Armorsmith Archive
Thread: Where do we go from here?
Yay, Master combat medic! what now?
Probably 2-3 weeks of waiting for the resources to show up so I can craft advanced components, (the non-broken ones). Then i'll be making DoTs about as effective as the Healthshot I got as a marksman pistol specialist. Im about as well off now stacking healthshot 1 and 2 as ill be then. Still im trying, traveling to every planet every day to survey...
What else is there to do? There is little or no point in healing people. Basicly every time i heal somebody i use up resources ive gathered,meaning i spend time and money doing so with nothing gained at all. I could go have fun atFort Tusken, but id be grabbing xp from lower level medics trying to level, and how much fun is it in reality? keeping in mind i'd be spending all my heals again, with nothing for reward.
PvE battlefields... well fun fun, here i can make FPs killing rebel scum with my buddies, but sadly im still wasting my time, when i heal i'm not fighting at full capacity, meaning i get about 1/10th of the FPs everybody else is getting, still no gain, fun wears out quickly.
PvP... well this was fun before everybody became BHs and Master Pistoleers, in its current state its all about gettingthe 1st knockdown off. hardly any real fun anymore, considering the reward is the adrenalin rush and certainly no ingame stuff, i have to kill about 3-4 rebels to make up for the loss in FP from 1 death, and throwing lightbulps around has a tendency of turning you into a universal target.
The HAM-system is too inflexible to reallyallow any big mobs to be tanked by players, im throwingnear 600-base-heal Stim-Ds around for complete heals 95% of the time, but whats that against medium-heavy armored mobs with medium-heavy armor penetration? Only way to do anything like this is by healing Pets, but why would you want to camp anything big? theres no loot in it for you, and still no reward in xp, FPs or anything at all!
Basicly whats left to do at master level is help out your friends (who in most cases solo because xp-output is much much higher, when you know where to go) and keep yourself in range for training other players.
Combat medics in myopinion is the least succesfully designed social profession in the game. Lack of content and the way the combat system is designed makes us about useless, and deprives us of any incitament to go out and heal people. The fun of games like this is when you have something to fight for, something to plan ahead to, somewhere you'd like to get your character to eventually. SWG in its current state has little or nothing to offer Combat medics or doctors. This is as much a content issue as is a proffession issue, other master professions will have nothing much to fight for, but at least they can get FPs and not spend credits every time they use a special. Im back to where I started, outside Theed spaceport, running delivery missions and imperial destroy missions for FPs, making a run to my harvesters once a day, dropping stuff i dont need off at the bazar to finance my daily planet-hopping to survey.
So basicly im asking, where do we go from here? Is there any content I dont know about? Ive finished all imperial retreat missions, and if its anything like that ill rather not do it. Ive leveled my pistoleer skills to whereI want to take them (no reason to get the bugged ones, and no reason to get master since I'll have to give up surveying abilities)What are you other Master combat medic/docs up to?
welcome to the SWG end game...
now ur playing for the fun of it not hte purpose...
Im just gonna try to make a lot of money,,,
but maybe u can graind for fp and buy faction perks...
I suppose youre right, i am in fact stockpiling cash myself.
Imight add we should worry more about fixing content, than fixing whats broken, even with all the professions working there wouldstill be nothing to do in this game. The reason why this game is friendly to casual players is because it will take them longer to figure out its a dud.
I certainly hope something will happen soon, I was reallylooking forward to this game, it cant be over in just 4 weeks.
If you haven't read the new information about the upcoming changes, you should read it here.
Basically, we are looking at a massive weapons revamp coming at us in January, along with a combat revamp. I have no idea how this is going to change our profession, but I imagine it is going to be collossal. It will likely make a good portion of our Top Issues redundant, out-of-date or inaccurate.
