Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Friday Feature Jan 23rd Jedi Revamp
MonroeThanes wrote:
This is great news! Before these types of changes were mentioned, being a jedi was mindless grinding killing beasts in the wilds of Endor, now the jedi will be able to venture out of his cave and PvP or hunt with a group of friends or pull out a saber in the coronet cantina just to show off. Thank you devs for listening to the community on jedi issues and responding with good news.
Devs: Is this what you want?
ttp://swg.stratics.com/content/feature/library/interviews/CavE3Interview.shtml
Interviewer : Surely an awful lot of people will want to be Jedi. How hard will it be to attain this status?
Galaxies Technical Director Jeff Grills : It's going to be extremely difficult. Based on the continuity between Episode IV and Episode V, there aren't that many Jedi. On top of that there's the fact that the Empire is very worried about Jedi in general, and Darth Vader is tracking down all Jedi and wiping them out. So even if you become a Dark Jedi, you're still not safe from Vader. He'll still want to kill you just as much as if you were on the Light Side.
http://swg.stratics.com/content/feature/e3/e32002qa.shtml
Stratics: Can you talk about the Jedi? What sorts of checks and balances are you going to be put into place... We know you mentioned it would be hard... but anything specific?
Raph: Well During this time period the Jedi are hunted by the Empire. So if you flaunt your Jedi power, we will send Boba Fett, Mara Jade or even Mara Jade after you.
http://swg.stratics.com/content/feature/library/interviews/IGNInterview672002.shtml
Haden Blackman : We're purposefully holding back information on Force Sensitivity and Jedi because we want Jedi to be rare and mysterious.
Haden Blackman
LucasArts Producer
Truth 8: There is a higher power. We do not make the final decision when it comes to continuity issues; Lucasfilm Licensing does. Because of this, we need to be prepared for occasional rejections. As a hypothetical, let’s say we wanted to give all human characters X-ray vision as a special power to help balance them against the other species. Obviously, X-ray vision is not something that normal humans possess in any of the continuity sources. We could argue the game design issue (that humans need something special), but we’d likely lose. If we were to propose such a thing, we’d need to anticipate that the idea could be vetoed by Lucasfilm Licensing. We always need backup plans when proposing anything that could be rejected."
B) If known Jedi escaped the purge, then it's reasonable to assume that Force sensitives who had not yet been identified and trained as Jedi remained unidentified and were never slaughtered. These Force sensitives have the potential to become Jedi.
4) I don't see characters "becoming" Jedi during this time period a contradiction because we have a mechanic in place that makes sense given the continuity. We're not sharing it yet, but the way that a Force sensitive goes about becoming a Jedi makes sense.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Haden Blackman
LucasArts Producer"
Player Impact: There’s the potential for players to impact the galaxy in ways that contradict what we know happens in the films. This doesn’t mean that players will be able to kill Darth Vader, but the Imperial presence on Tatooine might be pushed back, or the Rebel presence on Yavin 4 might stick around longer than we know is "true". This is all in the interest of letting players affect the game world, a design decision that we made early on. Because we’re drawing definite lines (no killing Vader, remember), this is still only a BEND. We are allowing fairly major changes, but not any that will directly contradict with the films."
To start with, let me say that I am frustrated and angered by these upcoming changes. This game appears to be progressing even more rapidly towards Star Wars: Jedi Galaxies than I had feared. Nevertheless, I’ll try to put my objections in as coherent and constructive form as possible:
1. "The second phase will be to rebuild the Jedi system to be quest-oriented; and to include the familiar elements of Force Sensitivity, Jedi-oriented quests, as well as many other elements the developers and the community feel should make up the process of becoming a Jedi." This criticism is more out of jealousy than anything. I admit that. The Jedi, and/or Jedi-wannabes, get cool new quests and content? Great. What about the rest of us, who aren’t Jedi, who don’t have any real interest in playing Jedi? Where’s our new content? Why is it that this brand-new change is already "In Development" while the proposed changes forthe "regular" classes–whose issues, in many cases, have been on the table for months and months--are just "In Concept"? I’m sorry, but I was unaware that Jedi were the focus of this game. I guess the new promotional site video wasn’t just a case of marketing tactics at work, but a real sign of things to come.
