Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept Open Discussion (5-31-04)
Guuseman
Mon May 24, 2004 6:45 pm
#27
I got a short list of ideas here:
Professions:
1. Miner: There could be a miner profession that yields the player with a greater success rate and sample sive when collecting resources. And maybe a cheaper maintenance on extractors to make it easier on them, mostly because resource collection doesn't make very much money after maintenance and power, unless it is really high quality stuff.
Skills system:
I was thinking about the 250 skill points and the fact it pretty much limits you to either being good at crafting, or good at fighting. You don't see any master commando/bounty hunter that is really any good at architect/droid engineer. I was thinking that maybe we get eliminate the 250 skill points, but replace it with a different system. My idea is to have the first profession they take have a base amount of xp needed for each skill. then the second novice taken on requires double the normal xp, then if another is taken on it is double the second's xp, and so forth. this would allow someone to master say marksman fairly easily, then take on medic a little bit harder, then maybe artisan alot harder, and if they took another like entertainer it would take them forever to get anywhere in it, but still allow them to do it if they really want to. With the number of professions we currently have it would take 2-3 solid years to master them all, and even then there'l be more out by then. Just my opinion, I'm open to criticism to make my idea more sound.
City stuff:
1.Militia: Maybe a ranking system in the city militia, like chief, lieutenant, sargeant. Something like that to signify seniority or status. As well as a rank system a mayor should be able to hire npc militia to patrol the city and attack people who have been banned by player militia. That way if only one militia member is online and they have to ban more than one person they won't be overwhelmed by their numbers and will have backup to assist them. There could also be the option to recruit from a range of combat specialized npc militia that cost more for better combat ratings and allow for teams of npc's to be built based on their specialties with different weapons. Making a more versatile npc militia force.
2.Streetlamps: They need to be alot brighter, I've got 2 up at the entrance to the cantina in my city on talus, and you can't see anything but the stairs with the amount of light they give off.
3.Transit: I thought maybe some sort of transit system that 2 mayors can set up between each other's city. Not shuttles but something ground based. Each city could be obligated to cover half of the maintenance. Could be a cheaper form of transportation, but designed kinda like the mounts and you just get a ticket, enter the vehicle and enjoy the ride.
4.Defences: I was thinking about maybe having walls or fences for architects to build and mayors to place. This could be used to force missions outside the city so we don't end up with npc camps spawned right outside citizen's houses. It's pretty annoying to exit your house and be swarmed with vynock. As well as walls we could have an option for a militia cheif to place defence turrets or covert scanners(for gcw cities) to keep out unwanted guests, as well as an option to deny civic services to an entire faction and declare the city as a certain side. This could make the city into more of an actual base and could be made to have drawbacks, such as destructable civic structures, or even something like how a faction base is destroyed set up in the city hall. This would definately add a spin to the gcw.
Pets:
I think that a person's droid limit should be dictated by control nodes that they can place in their house or possibly a civic structure for city defense. And maybe have it be 3 droids per node, allowing for someone to raise an army of droids, because it seems kinda rediculous to only have 1 droid at a time, especially after episode 1. And faction pets have that nasty problem of only being allowd a max of 3. A rebel/imperial general definately would command more than 3 troops.
Connectivity:
I understand that the developers have been working very hard and doing their best, but It seems a bit excessive to bring the servers down every single day for an hour or so. If maybe that could be changed to a few hours once a week I'm sure evyone would be considerably happier about the connectivity they would be getting.
Timeline:
Alot of people have been complaining about the timelines and continuity. I think the best way to appease these people is to try to follow the timeline of episodes 4-6, have the major battles and times that people can join these events. This way people can get in on major battles, but you can heavily design the battles to make sure the outcome is the same as the movie, but it allows people to take part in battle like the battle of hoth, if we got to get in on that(even tho the rebels have to lose) so many people will be happy they just got in on it. Then once the timeline is completed on endor at the end of episode 6 then we are pretty much not limited anymore and can grow as an immersive community and not have to worry about continuity.
