Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 6-7-04)
Please help me understand why Giant Dune Kimogilas drop one of the four basic components for RIS Armor. I can understand low spawn rates and rare loot drops but not for a creature you yourself said should not be soloed. You could have the component drop from a Meatlump with a very low rate and still accomplish the same thing. RIS Armor is a personal item and therefore should be able to be acquired by an individual. I just don't understand why you think our friends and fellow guild members would be willing to help us for months fighting 100k ham creatures so we can acquire just one basic component when there is nothing in it for them.
When will dual wield be implemented? Will it be part of the combat balance? Would it be possible to share a couple of work in progress screenshots with us?
Some folks mean content as in "actions to perform." For instance, badges are a kind of content. With the listing of badges not won, this helps find that kind of content.
Others think of content as a measure of the story being told. What stories can I play through? What stories can I influence? In this aspect, SWG falls short. I don't find that I influence anything whether I do or do not play. The world doesn't change because I am involved in it. In fact, it doesn't change with EVERYONE in it. We simply have no context for the game. We only have a place. We have no idea of the people who live there. We don't know what's happening in the Empire. There's no news of rebal activity. We can't read about famous characters. There is no mass media. No communication. No propaganda. No Rebel anti-propaganda. NOTHING. Even worse, the players can't fill the gap. There's no way for the players to put this in the game except for the forums, which lies outside of the game. There are simply no in-game communications.
Others look at content as "How am I influencing the world, and what changes have I helped make/cause?" SWG falls short in this area. The developers tried with the Cries Of Alderaan chapters, but the story took so long to design and play through that the dramatic impact has been nullified. This model of storytelling is simply too cumbersome and developer intensive to be sustainable. In addition, gratification has been put off indefinitely. A reward so divorced from action means that little to no pleasure will be gained from participation. In order to work, a system must be implemented that causes changes in the world within a reasonable timeframe and with little to no developer partipation.
Given those thoughts, here are some pie-in-the-sky suggestions.
- Top performing rebels could have their faces put onto Wanted posters on a weekly basis. He/she who gets their face onto the Top 5 by earning the most faction points that week also gets a badge for it. So not only do you get your badge, you get the bragging factor of having YOUR OWN FACE strewn across the game.
- Top performing Imperials could also get a badge, maybe a special medal for their character, and special recognition from all Imperial forces. Maybe there could be a recruitment poster with the character's face on it.
- Relocating most rebel recruiters on a weekly basisis, and diguising them as trainers or common people. Rebel mission terminals should be other "regular" terminals that look different to rebels. These should move around. Life is challenging as a rebel. Beyond a few fixed points, the rebel experience should be one of constant change and obfuscation. If the rebels are scurrying around and hiding, then the game should feel like that.
- Stories. This is the hard part. How do you get the feeling of story and history into the game? How does one provide the feeling that things are happening? Should there be once/week newspapers from the various planets that tell short stories in newspaper format? Do the players need cross-planet quests that provide fun rewards? How does one tell an engaging story in this format?
- Mini games. All games need mini-games to divert yourself every so often.
That's all for now.
I think that the Devs need to stop and discuss how badly they messed up the Jedi changes since very very few of the Jedi actually like any of them. Then once they have properly discussed the screwup they can yank Pub 9 off TC and completely revamp it so as to be much more appeasing to the players.
As someone who is just a set or 2 away from unlocking I am really sad about the changes being made based on what the Jedi's are saying about them. Pretty close to quiting the game but am still in the wait adn see mode so far.
TH;
My Q is this..
We are currently aware that there is one team for JTL and another team working on new content (ex Jedi and smuggler revamp)...
Is there a team setup to deal with just the system flaws and bugs. and if so how many devs are on this team and will that number be increased since the number of bugs in the game seems to be going up with few being dealt with.
GnomeAd wrote:
What I hear you saying is that you'd like more high end content. I agree. The problem is that they can't take an existing planet and bump it up like you suggest.Sorry, i'll clarify, I was using Corellia as an example of what it once was to what it is now, I'm not looking for it to really be any harder, just a case in point that there used to be, whatseemed, areas of Corellia that werehigh level than they are now. Same goes with Tatooine, Wayfar used to be hard to get to from Bestine without running into a couple Krayt Dragons, now they all seem to spawn only in the north east unless someone can confirm one way downsouth that isn't just bleeding and was dragged there...It's just not fair to new players who want the same experience you used to have when you were just a few boxes into an elite profession. My MDE only has Pistols IV and believe me, he can't get 1K outside a city on Dant without getting his backside handed to him.
What we need are "elite adventure planets" full of the type of creatures you are talking about. Places where a group of "Master Template Chasers of the Week" can go and have a real challenge. Places where there aren't any mission terminals and the lowest CL is 85 or so. This is what Dathomir should be. It certainly seemed like it was this last fall, but now its nothing more than an answer to Dantooine and the other planets that spawn nothing.
