Development Cycle Archive

I would be happy with unique items that cannot currently be crafted that serve no function except for display in houses, such as different paintings, statues, etc. basically just a trophy.

Schematics (would like to see these as faction perks, too), resources, components, but only if they're UNIQUE to loot drops.For instance, maybe a bio or chem suit thatdoesn't protect from any other type of damage, but protects against poison or disease and can go over armor, and has a low durability. Or maybe weapons that do damage not typical for that type, like a pistol that does cold damage. It doesn't have to be big damage, just as long as it's unique. That's the key here, they don't have to be uber items, just unique. Finding a vibro lance on a loot drop is find and dandy, but I can get one off the bazaar for under 3k that's probably just as good if not better. Drop a long stun baton, a polearm that does medium stun damage, and then I'd be interested. Another good one would be really good consumables like power ups or food buffs (if I got in the habit of using the loot ones, I might get in the habit of buying player made ones). Another good one would be unique tamable babies in the back of caves. They don't have to be the best, just unique, like a gurk baby.

Even more than rewards, I want intrinsically interesting quests. I'm getting really bored running back and forth between waypoints. I want plot twists, and puzzles, and surprises. A mutlilegged quest that sends me from waypoint to waypoint would be just as boring as running to one waypoint and back unless there's a plot associated with thenext legthat I have to read and understand in order to complete the quest. Give me a puzzle, and don't just send me out into the wilderness, but give me some clues to the location rather than just a waypoint. That's too easy. Like someone said earlier in this thread, challenge the player, not just the character. So far the most challenging thing about most of these quests has been enduring the boredom of running 5km.

Lastly, I understand why you have all the mag-seal containers that only slicers can open, but there should be an end of dungeon reward that goes to anyone who can kill the main baddie. Make the dungeon boss drop a key to the main treasure chest (andmake the main one look like it belongs in that setting)in the building, and have the minions drop an occasional key to a mag-seal container (like if someone were to clear out a dungeon they should get a key to the main chest, and one or two keys to mag seal containers). Otherwise you're just wasing time coming up with loot, cause not every group has a slicer in it, and it feels forced to have to drag one along if you want to get anything at all.

Perhaps this has been posted as a possible solution but I didn't read through all of the posts:

Make the loot reward drops for advanced NPC quests decayable and (possibly) not repairable but make it really awesome (better than crafted). That way crafters/slicers are still necessary.

Also, since the rewards are decayable, make the quests repeatable, but with a long reset timer - like a month or something like that.

Hmm, what to want..

Schematics: the ability to create parts that are better than a standard part. Most likely only allowing a player to make only so many of the item before 'data degradation' (ie. the schematic runs out). The more improved parts added, the better the item.

Skill boosters: just an odd thought, but perhaps something that is a one shot boost to a skill, weapon, crafter, other skill. Say an increase of 20+ points for about 10 seconds. non stackable so that you can't stack multiple boosters at once. Although stacking would burn them faster..

More house items: Sure why not.

Faction clothing: perhaps grabbing a set off of a dead guard might allow a PC to act as if they had Mask Scent up for a certian period of time. Good for sneaking closer to an important NPC..

Weapon boosters: Increased damage potential, but very hard on the weapon?

Perhaps maps that lead us to a specific quest location? such as those Badge quest spots? I'm horrible at finding anything that pops around a world like those quests do. I need help. ;p

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Rugoe

Q, let me put forward a thesis:

It is possible to offer loot which is more powerful than anything which can be crafted, without unbalancing the "crafters are king" design goal, if:

1) Said item is difficult to obtain.
2a) Said item is limited in duration of usefulness.
2b) Said item is carries handicaps equal to its usefulness.

Prime example: the Zicx bug bomb. I haven't finished the quest yet. Why? I have the components. But I've read the stats on the bomb. A C12 grenade, readily obtainable for a few thousand credits, is far more powerful. Thus, I have no real "quantitative" incentive to finish the quest (by which I mean there is no numerical "if I have this item I will quantitatively do more damage to mobs and thus be more uber" reason to do the quest, as opposed to "if I have this item it will show that I have the quality of tenacity to others").

