Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Jedi Revamp Phase I
NULLDISTANCE wrote:
/agrees with Tavian
Yeah I was a "Tom CLancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield" Junkie and had a lot of friends from online play with it.
I pretty much bailed on 'em to come play a game that had progress... (or so I thought)
Now I'm the arse because I put my faith in this title, and neglected some good people because I was too busy grinding'
Have I made friends in this game?
sure , who hasn't?
Poor people living under a mismanaged apartment complex make friends with other folks there.
I can't recount the number of times I've made a friend or 6 in SWG by uttering some curse about some broken system out loud, anda bunch offolks have an opinion similar to mine.....Brothers in misery?
Someone earlier in this thread mentioned putting a year of maintenance in their house and taking a vacation till the geame gets out of beta.... that would be a splendid idea if all it cost to maintain your game house for a year was game credits... unfortunately the monthly subscription keeps hitting too...
Count me out.
*Puts on some BDU's and picks up a tarnished, neglectedMP-5*
N.
My situation is kinda like that. When the game first came out I had around 10 or so friends that I play with. I had played with these guys in EQ, DAoC and we then moved to SWG because of me. No one wanted to leave DAoC but I kinda pressured them and reassured them that this game will Kick ass.
A couple of us played in Beta, then when the relase came out we tried eagerly all day on June 26th to make an account. We tried for about 5 hours.... couldnt make an account because they lacked the proper planning on the subscription servers. My buddies were calling me saying **edit**?? I thought you said they had their stuff together ( stuff should be replaced by a word that isnt allowed on the forums) And I was like.. its just a small oversite... they are so busy making this game awsome that they kinda put the login/subscription server on a back burner... but I kinda knew in the back of my mind that it may be screwed up because even in the last days of beta you couldnt send any messages to anyone and group chat didnt even work... the day before they went live it didnt work. But still I believed and my friends followed me.
We all start playing together on june 27th.. those of us that could log in. Usually the connecting to galaxy screen would stay up for about 5 minutes then you would time out and have to retry it. Again my friends are saying "man this sucks" I cant even log in.. why did I give up DAoC for this? I was like dude.. think about.. we can unlock a FS slot and really roleplay in this game. It will be awsome.. just stick with it for a little while more.. it will rule.
After about 2 months of bugs like this we finally settle in and can play for a few hours without being kicked out or not being able to log in and we went up through the professions we liked and played the game "the way it should be played" We rose through the ranks of the imperial army... grouped together and did a lot of stuff together.. made some new friends on the way and it was good. We completed a lot of the content, mainly starting with the theme parks and the missions you get from numerous NPC's. Our rewards for these parks were things like a flame thrower with a min of 77 damage and a max of 120 with a speed of 6.0. So you do the theme parks and it takes you about 3 days of playing to complete them because of the bugged quests and of course no speeder bikes everything is done by foot and again my friends are like.. this sucks.. we waste 3 days on this park and get the biggest piece of crap weapon.. and of course I am like.. trust me.. SOE will not let us down. It will get better.
Then after the holocrons came out and it started telling people to master certain professions me and my friends started hanging around dantooine to kill FS mobs. We tried the jedi caves but my god it was so camped and people KS'ing and cursing each other and ninja looting it was just untolerable. They makeholocron drops, that are in direct link with the most sought after profession in the game in the smallest cave in the game. Wow that was ingenius... at this point the player community started falling apart which is something you dont want in any MMORPG. So we hunt the areas around the caves for the random FS mobs and looted a holo. So we just went on to play the game as we had been.. and it was pretty fun. Then on November 7th the first FS character was made. This gave us all hope that you could unlock the slot. We started mastering different professions at this point. It was pretty obvious that mastering professions had something to do with the opening the slot. Hell we had done almost everything else in the game so we thought we had that part down. I mean doing other things besides mastering professions would have to have something to do with it. Or so we thought.
After a couple of months or rackign our brains trying to figure out a pattern/method to unlock, me and a friend of mine found that40 out of the first50 jedi and accumulated right around 10 million experience. So we did the 10 million exp thing and it didnt unlock. So we were like well they had 10 million exp and other stuff. So we went out and made colonel in our respective factions, made sure we had residence, made sure we visited every city and completed atleast one mission from every city.. most cities have those delivery missions and you get that neat little pen without ink. So we visited every city, did a mission from each one, visited every battlefield, went to the bottom of every cave/dungeon, every bunker, camped the hero and intellect badges, completed every theme park ( one of my friends that made colonel in the imp army actualy resigned and became rebel so he could do the rebel theme park. And of course made sure we did the dark jedi mission on dant and the dark jedi missions at the imp prison on dath. Went ahead and completed the stupid Kistar quests in entha because you get Anakins old pod racing helmet ( i mean that should count something towards it right? ) To say the least we tried about everyting and still we didnt open... then the falling out began....
