Development Cycle Archive

Another thought-

Again, I'm not the most experienced player.

I have never had an item repaired.

I assume there is a reason that people would rather not have decay. I assume that repairing an item is not 100% and not perfect.

*IF* we can't make PVP death decay-free somehow, can we address the issue from the repair end of things? If repairing were not a hassle, maybe folks would fear decay a bit less.

If I'm way wrong here, someone just one-star my post so we can move on.

I'm just trying to look at this from different angles. The preferred solution is that we have no decay from a PvP death. That solution is not available. "Free insurance" does not seem to be a fair substitute. How else can we solve the problem by keeping the money sink of insurance in the game and promoting the repair abilities of crafters?

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Thunderheart wrote:

Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but I made a mistake in the last paragraph of the Friday Feature.

It currently reads:

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The Little Things: The little things matter as much as the big things. There were many sound upgrades, improvements to the graphic user-interface and even a few minor activities for players to find. Many POI's and places where NPC's interact with each other (or NPC theaters). One of the "biggest little" things with this publish will be the removal of "insured decay" from the death penalty. Instead of having a 1% decay for items, players will have no decay as long as they have insurance.

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It is being changed to:

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The Little Things: The little things matter as much as the big things. There were many sound upgrades, improvements to the graphic user-interface and even a few minor activities for players to find. Many POI's and places where NPC's interact with each other (or NPC theaters). One of the "biggest little" things with this publish will be the removal of "insurance" from the death penalty in Player versus Player combat.Players will no longer have to insure their items after each death in PVP.

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The reason is because there is no way to tell the difference between a "PvP Death" and a "PvE Death".I will continue to try and get the development team to remove the 1% decay with insurance. (Any good ideas from you folks for an alternative might help).

I sincerely apologize.

Garva is always looking out for you guys and mentioned that it was still a little confusing.

He rephrased it and it sounds better like this...

Ok so this is what you mean...

There will still be a 1% decay penalty in pvp death but you will not have to re-insure after that death.

This is correct and clearer I hope.

Message Edited by Thunderheart on 02-03-2004 07:27 PM

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So, I lose 45 faction points when a player of the opposing faction kills me, 0 faction points when it's an NPV of the opposing faction killing me. Either this is a bug, or this is the system using its ability to tell if I'm getting killed by another player or not.

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The preferred solution is that we have no decay from a PvP death. That solution is not available.

-The solution IS available.. decay hasnt been around forever, if you can put it in, you can take it out.

"Free insurance" does not seem to be a fair substitute. How else can we solve the problem by keeping the money sink of insurance in the game and promoting the repair abilities of crafters?

-Weapons and Armor decay from use, believe me, weapons can go to 50% condition in a good day or two of grinding. and armor? it takes a while but it does need to be repaired often even without decay. then again armor SHOULDNT have to be repaired very often, its a friggin suit of armor.

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EH_Longshot,

Very good guess there. Repairing is totally random, you can actually lose a piece of armor with a repair one out of ten repairs ( or more if you're not lucky ). Unacceptable.

if you want armoursmiths to have beter repeat business, up the decay rate on armour as its hit. if you want tailors to have repeat business, put in decay related to other mechanics that would actually decay clothes, use. if you entertain in clothes, have them decay. if you fight in clothes, have them decay. If you heal with a set of BE healing clothes, have them decay a bit, after all, you are using the BE aspect of the clothes to heal better, so you are using them, hence they could decay.

people can die over and over in PvP, i don't have the inclination to work up the money to keep on paying for new armour, we all know how boring grinding missions is. PvP is the most fun part of the game fora lotof people.

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Thunderheart wrote:

The reason is because there is no way to tell the difference between a "PvP Death" and a "PvE Death".

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This may be a little off, however, to my understanding the System use to give out Revenge TEFs. Would it be possible to havethat put but but instead of the dead player actually having the TEF for the play that killed him, he would be expempt from decay?

/me calls bull**edit**

You can't tell the difference between a PvP death and a PvE death, yet you can remove the need to reinsure after a PvP death? So errrr, how exactly do you know it's a PvP death to know to keep the insurance? Oh, yeah, thats right, you can tell the difference.

I am sure this has been written, and I am sure no one is the Dev office is listening, but here goes. This is from an armor user, not a tailor.

Armor has a condition (the little numbers on the examine screen, ie: 36045/36045), these numbers go down as you get shot/punched/spit at. When these numbers get somewhat low (for which there is no warning like weapons) you can repair them, or at least try. Why in the world would you want armor that costs up to millions per piece to decay even more on death? To help the armorsmith? This in the end will destroy the armorsmith. An accidental uninsured death wearing the imaginary piece above would instantly lose you 3605 condition points. Which by the way is a % of the original condition not the current condition... In my understanding, decay was implemented to help tailors because there was no need for people to buy more than 1 set of clothing. Armor already decayed so why include it? Why not make clothing decay naturally like armor? Why not step up the natural armor decay by 10% or even more if armor decaying so fast is in The Vision. But most of all, why do I have to insure my tools and camp kits which have no condition as it is?

I guess what I am saying is, decay on death on anything is bad, insurance itself could be good if it wasnt linked to decay. Maybe insure or do a corpse run?Armors that decay on thier own decay much much faster now especially when PvPing. Clothing seems to be 'working as intended'. Tools/Campkits/other random things get auto insured with no need. I have played online games for over 6 years starting with UO the EQ and I have supported unpopular nerfs/changes if the end result was better for the whole, but this is hurting *everyone* and helping only Tailors, and that is debateable.

