Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Jedi Punchlist Feedback
Jedi are not being designed to be the perfect solo character that can defend against all other classes. Jedi are not “scrappers” and by definition, Teras Kasi was developed specifically to fight Jedi at close range. This will be especially true when Jedi are given the ability to block ranged attacks back at their opponents. Melee attacks are something the Jedi should be wary of.
Bull i saw darth maul doing som TKM moves there where he was foot sweeping.
LOL this is a joke
Man im a Tkm and i just soloed 3 Giant Kimos and 4 regulars ones and a Jedi cant solo a Tkm i ill never play my Jedi since 80% of the players are TKM i swear your making the Jedi into a Sissy with a Glowing stick, I swing that saber at a TKms arm or leg that leg or arm is comming off no question about it it goes the same for TKM how they hell can you make a master who has study the art of melee fighting Dizzy and KD if Bruce lee was still alive i highly doubt you would put him on his ass as easy as a TKm is now
WHY NOT GIVE THE TKM THE GLOWING STICK
Stupidfly wrote:
6. Meditation is the core of being a Jedi. It is the first thing every Jedi does in canon. Meditation should be moved to the Enhancement Novice box, with +meditation mods up the Synergy Tree along with Power boost EXACTLY like the TKA meditation line.
This is extremely unbalancing and not a viable course of action. However, meditating is part of what it means to be a Jedi and we are looking into adding meditation emotes for Jedi after this publish goes out.
Why is this unbalancing? You normally back your statements up. I do not see anything that could be considered extremely unbalancing about this.
8. If you initiate a force power while still, you are then locked in place
This is true for all animations across the board. Animations use a sequencing logic and this case is definitely possible with the level of animation detail in this game. This specific animation logic is something that cannot be changed.
Regardless it's a GREAT reason for the force power tree to continue to be ignored.
13. Robes of all levels should have *some* sort of armor resists. Padawan who are just starting out in the world could use a Robe with some resists. Higher level Jedi Robes should have +resists to certain things like poison/fire/etc.
The Jedi Development team is against balancing these combat features with the robes. We will work to balance resists to poisons/fire/etc.in a different manner and report back to you.
So are you saying our robes will haveno AR or resists? So basically they will be like the robes on test? Wow. You talk about how fun and wonderful Jedi are supposed to be, yet this gets worse with every update from you.
I am sure the response would be that this is offest by the fact that we can now get healing skills from medic at lower levels. Anyone can do that though, and they also get AR. So what you are really doing is putting us at a HUGE disadvantage.
16. Move Forcerun1 to Novice Enhancer, it really only adds some terrain negotiation and its silly that Jedi have none to begin with.
No. Jedi have a 50% run increase which helps with this and Jedi can choose terrain negotiation skills along the way if they choose.
50% run increase? Huh?
17. Move healbattlefatigueself1 to Novice Healing Box
No. This is considered a powerful, earned power and not a novice level skill.
Powerful? It's a convenience at best. It saves us the trouble of parking a dancer alt next to our doctor alt out where we hunt. So now I guess I need to buy another account. Make up your minds! Are we self-sufficient recluses or are we dependant on others? Now you want us to be dependant on others it seems. But you still want to leave in all the penalties that make us want to be reclusive.
How is that fun?
Force Power need mods to +speed for their respective skills. Why would anyone use force lighting if the delay is 3 seconds when they can saberthrow at 1/second. Additionall Master Healing has no benefits other than Total Heal which is no longer even a total heal.
The +speed benefits exist within the Force Ranking System. Total Heal has benefits in the Fire Cure addition along with the Force costs being adjusted for how much damage it heals. So there may be times where it is cheaper and times where it is more expensive based on how much damage it heals.
You still didn't address the problem. Especially with force powers. They are ajoke compared to the saber line. Everyone knows it. Biggest problem is the delay andyou already said you couldn't fix that.
20. The bonus damage against lower level mobs needs to work with the default auto-attack as well. Low level Jedi can hardly do specials, so this is a catch-22 if only specials get the bonus.
With the addition of Force Pool and Force Regen to the Padwan Robe along with increased Force in the skill tree we have already significantly boosted the lower end game. No longer is a lower end Jedi limited to 600 Force and 5 regen. Coupling this with the addition of higher end saber specials sooner, we have in fact greatly enhanced the leveling potential of the lower end Jedi.
No you haven't. You've taken away armor. Taken away our powerful attack. Made it all reliant on our force pool. Since we will be taking damage like crazy we will also be using that pool to heal. That equals tons of downtime.
Something nobody in this game has while grinding. Nobody. Ever. Well, except Jedi after this revamp.
25. The force power tree overall is weak, especially Force Choke. Right now there is no reason to use these skills other than possibly Force Cone 2 which still has worse DPS then a ForceSaberThrow3 attack. The delay coupled with mediocre damage and high force cost makes this tree undesirable.
Balance tweaks are still constantly being made to all the Force Disciplines. Force Powers are intended to be a viable alternative to sabers. This doesn't mean equal, but still viable. They should both have their uses and places.
Well guess what? They aren't. See the part about the delay up there.
