Squad Leader Archive
Thread: FEEDBACK: The Group Leader Issue
jphillips1868 wrote:
Darth_Sushi wrote:
I am able to get over the group leader hurdle if I view our role from a different perspective, that of "group enhancer" rather than "group leader." Real world military examples tend to break down at their implementation in an MMORPG, so we must concede to think in terms of abstraction (and anyway if I wanted true-life tactical simiulation I'd be playing Ghost Recon, not SWG). Imagine, abstractly, the scenario where a team is being led into combat by a relatively "green" Lieutenant, but on the team are one or more grizzled and battle-hardened Sergeants.
Thats the whole problem with the proposed change. It doesn't makeSL about supporting the leadership playstyle, it turns it into one more generalized combat profession. You might as well just rename the profession to white mage or paladin.
Yup. That is an interesting point - one that folks seem to have been missing lately. I have been hesitant to underscore this as the initial shock and awe of the revamp proposal settled in over the last week. Allow me to refer you to the Squad Leader Fan Fest Info Dump post, from June 6, 2005, in which I relayed that:
"Squad Leader is not meant to be a solo profession, and never will be. Any enhancements to Squad Leader will focus on our group enhancement role, and not on making the Squad Leader a better stand-alone combat class. We are meant to be analagous to the fantasy Bard class, in that our role is to enhance other members of a group, and when without a group to enhance we are meant to be of diminished utility."
Face it, guys -no matter what we may have grown accustomed to calling ourselves over the past two years, andirrespective of anyabstract and romantic notions of (or real world experiences with)military leadership and small unit tactics we maybring to the table- weARE the "Bard" class of Star War Galaxies. I'm real sorry if any of that comes as a surprise to any of you, but I'm not sure I could have madethat part of the designers' visionfor us clearer. I will becertain to underscore this concept as I rewrite the FAQ and clean up the stickies this weekend.
Being a"group leader" is about the technical meta-game administration of leading a group, whilethedomain ofa Squad Leader within the actual context of this gameconcerns the enhancement of the group. These roles are not mutually exclusive. Now, y'all go make me proud as youget out there and improvise, adapt and overcome.
Thanks for the reference to the earlier post.
I must admit I stopped regularly reading the Squad Leader forum and gave up on SL about the time Thunderheart ran off our first correspondent Captain Venemox.
Honestly,if that is what the profession is going to be about, I would rather it not even be in the game. A bard profession has no business whatsoever in a Star Wars based game. There has to be a real world or star wars worldrationale to buffs to justify their existance otherwise they just become magic. This is just one more case where EQ/WoW minded Devs are applying principles that don't belong in SWG.
The profession is and should be about leading groups. In light of what you are telling me the Devs are doing and intend nothing less than destroying the profession completely.
It hard to believe in light of how desperately in need of attention the profession as been since launch that when the Devs finally get around to "fixing" the profession, they essentially just remove it and replace it with something else. 
I don't know how you can even continue to be the correspondent. You should resign in protest.
Darth_Sushi wrote:
"Squad Leader is not meant to be a solo profession, and never will be. Any enhancements to Squad Leader will focus on our group enhancement role, and not on making the Squad Leader a better stand-alone combat class. We are meant to be analagous to the fantasy Bard class, in that our role is to enhance other members of a group, and when without a group to enhance we are meant to be of diminished utility."
Face it, guys -no matter what we may have grown accustomed to calling ourselves over the past two years, andirrespective of anyabstract and romantic notions of (or real world experiences with)military leadership and small unit tactics we maybring to the table- weARE the "Bard" class of Star War Galaxies. I'm real sorry if any of that comes as a surprise to any of you, but I'm not sure I could have madethat part of the designers' visionfor us clearer. I will becertain to underscore this concept as I rewrite the FAQ and clean up the stickies this weekend.
Being a"group leader" is about the technical meta-game administration of leading a group, whilethedomain ofa Squad Leader within the actual context of this gameconcerns the enhancement of the group. These roles are not mutually exclusive. Now, y'all go make me proud as youget out there and improvise, adapt and overcome.
While group leadership and group enhancement are not mutually exclusive, but neither are any other combat profession. So therefore SL will be no more of a leadership class than any other.