We then just started mastering random professions.. my buddy somehow looted a holocron and he used it and it was silent.. he has mastered around 9 profesisions.. he was happy... he knew he was close now. He then gave the holo to me and it was silent for me, I had mastered around 7 professions at that time.. So I was very excited. We then just kinda seperated and starting going our seperate ways, because it just takes too long to master these professions with someone else. It cuts out on exp and you have to do it as quickly as possible. So a couple of our friends quit and started playing DAoC again. But there was a couple of us still grinding away and trying to keep each other motivated to keep playing. Me and my last friend.. ( i went from 10 in the beginning to having 1 left ) just kept grinding.... then a month ago he quit. He just couldnt take it anymore after he got into the 20+ club he called it quits. I am still playing and chose to do what I always wanted to do from the beginning which was BH. Doing BH in the beginning was just too time consuming to master when you could complete 10 professions in the time it took to get up the investigation line. I was actually 2,4,4,4 BH when I started grinding the professions.. so I dropped it all to do the profession crap. So when they said we would be compensated I just decided to quit the profession stuff and do something fun for once. Since I have 20+ professions I will be compensated like they had stated. I felt comfortable with that.
Now from reading the last few posts it is becomig clear that we may not be compsentated for our work. I talked to a CSR and they said they only track profession mastery for a short time. They couldnt tell me if I had mastered DE when the game first came or not since so much time had passed. This got me to really start thinking about the compensation part.. how could they compensate? They cant track everything you had done. So now I am at the point to where if all of my work so far as been in vain, then I am really, really, really done with this game.
So what do I have far?
1.) No friends due to profession grinding, I log in alone and logout alone
2.) No compensation for all I have done.playing 3 hours a day mon - thurs and 6 hours on friday and of course all day saturday and sunday. A lot of time wasted there.
3.) 91 badges ( this sure means a lot )
4.) Spent440 dollars since last June to play. I have 2 accounts
Where will I be when publish 10 comes out? Probably in the same pool as someone that had been given 4 holo's from a friend when they started about 2 weeks before the publish comes out, the same person that has only mastered 4 starting professions and has done nothing else. At that point its a no brainer... you just quit. I mean if you rent a horrible movie and watch the first 20 minutes and it just sucks beyond comprehension you simply hit stop.
It would seem the devs would answer some of these basic questions to keep a loyal part of their player base. I would say I am loyal to have been playing since beta. I havent played any other games since this came out. All of my gaming time has been given to them and they cannot answer a few simple questions. I dont get it... They are changing the system which is good. Mastering random professions is just crazy. I really dont see how they could not see that it would cause a lot of problems. In every dev statement before the game came out they talked about how they would measure a lot of things. They had 3 years to iron it out and the most important profession in the game was implemented without being tested externally, and the way to obtain it can be coded in about 1 minute. If I was the lead game designer on this I would have put more work into this piece.
Am I whining? I really dont think so. I think I am very aggravated with the communication this far.. thats actually what I am most concerned with is the communication from the dev team to the player base. I can overlook a lot of this stuff and be pretty happy if I just had some information. If they said, hey we cannot track your previous professions and your only going to be compensated for those 4 professions, I could live with that, I wouldnt like it.. but I wouldnt cancel. If they said came out and said anything and it was truthful and straight forward I could accept pretty much anything they said and support them and try to help in any way I could.
If you get pulled over buy a cop and you had been drinking and the cop says " how much have you had to drink tonight" are you going to be completely honest and divulge the information? In most cases no.... you would probably get a lawyer and the cop/judge or whatever would not find out the correct information for a long time... or they may never get the correct information. I would imagine they are trying to hide the truth because it would cause a serious uproar and result in many, many cancelled accounts. Plus by being secretive about it they still have the money making potential. If they have 200K people paying 14.95 dollars a month until the July patch..they will make a few million. I guess I am done... So tired and just rambling.. take it for what its worth.. but this is why I am so aggravated. Will this post make any difference? Nope.. but I wasnt playing while I was writing this so it wasnt a complete waste of time.
First off i would like to SCREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i think the game will be ruined if the they go through with the new revamp. I have been playing for over a year (took about a 3 month break) but none the less i have been an avid and deticated player to this game.If people do not want to be a jedi and continue down a certain path, that should be their chioce. Just think of how many people that are gonna be runnng around with light sabers after doing a quest that someone else might have helped them out on......Of how many people that are going to be a jedi and nothing else and the people that are going to have a sniper and or a combat medic skill with their jedi......all on the same charactor. Is soe trying to ruin the game?
