Development Cycle Archive

Thunderheart, I have talked with a CSR once and posted here twice, still I have no reaction to a matter that should be solvable in days or even hours and would save your playerbase and maybe even support a lot of frustration:

If a SOE support persontells me the bug I encounteredis a known issue, and there is no way I can get to know these known issues, I'm feeling like I could punch him. If something is a known issue, how hard can it be to put up a plain HTML site listing those known issues so the players who have not yet been hit by the bug can make sure they won't make the same mistake ?

In addition, getting ignored by you twice is not exactly communication.

My communications teacher once said "you cannot not communicate". No communication is bad communication. I don't need such a site to magically appear because I asked for it. But a very simple answer from you or someone else at SOE would mean your words are more than just empty phrases. I think there are basically 3 responses to my post.

1) Yes, we need such a site. We will put one up.
2) Yes, we need such a site, but we don't have time. I'll file the request for later use.
3) No, you suck, go away. If you were hit by the bug, it's only fair no one gets a warning, so that everyone can be equally frustrated.

Option 4 would be to simply ignore it, like you always seem to do. Please realize we don't neccessarily need a positive answer on most posts. All we need is an answer either way. Communication is the key and you need to work on it badly.

I have time posting here and reading my professions boards daily while I do another job. And you come here and tell me it's to time consuming to communicate while it is your job ? I know you probably attend a lot of those "high importance" meetings which take 6 hours and produce zero result. That can be frustrating, too. But if you need an assistant to keep contact with us on basic matters ( like is this a bug or working as intended ) then please go ask for one. It can only help. I'm pretty sure you'd even get volunteers who will precheck the boards and only send you one link per board per day so you can be up to date with little effort. We don't need a full blown article. I don't care if you make mistakes once in a while because you didn't triple check something. A simple yes or no once in a while would be a great improvement.

Sorry for sounding a bit aggressive, but I don't like to be ignored on a thread that was said to be created to improve communication.

Here is my Top 5 issues or things I'd like to see...

1. More general Time Tables. ( ex. December = Vehicle Publish / Creature Handler Re-Balance / New Bio-Engineering System ) What can we expect in January and February? Any word on when the massive Combat Changes are Scheduled to go in?


2. After Combat Balancing ( or maybe during it ) how about having "smart" progression of elite professions. Makes no sense that Body Shot 2 is more DPS than Body Shot 3. Each new ability should be noticably better than the previous.


3. It was once said "Leveling should be a natural occurance of just playing." Why does it feel like a grind then? That is not retorical... Experience required makes no sense... especiallyWeapon Experience. Why in Novice Marksman does it take 1k - 5k - 15k - 70k to move up one tree?The following progression would be much better: 5k - 15k- 30k -50k and if you double check the math you'll notice that this actually requires 9k more more experience. However since there is not a huge jump it is much easier on the player.


4. On the subject of leveling why are experience caps in place at all? And why do we lose experience for gaining more experience? We spend experience to buy skill blocks... If I accrue more experience with nowhere to spend it ( lack of skill points perhaps ) then I should retain it to spend later. Or in the case of a Master of a given profession it should be easier for me to reobtain a title I once held. Garva offered his insight on this a couple weeks ago stating that it would give some power gamers an unfair avantage to switch professions at will; however, even if they did it would be with experience they earned and unless they grind more experience while at Mastery they could only "power switch" once before spending all their experience.


5. Lastly... Holocrons... it does not work that way ( in EU at any rate a Holocron would always be silent for a Non-Force Adept )... on top of that is has utterly distroyed most of the gaming economy. I had a favorite Weaponsmith to go to... we shared many adventures together but a Blue Box convinced him to give up something he loved and try something new. Needless to say he hated hair designing but as fate would have it he had already sacrificied all of the boxes he did enjoy and did not wish to "grind" it up again. Find another way for this... time spent... maxing exp of all your trees once a Master of your chosen profession... anything, I really don't care just find something else.


6. Bonus Ideas: Add More Damge types ( ex. Super Heated Acid does half heat half acid damage ) Give Cretures More Variety and Unquie Special Attacks that have two effects in one attack:
   Nausiea = Dizzy / Stun ( Any Noxious type creature )
   Dazzling = Blind / Stun ( Birds and Snakes )
   Toxic Venom = Poison / Disease ( Diseased Spiders )
   Cripple = Slows effected target's movement speed ( similar to the trap ) (Big Creatures like Grauls )
   Dominate = Posture Change / Intimidate ( Big Creatures like Rancors )
   Over Run = Knockdown / Delay 5 ( similar to Warcry ) ( Herd Creatures like Pikets and Thunes )

The same items I posted LAST WEEK !!!

1. Fix Droid Speed -- The only skill that get worse as you get better at it.

2. Fix Jedi Missions -- The only reason to be a Bounty Hunter now that I've reached master

4. Give us a reason to be in the GCW.

5. Make faction armor player made.The components are bought with Faction Points that way the armor would be worth someting.

6. Make faction weapons player made. The components are bought with Faction Points that way the weapons would be worth something.

6. Want a money sink??? Give us a first class minimal wait ticket. I'd pay 4x current prices to get there now

7. Make traps work on humans. Never spent so much time on a skill tree I dont ever use.

8. Love the Nym Slugthrower More loot like this would be great. I don't want to hurt crafters but everyone looks so cookie cutter. Composite armor (black or red) Laser Carb

9. Wookie armor -- The balance here is just too unfair. Which by the way is inbalance.

10. Combat Droids -- IG-88 was a wicked bounty hunter and all I get is a probot that a novice marksman can defeat. Also personality for the droids might be nice. More like a partner than aP-O-K-E-M-O-N toy.

