Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)
Karquile wrote:
Limbonik wrote:
Karquile wrote:
TH's question is a valid one. How do you know people are AWOL?
If you know because they TOLD you that they're AWOL, tell them to redeed their houses since you're having such a nice conversation and everything. If they're your Frat buddies and you know they all quit, walk into the Frat house and say guys, I need those lots, log in one last time and clear them out ok?
Hard to log in "one last time" when their accounts are inactive. Unless you think they should have to re-activate their account just to redeed the house? Note I said I received "emails" from said players. I did not say I received an ingame email.
How do you know their accounts are inactive? Again, this is amazingly detailed information to be getting in an out-of-game email. In my experience, most people who say that they're quitting the game give a (near term) future date and offer to give stuff away, etc. There are also people who drift away without announcing it... but that includes announcements telling me whether their accounts are inactive. So I don't really know.
I know the accounts are inactive because all the players have tried logging in at one point since or another. All members of my city are members of a gaming server I run that is based in California. All houses I'm speaking of are empty, and the players did give their stuff away. Also, this is only 8 of the 20 some people from my gaming server who have quit I am talking about. These ones just didn't think about removing their houses from the city after they logged of that time. They don't plan to come back, and I do not feel that the active players of the city should have to suffer due to their "absent-mindedness", nor that the inactive players should have to purchase another month worth of service for the sole reason of removing said homes.
I had someone quit the game on me this week. I didn't raise a fuss, we all know what an addicting grind SWG can be, and when you've put your time in and had some fun, hey, it's your call. I met him in-game and he /transferstruc'd his house to me. Now if I have someone for it, I'll move them in there, if not, I'll use the lot for something else.
That is a great idea...if you do not have anything on your lots to take the structures from them. Just because I'm a Mayor does not mean I can give up my lots. I need to be able to make money somehow myself, don't I? And some structures, such as PAs, take up way to many lots to just transfer them.
I would - and do - take the position that if you are going to be the Mayor of a sizable city, you owe it to your citizens to behave like a real mayor, and not some uber Commando who wants an extra title to hang next to Guild leader. Leave a few lots free at all times so that you can do transfers when needed. Draw a salary if you need it, or use some (not all) lots to pull and sell some good resources, etc. If you really play SWG for the other things, and Mayor is just a necessary evil, then someone else should be Mayor.
I play to be a Mayor, and still make money. I do not have combat skills, nor should I have to grind out a combat/scouting profession in order to make money. All my citizens have my email, home phone number and my cell phone number so they may contact me at any time of day in order to have something taken care of for them. I have 1 home and 1 backup home for storage as we are not given much in terms of inventory space. That's 4 of my lots. I also have a bank in the city which takes up another of my lots. This gives me 5 lots to take care of monetary issues that I have as a player. I like to be able to purchase stuff, and I also like to be able to afford to go the another planet if I so choose. The Mayor class is completely horrible at this moment, the fact we have nothing listed in our master box is proof enough. The bottom line is there is a middle ground to be met for players who choose to be a mayor, as their are not many rewards or ways you can support yourself in this class. Like I said, they have all the info in the world to contact me if they need something, but at the same time I'm not just some "idle class" who can give up what few lots he has and still afford to do anything remotely fun as well.
If someone hasn't logged in for six weeks and I haven't heard from them, I have no d4mn business passing judgment on their gameplay. Being Mayor doesn't mean being Tinpot Galactic Dictator. It means I run a city. I don't own it, I run it.There's rocks and dunes where I can't build, there's places where people had houses before I showed up, and there's places where inactive players have houses. Deal with it.
It's not as easy to just "deal with it" when you have no other space in your city to move players. Rank I and Rank III are no big deal, but when you're dealing with Rank II good luck. Ranks 1&3 provide 100m radius around City Hall, but Rank 2 only provides a paltry 50m to work with. And while we may not be allowed to dictate the city, so to should the Developers not be allowed to punish the active players of a City because of a short-sightedness in their programming.
There's more than enough short-sightedness to go around, however. If you're laying out a city in an area with limited buildable space, you should place houses yourself and not leave zoning wide open. You should make having an out-of-game email contact be a condition of moving in. You should bug your citizens to send you an outside email if you DON'T have one.
