Squad Leader Archive
Thread: FEEDBACK: The Group Leader Issue
Sylow wrote:
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 tha would ever happen, where people would organize themselves and coordinate who dabbles into which skill for maximum team efficiency.
It not a matter of if. It will be a matter of when. You will very quickly see groups for high end stuff that make some SL as an absolute requirement to join.
Thesegroups of "squad leaders" will become a requirment for PvP.
As much as I despise the change to let players that are the group leader buff each others, I feel I have no choice than to coordinate members of my guild in picking up various SL skills.
jphillips1868 wrote:
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.
I'm sorry but I think that last part is grossly unfair. Darth_Sushi represents ALL the squadleader profession not just a few or half or the majority. We all have differing opinions about what we want or dont want in this revamp,but seemingly personal jibes towards someone that I feel has done a fine job is crossing a line we shouldnt go over.
Put yourself in his position................ Should he support the position adopted by SOME of the smallest represented profession or try to support the profession as an attractive one to the rest of the community? Whichever position he takes he will get flak from someone. He has merely expressed his personal opinion on the matter as anyone is entitled to do. Truth be told the correspondents hold very little (if any) sway or influence over the development path for their professions, just ask Wes Belden about the slicing solution.
Reading between the lines I would say Darth's stance is more of resignation to the idea rather than tacit support of it, of course my apologies to Darth if I'm wrong or have spoken out of turn.
Rather than argue for or againt this single issue, why dont get behind the support for Obsidian's idea for the "leadership mod"
The primary goal of the changes was to make Squad Leader into a profession that was exciting and rewarding to play. Ideally every single profession skill set should have something exciting and rewarding about them that makes everyone want to try playing that profession. In that situation we would not longer have people playing a profession simply because it's the most powerful or best but because they personally prefer the playstyle offered by that profession.
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Off topic.
I think you folks have done an outstanding job with several of the professions since the CU (Specifically BH, CH, Smuggler, CM, Pistoleer, and now SL). Balancing professions in a manner that still affords variety of template and appeal to a wide range of play styles is no easy task, especially when considering all of the possible templates SWG offers.
When it is time to look at the Force Wielder Discipline I hope that it recieves the same creativity shown with the others.
Buku
Naritus
With the new 8-guys groups there is more groups now, so more people can get his own group. And SL should be a profession that people plays because likes what it is about, not a must-have for all chars to be able to stack buffs and unbalance the game... AGAIN.
As Darth_Sush from all we guessed but never found out, despite lots of poking (/poke Darth_Sushi), already had some idea of what was comming our way, i assume that many of the problems we see were also obvious to him.
Thus i hope and assume that he already at that time was giving the team some good pointers at problems to come.
I also admit, the way Keldarin is writing is able to, at first, make you agree with his statement and oppinion, unless you take a moment of time and think it over and realize that his smooth and beautiful words cover some elemental roughnesses and cracks in the current design.If such statements were also given to the correspondents at the start, ihope thatDarth was able to see through that already before we got informed and gave the team some notice of warning.
But, given the history of many adjustments and changes lately i could imagine that his concerns were just swept aside under the powerful preassure of timelines set by the management. I hope very much that management now gives the Devs the necessary time to resolve the still apparent problems before they are forced to push it to the live servers.
As additional sidenote on the feedback of Keldarin,i appreciate that itacknowledges some of our problems but i feel like some of them are dismissed without really considering the overall impact on the game if some of them are not fixed.It at the same time in no way accepts that we are already offering [easy to implement] fixes to the profession, and even have fixes suggested which aim to resolve the current issues while not conflicting with the goals which were confirmed by the given statement. It seems like some people here were able to guess the priorities of the revamp pretty well but also were able to grasp the current conceptional problems of the present setup. I was very much hoping for a bit more feedback on if they not only found our discussion interesting but also if they found some interesting concepts here which might make it into the system still. (No need to go into detail how it will look in the end, a rough hint would be sufficient.)
Ackehece wrote:
Very nice post, Ackehece. Summed up many of our concerns nicely.
