Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Rountdable Discussion (Week Ending 1-25-04)
TH...Not sure if this is the place to ask....
With the advent of no longer requiring a camp to call pets and vehicles, it has added another nail in the coffin of the Ranger community. I was wondering if you would take a gander at our boards to briefly gain a perspective from our eyes.
The need for camps wasa way for the Ranger profession to be useful to the SWG community, as minute as it seems. NRaas, bless his heart, has been catching it from all sides. If you could "pop-in" and make a couple comments that would be wonderful. Many fear the Ranger profession is fastly becoming an extinct profession, minus the hologrinders. We realize that someday down the line, we will eventually see some love and attention. However, it has been a while and players are fastly becoming disgusted and giving the profession up. Thanks for allowing me to bend your ear.
Thunderheart, I think you should check out the DE boards. It appears that this is exactly opposite of what the DEs posting there seem to have indicated that they want.
Thunderheart wrote:
Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?
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.
....
That is ridiculous.
You should not need special "skills" to handle droids. The Engineer should program them to do what the owner wants.
Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?
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.
Why would someone have to be some arbitrary level to be able to command a droid? Whether you've got a plain old B1 Battledroid or say some sort of super assassin droid, what is the difference in commanding it? It's a droid. It follows orders. I think what I'm getting at is why have a Droid Handler profession? It makes no sense. Whether a droid is level 1, 10, or 40 shouldn't make any difference in telling it to go kill something.
Thunderheart wrote:
Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?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.
Man, TH, this is completely and totally wrong!
You have 90% of the DE boards scratching their heads, wondering just which DE forum you've been reading for the past few months:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=52116
We really are owed one hell of an explanation here.
Factory Decay.
Ok here is my tale of woe....and yes its been /bug'd and no I havent had a response but based on past experience (items lost on vendors, in bags, after purchase) I know I have lost everything again.
Thursday morning I do a resource run. This includes putting credits in my structures (house and 3 factories as well as my harvestors). I do this just after the patch. I play most days.
I then have to go interstate on unexpected business. Im back on Monday.
My factory with enough components in it to make several hundred seeker and arakyd droids (almost a non profit item btw but they are a DE's only must have product) has dissapeared 
!!!.
So I check my email....I have one email at 17:20 on Saturday saying factory damaged and another on Sunday (same time same sort of message). However on Monday its gone !!!! With over 80 crates of items and about 120k of resources !!!!!
Here is the catalogue of events :
Credits put in Thursday after restart. Server crashes (so I have been informed) and all operations done in the 45 minutes or so after patch/restart/whatever they do every single day that causes a restart is lost.
First email from factory regardingcredit issueis on Saturday.
Within 48 hours of notification the structure has been destroyed.
I stillhave the emails.
I bet you the CSR will spin me some crap about not being able to refund.
So this game cannot be played as an artisan by someone who takes 3 days off !!!!
I once put 500k worth of stuff in a bag and offered it on a vendor. The whole lot went missing...the CSR said it was my mistake as it was a known feature to stop storage cheats and it was my own fault (in thread blah on forum blah...didnt see the need to read the formus in the Eula but anyway).
So tough on getting a) my stuff back b) a refund for my customer. Then three weeks later in a patch 'the bags on vendor bug' is fixed...so the CSR mislead me either through ignorance (implicit low quality process on SoE communication part) or just plain lied (no idea why...perhaps quickest way to close a log...which often seems their goal.
I have been a strong supporter of the game....but I am wearying. I dont want to, I want to be playing this in 3 years time with history and culture to my chatacter....but man you are pushing it.
Oh and a massive thumbs down to the forum setup.
Where are players meant to talk ? to each other....to discover references to how, why, where !!
Give us back a General Discussion forum even if it comes with the header...."never ever read by developers" only by decency moderator.
Be Well, Bob'the Builder
TH -
Is there any word on fixing Wookiees up a bit? We're pretty gimped in PvP, as you know, and I find myself having to buff, powerboost, and take muon gold in order to compete with people wearing composite (or RIS). It'd be nice to not have to do that!
