Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept Open Discussion (Week Ending 4-12-04)
Okay I sent a PM to Pex but with no reply (figure he's pretty busy but it was worth a shot). All my complaints are ones that effect RP that have been brought up bye me or other people:
BUGS THAT NEED FIXING:
1) CHAIR SLIDING!!! I know everyone gets annoyed with this. Nothing worse than being in mid conversation then sliding across the room.
2) Return our 'RP symbol' (like the AFK and Group) ones.
3) When you choose to have no title it resets when you log out then log back in, half the time you forget to turn it off again and walk around with 'Surveyor' over your head all day.
4) Imperial hat, still can't wear it...
STUFF THAT WE'D LIKE CHANGING:
1) The 'hearing distance' of spatial chat. You shouldn't be able to hear someone talking normally when you are at opposite sides of the cantina. You shouldn't be able to hear 'Billy Spammer' shouting his head off from the bank when you are at the Starport. Whisper /sigh, this is my biggest frustration. /whisper Is OBVIOUSLY and RP tool, but why bother having it if its not a whisper and you can still hear people from across a room? The distance that each of these can be heard ALL need reducing.
2) An action for lying on your back. May sound stupid but I hate seeing people :collapses /prone. It looks stupid, cant be that hard to use the feign death as a default action. This is a personal thing for me. This has been complimented by other people who feel there are far to few action emotes (where your char actually does something instead of text coming up that we could just as easily write ourselves). Why can't we do actions when sat down? There's a lot of actions that we could do with.
3) RPs Place Within the GCW. This comes from one of our forum posts where our RP Imps are getting beat up on by non-RP Reb's who just come to farm FPs and give us grief. This game is not made for RPers. The GCW is DEFINATELY not a place for RPers. There arn't that many people in the GCW who use ST Armor or an Imperial Officers Uniform to fight in, these are RP items, so why in gods name only make them available in a PvP system? I'd say either make some Faction uniforms (ST Suits, etc.)that can be worn as covert but offer 0 Armor Rating (so it IS just an RP item), including Imperial AND Rebel outfitsthat can be worn by anyone(no one wants their RP ruined by a bunch of FP Grinders looking for the easy kill.). Now I KNOW the idea of having someone in full ST Armor and having them covert doesn't make sense, unfortunately, the Overt/Covert swtich is not a switch that means Solder/Spy, it means Can Be Attacked/Can't Be Attacked. When Imps are covert, they don't act like they are Rebs, they act like Imps who can't be killed.... if this is what you wanted from the GCW then I stand corrected.
4) For the love of god decorate the buildings. Sick of walking into empty rooms all over the Galaxy. Can't take too much time to chuck in some furniture. Give me admin to the NPC houses and I'll decorate the bleeding things 
5) Make it so that you can hide your badges.
6) Potential to change your name (possibly temporarily), great for people wanting to RP as a spy. I only played UO before SWG and if they can have it on there, there's no reason why SWG can't.
7) Remove the damn ST's in the cantinas! They don't do anything apart from harass those two chiss all day (that might only be in the Mos Eisley one). When you've got people kicking the crap out of each other in the cantina it just look stupid that they are stood there doing nothing. They have no purpose, would be much better suited at the bank or starport, imo.
PROFESSION ISSUES (WHICH EFFECT RP):
1) Increase the item limit by 100 in all houses. You can deco it looking great and take up your item limit, but then you got no room to store anything.
2) Couches, the fact that only one person can sit on a couch... how big IS their ass?
3) Time related items? Watches, clocks?
4) The setting for the oldest skin (ie. wrinkles), you still don't look that old in game... OLDER!!!
5) More clothing/armor types for decoration, not for AR rating.
The one thing that came up the most was having a live events team. On UO we had an IGM (IGM Talos for Europa who RocKeD!) giving mini quests and adventures and stuff. I know Pexx does help out a little with some quiet prompting and so thats something I'm thankful for (though I havn't called upon his services... yet 
). Would be nice to just have something happen and get people involved.
Nothin majorly serious (apart from ST armor... that bugs me and I'm not even an ST.. hate them getting gunned down by some damn ninja reb). Just a few bugs that are a bit annoying. Figured its about time we tried to get some of this stuff fixed.
Starwind13 wrote:
How about a search function like that of EQ, (and other games non soe) so that we can look up for those who are LFG?
and so that we can search for specific classes, such as if we need a ranger or a doctor we can flag ourselves as a group needing these types. I think this would help alot in getitng groups formed to just hunt.
