Squad Leader Archive

Vemnox,

Please senda letter of protest BEFORE these changes hit the test center.

As I stated in the offical comments thread, forced march is good as is, and the mind regen and defensive stances can be improved to be acceptable, as many others have noted. The rest of the abilities would be a harmful change. I would rather wait on forced march with the hope we can getter better skills later. Presumbably the devs are only going to spend a limited amount on coding changes for Squad Leader, I would rather they spent that time coming up with some helpful skills. Waiting for these skills to go to the test center will only delay them giving us some decent skills.

Wow. I freeken love the stuff they are doing, and thank the devs for paying attention to our class.

While I can see how it may encourage AFkers, a squad will be much more effective if the members are not AFK. Special moves, any type of movement other than follow... there are many reasons.

As to the "making people resent our class" and whatnot, if a person doesn't like a group they are in, they can leave the group. The Devs have not yet introduced a command to prevent that.

Lets look at RL for a moment.(I know, many of us may find it scary :tongue In the military, a Sergent controls his squad, tells them when to fight, and commands them well, and they are a superior fighting force because of it. That's just the way it is. If you don't like being told what to do, you DON'T join the army. The smae thing in SWG. If you don't like it, leave. Many other people will enjoy being a part of a foce that is at least twice as strong as the total of it's composit members.

The Devs have been good to us, lets not blow it by whining.

*sacrifices a goat to the devs*

Here's my thoughts on the abilities. I think my #1 request would be a paint target ability. The rest of the proposed changes aren't very relevant.

Squad Leader
We're looking at adding a fairly large amount of functionality to Squad Leader, and because of that, it won't make this update. The stuff we're looking at:

-Follow Me:
Everyone in the group enqueues /follow on the leader

>>> Not a lot of value in this.

-Information:

Using code similar to AI's followOffset: the group follows the leader in column, wedge or line formation

>>> Not a big fan of this. Might make sense if moving in formation offered some terrain negotiation bonus, or attack/defense bonus. For example I could see a group in column formation moving faster but being an easy target. Especially for area based attacks.

-Hold Fire & Fire At Will:
No one in the group is allowed to initate combat, although they can defend and can defend vs. anyone attacking a member of their group

>>> I don't see any value in this. Fix the /disband function and there won't be any problems with people initiating combat or drawing mobs into the group.

-Group Attack:
Anyone not already in combat will enqueue an attack vs. the leader's look-at target

>>> Why? I'd rather have a paint target option and let my group attack at will. They may be calling/storing pets, healing, going AFK etc… Not keen on being the group puppet master. I'd suggest we request a paint target option.

-Cease Fire:
Everyone in the group enqueues /peace.

>>> I hate this. Generally there is only peace when everything is dead. If we're going to run, I'd rather have the group look after their own engagements.

-Assign Position:
The group leader can assign group members to "Front Line", "Support" or "Ranged" squads. Group Attack, Cease Fire, Group Cover, OffensiveStance, DefensiveStance, Hold Fire and Fire At Will can then be directed to these individual squads

>>> No value in this. Players know their skill focus. It might be able to assign sub-groups within the group. This could work with the paint target function. Paint targets for sub-group A and B etc… This would likely not be based on skill focus but rather the need to handle to multiple mobs.

-OffensiveStance:
Gives the group a temporary bonus to damage. The bigger the group the better the bonus, lowers defense.

>>> This sounds good. I'm assuming there will be some penalty like kneeling or going prone.

DefensiveStance:
Gives the group a temp bonus to defense. The bigger the group the better the bonus, lowers damage.

>>> This sounds good. Again assuming the penalties associated at balanced.

-Group Heal:
No, it doesn't heal the group: It changes the look-at target of anyone assigned to a support position to the leader's look-at target, and gives the system message "You have been ordered to heal ". Used by the leader to tell his healers who to heal. So you still have to push the button yourself (because he might not need a heal - he might need /firstAid or the like.

>>> No value in this. Good support staff can figure this out far better than me.

-Group Cover:
Enqueues a /assist for the group vs. the leader's look-at target. i.e. if I want everyone to shoot what Dan is shooting, then I look at Dan and enqeue Group Cover.

>>> How about just fix /assist. I could see some value in a group guard command. Ie if anyone is gets attacked the group will respond. Anything this powerful would need a heavy penalty to balance though.

-Forced March:
Non-combat group burst-run sort of thing. Broken as soon as anyone in the group engages in combat.

>>> No value in this. Again, I would rather let the players manage their affairs. A G2G flag might be kind of cool though. So we can avoid the "Ready?" spams.

