Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)
I would like to second this...
Riis wrote:
REPOST:
From the chat at Stratics....
"[17:49] [TH] Im happy to announce that in publish 8, shuttleport waits will all be 5 minutes and players will be able to travel from anyplanet to anyplanet. We are currently discussing the details of reducing the starport times."
I am in strong opposition to the second half of this statement.The five minute thing is fine, I guess, but taking away transit centers is wrong-headed, short-sighted and ruins the already fragile feel of "place" in the game.
Coronet starport has a feel of a bustling major hub of transit. By making it a center of trade and transport, I get the feel that perhaps (if I squint my eyes right), I am walking down the famed Treasure Row, filled with the wares of the galaxy, exotic aliens, and strange happenings. I know that if I want to travel the galaxy, I need to travel - go from place to place, taking time and effort. Allowing teleportation from Lok to Talus, while a great idea for the short-sighted who wish only to make things easier, takes away from the majesty of travel through a giant galaxy. Simply put, the drive toward lower risk, easier play, and convienience has driven away customer after customer that looks for a challenge. Now, shuttle time reduction -- it's hard to argue against that, but putting in that one thing should be your first step. Should you decide to make things even easier on the players, then the "Outer Rim is no longer Outer Rim" attitude can prevail.
I oppose this change ("able to travel from anyplanet [sic] to anyplanet [sic].") on the grounds of:
- Takes away from the Star Wars feeling of galactic scale and travel.
- Removes natural congregation places that are trading hubs.
- Removes the character of cities (even more) by taking away natural transit stops (Outer Rim is sparse, Core and Colonies are busy).
- While AFK macroers are bad (but required by your system of trade - another sore spot), having bustling trade centers are good. Transit choke points, that are continuity based, is better than how you gated successful player cities into being on popular POIs, ruining the feel of wilderness in places like the Krayt Graveyard...
As you continue to review this topic for Publish 8, you will likely see me revisit this idea in numerous threads. I tend to choose causes that are not championed by the average l33t d00d forum goer (like my current #1 - backpacks as storage and armoires not as storage), but this one is going to become a major issue with me.
Let the Core/Colonies Planets be what they are. Transit hubs. Trade hubs.
Let the Outer Rim be what is should be. Sparsely populated and hard to get to.
RbT
Thunderheart wrote:
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.
Thunderheart, this is a really big issue. Check with Bajeezus, when you have a chance. Here is the short version:
Incumbent mayor goes inactive/gets banned. New Mayor runs against the incumbent, and needs 51% of the votes. Problem is - if you have a metropolis with over 85 citizens, the odds are at least half of those citizens areprobably inactive players, and it might take few weeks before they get a chance to vote. All votes from inactive palyers automatically go to incumbent. Meanwhile, the city continuous to run on auto run. If militia still active, they can grant zoning rights to each other. Players can donate cash to city treasury. Other than that - the city is on auto-pilot. The new mayor hopeful has following options:
- Wait for 6 weeks while inactive players will be removed from city. 6 weeks is a long time ...
- recruit more people. need to have active militia members to place their houses
- try CSRs. They wont interfere, unless the situation is serious (like mayor being banned)
To make matters worse - this scenario is still possible even if the incumbent mayor is still active. In other words - there is no way to resign from Mayor position. And there is no way to remove inactive Mayor from office.
Any word of this being fixed?
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.
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.
Ok. I just thought I remembered reading it in some patch notes.
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 a very poor answer considering that CSR's are never fast. My guild put in tickets as our bases were being shot, took screenshots and sent them to Taurin, and the players who were doing it are still playing. Amazing what you can get away with. What would be the correct thing to do in a case where players were destroying your base with an exploit?
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?
Sometimes I wonder if we are playing the same game, then I realize that I play pvp and you don't. Due to stun damage being a vulnerability in armor, almost everyone uses a stun damage weapon in pvp. I can only guess this is the way the designers wanted it. My question was more of a "is there a way other than stun layered composite to stop stun damage and is it the design of the game that any profession that doesn't have a stun damage weapon be worthless in pvp? Things have gotten worse since the Geno blaster came out. That thing would be a decent pistol no matter what type of damage it did. Using Last Ditch with it on other players is very unbalanced.
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 guy who posted and said a large cross server citizen trade works is right."Everyone has to vote" is the problem. You folks at SOE take the game more seriously than anyone else. Players don't vote because most of them don't understand the urgency. No different from any elections, ingame or out. A mayor needs to be able to resign and leave office.
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.
I won't insult you by directing you to JutG's most recent post. The combat balance isn't on a schedule. It'll be ready when it's ready i guess. It's just ugly when you start a fight by being poisoned by something that will take 680 mind each tick. For most of us, that means we get hit with one tick of poison and then shot in the head by a jawa rifle for the rest of our mind pool and we're down in the amount of time it takes for poison to tick once. Armor doesn't matter. Defensive skills don't matter. I guess a doctor can cure it, but guess what...it's AE so you're entire group is poisoned. A doc can't cure them all. You don't agree that this is WAY out of balance?
