Development Cycle Archive

Akaara, what has happened is that when we put Wookiee armor in the game, we had to re-write some code so everything worked properly. The new batch of code fixes some unresolved issues, so in effect, what's happened isthe level of difficulty in socketswasn't working properly before and now it is. We should have been more clear on the patch notes. For that, I apologize What I have been doing over the last few days is trying to verify the details and also to find out if the ability to get 4 sockets increases as you get closer to being (or are) a master. I want to make sure that since it's changed, that it works similarly to critical fails (except in reverse ). As a tailor climbs up the tree, theirchance to get 4 sockets also increases

The problem is that this is really hard on us tailors. First of all, we are not the same as armorsmiths. Except for the wookiee armor padding, we do not have any stats or experimentation on anything! People associate quality with "stats" on items in this game. For armorsmiths these are things like base resists and effectiveness. For us tailors, the mark of quality is having 4 sockets. We have gone for so long with 4 sockets from master tailor that this is expected. People simply will not buy clothing with less than 4 sockets anymore. What we have now are random sockets which are weighted a little towards 2 or 3 sockets. I just made some sunguards and as a master tailor it took me 14 tries to get 4 sockets on one! The rest were 1, 2 and 3 (mostly 2). This is sort of like if you suddenly made it so that if an armorsmith gets perfect experimentation on composite armor that the base resist could be anywhere for 10-60% with no control over it! What makes it worse in our case is that tailoring is all about variety. We have hundreds of items and many have thousands of color combinations. We simply do not have the luxury of trying over and over until we get 4 sockets and then doing factory runs like some other people do!

The second problem is that now the market is unbalanced. For the moment, those of us who have taken the special orders "boutique" model are at a real disadvantage since "better" clothes can now be found at some of the "vendor" based tailor shops. What is more frightening, however, is the fact that clothing still does not decay properly! Right now the vast majority of clothing has 4 sockets and it will stay around forever! As people's vendor stock decreases, it will be more and more advantageous for people to just buy second-hand clothing. This could potentially make tailoring a non-viable profession if something is not fixed.

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RazerWolf wrote:
Is there any chance of getting Skill Enhancing Attachments looked at? Currently any SEAs which have more than one modifier only ever apply one.

A full list of the little idiosyncracies can be found here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=128773

A few to think about:

"you can only get one skill stat bonus from a tape to stick, with others being lost (i.e. a tape that has 2 or more stat mods will only allow one to stick, see below)"

"stat mods do not stack, you do not get benefit from putting additional tapes with the same type of stat mod on a single item of clothing as they do not add together (e.g. you put a +5 armor experimentation on a pair of gloves, you can't put another +3 armor experimentation on there and get +8, you would just lose the +3 and still have a pair of gloves with +5 on it)."

"when placing an attachment with 2 or more stats, the highest value stats will be the only one applied (e.g. a +5 rifle accuracy with +4 armorsmith experimentation will give the +5 rifle accuracy) regardless of the order of which the stats are listed on the SEA"

"if a tape has multiple stats on it and you want one that has a lower value than the highest listed stat mod (e.g. +23 grenade experimentation +20 armorsmith experimentation on a tape, of course you want the armorsmith experimentation to stick). Here the solution is based upon the order that the skill mods are listed on the SEA (e.g. is the +23 grenade experimentation first or is the +20 armorsmith experimentation first?).

There are two different solutions. One is to first place on the desired clothes item, a +1 stat mod tape of the type that you want to eliminate to allow for the more desirable stat mod to stick (e.g. a +1 grenade experimentation tape in the above example)--this only works if the less desirable yet higher number stat mod is listed before the one that you want (e.g. the tape above would have to have +23 grenade experimentation listed first). Second is to first place on the desired clothes item, a stat mod of the same type and value (or greater) as the less desirable yet higher number stat mod (e.g. a +23 grenade experimentation tape in the above example, if the +20 armorsmith experimentation was listed first).

So to refresh, say you have these tapes:

Tape #1
+23 grenade experimentation
+20 armorsmith experimentation

Tape #2
+20 armorsmith experimentation
+23 grenade experimentation

To get the +20 armorsmith experimentation to stick on Tape #1, you would need to put a +1 (or higher) grenade experimentation tape on the clothes item first, then put Tape #1 on an item. To get the +20 armorsmith experimentation to stick on Tape #2, you would need to put a +23 (or higher) grenade experimentation tape on the clothes item first, then Tape #2. In both cases 2 sockets are necessary"



Can we get a fix so that:
All modifiers from a SEA are applied to a piece of clothing/armour when added?
SEAs stack, you could put 4 +6 Rifle Accuracy SEAs in a 4-socket shirt and end up with +24 Rifle Accuracy and no remaining sockets?