Hope you guys like my ideas, please give me some feedback on what ya like or any changes that would make any of these better.
StrikerNI
Mon May 24, 2004 7:21 pm
#28
Will we ever be able to wear a bandolier AND a backpack together?
This is kinda a pet peeve of mine.
Eafphe
Mon May 24, 2004 7:42 pm
#29
yeah thats wut i was just goin 2 say roz, but i hope that they would make it so u can have more then2/3 masterd skills instead of just 2/3!
MasterOfPikes
Mon May 24, 2004 8:36 pm
#30
1. Roads. It doesn't seem feasable that such an advanced civilization hasn't mastered the art of making roads. We can have starships, but no highways.
2. I like the transit idea alot. Like a train or something would be cool, even if it is just to the standardized cities.
3. City residency, apartment buildings. Use up some of that space, allow players to rent these rooms, etc... I like the idea of living INSIDE Theed.
4. Faction uniforms. I really like the idea of player guilds that require all on-duty personnel to be in uniform.
5. Make ranks worth something aside from gathering more and more FP. Such as, be able to buy a squad of 6 Stormtroopers and the ability to command them, or the ability to temporarily take command of NPC personnel to aid in fights.
6. Allow for launch pads to be purchased, but only if the existing person owns a significantly large enough faction base. I mean honestly, who wants to see X Wings being launched from Theed? Doesn't make sense to me.
7. Combat droids!
8. Armor. I am tired of seeing nothing but composite. Allow Armorsmiths to use different 'shells' for the same type of armor. I love Mabari's looks but the stats are horrid and useless, same with bone. And Composite just looks silly. Either more looks for the same armor, new armor or the ability to make armor look like other armor. Let's have some variety.
MoP
2. I like the transit idea alot. Like a train or something would be cool, even if it is just to the standardized cities.
3. City residency, apartment buildings. Use up some of that space, allow players to rent these rooms, etc... I like the idea of living INSIDE Theed.
4. Faction uniforms. I really like the idea of player guilds that require all on-duty personnel to be in uniform.
5. Make ranks worth something aside from gathering more and more FP. Such as, be able to buy a squad of 6 Stormtroopers and the ability to command them, or the ability to temporarily take command of NPC personnel to aid in fights.
6. Allow for launch pads to be purchased, but only if the existing person owns a significantly large enough faction base. I mean honestly, who wants to see X Wings being launched from Theed? Doesn't make sense to me.
7. Combat droids!
8. Armor. I am tired of seeing nothing but composite. Allow Armorsmiths to use different 'shells' for the same type of armor. I love Mabari's looks but the stats are horrid and useless, same with bone. And Composite just looks silly. Either more looks for the same armor, new armor or the ability to make armor look like other armor. Let's have some variety.
MoP
ArkonPhoenix
Mon May 24, 2004 9:22 pm
#31
Here are some of what I believe are simple and obvious things to add.
1. Image Designers - Need more Hair Styles (as originaly promised), more Tattoos for all species that can show em and not just facial tattoos. Able to change Species and Sex would be a nice option too.
2. Droid Engeniers - Add Droidekas, Battle Droids and so on, everyone was hoping for this and was let down. Part of the star wars feel is droids and so far what is availible for combat is useless at best.
3. Creature Handlers - This profession is almost useless in PvP, also BE make better pets then a CH could ever tame. Not balanced. CH's also need to ba able to sell there pets on the Bazar and be able to drop them in their homes.
4. Vehicle and Mounts - Make it so you can shoot while riding your Speeder Bike and so on. Make Mounted pets attack while you shoot.
5. AT-ST's - Make AT-ST's vehicles that you take full control of target enemys like now. In escense, the AT-ST will just become another weapon. Not a pet.
