Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Rountdable Discussion (Week ending 1-10-04)
The current system of death and decay is extremely unpopular. Since its inception, I have yet to talk to a *single* person who likes or supports it.
Here are some ideas on adjusting the system so that it better serves the player community. Despite the length of this post, this is NOT a complete overhaul of the system; the adjustments I propose would actually leave the system very similar to what it is now, and could probably even be published in a hotfix rather than a monthly update.
I would like to address three points of the system:
1. Item Decay / Insurance
2. Repairing
3. Wounds / Cloning
4. Battle Fatigue.
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1. ITEM DECAY AND INSURANCE
5% item decay on death is extremely unpopular, and 1% decay with insurance is probably the most irritating thing about the current system. Proposed change: 5% item decay without insurance, *zero* item decay with insurance. Furthermore, item decay would only affect weapons and armor; clothing, crafting/repair tools, etc. should *never* decay. Insurance should cost a flat rate of 500 credits per item; this will mean that insuring all your weapons and armor will probably cost around 5000 - 6000 depending on what you have. Insuranceshould last for 7 days from purchase, or until used (i.e. the next time you die), whichever comes first. The player should be notified via email as soon as his insurance expires, in either case.
Reasoning: item decay sucks. We all hate paying tens of thousands of credits for a nice set of armor, then heading out on a hunting or PvP trip and losing 25% condition in one night. Insurance isn't terribly reliable right now; many people complain about losing insurance without ever having "used" it, even when they purchased it that same night. Note that a clone plus full insure would cost the average player some 7000 credits, and as a result would prevent *all* item decay and death wounds (see section 3, below), making it a perfect money sink (i.e. one that players are willing to actually put money into). Plus, this would revitalize PvP and bring those epic, multi-clone battles of the pre-decay days back to the game. 
2. REPAIRING
Repair tools should *never* completely destroy an item, regardless of how novice the user may be. The worst repair result ever should be 50% reduction to the item's max condition, and the best result should be 1% reduction (to allow items to "get old" and eventually have to be replaced... just not nearly as often as they do now). Master Artisans should have avery goodchance at 5% but usually get 10% reduction, while masters in the field (Weaponsmiths for weapon repairs, Armorsmiths for armor repairs, etc.) should have a very good chance at 1% but usually get 5%. To facilitate this, you could propogate a number of repair skill mods (weapon repair, armor repair, and clothing repair) throughout the Artisan skill tree, and the Weaponsmith/Armorsmith/Tailor skill trees, or just use the existing assembly and/or experimentation mods.
Reasoning: Nobody likes to repair things because, no matter how good they "should" be at it (master weaponsmith, for example) they're more than likely going to severely damage or destroy the item. Item repair shouldn't be a gamble, it should be closer to a science. If repair worked properly (as described above) then this point would also help revitalize PvP, which many people currently do *not* participate in simply because they don't want their good equipment to decay to dust.
3. WOUNDS AND CLONING
The current system of wounds on death and cloning is pretty good. 1000 credits to clone is perfectly fair. Generally, one does not acquire wounds when activating a paid clone, and does acquire around 100 wounds to each primary pool when activating at the "nearest [unpaid] cloning facility". Fair and good, keep it this way.
Reasoning: Death wounds are one of the major sources of business for medics, and many people still refuse/forget to clone, so leaving this subsystem intact will ensure the continued prosperity of medics. (No sarcasm intended, though I do realize many medics aren't exactly "prosperous". :smileysad
4. BATTLE FATIGUE
Regardless of the presence/absence of clone data and/or insurance, players should incur around 100 battle fatigue on every death. The function of battle fatigue needs to be slightly modified and made more visible. Battle fatigue should function as a negative modifier to all secondary stat pools and this modifier should appear on the character sheet in the stat pool section. Note that this is a negative modifier, not wounds, so it can still only be healed at a cantina.
Reasoning: With the above ideas, it is entirely possible, for a mere 7000 credits, to eliminate *all* the negative effects of death. This is obviously not something we want in this game, otherwise PvP battles would never, ever end. 