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If this is the way SEAs work, then it's just bone stupid.

Why bother having multiple skill mods on a single SEA at all? Why are they in the game?

This is an example of brain-dead development and implementation. It's a gross violation of the KISS principle, creating intentionally counterintuitive situations. The fact that you can never "undo" a SEA placement compounds the stupidity of this.

Once again, a poorly thought out detail like this helps to diminish the product that has virtually unlimited potential. Are the developers out to sabotage this product? Is that what is going on here?

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josfe wrote:

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With all the noise surrounding the AFK looting issue, it seems that it'd be pretty easy to prevent it. Before someone can loot the static cave containers that have skill tapes, the game should just force the player to type in a number, just like we have to do for redeeding harvesters.

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Well the AFK looting has pretty much gone away due to the 1 hour respawn times which is why I was applauding TH before. However we've got a new problem now. Not AFK looters, butHOARDERS. If there is one cave in the entire galaxy that has the "hot item of the moment" you'll get3 types of people that goto this place. The first type are the ones looking for a specific attachment for themselves, these people will typically stay there till they find what they want then they will leave. The second type are the explorers who came apon the cave and are looking for a challenge, they walk in they loot 1 time and they leave. The third are a special breed, Hoardersthese types of people come to the cave log off at the bottom where the best loot is and time their return so that they can loot again, log off and then do it again in an hour or two. They then take these SEA's to a shop and sell them for anywhere between 100,000 creds and 1+ million depending on how rare/good the SEA happens to be.

In all honesty it's not fair to the community that they have to pay these insane credit prices for an item that they should've had the chance to loot. And if it weren't for these people knowing exactly where and when these SEA's drop they would've had the oppertunity to loot the item themselves.

In the end the only thing the 1 hour timer truely did was get rid of the explorers and those searching for a specific skill attachment. So yea they got rid of a bunch of AFK macro looters but they rewarded the wrong people with their solution.

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If they made it so that players can only loot one particular chest per day, it would stop most of the problem you bring up. Whether that type of fix is feasible or even the right approach I dont know. But face it, if you run through a cave and kill everything and loot all the boxes and debris, are you going to do it all again in the same day?

Yes, if you are hoarding tapes or supplying your tape vendor

No,if you are a normal player...

I have a suggestion on loot that will stop camping.

enough of the *whoever does the most damage wins* routine, as that is only fair if each combat profession does equal damage at the top end, which they do not. Rather, when everyone attacks something, have the loot be copied and distributed to each person who killed it. Fewer cries of kill stealing, and the prices will start to come down on things, making them more affordable for the common player. Maybe to avoid a database nightmare, make the new loot law only apply to MOBs that are Level 30 or higher - this way, you don't have a group all looting a CDEF pistol from a thug.

TH

with the new vehicle coming out with the Corellian Corvette are we gonna be able to one of each four vehicles in our datapad at one time?

I'd like to get a landspeeder, but if I'm gonna have to trash it to have the new one then I'll just wait

thanks

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Thunderheart wrote:

We're close and kind of on the same topic. There is this umbrella of issues of unused or underused server objects - - houses, mayors, vendors, etc.

Specifically, there are a few Merchant items coming up that this is part of. Its premature yet. Doc Savag is definately harassing me about this issue though

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And I thought he was ignoring all those posts.

The empty vendors on the planetary map is definitely one of the top issues facting Merchants in the game today. Anyone who has tried to find anything using the global map in the last few months has come up against the fact that most shops listed on it shouldn't be. The dififcult part is determining when they should drop off. It is easy to say if they have 0 items and that will help a lot but some vendors are almost as empty with 10 items as others are with 0. But a good start would be getting rid of those with nothing on them. The big fear is that people would resort to putting garbase on their vendor to ensure they didn't get tossed off the map. I personally think that is a terrible business decision but that hasn't stopped people from leaving their empty vendors on the map to this point.

new issue:

BADGES.

I havebeen honored to receive anaccolade badge in my career as a player here. It is buried halfway down the list of badges everyone has.

The order of badges people want to see is:

Accolades.

Profession Mastery.

CoA event badges.

Marks of Regard/Hermit.

Other: Widow, etc.

Badge Collector.

Location.

Suggestions:

1. Sort them by what is rarest and most interesting to player.


2. Color code them


3. Font styles per badge type


4. Graphical badge system (a paper doll with badges and clickable zoom would be fun)

RbT

TH,

We submitted Top 5 issues and Ten Questions months ago. I haven't seen answers from SOE at least on the architect items.

When will SOE answer these questions?

If you ask us for questions and then we don't get answers then it will be much harder to get continued participation on your requests for such input.