Development Cycle Archive

Theres still a bunch of "bunk" skill tapes floating around...
Like:
grenade experimentation
twohanded melee counter attacks
twohanded melee evasion
one handed melee counter attacks

im sure theres more like those So if anone has ADDS to make please quote this post and list your additions... maybe we can get these taken off the loot table finally next publish..

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MCPrimetime wrote:
KD2 for TKA no longer dizzies and KD's...only one or the other. Is this accidental or is this a ninja nerf?

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KD2 dizzies and KD's just fine for me /shrug

Well, I should say the same as before the patch. There was always the chance it did one or the other, but I've also had it do both today

Droid & Droid Engineer Enhancements

• Droid Damage Repair Kits and Droid Wound Repair Kits
  Using these every few hits on a droid is less appealing than using regular stimpacks every few hits on a buffed player, who may at least be wearing decent armor and probably be able to use center of being and friends. In other words, the tradeoff of introducing these but reducing droid armor severely crimps their usefulness.
  
• Droid Battery consumption rate halved (enabling them to last twice as long)
  Good to see, but I would have MUCH preferred to see the current battery level first. I can wait until the next publish, but I just find it odd to do this change first and the more important change second.
  
• Droids will no longer be susceptible to poisons, bleeds, /warcry or /intimidate
  Snicker, what, a droid can't spring a hydraulic fluid leak? Good change.
  
• Combat Droids will have all the fighting functionality of a regular combat-capable creature (up to CL10)
  These options will function like creature pets.
  All players will have the ability to own and operate these combat droids.
  Er, woohoo? What reason is there to use a droid over a Bio Engineered pet? I would rather see droids everywhere than pets everywhere, but unless there's incentive for using droids, I won't.

Combat Changes

• Defensive Mod caps
  This change has no bearing on me. I'm not here to be in competition with anyone, I don't want to PvP, so I really don't care if some shmuck is unhittable. I can see how others would care, so I can see why this change is important.
  
• Carbineer Specials improved
  Good for the carbineers. Maybe someday I'll try the profession.
  
• Defense / To-Hit Fixes
  Testing when you introduced these changes would have made fixing them now unnecessary. Your internal QA department is abysmal. When you make a change and do not bother to verify that the change does what was intended, there's something majorly wrong. I can understand you failing to find unexpected consequences of that change, but not testing it at all just screams incompetence. Sorry, but that's the truth.
  
• Warcry/Panic Shot nerf
  Another useless skill. Mobs automatically encircle you. Cone effect attacks will only affect the one right in front of you, and guess what? you're hitting that one. What was wrong with the ability to justify this?
  
• Bleed DoT fixes
  This is another mistake that should never have been made. While not the same as failing to test it at all, it suggests you're not analysing the consequences of changes, which does not give me any confidence in the processes you have.

Crafting System Enhancements

• Reduced chance of critical failures
  I do not see the necessity for critical failures at all. Risk vs Reward is complete bunk. Your paradigm should be Investment vs Reward. Crafters already invest time and resources into crafting. The more time they spend and the better resources they use, the better the result. Introducing risk introduces a random irritation which can range from a mild inconvenience to a blue in the face rage. It does not add anything good to your game. In other words, you have not reduced the chance enough, since it will not be enough until it is zero.
  
• The one day exposure to a new system
  As has been said, one line experimental results and SEA users are producing schematics of a quality that will not be obtainable tomorrow. The poor, poor economy. Please consider the consequences of the actions you take.

Bounty Hunter Jedi Tracking Missions

I'm not a Bounty Hunter, but from what I've read, this is a partial success at best. I'd be up before my manager explaining myself if I released code in as untested a state as you do. There is no sufficient excuse for the lack of quality we are seeing. Hang your heads in shame.

Junk Dealer Revamp

Do I hear the sounds of muffled laughter?

Vertical Item Movement

Cheer! It's a shame your command parser can't tell the difference between "move [obj] [dir] [amount]" and "move [dir] [amount]," otherwise we wouldn't be having the continuing problems with items sharing the same name as the direction in question. Nonetheless, these issues can be laboriously worked around, and the addition is met with relief.

Lighting Objects

I can't wait to use these. The interior of my small naboo house in Amyrlin is dark enough to require the personal light, but I'd much rather use lighting objects. I haven't been inside my large house on the beach for some time, but my warehouse (generic small) isn't particularly dark, but has no furniture.

