Development Cycle Archive

Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)

SamhainLFC
Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:06 am
#118

Sorry to post in the wrong forum, but I tried posting this several times in the Game Guide forum since it pertains to strategy, but each time the forum nazi's just delete the post and dont answer my question..



Is killing the SMC scouts and dragoons and slaves at the SMC cave considered an exploit? I am constantly told it is.

If it is, why does the content remain after 3 major publishes and 20 something hotfixes?

If it is not, why are the CSR's harrasing your players?
If it is.. why dont you just fix the spawn rate? Why are you making us travel around a planet where there are virtually no othe spawns of SMC unless you ride around for hours at time.


Is this REALLY an exploit?


SOE : We have a cool cave, go check it out. SMC cave on dathomir.

CUSTOMER: Great, lets go. cool.. Lets kill this stuff.

SOE : If you kill this stuff you will be banned because it is an exploit.

CUSTOMER : oh.. what can I kill..

SOE : there are plenty of other empty caves on dathomir, please go there instead.

CUSTOMER : Well, how is this exploiting if im just killing things as they spawn. Im not doing anything out of the ordinary? Can you please explain?

SOE : <poof> you are now back at the outpost. Check your email because you will be banned if you come back here.

CUSTOMER : Why dont you fix the problem then? I dont get it.

SOE : You have been warned?

CUSTOMER : Yes I have, but what did I do wrong?

SOE : The respawn rate is too quick..

CUSTOMER : Why dont they slow it down.

SOE : Just dont go back there.

CUSTOMER : Why dont they close the cave?
SOE : You have been warned.

CUSTOMER : what is the point of having this in game?

SOE : Dont make me ban you.

CUSTOMER : I dont get it. WHY? that is all i am asking

SOE : the devs know about it but they have more important things to work on.

CUSTOMER : But there is an exploit that you are threatening banning people, who arent even really EXPLOITING, they are just killing a spawn when it appears.

SOE : Please leave the planet now before I port you to an enraged rancor lair.

CUSTOMER : Huh?

SOE : CsrjoseO is not online.



PLEASE. I JUST WANT AN ANSWER TO THIS MADNESS!





-=-

XXX has killed your game for 4,921 pts of listening to whiney noobs damage.
Intrepid1888
Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:11 am
#119



1beachbum wrote:

The 6Week rule should trigger a Tax Forclosure on the derilict player's House. The city should be able to auction of these forclosures to keep there cities alive and add to tax revenue. It is inevitable that players will leave the game.

I seems to me that this would be a good balance. I have not heard a better suggestion.







This would be "a good thing".
AltharXXX
Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:38 am
#120

Hey SamhainLFC- don't you know CSRs only have one thing to do - harrass players. no other role in the SWG environment. I mean come on. I put a ticket up asking how to get fencer titles with /setcurrentskilltitle ... and the response was a re-direction to forumsand then when I didn't delete the ticket within 60 seconds (as I was doing shuttle hops & bursts) the CSR got agro on me. LOL






Althar Maru, Flurry Janta Assassin
status: retired

Would you care to test out a 400 year old sword to see if it's decayed to condition 0? All the prior testers have no comment. Perhaps a gun which was used in WW I and still fires with high accuracy upto 1km?

If that doesn't get you, then start reading current military specifications for combat equipment.
AltharXXX
Wed Mar 24, 2004 12:31 pm
#121






Bihlbo said :

I also think that a big reason that composite is the default armor that people wear is due to the fact that armorsmiths make a lot more profit on composite than other armors, so that's what most of them sell. I once spent a full day trying to find a vendor that sold anything but composite


Very good points. This is killing me. I play as a pikeman, a profession that does need to be wearing armor in many situations. But my armor just got down too low the other day so I replaced it. Four days later I realize all the new armor I got is below 50%. With the current success rates in armor repair, even if I find a master armorsmith who's willing to take the time to repair all my stuff, I'm going to need to replace this new armor in two weeks. Armor that cost me about 300K. With my other expenses, I can't afford 600K every month, it's just not possible. I'd much rather see changes made to the item repair system (to allow any joe to use a repair kit with at least 75% success) than any change to armor stats.





happens I play a master armorsmith on corbantis. I made a matrix of costs ... most expensive armor to produce ....Padded Armor (also hardest to produce as suppliers of Lok Leather and Yavin 4 Wooly aren't supplying ...) 2nd most expensive to produce Composite, 3rd Chitin, 4th Ubese, 5th Armorweave... Anyway - I sell all sorts of armor. I kind of perfer to do armor to customer specifications. When you don't have the materials to make light layered composite - composite is a lot more expensive to make as you need to slice encumberance down on the set....