26. Hooded Cloaks. Yes its not going to kill anyone if we can't have a hooded cloak, but they are intrinsic to the look and feel of Jedi, and we've been teased with pictures of Jedi in them since pre-release. Can you just give tailors the ability to craft these darn things? 1 per species model if needed... There's no reason only a Jedi should be able to wear a simple cloak with a hood, and more people running around in them will help us hide ourselves.
The desire for hooded cloaks will never go away.
Hooded cloaks (as with all wearables in the game) are far more work intensive and very time consuming to produce than they appear to be. Huge actually. It’s not 1 cloak or 2 cloaks, but somewhere around 120 cloaks would have to be produced internally for all Jedi robes to have hoods in the game. Here’s how it breaks down: There are currently 31 unique Jedi Robe Models. For each of those to be hooded, there needs to be a special version for Wookiees, Twilek and Mon Cal’s because of their heads and a version for the rest of the species, except for Trandos which get a special version because of their feet. The time and manpower to create 120 cloaks isn't available at this time. We want and will do this in the future, but it is just not possible right now.
Ok. Well please stop showing them in all your publicity videos. All you did was get us excited.
27. Overall skill point requirements need to either be reduced or one tree collapsed.
Having to spend 24 skill points in force sensitive skills that do NOTHING for Jedi and having all skill boxes RAISED in skill cost is a very bad combo.
8,6,4,2 is simply too restrictive. We have jedi coming from a system where you can have all powers, to a system where you can not possibly have even the most basic powers and be viable.
That's just not "fun." This revamp is about what is fun, as much as what is good for the game as a whole.
We aren't looking for overpowered here, but we would like to be able to have viable templates and still have enough points to learn some of the necessities such as Meditate and Force run.
Please lower the skill requirements to 7,5,3,1 which will let Jedi master 2 trees and achieve 4444 in another. This is hardly overpowered, will still allow for great diversification between Jedi, and will discourage dabblers. Please do us this one favor, it is not asking too much.
Absolutely the revamp is about fun. It's also about adding depth and choice to the experience of being a Jedi. Adding additional skill points or reducing the skill costs just further homogenizes Jedi making them all have the same basic abilities. That is completely counter to one of the major goals of this rebalance.
They will already be homogenized. Don't you see that? You can never balance multiple available skills perfectly. There will be a FOTM and everyone who PvPs will use it. You guys have YET to balance the exisiting combat professions. You really believe you will balance this so that everyone is diverse?
Please, we are not Jedi because we think it is neato to shoot lightening. We are powergamers. We will gravitiate to whatever is the most powerful FOTM. Period.
Message Edited by Stupidfly on 06-22-2004 06:57 PM
Please, we are not Jedi because we think it is neato to shoot lightening. We are powergamers. We will gravitiate to whatever is the most powerful FOTM. Period.
As I said before to the devs, listen to the wisdom. SEAK Balance! (Socializer, Explorer, Achiever, Killer)
You now have a lot of powergamers who have Jedi, which was totally counter to the initial idea discussed on the boards for years. He might be correct though. Just as everyone in pvp who is serious chooses one of the major templates, CM/Rifle, Doc/Rifle, TKA/Fencer/Pistols.
If combat is the determining aspect of being a Jedi and maintaining it then you may have already failed. I see some light though, but will you do the impossible that is possible?
Thunderheart wrote:
25. The force power tree overall is weak, especially Force Choke. Right now there is no reason to use these skills other than possibly Force Cone 2 which still has worse DPS then a ForceSaberThrow3 attack. The delay coupled with mediocre damage and high force cost makes this tree undesirable.
Balance tweaks are still constantly being made to all the Force Disciplines. Force Powers are intended to be a viable alternative to sabers. This doesn't mean equal, but still viable. They should both have their uses and places.
I am worried about you saying that Force Powers are to be viable, yet not equal to lightsabers, unless you are thinking about Powers being better in some areas then sabers.
Let me elaborate:
Lightsabers - give ability to damage (pure damage, states, etc) opponents, grant block skills, grant defense modifiers (toughness, etc)
Powers - give you ability to damage opponents.
This comparison means, that lightsabers will have more value as a skill for players than powers, unless damage output of powers can be a bit higher to justify its lack of defenses. My suggestions would be to balance force powers, so that speed is comparable with lightsaber specials (add speed modifiers for force powers ?), damage is a bit higher (20-30%) than similar lightsaber move and force cost is also a bit higher (10-20%). Force cost should be less higher than damage, as you need to give more bang for force point, to compensatethat powers cant fall back to auto attack when pool is depleted and dont offer any defenses.
Current problems with Powers/Lightsabers balance:
1) damage based on equiped lightsaber (this one itself is powers tree killer, as you cant be effective with powers, without lightsaber tree)
2) Powers shouldbedeveloped to do a varietyranged attacks, as opposed to lightsabers, that are melee with some ranged skills
Edit: Typos.
Message Edited by Xeovar on 06-23-2004 11:40 AM
Yes this is true with my carbine fullautoarea attack. It only damages my target and I might get states off on the others. But pretty much a waste to use. I don't think it is consistent though as my actionshot bleed area seems to hit random though that might have changed as well. Area attacks don't work well, especially in a skill set without lots of defense that can tank.
