Development Cycle Archive

Ever since I started playing back in September I've had issues with the present Quest/Mission structures. Don't get me wrong, for a new player they will absorb hours of entertaining gameplay - but the variety is limited therefore so is the enjoyment. I don't know what plans the Devs have for future quests - I've resisted temptation to check out the new dungeon on Test - but I have an idea for the future.

There is a fundamental flaw in persistant open Worlds, Thereare no real physical paths to tread in the progression of quests. If any of you have ever played Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights you will recall the fights through a series of mountain paths, dungeon corridors, dark city roads etc... All of which to get to an exit or end point. From there continue forwards along whatever mission you take next. I undersatnd this is not a possibility in these types of MMORPG's, however I feel the kind of adventuring that you 'feel' you experience can be recreated.

Let's hypothetically talk about an as yet undiscovered planet. This planet is structured in much the same way as any other, however it's terrain will have carved into it a network of roads, paths, canyons, dungeons (with exits) etc. In fact much of this already exists. The difference here is that should you tread away from these said paths the ferocity and toughness of the native Mob's is significantly higher (perhaps due to policing authorities in the area). So, when one is given a mission from an NPC to head out to city X to meet their partner, the obvious way to travel - but not the only way - is via the road, forest, whatever. This path has been chosen for it's relative difficulty to the players group. The community will of course have access to less dangerous zones to place cities etc and can wander as they please. My point is that having these drawn out routes will allow us to play as an adventurer and explorer and actually 'feel' as though we are adventuring.

If you've not experienced games like the one listed earlier, think of the route in The Hobbit or Lord of The Rings the characters take. Yes they can travel whichever way the choose, but the path they do take is full of adventure.

---

BabyRancor wrote:

This post is likely going to run long anyway, so I’ll keep the intro to a minimum. Seeing that the Dev team is still discussing the implementation of the Combat Rebalance I thought I’d throw my two cents in from here in the peanut gallery.

Issue #1 – HAM system

I didn’t get a chance to explore the system fully when it was on Test, but in concept I think the system where special use deducts from the max value of the primary pool is a good solution.

If I recall correctly the question at the time was whether secondary stats had any effect on the new system. IMO, the best implementation would be to have the regen stats (i.e. Willpower) affect only the regeneration of damage to the Primary Stat, while the cost stats (i.e. Focus) continues to affect the Primary stat deduction (deducting from the max value of the primary pool rather than the current value). The regeneration of the max value (in other words – recovering the cost of specials) would then best be a flat rate, which would allow easier balancing.

This change allows mind stims to be introduced, as currently a mind stim as powerful as the existing H and A stims would remove the cost of the stim itself, resulting in a never-ending cycle broken only by running out of medicines.

Issue #2 – Armour

The current situation with armour is that pretty much everyone wears one of two types (ubese and composite) for anything other than looking good. In addition, you’ve got people like TKA’s and Jedi armoured head-to-toe in composite because it’s simply the best all-round armour there is. I think a critical part of a rebalance would be to make the rest of the armour types needed again.

I’d propose a tiered certification system something like this:

Existing personal armour would be sub-divided into three classes (light, medium and heavy – nothing to do with their Armour Rating).

Light – Bone, Mabari, Wookiee Ceremonial,

Medium – Chitin, Ubese, Tantel, Wookiee Hunting, etc

Heavy – Padded, Composite, RIS, Stormtrooper, Rebel Marine, Wookiee Battle (guessing here on the last one).

As the divisions have changed, so would the resists have to change. Bone, Chitin and Composite would be strong against Energy and Mabari, Ubese and Padded would be strong against Kinetic. As other armours get introduced, more esoteric damage types could be added. Each armour could still be layered as they are now to provide more protection. For balance, light armour effectiveness percentages would be hard-capped at 50%, Medium at 70% and Heavy at 90%.

Each class would then be certified to wear an appropriate weight of armour for their class focus. Anyone could still wear any type of armour, however the penalty for wearing non-certified armour is a reduction in skills depending on the type of armour and how much is worn.

Light Medium Heavy

Chest (25%)6.25% 12.5% 25%

Legs (25%)6.25%12.5% 25%

Helmet (25%) 6.25%12.5% 25%

Boots (10%) 2.5% 5% 10%

Shoulders (2.5% each) 0.625% 1.25% 2.5%

Bracers (2.5% each) 0.625% 1.25% 2.5%

Gloves (5%)1.25% 2.5% 5%

25% 50% 100%

So therefore, a Novice Marksman (no armour certs at all) wearing a composite chest and ubese legs would see all his combat skills (speed, accuracy, defence vs. – everything except damage pretty much) penalized by 37.5% (25% + 12.5%).

