Squad Leader Archive
Thread: A rational response from a disappointed Squad Leader.
I do want to say that I am sorry if our reation annoyed/insulted/hurt the Devs or whatever Dev team put those skills together. I know what it's like to work on something you think will win you approval only to have the very people you were trying to win over spit all over it. I do work in the tech field after all.
On the other hand, I can't help my reaction and neither can a lot of people on this forum. We've been leveling a crippled, gimped profession, and we've all put a lot of faith in the Dev team to reward us for the effort we have put into Squad Leader. We knew we'd be initally passed over for other, more popular Professions and we accepted that. We were pretty patient, I think. And many of us are passionate about this Profession and in a way, I think that is the problem. Literally. Let me explain, if I can.
I understand what the Devs were trying to do with that skill rework. I really do. They were trying to give the Squad Leader some direct control over the group. They were trying to give him a way to issue commands and see his leadership directly affect the actions of the group. And I suppose in a way they did that. And that's the problem.
90% of the people who are already involved in Squad Leader don't need skills to do the things that have been offered to us. We took this broken, gimped up Profession regardless of the fact that we KNEW it was a shambles because we genuinely enjoy and excel at leading a team of combatants. Maybe it's because we've been playing with a skill-less Squad Leader Profession for so long, but we've learned how to get our groups to do what we need them to without Puppet Master Skills.
We actually LEARNED how to manage the group, how to maintain order, how to get our soldiers to work as a unit. To most of us, the skills that are offered seem clunkier and less versatile than the text macros and the strategies we have devised. It seems like a step backwards. We feel as though the only thing these skills offer us is a way to automate the abilities we have already learned as GAMERS, not as CHARACTERS. And we also fear that that automation will come at the cost of efficiency.
So I understand the character concept that the Devs were trying to give us. And on paper I think it's quite cool. But that concept should be applied to PETS, at best. Not other living, breathing players. A soldier that CANNOT take the initiative is worthless, and that's essentially what we're being offered. The chance to turn our fellow players into glorified pets.
It's bad for us, because we gain nothing. It's bad for THEM because they don't want their character to be jerked around by another player. It's bad for everyone. They may be great commands and they may have value, but NOT IN THIS GAME. Not the way combat already (mostly) works in Star Wars Galaxies. Most of us look at those skills and see no advantages, only akwardness and mindless subcategorization.
And after all the waiting, leveling, stumbling and disappointment Squad Leader has already put us through, to be "rewarded" with a lame force-fed version of /sysgroup makes us sick. It makes us angry. We feel badly, badly cheated.
Squad Leader: A soldier whose very presence in a group provides benefits to all group members.
That's what the Star Wars Galaxies manual says about Squad Leader. So far, neither our current version of the Profession nor the Puppeteer verion that the Devs have suggested even comes close to fitting that bill. That's why we're outraged. That's why we screamed. That's why we're considering giving the **** up.
Another way to look at is to think a squad leader's job is to actively manage 19 other people in a combat situation for everyone's benefit. Its not realy that important with groups of 10 or less if you think about it. Such groups could be well within visual range, the dispaly of group members' health available for all.
If squad leaders are not actively designating targets for sub groups within those 19 people, what do they actively do in combat that refers to sqaud leader?
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=squad_leader&message.id=3062
i agree with what most everyone is saying. i think the concept of dividing the group into squads is a decent idea. the point that the defensive team will get less xp is not a huge problem if you just change who the defensive team is every so often.
im not against the target ability either, that can be very useful if the SL uses it sparingly and correctly. especially in PvP to take down an enemy player/pet/leader who may be owning. if the group is successful, people wont mind that their target is occasionally directed for them. if you are getting your ass kicked, then you may start to question the SL, but thats a player issue, not a skill issue
the other stuff like cease fire and follow is pointless. why get up the skill tree just to get something that is a only a minor convenience.
the SL should be able to confer distinct combat advantages-defensive, offensive to hit and damage bonuses, redistrubte HAM damage, remove effects lilke stun, etc. a lot of what is n the tree is decent, its just doesnt work well enough to make a difference.
if 2 groups of equal skill go against each other or the same big MOB, the SL run group (if the SL is good) should clearly perform better because of the SL abilities. that is the benchmark for the effectivenes of this class.
ZOGMrBill wrote:If 2 groups of equal skill go against each other or the same big MOB, the SL run group (if the SL is good) should clearly perform better because of the SL abilities. That is the benchmark for the effectivenes of this class.
