Squad Leader Archive

As the profession stands, please see Capt. Vemnox's report from September. Nothing has changed since then except the xp calculation.

However, and this is my opinion, Squad Leader needs a serious rework. It should contribute things to a group on par with what a doctor, commando and smuggler can do. They are all roughly the same skill point investment and would be good benchmarks for comparing the relative "power" of a Squad Leader. Clean up our current abilities as much as you want, SL is still going to be gimped compared to others of similar SP investment. So:

1) Rework Squad Leader

2-5) Until a rework, there are no other issues.

I have to agree with the general sentiment that there are alot more then five issues that can be brought up. A total rework would not be too far fetched but you would hear complaints no matter what you do.

1. Skills - They cost too much HAM for what they do. They fail too much for what they do. Some of them Lock out other functions such as dragging and harvesting. Let's face it.. The skills are broken. I have seen lots of ideas on this forum on what could be added to make an improvement including fortifications, improved crowd control skills, mind heals and regen bonuses.

2. Costs - The costs for the skills we have in Skill Points is unreasonable. Based upon #1, I could be more useful by picking up Doctor or a full combat profession.

3. Visible results - how about numbers to show our group members how much we are helping since the current skills are mostly passive.

4. Waypoint management - This may not be possible due to server load. But if I recall, orginally the group leader was suppose to be able to see the waypoints of his group. What happened to this?

5. Give people something to make them WANT to be a Squad Leader. I can put points to better use as a Commando or Doctor and still lead a group. Give those who want to lead a cookie other then being able to say, "I Masters Squad Leader and all I got was this stupid tag."

Since CaptainVemnox is not online right now, I just thought I'd let you guys know that he did make a Top Five Issues post on Correspondent Forum for you guys recently. Like you guys, he thought that it was hard to break down your problems into five issues, but he did it anyway. I'm sure he'll repost those issues here when he gets back online.

I don't know why Thunderheart is asking for new issues, but I wanted to make sure you guys knew that the Captain was working very hard for Squad Leaders. I haven't seen a more dedicated Correspondent than him ... he's always posting about SL concerns on every thread he can. I think the Devs are speeding up their work on SL just to keep him quiet. hehe

My top five

1) we have gone for way to long with out a DEV reply to our correspondent report, if you want any form of real Top Five Issues list you need to address the Corresondent report first

2) i would consider about 85% of our Skills more or less broken, this meaning that they do not do what they are described to do, the success rate is too low, the HAM cost is too high, or they just dont provide any useful function. each skill needs to be looked at indivualy and reworked to make our profession ballanced with other hybrid combat professions. our novice skill is a fancy /groupchat and we have no master levelskill

3) skill mods, what we have skill mods? yes of course we have skill mods! well what do they do? thats easy they, um, well they help, um, you know i dont think they do anything....

the meer presance of a Squad Leader is supposed to significantly increase the power of a group and as we are now our passive bounuses dont do anything useful. terrain nav does help some players but most everyone has the exploration tree from scout making it useless. and if our defence mods even do anything they dont do enough to make a significant differance.

in my opinion if you take two groups, same number of players, if each side has players of the same profession, with the same skill boxes, and using the exact same weapons what would you expect the out come to be? probably one or two people left standing. now if you add a SL/pistoleer to one group and a Pistoleer of the same pistol level as the SL to the opposit group and now what would you expect? the group with SL should more or less crush the other group, but as we currently are a SL makes abolutly no differance to the out come of a battle. something needs to be changed

4) i know everyone in this game thinks their profession is more broken they any of the others, but honestly i have been keeping an open mind and i really seriously do not see any profession more broken then we are. i used to think we were just as bad as chefs but now im hearing rumors they have food that works while we still have no working skills besides our glorifed /groupchat (/sys). and yet as completly broken as we are jedi, player cities mounts and even the complet revamp of the Creture handler profession has taken priority over our complet revamp..... CH changes are good i like them i think they impove the class very nicely but honestly, the CH profession works, and we do not! why couldnt the CH revamp have waited until after ours?

i guess this isnt so much an issue as it is an angry rant so i will change it into an issue, The DEVs need to rethink how they prioritize which professions need teh most work, they should not work on 'working professions' until completly broken and useless professions get some attention, or at least give us some kind of explanation as to why we have a lower priority then the whining masses of professions that acctualy have decent functioning skills and abilities.

