Development Cycle Archive

Armour: Defense Encumbrance.

Currently, armour (I'm Canadian, I spell it with a 'u') encumbrance affects the HAM secondaries, thus making it harder to perform special attacks and other skills. While this is one method to balance armour, I believe there is another. From a cinematic standpoint with some loose realism base, people without armour are the ones finding cover, running while shots miss and dodging blows. The armoured targets are more 'tank-ish' in nature, moving forward under a hail of fire or flurry of blows.

Presently, even with the whole buff argument aside (where hitting 1500 on your secondaries with varied buffs enables you to perform specials free of charge), what we witness is people with high Ranged Defense, Melee Defense, Dodge and even Toughness (I think) making full use of these skills while armoured, so adding to the fact most shots miss, they do barely any damage when they land.

While someone armoured certainly still possesses knowledge and ability of how to react in combat, it is neither as easy to do when encumbered nor as necessary: the armour does some of the work. And froma (again loose view of realism (since we don't have Composite Armour troops being deployed in the real world), someone should not be Dodging shots as easily in armour, using body toughness while armoured beyond a certain degree (shots that get through, dealing with the impact of heavy blows better, etc.), or applying their full flexibility, manueverability and dexterity while encumbered by armour.

I'm a fan of Armour Certs (in some ways, wearing specialized heavy armour is more likely to need certs than pulling a trigger). But in addition to Armour Certs, I think encumbrance to max Defense skills at less than the current 125 would do much for the combat rebalance that is planned.

Something to consider, anyhow.

A few things that people seem to be repeating over and over again, so I'll throw in my two cents as well. HEHE.

Ok, first is the request for having two people vehichles. I saw somewhere (can't remember where) that this is very difficult for the devs to do... some technical issues or something. Plus, I don't know what value this adds to the game. It's kinda fun and stuff, but is it really worth the trouble?

Second, I hear alot of people complaining about the spam ads in cities (cornet for example). Here I cannot agree more. IS IT THAT FREAKING HARD TO DETECT WHO IS SPAMING STUFF WHILE AFK. The little AFK thing shows up over your head. Just make some line of code like /if you are afk and say the same damn thing more than 10 times in under 10 minutes, you get logged out. Simple as that....... do I have to do everything for you devs. Jesus!

The last thing I want to comment on is people saying that one prof is overpowering. I'm trying to master pistoleer (I know all about being overpowered - I can barely kill a corellian butterfly), but honestly, if I want to become a TKA or swordsman, I can. Just stop complaining and switch. I know, I know.... I can hear you already.... "But I've invested time and XP in becoming XYZ", "I really like using a Pistol", "It would be boring if everyone were the same profession", etc. Unfortunately, if combat was truly "balanced", two characters that got in a fight would just sit there shooting/hitting/hacking at each other until they were both at the point of death, then the person that hit first would win. Since combat in this game involves no "twitch" skills, ina perfectly balanced system, those with the most money to buy the best weapons and the best skill tapes would win every battle. Then people woulb cry about the rich having a huge advantage. The true solution to this is to make it extremely hard to achieve the more powerful proffessions. Like make it require 100 Pistol XP to master pistoleer (lol) and like 1billion to be master swordsman or tka. Then if you are dominating everyone in PVP, atleast you earned.

Ka'lah

sorry for the double post

ka'lah

I'd like to see animations added for getting in and out of(or on and off of) vehicles and mounts.

Also how about when you use your ticket at a starport, characters actually walk up the boarding plank before the loading screen appears? Something similar for shuttles would be nice, but of course it would require a newshuttle design. I'm hoping things like this might become more feasible when the space expansionhasmaturedandif/when atmospheric flight is introduced for ships and airborne vehicles... like perhaps "instanced" shuttle flights where your characteractually travels the distance from city to city instead of sitting through a loading screen. I dunno, I'm proabably dreamin'.

And I knowthis is a tall order, but I'd really like to see an alternative developed to the resizing of toons when we sit on furniture or drive vehicles and mounts. It's very disconcerting when my max-height wookiee gets shrunk down to Bothan-size so he can fit in his landspeeder, or sit in a chair. In fact I often just sit on the floor so I don't have to see that happen.

Concerning Disconnection While Idle:

Remove or alter the "not moving" timeout from the game so that folks that are just chatting for a while don't get ejected from the game just because they do not perform other actions. I do chat quite often while not moving when meeting my guildmates for example so this is extremely annoying. And there's no reason to force players to run background macros for that matter just because they want to talk to each other. Let the system consider chatting an action - simple as that (I guess).

Thought I would throw around some ideas here.

For crafters -

• seeing as storage is a negative against most out there, why not allow the option for anyone with a crafting based character gain "extra" storage spaces in their houses? Kind of like a skill you get for novice artisan or something? and it increases thru the profession


• heh abilty to color weapons when they are made?


• adding a "comments" board to houses when being built. So you have the option as a artisan to add it onto a house. When in the house it is like a guestbook more or less. Where people can comment on the design, etc
  

For CH -

• Make pets better. Resist are weak compared to their wild counterparts it seems. Adding ALL creatures spawning babies would bring interest.


• Adding "stable" areas to certain cities. I mean there is alot of un used areas in cities that draw alot of lag. Cut down on the design size of the cities and put in a stable area, where CHs can sell their pets also. Not everyone wants a BE pet


• This is different, when in the wild and you run across a lair of lets say rancors, and you have a rancor as a tamed pet out grouped with you, the rancors then would not go aggro on you because they see you are "friends". If the rancor pet was stored then it wouldwork how it already does in game.Hard to explain but i think you get the idea
  
  

Pistoleers -

• ability to use EVERY pistol. ( same goes for the other gun type professions and their respected weapon


• specials fixed before new content is added. This goes for other professions as well with broken specials.


• Make the DOTs more effective. A 100 health bleed against a creature/npc with 10k+ HAM is northing more then a fly pooping on them.

Factional Rankings

• I would like to see these actually be viewable, not only to yourself but to other members in your faction. Maybe have it above names in ( ) with abreviations ( SS ) = staff sargent etc


• This would allow for the factional npcs you see out in the wild to be useful. If you have a higher ranking then the NPCs you could use them to help you with a creature or something


• This could even lead to interesting dialog through the whole galaxy. Even though it sounds stupid, i would love to ride past a rebel private and have him stop, salute and etc etc.
  

I have a question about this

Galactic Civil War - Publish 11

The Galactic Civil war is a central theme in the Star Wars timeline and the goal of this effort is to create more atmosphere and interactivity in the Star Wars Galaxies MMO while retaining its basic design philosophies such as PvP by choice, "star warsy" ambience and other facets of player involvement.

Changes to the existing Galactic Civil War will be considered for the month of January and implemented in March. In Concept discussions may include new features and items as well as design changes to the existing system.In what time (year)you start publish 11 in 2005 or it is a mistake?