature at 20m, but the server sees it right next to you. So they had to make a gap to overlap what you see and what the servers sees. Not much they can do. Thats why so many mobs have ranged attacks, or are increadibly fast. It would be a huge disadvantage to the Brawlers if they didn't have that 20m cushion. The server would see all of the brawlers as to far behind the action, if chasing another player or mob, and would never hit. Even when the client see it as 2 or 3 meters, the server could see it as 10 or 15.
you can throw a baseball 200 feet on target, great.
when was the last time you shot a beam of energy out of a gun? How far did it go? what were the effects on it from gravity? wind? How fast did it travel?
I'm pretty sure you can't answer these questions( if you can, I know someone that may be able to help you).
Here is why I really think you can't use real world logic here. If you really think about it, Rifles would have very little disadvantages. However, one would be that they aren't very mobile and secondly they are not concealable. The latter has very little value in SWG, however mobility should have a huge impact. Regardless of what gun you have if you are within striking distance with a melee weapon, the chances of you missing your target are pretty freekin slim.
My point here is this, considerably lower the effective accuracy of pistols(40+) and carbs(50+) from a distance and allow Rifles to suffer very little when it comes to accuracy, carbs and pistols will make up the restrictions with better accuracy while moving. Along with that lower the HAM costs of specials for all ranged when within "ideal ranges" it just makes sense, when you are comfy and settled in (could possibly at a perk to /cover to lower ham costs) it is less of a drain on your body to perform!