Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: ArthurDent's fanfest report 2005
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ArthurDentOnBria
Sun Jun 05, 2005 5:58 pm
#1
Ok, same disclaimers as last year. The following info was gleaned by listening to discussions at fanfest, and in some cases talking with particular developers outside of the sessions. This info represents my best recollection of what was said, and in most cases is what a particular developer said. This should not be taken as gospel. Things change, and sometimes you get different answers from one dev to another.
Fanfest had the same format as last year. Big meeting in the morning with all the devs and all the players, then "break out" sessions for the rest of the day by topic. I attended as many as I could, which means I got to see roughly 50% of them or so.
The Devs
The dev team was pretty well represented. Keldarin, Blixdev, Darth Platapus, Tiggs, andmany others. Most notably missing however was Green Marine this year, which was a shame because he always seemed to me to have the most wide-spread knowledge of the "ground game" in general, whereas the others seem to have much narrower focuses.
The Game In General
They boasted that both online hours and subscriptions are both at an all-time high right now, and there seemed to be sort of a "guarded enthusiasm" about the game's future. I noticed that the devs certainly spoke a lot more easily and confidently about Rage of the Wookiees than they did about CU though, which is understandable.
Art's take: the claim about subscriptions and online hours was a surprise to me and others, given that we've all seen so many of our friends and longtime players leave over the last couple of months. But it speaks to the fact that there must be a pretty healthy surge in new players. Whether this is a one-time anomoly due to the movie release, or a trend remains to be seen.
Crafting
I attended one of the two crafting forums. One turned out to be plenty for me. There really isn't much to say about it. For the most part the exact same things that were brought up last year, were brought up again this year. Some of them off the top of my head include casks being broken, one of the architect components not stacking, some droids being bugged and/or not useful, no decay for clothing and architecture products, lack of new clothing, the bio-tissues problems with reguards to lack of clothing accepting rfp, and in particular lack of wookiee clothing.
To all of this, the answer was always the same: "these are things we want to do, it's just a matter of priorities and finding the time to do them".
One thing that they were asked about several times were repair kits for the valuable speeders (e.g. av-21's and jet packs). The devs seemed to be very inclined to add those.
They were asked about the curious "doctor bag" in the master artisan box. They said this was an item that was added during testing and the fact that it made it "live" was a bug. They were non-committal about whether or not they'd make it useful or just remove it.
Art's take: very discouraging, more so than last year. Last year at least these problems were acknowledged and there was some serious desire aknowledged about adressing some of these things, but not this year. In fact this year when many of these things were brought up, we got kind of blank stares and the canned answer back in return. I'm not sure whether to attribute this to the devs unfamiliarity with crafting (with Green Marine not being there) or whether it is more of an attempt to try to lower already low expectations that crafters have for upcoming releases, or whether it's just a complete indifference to all such issues. Anyway, from what I could see there is pretty much no activity at all here.
Space
There seemed to be a heavy emphasis in this area. Of course everyone knows about the "capital ship" content that was demod to us by now. For those that don't, we were shown a 5min demo that essentially showed players landing on the big imperial ships, accepting missions, flying to huge rebel ships, landing on them, enganging in "ground" combat aboard the rebel ship, then taking over as pilot of the rebel ship and flying away with it. It was essentially a SWG re-enactment of the beginning of the original Star Wars movie.
Also it sure sounded like there were a whole ton of fixes, improvements, and new stuff going into space.
Art's Take:
I have to first apologize because quite frankly I'm just not a "space guy", so a lot of the stuff just soared right over my head. But it sounds good for those into space combat, and makes me want to do more of it.
Combat Missions
The mission spawn problems that have been plauging everyone were brought up. Ones where you'd take a certain level mission and you get there and it's a different level, or it changes mid-fight, or it vanishes. We were assured these problems were understood, were being worked on (or already done) and were very high priority.
I pointed out the issue of hunters now being tied to the mission terminals to a much higher degree then ever before, despite them saying they would do just the opposite last year. Keldarin assured me that this was still the plan (less reliance on combat missions), and that it would be solved by making populating different regions of different planets with very level-specific content.
A couple people lamented that when you fight creatures from mission spawns, they are so fast that you have no chance of outrunning them, even if they are "slow" (like squalls), you have great terrain negotiation, and are running up hill. The devs responded something about having to balance it that way to avoid constant kiting. It didn't sound like they considered this a big problem or had a good solution for it.
