Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept Open Discussion (Week Ending 3-1-04)
BuzzardBoy
Sat Feb 21, 2004 10:52 pm
#183
Improve Stormtrooper armor, please. I would really like to wear it around in PvP because its good for RPing and it looks totally awesome, but it also totally sucks...30% resists to everything and vuln to Heat, Acid, and Stun is not very appealing. Perhaps you could include a quest for schematics for this stuff? With full sets of composite with 80% resist to everything but stun(after slice), the ST armor just doesn't cut it anymore, and is only useful as a nice display.
Zaphar Waverunner 
Dark Jedi Padawan
WolfeTCK
Sat Feb 21, 2004 11:31 pm
#184
how about being able to pay a weekly fee and being able to view the bazaar from your home, or maybe access your bank account so u can store things, and take out money, all costing a small fee per week, would be convienent for most ppl i think
also id like to be able to put things on my deck in my large tat house, perhaps some items can be made that only go on teh deck, just for show, cant be that much of a lag problem, small items shouldnt hurt to much
Moofis
Sun Feb 22, 2004 4:38 am
#185
I fully agree with this kid on the whole graphicly issue. SWG makes great use of close range landscape effects yet has no rigid system of character interaction. When Ihit some one with my sword it would be nice to see it at least come close to hitting my opponents actualy flesh not just the air infront of him. Same thing goes for defense, fencers are fast enough to where you don't see the dodge half the time, fix that. When I block an incoming punch I wanna see my sword deflect it. When a blaster shot is aimed at my head i wanna see myselfduck. WhenI shoot something really big and see my shot go through them yet i "miss" i wonder how that works? I think all incoming/out going blaster shots should hit they're target dead on the flesh. No more shots going through your character.
Also I have become fully aware of the fact SWG has no vertical distance measure. You could be 100 feet upa hill but if I'm underneath you due to the hills steep incline, your still only "6m" away from me. There should be some sort of true vertical distance versus your character just appearing to shoot up words. Its so old school and lameto not integrate this into such an advanced game. And my biggest complaint graphicly is the landscape that forms infront of me. The old school idea of having a weird fog that is always in the distance to cover lack of distance view still works for me, and should be adjustable in the graphics settings. Maybe a toggle for it, or a degree of it.
And for graphics the whole deal with walking through people and tables is very disputable from a graphical vs gameplay point of view. But isn't there some sort of middle ground for that? Also i'm sick of seeing my character randomly move about in and out of a chair while mostly appearing to sit in the air. There are so many little bugs with such a basic issue. Just make my character sit in the same spot everytime on the chair, its not hard. Also the little deal with whereI switch weapons andI randomly animate gettng up and sitting back down on air about 3m away... thats just crappin stupid, fix that too.
Lastly it would be nice to see a players interaction with terminals, so you know when they are using them. Maybethey're staring at the terminal thinking kinda, then pushing some buttons or something. It would be nice to know if my friends are grabbing missions too. Same thing would go for all vendors, except npc vendors. Maybe when you double click on the NPC you say something to them by default, and they respond with either a default response or a custimized string by the merchant.
I love you devs, but I hate you... hehe
SithLord2000
Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:58 am
#186
Shuttle wait time is a needless part of the game, please lower to 5 min or less , at least until the space expansion. I understand the need to realism but there is nothing worse than running up to the shuttle when it takes off and having to wait 9 minutes and 59 seconds! How is this fun?
Or maybe make a faction perk for overts that if they are overt they have no wait time! Extra incentive to join a faction and promote PVP.
SithLord
Hisler
Sun Feb 22, 2004 11:54 am
#187
You know with all the changes and revamps comming soon I'm just wondering where the game will go in the future ... As now I have mastered many professions ... But most notably is the speed in which i have done it ... I have just mastered medic .... Doctor ... and Combat Medic in the coarse of this weekend ... What I am saying is If we goto a Quest system for jedi what is the purpose of this game if you can max a character out in less than a month ... I personaly think more content should be given to players WHOM WILL NOT GO JEDI !!!!!!!!! Maybe you should add Elite professions and I dont mean Master Fenser ... Master TKA and such ... i mean professions above those .... Like Duelists which are master fensers + master Pistoler's which open a whole new profession which is slow leveling not as bad as jedi but might allow the defensive bonuses of both classes to stack .... Maybe Elite Commandos ... Bounty Hunters ..... And so on ... As it is the 250 points we are given can be filled up in no time and players can get to master in no time at all even on combat Professions .... But as of now I see no High end to this game .... The only thing to look forward to is pvp which is a joke with stuff like tef ..... coverts attacking overts .... But the pvp aspect is a whole beast entirely ...
