Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 6-7-04)
Thunderheart, if you are able to have a back and forth convo with us in a thread, then yes that would be a great idea. I know in last weeks thread many of us wanted more clarification on what you meant by the number of players effecting the numbers of lair spawns. We never heard back from you at all after that.
I think their was a miss communication (imagine that) of what this thread was to be. It seems you expected it to be where we post things we ran into and experience in the game. The community seems to think its where we come to discuss, with you, about said issues andquestions we have about the game.
But back on the statement you made last week about the random spawn rates on planets. Can we get a clarification on that? The rest of the thread after you said that, was exclusively about that one topic. The Ranger coorespondant asked for clarification as well. It seems with that amount of attention, we are deserving of a further comment on it from you.
Thanks,
Phazorn wrote:
i'm pretty disappointed with TH's explanation too. I hate it when it takes 15+ minutes to find somethin to kill when I'm out in the wild. and that's alot of ground traversed on a swoop or av-21
the sheer amount of noob spawns on the advanced planets annoys me too. crap like lesser plains bols or lowland brackasets (non-CH pet spawns). i dont know why is so hard for them to crank up the spawns on rancors, voritors, or whatever.
If you're zooming around on a swoop or especially an AV-21, spawns will most likely NOT happen. This is a lag related issue, not a "spawn rate" issue. By the time the server realizes you are there and starts place the spawns in the world, you are gone. This issue is aggravated by the number of players on an individual planet by making the servers respond slower. That's why Dant is the worst culprit here. It was supposed to be an "adventure" planet, soI don't think it has the horsepower you see on planets like Tat and Corellia.
I'd suggest that if you really want to hunt and find some good spawns, have your group ride out to the middle of nowhere, store your bikes and walk (not run) back to the closest city. Should give you more than enough spawns to keep you busy.
LeBob wrote:
TH
you are already spread to thin
before doing this, I would suggest building a good track record of getting the other things done on time that you guys have promised... I think you know what I'm talking about
/agree
I remember on Dant at the beginning running from the outpost to the jedi caves, dying 3+ times trying to get past all the creatures/npc's. Now I can walk across the planet without running into anything. As a BE this is also a big problem trying to get higher level dna. Luckily I'm a master fencer as well so I can pull higher levels on Talus, Corellia, Naboo, Rori & Tat - still not high enough in some cases. But on the other planets, I'm stuck with lvl 32 or lvl 40 missions. On Dant people get around this by forming "solo groups." It's almost impossible to find a solo group on Dath or Endor like you can on Dant. I am continually relying on finding other players that want to group just to pull these higher level missions.
Another problem I'd like to mention is the "Target out of range" errors and the massive warping of creatures. As a ranged, the warping isn't as bad because they usually warp within range of a weapon, but as melee or BE its a pain to go chasing after the warp. Add that to being right next to a creature/npc and start attacking only to get an out of range error, or to be sampling a creature have it move 1m (from 3m to 4m away) and fail on the sample because target is out of range.
wickedHangover wrote:
can we finish this topic?
Thunderheart wrote:
wickedHangover wrote:
This issue is in regards to walking for very long distances and not running into and random lairs. It seems that Lok was fixed, but Dantooine is a dead planet. I walked for 11,000 meters on Dantooine hoping for something to spawn and only ran into 5 random lairs. Yavin is getting pretty dead too.
It means that there are a lot of people on the planet. The more people there are, the less random spawns there are. These are adjustments the server makes automatically. If you are running shy of random spawns, you should go get a mission. The terminals will spawn additional lairs when this type of loading occurs...
Thunderheart:
I didn't intend for this post to be taken this far, but the obvious problem is that the explanation you provided is flawed and that there is a real problem here.
Could you please have this problem looked into?
THe number of players on any given planet does not seem to be the issue. There is an underlying problem here. Some planets are dead planets. Some areas of dead planets have a "normal" level of creature spawns. But other areas of the same planet are empty, regardless of the number of players.