This already exists.
Concealing and falsifying identity.
This is something I have thought of should be available in swg for a long time, and have yet to see a forum or thread in dedication to this.
The fact that you can see someone’s characters details when they are examined. I know this will seem aimed at Jedi’s and bounty hunters, but I think it can have overlapping effects on other game play stuff and role-playing.
I think this is a big point and if changed, can add a more atmospheric feel to the game in general, not just for Jedi’s and bh's. I will explain why I think it is good for the game first and then maybe ideas as to how it could be done.
Jedi are in hiding. For one I am a bounty hunter, and although I have never seen a Jedi mission on the terminal, I already have a good list of all the Jedi’s on our server (mailed to me from another bounty hunter) if I stumble across him, all I need to do is tell the bounty hunters and they will come flocking. If it was more in a real star wars environment, Jedi will be trying to conceal themselves, using false names, concealing clothing etc. I think if a BH had a mark on a Jedi, who he has never hunted before, do you not think it would be a lot better if he was to turn up at his mark location, but not know who he is, having to examine people and taking a guess as to who to attack, (with npc's being about who they can also attack), instead of just turning up seeing a name and start shooting. If they were to attack the wrong person they fail and the mission has ended. It also highlights that yeah, fair enough if a known Jedi is walking about in broad daylight with no cloak, or no amour, and has used his powers to show off, then people will recognize him, but if he was wearing cloaks or concealing amour as a Jedi, u could not always pint point who it is. There are hundreds of people running about with say composite amour and cloaks (people will were a Jedi cloak just for to wear it, even if they are not Jedi). Overall depending on the quality of concealment, whether it is a bounty hunter hunting a Jedi, or another profession seeing a Jedi in action, they should not be able to identify who it is straight away depending on the Jedi’s efforts at concealment (which I will explain more below in as to how to approach this)
This would also be good for other professions as well. For example, a well known bounty hunter. In reverse, it can add a bit of mystery to a person. If there is a "bounty hunter" going about killing people, and is a well known Jedi hunter. then they would get a reputation and people will make up names for them themselves, almost creating a legend. You could be talking to say "john" the tailor one day and not realize he is this master bounty hunter hunting loads of Jedi’s and vice versa for commandos, Jedi’s and high rank gcw players. It would also make Jedi’s more careful as to who they talk to. Same in pvp fighting, someone can be shouting abuse at someone else, creating friction and challenge to a duel, it would be more fun to not know how good the guy is you are challenging. Also in parts of battlefields, being in a storm trooper suit or a rebel suit in battle would hide your identity, and for all you know, you could be talking to an imperial about this event afterwards that had just killed you and you never knew it. It is deceitful but that’s how real life is, and it would add more atmosphere I think. Even if it is just to change your identity for a short while if you want. Also it could give image designers a new aspect to their profession.
Now on to the point of how to do it. I think it can be done through a verity of options, and u can choose to pick one or 2, or them all. I think if each character has the ability not only to hide their professions mastered, and places visited, I think they should also have the ability to hide their name if they choose too. Basically I think examining should act similar in the rolling dice in which combat works. Depending on your skill level, items created, items bought and items equipped will raise or lower your chance of being detected. I will list these ideas below
False Documents and papers
These can be created by a crafter whom you trust or you have already contacted while concealed. They can create false documents which lets you change name for a period of time like a buff. Now depending on the quality of the documents made etc will affect as to how easily people can see they are false and detect you. It also adds another aspect to being searched by stoormtroopers for false documents. If you are caught, u can be attacked, and if rebel/Jedi; have a tef for a while. These crafters can then sell the identity of a person to the empire or bounty hunters if they choose to highlighting the fact that you cannot trust everyone, and that other professions can have a role in the ongoing struggle between the empire getting rid of Jedi’s.
Image Design.
I know image designers have the ability to change the look of a person as they see fit, but maybe give them the option to have another skill. Everyone is going on about how this profession is becoming useless, so why not give them an active role in the gcw war? We know they can change the look of a person but how about letting them change the way a character is detected. It could be explained in game as some sort of dna modifier, etc for a short period of time also. This means if you are a Jedi detected by a BH, or a rebel given a tef by a stormtrooper, then u can run and find an image designer who can change your identity. Again depending on the skill of the image designer will depend on how long this concealment will last and and how good it is in detection. Another great thing which you could do for this is, once the the image designer has changed your new identity, they could have a schematic of their new make up which they can sell on a bazaar to bounty hunters, or the imperials for certain amount of time after creating the change. Again highlighting the fact that you cannot trust everyone and those other professions can have a role in the ongoing struggle between the empire getting rid of Jedi’s
Clothing and amour
This is basically a generic thing which will give all clothes and amour a rating of concealment. Obviously it will not be full proof and there were will be a chance of you getting detected. If you saw a character who you have never seen before, entirely concealed, you should not be allowed to identify them 100% if they have taken of that clothing. I think however if you have been successfully identified by anyone, then your concealment level will drop very quickly to everyone else (spread of word type thing) and is easier to examine. It will also make people who are trying to conceal themselves have to buy a new set of amour/clothing once they have been found.
