Squad Leader Archive

Excellent discussion sir.

As I stated in the CURB thread, the one that most likely influenced this post, anyone who is inexperienced with their profession has the posibility to get the entire group killed. Squad Leader is no different. But there was that one poster with his counterarguments stating that Squad Leaders should not have that power.

I don't belive there are just those two sides. I would prefer to see something more akin to a mixture of the two. I don't want Squad Leader to be a extremely difficult profession to know, nor do I want it to be, like you stated, so easy it is just used as a buff bot or something similar. I want SL to be dynamic and open enough to allow for your style of play, yet informative enough that a newbie can sorta get the gist of it.

We have had it pretty good as a Squad Leader community. Not very many immature or malicious players come to our boards or take up this profession. But as the CURB comes into being, I see that changing and I am almost scared to think of what will happen to our respectable forum.

Regardless, I would like to see some feedback to this topic from other members of the community. It is about your profession, so go ahead and share.

IMO it should be both.

Squadleader is as all other professions, a bunch of skill and group boost would be a easy way to express what a squad leader does IRL ( although this argument is already total overused).

The way you play blackferne is the also the way I want to play my squadleader but since I m still quiet new to the game (5months and Im just starting to explore PvP) my insight ins not that good into combat. I still think squadleader should be the most difficult combat profession to master, but the skills should point the beginning squadleader into the right direction.

I havent seen so far any complains from the ppl I group with, as well hunting groups with ppl I dont know, as well as guild hunts, so cant judge the worries about other players who think a squad leader might lead them into their death.

What I would like to see is a certain kind of group boost or individual boost from a squad leader linked to a command and in conjuction with the other players agreement.

For example a kind of volley fire command, where the other players get a new target assigned, but they dont have to shoot it , but if they do, they gain a huge bonus to hit and to damage to this target.

This would encourage the group to listen to the commands of the squad leader, as the "newbie" squadleader can enhance their fighting skills in a direct way and over the time the players also get used to the "other" commands the more experienced squadleaders gives, like commands to do a certain type of attack to a certain profession.

This way it gets for the other professions also more obvious what we do (or should do), enhance the effectiveness of the group by taking the lead and assigning the different ppl to different task, thus in a certain way "enforcing" team work.

To Irott: wandering around these forums, I have seen that this as well the carbineer forum are the most easy once to read, since the usually "I pwn U,n00b, h4x0r or what ever kid/grown up brat" dont tend to like a professions, which forces you to use your grey matter behind your eyes.
Your comment that this might change with the CURB, as eagerly as I await it, and I got slightly scared.

As I could read in some enthusiastic post of some ppl the CURB will look great, but I hope our profession stays rare, not to be elite but to have realy dedicated player to this profession in particullar and not because it just became the FOTM or the uber template to play.








four skill boxes away from becoming master squad leader again

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Blackferne wrote:
I think we need to let people make mistakes. They will learn.

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Agreed.

Experience is the best teacher in this game. You can be told how something works, or read about it in the FAQ, but until you experience it while playing it means almost nothing.

Some players just happen to know more about the game because they have been here longer. They know they are more effective working by themselves, even if they are in a group, than relying on the direction of another player.

The nature of grouping is something that is very hard to understand, and we are smack dab in the middle of it. With the CURB going for a more tactical approach (that info is no longer NDA), I hope that our place as Tacticians is reinforced. I want us to be able to be West Point Tactical Wizards... but I don't want that the be the only level we are effective.

Its all up in the air... and the CURB is only the first step.

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Blackferne wrote:

A smuggler applying a blled to call a NS Elder and feigning death ismore dangerous thana SL, but nobody calls for that to be nerfed.

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I like side 2 but we still should have the group "buffs" but have them in a way that a Squad Leader must choose the best one for the situation. We should have our passives which would buff but then are leadership skills which we must choose wisely. I think the revamp should have 1 skill in each box of the leadership tree and the leadership mod put back in the game.

