Development Cycle Archive

� Pt 3Thank you. From someone that has a special appreciation for the position you are in, thank you.

� Pt 3The posted tree shows Mount as a Management IV ability. It is, AFAIK, currently Empathy IV on Test.

Intentional change, or goofup?

ing�

Crooth Wrote:

So, Thunderheart - when asking yourself 'do people support the changes' I think the people whose opinion matter most are those who are most impacted - namely Creature Handlers who aren't Master yet. In fact, I'd throw Master CH's opinion (at this point anyway) in with the same bucket as those who aren't a CH at all - if not less! The non-CH are going to lose their rock beetles and mountain krevols, after all

Forgive me for interjecting here again. But the volume of people who are going to be most effected by these changes are NOT CH's at all. They are going to be the overwhelming majority of the rest of us!

� Pt 3

First I would like to say I support the overwhelming majority of what is said to be changed.

However, people here are complaining that nothing has changed a bit. Well first off your not going to see someone with a flamethrower and a Rancor now. That alone does a lot for the game and I agree with that change. This serves to balance it out a lot. The nerfing of the lower pets should be expected when a lot of non-chs and CHs complained about them. So when you ask about the all of us remember quite a large chunk of non-ch wanted non-ch pets nerfed if not removed entirely. Should have posted a strong disagreement.

The class is also getting a boost and I think with Thunderheart's direction he is largely pushing SWG in the right direction. Changes to the CH prof wich was needed and he is looking into making correspondant relations better but more importantly they are looking at DE's seriously. I mean if he is looking at DE then once that class is rearranged and tweaked then some other groups like Squadleaders, Chefs, Carbaniers, brawlers, and here and there might get some luff. ^.^

I'm actually positive now with SOE and as far as you people complaining your not heard well you are being heard and by all means what are being implimented now. Perhaps you need to think what you are saying and look what others are to in all those little posts hm...?

ing�

Crooth quoth:

always viewed the xp needed to get a box in CH in terms of how many mobs I'd have to kill that gave me 100 xp. This is a good yardstick because that's how much you get on average for killing low level mobs outside the cities with a low level pet. Getting the 4th level of any of the branches costs 140,000xp. To me, that means 1,400 kills. For each box. Given that it seems that with one pet you can get about 20,000xp per hour, that would mean 7 hours per box - or 28 hours (of mind-numbing boredom) for just the 4th level of CH. I always liked that getting Management 3 rewarded you with a way to effectively half that time. If I look at the whole CH tree, that would be about 1 million xp (give or take a few) or 50 hours of killing low level mobs - wow! Getting a way to reduce that (not quite in half - lets say to 30) seemed very reasonable. Making Master CH in 30 hours of gameplay of CH (you of course had to get to the novice box - not sure how long that takes anymore) seems very fair. 30 hours of gameplay is what you get out of most single-player games before it is over. And that's if you do something pretty dull like that - but it is a good yardstick. Most of the time I'd say a CH spends twice that in game because of doing things like taming, killing real mobs, etc.

I agree, cranking out experience like that must be an incredibly boring experience. If you have reasonable weapon skills, then even more so cos you'll only get 1 exp per kill.

Do you not think it is better to sacrifice the rush and go hunt something a little more challenging? Your weapon experience would fly up even though your CH progression will slow. You will also earn a pile more money from looting bigger MOBs and have a lot more fun. I always find my experience shoots up much quicker if I just ignore it and get on with the game.

� Pt 3I don't have time to read the posts in this thread, but this needs to be said or repeated until the development team understands it.

It is very clear at this point that the development team involved with fixing or tweaking the game have been blinded by the 'shiny' and can no longer create logical and elementary solutions to problems.

Here is an example:

Creature handlers with 2 pets can gain creature handler experience too fast. Yes, this is a problem. The original solution of limiting everyone to 1 combat pet is overreaching and sloppy. The revised solution of removing the double-experience gain for 2 pets is more on target, but equally sloppy. If people are gaining creature handler skill boxes too quickly, why not increase the experience required for each?

This solution is both simple in execution, and elegant in impact upon other game mechanics. It took me all of 30 seconds to formulate after hearing that the profession was too easy to advance.

By taking away the double-experience-gain, you certainly solve the problem but then you create more work for yourself in implementing and testing it. It also means that if you want to further adjust the advancement speed of the class, you will need to adjust the experience tables anyway.

You could have also adjusted creature handler experience rewards across the board. This would have slowed advancement as well, and have a controlled impact upon the game. Maybe not as easy to implement as adjusting the experience tables, but certainly more robust than removing multiple pets or removing the double-experience-gains.

