Squad Leader Archive

I have culled this list from every single post on these forums, and attempted to consolidate them as best I could. I have attempted to remove any bias towards "magic" and any bias about PvP in this edition, as I received lots of feedback about both.

Why Squad Leader Should Be Improved...

• Squad Leader is a grouping profession, a support character, and who's skills solely benefit others. Giving Squad Leaders more power has a very different effect than, say, making Bounty Hunters more powerful. Additionally, since Squad Leaders very profoundly affect many of the players of the game by leading the hunting groups, having more Squad Leaders and happier Squad Leaders results in an increase in the general enjoyment of everyone who goes out on hunts. Finally, given the difficulty of becoming a Squad Leader, forming and leading groups, needing large groups to gain XP, the benefits of being a Squad Leader do not outweigh the costs at this time.

Bugs - Problems that are obviously not intended to occur

• Major - Very important, needs to be fixed very soon




• Groups can use /retreat and then /burstrun to achieve 4x speed.


• Minor- Something we dislike, but can tolerate for a while




• Sometimes using /sys instead of /sysgroup causes first word of the message to be cut-off

Issues - Be they good or bad, fixable or not, these are hot-topics, and the issues at hand

• Class-Breaking - Issues that must be immediately addressed to allow Squad Leader to be worthwhile




• Squad Leader XP is granted based solely on damage done by the SL


• While Rallied, no one can harvest, dance, sit, craft, etc, and cannot turn it off, thus making players hate this buff


• The Novice skill box is effectively empty compared to other hybrids and provides almost no help in getting to a first skill box


• To most people, particularly at Novice and low levels, a group with a Squad Leader is not noticeably better performance-wise than a group without one


• Major - Issues very important to us and need addressing soon




• Group options (notify, autoloot, etc.) do not work for most people


• Because of its leadership nature, levelling in Squad Leader is an intense and arduous process for most, and the benefit is not appropriate for the cost (specializing heavily in a pure support/group/benefit-others role)


• All specials fail very often (20% to 50% of the time), taking large mind/action pool drains per failure


• Many specials have long use, re-use, and activation times (Rally in particular)


• The effect of /volleyfire seems to add an extra, regular-shot, combat round to the target selected, and this is marginally useful outside of some PvP encounters


• Squad Leaders can solo to get XP by using pets (this may be as-designed or not, and good or bad, but it seems like a major point of debate)


• The benefits of +25 Group Melee Defense (or Ranged) are not particularly noticeable


• Forming a decent group is very challenging to many


• Squad Leader is one of the only professions in which one must be reasonably good at the real-life counterpart of the profession to succeed (Merchant is another) (for example, I assure you most of the Droid Engineers in SWG couldn't build a droid in real life)


• /volleyfire can wreak havoc with healers and crowd-control people


• The Leadership skill mod was removed, but still shown as a Human bonus, thus making some people choose Human for that skillmod and getting nothing in return


• /steadyaim is totally worthless to most people


• Mobility line is worthless in PvP since the fights are short, often in-town, and all participants have Exploration skills


• Minor - Issues we mention often, but can tolerate them not being addressed for now




• Any Terrain Negotation about +50 only affects prone, making this line a bit worthless unless you have someone without Exploration I


• Burst Run Effeciency only affects the cost of Burst Run, not the speed, duration, or frequency of it, making it marginally useful to most


• Melee is neglected with skills like Steadyaim or Volleyfire


• /sysgroup messages are not particularly noticable in battle spam situations


• /boostmorale makes a Squad Leader one of the most effective healers in the game


• Many people feel the XP requirementsare too steep


• Existence of Squad Leader precludes many other professions from becoming raid leader types


• A Commissar (Leadership IV title), by multiple dictionary defintions, is primarily a "Communist party official assigned to a military unit to teach party principles and policies and to ensure party loyalty" or "one that attempts to control public opinion or its expression"


• More than one Squad Leader in a group is currently a bad thing, causing competition for squad memebrs and discourages cooperation and socialization in a profession that specializes in exactly that


• Its unclear to new Squad Leaders when their bonuses are applied, and how to get XP


• With the XP-granting radius at 64m, chain-pulling is significantly less effective


• Its difficult to do destroy missions in groups because there is no mechanism to share the waypoints


