Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Rountdable Discussion (Week ending 1-10-04)
BH:
Fix the bloody droids already. If you're going to give us Jedi missions, don't do a half job of it. Let the droids work, or don't give us missions. Also, the fact our droids work WORSE as we get better is ridiculous.
Give us more defense, or higher accuracy. I'm not saying "WAANNNHHH I always lose in PvP" but against any other master my job is VERY difficult because I usually have to shoot at least 4 times to get my first hit to stick, and they don't have that problem.
Increase heavy weapon special, at least to say 30m. The IDEAL range of my LLC is 50m, if it's IDEAL, why don't my special attacks work? (this would apply to commandos also)
DE:
Make them worth something beyond making crates of bh droids? Bring on the combat droids, and let them use better droids in combat that anyone else can, like CH.
JEDI:
Give all starting slots a box of kleenex, it looks like they'll need it.
SMUGGLER:
Make tool quality mater.
Allow them to choose what stat they are slicing for.
GENERAL:
Vendor limit of 150 = stupid
House item limit: Tie it to lots, 125 or 150 (whatever it is) is fine for a small house, 250 for PA = stupid
Fix turret range exploit
Sliding out of my chair is annoying.
Remove decay from things like crafting tools, ARMOR (from death, not damage)
No decay from PvP when insured.
Make insurance more expensive, no decay.
Adjust targeting of "cone" effects.
1) Could you fix the "know issue" of some peoples bio's deleteing themselves when they Clone or when the Server resets?.
2) Could you fix the lock ups that started with the Mount Patch?.
3) Could you give me a Jedi Character? (Can't blame me for trying 
)
Wrrlaghot wrote:
Especially considering the server has been loading... for nearly an hour now.
My vendor has beeninitializing for that long.
There is something oddly wrong with experimentation, specifically moderate successes. A moderate success will actually lower the stats across the board for a item if you experiment on it.
Player item decay is in place as a death penatly, but it's confirmed that NO professions get any bonuses for repairing items. Anyone has a equal chance of repairing something, and those chances are LOW.
Your new forum layout is not only weak, but counterproductive to the overall game system. I must now search multiple forum sections to collect information on one specific item. And I doubt that this mesage here will actually make it to the devs.
This has been said alot here but lets list them (squeeky wheel gets the greese we can only hope!):
1) Building item count for Large Houses and PA Halls. 75 items per lot????
2) Merchant Bugs - Keeping Vendors after surrendering the skills, Initilization buts for artisian vendors.
3) Fix Droids - We are tired of waiting give us viable combat droids worth a grain of salt.
4) Documentation on BE Experimentation. We all deserve to see what is intended and what to expect from wild .vs. BE pets.
5) Monthly Story Line - Tri - Monthly? Lets get on the ball and do your job here. Eitehr do it every month or dont do it at all. Ur adding a basic quest once a month for a story arc...how hard can it be?
6) Let Overt Squad Leaders declare other lower ranking factional members, or their whole group.
7) Fix GCW Status command - give us a score boardin game - track kills, missions, factional dungeons for the whold faction.
8) Merchant Entry Fee - Currently gives EXP to house owner not the person who applied the fee.
9) Creature Handler - MCH still have no real great pets, we were told this last pet nerf wouldnt be felt much by MCHs and I have to argue strongly we are comparable to a commando left with a CDEF to fight with. Our pets last no longer in combat then a mid level CH. Comparativly there are BE pets out there around level 35 that only have 1-3k less ham and the same resists why bother waisitn another dozen or so skill points for a measly 20seconds morelife on a pet in a pinch. This nerf has forced CH to dabble in other combat professions mroe instead of just taking dabblers out of our profession.
10) Creature Handler - Special Attacks still do not apear to work, how about showing the combat command in our combat que and actually having the pet do the attacks.
11) Artisan - Let us colorize furniture.
12) Object Movment in Houses - Are we ever going to see the Move Up / Down command. In a game where the development team has told the community its moslty upto us the create player content this is a neccesity for us to make our player cities everything they should be.
13) City militia - We need a replacment for /citywarn yesterday. This is not something that should take weeks to resolve you made the mistake you need to take responsibility and fix it. Give us something to use to keep the unwanted people out of the city and keep them from grieving citizens.
14) City militia - can only grant zoning rights to others - is this intended?
15) Smuggler - There is no reason slicing should be so random - if the % is going to remain random and not improve with the slicers skill then at least let the slicer specify what they are slicing for - they slice enough they should be able to know what to do to get ball park replicated results.