Seduisante
Sun Feb 22, 2004 11:54 am
#188
Theaters:
Theaters.. Besides looking cool serve no real purpose for entertainers to use or own.
According to what i've read Theaters are suppose to be for a more larger grander venue. Yet you can not buff people in a Theater (You should really be able to Buff people from the Stage to the Audience!)
Theater Decorations?? There is hardly any! The Stage and Audience is considered Outside preventing you from adding any curb appeal to your structure.. You can not even place an Nalargon on the stage (not at all)
Theaters themselves are great looking .. can we please increase their fuctionality to make them worth owning and operating?
Thanks,
-Seduisante
Mor-Dan
Sun Feb 22, 2004 2:50 pm
#189
please increase loot drops on nightsisters/nightspiders/singin mountain clan
i am weary of killing 50 night sisters, my armour decaying over and over when they kill me, and only coming away with a few thousand credits. i want armour enhancers, schematics, vibromotors, skill tapes, etc. i still think that whatever weapon is being used against us should drop from the NPC, even if it is of crappy value. somethings we want just because they look cool. in short, things with 20k+ HAM should always be worth killing for one reason or another...
i am weary of killing 50 night sisters, my armour decaying over and over when they kill me, and only coming away with a few thousand credits. i want armour enhancers, schematics, vibromotors, skill tapes, etc. i still think that whatever weapon is being used against us should drop from the NPC, even if it is of crappy value. somethings we want just because they look cool. in short, things with 20k+ HAM should always be worth killing for one reason or another...
EFB
Sun Feb 22, 2004 4:54 pm
#190
I fully agree that the ticket droid is not the best way of finding out the times of your flight, especially in the star ports. Also I have found on a number of occassions that the ticket droid only appears when the ship docks, which is no good if I need to do something in the ten or so minutes that the ship takesand am unable to find out the time. Obviously the droid is there to collect tikets, but if you are looking for the time its no good when the ship is alreadyright there in front of you. I don't know if anyone else has commented on this, but it has happend to me a number of times. Clocks would be far better and easier.
AarinStar
Sun Feb 22, 2004 5:17 pm
#191
I think we should have the option to turn off the text over our head. I don't like to walk into a crowdedcity and have it look twice as crowded becouse of all the text. Then, there are those people that I don't want to know my name. We should still have it tell who says something. I realize this could cause problems for some, but most I know would choose to keep it up there. Or it should be like NPCs where it doesn't show it unless you put your cursor over the player. Or make both of them an option you can choose. Also, some proffesion (not sure wich, Bounty Hunter?) should have the abilty to coceal themselves from the radar.
WolfeTCK
Sun Feb 22, 2004 6:38 pm
#192
for one id like to see ppl to be able to wear a bandoliar and a backpack
also in regard to player cities, i think that if yah havea cloning fac, that since it cost 1k to clone there, the player city should get 25%-50% of that, so 250-500credit a person, it would help the smaller cities out alot while allowing ppl to clone and help a city out
Redfenril
Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:17 am
#193
Thunderheart
Are the Devs aware of the Exploit/Bug that has plagued the Faction Bases? (I'm refering to the Exploit/Bug that allows players to shoot through the base walls without the threat of being shot back)
Are the Devs aware of the Exploit/Bug that has plagued the Faction Bases? (I'm refering to the Exploit/Bug that allows players to shoot through the base walls without the threat of being shot back)
Kreedh
Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:50 am
#194
Could we please have the mission terminals changed so that we can filter for specific types of missions?
I understand that this might not seem like a terribly high priority item. Nevertheless, the current scheme is wasteful of player's time, wasteful of bandwidth, wasteful of server resources, all without any real effect on what missions are accepted. Let me illustrate.
If there is really good herbivore meat on Dantooine, my character, along with a lot of others, will head to Dantooine to get missions for herbivores. My favorite are the Piket Protector missions (PPM). They are easy to solo, have a good payout (17k) and aren't impossible to find on the mission terminals. When I want a mission, I pull out 70 levels worth of pets, group them, make sure my pistol is in hand and spam the refresh button looking at all 17k missions. Once I find my first PPM, I accept it and note the direction. I now repeat the Refresh spamming until I find a 17k mission in the same direction as the one I just got. It is not unusual to go through more than 20 refreshes. Think about the server and bandwidth resources that must consume if you have 1000 people all doing the same thing.
