Development Cycle Archive

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Vampiric_Hoshi wrote:

As much as a mining profession would be cool for people that like to mine, you would have to take into consideration the amount of crafters currently in-game that have used up their skill points in mastering their elite profession and (in my case as a DE) mastering the Artisan profession and trying to get SOME combat skills and are now relying on their own means of getting resources because of the greadyness of miners raising the cost of resources to extortionate prices.

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I don't think there is any risk of SOE completly nerfing crafters by taking away resource gathering completly.

Miners, however, would be much more efficient. The total quantity of resources could easily be adjusted downward to compensate for new input from Miners by reducing the spawn concentrations.

Some resources might be only available to Miners, or spawn at such low concentrations that only they could sample them. The former would keep the Miner from renting lots from others, the latter would give the Miner a huge market advantage before the spawn became known, and great prices once it was.

Refineries are a whole unexplored area. I had real trouble explaining to my kids why ore could not be made into metal. They expected to mine ore, and have me refine it into the products I needed.

The space expansion might make room for the profession. It must take special skills to mine asteroids. Spacecraft may need new, Miner only, resources. Nobody gets nerfed, but the new content requires the new skills.

If the Droid Invasion goes as I want, you won't need those combat skill points so badly. You will have a combat droid as a guard to protect you from those kreetles and Desert Demons while you service your harvester.

I havent gotten a chance to read all of this yet but i have an issue i would like to discuss. Plz if anyone has any information about this subject plz post for me.

At the moment i am a master carbineer + bounty hunter carbines 3 + novice medic... I am very concerned with the ham costs that I am suffering for my special attacks. The carbineer profession just seems to not work anymore. Chargeshot 1 and 2 are broken, Full Auto Area seems to not be working, Wildshot2 doesnt work, Im sorry if im a pain but im really suffering pvp issues from this. What exactly are you future plans for carbineer specials. I hear unconfirmed rumors that wildshot 1 and 2 are going to have added dizzy effects along with fixing the special overall. I also hear that chargeshot 2 will be fixed, is this true as well? but most importantly i am VERY concered with my HAM costs... will they be lowered in the near future

Here are some questions i have listed so it can be easily answered...

1. Is it too good to be true or are those cheap combat templates finally being removed. It makes pvp very unballanced and some people unhittable or unkillable.

2. Are carbine HAM costs being lowered or is it just another kick in the balls for a carbineer. I really cannot deal with the HAM costs since i use 3 specials and am almost drained of action.

3. Will carbineers get their own dizzy attack such as Wildshot, i highly reccomend this since dizzy is our only weapon against most TKM or melee characters. I believe it would be nice to have Wildshot1 dizzy a single target and WIldshot2 dizzy an area of targets.

4. Are carbineer specials getting fixed? WIll Chargeshot2 finally work and kd an area of people.

5. And my last question, how come fencers have dizzy moves but no knockdown moves? That is odd if you ask me... Might it be possible to give them a kd move.

As u can see im trying to be quite fair about this, im not asking to make carbineer some superclass i just want to make things a bit more even. I think there is alot of ways to even out the pvp system you have set up and i would love to speak to a dev about it one day on TC. Thank you for ur time.

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Thunderheart wrote:

Actually Im a big fan of the miner profession. I wrote several monster posts during beta and fought hard to keep it in the game way back when. Its something that players and devs want alike, but there is a really difficult balance issue to consider at this point.

Miners mine (go figure ). That basically translates into, "survey, place harvester" Sure, there are lots of other secondary skills that could be added to make the miner class more interesting, but their main focus is pulling resources from the ground. As it stands, there is as much resource pulling as the game economy can handle and in essence, its a redundant profession.

There are alternatives for sure, but its something that wont be considered until a lot of other current activities are completed.

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Good evening Thunderheart

I, and a LOT of fellow Creature Handlers would love it if you could please clarify your 30 sec pet calling restriction that is suppose to take the place of camps.

As it stand now a CH cannot call a pet durning combat or 60 secs following combat. Even though a MBH with a novice homemaker tag and a CDEF pistol can macro his armor and scatter pistolin a click of a botton in the middle of combat most CH are willing to accept not being able to switch our "weapon".