To prevent everyone dabbling in certain skills just to wear the heaviest armour, the certification would be broken up into 4 and placed in the four 1st tier boxes of the appropriate elite professions (see below). Achieving each box would reduce the certified armour’s penalties by 1/4, being completely negated once all four are achieved. Furthermore, I don’t see a reason that Medium armour certification shouldn’t also apply to Light as well, but balance testing might say otherwise.

This would increase the variety of armour made and sold, the variety of combinations possible, and the tactical choice involved in wearing armour at all (shield generators are fine as is I think).

Of course, restricting armour must be accompanied by re-evaluation of each profession’s defensive abilities.

Fencer – should be the defensive tanks, the ones that are lightly armoured but really hard to hit. Therefore they should be certified for Light armour and rely mostly on their Dodge ability (which would probably need to be increased a tad).

Pikeman – should specialize in AoE state effects. They should be cert’d for Medium armour (as they will get hit), but rely on Block to take most of the damage away (i.e. Block should either half or quarter damage – I’m not sure it does that properly).

Swordsman – they should be the offensive tanks. Certified to wear heavy armour and rely on high damage output to save them, their counter-attack skill works just fine in this role.

TKA – a special case. Like Jedi, martial artists wearing armour doesn’t really sit well with me. I’d rather see TKA receive a natural 25% set of resists at the master level and no armour cert at all. These natural resists would have to be over-written if the TKA did put armour on. Beyond that they should be able to rely on their unarmed toughness and defensive bonuses – Defensive Acuity should be replaced with Dodge to keep in line with the idea of a lightly armed fighter.

Jedi – like TKAs they shouldn’t want to wear armour. I think it would be reasonable to give increasing protection as they advance though. Say 25% resists at Padawan, AR1 and 50% resists at Knight, and perhaps AR2 and some % resists at Master? I’m no Jedi, so my knowledge here is limited. They could just rely on Sabre Block if it’s effective enough.

Pistoleer – similar to Fencers, they are short-range, lightly armed fighters. They should have Light armour certification and keep their dodge skill. They should probably also have some melee toughness to recognise the fact that they are often in the thick of the fight.

Carbineers and Riflemen – I’m thinking that Light armour is all that should be required for all these fellows, but some alteration in the way ranged professions play is warranted (see Issue #3).

Commandos – like Swordsmen these guys are offensive tanks, but instead focus on taking out defences and ultra-heavily armoured targets. They should have Heavy armour certs and I’m okay with only commandos and BH being specially certified to wear Mandoralan Armour.

BH – though a hybrid combat profession (half of the tree is based on scout after all), BH should be an all-out offensive profession. They should be cert’d for Heavy armour as their only truly defensive tactic.

Smugglers – I’d wait on the revamp details first, but probably Light armour only.

Issue #3 – General Ranged combat

Currently ranged combat (especially in PvP) consists of running around at top speed hoping your shots land. Setting up in a prone prepared position is pretty much suicide, as a melee class will close from max range to melee distance before they can be taken down. This is pretty much the reverse of what should happen – if someone charges me in a prepared position with my rifle ready they are not going to make it to me.

By logic, the first instinct of someone being shot at should be to dive for cover. Currently it’s to run at full speed at the person firing to get closer than ideal range.

I see two necessary changes. The first is cover. Currently cover provides some defensive bonus, but is very seldom used. Cover should also provide a noticeable increase in damage as well to give the possibility of dropping an attacker before they reach your position.

Second is reaction to fire. Players that come under fire should want to hit the dirt to return fire, and melees should have to work against that compulsion. Carbineers and Riflemen should get a new attack that forces a target tointo coverand everyone else should get a defence vs suppression or something similar. For clarification: this is different from suppression fire as it exists now. "Suppression" should result in the target getting into a more defensive state and sacrificing mobility to do so. The skill suppression fire actually makes the target more vulnerable because it removes mobility without increasing defensive mods appreciably. With their inherent accuracy at longer ranges it is to the advantage of a ranged fighter to suppress a melee fighter and try to shoot through the cover. Ranged vs ranged battles would start to look more realistic as players would be engaging from static positions rather than running all over.

Issue #4 – Ranges, Speed and Damage

Melee range is okay as is. Pistol range needs to be hard capped at around 20m, carbines should be hard capped at 40m and Rifles should get to shoot out to 64m. Point blank mods are ok now, as are penalties while moving (Rifles could even stand a tad more IMO).

