Development Cycle Archive

I have not been to teh DW bunker yet but after reading the various posts of those who did...I'm kinda glad that I didn't and now I have only one question " When is Pub 9 coming? "

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3D4D wrote:

I really hope that the Devs have had enough of the super hard dungeons that are a power gamer's playground. Im sure that others would agree that it is time to get back to content that everyone can enjoy. I miss the good old days of content like player mounts and vehicles. That content was fun because it built on the existing professions and made new content available to almost all players.

I also look forward to the veteran rewards system.

A helpful suggestion to any devs reading:

The Speeder, Swoop, and X34 are getting a little old, I am sick to death of seeing everyone in the same vehicles.The AV-21 was a good idea, but lets make more speeders that are a little bit easier to obtain.

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I agree that there is probably enough high end stuff in the game right now, but they put this in because they were getting complaints that the game was too easy. Basically, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.

Two thumbs down.

A) Ouch! : It is insanely difficult
B) Lagtastic! : The insane difficulty requires a large amount of people to overcome, which the area cannot support
C) Loot? : The rewards for the large number of people required to do it do not outweigh the price paid.

I can understand why the devs want these great loot items to be rare but not at the expense of players having fun [other than the 2% stacked-template rare-loot campers.]

The development time would have been better spent on features that can be enojoyed by everyone-


Here are some ideas where quests/dungeons can be fun .


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THE BATTLE FOR HOTH - [All mobs medium difficulty]

players can take part in a series of quests that eventually lead to participation in the SW ep4 HOTH battle.

Rebel players start inside the rebel ice base and must fight snowtroopers and solve a few puzzles to reach the snowspeeder launch bay.

Imperials are attacked at the imperial landing site base and must fight thier way
into the AT AT grouping area.

Rebels get to fly the snowspeeders or man turrets against the imperial's players AT AT'S etc and these epic battles are instanced for all active players who have reached their attack craft in time for the pending battle.

depending on player numbers the battle can be tipped either way with good rewards for everyone who takes part.

Neutral players get to scavange around the ice base and battle-area for useful schematics and stuff to sell while fighting ice beasts etc.

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Struggle for power -

A series of quests and missions that will allow players to attain the highest possible ranks within the rebel,imperial, and hutt [criminal] factions .

The ranks will display with the char name and will enable special features that the player can control. The quests and missions will be scored so that players will
constantly have to keep fighting to stay high in rank with a re-calcualtion of rank once every week.

perks of rank might include -
special outfits /visible rank/ vocal & visual salutes from all faction npc's/special elite shield generator.

plus -

Jabba's head of security - can put "protection" costs onto a chosen npc city
keeping 20% of the credits raised ,but can be a target for bounty hunters.

Rebel Colonel - could call on 15 rebel troops who will attack all imperial npcs [butnot players]

Imperial General -
could deploy an imperial base in any location and one AT AT.

Faction supreme commander -
could deploy massive assaults on selected enemy npc cities [eg not coronet][maybe limited number per week] but which would help to create the appearance of a struggle against the empire.... possibly one attack per week on a player city?!


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Lost underwater city of the Gungans.

An adventure to find the lost underwater city of the gungans .

This adventure would start on Naboo and would have changeing quests/rewards and locations so that it could be played many times.

The culmination would be the discovery of an abandonded gungan submarine craft that can be used to explore the areas beneath naboo and the lost city.
examples of Rewards could be - gungan force shields/gungan power grenades & lanchers, a super battle droid schematic ,a battle droid hover-assualt craft schematic etc etc
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All of these ideas would mostly contain moderate enemies with a scattering of very hard mobs .

13 pages thus far of "too hard", "uninspired" and other not so great feedback. I think it is pretty clear.

A few annoying trends in the output from the developers over the past few months:

1 - Solution for the hardcore gamer: make them grind away at something endlessly. Whether this be on a large scale, such as grinding away at the 32 professions in hopes of an unlock, to a smaller scale, with NPCs that have over 200K HAM and are 100% resistant to all but restraint. What is the point of these chars? Loot, that's it. Beat on one with a group for 45 minutes and the only thing actually doing damage is any DOT that hits. Maybe you get lucky and actually loot it first, AND actually get something. What to do with it? Set it on a coffee table in your house or sell it in the auctions to pay for the brandy, canape, and armor needed to try another run on the NPCs till you find something again. Eventual conclusion? Monotony

2 - Publishes are coming out faster than bug fixes: Playability right now is almost as bad as it was around the time of the first mount publish. Why is your buddy fighting there with no armor on and a lance when the mob teleported up into the sky miles away? He's not, you just get a different version of what he looks like and does. Guild chat working today? It's a crapshoot. Fly from your wind generator to your harvester, but where did your energy go? Log off for 30 minutes and cross your fingers it might be back. The vehicles were fixed to not teleport when you get off. Ooops, it wasn't the vehicles teleporting, oh well, maybe next time.

3 - A lot of the published material has been little more than fluff, or worse. Someone who could have been fixing bugs spent time revamping junk dealers? Woot, ty. The droid invasion was billed with all sorts of previews of combat droids and promises of improved droid use in combat. What did we get? A minor upgrade to the still useless probot. We did get somebody spending their time coding for bots that throw traps and harvest - nice idea but useless as you still have to target and type a command, why not target and hit a button? More bots can jam up the spatial chat at starports. If you actually are interested you can't just jot down the wp, you have to find the dang thing and use it's radial menu amidst all the lag caused by it and its brethren. If the lag isn't bad, someone will come along with a fog machine soon.

I don't make games and I appreciate that SOE is trying. The point is this, however. Bugs are bad right now, and the new content isn't tickling too many fancies. Maybe it is time for a few power lunches and board meetings, which I do understand, to get some fresh ideas going and get everyone focused on what needs to be done.

A lot of things I agree with posted above.

Just one thing to underline: LAAAG. I still don't get it why its not instanced, especially it was asked for many times.

Also, with instanced bunkers, you could really scale difficulty to the entering group, and not create the Entrance Camp.

Like Jedi, we didn't want Mandalorian Armor to become commonplace - it's supposed to be rare armor worn by an elite crew of mercenaries (who, by this point in the timeline, have been all but wiped out). - shug


lol, can you imagine if jedi were as rare as mando is going to be given the current dungeon's difficulty? thanks for the soundbite shug.

Content for the Few. Would like some content for the many.

Casual gamers are getting locked out of all the new content.

Take a look at your metrics again, then try to come up with content that fits the majority of players.

My opinion........

insanity, pure insanity, make it instanced and give a chance for smaller grps, come on, in EQ its adjusted to the grp dynamic, why not do that here???????
4 stars for effort, 0 stars for product