Development Cycle Archive

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can-i-car wrote:

I haven't ready every post but i feel that my 2 cents are worth putting here from my perspective:

Two Cents:

Hi all i've been playing the game since early 2003 on the Bloodfin server, the time when Jedi were 'hidden' where grinding wasn't as frequent, why wasn't grinding frequent?

Because at Christmas you made a mistake a very fatal one at that by giving everyone Holocrons this sparked a trigger in everyones mind "i must grind for jedi, i have used my holocron and it said to master proffesion title here i remember when holocrons were worth alot, now you can't even loot them, the constant updates and 'fixes' just introduce new bug's to the game, take a look at the chat tabs, the new planet and auctions tabs caused so much damage to the community because players could not contact each other.

finally tailor got fixed with the 'displaying' of the necklaces, how long did it take you to fix that? since BETA, if you concentrated on what the consumer wants instead of add-ons and the Jedi proffesion maybe you would have alot more customers playing the game than terminating their accouts.

I noticed something the other day whilst connecting to the galaxy

Publish 9.2 - increased spawn rate for the Squill Cave

Isn't this where Jedi gather?

isn't this where Jedi get back the 200k exp after getting killed by a BH?

It seems that as of late everything is tailored to the Jedi Profession, when you should be fixing proffesions such as:

Smuggler

Creature Handler

Pistoller

Ranger

Politican

Squad Leader

Commando

Every other broken profession

You are causing yourself to do more work to the game by introducing more and more content leaving the old content to get pushed further down the 'to do list'.

sure your out of your cave, but does that really change the rate of which we are going to get things sorted on Star Wars Galaxies? i personally don't think so, i understand that you are all busy working on JTL but why not just do as you all promised and release the Combad Balance already? i think i know why because if you release the combad balance you already know that it would be full of bugs, CSR's would get enough tickets to handle, which would push back the JTLs release date.

If JTLS isn't any good you will lose a hell of a lot of players and fans,

Why would you want a game over-run by jedi?

Are jedi going to have a certain role in JTLS?

without every other profession but Jedi you wouldn't have a game IMO

so listen to us and sort the original game out for the love of god.

Message Edited by can-i-car on 08-06-2004 03:10 AM

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Arcan wrote:

Just wondering if you would mind if I applied your principles to my account payments?

I would let you know that I intended to pay, then I could promise you and even give you a rough date.

Then I could wait 3 months and send you a few reasons why I did not pay and how my payment is just around the corner.

Then after 6 months I could send you an interview of me saying that I was sorry if you actually had expectations of payment but I had to buy other games to play on-line and pay for them.

Perhaps I could send you a one year anniversary photo of my children as a stop gap, placating type measure?

Please let me know so I can safely stop my payments.

Yours Most Sincerley,

Zeb Jones

Master Smuggler

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Another buggy cave. Hey, Tech guys! Your Haden spawn is broken!

Quoting Fishbrains from the Smuggler's forum, and Hayden, we'd love it if you OR OTHER DEV or staff would drop by.... our correspondent is even losing faith.. how sad is that?

The original post can be found here.

It is entitled "TH (Thunderheart), please respond".... of note is the fact that neither he nor any other staff bothered to respond.

Begin quote
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Recently Hayden blackman gave an interview in which he said the following thing:

IGN: What kind of message would you give to John Q. Gamer who has been playing the game since launch, sitting around as a Smuggler and looking forward to the combat revamp that’s going to increase the scope of his class? What sort of message would you give him to still stick with the game now that it’s up in the air when that sort of feature, which will enhance his experience, is going to be released?

Blackman: First I’d apologize that we were misleading at all, if that was the case, or if he was misled and had expectations for a Smuggler revamp.

The following is documentation of Dev promises that in fact do lead to the devs being misleading. Please comment on this, what I hope to be just gross oversight on his part


26 August 2003 - Devs make their first detailed promise to overhaul the profession

Blair wrote:

Smuggler
We are going to look at and probably revise the Underworld skill set.
We'll fix bugs with slicing 4.
Spices will get experimentation values (for withdrawals, etc).
Feign death causing the player to take too much damage and to be unusable when moving will be fixed.
We'll add more stuff to the master box. (Probably additional slicing features)
The bug with not being able to eat spice will be fixed.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=417746&highlight=smuggler#M417746


9 September 2003 - Devs promise action after a 1,010-post filibuster by Smugglers on the old SWG Discussion Forum

Holocron wrote:

On his way out the door, he tossed this over his shoulder:

1. Underworld Branch

- I think we are going to try and replace most of these skill boxes with something more usable, since these just aren't very fun. The main issue is finding the time on the schedule to implement some new smuggler skills.

2. Slicing

- We'd like to add slicing code to more types of terminals.