Plus, and I really hate to mention this since it's such a touchy topic on these boards, but we are only halfway through the "combat balance". (See, i said the C word) The creatures you are facing today are not a tough as they used to be. It wasn't just the CHs that got nerfed, it was all the creatures. Graul Maulers used to be bad @ss, now they are just sad. Don't worry though, we're about to all get nerfedin the fabled and too long delayed combat balanceand then it'll be fun again. I totally agree with this and I can't wait for the other half of the balance to take place, at that point I'm sure the PvE in this game will be as we would all like. It will take some adjusting to get used to being killed by things I don't bother with now cause they're too easy, but I digressed a little in my post and should have stayed focused on the issue at stake, not enough things spawning on planets.
I also noticed that few posts up TH has said that he is looking into this and there coul dbe an underlying problem. So I am happy, for the most part, that this issue is being looked into. I would still applaud the dev team, more than I already to, if they coul djust bump the max mission level to 50 on advanced planets.
You don't remember the quest correctly. The "investigator" is Thale Dustrunner. At the end of his quests, you get "Borvo's Money", which he tells you to take to CorSec Headquarters. You take it to Borvo. In October and November, Borvo was infected by an insatiable greed (otherwise known as 'a bug') and he would take the money, butnot give you anything in return (neither his missions nor the gun). People who became stuck at this point are now unable to complete the quest normally.
Saabotage wrote:
Strikke wrote:
TH, any update on the Krayt Skull Quest fixes for those of us who have beenstuck since October 2003?
Summary:
- I did Borvo's Guards missions.
- I did Thale Dustrunner's missions.
- I took "Borvo's Money" to Borvo and gave it to him.
- Borvo said, "Good."
- Afterwards, he would only say, "Next."
- He gave me no missions.
- He gave me no gun to take to Huff Darklighter.
- After the "fixes" of last November & December, Borvowould only tell me he didn't know me and to talk to his guards.
- Borvo'sGuards tell me to get busy on Corellia or if I'm through there to go see Borvo.
- Thale Dustrunner asks if I'm supposed to be doing something (ie, taking the briefcase to 'CorSec HQ').
- Huff tells me to see his guards.
- Huff's Guards tell me to find his gun on Naboo.
If i remember this quest right you need to take the badge he gives you and go to Coronet and talk to an investigator their. who will give you a Tuskan Kings rifle (something like that). and thats borvos gun..........Just make sure you got the badge first :-P
what is the latest on battelfields?
what was the resoning behind taking them down?
why couldnt you have left them up while you "revamped"them?
I am a citizen of Edge Noir, one of the few battlefield cities left alive. Cities that were built to use battlefields and they did and they were the most fun many people ever had PvP'ing. Shortly after player cities were initiated you removed battlefields and said you would return them in 3-4 months. That was January, its now May and no word whatsoever on battlefields.
while you "revamp" is there anyway we can have the old ones back?
/second this
Prime example of how the communication is NOT flowing between Developers and how someone there needs to go through ALL skills and delete old/outdated/renamed ones from both SEAs and craftable items:
The Demolitionists Belt was added as a schematic earned in the Jabba or Imperial Theme parks. When crafted, it has skill mods for Grenade Assembly and Grenade Experimentation - both of which were removed from the game back in JULY (originally a Commando's skills)yet the schematic for this was added in December/January (if I remember correctly). How could someone create this item months later to be put in the game and yet not know that the skill WAS REMOVED?
Fix anything and everything to do with SEAs, 'nuff said.
BerentD wrote:
/second this
Prime example of how the communication is NOT flowing between Developers and how someone there needs to go through ALL skills and delete old/outdated/renamed ones from both SEAs and craftable items:
The Demolitionists Belt was added as a schematic earned in the Jabba or Imperial Theme parks. When crafted, it has skill mods for Grenade Assembly and Grenade Experimentation - both of which were removed from the game back in JULY (originally a Commando's skills)yet the schematic for this was added in December/January (if I remember correctly). How could someone create this item months later to be put in the game and yet not know that the skill WAS REMOVED?
Fix anything and everything to do with SEAs, 'nuff said.
Oops, forgot to post the quote...was referring to this post from AO when I wrote the above:
ossireese wrote:
SEA's, loot tables( there was a mention about loot tables adjustments in pub 8.2 if i`m not mistaken)
/agree
It's really a shame that here we are, almost a year into live play, and SEA's are still dropping for skills that haven't existed since beta (from grenade experimentation to the individual counter-attack melee mods).
What's worse is the "new" themepark loot which contains many of these outdated skills, even though the lootwas just recently added.
This is on top of all the bugs regarding SEA's in general - they poof sometimes when applied, the multiple mods don't work (and if that's intended, take them away), and even with additional empty sockets mods with the same skill don't stack (intended? if so, the system should tell us so instead of just eating the SEA anyway).
With the prices and value of good SEA's, and the fact that many people are unaware of how many of these don't work (they assume that if a skill mod is in the game, it must exist - not exactly a leap of logic on their part), this is an issue that has been ignored for far too long.
While obviously I have no knowledge of how the loot system is coded, I can't imagine it would be very hard for someone to look at the list of droppable skills and find out which ones were taken out before the game shipped a year ago. At the very least, I hope someone cross-checks the next time they add new loot - it was really sad last time to complete a themepark to get the "new" loot only for 1/3 or more of itwas inherently broken and pre-date live play, not to mention disaponting/deceptive to those who continue to get the loot even today.
AO