16) Architects - Let experimentation on durability affect the maintenance costs of harvesters.
17) Wookies - Cmon Chain Mail or Leather Armor is not out of the realm of SWG continutity. Our regen stats are not nearly as effective as armor. I thikn alot of wookies are looking for more clothing options mostly in their request here also. All our clothing is very limited in color pallettes and we have few options unlike all other species.
18) GCW Factional Rank - Show it in the personals tab - Give us the option to display it in the examine window.
19) Badges - Give us a pop-up to let us decide if we want the badge. Some of us dont want our examine window cluttered by these things yet we have no choice if we wish to master professions or go to Points of Interest.
20) Special Item Distribution - The life day orb and wookir robe distribution was a joke. Your telling me you can hand everyone a holocron - you want everyone to get these items - and you couldnt do the same thing? Im a wookie and I spent the past month looking to buy one of these on Scylla I have yet to find anyone with one willing to buy them.
21) Content - Lastly add more content quick! More static quests, profession specific epics like the RIS armor, more Epic GCW quests to issue special armor or special weapons and such. By Epic I mean things that take many many people to complete exactly like the quests you have for professions in Everquest - things that cant be completed without the appropriate skill levels.
Lobaca
Chief Counselor of Twin Suns
Fix the patch notes.
Test Center says it hasn't been updated since December 4th and is lagging behind Live servers for updates.
Automate the patch notes system. The Updates page, the Launchpad patch notes, In Test page and Test Center Launchpad notes should all be pushed out as a single item.
Also a goodPERL script to pre-process the patch notes as submitted by the Developers could definitely shorten the 8 hours-3 days of sorting and translating that has been cited in previous threads.
OK, I have no idea where the best place for this post is, so I have to put it here, because I can't post in the SWG Discussions forum any more, and my thoughts started when I was thinking how many professions lose out on the ability to use vendors because of the placement of the Merchant profession as an elite Artisan profession.
Anyway, the goal was to make Merchant more accessible and usable; to make Artisan more in-line with other professions and to give it more value as something other than a stepping stone to the Elite professions, and to make a small change to the Architect profession.
DISCLAIMER: I'm thinking this through, but by no means fully, so don't flame me if there's something I clearly missed. It's intended for discussion not as absolute. It's got plenty of holes, but that's not the point. (In other words, focus on the donut, not the hole. This is a danish - the donut without the hole!)
Anyway, here goes:
Notes • When describing skills gained in trees, 5 = Master.
Merchant
Many professions need the value of vendors, but it is wrongly limited to Artisans. Furthermore, some trees pose limited value compared to others. Changing Merchant to a novice profession, like Politician, moving the Artisan merchant-related skills to this profession, and adding some flexibility makes this a profession that provides value and accessibility to all the professions which can utilize it.
• Merchant becomes a basic profession, much like Politician. In fact, the requirements for it may be identical – apprentice experience – to reflect the fact that a merchant must be an established player in the game.
• New skill: Reduced Fees – affects bazaar and maintenance fees by dropping at a % rate equal to the skill level.
• New skill: Vendor Delegation – allows merchant to grant another player Admin rights to a vendor, allowing them to ‘operate’ the vendor – effectively allowing a Merchant to provide vendors to non-merchants.
• New skill: Improved Vendor Delegation – The Merchant can now set a ‘commission’ rate on delegated vendors, thus earning a commission for each sale.
• Adjusted skill: Premium Auctions – allows bazaar sales up to 6,000cr (instead of 3,000) at the same posting price.
• The Hiring skills gained in the Hiring tree move to the Advertising tree.
• The Hiring tree becomes the Business tree, as follows:
- Access Fees (as Business I in Artisan profession)
- Premium Auctions (as Business II in Artisan profession)
- Vendor Delegation
- Improved Vendor Delegation
• The Efficiency tree changes as follows:
- Reduced Fees +10
- Reduced Fees +10
- Reduced Fees +10
- Reduced Fees +10
- Reduced Fees +10
Artisan
Artisans lose the Business tree, since Merchant is now a novice profession. Furthermore, the experimentation and assembly skills are moved to a separate tree to be in line with the other crafting professions, which have separate “assembly/experimentation skill” trees.
• The Business tree becomes the Experimentation tree, as follows. The skills are migrated from the Engineering and Domestic Arts trees.
