CUEmu - Thread Posts

Grimbot

Tue May 04, 2004 2:29 pm

All of our professions have issues and bugs to be worked out, but crafters have it doubly tough. Not only do they have to deal with broken content in the items they create, but they also have to please their consumers. This thread is not about Armorsmith issues, really, but about issues with armor itself. Almost everyone in the game wears armor, and must if they are to survive. So, as a consumer of your products I'd like to ask a few questions that affect... me.

1. Why is composite the only armor worth having?

By making composite the only armor worth having, the developers have insured that everyone will wear composite armor. This breaks Star Wars continuity for a number of reasons, most obviously that if you go to a starport 80% of the people there are wearing composite. Composite armor has never been seen in a Star Wars movie or in any EU source besides this game. It would be almost as bad to have everyone wearing Ubese or Mabari, but at least there'd be a canon justification. I spent the first hour or so of the game making my character look good. I assume that most other people tweaked and changed their character's faces until they were pleased with the results. But all I see when I look around are composite clones. Shouldn't armor be "balanced" so that each type has one great strength and one big weakness? At the very least shouldn't there be 3 or 4 types of composite armor, preferable with a few helmets with open faces (like padded or chitin)?

2. Why add so many "rare" inferior armor types rather than adding more variety to existing armor?

RIS is extremely rare and difficult to put together. Bounty Hunter armor is also rare. Mandalorian is rarest of all. All of these armor types are limited, as far as I know, to use by just a few races or just a few classes. I have never seen a full RIS suit in game. I suspect I'll see a full Mandalorian suit after the Deathwatch Bunker opens, but it's going to cost whoever owns it a boatload. BH armor isn't even a schematic that smiths can create armor from. As far as I know, the stats on RIS, BH, and Mandalorian aren't going to be much better than composite. Why is the art department devoting so much time to content only a very few people will ever be able to enjoy? Especially when they only half-implement the content (as in never finishing the adaptations of the RIS helmet). Again, I think we'd be better off with composite variants or several other types of mid-range armor.

3.When willfactioned armorsmiths begiven faction armor schematics?

This is Star Wars. I want to see stormtroopers and scouts in their white armor and Rebels dressed in their shiny black helmets from the Corellian corvette in Episode 4. Instead, we get composite because factional armor isn't good for much except decoration. I made the mistake of buying a Rebel cone helmet early on, and discovered that my chitin armor helmet from the bazaar offered better protection. Giving factioned crafters factional armor schematics comparable to composite armor just makes sense. It would add greatly to the variety of viable armor available to players, and it would add to the general "Star Warsiness" in the game.

It's all probably just part of the runoff from the fact that I've been hunting RIS components for two weeks and just found out that I can't wear the helmet. But I really do think that these are all legitimate questions. Feel free to argue, agree, or add your own.

Veezor

Jabba's Swooper, Bounty Hunter, Surliest Rodian in the Quadrant

I bent my Wookiee

Shilak

Tue May 04, 2004 2:47 pm

#2

1) I couldn't agree more, I spent ages getting the right look for my main toon and have only changed it very slightly in the game to remove a couple of traits I no longer liked. Problem is that for most of the game content composite is the best solution, hence there is little reason to make anything else. My prefered suit of armour for wandering about in is actually a mix of padded and composite, the padded is actually made using Acklay dropped segments but it still offers significantly inferior protection when compared with composite but its lightweight and I can wear it without buffs The whole composite clone problem comes down to two simple factors, one is the lack of vulnerabilities on composite which makes it easy to cover all the resists and second is that secondary stat buffs have totally negated the real downside of composite which is the encumberance.

2) A lot of the armour wouldn't be inferior if they fixed the encumberance issue. Calculate encumberance based on unbuffed secondaries instead of buffed secondaries and people will have to forget about wearing all that 90% composite. Secondary buffing is the biggest problem with the balance of the current combat system.

3) The devs have indicated that the factional armour will be made craftable as part of the GCW changes in a few publishes time, guess we will have to wait and see if they actually implement it, but that is the earliest I would expect to see it in the game.

M O R T A R I U S
Master Bounty Hunter / Master Pistoleer / Small Blue Fly on Chimaera

hopnasty

Wed May 05, 2004 10:43 am

#3

A little history for you guys...

When the devs decided to have a completely "Player Run Economy" they heard outcries from the beta testing crafters that if any armor ingame that was "quest-able/loot-able", the economy would virtually fail becuase no one would "buy" the items that were crafted and it would become EQ (EverCamp) all over again. So, being the smart devs that they are, they created thepolicy that if any item that is "better" than what a crafter to make is going to be very, very, very hard to obtain, otherwise, crafters would not have anything to sell to the "combat characters". Again, this is a decision that was made VERY EARLY ON.

I hope that sheds some light on the situation...

Shion
Master Armorsmith

Vevy

Wed May 05, 2004 11:18 am

#4

hopnasty wrote:

A little history for you guys...

When the devs decided to have a completely "Player Run Economy" they heard outcries from the beta testing crafters that if any armor ingame that was "quest-able/loot-able", the economy would virtually fail becuase no one would "buy" the items that were crafted and it would become EQ (EverCamp) all over again. So, being the smart devs that they are, they created thepolicy that if any item that is "better" than what a crafter to make is going to be very, very, very hard to obtain, otherwise, crafters would not have anything to sell to the "combat characters". Again, this is a decision that was made VERY EARLY ON.

I hope that sheds some light on the situation...

