Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Did the math... looked at the calendar...
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Matsubaa
Tue Jun 22, 2004 1:25 am
#1
The Devs said they plan for major publishes to come at roughly 6 week intervals.
This means that we can plan for the Combat Rebalance to be finished roughly sometime in September, barring any unforeseen delays or rush on the Devs part.
Anyone remember the exact date Creature Handlers got pounded with the initial steps of the combat balance? I'm remembering December but I could be wrong. In any case, it means for at least 6 months of the first year after release we have been terribly handicapped and probably will continue to be so handicapped for at least 3 months of the second year.
I think I regret not having realized this before having picked up my most recent game card. I could have saved myself time, money and heartache by avoiding this amazingly ill-planned game for at least another 3 months.
Efia
Tue Jun 22, 2004 2:11 am
#2
Ok, maybe I will get flamed, but here goes.
I started playing this game soon after it first came out. I think 90 percent of the people I saw had pets out. I had wanted to be a CH since I first heard it was a profession before the game was out, but when I saw that everyone and their dog had a rancor, the profession really lost it's allure. I ended up quitting after only playing for a month or so, and when I came back I was very happy to see that there were not pets every where. So yes, I am glad that CH was "nerfed" because it got rid of all the dabblers. Now, I do think that we could use a little boost, but I don't see how things are near as bad as people make them out to be.
I have also heard alot of complaints about all the attention given to Jedi lately. Well, the Jedi system needs to change for the good of everyone, not just Jedi. Holo-grinding sucks. It messes up the economy, it messes up the community, it messes up gameplay, and if I walk one more meter to an empty vendor I am going to scream.
Bounty hunters complain about broken missions, commandos hate their useless acid rifles, combat medics feel useless in pve, and on and on and on. So yes, there are professions that need balancing and just plain fixing. And yes, it is frustrating that there is sooooo much wrong with this buggy game that it seems impossible for them to fix it all, made all the more frustrating when they introduce mini-publishes and promise expansionsas stop-gaps to keep consumer attention.
But guess what? No one is forcing us to keep paying each month. There must be some redeeming quality here that keeps us coming back, right? Could it be that even with all the bugs and flaws and frustration we are still having FUN? I know I am. And just like in real life, if you dwell on the less pleasant things, you are just going to spoil the pleasant ones.
So the next time some TKA or fencer or rifleman takes down your rancor in 1.5 seconds, just remember that not every profession was meant for pvp, and at least your pet gives you a 1.5 second headstart if you need to run away 
Hazarstanagge
Tue Jun 22, 2004 3:49 am
#3
THATS what i like to hear Efia!!!!!!
If ya dont like it, DONT DO IT!
If it makes ya mad, AVOID IT!
If ya cant bring yourself to do any of the above, SUFFER IN SILENCE!!
KEEP THE FAITH!
KEEP ON TAMING!
Neogame
Tue Jun 22, 2004 4:10 am
#4
Ok to start with i've only been playing for about 2-3months (started just after the droid invasion). and i must say first off that i LOVE this game. OK i've been a fan of stars wars since i was 3yrs old. and have been waiting for a game like this since GOD knows when. ok getting back to the point...... what was my point again, oh yeah.
I started out as a droid engineer, which after awhile got a bit boring. but while i was doing this i had a lev 10 dewback. and love'd going hunting with him. So now i've changed prof to CH. which i love. i've got to say i think its got to be one of the best professions in the game. i dont know what it was like before it got nerfed, but i think its fine now. Yes there are little things i would like to change within it, but its the same with every profession.
there are only two things i would like the dev's to do for CH. a new structure that we can put some of our pets in (to show off, to other ppl in the city), these your'd have to return to swap pets from datapad to stable. and the abitily to sell our pets in a vendor or bazzar (so we can make a little money out of our prof like everyone else).
and i must say to efia i agree our pets do give u a good ecaspe exit. the one thing i hope doesn't happen with all the work on jedis is that everyone drops their prof and starts down the road to jedi galaxy. i for one wont be doing that/
PoilDeCarotte
Tue Jun 22, 2004 4:37 am
#5
Efia wrote:
But guess what? No one is forcing us to keep paying each month. There must be some redeeming quality here that keeps us coming back, right? Could it be that even with all the bugs and flaws and frustration we are still having FUN? I know I am. And just like in real life, if you dwell on the less pleasant things, you are just going to spoil the pleasant ones.
Definitely right, there MUST be something fun for us to continue play this game.