PvP is already pointless beacause of the mix of combat medic and headshot with master sharpshooter.....come on people thats way unfair and ridiculous....to even try to PvP anymore is a waste of time cause people pick the same crap and then they think they are superior cause they can take out your mind...bla..bla..bla
I HAVE SOME DEEP ISSUES WITH THIS GAME.....Like having an at-st which is cool......but when a sniper can waste a bounty hunter and an at-st with a head shot is %@*^ing stupid .....machines shouldn't have a mind pool to begin with..
Somtimes i wonder why there are so many professions available to use and only a few are even used due to pvp cause the others are worthless in pvp...
To get to my point that JEDI should be rare and a game should have sence of accomplishment like the Jedi should have...so are u trying to say that the last year i have spent holo grinding and playing an average of 10 hours or more a day is all for NOTHING....now there are quests to be a jedi? @%#^ &#%^ ^ &%^$ &$
the game will lose its flair when u see everyone and their dog running around with a light saber...not to mention if they can keep it on the same char. they will have mind shot and mind poison?sigh...sigh.....sigh
I think doing this the game will be ruined and dont hink ill want to play it anymore.......
I think i'm done ranting for now.
Merxion_Levoy wrote:
One very simple question I am part of the people who have grinded 20+ professions. You said before there would be compensation for that in the new system. What is that compensation?
We get to do the quest system. This is the wonderful, beautiful world of this game... we will have no idea for months after the publish what the change was or how far we are into the quest system. But what does that matter? By the time you get fed up and quit due to lack of communication.... they have already squeezed another4 or5 months of money out of you.
Imec1976 wrote:
Man, I'm so sick of the people who have no job or school who **edit** about this game not being perfect. This is a game, not life, people. The devs are HUMAN, they make mistakes and do their best to correct them. It's time to give the casual gamer some help and open FS to all. Its been a YEAR!!! Equal the playing field for those of us who play this GAME and have lives.
neelong wrote:
[alot]
So what do I have far?
1.) No friends due to profession grinding, I log in alone and logout alone
2.) No compensation for all I have done.playing 3 hours a day mon - thurs and 6 hours on friday and of course all day saturday and sunday. A lot of time wasted there.
3.) 91 badges ( this sure means a lot )
4.) Spent440 dollars since last June to play. I have 2 accounts
[alot more]
I totally agree. That was a damned good post and aside from being a rebel and that all my RL friends who I convinced to play with me quit after the first month to return to DAoC, we have the same story. I still feel like a moron for waiting at my EB for the shipment to come in with my reserved collector's edition only to get home and not be able to log in because the braintrust at Sony decided that folks wouldn't actually try to log in on launch day. My friends (whom I had already warned after playing beta for 2 months that the game was at least 6 months from ready for launch) called me and cursed me for insisting they buy the game.
We should form a support group or something. I wonder of a nicotine patch will break my need for SWG.
- Make new Jedi choose a faction at character creation and they stick to this faction. This would balance the sides by roughly making them equal in size instead of forcing Jedi to all start out as rebels.
- Dont force Jedi to pvp in order to gain experience but highly encourage it. I agree that the greatest limiting factor of the Jedi population should be other Jedi and knowing this you should put several things in place to encourage Jedi pvp. These could include:
- Allow Jedi to sense other Jedi through the force. Example would be If Im standing at the starport I could use this power that would give me a tef but it would also reveal all opposite aligned Jedi. Would also be an interesting concept by allowing Jedi to work much like a faction scanner with the ability to reveal covert people of the opposite faction.
- Give Jedi faction points that they can purchase Jedi specific items such as upgraded lightsaber schematics, pearls / crystals, Jedi clothing, sith warswords, jedi skill attachments, Jedi padawan faction pets etc.. This faction could be earned by doing Jedi specific faction missions much like the normal player faction missions or by actively hunting other Jedi. The main difference is that the reward for killing faction npcs vs. killing player Jedi would be much like the reward that bh's get for killing player Jedi.
- Give Jedi missions where they can track an opposing Jedi much like BH's but this would be by using the force. The reward would be faction and massive amounts of xp to those that help take down the Jedi.
- Give Jedi massive xp on killing a Jedi of the opposite faction.
- Allow Jedi to sense other Jedi through the force. Example would be If Im standing at the starport I could use this power that would give me a tef but it would also reveal all opposite aligned Jedi. Would also be an interesting concept by allowing Jedi to work much like a faction scanner with the ability to reveal covert people of the opposite faction.
If these changes were implemented it would encourage Jedi to pvp but not limit the xp to pvp only.