TickTock wrote:
A few issues:
Since someone brought up the longstanding issue of states going through block, I'll bring up another. Non-targeted enemies who aren't fighting caught in an area attack won't take damage. Since that sounds confusing, an example. I wander on up to a bunch of Quenkers(or whatever). I open my attack with lightningcone2 and catch all of them. Only one will take damage, but all will start attacking me. This makes opening with a cone attack very bad, and greatly reduces the effectiveness of all cone attacks in the game, especially with enemy's tendency to surround you. This bug affects everyone who an area attack.
Regarding powers:
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by viable but not equal. How I read this is the tree will remain substandard and there is little impetus to improve it? Or, do you mean to make the tree equal, but not identical. Which would make much more sense to me. Powers should be just as effective(albeit in different ways), as lightsaber. That does not mean it should be identical, not by any means. But it should be "equal", so that players must think about what they would prefer to do and how it would best fit in with their other skills. The problem with Powers is NOT that it is worthless. Recent changes have fixed that to a degree. The problem with Powers is that anything powers can do, lightsaber can do better(almost). Where Powers has the slow and costly FKD, saber has the fast will be relatively cheap saberthrow2. Where Powers has the resistable and slower lightning, sabers have the fast, cheap, and unresistable saber moves. Where Powers has mindblast, sabers has the faster and cheaper Dervish(or other such moves). Now, some of this could change with the speed differences in the combat revamp, but the bottom line is that anything Powers can do, Sabers can do it better. Whether that be faster, more damaging, or simply for less force.
I and many others would prefer equal but not identical, rather than viable but not equal.
Message Edited by TickTock on 06-22-2004 07:47 PM
Ko-aIri wrote:
TH,
Thanks for taking the time to answer us about all this information. I have one remaining concern that I feel has not been addressed, relating to the robes.
I understand the problems with the hooded robes/backpacks... fine, I can live with it.
What I CAN'T live with (from an aesthetic point of view) is that at this time, regardless of the 31 robes you claim to exist, it would seem the breakdown is 15 light-side FRS robes, 15 dark-side FRS robes, and 1 Padawan robe.
The padawan robe, as we have all seen, is a very plain white tunic with brown boots. And, it is a virtual requirement to wear it, because of the bonus to regeneration and force pool.
Because of this, I am begging, pleading, whatever... can we PLEASE get a limited color palatte to adjust these robes to customize our character a bit?
My reasoning is based off the following: First of all, SWG has one of the most robust character customization systems of any MMORPG, or any game period. The fact that an Image Designer and Tailor profession exist speaks volumes about this. Forcing all entry-level Jedi and even those Jedi who never enter the FRS to look virtually identical is contrary to the system, considering Jedi is one of the main "end-game" content points we have at this time.
Secondly, as I mentioned above, many Jedi will not choose to enter the FRS even when "mastering" their skill points, and for any Jedi that does not convert over from 4/4/4/4 guardian, or future new Jedi, we have a long grind ahead of us staring at blaze-white pajamas.
Thirdly, in the movies, no "padawan" that I saw wore this pure white. Obi-Wan in Episode 1 had a more cream-colored tunic, and Anakin in Episode 2 had very dark padawan garb. Obviously, there is no "standard uniform" for padawans in SWG movies, why should there be in this game with its fantastic customization system?
So in conclusion, could we please have (ideally) a 3-part color palatte to choose a tunic color, pants color and boots color from a selection of white/tan/brown/grey/black? That way, we'd have a better variety of appearances while still staying within the "earth tones" that Jedi favored (no ridiculous colors are being requested) and we can feel more comfortable that are characters still retain a shred of uniqueness. Worst-case scenario, can we have a single color palatte that chooses from the white/tan/brown/grey/black that modifies the tunic/pants the same color and leaves the boots alone?
Thanks for trying to make this publish great, the fulfillment of this request (or good answer why this isn't do-able/allowable) would be the icing on the cake for me.
raz1337 wrote:
Balance tweaks are still constantly being made to all the Force Disciplines. Force Powers are intended to be a viable alternative to sabers. This doesn't mean equal, but still viable. They should both have their uses and places.
What if you don't want to specialize in lightsaber, or even take it up for that matter, you're then unable to finish the knight trials.
It's because combat is right now the determining factor for being jedi. It's about power gamers.
SEAK Balance.
AnXdiety wrote:
Bentos wrote:
Did you play on TC2 the first week with the 90% built in plus force armor? Remeber the 10-20 point saber hits? Remeber no one finishing a duel because they got bored of neverending fights? That was just with built in resists no robe. I certainly do not want to go back to neverending fights. So now you have a choice, Master Defender for Toughness (Best PvE build) or Enhancer for Force Armor(lots of toys, can PvE but lots of downtime).
Thanks to the ability to change templates on TC2 right now you can see this. Kill some NS with a Defender and then swap over to an Enhancer. You will notice the built in toughness like night and day. Defender gets hit for 125-150 a pop, Enhancer gets nailed for 200-350ish but has a massive Force drain.