Very nice post, you said everything
(at least, I agree with it 
)
Very nice post, you said everything
(at least, I agree with it )
fantoq
Tue Jun 22, 2004 5:43 am
#6
Efia,
I think what you see here, and elsewhere, is a lot of frustration by players who want the game to be successful. Many of the players, like yourself, have been here for the better part of a year and have seen a lot of broken promises, non-answers, bugs never even being addressed - no less fixed, and features being added that were so poorly thought out they had to be reversed or nerfed shortly after publishing them.
A lot of these goes to poor community management. There seems to be some undying need to keep everything top secret and correspondents are stuck playing dentists pulling teeth to get information from the dev team. And so many of those few responses are either patently incorrect or so watered down they are meaningless. In 2004, it's pretty rare to see a software company operate under such a cloak of non-information.
What you say is true, no one is forcing us to play. But what seems to be lost on SOE is the fact that the posters here ARE the ones paying $14 a month. In truth, the money is probably not breaking most of our banks. On the other hand, I don't find myself playing as much these days and if that continues I'll eventually decide to stop paying as well. But a good part of that decision will not just be time alone, it will be the frustration with lack of progress in the game.
Grawarr
Tue Jun 22, 2004 6:51 am
#7
Granted it is a BIG game.
Granted there are a LOT of professions that need fixed (and a LOT has changed since release).
Granted there are a LOT of minor bugs (as well as big ones).
Users SHOULD be encouraged to voice their concerns/oppinions - that's what the feedback and forums are for!
Users should NOT just play in silence, and just sit there and put up with things like the 'auto-store' bug for vehicles and pets (have you tried repair your nearly dead vehicle, only to have ot auto-store, and the next time you pull it, it blows-up because the repair DID NOT STICK, and you wasted those credits????- and this happens over, and over, and over again...for MONTHS now).
The Devs have to decide on the severity of each and every bug, and how difficult it is to fix (how much code needs to be touched, etc.). WE (the players/community) HAVE to voice our concerns, report bugs, give enhancement ideas, etc. That's our part.
I don't pay much attention to people who continually RANT - give specifics, details, and possible solutions - that is constructive!
Just wanted to post my feelings.
Grawarr
Tue Jun 22, 2004 6:54 am
#8
Oh, just for the record...I've been playing since July 12, 2003. CH was not my first choice or professions, but it was my first MASTER, and I have NOT let it go since.
I hated the holo grinding - no I haven't unlocked - and am glad for the Jedi changes coming up.
I don't like the fact that I will have to double my work - either double grinding CH on my alt, so my main can be Jedi (because I'm closer to unlocking with it), or to start from scratch with an alt char so my main keeps CH (I like CH, and want to keep one char CH and another to try out Jedi).
But that's something I'll have to deal with when the time comes.
notQUIK
Tue Jun 22, 2004 8:37 am
#9
Efia..... /applaud
I couldn't agree more. I started when the game was only out a month or two. I quit after about three months. When I came back about 2 months ago, my character was still there, and it was a new game. So many things were fixed and changed that I played non stop.
You can sit here and say that all these things are wrong. You can point out all the flaws you want. But, as Efia said, if you weren't having fun then you wouldn't keep coming back.
The boards are hear to list problems and give suggestions. I hardly think Lucas Arts is going to lose a whole bunch of money and shutdown the game because you had a problem with a body armor "nerf".
As far as CH goes, yeah I think there needs to be improvments. But I'm a wookie CH/Rifleman. I have been "nerfed"just as much as anyone if not more and I'm about to be nerfed again. I don't agree with the present jedi grinding method. You might as well type in "God mode" and wait 1-3 months and then your a jedi. But, it doesn't do anyone any good for me to yell about it. And plus, I keep coming back. I am having lots of fun. I am a CH and a Wookie because I want to be, not because I think they are the best in the game.
CH, as well as every other profession, could use change. Voice your opinions here, please! But honestly CH isn't as bad as it seems and they are working on it. If CH was the best in the game like it once was, everyone would be a CH and then I wouldn't want to be. Even in the present state, you can make CH competitve. Be careful what you wish for.
KEEP TAMING (it will be worth it),
Quiksilver Kauri
Seiryuu
Tue Jun 22, 2004 11:20 am
#10
You can sit here and say that all these things are wrong. You can point out all the flaws you want. But, as Efia said, if you weren't having fun then you wouldn't keep coming back.
I keep coming back because I am the PA leader and have a lot of friends. Those are the things that keep me here.
I do find things to do and I do occassionally have fun. However that does not mean there could not be drastic improvements that would make it fun all the time. The advantage for the publishers of these games is that leaving is not as simple as giving up your stuff, it also means abandoning all the relationships you have formed.
