Squad Leader Archive
Thread: Idea, DONT COMPLAIN ABOUT SKILLS WE DONT HAVE
Just a personal thought:
If you don't voice your opinion before something takes place, the actual event can be far, far worse. You wouldn't elect a president w/o knowing something about him first. These abilities are not mysterious how-will-they-really-work. They are straightforward and are going to be the same in-game as they are on paper. It isn't some passive remote change that may or not be good. This is simply "Your new ability is X and this is how it will work."
As long as it's taken the Devs to get around to us, what are the odds, do you think, that if (read: when) these skills fail miserably, they will be right there to remove them and impliment a THIRD set of Squad Leader skills for us? Seriously, what do you think the odds of that are?
The Devs knew Squad Leader was a joke back in Beta, too. We should have been DONE before release, but we're all just sort of accepting the reality about that. Release was Beta 4. Okay, we get it and we've accepted it. In fact, I don't blame the Devs for that at all.
But we've been paying for Beta for a few months now, and the Devs have just currently gotten around to looking at Squad Leader. We're not even at the bottom of the list, either. Smuggler is mostly devoid of skills, most of the Unarmed classes need a rework at some level, Droid Engineer and Bio Engineer are kind of a shambles. Commando? Forget it!
We're getting looked at and reworked ONE TIME. At least for the next few months. So if the overwhelming opinion of this community is, "Hey, these new skills are awful, please come up with something good!" then we need to express that opinion. This whole backlash of, "Stop complaining, at least we're getting attention!" is ridiculous. It's absurd. We're getting the WRONG KIND OF ATTENTION.
Am I glad the Devs are looking at us? Yes. But this is our ONE SHOT. If we waste it on some lousy half-thought skills that add nothing and make us even less desirable to group with, we're not going to get any reworks or tweaks for another few months. This is OUR CHANCE. We can't blow it on these bull**** skills.
If there were even a glimmer of hope that the Devs would re-re-work us upon discovering that the new skills are a failure, you would have a point. But that won't happen. If this shot gets wasted, we're not going to be given the time of day again for another few pay cycles because the Devs don't have time to keep re-doing Squad Leader. They just don't.
You are advocating wasting this chance. And if your logic really is that we don't KNOW these skills we suck until we test them out, well, that's a chance that I am willing to take.
I like to see some worthwhile and good changes to the SL,
if we all were to be nice boys and keep quiet the devs might think that we REALLY like their idea of the SL and they truly implement it.
Meaning it will be ages before we see SL being of any real use since we have been technically "looked at".
I for one dont want to wait 1 year before getting fixed, preferably before I quit SWG....
Swiftblue said:
Stop complaining about skills we dont have yet... Why? Because we WONT get them if you dont shuttup! See how it goes first please.... Then we adjust how it works, dont be so **edit** pesimistic... If the skill doesn't work for you, dont use it, but the Devs Ideas make some sense, those that dont work for me I wont use...
Following this logic:
Next time you are on the edge of a cliff...jump off! See how it goes. If it doesn't work for you, don't do it again. Adjust to how it works.
Following more intelligent logic:
Next time you are on the edge of a cliff think about what will happen if you jump off. Then decide that it is a bad idea to jump and don't jump. This is similar to looking at the "new skills" for SLs and saying that they aren't a good idea.
Of course, having the SL "skills" put into SWG is not as devastating as jumping off a cliff, but we certainly can fairly accurately see what will happen if they are put in. In fact, as people become more experienced at being leaders of groups we nearly always have seen them become more and more against the "new skills". If the "new skills" are put in, the best we can hope for is that they get taken back out. This is unlikely...in the experience of many MMO players, once something goes in that is a big change, you're basically stuck with it. NOW is the time to fight it...not after the DEVs put hours and hours of coding effort into it.
--Ze'ev
--Ze'ev
/emote is fuming...
If we are smart, we will oppose certain of the proposed changes (skills we don't have yet) on these grounds: there is only going to be a certain amount of work (resources) devoted to fixing Squad Leader, and /wasting/ much of that allotment on 'abilities' that are a) useless, b) undesirable, or c) redundant with a good group or leader is NOT what we want.
Instead, we should re-focus our efforts to get the Devs to listen to our ideas for SL. With the limited feedback from the Devs, we can't be certain that they aren't paying attention, and it might help a lot if we made a comprehensive list of our ideas to date.
As for the arguement that we can't really understand how a proposed ability will work in game until its coded, tested, and released into the wild... yes, I have no doubt in my mind that some of you do not have the ability to use logic and reasoning to deduce the outcome or the effectsof implementing the proposed abilities. No doubt at all.
However, I agree with Captain V.that the proposals are not complicated, vague, or mysterious. It IS possible to take a good idea and end up with a poorly implemented ability, sure, BUT it is not possible to take a poor idea and turn it into gold without adding to or transforming the original idea. Now here is the difficult to understand concept: They presented these ideas ahead of time so that they, being devs who are still working 7 days a week to get the game to a higher level, can get feedback from people who actually play the game as it exists now, and actually have the time to organize and lead groups of experienced players into combat against high-level MOBs.
