Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 4-19-04)
Thunderheart Please:
Close these forums down for good.
All the forums with their Top 5 Issues threads are such a huge waste of time it makes me ill. If you round up all the 500+ player issues that have been brought up (cancel out the issues that the dev team already was planning to work on) you would end up with only 3 things that the dev team has done for the players.
1. Wookie armor (which may have been a dev idea from beta that just got more attention here and made to look like a player top 5 concern)
2. Removing campsite restirction for pets/driods/vehicles. (probably also planned and had nothing to do with our complaints)
3. Removal of decay in PvP. (decay is a great concept on paper but went a long way to destory the little PvP this game had)
If you round up all the other fixes and what not the only thing that these forums have possibly helped with are exploits and content for the player screen shot of the day.
I picture that deep within the SWG programming dungeon, there exists post-it note covered cubicle walls with excerpts from the various Top 5 Issues posts with comments like "OMG, that will never happen" or "**edit**, this guy says he's a programmer and he came up with that?" The bottom line is that this game is obviously going to be developed as the dev team wants. The player requests will always go largely unanswered, therefore making these forums a complete waste of time.
If our comments are valuable, then what the game needs is a comment card. This would be a questionnaire that any player that has been in the game for more than 90 days can fill out. It would be done from within the game's Holocron and could only be filled out once. It would use the player's list of mastered professions to base the questions on and probably act as the most useful tool you could have to know what the player base really wants.
These forums support trolls that know nothing about what they comment on. But even worse, these forums seem to produce a lot of hatred for the game that, in the end, will do more damage to the customer base than a few bugs. There are many impressionable minds here that are unable to come up with their own feelings towards this game and use the issues that other players bring up to brew their own hatred towards this game. People outwardly complain about professions they have never played, agree with problems with situations they have never even been a part of or they jump on bandwagons of complainers that do nothing to help further the game, the way this method of communication was intended to.
If you take any player that is particularly happy with the game and have them surf these boards for 2 weeks, you will end up with a player that is not quite as happy with the game anymore and in some cases considering quitting.
SWG does not need this message board, it barely works anyway, throw it out and the game will be much better.
*****TH. Please confirm or deny that grinding profs to unlock your FSCS will stop after the jedi quest system starts.
I'll ask here as well as on Orkut. I want to know if my last 5 months of grinding and that subscription money was a waste of my time. The "you will be rewarded by your place in the quest timeline" just doesnt cut it for me.
Yes or No?*****
_______________________________________
TH, I have asked this question before with no answer (you were too busy with image designers)... I have asked it on Orkut (where you, runesabre, and the rest of the Devs hang out).... why will you not do your job and answer questions? You cant answer this all of last week? You spent quite a bit of time with the Image Designers though, are you hoping that I will forget about the money i pay monthly and the money i have spent on my subscription since July if I just sit down and have my hair changed to blue?
Kurt, do you job. Tell me if grinding my way to Jedi will still open my slot after you launch the Jedi quests. Dont tell me I will be rewarded along the Jedi quest system because frankly, I dont trust the devs.
tattoodsleeves wrote:
*****TH. Please confirm or deny that grinding profs to unlock your FSCS will stop after the jedi quest system starts.
I'll ask here as well as on Orkut. I want to know if my last 5 months of grinding and that subscription money was a waste of my time. The "you will be rewarded by your place in the quest timeline" just doesnt cut it for me.
Yes or No?*****
_______________________________________
TH, I have asked this question before with no answer (you were too busy with image designers)... I have asked it on Orkut (where you, runesabre, and the rest of the Devs hang out).... why will you not do your job and answer questions? You cant answer this all of last week? You spent quite a bit of time with the Image Designers though, are you hoping that I will forget about the money i pay monthly and the money i have spent on my subscription since July if I just sit down and have my hair changed to blue?
Kurt, do you job. Tell me if grinding my way to Jedi will still open my slot after you launch the Jedi quests. Dont tell me I will be rewarded along the Jedi quest system because frankly, I dont trust the devs.