Camp Restrictions Replaced

I'm not sure I can express just how disgusted I am over this. I've dropped Creature Handler, which I'd been set on since late beta. Replacing one mindless obstruction with another is not a step forward.

Player City Garages

With vehicle repair so expensive, and decay rates so high, and vehicles themselves so cheap, and bugs that autorepair vehicles or prevent the repairs from sticking, the potential of these buildings is unreached. You would need to address the above concerns to see these buildings popular.

Sliced Armor/Weapon info

Aside from the info not appearing on current vendor stock, this is good. It would be great if it gave more detailed info.

GCW changes

I don't PvP. I don't want to PvP. Most of your players do not PvP, and a fair number of those would never want to. Yet you've made the GCW PvP only, with TEFs and covert detectors and the like. You've even made Jedi PvP only. You break PvE abilities and nerf professions because of PvP. You must make the sides in the GCW equal, for the sake of PvP, which means you cannot introduce a progessional PvE storyline involving the GCW. You even took away battlefields, the only bastion of pure PvE GCW content.

In other words, I do not care about the GCW. You could take it out entirely. I would not miss it. But if you attempt to force participation in the GCW on us, you will make the game entirely PvP, and you will lose your PvE market. This may be more successful than trying to be half and half, at least.

Bestine Quests

Faugh! Victor's rewards weren't tested by your QA department, and his new quest is another static spawn camp. Remember your initial design goals? Didn't think so.

New Mounts

I can't get excited about mounts. I have vehicles, which handle slopes much better, travel flats much faster, and don't bounce my viewpoint around at all.

Summary

The Droid Invasion brings us nothing good for droids. It brings us combat nerfs and bugfixes. It gives us a one day economy buster, and another failed attempt to fix Bounty Hunter missions. We get junk dealers, for what little they're worth. We get a new set of obstructions for calling pets to supplement camp restrictions, and are expected to be grateful. We discover that you didn't see if Victor's rewards worked, and that you gave us another static spawn camp. We get to keep critical failures, at a supposedly reduced rate.

We also get GCW changes and mounts, which I do not care one way or the other about, and player garages, which will have mostly decorative impact.

We also get lighting, vertical furniture movement and the ability to see if armor and weapons have been sliced.

Conclusions

The most positive response I can offer is: "At least there are three grains of wheat in this bag of chaff."

I would like to point out that all-new droids that were ready to go in this patch - aspart of a Droid Commander class -disappeared because most people didn't want combat droids in the hands of a single profession. We all want Droideka's . Obviously the DC also went the way of the Dodo. Ultimately the larger part of this patches content got scrapped.

However, that's no excuse whatsoever for false advertising. That wallpaper shows a Twi'lik in ultra rare RIS armour, shooting at some droids as he runs down the corridor of a Correllian Corvette. These last two items, the droids and the ship are both solely related to the mini-publish due in a few weeks and nothing at all to do with the Droid Invasion Publish.

Failing to supply new chasis as compensation was a serious error in judgement, especially after most of the Publish's content got thrown out. Yes, Droideka NPC's are 10k ham, but that was no reason not to include an "Experimental Droideka Schematic" or "Flawed Droideka Schematic" which might have produced a lesser version of the Droideka, which I'm sure we'd have all set about renaming anyway.

I'd like to believe that they are going to add new Droid schematics, but are waiting to see how the changes to exisiting combat droids pan out.

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RocketM wrote:
The new crafting system is fun and more intricate than the old one. I like it a lot more. If not for the fact that it nerfs half the equipment which will result in a post-nerf monopoly market I would really like to see it stay. Is there any way that you guys can make it work without leaving all crafters into the future in the cold?

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Non CH pets are now worthless... As i bio engineer i made 1800-2800 ham with mid 20's kinetic pets for me and all my friends and for sale. Which imo are useful but not overpowered.Now they are all worhtless. If you don't want us using pets without being a creature handler why did you give em to us in the first place? Put it back please or at least put the final nail in the coffin and just remove non ch pets.

I actually got cracked down on from the crackdown! LOL

It was great... having to fight my through the city. w00t!!

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Peaceman wrote:

Since this last publish, my framerate has dropped to almost slide-show quality.

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Ekhben wrote:
Bounty Hunter Jedi Tracking Missions

I'm not a Bounty Hunter, but from what I've read, this is a partial success at best. I'd be up before my manager explaining myself if I released code in as untested a state as you do. There is no sufficient excuse for the lack of quality we are seeing. Hang your heads in shame.

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