Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: ArthurDent's Fan Fest Report (very very long)
Rooks
Sun Jun 06, 2004 5:45 pm
#14
Nemo0 wrote:
Thanks. Just thought I'd repost the Ranger part in here. And here is the link to the original:
Ranger
=================
The session was shared with CH and Scouts. There were a half dozen rangers there or so, and they totally dominated the proceedings, lol. Right off the bat, GM was pretty apologetic about the state of Ranger. He definitely is aware of its deficiencies and stated that Ranger is an "incomplete implementation" and that he got taken off that project before he was done with it. He, and other devs, experssed concern about Ranger's ability to earn credits right now. He also stated that he doesn't generally post, nor read the ranger (or any other) forum, except for the correspondents forum. When asked about the outdoorsman proposal, he said he had no knowledge of it.
Overall GM stated that Rangers, in his view, were all about PVE, but that he regretted their "super scout" status right now. So most times when people brought things up that had to do with Rangers in PVP, he pretty plainly said weren't part of his vision.
Camps: He was in favor of adding things to camp that would aid a Ranger's ability to hunt. In particular hunting blinds were mentioned, as a way for a Ranger to stay concealed for a bit longer.
Traps: He stated that he had already done work in this area, on some traps that were "static" and would, well trap, lol. So Ranger drops said traps, and checks back later, and they may have animals in them that are caught. That sort of thing.
Forage: GM said that forage was intended to encourage Rangers to visit far away places and search for cool things that were location-specific, and would be highly desirable components for things used by crafters. He said that the "no room in inventory" bug was a silly manifestation of this incomplete implementation of forage. Apparently he never got a chance to actually create the foraged items, so there is a table in the game currently with one "placeholder" item in it - a wedding cake! lol. So when you get that message you are, in fact, pulling a wedding cake out of the ground and trying to fit it into your pack, lol.
GM stated that he is in favor of some type of weapon or weapon enhancement for rangers. A new gun, or a scope, or powerup, or something along those lines.
Tracking: They desscribed some technical difficulties having to do with server boundaries and such as to why we have problems with area track. Didn't sound like he had a clue how to fix it, so get used to it for a while.
Stealth: This was brought up, but I don't even remember whether it was in respect to rangers or not. But again, no real objection to it other than technical difficulties that they currently didn't know how to overcome (sorry Fred).
As far as the whole Scout/Ranger balance thingy, at one point a question was asked (don't even recall what it was about) about "whether scout would get X", and the response was "if added, it would be added to Ranger, as scout is a pretty complete class right now".
One of the few questions that I asked (hey, I'm shy) was about creature spanws, or lack thereof. It was explained that each (server? region? planet?) has a cap of 1000 creatures, and that ingeneral the presence ofeach person on the (server? region? planet?) would cause 1 spawn. However, missions spawns, and creatures in dungeons count against this number, so this is what we're running into. So if I understand this right (and it's possible I don't), it means that:
fewpeople on a planet =few spawns. Lots of people running missions and dungeons on the planet =few spawns. They did acknowledge this as a problem though and hopefully we'll see some type of resolution to it.
As far as "when", it was stated pretty clearly that "Rangers will be getting lots of love, but not until after lightspeed, jedi, smuggler, and squad leader" (as I recall).
Art's Take:
====================
Sounds to me like Ranger will be a *very* happening class probably towards the end of this year (but of course who knows exactly). I think all rangers should also hope that GM gets a chance to do this revamp as he seems to have a lot of passion for it, and tons of good ideas (plus he has a good track record with this latest chef revamp).
For me, it was also good just to hear that all the fears about them being completely oblivious to the obvious (and ridiculous imho) shortcomings of ranger were not accurate.
Umm, I thought someone said that GM LOVED the outdoorsman proposal?
Maybe a misheard word?
I HOPE GM has at least read the Outdoorsman 
Fodder650
Sun Jun 06, 2004 6:41 pm
#15
I just told my guild to check in here and read this as well.
As a secondtime Master Ranger im happy to read this report. It means that it will be worth it to keep the master status. Even if it takes the rest of the year to get something from it.
Im still a CH as well and i was thinking of remastering it. I was on the fence until i read that. Time to reclimb those trees.
Thanks for the report Art
Klif_Hangar
Sun Jun 06, 2004 7:14 pm
#16
Rooks wrote:
Umm, I thought someone said that GM LOVED the outdoorsman proposal?
Maybe a misheard word?
