Development Cycle Archive

Re:

"Playing SWG is like licking a steel post in the wintertime. Sure it hurts. If you leave, parts of you will remain."

Man, you are gonna get 5 stars from me ALL DAY LONG for this! Whoop! What a frickin' truth this is!

Cafa Asia

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BoozeFienD wrote:
What is so unbalancing about having a squad of 6 Stormtroopers with you? I think it would be sweet as hell to lead around a unit of Stormtroopers while decked out in my Imperial Uniform with the title of Warrant Officer I under my name.

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Six?

Heck, if I'm a buck LT I should have over 40 if I remember the RPG game correctly.

Cafa Asia

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LordBluefire wrote:

All I can say about a 1 pet limitspells out"Goodbye Droids". I just can't imagine what everyone's one pet is going to be...

This is a ludicrous change!

[snip]

Thepet system needs an overhaul! Datapad storage of breathing living things and chunks of metal is ridiculous...the datapad should be a way to communicate with droids that are remote and proof of ownership for pets. Not storage!

[snip]

3) Pets should be storable at buildings that players have admin access to and "stables" at towns. (At a cost for maintaining the health of the creatures) With this part implemented anyone can keep any number of creatures, droids, or vehicles as long as it can be stored in the house. Now you could display a droid or pet without it having to be a pre-tamed BE pet or a specific droid chassis. Wouldn't it be nice to have an MSE wandering around the house?

4) Many towns should have violent creature ordinances that warp violent pets into a holding pen until the player leaves the town, then the pet is returned to the players side. The proof of ownership would remain in the datapad. Towns should also be able to have mount and even vehicle ordinances that would do the same for mounts or vehicles.

5) All pets, except droids, should always remain outside buildings. Droids should remain outside of buildings that have droid detectors.... creatures could only be specifically invited into buildings that the player has admin access to.

6) Players should still be limited the number of creature they can pull from a storage at any given time based on creature handling limits.

7) Players should *not* be limited on the number of droids they can have with them, but understandably should be capped on a number of combat droids.The huge cost of batteries would be one engine to prevent people from hording a ton of droids with them, and understandably there would have to be a frame rate consideration cap placed on number of non-combat droids tagging along with a player. As nice as unlimited would seem, three to four maximum would be reasonable. One combat, a translator, a repair or powerdroid, and a profession specific droid (craft/slice/medic).

8) Droids should not be able to move when their battery is dead.

9) Players should not have to replace a battery more than once a RL day, perhaps enabling charge stacking to make this possible? Obviously one RL day is many in-game days, but combat droids losing a charge within 15 - 60 RL minutes is ridiculous.

10) When a player goes off game, any pet, droid or vehicle with them (not stored in a house - on display or the like)should go off game when they do, but return to the game when the player does. Perhaps vehicles and mounts could stay in the game as "scenery", non-targetable objects for other players or NPCs, to add a touch of realism that a player issomewhere nearby doing something...but frame rate-wise this may not be desireable. The bottom line to this is that there is no good argument why a person, after playing for 8+ hours, deciding to ride out 2000m+ to check their harvesters should have to ride all the way back to civilization before logging for the night. When you return to the game your "equipment" should return with you....if you survived the 3 minute log period.

I have a more detailed plan that I submitted a while back on the suggestion form. I will find it and post it if anyone is interested in an idea, that in my opinion, would make the game feel more like Star Wars instead of sorceror's datapad.

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Man these are some really awesome ideas! For heavens sake someone listen to this in Devworld.

However please add that there is almost NO reason for the 100 waypoint limit in the datapad! Speaking as a MAster Architect and Merchant I have to keep an entirely separate set of excell spreadsheets and goldmine entries to manage my contacts because I have 25 actively used schematics too! The 100 entry limit in the datapad makes no sense.

But, seeing as you NEVER give us comment and NEVER give us feedback other than blowing smoke, this, again, will get lost in Thunderheart's (and fellow rebel sympathizers) mission to screw every Imperial player in the game.

Fivo Asia
Master Artisan - Master Architect - Merchant 2/4/2/4
Tempest - Dantooine - Vesnia

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Skyfish wrote:

As I read this, it appears to say the balance that should be addressed is that a high-powered (and costly)imperial faction pet should be able to withstand a hammering from a commando. Are there any rebel faction pets that can withstand a hammering from a commando? I do believe that imperials are permitted to become commandos themselves, no? Seems to me, the base factors here are balanced.

I doubt very much that imperial players willagree withmy entire point of view, here, but my feeling has always been:

1. AT-ST's ought to be much more powerful than they are. At the very least, harder to kill.


2. AT-ST's should not be player-controlled. Or at least, not as permanent pets. I think you ought to pay faction points for a certain amount of time with an AT-ST following you around, butmaking its own AI decisions about what to attack and when. Once your time is up, it returns to base.

We didn't see AT-ST's following pedestrian officers in the movies, and my sense of Star-Warsyness is jolted when I see them humbly tagging along behinda pedestrianin the game. I definitely want them in the game, and I think they should be more sturdy, just not on leashes.

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We also do not see ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of a creature handler in the movies. Don't give me the rancor stuff, anyone can have a caged animal. Don't give me the caravan stuff. A caravan of animals does not make a SWG creature handler.

NOT ONE SINGLE INSTANCE OF P.O.K.E.M.O.N in the movies! NOT ONE! Yet they are the singlemost played character because they have all the damage absorption. I saw more AT-ST's following officers in the movies than ANY creature handler instances. At least WE HAVE A BASIS in genre.

Cafa Asia

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Cafa wrote:

Re:

"Playing SWG is like licking a steel post in the wintertime. Sure it hurts. If you leave, parts of you will remain."

