Just about once a week, we do a feature called, “19 answers”. Why 19? Well, we answer 19 questions on one week and 19 questions the next week. With each two-week cycle, we answer a topical question from each of the 38 correspondents. These represent current issues, interests and concerns of the community.ffice
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Here are the answers for Week 2 in the cycle: Bounty Hunter, Brawler, Carbineer, Combat Medic, Commando, Creature Handler, Fencer, Galactic Civil War, Jedi, Marksman, Pikeman, Pistoleer, Ranger, Rifleman, Scout, Smuggler, Squad Leader, Swordsman, Teras Kasi Artist and this week, we have a bonus answer too:
Bounty Hunter
On the tentative Pub. 9 notes (one on corr. forum) you had put down that the INVISIBLE MARK problem was fixed. Is it fixed and on the publish, but left out from the patch notes?
I checked with QA to make sure this fix was in and we are verifying it on Test Center.
Brawler
Dizzy currently only works on NPCs and PCs. Using dizzy on any creature results in nothing more than than the icon appearing beside the creature's name. Is it intended that dizzy not work on creatures and is working as designed? If it is working correctly, what can we expect to make this ability useful against creatures?
Dizzy is meant for PC’s and NPC’s and not creatures. There is a slight effect, but it is minimal. This is definitely a topic we can discuss further in our upcoming Combat Balance focus threads.
Carbineer
Nova, were you able to determine if just asking for basic definitions of what the state effects do would any more acceptable as a question, without the internal mathematics revealed?
There are states, postures and modifiers. Some combat conditions, such as Knockdowns, are actually postures. The states and their simple descriptions are as follows:
Aim: Gives an attack bonus, it can be used up to three times to get the maximum bonus and lasts for three shots.
Berserk: Increases attack modifiers and increases unarmed damage.
Blind: Lowers attack and defense modifiers.
Center of Being: Adds to the chance that block, dodge or counter-attack will go off.
Conceal: Allows a rifleman to attack a creature without it attacking them. A higher skill modifier improves this chance.
Dizzy: Adds the chance for the character to fall back down when attempting to stand.
Intimidate: Greatly lowers damage potential and slightly lowers defense modifiers.
Rally: Increases attack and defense modifiers.
Stun: Lowers attack modifier and slightly reduces damage potential.
Take Cover: provides a bonus to defense.
Tumbling: Increases defense modifiers.
Warcry: Adds a delay to the targets action queue.
Combat Medic
Since the start of the game, Combat Medics have debated amongst themselves as to their role in the game. Are we to be the best battlefield healers? Are we to be the offensive crowd/control juggernauts? What part did the devs have in mind for our profession in the overall design?
Without an answer to guide us, we've each chosen our own approach, taken our own paths, and made our own role. Some have tried to use the profession for pure healing, yet our healing abilities are far below that of our Doctor counterparts. Some have taken the role of chemical warfare agents and use their abilities to infect others with poisons and diseases, even though our offensive capability is extremely lacking in certain areas while somewhat overpowered in others. With the Combat Rebalance on the horizon, and all the major changes that entails, the Combat Medic community would like to know what role our profession is meant to play in the grand scheme of things after all is said and done.
What is the developer’s vision of the Combat Medic Profession, post Combat Rebalance? Are we to be Combatants with a bit of healing ability or Healers with a bit of combat?"
The developer’s vision of Combat Medics is to be exactly that - - medics that have abilities to heal players in combat. Optimally, the player should have the choice to make that decision to be “be combatants with a bit of healing ability or healers with a bit of combat” and this is another great example of something the correspondents and I will want community input on during the testing while the CB sandbox is up.
Commando
As Commandos, we have heard that many of our issues will be covered within the Combat Balance, but beyond that we have no details on the specifics being addressed. Specifically we would like to know about the plans for non-functional lootable Heavy Weapon Skill Mods (effect skills not present in Commando Profession since Beta), HAR issues.
This is an early answer and is subject to change, but one of our goals for Commandos in the Combat Balance is to change the way Heavy Weapon modifiers work. In simple terms, instead of the modifiers coming from the skill tree, the mods would be available through skill tapes and other means. The skill tree would then be used for something else (as of yet undetermined – there are some things on the table, but we wont know until the Combat Balance sandbox is live).
When the Combat Balance begins (which will be soon), the correspondents and some players will be brought on to a special Combat Balance server. We will support that with some In Development threads and other communication tools. I’ll also do some update posts, too.