Spellweavers were hitting for:
1000-1100 no saber equipped no Defender
500-600 Master saber no Defender
200-350 Master saber plus Force Armor on
125-150 Master saber Master Defender no Force Armor
Please when you dispute me and try to include numbers from testing today or in the future, vague descriptions like "gets hit harder" do nothing for anyone.
And the people that are just starting and grinding towards those skills use what for defences? Go try 4004 lightsaber and that is all for your skills. Drop everything else and come back and tell us how long you live and what the grind is like. That is what we are up in arms over. This freebie knight status is still going to be a couple months away for the majority of Jedi. What concerns me most is it actually being feasable to grind through the entire defence tree without having any defences or resists along the way. As an example... show me 1 other class that is combat that does not wear armor through their entire grind to mastery?
I was only novice with one jedi skill choice. I choose master TKM, Master Fencer, Master Brawler and did very well while buffed. I did manage to die a bit but I would take on easier opponents in live. You will have to balance with other skills outside jedi to gain jedi skill. A TKM would be my choice for the long fight, gives you pvp and pve power and good defense. When your saber fails fall back to the TKM skills and destroy.
AshleyHumes wrote:
So what are my options for leveling my Jedi if I don't wish to follow the dark path of slaughtering thousands of innocent creatures or wielding a lightsaber?
Is there any other viable way to gain experience without following the dark side?
In several of the books, jedi would not even harm insects (considering it to be aggressive and not defensive).
Give me some options that allow me to properly roleplay my character. Please.
I agree and was hoping to if I ever have a jedi to do a pure healer and then keep a normal profession of some sort. I still might be able to do that but shall see.
Even so this might not be the game we are looking for. *waves mind trick on ourselves*
Renairdor wrote:
- Jedi powers
Balance ongoing. Difficult to comment except for the discussion between devs and the testers on test for the powers balance. The powers delay is not something I'm aware is modified in the council mods, I just made Knight so will play around and see if any noticeable difference- but a 3 second delay on a regular heal self iscrippling in battle at the level Jedi need to play.
- Crystal Drop Rates
I have found 2 crystals on test 2, after killing about 300-400 nightsisters. One was nice low force, the other moderate dmg , moderate force. I did not need to replace a crystal during this time, so it seemed fair. However, I must comment it seems very difficult to find color crystals - but then again I'm not attacking the lower level mobs so it might not be a valid concern from my testing.
- Jedi Council
Just starting this. The Knight trials that involved the Death Watch Bunk Overlord, Akalay and those rare , never seen, mobs, seem a bit unfair. I don't mind hunting 'rare' , but extinct is something else. I personally wish there was a 'interesting' quest such as visit a number of POIs, Shrines, meet someone and deal with some Jedi lore questions just as warmups. The Krayt, Kimo, Peko, Nightsister Elder type missions seem fun and fair- excuse to bring a group out. And Jedi Knights should be familiar with the corvette mission- it's another nice excuse to get your group out and about, do something fun. I think these quests have great potential, but need some tweaking.
- Jedi and Combat
If there is no xp loss on Ranked PvP players, they just start falling to the bottom of the heap again, then it seems a fun and fair competitive system. Jedi do not get a TEF like the 'old days' so PvE grind and levelling is not terribly difficult, barring attacks from BH. I think the robes lack of resists is a fundamental problem, however. In response to looking jedi like and 'ditching' the composite armor look, Jedi players made a HUGE sacrifice. I don't believe ignoring this is fair or nice at all to Jedi players. Every other profession gets up to 90% resists in PvE, at the minimum a Jedi robe should have light armor and 50% resists - it's weaker then the average composite, but gives starting Jedi a fighting chance. It is , as well, what was promised.
- Lightsaber Crafting
Lightsaber crafting is 'decent' given that the specials and multipliers can be tweaked by the devs. I do hope the random factor is removed on tuning existing pearls/crystals since some folks have -7 force cost ,-8, -9 pearls they have saved for a rainy day. The conversion code seems a bit broad. The old -9 pearls were very hard to come by, and made 'uber' lightsabers. But this is not a complete show stopper, just something the community will be angry about.
- Jedi Conversion Process
I still feel the current 8/6/4/2 conversion system is backwards to how it should be. I have been playing Knights of the Old Republic this weekend to get that loving Jedi feeling back. I would like to see the development team revisit this, since there really is a canon of basic powers, that are utility in nature and expected in 'all' jedi, that we just do not see in this current form revamp. Meditation at lvl 4 is a 100% regen bonus to force- very powerful, but a 10% in Enhancer? 25% lvl 1, 50% lvl 2, 75% lvl 3 along the meditate line appears very reasonable to me and gets jedi 'recovering' from battles. It's a interesting aspect since we'll see BH looking for those resting jedi.