5) i think i some how managed to cram every single SL issue into 4 main points... not sure how i did it but since i have this extra point i'll go ahead and use it for a small self promotion.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=squad_leader&message.id=8981

this thread contains a proposal for Squad Leader Fortifications, a new ability for SL that i belive would make us the respected profesion we deserve to be

you wanted 5 so theres five.... but honestly TH we are only regergitating the same stuff that captin has so clearly stated on his correspondent reports that have gone with out a DEV reply. if you dont know whats wrong with this profession then you need to do some homework. everything is there in the report and nothing has changed. we are just as broken now as we were three months ago, we just have a hyper active XP formula.....

I have begged for a post so I will response.

This is as I see it.

1. Mind cost is too high for our skills

2. Skills fail too Often

3. Skills such as Rally and our melee and ranged bounses give no real advantage that we can see.

4. The first line of skills is point less becasue of mounts.

Things I would like to see.

1. Let Squad have a new type of camp as we have to have camping skills.

2. Let Squad Leaderpull more faction Pets

3. Allow Squad Leaders to get a new type of shot. Something like cover fire to help people get out of danger.

4. Allow Squad Leaders to have a shorter wait time on Shuttles for them and there group members.

5. Allow Mounted Squad Leaders when grouped to fight while at gallop

6. Allow Doctors and Medics in a Squad Leaders group get huge healing benifits

7. Allow Rilfemen in Squad Leader groups to havea longer range

8. Allow Commandos do have a higher hit rate when group with a commando

9. Give Pistol users a better rate of fire with a Squad Leader.

10. Allow Boost Moral to balence damage not wounds.

I only have one issue to bring up: listen to Capn V.

from day 1 of the correspondent program, the devs have asked "what are your issues?" The first time we were asked that, we submitted our issues... the second time we were asked the same question, we submitted the same issues (updated) and the only response we got was "wow that's too much text for me to read."

now you're asking AGAIN for our issues... so I say once again... LISTEN TO CAPN V. Read his reports... learn them... know them... BE them... and you'll know our plight.

Thanks for the effort TH (not being sarcastic).

It has been said on this post and is a very common sentiment in the Squad Leader community. A true Squad Leader is better off not being a Squad Leader. You can contribute more while leading your group by taking Doctor (where many of our former SL Masters have gone) or another similarly kickass advanced profession. When people put together a group they do not look for a Squad Leader. It doesn't matter that I and most of my compatriots here are very good at leading our squads. Random groups don't want us. We stick with the squads we built as we leveled ourselves up. So, please, modify my issues thus:

1) Rework Squad Leader

2) Make Squad Leader desirable to groups

3) Make Squad Leader the best choice for contributing to groups as a leader figure

4-5) Maybe I'll come up with something else later.

Top 5? Argh, there are so many issues out there. Let's see what we do have

Skills - All are broken, ineffective, fail more often than not and areprohibitively expensive to use. We have 5 skills that fit into this catagory. All the skills need to be totally revamped so they have a clear and definate benefit to the party when invoked. The mind cost should be proportionate to the benefit.

Modifiers - Too small to make any difference and if it did nobody would notice. We have 5 passive modifiers. They should all be raised and in the case of group mobility there should be some benefit that is given to those who go above the cap (apart from being able to crawl really fast)

There are6 invoked abilitiesand 5 group skill modifiers. All of which are ineffective at best to suicidal to use at worst. Does this count as 11? Should we have to prioritize on which broken useless aspect of our profession should be fixed first?

I would have to guess that fixing or replacing 5 of the skills would be a start. If you have a party of 7 people and could add an 8th and there is a choice between a Squad Leader or a Combat/Combat Support person both party options should have equal viablity. Right now as the 8th member of a party the Squad Leader is a liability.

Feliz Gizmacher

Ooh, me, me! PICK ME!!!

If I were Letterman's baby, I might describe the top 5 issues for SLs like this:

Straight from the home office in Sanctum Malleus, Talus come the...

TOP FIVE SQUAD LEADERS ISSUES!

NUMBER 5

Not really the lowest ranking of our many issues, I just wanted to list it first: lack of response from the Devs. Yes, posting here and asking us for issues is GREAT, and I thank you very much for stopping by, TH.But although Vemnox does aSPECTACULAR job inreporting our issues in a professional manner, we STILL have had, by my count, two (2) responses from Devs in the past three months or so.It's hard for us not to feel like the step-headed red child of Galaxies.

NUMBER FOUR

SYSGROUP is great for Novice SL, but it's pretty cheesy that it's the ONLY skill given, considering how many other ways there are to communicate to the group.

NUMBER THREE

There are no additional skills for making Master Squad Leader. Almost every other Profession gets to do or make cool new stuff when they make Master. Not us.