Creature Handler
We have been told that there must be a delay on calling pets due to "exploits." However, the existing timer on calling pets after combat seems to negate any possible exploitive behavior already. Further, this creates a problem when running missions in a group... as players usually travel on vehicles (which most pets can't keep up with), causing the Creature Handler to wait 15-45 seconds at each lair for his 1-3 pets to appear. Most groups are unwilling to wait this long at every lair, and start attacking before the CH is ready.
Will you consider removing the timer on calling pets when combat has not recently taken place? And if not, please explain exactly what kind of "exploits" you think are possible that the combat timer alone isn't enough to prevent?
I will never discuss the details of exploit techniques in an open forum. As far as removing the timer on calling pets, it is something that the devs might consider removing, but it is a major hurdle to winning that discussion. The difficulty is measuring when and how combat begins and ends. Controlling that programmatically is a high level challenge. The machine can’t predict when combat is going to begin and end and can only react to it once it has begun and that is usually too late to prevent an unfair player death. When do you stop and start combat? I’m very open to hearing your ideas on how we might solve that issue so I can present the options to the team.
Fencer
Will Fencers ever be able to duel wield their weapons?
Yes, Fencers will be able to duel wield at some point. Probably after the Jump to Lightspeed.
Galactic Civil War
Can you ask if it is possible to get faction chat channel?
Yes, Faction Chat Channels are something that we would like to see in the game. They would be Overt only though. How do you feel about that?
Jedi
Our sabers have been changed to Lightsaber damage, which everyone is very happy about. However the addition of "vuln" to all creatures causes armor piercing 2 to not function, due to the way "vuln" is calculated in the armor system (It negates all armor piercing). This means that while nothing has an actual protection from lightsaber damage, everything essentially is getting a 56% damage reduction. This makes our lightsaber damage output extremely low especially in PVP. Can something be done to fix this? Possibly increase the damage on our sabers the appropriate amount would be the easiest solution. (As I doubt changing the core function of vuln to be a time efficient endeavor).
Lightsabers have been balanced against the system after the combat balance. For PvP specifically, Jedi Knights and above will be balanced for PvP play.
Marksman
With the upcoming combat balance are there plans to add to the master marksman box? (such as the proposed aim2, a longer duration aim command.)
There are plans to add something to the master Marksman box. This is something we will definitely discuss in upcoming focus threads.
Pikeman
What is the dev's vision regarding Pikeman.
What Pikeman are looking for in the answer: Profession definition, including capabilities (strengths, weaknesses) roles (group, gcw, combat) and goodies unique to Pikeman which we'll be receiving in the combat balance.
I am in almost constant discussion with the correspondent on this issue and the dev team is looking at the information. I know you guys are eager to see some changes and very soon we will be discussing all of these details. The most important component to this is to keep giving good, solid feedback to your correspondent so I can bring these opinions to the development team while the CB sandbox is live.
Pistoleer
Pistoleer is a profession facing some pretty challenging problems. We've been told that the Combat Balance aims to fix a lot of these problems. Can we look forward to sweeping changes (revamped specials, added functionality, speed, significant number tweaking, etc), or primarily only basic bug fixes?
You can look forward to sweeping changes in terms of functionality, speed, etc. But again, I stress, we talk about this topic a great deal in a conceptual form. The rubber is going to meet the road when we bring the correspondents and other players onto the Combat Balance Sandbox server. When that happens, we’ll be able to ask all the important questions and make changes based on the answers as opposed to all this nebulous discussion (which is a result of asking specific questions before specific data is available. All I can communicate this point are goals).
Ranger
Do the developers consider any part of the "Outdoorsman" proposal viable? If so, which parts might possibly be implemented in the future?
Absolutely. I am a fan of the "Outdoorsman" proposal presented by the Ranger community and whenever an opportunity comes up, I have pushed it as an issue and will continue to do so.
Rifleman
Why do we have +40 (or so) at 60m with a laser rifle, and then -50 at 64m? Will range modifiers be reviewed in the new balances?
Again, absolutely. These changes are the types of things we want to address in the Combat Balance.
Scout
The /forage ability has been a longtime source of contention with the Scout community. After the Chef revamp, the usefulness of foraged items has dropped to almost nil. Scout foraged items are used a cheap pet food and for fishing, but rarely for anything else. What is the Developer intended function of /forage and is there a plan to upgrade the forage-able items to be more in line with the Chef revamp or to make the /forage command more useful?