However, A LOT of CH are under the impression that not only can we **NOT** call/store a pet 60 sec after combat (something we are fine with) but we will have to wait another 30 secs when we do call a pet in the wild. So, even if we are **not** in combat (or have been within the last minute) we have to wait 30 secs for our pet to appear???

I truely hope I can report back to the CH forum that this is NOT correct.

Please keep in mind not only the above MBH example but also the fact that in cities we can already call pets at will (excluding the 60 sec combat timer). I have not as of yet seen any exploits as a result of this.

Also note that pending the completion of the combat re-balancing CH pets are 100% worthless in PvP. Even our biggest, badest, BE pets fall within 10-20 secs from MTK using their kd/dizzy combo or MC using their flame dots.

In PvE pets are only usefully as "bio-armor" and once you have any decent combat skills pets tend to just get in the way.

What I'm trying say, on behalf of many of my CH brother, our class has taken enough hits from the nerf bat. We are bruised, battered, and are feeling under appreciated. Our specials are broken, our pet market is gone, are pets are gimped, and our rare baby we were promised are so RARE that 99% of us NEVER saw one, and now we are getting hit with another TIME SINK???? We already have to wait 60 secs even though no other combat class has to wait 60secs to switch their weapons!!!!

ThunderHeart, would you please take the time to clarifythis issue for the CH community.

Thank you

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Thunderheart wrote:

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FumblerMJM wrote:

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Thunderheart wrote:

Soon. Its high on the list- - I think maybe we'll be able to get "up and "down" at least added to publish 7. The schedule is still firming up but it looks pretty good.

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Cool, now if we could just get working lamps/light sources for our houses and shops!

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Well the lamps themselves is kind of tricky. A "glow" spot has to be added and an ambient light source and it takes a lot of involvement. WhatI were able to do was focus on "ambient lighting" in general. What Im hoping will happen is we'll get a switch on our main housing control panel and it will have "bright, medium and dim" or something similar and the lighting levels through out the house will be effected.

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for lamps why can't you guys just get a torch... take away the flame... take away the crackling noise... take away the smoke... voila... you've got a lamp...

in other words use the lighting mechanism in torches but cut out everything else... the light that torches give off is very soothing but I hate the other stuff...

thanks

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Zuulann wrote:

Here are some questions i have listed so it can be easily answered...

1. Is it too good to be true or are those cheap combat templates finally being removed. It makes pvp very unballanced and some people unhittable or unkillable.

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Its true. Part of the combat balance will remove all of these unbalances.

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2. Are carbine HAM costs being lowered or is it just another kick in the balls for a carbineer. I really cannot deal with the HAM costs since i use 3 specials and am almost drained of action.

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Yep. This too is part of the combat balance. The new HAM work is underway as we speak.

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3. Will carbineers get their own dizzy attack such as Wildshot, i highly reccomend this since dizzy is our only weapon against most TKM or melee characters. I believe it would be nice to have Wildshot1 dizzy a single target and WIldshot2 dizzy an area of targets.

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Try not to get hung up on specials as they are. Everything is going to be tweaked and balanced. Some may stay the say and some many not. Things will be changed so that combat roles are more defined and those changes are down the road a bit.

As it applies specifically to your example, TKM and melee characters will have a different balance, though I would add that all combat professions have a vulnerability. No profession is invulnerable and all professions have strong points and weak points.

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4. Are carbineer specials getting fixed? WIll Chargeshot2 finally work and kd an area of people.

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Carbineer specials are getting fixed as part of the combat balance. I dont know about Area KD's though. Its going to depend on how the PvP balance is going to shake out.

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5. And my last question, how come fencers have dizzy moves but no knockdown moves? That is odd if you ask me... Might it be possible to give them a kd move.

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Because knockdown, while a very cool move in theory is very exploitable. In rapid succession, its used to pin players down and create many situations where players can't get back up. The devs are working on a compromise to keep KDs in, but not in a way where it can be exploited so badly.

The team met on the new HAM today and some exciting progress has been made. As soon as I have a good feel for when its going to TC, Ill let you know.

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Thunderheart wrote:

As it stands, there is as much resource pulling as the game economy can handle and in essence, its a redundant profession.