I wholeheartedly oppose these changes.

Some of the thoughts brought up by others are akin to "if you don't like the abilities, don't use them." Well, that's the problem with Skwaad Leedur right now. What's the point of getting new abilities if you still don't use any of them?

Even if they fixed the current abilities SL would stink. They aren't going to activate the passive defense bonuses. They've been turned off for everyone since before release. Rally would stink even if it was 100% no mind use. Boostmorale would be great if it did damage, not wounds, but that won't be changed. We have no Master level ability. We have no real high level ability. None of the new proposed abilities is a high level or master level ability. This class needs serious work. Putting it on TC is just one step away from full implementation. We need to get them to change this before they start coding it for TC otherwise we will be stuck with it. Believe me, SOE is not going to change things if they pay someone to code all those new abilities and a handful of players (SL is a small handful) don't like it. We will go back down to the lowest priority before they think about fixing us again. Time is crucial here! /groupattack SOE

Forced March and Smoke 'em(if able to use out of camps)are good, and the Offensive/Defensive Stances look good if they show a noticable benefit. The rest of it I don't really care for. I wish they would fix our current issues as well instead of tossing our issue list out the window. I think a Master should have 0% chance of failing a command and the mind cost should be dramatically lowered! Make our current skill useful, like when I /rally I want the group to see a difference, not just a flag by their name.

So overall do I like them? No. But I do like 3 of them and if they fix our other issues, def bonuses, mind cost, etc. then I'll be a decently happy Squad Leader. What I want, and I think every other Squad Leader wants, is to have abilities that people will go actively seeking us out for when they form groups.

For all that is holy and sacred, please stop SOE from giving us these craptastic "abilities". I vehemently oppose the implementation of these shining examples of lazy dev syndrome. When I first started playing at launch, I thought Squad Leader would be one of the last professions I would ever try, but after experiencing group PvP I wanted to help out my team mates as much as they were helping me (by healing and what not). My first big group that I led got me hooked on this profession and that was when i only had /sysgroup.

Ash Lightsun

Squad Leader, Gorath galaxy

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I am iffy on the proposed changes. Is everything else being removed? Are these additions?

-I want to lead a group not control them. That is very important.

-I do like the idea of some way to, no control, but pass targeting info along to the group. This way the whole group attacks 1 target and not 4 different ones. This is really important

-I do like, and so do people grouping with me, like our movement bonuses.

-I wish our passive bonuses worked and we had more...defense, accuracy, speed, movement. It doesn't have to be alot - just noticable.

-A smattering if activated buffs would be nice...like 10 second boosts in speed...etc

-Many of our current skills would be awesome if they worked reliably and cost less HAM to activate AND had a noticable effect.

-smoke if you got them is POINTLESS if it has to be used in a camp. POINTLESS. Dropping a camp will always make someone or several people go AFK leading to even longer downtime.

-I *strongly* believe we should gain some ability to heal mind...for instance.../boostmorale could balance mind damage (damage, not wounds) across the groups. The skill name even makes 100% sense for that type of ability.

Am I completely satisfied?

Not enough information to make that judgment yet (Will these replace or augment current abilities? What are the stats on the stance buffs).

My vote is wait until Test Center.

However, DiLune makes a good point, once it's on TC it's probably too far gone, it'll likelygo to production regardless. But even assuming that, I still welcome these changes over no changes. I understand that most here do not feel that way.

Cyrus wrote...

"If the changes like proposed should come, I'm absolutely sure there will be a long, long time no change in that profession."

That is a valid concern. But first it's pure speculation, and second we have no control over the development timelines regardless. My return question is if the proposed changes do NOT come, how long until we seeany newchanges?

Here's the ways I see thisprotestsituation shaking out.

1) Dev's acknowledge letter and hold all changes while they re-revamp prof

a) They scrap these proposals and start developing new changes of either our proposing or their own, either way takes time

b) They only tweak and repackage their proposal, give us the same new skills re-fluffed, only now much delayed

c) a combination of a & b, again taking time to plan and develop

or

2) Dev's /ignore letter or just respond with "we understand your concerns, but..." and continue with their proposed changes

"What I want, and I think every other Squad Leader wants, is to have abilities that people will go actively seeking us out for when they form groups."

Psquire,

Ihave an Engineering Degree and one of the first things Ilearned out of college was the phrase "Measure twice, cut once." If the developers do not follow RL Eng Design 101 and don't take the time to take a second measurement on these proposed upgrades then they are a bunch of morons. I will lose faith that this game will ever get fixed properly, and I will simply move on...