MP Imbalance Issue: Guns + Force vs Sabers + Force

[Torquemada]

I agree FGStratus, I don't want to see the gunners completely neutered, but something needs to give. Maybe a situation where you don't get to use the force and guns, but you would be allowed to throw points at a passive sort of force resistance. Maybe some extra equipment for gunners like jet packs, grappling hooks? I don't think you could take force powers away from gunners without providing something else in there place. This, I believe would also add depth to the game. Maybe that's an idea for a mod.

[Orangina_Rouge]

Well at last some gun users who are not sayin that they rule the world but posing some interesting suggestions

 

I agree the Repeater alt fire may seem a bit too much , personnally i manage to counter it by either pushing and then escaping or dodging for coming close enough to pull ......but no dount that this is the most powerful gun attack , it must not be taken lightly

 

Also i think the idea to spend force points for weapons is good, maybe it s not really making sense coz after all using a weapon is not force dependent but it would be wise .....or make classes a la MoS

 

Else i think the gun issue is not as bad as some may say here, force pull is quite efficient once u practice it and u can come in it s range by force jumping , rolling etc ........

Force pull is not easy to counter for a gunner coz if he try to use a force power then he isn t spamming .......leaving the saberist escape or close to use force pull ( if the power is force absorp then generally the saberist will have time to flee and come back after force is consumed )

Also i dunno what some guy here smoked but there is no way u can get trough a saber defence with blaster fire, saberist moving or not .....if some guy shoot me with one blaster i just close on him and watch the silly mofo die by his own fire

 

Personnally i use a lot saber but guns too depending on the situation and got no trouble gettin on top on FFA servers

 

Well to conclude i would say that personnally i find this game pretty balanced , the only issues i can see are :

 

-Repeater alt fire a bit too much

-Force drain too

-The issue u pointed about force gunners not spending force points on saber skills

[fgStratus]

Pissed Jedi, I am not attacking gun users as being no-skill or any such thing. And, as I previously stated, I don't want the game balanced by removing guns (ie playing in a saber only server.) I want the game balanced by tweaking the dynamics. Granted, it is more difficult than the current alexander-approach employed by Raven, but it would also be more enjoyable.

 

Orangina_Rouge, you essentially pose two ways for a saberist to counter a gunner. He can either force jump and roll towards the gunner in an attempt to force pull the gunner's weapon, or he can try to survive and run. Force jumping and rolling is also available to the gunner, so theoretically you should never catch up to him applying those two methods, and he can push you if you jump, knocking you down which would result in you getting pummeled. Also, when you finish a roll, you are temporarily stunned, leaving you once more open to fire. Your second method isn't a solution. If you run from every gun user then you are essentially admitting their superiority in a fair fight.

 

Finally, you can't deflect blaster fire when you are using a force power or attacking. Thus, the gunner is under no pressure to shoot you if you are able to deflect since, by being able to deflect, you are unable to attack him in any way.

[Orangina_Rouge]

Well u got good points

 

Also i used to be saber only but switched to mix between guns and saber depending on situation as i told ya and to compete in FFA servers against ppl shooting myriads of noobs ( a saber will never be faster in this area )

 

Personnally i didn t found yet a gunner who really gave me troubles ....maybe i m performing well , maybe no good gunner on servers i play ( well would be hard coz i play a lot online )

Maybe coz the gunner allways have to backpedal and then can t maneuver so quickly ( and finish to be stuck somewhere ) , except on yavin ( wich is surprinsingly the map where i think i use guns more often )

 

i m not for saber only servers too and if your suggestions can help ppl to have more fun then it s ok

For now i m enjoying this game and find it quite balanced ( well having played DoD a lot recently ....i can hardly find worst balance )

[chiablo]

I tend to rely heavily on the Saber. If there's going to be some space between me and my opponent, I'll switch to a gun (sniper rifle, Rocket Launcher, or Electric burp gun.) but if I'm going to be within close proximity, I'll swap for my trusty saber.

 

If you have a problem with gun weilders, get level 3 saber defence. If you see them with the rocket launcher or repeater, run... force jump away... let someone else be their whore.

 

if you are going to moan that the repeater keeps killing you, perhaps you deserve to die

 

just my two battle droids worth: :bdroid2:

[COLT 45]

I'm probably in the minority, but I think the game is PERFECT as it is. I have no problems killing people with guns, sabers, light or dark forces. There is no one person that is impossible to defeat. I don't understand why there is so much complaining. Maybe some people just need to practice more?