A player's skill can be put to the test with the mix of SL abilities, leader skills like rally and new tactic skills like IE formations

Message Edited by MailekEOC on 02-02-2005 03:20 AM

I can understand your concerns, Blackferne. The template mentality isn’t always such a bad thing (like everquest bards), and would make playing our class a lot easier if it were designed to be that way. However, not a lot of people want to be stuck in a position where they are issuing commands because someone else told them to do it. The fact that we have “Squad Leader” as a title also pushes us to take on a role of authority, rather than one of appeasement.

The way I see it though, is that the CURB would put the SL more tightly knit into the combat system. The SL revamp would then give us the improved skills that we need in order to make a noticeable difference in this new system. These two updates will be known to the public, so they will want to have a Squad Leader in their group in order to take advantage of these improved benefits. This is where we come to our issue.

Will we only be sought by people because we can give out buffs on the fly, without them having to worry about SL yapping in their ear? A Squad Leader’s skills are only tools. Assuming that the CURB and SL revamp will push us into the role of a tactician, the effectiveness of most of our skills would be diminished if the SL couldn’t properly control their group. Therefore, it should be expected of the player to assist the SL in making the most out of the group experience.

So it’s up to us to educate group members of the importance of coordination. They will only listen if they open up to the SL. And they would only do that if the SL knows how to communicate. I think that we are a social class, as our commands require us to be in a group. In the future, I hope to see some more discussions on intra-player communications, where Squad Leaders would discuss how to make a good first impression, deal with an unruly group member, etc. This would equip new SLs with the knowledge that they need in order to better lead their group.

Would the player expect a buff bot or a live person behind that Squad Leader tag when they join the group? Better yet, would the player expect to be given orders to follow, or will they expect to give the SL orders when they see fit? I think that, while a SL could certainly just sit there and give out buffs, a player will find that the SL is more effective when they are given the opportunity to take charge of the group.

To finally address the issue, I don’t think we should be worried about “template” Squad Leaders at all! If a player decides that a bot is better then let them choose a bot. When properly trained and experienced, a live SL will be able to inform that player that bots aren’t as effective, by plowing through his group with his well-coordinated squad.

I personally feel SL should have some passive buffs like the melee and ranged def we currently have. Terrain neg is nice and burst run efficiency could become quite handy post CU. I'd also like to see some sort of accuracy buff, maybe to give a total of +25 at most. This would be plenty of skills that require no real skill to use imo. Ontop of this I would like to see a diverse set of specials each with their own drawbacks. They would be very powerful abilities but also have significant drawbacks, at least most should. This would add a great deal of skill into the proffesion. It would make all SLs useful to a group but at the same time make a skilled SL much more useful than a less skilled one. And also I dont think they should ever get rid of /sys, I love it, its great fun

I'd really like to see SL come out of the CURB as a very balanced, 2 sided proffesion. Pleanty of passive buffs that require no real skill to use as well as pleanty of skills that require a good knowledge and experience of them to be used effectively. When used effectively they should make a big difference to the battle. All groups should be looking for at least a newbie SL but should prefer an experienced SL. A SL without a large amount of experience should still be sought after in mid end PvE so that they have a chance to learn the ropes. However high end PvE and PvP, a skilled SL would allways be prefered unless we end up with no specials at all

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To finally address the issue, I don’t think we should be worried about “template” Squad Leaders at all! If a player decides that a bot is better then let them choose a bot. When properly trained and experienced, a live SL will be able to inform that player that bots aren’t as effective, by plowing through his group with his well-coordinated squad.

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I see it the other way around. With present game-mechanics anybody can pretty well coordinate a team, no Squad Leader is necessary for that.(Heck,even a Master Artisan, Master Architect,Novice Brawler can do that job,leadership skills and tactical knowledge come from the player, not from the template.) As a quick and dirty fixsevere communication limits on groups without a SL could come to mind butthose would severely reduce playability and thus the fun of the players, invalidating this option.(Not to mention that according to my knowledgesome PVP-oriented guilds already now use teamspeak, making ingame communication a secondary issue, completelydisabling this approach.)

A valid fix to save the profession "squad leader" was already mentioned more than once, give the functions of SL a limited range and off you go. Though, i personally would vote for a higher range than mentioned here so often. 50 Meters is nothing, i would vote for 150 meters at least. That would allow the SL to fall back and coordinate the fight from a good observation place, instead of being forced to stay in the thick of battle. (Though, a well organizied opposing force will then send a small group to locate the SL and take him down. Tactics and countertactics...)