The more I think about this situation, the more utterly unbelievable it is. SOE ignores and lets Squad Leader languise FOR 2 YEARS.And then when they do act, they destroy its most fundamental charateristic.
Adapt and overcome is the wrong advice. Man thebarricades and resist!
I know ultimately, SOE will do what it wants, but sometime you can change their mind. Remember Koster's hair brained idea that we should be the creature handlers for NPCs and PCs in some circumstances. We got them to can that. You need to be leading the charge to convince the Devs that their design philosophy is WRONGon this issue, not telling the community todeal with it.
You need to /Rally the troops!
Message Edited by jphillips1868 on 09-08-2005 11:25 PM
jphillips1868 wrote:
I don't know how you can even continue to be the correspondent. You should resign in protest.
Yeah, well I have already stated that perhaps I havebecome too flexible at accepting catastrophic change. On the other hand, it just really isn't that big a leap for me to make theshift in perspective. I am sure thatmore than one long-time Squad Leader will throw up their hands and quit in disgust. That is a shame, but it probably can't be avoided. That vacuum will be undoubtedly filledas eager and fresh faces embrace the newly found accessibility and enhanced utility of the profession. And the development cycIe will begin anew.
Don't get me wrong - Istill have plenty of concerns regarding the implementation of this revamp andits long-term impact on my playstyle. It is certainly different enough, but hardly Earth-shattering. Now, if all of a sudden for some reasonSmugglers could actually smuggle - I'm not sure if I could handle that.
LOL.
Darth_Sushi wrote:
Now, if all of a sudden for some reasonSmugglers could actually smuggle - I'm not sure if I could handle that.
BlueGlowy wrote:
Call me crazy (some do), but I swear GTN is not in the SL template on TC. I can't log in this second to confirm, but earlier today (still grinding up the pre-requisite profession skills there) I saw that the Mobility tree is all about Group Burst Run Efficiency (with +25 given at 2xxx and another +25 given at 4xxx). I made special note of this because I also play a ranger character, and thought to myself "cool, this was always one of the primary rangerskills we (rangers) thought got trumped by other professions."
To the dev response in this thread... Thanks! And a side-note that at least for one current non-SL, the changes in TC pub-24 for this profession *are* in fact removing a primary issue for me (group leadership restrictions).
You are correct, the GTN *passive* bonus has been removed from the SL skill tree. At Mobility 2 is the Form-up buff skill, this groupbuff gives everyone TN. Thus my comment about having to actively decide if TN was worth it on a by case by case situation.
jphillips1868 wrote:
While very funny, it is a good analogy, Smuggler have never been able to smuggle and now Squad Leaders won't lead.
Strange game.
I really don't know why this keeps coming up. Squad Leaders will still be group leaders. I'll still bea Master Squad Leader. AndI'll still be the group leader. Well, unless one of my guildies who's busy grinding out Master Squad Leader want to be the group leader. In which case I guessI'll just tag along, apply some buffage and keep throwing mad rifle damage downrange - you know, actually serve a purpose instead of letting half of my skill points rot on the vine.
Darth_Sushi wrote:
jphillips1868 wrote:
While very funny, it is a good analogy, Smuggler have never been able to smuggle and now Squad Leaders won't lead.
Strange game.
I really don't know why this keeps coming up. Squad Leaders will still be group leaders. I'll still bea Master Squad Leader. AndI'll still be the group leader. Well, unless one of my guildies who's busy grinding out Master Squad Leader want to be the group leader. In which case I guessI'll just tag along, apply some buffage and keep throwing mad rifle damage downrange - you know, actually serve a purpose instead of letting half of my skill points rot on the vine.
I can live with not being the group leader cause Darth is right, i will still probably lead. I just want to make sure that multiple sls don't upset the balance and the key leadership skills become active once an SL becomes the GL. What I don't want to see is our buffs go from say 175 accuracy to 50 accuracy, thats not fair. I'm all for decreasing the buffs as you have more sls in the group if thats possible.
I am hoping eventually the devs will create a "raid" party function but I believe this is something that squad leaders deserve. I would trade 2nd chance anyday for platoons.
