Development Cycle Archive

Amen,

Its all been said.. i had been in game thinking about quitting because of the defense changes. I was worried for a moment that everything is working as intended... with so many players to agree with, surely it can't be!

So defence is screwed now, i had 211 melee defence so you can imagine the drastic change I've had bestowed on me (and no i wasnt invulnerable with that). All those grinding hours lost, not to mention my favorite activity in the game i had enjoyed so long, pve tanking, now gone.

ok, so the cap is 125. they never documented it would be applied to melee/ranged, ive only seen mention about the secondary defences. /whap soe.

I can tell you, it seems like i have *NO defence* now, getting hit all the time now just as my other char does with 15 melee defence. My guess is that they messed up. Even if they did get it right, 125 is too low as i can remember having that some time ago and was'nt anything special.

My experience inpvetells me that defence is noticed at about 100... at 150 is getting good, and 170+ gets fantastic. i hate the cap idea altogether and i think if one has to be imposed, i suggest 160 cap. i have had occasional pvp fun here and there, my defence didnt seem to help me much. eg, commando could flame me 60% of the time.

I talk to some players who tell me swordsman had trouble hitting a fencer/pistoleer (dodge 210) which im not supprised, but swordsman accuracy, especially the PH is poor...imo improve that for them, instead of having such a low cap on defence.

OK, so in pve whats 200+ melee defence like? its what i think is worthy of a master title and makes a true tank. It doesnt really work when fighting things like krayt dragons and nightsister elders, but helps immensly with most other things. force npc tended to get me with choke and sometimes could be fatal.in the crystalcaves however the difficulty level increases. I hadgreat fun, players i grouped with had fun because they didnt die all the time,and stillfound high level things a challenge. Best thing is, its avaliable to any player who is serious about tanking, and there was more than one way to get the defence.. melee/dodge/block/counter.

umm untill now that is.

Im starting to wonder if the devs know what theyre doing, you do, right? and you knew all this already, yes?

Haven't had time to plough through the 6 pages of comments before mine, so I'm sure this has been covered already, but I'll reiterate anyway.

Master Commando / Teras Kasi 0314 / Novice Medic / Scout 2030

I went master commando a few moths ago and noticed how easy I was to hit due to the laughable defensive mods that commando's get in this game, so I picked up the appropriate lines of TKA to get their defensive bonuses, and up until the day before publish 7 went live this was working adequately for me (and by adequate I mean it was providing me with enough defenses that I could survive nicely against mid level critters, high end critters - like Rancors - were a struggle, but possible with a bit of mixing things up between commando and TKA, and PvP was ok until I came across a TKA, rifleman, bounty hunter or any of the uber stacked professions)

Now publish 7 goes live and I suddenly have a huge bullseye painted on me.

Mid level creatures are now hitting me with almost every attack - I went to a Bolma lair on Dath with a guildmate last night and had to heal myself twice during the initial wave, and was incapped and killed during the second wave (all this while wearing 80% kinetic resist composite)

I'm not even going to go anywhere near any high end critters.

Tried some quick PvP in Coronet, and got jumped by a TKA.... now whereas these guys were tough before, my attempts at shotting one now is laughable. I got off one flamesingle 2 before he was on top of me, then KD/dizzy and lying on my back staring at the sky for the remaining 5 seconds it took him to beat me toa pulp.

The bottom line ?? This ridiculous to hit mod for ANY melee attack vs anyone carrying a ranged weapon has a joke of my character who I've spent 5 months and 206 points on combat skills.

Vs any critter - I get pummeled

Vs any TKA - I get pummeled

Vs riflemen - I get pummeled

Vs any uber stacked template - I get pummeled

All this is doing is forcing people either out of combat professions completely, or into melee or uber template classes.

Druce Bayne

---

Kelgry wrote:

Amen,

Its all been said.. i had been in game thinking about quitting because of the defense changes. I was worried for a moment that everything is working as intended... with so many players to agree with, surely it can't be!

So defence is screwed now, i had 211 melee defence so you can imagine the drastic change I've had bestowed on me (and no i wasnt invulnerable with that). All those grinding hours lost, not to mention my favorite activity in the game i had enjoyed so long, pve tanking, now gone.

ok, so the cap is 125. they never documented it would be applied to melee/ranged, ive only seen mention about the secondary defences. /whap soe.

I can tell you, it seems like i have *NO defence* now, getting hit all the time now just as my other char does with 15 melee defence. My guess is that they messed up. Even if they did get it right, 125 is too low as i can remember having that some time ago and was'nt anything special.

