Development Cycle Archive

Wait...What!?!?

What has this done to the timeline? Most of us, myself included, were under the impression that the Combat Balance over time thing would be complete in Publish 8. As I read what you posted above, the Combat Balance will not wait until after the Jedi Revamp. I have no illusions about the time the Jedi Revamp will take.

As an example, let me ask about 2 specific issues that we've heard 100 times "wait for the Combat Balance" as a response to: 1. Combat Medic poison & disease (always hits, groups through walls, no PvP damage reduction, etc.) and 2. Pistoleer has 2 specials that work of all the ones given. Where do those two items fall on the timeline now? Are they after the Jedi Revamp?

Blah...can't edit on this forum. See highlighted change.

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SunLao wrote:

Wait...What!?!?

What has this done to the timeline? Most of us, myself included, were under the impression that the Combat Balance over time thing would be complete in Publish 8. As I read what you posted above, the Combat Balance willnow wait until after the Jedi Revamp. I have no illusions about the time the Jedi Revamp will take.

As an example, let me ask about 2 specific issues that we've heard 100 times "wait for the Combat Balance" as a response to: 1. Combat Medic poison & disease (always hits, groups through walls, no PvP damage reduction, etc.) and 2. Pistoleer has 2 specials that work of all the ones given. Where do those two items fall on the timeline now? Are they after the Jedi Revamp?

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JustG wrote:

I'll respond to some of the more popular questions about the State of the Game here:

Why is the combat balance being put off?

The combat balance is another massive overhaul. We want to get a lot of player feedback from it, and make sure we have it right before we put it in the game (to avoid another Crafting Experimentation situation).

The first 2 parts of the combat balance are already done, why can't you finish it? Now we're stuck with something that's half fixed and twice as broken as it was before we started.

Thanks for the state of address Just G. Hope all comes out as planned!!

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JustG wrote:

Priorities. We have many many many (many) different viewpoints on what needs to be fixed first. This is why we have developed our system of establishing priorities. Every publish, and in-between, we fix a ton of different things. Who sets the priorities? Essentially you do, for a lot of them. There are three different feeds into a specific set of development tasks:

1) Your correspondents. They tell us what needs to be fixed with the game, specific to your professions, as well as how they relate to each other.

2) Customer Service. They look at their tickets, and decide what is causing the most problems for the most players. They have a priority list of things that they think need to get fixed for the game from a scale point-of-view.

3) Quality Assurance. They play the game endlessly, and have a fantastic feel for what is not working right. We get a top 10 list of their most-desired fixes as well.

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I've been around a while. I keep seeing posts like this from you, TH, and other 'official' sources. I'm tired of you telling me what you might do. Reviewing patch notes, it is obvious the correspondent issues go largely ignored. Of the few issues that do get fixed, some fixes do not even address the raised issue (but it's close so you label it a correspondent issue).

In other words, if I had evidence that these 3 avenues actually produced bug fixes, then I think we, as players, would be happy with that. History and evidence being what it is, these are just more words. Actions speak louder than words.

And to put it bluntly: Stop blowing smoke up our collective *&^%$#. (self-edited)

And for goodness sakes, don't use so much HTML it takes me 5 minutes to edit out all the tags I do not have permission to quote....

JustG,

How about the simple promises:

"1 lot will equal 75 units of storage." Q-3PO Aug 2003.

almost FULL 6 months have gone by. How complex is this to implement?

I like the current concept for becoming a Jedi. There is one problem I can forsee with it. That is, if it's quest driven you'll more than likely have to fight high HAM opponents which means the only effective way to get anywhere would be to become a Master Commando and MCH or convincea bunch of ppl that helping you become a Jedi is good for them...some how...

JustG,

I am angry. I am replying to the CH issues raised by Seiryuu. We are not rebalanced as you so unwittingly put it we are nerfed. We have no worth or value and nothing to add to any hunting or PVP party. We are hated universally by the players and by you. We have tried many times through Vert to get your attention, to no avail. We don't believe you, we don't believe you know how to fix anything, we don't believe you know how badly you have broken one of the most unbroken professions around.

You don't listen, you don't care, how do I know becauseyou, Thunderheart, Runesbarro etc. do nothing, say very little and when you do refer to the CH professionit is always in a derogatory way. We have not been UBER for several months. We have been nerfed, not rebalanced, nerfed for over 4 months while riflemen, CM, TKM have been lifted to the heights of uberness. Brawler, swords etc are struggling, and crafters rule SWG universe.

All we want is that you "rebalance" our pets upwards a bit to make us once more a viable addition to any hunting/pvp party.

Thanks g.

I am 20 something professions into the holo grind and I have had enough. I will not learn any more professions that do not interest me in pursuit of the FS slot. I would like to know:

1) When (rough estimate will do for now) can we expect the Jedi Path revamp?

2) For those of us who have ground out literally dozens--24 doesconstitute dozens--of professions, we know we are 1 profession from the prize and so how close will we be in the new system? We should be 1 step from the end.

3) Will there be more information about the path than before? The original path was cheezy and there was nothing suggesting that we grind professions til the cows come home to become a Jedi--until the Holo's came out. I do not want to stumble blindly trying to figure out an all new nightmare path to take.

4) When are the Krayt Pearls required for top of the line lightsabers going to be changed or somehow made available to the less affluent among us? I do not play for virtual profit, I play for fun, and the idea of having to save up 5 million credits for 1 pearl is rediculous. I simply would not consider doing that, and I absolutely would not alter my existing characters to make them money machines. I deal with capitalism enough from 8 AM to 6 PM 5 days a week. Besides the credit factor, the Pearls come from Krayts--which are intended to be a raid level type of creature--and that goes against the primarily solitary depiction of the jedi. They were not profiteers nor were they big game hunters.

Just a few thoughts...

Thanks,

Vinaddar

Its really simple whats happening here, if you think about it like a business person.

1) No matter what they do, they know they will fail completely on combat revamp. Why? Because there is no way to make it balanced and please everyone. They will end up nerfing a whole slew of classes that might be overpowered or that people just don't know how to defend against and whine about constantly, and in the end, we will still have a few powerhouse professions.

So, as soon as people figure out their profession has been nerfed or that nothing has changed really, a TON of people will cancel their subscriptions.

2) They prioritize jedi before GCW updates because they know that with all the tons of hologrinders out there, more and more people become a jedi everyday. Jedi is one of the endgame objectives, so when people become jedi and find out that they really do suck, they'll feel like they just wasted money waiting for something that didn't meet up to their expectations. More cancelled subscriptions.

So they purposely prolong both, in order to both keep as many people paying as long as possible, and to make sure they test it well instead of rushing out buggy junk...even though things will always be unbalanced.

Notice how both are also close to the space release? This is another common tactic. Up the "cool factor" in the releases and hope it compensates for the stuff they mess up. Its basically like hoping people will spend so much time in a new adventure or with their new gadets that they'll forget they were just completely shafted in some way or another. This has been done in patch after patch and it looks like thats how it will continue to be. If it keeps people paying monthly, then its gold.



It is sad that things that have been bugged since the beginning are still in the game, and that the professions that have been "rebalanced" (read: combat medics) are now more powerful than they ever were.