By accruing battle fatigue with every death, and having it adversely affect the player's secondaries, we reinstitute the needed "negative aspect". When a player dies even once (particularly in a PvP battle) his HAM regeneration will slow down and his costs will go up, making him less effective when he runs back out to rejoin the fight. After a few such deaths, the battle will eventually come to a close because all the combatants will have been rendered entirely ineffective. Of course this can be countered by dedicated medics healing the combatants, which is cool because it adds another layer of organization to PvP wars.
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Hopefully these ideas won't be too difficult to implement. I'm sure I'm not along in hoping that something even close to this suggested system will be implemented very, very soon.
That is all.
nofxslaugt wrote:
Anyway, my point is, if the poor jedi have to get a krayt pearl to make a saber, at least make that saber last a LONG time. This makes it so players who aren't rich simply can't play jedi.
jedi dont HAVE to have pearls to make lightsabers. just to make the very good ones. if you want the best, you pay like the rest.
Fishing is broke. Since the last patch the fishing interface box never appears after casting your line. I've tried with multiple characters, accounts, computers, planets and servers. Even on Test Center. It's like the mini-game just doesn't "boot up." A couple guildmates are reporting the same problem, so I went ahead and did a /bug report in game, but I just wanted to note it here as well.
I realize it's not game-breaking, but I hope it gets fixed soon. I'm fear nobody has noticed because players so rarely fish, but it's one of the things I really enjoy in the game.
A reasonable request:
Players need a more reliable method to repair armor and weapons then is currently in the game.
If I buy a high quality repair Tool I'm paying for the best possible chance to repair my items.
I have lost valuable armor and weapons using even the best quality repair tools.
The smiths are even less likely to want to repair our stuff too. They don't want to have to put up with players who just lost a 100k weapon or amor piece.
The system currently in place may be bugged , then please fix it.
ArteL wrote:
yea... this forum is completly usless...
all this "discussion" going on is now just in one huge jumbled thread, instead of one huge jumbled forum..
GREAT WORK!!
I mean... if you are gonna have a "roundtable discussion" .... what good does it do you, if the people who can make the change... ARENT EVER AT THE TABLE!!
They are idiots. It's hard to get much more contradictory than taking away the SWG Discussion forum, and then 2 days later creating a SWG Discussion thread. They're fools. And all of my worst fears are coming true... they ;ike to preach about how much something like the "In Live" forum will streamline communication, *looks around* where the hell are the devs? This is bordering on a flat out lie from them.
Wepps wrote:
A whole lot of stuff...
Wepps,
I had my beefs with you way back when, but I've come to realize that you know more about being a BH than 99% of everyone involved in the game (players, Devs, everyone). That said, even you should realize by now that anyone who is not a BH will always argue against any BH improvement, whether they're right or wrong. Hell, people will even argue against BH when they're side is all out of facts and the truth is smacking them right in the face.
The Devs are clueless. There isn't much more to it than that. My guess is that with the xoming combat "balance", they are going to completely screw every combat profession for at least a month, probably two. Do yourself a favor now and become an Architect. Harvest resources, you'll make more money in a week of harvesting than you'll ever see in 6 more months of MBH.
I guess the point of the post is to let you know that putting up all kinds of numbers and logical reasoning really amounts to nothing when the people you're talking to are braindead or similarly dumbfounded.
I got one that's not all that significant..but...
I'd like to see the top part of PA halls ( the open area outside), able to drop things such as furniture and such..
Thx
Bajor_Dit wrote:
Lately I have seen people camping "Loose Debris" "Mag Seal Containers" and the like in the static caves and bunkers. Some of these, The Borgle Bat cave inparticular, are known to spawn valuable loot such as skill tapes. The Borgle Bat cave in particular has a regular schedule, an even 30 minutes, and non-agressive mobs at its lower levels. Instead of getting harder as you go down, it actually gets easier because of the non-aggro mobs. Given this, players have been camping near the debris and using timers to always anticipate the drop of the loot.
Making this dangerous by converting the mobs near the end of the cave to aggro, or making this even hard to predict, by randomizing the spawn and mixing in other items would stop this behaviour.
I know this is a small issue, but this is an open forum, and the CSR's I talked with pointed me to the forums to publicise this issue.
I am sure there are other priorities, but please put this on the list. Thanks.