My experience inpvetells me that defence is noticed at about 100... at 150 is getting good, and 170+ gets fantastic. i hate the cap idea altogether and i think if one has to be imposed, i suggest 160 cap. i have had occasional pvp fun here and there, my defence didnt seem to help me much. eg, commando could flame me 60% of the time.

I talk to some players who tell me swordsman had trouble hitting a fencer/pistoleer (dodge 210) which im not supprised, but swordsman accuracy, especially the PH is poor...imo improve that for them, instead of having such a low cap on defence.

OK, so in pve whats 200+ melee defence like? its what i think is worthy of a master title and makes a true tank. It doesnt really work when fighting things like krayt dragons and nightsister elders, but helps immensly with most other things. force npc tended to get me with choke and sometimes could be fatal.in the crystalcaves however the difficulty level increases. I hadgreat fun, players i grouped with had fun because they didnt die all the time,and stillfound high level things a challenge. Best thing is, its avaliable to any player who is serious about tanking, and there was more than one way to get the defence.. melee/dodge/block/counter.

umm untill now that is.

Im starting to wonder if the devs know what theyre doing, you do, right? and you knew all this already, yes?

---

I'm like this too, i don't pvp i spend my time pve and as rifleman/tka before patch time i enjoyed it.

Now it's like no defence at all.

i mean i shouldn't notice a difference 'cause i don't have dodge and stuff like that.. but i did.. big time

Publish 7 Combat Change? Just like the rest of this game. BROKEN. And more and more I believe it is broken beyond repair. I just spent a full evening in worthless GCW PvP. For what? We nothing to fight for. Mind damage from CM and Riflemen make any other profession useless unless you get lucky. In same class vs. same class PvP it all comes down to who hits first with no skill required. Its just down right pointless.

It is a shame that I sat there after two hours of pointless PvP and thought about that being the last time I play this game, because this game had so much potential. All of the content of the STAR WARS universe. 5 movies, countless books and comic. Deep rich story lines and what did we get?

1. Almost non existent content. What we do have is so strange and counter STAR WARSY as to be laughable at times. It is also about as shallow as a mudpuddle on Tatooine.


2. No real connection to the GCW. Nothing to fight for. PvP at this point is just a spitting contest to see who can say "I owned you man". So what and who cares. The battle feilds are broken and have been since day one with no promise they will ever return. All we have now are some pointless FP sinks called bases and scans from ST that I just simply KD and kill when they try to scan me. The GCW is pointless and they have no plan I can see to make it any better. This is the heart and soul of SW you would think they could do something that was at least FUN and not boring.


3. Missions are the most boring and repitious thing I've seen in a game since running around in the maze in PACMAN. It just the same old thing over and over and over. But you have to do to get money or else go with the even more tedious and boring crafting professions (how can anyone stand those?). I tried aritisan for about a month and was so bored I dropped it vowed never to go there again. Entertainer has to even worse. Standing there AFK dancing? Come on.


4. Bugs, exploits, and server lag to point of unplayability much of the time.


5. A combat system that is nothing but a who can throw the first punch.


6. An the tendancy to make every new quest such that only uber players in big groups can enjoy them.

I've been so disappointed by this game. I thought it would get better but instead I've endured a major nerf of CH. Promised droids that have turned out to be nerfed versions of the old droid. An end to stacking that turned out to be boon for stackers and a nerf to players who don't spend their whole life building an uber template.

And lastly a Jedi system that is only for those folks with no life, who have the time and energy to master countless useless and unrelated professions. I'm sure there are people with no job, no family and no other life than gaming that can spend hundreds of hours grinding out image designer to make jedi, I'm just no one of them. It would be nice to have this be difficult just not totaly tedious and boring.

So the bottom line of my rant. SWG seems to be broken and the devs have no solid plan to fix it. They just seem to nerf and add more useless stuff or worse yet as with publish 7, hype stuff and deliver NOTHING (Wooo Whooo I can sell more to the junk dealer /stick tongue in cheek). Only the whiners get anything (CH Nerfed, Wookie armor, et al) the 80% of us who quitely go about trying to make lemonaid from this lemon of a game get nothing.

I'm definately on my last months subscription.

/Sit

/Logout

/makelogoutpermenant

Please Post the Cap Numbers for ALL Affected Abilities/Capabilities/Skills.

We will find out one way or another. Take the smart benevolent move and post the technical changes made to the game mechanics. Employees of SOE, you are only hurting those players who do not have the time or the accounts to go about "conducting tests" to determine the values.

