Development Cycle Archive

Rebelshand

Would you mind posting where you read the thread for when Thunderheart said it would be tomorwo morning? I cant find the thread where you quoted him saying that. Thank you

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Thunderheart wrote:

Ill be doing it this week. I had to push it off until some of internal discussions were finished. The timetable was changed because the Droid Engineers were very clear in telling me they wanted Droid Engineering and Droid Handling as two seperate professions.

Their argument makes a lot of sense too. A good balance is akin to Bio-Engineers and Creature Handlers; BE's make em and CH's use them. Its really two different playstyles. One is crafting and one is combat/exploration. Adding a class of combat droids to the game has to be similar. Combat droids themselves have to stay level 10 or under for the general population otherwise everyone would rush out and get the better pets. That leaves a wide range of powerful combat droids that needs to be in the game, but to get those droids, players have to spend the time and energy to earn them.

So what we'll have is a Droid Engineer profession and a Droid Handling profession. All players will have access to combat droids up to level 10 and DH's will get a wide range of heavy combat droids to handle.

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Telakyte wrote:

TH, I have a question for you.

As it stands PVP I think is still one thing majorly flawed (hence of course the revamp). Of course, we don't really know what all that will give/take on live. But one concept I've been thinking about is the idea of the Radar in pvp. If you really consider it, it takes away alot of the key element of battlegameplay. If you can see every enemy on radar, anywhere (even in, behind, around buildings/mountains) what's the point? It takes little or no brillance to fight once you've learned your character's attack combinations. Simply target the red blip on your radar and have at it. He can't hide so no worries about him/her getting away. With Radar you take away the whole reason for having tailors make camo clothing and light or dark armor (save for the mere appearance). Now, if there were some way to become invis to radar I'm sure you'd have alot more people joining in the PVP fun. ANYONE could win. It would be simply a master's reign of terror. You'd get novices involved. Consider this: 3 tkanoviceswait near an ally after hearing of an overt enemy in town. Said overt then gets too close, and after a few moments pounce the unsuspecting victim. They've used their given profession for what it was meant for. Stealth, speed, and quick kill at close quarters. A rifleman could wear his dark clothing during night and sit on a hill, finally sniping as his title suggests.

Every profession would have an equal chance and be able to use their special given talents for the right environment.

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I Love this id. This in it self would add so much content to the game.

Maybe have the radar just work for npc or wild creaturs.. but not for pc or player controled pets and droids.

If only they would look into this ID.

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New-Name wrote:

Do not create a DH profession.

Instead, add a droid Droid Handling mod tree to EVERY combat profession.

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Ackis wrote:

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Thunderheart wrote:

• Runesabre was pulled away on personal business so I am putting the in dev post together on droid handling now (because I know how important it is).

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Hope everything is alright with him.

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Thanks. Ill tell him you said so

Status: The post is drafted and waiting to be agreed upon by the producers.

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So what you're saying is that even though a larger then large percentage of the community is vehemently against a droid handler profession you are still going to push through with it? This combined with the insult in the concept forum more or less trivializing everything done in the profession forums makes me question how serious our concerns are taken. While you can speak out of both sides of your mouth all you want, pull an Ari Fleischer or even just tell the truth, when a dev feels that a certain idea is good and that they know what's best for us even more so then ourselves...are we just swept under the rug then?

Droids are programmed, and at this point in the past everything has been made beyond idiot proof. When you make the droid brain it is given just about every command it will need. You then just have to tell it, follow me and the droid will go. Just because xerox machines are overly complex and require a PhD doesn't mean a power droid does. A moisture farmer was able to control a fleet of droids and even though Luke obviously had some crafting skills I doubt he had the necessaryabilites to reprogram a droid.

Creatures as pets make sense, Droids as pets don't. Droidsare machinery and should be treated as soo.

Like cars and other machinery peoplerequire licnses to use them. Similiar to a mini profession ideacreate a licence systemt that lets a person aquire a licence dependant on thier XP not skill since the majority of the post on this topic agree it takes NO skill to use a droid. I am sure people right now are saying OHH well it doesnt take experience to use them either and everyone should be able to use them regardless. all i have to say to that isNOT EVERYONE IN THE MOVIE HAD DROIDS so there needs to be some sort of system in place so NOT EVERYONE IN THE GAME HAS DROIDS and it shouldn't cost us are skill pts which determine professions.There are different xp fields that canreflect on different Droid Classes. There are already caps set on XP dependant on how far up a tree you are now. Have Xp spent just like faction points are spent but at high cost. This makes a person slow their advancement in a profession if they choose to purchase a license to use a droid. Also it prevents non combatants/noobs from buying the highest lv of droids. This gives non combatants a chance after earning Combat XP to spend that XP that they would of normally not of used on a droid. Due to XP caps they wouldnt be able to get an uber droid. If more restriction are needed then add a +(#lv) to master only fields soo not everyone is able to turn get droids making being a master more important. The lv number can vary from Prof to prof, Giving a master DE a higher lv then most but due to XP restriction they would need some Combat fields too to gain the higher lv droids. SO a master DE master Artison who choose to be a master weaponsmith too wont have a uber combat droid because that person choose a non combat life. To aquire the licenses just set up vendors for them.

DE's being able to use all their combat droids?????? IF the devs really want to do this for the DE's then I really feel that DE's should be masters marksman since combat droids in general will be using ranged weapons. This would make them a Combat/Crafter class. But as it stands right now they are branched off the artison field and should be just that. If droids become uber compared to pets andONLY DE's are able to get the top notch combat droids then they should also be required to be master artisons besides master marksman.

OR have an ELITE ELITE field where Combat droids can only be made by someone who has mastered DE and ranged weapons in the weaponsmith field. All noncombat droids to be used by everyone Combat droids needing special certs/licenses.

Personally As droids go really I dont ever recall seeing peoplein the movies in generalwalking around with thier own personal combat droids. I would personally rather see more effort put into functional droids then combat droids. Luke did own two droids but neither where Killing machines. To me it makes no sense that the empire would even allow everyone to own high end combat droids. I roughly recal a storm trooper asking Luke for papers on his droids that in no way looked fearsome. I agree there should be something to limit combat droidsmaybe even have quest or something added to the proposed plan above.

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Thunderheart wrote:

Welcome to the Weekly Discussion Thread.

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Vehicle auto-store.

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Vehicles have to autostore. Without vehicles autostoring, the game environment gets horribly polluted with vehicles. If you were involved in the vehicle tests on TC, youwould have seenwhat happens. In an hour hundreds of vehicles accumulated around starports, cantinas and other places where players gather. The downside is any place there is a high player traffic, a crazy amount of vehicles gathered and then your frame rate chugs because there are so many vehicles on the screen.

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May have been mentioned before, but here's some ideas on addressing the autostore "feature".

1. Only autostore in the following circumstances:




• vehicleis in a city area and player has beendismounted for > 1 minute


• or player is logged off/linkdead


• or player is not on same planet as vehicle, or is on same planet but > 500m from vehicle (i.e. they shuttled somewhere)
  


2. For City/Dismount Autostore only, display aconfirmation dialog to CANCEL autostore within, say, 10 seconds. No cancel = Autostore proceeds

I agree that the starport areas get ridiculously lagged with all the vehicles, players, mounts, etc, but at least add some confirmation before the autostore kicks in if the player is near the vehicle; this could get rid of practically all the autostore problems I believe.

Thanks

just got all the POI badges but they look a total mess in my bio,

I was thinking there should be some kind of seperation between them in the bio like:

POI Badges
...has visited

Profession Badges
...has mastered

Act Badges
...Dead-eye

etc..