as for repair - I wont touch it. first time I did a repair person handed me armor to repair and it was shot (1/32000 stuff) - I explained it to them - 5 minutes later they handed me 5 pieces to repair. Then I'm thinking - here I am using my repair tool which cost me so much of conductivity 999 material and I have no assurance that I will be paid - if I fail on all 5 tries they could very well tell me to eat the cost. (and I wouldn't blame them beyond wanting to see the ruined pieces) Then I think about just selling repair tools since as best I can tell I have _0_ skill in armor repair...


yes - I think armor decays to fast if you don't have +75 melee defence (or ranged in NPC fights) ... although I'm not sure if it's really a problem. if you face foes who aren't Red or worse in consider the armor might last a lot longer.





Althar Maru, Flurry Janta Assassin
status: retired

Would you care to test out a 400 year old sword to see if it's decayed to condition 0? All the prior testers have no comment. Perhaps a gun which was used in WW I and still fires with high accuracy upto 1km?

If that doesn't get you, then start reading current military specifications for combat equipment.
AltharXXX
Wed Mar 24, 2004 12:49 pm
#122





AsterothBlue said : - make adding resources in crafting tool 1 click for those who cannot get their mouse to support double click. this is an ergonomic issue and a real time and wrist saver.






I have to agree with everything you said Asteroth - you listed every single bug I've been reporting for months! NICE! On this last point you made - I'd like to suggest that the developers fix the internal macro command which could be used to load resources and document it so that everyone can use it - not just their personal friends and people who take the time to reverse engineer the client.


While I'm here - I'd like to also suggest this - when you dismount your vehicle a "temporary" way point should be created on your vehicle. This way point should glow in a unique color (not blue or yellow) - and the way point should go away (ie not persist in your datapad) should you - store, generate, destory the vehicle, or quit or shuttle hop. Additionally a hot key should be created to select your vehicle. It's just not right that if 5 swoops are all parked on top of each other I have to click on each to find mine.


- POI's persist when you travel between planets or servers. There is no hidden rebel base on tatooine...





Althar Maru, Flurry Janta Assassin
status: retired

Would you care to test out a 400 year old sword to see if it's decayed to condition 0? All the prior testers have no comment. Perhaps a gun which was used in WW I and still fires with high accuracy upto 1km?

If that doesn't get you, then start reading current military specifications for combat equipment.
Vicmann
Wed Mar 24, 2004 1:20 pm
#123

Yet again... Do not completely lock a person out of taking any quests.


I keep getting the "above your level" thing, yet I'm MCH, I could easily completeany mission in this game, and have. But now the Lady Valarian missions, even the first lady I'm supposed to talk to, won't let me do them. The Scythe Schematic guy also locks me out.


Would be much better to give a warningthat the NPC thinks we're too low a level, but still let us continue on and accept the mission should we so decide.But don'tlock us out of the missions completely..


Can we get an answer on this? There have been many posts on this posted by lots of peopleever since the quest lock outs started.



-Master Creature Handler
-Master Bio-Engineer
-Buncha Novice Stuff
NMSig
Wed Mar 24, 2004 2:07 pm
#124

Could you beef up the spawns on all high level planets, they seem somewhat barren since the Geo Caves were added. The only place on Dathomir that seems to be highly populated and difficult to traverse without getting agroed is within 2K of the Trade outpost because of all the mission spawns. They are not random spawns mind you they are missions. Endor, Dath, Lok, Dantooine, and Yavin should be crawling with dangerous lifeforms and quite difficult to traverse without being agroed. Right now all of these planets are a walk in the park once you get outside of the mission range.








Cleo in exile...
jemelby
Wed Mar 24, 2004 2:09 pm
#125

Come-on, TH.



Your answer on the "derilict house" issue was way inadequate. It is the main topic of discussion for 70-80% of the posts in the political forum right now. You can't just leave us with THAT. The case you quoted can't account for more than .05% of the derilict houses. There have been plenty of reasonable recommendations from the political community that if implimented, would take good care of the fellow you mentioned. No griefing, no loss of future customers for SOE.



Please throw us a bone with a little meat on it next time.




J'Vee
Mos Onarok, Tatooine - Flurry


CommanderRyalis
Wed Mar 24, 2004 2:12 pm
#126

I have noticed that Items placed on the Bazzar do not always get placed in the right catigory. I think one example would be wookie clothing goes under misc. clothing not wookie ware and there are others but I can't think of them offhand.