Speeds and Damages are really the things that need the most work. Currently pretty much every master elite hits the 1 sec speed cap regardless of damage. This renders pistoleers and fencers at a large disadvantage and overpowers Swordsmen and Riflemen.

This is where mathematical balance needs to happen. Assuming perfectly made weapons (i.e. max stats for speed and damage) wielded by elite masters of their professions, all weapons should have the same Damage per Second. That DPS should be calibrated such that a Blue-con mob can be taken down quickly using only auto-attack.

From this common baseline you could then re-build the specials by damage multiplier, recovery time and HAM cost.

Pistols should come in at one shot per second under baseline conditions, carbines at two seconds, and rifles at three (just to pull numbers – play-testing would be needed of course). Fencers, pikes and swords should match those numbers respectively.

TKA are unique again, in that currently their VK damage apparently adds on top of their unarmed damage. This bug should be fixed such that VK provide a smaller bonus to damage and AR 1. TK speed should be increased if possible to lower than 1 second per hit, in order to keep up with the baseline DPS. If that’s not possible, they should receive a bonus to applying state effects – essentially filling the role of a "debuff" class. A novel attack at master that temporarily reduces armour values (an "armour break" if anyone’s played Final Fantasy games) would be a good way to promote that notion.

Damage types would need redistribution too. Essentially pistols and fencers should get a wide array of damage types to offset the lack of AP weapons (max of one AP 1 weapon), Pikes and carbines should have 4-5 damage types available that range from AP0 to AP2, while rifles and swords should be restricted to 2-3 damage types (Kinetic, Energy and one unique one each) to offset the higher AP abilities (AP 1-3).

AP vs AR could be reworked too. Originally the idea was that AP>AR lead to a reduction in resists, not an increase in damage. That makes more sense and is easier to balance, as players will never do more than the max damage afforded by the weapon + the special (no need to balance for additional damage due to AP). This also eliminates the problem some classes have with being completely useless in encounters with 100% resist mobs. This would still promote grouping, as that would be the more efficient way to take down a mob like this, but would still let players contribute to encounters with high-end mobs.

Several things remain to be addressed. Combat medics in PvP (probably solved by making craftable air filters providing bonuses to resists), the relative power of doc buffs and how they make encumbrance and HAM costs irrelevant (still an issue even with the system sketched out above), and all the issues with the GCW (group TEFs, etc). I’ll sum up here though. For your consideration.

---

I knowthis may be opening an old can of worms, but here goes anyhow.

Right now we have 200 skill points to allocate if I'm not mistaken. That's perfectly fine, and I have no problem with the number of skill points. It's the same for everyone.

But that said,I enjoy many aspects of SW Galaxies, including PVP, PVE, Roleplaying as well as severalnon-combat professions. ow, I agree there has to be a balance, but what I'd like to see is a division of skill points.

What if, with a future patch a new set of skill points were added. For example, you would now get 400 skill points. HOWEVER, 200 skill points can only be used for non-combat related professions i.e. Politician, Entertainer, Artisan, etc. and the other 200 for combat related skills.

As it stands now, if I'm a roleplayer and I want to be both a politician/combatant it's obvious that I'm won't stand a chance against an all-combat character. But if there were a separation of skill points between non-combat skills and combat skills the result would be the same BUT it would also allow us to have a more of a well-rounded character, without the worry that we'll not stand a chance in PVP. If an all combat-character decides not to use his skill points for a crafter lets say, he's not losing anything. He'll still have the same chance of beating my character up that he has today.

This would just allow us more of an opportunity to be more varied in our skills if we so chose without feeling pressure from PVP to put all of our skill points to combat to compete.

Hope this makes sense. I don't know that people will like the idea. It may have been brought up at one point or another in the past, and if so I apologize but I just thought I'd speak my peace now.

1 also posted this on the In Live thread, since this is addressing things that are currently in live:

------------------------------------

I have an idea:

Dungeon and PvE Rebalance

You guys are focusing on rebalancing the PvP.

How about rebalancing the PvE?

I know most of it is fine,but arguably the most important part in most MMORPGs, the dungeons (the original ones), are SERIOUSLY unbalanced.

Right now, a master in any combat profession can solo practically every dungeon (not including the recent ones). Therefore, there is absolutely no group play in them.

In addition to increasing the difficulty, I believe you guys should somehow add rewards, in the form of loot or something.

I believe it would make sense (and be easier)to improve the existing content before adding the new upcoming content.

Thanks!