One way to address balance is introduce a 'Padawan' box that costs a certain number of jedi points, to offset the jedi dabblers- TKA/Lightsaber master is a fearsome foe. Heck, Master Fencer/Lightsaber master may be one of the most powerful in PvP with their high dodge abilities, state defences and mitigation.There really should be some sort of step to take a jedi along the basic Initiate -> Padawan path FIRST, that allows the elite normals to 'dabble in' but only gain basic jedi powers, then once completed this Padawan training they have 150 skill points left to use in the 5 'elite' trees. Guess it's too late to redesign things though
Comments on a few answers:
B. The immense amount of negative XP that will happen in PVP will not gate you from retraining.
Experience loss has been changed back and forth a bit. There has to be some death penalty associated with PvP deaths because of the inherent power level of Jedi and also to prevent Jedi from selling their deaths to Bounty Hunters. Without a penalty, it leaves the possibility of a “Death-credit” loop.
However, we are going to remove XP loss for Force Ranked Jedi when they fight each other because it is required to gain rank.
*** If you have any class that suffers XP loss on death, they MUST be unbalanced to other classes, and fairly powerful. It's nice to reduce the XP loss on ranked vs Ranked, but there is too much room to exploit. Get your BH buddy to give the deathblow, as one easy example. PvP XP really needs serious thought. We want BH to hunt jedi and keep their numbers low, so sure a BH should hunt Jedi, have the tools they need to beat them, and reduce a Jedi progress if the Jedi gets caught. But the way group TEFs are abused, the ease of exploiting CM poisons, means that Jedi will die a LOT and gain huge XP losses against 'normals' unless you are making some serious changes to tweak up the PvP exploits to killing folks, and fixing up TEFs.
We are making some tweaks to the combat system to increase accuracy across the board. It should no longer be possible to never hit or always hit an opponent.
WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK ON HOW PvP and PvE after this change.
First tests to run will be against the TKA/Fencer and stacked folks
Melee mitigation is going away for PvP for everyone very soon.We are evaluating alternate ways to make the Defense Tree more desirable.
I'd personally like to see some dodge introduced in the master level. But what we really need are some actual powers. Anyone taking master defence has one single power in master, and not much else. Maybe bring the state defences into master defence to help complement the state resistances? I can understand having Master Def with the force armor is a bit powerful, but there really needs to be 'something'.
Poisons fire/etc.
The Jedi Development team is against balancing these combat features with the robes. We will work to balance resists to poisons/fire/etc.in a different manner and report back to you.
This is really not a Jedi specific problem, though of course with the XP loss it affects them a ton.Regardless of your comments at the Fanfest, I think most of us werein shock whenit was said CM's were not overpowered. They are. You canuse havlato throw one poison PER second, and stack up to 6 poisons on the samestatisic. IE- 6 poisons on health. The total tick is easily over 1500, not even usingrare components.
Group TEF is the other problem. One overt engages a Jedi, and 19 others can attack at their leisure. The simple combo attack is a Flame DOT by one covert (with or without poisons) followed up by a Warcry2. This results in a instant dead Jedi - does not matter if they are a council master or not.
Some general things that need to be fixed - Warcry2 should not work on players/characters under influence of a damage DOT, and poisons need to be restricted to only one affecting one stat, from one player (highest takes effect). Now that poisons are so extremely powerful, it's time for a PvP reduction in damage/and orthe area cure we've been asking for, for months. This will be one of the healthiest fixes for PvP, ever. Most of my friends refuse to PvP since it's just so 'silly' right now.
16. Move Forcerun1 to Novice Enhancer, it really only adds some terrain negotiation and its silly that Jedi have none to begin with.
No. Jedi have a 50% run increase which helps with this and Jedi can choose terrain negotiation skills along the way if they choose.
One of the most basic canon to jedi is the ability to do physical feats. Once a jedi is 'master', even a master LS/Def/powers would have the basic abilities to run with the force. But I won't say this is 'game breaking' one way or another, but it seems silly to not have it as part of the basic jedi starting skills.
Jedi are not being designed to be the perfect solo character that can defend against all other classes. Jedi are not “scrappers” and by definition, Teras Kasi was developed specifically to fight Jedi at close range.This will be especially true when Jedi are given the ability to block ranged attacks back at their opponents. Melee attacks are something the Jedi should be wary of.
I disagree strongly here, in all the canon, the lightsaber/defender Jedi masters are very akin to a mix of TKA/Fencer in the SWG skill set. They avoid most attacks, and block is very common, part of the jedi canon. All games, stories, battles, everything around Jedi combat centers on the lightsaber excelling in melee and ranged. It's the only weapon they have. The TKA in the canon were singly devoted to one profession, and one task. There is no equivalent in SWG since we have TKA/Fencers/Doctors mixes. Jedi at the high end do not get such luxuries. If a jedi specializes in just combat using almost all points (IE- master defence/master lightsaber) then you are basically saying a TKA/Doctor should be far superior. This is, as we said, unacceptable. If a TKA is expected to beat a Jedi one on one, then the Jedi may as well have more skills to dabble in, since their combat abilities are set at a mediocre level.
Do jedi players want to be 'Gods' ? No, but neither should a single TKA/Fencer who does not receive any penalty on death be immune to a jedi lightsaber master. Nor should they EASILY defeat a master defender. The sacrifice to become master of either of these, means the jedi is already very low on other options. I'm hearing too many jokes from folks saying they as as well go Fencer/Tka/Lightsaber and stay there since it's far far more powerful then any Jedi could ever be. That is not acceptable risk/work vs reward.
