Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)
Thunderheart wrote:
Krayvex wrote:What's the status on stomachs being emptied on cloning? Wasn't it supposed to be in the last publish?
No. The effects of food buffs are not cleared when you clone. They have to naturally time out.
This doesn't make much sense to me. Why would your clone start with stomach contents?
Kade_Deveron wrote:
I'd like to comment on the issue of armor. Armor in SWG is clearly too powerful. It encourages soloing to virtual exclusing of grouping, makes being unarmored an unviable option (esp in PvP), and creates a cookie cutter environment where everyone is wearing their 70%+ composite. It also leaves factional armor (and uniforms) unviable (the cost on faction armor doesnt help).
The fundamental problem is that the "penalty" for wearing armor isnt really a penalty. Buffs are so powerful and easy to get that everyone runs around in their armor and buffed. In order to balance armor, forget penalties to secondary stats. Try penalties to defensive skills (ie ranged/melee, KD, dizzy, etc..) or to weapon speed. Armor is cumbersome and should make players easier to hit as they are less mobile (but allowing the armor to absorb damaage of course), leaving unarmored players options for pvp or for, heaven forbid, factional armor.
Actually Armor isn't too powerful, people have too much money. As it is now virtually everyone that PvPs can afford to buy the best there is.
I'm a master armorsmith. I can't count the number of times I've gotten tells from people I don't know asking for armor with X% vs kinetic for example. I think about what I'd have to do to make it, decide I really don't want to. I quote a ridiculous price and the customer responds with, "I want 2, where can I pick them up?".
The fix to this isn't to make armor less powerful. The fix actually has 3 pieces and actually applies to weapons and other items as well.
1) Make armor repair automatic. It should NEVER fail and NEVER cause the condition of the armor to be reduced. The degree of repair should be based on the skill of the person doing it. I made a rather long post in the Armorsmithing forum about this topic.
2) Armor needs to be more versatile after it has been crafted. Some or all of the layers should be replaceable. Say for example I want a suit of composite but I can't afford one with layers. I purchase the composite suit. Later I decide that I really need to add some stun protection. I take it to an armorsmith, he/she installs the needed layers for a fee.
3) Credits need to be awarded in a more appropriate and more stingy manner. A couple months ago if you took an NPC mission that involved delivering something to another NPC that was 300 m away, you would get 40 or 50 credits. Now you get 4000. The original amount was much more appropriate. By more appropriate I mean that the amount of credits you get should be proportional to the enemy. Right now it's not unusual to kill an Evil Hermit and get 100 credits then kill a Tusken and get 40. These amounts should be more like 12 credits for the Hermit and a few hundred for the Tusken. Every credit should be important.
Thunderheart wrote:
The same people that killed, John, Martin, and Robert. Our country may never recover.
Krayvex wrote:
Can you still target bases and damage them? What's going to happen to players who knowingly did this?I don't know. I havent been on any Base Attacks in a few weeks. If something is wrong, please let Jester know. Probably nothing unless a CSR saw them do it.
This is the attitude toward exploits in general, and as you seem to realize, the chances of a CSR actually seeing any of this are 1 / 10 of 1 percent of 1 in a million. Gotta love the apathetic dev response...
Any thoughts on how to stop everyother pvp player from using a jawa rifle or stun baton?No. Do you find this to be a problem?
So you do play this game, and claim to be more fighter than crafter, but I guess you can't be expected to be up to speed on PvP on the pvp servers as well.
How do you vote out a mayor who no longer plays when alot of the town no longer plays?An incumbent mayor has to run against the absentee mayor and everyone has to vote for the new mayor.
The actual answer is to get a large number of cross-server trades going as this broken system is by design to attempt to make being involved in a Player City as frustrating as Holo-grinding so that less folks will want to be in player cities, thereby negating the need for a player city cap. "See, you complained, we listened!"
Why don't poisons/diseases get the pvp damage reduction?All combat questions will be in the combat balance. It is being discussed at a pretty high level at the moment and I dont know what the outcome is yet.
The "your combat bug" bath water, is being thrown out with the PvP baby, and in three months they'll have comments In Concept about the coming combat balance.
Do any players still use creature mounts?Yes. Does anyone who can afford a speeder, has a good one in their datapad, or wants to get somewhere without anything spawning to attack them use a mount? No.
