Development Cycle Archive

2 things, 1 return back droid armor...

2: after a very thorough 5 hours of crafting last night here are my findings:

If a crafter crafts something with materials 900 or better avg for primary stats of crafted item they get +7% on a great and +8% on an amazing. What this means to non-crafters, i make crafting tools with 983CD, the tools really on CD. Prepatch they would get 98% total experimentation with 10 points, with the new system with a few amazings and all greats i was able to get 100% experimentation. This is good for 1 stat items where said resource spawns over 900 in prime attribute.

The downsides: I made some melee wpn components using 850SR, melee comps go off SR. With all10 pts the best i could get was 5% worse then prepatch(this is with some amazing results, the greats gave 6%, amazing's 7%+). Tests with ranged weapons were even more terrible.

Why am i bothering to repeat all this, when it has been said before....

I Propose that the developers intiate a hybrid of these 2 systems. Allowing amazing results to make a product go beyond its normal %'s based limits in the prepatch system. This would level the playing field on materials that are close in %'s but not identical and also allow for equipmentmakers to distiguish themselves via hard work trying to earn amazings, which previously had little value over a great. I hope this is considered it would level those that are already close to performance and for those whom spend the time allow them to make truly top of the line gear.

I think I found a bug. Here goes as follows.

I got a mind buff from an entertainer for 1009 mind 1 hour 30 minutes. About an hour and 10 minutes after this I got incaped, and db'd. I respawned, and went to the same dancer. Got another mind buff. When it was done the buff was exactly 1009 again, but the the time was about 20 minutes. Looks like after the clone the timer didn't get cleared correctly. Please fix this ASAP... At least I was friends with the dancer, and didn't have to pay for a worthless buff.

Thanks,

Thaum

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Ekhben wrote:
Combat Changes

• Defense / To-Hit Fixes
  Testing when you introduced these changes would have made fixing them now unnecessary. Your internal QA department is abysmal. When you make a change and do not bother to verify that the change does what was intended, there's something majorly wrong. I can understand you failing to find unexpected consequences of that change, but not testing it at all just screams incompetence. Sorry, but that's the truth.

Funny, I don't recall seeing you on Test Center helping to test it. Maybe I was just looking the wrong direction.....

• Warcry/Panic Shot nerf
  Another useless skill. Mobs automatically encircle you. Cone effect attacks will only affect the one right in front of you, and guess what? you're hitting that one. What was wrong with the ability to justify this?

That's like sayiing FanShot is useless because it's a cone attack, but (despite what you think) when used by somebody with even a minute amount of ranged combat sense it's quite powerful and effective.

• Bleed DoT fixes
  This is another mistake that should never have been made. While not the same as failing to test it at all, it suggests you're not analysing the consequences of changes, which does not give me any confidence in the processes you have.

/healthshot1;
/feigndeath;

There's one of the biggest reasons for the Bleed changes, and it's a God-send that they made it so people can't do that anymore.

Crafting System Enhancements

• Reduced chance of critical failures
  I do not see the necessity for critical failures at all. Risk vs Reward is complete bunk. Your paradigm should be Investment vs Reward. Crafters already invest time and resources into crafting. The more time they spend and the better resources they use, the better the result. Introducing risk introduces a random irritation which can range from a mild inconvenience to a blue in the face rage. It does not add anything good to your game. In other words, you have not reduced the chance enough, since it will not be enough until it is zero.

So then if they remove the risk from crafting they should remove the risk from combat and just give us all God mode. If they removed critical failures, then they've have to remove critical success, and then some of the really well made items out there would disappear as everything settled into just a gray zone. Somehow I'm not surprised in the slightest that a TKM is suggesting there be zero chance of faliure for anything.

• The one day exposure to a new system
  As has been said, one line experimental results and SEA users are producing schematics of a quality that will not be obtainable tomorrow. The poor, poor economy. Please consider the consequences of the actions you take.

Yes, those mediocre items they produce will be vicious.

Bounty Hunter Jedi Tracking Missions

I'm not a Bounty Hunter, but from what I've read, this is a partial success at best. I'd be up before my manager explaining myself if I released code in as untested a state as you do. There is no sufficient excuse for the lack of quality we are seeing. Hang your heads in shame.

