Squad Leader Archive

OK. I just finished reading Holocrons post about the new patch, and (unbelievably) it mentions Squad Leaders. I read and reread the portion about our supposed new abilities and my first thought was, "Where the hell did they come up with this stuff?" I can't figure it out. We have been posting and asking for stuff since week one, but I have never seen any of these new abilities mentioned anywhere.
There was a time when I thought it might be nice to be able to pull a squad out of a sticky situation with a command, but since then I have learned that no one wants to play in a game where someone else controls your actions. But the new list of propoesed Squad Leader goes way beyond that. It turns PC's into pets. Its a joke. Nobody is going to want to be placed into a formation and told when to fire, what to fire at, when to heal, who to heal, and when to run. I play in lots of groups (hell, I'm a Squad Leader, all I do is lead groups) and on more than one occasion I have had little groups within my big group. These guys look after each other first and the rest of the Squad second. It would be nothing more than a nusiance for me to try to point out to them what I think they should be doing.
The normal situation is that I have a mixed group of competant veterans, and semi-competant and incompetant newbs. I let the Vets take care of themselves and I do my best to watch out for the others. I quickly learned that to keep a group alive you either need a dedicated doctor that looks out for the whole group, or better yet, be a half decent medic yourself. I chose to follow the later rout because in most situations there is no time to be doing a lot of typing and running around in circles. Its best if you (as a squad leader) can heal someone yourself.
Anyway, my point is we don't need these new skills. People will resent us for using these type of conroling skills on them, and they won't see any benefit from them either. Which brings me back to the question, where did the devs come up with this list in the first place?

Where is the link for this? I want to read it myself, because I will seriously drop this class if they make it any worse.

Looks like the powers are OPTIONAL, but I totally have the same pain in my gut about turning players into pets. ALTHOUGH I think that this shows the lack of combat depth, not realy the Squad Leader dynamics. If all your going to do is press ~1 ever time a target comes up for you, what the differance in starting the attack? The hope here is that the COMBAT rules get upgraded, so positioning, stance, angle and attack type have such an effect there is still a lot of user input.

I tend to agree with that totally, SithBishop . But that's just my personal opinion. Throwing 50 semi-useful abilities at is won't fix the current one's.

Vemnox, are you going to follow up with the Devs on this?

Really the idea of controlling the other players actions will make the SL a big no-no. Yeah, they are optional, but what is the point of having them (and thusimplementing them) if you cant/ don't want to use them b/c they work negatively on the group dynamic?

I'm jsut an aspiring SL, but with these changes, I'm not sure I want to even be that anymore.

Atleast they have a vision, whereas here on this board it has been severely lacking. 'More power' is the general cry here without giving much thought on what a Squad Leader is all about. I'm looking forward to thesechangesto this profession. If you want combat power, go pick up Commando.

I think your making it seem worse than it is

1. i really like the "assign position" thing thats a great idea.

2. most of these arnt tooo controling like "follow me" just starts everyone following you

if you dont want to follow then dont simple right?? i dont know how many times i have sat

wondering what we are wainting on, no one want to speek up, people shoot too soon

i for one really like the idea of controling some of these things

for example tonight i was on lok doing imp missions with a large group we happened to get

2 missions within 25m of each other when we got done with one i had taken alot of damage

and so had others but some people started attacking anyway.. almost go us all killed now with a "hold fire" flag in there upper corner of there screen that would not happen. alot of these are just little things that can save a groups ass!!

3. the "Group heal" doesnt Tell you what to do is a suggestion. some kind of beakon comes over the persons head that you used "group heal" on and people heal him

4. there really is alot of indiscision, lack of leadaership, standing arround, and some of this can help with that

5. your right alot of these are not ideas for the boards (that i have seen anyway)

6. are they adding theses and fixing the broken stuff??? or what??

7. it really is some of the little things that can make a group work alot better for example i will get in a group with 8 people and each person takes 2 missions ok we go do one then we just stand arround wondering what to do next it can be for a long time!!! now, i just say "ok everyone sound off your closest distance" then say "500" then the screen fills with "200m" "500m" "300m" "800m" "600m" who ever said 200 i say GO FOR IT!!! after you said it once i just say "sound off distances" to save time. YOU HAVE NO IDEA (untill you try it) how much better things go for the group!!! as simple and stupid as doing that is!!

i think a little control (and rollplaying) is exactly what this profession needs THANKS HOLO!!! LOVE YA!!

