Swordsman Archive
Thread: WEEKLY EMAIL TO THE DEVS: 07/25/03
Ok, fellow swordsmen, here it comes....this is basically what i intendto reportto the Devs inour first weekly mail. Iplan on sending it out tomorrow around this time, which leaves us 24 hours to discuss any possible amendments. Earlier on someone posted that there might be some discussion coming up in which order our issues should be reported. I personally think that we shouldn'tgive ittoo much importance because i think the use of the term "top 5 issues" is meant more in relation to the total number ofissues of a profession (just think about the number of issues my poor Marksman or Creature Handler colleagues will be confronted with)rather than beinga ranking inbetween those 5 issues. In addition to that it has been stated by the Devs on Dev Tracker forum that all of the five issues will be discussed by themand in addition to that we've been offered this tool not only to report issues but also to ask questions and i guess starting to rank questions would make this more complicated than it should be.But as usual, please let me know if you don't agree....
So here we go:
1. Balancing
- Offense:
Generally thereseems to beconsent in the community about a healthy damage output / XP gain.
Yet we feel unhappy about our abilities in ranged in ranged combat, which get even more important when PvP'ing:
Due to the problem of not being in complete sync with the servers resulting in a deviation of accurate display of Player vs. Target positioning and the fact of not being able to hit on the run, attacking a kiting ranged NPC or Player gets almost impossible, because of being constantly "Out of range".
Offered solutions:
- some type of "sticking / closing" skill
- remove the "Out of Range"-HAM-penalty
- a ranged posture changing skill (combined with "intimidate" for example)
- some type of "ranged defense / avoidance" skill or special
In addition to that the number "misses" seems fairly high
- Defense:
As our profession mostly consits of tanking and as we don't have any knockdown, kiting or other ranged abilities or specials, we think that our professions defense abilities / toughness could still be improved a little.
One of the reasons for that might be....
2. The negative modifier
Basically we would like to get more information about it: what it exactly stands for, what it depends on and if there is a way, by leveling up for example, to improve that modifier.
We collected a couple of observations about it in the following post and it doesn't seem to have any obvious pattern or formula eventhough a modifier of -18 wasobservedmore oftenthan others:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=swordsman&message.id=579
3. There is an issue with two aspects of our skilltree:
- Two-Hand Mind Hit 2 has been moved from the Expert Finesse Box to the Master Finesse Box which leaves the gains for Expert Finesse completely blank. As combat XP are the hardest XP to earn it is rather frustrating not being rewarded with a new skill or special when reaching Expert Finesse.
Offeredsolution: An additional skill or special dealing with the issues we have in ranged combat mentioned above
- There is an overall feeling that 2h sweep and 2h area attack are too similar in what they do. Besides the fact that their description only differsin one being for multiple and the other for single targets there is no noticable difference between them when being used.
Offered solution: Maybe change sweep into a special comparable to knockdown
4. "Scythe"-issue
Eventhough we get certification for a scythe, it is mentioned nowhere in the weaponsmith tree and so far there don't seem to be any around
5. Weaponsvs. Profession description
As it is right now our profession is being offered the following weapons:
2 swords (two-handed curved), 3 axes (heavy, two-handed, vibro) a power hammer and a (so far) non existant scythe.
As our profession is described as "Swordsmen" a big part of the community percieves it as rather frustrating that our newbie weapon is a heavy axe and that there are only 2 swords to choose from. Many people who pick this profession do it simply because they want to be swordsmen, and get rather disappointed once they realize there are only two type of "real" swords offered to us by the game.
Furthermore we think that there seems to be an imbalance between the positioning of our certifications in our tree and their respective shematics in the weaponsmith tree and the fact that the demand for ranged weapons is bigger than the one for melee weapons, which results in weaponsmiths concentrating more on ranged weapons doesn't really help either.
We are well aware that the stats on our weapons haven't been maxed out yet as they depend on experimentation and quality of resources used, which on their turn haven't probably reached their peak as well yet and there is also the word going around that one or some of the themeparks / story arc's might offer new weapons, yet we would really like to see more swords at our disposal.
Offered solutions:
- pleaseincrease number and variety of "real" swords
- please consider offering a sword as newbie weapon
- please make ditanium steeleasier accessible to weaponsmiths as we are being told by them that it's being needed for most of our weapons to be crafted, but seems to belacking on some servers, whichwould probably straighten out the imbalance some between ranged weapons vs. melee weapons crafted.
