Squad Leader Archive

As far as the "Worst Class in SWG" Award goes, Squad Leaders feel that they generally lie somewhere between Droid Engineers and Chefs in vying for the top spot. SLs cost more skill points than most advanced professions (135 to master), and get less abilities and bonuses than any other advanced profession than I am aware of (every SL box only gives 1 ability OR bonus, with the exception of Master SL.) Most of our abilities are currently broken (Rally), "Working" but ineffectual (Retreat, Boostmorale), and/or have such a ridiculously high HAM cost that they are not worth the time (all of them.)

Basically, the "good" parts of Squad Leader are Novice SL (/sysgroup), Mobility I and III (terrain negotiation), Leadership II & III (Melee Defense), and Tactics II and IV (Ranged Defense). These aren't THAT impressive, just handy little tricks. But they work, and they have some use, and that puts them head and shoulders above the other 11 blocks of SL.

So how do you make a class this useless any worse without actually touching it?

How about giving Combat Medics terrain negotiation like SOE did recently?

The support tree of Combat Medic now grants +40 terrain negotiation total. That’s almost max as far as running over terrain is concerned (anything over 50 affects your speed while /prone). I'm sure all the Combat Medics are cheering it, but it does take a certain something away from the SL mobility tree, doesn’t it?

I mean, I only ever get 2 compliments on my SL abilities. Sometimes people like me spamming their screen (and sometimes they complain about it), and sometimes people (if they have no scout skills) like running up hills faster. Nobody notices the defensive bonuses. Nobody. 90% of my compliments are about running up hills faster- its our most notable benefit.

And now, my most vocal compliment-giver wont notice that anymore. Asnno, a CM in our PA, was delighting in his new Terrain Negotiation. Formerly, Asnno has always said things like "I love it when Jynn's around - he makes me fast" and "I just RAN up that hill!" as I lead. But yesterday what he said was "Now I don't need Jynn!" Just a joke, not meant to offend, but it does raise a point: Nobody NEEDS a SL, but why take AWAY some of our demand?

And when I brought that up, he said "don't you like medics being able to reach group members? Doesn’t it make sense that CMs would be able to run around to the wounded?" And that argument KIND of makes sense, but not really, because you could use it for virtually every class. You could say "Don’t you want brawlers to keep up with melee targets? Doesn’t it make sense that brawlers would know how to close with the enemy?" and then TKA, fencer, pikeman, and Swordsman all get Terrain negotiation. You could say "Aren't commandoes used to fighting on their feet? Doesn’t it make sense that they attack quickly from cover?" and now Commando has terrain negotiation. "Shouldn't Pistoleers be good at moving fast? Don’t Soldiers like carabineers march a lot? Don't bio-engineers spend lots of time in the field?" The list goes on and on, and granted the arguments get a little weaker, but the CMs argument was pretty weak to begin with. The point is that up until recently, there were two ways to bolt up a hill: blow some points in scout, or get with a Squad Leader. Now, for no good reason, there's an option 3, and we're just a little more useless.

The Devs have been silent on Squad Leaders. A long time ago they posted some frankly terrible ideas about what to do with the class, and the Squad Leader community met them with such vehemence that they seem to have abandoned those ideas. Since then all they’ve done is fixed a boostmorale "exploit" and broken Rally. They could have abandoned the previous plan and formulated a new one, or they could be pushing their terrible Puppeteer plan forward. We don't really know, though, as they have absolutely and utterly ceased to communicate with us. Maybe they feel hurt that we didn't like the ideas, or maybe they are baffled as to what to do with the class, or maybe they want to make it a big old surprise when we log on one day and, to our rapture, do not suck. Whatever the reason, though, we have no idea when or what the changes will be.

I will wait for those changes. I am one of the few SLs not dropping all the skills but novice, or the class altogether. I am mostly patient and relatively long suffering. But I do have one simple request for the Devs: Try not to step on the SL's toes while buffing all the more powerful classes until you’ve actually fixed us.

That shouldn't be too hard. We don’t have many toes to step on.

You know what? It might be worse than you thought: Mounts coming up in the not so far future!I don't think that I need to elaborate on this...

