Development Cycle Archive

Regarding Armour -

We Certainly need to see more types of armour in this game, or maybe the resists on the underused armours need to be changed to encourage players to use them more. Adding Stun Resistance to Padded, for example. That could be a start, since padded looks cool and almost no one uses it.

Also, There needs to be a way to defend against the currently unbalanced CM poison/Disease issue. Perhaps creating a new set of layers that would protect against poison,disease, bleeding, fire, etc... That way people could sacrifice some degree of protection for protection against these DOT's. Maybe adding an extra layer slot to composite for these new layers only, and then adding 2 or even 3 to padded or ubese, or even making a new helmet that functioned as a gas mask and had say 4 slots for these, but low resists to damage, would be a great idea. It is silly to think that there would be like no military style defenses against these types. It would also get some uber suits of armour moved out of the game, encouraging people to go buy new gear and make something new for AS to specialise in.

Also, there should be a new damage category for Lightsaber damage, and that you should be able to add cortosis layers to existing armour to defend against this. This would force folks who hunt Jedi to have special equipment made, and make Jedi damage more devestating.

A really cool thing would also be adding an animation for Shield Gens, They should flash or sizzle when you take hits and they are on. That would be very cool, and useful, you would know when it died. Adding a new Shield HAM bar and recharge units would be cool too. Maybe if there was a Heavy Duty Shield Gen that was worn in the Backpack slot, thus forcing folks to trade storage for a huge energy shield. It could look really cool, like a Tesla Coil powered pack or something along those lines. Combat would be really nice with a lot more client side lighting effects and whatnot. SWG combat should be busy with lots of smoke and explosions and whatnot.

I think that there should also be some kind of cert system for armour, one that maybe gives bonuses to certain classes/factions when wearing it. Like Rebel Armour x Rank = bonuses. So a Rebel Private gets no bonuses, but a Colonel gets like 70% across the board with maybe lower stats for stun and restraint. Vice Versa for Imperial Players. You could then make wearing faction armour not faction dependent, cause a Rebel in Stormie armour would have crappy armour on and an Imperial Player could have Uber Armour on par with the best composite. This could be another reason to go up in ranks.

Also, maybe there could be sort of steps on the way to being certed, so that you would have increasing skill with the armour as you go up in skill levels in the related professions. This could be a way to balance TKA out, they might never get full certification in Composite, But might get it in Ubese or Padded. Whereas a Pikeman would get full cert in Composite to reflect their Tanking role as intended. This way, BH, Commando and Squad Leader charcters could get better advantage out of Mandalorian, but others could still wear it and it would be great for them too, just not as great. Or armour cert could be related to your total number of invested skill points in Combat Professions. So that a person who has made a great commitment to combat would be able to wear any armour, and a mixed character would be restricted somewhat. That way some profession combos wouldn't be as unbalanced. Like a TKA/Doc wouldn't have as great a cert in armour as a all melee tank character, because Doctor is a non-combat profession. Maybe it would be in his interest to wear padded instead of Comp.

First, about vehicles and tools...I would like to see the vehicle decay rate reduced, and the customization times significantly increased. The paint job should fade based on how long the vehicle is out, not on how many times you store/generate it, and it should last for at least a few weeks rather than the current (typical) 1-3 days. Vehicles should not be losing their condition so quickly assuming they're not getting hit...right now, if you keep your vehicle out for only a matter of hours, it's already in need of repair. Repairs aren't unaffordable, but vehicles are really decaying too fast. It would be nice if NPCs didn't attack vehicles for fun as well...particularly after they incap you. That's just annoying.

If tools are going to be subject to decay, we need to have a way of knowing how much condition the tool has left, without having to die first. A condition indicator like that present on most other things would be helpful here.

Second, about armor, I think Master_jaydawg has some great ideas. It would be nice to see people wearing more types of armor besides composite, and PSGs do seem to wear out too quickly, way too quickly. You can fight one greater desert womp rat and your PSG will be gone...I like his idea of a shield recharge kit that can only be used when not fighting (assuming that the bugs that keep you in combat when not actively fighting are fixed) and a fourth shield bar. I would hope that a shield at 0% can be recharged rather than becoming useless, since it's pretty easy to get hit for like 800 damage.

I would like to add something to this proposal:a change to the AP and AR calculator. Right now when AP is less than AR, damage is reduced by a high 50% per level of difference. Pistoleers, who don't have any really high damage moves and even worse, can't fire all their specials very quickly without special mods or BH dabbling, are a little too weak against even light armored targets. Fencers don't have it much better either. TKAs may only get light armor piercing, but their damage is so high that it compensates, and they are supposed to be the weakest of the brawlers damage-wise anyway.

I propose that the 50% be changed to 25% for AR being greater than AP. Just lower the damage by 25% for every level of difference. If AP is greater than AR, retain the current 1.25 multiplier. Such a change will help pistoleers and fencers compete with other classes while not adding more power to higher-AP classes like rifleman or Jedi. This change in the calculator should apply for both PvP and PvE.

In addition to Master_jaydawg's ideas, I want to add that encumberance might be made into a percentage of a player's secondaries rather than an absolute number. That way buffs would still help, but not allow a player to completely ignore encumberance of armor. This might be combined with Jaydawg's proposal of lower chances to dodge/c-attack/block, less terrain negotiation, etc. The percentage of encumberance, obviously, should not be too high for a full suit of armor though it should be higher for the more powerful types of armor (particularly this Mandalorian that we know so little about). Regarding Imperial PSGs having a Medium armor rating, thiscould work IF the AR-AP calculator is changed to 25% from 50%. I'm not quite sure that the playable species should be able to wear physical armor with a medium rating, simply because it would be just too heavy to wear, but with an energy shield I guess it isn't as much of an issue.

