Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept Open Discussion (Week Ending 4-5-04)
Daeyron wrote:
so here's my request: PLEASE ADD MORE SKILL POINTS. encourage players to try new professions by making it less painful. if you don't just raise the cap, perhaps you could please consider adding a quest whereby players could acquire more skill points.
How bout some generic items that could aid players and events. LIke a data disk craftable by artisans. the farther up the engineering tree, the more characters it could hold. IT could be made out of 8 units aluminum, 4 units non ferrous metal or something. They could be encoded, serial numbered, or whatever. They have multiple uses, such as giving out fliers for events, vendors, encoded pvp plans read only by a particular faction or having a known encrption code. It could also be used in events when things would be needed to have a serial number or a special message. I play on chilastra, and probably the coolest event are the Neutron-7 episodes and quests.If they had craftable datadisks among a few other improvised items, the quest would be perfect.
A second item would be sabbac or pazzak cards and decks. You could buy them from NPC's in hotels or cantinas, and play players and npc's for small wagers on hotel tables during downtime. It would be a source of crowds hanging out in hotels and a lot of fun for players.
i remember some thread or topic way back when asking players how they thought the devs could make the game more star wars-y or give it a move lived in look. i want to expand that concept over to how the devs can help player cities look more like cities.
might be nice to give our mayors, with the help of our architects, the ability tocreate actual paved streets that can go up the sides of hills (if giving mayors the ability to flatten terrain is too difficult) this could be done by say streets are laid down in squares on the grid and if it runs into a house, it just cuts off there and forms around the house or building. perhaps the type of pavement becomes available like the ability to place certain structures becomes available. the pavement at wayfar is very crude compared to the metropolis that is theed. i think the terrain on which players walk in their citiesshould be reflected in the size of the player city. i live in a huge metropolis on dantooine and yet wayfar looks more sophsticated and city like than our player city.
let architects craft different styles of bridges to go over the rivers that divid cities, and beautiful fencing styles to go along the river sides (as they do at theed for an example), or around cities(dearic, coronet) with the option of building exiting/entering archways,craftable staircases to go up hills or inclinesto craftable balconies(parts of theed, restuss or the lake retreat are good examples of this), everything placeable on top of that pavement idea i have up above.
'm sure other people are asking for the same things, and i know this is a mouthful and would be a lot of time and effort to pull off on the parts of the devs, art and programming department staff. we have the space expansion coming out soon, which i have a good feeling about, and i know that takes a lot of the resources to development. after that's out, i dont know what your next huge grand project will be, but i think this is an idea worth looking into. you want to make this a unique game, let the players be as unique in their player cities as they can. ^_^ even if this is starting to sound like rollercoaster tycoon or sim city. 
- Master Marksman ; obviously need to be able to shoot guns...
- Honestly I can't really think of anything else that should go with Commando because it's basiclyan advanced Marksman. Nothing else really makes sense as to why it would be a requirement for an advanced Marksman unless possibly Scout skills but pretty much anything else they take will no longer be used except for camps and terrain navigation.
Bounty Hunter:
- Master Marksman: Again, obviously they need marksmen skills though why do they need to learn rifle skills if they never use rifles in the skill tree?
- Master Brawler: The Bounty Hunter should be very versatle and able to do battle under any condition weather they have a firearm or not. At the least this would be a better idea for a place to have Unarmed requirements. We do see Boba Fett on this web site doing an Unarmed Kick...
Smuggler:
- Pistol Specialist; Though I don't think Smugglers should be limited to only using pistols...
- Master Scout: When I think of a Smuggler I think of someone who is not going to normally be taking the direct road to the places he's going. He would use scouting skills to accomadate him.
- Pilot: What the heck is a smuggler really good for if he can't smuggle passengers, cargo, contraband from one planet to another??
These are just some examples. I honestly think Smuggler should have been one of the professions they introduce for the Space Expansion. Any other ideas?
I wrote this in response to a thread in the BE forum called, "Where did all the CH go?" It is addressing concerns about falling pet sales due to a lack of CHs in the game. The basic reason for the lack of CHs is because they are now way underpowered compared to other classes. Players with high combat abilities, 80% composite, full buffs and food now fight at a level of CL150. People routinely pull CL150 missions in large groups, just to pull the mission, but then go slowly that mission on their own. They can also kill any CH pets and then the CH. The CH bugs are still annoying and 15 seconds to pull one pet is too long. It needs to be, Call - Pet, Call-Pet. The autostoring, slow pets that don't keep up with the speeders, and them slowing down and not following problems make them not usable. In the time it takes to pull out all the pets to be used on a mission, the fully armored, fully buffed TKA will have the layer destroyed.
Posts follows:
I can still sell pets, though I happen to be in a town where there are a number of CH left. Coronet use to be a zoo with more than 50% of the spamers selling animals. Now you don't see a one out there.
The problem is, something people are missing, is that harvesters got a hug boost. Everyone is on all the planets, so SWGCraft.com is kept up to date. So when there is a shift of great resources everyone mines the hell out of it. This means armor is amazing, weapons are top notch and doctors can buff for 2500 a pop. Not only that, but people can buy enough armor and weapons due to huge supply and lots of money from 25k missions that they can get good slices on everything.
CH was popular when an animal was the only thing that could tank. Now people with the uber templates, full comp and buffs are by far better tanks and they dish out unreal damage. No pet can complete with that. So while CH got nerfed, everything else got far far better.
The bugs are huge. They make pets annoying to work with. Speeders are huge too. Even the fast cat skins don't keep up fast enough to make them worthwhile. In the end, their power is weak and their usability sucks. Therefore they go unused and CH is something to drop, not pick up.
When I do travel to a Player City, it always lacks the feel of a city. It's a grouping of houses. No more, no less.
The main differences I have seen between NPC cities and player cities:
* Tileset - pavement, roads, bricks, marble in NPC cities -- grass in player cities.
* Walls - Define the city. Corellian arches, Tattoine sandstone, all give the effect of an actual city. You know the difference between the city and the wilderness. Not so in player cities. There are no streets, no city limits, only houses and an occasional "garden".
* Ambient sounds - In an NPC city, there is the sound of ships flying overhead, equipment humming. In a player city, it is deathly quiet.
Adding tilesets and sounds for Politicians to add to their cities would go a long way towards making them feel like cities, and they would be unabuseable.
Walls are a bit more of a dilemma. People are worried about walling off areas or someone's house, or giving extra defenses to bases. There are things that can be done to avoid this. First of all, walls could be non collideable. Graphical only. This would be the easiest, but not necessarily the best way to do it. The right way to do it would be to track the placement of walls and make it impossible to completely enclose an area. Make walls not buildable within 10m of any structure, and within 100m of a faction base, and you take care of most forseeable problems with these rules.
This does kind of feel like SimStarWars, but Simming is a guilty pleasure of mine. These would be great changes that make player cities feel unique and like home.
---TestCenter.Stootee