Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IC4: Path of the Jedi
Hi,
these things I would like to see:
1: Each (!) Mission should give you a choice where you can choose the dark or the light path. See it as sorta ying and yang. If you choose the dark path, you get "dark points". If you choose the light path in the next quest, you then loose "dark points". If you achieved 100% of your dark or light points (whatever this means), you get your fs-slot. Well, even without those points, it would be great to be able to choose a path in each mission, cause thats what jedis have to do, choose their path.
2: A number of Random generated quests should lead you to the char which has the first jedi-path-mission for you, and that person should also be random, so noone can make a guide for the jedi.
3: To become a Jedi, you should need a padawan. In other words, you should not be able to simply learn from an npc. If you gain a skill-level, you should either learn it from another FS-Char or do a quest first to get the selected skill. Of course, that mission could offer two paths also, and if you choose the wrong one, you might not get the skill this time.
4: A Jedi will not use any skills, because the FS Slot is not available at that point :-)
5: There should be no need for bringing friends with you for each quest. It should be possible to make those quests on your own, IF you have the right skills. Mixing crafting and fighting might be a good deal. In other words, I see no problem in letting a BH Master making a quest where you need to craft something, as long if he can deal the schematic and the items needed to craft to another player who can build the item for him. All Items you need for those schematics should be available due to quests also, but some might be available as drops too. But if you let people make quests for those items, you can involve crafters more easily. Crafters do quests for the items, Fighters go hunting for drops.
6: Those quests should need Brain, not Muscles. Of course you should need to fight sometimes, but the silly " I have a wp now, lets go and kill whats there" should not be the way to go for the fs-slot.
7: Make a Quest-contest. Let people sent in their quest proposals and give the best 200 quests some free gametime and the 10 best quest-ideas a FS-slot. Then you will get the variety of quests thats needed for the fs-slot.
Read ya.
Personally I have a few things to say.
Something should be changed in how you obtain your jedi character. If holos are still the desired path than in my opinion if you started as a combat profession then all of your holo grinds should be of combat professions.
If it is desired that quest be fufilled then that would be great to, my only concern with that is that you will have tons of people running the exact same missions, so some consideration to that would need to be addressed,
Personally as it stands right now i have mastered 3 holos and 4th told me merchant, and to be quite honest i was pissed, because i started out as a marksmen and worked my way thru BH, then i started my holo grinds and they were all non combatant, The only thing that kept me from quitting the game when i opened my 4th holo and read that i had to master merchant was my guild and the fact that, several of them had encountered the same crap, so now i strive to master commando, and maybe someday get my BH back so i can have some payback on some jedi, lol
I would like to see this sort of system for jedi skills as well as other professions:
- attain skill boxes through xp like normal
- when you learn a skill box, you get all the stat mods that you normally would (weapon speed, weapon accuracy, etc.), but none of the skills
- once you get a skill box, you unlock a series of quests (that you recieve from your trainer, or maybe another NPC)
- you must perform the quests for the NPC to teach you the special skills/schematics that are available in the box
this would add some amount of story to the otherwise boring grind. maybe completing the quest would give you a bonus of xp to help you along to your next box.
My biggest concern is that the quests dont begin with campable NPC's.
Perhaps several dozen NPC's around the galaxie will be able to start a quest, but for eachperson, they must find the right ones. Those that aren;t right for them, may give a hint, or just say, "I feel the power within you, but I cannot help." or something along those lines.
If possible, the NPC's would rotate occasionally, since websites would just log where each is anyway. One or two on each planet, and once a week, you devs would just move them from city to city, or wilderness area. OR, they have a set walking path. 24 hours a day thay walk in a roundabout pattern across each planet.
Once you have found the right NPC to talk to, he will give you a set of missions. After those missions, he will tell you to visit anothe rnpc on anothe rplanet, and so on.
A Padawan System
Why not get rid of this dependancy on NPCS and move to Players? The current player jedi should be instrumental in future jedi advancement!
Ok so i've already posted my small ideas on FSCS achieving. I just wanted to remind everyone of a point or two wich makes the current FSCS system GOOD, and also what makes it BAD:
A casual gamer CAN achieve it, but it will take considerably longer than a powergamer...
ANYONE can achieve it.
No actin you ever take will forever prevent you from attaining FSCS.
FSCS takes time, dedication, and sacrifice. You NEED to change something about your playing style to open FSCS currently. You might need to entertain when you are a fighter, or craft when you are an entertainer, ETC, but you WILL have to FIGHT, CRAFt and HEAL, the 3 main roles in SWG...
It makes you explore the game, you go through a LOT of professions and you discover a ton of aspects of the game you normally might not have discovered...
Any faction can attain it: Imp/Rebel/Neutral,doesn't matter.
It feels REWARDING! When you open that FSCS you go 'YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS (add twenty more 'S') and you feel like you have REALLy accomplished something BIG in SWG.