Issab Tyrann,
Imperial Warrant Officer II (Retired)
Avallach
Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:03 pm
#127






Thunderheart wrote:



The challenge is knowing what house is not being used for what reason. There really is no way for us to know and the original design was meant to protect peoples houses if they werent going to be able to keep their account for a couple of months and for the time being we come down on the conservative side of leaving the houses for players to come back to.


It is something we think about with some frequency though.






It strikes me then that the same arguments apply to the six week citizenship timer as well. If it's important that the houses remain when someone leaves the game for whatever reason, whether permanently, temporarily, or what have you, then it's equally important that their citizenship, and by extension, their cityremain. If the return of the used land can wait for the maintenance on the house to expire, then the citizenship can remain until said time as well.

The current system feels (at least from a mayor's point of view) like it's intended to punish cities and mayors for having citizens leave the game. I've done everything I know how to keep people active and involved. We had a wonderful RP event a few weeks ago that went very well and even had a little flare at the end courtesy Pex, yet I still have citizen who are choosing to leave SWG for a time. I have no doubt that some will be back with the coming changes (combat revamp, Jedi revamp, Space, etc), yet in the meantime I find myself scrambling to find warm bodies to put in houses to keep the city intact. It's frustrating to realize that no matter how hard I work I ultimately face the work of Sisyphus. I have no problem with the idea that players who cancel accounts should be removed as citizens. Indeed, when their maintenance expires or the character database is cleaned out, they will be, but their house will be removed and their land returned as well.


I realize that these changes were implemented in response to the cross server trading of citizens, but I think perhaps they're poorly aimed. Those who continue to engage in cross server trades are doing so with the caveat that each party log in once a month, while legitimate mayors with legitimate citizens who leave the game, even temporarily, are forced to fight a never ending battle against attrition and space. What I would offer then, as an alternative, is that you require a character to have been in game for more than 10 play hours before allowing them to declare residence in a player city. This is a minor burden to active players, while presenting an equal hurdle to cross server traders as the present system, if not more so.


Thanks for listening and considering the issue.




------------------------
-Charin Ianaro, Aventine Neighborhood, Temenos, Naboo

"I was born to laugh--I learned to laugh through my tears.
I was born to love--I'm going to learn to love without fear."
-Karin Bergquist/Linford Detweiler (www.overtherhine.com)
Limbonik
Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:08 pm
#128

Alright. Sorry guys (subscribers), but I will continue to post this until we see/hear clear cut answers on all of it.


1. Make use of the Skywalker Sound archives.



  • Music for cities; I hear music everytime I land at Nym's. Where's the rest of the love?

  • More than one choice to "battle" music.

  • Music keyed to factionally-aligned base destructions.

  • Ambience

  • Background "chatter". (e.g. Cantinas, Hospitals, Starports, Bazaars, etc.)

  • Beeps, bells and whistles

  • Fix "wrong sounds" on weapons.

  • Only one Corellian Corvette between every planet? No? Alter the pitch/tone for variance.

  • Stormtroopers should be saying "Move along," "Nothing to see here," and "Hey, you there!" for starters.

  • Is there an enviornment in Star Wars Galaxies? Funny, I haven't heard it.

2. Factionally-aligned crafters:



  • Armoursmiths: Republic/Imperial armour.

  • Weaponsmiths: Republic blasters are in the game, where is the Imperial Blaster?

  • Tailors: Republic/Imperial Uniforms.

  • Droid Engineers: Faction specific droids. RX-7 (Republic) and Death Star Droid (Imperial) as examples.

3a. Droids> Pokèmon



  • 10 available droid-types, but how many creature-types are available as pets?

  • Droid CL should be higher than CL. Creatures have a will; Droids are a pre-programmed set of routines with no "will to live"

  • Allow either more than one droid out at one time, or remove the formation commands from the radial menu. It looks horrible to see that on a menu when it is useless.

  • Return the Pre-nerf, "Legacy" Probots armour. If you can't do this, than do this to everything. I have houses I built when I was an architect that can't be placed on planets other than what they were created for. If you can go in and remove armour from a droid that old, then you can modify everything else old to reflect new.

3b. Make droids do what they should do.



  • Protocol Droids should translate languages. Remove the ability to learn languages, or make them cost skill points.

  • LE Repair Droids should repair droids. This droid should be callable no matter the other droid you have out, so you can actually repair your own droids, and not waste money on a droid that repairs everyone elses droids.

