Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept Open Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)
DeQuosaek wrote:
Are there currently any plans to convert any of the current dungeons into instanced dungeons? (the Warren, Genosian Lab)
A group of uswent to the Warren for the first time the other day, and I really enjoyed it, except for the fact that there had been several people there before us and the quests seemed to bealready done at some points, and it was pretty confusing. It would be great to be able to get your own instance of some of the more engrossingdungeons thatalready exist.
I agree, I think most dungeons should be instanced. Especially mostly camped ones like the Warren, Geonosian Lab, or the Tusken Fort. I greatly tire of riding all the way out to a cave, only to find it empty except for 1 AFK grinder who's running a macro to kill everything. (This is a very common problem at Blue Leaf Temple.)
Nokhoi
Anything we like, huh?
I've got something for you, then...
GCW
How about this for a concept? Introduce an RTS interface for those who reach high ranks in the various factions. These people would then be able to place recruitment requests on a server-wide basis - maybe similar to the CTRL+V Location finder - and actually use real people as their troops in battle with other commanders of NPCs. And the more battles they win, the more FP they gain. To spend in the next battle, if they so choose.
And as for cruddy commanders, well, word spreads fast in SWG. No-one would serve under them. Also, if a player doesn't follow orders - go to waypoints, attack targetted items - he or she will not be prized as a soldier. As i said, word gets around.
Vehicles
Geniune racing for vehicles. Abilities to customise vehicles _after_ manufacture, perhaps along the same model as the old Episode 1 Racer game, only craftable components. Expericmentation could in turn affect these.
Multi-seat Vehicles
We all want this. And you know we do.
Space:
Multi-seat "crewed" spacecraft. Give each ship-type a "crew" rating. With full crew, the ship operates at maximum efficiency, this decreases as crew drops. Make NPCs hireable to act as crew, but give players XP in a non-learnable skill the more times they crew. Veteran crew should be expensive and much sought-after.
In an ideal environment, each crew-member would be given their own interface - differing by ship - and be kept busy, at least in a combat situation. Have you ever seen a submarine go to battlestations? EVERYONE is busy, if not frantic.
That should do for now.
Cael Broden - Starsider.
(Not leader of) Underworld Alliance (in any way).
Lots of cool ideas here, IMHO.
As a master crafter, I'm not sure I like the idea of novices being able to craft perfect experimentable items. But maybe the ability to experiment on items should be related to their complexity. I don't want to nerf my current capabilities for sure, because I already get too effin many "good successes" in experimentation that leave me with useless heaps of garbage (I'm an architect, and I'm talking about BER 11 or 12 heavy harvesters).
I like the idea of bringing NP cities into the player game more, and actually having more NP "background" interaction in terms of economy and GCW.
How about allowing Politicians to run for city council orelective officesin NP cities? This is like a training ground for Politicians, who now only get experience competing with mayors.
How about elective offices other than mayor in player cities, for the same reason as above?
How about having the NPpolitical "temperature" of a city or planet interacting with factional activities. For example, an imperial-aligned player hosing down a rebel in independence-minded Coronet might not please the NP population, resulting in a shift toward rebellion in the city and LOSS of faction points for said imperial player. And of course vice-versa for an imperial-sympathetic city. After all,influencing the population to pay for, or not pay for, all the cool combat stuff through taxes or donations is what REALLY counts.
How about allowing players, presumably Merchants, pay appropriately, or even through the nose, for lots or vendor rights in NP city limits? I get tired ofthe risk of gettingwhacked just to check some guy's vendor. Or arecomposite armor and uber-buffsgoing to be a prerequisite for survival for even the carebear types going to the mall? Real Star-Warsy there!
I haveseveral proposalsrelated to crafting, specifically the time sink that resource knowledge management is. How about making data terminals do something, like display data about something? Anyone heard of immersion? Why should I need to hot-tab to a fan site or a self-maintained spreadsheet to check resource values or the last sale price of something? Alternatively, since furniture is evidently intended to beuseless RP vanity stuff,how aboutcreating advanced or augmented survey tools toremember the values of some previous number of surveyed resources? Something about the name "electronic memory modules" leads me to believe they are supposed to be useful for remembering things. The "immersive" alternative is keeping samples around, and I guess the DB guys like that better because it effectively forces an upper limit on information referenced in-game. (OK, I'll try to avoid ranting)
My apologies for getting way beyond the points of the initial thread, and for forgetting most of them.
You know its been...hmm a very long time since something was going to be covered about Bio-Engineering.....yeah hmm...that link with a message froma long awhile agois still in the Bio-Engineer forum too...yes what was that now..something about a friday feature explaining things....hmmm...oh well.