Of course, if the new changes make it possible to open a FS without destroying my character, maybe I’ll pursue that line on the side. I mean, why hinder myself unnecessarily? If the Holocron fiasco has taught us anything, it’s that finding a few classes you like, building a character based within those classes, and then playing that character is not the way the game was intended to be played. Though, by the time I get around to doing that, I’ll probably be Jedi #3528 on my server. Which brings me to my next point:
2. I thought Jedi were supposed to be secretive and small in number. It’s bad enough right now, when I can walk into in any cantina in the galaxy and ask the other entertainers, "Who is here to entertain and who to hologrind?" and 9/10 of the responses I get are "Hologrind."I can't help but wonder whatthe gamewill be like when all of those people have FS slots. Previously, I could console myself with the knowledge that most of them would probably be unable to handle the Mother Of All Grinds that is the Jedi system, especially if they managed to amass hundreds and hundreds of thousands of xp, only to lose it all after being killed. Now that the system is much more forgiving in that respect, I expect to see many more Jedi openly using their powers... and participating in PvP.
I don’t know if it’s the case anywhere, but on Starsider many people share a few common ideas about the current state of PvP: a) The side with the most CMs wins, and b) Don’t bother if you’re not a fencer/TKA/rifleman (or whatever the current FOTM is; I’m so behind on these things). The Jedi changes will almost certainly alter these ideas (if proposed changes to skill bonus stacking don’t do it first). Which is my third point:
3. Large numbers of Jedi participating in PvP will radically change the nature of PvP. And I don’t mean in a good way. As it stands, Jedi are powerful characters–at least once they’ve trained a bit. The overall weakening of hybrid combat class characters that I believe is just around the corner will be good for PvP dabblers like myself, but bad in the long run when coupled with the emergence of another class whose power will therefore be unmatchable. Continuity issues aside, the ability of Jedi "to sway the course of a battle" will ultimately boil down to "the side with the most Jedi wins." Eventually, as more and more Jedi become powerful, I’d imagine that the conventional wisdom regarding PvP will become "if you’re not a Jedi, don’t bother."
A few months after the above happens, I predict that the Devs will take notice and realize that the system is not actually what they intended. Their first response would probably be to make becoming a Jedi even more difficult, but I’d imagine that by the time they got around to doing this, the problem would be too acute for a reactionary measure like that to have much impact. Removing the Jedi class entirely, while an idea that I would support wholeheartedly, would not be an option; it would be suicide. Nor could the Devs arbitrarily cull the Jedi population, deleting a few characters here and there. No, the only solution would be to drastically reduce the power of the Jedi, leaving us with hordes of lightsaber-wielding weaklings.
Yippee. I can hardly wait.
Disclaimer: You can call me pessimistic if you want, but I can see all of this happening all too easily. I just have a knack for predicting the worst possible way anything can turn out. Yes, there are some good things about the changes... ok, one good thing that I can think of, and that’s that opening the FS is now a viable option for casual RPers like myself, who don’t have the inclination to destroy a character concept for the sake of a FS and don’t have the time to play a second, for-grinding-only character. Somehow I just don’t think that this potential benefit outweighs the potential drawbacks.
Hey Q and true Star Wars Fans.
Here is a thought. Be rid of the entire Master Jedi Profession! The hologrinding, the whine, the permadeath, rid it from this game.
In this time period of STAR WARS LORE, only Yoda, Darth Vader, and the Emperor are offically th
I could go on and on looking for quotes. There are a ton of them out there from the devs that say "Jedis should be rare and mysterious."
http://swg.stratics.com/content/news/archive/arc8-2001.php
For every time we’ve bent the continuity, we’ve made decisions to preserve it as well. Here are just a few examples:
Stormtroopers: Some players want to play stormtroopers, but we didn’t feel we’d be able to preserve the continuity and the sense of immersion if stormtroopers were running around the world freely. Stormtroopers are a very menacing and recognizable symbol of the Empire (and evil). We prefer to keep them mysterious and threatening. We also didn’t feel that we could recreate that military lifestyle that stormtroopers must endure."
About 100 sounds right to me.
Is your hope that even though Jedis won't fear death much, many will find too boring and difficultand they will play there main characters, so only a handful of people would be playing their Jedis at any given time?
"THE FUTURE
Where might we bend continuity after the initial launch? That’s hard to predict. Hopefully, any bends will be minimal and we'll find ways to explain them ."
for the matter, combat droids are banned in this period, ESPECIALLY droideka.
As far as I know, only Nym is allowed to have droideka, because he controls Lok and the Imps tollerate him begrudgingly since he tollerates them begrudgingly.
All I can hope for is in the 1-2 months it takes them to ruin how to open the FS slot as it is now, I'll open it. If not, I refuse to play a game where the owners slap you in face, say they're sorry you just wasted all your time, and good luck figuring out the new way to open it.
An even greater grind has just started, and we have very little time to finish it. Fun fun ... not.