Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 5-31-04)
speardancer wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
wickedHangover wrote:
This issue is in regards to walking for very long distances and not running into and random lairs. It seems that Lok was fixed, but Dantooine is a dead planet. I walked for 11,000 meters on Dantooine hoping for something to spawn and only ran into 5 random lairs. Yavin is getting pretty dead too.
It means that there are a lot of people on the planet. The more people there are, the less random spawns there are. These are adjustments the server makes automatically. If you are running shy of random spawns, you should go get a mission. The terminals will spawn additional lairs when this type of loading occurs...
OK, is it just me, or does this seem like a bass-ackwards way of doing things?
th0mas wrote:
I find that sometimes (far from always) i slow down/stop my swoop and wait a little the area will spawn lairs.
Should you have to come to a stop to spawn the lairs?
No, but its a potential workaround for those creatures handlers looking for lairs.
Doesnt fix the planets beeing deserted and non-advanced.
LOL, dude, I am an oldschool ranger, and I hoof it. You can run all the across Dant, and I mean run, and not see more then maybe 2 lairs. If you're lucky. It is better. A few months ago you could walk from the southern outpost to the Rebel hideout, and not see one single mob on Dant. Very wrong.
ONLY problem I had was about a half dozen of the missions I did gave me NO payout... the lair and all NPC's were destroyed but the WP remained... and NO system message about completing the mission - game owes me about 150K
I applaud the new content and love it to death, but there are times where I don't want to go to those places. I just want to hike up that hill over there and fall into the middle of two huurton huntress lairs with a half dozen horned voritors between them after I just got done wiping out a piket lair 50m backlike I used to run into back in november...
Bowoci wrote:
No need to do that... for higher level content/missions they gave us the Death Watch Bunker and Corellian Corvette;X
The real fun and challenge of your skills is to wander an advanced planet, or just a non starting planet, with no buffs, and no armor. I do this crap all the time. For me, being being buffed and wearing armor is no challenge. Any noob can kill crap and survive and do group solo on Dath that way.
Try it o natural.
Squidwalker wrote:
The real fun and challenge of your skills is to wander an advanced planet, or just a non starting planet, with no buffs, and no armor. I do this crap all the time. For me, being being buffed and wearing armor is no challenge. Any noob can kill crap and survive and do group solo on Dath that way.
Try it o natural.
that's actually all I did for many months. You are right in that it provides much more satisfaction to go hunting without buffs. The problem is what happens when you go hunting and you find that all the creatures are gone?
This game is designed for player created content. So I set goals and say "I'm going to go slaughter voritor lizards." I don't want to play tag with mission terminals, I want to venture into the parts of dantooine that don't even have player houses, structures or even a harvestor. Why would this part of a planet be barren?
It's not a question about how i'm going to fight, its a question about having something to fight when i get there.
Dantooine used to be a very hard planet for anyone less than master unbuffed. Now any noob can walk around with their CDEF pistol and not get scratched. I do believe that player cities ruined this game and if they ruined the hunting grounds on Dantooine than that only further proves how they ruined it.
Thunderheart wrote:
wickedHangover wrote:
This issue is in regards to walking for very long distances and not running into and random lairs. It seems that Lok was fixed, but Dantooine is a dead planet. I walked for 11,000 meters on Dantooine hoping for something to spawn and only ran into 5 random lairs. Yavin is getting pretty dead too.
It means that there are a lot of people on the planet. The more people there are, the less random spawns there are. These are adjustments the server makes automatically. If you are running shy of random spawns, you should go get a mission. The terminals will spawn additional lairs when this type of loading occurs...
From a play standpoint this is terrible. When I first got to Dantooine in Sept 2003 (before your lovely team made the Imp OP all no-build zone) we had a few houses and 2 guild halls surrounding the Imp OP. You could not walk outside your house without getting agro'd, much less across the planet without having a doc and a few high level fighters.
When an adventurous place get more people where is the logic in deleting the reasons that people came there in the first place.
Are you basically saying that in order to get general content in the area we have to pull and drop missions?
This should be changed at the highest levels, and probably is the most detrimental issue in the game, behind storage conservation techniques that are not being utilized.
Cafa Asia
Squidwalker wrote:
I died in pvp faction death, while I was overt and the Imp was overt, and got item DECAY.I should not have been, since it was well over an hour after asking to go covert. But that was not what I sent the ticket in for. I sent it in for the item decay. Not so much cause I wanted the condition returned, but the fact that we are not supposed to get decay in pvp death, period. The CSR responded with a non sence answer. I asked for more of an answer. They came in game and sent me a tell. The CSR told me THAT YOU DO GET ITEM DECAY WHEN YOU DIE EVEN IN PVP. IF I'M NOT INSURED, I WILL GET THE 1% DECAY EVEN IN PVP DEATH. So I told him that he is wrong, you do not get decay in pvp faction death. He argued that against me and said he can't help me if thats how I feel about it.