 

I really hope LucasArts doesn't change anything signifcant in future patches except to maybe fix bugs. I would hate it if the game is reduced to a level where I have to play by someone else's rules instead of the game's original intentions.

[Schwolop]

The other option people is to stop caring so much about your score. I had the best game of my life yesterday on that level with all the walkways. And my final score was -17. Who cares? Let the people who want to shoot you - shoot you. I get my fun from the times when I manage to grip the guy, throw him in the air, and impale him on my sabre when he comes down...

If people want to use guns when I've got my sabre - that's fine. They probably will kill me, but I respawn with my sabre in hand (especially now I changed the default weapon to sabre rather than pea shooter) and don't have to go looking for weapons the whole time.

My main point is just the following : while a guy using guns may beat you in score, if you prefer to just have fun with the sabre, you'll eventually cease caring about your score. And in my case, I finished on -17 and people still congratulated me on a well played match. And in the long term, it's all about the fun, not the score.

[fgStratus]

Colt, the fact that you've "never found a gunner that gives you trouble" already discredits you. It means that, assuming guns and sabers are 100% balanced, you have never played someone better than you. However, since guns are clearly better than lightsabers, it actually means that you have always played people significantly worse than you. Thus, your experiences with JK2 are minimal.

 

Chiablo- Level 3 saber defense only blocks attacks from the E11 and the bowcaster, and by blocking you become unable to attack. If you run, then, once more, you are admitting that the gunner has an advantage over you by virtue of him having a gun.

 

 

And to the people who say that they "use weapons depending on the situation", yes, that is an effective strategy, but it doesn't pertain to the post. If you follow this train of thought, the game turns from "Jedi Knight" to "Jedi with Rocket Launcher and Machine Gun Who Never Uses His Lightsaber Because It Sucks." The lightsaber has always been the symbol of the Jedi, as it stands now, it is simply a last resort weapon.

[Nax]

I'd just like to point out that someone useing a saber CAN do things that someone using a gun cannot.

 

Namely, all the nifty rolls and wall runs and flips & stuff. Not THAT useful, but they're there.

 

Nax

[Emon]

It's not an imbalance at all. Gunners always have an advantage over saberists because of the range and firepower they have. You cannot possibly expect JK2 to let a saberist run around and be winning against gunners. It just won't happen. I've played against saberists who I just can't hit with anything; they push all my stuff back at me, and block everything else. It's possible but hard.

 

If you want sabers to be balanced, play in a sabers only game. That's what the option is for.

[Torquemada]

Yeah, if your gonna use the saber, you have to learn to run when the guy with Rockets shows up (even though they start flaming you as soon as you do that).

 

Also I use pull A LOT and it doesn't always work like you might hope. Yeah I can pull the Rocket launcher out of his hand but doesn't it then ready the next most powerful weapon? Those situations get messy if you don't kill in the first swing (which I don't do often enough).

[Torquemada]

Wow, Schwolop, I'm getting all choked up here man, you nailed it right on the head (sniffle).

[aletoledo]

though the alt-fire weapons are the deadlist with a limited way to counter them....I personaly like the challenge of figuring how to fight them. the game has only been out 2 weeks already, if it was like every other game I played and I had no trouble fighting anyone with anything, then I would probably stop playing (why I stopped playing JK1 after the first month as a matter of fact).

 

nerfing anything at this stage is just premature.

[Morkath]

you guys talk about pulling guns from peoples hands like its easy. I used force pull constantly and as my main power for the first three days, not ONCE did I pull a weapon out of someones hands. Nor has anyone I have talked to about it in the jediknight irc room.

So...did I get a gimped copy or what? heh

If force pull is the answer to guns it needs to have its chance of pulling upped to 50% at least.

[Elenkis]

>>Chiablo- Level 3 saber defense only blocks attacks from the E11 and the bowcaster, and by blocking you become unable to attack.<<

 

Uhm, it also blocks and reflects blaster pistol primary/alt, Repeater primary and Flachette primary. In fact firing the primary fire of the Repeater at someone holding a saber is one of the fastest possible ways to die.

[fgStratus]

If you reply here with the mindset that it is possible, or even easy, to beat a gun guy with a saber, then you've played too much single player JK2. Force pushing projectiles sucks. Its a losing battle. Every gun spawns with more ammo than your force pool affords you to force push. When you describe these jedis whom you "just can't seem to hit", you end up sounding extremely incompetent.