- The problem with weapon slicing giving better results than advanced weapon slicing has been fixed. Slicing 2 had a bonus that Slicing 4 was supposed to have.

3. Dirty Fighting

- Some unarmed moves would be good to add and probably fairly easy. We will look into it.

- We will look into adding combat bonuses to this tree.

- We'll fix last ditch to be balanced with similar moves and we'll look into the other smuggler moves to improve their usability.

4. Spices

- Experimentation never had any impact on spices, so the UI stubs for these were removed. Adding experimentation systems to crafted items takes time, but we'd like to add one to spicing at some point.

- The effects of spices still need to be balanced to other buff consumables. Also, effects like burst run, etc, can be added, but require more development time.

5. Master

- 25% off faction perks is very very useful to any smuggler in PvP, but we will look into possibly adding nonPvP bonuses to this box.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=19942&highlight=smuggler#M19942


16 September 2003 - Smugglers are distinguished as needing the most love

Q-3PO wrote:

We're dedicating a designer (Green Marine) next week to looking into fixing some of the bigger issues of the smuggler. (Yes, we are also looking at issues with the other professions, the smuggler just seems to be the one needing the most love at this moment).

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=552985&highlight=smuggler#M552985


6 November 2003 - Devs tell Smugglers that the profession will be "augmented" "immediately"

JustG wrote:

There is a lot on our plate, and we are regularly going to provide you with as much information as we can about what is going on. Our priorities and tasks feed in from a variety of sources, and there are very many items on the design priority list. We will not be able to get to all of them with the next few pushes, but we want to take on a number of things that will make the game better, immediately. These include:

* Professions Augmentations
Droid Engineer
Smuggler
Merchant
Chef

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/team_comments.jsp?id=59306&page=Team%20Comments [look for Gary Gattis's Letter to the Community" at the bottom of the list]


5 December 2003 - Devs state that "Smugglers are getting some attention soon."

Thunderheart wrote:

Smugglers are getting some attention soon. Everything is getting more attention now that Player Cities, Mounts and Vehicles have been added.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=15023&highlight=smuggler#M15023


20 December 2003 - Devs state that Smugglers will be overhauled, and that the community should offer some ideas on what we want

Thunderheart wrote:

Both San and I agree that you guys need more of an answer and here it is. The smuggler isn't going to be just "fixed". Its in re-development. Smuggler is an important profession and needs more than a little attention.

Here is what I need from you folks. Since Smuggler is "In Development", I hope you folks can work together to put together some reasonable ideas together for the types of directions you would like to see the Smuggler profession change/develop. . . .

. . . I will take that information to the producers so that your desires and ideas can be accounted for when the development process moves to the next stage.

The best recommendation I can make is to keep your ideas realistic. Come up with ideas using the system as you know it as opposed to inventing things from a "blue sky" approach.

I very much look forward to seeing your input.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=42882&highlight=smuggler#M42882


23 December 2003 - Devs say that contraband scans are too tough to implement

Thunderheart wrote:

The thing is that smugglers essentially are a "space based" profession (at least the way we think of it) and given the inherent client/server limitations, its a tough proposition any way you look at. For instance, lets say Imperials do a search for contraband at starports. Can you imagine the lag if we even did an item check for everything in every player's inventory as they entered and exited a starport? And then there are the guys that run back and forth across that threshold just to lag things out. This is one tiny piece of a larger puzzle. It has to be a cool game mechanic and work in the game system and in a big MMO environment.

The key here is that while I was in beta and I knew everyone (I actually have almost all of it saved on my hard drive, but doing a search on "smuggler" with 12 gig of materials would be insane). Further still, that was a while ago. I want to hear YOUR ideas and Ive worked with the devs and correspondents to focus communication so that correspondents can get me information and also in a way that I can both share it with the devs AND catalgoue it.

Its all a process and we're working on it and its going to take time. The devs want to make a good game, you and I want to play a fun game and as a community, I believe we can make this whole experience very cool.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=43562&highlight=smuggler#M43562


21 January 2004 - Devs promise revamp post within the week

Thunderheart wrote:

"Smuggling" really is a spacey kind of profession and doing something on the ground really needs to be thought out.

With that being said, Im working on the Smuggler and Squad Leader profession revamp posts this week. Im just taking the time to put together some really nice posts so that the answers that players put forth can be easily handled and used by the dev team.

Currently, people don't say, "hey we're going out hunting, lets make sure we have a smuggler". That shortfall is something that needs to be included in the revamp thread.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=19680&highlight=smuggler#M19680

27 January 2004 - Devs institute contraband scan idea that had been dismissed as impossible 5 weeks prior

Thunderheart wrote:

... I pushed very hard (I spent a couple of days pushing this issue) and the devs added bonuses to the Smugler Underworld Tree

A small victory, but you asked and its in. Here's how it works:

1. The system counts up your contraband and does the "scanning roll".
2. If the system "sees" the contraband (having made a successful scan roll), it checks to see if you are a smuggler. Depending on what level of Underworld a smuggler has, they get a progressive chance to "escape the scan". If the smuggler roll succeeds, then the player will get a message that reads, "You have successfully avoided the scan."