Dantooine is the biggest problem of all the planets, this is an advanced planet but nothing spawns there. Using mission terminals is fine, but the things I want to hunt are not on the terminals and why would the dev team want me to stick close to terminals to hunt? I mean with 15,000x15,000 meters to explore, you cannot possibly think I won't get bored of running back and forth 1200m from a mission terminal.
The spawn rate needs to be looked at, there is a serious problem with it and your explanation does not cut it. I hate to press on this issue, but its important. I think its more important than a lot of things, no sense in having combat rebalance if there's hardly any PvE combat due to a lack of spawns.
Sincerely,
The Hunters of SWG
wickedHangover wrote:
can we finish this topic?
Thunderheart wrote:
wickedHangover wrote:
This issue is in regards to walking for very long distances and not running into and random lairs. It seems that Lok was fixed, but Dantooine is a dead planet. I walked for 11,000 meters on Dantooine hoping for something to spawn and only ran into 5 random lairs. Yavin is getting pretty dead too.
It means that there are a lot of people on the planet. The more people there are, the less random spawns there are. These are adjustments the server makes automatically. If you are running shy of random spawns, you should go get a mission. The terminals will spawn additional lairs when this type of loading occurs...
Thunderheart:
I didn't intend for this post to be taken this far, but the obvious problem is that the explanation you provided is flawed and that there is a real problem here.
Could you please have this problem looked into?
THe number of players on any given planet does not seem to be the issue. There is an underlying problem here. Some planets are dead planets. Some areas of dead planets have a "normal" level of creature spawns. But other areas of the same planet are empty, regardless of the number of players.
Dantooine is the biggest problem of all the planets, this is an advanced planet but nothing spawns there. Using mission terminals is fine, but the things I want to hunt are not on the terminals and why would the dev team want me to stick close to terminals to hunt? I mean with 15,000x15,000 meters to explore, you cannot possibly think I won't get bored of running back and forth 1200m from a mission terminal.
The spawn rate needs to be looked at, there is a serious problem with it and your explanation does not cut it. I hate to press on this issue, but its important. I think its more important than a lot of things, no sense in having combat rebalance if there's hardly any PvE combat due to a lack of spawns.
Sincerely,
The Hunters of SWG
GnomeAd wrote:
Phazorn wrote:
i'm pretty disappointed with TH's explanation too. I hate it when it takes 15+ minutes to find somethin to kill when I'm out in the wild. and that's alot of ground traversed on a swoop or av-21
the sheer amount of noob spawns on the advanced planets annoys me too. crap like lesser plains bols or lowland brackasets (non-CH pet spawns). i dont know why is so hard for them to crank up the spawns on rancors, voritors, or whatever.
If you're zooming around on a swoop or especially an AV-21, spawns will most likely NOT happen. This is a lag related issue, not a "spawn rate" issue. By the time the server realizes you are there and starts place the spawns in the world, you are gone. This issue is aggravated by the number of players on an individual planet by making the servers respond slower. That's why Dant is the worst culprit here. It was supposed to be an "adventure" planet, soI don't think it has the horsepower you see on planets like Tat and Corellia.
I'd suggest that if you really want to hunt and find some good spawns, have your group ride out to the middle of nowhere, store your bikes and walk (not run) back to the closest city. Should give you more than enough spawns to keep you busy.
I think you would need to go back to the original post I placed on last weeks round table discussion, i don't use a swoop bike or any other mount and walked for 11k meters on dantooine and rand into 4 lairs.
Furthermore, the debate here at this point is an explanation given to us that makes no sense at all. It works in some places but is contradicted in others.
As a community elder you must remember the days when going to the advanced planets was "tricky." My cries of alderaan 2 was on Dantooine, I went there and got killed three times on route to see the Rebel colonal. Then when I finally got there, I got killed twice on route to the Imperial Base I had to destroy. Then when I finally made it to the base, I got killed in a matter of seconds by how hard the base was to beat (Corvette solo artists stop chuckling).
I then lost the WP to get back there and ended up finishing the quest with a guild on Dathomir. This was even funnier, it took the group of 8 about 2 hours to get to the base to destroy it.