/salute
My concern is not so much that SL's don't have to be GL's. It is annoying, yes, I don't agree with it, but I wouldn't be so concerned about that alone. My main concern is the high level of stacking that can be achieved, and the best way I see to curb this is to keep the SL as GL. There are plenty of other suggestions out there that I wish the dev's would really consider and explore, rather than attempting to rationalize stacking on that level and totally disregarding the view of many people who have played this profession for a long time, and manymore who are looking at it to pick up or just from a fellow group member's perspective. Everyone is pointing out that the numbers are just crazy. The concepts are good, but to that degree? That's the issue. Limit those numbers somehow. Figure out a different way to make each and every flavor-of-the-month player picking up SL feel like they're doing something with their new flavor. But don't screw the regular SL's over when the others move on to other professions, leaving only a couple of SL's left who can no longer boost stats worth anything (what we fear will be the nerf when people use 8-man SL dabbler groups. The game will be balanced for 8-man SL dabbler groups, leaving the 1-2 SL groups out in the cold with minimal effectiveness.)
That's really what we're trying to get addressed, and what still has not been addressed.
/sign
Figure out a different way to make each and every flavor-of-the-month player picking up SL feel like they're doing something with their new flavor. But don't screw the regular SL's over when the others move on to other professions, leaving only a couple of SL's left who can no longer boost stats worth anything (what we fear will be the nerf when people use 8-man SL dabbler groups. The game will be balanced for 8-man SL dabbler groups, leaving the 1-2 SL groups out in the cold with minimal effectiveness.)
That's really what we're trying to get addressed, and what still has not been addressed.
Example: Rally Point would be a great leadership one. There is no real reason you need four SLs all giving rally points and cluttering stuff up.
Example 2: Toughen, feint combat or verbal assault are all enhancements that should be used by any SL in the group.
Example 3: Paint target should be a leadership one, you do not need 3 SLs all picking different targets thus drawing more aggro, reserve that for the group leader.
Just a thought.
Message Edited by BlueGlowy on 09-09-2005 09:45 AM
Message Edited by BlueGlowy on 09-09-2005 09:47 AM
What I hear about TC, I doubt anyone has. But if this 8 SL in a group thing does go live Ill be waiting for the first BH with 7 SL buffs(or are the buffs removed from this now?), or a group with 8 SL buffs in place. I have seen very organized groups that took a little hurt to themselves to make the group invincible. So I really wouldnt doubt it.
BlueGlowy wrote:
That aside, and this is really what I want to get at....
Have 8 of you SLs gone in yet to kick the butts out of everything in the game on TC? I mean.. are 8 stacked SLs tearing up the content in the game any better or worse than 8 rifleman (or 8 whatever profession you think is currently uber)? Or have 7 SLs found the TC Jedi and buffed him/her/it into a being with no stats that can't be killed? Alternately, if you have done this, did you feel that you were a group of 8 really buffed-up-to-the-gills weaklings?
BH/Jedi fight SHOULD remove the BH from the Squad buffs, as Combatant SL does not benefit a S.F. group member. Should, I add.
I haven't tested this myself, no.
Message Edited by HzGuderian on 09-09-2005 08:46 AM
Keldarin wrote:
I've read all the great reasons for keeping Squad Leader abilities limited to the group leader and for the most part agree with many of them.�� The problem though is that a group leader restriction is too limiting and will prevent a large portion of players from being able to enjoy being a Squad Leader.�� The reality is that not having the restriction does not prevent any experienced and qualified Squad Leader from taking the leadership role that they desire and in fact can perform better due to the tools available to them, while still allowing players with Squad Leader skills to join a group in a support role that benefits everyone in the group and is rewarding to play.
I'm very encouraged to see I'm not the only one who thinks this way. It has been rather disheartening over the last few days to see so many Squad Leaders adamant that the entire SL community want abilities to be only for SLs who are group leaders.
Message Edited by damocles88 on 09-09-2005 09:59 AM