Anyways, i feel that the SL as template have to give substantial bonuses and advantages, otherwhise it'll stay an almost dead profession as it currently is.

I know that my approach is not the complete solution of the issue,i can very well imagine that one player actually holds the profession "squad leader" and only uses it to give the bonuses to the team, while not reallycoordinating the team.From my (very limited, i admit) experience i would say, coordination is often the most important thing in a fight. Anyways, i have one idea which could make the SL profession very unique in terms of leadership:

Give the SL a "command mode". (Yes, i have seen that this has been suggested more than once, but those threads are dead since a little while, while this one seems open for the topic.)I don't know how many of you have player the HL-Mod "natural selection", those who know it will see what direction my idea is comming from. In that game, one person of a team can enter the "command console", giving him an overhead map of the combat area. (I don't completely know how to implement this yet. The "fort" was discussed more than once, but since such a fort would probably have the same building limitations as a camp, perhaps even more strict, it could not be used in city combat. Unfortunately that's where i would find such an interface to be most useful...)

This map more or less looks like the interface of tactical games like Warcraft or the likes, showing all friendly troops, terrain and buildings and any enemy which is in visual range of a teammate. The leader can then organize his team into squads, assign waypoints or targets to those squads or also to single teammaptes and all in all coordinate the battle. (In NS the teamleader also can supply the team with weapons and healing, have then build structures and so on, but that's no option for SWG, i would say...)

The raw mechanics for this "command mode" are already present, whenever you place a building you can get a nice overhead map. It would require a bit more of range (750 x 750 meters or so, perhaps the range could even depend on how good one of your skills is) and should easily be navigated and zoomed in and out of.

That way a SL would really have a tool for coordinating combat which no other profession in the game has access to and which also can not be doubled by other means like teamspeak or the likes.

Also note that this would support having several SLs in the fight. The map proposed would be 750 meters on square while the proposed range of SL-specials is 150 meters. That way the bonuses of the commanding SL will only be available to people on a small portion of the overseen map. If the mobile fighting groups still want to have the bonuses all the time, seperate SLs would be required to be there. (Or in extreme, an SL in "command mode" can not use things like formup and doesn't give any of the bonuses at all, depending on how it works out.)

Anyways, to make this working, some more changed have to be applied, there are a few possibilities:

1. Any SL in a group can give the bonuses to people in range. If a person is in range of several SLs, only the higest bonuses are used, they do not stack. (Perhaps the range of specials of a SL will be reduced to 50 meters when not being the leader of the group, forcing the subgroups to stay together and not allowing the a few SLs to spread their bonuses all over the battlefield.) Commands like formup would be applied to anybody in range, no matter which SL issues them.

2. SLs still have to be the leader of the group to give their bonuses and use their specials. In this case, the "field SL" would not have to be touched a lot, it would again have to be coded into the "command mode". In this case, the "Commander" would have to form his own "group" where he just invites the leaders of the small squads. To those leaders he'd then send the waypoints and mission targets. (Though, i would say that anybody in those groups should get the waypoints to prevent further confusion.) That way it would even be ensured that the bonuses for the squads always completely depend on the SL in the field and do not come from the "Commander".

Option 1 in my eyes is more flexible with the disadvantage that by having several SL the delay times of the specials can be circumvented. Option 2 would be the more drastic change, making the SL usually really the leader of a small squad. (Although one SL would actually act as platoon commander or something like that. But that's acceptable i would say. )

I am aware that this still needs some refinement, i also know that it was on the boards already, but as those threads all were rather old i decided to bring it up again in the hope that it's heard for the revamp. *smile*

Anyways, i think this approach would cover both sides Blackferne mentioned, both the "small SLs" on the front as well as the "Commander" would, although in different ways, gain unique and important features from the profession, while also making the players of SLs predefined to actually lead by having powerful tools to coordinate the team in combat.

Message Edited by Sylow on 02-04-2005 02:44 PM