Yeah you can just loot the debris again if you wait. But I can tell you that even after looting 100+ skill tape/armor attachmentsthe best one I got out of ANY of the caves had +2 mod, but it wasn't even a good skill mod. half the loot is1 unit of resource or some cruddy weapon.Some of them were mods for stats that don't evenexist anymore, rifle crawl speed for exaple. If skill tapes stacked I'd understand, but havinga 1 pointmodin something isn't exactly game breaking. This isn't D&D so 1 point in a skill is highly diluted in actual value.
TremorArchayen wrote:
Wepps wrote:
A whole lot of stuff...
Wepps,
I had my beefs with you way back when, but I've come to realize that you know more about being a BH than 99% of everyone involved in the game (players, Devs, everyone). That said, even you should realize by now that anyone who is not a BH will always argue against any BH improvement, whether they're right or wrong. Hell, people will even argue against BH when they're side is all out of facts and the truth is smacking them right in the face.
The Devs are clueless. There isn't much more to it than that. My guess is that with the xoming combat "balance", they are going to completely screw every combat profession for at least a month, probably two. Do yourself a favor now and become an Architect. Harvest resources, you'll make more money in a week of harvesting than you'll ever see in 6 more months of MBH.
I guess the point of the post is to let you know that putting up all kinds of numbers and logical reasoning really amounts to nothing when the people you're talking to are braindead or similarly dumbfounded.
One can only try. The combat system changes coming, I'm not totally sure are completely supported with facts. That was only my attempt to point out the tremendous differences, and not only for Bounty Hunters but for all other players not using these uber-templates. Combat defenses are ridiculously high, and this will have to change.
I'm not privy to what is going on at DEV team, and I'm not making a judgement call in that arena. Just giving the facts, that's all.
1) Fix tusken fort. They shouldnt be able to agro and shoot through buildings, walls, and hillsides
2) Fix interface issues. Buttons in options not working properly, or forgetting their current settings
3) Faction missions. When you go out to save an X-Wing, or recover a droid, or what all.. Why cant that be at the site? Instead of generic, insert 3 factional cannon-fodders here, standing around a grey box.
4) Borvo the hutts krayt skull mission. I tried to complete the mission before the last patch when it was still broken. Now, thale says.. dont u have something better to do. Borvo.. talk to my guards.. guards.. shouldnt you be on correlia?
5) Loot. looting a cdef and one unit of crap minerals is kinda pointless
6) Space expansion. Have on-board ship combat. Boarding parties, escape pods, close combat.
7) More playable races. I've always wanted to play a jawa, or a droid
8) GCW Missions.. Shouldnt there be construction site on endor for the deathstar, and shield gen? It would be a really cool sight to see a partially assembled deathstar floating around endor. Even just as a POI.
9) Instead of those terrible splash screens for shuttles and loading. How about a shuttle animation?
10) Cloning centers. Why not turn them into bacta revival centers? Instead of storing clone data, you register your location so the medics can "Find" you sooner, therefor with less wounds. Cloning has continuity holes in it you could drive a truck through. Ie, how come I remember everything since i last cloned? In fact, why isnt anything have bacta in it?
11) NPC bands / Healers in the now empty non-player cities. On kettemoor tatooine, only citys that have any one in them are anchor, and bestine.
12) Star ports, cities, are empty of details. No broken droids, no other star ships in thespace ports. You can travel for 20 minutes in the wilds with out seeing anything.
13) I had a twilek slave run up to me, hand me a disk, and get gunned down by 2 storm troopers. No one knows what to do next?
14) Why can't this kind of random stuff happen more often? Small sub stories.. A little gcw action not from a terminal
15) Make content NOT = to, run, talk, run, kill something, run back, talk, run, kill, run, talk.
That is all i can think of right now.
16) Repair tools arent worth a pinch of **edit**. I've lost more gear becuase of my 99% repair kits. Even when the unit has only lost 100 condtion (900/1000), it falls apart. FIX THIS.
Its not helping the economy. I just dont buy good stuff any more. I'll buy junk off of the bazaar. abuse it, and throw it out when its done.
if a Commando hits you with a Burn dot you are DEAD, not Incaped, DEAD. you will burn from the dot (all other DOTs bleed/poison/disease you down to 1 point) and wound you(source fo the bug?) and incap you.
its not so bad getting incaped by a 1200 point burn.. the bad part is that you keep burning through both of your 2 minut long incaps, and finaly, it killes you. thus Burn = Death blow. which sucks
please fix it, thank you