How about Making about a nice listed chart of what stats a Creature has at maximum and what its minimums could be.
That would help out alot both for The Bio_Engineers the players who want pets and to Creature handlers and even the people who still explore and do things other then trying to kill each other.
Also I suggest that maybe a level box be put in the crafting tool that shows the level of the creature being created during the creation process.
You know sort of like how any other crafterout there knows how much damage they are puting in a weapon and how much durability it will have....sort of the same concept here.
I realize somthing so simplistically simple will be canned and never done, like the fact there is no scale control on creature sizes....but hey I figure I should post this anywise and watch as it falls into the cracks of oblivion.
Just an idea for a class I had that would add more depth to the game. I hope this is the appropriate place to post it.
Profession: "Holocaster"
Prerequisites: Master Entertainer
Masters ofthe Holocaster profession will be the information brokers of the server, and they will have a powerful influence over politics, able to sway public opinion for or against PAs that are behaving themselves (or not). From within their Holocast Station, they will be able to provide film footage in a studio environment and invite in prominent interviewees. Crafters and merchants will pay the Holocaster to draw attention to their business and Imperial or Rebel agents might pay the Holocaster to spread propaganda for their side!
Why SWGwould benefit fromPlayer Media:
It will tie each server community together more, and allow the community to raise up its heroes and lambast its villains in game instead of on the forums. Additionally it will get barker players/bots out of starports by giving them a money sink mechanism to use without tying up their play time and it'll look a lot cleaner and more believable asthetically. It stimulates the economy by providing in your face advertising and another player industry, and it would promote moreimmersion in theworldwith players doing war reports, etc.
DEPENDENCIES:
An object created to put in player housing called a "Holocaster" This in its simplest to code form will spew out emotes as news stories when turned on, or better yet a graphic window with accompanied story or commercial text if the player chooses to view it. Perhaps a radial menu with information about a player's store who has chosen to pay the Holocaster player for commercial broadcast rights. It will receive the signal of any Broadcast Tower or Station.
An object created to put in player cities called a "Holocast Tower". This object will transmit the Broadcaster's personal signal to any Holocaster within range defined by his skill * percentage rating of player crafted tower. The Tower requires maintenance to avoid decay, and power depending on the frequency and complexity of transmissions.
An object created to put in player cities called a "Holocast Station". This object will be comparable to our modern day television studios, with optional builds or mutiple rooms based on news or entertainment settings from which to broadcast an image. (Johnny Carson's sofa & desk type setup or newsroom, etc.) It contains an additional object called a Broadcast Terminal through which manyTowers are fed a central signal (or not). It can come with holorecordersthat may or may not actually work dependingon the game technology.
The Broadcast Tower& Stations arecreated by Architects, the Holocasters are created by Artisans.
The placement of tower and station should require zoning rights from the city mayor. Holocasters are decoration type items, which can be placed outside by the mayor, or inside by building owners.
PROFESSION DESCRIPTION:
Novice Holocaster
Abilities: Script Jingle - This will allow the Broadcaster to create one line of text to be thrown out of Holocasters in an emote form, once every 30 minutes.
Place Holocast Tower- This device will allow the Broadcaster to transmit his signal to Holocasters in a certain radius, modified by his Broadcast skill. This signal is bound to one planet.
Skills: Broadcast +5: This skill will broadcast transmission 100m per point.
Skill Trees:
Programming:
Programming allows the effective Holocaster to build entertaining, informative and profitable content for his network.
1 Script Segment: This allows for a paragraph of text to be thrown out of Holocasters in an emote form, once an hour.
2 Additional Segment: Allows for two different paragraphs, once every 30 mins.
3 Additional Segment: Allows for three different paragraphs, once every 15 minutes.
4 Script Show: This allows for a paragraph of text associated with a static or moving image, as the technology of the game allows, whenever a player picks to view the Holocaster. The show is announced by a single line to draw attention "DAYS OF OUR UNIVERSE STARTING NOW!"
News Feeds:
News Feeds represents the ability of the Holocasters staff to bring in information to the network.
1 Business Feed: Holocaster automatically receives emails on auctions or salesperformed that are 50k or greater in worth within the broadcast radius.
2 Political Feed: Holocaster automatically receivesemails of elections and city expansions occuring within the broadcast radius.
3 Film Feed: Holocaster can assign 'reporters' ...flagged players or droids through which they can receive image data to transmit through a process of recreating graphical objects in the database as the technology of the game allows.