Overall this will make it expensive to change identity, for example if someone is in front of you when u take of your concealment; it will up the chance of being detected. False papers and and image design can put that back up with new amour. I think this will give many professions a chance to join in not only hiding/detecting Jedi but also another part of the profession which they never had. It means that Jedi’s will have no choice but to do this, making it harder and more expensive for them, but also will make others think twice about it before forking out that kind of money. It also means, if you come across someone concealed, are they Jedi? are they a bounty hunter? do I examine them? I have discovered who they are, is it worth keeping a note of their name and telling others? Could the game develop into image designers and crafters conspiring with bounty hunters to get Jedi’s? or vice versa? It will add a more, “who can you trust" aspect to the game as a Jedi and other professions.
It would add a certain role-play to the game which is not really used, and create conspiracies, legends, hunts for people, bounty hunting more interesting and getting other professions into a part of the game they are not much involved in.
Just a different idea here, what do the rest of you think?
M
I agree with this too. I think it can be used across alot of professions and not just jedi and bounty hunters. It would add an extra atmosphere to the game and more roleplaying. Would it be that hard to do in code? I especiall like the image designer aspect and levels of concealing clothing.
Can this be done TH? Have you already thought about it in the past and have come up with reasons as to why not? Please give us feedback on it,
You know, I keep looking at pics of the day and such and I am sorry, but Jedi all in composite armor is asinine.
It borders on blasphemy and is utterly retarded.
Give them defense enhanced robes or something that only a Jedi can craft and wear, but get rid of Jedi in full battle armor.
Jedi havent worn armor since the Sith Wars.
Auto Pilot.
How about being able to click on a waypoint and set it to auto pilot, so that your vehicle or ever yourself on foot will keep running untl you hit that spot.
Yes I know about number lock, but that is only a straight line and you can get turned off course.
Of course this would require a fix in pathfinding.
GET RID OF STAR PORT AFK SPAMMERS.
Let people be AFK all they want as long as they are silent, I do not care but get rid of the star port spam.
I posted this in another thread but I think it should go in here maybe. It was in response to the suggestion that there could be a ribust legal system. Obviously these are simply ideas and suggestions which could be developed further.
Basically I don't think that Criminal Activity should be a GCW or PvP thing.
Does anyone remember Elite? That had a basic but working "Legal" system that hopefully would not be too much of a stretch to implement this within SWG. If you were caught smuggling narcotics a) they were taken off you, and b) you were given varying levels of criminal status (Offender, Fugitive - uhh, can't remember the others).
- Introduce a "Criminal" FP system which is increased by illegal behaviour.
- If caught with contraband (a maximum of one detected item):
a) the detected contraband will be taken from you
b) you will have your "Criminal" FP increased
c) you will have to pay a proportionate fine (important to make it serious enough for rich and poor characters)
d) you will have a period of scan immunity for some time
- As your "Criminal" FP increases you are:
a) more likely to be scanned for contraband
b) open for attack from NPC Police Forces
c) may be more likely to ask a smuggler to transport contraband for you until your FP lowers.
- If NPC Police forces attack you:
a) you only receive a TEF if you fight back and if the Police Force are of the opposite faction (thus giving you the option to simply flee).
b) Fighting back will increase your "Criminal" FP
These are just a few ideas on how to make a real difference to legal/illegal activities without introduced "forced" PvP. There is scope for greater expansion. For example certain critters could be a protected species and hence carry a penalty for killing them, killing non-aggro NPCs could constitute "murder" and so on...
A few moments of thought and most people would agree: space
There is simply not enough room in this game to store things.
Consider this... without the use of vendors (which SOE OBVIOUSLY doesn't want us using for storage) or storage bins in droids, each player can hold 750 items in houses (5 small houses), 110 items on themselves and 100 items in the bank. This comes out to a grand total of 960 items per person. This is so ridiculously low it is unthinkable. As a crafter I can fill up that many spots in, what, a day and a half? As a merchant I have several thousand items on vendors. Can you imagine what it would take to move that many items between vendors (vendor issues aside)? I can fill up a single house in minutes.