The point is that Rangers aren't really doing the job now. First, there aren't enough of them. I know know of one on my entire server. Second, they aren't hunting a large enough quantity. I need stacks of meat in the thousands. Third,they're charging outrageous fees. 35 cpu, for a resource which comprises 22% of a pet stim, consumes nearly 85% of the overall cost of the stim. I'd rather spend a few hours hunting on my own than pay a Ranger the prices they're asking. My opinion, you've priced yourselves out of business. When I was a ranger, I used to fill massive orders for Tatooinian wooly hide for a Master Tailor I knew. I charged 4 cpu. Period. Made a fortune doing so, without the need to force her to pass on exceedingly high costs to her customers.
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
MerryPrankster wrote:
This most likely belongs in the doctor thread, but this is as good a place to get ignored as any
A few suggestions...
Make a FARM as a type of harvester so doc's can get avian and herb meat without having to beg thier entire PA to go out hunting for them.
Then what will us rangers do???
Some very basic UI improvements.
Please consider some of the following very basic UI improvements.
- Factory interface. On the list of ingredients required please highlight those that have been entered so far and the number of items to be built. With items not showing their subtype, distinguishing one type of steel from another on a 9 ingredient build with different amounts and several crated components is way too time consuming. So allow a drag and drop from inventory to a 'schematic' style interface (ie highlights when valid ingredient selected) and provides totaliser of product to be made (include output hopper limits)
- Harvestor Interface. Please one screen management. From the Change Resource/On/Of screen also provide the hopper retrieval subscreen and 2 data entry fields to add and ok more power and money. Whey must I call up 4 radials...its bizare. If its some attempt at code re-use then fine, but dont go for re-use at the GUI its totally inappropriate, inefficient and useless to the end user
- Why must I always Call twice, Store twice, Use ticket twice, use travel robot twice, hit meditate twice. Its as if something as basic as your state/event management is always unkown until tested. I am so weary of standing still, hitting say meditate or use deed only to be told I cant because I am still running. Its not timing because I have stood still for a long time....its basic state management being wrong
- For the love of all things, dont shut the trade window if I open a bag !!!!
These are basic UI flaws that imply you guys dont play the game. They are amature and low quality in their inception or deployment and they stick out from the rest of the game (which in many cases is excellent).
Try showing someone who has never played before that to use a travel ticket they must select it or the travel droid twice in order for it to work....you draw from them a look of "your kidding". Add in all the other obscure GUI bugs and the game is not doing itself justice.
Please Please bring back our general discussion forum. You dont need to read it (other than for foul language moderation etc). But give us a central place where we can discuss in a thread oriented fashion general ideas.
Im not user if this will ever be read by TH or anyone unyet it is the only place I can post to on-topic....and the topic is everything !!!
Be Well, Bob'the Builder
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.
Let me join the chorus of those saying: "Huh?" I've yet to see anything like a concensus among DE's on this issue, but never mind that, what about the rest of us???
The non-DE's in this game have been waiting since Day 1 for droids that are useful, much less interesting. Now we're told that maybe there will be some, but we'll have to rebalance our templates and find more skill pts to use them?
First, I hope that's simply a preliminary and uninformed opinion from TH, not fact.
Second -- BAD IDEA. Ok, so you don't want poor n00bs using high-level combat droids. Fine. Figure a mechanism to make them expensive, or cost a lot of faction points, or require at least an elite profession Master status before granting access to good droids, but a Droid-Handler profession? Yuck.
Thunderheart wrote:
Could you drop a hint when we will see the post about the DROID INVASION, please?
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.
TH,
Where in the HELL are you getting this stuff? DEs NEVER said they wanted a droid handler profession...they simply said they want droids to sell and use. Basically, they ALL combat droids to be usuable (in theory) by ALL players, andall elite professions to have combat droid certs of some kind to preserve balance.
In fact, if you go to the DE forum right now, you will see a thread where 95% of DEs DO NOT want a handler profession.
This is even worse than your misrepresenting to the devs that players want commandos to have both flames subject to resists AND fire extinguishers, even though players were ONLY asking for one OR the other (and even though any 2 year old can see the implementing both would over-nerf commandos to the point of being worthless again).
If you are going to represent us, that representation need to start with a general attention to what players are ACTUALLY saying. This is totally unacceptable.