NUMBER TWO

The HUGE mind costs associated with SL commands. Carbiniers who complain about their motto being "I bet I can kill me before you can kill me" have never tried being a Squad Leader. I have my stats set so I can just barely wear a full set of nicely sliced armor, and I can usually empty my Mind pool in 3 commands.

AND THE NUMBER ONE ISSUE FOR THOSE WACKY, MASOCHISTIC PEOPLE WHO CHOOSE SQUAD LEADER...

Everything's broken. The Mobility tree only seems to make ME faster, and I keep having to slow down to let the group catch up. Defensive bonuses don't seem to work. Volley Fire rarely works. Heck, everything rarely works, and when it does, see number 2 above.

Thanks again for stopping by, TH. I have to say that I troll a lot of the SWG boards, and the Squad Leaders seem to do a heck of a lot less complaining than just about any other profession. Even if I wasn't an SL myself I'd say these guys deserve some attention.

C

Why is there even a chance to fail anyway? I've never seen a doctor fail to heal someone.

#1 ISSUE! The simple fact that it makes no noticable difference to my group whether I am the leader or not. I contribute MORE to my group by NOT using my SL skills. Does that make any sense?

#2 Our passives offer no noticable benefit to our group.

VolleyFire and Steady Aim bonuses? WTH do these do? Just there to fill up 2 boxes?

Burstrun efficiency: Saves 190 HAM when using burstrun. That sure comes in useful...

Terrain Negotiaion: Very few players do not have this on their own.. plus now there's mounts and soon vehicles.

Melee and Ranged Defenses: These are so insignificant that they will never be a determining factor during combat.

#3 Our skills:

Rally: I do more damage to my own mind pool than the benefit the group will receive by using this skill. Not to mention it actually makes most group members angry when we use it... and of course... FAILS!

Retreat: Every player in the game gets this skill on their own, plus it lasts much longer. I could either use /retreat and cause myself 1036!... HAM damage, or I could just /yell RETREAT! and cause 0! HAM damage to myself and hopefully each group member is smart enough to know I want them to burst run.

Form Up: Can't Doctors heal dizzy too? Plus we can't even heal dizzy when we're dizzy ourselves, so that leaves stun... w00h00!

BoostMorale: I used it when it considered pets, haven't used it since. Why would I want to take 500 health wounds from one member and distribute it among 5 of us at 100 each... then the doctor can heal each of us for 100 damage and waste stims instead of just healing the one player for 500?

SteadyAim: Works for 1 combat round... and can't a player just cue an aim for themselves?

VolleyFire: Using a combat special move uses 1/10th the HAM and does 10x the damage. Plus it fails a lot!

#4 What we don't have

Group Speed Buffs

Group HAM Reduction

Group Damage Buffs

Group Regen Buffs

Group Resistance Buffs

#5 We have been completely useless and ignored since the game was released.

That sums it up for me.

Number One:

The whole profession and almost all the skills involved *do not make a discernable or significant difference* to a group's effectiveness. Squad Leaders should be one of the best, if NOT the best addition to a group. The entire philosophy of the profession is to support groups and other players... and thus, the SL should be the most effective at it. SL's give up MAJOR skill points for skills that do not even work solo. Yet, CH's, Doctors, CM's,Commandos, BH'sand just about every other profession increases the effectiveness of groups by a magnitude of 10's or 100's over what a SL adds.

/sysgroup and /formup are a SL's best skills. That should indicate something if spamming messages on-screen and healing the dizzy state are the BEST things an elite profession can do.

The whole profession needs to be reworked, or the current abilities be given a HUGE boost many times over. I'd say when you're at the point where you're debating whether you'd rather have a Squad Leader along or a CH, Doctor, orCommando along to your group of 3-4... is when you're close to striking a balance.

At this point, I'd rather have a Dancer along (for the mind regen buffs). Something is SERIOUSLY wrong with that.

Number Two-Five:

Many of the abilities fail too often, don't work well, and cost too much HAM. Fixing these still does not make the SL much of a contributor to a group over most any of the other professions.

A lot of good points, and rehashed information... many issues we've been waiting to have addressed, so I won't restate them again.

But I will ask this, if you can't fix the functionality of SL anytime soon, at least change our titles. LOL.

Yes, odd request I know, but when I say "Master Squad Leader"... and "Field Commander"... which sounds more senior to you?? This should be treated like Pistoleer. It's not Master Pistoleer, it's Master Gunfighter, although the profession is called Pistoleer.

Strategist and Tactitician? Bleah, where's my desk and office chair. And how many Russian gamers did you really satisify with "Commisar"?

-Ex