So we have two options right now.
a.) Finish up our Issues compilation and begin working on our Top Issues, starting Monday. Once we reach an overall concensus, we push our Top 5 to the Developers. We have a high probability of receiving responses like, "Wait until the next major publish," to all of our issues.
or
b.) Wait it out. The game will be dramatically changed and we will have to completely rehash our Top Issues again. Instead, we focus on smaller battles, like the Krayt Exploit. Our compilation of issues would constantly be updated to reflect new changes and fixes, but we would have no Top 5 being sent into the Developers until after we could experience the changes.
If it were up to me, I would choose B. I don't want to set us all up for a big disappointment when we wait a month to receive nothing but, "Wait for the patch!" Additionally, we don't want to push issues that are going to have nothing to do with how the game is going to be a month from now.
What do you think?
The overhaul sounds uber good, but I would go with A.
We still have issues that don't deal with guns, and I say these should be in our top 5 since the certs and weapons are already going to be overhauled. The top issue I can think of that doesn't deal with certs or weapons directly is the factory crate bug that puts the owner of the factory as the creator of the weapon. This must be changed, IMO for all professions, I not only have weapons that appear not to be made by me that I sell, but also arch items and artisan items too. This is definitely our issue too though.
I agree, it's just as much our issue as it is anybody's. However, other professions, such as the Artisan Correspondent, can much more easily cover it. We'd be able to push this issue without having to make it a Top 5 of our own. I'll definitely have a look and check up on what Vaedross is adding tothe ArtisanTop 5. The major "Crafting Session Closed!" bug is definitely going to be intheir top 5, as well.
This is what I mean by "small battles". I can also push for more awareness of the Krayt Exploit without having to wait for it to be sent in with a Top 5 Issue list, as that is highly inefficient. Waiting a month for a response on an issue that needs to be fixed now is not a good thing!
However, we can have certain issues still going in our Top 5 that won't (likely) relate to the Weapon Balance patch. Like UXP, for example. If we can get solid, concrete data on how unreliable/inefficient it is, it's definitely worthy of Developer attention. But if we go this route, we're going to have to be sure to make it clear that the Top 5 Issues are not going to be in any way related to Weapon Balance. Going that route may add a lot of confusion and displease others.
One more note, no matter what route we take, I'm not going to neglect this position. Iam a Master Weaponsmith on TC and I will be constantly reporting the new changes back to you and how they will affect us.
I say A, but in the context of these new changes coming.
Some current bugs to push would be:
-Fixing experimentation (without hosing everything)
-Fix the chemical dispenser while we wait (can it really be that hard???? I know they say it is fixed, but I won't believe it until I see it on live :smileyhappy
One thing to push differently:
-One thing to push differently would be the rodium/plumbum balance pass type issues. I would say, that we should be constantly reminding them now while they redo the weapons to be mindful of what resources they pick. To look at what stats are required for each item and look at the averages stats of that resource to make sure we don't get some situation where the novice T21 is better than the master T21. We don't need every gun super easy to get the best, but we don't need it impossible either.
decided to see if had been posted here yet.
For those of you too lazy to click on the url:
The next phase of this massive combat balance is the Weapon Balance. When the game was originally designed, certain aspects of the weapon system like certifications and weapon types were meant to be unlocked as players opened the layers of their skill onions, opening up an interesting variety of weapons and having a good game challenge. What happened is very similar to what happens when you try to level off a wooden kitchen table with a hand saw. You take off a little bit off of this leg and a little bit off of that leg and by the time you get it finished, it looks more like a coffee table instead of a kitchen table. What happened with the combat system is that the certifications were moved, the combat and damage types were shifted and this has left the current system a little wobbly, so we’re getting a new “table”
In very basic terms, rather than making the T-21 and the FWG the end-all, be-all master weapons, we are “buffing” the system and putting in a full range of weapons at all levels. We’re going to be adding power progression levels for each type of weapon, a better damage progression for each specific power level, more weapon scalability and more weapons and certifications. We’re also putting in more swooshes and blaster bolts!
