Teras Kasi Archive

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sunstone1 wrote:

But in a age of galactic travel-superstardestroyers, super flamethrowers, proton grenades, lightsabers, vibro weapons , kimos and rancors and blasters- a spacefaring kung fu master should not reign absolutely surpreme.

jaik longstrider

bria

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Ok, nice post and i almost agree completely.

I agree with the responses to date and let me add my own along the same lines.

There are a few things I could do with understanding a little better though, are you trying to say that a Teras Kasi is the most powerfull profession in the galaxy and should be toned down ? Or are you saying there are too many of us around ?

I would say in an RPG respect what you are saying is 100% correct and TKA wouldn't be the dominant fighting force at all given that everyone has increadibly powerfull weaponry at their disposal, but we don't really have a choice in how many people choose to take the TKA path and therefore can't decide how many people should be using this skill to hold with the 'mood' of the game. Unfortunate indeed..

I see the point, but in trying to make the game playable and enjoyable for all, regardless of whether youprefer a ranged or melee style, we have what we have. For myself I see good balance. If I find myself in combat with a ranged opponent at range, I am most often killed if I cannot close into melee range. If I can get my opponent distracted enough not to notice that I am getting close, then I can usually win. Both TKA and ranged need to keep foremost in their minds what their effective ranges are. To me this is balance.

Now if we were to take the position that we want realism as most people know it from the movies and real life, all players would, 95% of the time, be killed by a single blaster shot that landed in main body mass. Pick any of the movies and watch the armored troopers fall from single shots. There are hundreds of examples. I actually prefer that, and am used to that kind of action in prior games, but you would have to agree that most people agree that being able to take 4-10 blaster hits makes more of a battle. We operate this way, totally unrealistically and totally against the culture of Star Wars, because this is a game and no one wants to be out of the action in the first shot.

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Coastromo wrote:

Now if we were to take the position that we want realism as most people know it from the movies and real life, all players would, 95% of the time, be killed by a single blaster shot that landed in main body mass. Pick any of the movies and watch the armored troopers fall from single shots.

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nice post sunstone. always good to get an informed perspective on the martial arts, seeing as it seems that the melee profs were implemented without any real working knowledge of the fighting styles.

however, as for the history of the martial arts that you outlined, you should keep in mind that unarmed training may accompany a soldiers training, which focuses more on weapon use, yet this doesnt account for higher levels of the martial art in which the body weapon can become superior to the melee object weapon.

soldiers are not trained with mastery in mind. mastery perhaps over a small set of skills, but nothing approaching the breadth of mind/body control one attains in mastery of a martial art. further, from a historical perspective most soldiers were little more thanlightly trained and armed fodder, and as such they were given the skills that were most effective with the least amount of mastery- hence, armed combat.

im not saying thattoday'ssoldiers are not highly trained and effective, justthat from a historical perspective certain types of weapons (mainly polearms and forms of long knives) were favored for troops over unarmed combat due to the relative difficulty inturning the human body into a killing machine comparedto a stick with ablade at the end of it.

it seems to come down to a question of artistry and utility: weapons skills are easier to use at lower levels while the body weapon requires much more training/conditioning to become effective with. while it is interesting to note that teras kasi are the only combat prof in the game to receive any indication of artfulness in their titles, it is still sad that mastery of any elite prof ultimately requires the same amount of skill points and ends up, in a sense, no better than any other, thus making allelite combat prof masteries about on par with each other... at least in terms of skill points. for game mechanics, it seems that anyrange of combat should be the most superior at that range. which, with a few notable exceptions (cough... rifleman) seems to be the way it is. a melee prof, at melee range, will kick ranged butt. big time.

however, this brings up an interesting omission from the gcw: friendly fire. while the melee profhas to use tactics to use theirstyle (ie, getting in melee range), ranged combat lacks any necessity for tactics other than staying within a rather sizeablerange and maintaining line of sight. this hinders group encounters greatly, in that aranged combatant has no worry of hitting any of his teammates withhis fire. there is nonecessary careinvolved in a bunch of rifleman strafe-firing their way through a battle. or concern for who got hit by the bullet thatmissed your target. at no point does the ranged combatant need to make use of anysort of caution when firing their weapon, greatly reducing the real life limitations ofprojectile weapons.

as an ex-marine im sure you are aware of the things you cant dowhen travelling in a unit usingranged weapons, for fear of harming your own troops. none of these limitiations exist in swg for ranged attacks. you just simply cant hit your teammate. the devs seem so concerned about people spamming their attacks, yet they do nothing about friendlyfire. ifplayers had to actually beresponsible for who got hit with each shot, ranged combat would change dramatically. spamming shots would decrease dramatically, as would the lack of tactics necessary for battle in swg.

i say, for every cry to nerf tka, we should respond with a cry for the inclusion of friendly fire.

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Young_Padawan wrote:
Stuff that has no bearing on the game, is questionable as to it's authenticity and will never be implemented in any form, that people should stop mentioning because TKA is a regular class that takes the same amount of skill points as any other class and anyone can be easily.

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Any comparison of Teras Kasi and anything is "is questionable as to it's authenticity" and should not be considered in lieu of hard numbersand howthose numbersaffect game balance. What people think they are supposed to "be" is a moot point.

And when you use the quote function, please have it contain an actualquote lest you damage your credibility.

People still play pikemen? Huh, go figure.

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Young_Padawan wrote:
People still play pikemen? Huh, go figure.

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Message Edited by antares_Kauri on 03-04-2004 03:42 PM

Hehe good posts here :}

But remember how masy times Luke or Han was shot at by trained storm troopers? (I lost count)

But did they ever hit them?

Hmm they must have dabbled in fencer a bit to make the UBER PVP movie template.

All and all TKA is a very ballanced class when it comes to PVP. That is to say a "Pure" TKA that doe not have any other skills effecting the outcome.

I hope they leave it alone and fix Pikeman for god sakes.