Development Cycle Archive

Your "HQ vuln. fix" patch caused my guild's base vulnerability to shift forward by 18 hours, allowing a bunch of cowards to come in at 2 PM EST today and blow it while our members were at school and/or work.

But hey,now we have HOLO-EMOTES and TRANSLUCENT EYES!

Good job. Really.

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Shadow2k wrote:

Wow. Nuts.

From a holo-whore who did every profession but politician, 60hrs to complete a profession is nuts, unless you plan to do the same with the rest of them.

Time to complete professions (actual gameplay hours):

Armorsmith: 6hrs

Weaponsmith: 5hrs

DE: 7hrs

Tailor 8hrs

Ranger: 10hrs

Architect: 1-2hrs

Doctor: 8hrs

Combat Medic:4hrs (buffing)

Any *pure* combat profession: under 24hrs

etc, etc...

The ONLY professions that *might* still take longer than ID, would be Bounty Hunter and Merchant. Back before it was changed, it took me probably 250ish hours of gameplay to master BH. Once it was changed, people were doing it in 40-80hrs. So it's a toss up now, as to which profession is the most painful to master.

Considering that you are trying to beef up the profession to make it more desirable for people to play, you may want to reconsider how long it will take someone starting from scratch to master it. Should it be mastered in an hour? Of course not. Should it take longer than every other profession but Bounty Hunter to master? Of course not.

In my opinion, Image Design is probably one of the classes that *could* appeal to the casual gamers. You know, the ones that may play 5hrs a week, if that. This will effectively cut them out, leaving us...well, without many Image Designers still.

SOE screwed up with the holocron grinding. Powergamers showed you how easy some classes, like ID, were to master. Do not punish the players who wish to actually play the class by making them take 60 hours of casual gameplay in order to do what they desire. Fix the issue of making those of us who aren't interested in being Image Designers bulldozing over professions such as these and trivializing every aspect of them. You created the problem...remove the desire to bulldoze over your professions, and the rest becomes moot. Obviously things will change in publish 10 in regards to holo-grinding, but this...change...will not be good for the Image Designer profession in the long run.

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I am very disappointed in the timer now implemented on the ID community.

i mean SOE seriously, do combat professions have to wait 60sec to 2 mins before they are able to shoot again? no.

do crafters with multiple tools have to wait 2 mins between crafting? no they move to another tool and they craft the next thing.

Why then do image designers HAVE to wait 60 secs - 5 mins on changes (excluding stat migration)?

In my honest opionion you have seriously hurt the gameplay for players in this community and those players seeking a quick ID before logging or before hunting. Its now VERY boring standing around waiting on an extreme timer before able to actually making the change.

/sarcasm on

In my opinion you must have seen ID's as an uber powerful profession since we gota serious nerf with this.

*changes so-and-so's eye color and hits for 5000 damage*

/sarcasm off

The Lunatic Fringer,

Ok, looks like 'The Fringer' has about a week till I get my Military Orders. A lot of us have voiced a strong dislike with what you've done with the Image Designer 'Stat Migration' theme.

This is the only 'fix' I can think of to improve upon this and make a lot of us not mind it as much. First Off, put back regular Stat Migration. It may be slow, but 'we' get to do it ourselves. So, that much should not have been tampered with in the slightest.

This was suppose to be an enhancement to make ID more of a pivitol role in game. Fine, here's what you do:

1) Put back in normal Player Stat Migrating.

2) You allow Normal IDers to Stat Migrating with the 'enhancement' that they can give it to us at a quicker rate than if we do it ourselves.

3) Take out the Timer for Master IDers to act as a 'skill enhancement' for them.

4) Take away Emoticons. That doesn't belong in game. We're going for the Episode 4-6 feel here for the most part and a lot of the developers and players seem to be forgetting that.

That's all I've got to say. Keep us soldiers in your prayers everyone. I'll stay with this till I ship out.

The Lunatic Fringer

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Ceroshin wrote:

"Stat Migration: Image Designers now have the sole ability to migrate player stats."

Here's my issue with this patch:

When Smugglers requested actual smuggling ability around the time of the Imperial Crackdown, we were told it wouldn't happen, because SoE wouldn't take abilities away from the rest of the playerbase to provide us with content. However, with this patch, you did that VERY THING for Image Designers.

Why the double standard?

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Why the double standard? Because theres no way the community would have put up with having to use a smuggler to move their sliced items etc... from one planet to another. There's far too many players who rely on sliced items in their gaming experience. The backlash from that would be too severe. Especially if done without conveying the changes to the smuggler/community at large prior to making the change.

No... I take that back. If the devs and smugglers take the time to communicate with the player community and PC smuggling is balanced out with increased checks etc... for non-smugglers then the the smuggler becomes a viable option for moving rogue goods around. The trick is in paintinga picture that smugglers are a necessity for all but the foolhardy or gambler. If the picture even remotely conveys a ramming down the throat action ala stat migration revoke then expect one hell of a backlash. The keyword here is communication, something the devs are lacking in.

As for stat migration, that was a feature only used by a few of us. Myself included in that statement. I regularily moved my stats around based on which item I'd need to use for the next few days to reach whatever goal I'd given myself. As for why they really did it? It was the easy way out. They didn't have the resources to alter the toon models (most of the art dept is tied up with the add-on) hence no new hairstyles, body tattoos for non-tattoo species etc... Well, they might have had the resources to do that if they hadn'tspent time on the holo-emotes.

Ultimately, though, now thatI have had some time to think about it,the ID's got just as much a nerf as the rest of us. Nerfing in the sense of lost potential of what might've been. And, if we're not careful, other professions going through revamps will face the same fate.

Instead of getting abilities that would have better integrated them into the economy and the rest of the game,ID's got a new interface, some new colors, holo-emotes (which at the momentis the fad of the week, just like color kits were),ridiculous timer constraints,and a monoply on a 'sunset' feature that ultimately effects few players and even less players as the holo-grinds wines down.

In 30 days are ID's going to be making as much an impact on the game as they have in the last few days?Once the holo emote fad ends; the holo-grind ends etc... ID's will still be the same marginalized profession, notwithstanding the new interface and colors. Really, how is few new colors and an interfacenon-ID's can't seegoing tocause people to see ID from a different perspective. It's hard for a large audience of gamers to care about their toons looks when they're buried under Composite 24/7. Maybe you ID'ers should have been give the ability color armor? Just an idea.

Ultimately, this patch/revamp... or whatever you want to call it doesn't begin to address the narrow target audience of the ID. The blame for that largely falls on Kwee and Co.'s shoulders.Soliciting feedback fromthe non-ID's would have no doubt generated a wide array of ideas and altered peoples perceptions of the ID profession.Ceroshin, make sure you're correspondent(s) takes the time to venture outside the smugglers forum.

Some ofthe ideas that I have seen so far...

i... Giving ID's the ability to alter the colors/textures of furniture (how long have we had that orange couch now). Imagine you could extend that to tailoring as well.

ii... Semi-permanent buffs to a toons base stats that say last 30 days.

iii... Disquises for Overt faction members etc...

Of course addressing the fact, that as it stands now, ID'ers are essentially plastic surgeons without any medical training would have been nice as well. Creating alink between BE and ID for tissues etc... for a body overhaul would have created a halfway decent dependency too.

Anyway, It's over and done with now. I guess we just learn from our mistakes (devs are included in *our* !!! :smileymad and move on.

PS.. In the event you actually read this RuneSabre, do me and the other architects a favor and don't schedule us for a revamp until you've overcome you're need to treat us like lab-rats.