What this means is that there will be novice level T-21’s and master level T-21’s, novice level FWG’s and master level FWG’s. From novice to master, there will be a full range of weapons and certifications for each layer of the skill onions for the various combat professions.
In terms of gameplay, this second stage of over all combat balancing is going to bring with it a new wave of change; damage, to-hit, specials and the full scope of weapon combat will be out of whack for a little bit, but keep in mind, creature changes are in and at this stage, weapons will be falling into place; 2 of the 4 basic subsystems will be trued up with each other.
On the plus side, I really felt like our top 5 was getting down to the point of tweaks. Do we have
problems? Yep, but things are much better. This also sounds like a much more complete system.
That is good. It would be nice, if this goes in right to have solved two of our big problems:
- Novice Weaponsmiths can't sell squat
- We all end up making about 10 weapons, the other 30 or so are wasted
On the downside, who doesn't think that this new system going in won't be badly borked for a while?
Well to get my 2 creds in I'd say mostly B. I say mostly because we shouldn't completely ignore the "top issues" stuff. It gives us a unique way to bring issue to the devs and tell them they are improtant to us. So, we should constructthe top issues in a way that the issues we call our top will not be changed/resolved by the new combat system. Example, the problems with chemical dispersion experimentation will not be addressed in the combat overhaul, but HAM, range mods, and damage will be.
Why not do both? (within reason)
Now, wait a second, before you shoot that idea down.
I think that we could present our current top 5 issues. If the devs say "That'll be changed with the patch" then at least they know it's an issue and we can start discussing how it will be changed (the better to get it right the FIRST time...). If they don't address it or say "That won't be an issue anymore" we can present a new issue.
In the meantime, we work on potential concerns of the upcoming patch, and things we think the devs REALLY need to consider before they go mucking with the system too much. They will absolutely, positively NEED our guidance on this change. Granted, we need more information on the specifics of it, but that's no reason why we shouldn't toy with ideas depending on how things work. We can spin out contingency plans, and hopefully figure out what suggestions we MAY want to make, once we know where things are going. At the same time, even absent information on how it will work, I think we can make some top-level suggestions at least for how the system OUGHT to work. I'm betting the devs haven't really considered very thoroughly how this will affect weaponsmiths, and it's up to us to wake 'em up to what COULD be issues and what SHOULD be fixed, given the general notion of what's going to happen. As we get more info, we can revise this stuff.
That said, there are definitely issues that have come up and won't be changed by the patch, like optional components and UXP. I think UXP absolutely needs to be addressed ASAP. This evening, I'm going to post a thread on the potential changes I see coming in the hopes that we can get an organized discussion going on those issues. I do think that we should figure out what issues won't change, though, and present them to the devs.
I think A is a better choice. If we get the "Wait until the next major publish" answer, at least we know that those issues are being addressed. The Devs need to know what we think the big issues are,even if they are already working on fixes for them.
Solo4114 wrote:
That said, there are definitely issues that have come up and won't be changed by the patch, like optional components and UXP. I think UXP absolutely needs to be addressed ASAP.
They can't address UXP without data. I don't mean to be tough about it, but I've never seen a single thread with good data on this, at all. Even the best anecdote is just, "UXP is broken."
So, you want it to be addressed, go grab five of your closest friends and toss them all D18s and record your experience gain. Experience per ten shots, experience over the course of an hour, experience off-planet, experience standing next to the shooter, total UXP gained from one gun, etc. But I can't just tell them, "Fix UXP." They'll just turn around and ask for specific examples and I'll have to tell them I'm empty-handed. Master Weaponsmiths can't help us on this, it's up to the little guys to bring in the pain.
Lastly, we are still in the "debate" phase of the last Top 5 Issues sent in by DarkCipher. So bear in mind, we still have a 'formal' response coming up once the Developers come to a solid conclusion after my input on those issues.