Well, I believe he was slightly incorrect, but you are wrong. You do get decayevery time on any item that is not insured, no matter what. However, you say the CSR said you would receive 1% decay if uninsured in PvP and that's not right. It's actually 5% when uninsured no matter what. So if you insure and die in PvP or even PvE battles against opposing faction, you will get no decay at all, but if you do not insure and get killed by a faction person,a durni, or anything at all you will get 5% decay on any item that is not insured.
No insurance = 5% decay (no matter what)
Faction death + insurance = no decay
Thunderheart wrote:
wickedHangover wrote:
This issue is in regards to walking for very long distances and not running into and random lairs. It seems that Lok was fixed, but Dantooine is a dead planet. I walked for 11,000 meters on Dantooine hoping for something to spawn and only ran into 5 random lairs. Yavin is getting pretty dead too.
It means that there are a lot of people on the planet. The more people there are, the less random spawns there are. These are adjustments the server makes automatically. If you are running shy of random spawns, you should go get a mission. The terminals will spawn additional lairs when this type of loading occurs...
Master Ranger/ Mediocre Pistoleer
Bloodfin
In your ongoing quest to ensure that high level MOB's can no longer be soloed by players keep in mind the reason so many of us solo is because grouping in this game is a complete and total waste of time.
If you "nerf" soloing without making grouping worth our time then you may be in for a backlash from players.
Phantasy Star Online for the old Sega Dreamcast got it. . . I don't know what it was about a game that had 4 static stages that never changed and zero dynamic content but I played that game for over a year and a half nearly every day and I grouped at every possible chance I got.
I don't know what it was about that game but grouping in that game was a blast, grouping in SWG (for me at least) is a waste.
Continuity director.
Job Description: Keeping in mind the time frame of SWG (inbetween epi IV and V) insures that the game lives up to the standards of that time period of the SWU. Prevents Dumb mistakes like placeing battle Droids (a Seperatist weapon) on Imperial Corvettes, and Making them stronger than their more powerful counterparts from that time (the Droidkea).
Seriously TH. Someone needs to be in charge of this. The operation of the Battle Droids relied on a central command center to provide them with orders. They could not function with out this (see Epi I) That is the whole reason that the Republic never used them and they were never used again (in SW). That and they are supposed to be disposable troop. They are not built to the highest standards yet they are harder to kill than a Kryat dragon in this game!
Yes we realise that in real life they were created after Epi IV however if you read the reasons for their lack of use was explained. If you are gonna put them in then add a destroyable central command center.
Droidkea You at least explained their existance on LOK. They were built and tested there, so understandably someone went through the factory and built more. But Battle Droids? I want to hear the explination for keeping them on imperial corvetts?, or better yet the death watch bunker. Assasian droids like IG-88 maybe not BD's
Pick a time period and stick with it!
I had the pleasure of playing through the Corvette when it was still in the late stages of development on the Test Center.
It was exciting when we finally got the ticket and shuttled up to it. The first room was kind of dirty and strewn with junk and nothing too impressive. Then the door opened and we were awed by the long white hallway and the gleaming floors that looked like they were freshly waxed. Scenes from Star Wars: A New Hope flashed through our minds as we walked down the halls of the ship. It was so much fun just exploring some of the rooms and seeing the interior of the first spaceship in SWG. We didn’t have very long to just gawk at the ship because there were several Rebels who were challenging us for being in their ship. We blasted, slashed and punched our way through them and we were able to explore more of the ship. We saw the main corridors and the cool side corridors that were more of an access tunnel with the escape pods. Everything had great detail. When we got into some of the rooms with computer consoles we were happy to find clues about our mission. It had a very nice RPG mission feel to it.
When we finally battled through most of the NPCs we came across a real surprise. In the aft (or stern) of the ship under the engine room we found some droids. But these weren’t regular droids. These were Battle Droids and Super Battle Droids! We were taken aback by this. They looked incredible. The droids seemed like they “fit in” in this portion of the ship. The felt like they “belonged” there. Foolishly a few of us tried to take one down. We were surprised at how tough they were. We had to retreat back to the elevator to regroup and heal before we tried again. It was great fun and while we didn’t finish the mission due to some door bugs we still had a great time.
My point with this post is this: The Corvette was fun before the new changes. It felt almost cinematic. Everything was in its place and it all seemed to work just fine.
Just because a few players ended up getting through it with more ease than the developers had originally anticipated, there's no reason (IMHO) that the experience should be ruined for the rest of the players. The experience is drastically different from what I described above now. Now there are SBDs everywhere and it renders the whole experience frustrating and much too difficult. There is hardly any time for exploring or even noticing many of the cool little details or the clues and other text from the computer terminals.
Please reconsider.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.