6. Web Site Login issues - Please fix it so I dont have to put in my SAVED password every 20 minutes.
SirCyrus
Mon May 24, 2004 9:44 pm
#32
>>Bio-Engineers
Bio-engineer clone tree should be retuned so that the creatures they create are on par with the creatures in the wild. Creatures of the same species in the wild all have different stat distribution. You'll see some with more action but less mind then others, or vice versa. This should be the role of bio-engineers. They can create pets then tweak their stats to be distributed differently, to enhance pets (changing their specials and armor etc) and to change their appearance. Basically, create normal creatures but then tweak them like an animal image designer.
Example: Bio-engineer creates a bageraset. When tamed these things have 900 for each stat and 90-100damage (or around that). By increasing the pets strength/health the pet now does more damage but will need stats lowered to account for the increase. Decreasing the mind stat to do this would make the pet less intelligent and more likely to be affected by the intimidate-type attacks. By increasing action you would have a pet who is fasterand able to dodge attacks better, but at the cost of some damage/health or mind. They can also tweak the animal's hide to be more resistant to certain attacks at the cost of others, and change the animals color (for the pets which have multiple choices) and possibly their size.
What this does is evens out the playing field between creature handlers and bio engineers without making either of them useless. Creature handlers are going to want to get their pets changed around and bio engineers can still create "better" pets that CH can purchase. The difference is these pets have just been changed before they were tamed. This allows CH to capture their pets in the wild if they wish. Since theres an entire tree dedicated to taming creatures it seems foolish that they cant get anything that can compare to many BE creations later on.
>>Creature Handlers
Lures for baby animals. Creature handlers should have ways to lure babies away from their packs or lairs. This could be by food, noise boxes, etc. There should be a failure rate just like when taming a creature, and sometimes it should result in the handler being attacked, again like when taming a creature. If successful the creature would wander over and stand near the lure for a set period of time (could be dependant on the type of lure used for the creature) and the player can try to tame it. Perhaps rangers could build these Lure traps... that'dmake sense.
XP or grow bars in datapad for tamed pets. You should be able to view your creatures growth and how long it will take until it grows more. Also it doesnt seem to make a difference if you have the creature out and are using it or if you keep it stuffed in the datapad. I kept 2 creatures in the pad using them very briefly, compared to 1 creature that I kept out at all times, fought with, played with and fed. They seem to grow at the same rate, atleast I cant tell a difference. It would be nice to see a bar or "time to growth: X:XX" clock under the creatures info so we know how long we have to wait.
Teaching failures. I'm not sure why we fail when teaching creatures commands. The pet will eventually learn them it just requires us to keep spamming spatial to teach them. The failures should either be removed or affect the pet in some way. Maybe damage its mind stat if you try to train it for too long with failures, or the pet runs off in frustration... just something to give the failures a meaning.
>>Mission Terminals
I find that the missions I receive from terminals arent challenging enough. With how powerful weapons are now there should be a slider to adjust the difficulty of a selected mission by 1 or 2 points (either up or down). This could decrease or increase the credit reward too. An example of what I mean: When I go for destroy missions I get vynock and bageraset missions at novice rifleman, however I'm able to solo sharnaffs/sharnaff bulls, rogue bagerasets already. If you could choose a mission and slide up the difficulty that would be extremely nice. Even if all it does is increase the lair size to spawn more creatures.
Kevie
Mon May 24, 2004 9:52 pm
#33
more factional armor- with certifications......
not sure about rebel armor /shrug
examples:
storm commando armor-
certification: commandos
accuracy mods for disposable weapons
scout trooper armor:
certification: scouts/pistoleers
accuracy mods for scout blaster, terrain negotiation/mask scentmods
swamp trooper armor:
certification: rangers/rifleman
increased accuracy while covered, camoflage mods, increased crawl speed
stormtrooper sergeant armor:
certification: squad leaders
modifications for volly fire, rally, etc.
also i would like to see the backpacks that sandtroopers were wearing while on tatooine..... i don't care if they're really special, just the skin on a backpack would be cool 
Niri_Soma
Mon May 24, 2004 10:02 pm
#34
This thread is so community members can share their ideas about what they would like to see in the game that is not currently being planned.