4 Military Feed: Holocaster automatically receivesemails ofmilitary actions occuring within the broadcast radius. This includes shutdown timers activated,prevented shutdowns, and placement and destruction of bases and other military hardware as wellas the owning player. Takeovers of factional NPC bases would be included in this.
Signaling:
Signaling represents the skill of the Holocaster in boosting the technical effectiveness of his equipment through effective engineering of his or her network.
1 Broadcast +10
2 Broadcast +20, Place Additonal Tower Per Planet
3 Broadcast +30
4 Broadcast +40, Place Additional Tower Per Planet
Network Management:
1 Repair Holocaster
2 Repair Holocast Tower
3 Reduced Maintenance Fees: Holocast Towers
4 Reduced Broadcast Power.
Master Holocaster:
Place Holocast Station
FTL Signaling: This skill allows signal from the Holocast Station to be repeated to broadcast towers. This signal is not bound by planet and can be distributed to any tower on any planet. This would be managed by a radial through the Holocast Station Broadcast Terminal device.
Encryption: This skill allows a signal to ONLY be viewed by members of a faction of the Holocaster's choice.
(Note that opportunities can later be brought in for cipher breaking by smugglers or spy professions)
/beatsdeadhorse
Let the crafters make the engines of war. walls, and turrets, bunkers and bases. If its in the game we should be able to craft them. With as wacky as the GCW is right now, the war can use every bit of help. I feal like a tool every time we use houses as base walls. And we shouldnt have to. You already have multiple kinds of walls in game, let our factories crank them out.
Either that or just make the CM's find an ever stonger posion to toss so we dont ever have to worry about pvp again =p
I'm not sure if this is off-topic or whatnot, but i had a few thoughts on the space expansion. I'll try my best to present them in an adult manner, and not rely on the usually complaining about a problem and not coming up with fixes, as that doesn't do anything but point out the obvious.; My idea is obviously not a current problem, and isn't about a future problem, just an idea to throw out there about the acquisition of ships after SE hits the shelves, or...high speed download lines, either way. The spacecraft in the game should be categorized, and the acquisition will reflect that. Also if this has been covered, please excuse me as there is a freakin large amount of posts here, and it takes a while to comb through it all to see if someone else had the idea.
First Category: General Ships
These ships are considered to be the general, non-aligned craft of the galaxy, the various different cargo haulers, runabouts, and light protection vehicles that are seen every day. These are going to be the fruit of the ship engineer's labor. The skill will start out making smaller craft, with the location of the galaxy (centered around Corellia) the first ships built by a ship builder would be something along the lines of a Selonian Coneship (reference Showdown at Centerpoint, Book Three of the Corellian Trilogy, by Roger Macbride Allen) This is a crappy ship that has very few of the amenities seen on ships such as the Millennium Falcon. The ships will progress up higher to a few ships along the lines of the the primarily Corellian PPB, I think that one stood for Pocket Patrol Boat, a very light defensive ship. And the ships that could be built will progress further on into small and large cargo ships, but nothing in this category will be ships typically recognized in the movies as either Rebel or Imperial. There are also different designations and levels of the ships as far as use. Some ships are for intra-planetary travel only, others for short jaunts across a single system, others would have larger ranges as the skill got larger. Of course the un-modified version of the Corellian freighter would be in there as well
Second Category: Faction Ships
This is the bulk of what people will be attempting to attain, in my opinion anyhow. This is where you find your X-Wings, A-Wings, B-Wings, possibly the E-wings, i can't remember the chronology on all of those, as well as the larger craft used by each side, the Corellian Corvette and the Mon Calamari Cruiser for the rebels, and the various Imperial Ships, Tie Fighters, Tie Bombers, Tie Defenders, Star Destroyers. There could also be more dummied down versions of these. And by no means would these ships be the strongest, they would just be the ones recognizable as factionally aligned. Their use will be just like that of a factional item right now, overt is a must. And of course the cost of the ships in faction points would be related to the size and specialization of the ship. If possible I'd really like to see the Interdictor Cruisers too, but i don't know how possible that will be to calculate in. That’s a lot of trajectories to be monitoring at one time for objects that aren't visible to the people doing the interdicting. And due to the large cost of the more powerful ships, and I’m talking maybe a couple hundred K faction points for a Star Destroyer/Calamari Cruiser, there may have to be a system put in place to make this a tad easier, its going to be something hard to balance, you want to make it hard enough to obtain so that not everyone in the game has their own personal star destroyer, yet achievable at the same time
Space / Planet Interaction
