Development Cycle Archive

I NEVER use my robes. Ever. There is no point to them for me. +10 regen is barely noticeable and there are no defenses on the robes. Glady they only take up 1 inventory space while they collect dust. A good set of BE clothing with melee/stun defense is all I need.

Tuning of crystals seems rediculous in that its totally random. A friend tunes a POOR crystal and gets 31 damage -4 force. I tune a 'select' pearl and get 23 damage -3 force. What's up with that?

Other then those two items, I am happy with the results. What are the odds of either of those items getting fixed?

TH - I have never been a big fan of you due to your ability to post completely false info based on heresay. ( 1 for 1 box conversion, robes having resists compareable to good armor, etc ). Please try to work on your info gathering skills. The community as a whole will appreciate it.

The Jedi conversion process - Poor
The new Jedi system is very good in concept, the implementation of the process is extremely error prone. Character generation is a non-linear design process, but your conversion is linear. The main problem in the design is that while you documented how convert the character, you failed to provide any documentation on what the conversion of the character is. There was no provided information (not even links) to what each of the force-sensitive trees do, whether they work or not. Notable cases are:

- The vehicle tree appears partially broke, where acceleration on vehicles is working, but turning is not.
- The experimentation tree does not work on light sabers which many assumed to be true.
- Scouting bonuses only work if you have picked up the scout profession. Many assumed that since the old Jedi could survey without needed artisan, these skills would not need normal professions to use them.
- No one is sure what persuasion even does.

As a consequence, there are many people who chose character templates based faulty assumptions in the lack of information. The common argument against a re-roll is that "you should have spent time on T.C.2 to figure out what you wanted." There are two flaws in this statement. First, me and my guild mates unlocked only with days to spare. We had no time to play on T.C.2. Second, it is the obligation of the development team to provide realistic and accurate information. I literally spent hours trying to figure out the conversion guide. Thankfully, many concerned people have been kind enough to generate additional resources (padawon.org is a godsend) that when taken together gave a somewhat useful, if not completely accurate (not their fault!) picture of the system.

Conclusion:
- Use the profession screen to purchase and release all skills as desired, then have a master "I am done" button.
- Provide adequate documentation for all skills.
- Provide a one-time character reload until non-linear system is in place.

Light saber Construction - Superior
Simply put: this rocks! It is very nice to be able to swap items in and out of sabers. It allows testing of different combinations, colors, and damage values. On a side note, the damage to the pearls and crystals are far more reasonable. There are a lot of complaints about too many poor crystals or pearls in existence; however, it is my experience that even poor crystals in a second-gen saber are far superior than most non-Jedi professions. In fact, I use a poor twin-crystal in a second-gen as my grinding saber. This was a very well thought out and implemented process. It doesn't commit to unknowable knowledge, and rapid changeability allows quick changes in play style. I also see a future in those with light saber tech to be the new "weapon smiths" of Jedi. I would seriously consider how this might fit into the weapon smith profession.

Conclusion:
The only fault is that light saber quality stays at 1000/1000. It would be nice if it represented percentage of the lowest conditioned item in the saber.

The Jedi Robes - Neutral
The game's balance is really sitting around armor. Wearing the robes is negative to game play, at this time, since dealing with a lot of high-level mobs requires high-resist armor. I can get overloaded with bark mites, much less ever thinking of taking on a super battle droid (which I think most people would agree are totally over powered, anyways). From the rumors of the a serious armor nerf and "combat rebalence," it suggests this may not be a much of an issue in the future.

Conclusion:
Until the mechanics are known, this cannot be resolved. I hear that HealAllSelf1 very much negates this issue, but I do not have that, yet.

The Force Ranking System and Light Powers vs. Dark Powers - Apathetic
I am unconcerned with these and will never have an interest in them. On a side note, I really appreciate being able to be out of this system. I have little interest in PvP; though, I do accept still being in the visibility system. Please get the bounty hunter system working. Realize that anytime players are used to regulate players, abuses are always going to happen; however, to all bounty hunters: If I'm visible, it means I'm out with my guild, so the force won't be with you.. =)

Conclusion:
Those who aren't interested don't have to be.

Over All - Drastic step in the right direction
As usual, implementation issues, lack of documentation, and the ever incessant bugs mar the patch; however, from four Jedi in our guild I can say that overall we see this as a significant step in the right direction. We can play as a guild again, and we feel we can just play instead of worrying about doing the grind. Many argue this destroys cannon. Perhaps it does, but I would rather play a game that is fun than follows cannon. If you really think about it, Star Wars cannon for this time should really allow imperials to take what they want when they want, kill anyone on sight, be utterly rude and contemptuous (don't we have enough 12-year-old's playing already?), take wookies as slaves, and a host of other atrocities. I doubt people would think that this would make a good game.

Thank you,

Message Edited by Beldraen on 07-02-2004 11:53 AM

- Robe Regen is not working correctly, it gives a boost but it's not much (it takes me 30 minutes to fully recharge only 2350 force!!)
- Force Defense tree seems to be pretty much useless compared to the Force Armor skill at Force Enhancer
- Mobs who are supposed to drop damage crystals are dropping color crystals at insane rates, (for instance: Tuskens. 3 hours camping over two days got me 5 crystals, all of them were color crystals. Yet, Tuskens should drop damage crystals of which I only saw one drop in these 5 hours....) Please change it so they have a higher chance of dropping damage crystals than color crystals.

- Penalty on dying isn't properly balanced. A system like this should be better:
Per death you lose 1000 xp per skillpoint invested in Jedi skills.