PS you said"My apologies for not posting these in each profession forum, but I am late for a dinner engagement." got a hot date??? what about all the people that need you here online!!!!!!! lol JK

I'm not a squad Leader, but I think you guys are thinking too bad about the changes. There are some good ideas in it. I agree that controlling PC group members like pets is something most players don't like, but the changes don't look like it will be that way.
What you give are orders, nothing else, and a few very useful things like follow me...
These orders are awesome in really big groups of 15-20, but pretty useless in small groups. So the devs definitely need to adress the many issues you proposed, but these are not bad things. They aren't changing the complete profession, they are just adding functionality, thats never bad.

I wish they would give as much attention to my profession (DE) as they do to yours.

Could you please post a link to Holo's post? Thankyou.

As a former Squad Leader (yes I gave it up to be a master smuggler) I can tell you that these controlling measures are a godsend to keeping a group organised and focused. It WILL separate the good squad leaders from the bad and force people to think about how willing they will be to follow the squad leader's commands. Good squad leaders will use these new abilities very effectivley to manage battles, keeping nimrods from attacking stuff that is not the focus, helping medics figure out who to heal, etc.A good squad leader will have a good group...a group that is efficient, focused, and better - because their squad leader has more control.

If you don't like it, leave the group and form your own without a squad leader. Plain and simple. I don't think a good Squad Leader wants anyone inhis group that can't follow orders any way. I welcome these new abilities and I'll probably be allocating skill points to re-acquire Squad Leader after these new abilities are implemented. I may go as far as totally changing, perhaps going the Squad Leader/Ranger route since both of these are basically both revamped and now viable professions.

Oh, and here's holo's post that covers many classes in addition to the SL. Scroll down a bit for the SL stuff, or better yet read it all to be knowledgable about all profession's changes:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=394421#M394421

And another thing...they did watch these forums and build at least some of the skills based off of suggestions. I remember reading some user's suggestion for the "Forced March" skill, and low and behold, it's now there.

I also read many posts suggestiong the "smoke-em-if-ya-got-em" type skill where mind regen gets enhanced, low and behold, it appears as a new skill.

It took a long time, but they listened and responded - and many of the skills came from the feedback of the users in the SL forums...I'm positive of this because I monitor the SL forums out of my love for the profession, so I stay on top of the issues and have read all this stuff...

So IMO the original post makes me believe that you haven't been following these SL forums too much...many of these new skills came straight from user feedback.

I think these changes can be effective for a group that actually wants to be lead by a SL. Someone mentioned somewhere that a "good group" doesn't need someone telling them what to do. I agree with that but I have yet to see a group work together quite as well as say a group commanded by me in some other game. Like a war strategy game where you have everything in your own head. There's always a couple people on a different page than the rest. Even with a really good group, if you have a SL that's really paying attention and the group is letting them lead, things will all be slightly more coordinated and happen slightly faster. NOW remember, with twenty decent fighters in a group, there's not much out there that can match it. So even running into four or five or six tough enemies, they can be handled without much organization. That doesn't mean that a SL wouldn't help bring them down faster and with less casualties. And against something that really posses a threat, I think that the proposed SL changes could be pretty useful.

That all being said, that doesn't mean that these changes will be accepted by all. There may not be many people who like being treated as 'pets' if they choose to look at it that way. And therefore this SL may not work out.

I suppose there are two ways the SL could go:

1. This way, very controlling and coordinating. Designed to keep a group mocing fast from target to target, and focused in the proper places.

2. Supportive, more skills like steady aim that just help out the group with whatever they're doing. Even if six people are attacking six different targets they get some sort of bonus to do it.

Personnally I like the idea of the first one a bit more, with a bit of the second mixed in. I think that coordinating great players will be a lot more powerful than giving great players small bonuses. But that doesn't mean that those great players want to change their play style to be lead by a SL.

As with everything in this game it's point of view. You can go crazy trying to get XP and making a great character, but if you don't find something else to do you're going to get bored cause you max out so fast. With SL if people choose to go with the game mechanics and be lead by the SL I think they would find it to be quite fun, but since they're not used to it that way now.... well it may never take.

Brett