Yep, this part of your post still makes me laugh until my gut hurts. Maybe one day we'll read the story of Jedi on Test Center. Y'know.... that one guy.

Junk Dealer Revamp

Do I hear the sounds of muffled laughter?

No, you don't actually. Junk Dealer are for new players to get a small amount of extra cash, and the new set up allows them to get more money and sell just about anything. Man, you gotta start thinking about these things before you post because your thought process is..... non-existant.

Camp Restrictions Replaced

I'm not sure I can express just how disgusted I am over this. I've dropped Creature Handler, which I'd been set on since late beta. Replacing one mindless obstruction with another is not a step forward.

Yes it's so terrible that crafters can now call vehicles anywhere without having to spend 15 points on Novice Scout, which they wouldn't use for any single purpose other than to call their vehicles. Man, that's such a terrible thing. How dare they allow those crafters even a mild amount of convenience when checking their harvesters! (Hint: That was sarcasm)

Player City Garages

With vehicle repair so expensive, and decay rates so high, and vehicles themselves so cheap, and bugs that autorepair vehicles or prevent the repairs from sticking, the potential of these buildings is unreached. You would need to address the above concerns to see these buildings popular.

Only two of those issues need to be addresses: the auto-repair using shuttles, and when repairs don't stick. The decay rate and cost of repair aren't a problem in the slightest. It's like owning a car in real-life and paying insurance: if you can't afford it, don't buy one. Of course I expect the near-cliche comment "but this is a game, not real-life! I don't want a game that's like real-life!" Yes that's fantastic, I'll be sure to make note of that in this dictionary next to the entry "analogy."

GCW changes

I don't PvP. I don't want to PvP. Most of your players do not PvP, and a fair number of those would never want to. Yet you've made the GCW PvP only, with TEFs and covert detectors and the like. You've even made Jedi PvP only. You break PvE abilities and nerf professions because of PvP. You must make the sides in the GCW equal, for the sake of PvP, which means you cannot introduce a progessional PvE storyline involving the GCW. You even took away battlefields, the only bastion of pure PvE GCW content.

In other words, I do not care about the GCW. You could take it out entirely. I would not miss it. But if you attempt to force participation in the GCW on us, you will make the game entirely PvP, and you will lose your PvE market. This may be more successful than trying to be half and half, at least.

Holocron himself said it best: Joining a faction is signing up for PvP. This means that GCW is based on PvP. If people don't likeit, they can always go back to being Neutral. Oh, and battlefields were taken away because they're revamping them and needed to remove them temporarily.

Bestine Quests

Faugh! Victor's rewards weren't tested by your QA department, and his new quest is another static spawn camp. Remember your initial design goals? Didn't think so.

I wasn't looking again, but I thought I heard you walk by on Test Center again......

New Mounts

I can't get excited about mounts. I have vehicles, which handle slopes much better, travel flats much faster, and don't bounce my viewpoint around at all.

You don't excited about anything that doesn't involve more winning (with no risk) and a total removal of any possibility of losing, or so it would seem from your post anyway.

Summary

The Droid Invasion brings us nothing good for droids. It's a two publish Droid Invasion, and this was the first part. You might want to wait for the second part, just maybe. It brings us combat nerfs and bugfixes. This is an MMORPG, nerfs and bug fixes are a massive part of the way the game functions. All MMORPGs do it, and always have done it. It gives us a one day economy buster, and another failed attempt to fix Bounty Hunter missions. Busting the economy with craptacular items almost sounds realistic. We'll be sure to get all the Test Center BH's to hunt down the one Jedi on there, I'm sure the data collected from it will be..... mediocre. We get junk dealers, for what little they're worth. They weren't worth anything to veterans before. It's for new players. It was never meant to effect you.Move on with your life.We get a new set of obstructions for calling pets to supplement camp restrictions, and are expected to be grateful. Some peoplehave 15 skill-points worth of gratefulnessnow that they didn't have before.We discover that you didn't see if Victor's rewards worked, and that you gave us another static spawn camp. So, how's TC treatin' you today?

Conclusions

The most positive response I can offer is: "At least there are three grains of wheat in this bag of chaff."