I keep coming back because I am the PA leader and have a lot of friends. Those are the things that keep me here.
I do find things to do and I do occassionally have fun. However that does not mean there could not be drastic improvements that would make it fun all the time. The advantage for the publishers of these games is that leaving is not as simple as giving up your stuff, it also means abandoning all the relationships you have formed.
Wolfus
Wed Jun 23, 2004 12:10 am
#11
The combat balance comes with publish 10 so we should see it in July - it's set for july 29 currently
Wolfus Stratisferia 
Matsubaa
Wed Jun 23, 2004 12:26 am
#12
Seiryuu wrote:
You can sit here and say that all these things are wrong. You can point out all the flaws you want. But, as Efia said, if you weren't having fun then you wouldn't keep coming back.
I keep coming back because I am the PA leader and have a lot of friends. Those are the things that keep me here.
I do find things to do and I do occassionally have fun. However that does not mean there could not be drastic improvements that would make it fun all the time. The advantage for the publishers of these games is that leaving is not as simple as giving up your stuff, it also means abandoning all the relationships you have formed.
You might all do well to remember this game's timeline.
Day one, we all had to fight because SOE wasn't ready to release the biggest MMORPG license in history. When we finally got registered the lucky among us got to play for as much as an hour.
On day 2 the login problem was fixed at least enough for us all to get in an create our characters. We played for a bit and because we were all newbies nothing much got done.
Within 2 or 3 weeks the powergamers were already grinding CH, Commando, BH, etc. We were massively overpowered with the ability to call 3 pets of any call level at novice which made gaining XP extremely easy. We were starting to hear the rumors of auto-storing, cowardly pets and commands that didn't do anything (befriend, column, wedge).
About a month and a half into the game the more casual players caught up to CH. By then the rules had changed and you now had to work your way up the profession tree to get the 3 creatures at once calling. There still wasn't a cap on call levels, so the master CH still had enormous power but that mattered less than the novice dabblers. We confirmed the rumors on auto-storing, cowardly pets and non-functional commands.
About 6 months into the game, the dabblers had gotten themselves comfortable with templates of BH + CH 4/4/0/0 or some such.
They were taking our best pets and the best combat professions and combining them into mega-powerful tanks. Management had ordered the Jedi to be put into the game. The "pure" CH community was pretty happy at this level of power. The very rare medium armored pets and the graul mauler were popular and powerful at the time. Enough that people even sometimes used their pets in PvP. That of course came to an end. We were told that master CH would be fine, high level pets would be patched in to replace the ones we had lost but the low level pets were all going to be rebalanced. Auto-storing, cowardly pets and non-functional commands were now confirmed, reproducable at-will by anyone in the community and people had theories about what was wrong with the cowardly pets.
*All* pets were rebalanced. *All* CH lost power, not just dabblers. XP was now harder to get, the rares were now rumored to be extinct because we went months before anyone even saw one. It was okay because within a month or two the other professions were all going to feel the sting of the nerf bat and then we'd be comparable again. The Devs reported back to us that they couldn't confirm the existence of our bugs and they could not reproduce the results on their test server. Any given player could, and still can, reproduce the cowardly pet bug at-will.
BE gained the ability to make monster pets, creatures as powerful or more powerful than the graul maulers pre-nerf. They could even make non-CH pets which were at least as good as our best. It wasn't even fun to tame babies anymore because anything we could tame was crap compared to a BE pet. We complained, they complained. A fix got put in which didn't work. A new fix got patched in which didn't work. Then the Devs gave up. They had DE and Jedi to worry about. Now BE can create monsters which become invalid the moment a CH tries to tame them. Fantastical but useless pets abound. And of course there are still the level 0 rancors and other such monstrosities if you can find a BE willing to bend the rules.
And here we are, still waiting. We went from soloingeverything in the game (overpowered) to needing to be buffed and armored with a BE pet and an elite combat profession to be able to solo anything.
This is why I'm not having fun anymore. I could fight with my pets in a group or alone, have fun and make a decent living at it. Sometimes I would PvP or pick up a BE pet for the more specific strengths with which they were blessed or I could go out into the wilds and tame companions that weren't just trophies, they would stand shoulder to shoulder with me in the worst situations imaginable. Now? The strongest pets are BE (all gurrecks for the running speed, of course), taming feels futile. Combat is a joke when every player in the game tanks better than my BE franken-pets in PvE or PvP.
Matsubaa
Wed Jun 23, 2004 12:28 am
#13
Wolfus wrote:
The combat balance comes with publish 10 so we should see it in July - it's set for july 29 currently
We'll be very lucky if that's the case.
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