Go ahead, work yourselves to death. I'd rather see fresh faces coding at this point anyway.

� Pt 3

To all you who wish to nerf CH to high heaven and say that Pet Wars isnt starwarsy:

Every profession should have a reason for existing. Under the proposed rev 2 changes, CH's wouldnt have really had a reason for existing other than to provide other players with mounts.

Any ranged attacker going against a meleer needs some kind of anti-melee abilities. CH provides that, and I can use up skill points in it rather than another useful profession (say, ranger or medic) and not die every 5 seconds. Knockdown (pre-nerf) was another way. People with TKA friends have another non-pet recourse. And soon combat droids will be available.

Now ranged vs ranged (which is usually the casefor PvP) doesnt require pets just to live. There's not much PvE content that fits this description though (ranged attackers are usually sentient and will help each other; thus you need backup).

SoI think the proposed ver 3 changes to CH are quite suitable. They suitablyreward non-dabblers, while still allowing dabblers (as is true for every other profession out there [except forJedi]).

The proper way to tone down on the Pet Wars isnt by half-killing the profession (delete the profession entirely, or dont...there is no middle)...its by adding content to allow other options. ie, combat droids, more damaging attacks (or lower HAM enemies), etc.

And honestly, even with pets, I still manage to kill myself faster with a carbine than any creature/NPC can .

� Pt 3

What does all that lacetype stuff mean under Management 4?

� Pt 3

also, there's going to be changes made so that rank affects how many pets you can have. At the patch it will all be 1 each though. So a Rebel with one 5k faction soldier is supposed to fight an Imp with one AT-ST??

uhhh..this is insane.

� Pt 3

Thanks TH! You must have the patience of a Saint.

Bob

� Pt 3

As an MCH, my initial reaction based on this information is that I like the revised proposed changes much more than the initial proposed changes. The clarifications helped alleviate some of my concerns regarding the changes as well. Also, the further information to make additional faction pets, droids and the like available based on various criteria and to add to the utility of droids as combat companions introduces the promise of diversity I had hoped for.

My single reservation is one limited to a race issue created by the AI. Some of us chose Wookie as our race because we intended to use pets as our "armor", foregoing conventional armor since we intended to rely on our pets holding taunt. We understood this resulted in a serious limitation to us in PvP (not being able to wear armor), but also understood that in PvE, due to pets holding taunt, Wookie was not at a disadvantage as a race. We had every reason to believe pets would continue to hold taunt. E.g. Tanks in general and pets in particular holding taunt is historically present in MMOG's and was present in Beta in SWG; so it was a fair assumption it would continue.

Since the AI appears to be moving to a simple "skip the pet and attack the owner" I (and I'm sure most Wookie CH's) would appreciate some thought and discussion by the devs regarding the effect on Wookies. Our enhanced HAM at startup is good for specials, but AR1 doubles the effective HAM of any other race.In addition,good armor gives resistance above the AR1 which compensates or more than compensates forthe HAM cost of wearing the armor.Thus non-Wookie races with good armor arebetterat "tanking", i.e. taking damage, than Wookies.

Considering Wookies will now be required to "tank" more in PvE, an adjustment seems to be in order. Two options I can think of are 1) make certain Wookie-useable items available that make our "effective HAM" (Points in damage we can take before incap) equal to other races with good armor or2) give pets the ability to "build taunt" so as to avert the "skip the pet" AI (e.g. in the same way Mage pets in EQ could build taunt to a point the Mage could inflict damage on the target without the pet losing taunt, but if a Mage inflicted too much damage or inflicted it to early or if a healer healed too much damage or healed too early, the pet would lose taunt - but could rebuild it again rather quickly). While I believe "building taunt" is preferable for strategy reasons and for healers, either solution would address the issue created in PvE for Wookie CH's. (Additional items to equalize effective HAM would have the side benefit of making Wookies more viable in PvP.)

Thank you TH for your time and effort in responding to our past requests for clarification. And thank you again, in advance, forbringing the effect of the new AI on Wookies to the attention of the appropriate people.

ing�Oh this is a horrible horrible nightmare nerf.....

ing�This nerf along with bugs and lack of content that have plagued this game for months is just too much to ask a player to bear for the privledge of playing in a faux Star Wars environment. I'm just plan and simple sickof all the nerfs. You take you take you take and don't give back anything... When I find myself on these stupid boards instead of playing the game I have to reasonably question if its worth it at all... On top of it all I have to pay for this? Hello? And you ask us to be constructive? What are you doing thats so constructive? Am I suppose to be doing your job? Oh your going to accomplish your goal of less Creature Handlers with this nerf, along with less players in general, thats what your going to accomplish...