• It remains very challenging in SWG to tell which is the main target when you swarmed by three creatures with the same name


• Many feel grouping is not worthwhile unless they are using a Pistol and can hurt Health pool (especially riflemen)


• A looting, harvesting, and camp order/permission system (like DAoC or AO, I hear) would be greatly appreciated


• /assist seems to not work and is not widely used


• Most people really dislike getting all the Combat XP and Survival XP


• PvP Squad Leaders often find themselves the primary target of their opponent, and wearing armor greatly reduces the ability to use their specials due to the high pool cost

Proposed Fixes/Additions - Good or bad, here's whats been thrown out

• Quick/Easy - Should take a very marginal amount of developer time, for a very nice benefit




• Decrease special's fail rate


• Add color and other additions to /sysgroup as skill increases


• Allow harvesting, entertaining, sitting, crafting, etc. while Rally is in effect, or allow players to "click it off"


• Move a +10 Group Terrain Negotation and +5 Group Melee Defense or /formup or /steadyaim down to Novice Squad Leader


• Get /assist to work correctly


• Get the /group options to work correctly (they worked in Beta for a short while)


• Allow Squad Leaders to set a waypoint everyone can see (any group leader used to be able to do this Beta)


• Bigger/More Complicated - Fixes that have great benefit, but will require somesignificant development time




• Change Squad Leader XP granting (seperate thread on this to come)


• Implement some of the new specials listed below


• Add some of the passive bonuses listed below


• Some form of Second-in-Command setup for secondary Squad Leaders


• Allow Squad Leaders to see their squad member's mission waypoints


• Add some form of group target identification, be it radar-bracket or waypoint-beam on the Squad Leader's /combattarget


• Add looting, harvesting, camping permission list, and possible a set order


• Change /steadyaim to be a long-lasting accuracy or damage buff, not a one-shot /aim (which in-itself, is pretty worthless)


• Transformational - Changes that could add another level of gameplay, but would require averylarge developer effort




• Add formations that give different bonuses depending on which one you're in, similar to a bard playing a different song to give a different bonus. These might be in-name only and not actually move the players.


• An improved looking-for-group (LFG) tool available to Squad Leaders to help form groups (major issue for many)


• Some way for Master Squad Leaders to lead raids, or platoons of squads


• Allow Squad Leader to gain/recruit weak NPC pets based on a Loyalty ability


• Add Squad Leader support weaponry, specializing in crowd-control and debuff abilities


• Add some sort of seperate, small, XP granting for using knockdown, posturechange, or warningshot type shots to promote their use

New Specials Ideas - Good or bad, these are the ideas I've seen

• /targethealth, /targetaction, /targetmind specials that allows the group to hit the specified pool more often for the targetted mob, with high enough mind/action pool cost that it is only to be used on the rare mobs with one pool particularly low


• /determination, gives +defense or +toughness for a few minutes, for high-damage-taking battles


• /inspiration, gives +damage bonus for a few minutes, for battles vs. mobs with high HP/armor


• /sacrifice, uses a SL's action and mind pools to replenish the pools of the group (reduce Action and Mind to 1 point each)


• /hurryup, increases the group's attack speed for a few minutes, perhaps at the cost of higher specials cost


• /charisma, a no-pool-cost, 30-minute-between-reuse special that increases healing rates in camps for a few minutes


• /confidence, makes mob more susceptible to fear/warning/threaten attacks


• /concentration, makes the group less susceptible to stun/dizzy effects (makes sense, a good SL can keep the group


• /groupmaskscent, a group version of /maskscent. This could be granted at the top of Mobile Command, as SL's are already Explorers. (makes sense, he is an Explorer (Exploration IV), and has Mobile Command IV)


• /atease, low-pool-cost, rare-reuse, allows healing of Battle Fatigue for 5 minutes


• /quartermaster, increases the benefits of medical healing for a while


• /conservation, makes specials used by group members cost lessfor a battle

New Passive Bonuses (to be small bonuses at low skill, reaching very worthwhile bonuses at Master) - Good or bad, these are the suggestions

• Less failure of Squad Leader specials as you move towards Master


• Stun, Knockdown, Dizzy, Intimidate bonuses


• XP bonus


• Reduced Specials cost for all group members


• Increase faction points gained


• Offensive boosts similar to the current defensive ones (accuracy and speed)


• Some form of "haste"


• Increased normal running speed (even just 10% at Master would be great)

Please add your comments, ideas, or re-ordering.Try and use the Bugs/Issues/Suggestions, Major/Minor etc. categories I have tried to set up to help clarify your comments. It is my intention to use this thread as our initial shipment to the developers as part of the Correspondent program.