- Artisan Assembly +15, Artisan Experimentation +15, Customization +20
- Artisan Assembly +15, Artisan Experimentation +15, Customization +20
- Artisan Assembly +20, Artisan Experimentation +20, Customization +20
- Artisan Assembly +20, Artisan Experimentation +20, Customization +20
- Artisan Assembly +20, Artisan Experimentation +20 (“Inventor”)
• All items in the Architect “Furniture” tree are moved to the Domestic Arts tree.
• All furniture items for Master Architect are moved to Master Artisan.
Architect
Architects lose the ability to make furniture. The player city structures are moved into the Furniture tree, and the assembly skills are moved into the Construction tree, which already includes experimentation skills. Architects may complain about losing furniture, but they just gained a lot with player cities, and most Master Architects I met don't give a hoot about furniture any more.
• The power core and structure storage module are moved from Buildings I to Novice Architect.
• All Structure Assembly skills in the Furniture tree are moved to the Construction tree.
• The Buildings tree is renamed the Housing tree.
• All structure items in the Construction tree are moved to the Furniture tree, which is renamed Buildings.
Implementing
This would be tough because a lot of skills jump around. You don't want people to "lose" the ability to do what they currently do.
- Artisan -- Engineering II gets +1 skill level in the Experimentation tree. Engineering IV gets another +1 skill level. Domestic Arts II gets +1 skill level in the Experimentation tree. Domestic Arts IV gets another +1 skill level. Potential problem: skill point cap.
- Artisan -- Those that had Business III get Novice Merchant, which allows the use of a vendor. Otherwise all skill is lost (since these skills are otherwise gone). Potential problem: Loss of skills (access fees, premium auctions) which don't have much value right now for most people anyway.
- Merchant -- If the player did not have Advertising skill of the same rank as their Hiring skill, the Hiring skill level transfers to Advertising. Otherwise, leave thing as-is -- the player is only gaining skills. Potential problem: None.
- Architect -- If the player did not have Construction skill of the same rank as their Furniture skill, the Furniture skill level transfers to Construction. If the player does not have Artisan-Domestic Arts skill on the same (or higher) level as their Furniture akill, they gain Artisan-Domestic Arts skill equal to their old Furniture skill. Potential problem: skill point cap.
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Hey, it's nice to dream and run through these exercises in your mind... :-)
Peraonally i was not too upset by the previous "CH nerf" as it has come to be called. Yes, it was a setback having our pets downgraded slightly, and i would have trained the order of my skills differently had i known the post-patch abilitys, but it was recoverable in time.
The ability to control the special moves of my pet in the future, made up for the inconvienance of the patching process. As far as the pets level/attributes changing, and the non-ch pet level changing, that appeared to be more than compensated for by the new options available to BE's. Effectively switching the pet market to engineered/ cloaned pets, rather than wild-tamed pets.
This i thought was as it should be (though again we have present hardship for future gain during)... genetic engineers CAN create pets which are more easily domesticated, trained, controled or have greater resistances or abilitys than their natural counterparts. To me this appared to simply initiate a shift in pet mechanics, and i told this to anyone complaining "nerf".
I did not see the gross exploit of the level 0 BE pets or the level 5's with 10k hams. I did buy several pets... (too keep current with the shift), most of which still "live" in my house. I released a couple of tamed pets from my data pad to replace with these "slightly better" engineered pets , but fortunately kept several "old" pets (for centimental reasons... I'd tamed/ trained them from babies after all).
I understand the need to remove the unintended, and extreamely imbalanced pets from the game. However, i and many others would have prefered to simply "exchange" them for a "valid" pet of the same type, with the invalid stats modifyed. Perhaps at the CH trainers.
When the "invalid pet" patch went into effect i lost my little "BirdBait" (a little level 11 lizard : 2- 3kish ham with an absolutely pittiful attack). I'd never used him to fight; he was just comic relief (running 'round the leggs of my giant carian spat). I'm sure many others lost pets that they were attached to as well.
The continuing problem i see with this is all those deeds out there that will produce invalid pets. Players now need a spreadsheet of what constrains a valid pet, before they go visit a BE vendor. (does such a document even exhist) Of course we don't want those deeds simply deleted as it will destroy some pretty cute house companians. Perhaps you could simply indicate "valid or invalid" on the deed if not put in the option to modify/ validate the effected pets at the CH trainer(s).
Many dedicated BE's have also not only lost cash/ inventory, but have now developed a "bad rep" as well for all their efforts, as their product is unusable.
Starskin wrote:
hey, i hope this isn't lost in the myriads of stuff on here.
how could it not be...thi shas got to be the worst idea ever...having everyone sound of about everything in one thread. it is cacophany. just reading a page gave me a head ache there are so many disconnected ideas and topics