...the problem with this is 99% of all questable/lootable items suck! ...the loot drop enhancements are even worse. So this may have been their verbal policy, but this is NOT what they did in application. In fact it's just the opposite. EVERY questable/lootable armor is only about 50% as effective a a good suit of master made compo. IF they actually did make this stuff better, the economy would actually be improved because it wouldn't be a one-armor show. IMHO of course ;-)

As for the issue of why compo is the best, I don't think it's an enc issue at all. If people want low enc grinding armor they just go buy ubese. Compo is the most versatile of all the armor types and nothing else can be layered up to 80% across the board so why buy anything else? I make 80% kinetic 66% base now and with base slices it goes up to 87%, with enc slices it goes down to the low 400's and you can wear it without buffing.

Given that one suit of armor covers such a wide range of uses, why would you buy anything else?

I started a thread on this a week or so ago on what I thought would fix armor. I think all the armor types should be equal, but in different fields of damage. For instance compo can have high elec/energy resists, but then it needs to be vulnerable to something more than just stun...like acid or blast. That way you can't just layer it and make a killer suit. Likewise other type should have the high resists compo doesn't, but they too will have severe weaknesses in other areas.

That's the only way I see to make all armor valuable. If every armor type was geared around a certain damage type/ damage weakness, you'd have to carry more than just compo to cover any possible battle you get in.

Vevy
Master Armorsmith / Master Weaponsmith

Grimbot

Wed May 05, 2004 11:22 am

#5

I agree. I'm not asking for better loot drops. We can leave the skill tapes and crafting components for loot drops. I'd rather BH armor weren't a loot drop.

What I would like to see is a variety of armor in the game supported by each armor type having specific strengths and weaknesses.

Veezor

Jabba's Swooper, Bounty Hunter, Surliest Rodian in the Quadrant

I bent my Wookiee

Lomar4976

Wed May 05, 2004 11:19 pm

#6

Im all for having different armours affecting different resists... but if anyones planning on doing that, drop the harvested resource requirement for some of them... I dont have time to go out and get bones and hides and things, so i'm forced to pay hunters... hunters in response ask for high prices to cover the cash they could have made from missions in the same time (the major problem with the economy is everything is based around 37k rancor missions which can be done solo with the right skills in less than 10 minutes each)

... anyway, high ingredient prices lead to high suit prices, which for some of the lower use/creature resourcethings (tantel, padded, bone for instance) makes the price too high to make it worthwhile.

====================================================================
Kharnak Griss - TKA/FS - J'akara Tyrannis - Master Armoursmith - Dashton Starstrider - MD
J'akaras Armour - At the following locations:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mos Omenos Combat Store, Tatooine / Llama Industries Inc, Coronet / Assassins Hutt, Theed
------------(-2906, -6755)--------------------------(724, -5220)---------------(-5347, 3431)------
Drop Offs To Doaba Guerfel, Corellia (2483, 4288)
====================================================================

dlcnate1

Thu May 06, 2004 12:14 pm

#7

I havent heard that BH armor was loot only, all I know is that there are no schemats yet, there may bee some later, and as far as why composite is the best, its slicing of course, slicing armor makes no sense, weapons and shields i can understand, but I cant possibly think of anything someone can do to make armor less encumbering or more effective by just cutting a few wires with a laser precision knife, I mean seriously slicing is what has made composite the end all of armor, even while buffed losing 800 or more on your secondary stats is significant, but when you can drop a full suit to less than 400 who the hell cares anymore, or when you can get armor to 80+ on the base they can live with the 800 encumberance. That and the fact that we can still change the armor color even though they were supposed to take that out doesent hurt the composite economy either, I wish they would turn that option off like they said they would, maybe that way at least people would buy custom orders more often and make mass produced armor stuck being grey.

hopnasty

Thu May 06, 2004 2:26 pm

#8

Allowing the customer to pick and chose the coloring on Composite Armor is the best thing the devs have done for us outside of fixing bugs.

changing composite colors by customers > mandolorian armor / RIS / 90% base Composite COMBINED.

Shion
Master Armorsmith

Vevy

Fri May 07, 2004 12:33 am

#9

dlcnate1 wrote:
I havent heard that BH armor was loot only, all I know is that there are no schemats yet, there may bee some later, and as far as why composite is the best, its slicing of course, slicing armor makes no sense, weapons and shields i can understand, but I cant possibly think of anything someone can do to make armor less encumbering or more effective by just cutting a few wires with a laser precision knife, I mean seriously slicing is what has made composite the end all of armor, even while buffed losing 800 or more on your secondary stats is significant, but when you can drop a full suit to less than 400 who the hell cares anymore, or when you can get armor to 80+ on the base they can live with the 800 encumberance. That and the fact that we can still change the armor color even though they were supposed to take that out doesent hurt the composite economy either, I wish they would turn that option off like they said they would, maybe that way at least people would buy custom orders more often and make mass produced armor stuck being grey.

oh god don't start crying over changing the color of armor...in a prof racked with worthless loot, unbalanced products, and insanely high priced/hard to get resources...being able to change the color of armor is one of the few GOOD things they've added in.

I mean come on, you can change the color of your vehicles, your droids...even your freaking hairdo and appearance...and you honestly think taking away our ability to change the color of our armor will somehow miraculously fix the armor economy??? PLLLLEEEEAAAASSSSEEE get a clue!!

Vevy
Master Armorsmith / Master Weaponsmith

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