So if you want to get spice or sliced armor and weapons from one place to another and not get harassed by the Empire, then smuggle it

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=51541&highlight=smuggler#M51541


3 February 2004 & 11 February 2004 - Devs thank the Smuggler community for endorsing a system whereby Imperials move contraband better than Smugglers

Thunderheart wrote:

Based on community input, we have made the following changes to the Imperial Crackdown penalty schema. Thanks go to San Tsu and the Smuggler community and Jester and the Galactic Civil War community.

[Thunderheart then proceeds to describe the system -- hugely controversial and now known to Smugglers as "Imperial Immunity" -- whereby anyone who invests some Imperial Faction points is able to bypass contraband scans better than a Master Smuggler. I would post it all, but Thunderheart used a strange script and it takes forever to clean it up for posting purposes.]

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=801&highlight=smuggler#M801

Updated on 11 February 2004:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=22484&highlight=smuggler#M22484


7 March 2004 - Devs institute Fred Sanford minigame so Smugglers can sell trash

Thunderheart wrote:

One neat new addition to Publish 7 is with the Junk Dealers. Smugglers who have underworld can now take their Junk to the Jawa Traders camp and they can sell their junks to the Jawas up there.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=137614&highlight=smuggler#M137614


8 March 2004 - Devs reiterate the idea that selling trash counts as "smuggler stuff"

Thunderheart wrote:

... the change to smuggler's [adding the Fred Sanford Trashman minigame] was a small one. Its just me working with the team to fit smuggler stuff in where we can until the revamp - - thats when the beefy changes will occur.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=138096&highlight=smuggler#M138096


8 March 2004 - Devs promise a "pretty high visibility" revamp plan that incorporates the Smuggler Correspondent and the community

Thunderheart wrote:

You can expect pretty high visibility from the Smuggler thread. Ill do a takeaway and work with the correspondent and the community when we move to In development with it...

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=30240&highlight=smuggler#M30240

Public Post by Developers
March 24, 2004

Smuggler Revamp Timeline

As it stands, Smugglers are looking at their revamp to be included within Publish 9. This is essentially within the month of May. Through the State of the Game, posted on March 24, 2004. This information is found here.

Smuggler revamp

CS Issues (Bug fixes/ tools)
QA Issues (Bug fixes/ features)

Developer Post April 19, 2004

Thunderheart wrote:

bigmacdaddy12 wrote: Smuggler would still like some feedback about their profession and which of their suggestions are actually possible to implement. Please stop by at some point. I mean aren't we scheduled for a revamp about one month from now?

The Smuggler revamp moved into its early discussion phases last week. Smuggler_Caylin, the dev working on the revamp and myself have all been in close contact. We've also been reading the In-Concept Smuggler thread and a lot of the big proposals. We're looking at a lot of enhancements to the existing tree to make spices more useful, to make slicing a bigger, more integrated challenging and making the smuggler combat skills more formidable. Its just a question of hoe much is technically possible. When a crafting profession is revamped, its a matter of making new craft items, maybe some new wearables and other things that are more localized.

Smugglers, on the other hand, have a different type of profession. The spice and the fighting are pretty easy to change, but the most anticipated items are difficult to address. Lets look at slicing for instance. Slicing gives bonuses which effect all related game objects in the world. Thats more interface, more dynamics and a lot more low level coding. Its also very vulnerable to exploits and other tactics that make rapid development very difficult. What we want to do, is get a good system in place and grow it as the game continues to grow.

Another example is the act of "smuggling" itself. We would love to integrate smugglers into some sort of object delivery service to smuggler things, but its way open to grief and its also technically difficult. For instance, to have "smuggling", you need a choke point. At that check point is when some NPC would "scan" or investigate players. Any time you have a choke point, players gather in large groups and suffer wait and lag. Also at that choke point, you get some players who like to try and lag everyone out for some reason. So the obvious grief there is to find check points and lag out everyone in an area to try and beat the system some way, so instead of having something fun, it ends up being "not so fun".

We do want to add a kind of smuggling mini-game, but I dont have any details since its in progress. The developer, myself and Smuggler_Caylin are in close contact though. There will be many additional opportunities when SE comes, but I can't talk about any of that just yet.






Joras Kal'lan: The Smuggler Advocate of Sunrunner
R.I.P Feralmongoose, one of the very first

As a smuggler I feel like a sucker stuck in a messed up relationship screaming "but he loves me, he said he won't do it again".


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End quote.