I agree with that completely, and I see no skills within Squad Leader that are going to really make a difference in that department. The only thing these skills do is help a BAD Squad Leader keep BAD Soldiers in line. That's my problem with it. All it does is allow us to FORCE our players to do the things that, if they are really worth my time to lead, they will do anyway.
Maybe that makes me an elitist jerk. Maybe I'm just used to people trusting me in the game.
Have there been times when I wish my group was more responsive to my commands to stop shooting or attack a certain target? Yes, there have. Is it worth 135 skill points to have gotten a cease fire a few seconds earlier? **** NO!
I would be better off putting those 135 sill points into Doctor or Combat Medic or Creature Handler. I mean, come on! I'd be better off putting them into ENTERTAINER. My main point is that all these new skills do is allow me to force control on people that should already be following my instructions.
The only two actual "skills" I get are the Offensive and Defensive stances. Anytime I use Defensive Stance on someone, I reduce the damage they deal (and will thus get flamed for lowering their XP, you know it and I know it). And time I use Offensive Stance and someone in the group dies, I will get flamed for lowering their defense. It's not bad enough that I got Puppeteer Skills instead of Squad Leader skills, but the only two buffs in the game came with built-in debuffs!
This new model isn't even CLOSE to the description of Squad Leader, and it won't play in the actual game. If I wanted to be a Squad Leader as the new skills suggest, I'd go play Starcraft.
The biggest problem I see is that, unless there are already 12 of them in the group, a Combat Medic of comparable character and player skill is ALWAYS better to have in a group than a Squad leader. To carry the suggestion further, let's see what various professions add to groups (in order of my own personal preference):
Combat Medic--simply the best at keeping group members from getting incapacitated.
Doctor--Revive. Revive. Revive. Not to mention those huge buffs they can dish out in the downtime.
Creature Handler--Three massive tanks to make having a melee group member unnecessary
Bounty Hunter--Ranged knockdown, awesome firepower
Pistoleer--rapid, targetable damage. Not much AP value, but wth they have a knockdown
Carabineer--BIG damage with AP2 laser carbine
Rifleman--mind-target damage all over the place; indispensible in PvP. Big damage with AP2 laser rifle
Entertainer--mind wound healing in camps
Squad Leader--movement bonus for group on the way to a destination
Droid Engineer--butt of many jokes
All kidding aside, for the bonuses the profession provides, I would quite honestly rather have an entertainer in the group than a Squad Leader, unless we're running through mountains and several players don't have any exploration. Droid engineer is even worse than squad leader, but what the hell. I left out many classes because so many of them are obviously not combat-related. I left out commando because it's the profession I ditched first, it's sad how bad they are at combat.
As far as I can tell, there is some general agreement that the best thing Squad Leaders provide is totally about what the player knows, how the group trusts each other, etc.; why should I spend skill points on SL when I could be twice as effective at keeping a group together and alive as a Combat Medic who is just knowledgeable about leading groups?
What am I getting for my skill points, other than the required abilities to gain novice squad leader? Answer--some buggy skills, some useless skills, /sys, and terrain negotiation bonuses.
I don't mean to piss off any devs (or anybody else for that matter), I'm just trying to point out that other than forced march (assuming it doesn't burn Burst Run or anything like that), none of the skills are unanimously agreed to be any good. Many are directly attacked by most of the Squad Leaders who play as being detrimental to the class.
Please please please give us some skills (passive bonuses or genuinely useful active skills) that make the class useful in a group. Don't give us a bunch of commands to pre-empt the button-poking of other players, or if you're going to do that just change the "/invite" command to "/tame" so we really know where we stand.
I would like to see the ability for squad leaders to divide groups into subgroups easily; one player could belong to multiple subgroups, so you could have Billy in the "Point" group, the "Offense" group, and the "All" group. Give us the ability to direct messages to subgroups. Give us passive bonuses to movement, regen, to hit, defense, damage, whatever; or make them duration-based active commands. Give us the ability to see mission targets of all group members as if they were our own. Make volley fire more effective--up the damage bonus on it, and allow us to pick a pool and target it with the volley (so you could, like, volleyfire action). Make volleyfire a knockdown attack. Give us, I dunno, an auto-drag command (/neverleaveamanbehind) that drags group corpses and incapped players behind the squad leader automatically.