It is the END reward for the powergamer. and he CAN "powergame" to FS, and then to Jedi master. And as much as some people don't like powergamers and would rather they not grind, and use powergaming tactics, etc, ou NEED to cater to them. they want and need a high end goal: Jedi Master It will take them over 5 months of achieving. It is hard and rewarding and they can BRAG about it... Just imagine for a second, if you could start yur character as a jedi , a novice proffession, and it was as "easy" as mastering BH, would you feel a sense of accomplishement when you attained it? You would, but not to the smae degree, not mentionning the fact that there are another 700 like you on your galaxy...
now, the BAD with the current system:
It requires you to "kill" your template for your character. you HAVE to drop whatever template you have to grind through professions...
the GRIND: It is dumb, point-less, it can and IS afk'ed, leads to people using 3rd party macros to grind for them, or in game macros to afk through professions, etc... It is BAD DESIGN (sorry devs...) because, wether you like it or not, it DOES force people to grind.
I remember Holo saying that no matter what they did, we could still find a way to grind through it. I agree to a certain degree. Grinding is a certain way a player plays. he does not HAVE to grind, he could well master 15 or so professions the "normal" way, at a normal pace, by simply crafting for customers (but he can't with the current systems, on live the market is flooded and cornered by the masters...) or just grouping when he is on to kill stuff (wich is also a way to grind, even though some people argue that it is slower than most, for me, grinding combat solo is the worst. I feel like i'm playing an old arcade game, without a "Top Scores" board 
) . Players here are FORCED to grind because, with what we know of the current system, they have to keep mastering professions until they find the right one. TH says we are missing something, i'm sure we are, but until we know what it is, this is the only way how to open the Fs slot for us...
Let's face it, you "need" to master 15 or so professions in order to open FSCS. Great, let's openmy skills UI and look around here... Ok, let's try... marksman! I'll go pickup a D18 and try to get pistol first, yea!
You go and take a mission, you kill it,you take another, boom, pistols 1. Great. You go back, learn it, take another 2 missions, go back out. You kill, halfway to skill 2. Take another 2, kill, skill 2! then it takes another 8-10 missions. and the 4th one finally, takes a LONG time if you solo, even soloin the right mobs.
So you go to a group, butyou won't make so much XP (this is on live, i mostly play on TC, but i recently went on live and fought in groups at rifle 4. I had novice Bh but i entended on going novice rifleman.) . The group steals most of your XP, and when you do manage to get XP, it still takes a WHILe to getpistols 4. multiply that by 3 times to get master (not mentionning AP, wich is horrendous on live,less horrendous on TC).
Ok, fine, marksman is one of the "easy" trees. brawler takes twice the time. Medic is slow if you only heal people in groups or med centers. It's very fast if someone tumbles for you. (master medic in 3 hours, saw it done yesterday night on TC... Master doc in 6 hours or so, did it recently on TC... )
Grinding is THE way to go for most players, becauseeach new mastery is X more chances to get FSCS opened! they get "hooked", and they grind a profession and they master it, and they hope and pray they'll open FSCS, and they don't. so they pick another profession, grind thru it, master it, etc... It's like gambling, youpay with your time, and you may or may not be rewarded. When you are, the more time you put in, the bigger the reward... It's a simple equation.
Anyways... I wandered off the right track here. back to bad things:
Grind, see above 
NOT casual gamer friendly at all. (even tho acasual CAN do it): A casual gamer is someonewho, like me or others, has a job, or college, or school most of the time, and comes home and wants to RELAX by playign SWG... Anti-casual gamer friendly simply means that grinding is not relaxing for most I'm almost done making a TKM/M Doc on TC. Iwanted at first to just drop him and change him afterwards and maybe grind my holo profs, but i'm not going to. He's going to stay TKM/Doc. (and bless the 3 alts rule ) I will keep him so whenever i feel like relaxing, i can hop on him, buff myself and others, rez them, make a little cash for my other alts, enjoy a hunting party, etc... I will make another alt with another template that i haven't tried before, Rifleman / Sth... If i was on live, it'd be it for me. Either the game would stop having that relaxing appeal, because my character would be weak once more and all my achievement would have gone out when i typed "YES" 18 times, and it would become BAD... This is why it's not casual gamer friendly, it's like telling a casual gamer:
If you wan to be a jedi, you need to hate this game for 6 months, and then, then MAYBE you will open FSCS...
It's suicidal, it drives customers away, etc etc...
It doesn't fit continuity! Luke never mastered 13 jobsbefore he met obi-wan. He was a farmer and amechanic, with SOMe combat skills and bartering skills. If you ask me he was a jack of all trades (haven't heard this phrase since beta ) what changed it tho were two things: He was of FS decent (hid midichlorian count) and he bought R2-D2 and C3PO, wich was a randompoi spawn of jawas... 
Anyways, i think i've summed it up here. i already gave an example of things you coulddo up int his thread, and i'd like to add2 things here:
For crafters: they could find holocrons when crafting. the holocron was buried in their ore, etc, and their harvester pulled it up along with the rest and it goes to the hopper. Dunno if that's feasable. OR they get a random event when they craft something, wich says that their item crationg failed because somethingin the materials used jammed the crafting tool: a holocron.