Some people reported that they were seeing occasional "level 300+" otherwise ordinary creatures just kind of running around. The devs said they've heard such reports but have been unable to reproduce this so need help. They said that if anyone sees these things, please contact a CSR immediately and ask that they go collect data on these creatures so the devs can fix it. If no CSR is available, Tiggs said to send her a PM and she would fetch one.
There was also mention of a "spawn system revamp", but no further details were given.
Art's Take: sounds good. I'm sure the problems will be fixed. I'm still a bit unsure about whether the plan to make different "combat level regions" will be effective or not, given that presumably you'll have a lot more convenient way to get the *exact* level of creature you want on the terminal, but we'll see how that works out.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 06-06-2005 08:16 AM
ArthurDentOnBria
Sun Jun 05, 2005 5:59 pm
#2
Smugglers:
One of the real shockers to me was the bold statement that "there will be no smuggler revamp as such". This is SO contradictory to everything we've been hearing just days or weeks ago. Instead they talked about a new slicing system that was in testing, and some form of balance adjustments to spices. Aside from that, smugglers could expect changes to their class like everyone else, a little at a time, spread out over a lot of releases. When asked why they had changed their minds on this stuff, they used smuggler's new post-cu combat prowess to justify this change.
Art's Take: bad bad bad. My jaw is still on the floor over this. I can't help wonder what the REAL scoup on this is, because I sure didn't feel like we were getting the real story here. I gotta believe we're missing some vital part of the story here.
Rangers/SL's:
A lot of questions about these two. Basically most questions were answered with "we know they are not very fun to play and something needs to be done, we just need the time to do it".
One thing that was requested was that squad leaders be able to command larger groups. They seemed pretty strongly against this idea, saying that they had specific balance-reasons for making the groups 8, and 8 they will stay for ever and ever (amen).
Art's Take: Dunno what the deal is here, kinda like crafters, it may just be because the particular devs there really had no clue about these, or they were being purposely evasive, or it may be that like smuggler their revamps are being re-examined. People are free to come to whatever conclusions they want to here, but there sure was no information to be had at fanfest.
Melee Combat:
This was part of the creature handler session (no idea why) which is the only reason I had any interest in it. The issue of not being able to tank came up. The devs take on this is basically that people are not using it well. They gave this example, which is an indication of the sort of combat they expect:
high damage guy hits a mob with a powerful shot
mob rushes the high damage guy
crowd control guy knocks down the mob
tank guy then moves in and taunts the creature, drawing aggro on himself, and absorbs a lot less damage then the others would do to "center of being" etc.
The devs also stated very clearly that they want to de-emphasize melee combat in the game because it was not something seen in the movies.
There were other issues brought forward, but I didn't pay as close attention since I've never played a melee toon before and it really isn't an interest of mine (sorry). Hopefully someone else will report on this better.
Art's Take:
To me Tactical combat = good, deterministic combat = bad.
I brought this up, suggested that combat might be more fun if it had more random elements in it, butthe devs think deterministic combat = good. /shrug to me it just seems like this dumbs down combat. It seems to me that a few players could come up with an unbeatable "I win" button for PVE where you simply chain a few special attacks in a coordinated way and then you couldn't possibly lose or perhaps even be damaged. oh well, time to start looking for such chains of specials I guess.
Guilds/Player Cities
The devs stated that they were fixing the annoying guild problems that have sprung up recently. They also said that they were working on the tax problem. They also said that they were going to be doing somewhat of a revamp of guild functionality including a bunch of new fancy UI elements. They stated that they have hired a PHD in UI design to work on this problem. They also talked about the concept of a "guild bank" which was a way that guild mates could share things (resources, goods, etc.).
There were a lot of questions about structures owned by players who had quit. The devs assured us that a cleanup of such things was coming soon. Their solution to this problem is reportedly as follows: They will removing such structures from the map, rolling them up, and placing them in players bank vaults (even if it makes the vault overflow). So in other words, if you own a house full to the brim or items, and you have quit the game, carelessly leaving your house out there taking up space, the house and all its contents will be removed from the map and appear in that players bank vault. They also mentioned that such a solution will make it possible for people to "roll up" their existing houses in a similar way, for the purpose of moving them for example.
There were lots of questions about "can you add this? can you add that?" to player cities. Two of the requests were spynet operatives and some type of ability to land and take off spaceships from a player city. For these requests, we got this answer: They want to encourage players to congregate in NPC cities, which enables people to find other people for goods, services, and just socializing. Therefore they do not want to remove reasons for people to visit NPC cities. In fact they want to do just the opposite. But on the other hand they'd like to find alternate things to add to player cities to make them fun places to be as well.