I understand everyone's frustration in this matter and maybe i'm in the minority of players that are not interested in unlocking (anymore). But the dev's made it pretty clear a long time ago that they will not ever tell us in any way how the slot will be unlocked. Even at the height of holo looting in november/december the dev's kept their mouth shut and danced around the fact that the first jedi would unlock solely from mastering 5 professions. The almost falsely indicated that there waas other routes without actually saying that there were.
If and when TH gives us an update on the new path to jedi, it is bound to be a short paragraph telling us that a major change has been implemented to the methods to unlock your slot, or if I understand correctly, the methods which your current toon will aqcuire force powers. They will never tell us directly that we can still grind to jedi or that we can no longer grind to jedi. If you are that concerned about getting jedi and want to know if you should grind or not grind, then all I can suggest is that you grind out everything you can before the jedi revamp publish (10?).
I really do not think that the new system will be solely based on grinding professions, but it will be a long path.A general concensus of players heredon't think they want new players buying the game and getting jedi accounts within a month. The same consensus does not see nearly the same number of jedi in the game this time next year. So there's probably a good chance that the new path will be hard and many will fail. It will probably require you to complete many tasks that will make you a very well rounded player. Chances are some of the parts of your quest will require mastery of a profession. Possibly even re-mastery.
My thoughts are that the corvette quest is a sort of predecessor to the type of path that will be implemented. Instead of allowing groups, it will be a single player instance dungeon style quest. In order to pass through the dungeon(s) you will require specific skills and you may have to go learn new professions in order to make it through it. It's just a guess and everyone here has their own predictions.
But the most I can say on the subject of jedi, its one of many very cool professions in this game. Those of you who want it so badly that you think about it all the time, I hope you get it.
Thunderheart...
I have a question
Since the devs have put in the new system to prevent the AI for getting stuck behind something the creatures who are almost dead run 2m and then suddently warp 200m away from you, This is very annoying if you have to run after them all the time 200m and then 200m back to the lair again.
Some are even 50m up in the sky with no ground below them.
Is there going to be a fix for this because this is for sure one of the most annoying bugs i ever had.
discussion \Dis*cus"sion\, n. 1: an extended communication (often interactive) dealing with some particular topic 2: an exchange of views on some topic
Where is the interactive part TH, I see quite a few pages of questions without responses, and I am not even counting the 5+ pages from last's weeks "discusson"
Hey ive got some feedback over here.
why is it that every pub introduces new things and makes little repairs when lots of BIG issues with various professions still remain unsettled? I was hoping the combat balance pub would fix a few of those problems, but lo and behold, its been pushed back till who knows when. Now i appreciate innovations like the corvette, which was fun, but after runningit multiple times with 9 other highly skilled and well armed players, we came to the realization that it is too hard to actually complete as a mission. the most it is good for is a good time. I appreciate that the game hasnt been left to rot, and someone is up there making changes, but how about responding to actual requests from players instead of acting on a whim. from experience, people have complained about the commando profession for months now, but the only change that has been made in the profession is the nerfing of the flame DOT. I know other professions have similar LONG LASTING complaints. Im sure most of them would only require small changes in the game code. How bout fixing the stuff that makes the game worthwhile. I really dont feel like hologrinding.
Making things harder to kill is no substitute for better gameplay.
how many people have to make a comment before a DEV actually takes notice?
Harvard Ferrier
Master Commando, Master TK
Bria server
Thunderheart wrote:
The programming team is putting together a plan that may get the "development sandbox" that JustG mentioned in his letter to accelerate this.
TH:
How will one get to play in this sandbox?
I've been arguing for character copy to be turned on since December because I've wanted to help with the combat balance.
Now that I understand the purpose of Test Center, I've argued for this sort of sandbox so I don't interfere with their testing.
One of the reasons I have not been playing on Test Center is because I've felt it would be futile to work on building a character there when it's possible I could be able to just transfer over my characters any day or week in the near future.
I have a Master Bounty Hunter, a TKM, and a Fencer/Carbineer I would love to have copied over to this sandbox.
I want to do some real testing to help make the combat system as good as it can be.
I think it is in the best interest of the game to have as much help from as many people willing to work on the combat system before it goes live.