Entsin cantinas could get a random systemmessage where an NPC would have given them a holocron as a "tip"... it would be TOTALLY random and it would be untradeable/undroppable holo, same as with the crafter's holo...
Good luck ont he FSCS redesign, it sounds already like a hairy problem Modifying a core system is always hard. It was a tough call but you made the right decision. Had it stayed like it is now, int he end either everyone would have been jedi, or a lot of folks would have left the game out of disgust (and probably a lot of CASUAL gamers would have...)
I'd like non linear quests. E.g. your asked to deliver an item to somone, when you arrive instead of just accepting the item the person gives you 3 options:
'You took your time looser. Now come protect me as I go to do my task if your not scared.'
1) Ive done what I was asked to do I'm off back for my reward
2) You should be more polite, but I'll help >> leads to a fight which he must survive (but you need not).
3) Insulting me is the last act of your miserable life.
Should be fairly tough but easier than the other fight
If you take the former approach then the story says he died trying to do his task and you get a crafting quest from your task master requiring rare componants.
If you help him then you skip that stage that required the crafting stuff.
If you loot him then you get the item needed to complete the crafting quest and some other usefull items (but.. well obviously your actions are stored up).
Not all dark acts should be combat, nor all light acts.
Theft:
'take these power couplers to help him make a weapon'
- quest completes if you give him only one but you get dark points for keeping any)
Deciet:
'Give this valuable thing to Uko' but at the waypoint is Uko's droid who tells you he'll deliver it, you can insist on finding Uko but he is on another planet and you'll get the run arround. If you give it to the droid then the quest completes but your task master will send you to Uko anyway unless you lie and say that you deliverd it to him personaly.
Also the story hooks should be more varied. The plot should draw to a conclusion after some stage then after a few days the next time you log on you get an action box telling you that you had a dream: a schematic appears in your data pad 'some thing you drempt up'.
The item you make is a chance cube type of thing that spits out waypoints, at one of these waypoints is an NPC who continues the quest: "I had a dream and made this thing that told me to come here". You exchange as much info with him as you see fit, perhapse lie, perhapse not, he offers to exchance devices so you can see where they are similar. When you use his device you get a single waypoint repeated - same for him. You go your separate ways but when you arrive you need your device back, you can go back to meet him (hes not there only his son and you must quest to find him) or you could have killed and looted him at your first meeting or tricked him via some text options.
I agree to some extent on a timer, but not in the way that I've seen expressed here, unless I missed a post on that topic...
Making a limit to how much one may advance towards jedi-ness per day or week for example isn't fair to those who are powergamers, although if there was a timer on how fast the mission can be repeated, would make more sense...
In other words... Take a mix of The Warren and Act 3 for example... keys, traps, locked doors, riddles, visiting several planets, etc... If you were in the middle of this one and got the wrong answer, died or failed the mission, then you would have to wait a week to try it again, (as the npc who starts the mission is "busy" for a week or something)... This per se would be fairer on the powergamers, as if they managed to complete the mission first time, they can keep going, not having to wait a week to move on...
It would also mean that the casual gamer could move at his/her pace too, however if one day he finds him/herself with more free time than normal, he/she can also progress at a faster rate.
One very important thing imo is to make them very demanding, and as varied as possible to avoid walkthroughs.... Becoming a jedi is supposed to be a hard and trying path, if and when necessary relying on other ppl. If there are "entertain this npc" quests, "craft this item" and "kill this mob" quests, then I don't want to have to restructure my toon to do it... I want to be able to "hire" another player who is an entertainer to entertain, the crafter to craft or the damage dealer to deal out damage... Possibilities would be along the lines of rewards (similar to the newrewards system for the theme parks)... Not only would the entertainer get paid by me for entertaining, but we could also work out the reward for that part of the quest would be given to the person hired, not the person who needs the mission done. Watch to not let groups of ppl hire one entertainer to complete that part of the quest for everyone in the group though... added challenge there...
The path to jedi does need to take a long time, and imo does require player interaction... so there would need to be a whole lot of these quests... some which one person can complete alone and others where you would need to be in a group to have a chance of surviving or completing... "two levers used at the same time to open a door for a third person to go through, for example"... how to avoid ppl disbanding just before completion to grief others is something you'd have to look at though...
In some respect similar to the theme parks, each quest on another planet... Make ppl travel and visit other planets/cities... But not similar in the sense of the typical destroy/delivery missions of course...
Possibly have one quest where the player must find a junior player and help them along a path of some sort, either by healing them, supplying them with resources, defending them while fighting, or something along those lines...
Good or Bad options should also give you + or - jedi faction:
- jedi faction = you may join the dark side when unlocking your fs slot,
Below is my idea of how to unlock and progress up the Jedi Professon. I beleve that this way would be a fun and enjoyable experience.
Unlocking your Jedi Slot: