Rifleman Archive
Thread: The last, rifleman petition EVER
Thanks folks! For those of you making it this far through the thread, I'll repost my suggestions in an easier to read format.
I've also placed this thread on each of your respective Galaxies' forums, so be sure to sign that one as well.
EXTREMELY constructive posting here thus far! Congratulations to ALL riflemen for not being dumbasses! That's more than I can say for some pistoleers on Bria, who felt the need to flame my original thread.
Greetings, Riflemen from another galaxy! As a fellow rifleman, I must warn you about the coming nerf that will phase out all riflemen everywhere. Before reading my suggestions, realize that the quotes below come directly from the combat designer of SWG, whose remarks, in their entirety, can be read at the link below.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=565036&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
DO NOT go quietly into that great night! Sign your galaxy's petition now, and add your own constructive comments!
"A newbie marksman might get a maximum combo size of 2, while a master rifleman might be able to string together 8 attacks."
Clearly you've never played a rifleman. The concept of even hitting twice in a row as a novice rifleman is not insane, just unlikely. However, the odds of stringing together eight attacks, even at master,is a virtual impossibility. Riflemen are already the slowest firing class, and the least accurate (at all ranges other than 60-62meters). Adding combos simply showers further blessings upon the pistoleers, who can actually HIT eight times in a row.
Ask any rifleman how many shots he gets off before a melee mob is in melee range and the rifleman is both dead (we are still the only class to take 2.5x damage in melee) and unable to hit anything. Answer=2. Will 2 hits kill every mob in the game? No. Ergo, every mob we fight must be tanked, or else we die. Oh, but thank God the pistoleers don't have this problem... see, they can fire ten times faster than we can, and they are better in melee than at range (due to pistolwhip).
"I could raise the damage on carbines/rifles because I would be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be fired as quickly as pistols."
This is fine, so long as you realize that if pistols shoot every .5 seconds and we fire every 3 seconds, that we need to deal 6x the damage with every shot that a pistoleer can do. I've seen pistols that deal over 200 maximum damage. If you do anything other than increase the laser and T21 rifles' maximum damage to 1200, then you're nerfing us further. And do you realize that the only viable weapon for a master rifleman to use is the DL20a due to mind costs? Can you imagine the outcry if pistoleers had to use a CDEF to be effective? We actually HAVE this problem! For the love of Pete, get rid of your T21 renerf and make them available... three months and no resources on several servers still? I respect rarity, but half the people on Bria have already left, never having seen a T21. Let's get real here.
"Development Hates Riflemen."
Yes, you do.
"We don’t hate you."
We seem to be at an impasse. You have both nerfed and denied to us our top-of-the-line weapon. You have also imposed a 2.5x damage penalty to us for simply holding the weapon of our choice. Our DPS is still far lower than that of pistoleers and a variety of other classes. The vaunted "you can do mind damage" defense is laughable, because as a master rifleman, I was mind incapped by a BH using eyeshot because he could hit me and I could not hit him... but my mind costs from the HAM sure helped him along... even though I was missing. But don't worry about the BH... though he hits mind, his weapon doesn't cost mind to use.
"Take Cover is not particularly effective given it’s penalties."
No duh. Three months in and you just now realize that we get off one shot with this ability before being incapped by the mob's buddies?
"I’m going to try to improve the protection values of take cover. "
Ask around, get some feedback. Riflemen don't give a rat's butt about cover. Cover is for solo hunting, and as explained before, riflemen need company or get killed instantly. This makes the ONLY viable rifleman one who is also a melee fighter (who remembers to unequip his rifle before getting insta-killed), or a rifleman/CH. Cover only works if we can hit, and we can't. The rifleman cannot be a sniper in this game unless he one-shot kills in the same way a commando does. Unless you let us do that in both PvE and PvP, your proposed changes will drive out every single rifleman in the profession. Guaranteed.
"This will also enhance the "anti-sniper" moves of riflemen."
If cover works properly, then we shouldn't even be able to see snipers on our radar or otherwise (Tabbing) until after they've fired. Somebody at SOE needs to see "Enemy at the Gates." If every shot is a one-shot kill, and the only way to find a covered rifleman is after he fires, every fight against a "Master Sharpshooter" (which is funny, because we still miss more than any other class...) should last for one single blast.
There's no need for these "anti-sniper" shots. Just because they are in the original design doesn't set them in stone. There is no defense against real snipers, except perhaps high-yield grenade launchers and small to medium-sized thermonuclear weapons. Please, please replace these anti-sniper attacks with something useful. Compare thearea attacks of Pistoleers and the glorious area knockdown of the carbineer to the specific, useful-against-one-nerfed-class-only attacks of riflemen. There are about 10 riflemen in Bria, and most are rebels. How many chances am I going to get to use these "anti-sniper" attacks, even if cover becomes mandatory for survival as a rifleman? Not many. Now, how useful is fan shot? Panic shot?
"Rifleman accuracy is lacking against moving targets."
All targets move. Worse, they move towards us, making them unhittable within 30meters or so.
"I’ll also investigate the toHit bonuses for all rifleman skills."
The matter, though we cannot hit, is really one of damage. Commandos have mediocre odds of hitting with their uber weapons, but they sure do kill everything they hit. That's the same reason we applied to be snipers. We still have far, far greater drawbacks than they do (yes, I've heard the skill point debate) and they still do our one-hit-kill job far better than we can.