I HOPE GM has at least read the Outdoorsman
TH has stated many times that he loves the Outdoorsman proposal, and there have been some general statements about how "the devs" or "the dev team" love the Outdoorsman proposal, but there's been nothingclaiming GM specifically had read it and loved it. I actually don't find it too surprising that GM hasn't read or heard about it, since he's apparently been working on the Space Expansion instead of the live game for a while now.
Hopefully after JtL is released, GM will get reassigned to work on us. He sounds like a really dedicated guy with a lot of good ideas.
fishbrains
Sun Jun 06, 2004 7:19 pm
#18
Woot! Great work Arthur but you neglected to mention that the said that they will be giving SEAs to us. I don't care about experimentation tapes but assebley (sp 
) tapes would go a long way to stopping baby Jesus from crying everytime I crit fail on a pet that has mutant rancor/BMBQ/otehr rare or hard DNA.
) tapes would go a long way to stopping baby Jesus from crying everytime I crit fail on a pet that has mutant rancor/BMBQ/otehr rare or hard DNA.
Zeon_Zaku
Sun Jun 06, 2004 7:20 pm
#19
Awsome post. Smuggler Revamp sounds neat. Player City casinos placed by Smugglers would rock! 
ArthurDentOnBria
Sun Jun 06, 2004 7:24 pm
#20
Doh! Definitely, damn, I know I missed a ton of little stuff like that. Hopefully others will point out other mistakes and omissions.
*goes back and inserts the bit about BE SEA's*
Hey, when are you going to do the smuggler revamp report? hehe you da man for that.
fishbrains wrote:
Woot! Great work Arthur but you neglected to mention that the said that they will be giving SEAs to us. I don't care about experimentation tapes but assebley (sp
fishbrains
Sun Jun 06, 2004 7:26 pm
#21
Look for it early tomorrow morning
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Doh! Definitely, damn, I know I missed a ton of little stuff like that. Hopefully others will point out other mistakes and omissions.
*goes back and inserts the bit about BE SEA's*
Hey, when are you going to do the smuggler revamp report? hehe you da man for that.
fishbrains wrote:
Woot! Great work Arthur but you neglected to mention that the said that they will be giving SEAs to us. I don't care about experimentation tapes but assebley (sp
Laeren
Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:48 pm
#24
If you would allow me to add....
Developer Forum (run by Andy Sommers)
Main issues discussed (as I remember them):
"Why is there so much lag in certain spots such as Coronet or entire planets such as Dantooine?"
Andy's answer:
Basically, each planet is comprised of between 1 and 10 server boxes running various portions of that particular planet. Each box can handle up to 125 players on it easily. Any more on the box and it starts to lag. So, since the Coronet locationpossibly sits on1 or 2 boxes, and there are usually more than 250 people in that partiular area at any time of the day, you can see why this area lags (and why the rest of Corellia isn't so laggy). As of right now there isn't a huge solution to this problem, but some proposals were to make Coronet less attractive as a meeting-spot somehow. Dantooine probably just needs more boxes assigned to it, as it used to be a not-so-popular planet. But with many player cities being built on it, it probably needs allocation of a few more boxes than the original amount.
Laeren's take:
Game as limited by current technology. We can expect to see improvements to the lag issue only as soon as there are some significant hardware advances in computer technology. So, no solution in sight.
"How will JTL affectserver performance once it goes live? Will the extra load be a problem for the main game?"
Andy's answer:
JTL will be held on separate servers/boxes covering the 10 space zones. Also, since no terrain needs to be rendered in space, the servers should run much smoother than the current SWG live games, since terrain is one of the biggest hogs in terms of computer power.
Laeren's take:
Reallly really need to keep the action in space smooth and fun, otherwise it's not going to work, since it's highly twitch-oriented. Glad to hear they're beefing up their systems for it.
"Do the devs really know what's going on with X, Y and Z bug? Or what about suggestions for features/improvements?"
Andy's answer:
Bugs and requestsare takein from the /bug reports and from issues brought from the forums and from forum correspondents and designers. They are placed on a list and dealt with in order of priority. However, they also make the dev's play for 4 hours on some fridays, and then over the next 4 hours, they fix what can be fixed, of what they observed during those 4 hours of play time. They hope that with this system, the most glaring and obvoius bugs and features are fixed or implemented and coded, based on this play time, with a mind towards the prioritized bug list as well. And, it also helps the devs to really understand the bugs that are being reported, rather than relying solely on the descriptions of the players. They can play them, test them, be bugged by the bugs, and look at the timetable for the fix to it, if it is indeed deemed a bug.
Also, currently, they have 17 devs/programmers. 9 of these are working on JTL, the rest are working on live stuff.