I think it's very important for the development team to acknowledge the community's concerns in this matter, as these concerns lie with time and effort invested in players' characters -- sometimes many months of time and effort. (Some may say this is an overly large amount of effort and attachment put into a mere game, but any mmog that does not have the ability to engage and immerse its players to that degree would be a very unsuccessful game.) A blanket response that no questions will be answered makes light of this and is both patronizing and belittling.
This is not a change to an existing system, but the complete removal of a system in favor of a different system. Note that different does notinsure it will be better,but the chances of achievingthis would be improved by engaging and involving the community in this process of change rather than locking it out entirely. Many of these player concerns can be put to rest with some very simple responses that need not even give away any specifics of the new system.
1. Where do current hologrinders stand if they have not unlocked by the time the patch is implemented? It was previously stated credit would be given. Will this credit consider all the professions that have been mastered, or only the four holocron professions if not?
2. It has been stated current Jedi would be 'translated' into the new system. What does that mean for current Jedi in each of the three trees?
3. Will PvP be required foradvancing past Jedi Knight? If this is so, I can't say strongly enough that any system that mandates a specific playstyle for advancement is a poor idea. It excludes a great number of players, probably a majority of the game's players if the astromech statistics listing nearly 75% of the playerbase as factionally neutral can be trusted. The old system failed because it was destructive, destabilizing, and targeted to a very narrow section of the playerbase. It's also a copout since it completely absolves the dev team from providing any high level Jedi content. Let's not go there again.
4. Does the revamp address any of the current issues with Jedi? The Jedi forum's current top five list would be a good place to start.
5. It has been stated the new system will be quest based. What steps are being taken to assure these quests won't be solved with answers posted on every game guide website in a short time, like every other quest in every other game has been before?
6. What steps will be taken to assure the new system is fully tested before it is pushed live? There aren't near enough jedi on test center to do this adequately at this time.
Borwin wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
Should they wish to continue, players can follow a PvE path of Jedi development from Padawan through learning the various force disciplines to become a full fledged Jedi Knight. Jedi Knight is yet another beginning to a new path of development. Once players have become a Jedi Knight and still hear the call, they can enter a whole new level that splits off to light and dark Jedi paths where forced Jedi PvP will gain you force ranking and possibly a seat on underground Light and Dark Jedi Councils.
Below here are the issues that I have with this:
Forcing Jedi to pvp in order to level is also totally unacceptable. First off 75% of the player population could care less about pvp and if you factor in Sony's inability to balance professions and its ability to break pvp by introducing bugs then I can see why most people could care less about pvp. Now take this balancing and gamebreaking bugs and apply them to a class that is forced to endure them in order to master then you have serious problems. Secondly switching to this system would be unfair due to some people were able to level under the old system to guardian and the disparity between light and dark jedi. At the current time on most servers the Light Jedi severely outnumber the dark Jedi for the simple reason that Dark Jedi are severely gimped atm compared to light Jedi.
The way that the changes should be is that:
- Make new Jedi choose a faction at character creation and they stick to this faction. This would balance the sides by roughly making them equal in size instead of forcing Jedi to all start out as rebels.
- Dont force Jedi to pvp in order to gain experience but highly encourage it. I agree that the greatest limiting factor of the Jedi population should be other Jedi and knowing this you should put several things in place to encourage Jedi pvp. These could include:
- Allow Jedi to sense other Jedi through the force. Example would be If Im standing at the starport I could use this power that would give me a tef but it would also reveal all opposite aligned Jedi. Would also be an interesting concept by allowing Jedi to work much like a faction scanner with the ability to reveal covert people of the opposite faction.
- Give Jedi faction points that they can purchase Jedi specific items such as upgraded lightsaber schematics, pearls / crystals, Jedi clothing, sith warswords, jedi skill attachments, Jedi padawan faction pets etc.. This faction could be earned by doing Jedi specific faction missions much like the normal player faction missions or by actively hunting other Jedi. The main difference is that the reward for killing faction npcs vs. killing player Jedi would be much like the reward that bh's get for killing player Jedi.
- Give Jedi missions where they can track an opposing Jedi much like BH's but this would be by using the force. The reward would be faction and massive amounts of xp to those that help take down the Jedi.
- Give Jedi massive xp on killing a Jedi of the opposite faction.
If these changes were implemented it would encourage Jedi to pvp but not limit the xp to pvp only.
/agree
Forced PVP is not the path most poeple are interested in. Force full time PVP onto people in a game where part time PVP is the norm is not a bright idea. It's just foolish.
/sigh
Dev's can't you listen to people, namely your customers? So far you're doing a bang-up job of doing the exact opposite.
Borwin wrote:
Make new Jedi choose a faction at character creation and they stick to this faction. This would balance the sides by roughly making them equal in size instead of forcing Jedi to all start out as rebels.