I'm sure that Sony has had a hard time working this one out, as I've thought about it for a long time. And the only viable solution that I've come up with is that entering or exiting a vehicle will be almost exactly like pulling out a bike today, except your calling it on a slave circuit, not conjuring it out of a data pad. The more rudimentary ships, although some upgradeable, require a star port to enter/exit the vehicle, because it does not possess a slave circuit so that it can be given remote commands. This makes it so that not everyone can just off and jump into space. The slave circuited ships would have the ability much like the bikes and probot droids do now, you call it, and maybe 30 seconds or a minute later it lands somewhere near your position, or possible at a waypoint that has been sent to it. The other problem with this is what to do with all of the ships that people land at the start port on, I'd have to leave that one to Sony, because they'd either have to make a huge complex of what look like today's star ports, or do some kind of deal where when people enter the outdoor portion of the star port its like a dungeon. They only see their craft, while simultaneously there are others that see THEIR craft. It could be done so that if you’re taking passengers along, as long as you’re grouped they will get the same "version" of the star port that you are. I myself would be rather disappointed to go to the star port and hit enter my ship on some panel, then sit through a loading screen and pop up in space. It would only take about 30 seconds to a minute to fly out of the atmosphere at the speeds reachable by these ships. Technically they could fade the ground out as fast as they want, then just set a time for when the sky starts to fade to space
New Planets: The Corellian System
I'd like to see the galaxy start developing into systems, as it really was in the stories. The current map makes it look like all of these planets are damn near neighbors, when in fact Naboo and Corellia were quite far apart. I'd like to see the forming of some of the systems to look like their own independent system. Such as the Corellian system, there were many planets in the system, and we've already got two in the game. Corellia of course, and Talus, but I'd like to see Tralus, Talus' twin put in, as well as centerpoint station if at all possible, a death star sized space station that sat in the barycenter of Talus and Tralus, which rotated around each other, at the same time as rotating around the sun of the system, there was also Selonia, Drall, and a lot further out, Saccoria. I would like to see the game not focus on the planets and locations in the movies, but branch out into locations in the extended galaxy. Also I’d LOVE to see Corouscant, but that would be damn near impossible, probably take a gig or two on its own of graphics with the whole planet being a city, you can't just run a random terrain generator on that one to make it, then plop cities in the flat spots
Species:
Again I'd like to see Sony move away from the stuff that is popular and do a little research into the extended universe. When i was loading up today i saw a screen about the Selonians, that said that the den was led by a fertile female, when in reality the fertile members of the species were almost treated as slaves, and the sterile females were the ones that did everything else, from leadership to interacting with the outside world, and they did not have small stations aboveground floating around that a semi-skilled player could kill, they live underground. In the end, I really just want to be an Ewok Jedi
Combat / PVP:
I see a lot of people on the boards who do nothing but complain about the pvp system, and that’s just to be expected. Not everyone understands that things tend to get fixed faster if you not only state the problem, but suggest a well thought-out solution. Here is an example: TKA's keep kickin my butt, please nerf them and make master scouts really good. Some of it just doesn't make sense. There are skills that are just inherently better then others. When you start playing star wars, if you’re going to pvp, you can't dabble into some combat skills while keeping your bio-engineer and whatnot. You have to go all-combat or don't go pvp. Now with those that DO go all combat, you must understand that games like this are all about numbers, and when you’re talking about such a huge matrix of numbers it is all but impossible to get them to perfectly balance. They come close, but something small like the release of a new weapon can throw them off, and then the developers have to re-balance the entire thing to compensate for this one single addition. If you think you can do a better job then Sony, send them in a complete plan for pvp numbers, I guarantee you can't. I know you don't like to hear it, but its going to take some time for the pvp system to balance out to where its not 2 or 3 uber-classes vs. everyone else. One of the main problems is that there are so many new things introduced into the GCW every month that this table is fluctuating. So hardcore pvp addicts/complainers are going to have to make a decision, new things come at a much slower rate, so that the pvp table can be balanced, or the pvp table will be consistently thrown into loops as new things are introduced, its actually a balance of these two things that will make the game better.
I had a lot of ideas and got bored and decided to write them down finally. As you can see I’m not a community veteran. If this stuff has already been spoken about or over-discussed, my apologies, if not then please have at it, because I'd love to see what others think about this stuff. My apologies to Sony if anything here catches fire with the masses with it being so close to the release of the expansion.
This would have two major benefits. First, it would allow players who really hate the wait, to have the option to get moving faster, at the increased cost (and 10X is pretty significant, without being, I think, utterly ridiculous). Second, it would help cycle credits back out of the economy, and at a pretty decent clip.
Velashur