The bug bomb is a series of quests. There is no easy way to obtain the components for more than one "set" of bug bombs at any one time. So we've fulfilled requirement number 1 for a high-powered looted item. And the fact that the bomb has only 5 uses fulfills requirement 2a. In a certain sense, the fact that one must be within 30m to use a grenade fulfills requirement 2b.

But there is no incentive to get the item, because THE BENEFITS DO NOT EQUAL THE RISKS IN USING IT, NOR THE EFFORT GIVEN IN OBTAINING IT.

I could go on. Getting a stone knife as the first reward for the Jabba quests? Perhaps if the first quest was to kill a nuna. But to kill a Tusken Chief? Please. The guns given as rewards are essentially useless, except as trophies. In the same vein, the food given in that theme park is completely devoid of powerups. Even the food I can craft as a total noob does SOMETHING.

Solution:

Weapons, food buffs, armor, clothing, etc. of SIGNIFICANT power, but with SIGNIFICANT drawbacks/limitations/imbalances.

That stone knife? Give it poison that does 500 damage every second, and an integrity of about, oh, two.

The loaf of bread? How about +2000 to Strength...for 500 seconds, and -500 to Mind.

The bug bomb? Five uses. 2000 damage per use. But a HAM cost of 200 to Mind because of the complexity of arming it, and a chance to do 500 damage to Health if you don't throw it properly.

The D12 should fire an AR3 round that does 10000 damage. And it should have 3 bullets.

There should be an "ultimed," which cures 100% of wounds and damage. It can be used by anybody, medic or not. It has a single use.

Worst-case scenario, you have 300K pistols floating around that can kill anything in 3 shots. So, that's 900K Krayt-killer blaster bolts. In contrast to the total number of blaster bolts fired every second by players, do you think that even that number of uber weapons would last more than a few minutes? Of course not. Crafters supply day-to-day weapons, armors, buffs, meds and the like. The whole point of "kewl loot" is stuff that isn't day-to-day. You use it when it counts. Call it a special tactical weapon.

C'mon, guys. You've done a great job with everything else. But, honestly, the loot defies some of the fundamental rules of an RPG: there always needs to be something more powerful to be found, things that you find on mobs are different from what you can buy in shops, and there's always a catch to something truly uber. Try applying these 2.5 principles and see where it gets you.

Items I can decorate my house with.

Rare outfits without any special stats on them.

Badges.

Hints and clues about the status of my FS slot unlocking thingy. (Just something to give me some sense of what direction my character should move to)

Group missions (possibly faction based) that leas to dynamic battles, kinda like mini-battlefields.\

1-time-only constant HAM increasers, thse should be UBER-RARE and increase a character stats by values like 100 to 400 ONE TIME ONLY. They should also be no-drop so people can't sell them.

Just some random idea's.

I believe the loot idea could be slowly changed to allow more satisfaction from crafting by following a path of changes:

1. Add the ability forcrafters to severly customize the LOOK of theirproduct through addon parts. Possibly make some of these parts dropped(so someone who wants the most interesting looking gun would have to kill something like a nightsister, then give the component to a weaponsmith to hand-craft into the final build).

2. Make schematics for special weapons/droids/armor be rare drops, make these tradable unlike current design schematics.

3. Add dropped/crafted components that add things like poison or terrain negotation. Phase out the current "Exceptional" weapons. Also add dropped items that further change weapons appearences, yet also change damage type/firing effects etc...

4. Begin adding elite-elite crafting professions, that require profession-specific quests to get components for their products. For instance, an armorsmith would require 5 krayt pannels to make a Krayt Helmet, and these panels would not be craftable.