There is no plan to change forage, but it is something the devs are open to. Having any changes made to novice professions is going to be a challenge, but I agree that this is something we should lobby for change on.
Smuggler
"Smugglers have been promised 'love' since September 2003, which we believe is now coming in Publish 11. Mr. Stangl [TH] has stated that smuggler is 'more of a space profession'. Given that the expansion is being described as a 'twitch-based fighter', how, specifically, is Jump to Lightspeed going to bring Smugglers closer to actual Smuggling, as opposed to giving us stuff to loot, things to slice and having our own ship to modify?"
This issue is being discussed internally and as soon as I have some news, I will report to you on it. Sorry, but I can’t discuss it in any more detail than that currently. I know Smuggler’s are dying to find out what’s going on and as soon as humanly possible, I will let you know.
Squad Leader
What is the SL revamp timeframe?. It's still going take place after the combat rebalance, correct?
Its going to be released in the same publish.
Swordsman
The Swordsmen profession was hit particularly hard by changes to bleeds as a profession that had relied on large bleeds to deal damage against heavily armored targets. While this change sought to prevent certain abuses and imbalances the result is that bleeds are, for the most part, useless. With the combat rebalance will we see any improvements to bleeds that make bleeding attacks useful again?
We won’t see improvements in bleeds in terms of damage because of the very imbalances you mentioned. Since XP is tied to how much damage you do, there were situations where this was over-leveraged. To answer your question though, this is something we can, and will, talk about during the Combat balance.
Teras Kasi Artist
Can I tell the TK's that the Black Sun Razor Knucklers will be available with the combat balance if that is the case?
Yes, Black Sun Razor Knucklers will be back in the game after the combat balance.
Bonus Answer
What is the biggest, meanest, toughest critter in the game, and where does he (or she) spawn?
One of the developers who reads the boards a lot noticed the correspondent’s question and came up with this answer, “I was testing some changes for Publish 9, and figured that since I would be there for a while, why not host a royal rumble?”
(At this point, the dev spawned these creatures on the development server. For those that were in Beta, you'll remember what it looks like - - it looks a lot like Tatooine 
)
Location: Grand Arena Flats, Tatooine.
Contestants:
Krayt Dragon Ancient - Tatooine
Peko Peko Albatross - Naboo
A Gungan - Naboo (Because who doesn’t like to see Gungans die?)
Lord Nyax - Corellia
Gronda Juggernaut - Corellia
Graul Marauder - Dantooine
Kiin Dray - Dathomir
Nightsister Elder - Dathomir
Blurrg Raptor - Endor
Gorax - Endor
Endraged Dune Kimogila - Lok
Captain Hassk - Rori
Mire Marauder - Talus
Mad Angler - Yavin IV
Acklay - Yavin IV
AT-AT - Anywhere they please
Believe it or not, the Acklay was the first to die. This was followed closely by the Gungan in a sort of, "Oh look, a gungan" sort of way.
What amazed me the most; was Lord Nyax coming in third out of that bunch. He stayed away for the most part and just plucked away with his blaster. Worked well for him until he got the unlucky attention of the Gorax though or he might have gone the distance.
Fight carried on in the way that fights do while I continued on my crafting. Captain Hassk and the Mad Angler had died at some point and I returned just in time to see the Mire Marauder go down. The Gorax and the Peko Peko Albatross were having a bit of a one-on-one duke'em out, the royal rumble not being their thing. The Krayt Ancient though was more than willing to welcome all comers; he appeared to be fighting everything at once and dropping them one by one. In the end it proved to be his demise with only the AT-AT, Nightsister Elder and Lord Nyax surviving to tell about it.
The Gorax proved himself to be the best of the two and returned to the fray, not liking the looks of the AT-AT I imagine he went for the Nightsister Elder instead. Kill shot though was provided by Lord Nyax, ever the opportunist, who then paid for the folly of reminding the two giants that he was still around.
Gorax came into the fight with more HAM but it appeared that the AT-AT was the one with the stronger punch. It really would have come right down to the wire but an untimely server crash will always have me wondering who it would have been.
Since the AT-AT does not yet spawn on his own, I guess the answer is: The Gorax of Endor.
Im off to catch a plane to Fan Fest - - see you there!
Have a great weekend!
Jedi Padawan
Rebel Colonel
