Squad Leader Archive
Thread: Official: Your Comments on the New Abilities
I was expecting our profession to be able to boost abilities of our fellow members. Instead we just get mainly organisation and group control tools which can all be achieved through proper training with regular people.
The exceptions are Forced March and Defensive/Offensive stances. That's the kind of abilities I was expecting from this profession, but only 3 of them aren't worth spending skill points. I just to hope that forced march won't be too effective or I will have to keep the Mobility branch in order to stay in combat range of a fleeing ennemy group that has the skill too.
In conclusion, really disapointing suggestions from the Devs. I chose this profession to help my group, not to play with 20 accounts, which is the feeling I get from this list.
-Follow Me:
Everyone in the group enqueues /follow on the leader
Decent. Helps make organizing a group a little easier. Not a strong skill, but something that might work well. Rating three stars.
-In formation:
Using code similar to AI's followOffset: the group follows the leader in column, wedge or line formation
More for the cool factor thatn any specific usefullness in my opinion. Rating two stars.
-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
Decent. Helps keep idiots in the squad from sniping that Slicehound while we're trying to march to a target, or stealing the kills if they get there first. Not a huge necessity, though. Rating three stars.
-Group Attack:
Anyone not already in combat will enqueue an attack vs. the leader's look-at target
Best abililty so far. Suggestions: don't even need to enque an attack - just have everyone target the leader's current target. Call it "Paint target" or whatever you want. One of the toughest things is getting a medium group to concentrate fire on enemies. Since %TT doesn't work in either the System Message or the Group Message, it's hard to tell people what the target is, if they are spread out geographically around the target for example. Also, if this just enques an attack but doesn't change the target (so they attack once and go back to their previous target) this becomes significantly LESS useful. Overall rating, four stars.
-Cease Fire:
Everyone in the group enqueues /peace.
Fits in well with the general line of abilities - i.e. the ability to give orders which are automatically followed to the group. However, I personally don't think this forced action is the way to go.. more on this later. Rating two stars.
-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
Not sure how well this will work in practice. There is no good way in the UI to organize these individual squads. If you give us a pop-up menu with everyone on the entire team, and allow us to drag & drop or click to assign to different groups, then I can see that actually being used. Suggestion - make each group get certain bonuses and weaknesses for being assigned to a group. For example: Front line gets bonuses to defense and mele damage, and lower ranged attack damage. Support gets bonus to movement and damage, but loses defense. Ranged gets bonus to aiming and damage, loses movement and defense. Rating, depending on implmenetation, four stars.
-OffensiveStance:
Gives the group a temporary bonus to damage. The bigger the group the better the bonus, lowers defense.
Very good. If there are two levels to this skill, one level should up damage at the expense of defense, the second should up damage and hit percentage at a larger defense cost. Rating: five stars.
-DefensiveStance:
Gives the group a temp bonus to defense. The bigger the group the better the bonus, lowers damage.
Good. Will be used less than OffensiveStance - most groups will sacrifice defense for the abililty to do damage, not vice-versa. However, this could be useful against a group of enemies where their attack isn't too strong but they have great defense. Also fits well in to the overall flow of abililties, as its obviously a natural pair to OffensiveStance. Rating: three stars.
-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.
Utterly worthless, ordering the heals. Any decent combat medic or etc can think for themselves. If anything, if you want to implement this abillity, allow the "Paint Target" command (i.e. the modified Group Attack) be used to enqeue everyone's target to a PC or NPC. Then while not in battle you could direct everyone's attention to the player that needed healing. Rating: one star
-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.
Decent compliment to Paint Target / Group Attack. But not nearly as useful, as you could just paint the target yourself. Rating: three stars.
-Forced March:
Non-combat group burst-run sort of thing. Broken as soon as anyone in the group engages in combat.
Excellent. This could also be a natural ability of the mobility tree instead of a specific action - Mobility I gets a 10% bonus to group movement speed while not in combat, and etc up the tree. Rating: five stars
-Smoke-em-if-you-got-em:
In a camp, out of combat, everyone in the group gets a mind regen bonus. The bigger the group the bigger the bonus.
This is an EXCELLENT ability. Mind regeneration is currently a time consuming thing, forces squads to avoid using mind (limiting rifleman, for example) or else forcing the squad to wait around for 5-10 minutes after a major battle to rest up. With this, you could drop a camp and cut down on that 5-10 minute wait time... PS: obviously, call it something different - "War Stories" would be more in keeping - the vetran leader telling his squad tales of victory which relax them. Rating: Five stars.
Overall, here's a bit of feedback at a meta level. Don't make squad leader a "control other people" character. I think you'll see too much abuse and too much resentment if we Squad Leaders can actually control people's actions, i.e. forcing them to attack and such. I'd rather see a direction of encouraging behavior rather than requiring it - focus on giving bonuses and enhancements over controlling others actions. Now things like "Paint Target" i.e. "group attack" are very necessary, even if they do offer an opportunity for abuse and/or player control - as being able to have an entire group target a single target will solve many logistical issues and significantly enhance the benefit of Squad Leader to the group.
