Development Cycle Archive

---

Tavian_McMaster wrote:

While I celebrate the increased difficulty of npcs, I worry that some npcs are going to be simply undoable. i haven't made it to the corvette or DWB since the patch so I'm just guessing here, but if a Janta that couldn't even scratch me before now can kill me in 10 seconds if I do not watch it like a hawk... I have the feeling a SBD would cut me in half and scoop out my insides. If the DWB took a group of 15-20 before, how is it players are expected to go through increased difficulty with still a 20 person cap on group size?

---

I can speak for the Corvette....A few people from my guild and Itried to dothe Neutral Vette.

We were noticing we were getting hit hard...VERY hard. We didn't last long. We made it to Engineering...where you can look out the window and see the SBDs...All 9 of them....

The Corvette was released when NPC specials were broken, so it seems they were beefed up a bit. Now...with specials back in the game...They have pretty much made the Corvette nearly impossible.

Swordsman seems to be the mosteffective profession on the Neutral Corvette (Not as resistant to blast damage)...So...Get lots of swordsmen to go with you. I am a Master Brawler/TKM/Swordsman...It helped a LOT. Get about 8 of them, and 2 docs or combat medics...and it could be done....Still may lose people...but it can be done if the Medics are on their toes.

Basically anyone with high ranged def will do well on the Neutral Vette. For some reason...the only weapons they would switch between were Grenades and ranged weapons.

I would get toe-toe with them and they would drop Grenades on me...They would take no splash damage...of course....and their grenades would take a large chunk out of my HAM....like 1500-2k damage...OUCH. I want a grenade like that!

---

Sanguin75 wrote:
LOL! I see alot of people here complaining "Buhuu! Devs, I cannot solo a ns elder" or "Buhuu! The tuskens are too tough for me!" Well, welcome to the real SWG!

Aaaahhhh! Just like the old days! Nothing like a good choke from a NS Elder or the pounding from 20 tuskens!

/salute SOE!

Now, all the remains is to remove buffs! Completly! Then we can go grouphunting again and have some real fun!

/cheer!!!

---

the comment about removing the buffs that not gonna happen or the doctors won have anything to make money on. and i do a alot of group hunting and for some high lvl nps like ns and on the corvette you need the buffs or your group will get slaughtered. so i say i like that they are using specials again and buffs shouls stay

---

-VtS-Maddix wrote:

I was wondering whether returning NPCs specials would make the Corvette and DWB (both implemented while these weren't working) harder than they were intended to be. Having visited the Corvette for the first time tonight after the recent changes thought I would bring up a few issues.

Firstly after boarding the Corvette nearly all theSBDs and the Rebel NPCs were fighting. This had in turn triggered several of the 'SBD spawns' so there were twice the amount as normal. Navigating around the place was made harder for me personally because of a graphical bug that for my second trip in a row meant I couldn't see the walls/floor/roof/doors of most the place. Basically anything you see in the Corvette is normally white I saw as 'space' - blackness with stars. As I said, this was the second time it had happened though and first time it hadn't been a problem as I know the place quite well and was able to navigate via the ceiling lights (lol).

In any case as you'd expect the NPCs and SBDs are all now using special attacks, which means that a single one of them was capable of hitting a member of my group for as much as 2k damage after damage had been mitigated by defensive buffs and armour. Add this to the sheer number of things on there plus the fact that as they were already fighting there was almost double the amount of them, its fairly obvious that the place is a lot tougher than it used to be. Also bear in mind that since it was first launched the Corvette has been made harder by adding extra SBDs and 'hidden SBD spawns' that seem to trigger at certain actions.

Surely the place was never intended to be this hard?

I can only imagine what theDWB might be like. All this is also made harder by the fact that mobs can still be agro'd through the walls and on the most recent visits we were getting agro'd through walls by things while just standing still not doing anything or fighting anything else!

I imagine the main cause of the problems is the fact that everything on there is capable of doing AOE attacks that can agro thru the walls, floors and ceilings. Is there any hope of being able to see some fixes for any of this, before people start to give up on some of the games only real content left for many veteran players?

---

yes this is a very good point.

could we get a dev to comment on this since it does seems that noe the npc's can use specials that both places difficulty is semmed to skyrocket i saw a group of 20 last night in dwb get get slaughtered in the first couple rooms most were masters and the corvetted is totall chaos tried there this morning with nuetral mission was aggroed before i appeared on the corvette and everything was fighting everthing mass chaos there.

We are furiously trying to track down the Wookiee Armor crash, and have been working in close concert with some of you (THANKS) to nail it down. We are making traction, but have not solved it yet.

This is linked to the pixel and vertex shading options which are able to be disabled during startup. I was having the same problem, any time the hunter armor was visible on screenI crashed instantly. I had a friend who had a set so I turned off all graphics options and one at a time slowly turned them back on. I eventually had them all turned back on except pixel and vertex shading. The second I turned on the pixel/vertex it crashed again. I now play with both turned off.

---

StolenDiagram wrote:

If I were you, I'd completely scrap the idea of dungeons such as the DWB and geo cave, its not like anyone will be able to complete them

---

The DWB needs an enema, Ill agree wholeheartedly with that. The Corvette too for that matter. Simple fact is 350k HAM droids and NPCs are insane. I want the buffs those Cor Sec guys had on the vette... And I wanna buy a super battle droid...

But the Genosian Lab is fine as is. Last night my guild got all the way to the end where we whooped Acklays bottom. We were about 14 people, but isnt that kinda the idea for those places? The vette though or even the dwb... their not impossible, but way too close to it. And item decay on the vette should be turned off. If we have to fight insano NPC's I thinkthey could cut us some slack on decay.

I don't have a problem with the NPCs doing specials, etc... It reminds me a lot of EverQuest with one big difference:

In EQ, you could get some really nice loot drops.

In SWG, the loot table is nowhere near as nice.

If you're going to add risk, there needs to be a balance of 'reward.'

I agree about the stomach filling being stupid. Same thing happened to me and my partner with Nightsisters, We died and had to wait around a half hour for her to unfill enough to just buff again and around the same for me to lose filling. So really I would like to know: WHY after death do you lose your buffs but not the filling? Better yet, WHY after death do you still have the filling from the food, but none of the affects? The foods you are "full" on after death don't even show up on the little buff meter thing :/ Bad code is right.

It's fun fighting the Nightsisters with the Force and wepaons again and they should be the hardest to take in the game, no doubt there, but what is the point of still being full after death? And someone else mentioned a Protector DB'ing even though they had ham. Same happened to me. In fact even after that happened I got rez'ed and then db'd again right away. I remember them before they got their powers taken and got watered-down (why btw did that happen? They went from TKM and healing them selves MASSIVE amounts/and K/D after they for the Force nerf to being basic TKA), just why the mega bleed stacking and using jedi moves with a curved sword or hammer now? I sure don't remember that back then.

And again as someone said the lack of loot chances even with the npc's being harder is also stupid. We need at least a LITTLE sugar SOE! Not to much! Don't spoil us! Just give people that aren't Jedi looters some reason to still play this nice game ( and funny, maybe it's just my timing, but on Bria I rarely have seen Jedi near the Stronghold. I'm sure I could be totally wrong so forgive me if I am but,I only see them at the Geo caves and Graveyard. Gee can't wait to see the bext batch of 200 force sensitives after publish 10. Kill me now please).

Sorry for the massive whining btw just a bit frustrated.

Be well