Great summary.

Suggestions (Major/Transformational):

- HAM Costs: Rather than big one-time hits for using SL special abilities, have them work more like an entertainer's singing/dancing - a small, constant drain on the appropriate pool while the special is in effect. (The SL should be able to end the effect at will).

- Mobility: Since the consensus seems to be that the group movement bonuses aren't very useful, replace the abilities granted in the Mobility tree with the formations suggested above. One or more of these formations couldthen be movement formations that grant the group movement bonuses currently in the tree, while other formations accomplish other tasks. Sample formations (not balanced, just ideas):

/traveling - While in traveling formation, the squad gains an increase to terrain negotiation and base movement speed, but suffers a penalty to alertness and ranged defense.

/reconnaissance - Grants the squad a significant bonus to camouflage.

/patrol - Significant bonus to alertness, small bonus to ranged defense

/overwatch - Counterattack and aiming bonus

/assault - Bonus to point blank/melee accuracy

Thanks for the great post! I'm saving it now for further reading.

Many people reccomend carbine for its suppression abilities, but I believe anything is fun and worthwhile. I use pistol, myself. In the long run, I'm sure using rifle for mind shots will be better against those with extremely low mind pools (and we've all seen them), but in general anything works. Carbine's leg shot tears through action pools which is not fun for any class! =)

The reason Vol recommends carbines isn't to do heavier damage and kill stuff faster, it's to keep the mobs controlled. Drop one and /warningshot the others away, then pull the one to your group. You're not around to kill the mobs, that's solo material. You're there to keep everything organized and controlled.

I use pistol/carbine. Hate carbines too much for it to be my primary weapon.

wow, i just posted on another thread that im going to go SL for char development. but there isa point at which you start to wonder. based on voltaris's post, this class seems almost useless and very hard to rise in. while im not a min/max power gamer, i do want to see some results for my effort.

then again every forum is littered with posts about how unfair the skills are for the adv profs.

Funny, someone decided to rate all my posts as 1-star.

Also:

• Allow the squad leader to see the weapon his squad members currently have equipped. This will allow for better organization and better tactics.


• Allow the squad leader to assign teams within the group, i.e. blue team, red team, and so on, each team having a specific weapon use. Also the color of their names would change as well as their color on radar.


• Increase the range for the 'out of range' status of group members.


• Allow group members to quickly makea waypoint to the squad leader, via right click on his name on the group menu.

I'll post more as I can think of them.

The two issues, aside from additions to the class, that I find most important are: Being able to see the waypoints for destroy missions. This would be a huge advantage for the SL and could be added to mobility (probably level 3.) If you could efficiently direct a group from one destroy mission to the next it would speed up overall credit production and make you a pretty popular addition.

More important to me is simply having the group options working. It isn't an SL only issue, but as the usual squad leader it is frustrating to me to have to endure ninja harvesters and ninja looters. Worse than that, however, people run into the middle of spawn points to loot bodies and often end up drawing newly spawned agro. When autoloot works (and it did for ten minutes one night this weekend) it saves you having to run to downed foes and it makes sure every group member (with autoloot) gets their fair share.

I also want to once again voice my opposition to cutting out xp with a pet. I have never had a point in this game where I could not get a group together or get into a group and have myself made leader. But I have had times where I didn't want a group because it is more efficient for me to work by myself. Because SL xp is dependant on damage done in combat (as well as my pistol and combat xp) I sometimes solo in order to avoid having to nerf myself in groups. I am a fairly effective pistoleer and I have to purposefully reduce my combat effectiveness so that my group members can get an equal amount of xp. This is frustrating at time, so along with needing quicker credits, I solo. When I am by myself with a droid grouped in (not much of a combat droid at that) I get roughly 1/2 of my weapon xp in SL xp. This really isn't that much! Its a way to continue the arduous advancement through this class while playing solo. In an ideal world SL xp would be based on the production of the group and usage of your special abilities. But while it remains based on personal production don't nerf the SL xp with pets.