Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 4-19-04)
As I am a new player here, I am becoming dismayed atthe lack of support from the makers of SWG. You have a large group of customers who each pay at least $15 per month to play this game.
Why is it that nothing seems to get resolved? With the millions of dollars that you are making from your subscribers, why can't you spend the money to hire some programmers to implement these changes at at least a decent pace? There is no reason why bug fixes should take ages to implement. There is no reason why the huge imbalances in the game and the broken systems should survive this long. Not enough people to do everything in a relatively speedy fashion? Hire some!! But it seems like the decision makers at the top of the ladder are merely interested in the paycheck and not the integrity of the game itself.
Quite frankly, I am amazed that you have any players left at all! There seems to be hope that the Space Expansion will breathe some life into this game. To be honest, this game has the potential to be the best game ever made for the PC. But I log on to servers and they are virtual ghosttowns. How long do you think players will put up with this? There will be no one left to play the SE once it's released!
For the love of all that's SW, at least communicate with the community in an official way. State exactly what is being worked on and state the ETA of the changes. Let us know that something is being done to correct the existing problems. It is great that there is new content coming, but most of us would actually prefer the current system gets balanced beforehand!
Not really. Not for now anyway. You see, if we put it on Test Center, we'd have to push it out in Publish 9 with the the way the process works. Once a clump of code is integrated, "its in there". Thats where the sanbox that we've been talking about comes into play. This sandbox would be like a second Test Center, but configured in a way where it would be insulated from the live code and we would be able to push different versions out much easier without interfering with current process.
I am curious which configuration management tool do you guys use.
thegreyman wrote:
So my speeder exploded today...
Normally that wouldn't be a problem...quick shuttle trip and badda-boom...clickity click, regen trick!
But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..........................
Why?
Some genius decided to end the shuttle regen policy.
So let's do the math, shall we?
New speeder $30,000
repair for 2/3 useage $6,000 x 15 /month $90,000
11 more months of gameplay$990,000
Yearly charge to drive $1,110,000
well...isnt this great! Now I have to permanenty allocate skill points on scout to harvest my kills, or dedicate I don't know how manylow level missions (because I cant ACCESS any of the onesthat are challenging), to pay an artisan for new speeders and city owners for repair jobs.
$3,500 per day to fix a speeder isn't much if you're a master armorsmith or long time elite fighter or something with millions in the bank and a backpack full of speeder deeds.
But to the layman, like myself, ALL of our gameplay will now be devoted to either paying someone for the ability to drive, orspent all day RUNNING around the desert slower than molassus in winter.
Or being attacked by argoing creatures that can run faster than a bantha mount.
I have a humble suggestion to the devs:
Stopfinding newways to punish a few players who are successful because they know how touse the rules to their advantage.
You end up screwing the little guy, like me.
Instead, make thisgame fun, buy fixing what's broken, unlocking jedi in under 20 professions, and adding more adventures.
As it is, I can barely keep up with daily shuttle trips to fix my speeder, let alone with repair jobs that are 10X more expensive.
A but of praise to the devs:
You ARE doing a good job.
This game is still fun, the graphics are amazing, and playing is the highlight of my day.
But please PLEASE stop screwing over the little guy to punish a small percent of ultra-rich, ultra powerful players. The rich and powerful do not bother us. They buy our hide and teach us their tricks and knowledge. They are not the problem.
Remember this is a game. If it's impossible to 'win', or even to get ahead, then what's the point of playing.
Repairingthe speeder every day is so very expensive for the little guy.
CHANGE IT BACK!
agree...its a really dumb money sink....i could understand thevehicle taking damage if you where in combat or driving in really rough terrain...but come on...it can take 1/4 of it bar just sitting in front of your house for a couple of hours...
if the decay on vehicles is so silly, i dread what our spaceships will be like...
if anything we should be able to repair our damaged vehicles with DROIDS...they are called astro-mechanical droids so i assum they can do mechanics and fix our cars...
if nothing else they should add GARAGES to EVERY CITY
i feel really bad for the people who get the schematic in the Corvette mission...it will probabaly actually cost them about 100,000 between shuttle tickets and buffs and food and damage to items to get a car that is going to just keep costing them 5K a day to use.
Thunderheart wrote:
Last Week'sThread:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=31412
Welcome to the Weekly Discussion Thread. This thread is for commenting on general live issues, asking questions and reporting known issues.
agree...its a really dumb money sink....i could understand thevehicle taking damage if you where in combat or driving in really rough terrain...but come on...it can take 1/4 of it bar just sitting in front of your house for a couple of hours...
More money sinks are good, I am sick and tired of not being able to afford 90% of the cool stuff in the game because I don't play a template that makes tons of cash. If you combat types want to charge 6 million credits for a Krayt Pearl then you can afford to pay $3000 every few days to repair your vehicle.
10110110 wrote:
Daker-Naritus, I think you might have it wrong. It would be insane to wear anything other than composite at this time and yes.... armor is broken. Broken in the fact that it is unbalanced. If it were balanced then Padded, Chitin, Tantel, Bone, Mabari, and RIS would be worn by more players (even theplayers who arent n00bs).
1)Massive buffs are and have been readily available for a while now. Personally, I would not even bother playing at all unless I had access to buffs.
2) No other armor comes near the protection comp offers. Period. End of question. Ubese is not as good because its base is far lower and the Kinetic damagefalls into the "special" resistance category. Slicing does not affect special resistance. It may have lower HAM cost butthathaslittle meaning when a full suite of 2k/3hour buffs are being handed out at the starports.I will agree that Ubese is the second best armor to wear and has value as a "hunting" armor.You will diea horrible deathif you choose to do anything other than hunt space bunnies with it.