Laeren's take:
The distinct impression I got is that there are just a lot of things that are /bug reported every day, and they can't all be done with all the other things that are slated for release. JTL and the various announced revamps are taking a lot of time, and a lot of bugs/requested features/changes will be addressed in the various revamps that are scheduled to come out. So, it's just gonna require a little bit of patience on our part until everything is out and implemented.
"Are there any technical resistances to changing the resource stacking from 100k stacks to 500k stacks? Wouldn't this improve the database by combining many of the singular 100k stacks, thus opening up the database for other item storage?"
Andy's answer:
No, issues such as this one are merely a database item-typechange (basically changing one number), if it is deemed appropriate to implement this change. It may or may not reduce the load on the database, but there are no real technical hindrances that he could see to this type of change.
Laeren's take:
Since this was my question, I was quite ecstatic. I hope it gets implemented
Laeren
Sun Jun 06, 2004 11:21 pm
#25
Politician/Player City forum (run byGreenmarine, Thunderheart and Kirk Blackand one other I don't remember getting his name)
Gist:
Unfortunately, bad news for player cities as nothing has really been allocated in terms of new things. Bug fixes will be taken care of as time permits on the bug list priorities, but nothing new is being planned for them by themselves.
However, if player cities and politicians can slant their requests towards the GCW, they can shiv player city changes in with the upcoming GCW revamp. Perhaps more involvement of the player cities in the revamp willl also mean changes and additions which would not happen as a stand-alone request.
Some questions regarding player cities/politicians:
"Why can't we have cities that flatten the terrain? Or what about eliminating radial flora from a player city area? Or what about the addition of city streets?"
Answer:
Flattening terrain is a huge coding deal and very server intensive, especially for an area as large as a player city. Not gonna happen. Radial and non-collidable flora removal would be much more possible. City streets would be possibly only by changing the color pattern used for the ground in which you wanted to create the street (doable, and not as intensive as flattening the terrain).
"Why can't mayors simply delete people's houses from the city, especially if that player has quit the game?"
Answer:
The problem lies in how much "imminent domain" should a mayor have over their city, and how much these powers could be used for griefing. Since the whole /citywarn debacle, a lot of concern has been brought down upon how people use various features to grief other players, and a lot of care is taken so that any new features are ones that can't be used to grief players, or at least minimize the risk of such. They are trying to give the mayors some power in their cities, without giving them total power in the case of grief-prone situations. One idea was to set a timer on a city, such that if a city has grown and thrived for X amount of time, some of these powers might come into effect, simply because such long-established cities would be much less likely to grief people within it. Other types of things would be implementation of the ability to see owner and condition/time remaining on a structure (not just for mayors but for everyone) which would be a tool that mayors especially would be able to use.
"Is there any help for mayors wishing to give up office and give the office to the other candidate running for mayor? Or is there any help for cities in which the mayor has left the game, but is still winning the weekly election?"
Answer:
If it is a truly dire case of needing to switch the city over to another mayor, CSRs can help the city with this, especially in the case of where a mayor has left the game (cancelled account) and the next mayor is trying to get elected.
"Why does politician cost so many skill points? Is there any idea for a change to this?"
Answer:
Back when the professions were being created, they were limited in the template of the profession they could create--i.e. it had to be 18 skill boxes. However, apparently this rule or template has changed, and there are plans to possibly change politician (and possibly other professions) to be less than 18 skill boxes, and if so, then Politician would cost much less skill points to master and keep. So, mayors would still retain full bennies for their profession, and still be able to do other things.
"Why were the double-specialization abilities at Master Politician removed?"
Answer:
Simply, they didn't work as intended, so were removed pending further review of the code.
Message Edited by Laeren on 06-07-2004 09:39 AM
Bracci
Sun Jun 06, 2004 11:48 pm
#26
Wonderful reports. It's nice to know that we as BEs were represented well. Only real thing I see going downhill is the fact that armor is going to become teh suck. Combine that with the nigh impossibility of getting MR samples lately, CH are going to have a hard time getting CL70 creatures from us.
I'm intrigued about the money issues. I can't see how money is actually going out of the economy, since maintenance hasn't been changed and the only real sink they've added was vehicle repair (the chef revamp took money out of the combat players pockets, but the current state of solo grouping junda missions is POURING money into the economy).
I'm intrigued about the money issues. I can't see how money is actually going out of the economy, since maintenance hasn't been changed and the only real sink they've added was vehicle repair (the chef revamp took money out of the combat players pockets, but the current state of solo grouping junda missions is POURING money into the economy).