Development Cycle Archive

TH

Thanks for answering my post. At least I know now what is going on. The hard part is that customers have come to accept 4 sockets and even demand 4 sockets in their clothing, especially BE clothing. Now it is much harder to get 4 sockets, which to me is okay since I will simply start double for 4 socketed clothing, but I gotta say that now players are perceiving this as a nerf and are now auctioning off 4 socketed clothing.. or will be shortly.

I am just going to start pricing different and make player pay more for more sockets.

What is the outlook/timeline for the professions that need fixing, the combat rebalance WON'T fix? For example if the Profession works OK as it is, but just isn't especially appealing, unique or useful such as Ranger. Or how about the example of Pistoleer, where most of our specials don't work and or are redundant useless, and underpowered balance wise. These two examples alone are not things that the combat rebalance will change anything for. Esepcially when talking about combat professions like Pistoleer. It has been in its current state since day one of the game. That's nine months.

I understand there a lot of professions that need revamping, and updating. And I understand that the team was under the gun because they HAD to get out the player cities, mounts and vehicles in the first 6 months. I understand that problems/bugs come up that are hot items that need to be taken care of.

But I look at things like the letter from someone at SOE giving a tentative schedule for the next several publishes. The only profession mentioned in that list is Squad Leader. I find that truely truely sad that with all the extra work on the new stuff, you can't find the time to fix what was not made correct in the first place.

I'm biased when it comes to pistoleer because I am one. And I have not done many professions. Actually pretty much what I have now is what I have done in the game, with a little time in brawler. The point is your teams were able to crank out 3 large componentsin a few month,that were complex and effected the entire game. Player cities, mounts and vehicles. Now after that masterful feat, I don't buy it one second that you can go back to code that is already there and rework it to fix these broken professions. I know it sux to rework something you already did, that you spent so much time on. It's much more fun to work on new stuff that is exciting and cool, and makes the crowds go wild. But you really need to clean up your mess that you left behind.

Please start telling us that you will be looking at broken/useless professions and actually doing some work. Not just gathering data, asking the coorespondants for info and feed back, making us all think you are actually opening the source code. I'm talking about "OK gang, in July we are actually looking at AND working on XXXX profession. We hope to have some changes hitting test by end of August." Is that so hard?

Please respond to the Ranger community with some actual feedback and give us at least some timetable as to when we can see some form of a revamp and what changes and improvements are being considered, if any.

At the very least, tell us, straight up, that currently Rangers are not being looked at and that no changes are expected now or anywhere in the near future(ie not until well after the space expansion).

Asking us to resubmit the same top 5s over and over again without ever even getting any feedback seems pointless. I honestly feel, after having been made specific promises back in August then having all our changes halted and put on hold with little or no communication since September, that Rangers at the very least deserve to be told, up front, the honest truth about where we stand on the dev development schedule.

I'd rather be told "you are going to have to wait at least 6 to 8 months more" then you turn you energy to the professions who do have improvements coming, than see our energy and your time wasted when nothing is going to be done anyway for months.

At least give us some sort of honest answer. Rangers deserve it, even if the truth is painfully blunt(which I am guessing it is which is why you have been avoiding us in the first place for endless months after making us promises).

TH,

I have a question. Due to things I am not allowed to discuss at the moment I can't ask it. I can say however

that when I get my thoughts balanced it should clear things up so I can ask it. I am not sure when I will get my

thoughts balanced but it should be soon. Sorry I can't disclose more and ask my question now. Hang in there though

my questions get better each publish. If you could get together with some of your friends and come up with a list of answers I

might be able to ask a few more questions.

Terry

Hmmmmm... my first post here on those boards.

Been playing avidly since November and allow me to do a quick recap on how things evolve.

THINGS ARE GOING WRONG AT AN INCREASED PACE.

To me its clear the marketing guys look to push out new content and are more interested in selling the upcoming space expansion then in fixing problems. ("Give them a few new tasks every month to keep 'em busy" - and PAYING....) They fail to realise that large parts of the community are getting really upset with the total ignorance of large parts of the players concerns.