/bump

Issue: Republic Blaster
Republic Blaster Cert placed (and visible) in Novice Pistoleer, however my character (Master Marksman, no Pistoleer skill) can still use it. I am informed by a carbineer (only novice marksman for pistols) that they get the 'uncertified' message however. Perhaps the Republic Blaster was marked for Marksman III like the Modified Republic Blaster instead?

These are blasters produced pre-publish. I don't need to go buy another blaster for some time (I have 9 of them, curse of the master smuggler).

Master Marksman-2/1/3/0 Bounty Hunter-0/0/4/0 Smuggler-Master Scout-4/0/0/0 Brawler

Sub Issue/proposal: Make the DL-44 AP1, don't change it's damage amount or type (it's inferior to republic as it stands) and move cert to Novice Smuggler, so we have a reasonable AP weapon available to us without having to take another profession.

Warcry and panic shot may as well just be removed from the game if they remain in this state. With the possible exception of warcry still being a cone and not an area attack, both appear to be working as intended. However, there is now exactly one situation in which they might be useful. Knockdown, warcry/panicshot, peace, burstrun away. That's it, and it gives very minimal advantage over simply burstrunning away by itself. Its nerf also represents another slap in the face to wookiees' innate bonuses, but that's flogging a dead horse at this point.

The stated purpose of changing warcry was to turn it into a "crowd control" ability. It's not even close. To a large degree crowd control requires using area or cone attacks, or at the very least switching between targets. Therefore, even an area warcry would become pointless on the next area attack. A player who is only targeting one enemy is not doing crowd control, and a delay that immediately breaks is useless.

The former functionality of warcry and panicshot was fine. PvPers whining about the delay have killed its usefulness in PvE. Why not just change it so that its effect in PvP remains as it currently is and its effect in PvE reverts to the former way? Otherwise, just remove both warcry and panicshot from the game and replace them with something else, as neither attack is going to be used anymore.

As for the other changes. Defense caps seem fine, carbineers finally got the fix they deserved, and the to-hit change is appropriate. The ranged to-hit change only seems drastic because people fail to realize that ranged fighters had an inverted modifier and were getting a bonus rather than the intended penalty. Therefore it's twice the nerf it would have been had it been implemented correctly in the first place. Having better melee defense when holding a CDEF rifle with no marksman skill than as the master of a melee combat profession was never intended, and I'm glad it's fixed.

The bleeds do appear to be hitting the right pool, though bleeds have also become essentially useless. Their only use formerly was in taking down very high-HAM heavily armored opponents, and that was thanks to the bleed ignoring armor and resists. Rather than decreasing their effectiveness 80% across the board, it would have been a better move to leave them as they were but take armor and resists into account. Against the toughest mobs (with no vulnerabilities) they would still be appropriately weak, but would retain their usefulness when fighting a mid-level mob with a vulnerability or low resist.

Overall there were many good changes, but the pattern of making certain attacks become useless needs to stop.

The new combat system is totally broken, my combat log from my alt character last night is ridiculous.

This char is working on commando so has 3 0 0 0 in brawler and 3 2 4 4 in marksman at the moment.

Fighting low end critters like durni's and gubbers and butterflies this is roughly how it went.

Equip spraystick Rifle and spam headshot2 from rifles ideal range

-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X dodges -
-Critter x counterattacks -
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-

Equip E11 Carbine and full auto and overcharge a few times

-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X dodges -
-Critter x counterattacks -
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-

Switch to unarmed warcry, intimidate, unarmed blind, unarmed stun, lunge etc.

-intimidate failed-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X dodges -
-Critter x counterattacks -
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-miss-
-intimidate failed-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-intimidate failed-
-miss-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X dodges -
-Critter x counterattacks -
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-
-miss-

etc. etc.

-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X dodges -
-Critter x counterattacks -
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-
-Critter X hits you for X amounts of damage-

Noticing a pattern here...

Oh and warcry, that's a joke "you delay critter x for 10 seconds" then less than 1 second later critter X hits you for X amounts of damage

And yes I was standing still and not kiting.

If my wife hadnt been playing her CM character and throwing ranged stims at me every 30secs I would have been killed by every newbie creature I took on.

I fought 1 butterfly drone for about 2 minutes last night, I used to be able to one shot them with full auto on a poxy dh17 snub, it was quite funny, it was like I'd just bought the game and had nothing but a cdef and no specials again.

Please fix this

Why should you not get hit 40-50 % of the time against a savage quenker? I do. Isnt 100% a bit much? As long as the range changes are up to par I have no prob with it.