 

A lot of people also say that if we want sabers to be balanced, we should play in a sabers only game. This is possibly the most shallow, under-developed, knee-jerk, FAQ-ess response that I have ever heard. Your solution then, is to remove every feature of JK2 that is imbalanced, instead of balancing them.

 

And no, I don't want to be able to cut down anyone with a gun with impunity. I want it to be POSSIBLE to defeat a gun user that ISN'T 10 times worse than I am. Even if you had a 100% hit rate with lightsabers, you would still never hit a gun user unless he backs into a corner unkowingly and doesn't force jump.

[Essobie]

Originally posted by fgStratus

If you reply here with the mindset that it is possible, or even easy, to beat a gun guy with a saber, then you've played too much single player JK2. Force pushing projectiles sucks. Its a losing battle. Every gun spawns with more ammo than your force pool affords you to force push. When you describe these jedis whom you "just can't seem to hit", you end up sounding extremely incompetent.

 

A lot of people also say that if we want sabers to be balanced, we should play in a sabers only game. This is possibly the most shallow, under-developed, knee-jerk, FAQ-ess response that I have ever heard. Your solution then, is to remove every feature of JK2 that is imbalanced, instead of balancing them.

 

And no, I don't want to be able to cut down anyone with a gun with impunity. I want it to be POSSIBLE to defeat a gun user that ISN'T 10 times worse than I am. Even if you had a 100% hit rate with lightsabers, you would still never hit a gun user unless he backs into a corner unkowingly and doesn't force jump.

 

Sabers are not going to be balanced with the Flechette or the Repeater. How can they be? Sabers are what they are... a big, nasty, high damage MELEE weapon that can sometimes block a few projectiles.

 

Yes, you can throw it, but not far, and not accurately enough to make it more effective than the splash on the repeater's secondary.

 

Now I say all that, and it may sound like I'm agreeing that they SHOULD be balanced somehow... unfortunately I'm not. I don't have a problem taking heavy weapons out of someone's hands with Pull unless they have Absorb on.

 

Now saying THAT, you may think that I'm a saber only type of player... unfortunately I'm not. I play with everything in the game. I'll also add to that that the majority of the kills I get are when I successfully have a Repeater with lots of ammo, or a Flechette in a crowded room.

 

And saying ALL of that, you may think I have a problem with the entire set up.

 

Unfortunately I think it's perfect. =)

 

Here's the knee-jerk part: if you want to primarily get all your kills with a Saber, go join a Saber only server and deal with the problems with Drain with no guns.

 

Essobie

[fgStratus]

The only difference between your argument and mine, Essobie, is that you don't distinguish the lightsaber from all the other weapons. To you, the lightsaber is just another weapon to use in a certain situation. However, I consider lightsabers to be more of a "special weapon" aka the weapon of the Jedi. In other words, if you are a Jedi, you should be using the lightsaber, not a rocket launcher. I have no problem with guns the way they are now. But if you are ditching your lightsaber because it sucks, then you should ditch your force powers too.

[Essobie]

Originally posted by Vanor

Really?

 

Maybe things changed but on the zone when I played JK1 the vast majority of the games where NF Sabers. Gun games where rather rare typicaly.

 

This is probably because playing JK1 with weapons meant you played with Absorb (so they couldn't be pulled away from you), which became extremely shallow gameplay.

 

I was referring to the beginning of JK1 where strong players were finding out the most efficient ways to kill people... and that meant Absorb and Weapons. Once that became common knowledge, the community left it behind and starting fighting with sabers only.

 

I left the community when that started to happen because sabers only was the only way to leave a broken gameplay model behind, but in a Peer to Peer game with a lagged connection Sabers only isn't a fight of skill... it's a crap shoot.

 

Essobie

[Essobie]

Originally posted by fgStratus

The only difference between your argument and mine, Essobie, is that you don't distinguish the lightsaber from all the other weapons. To you, the lightsaber is just another weapon to use in a certain situation. However, I consider lightsabers to be more of a "special weapon" aka the weapon of the Jedi. In other words, if you are a Jedi, you should be using the lightsaber, not a rocket launcher. I have no problem with guns the way they are now. But if you are ditching your lightsaber because it sucks, then you should ditch your force powers too.

 

I disagree... I only ditch the lightsaber when I have a better weapon for the situation at hand (like you said), but Force powers are ALWAYS good. I don't buy into the "I'm a Jedi, so I use a Jedi weapon because the movies say so". I buy into the "force powers and big guns make me kill fast, and killing is fun, so I'll use force powers and big guns if I can."

 

Essobie

[Mattman]

..which makes you part of the problem, as far as the context of this thread goes.

