Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 4-19-04)
I know you declared the starport/shuttleport issue closed, but if you would not mind indulging me:
Would it be possible to make Coronet's starport "instant" in the same manner that Theed's is?
Also, and I do not ask for anything specific, merely yes/no:
Are any changes aimed at changing the power of CMs within the GCW "on the radar"?
Thank you,
Tantek
kimsdragon wrote:
1. What does ! and ? mean over a creature's head?
! means the mob is startled with your nearby presence
? means it's interested in having you for supper(I think)
EvoBeck wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
10110110 wrote:
ON ARMOR
Hello.
Is the team going to do anything about the fact that everycharacter (including Jedi) wears composite? What's the use of having all these neat types of armor whenonly onekind is used byan entire population (excluding Wooks)?
Each armor type should have strengths/weaknesses against the spectrum of damages inflicted in SWG. Current composite resistance capabilitiesare far superior to any other type of armor made. Is this how you want it?
Also, do you plan to make your upcoming death watch armor a big waste of time like RIS? Broken, shifting stats and loot camp madness?
Basically what I am asking is are you ever going to make armors like Padded, Mabari, RIS, Death Watch (Mandalorian?), Bone, and Ubese worth wearing or are you going to let the composite craze run its current course? Its kind of sad when everyone standing next tomy toonis wearing the same stuff, only in different colors.
No, its not how the devs want it. The rub is that with the crafting experimentation bug, everything is uber. To change that, it needs the crafting experimentation change integrated, but its been pre-empted due to popular demand. We're hoping to equalize that with the combat balance.
And for those of you who are following the Combat balance news story, we had a strategy meeeting yesterday and myself and a couple of others investigated what could be done to get the combat balance back in the mix. The programming team is putting together a plan that may get the "development sandbox" that JustG mentioned in his letter to accelerate this.
Thunderheart,
I believe that you are mis-interpreting the question here, and I don't belive it is fair that you are trying to push the blame back on the community.
Hispoint, I believe, is not that composite armor has reached 80% effectiveness, but rather has to do with vulnerabilities with particular armors.
Composite is only vulnerable to stun. RIS armor, which by all accounts is expected and announced to be armor of the highest order, is vulnerable to both stun and acid. How can an armor be expected to be better when it has more vulnerabilites. All other armors are not only lower in base resistance, but have more vulnerabilites than composite, but still always include that stun vulnerability.
A viable solution to some of these issues would be to make different armors have 'different' vulnerabilites. For instance make RIS only vulnerable to acid (but not stun). Therefore a person could choose to make RIS armor or use acid layers to make it better or at least different from composite.
Make ubese only vulnerable to heat/blast or something like that, so that stun/acid become part of the base resists or special protection. This way people have to conciously choose their armor for their situation, and so to would attackers when choosing their pvp weapon, just like you do when fighting creatures.
I can understand your point on experimentation if perhaps RIS was indeed supposed to be the only armor able to reach the current out of balance levels that composite has, but even so, with its additional vulnerability, a 50% composite > 80% RIS against an acid rifle (of which you guys so graciously added to the game).
With the current state of armorsmith it is not viable to craft armor for others until master anyway, so instead of making armor scale up in base %, instead make most armors have the same potential, but give them each unique special protections and vulnerabilites. Also perhaps give all regular armor 2 vulnerabilies (even composite) and have only rare quest armor such as RIS or mandalorian have single vulnerabilites.
You have indeed mis-interpreted my questions Thunderheart. EvoBeck has more or less nailed it on the head.
Iam very aware of the crafting changes that the team wanted to push into live and the effects it would have had on armor quality (I have a master armosmith alt). Pretty much everyone can agree that composite has reached insane levels of resistance and that something needs to be done to counter it. Armor exp skill tapes/attachments, Doc buffs, and the experimentation bug all play an equal part in this problem.
My issue is that even with the implementation of the teams bug fix, the remaining armors in SW:G would still be largely un-used. Composite reigns supreme not only because it has high base resists, but also because it is not vulnerable to anything other than stun (which can be layered in). Everything else the armorsmith makes is either vulnerable to too many damage types or cannot even come close to the base resistance composite offers. You have basically given the playerbase no incentive to wear the six other craftabletypes of armor(even RIS) available because you made them sub-par to comp. I will not even bother talking about factional armors.
Ask the combat dev if he would have his toon charge into a PvP battle wearing Padded or Tantel. If he looks at you like you're crazy then there just might be a problem deeper than a crafting bug. Players should be given choices of armor based on situation. They should not be forced to wear one particular type because it is the best for all scenarios.
Developmentneedsto take a very close look at armors available and adjust thier values to promote diversity and variety. Nobody wants a legion of bounty hunter look-alikes. Especially a bounty hunter. 
- Lost 80k of retrieved resources the previous day when I logged in today.
- Died a faction death by a PCand decayed.
- I am a TKM and had ST's running through walls in Mos Espa so I could not get to them but I could be shot by them.
These are just things that happened to me just last night. Bugs constantly happen in this game. I just wish we could get through the game and not be riddled with these problems that only irritate. Instead of adding new mounts or vehicle colors that wear off in one use, please fix game play issues not adding niceaties.
Thanks
Thunderheart wrote:
10110110 wrote:
ON ARMOR
Hello.
Is the team going to do anything about the fact that everycharacter (including Jedi) wears composite? What's the use of having all these neat types of armor whenonly onekind is used byan entire population (excluding Wooks)?
Each armor type should have strengths/weaknesses against the spectrum of damages inflicted in SWG. Current composite resistance capabilitiesare far superior to any other type of armor made. Is this how you want it?