We like to have new dungeons and expansions, new quests etc. but plz start at last to realise that more then anything else WE WANT BUGFIXES.- address and repair the "core bugs" and tons of annoying smaller bugs before putting even more effort and money into adding new stuff.

As a project manager working in the game industry and creator of a rather large gaming community I dare to say I know what Im talking about. I tend not to speak up too much and spam the boards with "ideas" no one will listen to anyways, but guys you are REALLY taking SWG into the wrong direction.

Someone once said that SWG is a 2nd generation MMORPG, but that 3rd gen MMORPGs are already lurking through the door. Guess you will have a hard time if some good brand comes up with a rather solid engine.... and I hate to say more people seem to be leaving then coming already.

Dont get me wrong - I love SWG and to me its a milestone for the massive multiplayer scene. But maybe it was just too - ambitious. The complexity of interaction and the sheer unbelievable amount of content seems to be no longer manageable by the devs. And instead of trying to fix everything before taking the next step they keep pushing out "add-ons".

Last word of advice before I shut up: every new line of code adds new bugs.

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SmakU-Awound wrote:

Frenzied Graul and Bull Rancors are not even spawning anymore as far as most of us can tell

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I do a lot of hunting on dathomire. Mostly in the area of 2000m south of the imperial prison since there's generally nobody around there at all. I like taking on rancors and nightsisters and have to say that in the past week I've stumbled across 3 lairs with bull rancor babies. I used to be a CH and know that people like these but my /tell's to people on dathomir go unanswered.

As for frenzied graul, i've only run into graul lairs twice since august on dantooine. That planet needs to be beefed up with spawns. My cries of alderaan act 2 was on dantooine and it took me 2 hours to get from the agrro outpost to the rebel captain because of voritors killing me. I don't think I was able to go more than 50m without having to stop and make sure nothing was stalking me. I go there now and feel like I own the place.

Please Dev's, increase the spawn rates of animals on the advanced planets. For as tough as they should be, they are not tough at all.

It used to be that you couldn't move on Lok for spawns, you had to be very careful moving about in case you got aggroed. Now I'm lucky to see more than 3 lairs over 2km.

I'm just curious so follow my train of though, however strange it might sound.

I went to Lok in late september. /who returned an abridged list of 32 players. The cantina was hopping with a band and I was attacked twice by some odd creature between the starport and the front gates to Nym's stronghold.

A walk over the hills north of the starport lead me to a battlefield of players, creatures and what felt like walking into the middle of hell. Within 30 seconds I was sent to clone, I was not master of any combat and died as one should.

Then after vehicles I went back and nothing. I did a /who andreturned like 6 players.As you say, I could walk 2-3000m without a single spawn. I went yesterday afternoon and happened upon a driodeka spawn which was cool, and a handful of pirates. It seems that they are spawning fine, but to find creatures on Lok is impossible. a /who returned just myself.

I run into a fair number of creature spawns on Endor, though I'd like it bumped up about 50%. Last trip there /who returned usually the cap of 32 players or slightly less.

Dathomir has parts that spawn a lot and then there are areas that are deserted. /who tends to return 10 players at any given time except weekends where it can cap at 32.

Yavin almost always has the 32 player cap cause of the geo cave and the creature spawns are high. I can't walk more than 30m without another lair spawning and something stalking me.

Now my point being, is the number of creature spawns directly proportional to the number of players on a given planet? Because to me it certainly seems that way.

If that is the case, then can we get the numbers that calculate that proportion adjusted for the current player location shift?

So, TH, another "mini-publish" has come and gone, and the following three issues have, yet again, not been addressed:

1. Mounts no longer autofollow their masters

2. Mount HAM bars do not update when they're stimmed or do their tricks

3. Creatures and droids spawning when called at a distance of 0 meters; multiple creatures spawning on exactly the same place.

When will these three bugs introduced in publish 6 be fixed?