"Once we add the speed cap, I will investigate improving damage output. The combo system I have proposed will nicely fit into the rifleman attack paradigm."
If you implement the speed cap, I, and all the riflemen across every single galaxy will quit. The grind to make master rifleman is easily ten times harder than for any other combat class, and we have been nerfed to hell and back already. You deny us our guns, and nerf the ones we get. I spent three months working 8 hours a day to make master rifleman and master doctor. I've seen a player go from novice commando to master in 3 days. The blessing of beinga "master" rifleman is not a "toHit" bonus, or a damage increase, but in the amazing speed with which we can fire. It's the only thing we have, the only carrot dangled in front of us on this long, insane journey through 4 million xp. You take it away, and every single one of us is out, either out of the profession or out of the game.
How about a constructive solution? Weapon Cap speed reduced as you rise in elite professions. Pistol get's down to .5 at master (from a base minimum of 1), Carbineer hits 1 second minimum at master (from base 2), and rifleman hits 2 second minimum at master (base of 4). This is a carrot to all classes and nerf to none. Even a master rifleman shouldn't get more than one shot per two seconds, and this is still fast enough to be competetive. This is an implementation of an intelligent speed cap, which would be acceptable to all.
As for the calculations of weapon speed, my speed wentfrom firing once every 5 seconds toone shot per second when I took the last support line box and master box at the trainer. A 500% speed increase should not happen in 35 seconds. Period. This isnot true for other classes, and it should not be true for riflemen. Spread the speed increases through the tree, and make them work. Right now they only work at master level.
"Rifles too difficult to craft (T21)"
A gun's power should be directly proportional to its difficulty to craft and use. This said, the T21 should be the most powerful gun on every server, hands down. A number of servers have been waiting since launch for them, still to no avail. Fix it, and make the T21 actually better than a Laser Rifle. The DPS on a T21 is considerably worse than for a laser rifle, and if you think the carbineers have problems with HAM costs, ask me about my maxed, yet vaped Mon Cal mind pool. The HAM costs of any weapon other than rifle are healable, making them negligible because they are very temporary. When a Master Sharpshooter uses headshot3 in PvP with a current T21, he frequently deals more damage to himself than his enemy. And he misses.
Riflemen have all the drawbacks of meleers in PvP, and some special drawbacks all our own. Hitting mind pool is great... just ask the swordsmen and BHs that can do it far better, faster, more reliably, without self-damage to an unhealable pool, and without taking extra damage just from holding their weapons. The problem many meleers point out is that they cannot catch up with a running player out of melee range. Riflemen cannot get out of melee range, and cannot hit anything within it. All PvP currently takes place in cities, and there are no clear shots at 60m in cities. I know that this too is being looked into, but realize that if someone is running towards me because he survived my first shot, that the battle is over, and I am dead. This is not true for any other class, and should not be true for us.
In any case, you're likely around 3/4ths of the way through getting your combos thing set up, blithely believing that it will somehow mollify the riflemen... failing to realize that with our mind costs, slow fire, and impossibly low accuracy that we will never, ever be able to use combos to any success. As with the terrible miscalculation of DPS that caused the original T21 nerf, you devs have miscalculated MANY things in this latest "Combat Proposal" that will, as usual, result in your killing off many aspiring riflemen.
Have you noticed that the pistoleers got a couple lines, but the first thing that you said to the riflemen is that you don't hate us? Have you ever heard a pistoleer say "The Devs hate us!" No. And yet every riflemanbelow master status says this to himself and elsewhere every single day. There's a reason for this, and your proposed changes only make everything that sucks about being a rifleman worse. Not only that, but you threaten to take away the only thing that makes the class worthwhile... the speed of a master rifleman.
I pray that you read this and take it to heart, from one dev to another. I love your game, I truly do, but I'm not going to spend another 3 months grinding some other combat class when you stick your cork in my gunbarrel. Don't do it, guys. Think first. Listen to the 20+ pages here and give theplayers what they need, not what you think might be a good idea.
DEAR MEMBERS OF OTHER PROFESSIONS:
Feel free to comment on this thread after completing at least one full tree of rifleman. Until then, what you know, or think you know, is only hearsay. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
The original thread was posted on Bria and signed by every single rifleman on the server. Make your voice known!
Last part is worth repeating.
Zathrus wrote:
/sign
As I've posted and seen posted before, the maths just don't add up
By the time a rifleman gets off 1 eight hit combo a pistoleer has time to get off 6 eight hit combos.
I don't want to be overpowered I just want to be competitive.
"A newbie marksman might get a maximum combo size of 2, while a master rifleman might be able to string together 8 attacks."
I have to agree this is ridiculous for a rifleman. When doing missions for cash I can kill my target in under 3-4 shots... if it gets longer then that because of misses I am in melee so I am going to miss anyway...The only time I might see 8 attacks is with a smaller group attacking larger mobs.
This is only going to be useful in a very specific set of circumstances. Another words the devs are going to say "look we improved your class, so what if you don't use it"
/sign
We need a master headshot(not headshot3) some shot that when u hit rifle it is an uber damage shot to the mind not healt pool, action, mix/hit and guess what pool damage.
/sign
I'm giving them 2 more weeks and then I'm going to BH/Commando! 
/sign
Another Master Rifleman who thinks these proposed changes are ridiculous.
/sign
Joshua
Wanderhome
Please Devs, make this right!