Rifleman Archive
Thread: The rifle problem
I would like to reply to some things I read earlier today in the post "sad state of the game".
Here are some quotes by Holo that directly affect riflemen, that are in my mind exactly the problem with our class. We see things very differently, and we have to get into this discussion before we can be happy. This goes to the heart of the pistol vs rifle debate, as well as the T21 debate.
Ok I choose this post because I feel that the original poster, Sangreal used an example that riflemen are useless in groups, and either I or Holo didn't understand what he meant by that. First off Holo went on to state that the problem, as I understand it, was that because some of use can solo reds, we gain alot of XP from it, and then feel like we dont gain enough in groups. Also, he has stated that no one should be able to solo reds, which I am fine with and agree whole heartedly with. But being a rifleman myself, I feel very useless in groups. I took this post to mean that we have no role to play in groups and we are loosing out in xp because of that lack of a role.
Often I have seen Holo post that one of the major bonuses of a rifleman is that he targets the mind pool. This is great in PvP and soloing, but it becomes a very big detriment in groups where I am the only rifleman and there are several pistol users. The pistol users that I play with don't even need to spam body shot, they simply knockdown, and use their normal attack speed to kill. I on the other hand have to try and kill the same target using headshot2 to keep up with their normal base damage. I have never beat them to a kill, nor have I helped them in the fight because they are hitting the health pool. When this happens I have 2 choices in a group: A. I can choose to do my maximum damage possible or B. I can try to help them kill the creature faster. With A I generally end up with half the XP points they gain, with B its more like a 5th.
In a group of three, 2 pistoleers and myself, a rifleman, we took on some bolle bols. At the end of every kill they recieved 1500xp for themselves. I on the other hand would recieve 700xp for using A, where I would just spam as much mind damage as possible before they killed it, or 300xp for using option B, where I tried to help them kill it faster. (They were using fwg5s at 2.0 speed dmg 41-178ish, while I am using a t21 at 8.3 speed dmg 160-421. Note that they were using a weapon in the marksman tree, while I am using the rifleman special weapon.)
This is why we feel useless, if we try to help the party succeed in killin the mobs quicker, we are not rewarded for our effort. So we feel we have no purpose in groups whatsoever.
The problem lies in DPS, damage per second, and this brings us to our second post.
ARC_Casper wrote:
Holo, try and be in a group of 15+ and use any kind of gun with an attack speed above 3.0 and you are gonna get about 100 points per creature, and your so far back you get no loot or harvesting because of the ninja looting and harvesting.
And if your grouped with just one TKA forget it no XP for you that day.
OK, that definitely sounds like a problem in the damage per second between the riflemen and the TKAs, or perhaps in the riflemen vs everyone else.
But from our perspective, it'd be far preferable to fix that by upping the fire rate than by giving you single shots that can kill many targets without any risk.
-Raph Koster, Creative Director
In this post Holo stated what I see as the biggest problem for riflemen, that everone else is doing more damage than us over a given time period. His answer to this is to lower our speed of attack so that over time we will be on par with the others. This is also a prelude to the T21 nerf that they are implementing, where we do less base damage, but we shoot faster.
What I am, and what I believe to be most of the other riflemen out there are saying, it that we don't want this sort of fix. Holo talks about giving us a single shot that can kill many targets without any risk, and that he doesn't like that idea. I on the other hand see it as a vital part of the rifleman philosophy.
We are, in my mind, supposed to be the snipers of the world. We should have that one shot one kill mentality as riflemen.we should know that failure means death and I for one, feel this is the rifleman way. I have my shot, my one shot, and if I miss I will die. This is why we are so adamantly opposed to the changes being made to the T21. This is our gun, the one that makes us feel like the sniper we want to be, and you are taking away that feeling.
Also I must stress that I am already forced to use my pistol as my only defense. If I am soloing without a rifle that can kill in a single shot, I am taking damage that is worse than any other profession. Mobs immediately move to close range, at which I miss constantly, and they have the 2.5x damage multiplier on me for as long as I keep my rifle in hand. Warning shot helps quite a bit, but in cases where multiple mobs attack me I am toast, becasue even if I warning shot one away the other has almost killed me by the time I can switch to it.