There are alternatives for sure, but its something that wont be considered until a lot of other current activities are completed.

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I do not think it would add that more resources. (This is assuming that the existing harvesters were left in place and miners were given certification for new uber harvesters)

The miners themselves will not produce much more resources than the average players so long as miners were also given the ability to refine their resources. This would offset the increased mining capacity of miners since the refining process would reduce the actual volume of resources produced.

Since refined resources would produce superior quality goods, crafters would stop mining their own resourses, and get there materials from miners. Even if all crafters immediately adopted the mining class, the resources still would not go up significantly because players would not have enough lots to operate the uber harvesters, refineries, factories and shops all at once.

In fact the only non-miners harvesting resources would be those harvesting for training sessions. (aka grinding) Therefore, if carefully implemented, a miner profession would actually REDUCE the number of resources out there.

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Oculus wrote:

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Thunderheart wrote:

Actually Im a big fan of the miner profession. I wrote several monster posts during beta and fought hard to keep it in the game way back when. Its something that players and devs want alike, but there is a really difficult balance issue to consider at this point.

Miners mine (go figure ). That basically translates into, "survey, place harvester" Sure, there are lots of other secondary skills that could be added to make the miner class more interesting, but their main focus is pulling resources from the ground. As it stands, there is as much resource pulling as the game economy can handle and in essence, its a redundant profession.

There are alternatives for sure, but its something that wont be considered until a lot of other current activities are completed.

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Yes, I remember your posts and I agreed with most of them.

However, I don't agree that a miner profession would be redundant. The harvesting abilities in Artisan should remain more or less the same. Nobody wants resource prices to go through the roof. Yes one part of a miner profession would of course be the ability to "survey, place harvester" more efficiently, with additional lots for harvesters, increased extraction rates, reduced maintenence fees and off-planet survey droids ( did I just make up a new utility droid? ), but, a miner would also be a crafting profession, with the ability to experiment with and manipulate existing resources, refine resources into other resources and so on and so on. There are a lot of great sugesstions out there but you know that.

Maybe miner is just misleading, how 'bout Resource-Engineer

I do appreciate you taking the time to comment on it though, especially since it sounds like it might happen, eventually, in a galaxy far far away

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Sure I miss the ideas of the farmer and miner a lot myself. (I also miss the activity of "just kicking things around" like in the old days, but in this position, I can't afford to project things that really arent being considered and I have to focus on "whats on the plate" as Blair would say...

There are lots of ideas for sure, but right now, the team is focused on the Combat balance, the GCW, the Jedi Revamp, Correspondent/CSR issues, the publish theme, getting the existing professions improved and the dungeons. Brand new stuff is going to be a ways off for sure. I do like the idea of a "resource engineer" though.

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Thunderheart wrote:

There are lots of ideas for sure, but right now, the team is focused on the Combat balance, the GCW, the Jedi Revamp, Correspondent/CSR issues, the publish theme, getting the existing professions improved and the dungeons.

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I understand, it is on the back burner. And it has to be because the issues you are addressing are more important to the majority of players. But please don't forget that some of us want to play an economic strategy game in SWG. (Yes, I am going to beat this horse again) It is actually important to gameplay for all players too.

I already posted this once in this thread... hope nobody minds if I post again... there is no '/bump'

also someone posted right after my post saying 'this has already been answered in other threads' but I'm not sure if that was directed at my post and I still don't know the answer...

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TH, can you explain this please?

from the Test Center Patch Notes:
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Skedoozy wrote:

I have a question..

With everything being balanced for PVP doesnt this leave the people who don't PVP out in the cold? While you make sure PROFESSION A can't destory 10PROFESSION B'sin PVP you are also making sure that PROFESSION A is going to be destroyed in PvE. You guys keep balancing things for PVP and making PVE more and more unbalanced. I know it's hard to tell but a lot of people don't play this game just to PVP.

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Thats a good question. Thats why there is a focus on getting the dungeons in. Also, a lot of the correspondent issues are non-combat/PvE enhancing.

One thing to consider is that the Combat Balance is just as important to PvE as it is PvP. The combat balance all by itself solves almost 40% of the Correspondent issues.

(fwiw, roughly 15% of players are engaged in PvP though that number fluctuates a bit).