Edit: Weird formatting bugs.

Message Edited by Vyko on 09-10-2004 07:22 PM

Message Edited by Vyko on 09-10-2004 07:23 PM

And for those still reading, here's how a press junket works for movies. Our Correspondent Junket seems a little too similar:

"I hated the atmosphere of junkets, as do many writers who have to partake of them. Lately they’ve been described as almost pure bribes: Studios hand out free trips to Los Angeles (or New York or even some exotic location) to newspaper and TV press, and, in return, they get adulatory coverage. There’s more than a little truth to that, but it’s more complicated.

Some minority of newspapers do accept the free airline tickets studios offer for their reporters to fly in and interview a movie’s actors and/or director (actually, two studios will usually join forces and "piggyback" two movies on one weekend). More will accept the free hotel. Of course, there are unscrupulous writers who accept per-diems from the studios and even abuse room service to the point where the studios get mad. All this is very, very bad.

But a high percentage of the writers show up on their newspapers’ dime, yet still produce copy similar to their unethical colleagues. And that’s because of everything else that happens. At a junket, writers fly in from all over the country and stay at the same hotel. Once there, the people they are staying with are people they see all the time at other junkets, and the feeling is that of a reunion of old "campaigners," battle-tested veterans out to do a job. They swap old war stories, only these are about the time this star cried, or that one got angry and left the table, and so forth and so on. A feeling of being on the inside of something special is nurtured from the night before anything begins.

That first night, they’ll see the first of their movies after being driven in a bus to a theater. There are roped-off seats roped off just for them (exclusive of even other members of the press) and, as they well know, even if the bus is late, the movie won’t start without them. After the screening, they’ll trade opinions confident that they’re forming a "critical consensus" that will becomes conventional wisdom.

The next day, as the junketeers eat a hot buffet breakfast prior to the beginning of their interviews, publicists will be sure to ask each and every one of them what he or she thought of the movie. None of the publicists will argue, but just nod his or her head and agree enthusiastically if the opinion is positive, or say "that’s interesting" if it’s less than positive. In the hospitality suite, stories will make the round about funny things that happened during the shoot and, on a TV set, promo tapes featuring studio interviews with the actors, will play non-stop.

Writers from the biggest newspapers will get one-on-one interviews with actors for from ten minutes to 30 minutes (usually the latter, though I got only 10 with Michael Douglas once). But everyone else, and sometimes even the biggies, have to do what are called "round tables." These are, quite literally, round tables, where six, seven, or even 10 interviewers are seated, with one empty chair left for the interview subject. Actors and, usually, the director, are then rotated through the empty chair at, generally, 20 or 25 minute intervals. These occasionally turn into disasters when the table is dominated by a loudmouth gossip writer.

It’s important to keep in mind that the writers are not free agents. They have been sent by frequently clueless editors with some bright story idea. Since all these editors are generally clueless in the same way (they all read People and Entertainment Weekly for their entertainment story ideas), they’ve all assigned the same story. So the writers are generally all asking roughly the same two or three questions and following them up the same way.

On the other side, the actors aren’t exactly talking off the tops of their head. Before the junket, they’ve spent time with the publicists talking over the movie’s marketing campaign. They’ve been told the type of audience the campaign is aimed at, and what themes and even phrases will get its attention. They’ve been rehearsed and, like good performers, they go out and do their best to deliver to this small, select, but attentive group.

Everyone on each side knows, to one extent or another, what’s going on. If you’re lucky enough to get a one-on-one interview, you can usually get past to baloney, especially if you’re willing to slice it for the first few minutes. Then the actor can relax and open up, tell some stories and so forth. But even in that situation I’ve seen actors of both genders freeze up and become terrified when the questions have gone off reservation. They stammer, their eyes start looking around the room for help (we’re alone). I’m talking about household names here. You just have to soothe them by going back to the "regular" questions. There’s no point, after all, in knocking them dumb. You have to turn in something to your paper.

Meanwhile, back at the tables, there is at least one reporter at each of them, sometimes two or three, who will want to knock the actor off the party line and get him or her to say something – anything – original. Often this means something that is not entirely praiseworthy of the movie. Not negative mind you; just not ringingly positive. The actor will answer as little as possible, or dance around it. Finally, if the interrogator persists, they’ll be a little knowing smile and a joke about how "I can’t answer that they’ll kill me" or something like that.

And everyone chuckles.

That smile and that chuckle is a way of acknowledging and denying that everyone is a w ho re. It’s a reciprocal admission that, yes, we could all use our brains and conduct actual interviews on a free range of subjects about this movie but, on the one hand, we have editors who have these dumb story ideas and, on the other, we have a script we have to follow. Moreover, publicists have cocooned us in this cozy atmosphere where we all feel like buddies and have agreed not to ruffle each other’s feathers."