Swordsman Archive

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Gorecki wrote:

Hi all,

eventhough we don't really know yet what exactly it is going to consist of and how far it is going to go, i was wondering what your personal expectations and visions about the combat revamp are.

I'm not really talking about the details (like "give us this" or "give us that"), we did quite a bit of that already, but more from a general point of view. Questions like:

Do you think combat will drastically change or not so much ?

Hopefully.

What should the combat revamp aim for ?

balance, individuality. bringing back the feeling of reliance on groups.

Do you think we will still be one of the strongest PvE professions or not ?

Yes. However we shouldnt be able to solo things such as kimo's, krayts, and nightsister elders.

Should there be any professions at all that lets say are "best" in a certain domain ?

Yes. Teras Kasi shouldbad offense and mediocre defense, but still have meditation ability. Fencers should have good defense and bad offense. Swordsman should have good offense and bad defense. Pikeman should have bar none the best crowd control abilities (maybe a move that literally slows down your enemies movement for a few seconds) and bad 1 on 1 offense, mediocre defense.

Bounty hunters/carbs and bounty hunters/pistols should be the best combat professions in the game when it comes to pvp, high damage, mediocre defense. pistoleers (no bh or smuggler) should have bad offense, good defense, cabineer should have good offense, bad defense. Rifleman should have good offense, and bad defense, but have 74 meter range.

Swordsman, the best 1 on 1 damaging meleeprofession, do roughly the damage of a pistoleer (ranged professions are all togehter more damaging). a pistoleers defense, the best ranged defense profession, should have roughly the defense of a swordsman (melee should be alltogether tougher to take down)

Do you think your template will still be of use after the revamp or do you expect having to change it ?

Probably not

What's your overall feeling about the revamp ? Fear or confidence ?

To tell you the truth... fear.

What do you think is the most difficult task forthe Devs working on a combat revamp ?

Giving each profession its individuality and uses.

Stuff like that

Thanks for sharing.

/bow

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Message Edited by APEist_theReb on 10-17-2004 06:52 PM

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Vshbaa wrote:

If AP and AR worked in PvP, there may be more balance

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It's currently working so that our ap2 weapons dont get a damage boost when facing ar1 armor.

thats not a problem. we do fine in pvp. the problem is when an ap0 guns goes against an ar1 and does sh1t for beans damage.

i say remove ar and ap. rearrange the damage numbers on weapons to the general outline of my post above. see how everything works out, and then change multipliers to specials, if necesary.

have rebel and storm trooper armor be as good as composit, and make it craftable. take it away from recruiters and instead add segments that are necessary for the crafting process to the recruiters. make the faction point cost for these segments much lower. about 300 points for each segment.

add some different types of faction armor, just for looks.

the overall goal would to make pvp combat slightly shorter, and have every profession be viable.

Semi-tested AP vs AR in PvP, it seems to work (i mean, i was doing 100 damage a hit after armor/toughness/mitigation of a TKM with 90% blast armor, seems if it wasn't working i'd be doing a bit less), I'll do some more testing later.

If it doesn't work now, then it would be VERY nice for it to be working.

I've heard rumors that the CB sandbox will be coming up after JTLS is released, can't wait for that. I believe that the combat revamp will finally get rid of the huge reliance on buffs/armor, and that we all wont be clones wearing composite. Also, they better be reducing HAMs and damage on NPCs and mobs in the CB, to fit with the changes.

I'm hoping they'll keep the basic setup they have now with melee (fencer with high defense/low offense, swordsman with low defense/high offense, TKM completely balanced, although pikeman needs some definition) but we'll see.

Combat will indeed change drastically, with the new special system. You won't see people spamming specials, etc., but there might be problems with this, such as auto-attacks primarily hitting health/action, making mind damage specials potentially useless (if you can only use a certain amount, it'd be smarter to go with random pool/health damage specials in order to fit with the autoattack damage).

It's too early to know if my template will be useful (if they nerf dots, then it might not be).

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Gorecki wrote:

Hi all,

eventhough we don't really know yet what exactly it is going to consist of and how far it is going to go, i was wondering what your personal expectations and visions about the combat revamp are.

I'm not really talking about the details (like "give us this" or "give us that"), we did quite a bit of that already, but more from a general point of view. Questions like:

Do you think combat will drastically change or not so much ?

I hope it will have a "drastic" changes but still keep it reconisable.

What should the combat revamp aim for ?

Combat balance?making the combat expirance in the game more enjoyable rather than mondae and one tactic wins

Do you think we will still be one of the strongest PvE professions or not ?

I hope not, there shouldnt be strongest in term of best profession but rather different approach. whiles other profession and slap on status and what have you to make it safer to fight or weak enermy i like to see us remain as heavy hitter. i like to see other professions on uniquest being more useful in PvE

Should there be any professions at all that lets say are "best" in a certain domain ?

In certain area if you dont mean PvE and PvP then yes i do believe they should be. It would give all the profession thier own flavour and style and that means more reason to explore the game and more fun with not just one style of fighting to get that all important win.

Let's face it Dizzy + posture/kd is too over powered and boring. it kills that varioation of style because everyone wants to pull it off

Do you think your template will still be of use after the revamp or do you expect having to change it ?

As i said before i am hoping for big changes but still reconisable. so the only way i can anwser this is that i hope i will be able to keep it but needing to look at it again and consider new options open to me whiles realising the template now has new false. over all i hope i will be able to keep the template but will be tempted to change/modifield it because new options are now open

What's your overall feeling about the revamp ? Fear or confidence ?