There it is then. I had to say what was on my mind. I hope I was able to articulate the problem I have, and I think most of us have with rifles and riflemen. I understand where the devs are coming from, but I think they should listen to us. I want to stress that my views are mostly toward PvE, and that any readjustment of the way our damage works in PvP is another topic. I feel that we need to be more useful in PvE and by balancing our DPS, we will be helped alot. I feel though that we should be adjusted so that we have our one shot kill, and still have our DPS be inline with other professions. If this means slowing down the T21 then so be it.
agreed. Unfortunately it does not look like they are going to change their minds about anything.
Ever game has a reasonable solo class, because some people prefer to play that way. I like to solo thats why I went rifleman. There is no way to make every class group friendly. In DAOC the wizard did huge amounts of damage had AOE that damaged many, but 1 shot from an Archer and you were history. EQ the necro could solo reds all day long and was by far the fastest leveling char to play but was usless in a group.
I hope SOE does not take away the ability of the rifleman to fill this role. If you want to be a group player choose another route, or play crowd control in a group.
Sorry this was supposed to be the first quote I was refering to.
Droid-S128 wrote:
Holocron wrote:
-SanGreal- wrote:
Holocron, the problem is not every class has a group role in this game. For example, riflemen are utterly useless in a group.
Why are they useless in a group? Serious question.
Cause by the time we get a shot off(or 2) the thing is already dead. So that means less XP. So we don't group cause we get more Xp when not grouped.
This is why the rest of the numbers matter so much.
The XP you get from creatures is scaled such that your normal rate of advancement is figured off of your killing whites. If what you tackle in a group is white to the group,you should be getting significantly more XP for being grouped and tackling that target, than for soloing white targets.
Thsi all gets ruined when you instead solo reds. Because it leaves no room for yet tougher creatures that give even more XP, so that when you kill them, it gets split up in such a way so that you get a bonus.
Erm, that may not have made sense.
You're supposed to kill a lvl 10 white con and get 1000xp, let's say.
Three of you are supposed to kill a red level 30 con and get more like 2000xp.
Instead, you're soloing the level 30 con and getting 6000xp. So you then say the game discourages grouping, and you also say that we're nerfing your gun when we scale it based off of your killing white cons, not reds.
Kindar, I am not saying that I want to change our class from the solo artist. I don't know if you are objecting to my post or the devs. But I most certainly do not want to lose our solo abilities. I actually would rather solo more. I am a late night player and there aren't many on.
I am simply talking about what, in my own interpretation of what Holo is saying in this post above, is that he doesn't see that riflemen are not balanced DPS and XP wise, so they are having a very hard time grouping. I also state that I would rather have a t21 that does more damage in one hit and take a speed increase than to have it nerfed to that of a slow fwg5.
From the history so far in SWG I see a trend of Complaining = Nurf. Personally I think the rifleman class should be the most powerfull damage dealing class. I think that 1 shot kills are a viable option and we should have it. But I also understand that to have this ability we have to have negative aspects also.
Hopefully as the game develops the rifleman class, in certain group settings will be desireable.
One shot kills for riflemen already has disadvantages, in the heavy mind costs we pay for headshots. So many times have I used a laser rifle to headshot, and burned half my mind pool on one mob because the first headshot does less than 100 damage, yet I'm lucky enough not to have the creature spot me and not come after me. So now I hit it twice more and pray the next one does the job.
When we're in groups, we take on mobs that have heavy enough HAM that we can't one shot kill the mob. Just a few days ago on Lok a large group of us ran into a Giant Desert Kimogila (sp?) and figured what the heck. When I saw a mind pool of 20K, I laughed to myself because I knew trying to use mind damage on it would be useless since 1/2 the group was CH's and pistoleers, and I was the ONLY rifleman. So I sat back and just shot, with a couple OC shots since a few of the group got hosednear the end, and all the CH's pets were knocked out.
And when all was said and done, I got 3k xp.
What would be nice if some of our specials did effects like the other weapons, like a knockdown or dizzy. It would make a lot of sense if headshot added dizzy to a mob, since heck, you're shooting it in the *head*. I played (American) football long enough to know how getting whacked in the head can do to you. That's all I'd ask for, a simple little change like that.
I know, we have flurry shot, which is supposed to cause dizzy. That's to NPC's, not mobs.