Art's Take:
it actually sounded like there was quite a bit of work at least planned for this area. Again this is not an area of expertice for me, so I'm not reporting all the gory details (ask Pappi and Rothin) but what I heard certainly sounded good to me.
Last Tidbits:
I had fun there overall. Some good, some bad. To me there seemed to be smaller attendence there, and somewhat of a lessfestive mood overall. The devs in general seemed a bit more reserved and less forthcoming with answers to questions then in the prior year. Still, that said, there is plenty of good things revealed there and I'm glad that I went.
The best thing was definitely meeting people that I'd only known online prior to the event. To those people I say /salute and let's keep in touch. I definitely enjoyed meeting ya.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 06-06-2005 09:51 AM
Ankhesanamun
Sun Jun 05, 2005 7:15 pm
#5
Actually on the subject of the 'special' monsters on kashyyyk or however its spelled 
, you can tell them from the level indicator for the npcs. If you look at it closely it will have a darkened center instead of the uniform color of the regular monsters. On the usefullness of the DNA, yea you can sample the npcs and they have different 1000 stats, and using the current DNA data that i've aquired they do throw the calculations on pet level off alot. Creating what should be a level 66 monster yields creatures that are level 73+, i've yet to try to tone down some of the stats on these monsters to see the effect, but i'll do that later to see if it indeed makes the DNA useless or harder to create a usefull creature with good stats.
Ankhesanamun
lammergeier
Sun Jun 05, 2005 8:22 pm
#6
many thanks, Mr. Dent.
it's a lot to digest, and I hope the devs make some official statements on the forums to clarify the impressions gathered by the players who were fortunate to attend.
EDIT: I'm also stickying this thread until we have more direct communication from the devs.
it's a lot to digest, and I hope the devs make some official statements on the forums to clarify the impressions gathered by the players who were fortunate to attend.
EDIT: I'm also stickying this thread until we have more direct communication from the devs.
Message Edited by lammergeier on 06-05-2005 11:23 PM
DrendalKahn
Mon Jun 06, 2005 5:17 am
#7
Amazing work. I still have your report from last year's fanfest bookmarked. 
BraccusD
Mon Jun 06, 2005 9:59 am
#8
Good post. Thanks for the update! These new enhanced training features for CH have me worried for the pet making part of the BE profession... I guess will just wait and see how compareable the pets will come to different BE pet configurations. I don't want to become an image designer for pets where we are justlooked at as changing the skin, color, specials.
Spazzers
Mon Jun 06, 2005 11:39 am
#9
Great job! Very comprehensive and I'm glad you weren't afraid to post your impressions of the material being presented and how it was put forth. In some ways, that can be more telling than the data themselves.
Thanks for the info.
Aleskander
Mon Jun 06, 2005 5:32 pm
#10
Thanks for the info Art. Very well put forth and your impressions are very well laid out and informative.
HaughtyElf
Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:04 pm
#11
My guess, is that the DEV's have no clue as to how to implent anything that would statisfy the smuggler community, especially with regards to real smuggling. Every thing we've come up with has been put down as technically impossible or would create unwanted bottlenecks. Of which, both statements are moronic, since much of what we ask for I've seen in other games with out issue.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Smugglers:
One of the real shockers to me was the bold statement that "there will be no smuggler revamp as such". This is SO contradictory to everything we've been hearing just days or weeks ago. Instead they talked about a new slicing system that was in testing, and some form of balance adjustments to spices. Aside from that, smugglers could expect changes to their class like everyone else, a little at a time, spread out over a lot of releases. When asked why they had changed their minds on this stuff, they used smuggler's new post-cu combat prowess to justify this change.
Art's Take: bad bad bad. My jaw is still on the floor over this. I can't help wonder what the REAL scoup on this is, because I sure didn't feel like we were getting the real story here. I gotta believe we're missing some vital part of the story here.
wha_tagoo_siam
Fri Jun 24, 2005 8:36 am
#12
Thanks for the update Art! It makes me worry however for the future of the game. Seems like the artisan professions are getting SERIOUSLY overlooked when they are the backbone of the game. Also, I am curious as to how many of the current devs are the same devs that were around when SWG was initially created and launched??? Seems like a lot of damage control is going on, and that is always a scary thought. /sigh
ThrakenSal
Sat Jun 25, 2005 12:53 am
#13
so basically you are telling us once again Smuggler's get the short end again? I can't believe this, I have been a loyal smuggler for ages and have been looking forward to this for so long that I am exasperated beyond belief that the Devs have shoved us aside once again :'( well I guess I should expect this by now but I had always hoped...............................
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