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Thunderheart wrote:

So what we'll have is a Droid Engineer profession and a Droid Handling profession. All players will have access to combat droids up to level 10 and DH's will get a wide range of heavy combat droids to handle.

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You know, it's funny, but the DE boards have gone over this idea and have rejected it a great many times. When do we get that concept thread so that we can have all of these discussions all over again?

Despite all of the ideas we've brought forthfor changes that can be made to the profession, the DE board has emphatically stated that we don't want to become 'combat oriented' (though more combat options are welcome), and combat orientation is exactly what's going on here. Regardless of the fact that the developers' new year's resolution was to improve communication, we've been trying to communicate volumes, as always, and either our correspondent isn't passing them on, or he's being brushed aside just like the rest of us are.

Though I'm sure this is in vain, allow me to state again that Droids have a great many more uses in the Star Wars universe that don't seem to be getting looked at here. There aren't only two categories, Crafting Station Droid and Combat droid. There should be individual droids, or at least modules for the existing ones, that assist almost every profession in the game: there is precedence for all of it and it's being ignored.

Definitly it is time to share with the DE about the so called Droid Invasions as the discussion post has two weeks of delay ( according the official web site were it is state that the discussion thread will be post between the 5th and 8th of january ... )

No need to say that one more time many are pissed off and have less patience with the time ...

I have a question about the loading of the interior of houses. It seems to me that the more items that are stored in the house, the longer it takes to load the house itself. I find myself having to walk into a house, stand there for at least 5-10 seconds and eventually the house will load.

At first I thought that the house was built on a server boundary or something because it was always laggy there, but then the house was moved and the same thing occurs. Also, I've noticed this in many other houses as well. And it is very noticable in the guild halls.

I have one other thing to note. I have noticed that with vehicles and houses, sometimes, usually when grouped, I find that I can no longer see certain people. They will simply disappear and if they are grouped with me they will show as "out of range." This usually happens when entering or leaving a building, or entering or leaving a vehicle. Are these known bugs that are being taken care of?

Thanks!!

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?

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Ill be doing it this week. I had to push it off until some of internal discussions were finished. The timetable was changed because the Droid Engineers were very clear in telling me they wanted Droid Engineering and Droid Handling as two seperate professions.

Their argument makes a lot of sense too. A good balance is akin to Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers; BE's make em and CH's use them. Its really two different playstyles. One is crafting and one is combat/exploration. Adding a class of combat droids to the game has to be similar. Combat droids themselves have to stay level 10 or under for the general population otherwise everyone would rush out and get the better pets. That leaves a wide range of powerful combat droids that needs to be in the game, but to get those droids, players have to spend the time and energy to earn them.

So what we'll have is a Droid Engineer profession and a Droid Handling profession. All players will have access to combat droids up to level 10 and DH's will get a wide range of heavy combat droids to handle.

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Thunderheart, I cannot belive how utterly and amazingly wrong you got this! Droid Engineers DO NOT WANT a Droid Handler class. If you've spent any ammount of time pursuing discussions on the DE board you would realize this.

In fact, there isn't even an overwhelming conensus on who gets to use combat droids! Some DE's want to be able to use every droid they make, and some want to remain purely crafting. You have not discussed this with the community at all. Quite frankly, the lack of any communication on your part regarding the 'Droid Invasion' despite the promises made has been quite frustrating.

Calis Exud - Droid Engineer Extrodianre - Retired

TH -

Is it possible to have beast of burden for Merchants? It is difficult to move shops and Vendors to PC or to new locations. Perhaps merchants could rent these beast for a set amount of time from CH. This would keep them from being used as storage containers. Or maybe the community could come up with a different idea that would allow merchants to more easily move their inventory from vendor to vendor.

Thanks.

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Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?

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Ill be doing it this week. I had to push it off until some of internal discussions were finished. The timetable was changed because the Droid Engineers were very clear in telling me they wanted Droid Engineering and Droid Handling as two seperate professions.

Their argument makes a lot of sense too. A good balance is akin to Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers; BE's make em and CH's use them. Its really two different playstyles. One is crafting and one is combat/exploration. Adding a class of combat droids to the game has to be similar. Combat droids themselves have to stay level 10 or under for the general population otherwise everyone would rush out and get the better pets. That leaves a wide range of powerful combat droids that needs to be in the game, but to get those droids, players have to spend the time and energy to earn them.

So what we'll have is a Droid Engineer profession and a Droid Handling profession. All players will have access to combat droids up to level 10 and DH's will get a wide range of heavy combat droids to handle.

Yeah .... ...

That was the only solution that almost all DE did not want ....

That is effective communication either our DE correspondent has betrayed us or no one on SOE side care about what DE thinks ...

That smell like a cancel account,too many miscommunication and not enough respect to players...

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Flynn_Nomad wrote:

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Thunderheart wrote:

Lag is lag. Sorry about that but when then servers are full, there will always be a drag no matter how much we tweak it though the programming team is always working on ways to improve that.

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I seriously dont need to see the objects in my inventory spinning around in 3D. That MUST put a little demand on our systems and/or the servers... Everytime I open my inventory, or a new window for that matter, I get a huge slow down, untill all the items are displayed.

Could we get an option tho shut off 3D rotation in object screens?

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