This may be, but it’s a reality of the engine. We are currently investigating giving the robes themselves backpack functionality because Jedi are always pulling neat stuff out of their robes, but it will not happen with this publish.
On the topic of clothing/items- Jedi are now limited in what additional items they can wear granting skill mods via clothing attachments. This is again a 'nerf' to jedi, since I know many folks with +10-25 defences vs states, knockdowns, melee defence, etc... clothing. Jedi cannot wear robes and an undershirt. How odd
Overall, I'm still very very disappointed.A number of reasonable promises were made which included:
* There would be box for box conversion in the new system, so that the powers of old would be equivalently rewarded in new
* Jedi robes would be given defences equivalent to the composite of old, to make up for the fact jedi would not be able to wear armor such as other melee classes (who have dodge, mitigation, toughess as well...)
* Pearls and crystals would have equivalent stats in the revamp after conversion
* Ranked council Jedi would be very powerful in PvP. (We are nowhere near there yet- tough enough for a Jedi Master to beat a prepared TKA/Fencer, not to even mention the numerous ways to exploit Group TEF, Warcry2, DOT and poisons... Jedi master means little)
I'll stop here for now, already 'ranting' enough though I hope you see a few concerns/points.
Ren
Awesome Post Ren! I agree!
Atiw wrote:
Before I start my replies, let me preface this by saying that I was one of the few TC1 Jedi that had to play with this patch as a low level Jedi, and my observations are based on that point of view, not from the PvP portion that was tested on TC2.
Thunderheart wrote:
1. XP loss will greatly affect the ability for a Jedi Knight to change their template. There should be a way to retrain skills at the Knight level so that:
Experience loss has been changed back and forth a bit. There has to be some death penalty associated with PvP deaths because of the inherent power level of Jedi and also to prevent Jedi from selling their deaths to Bounty Hunters. Without a penalty, it leaves the possibility of a “Death-credit” loop. However, we are going to remove XP loss for Force Ranked Jedi when they fight each other because it is required to gain rank.If XP loss is only an issue due to the PvP Death-credit loop, then please remove it from PvE deaths as well. I understand that Jedi should be hard to level, but given the exptremely high XP requirements currently in place, that has already been achieved.
I'm all for death penalties if a bounty hunter successfully completes a mission he has on you, but survivablility for low level Jedi as it currently stands is really not what it should be. It is incredibly hard to level up a low-level Jedi without any armor or any healing skills (yes, I know you can take novice medic), and coupled with the low force pool at lower levels it becomes increasingly so.
Thunderheart wrote:
5. The changes to the defense tree have made it very undesirable. There is literally nothing in the entire tree until Master when you get avoid incapacitation which is overall pretty useless.
Melee mitigation is going away for PvP for everyone very soon. We are evaluating alternate ways to make the Defense Tree more desirable.
Melee mitigation is not only important in PvP, it is also extremely important in the PvE portion of the Jedi grind. If you are removing it from the other professions for PvP, but keeping it in for PvE, then you should do the same for Jedi. This coupled with the fact that Jedi are not allowed to wear any armor makes it incredibly difficult to level up in the PvE portion of the Jedi profession.
Thunderheart wrote:
13. Robes of all levels should have *some* sort of armor resists. Padawan who are just starting out in the world could use a Robe with some resists. Higher level Jedi Robes should have +resists to certain things like poison/fire/etc.
The Jedi Development team is against balancing these combat features with the robes. We will work to balance resists to poisons/fire/etc. in a different manner and report back to you.
Playing as a low level Jedi that has no access to the skills a converted Gaurdian 4/4/4/4 has, makes the fact that you can not wear any armor an incredibly big nerf.
The fact is that most of us will have a hard time surviving in the PvE portion of the Jedi profession due to this. Yes, I understand that you added force and regeneration bonuses to the Jedi robes, but when you are too low to be able to afford Force Armor, or Force Armor eats up your meager force pool extremely fast, it just does not make it any fun.
Thunderheart wrote:
15. Sabers made with exceptional pearls (-9 FC) for example are not returning exceptional components.
Pearls are returned based on the stats of the Lightsaber as a whole. So if you have one amazing pearl and three lame crystals in a lightsaber, you will not have an amazing pearl come out. Additionally, when lightsabers are deconstructed, the pearls are un-tuned.
If what you are describing is the case, then there is still a bug here that needs to be addressed. Many Jedi have reported that 5th Generation Sabers made with perfect pearls in the old system did not return even good quality components.
I have even heard reports of sliced sabers, which in this case should return exceptional components giving back the same as other normal sabers.
Thunderheart wrote:
18. Master Healing/Force Power need mods to +speed for their respective skills. Why would anyone use force lighting if the delay is 3 seconds when they can saberthrow at 1/second. Additionall Master Healing has no benefits other than Total Heal which is no longer even a total heal.
The +speed benefits exist within the Force Ranking System. Total Heal has benefits in the Fire Cure addition along with the Force costs being adjusted for how much damage it heals. So there may be times where it is cheaper and times where it is more expensive based on how much damage it heals.