Head now to Corellia where perhaps there is very high OQ and PE avian meat spawning. Doctors are falling over each other to pay 150cpu for this meat (welcome to Ahazi's economy). I want in on this... so I hop a shuttle over to Coronet. I have checked out www.swgcreatures.com and found that all varieties of spats and gulginaws sport avian meat. I hit the mission terminals and follow my same procedure. After about 50 screens, I realize that missions for these critters are not so easy to come by. After much experimentation, I find that if I pull out a half grown baby GSP and have no weapon equipped, I can get carrion spat missions. I don't really care about the payout as one spat from the mission earns me more credits than the mission itself is worth. These missions are mind-numbingly easy, so the next time I get missions I see if I can find any greater gulignaw missions. I try every combination of weapon and pet I can think of, but nothing. In the end I settle for just doing the low yield, boring missions, but not until I have pounded the refresh button more than a thousand times.
Now imagine that thousand refreshes being done by thousands of users. I guarantee you that it happens, and it happens a lot and not just so that some poor slob like me can get his hands on some avian meat. People spam the mission refresh button for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it is just to try and find that one elusive mission that is difficult enough to challenge you, other times it is to mesh with what your group is wanting to find.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this put more load that is needed on both the bandwidth and the servers that service the mission terminals, but there has to have been some logical reason behind implementing the mission terminals in this way. Without access to the design documents we have to guess, but I imagine that the following are likely candidates for why missions are set up the way they are:
- To limit payouts. The economy being what it is, at least on my server, the devs have a realistic fear that too much money is going into the game and not nearly enough is going out.
- To give players fast access to level-appropriate content. Noob players, especially, need help figuring out what kinds of critters they can handle and which they had best stay away from.
- To ensure that a variety of different lairs exist within the
Does the current system accomplish these design goals? I don't think so. Payout limits are based not just on the character level, but on the party level as well. I know lots of people who like soloing. The will often group up just long enough to get the highest paying missions they can do and then everyone disbands and runs off to do his own missions. Thus the payout cap is not preventing people from getting past the cap. Additionally, the cap is not just one sided. Unless I take very specific steps to get low paying missions, it is impossible for me to find them. Thus, my average payout for missions is higher than it might otherwise be.
The second design goal also falls short. I am a far better judge of what I can handle than the server ever will be. Sure, noob players will need some guidance at first, but they will quickly learn what they can and cannot handle. What the current system is really doing is keeping me from accessing truly level-appropriate content, as it doesnt thing I am high powered enough to do the lairs that give me a genuine challenge.
The final design goal isn't met either. Players don't care about the diversity of the missions, they will just spam refresh until they find the ones they want.
My solution is to allow the player to choose the challenge level, the creature type, and direction for all his missions. The benefits of doing this are several:
- Reduced bandwidth and server load. People will only need to hit the first screen to get the mission they are looking for.
- Less player frustration. Players wont be spamming the mission terminals cursing at their monitors as they try and get that elusive PPM to the NW any more.
- More level appropriate content will be accessed. Players will have more fun because they can actually get missions that challenge them, instead of having to hunt carrion spats.
The alternative solution for this would be to assign enough servers for each planet that wild lairs actually spawn every once in a blue moon. Last week, looking for Corellian Avian meat on Ahazi, I literally criss-crossed the entire planet looking for a single gulginaw of any variety. I spent hours and hours driving, running, swimming... all to no avail. I have still never seen one outside of captivity. The wild lairs just don't spawn the way they used to in beta (or, I bet, the way they do on TC). Why is this? I think the devs let us know when they added servers to get past the mission cap for CoA3. I think there is a cap on the number of lairs that active on any given server. If that cap is reached, then no more wild lairs will spawn, and existing wild lairs will be removed if someone accepts a mission after the cap has been reached. If you get enough missions from mission terminals, there won't be any wild lairs to be found on the rest of the planet. I guarantee that if you go visit the wilds of Dantooine at 3am CST on a Tuesday, you will see a far different world than you will at 8pm CST on a Friday.
So is my suggestion do-able? Ultimately, the devs have to answer this one, but my thought is that it should be doable, at least as regards mission level, with only minor changes. The current mission system takes into account your level when creating missions for you. If it gets this number from the server-side rather than the client-side (which it probably does), then it becomes a bit more difficult, but still do-able. Creature selection and direction might be tougher to add, but I think it would be well worth the effort.
So won't this blow the cover off the economy and cause even worse inflation? It doesn't have to. I dont know that anyone would mind having the mission payouts stay the same or even be a bit less if we don't have to spam that refresh key.
If you wanted to make it more interesting and useful, perhaps you could bring in specific classes to help make something like this happen. Maybe groups with Rangers in them get to select the critter type, simply because of their expertise. Perhaps you can by a limited use slicing kit from a Smuggler that allows you to select the challenge level and direction of a mission, burning one charge at a time (and adding to the list of contraband you can get dinged for).
If you have read far enough to get to this point, thanks so much for your patience!
CavemanGamer
Mon Feb 23, 2004 9:27 am
#195
Yeah, I agree.
I kind of miss clicksaver. (If you ever played AO, then you know what I'm talking about).