Development Cycle Archive

Schematics sound cool, but they require a lot of player trust and integrity to work. As a guy who keeps only a small circle of in-game friends, with no PA and no uber-crafter buddies, it would be quite a pain to get my uber-schematic turned into something useful. The schematic system would almost need some accompanying code for a secure crafting trade to make it useful for me, and I imagine that would be a pain.

But, ultimately, I do want some things that are more than just eye-candy. That's cool and all, but I'd also like things that beef up my character. More enhancement items (tapes and such) would be cool.

Here's an interesting thought: Suppose what get's dropped is a special kind of powerup. It's a really uber powerup, but it only works on a newly crafted weapon. So, you have to go to a weaponsmith, buy yourself a new weapon (of a specific type), and apply the powerup. The result is an uber-weapon, and while you're at it, make the powerup alter the weapon appearance too - to add some eye-candy to the mix.

This works kind of like a cool schematic, in that it requires you to go buy something from a crafter, but it doesn't leave room for unscrupulous crafters to screw somebody out of their loot.

You could have the same kinds of power-ups for armor, droids, etc.

jb

Well there are so many posts now that I cant read through them all....so if it was said already...sorry...if it wasnt.....

You need to have drops that any species can use. Nothing is more frustrating like the times that we FINALLY get a drop and every Wook in games gets to see the "you can not equip this item" message. It is such a let down with so little loot in the game.

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Q-3PO wrote:

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Overall SWG is not an Uber-Loot game (like EQ or DAoC) and we don't intend to make it so.

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What a completely ignorant thing to say. If a game has monsters that drop loot its automatically an Uber-Loot game?

Granted Loot is a huge part of EQ ... EQ also has a very mature and sophisticated character development path ... one that takes a newb at least 6mo to a year to complete (much more in some cases).

DAOC has a very mature PvP system. In fact, it could be argued that the whole point of DAOC is PvP (not Uber-Loot)

The resistance this dev team shows to implementing some obvious solutions to the more than obvious shortcommings of this game can only be attributed to either ARROGANCE or INTRANSIGENCE (or a game whose architecture isn't capable of dealing with the problems, so they hide behind those two stances and pretend the game is fine).

You either think you know better or you wont admit you were wrong or you have a system which is incapable of handling large amounts of loot. Personally I think its all of the above.

The solution to your problems is this: Implement a good random loot generator for all monsters AND implement REAL quests (not run from one person to another 'quests') with real rewards.

There are a gazillion ways you could do this without harming the crafters ... in fact there are many ways you could do it which would help the crafters.

I'm really starting to dislike this game.

OK, caveat that I have not read allnine pages, but I had to put my two cents in.

My favorite idea for combat dungeons is to have a disassembled "uber item" (appropriate for the looters class). Basically, a limited use schematic (for the crafter the looter goes to) and top quality materials and components sufficient to make one of the items (for the looter himself). This gives the fighter something to wade through piles of enemies for and givesthe crafter a limited schematic.

Second: Wildcard materials. A resource container of material that can be used in place of a specific requirement. For example "* steel" could be used to fit any "plumbum steel" or "niftium steel" or even "unobtanium steel" requirement. Basically, dropping the specificity of a requirement one level for those really picky schematics. Naturally, the assumption is that the wildcard is of such good quality (i.e. it is a 900+ for the required traits) that it makes up for not having the absolute correct materials...

Additiveidea: More badges. I admit it, I'm a badge junky.

Honorable mention: Personalized pictures. Now, before the DBA faints, I'm actually thinking that we can leverage the existence of "holograms" to make things mutable and the "picture" would only need 3 bits of data: foreground humanoid (copy the player mask), midground beastie (reference boss-critter model), background. Heck watching the character in the picture flail at a Arachnae Warrior with a slitherhorn could be it's own entertainment...

At the very least: Get rid of almost _all_ of the broken stuff. It would be fine as an occasional "you critically failed your loot roll" thing. But there is just too much of it. Especially when you taunt us with broken binoculars when there aren't any _working_ ones in the game.

Have a good day.

-Tad

A cool, unique rather than uber, trophy item whether it be a weapon, armor, clothing or furniture item or a unique . Furniture items were actually very popular quest items in AC. That said, with one character per server and the limited storage space we have these items might not go over as well as they did in a game with 5 characters per server and more storage on each of those characters than we have on our one.

-Special schematics for even better stuff than allready, or items with just different statistics.

-Superior ingredients/parts used in schematics or in assembly. Like pieces of weapons or armor or medicines. I know these are somewhat allready in game, but would like to see more different ones. Ingredients could be like 1000 units of resource with all stats 1000.

-Furnishing for the houses. Of course this would mean you would have to allow z-coordinates when furnishing a house (no, don't mean the stair thing. Some houses have only one floor). And raise the maximum number of items in a house, or that furnitures do not count against the limit.

-Money, money and more money.

Dunick