What a crock!!! Devs you do realise that the only thing that people have left in this game is the broken pvp system right? I already have all the exp i need to use the skills that i want. In the last couple weaks i have spent MILIONS on skill attachments for my PvP armor. Thankyou for WASTING all my time with your lame camping system to get these pannles that almost never drop so im forced to camp for. Then after being sick of wating spending tons of money buying them from auctions at outragous prices. Now i cant even use them because In pvp it will cost me MONTHS of time getting said money in a mater of DAYS or HOURS of pvp. Making it compleatly not worth it...PvP is totaly out of wack as is. You either win or you dont stand a chance. So what your telling us is this "patch" is nothing more than a cheff revamp...and its taken you a couple months just to do that.

I dont know what game your playing, id like to try it though devs. No npc has EVER taken faction points from me wen they killed me...ONLY wen I kill them. If i do a faction mission and stormtroopers kill me i DO NOT loose reble faction standing. The only time i loose reble faction standing is wen i spend faction points (there being nothing to spend them on is another issue) or die in PvP. Or by some freak occurance that someone in my party kills a reble base or sompthing. Insurance is suppost to be a money sink. Well compared to the cost of items this cost is irrelavent. I make 10x more money than i spend on insurance thrue the game by acident than this takes from me.

Look...Im sick of your incompatant programmers. You have had 4 years to make this game. Its still messed up on so many levels. Here we are comming on almost a year after release and your compleatly revamping total game systems like the "combat" patch. Most professions are more than 60% bugged with only the bare minimum working or less. If your game cant tell what killed me but can take my faction points wen its a player that did it the problem is not the game. Its your programmers that cant find the code they need to be looking at. The 1% decay should have never even ben there in the first place. Most people agree that use decay is the only system that makes sence. You hade a huge debate in beta on if you should have flat decay or use based decay. Why did we argue that wen it obviously served nothing....The fact that you have only fixed use decay for half the items is another example of inept workers. I realise that this is a extreamly complexed game. I understand there are more variables in this game than any 5 other NNORPG games. But enough is enough you need to clean house and get some people that know what they are doing in there.A lot ofyour complex systems serve no point as is. Examples being languages, droid coustomization failing to 0 wich does nothing, endless email spam wen i pull a sale from my own vendor. I would guess that a good 15% of the things your server is tracking is wasted yet we cant fill our house with furniture because we have endless stacks of resorces that keep spawning.

With removal of the 1% decay in pvp at least my armor worth about 4 mil because of the attachments would last me some time hopefully. This is all i was looking forward to in the game...Gone. Dont give me the "a slash of a sword is a slash and a blaster bolt is a blaster bolt" THAN WHY IS THE DAMAGE REDUCED 75% FOR PVP ATTACKS IF ALL DAMAGE IS THE SAME?????????? IF dieing from pvp is no diffrent than from pvm there would be NO WAY FOR YOU TO HAVE THE INSURANCE CARRY OVER.

Now here we are with you big "content" addition of the "crackdown". Wich is not realy content...Just a way to force rebles into battle wen they might not be ready in places that sevral players are so laggy anyway that a battle is out of the question. Your flat out Lieing to us. If you actualy believe that this game cant tell if a player killed us or it was an npc i would love to hear what they said to convince you of that. Its official now. There is nothing left for me to do in this game. I have nothing to hunt that can drop anything that would help me or give me reason to kill it. There is no war to participate in. No front line to push back. Pvp is so unbalanced its a joke and now just a huge money sink. No quest that takes longer than a couple hours to compleat. No boss me ant 3 friends couldent destroy in minuts. No place i fear to go. Just a huge area to wonder around in and a char room that finaly seems to not crash.

I am compleatly discusted and extreamly dissapointed. Again you failed us the coustomers on so many levels. This game just keeps failing to deliver an imersive star wars inviromentwhere i can live my life among the chayos that is the glatic civil war. The box even ses "Follow your own path with a skill-based advancement system, wich accommodates your style of play, whether you become a bounty hunter or a dancer or a merchant ore even a jedi" and "Square off against other players on the vast battlefields of a crumbling empire". Following your own path leaves you with an empty fealing and a void of "what next". Squareing off against another player is far far from balanced as of yet...I can even live with the unbalance. But your idea of content seems to be adding game grief and harasment. You attempt to misslead us and flat out lie to us on these forums. You make excuse after excuse of why you fail to deliver what you set out to do patch after patch. Clean house and get your act together soon because like im sure it is with so many others here i know more people well that heve left this game than are still playing it.

My suggestion is: (and I'm serious. I'm a programmer, and have done a bit of game dev, while that doesn't make me a god of all things swg-dev, I have some idea)

Make it so you CAN tell the difference between PvP and PvE. Surely you can query the object that just performed the death blow, else how do you print the deathblower's name on screen? Surely you can tell when an object is a player, and when it is not? Now, I'm just spinning bs here, but if it was me, the code would look something like this (in a language called lpc):

player->printscrn("You were just slain by " + death_blower->name() + "\n");

That's a deathblow message, sooo....

if (death_blower->is_player())
{
player->new_player_exception = true;
}

A bit of a band-aid fix, but it'd get the same result.

The point of ^^^ that jargon up there is, I just don't understand WHY it's not possible??