Squad Leader Archive

I had so much looked forward to the SL after the CURB. I thought, "Encouraged grouping at last! NOW is the time for the SL to shine!". Then I found it was nothing but a whacky aggro magnet and with marginal contribution. How many things the SL have that actually serve a useful purpose tha they could use with any impact. I found it just sucked my action and mind dry after a couple commands leaving me to be samsonite luggage being beaten on by crazed apes.

Then I see Squad Leader in the patch notes and thing, "Aha! NOW it is time!" and I see the /formup ability was NERFed.

How the heck can the Squad Leader be put onto the NERF chopping block like this is beyond me. I respecced out of the profession a week into the CURB because I found it so woefully lacking in value and purpose. Yet somehow SOE found resources to NERF it? This is insult to injury.

Rather than NERFing what has to be one of the most broken professions how about FIXING it first? Give it something WORTHY of being NERFED.

This can't be correct...

Does it mean "/formup will no longer remove Dizzy and/or Stun from team members involved in Jedi/BH PvP."?

or

"/formup will no longer remove Dizzy and/or Stun from team members involved in PvP when the SL is not Overt."?

Hasn't squad leader gotten beat down enough? First, they took away the SL ability to help a Jedi when being attacked by a BH. That was somewhat understandable but I always thought it was short sighted since the Bounty Hunter could have used a Squad Leader as well to keep from being Dizzy/KD by the Jedi. If the Jedi was paying for a separate account to sit at the outpost barking commands so that if a bounty hunter came along and wanted to attack him he would not be dizzy/kd then why would a bounty hunter not do the same? But, the devs caved to the Bounty Hunters and nerfed one of the great uses of the SL for grinding jedi. Quite honestly, using an SL for normal grinding wasn't practiced because getting killed while hunting with your Rifleman was no big deal. The stakes were much higher when grinding Jedi because a death could have meant an extra 4 hours re-grinding what you lost. This use of the SL was probably one of the most popular uses of SL in my time playing this game, other than PVP of course.

Then, they changed SL for PVP by requiring that the Squad Leader be Overt to help other Overt players. This was tough but was workable since the SL had a pretty long range and on some planets, you could place the SL in a house a few thousand meters away and the effects of the /formup still worked for those in the group. Again, it was still useful to have a Squad Leader even though it was becoming harder and harder to use one effectively.

Next, they came with the CU and since there's no such thing as a meaningful action buff, the old SL macros stopped working. There's not enough action pool to call a /formup every 3 seconds and a retreat every 25 seconds. Some might say, well that's a good thing because then Squad Leader has to be played by a real character. I actually agree with that statement. However, even so, only being able to do a /formup every 20 seconds isn't going to be worth it regardless if it's a player character or a bot you have running on another computer.

Lastly, they decide to make the Squad Leader ineffective in PVP. I don't even know what to say about this one. Before we all know it, this game will be one dimensional. Do us a favor SOE, rather than continuing down this path, just get rid of Squad Leader while you're at it. Take Dancer, Doctor, Ranger, Commando(still way broken), Entertainer, Fencer as well. You've marginalized their existance and the value they used to provide is gone so why even have them around. The more professions you get rid of, the less development time you'll have to spend maintaining them. This will allow you time to focus on the important professions like Jedi, Rifleman, and Bounty Hunter, oh and Carbineer. Those are the only professions worth anything anymore right?

One last comment is that even though Sony thinks they're doing the right thing, they're losing a lot of accounts to these kinds of nerfs. I had a dancer, a doctor, and a Squad Leader as my extra accounts. Because they were useful. Of course, it's much better for ME now since I don't have to pay the extra $45 a month to maintain those characters, it means less money for SOE and less money isn't a good thing. There are hundreds of players like me who've dropped their "utility" characters because of the CU and nerfs like this one. Lack of funds makes development even harder...

Good Game SOE...

That is just...... sad..

That the devs feel the need to kick us while we're down.. And while we're in correspondent transition, no less. And not even give us the dignity of a in-forum post about it..

just wait... i think they just meant when your faction doesn't line up with the group and the jedi bh thing.. even if...whoopdee doo formup rarely worked anyways.

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No-Ni wrote:
Hasn't squad leader gotten beat down enough? First, they took away the SL ability to help a Jedi when being attacked by a BH. That was somewhat understandable but I always thought it was short sighted since the Bounty Hunter could have used a Squad Leader as well to keep from being Dizzy/KD by the Jedi. If the Jedi was paying for a separate account to sit at the outpost barking commands so that if a bounty hunter came along and wanted to attack him he would not be dizzy/kd then why would a bounty hunter not do the same? But, the devs caved to the Bounty Hunters and nerfed one of the great uses of the SL for grinding jedi. Quite honestly, using an SL for normal grinding wasn't practiced because getting killed while hunting with your Rifleman was no big deal. The stakes were much higher when grinding Jedi because a death could have meant an extra 4 hours re-grinding what you lost. This use of the SL was probably one of the most popular uses of SL in my time playing this game, other than PVP of course.

Then, they changed SL for PVP by requiring that the Squad Leader be Overt to help other Overt players. This was tough but was workable since the SL had a pretty long range and on some planets, you could place the SL in a house a few thousand meters away and the effects of the /formup still worked for those in the group. Again, it was still useful to have a Squad Leader even though it was becoming harder and harder to use one effectively.