My $0.04 (too long to be only $0.02)
Borion, Sunrunner
Squad Leader and Rifleman
Holy cow! I am amazed at alot of the SL out there. Such vicious bickering over a class that actually could work really well. To the person who wrote everything in red, and considers himself to be the apex of MMORPG raids - This ain't EQ.
Sure all these new abilities could be abused, but they could also work too. YOu haven't even tried them yet. If you feel they are too much DON'T USE THEM!
Sure they could unnecessary if you had a well trained group of people who knew what they were doing. Do I even have to comment how unlikely that is in alot of times.I want a group of 20 guys to go to Endor with me, I don't know 20 guys that are onlineat any given moment, I have to take whoever joins me.
Look, I don't want to get into a "who's most downtrodden" contest, but SL is one of the best classes out thereso far that I can see.Its not the darling like CH or BH, but its sure not Droid Engineer or Pikeman.
Ok, I feel better now. I know there will be problems. I just hate seeing people venting their spleen over stuff like that.
Truth is that most of these won't work in the game, even if they do "work." Between the jumping MOBs and the sliding terain, I don't know that formations are going to function quite right. And I also feel a certain amount of disdain for skills that let me FORCE other players to do what I tell them to. If I have to FORCE players to obey, I'm not a Squad Leader. I'm a Slave Master. And I still see no reason for people to group with me. In fact, I see LESS of one.
I have already had a few people say they don't want to group with Squad Leaders if we're going to be controlling them. We're supposed to be able to really help out the group. Offensive Stance was just about the only thing I saw on this list that I might cast.
/sysgroup Devs, please read the endless lists of skills we came up with.
Joshai wrote:
He's just a lamer who's totally out of touch with the entire SL community.
As opposed to you, who's one and only post on this forum is a flame?
Bye, troll.
I don't buy this argument at all. First of all, if you are playing inside of a PA with friends, there ought to be some give and take, and they should trust you if you are going to be a Squad Leader.
I am not in a PA right now, but I never have a problem with discipline. Honestly, people LIKE following my orders. Maybe that's because I'm a good Squad Leader and maybe they just like being in the Squad. Maybe they are almost (dare I say it) getting into the Role Playing aspect of it a bit. I'd like to think it's a combination, and usually when people do what I /sysgroup them we come out on top.
When I get people disobeying those orders, being jerks, pulling extra MOBs or being counter-productive, I most certainly do have a way of disciplining them. I boot them out of the group. Usually the etire group is glad to see them go, and no matter how strong they are, someone being disruptive like that hurts the group more than ANY tactical advantage they can bring. I often find that just WARNING people that I will boot them is enough. But it rarely comes up, because most of the people that want to run with a Squad Leader WANT to work as a unit.
Maybe they appreciate the coordination. Maybe they've just read Ender's Game too many times. Couldn't tell ya. But I've never had these problems and the ONLY time I have trouble doing all of the things we are getting as "skills" in my groups is in designating a target. Look at ANY suggested list of skills for Squad Leader and a skill to mark targets is on the list.
Hint hint.
If this is what Squad Leader does, I'd like my XP migrated into something more useful like Droid Engineer.
TychusTM wrote:
Hey, what do you know? Report Abuse to Moderator works!
Really? I should report the Dev post where they listed our new skills.
That's ABUSE.
obviously youve never read Sun Tzu or the (and i cant remember the name of the author atm) book of 5 rings. Book of 5 rings itself doesnt hav emuch in it as far as leadership....but if you read other texts etc by and about the guy it gives you good info.
leadership is meant to inspire. But inspiring doesnt do jack crap if people arent paying attention to you, or are too concerned with watching the pretty butterfly's than watching th eback of the man in front of them.
Leadership is a discipline involving raising the spirits of your men, inspiring them to do better than they otherwise would...handing them hope in the face of hopelessness..giving them comfort in the face of extraordinary harshness.
Leadership is ALSO about the ability to take charge and control of a group when all hell breaks lose. If you dont have the brass to tell a guy to **edit** and pay attention before he gets everyone else killed, then you have no reason being a leader.
Never leave a man behind.....never let a singl eman be soloed out.....never let a single man jeapordize the entire group.
argue with me on that
Okay, gonna play dev(il)'s advocate for the moment.
I can see a beautiful use for /follow and /ceasefire (think that was the command.) Everyone has had that annoying jerk spamming "invite me, invite me." Really annoying. Well, add him in, put him in his own "squad" put him on defensive stance, spam /follow me and /ceasfire. Not only will he not be able to fire or move himself, when he's attacked he will do way less damage so he won't get very much xp. He'll have to run himself into agro to be able to even attack. Better yet the group, already annoyed by him, will just let him lie incap or be DB'd.
There you have it. A practical application of the new abilities that will be acceptable by all mature group memebers. Just playing dev(il)'s advocate here...
PanzerGR: What you are talking about can be accomplished with /sys. The new skills are unnecessary and hindering.
Consider it just a belated failure of basic training.