Man, you are gonna get 5 stars from me ALL DAY LONG for this! Whoop! What a frickin' truth this is!

Cafa Asia

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Most people seem to like my Sig better than my ideas!

I really hope that the faction cost for these pet's goes way down also. Because a novice commando can solo AT-ST's with out even lifting a finger. hmmm.. I don't know about this change might make me think of not playing ever again. Tired of all the changes for the worse. If this happens I might just decide to play some other game then. This is if anybody really cares I guess. lol

Ant.

What is the ratio of rebels to imps? 3:1 average , I say that is fairly accurate. If the numbers are correct why nerf the atst? why not make the game more balanced? make the game fun! and enjoyable! Do your job! (Devs) the customer is always right, or is it the majority always right? you figure it out! common sense

Loyal imp,

Muahahaha!

I honestly admire the SWG developer team for all the effort they put into this game, but sometime you all mystify me... truly. What has faction NPCs have to do with Creature Handling?FACTION RANKhas to do with faction NPCs just as PROFESSION SKILL has everyting to do with the ability to tame and control wild beasts. The two are entirely dissimilar. What are you thinking?

Now what? We have one entirly dominant profession in the entire game? Who will stand a chance against a CH with three (Level 70 I assume) beasts at their command? This is stupid, and not at all lending to game balance, but in fact the reverse.

I thought the idea was to have LESS creatures in the game, and more troopers/mechs/droids! Or was I mistaken there? Bah, why talk when reason seems to have no ears at the moment?

Ur86d, your right. I thought UO had it nailed down pretty well. I played a crafter on there, GM bowcraft/armorsmith/carpenter/blacksmith/tailor and a mix with the remaining points. I might have left off a GM, but that was a while back. But even with "magical" leet loot in the game, I still had plenty of orders to fill. Usually in quantities of hundreds of items at a time. Master Crafted weapons and armor in the game was really excellent. Granted it could be outdone by some of the loot that dropped. But people didn't want to risk losing that loot in PvP since others could kill you and loot you. Not too mention the fact that you had thieves running around, ninja jacking your goods. But I didn't even mind that cause the system was balanced and it worked. Not too mention their Dev's actually listened, player run events were common, the Game Masters often ran events as well. The storyline progressed. Everything seemed to work really well. I didn't have many complaints about it at all. I was quite content with chopping trees for hours. Hell I even liked the fact that you never knew who you would run across out in the field and that was literally the only way you could communicate, when you literally ran across someone. It was an incredibly immersive game, even more so than SWG and EQ. And it was in a three quarter overhead view. It is truly impressive that a game can give you those kind of attachments even after this long.

Immersion isn't done through fancy graphics and first person or chase camera views. It is done through story progression, community base, GM interaction for the sake of advancing said story, and game play. With the exception of the extreme division of our two factions, the community base is pretty strong. But not strong enough to make up for the other areas in which the game is severely lacking.

I digress a bit from our topic here I realize. But your post about exploits and then carrying over into how the devs effectively killed crafting made me think of it.

Carry on with the topic...

"AT-ST's should not be able to be shot down by one person"
"Stop crying you stupid Imp, we will own you now that you will be forced to use the AT-STs you never used in PvP before in PvP"
"What in god's name are you talking about JohnnyReb_01? You aren't making any sense."
"That's right just like your AT-ST won't make any cents after I bust him in his head with my CDEF pistol."
"Were you dropped on your head JohnnyReb_01? We won't be using our AT-ST's in combat. They cost too much and they are too vulnerable."
"Yeah we will own you for sure now... with our numbers we will spread like the roaches we are!"
"Ok that is it JohnnyReb_01. I can't take this anymore"
*ImpJoe_01 takes out his Sword and commits seppuku*
"W00t! I pwned you!"
etc...
etc....
etc.....

I agree 1000%, **edit** no wonder no one wants to be imp........ devs must be rebs

I hear all this reference to comando's, though I myself made a reference to them, it isn't just the comando that can take down an at-st. large groups of people can do the same with knock down shots and such. Perhaps as said earlier one way to change them is make them stronger but at a cost per hour in faction points. but then shouldn't be have a limet to the amount of them or troopers you could have. that way a raid on a city is based on time and faction not the amount of time till you get bored. Second, I am totally against the "covert/Overt crap" there are the neutral people. you want to be neutral be neutral. You choose a side you should be Overt, Period. Keep Rebels in their own cities, keep Imperials in theirs. You want to do a raid on a city you better come prepared for every opposing faction member in the town. leet players and noobs alike should be vulnerable to attack, not just the overt. Tired of seeing people come into your town. cloning in your city, buffing up in your med center only to wait for their overt buddy to hit the transport and give everyone group teff on the overt people? Something there needs to be changed i think. As to faction pets, like everyone has said, make rank mean something. show your rank to other players. Im out of ideas for this game, never see a response from dev on this bored. Just the "welp, this is what we are doing,just discuss thisfor 20 pages or so and our original idea should be done and updated, sorry we didn't post back to you guys to make you understand our choices"

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lovewillkill wrote:

Although I love my AT-ST, I can understand the reasons for the changes (notice I didn't call it a nerf). However, I can't BELIEVE you guys are making it so only Master CHs can have three pets. My guess is that you Dev types assume that the CH dabblers who mastered the one tree so they could run around with 3 grauls are now going to drop CH because they'll only be able to have 1. I can pretty much guarantee you that this will not be the case.

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Since when can anyone run around with 90 levels of pets?

why dont they just nerf the whole imp faction while at it?, heh not only are imps out numbered our equipment sucks..........