As a Swordman i have no reason to fear they cant take very much away fromus we havent got alot to begin with. i can only see good things for us.

What do you think is the most difficult task forthe Devs working on a combat revamp ?

I hope they see this as the most difficult task they ever taken on in thier career of swg development otherwise the result will be another bitter disapointment

Stuff like that

Thanks for sharing.

/bow

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Oss_Wilum wrote:

I choose fear. swordsman will be SEVERELY weakened.

the guy who wants buffs gone: are you freaking insane???? a nightsister elder with an LVA does 150 damage after intimidate2 but before steak(which i don't use). with the armor nerf, that will probably go up to 200 damage before steak or more. that means she can hit my health twice before its gone and i'm dead. even in a group of 20 against an elder, everyone will be dead before she is, or everyone must constantly heal the tank, who becomes nothing but a meatshield and all that work yields 7x heavy duty leather.

what ruins pvp isn't buffs or armor, it's buffs and armor together. personally, if all professions had our level of power and rifleman was taken down a peg, pvp would be completely balanced except for CM and Jedi.

the combat balance = nerfbat swung by ty cobb to everyone but the weakest profs and jedi.

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You're right about the armor and buffs together. You're right about NS, they wouldn't be soloable anymore. That's what i want though. My toon can solo almost everything in-game, that sux IMO. I want the group factor to come back into the game. Keep the Power Boost function, but have a different type for each profession where they can get a little 10 minute "buff" like TK gets.

One option i thought of while reading this was, you can have one or the other, but not both. Have it to where u can wear armor only or have buffs only. Just ideas.

Message Edited by RoninGaiden on 10-18-2004 04:41 PM

Specialized armor is the first thing that needs to be addressed. Composite and Ubese (and RIS, but who's actually going to USE RIS?) are the only viable armor types, and Ubese is only useful when fighting creature mobs. We need a reason to have different types of armor. Whether that's just shifting around protections or completely revamping the armor system is up to the devs, but I'm sick of seeing a Composite Clone Army. Not to say I would like to see, say, Bone Armor make a comeback, but Chitin, Padded, etc should have a place.

To the person who said we should not be able to dabble, I completely disagree. Dabbling in other professions is fantastic and integral to the game. There just needs to be a clear benefit for actually mastering the class. If I want to be a jack of all trades, fine, but I shouldn't be able to swing a gaderiffi baton nearly as quickly as someone who is a master, or with anywhere near as much power. With Swordsman this is somewhat of a non-issue, as next to Rifleman it is probably one of the least non-master friendly professions, however TKA and Fencer are very often taken up and used almost as effectively with just a couple 4th level blocks as you would be using them at Master.

I love solo content. There's a lot of fun to be had when you don't have to find a group just to clear out the mobs in front of your factories. However, the level at which we can solo things in this game is absurd. I shouldn't be able to solo a NS elder. I shouldn't be able to solo Krayts. I shouldn't be able to solo the Corvette. And yet I can. I expect that we will be majorly nerfed, and I welcome it in the interest of a better game. However, with this "nerf" we must be sure that there is adequate compensation. If I'm going to gather a group of 10+ to take out an elder, it damn well better be worth my time. I don't care if I get stinkers for loot once in a while, or even a majority of the time, but killing 50 elders and not getting a single worthwhile piece of loot is unacceptable in my mind.

I would like for there to be very defined roles for specific professions. For instance, Swordsman should be a damage dealing class primarily with only moderate defenses (much as it is now). You should be rewarded for following your specific role but not penalized for trying to expand the role. Dabbling in other professions should allow for me to gain a small amount of the role of said professions, but not enough to create one super profession. What I mean by this is that the bulk of a profession's power should be in its master box. I feel that if I want to be a Swordsman, I should be a master. If I want a bit of extra defense, sure, I can pick up some TKA skills, but in all the defenses from 4xx4 will be not even a quarter of what I'd get if I went to Master. This would prevent extremely overpowered templates from forming, but would also somewhat limit those grinding up the professions. I don't know of any way to solve that right now.

The AP and AR system does need to be looked at. While the system makes sense in concept, in practice all it does it make professions like Pistoleers useless in any of the highend content. There should never be a point where any one profession will be completely useless. They don't need to be dealing damage, but they should have some role that they're filling in a group. If I take a Pistoleer to the DWB, for example, they will do nothing to the SBDs due to the very low AP on their weapons vs the AR3 on the SBDs. That's unacceptable. At the very least, they should be able to apply some sort of state effects to the mobs.

Going along with that, 100% resistances need to be completely removed in all but the most extreme cases. There should never be a point where any class, no matter their role, is completely incapable of dealing damage.

One problem I foresee with all of this, though, is that new credits will not be entering the economy at the rate they currently are due to the necessity of grouping for most high-paying missions. While this does serve to stop inflation, it also effectively stops new players from entering into the economy. Veteran players will surely have millions of credits and tons of equipment stashed away, but new players will have to start from scratch. With no money leaving the economy to lower the currently inflated prices, it will be nearly impossible for new players to get far enough to afford decent weapons or armor. Again, I don't know how to solve this problem but am very interested in seeing what SOE attempts.

Well, that's the end of my rant. Seems to be more a wishlist than speculation, but oh well.

Edit: That's a lie. I also want to add that the new HAM system looks good and as long as they can work out some of the kinks with it from the first time they tried to push it out, it should be a great change assuming it's implemented around the same time as all these other changes.

Message Edited by Etozae on 10-18-2004 08:53 PM