Keldarin wrote:
HzGuderian wrote:
I understand your point of view on this, even though I'm one of the vet SL's who ardently supports keeping SL abilities part of being a GL as well. Reading your post, I did think about a couple of options that we may have available to serve both ends.
One is to simply move group-wide bonuses to being a GL requirement. In this manner, group buffs and bonuses cannot stack to being huge numbers, probably resulting in a nerf which would screw the individual SL over.
Squad Leader balance is a big concern and I'd rather get that resolved as best as possible before these changes go live.
Nearly every other profession in the game can stack in a meaningful way when multiples are added to a group. Eight Rifleman in a group means eight times the damage output,eight Doctors in a group means eight times the healing potential why should only one Squad Leader in a group be able to provide the benefit?
Squad Leader buffs need to be balanced so that they are useful and worthwhile when only one is used from a single Squad Leader as well as not being overpowered when eight are applied from a full group of Squad Leaders.
A rifleman that joins a group gives the group his full abilities.
A SL that joins a group today gives it his full abilities.
Tomorrow, any SL joining a group will only give part of his might to the group. And will be able to use any of his skills even if it's THE WORST IDEA EVER (like the silly "let's bring more aggro on the healer and run away")
All your arguments are flawed.
All SL I know today are SL because they do love leading. It's like rangers that are not only rangers because they can harvest more : SL do love to lead groups, to play in groups and give groups his full potential.
Thoses changes are just a way to say that Squad Leaders are not squad leaders anymore but only Group Enhancers....
And the leader of a group will not have the might to limit those stupid tricks.
The possibility for any SL in a group to give some group enhancements is a great idea. But the Leader of the groups should be the only one to be able to use some SL skills. Like retreat, charge, aggro management, paint target...
My argument for this : If 4 SL in a group paint 4 different targets, What target will YOU attack?
You should really thinkagain about it instead of just giving hollow arguments to justify your choices and saying that they will not change.
BTW, after your first post about the changes, i decided that i di not wanted to be a SL anymore. This was a profession i discovered only a few weeks ago, that i mastered, that i loved, that all groups i joined enjoyed....
Now, i will only make more damage and play differntly. This Squad Leader is not Squad Leader but just Group Enhancer
When i see this, i have strong fear about what you could do to ranger....
I very much feel the same. The rework is not finished yet, there is still a lot of workgoing on.
(At leats i hope so, if the system, in any form close to the current one is going life, we can as well leave the profession and open the playing field for the powergamers anddabblers.)
My highest priority is balance. The current system, where a 0001 SL can give the team as much as defence bonus as a MSL is just flawed in my eyes. I know that there are many people around here who can't believe that something like that would ever happen, where people would organize themselves and coordinate who dabbles into which skill for maximum team efficiency.
Anyways, i dare to bet that none of those players ever was deep into a PvP oriented group, be it SWG or any other online game. If you were, you apparently were in some who didn't take things "serious". I personally want to play for fun, i don't want to have to optimize my team. I want to be able to compete (not being superior, but being able to compete) with MSL and some non-SLs in group when going SF to blast one or another base.
Just really take a look around. I know of a PvP guild where almost everybody on the battlefield is a full-sized Jedi, geared out for the FOTM template. Whatever is found to be the most powerful at the given time is used and the people change their templates whenever some changes in Jedi come up. Now, if they do that even with Jedi, where grinding new skills is a lot of work, do you really expect them not to do that with SL, where grinding one tree and dropping another is easily done?
Also, i once was incontact with aclan with focus on the FPS Alien vs. Predator 2, Counter-Strike and BF 1942. Default procedure there was that leaders of the clan tried to get into open games with members of the other clan as soon as a clanmatch was announced. They did that under nondescript names and intentionally played only mediocre there. Their main focus on that actions was to observe the players of the other clan. 60 Minutes before the clanmatch took place, the participants of the team had a meeting in the (closed) clanserver to go through tactics on the upcomming match and the leaders gave some basic overview on the tactics and abilities which players of the other clan employed.
Again, if you know that there are people, complete clans even, out there who put that much effort and organisation into it (and, there it's really only for 90 minutes of battle time, then it is over!) then i again dare to ask, do you really expect people in SWG not to react on the changes? Adjusting your template here is many times more rewarding than putting the effort into preparation of a FPS game, the game is over after 90 mins, the template can stay for a while and you can spend hours of pure "p0wnage" by blasting people who have no chance to compete with your fine-tuned (or should i say fine-dabbled) team.