Even if we got all of these commands, I still think a combat medic would be more useful to a group, but at least a squad leader would move up to somewhere around the CH notch in my estimation.
-Biehn
Squad Leader/BH/Carbineer (yeah yeah, I know I can't masterall of them), Lowca Server
i am not as against the "puppeteer" commands as you are. you may not have time to type /sysgroup "attack left stormtrooper" or whatever. if you are surveying the scene as a SL and see for example a MOB about to take down one of your players, a quick alltarget for 1 round might take that MOB out and spare your player. since you can delineate squads, you dont have to disrupt the healers with it.
or in a pvp situation, maybe an enemy TK artist flanks around and is ready to pound your prone rifleman-a quick all target is much better than /sysgroup "Shoot the TK artist behind you"
the fact that you can split the alltarget among the front line, def, or support squads makes it quite useful i would think. even if you can macro /sysgroup in a large battle it can be hard to quickly tab the correct target per a SL /sys command on a crowded screen.
what would be really nice is if YOU could determine the # of sub sqads, not just 3 static categories of front line, defense and support.
this feature, combined with spread DAMAGE AND WOUNDS, and USEABLE bonuses to hit, dam, and defense, would make this class worthwhile.
a couple of other ideas
1. EXHORT: buff a targeted players lowest HAM pool-keep a front line fighter in the fight if the SLs HAM is not in jeorpardy.
2. LAST DITCH EFFORT: 1 round of all members doing 2x damage for a massive HAM drain on the SL.
3. Of course, change the XP formula. XP of MOB/# of group members maybe.
A skill that lets us highlight certain MOBs would work infinitely better than these "auto-attack" commands. That type of skill was in EVERY SUGGESTED LIST OF SKILLS. And yet it didn't make it into the game except in this Puppet Master format.
Brawlers, Medics and Gunners (the three basic classes in a fight in SWG) all should know what their roles are. My Medics don't need a special subgroup to know NOT to attack the MOB with 15,000 HAM using their CDEF Pistol. They've got it covered. They know their job is to heal. My Gunners don't need to be told to fall back and support the tanks. They've figured that out by the time they moved past Novice Marksman. And my Brawlers don't need to be spoon-fed instructions about how to tank. That's what they DO. And if these players aren't doing it, I don't want them in the group. I'd rather have NO group than a group that can't handle those sorts of basics.
Aden_Nak wrote:
My Medics don't need a special subgroup to know NOT to attack the MOB with 15,000 HAM using their CDEF Pistol. They've got it covered. They know their job is to heal. My Gunners don't need to be told to fall back and support the tanks. They've figured that out by the time they moved past Novice Marksman. And my Brawlers don't need to be spoon-fed instructions about how to tank.
While all that is true, you would need subgroups so you can give your medic a defensive bonus so he doesn't get one shotted. As I have argued elsewhere and others sometimes say too, a defensive bonus for tanks is not necessarily going to be something they hate. Yes, they will do less damage per hit, but they will be standing up to deliver more hits so it is quite possible that it would increase their damage output in some fights. This is only a concern for those who are worried about xp under the current xp system. First, not everyone is primarily concerned with xp (it's relatively easy to reach master of an advanced profession anyway) and second, we may be seeing a new xp system.
In any case...there are uses for subsquads that make sense to me if there are meaningful actions a squad leader can direct toward a specific subsquad.
--Ze'ev
However, do I think we need a whole tree built around it? No way.
Furthermore, even if they give us subgroups, I still don't want to be passing direct puppet commands to those groups. If the game will allow me to buff them all differently, awesome! That'd be useful, and I will acknowledge that.
But until those subsquads are used for more than divying up the Puppet Skills, they aren't worth much to me.
i actually as a player would prefer to have my attack targeted for me, as long as its not used to excess. if im told to attack a certain target, I personally (maybe im just lame) have a hard time targeting it if its crowded or moving fast or there are a bunch of targets close together or im under pressure to make it quick cause my partner is down to his last hit. .
its like targeting the right NPC when you do delivery missions in anchorhead and 3 guys are all on the same spot-Arrrgh!
if someone would just do it for me--and then---let me choose the type of attack, that would be nice. maybe a little /sys message that says target changed to x by SL. then i can look at the new target and see what attack typeis the most apporpriate, or i can ignore the SL and re-target what i was shooting at.