I'd like to add to your conclusions (interesting that you pluralized "conclusion" but then only provided one) by saying: It's interesting how you complain so much about testing but are totally unwilling to help make it any better. Once again, I'm not shocked that you're a TKM. I do so love your "give me the best stuff at low cost, and all rewards with no risks" attitude....... at least I love to laugh at it anyway.

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Errlor wrote:

Hell, I'm sure there are a multitude of players that would be willing to sign NDAs, pay extra monthly fees or whatever to become jedi characters on Test Center.

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Smuggler_Caylin wrote:

The "Droid Invasion" from what I can tell is a complete let-down. Droid Engineers all over are virtually crying into their hands because a Repair Droid is a better fighter than their probot apparently. It also stands to reason that misinformation concerning new chassis from your advertisement/Wallpaper would become available.

Players dreamed of having droidekas and goodness knows what else, it is now a matter of modifying your R3 or Repair droid, and even at their best, still be a less effective combatant than even a CL10 BE pet.

Brawlers have a nearly useless skill in Warcry 1&2. To keep it as a cone effect limits it's effectiveness profoundly. To make it even remotely worth it, the skill would have to become an AOE effect, instead of a cone.

Smugglers now have another worthless skill in panic shot. Thanks for your feedback and indepth responses on this matter with their profession/ (/sarcasm off)

Also, while giving content to Smugglers is nice and all, making us trash collectors for desert rats known as Jawas is not exactly the content and usefullness that we had in mind for our profession.

The best things in this patch for me are moving items in my house up and down, calling my swoop bike without Scout skills and labling sliced items upon inspection.

Other than that, I fear you have hurt more than you have helped.

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RazorBlade79 wrote:

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Smuggler_Caylin wrote:

The "Droid Invasion" from what I can tell is a complete let-down. Droid Engineers all over are virtually crying into their hands because a Repair Droid is a better fighter than their probot apparently.

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Very good post, I couldn't agree more.

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I didn't bother to read all the posts if someone posted on this.

But why the sith did you change the delay attacks? The are pointless now. Especially for TKs. Now the only thing warcry is good for is, delay and run. Because there is no other purpose for it, since once you hit them the effect is over. You say this is for crowd control, yet a TK can only hit one target with it, and it has a delay on the use of the effect itself. If you want it to be crowd control, then make it a AOE with full 360 degrees around for say 10-15m. That will actually make it crowd control. Because if the TK hits one single target with it, they can't hit anyone else with it, and the rest of the "crowd" can still hit them.

So if you wish to leave delay attacks like warcry so they cancel when attacked, then

1. take off the delay for usage.

2. make them a "true" AOE espcially for Melee classes. The smuggler one can be a cone, since at range you are able to reach the wider part of the cone and get more of the "crowd", but it should be a decent sized cone say 60-70 degrees.

I don't use the term nerf willy nilly, and constantly tell others what it really means compared to a change. But you guys actually did nerf the delay attacks on this update.

Need an option to rename the vendors without destroying them.

Need an option to remove vendors from global map advertising without destroying them.

Need an option to remove maintenance from houses.

Add the following titles to professions:

Add Bounty huntress

Add Huntress

Change Rifleman to Rifleperson

Change Pikeman to Pikeperson

Change Swordsman to Swordsperson

Change Foreman to Foreperson

Enough of the macho thing

Increase Exp for merchant professions.

Disable all schematics made the day after pub7 especially schematics from Armorsmith/Weaponsmith.

DO NOT fix thisby releasingubber new resources. This won't work this time.

Allow Jedi to sense incoming danger. If rangers can, Jedi can...

Jedi should have their +25 terrain negotiation. If Luke could jump from cliff to cliff on Dagobba like a chimpanzee then it means he had +50 terrain negotiation

Lightsabershould bea mix of Kinetic + Heat + Energy damage type.

Replace the crystals component with something that only jedi can get. Like a very rare crystal that only They can survey and sample once. The spawn could disapear right after it's been sampled.

Or increase the number of crystal spawns to drop the price on them....enough instant lottery for now.

Change the way to unlock to Quests systems.

In the next Revamp, do not remove second force character on same server for those who already unlocked. Because that's the reason we worked for it. (to have 2 char on the same server)

Do not give that force char to newly created accounts or those who did nothing to get it...common sense.