We beefed it up in Publish 7 and recieved a lot of positive feedback. We're looking at other ways to make it tougher, but its a tough balancing act. Thats why it happens slowly.
You may have wrenched it up for a day, but then the way it was implemented, cantina scans, yielded in holo-grinders getting killed. That was the last time anyone was attacked that could have been overwhelmed. The first day of the new patch I wandered into the bestine cantina and got owned when the 1 trooper I saw became the 6 troopers tucked away in corners throughout the cantina. I got one, and was DB'd before I could get a Master Doc in. It was a true Imp Crackdown. Someone hadn't taken the time to realize that cantinas are only for the AFK so there was a conflict waiting to happen, and the people who need to meet with Imp resistance farmed faction all day in the cantinas. Now the GCW is perma-revamp as they were out of ideas until Runesabre came with clue to fix yet another system...
Where'd all the entertainers go?To the cantina?
Nice, though I'd again claim that you and I aren't playing the same game. The entertainers quit, the AFK-Macro folk are playing as entertainers now. Remember Digiteers from all the launch hype? Well, there you go!
Who killed Jimmy Hoffa?
I tend to side with Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno. He stated in his book, "The Last Mafioso," that Hoffa wasn’t killed by the New Jersey Mob at all, but by the local Detroit Mafia bosses. He says that Tony "Tony Jack" Giacalone, a close friend of Hoffa set him up, and Tony Zerilli and Mike Polizi ordered him killed. I agree with that line of thought.
Thunderheart wrote:
I tend to side with Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno. He stated in his book, "The Last Mafioso," that Hoffa wasn’t killed by the New Jersey Mob at all, but by the local Detroit Mafia bosses. He says that Tony "Tony Jack" Giacalone, a close friend of Hoffa set him up, and Tony Zerilli and Mike Polizi ordered him killed. I agree with that line of thought.
Thunderheart wrote:
All combat questions will be in the combat balance. It is being discussed at a pretty high level at the moment and I dont know what the outcome is yet.
Yes, LeBob, this WOULD be fun, IF the people who were continuing their "advert / tumble / dance macro" got a global TEF and were attackable while inside the shuttle. If I could kill them to make them shut the heck up, it would be great fun. Come to think of it, it would be great fun if they implemented this feature withing 100m of every starport/shuttleport in the game.
LeBob wrote:
an idea I read in another post that I really liked is that each shuttle would have an 'instanced interior' so that when you see other people on the shuttle and you can continue your advert / tumble / dance macro inside while everyone waits for the shuttle to arrive at their respective destination... the distance needed to be travelled could even factor into the amount of time it took to get to your destination would that be fun or what?!
Thunderheart wrote:
Krayvex wrote:
What's the status on stomachs being emptied on cloning? Wasn't it supposed to be in the last publish?
No. The effects of food buffs are not cleared when you clone. They have to naturally time out.
TH, are you sure you are understanding the question? The effects are most certainly being cleared upon death, save one. You lose the buff effect, yes. Your stomach STAYS FULL though. Many of us find this to be an annoying bug (and one that adversely effects our chef friends at that).
If you are saying that stomachs staying full without the buff effect is by design, I would like to hear the reasoning behind the design. Thanks!
Krayvex wrote:
Any thoughts on how to stop everyother pvp player from using a jawa rifle or stun baton?
Wear armor with high stun resistance?
/obvious
No. Do you find this to be a problem?"
Spoken like a man who doesn't know pvp at all.
To be successful at killing people in PVP you are one of three classes:
1. Rifleman with a well made (preferably krayt enhanced) jawa ion rifle.
2. Fencer with a well made (preferably acklay enhanced) stun baton.
3. Combat Medic with well made (preferably spider enhanced) poisons and diseases.
Granted, you DO have 1 of each type of profession in there, Ranged, Melee, and Support. But it's ridiculous how much more powerful each of those three is over ANY other class or combination of classes in the game.
In case you didn't know (I'm just going to start assuming you don't), armor can be made to be up to 90% effective against every form of attack outside stun (where it can only get to 40%). That means unless you do stun damage, forget about it.
Also, poisons/diseases have no damage type that can be resisted, and have no defense to counter their 'to hit'. They also tend to have a range greater than any firearm and take a very high level elite class to counter.
You might want to consider looking into this and see what you can do about it.
Instead of giving those of us that DO pvp (or did, in my case) a snide response such as "Do you find this to be a problem?"
-Shi