Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 2-16-04)
Kirillian wrote:
...and after this commercial break, we'll be discussing people of color, fundamentalist religions and third-world political views...
- K
And this has WHAT relevance?
I called it as it is, no more and no less
No matter how tasty they make the GCW look, the PK mentality of PvPrs will poison it for the rest of us.
Kirillian wrote:Fear not, Rebel brother. PvE'ers will only be fined. Only those of us that have joined our glorious rebellion have anything to fear, and we all knew the risks when we signed up. And the risks are minimal - hardly more than what they have always been.
- K
Feel free to explain. By calling me 'rebel brother', you accept that I've joined the rebel faction. But you seem to think PvEers will only be fined. I know I don't have to explain to you that PvEers can and have joined factions, so are you saying that in-game play has revealed to you that rebel coverts only get a fine? Because that's quite different than what the TH said, and I'm not sure I believe this finding. Remember, there's only a chance that the penalty will be applied, and perhaps you or your friends were just lucky.
Regarding risks: no, I did not know that the devs would add additional ways to force pve coverts into pvp. This goes against their earlier promises, and anyone who had that expectation had no reason to have it in the first place.
I'm about to sign on now and test-run my rebel pc, as it should be quiet enough now that I can test it out without being jumped. If the only penalty is a fine, then I won't have a problem with it; that's the reasonable thing to do. But if I'm forced into Overt status, as we've been told by TH will happen, then I'll continue to lobby for it's reversal.
Kirillian wrote:
Fear not, Rebel brother. PvE'ers will only be fined. Only those of us that have joined our glorious rebellion have anything to fear, and we all knew the risks when we signed up. And the risks are minimal - hardly more than what they have always been.
- K
The first time I open the datapad after starting the game, the help bubbles are turned on, even though I had turned them off the last time I was playing.
Since the patch mount pets seem to follow right on top of you. This is definitely annoying while trying to fight and you keep clicking on a target to fight only to find you have targeted your pet since you are now looking out from inside his skin.
Also, mount pets seem to vanish if you dismount them tell them to stay and start a combat such as a mission nest. Part way through the combat the pet will vanish.
Hlicalanthe wrote:
I'm about to sign on now and test-run my rebel pc, as it should be quiet enough now that I can test it out without being jumped. If the only penalty is a fine, then I won't have a problem with it; that's the reasonable thing to do. But if I'm forced into Overt status, as we've been told by TH will happen, then I'll continue to lobby for it's reversal.
Well, here's my initial report.
I went to the Theed cantina. Less than a minute later, a ST spawned outside and came in to do his searches. He didn't find anything right away, but apparently a rebel covert took exception to his presence and attacked him. He called in two other STs, I and another covert joined in, and the STs were taken out (though I was incapped). No imperial overts were around, though I was surprised that no imperial coverts took the opportunity to db me (thanks either to the fact that they were all afk entertainers, or that they didn't realize the ST hadn't db'd me).
I decided to wait around to see if I could determine the spawn frequency; within 20 minutes of the first spawn (not 20 minutes after the last ST was killed, but 20 minutes after he first spawned) another spawned. Again, a rebel covert attacked before anyone was "discovered", and I and another joined in; so all that happened was a few TEFs and dead STs. Again, no overt imperials were around (it was about 1:30am EST on a Thursday morning, so not too surprised there).
So I decide to head to Moenia to see if I could actually find out what happens if the ST is allowed to do his search. I'm still TEF'd, and waiting at the nearby shuttleport for the next shuttle to arrive. Low and behold, I see a blue pip approaching on my radar, and it's a hurt (HAM damage) overt imp returning. (sarcasm) Of course, it wouldn't make sense for a covert rebel to jump an overt imperial (/sarcasm), so I wait to see what he does. I prepare myself for the inevitable attack, and think I'd have a good chance. Then he does the obvious: pulls out an AT-ST and runs to me. So I burst run out of there, and come back a minute later when I lose the TEF.
This is the type of gameplay that I'm against. Too many overts play so because they get the first strike and often surprise on TEF'd PvEers. This is wrong, and should be discouraged. Instead, this crackdown will encourage this playstyle. If an overt has the ability to attack a TEF'd player, a TEF'd player should have the ability to attack the Overt. And if anyone should have an automatic first strike, it should be the covert.
Anyway, on with the report.
So I make my way to Moenia. First thing I notice, is that the recruiter is gone (expected) but so are the mission terminals (not expected). It seems the Imperial frame-of-mind purpose of this crackdown of making play "easier" for imps and "harder" extends to making it even harder for new players to join.
I enter the cantina, and there's only two other people: one, an afk "neutral" entertainer, and the other a covert rebel. I sit down, and wait... and wait... a couple minutes go by, and think I remember that not every city is going to get these... so I get up to leave, but see a yellow blip spawn outside, which just happens to be a ST. Well, at least I know Moenia will have them. So I wait to see what happens.