Please reconsider the fact that the healing speed bonuses are only available as part of the force ranking system. If at all possible, spread them out so that you get some force healing speed bonuses while you are still grinding up, and then get the final bonuses in the FRS system. Duplication the skill bonuses to Injury Treatment Speed in the Medic profession would be a good fit.
Thunderheart wrote:
19. Force Sensitive skills are useless for Jedi. Example: melee accuracy, melee speed, Healing skills, assembly, healing speed....none of these affect Jedi skills at all yet we are forced to learn them.
Yes, they are. Basically, this is 20/20 hindsight and a by-product of the conversion. As a character moves through the Jedi process on a normal progression, Force Sensitivity skills are basic enhancements for “regular” characters to simulate Force Sensitivity. At that point, they are great to have. Once a character becomes a Jedi, they have already moved past those skills and in effect developed their Force powers from sensitivities into full blown powers. In essence, you have all moved past this point but everyone will have to go through this phase in the future.
Again, please reconsider this. A Jedi is a Melee fighter, and while you are leveling up, is when you really need it. Once you are done with the PvE portion, I can see how they might become redundant, but at least get the Melee Speed and Accuracy bonuses to work.
In the old system it might have been true that a Jedi moved past the need for those skills, but in the new one, the above 2 skills should at least be applicable while you are still leveling up a Jedi.
Thunderheart wrote:
20. The bonus damage against lower level mobs needs to work with the default auto-attack as well. Low level Jedi can hardly do specials, so this is a catch-22 if only specials get the bonus.
With the addition of Force Pool and Force Regen to the Padwan Robe along with increased Force in the skill tree we have already significantly boosted the lower end game. No longer is a lower end Jedi limited to 600 Force and 5 regen. Coupling this with the addition of higher end saber specials sooner, we have in fact greatly enhanced the leveling potential of the lower end Jedi.
I'm going to have to seriously dissagree with you on this one. Having played a low-level Jedi in the new system for the past month, the leveling potential is very far below what it was in the past.
Yes, you increased our regen and force pool, but you also increased the force cost of specials quite a bit.
Coupled with the fact that we have no damage mitigation skills (or armor) at lower levels, this means that you have to get in, kill the mob as fast as you can (since you can not take hits anywhere near as good as previously). This means that you have to use specials, which eats up your force pool much faster, which in turn leads to downtimes between fights.
Couple all of this with the fact that the amount of Jedi experience now needed has been greatly increased, it makes for a much longer grind than before.
Thunderheart wrote:
21. Jedi cannot block melee attacks....at all. This is unacceptable.
Jedi are not being designed to be the perfect solo character that can defend against all other classes. Jedi are not “scrappers” and by definition, Teras Kasi was developed specifically to fight Jedi at close range.This will be especially true when Jedi are given the ability to block ranged attacks back at their opponents. Melee attacks are something the Jedi should be wary of.
Again, this is fine from a PvP point of view, but is really a big problem in the PvE portion. We need 36 Million Jedi XP to get to the PvP portion of the profession, and virtually everything that gives us that experience uses melee attacks on you.
Given the fact that PvE is pretty much an incredibly difficult portion of the profession already, we really need some kind of defenses while we are still working towards the PvP portion of the profession.
Given the current implementation, anyone that wants to go into the FRS System needs 3 things, Master Lightsaber to deal damage, Master Enhancer to prevent damage being done to you (Force Armor and Shield, Force Drain) and at least Healing 4000. This pretty much guarantees that all Jedi that enter the FRS portion and want to be competitive in the system will all have the same template anyway. Relaxing the skill point cost will not change this in any way, but it will however make it much more enjoyable getting to the FRS system. Again, lower level Jedi need access to more skills to be able to make it a fun game play experience to get to the Jedi FRS system. I understand that you guys believe that the 5 separate trees with high skill point costs will deter dabbling in the Jedi profession, but I respectully dissagree. People will continue to dabble, and I am almost willing to bet that we are going to see a whole lot of TKM's with Force Hearing 4/0/0/0 and Enhancement 0/4/0/0. Also, considering that we have 24 skill points tied up in skills that you have stated will be useless to us, relaxing the skill points needed just makes sense.
Thunderheart wrote:
27. Overall skill point requirements need to either be reduced or one tree collapsed. Having to spend 24 skill points in force sensitive skills that do NOTHING for Jedi and having all skill boxes RAISED in skill cost is a very bad combo. 8,6,4,2 is simply too restrictive. We have jedi coming from a system where you can have all powers, to a system where you can not possibly have even the most basic powers and be viable. That's just not "fun." This revamp is about what is fun, as much as what is good for the game as a whole. We aren't looking for overpowered here, but we would like to be able to have viable templates and still have enough points to learn some of the necessities such as Meditate and Force run. Please lower the skill requirements to 7,5,3,1 which will let Jedi master 2 trees and achieve 4444 in another. This is hardly overpowered, will still allow for great diversification between Jedi, and will discourage dabblers. Please do us this one favor, it is not asking too much.