CU

Mille

I concur...SL is getting shafted...and at the risk of getting flamed, take away the Combat Medic terrain negotiation...its the only thing we're freaking good for right now.

Dr. Ventus

Novice Squad Leader

Intrepid

I can't tell you how thrilled I originally was when I saw there was a squad leader class in this game. My initial thoughts were along the lines of 'Wow! A class that can take someone's natural leadership tendencies and combine it with hard, in-game bonuses and abilities!'.

So I bought the software and joined the game and made a character... and not 30 minutes after playing, as I was explaining my squad leader intentions to the friend who got me into SWG, he promptly talked me back out of it. "It takes forever to get the XP you'd need." "They're kinda cool to have around, but everyone and their mother already has scout (because they're all creature handlers and/or bounty hunters)." "You'll have to put up with a lot of morons."

All of them were valid arguments, so I abandoned the idea for that character. Then I made a second character and briefly entertained the idea of making -her- the squad leader instead. But, there just weren't any points left after all the entertainer stuff I fell into, so again the squad leader got shelves. And then, finally, on my third character, I found myself in a position to get the profession with just a little tiny bit of work.

So I sat around in camps for 4 days, twiddling my thumbs and occasionally chatting with the people who stopped by to pull out their graul mauler before rushing off to fry something else with their LLC and/or flamethrower. "Hey, squad leader? Wow, that's cool. I don't know any squad leaders." I got that a lot.

And then! I finally got the class one night! I annoyed my friends by sending multicolored system messages rather than just using groupchat. I made them sit around and watch while I single-handedly shot apart lairs to get all the XP. I made them join the Rebellion and get faction pets and go overt with me so I could lead a group of 12 rather than 3.

And then! I finally got rally! My first, biggest, best squad leader ability. The one that would finally give a benefit to the people grouped with me! Eagerly, after shelling out 6000 credits for the training, I typed the command.

/-r-a-l-l-y <enter>

"You must be leader of the squad to use this ability."

Er? I AM leader. Okay. Maybe I have to be in combat... No, still not working. Okay, I'll disband and reform. Nope, that didn't do it. Er? Am I broken?

No, I'm not broken. I just wasted a week of my life earning a class that no one, not even the developers who created it, cares about. I have commands that don't work, terrain bonuses which everyone already has, and the ability to get all those commandos to do their 50000 flamethrower damage against a target all at the same time, instead of spread out over the next second and a half.

But hey, at least I can, like, operate a terminal to help destroy a factional base. I think. Isn't that how it works?

I still have high hopes for the squad leader profession, but until there's actually a reason to learn it and something in place to make us valuable, I'm going back to the bio-engineer grind. At the very least, I'll be able to make a few credits selling people the mounts that will make our group terrain negotiation bonuses usless to the remaining 5% of the playerbase.

Squad Leaders....You need to push...push against the devs....they'll listen soon enuf....Get ur correspondent to stay on them, by staying on the Correspondent....

Make a post on all other boards...have any and all squad leaders, and those non-SL, to reply....pushing the message to the top...at all times...

Devs cant ignore ya forever....it takes time tho....and it takes some dedication...after all your hard work to earn these skills--bring back ur pride and fight for it.....dont let em whip ya...if everyone folds, they just take the class away....and that's not necessarily what's best for the gaming community....

Kattiffi Nix

Reworking skills for Master Squad Leader, Sniping Rifle(wo)man and Novice Dancing

Eclipse Server

Kattifi, They've been ignoring us for months now... pretty much since the game came out. Instead of fixing us they break us more and make the skills that do work obsolete by giving other classes the abilities. We've created petitions, /bugs, CS tickets, PMed the devs.

I'm sorry but I'm starting to get the impression that they are trying to make it so everyone drops the Squad Leader proffession so they can remove it from the game.

As bad as this sounds I totally agree with Whitecastle...we have no assurance that anyone with influence reads this profession board. Our only connection that matters is through the Correspondent....Cpt I know you've been pushing hard so just take this as encouragement...you need to keep pushing and push harder...spam that correspondant only forum. That is really the only way we will get our problems heard.

Push harder...push push...now breathe...your're don'g great. Now one more big PUSH!

Dr. Ventus (Squad Leader....ready to birth some more into our profession)

Intrepid