Do any players still use creature mounts?
Yes.
We're talking about SWG, right? I'll admit bantha's are cool, but that's the only pet i've seen out in the last 2 months. Anyone who can afford a bike, which i see on the bazaar for 6k, rides a bike. Mounts only get used by SOE employees. I guess that'd be an easy way to find a CSR in disguise. Anyone riding a dewback worksfor SOE....
What happened to the Republic Blaster cert?
It is in the Novice Pistoleer Box
The cert is listed there. I won't argue that. What's funny is that I have no pistleer skill and yet I can use this gun with no penalty and no message telling me i'm not qualified. The cert may be listed there, the combat system wasn't informed of the change.
Why are the "crackdown's" a joke to anyone over novice level?
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.
I can accept this. It's no where near enough of a hazard for players to worry about, but it sounds like you know this. Keep it up.
Where'd all the entertainers go?
To the cantina?
Which cantina? Not any that I go to. The last dregs of the hologrinders are always grouped up in one cantina on one planet. Theed, Naboo. If you'd like to test this, pick a server and then travel around to all the player cities you can get to in a night and tell me how many had working entertainers while you were there. I really want to hear your results.
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.
Well answered.
DeQuosaek wrote:
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
Galacticprophet wrote:
Heres something to discuss.... Lazy CSR's.
I am a member of a PA called DOOMon the Eclipse server. You should be familiar with it Thunderheart, afterall, the leader of DOOM is Arjunthakur, the jedi coorispondent.
Our PA hall is located in a town called Fort Krayt, right beside the krayt Valley.We, the citizens of Fort Krayt have taken it upon ourselves to ban anyone who uses the harvestor exploit on Krayts from our city.
I was on my usual daily patrol when i witnessed4 players, Vadim Ethne Deusk and kyou all attacking a krayt while it was hooked onto a harvestor. I immediately submitted a ticket and bug report and logged onto the chat channel, and ask CSR-JessicaK to come and witness the exploit, after about 5 minutes of waiting for a reply (and the room was empty, noone was chatting)she said she coulden't leave the chat. I then asked her to inform another CSR, she said to "utilize the ticket system" .....yeah..we all know how helpfull the ticket system is when it comes to exploits. I know for a fact that the CSR had the power to inform another CSR to come ingame and help, becauseihad asked befordid it befor and had gotten it.
It seems JessicaK isn't too thrilled with the CSR position and should find a job elsewher. I hope this is looked into.
BTW, she is in the general chat room now, so if you have any problem, i suggest you wait till her shift is over.
Work ethic flows from the top mate.
"1 lot will equal 75 units of storage. Working on the change and you should see it real soon. "
Q-3PO Aug 2003
Galacticprophet wrote:
Heres something to discuss.... Lazy CSR's.
I am a member of a PA called DOOMon the Eclipse server. You should be familiar with it Thunderheart, afterall, the leader of DOOM is Arjunthakur, the jedi coorispondent.
Our PA hall is located in a town called Fort Krayt, right beside the krayt Valley.We, the citizens of Fort Krayt have taken it upon ourselves to ban anyone who uses the harvestor exploit on Krayts from our city.
I was on my usual daily patrol when i witnessed4 players, Vadim Ethne Deusk and kyou all attacking a krayt while it was hooked onto a harvestor. I immediately submitted a ticket and bug report and logged onto the chat channel, and ask CSR-JessicaK to come and witness the exploit, after about 5 minutes of waiting for a reply (and the room was empty, noone was chatting)she said she coulden't leave the chat. I then asked her to inform another CSR, she said to "utilize the ticket system" .....yeah..we all know how helpfull the ticket system is when it comes to exploits. I know for a fact that the CSR had the power to inform another CSR to come ingame and help, becauseihad asked befordid it befor and had gotten it.
It seems JessicaK isn't too thrilled with the CSR position and should find a job elsewher. I hope this is looked into.
BTW, she is in the general chat room now, so if you have any problem, i suggest you wait till her shift is over.
Work ethic flows from the top mate.
"1 lot will equal 75 units of storage. Working on the change and you should see it real soon. "
Q-3PO Aug 2003
Glad you are so worried about those Krayt Dragons. Some of us just want the house storage we were promised. Not counting Aug 2003, we're about to go on 6 months for this promise.
I guess Jimmy Hoffa jokes are easier than promises. Sorry TH, just really depressed about the new features, no follow-through.
Cafa Asia
DeQuosaek wrote:
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
Have your local BE make you up a pet from Tortun Bulls (Talus) with 100% Stun Resistance.
Acutally i use an AT-ST as much as I can against riflemen or CMs. Problem is that they'll just mind pool incap me first, hangup my AT-ST on a house or harv and then come back and deathblow me.
lund0529 wrote:
DeQuosaek wrote:
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
Have your local BE make you up a pet from Tortun Bulls (Talus) with 100% Stun Resistance.