The ST enters and starts talking the usually l33t dude smack you expect only to hear from 12 year olds, though I am surprised by a couple of quotes: "rebels seem to think they're above the law," and "the rebels might as well work for Jabba the Hutt. At least be honest about your illegal activities." This is surprising, because the Imps are the ones who think they're "above" the law, and the Devs agree by allowing many of them to use contraband. Rather than suggesting the rebels to work for Jabba, I suggest the Devs change the dialogue to suggest that we work for the Empire.
Onwards...
So the dialogue continues, and not much seems to be happening. Another covert enters, and asks if we should take him out. I say, "sure" (thought I had already passed the scan, so there was no point in waiting longer... I believe that assumption was wrong, as I'll show later). So we attack, he calls in a couple others. I'm incapped and immediately db'd that time, and the other covert doesn't make out any better by the time I reclone and return. From a distance, I see the STs "despawn", and I go to the hospital to heal my and the others wounds (neither of us had cloned in Moenia).
We go our separate ways, I returning to the cantina again. Not a minute later, another ST spawns outside (again, it's been about 20 minutes since the prior spawn). This time, I sit through extensive smack-dialogue, waiting to see what happens. I'm beginning to think this is how it works: there's a 25 sec or so timer, at which point the ST scans a random person. If the scan doesn't show positive (i.e., either the target has no contraband, or the scan simply fails) some random dialogue occurs. At least 6 statements were made before I apparently failed a scan, and he attacked and two others spawned.
I didn't receive any notice about being turned overt, though did get a TEF. Oh, so maybe TH did misspeak about being made Overt! So I run out, and luckily for whatever reason the STs don't follow. But then I think, let me just check my status; I hit ctrl-c and sure enough, I'm now declared. The TEF wears off in a couple minutes, and I'm still declared. I took a quick swoop ride to my mountain retreat, and am waiting to see whether the overt status may wear off by itself. It's been at least an hour, so it seems to be permanent.
So not only have they made a covert PvEer overt, but they've made it even harder for me to go back covert, as there was no recruiter in town that I could find. Even if we find there's a recruiter in one of the buildings (as I expect), it still means a minimum of 60 minutes as overt. Of course, you have the option to simply allow a PvPer to kill you (now that there's no decay or insurance loss, all you lose is fp) or allow a mob to do so (all you'll lose is insurance and decay); but these are unacceptable methods for returning covert--and giving incentive to allow yourself to be db'd certainly doesn't make things more "Star Warsy".
Again, I call on the Devs to reverse this decision ASAP for all the reasons that have been discussed in this and other threads.
And to those Imps that complain that they haven't seen any STs doing searches, have you even spent more than a couple minutes in a cantina? The spawn rate seems to me to be about every 20 minutes. While rebels seem to be taking advantage of this for now, it's only a matter of time before overt imps start camping the cantinas. And I'm sure my being signed on off-peak had something to do with the lack of Imperial overts in Theed, as well.
great idea today:
kauri takes 2 or 3 times other servers take to start and it was started last.
Could you at least monitor the time that servers take to load and act accordingly ?
can anyone help to confirm this:
one of the things that has been mentiond is that bleeds no longer stack, ive found this to be false, Im a rifleman/sowrdsman with 3 bleeds in total, i can definatly stack a Mindshot2, and a Mindshot 1 from rifleman, and also a Mindshot 2 (rifleman) and mindshot 1 (swordsman), i was then definatly getting 2 diffrent bleed numbers above my target, unfortunatly work called and I coudnt continue the experiments.
Ive also noticed a few more faction points...i mean stormtroopers walking around, usually in groups of 6, this is good but still quite easy to kill.
StPhil wrote:
Nerj wrote:
Droidtrainer wrote:
At least your server is loading..the cluster that eclipse is on is still offline...even tho "All servers are up"
At least you get a listing, VALCYN still is not listed in server status even thou it was active before TEMPEST which is listed
Tempest is now up and running, and historically works pretty well. Eclipse always seems to have special issues that keep it down, and Wanderhome seems to be cursed as ALWAYS amoung the last 3 servers to be online. Today is no exception. Both Eclipse and Wanderhome are still downa full hour after over half the servers were up.
-Phal
How can you tell if VALCYN is up IT IS NOT!!!!! IN THE SERVER STATUS LIST
Waste93 wrote:
Wanted to comment on the bleed nerf.
Bleeds have become almost worthless with the massive damage reduction. I have no problems with the resists reducing them, but it appears they are being reduced even further than that.
A 300 or so point bleed tick every 20 seconds against a 12k HAM MOB is basically worthless. I use almost that much HAM just to apply the bleed.