• This process was very poorly documented. I am satisfied with the template I arrived at, but most Jedis I talked to were confused and eventually disappointed. A few were so angry they threatened to leave the game. Additional information should have been provided in-game to assist the process. For someone who reads the forums dilligently and does all their homework, the information was inadequate. For someone who does not read the forums the information was practically non-existent. It is hard to stress this enough. Clearly there is nothing that can be done at this point except to learn from and not repeat this mistake. Badly done.


• I was pleasantly surprised that I got to spend my remaining skill points on traditional skills. This helps to balance out the deficiencies of the initial Jedi experience.

Robes:

• I very much enjoy the enhaced atmosphere that the robes provide (despite the part about sticking out like a sore thumb).


• Higher defensive modifiers would be welcome. There are already doubts as to the relative value of the Force Defender profession, so we'll have to wait and see if a defender has the same problems with the robes.

Lightsabers:

• The difference between the innate damage and the special damage is too high. Without specials my 3rd gen 1-handed saber has a damage output similar to a novice marksman. With specials the output is higher than most professions. Something more in the middle would be better so that running out of force didn't require running away from a fight. The pre-patch balance felt more appropriate in this regard. As it stands the only mobs I can stand toe to toe with (without using specials) are the ones that I receive 1 pt of Jedi xp for killing. Anything even as high as 50 pts will drain my ham before I drain theirs.

We were promised robes with the equivalent of Composite armour, there are no resists etc on robes.

We were promised pre-patch saber damage until the combat balance. Max saber damage is well under pre-patch. Max saber damage is about 40%+ lower now.

Low level jedi XP loss on death is too harsh. It's fine for us higher levels, but 200k xp to someone with 2 LS boxes is insanely high.

Too hard now to see force costs. Saber costs seem a lot higher than pre-patch.

Crystal/pearl/saber conversion. We were told the pearls received from a saber on breakdown would be based on saber stats, it wasn't. As an example, a 5th gen, 1000/1000 1498min/max with all -8 FC pearls in broke down to average 22 min/max, and -2, -2, -3, -4 FC pearls.

Force powers line : At the heart of being a Jedi, yet these cost way too much force. Force Lightening Single 2 hits for ~2500, is resisted by electricity resist armour, and costs about 5* the force cost of doing the same damage with a saber. Force power costs need lowering across the board to be more in line with saber damage/force ratio

XP loss at ressurrection/regainconsciousness : it was stated that this would bypass XP loss, as XP loss wascalculated at clone. Many people took Master Force Enhancer as a result of this, but this is not how it is working.
XP is not lost at res/regain, but if you die and clone, you lose 200,000xp for EVERY death you were ressed/regained at in one go.
Please state the situation on XP loss and res/regainconc and if this is not to work as expected, people deserve the option to respec their skills, as we have been mislead and made choices on inaccurate information.

BH missions. Once you get on the terminals, you are in a catch 22 situation. If you fight the BH, you end up back on the terminals with more BHs taking the missions (if you kill the BH they often get a mission on you again). So if you want to get off the terminals and stop BH's you have to let yourself just die.

SWG is still unstable clientside. There are many ways you can die where it is not yourr fault.
Many people are crashing in combat, getting on/off vehicles, and some die as a result.
XP loss should be low to start with, and scale with the number of deaths you get.

Crystal Drop Rate : seems very acceptable so far.

Lightsaber line : in pretty good shape, but as many people are discovering, you are better off levelling on a 1st gen saber, as you can spam specials without too much worry.
Someone posted a table whereby you can see when a generation is worth using. A fourth gen is only worth using in PvE if you use all -9 force cost pearls/crystals.
The Damage ranges of sabers are too small, meaning there is very little reason to use a higher generation saber in most cases.

Enhance : With the level of poisons and diseases in use in PvP means the resist powers are next to useless. Other than that, enh is in good shape, but we need clarification on the regainconsciousness situation

Healing : Seems to be in good shape, although very few people will go for Master.

Defence : not going defence, so cant comment.

Why we cannot change jedi starting prof tree after we found that we picked the wrong one?

This is ridiculous, not every one of us have time to read forums and info and test in TC all the time. i have jedi but im a casual player now, don't even have much time login. why choosing a skill can be such a fatal dead end to screw up my jedi ? as we can always drop the skill that we don't want before, and then make afford to get new one. as we don't aware such a trap howwe beingespected to search the info about it? Ihope this can be fixedsoon. it's nonsense that player CANNOT make mistake.

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Thunderheart wrote:

Please post your feedback on:

• The Jedi conversion process


• The lightsaber reconstruction/deconstruction process


• The Jedi Robes


• The Force Ranking System


• Light Powers vs. Dark Powers

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Light powers? Dark Powers? You mean Master Saber Master enhance 4004 heal? cause that is what 90% of jedi are going....

You know why TH? The powers Tree is really gimped... no speed mods, anything a master power can do, a Saber can do better.. (Force KD? why when you have saber throw 2 or 3 that does damage?)

Give the power tree a /forceconsume or something that drains life and adds it to the jedi... This was in all the Jedi Knight games, its the way Dark Jedi heal themselfs.

Please look at the powers tree TH, we need some love.

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fatgit wrote:
Force powers line : At the heart of being a Jedi, yet these cost way too much force. Force Lightening Single 2 hits for ~2500, is resisted by electricity resist armour, and costs about 5* the force cost of doing the same damage with a saber. Force power costs need lowering across the board to be more in line with saber damage/force ratio

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Are we 100% certain that lightning does electricity damage? On TC2 I was hunting Nightsisters with 100% electricity resist with lightning, and they were taking good damage.