My point to these 2 stories is that back in early October, you couldn't walk 50m without something attacking you on Dathomir or Dantooine. Same for the rest and if you so much as went over the hill to the north of the starport on Lok you were stepping foot in hell for sure. Yavin and Endorwere just crazy, as soon as you walked out of the outposts, you had better have good armor, spice, several good friendsor a buff.
I can go so far as to talk about starting planets being off too. You used to not be able to walk the whole northern and western side of Corellia because Nyax owned that planet. Go there now and its all durnis (unless there's a wooly hide shift, in which case its all razor cats). Yes, its a starting planet, but if you venture into those hills, it should be tough and its not.
This all goes back to my original problem several "round tables" ago where I wanted to open a discussion on higher level content for solo players. The answers were Corvette and Death Watch Bunker as being things that were going to be added to challenge the master level players.
A challenge to me is not being fully buffed and spamming /headshot3 for 45 minutes to kill something. Challenging is taking on something that has 20k of ham and if all goes right i'll kill it in2 minutes. But chances are all will go wrong and it will kill me in less than a minute. See where I'm going? We don't need 800k HAM battlebots to kill us. We need 25k HAM things that do damage higher than we do. We need nightsisters with force powers and not dizzy/lunge.
But more importantly, we need creatures to spawn out in the wild that do not show up on mission terminals. I'm not asking for missions with 50k payouts for solo players. I'm asking for 20k mission payouts for solo players that will possibly kill them, even if they are buffed.
The geo cave has been wide open for a long time now, I think its time that those creatures start showing up as random lairs on Yavin.Super Battle Driods should start showing up on Endor. Krayt dragons should spawn all over tatooine, starter planet or not. Dathomir needs creatures that arevery high level, there's nothing on that planet that cannot be easily killed with a set of buffs.
TH wrote in unquoteable HTML:
To have a really challenging roundtable, one think we might do is pick a "topic of the week" and that might bring some more focus to this thread and it seems to be a natural evolution. If we did that, we should probably break it into two different threads. A weekly live issues thread that players post their info and reports on and a weekly roundatble which takes the shape of a more traditional conversation.
What do you think?
Really a great idea, but please don't implement it unless you can do it for real. The last thing we need is another "19 Questions" or "Top 10 Issues" type of situation. What this community needs is more useful communication from the devs, not more empty promises to have a good dialogue. TalkWITH us and we can have a meaningful discussion. Talk TO us, and all we end up with is a bunch of frustrated customers shouting at each other and you.
If for no other reason than this, the "members-only" Correspondent forum is a bad idea. It gives you a place to have discussions with customers like we need, but no one but a few know about it and they are sworn to secrecy.
What SOE really needs is someone who is familiar with basic game mechanics that can answer about a half-dozen questions a day from the forums. It seems that you have way too much on your plate behind the scenes and not enough time to do what we thought you were hired to do, communicate with the customers. this isn't to say that what you are doing is not valuable, but perhaps it's time for you to have an "assistant".
TH-
Do you understand how disappointing and annoying these bugged Jedi missions are? We can't even tell whether it will be bugged or not. The CTD bug is certainly not as frequent as a problem as the waypoint problems. With the last weekly discussion you said something about finding the problem- so why is it not fixed yet? This is such a game breaker for me because it's what I want to do the most in the game and every time I get a mission (so far I am 13/13 for bugged missions) I lose faith that this issue will be address and fixed ASAP.
Squidwalker wrote:
Thunderheart, if you are able to have a back and forth convo with us in a thread, then yes that would be a great idea. I know in last weeks thread many of us wanted more clarification on what you meant by the number of players effecting the numbers of lair spawns. We never heard back from you at all after that.
I do not like the idea of turning this into two threads, because it would devide you, the devs, attention even further, and live issues would be more ignored than ever.
Anyway, here's my post:
wickedHangover wrote:
I think you would need to go back to the original post I placed on last weeks round table discussion, i don't use a swoop bike or any other mount and walked for 11k meters on dantooine and rand into 4 lairs.
Furthermore, the debate here at this point is an explanation given to us that makes no sense at all. It works in some places but is contradicted in others.
