Rifleman Archive

Here's the thread about mind heals: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=510081#M510081

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Meyree wrote:

If the HAM costs for the move were moved to mind without lowering the number it takes, it would make the skill useless, as well.

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Yeah? Well welcome to headshot3! With no helmet and maximum Focus for human (600), I lose right around 160 mind pool to HS3 a T21. How much action pool do you lose to fire your strongest pistol with Eyeshot?

Meyree...

Thanks for taking your time to carry on an important and, so far, civil conversation with the Rifleman community. Lets hope all who post to thisthread see this as a chance to understand another point of view and possibly work out some viable solutions.

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Meyree wrote:
Pecos, is that headshot 3, or headshot 2? Remember to compare abilities of roughly equivelent experience costs.

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I can't find figures on it, but I'm pretty sure Eyeshot has a higher damage multipler than HS2.

I can see the cause for your distress Pecos...

This is a sticky one indeed... I only hope that a mutally fair solution can be reached before the nerf timer runs out.

What's the nerf timer? Well, I believe that when any imbalance occurs within a MMO, there is only so much time to attain a perfect solution before a simple nerf must be implemented. We're marching against that timer now, and it should be noted that the hammer always swings both ways.

Moving eyeshot to mind, it seems, would be the most appropriate course of action. The only problem there is that mind is not supposed to be the sole determining factor in PvP... It already is, which is something the devs want to move away from. Making a change that would deepen that problem would be counterproductive regardless of whether it would solve problems.

So then you have the other possibility, which is the polar oposite.

Headshot 1 = mind bar

Headshot 2 = health bar

Headshot 3 = action bar

The action bar, currently, is the one that seems to be the most plentiful and long lasting, therefore, only the higher skills should draw from it. Nonetheless, skills that draw from the mind bar only add onto a related, yet different problem.

Eyeshot is, before anyone says it, a hard to attain skill. Trust me, I have over 100 million xp to go before I even finish the weapons portion of BH. I'd imagine that more issues like this will come up as a greater percentage of the BH population advances, as well.

It is completely imbalanced that with PvP so dependant on mind, the profession defining skill of riflemen draws from mind while their mind is likely to be hit the most.

Perhaps all skills should be moved off mind with exception to those that would naturally be a mentally straining action, with exception to those that are likened to real life sniping.

I do understand the true nature of that, as I was once in the Army and can knock a penny of a table at three hundred meters easily with an M-16. (I know M-16s suck, but I was just naturally good with them *shrug*)

Headshot 2 is also a much easier to attain skill.

Nonetheless, headshot 3 should ALWAYS outperform eyeshot by a considerable margin.

Headshot 2 should only be slightly over matched against eyeshot. The only reason is that eyeshot is harder to attain.

That margin should be slim enough though that it literally comes down to the BH only needing to be head hit one more time to be incapped when the rifleman falls.

Then again, this is semmantics, and is my opinion. Opinion does not equal balance, and balance is paramount, so I digress this in interest of balance 8)

Well, one could possibly have mindshot moves take from action. But then I imagine you'd move all moves to the action bar. In fact, I'd be interested to see what that was like. If every special move drained from the same pool.

Barring that, it still makes more sense that Health attacks drain from your health, Action attacks drain from your action, and Mind attacks drain from your own mind.

YOU SHOULD NOT BE DOING A BETTER JOB DEALING MIND DAMAGE THAN A RIFLEMAN CAN....BOTTOM LINE. YOU SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO USEEYESHOT OVER AND OVER WHEN A RIFLEMAN CAN ONLY USE IT 3-4 TIMES BEFORE THEIR MIND POOL IS DRAINED. WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND NEWB!?!

Sorry for the caps lol

Bear in mind, (no pun intended) that the issue of healinf mindpool is something they're thinking about and trying to come up with an answer to. I doubt the outcome will be some kind of special Stimpack for the mindpool. I hear they had that in Beta, but medics were using it to heal indefinately. And that battles could be decided less on offensive power but medical capability.