 

As it seems, you're just interested in upping you frag-count, no matter what, as with any other MP game. However, this is not just another MP game, it's based in an established universe, where the jedi have force powers, and use the saber almost exclusively, and very effectively, I might add.

 

We're not asking for much... Just a few tweaks to make more of a balance. In most of these situations, these tweaks could stand to make things better for everyone.

 

Slower backpeddling, for instance, would keep people from running backwards while fire rockets at you. Which is ludicrous to begin with, as no one can run backwards at the same speed they run forward.

 

Using force points for guns would keep the drain, push, jump, secondary repeater spammers from doing just that. These guys are lame no matter what weapon you're carrying.

 

And speaking of the repeater, when the alt-fire of that weapon can clear an area faster than anyone can excape, well that's just wrong.

 

FFA's are as much skill as they are about what weapon one carries, but as it is, whoever gets to the repeater/flachette first tends to dominate the map.

[ryudom]

i think the games good the way it is. i use sabers most of the time, but sometimes pull out a missile laucher or the bryar pistol (I've killed a suprising amount of people with that gun). maybe i just haven't ran into any amazing gunners yet but i don't find they cause that much of a problem. if i can't get close enough to hit them, then i'll just run away. later on i can suprise them, pull there gun/slice them whatever. i'm not saying it works like that all the time but thats my strategy and it seems to work. force pull seems to work fine with me. i know i can also block anything besides the explosives if i'm facing it. sur i get killed by gunners but i'm not helpless.

 

anyway the game seems fine to me

[Chewie Bakker]

Everyone seems to have thrown their 2 cents into this thread (so I'm gonna take 'em all and BE RICH! RICH I TELLS YA!) so I'm gonna put mine in.

 

I don't play MP online (56K = Death), but there's an entire novel of posts ahead of this one that gives an idea to what this is about.

 

The whole Jedi with guns issue is interesting. Temple-trained Jedi (Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, etc...) only use their lightsaber and their Jedi powers, while the Jedi who discovered most of their powers on their own like Kyle did used blasters, Even Luke did until he became a fully-fledged Jedi Knight.

 

The Sith stick to lightsabers too. Darth Maul and Vader didn't use blasters, who would want to when you can invisibly haul your enemies into the air by their throat. Palpatine/Sidious didn't even carry a lightsaber. The Dark Side - known for their destructive nature - do have an affinity for bombs.

 

But to those who groan about Jedi with repeaters blasting you into non-existence, remember that a Jedi is prepared to die at any given moment, and if you ARE struck down, you can become more powerful than the enemy can possibly imagine.

 

Cheers,

Luke (aka "Chewie")

The worlds first 1337 |\|00B

 

I'd say "besides, it's just a game" but it's too cool a game to say that about. ^_^

[Ascari]

Maybe a simple and easy solution is to just extend the range of a force pull? and make the chance to pull a gun out of some1's hands to 99.99%?

 

And yes I do think that the alternative fire on a repeater is a bit 2 strong and fast.

 

Another solution would be to slow down your speed depending on the weight of the gun. So if u equip a repeater u walk a lot slower than a saberer.

 

 

just my 2 cents.

 

[sttaffy]

i read the WHOLE thread. interesting points. i almost exclusively use the saber, but sometimes i whip out the e11 and cover some buddies in team ffa. i havnt had a huge problem with gunners. actually they add another level to the gameplay. you have to dodge and get closer to him at the same time.

and all this garbage about if you use guns you cant use the force. that is BS. so you are a jedi, but you cant use a gun? or, you use a gun, but the fact that you use a gun prevents you from using the force.

one point i did agree with, the backpedal is annoying. not exclusively gunners backpedaling, either. one of the most annoying things ive encountered are people that backpedal and fDrain, and drain over and over again. they dont attack. another annoying thing is sometimes there will be 5 bad guys in team ffa, and they just run around me draining me, i mean, 5 on 1, and they dont attack. that is becoming less of a problem, because with constantly getting drained all the time i am getting better at the saber. the spam launcher is cheap, but it IS available to everybody.

i think the MP is perfectly balanced, except for the backpedal speed. like someone else said, it is all checks and balances. but, if you find a nice server, with polite people, and no jerks (trash talkers, people who ONLY drain) the game is great. so far i have played team ffa with everything on Master and Knight, the same for ffa, and played ffa as a Jedi (small amount of force powers). every mode seems to be perfectly balanced. and plus, isnt it cooler to be good at the saber than to be good with the booger blaster?