As a community elder you must remember the days when going to the advanced planets was "tricky." My cries of alderaan 2 was on Dantooine, I went there and got killed three times on route to see the Rebel colonal. Then when I finally got there, I got killed twice on route to the Imperial Base I had to destroy. Then when I finally made it to the base, I got killed in a matter of seconds by how hard the base was to beat (Corvette solo artists stop chuckling).
I then lost the WP to get back there and ended up finishing the quest with a guild on Dathomir. This was even funnier, it took the group of 8 about 2 hours to get to the base to destroy it.
My point to these 2 stories is that back in early October, you couldn't walk 50m without something attacking you on Dathomir or Dantooine. Same for the rest and if you so much as went over the hill to the north of the starport on Lok you were stepping foot in hell for sure. Yavin and Endorwere just crazy, as soon as you walked out of the outposts, you had better have good armor, spice, several good friendsor a buff.
I can go so far as to talk about starting planets being off too. You used to not be able to walk the whole northern and western side of Corellia because Nyax owned that planet. Go there now and its all durnis (unless there's a wooly hide shift, in which case its all razor cats). Yes, its a starting planet, but if you venture into those hills, it should be tough and its not.
This all goes back to my original problem several "round tables" ago where I wanted to open a discussion on higher level content for solo players. The answers were Corvette and Death Watch Bunker as being things that were going to be added to challenge the master level players.
A challenge to me is not being fully buffed and spamming /headshot3 for 45 minutes to kill something. Challenging is taking on something that has 20k of ham and if all goes right i'll kill it in2 minutes. But chances are all will go wrong and it will kill me in less than a minute. See where I'm going? We don't need 800k HAM battlebots to kill us. We need 25k HAM things that do damage higher than we do. We need nightsisters with force powers and not dizzy/lunge.
But more importantly, we need creatures to spawn out in the wild that do not show up on mission terminals. I'm not asking for missions with 50k payouts for solo players. I'm asking for 20k mission payouts for solo players that will possibly kill them, even if they are buffed.
The geo cave has been wide open for a long time now, I think its time that those creatures start showing up as random lairs on Yavin.Super Battle Driods should start showing up on Endor. Krayt dragons should spawn all over tatooine, starter planet or not. Dathomir needs creatures that arevery high level, there's nothing on that planet that cannot be easily killed with a set of buffs.
What I hear you saying is that you'd like more high end content. I agree. The problem is that they can't take an existing planet and bump it up like you suggest. It's just not fair to new players who want the same experience you used to have when you were just a few boxes into an elite profession. My MDE only has Pistols IV and believe me, he can't get 1K outside a city on Dant without getting his backside handed to him.
What we need are "elite adventure planets" full of the type of creatures you are talking about. Places where a group of "Master Template Chasers of the Week" can go and have a real challenge. Places where there aren't any mission terminals and the lowest CL is 85 or so.
Plus, and I really hate to mention this since it's such a touchy topic on these boards, but we are only halfway through the "combat balance". (See, i said the C word) The creatures you are facing today are not a tough as they used to be. It wasn't just the CHs that got nerfed, it was all the creatures. Graul Maulers used to be bad @ss, now they are just sad. Don't worry though, we're about to all get nerfedin the fabled and too long delayed combat balanceand then it'll be fun again.
1) Loot needs to be more useful when droped off high level mobs.
2) Need to fix the Profession Tag Above a Players head so that you can hide it. You can already hide it, but when you log out and then come back later the Profession Tag will be floating over your head again.
3) Same as #2, but with languages. I am a Trandoshan, but my language always switches back to basic when I log back into the game.
4) Tailors chould use a Revamp like the Image Designers got. They need to be able to sell color kits like the Droid color kits for clothing. Customers have a really hard time communicating what colors they want. I suggest that at the very least all clothing should get a new universal color pallet.
5) Vehicles that have 2 seats should actually transport 2 people.
6) We could use more Vehicles in general. I hate seeing the Same 3 vehicles every place I go. The AV-21 was a nice touch, but it is far to rare to add any variety to the hand full of vehicles we have to pick from.
Note: I own my own AV-21, so don't think that I just want it to be easy to get so I can have one.