Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-22-04)
Rookgraawl wrote:
I agree with Imperial_Destroyer. Keep the routes as they are. If you end up adding more planets later on, make the routes for them, too. I like the fact that Corellia and Naboo retain thicker populations due to traffic/commerce, etc.
Imperial_Destroyer wrote:
uhhh reduced shuttle times great. I can understand the change there.
The starport change, I'm not so sure I like that one. The fact is, the way it is layed out now creates central commerce areas. Much like a NYC or Chicago or Dallas. By eliminating those I think they might be detrimental towards central commerce areas. As it stands, those wishing to be close to those areas can, and those wishing to be in the middle of nowhere (rori for instance) can be.
I can see both sides of this issue:
1. Instead of being able to go anywhere from any planet, must make it so you can purchase your connecting flight ticket ahead of time. For example, say I'm on Talus, and I want to go to Dantooine. I have to go thru Corellia to get there. Make it so that from the Starport on Talus, I can buy the ticket for the flight from Talus to Corellia, and also the ticket fromCorellia to Dantooine. That way when I get to Corellia, I don't have to run to the termial, buy a ticket, and then run back. I miss the shuttle so many times making this run, especially if I go thru the lag on Coronet. If I already had my ticket, I wouldn't have to wait. This could reduce the wait time, but also keep Theed and Coronet "Commerce Centers".
Another reason we should leave the routes as they are, is because people offering services can almost always be found in Theed or Coronet. If I need a doctor buff, there is almost always one outside the Coronet starport. There are always entertainers in the cantina. There are smugglers looking for customers who need weapons/armor sliced.
2. On the other hand, having Coronet and Theed as "Commerce Centers" makes them very busy, and therefore very laggy. If you can get anywhere from anywhere else, people will be spread out a little more. This can be a good thing too. That way a doctor that lives by Mos Entha or something, canactually go to Mos Enthan and see some customers. When was the last time you saw anyone in the cantina in Dearic on Talus? If people are spread out a little more, it can reduce the lag in places like Coronet or Theed, and make places like Dearic a place where people actually GO.
I realize that I just argued both sides of this issue, but I can see where you are coming from with wanting to make a change. If number one was implemented, it would make travel much easier, and and the routes don't have to change. If number 2 is implemented, it spreads out the population on the servers. I'd just be afraid that it may spread everyone too thin, and it would be hard to find anyone.
Just my 2 credits...
What was I doing there? Let's see... haven't been to that dungeon before. Showed up and it was FULL of bats. Yeah for me... I get to kill some things. Fought my way down to the bottom of the cave just to find a lot of AFK looters. Not sure about how you'd feel, but I felt robbed. Here I travel all the way to Talus, fight through a dungeon, and where the final *great item* should be is a bunch of AFK'ers looting for the sole purpose of selling those items off.
I hope you see the problem here? Do I afk loot? Nope.. not once nor will I start. People like this need to be banned. Plain and simple... it's a violation of TOS and that's it.
So... by you calling me out on this, I'm assuming you are one of the AFK looters that we find in areas like this? As for being here just to report people... do you see any names being mentioned for all to know? Tell you what... I hate stupidity and dealt with it enough today. Go back to your AFK macro'ing and I hope a CSR chats with you soon!
I think you should change the starport to every planet thing.
Make it that you can fly to every planet from bestine, theed andcoronet and you can fly from every planet to these 3 citys....the rest you leave at it is (current routes stay as they are),
I think you should fly from a capitol to everywhere but it's not good that you can fly from endor to yavin 4 in one flight. Also it keeps coronet, theed, and bestine as capitol cities in the game.
Thunderheart when i'm helping noobs gain the faction needed to join us Rebels they always ask me why they keep getting attacked by players whenthey have a flag next to their name, which ends up with me explaining the whole TEF system to them which takes ages. Since Q is gonna be putting some more load screen fixes with publish 8 could you ask him if he could make one that explains the whole tef system?
i.e gaining a tef, what it stands for, what it does and why can't they enter some buildings withone (also what kind of buildings can't they enter)with a screen shot of the HAM bars withthe flag next to it.
Dapper_Dan wrote:
Not that I do not disagree with your statement about there being central commerce areas, and those are great things. But , they also tend to be the laggiest spots in the galaxy. Especially Coronet. With a couple dozen afk peeps spamming spacial chat about stores, and tons of players standing around waiting for a shuttle. I had always hoped they would make that port like Theed, because of the lag alone, and being it connects to a lot more planets than Naboo does.
Ever try NYC traffic? I'd say you could call that lag too.
There are some prices to be paid for convenience, but my experience has always been that Dantooine is the lag from hell planet regardless. Coronet for me is never that bad, even at it's busiest times.