I used a bleed on a Bol. Combat spam said 1021 damage. That use to be the amount that was done per tick. When the damage actually went off it was for 323. This was with a T21 against a Bol. Last time I checked they didn't have 68% energy resists.
Bleeds now serve little to no use. So either fix them so they are useful, or remove them completely and replace them with something worth using.
From the Carbineer forum:
novamarine wrote:
The issue has been brought up on the Developer forums.
And a second issue you may not have noticed yet. Our bleeds are only doing 30-40 per tic...
Yeah but everyone's DOT got nerfed except the CM.I canmaybe live with that as I barely used AS1&2 because everyone runs around buffed. Whats weird is before the changes everyone thought the TKA and CM were the 2 most powerful classes in PvP. So after, they make this change so that those 2 professions are stronger now? TKA is only profession without a bleed. Therefore they are uneffected. CM has the most devistating DOT in the game IMO because of the serious mind damage and they are uneffected? Carbineers on the otherhand are far from feared by any profession and we get aBIG change. No fix on any special except on the one that we all needed to just survive (im speaking of Chargeshot1)
Im sure the dev forums are getting hammered by alot of professions. Im seeing the Commando's complain about their DOT and the swordsman about theirs. But I can bet you Novamarine that you wont see any TKA Correspondents or CM Correspondents complaining at all. If they are even posting in there its to defend the fact that everyone is upset besides them and their class.
I really do not expect a (non-standard) response from the hardest profession in SWG. So hard that there is ONLY one person in it, THUNDERHEART
standard reponse: It will be handled in the combat balance.
Nice going SOE. LoL.
I love you guys, i really do.
You relese a publish, and yeah, it's got cool stuff in it, no dought, BUT you unless more and more bugs on us.
Lets recap so far.
Bleeds are now random, as, even if you use mind hit2, you could end up bleeding the action or health pool...
The brawler class doesn't seem to have certs of basic weapons in the 2 handed, and pool arm line. thus people can't level in them.
The Power Boost bug is back.
Crafting XP seems bugged.
And i've noticed all that from just 5 min's on the board... who knows what else you've done?
KingSnake. But, on the up side, the crack down sounds cool to me. Yeah high level imps are now smugglers by defualt, but to me, that's no big deal. The empire is full of all kinds of scum and velenony anyway. 
Kind of makes since to me.
Anyway, i'd much appreacite a post accknowlaging the known bugs and giving an idea of when you plan to fix them.
KingSnake.
Hlicalanthe wrote:
JezabelleSWG wrote:
We realize you are not in control but a response to the community on this would very much be appreciated:
A) Is what we are seeing now the crackdown in it's final form? Only a few extra stormtroopers around in cantinas and cities and isolated incidents of a significant imperial presence?
or
B) Is this the beginning of the crackdown which over the coming days (weeks?) will evolve into a TRUE crackdown...imperial troops prevelant in ALL cities, ALL starports and regular scans? I remember reading once during the holocron craze that the devs could "tweak" the holocron drop rate at any time. Will the imperial presence be gradually "tweaked" up in the coming days?
Frankly if the answer is not B I think many of us are going to be very, very disappointed
Thanks
Yes, Imperials want to be consoled: they thought the crackdown was going to mean you'd be completely holding their hands and forcing rebels to stay out of cities. But it's always nice when Imperials make their unreasonable and unfair expectations for the crackdown public.
Even I understood this wasn't going to be the case. This update isn't going to hurt the uber PvP rebels who are prepared to partake in PvP in a town, it's going to hurt the PvE rebels who will end up being forced Overt simply for sitting in a cantina to get their BF healed. And since the rebel recruiters will now be harder to find, this will also mean that even a PvEer that doesn't get jumped right away in the cantina will likely get jumped at some point during his recruiter search just so he can request covert status, which will take another hour.
I'm a Rebel, and I'mnot entirely satisfiedwith the crackdown so far. I want to see Imperial troops on every corner (note I said troops, they don't all have to be storm troopers 
). I bought and pay to play this game to feel as if I'm in the Star Wars universe. I chose to be a Rebel and as such, in order to feel as if I'm in a Star Wars universe, I want my character to be oppressed, disadvantaged (my circumstance, not mentally ), always looking over his shoulder and some of the time on the run. This enables people to have things like 'fun' and 'excitement' in a game.
I do agree with you though that if those that wish to remain strictly PvE are forced into PvP, the system is a mild form of griefing and the problem needs to be addressed and changes made.
Just got two questions:
One, will the number of troops seen in cities across the galaxy be increased?
Two, have you an ETA on answering the top 10 pistoleer questions? (I realise you can't give a firm answer because of waiting on responses from various designers etc. but a specifiedmonth would be nice 
)