There are many suggestions here how to fix the current balance issues, the concept of ObsidianWrath is the best one, in my eyes, but if it doesn't find favour with the Devs, there are several other concepts around, too. (Some of them rely on the groupleader slot for limitation, so i assume they are also not in favour, but not all of them require it.)
To make it clear again, i want the SL buffs to be powerful but i at the same time want the profession not to become gamebreaking. And i think the concept of ObsidianWraith is absolutely the best suggestion i heard to achieve that.
On the matter of leadership and coordination, i think that it would be beneficial to the profession if leadership commands would be limited to one person in group. I accept that coordination can fix the problem, specific tasks can be assigned to the people in team and coordination can be ensured without codewise measurements.
For any halfway organized team (see example above) this definitely is not an issue at all, problems arise mostly (if not exclusively) in randomly assigned teams.
The biggest issue there will probably be grind groups, which i personally at first thought woundn't mind at all if one of another visits the cloner occasionally. On second thought i have to consider that if some SLs send those groups to the cloner on a regular basis, the SL profession will switch from undesired to plainly hated. That way, we SLs suddenly will find ourselves in solo roles, as nobody wants to take the risk of grouping with us any more. I really ask you to consider if that is what you actually want.
The second line of thought on the disruptive nature of the uncontroled SL is in terms of basebusting and general PvP. In such a dynamic environment, i at the moment have the tendency to pick up any ungrouped imperial on the battlefield as they will find severely increased survivability in our group. (Not so much because of my defensive modifiers, but very much since ourhealers then see his health status and can take care for him. Also, by instructing him on how to work with the team, we increase damage output on designated targets, killing them quicker and thus increaseing the chance of victory.)
If i in the future have to fear that a random picked up person might just send our team to the cloner in no time, i will refuse to accept people i don't know well yet into my group. I experienced it more than once by now that we were in some SF-fight, carefully working our way towards a rebel SF base and killing the rebel SF players. Suddenly an imperial combatant (who none of us knew) turned up, attacked the NPCs of some combatant bases around and lead them into our group. This is a clear sign that some "traitors" are around who have imperial faction standing but actually work for the enemy... if now everybody can possibly have a bit of SL in their template and can possibly hit retreat while we are just in the middle of a PvP fight, i dare to already now say that i will refuse to accept anybody into my team who i don't know well yet.
This posture apparently is not only true for me as SL, but makes sense for anybody with noticeably PvP experience. This will result in newcommers who haven't proven themselves to be relyable yet to not being accepted into such groups any more.
So in effect the concept, designed as it is now, discourages grouping with people you don't know well yet. Expect old friends to still continue working greatly in teams, expect newcommers to be left behind as they are considered to be too much a risk to take them along compared to the benefit they could offer.
And now i dare to ask, is this really what you want?
If not, please reconsider the design, it really only needs a few basic changes to control the useage of the few abilities which can break the team in combat. Most of all abilities are "save" and can very well be used by anybody in team without any problems of coordination, only a selected few should preferably be kept under control so people won't consider teaming withSLs or people where the template is not fully known (and fully known that they don't have SL in the template) a risk they are not ready to take.
Darth_Sushi wrote:
jphillips1868 wrote:
While very funny, it is a good analogy, Smuggler have never been able to smuggle and now Squad Leaders won't lead.
Strange game.
I really don't know why this keeps coming up. Squad Leaders will still be group leaders. I'll still bea Master Squad Leader. AndI'll still be the group leader. Well, unless one of my guildies who's busy grinding out Master Squad Leader want to be the group leader. In which case I guessI'll just tag along, apply some buffage and keep throwing mad rifle damage downrange - you know, actually serve a purpose instead of letting half of my skill points rot on the vine.
You might be the group leader, but not because that has anything to do with your profession, because soon it won't. But the other SLs Magic Users (because if they are giving buffs while not the group leader there is no other way to explain this, in your group won't). Squad Leader will become no more of a leadership profession than any other profession.
You are basically presiding over the destruction of the classand are defending the changes rather than leading the charge against them.