Now onto a different subject, that of SEAs in clothing and armor. Decay is really annoying many players but if it is going to be kept, those SEAs ought to be removable by tailors and armorsmiths with a special tool (given to all tailors/armorsmiths, not made available only by looting a ton of different components--loot only is a bad idea and encourages camping). If clothes at 0% condition are made unequippable, at least let tailors salvage those expensive SEAs...particularly since this change is being put in way after people stopped insuring their clothes because they knew 0% clothing retained its skill mods. This change is a bad one but I suppose it's a little late to change it in time for publish 8.

Even better than removable SEAs would be to make ALL SEAs craftable by BEs. The camping would be very much reduced, and good SEAs wouldn't be out of the reach of all but the very rich, assuming that the schematics for them (fairly) require reasonably common components. Camping is a problem whenever you introduce loot-only items (except in the case of the Corvette because it's instanced), and it frustrates many players.

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FalgornLightfoot wrote:

"And before everyone clammers about not joining one side unless you PVP, the reason I joined was to chck out the little extra game content provided to factions. This change would lock-out content and make the game much less appealing to me. I have not, nor will I kill a character controlled by a real warm-blooded human"

*blank expression*

Ehrm, so when your killing a storm trooper, or rebel commando, (pve) and an overt player comes along and attacks your TEF, what will you do? put away your guns and make them afternoon tea?

If your factioned, and activly attaking opposing faction opponents, then your as much a target as if you were on the terminals.

Great Idea about adding factional Bounties, Im all for it.

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Bryan1138 wrote:

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DorTaul wrote:

Why not make Rebels who kill Imperial Crackdown Stormtroopers appear on the Bounty Hunter Terminals? The Empire, instead of doing nothing about the 15 Stormtroopers killed in Kaadara, posts a bounty on the head of the murderer. Or, instead of doing this, make the murdering Rebel kill on sight to all other Imperial Crackdown Stormtoopers until he/she is killed by them.

I believe my idea is a good one. Anybody else?

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This is a great idea. I'll share it with the team. Everyone reads the weekly dev cycle threads, but I'll send this around for a second look.

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- if u bring players unwilled on the BH board then please all of them ... also the rebels can place bountys. A good idea might be to autoplace bountys on imperials that are turing vaders and the emporers jedi policy absurd by protecting jedis or grouping with them .

- please do something against the third party tool looter on the bottom of the borgle bat cave . Just spawn a couple of boss onsters which cannot be beaten easy. Or move the good tapes to no static spawns .

- jedi grouptef ...... from the beginning of the knights tree grouptef should be removed if someone is grouped with the knight .these guys can protect themselfs pretty well and it is just wrong that they could be and they definitly are protected by large groups unless they reach 4 4 4 4 guardian.

- take a look at ranged defence ... it dont seem to be working on something thrown

- take a look at all secondary defences ... they dont seem to work on something thrown as well

Hey another good thing would be if you have been causing alot of trouble and you think you might be showing up on the boards then you could go pay a recruiter, or have a smuggler, hide yoru identity, or "pay off" the official! :-D. That way if nobody has gotten your mission they wont. (and its a money sink!!). And if they have your out of luck. (make it a matter of if they got their names off the terminals in time, and dont tell em) :-P

First !?

I am a badge lover.

I think we should have a badge display revamp. Specifically I would like to see graphical badges. The game Jumpgate had a very good graphical badge system. I don't know if that game is even still running or not, but they even had a website you could go to and view peoples badges. I think this would be much better than the "...has seen blah blah blah" on our screens now. Basically just a little picture icon to represent the badge instead of the text. Also maybe we could add faction rank as a badge?

The second part I think should be a separate badge window when you examine someone. They could be organized into categories and all that kind of thing. Give badges, bio, and anything else their own page in the examine window.

Also for the non-badge lovers, an option to not display them would be in order I think also.

TH,

i would like to know what direction this game is heading in, it was stated in a lot of times pre beta that this would not be everquest in space, and the devs came through with that, it wasnt, but now every new patch brings new weapons and items which can only be crafted through schematics, thus bringing loot camping and "uber loot" into the game to a large extent, as a weapon smith i cant craft any of the new guns unless i can aford millions for schematics and components, we have few guns that can compeat as natural schems rendering most of our skills useless apart from as loot combiners.

so can we expect this trend of loot drops and new places to camp to continue? personaly i find with every new patch im enjoying the game less as it gets more like the loot hunt most other games are, which isnt what this game use to be about, you could hunt for rare enhancements to give you a nice advantage, but they wernt necisery and most of us were happy with the normal versions, but now were being compleatly cut out as the game becomes more and more about loot.

Hello,

Is the database ever going to be upgraded to allow the proper items per lot usage for Large Houses and GuildHalls? The current "nerf" was deemed "temporary" by Holocron when it was first introduced.

Can you please clarify the structures wipe with a "deleted" character? I.e. If an account is cancelled and/or expiredwithout the character being deleted prior, do the structures remain?

Thank you for your time and interest on this matter.