Of course, some of the people on this board say things like:
"I think they are great, I discussed them with my PA and we are all in agreance that these are some awsome changes and will have a GREAT inpact on the group game play and make the SL a true support class that is a definate force multiplier."
"Some people are just getting extreme with their ideas, such as the poster of the topic who actually thinks Healers will be offended by the SL telling them who to heal."
"...if all these type sof commands and stuff are so useless and all...... then why have militaries AROUDN THE WORLD used them for HUNDREDS of years ?"
"...SL is one of the best classes out there so far that I can see. Its not the darling like CH or BH, but its sure not Droid Engineer or Pikeman."
Quotes like these make me think there is a secret guv'ment program that pays test-subjects to smoke crack and play SWG all day long in an effort to produce the ultimate gov'ment employee. Well, hey.... that would explain a lot, wouldn't it? I'm pretty sure Al Franken is a product of that program.
Unlike the Squat Lee-DUHRRRs represented by the quotes above, I believe the profession is the gimpiest, half-baked profession in SWG, and maybe in any game ever. (This may hurt some dev's feelings, but I have to think that they actually know this to be true, that they made a conscious decisionat some point to leave SL in an unfinished and unpolished state while they got othercrucial systems ready for release.) Maybe I wouldn't feel that it was the most half-baked if it wasn't also the gimpiest (i.e., everything worked as planned, AND you could actually use all of your abilities without using up all your HAM, and failing so often to boot).
Naaaahhhh, it's pretty half-baked even if everything was working.
A Major Basic Design Problem is the SL XP design: require the SL to gain combat XP to advance in SL. The design seems to exclude the possibility of a Medic/Squad Leader: an SL needs to put all spare skill points in combat disciplines and spend his spare time fighting rather than healing, or SL XP gain is very slow or nil.
Another Major Problem is the cost/benefit of the SL to a group. A cost/benefit analysis of SL takes into consideration the skill points given up versus the abilities and skill mods gained. Many professions may have one or more abilities of dubious value tucked away in their skill tree somewhere, but usually each box gives you more than one ability, schematic, and/or skill mod. So each box gained adds at least a little something to the profession in most cases. Squad Leader is the only profession I know of that has numerous entire blocks, including the Novice block, that have nothing but abilities of dubious value. (Yes, many players, myself included, DON'T see 'System Message' as a 'must-have' ability.) In other words, is it worth the skill points?
Say you and some Novice Elites are forming a group. A Novice SL comes up and asks to join. Each of you gained some pretty nice skill mods and abilities when you trained as Novice Pistoleer, CH, etc. Now a guy that just got Sys Message to Group and may not even be a Master of any base profession wants to join your group. What thoughts go through your head? True, he probably has enough in Marksman to be a good contributor to the group, but that's not the point. The point is you are NOT thinking, "Cooool, we got us an SL, we're gonna rock!" And it never gets better as an SL progresses. In fact the comparison between SL and other professions only gets worse, because I don't really see any of the current SL abilities and skill mods as better than Tier II. Hypothetically, say I know Joe and Moe wereboth great group leaders, and I have the option of grouping with one or the other.However, Joe is a Master SL and Moe is a Master Pistoleeror BH that has put his extra skill points into somethingmore useful than SL. Right now, as things stand, I would go with Moe. Everyone say it together: That's Bad.
Have I gone off the thread topic here? No, just bear with me.
The basic premise of the SL is that any group should want one even if he is just an appendage who delegates all the work to other group members. His very presence should be a boost to the group. That strongly implies that a SL's presence would boost the stats of the group, passively, just by being present. These stat boosts might be limited, but they should exist starting in the Novice Box, and there should be a column or columns of advancement that gives increases to these boosts. And the majority of the passiveboosts should affectgroup combat, not just movement to or from combat, or time in a camp. I really do think a lot needs to be added to SL starting inthe Novice box and moving up from there to Master.Sys Message, which really ought to be available to all group leaders, is not a tangible benefit to the group. I'm certain they reserved it to SL because the SLs abilities are scant to begin with.
Now to the point: since many of us on this board see the SL in this light, it is not enough to implement the currently proposed changes. Where's the Beef? Besides the well-stated critiques of the current proposal, there should be a hue and cry for more meat to the SL profession. Some intrepid players have started presenting their own meatier versions of an SL skill tree. We should be encouraging MORE of this, not calling for people to shut up!
" yes, I have no doubt in my mind that some of you do not have the ability to use logic and reasoning to deduce the outcome or the effectsof implementing the proposed abilities. No doubt at all."
I stopped reading after this, you sure have seperated yourself from the rest of the stupid folks on the board.It seems you have figured it all out with your superior intellect. Humbled to be in your presence.