Also, do you plan to make your upcoming death watch armor a big waste of time like RIS? Broken, shifting stats and loot camp madness?
Basically what I am asking is are you ever going to make armors like Padded, Mabari, RIS, Death Watch (Mandalorian?), Bone, and Ubese worth wearing or are you going to let the composite craze run its current course? Its kind of sad when everyone standing next tomy toonis wearing the same stuff, only in different colors.
No, its not how the devs want it. The rub is that with the crafting experimentation bug, everything is uber. To change that, it needs the crafting experimentation change integrated, but its been pre-empted due to popular demand. We're hoping to equalize that with the combat balance.
And for those of you who are following the Combat balance news story, we had a strategy meeeting yesterday and myself and a couple of others investigated what could be done to get the combat balance back in the mix. The programming team is putting together a plan that may get the "development sandbox" that JustG mentioned in his letter to accelerate this.
Perhaps the crafting bug makes it better, but that's not the root of the problem. The proposed crafting "fix" would have had absolutely no effect on fixing the armour situation (as tested on the one-day patch).
The root of the problem is that there are no negatives to wearing the best composite armour. As long as you have a set of doc buffs you can ignore the effects of encumbrance that is supposed to balance off the high protections of the armour. In fact, with a good set of buffs andfoodyou can wear the heaviest armour and still spam specials, rather than being completely crippled by the armour (as was obviously was the design).
The problem is not so much the armour but the systems that allow the armour to be unbalanced.
Jayces wrote:
Thunderheart, is there any chance of working on the communication between devs and CSR's please?
Specifically the poor souls who man the Chat rooms and often don't have any idea what is going on with the servers.
I have asked for this in the past numerous times but to no avail and that is firstly that you keep them up to date with what is going on and secondly you allow then to change the scrolling banner to reflect any known issues that they may be being bombarded with.
It's really a simple solution (or so it seems) that will mean better communication all round and that is something that you have been saying you want to do.
Does SWG have a NOC (Network Operations Center)?
Does the NOC keep the CSRs staffing the chat room up to date with status reports?
Can CSRs communicate live, ingame reports of server problems to the NOC?
Is there an on duty developer who can be contaced on a 24/7 basis by a CSR supervisor to escalate critical issues and get immediate attention to them, like bizaare gamestates?
ShrewLWD wrote:
TH, can you please read the PM I sent alittle while agotitled "concern over missing friend"... any assistance at all would be greatly appreciated!!!!
Dude, t0fu made his bed. Let him sleep in it. He was banned, PERMANENTLY, for a reason. Thunderheart is not going to do anything about something so stupid.
Cloudgatherer wrote:
Small correction here. It is not a bug. It is a feature. Bugs get fixed in a timely fashion. Features stick around for months. Welcome to software development.
Thunderheart wrote:
DVader539 wrote:
blockquote>
First off, thank you TH for a response to this issue. Before you read anything else in my response, please understand I am directing no anger at you, since I know you are only fielding the question, and are not responsible for the error nor ignoring the error.
The answer is that it never was kinetic. If it ever was seen that way, it wassome sort ofoddbug. In the data tables themselves, they've never been listed that way.
eot wrote:
Ok, you said we could use this area to ask questions. So here is my question!
Why, do these games never have "children" in them? Every NPC is an adult! Where do these "adults" come from? Are they hatched or what?
Inquiring minds, need to know!
This was a big request pre-launch too. Its always a big player interest, but the answer is that with the family rating, the lack of children has to do with keeping vulgar and/or upsetting images out of the game.
hmmm the tusken rifle at launch was kinetic it did kinetic damage i distinctly remember it listed on some official guild or other as the only kinetic rifle...
on the children issue. yeah the sight of a child in public offends me so much i call 911 whenever i see one...
all kidding aside i have to go HUH?!??!???!??? at that answer to EOT. how is a picture or image of a child offensive?? we are talking about NPC non-attackable children. maybe a child testifying in court is offensive to michael jackson but that is hardly the same thing as seeing a NPC child playing in the cities...
Thunderheart wrote:
eot wrote:
Ok, you said we could use this area to ask questions. So here is my question!
Why, do these games never have "children" in them? Every NPC is an adult! Where do these "adults" come from? Are they hatched or what?
This was a big request pre-launch too. Its always a big player interest, but the answer is that with the family rating, the lack of children has to do with keeping vulgar and/or upsetting images out of the game.
Thunderheart, please tell us that you care more about actual bugs, that have gone untouched since launch, than answering pathetically stupid questions as this!
How many posts do you see virtually begging for answers that NEED to be and SHOULD be answered???
Let me ask you a straightforward question, TH, and do me the justice of giving all of us an honest answer...
If you were to go out and by software, get it installed on your computer, play around with it, begin finding countless bugs, send the software company writtens warnings that they have known issues, be completely ignored by the company, go to download the constant updates which add "flashy" new features (that are also laden with problems), find the company's feeble attempt at a feedback forum and see all pertinent questions ignored...would you tell your friends that they should pick up said software? If you were having to pay for it, monthly, would you continue to pay?
As I said, please be honest.
Yes, TH, I am being VERY critical and I know full well that it's against your rules. Well, guess what. You're (SOE) breaking some very major rules of good business. It's time for a change, TH. You are the players' mediator. With all of the new games being released, you're going to begin seeing more and more accounts cancelled, as you are already, unless YOU do something about it, personally, Kurt. This falls upon your hands and no one elses, at this point. So, unless SOE originally intended for this to be a very temporary game (maybe until EverCrack2?), I suggest you start listening to us paying customers and actually doing something to appease the one's who really pay your bills.