Spacelanes etc. do add to the feel of being in a thriving world. I personally like the hopping about and I think many do, what they complain about is the waits. Those are 2 seperate issues and it seems like the dev's are creating one that doesn't really exist to most players minds.
MisterVertigo wrote:
2. On the other hand, having Coronet and Theed as "Commerce Centers" makes them very busy, and therefore very laggy. If you can get anywhere from anywhere else, people will be spread out a little more. This can be a good thing too. That way a doctor that lives by Mos Entha or something, canactually go to Mos Enthan and see some customers. When was the last time you saw anyone in the cantina in Dearic on Talus? If people are spread out a little more, it can reduce the lag in places like Coronet or Theed, and make places like Dearic a place where people actually GO.
I realize that I just argued both sides of this issue, but I can see where you are coming from with wanting to make a change. If number one was implemented, it would make travel much easier, and and the routes don't have to change. If number 2 is implemented, it spreads out the population on the servers. I'd just be afraid that it may spread everyone too thin, and it would be hard to find anyone.
Just my 2 credits...
And don't you think the concept art guy looks like Tik-Tok from Return to Oz?
Some issues that I'd like to address.
Number 1 in regards to the new lighting in the game and their time lasting effects. It takes quit a bit of effort to place these object exactly where we want them and once the candles or lights burnout and we want new ones we'll have to spend alot of time setting them where we want again. How about instead of having the lights and candles decay, add in lightbulbs and matches that we can use to relit the objects once the burnout eliminating the need to spend hours moving things around.
In relation to droids: please make it so that we can call more than one droid. I'm sure Luke, Leia, Padme, Anakin ect werent the only people in the galaxy able to control 2 droids at once. And i dont even mean combat droids. Make all droids with no combat modules installed level 5. And all with combat modules level 10. Then we can call like a protocol droid and an R2 at once. Also, please tell me that we are going to be seeing new droid types like Pit droids, battle droids, droideka's ect. I really want a battle droid that says roger roger when i issue a command. And, in relation to this concerning the datapad. Please make the droids, pets, and vehicles not count towards the 100 datapad item limit and give us the ability to carry more droids. I'd really like to own more different types of droids other than 5.
I have some serious concerns with enemy ai and combat in this game still. Most of the rest of the game is looking great though. One hit kills needs to go. With all the holo grinders finding a rezz is very difficult. And one hit killing kind of defeats the medics purpose if you are dead before you hit the ground. And the enemies are still way to overpowered in many instances. I fail to see why regular human npc's should have 10x as much ham as a pc player and be able to hit for the same if not more damage as many of the class types. ENEMIES ATTACKING VEHICLES NEEDS TO BE REMOVED. I really wonder how a sand beetle can destroy steel and iron? Once the storing to fix thing is fixed, we dont have 50k to replace our vehicles when enemies one hit kill them. This is just rediculous. Why so many money sinks? With all the greedy kids on the bloodfin server replacing anything is getting quit hard these days.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, in the next patch make at-st's vehicles instead of pets and unable to shoot between their legs. Having an at-st takes no skill to use, just shouting A! A! A!. In the movies the at-st's could not shoot directly between their legs either. If you are not going to do this then give me a snowspeeder to follow me around and respond to Kill! A! Follow! Thanks for fixing stacking.
Thank you for your responses Thunderheart. Could you answer some quick questions for me?
1. For all of us who voted for Victor, we didn't get the reward. Test Center showed that we should have recieved an imperial banner, but you don't recieve it when you give him your campaign disk. Is this working as intended? I know that the other guy gives you a painting or a rug or something like that, so it seems odd that Victors reward isn't working.
2. Kstarfire has put together some great info on tweaking all of the species. Wookiee armor goes a long way towards this, but the other races are also having some issues. Is this something we could get looked at?
Thanks again for making this game better with each patch. I'm loving the ability to call my bike now when it autostores in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, but when was the last time you had to go through NYC to get to Boston? or LA? or Chicago?
Eliminate the bottleneck. Corellia might have been a thriving commerce planet, but there's no reason to have to go there for almost every planet in-game.
Many many people were PRO-experimentation changes and yet again the developers relented to inaccurate outcry of a vocal minority in my opinion without any relevant testing. Not only that the situation created an imbalance where people that had the entire day off from work got to make overwhelming crafts with abilities well beyond what is currently possible.
Either way, not a word seems to be forthcoming from you on this issue or the SEAs being corrected to the level of performance you (TH) documented.
I believe this post polite, forthright and to the point.
Both the pro-experimentation crowd and the players who sank millions into SEAs would appreciate a response on this interwoven issues.