Next, they came with the CU and since there's no such thing as a meaningful action buff, the old SL macros stopped working. There's not enough action pool to call a /formup every 3 seconds and a retreat every 25 seconds. Some might say, well that's a good thing because then Squad Leader has to be played by a real character. I actually agree with that statement. However, even so, only being able to do a /formup every 20 seconds isn't going to be worth it regardless if it's a player character or a bot you have running on another computer.

Lastly, they decide to make the Squad Leader ineffective in PVP. I don't even know what to say about this one. Before we all know it, this game will be one dimensional. Do us a favor SOE, rather than continuing down this path, just get rid of Squad Leader while you're at it. Take Dancer, Doctor, Ranger, Commando(still way broken), Entertainer, Fencer as well. You've marginalized their existance and the value they used to provide is gone so why even have them around. The more professions you get rid of, the less development time you'll have to spend maintaining them. This will allow you time to focus on the important professions like Jedi, Rifleman, and Bounty Hunter, oh and Carbineer. Those are the only professions worth anything anymore right?

One last comment is that even though Sony thinks they're doing the right thing, they're losing a lot of accounts to these kinds of nerfs. I had a dancer, a doctor, and a Squad Leader as my extra accounts. Because they were useful. Of course, it's much better for ME now since I don't have to pay the extra $45 a month to maintain those characters, it means less money for SOE and less money isn't a good thing. There are hundreds of players like me who've dropped their "utility" characters because of the CU and nerfs like this one. Lack of funds makes development even harder...

Good Game SOE...

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Actually using the command to help Jedi is exactly why it got nerfed. A Jedi/BH fightis suspose to be the jedi vs. the BH with his mission, no other outside help for eaither side. So no healing, no force sharing, and now no state removal. The fact that /formup worked in a Jedi/BH fight was something overlooked and now since it's being exploited it has been removed. It was never intended to bypass the Jedi/BH lockout and now it has been nerfed from it's actual useful role in traditional PvP. A big thank you to the Jedi for getting an already broken profession nerfed with their exploiting.

What I was trying to get fixed before I left... was for SLs being able to help in a Jedi/BH encounter (when the SL was not a BH himself).

There was also rumors of SLs still being able to help PvP-Enabledgroup members while the SL was PvP-Disabled or On Leave. So I advised the Devs of that as well.

So maybe they just didn't write it out clearly enough... I just don't know. Since I havent had Game connectivity for a while I cannot test this out. Any clarification would be helpful.

I just got home after a long day of worm-bashing at work. I need a shower and a beer.Hopefully TC-Bria will make it an order of magnitude easier for me to get some answers on this. I'll report back as soon as I have something. Or when the devs clarify their intent - whichever comes first.

Hmm.... If /formup worked on Special Forces while anything but Special Forces in the same faction that would be an issue needing to be fixed. If /formup worked on a BH/Jedi TEFed person while not having a BH/Jedi TEF that would be an issue needing to be fixed.

Do either of these things happen presently? Perhaps the patch notes are just vague?

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Fidgiter wrote:

Hmm.... If /formup worked on Special Forces while anything but Special Forces in the same faction that would be an issue needing to be fixed. If /formup worked on a BH/Jedi TEFed person while not having a BH/Jedi TEF that would be an issue needing to be fixed.

Do either of these things happen presently? Perhaps the patch notes are just vague?

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It's been a long fight for all SL in all galaxies. I've been part of the show for long enough and I enjoyed being one of the most unknown Commissars ever
Now we all have to face the fact, that a so called group based RPG is no longer involving group leaders to be useful. Personally I gave up complaining due to SOE never fixing what they have rendered useless. We all know this and especially for the correspondents it's a hard time post CU. SL has never worked the way is was designed to work, now they have removed the final working skill and that's it.

JediOnlyGalaxies - let's all create Knight level toons at the beginning and assign everybody the same weapon. That's what we head towards, give it another 24 months and .... anyway ... no rant anymore.

My condolences to all of you active SLs.

If the Jedi/Bh conflict realy was the problem, they should have better fixed it rather then just nerfed it.
And since Stun does apperantly nothing and dizzy only so less, why nerf it anyway when the impact on such a duel is rather negligible?

I just can repeat what Orkajum wrote:

Orkajum'sydef Master Smuggler wrote:
"The thing is, there's more Jedi now than just about any one profession. There's definately more of them than there are of us.

What we need, more than presenting the evidence we have to counter Jedi-powergamer lies (there are respectable Jedi who play the profession as it should be), more than how many Jedi can be killed, more than even protecting LD or FD from future nerfs, is a united front.

It's time Smugglers and Bounty Hunters, Weaponsmiths and Creature Handlers, Carbineers and Pikemen, every other professional forum in this game makes it abundantly clear to the devs that any Jedi-induced nerf upon one profession will be seen as a Jedi-induced nerf on every profession. Because while the subscriptions of all the Jedi players are significant, the subscriptions of everyone else is even more significant to SOEs bottom line.

There's got to be more players out there interested in keeping this game Star Warsy and fun for every profession, than there are Jedi just out to be uber. Time to start building up that political clout we deserve with the other professions and cashing it i to bring this game back to how it should always have been.

Orkajum'sydef Master Smuggler
"I--I'm out of it for a little while, everybody gets delusions of grandeur.."

and to MsNiL

I wonder how you found me posting this the first time in this thread since you havent been posting in here for several weeks.
To quote a real jedi:
" .. I sense much fear in you .."

Afraid to loose your uber ness to the SLs ?

Ah I shouldnt flame.



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