Now on to a general observation. This revamp was thoroughly tested in the top end of the profession, but it really did not get sufficient testing of the lower level Jedi experience. Yes, I know that you had tons of people with just novice Lightsaber on TC2, but most of them gave up because it took so long to obtain a single new skill box, and they could lose it at any point in time. You guys made some progress towards making the grind bearable, but it simply needs more testing. The PvE portion of lower level Jedi is simply not fun at the moment, in fact, the old system was more enjoyable than the new one. Please, use this last week to set up a testing environment on TC2 where people have to play at various levels in the leveling process, because once this patch hits live, the low level Jedi are in for a world of hurt.
MatchstickNaritus wrote:
Matchstick is in RED.
We will be adding descriptions and final skill point costs to the conversion guide. As it stands, we are still tweaking the conversion rates and may continue to tweak them in the future. We know you are going to evaluate and post them. If we were to post them, it would become canon and we could never change them without massive protest.
Just to clarify. There's only going to be ONE conversion. So when you say "tweak them in the future" the future refers to the next 5 days. At some point, they WILL become canon, please make the player base aware of what the exact chart is at that time. There's no need to allow us the fun of discovering it on our own. It's not like knowing AFTER the 29th will be valuable in any way.
Jedi are not being designed to be the perfect solo character that can defend against all other classes. Jedi are not “scrappers” and by definition, Teras Kasi was developed specifically to fight Jedi at close range.This will be especially true when Jedi are given the ability to block ranged attacks back at their opponents. Melee attacks are something the Jedi should be wary of.
Hmm.... I would say that Jedi ARE in fact "scrappers". Luke killed the Rancor without a lightsaber, and he seemed to do well on Jabba's skiffs vs. those Weequay with pikes. But I understand your point. However, the Teras Kasi profession is a mundane profession and very simple to achieve (or any other melee profession). This does not make sense that a Jedi should be wary of them per se, when a Jedi has spent months upon months to acheive their ability. And Jedi truly ARE the perfect solo character... that was always the point.
Consider that the profession that requires the MOST skill points (Bounty Hunter) is the least equipped to handle Jedi, but they are the only ones that can get missions versus them. I fail to see the balance there. If you want to give Jedi some weakness... fine... but to single out the Teras Kasi as being specifically developed to fight Jedi at close range... then what is the weakness of the TKA?Melee dominates versus ranged right now in PvP. Rifleman is about the only ranged that can compete because of it's damage type, mind attack and ridiculous DPS. Other than that, it's nothing but Fencers, TKA and Combat Medics.... with a little of everything else thrown in. Is that the Star Wars environment the designers envisioned?
Bottom line... I know you need a **edit** in Jedi... otherwise it'll piss off everyone who isn't a Jedi... not to mention Jedi will get bored if there's no real challenge. But make sure that if TKA or melee or whatever is the Jedi weakness.... that THEY have a weakness as well. And really... Bounty Hunters AND TKA should be that weakness for Jedi, and the requirements for TKA should be increased like Bounty Hunter if they are to be like that.
Also, if we could have a dialogue regarding general combat balance after Pub 9 the way the Smugglers are right now with Green Marine with Keldarin or whomever.... that would be fantastic.
Hooded cloaks (as with all wearables in the game) are far more work intensive and very time consuming to produce than they appear to be. Huge actually. It’s not 1 cloak or 2 cloaks, but somewhere around 120cloaks would have to be produced internally for all Jedi robes to have hoods in the game.Here’s how it breaks down: There are currently 31 unique Jedi Robe Models. For each of those to be hooded, there needs to be a special version for Wookiees, Twilek and Mon Cal’s because of their heads and a version for the rest of the species, except for Trandos which get a special versionbecause oftheir feet. The time and manpower to create 120 cloaks isn't available at this time. We want and will do this in the future, but it is just not possible right now.
Canyou give us the ability to wear regular cloaks (that currently exist)in the interim? Robes look SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better with cloaks.
It's very very late in the game to implement my thoughts on this... but I've always believed that the trees should have been desiged where the skill point cost was always very low at the bottom, and they went up as you progressed. And that mods and skills within a profession were scaled accordingly. It would cause more dabbling... and less interdepancy (which is an issue of course) but would also alleviate balance IMO regarding the level of ability. The power contained in the box should dictate it's XP cost and SP cost. I.e. if you get some awesome mods and abilities in the master box, it should cost the most from both an XP persepctive AND a skill point perspective, with the same idea at the lower level boxes. Like I said... way too late in the game.. but it seems to be a more logical design to me.
Great Post.
I agree if TKM are the Jedi watch dogs then they probably need to be balanced or required to spend all their points in non combat professions like scout such as the BH have to do. This way they have less chance to stack combat abilities. Also this is bad for Jedi that are converting now as most hard core pvpers are TKM/Fencer/Pistoler or a Rifle Combo. The two major pvp skill sets TKM and Combat medic could be a problem.
As far as the skill trees and being worth more at the top, I believe it used to be that way but it changed. We were constantly told that people could be a dabbler in many profession a master of none ora master of a few. But they changed that and have tried to focus everyone on achieving a master box in order to maintain balance. Otherwise you would see a huge diversity in the population with people taking all sorts of the bottom level skills but never master. *shrugs*. Ever since launch it has been going more towards a master box game, dabblers are not being rewarded.