Thats it.....
please let me know what you think about it and if you would like to see certain things being amended, but please keep in mind that we should try to avoid getting too much into details and discuss things to death,because i think it wouldn't help anyone....and then there are still next weeks mail, the ones of the weeks to follow....months....years....
Thanks for your feedback and i will talk to you soon. For now it's rather late here and i will soon go to bed. I will check on your repliesfirst thing in the morning.
Happy wielding
Gorecki
hmmm...servers must have been running nice and smoothly all night considering the amount of feedback i got so far...lol
Anyway...just to let you know that i plan on adding a "penalty when shooting while running", as it was proposed in another post here to the offered solutions in balancing...
5 more hours to go 
Gorecki
Fantastic job! I wholeheartedly agree. I am excited to see what the devs will say about it =) I wouldnt change a thing.
Great work Gorecki.
I like your emphasis on the ranged issues. People say, "well in RL a swordsman could never kill a gunfighter" Thats partly but not totally true and ina SWG world sabres deflect and even re-aim bullets I think there should be some defensive skill similar to that - albeit not nearly that powerful.
I spent a nice chunk of time getting Master Brawler for the defensive aspects and it helped a bit but we are still not tough enough.
That's it for now...
Iag Iag
Thanks Gorecki! Sounds like a good start.
The only critique I have is that I think maybe you should stress the importance of toughness/defense a little more, since we are the tanks. Most of cannot or will not wear the top armors due to the HAM penalties, so we need more built in defenses to stand up to those really tough mobs! Just my opinion though.
Thanks and keep on fightin for us! Swordsman - the stepchildren of SWG 
Should be no problem i guess, CaptMorgan
...i'm going to remove the "little" part from "improve defense a little" and mention the HAM penalty on armor in that sentence.
I basically intend toreach a certain balance so that we don't create the impression of wanting an (..and sorry for the expreesion ...) "Uber"-swordsman
Thanks for the feedback
Sounds good Gorecki. Only thing I would add is that the Power-Hammer is such a crappy weapon. It'd be nice if you mentioned somewhere that it's standard stats need to be increased.
Other than that, looks like you are a great corrispondant. I'm looking forward to all the WEEKLY EMAIL TO THE DEVSs.
Also, I saw someone last night weilding a huge thick sword. I asked him what it was and he said it was a 2H cleaver. If he's telling the truth, that's the first time I've ever seen one.
I asked him for the stats and where he got it, but he didn't respond.
Doesn't the cleaver look neat, Adam ?!
It's basically my favourite weapon if going by looks...did you notice the reflections ?
Unfortunately i haven't come across any so far with good stats....but i hope that it still has room for improvement.
Regarding your Power Hammer issue:
Last night after having posted this message here i realized that i did forget to add a sentence in the likes of "Could you please review the stats of Power Hammer".
After that, and i should have maybe created a post about it earlier on because that's the reason why i want to give us at least a day before sending it out, i was a little bit struggling with myself if i should still add it because somehow i am convinced, and i also mentioned that my in message, that experimentation and quality of resources haven't reached their peak yet and in that context i find it rather logic that what is supposed to be our most powerful weapon, at least if going by the rank of certifications, probably requires also the most out of a weaponsmith to craft, if wanting acceptable stats.
I have seen though that there are quite a few posts, also older ones, expressing some unhappyness about this weapon....especially about its penalties....eventhough, and you can also find that info in some of the posts out there, damage output seems to be already rather nice on some servers....
But tell you what: in preparation for next weeks mail i'm gonna call in a Swordsmen Round Table in the next couple of days treating the Power Hammer issue.
As we (still) are a rather small community and therefore are able, as the last couple of days showed, to work out topics rather nicely i think we will find some consent about this issue because, andi might get a loud outcry from you guys for this statement, i am a tiny little bit worried if we will even be able to get 5 issues together by next week....so prove me wrong...hehe
As usual, let me know if there is something you don't agree with...
Gorecki
What about the maul...does nobody know about this thing...other than the lightsaber this is our most powerful weapon...and there is also no mention of this in the weaponsmith tree either.
Cleetus McCoy
Just to inform you guys that the first weekly mail has "just left the building"....
Thanks for all your help and input this week and i'm looking forward working with you on next week's mail
Gorecki