An in-game four-function calculator; I always end up loading gdm on the server to do quick math. :-)
An in-game brightness/contrast/gamma calibration wizard customized for SWG to make sure we're seeing what the Art Teams see. I run Adobe Gamma on my Windows box, but full-screen and windowed mode look completely different.
Ablon
Mon May 24, 2004 10:38 pm
#35
Atmospheric flights- down the road.........and cut your hair TH you look like a hippy! So how are the Austin clubs? LOL
Kaloman
Tue May 25, 2004 1:20 am
#36
Ok, I've seen the request to advance the timeline a couple of times here, and I would like to remind people that the death star was destroyed only about one year ago. In the timeline the attack on Echo Base on Hoth won't happen for another two years or so. Keep in mind that there is alot more that needs to be done before Hoth, (like a conversion from having AT-STs as pets to them being ground based combat vehicles, and perhaps the creation of aerial combat on planetary surfaces via T-16 skyhoppers, and snow speeders.) SOE has plenty of time to progress the timeline.
As for scouts and rangers having useless camps. I would say, an easy fix for that would be, increase the planetary land coverage from 225 sq km to something much larger (about 900 - 2025 sq km) Don't allow ANY cities to be within 2 km from each other, allow players to get more than two missions from mission terminals (I don't fully condone that one), AND allow the mission terminals to generate missions over 2 km away.
I still recommend allowing metropoli' to have starports. But I would also suggest having a larger spread of city sizes. I don't recommend the ability to have civic structures vulnerable to PvP attacks, especially the city hall. Even if it were possible, no one would take it due to the fact that when city hall falls down, so does the city. They would then have to spend the weeks it takes to get back up to their old rank and likely wouldn't make it.
I want to say more, but I'm tired and going to go to bed.
Raynor Talos, Gorath: Thune, Dantooine
Mikhail24
Tue May 25, 2004 2:09 am
#38
I'd love to see one of these "live events" I keep hearing about. I've been playing this game since launch and not once have I seen any SOE-Controlled NPC's, live events in Starports, or anything else like that. It's all just the same boring cities everywhere you look.
More live events...hire more personnel to constantly run live events. I'm not sure how many people you have working it, but one or two people for all servers combined equals 99% of players never seeing a live event. I know I haven't, and I haven't even talked to anyone in game that has seen anything like that.
I guess I'll just have to keep living vicariously through others' experiences here on the forums
CheTheRebelGuevara
Tue May 25, 2004 3:13 am
#39
Man! All you guys have great ideas!! I just want to add my Ideas, that may match many of ya'alls.
- Armor re-vamp; Need different kinds of armor, pleeze! I dont remember hearing about the Composite fashion boom between Episode 4 and 5. Different Armor same stats ya know?
- Pistoleers should be allowed to hold 2 pistols for the love of Star Wars! These are pistol experts not novice marksmen!
- Vehicles; I want to shoot while riding, bad accuracy depending on speed of course. I want to be able to take someone else on my landspeeder. I want armored vehicles, and transports! This way whole guilds could travel in packs and arrive at battles. You could add mechanics to modify these vehicles, that the new spaceship builders could make! Weaponsmiths would make the weapons for the vehicles. Man it would be a whole process to build one of these, but youd kick some arse in it! Also would give commandos something more to shoot at other than AT-ST's...
- Player Bounties; I want to approach a Spynet Operative, give him a players name and give the NPC half of the ammount I am willing to pay, 500k min, once a day limit means that players names would only come up ONCE a day on BH terminals, once they were killed of course. The other half of the money would be paid upon death and you would receive an e-mail letting you know how much was withdrawn and when and where target was slain. Muahahaha! The once a day rule prevents greifing. Also the markdraws aTEF to the specific BH only. Unless of course he is overt.
- More instanced dungeons! More live events!
I will add more later... maybe not. Maybe next Open discussion, again if I stated what you previously stated, Im glad we agree!