  • Power Droids should recharge droids (this is currently implemented and fine.) This droid should be callable no matter the other droid you have out, so you can actually recharge your own droids, and not waste money on a droid thatrecharges everyone elses droids.

  • Surgical Droids should heal players. Make this a Doctor/Combat Medic droid only.

  • Binary Load Lifters should allow you to carry a larger amount of items inside of it automatically. Make this droid work as a harvestor and/or resource "container".

  • R2 astromechs should give a bonus to slicing and to later inclusion of X-Wings.

  • R4 astromechs should give a bonus to the later inclusion of Y-Wings.

  • Probe Droids should be Imperial only. Their primary function isn't combat, it's recon. Give the Probot the ability to travel to xx / xx waypoint, and provide the ability to "view" from the Probots current location, in a 360 degree view.

3c. AT-ST



  • Give us a way to repair our AT-ST already.

  • Give us the option to trade in our AT-ST. Some of us purchased ours at the start of the game, and would not have bought one had we known how bad you were going to screw them up.


4. Addition of Hutt faction (the game is programmed for it already.)



  • Rebel and Imperial forces may attack known (or overt) Hutt aligned faction players.

  • Hutt aligned forces may attack Rebels and Imperials that are known (or overt.)

  • Placement of a new negative faction system.

  • Introduction of "Player Bounties/War Crimes"; Once a player hits -5000 faction(if a new negative systemwere implemented,) a mission would be given out randomly to 3 players to kill them. In order to prevent a bounty (Hutt) or a war crime (imp/reb) from occuring, players could seek out an NPC and pay them X amount of credits in order to "raise" their standing with said faction. Negative faction should also "decay over time," giving a player the choice between spending credits to keep on slaughtering, or "taking a break" from their crimes.

5. Addition of new "faction capture points."



  • These points contain Cloning, Insurance, Healing, Missions and a "Declare" terminal.

  • These points cover a radius of 1-300m. Faction who controls capture point receives a bonus to defense while in the area of the capture points.

  • Doors on any entrance for the control point.

  • Doors must be destroyed whichX of time.A Master Smuggler can slice thru it 50% faster.

  • Each point captured counts toward the /GCW

  • Capture points to execute "NPC events." (think Bestine Political Quest.)

  • Allow "Detention Center" feature w/i control points. Similiar to the warning of Battlefields, a player could be given the choice to take part in a "prison break" feature, or could also pass on the feature, if they did not want to feel "punished" by the game for error.

6. Addition of "animated" Load screens (or small .AVIs).


  • Instead of a Picture of a Jawa with information on Selonians maybe we could find a tad more "immersion" to chuck in.

  • "animated" load screen depicting planet lift-off/landings

  • "animated" load screens depicting town-to-town shuttle flights. (small video plays of flying over the vast, vacant deserts on Tatooine as Mos Eisley appears on the horizon, etc.)

7. Variety is key.



  • If you must use a solitary corvette model as our only planet-to-planet ship, can we at least have different coloured stripes/markings based on planet? At least try to make us think there's more than 1 corvette out there.

  • Shuttles should vary in striped/markings colour as well.

  • Spaceports shouldn't look the same on every planet. Are all spaceports pre-fabs from the same manufacturer?

8. Scripted Events.



  • Tatooine: Sandcrawler should be moving across the desert from the Jawa Fortress to another point, then return. Imperial Patrols should be found patrolling outside of cities/deserts with Dewbacks. Slave-1 should be seen arriving to/leaving Jabba's Palace. Sand Skiffs dumping hapless victim into Sarlacc, etc.

  • Endor: Imperial Speederbike patrols should be seen all over theplanet. Ewok hunting parties raiding enemy camps, etc.

  • Dantooine: Imperial presence should be more visible. AT-ST patrols, AT-PT/AT-AT patrols.

  • Dathomir: Larger, sweeping Imperial presence near the Prison. Nightsisters dropping slaves into the Lesser Sarlacc, etc.

  • Corellia: Larger, sweeping CorSec presence. Shuttles arriving/leaving Hidden Rebel Base, etc.

9. Armour



  • Fix the "armour hole" that's plagued armour forever now.

  • We have lots of armours, and only Composite is used. Are the players the only ones who notice this?

  • Armour should slow (speed/dodge/etc) players down. Wow...an encumberance that doesn't encumber speed?

  • Armour should only cover a few types of DMG max. This prevents a world of BLAND. This will also help foster a bit of variance between players.

  • Imperial armour needs to stay human-specific. You've screwed way to much continuity wise to just screw everything else up.