3) You are dead wrong about using abilites. Any buff over 2000 will practically eliminate H/A costs on specials and thats even with unsliced comp. Mind can be buffed. Food (canape)and drink (BE'd Vasarian brandy) can also be added in. Muon Gold or Neutron Pixie asa topper if desired.
4) Composite is not expensive. No way. The really high end stuff is, but the standard 55-60% base along with a triple layer of your choice is commonplace now.
I dont know about all the servers. However, the ones I play on are completely dominated by composite troopers. Theres a reason why. The other armor typesarent getting usedbecause Comp is superior in all aspects, regardless of HAM cost or price.
10110110, don't be stupid.
It isn't everyone else's fault that you suck and "would not even bother playing at all unless[you] had access to buffs."
Fact is, armor is NOT broken...buffs are broken. If you ignore buffs, armor is perfectly designed. We have 5 levels of armor.4 types withdifferent strengths and weaknesses,and compositethat is great for all situations but really hard to wear. The highest composite % is unwearable without buffs, and medium composite kills your specials costs and regeneration.
So, what we have is a buff problem, not an armor problem.
The ONLY reason composite is common is becausebuff-addicts like you suffer no penalty for wearing composite when buffed. If you want other people to be pretty for you to look at and wear other types of armor, why don't you practice what you preach and start the trend?
The fact you say that composite is "inexpensive" and ubese "worthless" is clueless.
First, good 50% composite on my server costs 200k, and 75% composite costs 500k.If you want to be able to wear that armor (without being an exploiting buffamanic), you have to buy 2-3 sets and pay aslicer to get encumberance slices. I play the game the way it was meant to be played, and don't have 6 accounts with 5of the 6 used for mining and selling stuff to make money. I have one account and make money running missions and doing a little crafting. To me, composite is abysimally expensive.
Second, 75% of the mobs in game are creatures, and 99.999% of creatures do ONLY kinetic damage. Armor wears out with every single hit. So, which makes more sense...(a) using my 75% ubese armor that I can wear without buffs and bought for only 75k, or (b) burning through a 500k+ set of 75% composite with exactly the same kinetic resists. Need a calculator?
Instead of being a troll why don't you instead propose viable solutions that don't screw everyone else over? Try this: What if armor encumberance took buffs into account; if your secondaries were buffed 200% the encumberance increased 200%.
Doesn't that fix the problem without a nerf?
Armor IS NOT broken...buffs are. If you want to get people to wear varying types of armor, encumberance penalties need to be fixed to take encumberance penalties into account. Then armor will work like it was designed to, and all will be happy.
They fixed the speeder shuttle exploit?
IT'S ABOUTKRIFFING TIME!
Having said that, I hope that they have also fixed the autostore bugs that led me to no longer taking care of speeder maintenance "the right way" by stopping off a the garage every so often. When I tell the speeder to store, it should store. No sit there and wait poodoo, right? It stores when I tell it to store, right? Also, it does not store until I tell it to store, right?
And you did fix the mount bugs, right?
We shall see.
Daker-Naritus wrote:
10110110, don't be stupid.
It isn't everyone else's fault that you suck and "would not even bother playing at all unless[you] had access to buffs."
Fact is, armor is NOT broken...buffs are broken. If you ignore buffs, armor is perfectly designed. We have 5 levels of armor.4 types withdifferent strengths and weaknesses,and compositethat is great for all situations but really hard to wear. The highest composite % is unwearable without buffs, and medium composite kills your specials costs and regeneration.
So, what we have is a buff problem, not an armor problem.
The ONLY reason composite is common is becausebuff-addicts like you suffer no penalty for wearing composite when buffed. If you want other people to be pretty for you to look at and wear other types of armor, why don't you practice what you preach and start the trend?
The fact you say that composite is "inexpensive" and ubese "worthless" is clueless.
First, good 50% composite on my server costs 200k, and 75% composite costs 500k.If you want to be able to wear that armor (without being an exploiting buffamanic), you have to buy 2-3 sets and pay aslicer to get encumberance slices. I play the game the way it was meant to be played, and don't have 6 accounts with 5of the 6 used for mining and selling stuff to make money. I have one account and make money running missions and doing a little crafting. To me, composite is abysimally expensive.
Second, 75% of the mobs in game are creatures, and 99.999% of creatures do ONLY kinetic damage. Armor wears out with every single hit. So, which makes more sense...(a) using my 75% ubese armor that I can wear without buffs and bought for only 75k, or (b) burning through a 500k+ set of 75% composite with exactly the same kinetic resists. Need a calculator?
Instead of being a troll why don't you instead propose viable solutions that don't screw everyone else over? Try this: What if armor encumberance took buffs into account; if your secondaries were buffed 200% the encumberance increased 200%.
Doesn't that fix the problem without a nerf?
Armor IS NOT broken...buffs are. If you want to get people to wear varying types of armor, encumberance penalties need to be fixed to take encumberance penalties into account. Then armor will work like it was designed to, and all will be happy.
Look friend, I dont know where you get off saying I suck. I didnt attack you in any way so whats the deal? You having hormone troubles?
If you want to believe that armor isgoodthe way it is thats fine with me. It appearsfrom Thunderheartspost that the devlopment team agrees that something is wrong.
I dont have time to sit here and argue with simpletons who lash out when someone disagrees.
Armor IS broken and no insult you throw at me will sway me into believing that it isnt. Thunderheart wouldn't have responded to my post at all if there wasnt a problem in some way.
Good day to you.