Zoning isn't open, it's closed off. I've laid out players where to go when we had limited space to work with. It is not my short sightedness that prevents the lots from freeing up. The people who have lived there longest are the ones who've dropped, and they have the lots closest in radius to the City Hall...that's normally how it works. So when a city shrinks, it's hard to recover as those lots are full. It would be easier if those lots were in the outer radius of the city, but as I said it doesn't normally work out that way when we're talking the "first sons" of a cities creation. It be just as simple if those homes could be moved to the outer ring of the citym if we cannot have them removed. I'm not asking for homes to just be taken from everyone....I'm asking for a way to access space that can no longer be used until said cancelled players homes have decayed.
Uncontrolled cities on rough terrain only work if you have a bulldozer. And we're not getting a bulldozer.
As I said, the city wasn't uncontrolled. And again, this would not be an issue if not for a "recent addition" to the way a city functions. Had this been implemented from the beginning, this would not be coming up at all.
Strikke wrote:
Yes, LeBob, this WOULD be fun, IF the people who were continuing their "advert / tumble / dance macro" got a global TEF and were attackable while inside the shuttle. If I could kill them to make them shut the heck up, it would be great fun. Come to think of it, it would be great fun if they implemented this feature withing 100m of every starport/shuttleport in the game.
LeBob wrote:
an idea I read in another post that I really liked is that each shuttle would have an 'instanced interior' so that when you see other people on the shuttle and you can continue your advert / tumble / dance macro inside while everyone waits for the shuttle to arrive at their respective destination... the distance needed to be travelled could even factor into the amount of time it took to get to your destination would that be fun or what?!
why not just use /addignore?
I'm saying I like spam... but this would be very cool implementation...
Kade_Deveron wrote:
I'd like to comment on the issue of armor. Armor in SWG is clearly too powerful. It encourages soloing to virtual exclusing of grouping, makes being unarmored an unviable option (esp in PvP), and creates a cookie cutter environment where everyone is wearing their 70%+ composite. It also leaves factional armor (and uniforms) unviable (the cost on faction armor doesnt help).
The fundamental problem is that the "penalty" for wearing armor isnt really a penalty. Buffs are so powerful and easy to get that everyone runs around in their armor and buffed. In order to balance armor, forget penalties to secondary stats. Try penalties to defensive skills (ie ranged/melee, KD, dizzy, etc..) or to weapon speed. Armor is cumbersome and should make players easier to hit as they are less mobile (but allowing the armor to absorb damaage of course), leaving unarmored players options for pvp or for, heaven forbid, factional armor.
I have to agree. I have agood, capable char& not really into the whole armor thing. And because of that I have a lot of trouble with PvP. Even with buffs and/or good armor, I still end up getting killed, fast,most of the time& it is usually always by one person(solo). If I'm going to get my but kicked within 5 - 10 secs, it should be by 2 or more players. Thats enjoyable. I even saw two players shoot up 20+ stormies in a span of 5 mins& take almostNO damage. I love playing but when I see things like this it just ruins the fun for me. Very sad, very sad......
Whatever happened to the "HUTT" Faction? Cant you guys do anything about this. Some of us are not Rebel or Imp's and we have to Join a Faction to get all the Perks. I Was waiting for the Hutt Empireand you guys removed it. Anyone else agree with me on this?
BRING BACK THE HUTTS!
-Sazo
I have many things to comment, partly as im a commando...
TH, take a look on our forums..post..do something...some of us are pumping out some great new ideas for the proffession...yet we get no response...no response yet on Top 5...Ten Q's to devs...we have no one to acknowledge our ideas...
But thats not why im posting this...checking TC religiously...we have 1 new thing added...ability to use hvy weapons/gernades indoors....yet we were promised significant changes to our prof in Publish 7 and 8..we're loosing faith in the devs..AGAIN..from the lack of communication on what these changes are, whats in the works, or what your going to push out...and many are feeling once again we've been lied too, or pushed off.
This isnt a laughing matter...the chef got a revamp...you obviously told them and discussed with them whats going to occur..hell, even the whole community..Yet commando needs a massive overhaul now as well...yet you guys ignore us on the boards...our role is STILL not truly defined with all the "fixes" the dev team has implented..we NEED direction, we NEED guidence, we NEED answers/discussions on our own board.
I implore you guys to try and make a commitment to this...we've been on the backburner..for too long...and now are fearing it will be another 2 months (since jedi are focus in next 2 publishes) until we actually get fixed...and simply changing titles and adjusting mods..is NOT significant change.
Have some comments on the Shuttle issue:
1. Time was decreased from 10 min to 5 min. Everyone say thank you and shut up. almost everyone (except the moron in the back row who keeps firing spitballs at TH when he's not looking) ASKED for a decrease. You got it. Be happy.