Look, people need space to put stuff and SOE seems bound and determined to not provide it.
I could spend pages talking about the issues that guilds have concerning space, but I think I've provided enough fuel for this fire.
Ok, enough about the problem, everyone knows there's a problem.
So what to do about it?
This is what I propose...
1) Player Warehouses
The grand over-arching idea I have is a new player city building, the Player Warehouse.
- This would be an architect crafted building (one per city) that would take no lots but would cost the city a pretty penny in maintainance.
- The warehouse would have a foyer in the entrance containing nothing more than a data terminal built into the wall.
- Items could be put into the warehouse and removed from the warehouse with no cost to the user.
- Each citizen of the city would be granted their own private "storage room" with an access list dictating who could put items into or take items out of your storage room.
- Guilds would have their own storage room established and maintained by the guild leader.
- The guild storage room would be sub-divideable because the sheer quantity of items that could potentially be available to the user would make it very tedious to scroll through.
- If either the citizen lost their citizenship or the guild disbanded they would have 30 days to remove their items or they would be forfeit.
- There would be a maximum limit of 1000 items for a citizen and 10000 items for a guild.
I realize that this is a very big undertaking and so I would like to propose a second alternative.
2) 1 Item Bags
This is a very simple solution to the problem.
As it stands, each item in a bag, AND the bag itself, count against the maximum number of items allowable in the house. For example: if I put a bag containing 30 items in a house, this counts as 31 items in the house. At one point this might have made some sense, but since the devs set it up so that the items in a house only load when someone enters the house, this should no longer be a problem.
In this scenario what would happen is that each bag, regardless of the number of items placed in it, would only count as 1 item in a house.
This has several problems: this increases the number of items from a maximum of 960 per person to 7500 items per small (2 lot) house, this would also require the devs to make a further distinction between a house as a container and a person as a container (the first gets bags counted as a single item, the second gets bags counted as the number of items in the bag plus the bag). This is why it would only be a stop-gap until such time as the player warehouses would become available.
Third, and finally...
3) Increased House Sizes
I'm sure this has been discused many times, but, like the 1 item bag suggestion, could be used as a stop-gap until player warehouses could be developed. Even an increase of 100-200% would make such a huge difference, but ultimately not enough of a difference particularly for very industrious crafters and for guilds.
It all boils down to...
People are screaming for space and have been since day one. We need more space, pure and simple.
SOE OBVIOSLY does not want us to use vendors for storage: items disappear off vendors, items only stay on vendors for 30 days, items disappear out of the stockroom after 7 days, access fees have been reduced to 50k, vendors can only be put in public buildings, entry/admin lists cap at 50, the "guild
whatever)" tag in the entry list gets checked AFTER the access fee is checked, etc, etc, etc. Please... I implore you... give us an option.
Berachiah
Intrepid
Guild Leader: Trimmer Dominion (TDOM)
Quest idea:
Dark Fleetquest for SE
Position: A randomly-occurring coordinate in an unpopulated region of space transports the player to an unchartable location.
Background: A large group of star destroyers was slaved together by Imperial officers after they were infected by a strange hive virus. The entire fleet jumped to hyperspace, never to be seen again.
To preserve the continuity of the books, the fleet must stay put andits coordinatesnot revealed.
Imperial:
Get aboard one of the ships and rescue a dyingImperial officer. Return him to the Emperor so he can tell the Emperor what happened (The Emperor dies in Episode VI before he is able to act upon the info).
Rebel and Neutral:
Your hyperdrive motivator has burned out! You must get aboard one of those ships and "salvage" another. Return to your ship with it.
Please please let us Rangers know thatwe are not completely forgotten!
We are close to useless now, and the few remaining hardcore players are clinging to tiny snipets of things mentioned months ago... or merely to the "idea" of being a Ranger...
We have come up with tons of useful ideas and many of them have been consolidated in the Outdoorsman proposal, as well as a Top 6 list.... and while we understand that all that might take a while to implement, can we at least see something?
Back in august a few things were mentioned, and we were told they were almost ready, and would be included soon. (some new traps and the hunting blind are whatI recall off the top of my head). Would it be too much to ask to just get a few things like that given to us? Maybe a few combat modifiers? Just to sustain us until we can get full attention?