  • There needs to be species-specific Imperial factional armour to replace the Stormtrooper armour for aliens.

  • There should be a species-specific armour for each alien race. Although I stand by the fact that Wookiees should not have armour, but something that can be worn to give the same bonuses armoured classes recieve. (See my bandolier and ammoclip suggestion in previous threads for more information.)

10. Player Cities



  • Return /citywarn to us already.

  • If you will NOT return /citywarn, give us the option of NPCs that will enforce our city for us.

  • Give us pavement.

  • Give us bridges.

  • Give us walls.

  • Give us the ability to remove players from our city.

  • Remove the ability recently added to allow a player to undeclare residency in a city.

  • If a player removes themselves as a "citizen" of the city, they should be forced to move from the city so we can recover our lot space w/o losing our City Rank due to poor planning on the development end.

  • Example of above comment: 8 players "quit" the game and never come back - but paid 6 mos maint. We can't remove those houses and lose space needed to refill the city to keep out City Rank. Since we can't remove the houses or recover our player count, we lose our City Rank at next election, and then we lose more radius in the city, effectively booting active players and civic buildings from our City, costing us millions in credits lost in civic buildings due to a poorly conceived, poorly implemented "Lemming-based" system.

  • Cities are democratic-only, and yet we live in a Dictator-controlled Galaxy?

11. Add Imperial/Rebellion Banners as faction-purchased items from the Recruiter.


12. Immediate Concerns/Priorities needed in order to at least make this game playable.



  • Bugfixes > New Dungeons.

  • Bugfixes > Content.

  • Hotfix the "armour hole" bug.

  • Hotfix Line of sight.

  • Hotfix shooting thru base walls.

  • Hotfix covert/dead/feign death base shutdowns. Enough is enough.

  • Hotfix "poison/disease" decay incap for Combat Medics.

  • Hotfix "Greater than 64m" poison/disease throwsfor Combat Medics.

  • Give us the ability to keep our city rank if we lose players from our city because of your poorly conceived "feature."

  • GCW > Jedi: Jedi is the minority, Galactic Civil War is the majority. GCW publishes should take priority over Jedi path publishes.

(Oh, and give us control of our cities again, as I posted previously.) I find new things to add to this every week and will continue to post this until all points are answered with a well thought, intelligent response that does not add more questions than it answers, so let's see if anybody in charge is listening. Of course, if I end up having to wait on an Imperial Banner until the next "chance" at it - I won't keep posting this...I'll just give my money to a company who will listen to it's players.




Limbonik
Imperial Inquisitor :: Darksider Historian
Remember the Fallen


cwhooks
Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:10 pm
#129

I'm not sure that havign any starport goto any otehr starport is the fix. I like the current starport web. However, I think changing the Coronet starport to work like the Theed starport would solve quite a few problems. By having 2 no delay hubs, allows people who need to visit alot of planets todo so in about half the time currently.


For example... Every other day I visit every planet to see what new resources have spawned. In generally takes be between 8-10 minutes to determine this. If there is new stuff, then it takes longer to get the sample as it is not always at the starport... Still, just doing the scan usually has me barely missing the shuttle back and I usually have a 6 minute wait. For planets connected to corellian starports, for a while the shuttle between the planets were in snyc and I was having to wait less than 1 minute for shuttles. However... Since publish 6, they have been out of sync and I generally have to wait 7-8 minutes for a shuttle to hit the next world.... By making Coronet a hub like Theed, my survey time right now would drop from4 hours to just about3 hours... Time that is basically pure work for me, but required as a weaponsmith!



Battleaxe - Bloodfin galaxy.
Surveyor of Lok and 12 point Master FS Weaponsmith.
_____ Resources, Sliced Weapons, Skill tapes, Loot...
Mall.....800m from Theed starport at -5139 3399.
_____ Deliveries use any vendor named 'BA's ...'.
KapowBzapp
Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:17 pm
#130


NMSig wrote:

Could you beef up the spawns on all high level planets, they seem somewhat barren since the Geo Caves were added



NMSig is absolutely right, and it's not just the high level planets. Talus is completely barren except along travel routes between cities; I've traversed thousands of meters without seeing a single spawn. Even the mountains of Naboo are mostly devoid of life.





JEDI: the Starbucks™ of SWG
Long ago they were cool. Now they're everywhere, and hard to tell apart.

New ability proposal:
/grabAndPull to get the Theed guard out of that banner

Grinding is for coffee. Nobody "forces" you to grind. You play by choice.
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