2. There were quite a few people who asked if we could purchase tickets from 1 terminal that covered an entire trip (at naboo, buy naboo-coronet and coronet-dath) so save the trouble of running out to the terminals at the mid point of a trip. That made sense.
But, think about it... If you want to go from Naboo - Dath, what is the difference HOW it works mechanicly? with the proposed change, you don't have to run over 15 meters, click on the droid, and Re-affirm your destination.
3. The change will de-centralize the game. People who are crafting will move from the "choke-point" to the "end-points" to get customers... Since there are more end points, they'll thin out.
I LIKE the thought of less bodies in coronet's star port.... I like it a LOT!
TorvusMessorius wrote:
How about..... why do harvesters no longer move when you walk 64m away from them and then come back, e.g no animation
Who knows, but harvestors moving for immersion does not affect my fighting or crafting progession.
Harvestors moving does not affect the fact that:
1.Harvestors moving does not affect the fact that we cannot buy more than 1 pair of clothes because the house is full of rotating components need to perform a crafting function. We were promised changesand standardization in structure storage functionality 6 months ago and instead of addressing the issue the devs continue to "Make New Content(TM)" without fulfilling those promises. Also, I like the total "We Do Not Reply(TM)" attitude on this. I have made no statement there which is not factual.
2. They continue to knee-jerk react to whiners (ala the AT-ST Geldings viaAdmittedly PlannedRebel Whiners, alaThe Great Experimentation Whine) and delete or nerf with nological feedback put forth whatsoever that "I" can see (notice my qualifier devs). No logical or semi-scientific poll or profiling is used.
3. We continue to have things tested in a LIVE SERVER that has not a single chance of getting a critical mass mean or any value to any decision, in my opinion, instead of galaxy copy.
3. Still have multiple bug fixes which literally APPEAR (notice I did qualify this too) to be simple variable changes.
4. Rightly or wrongly publish incorrect SEA information, have the problems COMPLETELY spelled out for them by the user base and then refuse to acknowledge anything further on the subject.
So sorry, somehow harvestors jumping up and down just doesn't seem so bad.
Khragon wrote:1) Chef foods and drink when you die have the icon go away, but you still carry the "full stomach" effects with you as well. Meaning you cant eat or drink more as you are full, but you died and no longer have the buff effects. You then have to wait for the fullness to go away to eat or drink more. This should reset upon each death.2) People are using FD at base terminals. Once inside, just FD at the terminal and keep shutting it down.3) Can we get an update on Combat Balancing? Info, Publish 8 notes, etc...very much looking forward to hearing more.
1) The timers shouldnt decay...cmon death is already a joke lets at least penalize the person somehow. Its definatly nota good idea for pvp purposes to elt someone clone and fully stock up back on food and come right back into the action.
2) This was addressed in one of the posts about GCW changes...not sure if i can find it again but if i do ill repost it.
3) Combat balance is posponed until the whole system is ready to push all at once and its be totally thought out. JustG mentioned that in his state of the game earlier this week.
Not sure if this is the correct place to post this but here it comes.
I just recently found out the hard way that it appears that when several people are attacking a mob, say a Krayt dragon, that the person who damages it the most gets the loot rights. It does not take into account people in a group attacking.
So, if a group of 20 people do 1000 points of damage each for a total of 20K and another person comes along and does 1001 points of damage, he'll get to loot it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't EQ that way until enough people complained how stupid that was and SOE finally listened and changed it to base the loot rights off the group that does the highest amount of damage? This drastically reduced the KS'ing going on in EQ. Why then would SOE not do the same for SWG?
This happened to me the other night. I had a group of about 12 people (many masters) but two guys come along and one starts pounding on the dragon with his power hammer doing 8K+ hits and his medic friend stood back and healed when needed- which wasn't often, as his bars barely moved. Needless to say, he got the loot.
So, this one guy was able to outdamage each of us individually. I can accept that. What I can't accept though is that as a group, we far out damaged what he was able to do but still lost the loot.
Kharr Khomak
Master Ranger - since Dec 14, 2003
TKA 3-3-3-3
Member of the Antarian Rangers
Ex-Master Creature Handler - Dec 16, 2003 to Mar 9, 2004
Playing since Sept 7, 2003
Thunderheart wrote:
Any thoughts on how to stop everyother pvp player from using a jawa rifle or stun baton?No. Do you find this to be a problem?
hm, maybe that question was worded badly, how about this:
What are you going to do in effort to encourage pvp players to use non-stun damage weaponry in PvP?
this also extends to the following question:
What are you going to do in effort to encourage pvp players to use other armor beside composite?