My general idea here is to further cement the need to group hunt for the rare items and stuff, and also to make the crafter more reliant on the hunter for goods and services, and therefore removing part of the one-sidedness of the economy(favoring master crafting professions, of course).

NONE of the NPC quests/missions on Vreni Island in correlia work. Some dont talk at all, others talk, but dont give you any choices and some say things like 'npc1 noloc' and stuff like that.

I saw ONE other PC the time I was there, and he was a BH chasing an NPC mark.

If you spread the good quests around, the player population would spread around and you wouldn't have 90% of the players in Coronet, Theed, Bestine, and Anchorhead.

As far as loot goes, what everyone else has already said.

Here is my 2 cents on this, I like the idea of professions specific quests and rewards. Or even Faction/Profession specific quests...like a quest from Vader to craft a special part he needs for his TIE fighter. With the reward being something like maybe a crafting station that only the person that completed this could use, that would grant extra experimentation points or something like that. The lootable schematics is also a good idea, but there would need to be away of making sure that an unscrupulous crafter didn't just take the schematic and deprive said person of their reward. of course there would have to be the quest for Creature Handlers to track down and tame the Emperor's escaped pet Durni "Darth Flufficus"...or a image designer quest to learn fix up Leia's hair after she has gotten it messed up...after which of course the person in question could apply this hairstyle to other players (but not wookies, no love for them...just kidding, please no really, don't rip my arms out...). Anyway in all seriousness I think profession specific quests for each side would be nice, and for the undecided out there a set professions specific quests from say Jabba or maybe those would come from random other npcs, like say Jawas would provide the quest for Droid Engineers.

I'm sure this has be said a number of times before, but i'll add my vote.

How about badges for completing themeparks? As well, if you are gonna hand out goodies, make it so we can all use it. I completed jabbas themepark (had to use /conv because the smuggler agros on you 100% of the time if you have bad thug faction), and got a particle gun/cannon thing. Thats all very nice, but I can't use it, and its not good enough to sell.

How about nifty rewards (I like the idea of things for your house). Make them rewards, instead of us canceling missions, and keeping the goodies for neat stuff (ie. batha toy, atst helm, rankok (or whatever) sword from jabbas).

Just an idea..

Osri

Master medic/pistol. CH

Kettemoor

I know of a way we could add better Loot items, just make the items damaged, in away that an artisan(architect, Weaponsmith, ArmorSmith, Droid Engineer) or maybe the loots could be parts of better items or items to make artisan items better, sorry if someone has already said/asked but all i did was read what the dev said, thanks for you time later!

-Drab Willc(Starsider)

Master Architect 4/4/4/4

Master Artisan 4/4/4/4

Droid Engineer 0/0/0/1

Merchant 3/3/0/1

Brawler 0/0/4/0

Thank you Q for addressing this

I think lots of posters have hit the nail on the head. Make special schematics that produce above quality products. The combat players get the drops, but still require the artisan to actually craft the item and farm the resources. Really this idea spans all artisan professions:

Armorsmith: Low ham cost composite;or even better, put plans for advanced rebel marine armor or stormtrooper armor in factional quests (allows players to get marine or stormtrooper armor that is 40% to 50% resistance).

Weaponsmith: Fast, powerful weapons

Droid Engineer: Add Droidekas to the game, but make the schematics rare drop only

Tailor: Make specific outfits from the movies (ex: Amadala's robe) or just unique robes.

Architect: Specialized furniture (new), maybe the ability to the outside of houses a little differently

Another solution: People talk a lot about krayt tissue. I know absolutely nothing about krayt tissue, but as much as people talk about it it must be good. Make it so that you get 100 to 200 units of an outstanding quality resource (any less would be worthless because its not enough to use) to use in crafting items. Make the resource such that it overrides other stats from other resources and makes an amazing quality product.

I think these would be well worth playing for, AND they keep the artisans in the loop.

custom 1 use spechmatics of cltohing would be cool....like leias slave dress that i see npcs wearing

also more paintings and rugs! those rock...hard