Plus, i would be against spreading the costs across the board by having some moves take from action, others from helath. Probably for the same reason you dont want eyeshot to take from mind. I've et up my stat migration to be maxxed out in mind pool stats since they are what I live and die by. I do not want to put points in the other stats

How is moving eyeshot to mind counter productive? It will just make BH's less likely to use that attack seeing how they don't want a combat medic or rifleman to be able to one shot them, dont like sitting around for 5 minutes as opposed to using a stim...you know the thing that we have to do regardless, and will move mind damage back into the hands of rifleman and combat medics. I'm sorry but the fact that it is "Hard" to get eyeshot pales in comparison to what we have to go through. You can at least group with people and go kill kimogilas or raid tuskens all that I can do right now...and until I get high up on the chain is solo bantha's or snorbals into extinction.

The solution is not to allow the mind to be healed because what will that do? Oh yay we can heal after spamming our attack, however our attacks are made meaningless since our prey just healed away all of our shots and doesn't have to worry about his health or action. I have actually gotten into PvP fights where people don't use specials and have lost. All that needs to be done is give us back our gun, and make eyeshot use mind thats the obvious and easy solution but it doesnt cater to 80% of the player base so it won't happen.

Captiva I came in here to have a conversation regarding an issue facing both our professions. Outbursts like that not only accomplish nothing constructive, but are also generally not appreciated.

Also, I find it ironic that you would call a BH a noob /boggle

The balance issue on whether each move should drain for the same pool it hits is complicated when there is one unhealable bar. Now, generally, the common sense thing to do would be for the most powerful special moves to drain from that bar, thus making your use of the most powerful moves be very limited, and creating a situation which you are more vulnerable.

This observation is actually in favor of riflemen, not BHs. This would indicate that eyeshot, being a very powerful move, should draw from the most easily depleted source.

The problem herein, on the behalf of the riflemen, is that your entire profession is based on mind bar damage, which serverely limits everything you do, and keeps you constantly more vulnerable.

Now, in PvE, this is not exactly the case, because you get skills to counter this, but nonetheless when using sniping skills in PvP, you do not actually become invisible to players.

Therein lies the problem, as well. The denfensive abilities which define your profession by outlining exactly how you snipe limits you to PvE unfairly, and that must be changed...

Ugg I think I opened a whole big ol' can o' worms here lol

Heh. "A can of worms" is easily opened when talking to riflemen, especially since you represent the most powerful combat class in the game. Envy and frustration abound on many boards outside of BH and pistoleer.

We are more or less limited to PVE for now, for the reasons you just mentioned. If conceal shot or cover worked aginst PC's we'd be more powerful to be certain, but lord it would piss off everyone in the game. It's not fun being 1-shotted by a guy you never even saw on your radar. I mean I'd love it, but it would upset everyone else.

So yeah, balance. I dunno.

You're absolutely right, psychotic, with exception to one point.

BHs are the summary of all the elite marksman derived professions rolled into one. It's alot like rock paper scizzors, or is supposed to be.

In other words, we should not be attacking mind in order to kill a riflemen who has a skill of equivelent experience cost.

We should not be attacking action against a carbineer under the same circumstances.

We should not be attacking health against a pistoleer under the same circumstances.

Or should we?

Keep in mind, that BHs are not defenders, we are not soldiers, we are killers. The only way we are feared in PvP Is:

We attack the mind of someone using mind

We attack the action of someone using action

We attack the health of someone using health

Then BHs are what they are supposed to be, but you introduce a plaethora of problems, as we are seeing here.

See the thread I linked a bit higher on the page for the reason why moving eyeshot to mind is counter productive. That would make PvP even MORE dependant on mind, when their current goal is to move it away from that.

Thus, it makes more sense for headshot to be moved off mind starting at 2, and hit action by 3.

Compare this to the initial idea I had as to what would fix the problem, which is posted at the top of the thread.

I'm not playing favorites to BH or riflemen, or at least am trying to see the whole picture. The whole picture is not only the point of view of BH and riflemen, but also consideration of what the devs want to do, and are going to do.

Now, the statement that riflemen and medics should own mind is ridiculous.

Bounty Hunters, say it with me, attack all three pools. The difference is that a BH should never be as effective against any pool as a master of the profession concentrated on that pool is.

Thus, the reason why I have been comparing eyeshot to headshot 3.

I'm going to take a break a sec and get a smoke. We've been mostly constructive, and that is awesome, but some riflemen are bringing unneccessary bias and hostility into a diplomativ thread. Let's all cool down a sec and come back 8)