Development Cycle Archive

Thunderheart wrote:

StarchMonkey wrote:

Any more details on the Aqualish Cave badge? We are still confused as to whether you know its just a POI badge and not actually part of the Hermit Quests. If there is something we "don't know then I can live with that, but some of the answers we got were kind of vague.

Im sure we'll find out this month. One of the new design tasks is to have the Hermit Badge Quests fixed in Publish 8.

Thunderheart,

I believe that there is some confusion on your part on this issue, based on this response. The poster wants to know about the Aqualish Cave badge, which is currently not working correctly. This is just a POI badge (the same as visiting the Saarlac or theed waterfall etc). This badge has absoulutely nothing to do with the Hermit quests and the related badges. We understand and very much appreciate that the Hermit quest will be addressed.

We would also like to know when the final POI badges will be fixed such as the Aqualish badge mentioned above.

Beck - Bloodfin

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Thunderheart wrote:

Im sure we'll find out this month. One of the new design tasks is to have the Hermit Badge Quests fixed in Publish 8.

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Friday I saw offers on the Internetof 50 million credits available on any server for a few hundred dollars. Isn't the economy if not the game out of control with this going on? Who is doing this? Is it player/groups that have monopolized/trivialized some aspect of the economy? Is it software experts who have cracked game security? Is it SOE employees fudgingonline accounts?Is itall of these and more? Sorrowfully, SOE's response seems to be limited to announcementsclaiming ownership of intellectual property and making threats of banning players.

Doesn't SOE have a responsibility to do something more effective? Why not check the databases to see how many online bank accounts have balances of more than 50M?Find out howthose amounts ofmoneyare generated and stop that. Tips of more thana certain amount could be disabled anditems sold for more than the same amount examined? Why doesn't SOE sell them itself? There can't be anything wrong with it if enough players wantit; if there are sensible limits;and if it is available fairly and above board to all.

A second note on the economy: Everyone in the game pays per unit costs on what they use except the resource collectors. They pay fixed costs. This makes resource collecting and selling a source of unlimited credits (with unlimited accounts).

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Wolfbane9999 wrote:

Friday I saw offers on the Internetof 50 million credits available on any server for a few hundred dollars. Isn't the economy if not the game out of control with this going on? Who is doing this? Is it player/groups that have monopolized/trivialized some aspect of the economy? Is it software experts who have cracked game security? Is it SOE employees fudgingonline accounts?Is itall of these and more? Sorrowfully, SOE's response seems to be limited to announcementsclaiming ownership of intellectual property and making threats of banning players.

Doesn't SOE have a responsibility to do something more effective? Why not check the databases to see how many online bank accounts have balances of more than 50M?Find out howthose amounts ofmoneyare generated and stop that. Tips of more thana certain amount could be disabled anditems sold for more than the same amount examined? Why doesn't SOE sell them itself? There can't be anything wrong with it if enough players wantit; if there are sensible limits;and if it is available fairly and above board to all.

A second note on the economy: Everyone in the game pays per unit costs on what they use except the resource collectors. They pay fixed costs. This makes resource collecting and selling a source of unlimited credits (with unlimited accounts).

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Unfortunately Wolfbane, that is one of the pitfalls of an economy that is compeltely player controlled. I know an armorsmith that has over nearly 70 million credits. All made legit. He prices his armor high and people buy it, because it's worth it. It's not all exploits. Take skill mod taps and attachments. I've seen those selling for upwards of 17 million each. Players are totally determining the value of their products and what they wish to buy. On sunrunner a suit of composite..actually a chest plate of composite, can go for 5 million alone, depending on teh stats, and the quality. And folks have the money to buy stuff like that. Jedi need (well they don't need, but they sort of do) Krayt pearls and force crystals. With the new rarity of crystals, the prices have skyrocketed into the millions. Folks either have the money and pay for it, therefore increasing the seller's balance, or they run alot of high level missions,..and pay for it. Either way, the game is generating the money, the players are only raking it in.

• 2 points per month of game time (providing a total of4 hours of total play time in that month)


• 1 point for finishing 'major tasks' such as theme parks andmajor quests (first time only, no resets)


• 1 or 2 points for completing the current story arc quests


• 1 point for attaining the first level of an officer rank for your faction (first time only)


• 2points for attaining the highest level of rank for your faction (first time only)


• 1 point for mastering a basic profession (the first time only)


• 2 points for attaining an advanced profession (the first time only)


• 1 point per major badge (compassion, explorer, etc... not the individual exploration badges)

Every time a character receives a skill point increase we could get a system message or email that says "Your character has gotten a little older and wiser". It would be an immersive way to give us something we desperately want.

And why do we want it?

1. Because even those of us who are not 'uber gamers' find ourselves being discouraged when there is little else we can do to improve our characters. EXAMPLE: My wife is a dedicated role-player who has maxed out her combat medic (plus some doctor and some pistoleer). Simply the feeling of knowing you have nowhere else to go is discouraging her from healing, hunting, PvPand any other game activity related to her profession. She wouldn't mind picking up a few more combat skills, creature handler or maybe entertainer, but the current skill system prevents her from doing that without completely trashing months of hard work. Allmy wifehas left is signing on to the game, talking with friends and helping to run our town.


2. The current skill system may make sense systemically but it doesnt work IMMERSIVELY.My wifeand several others I know can't bring themselves to dropskills to free up points to do something else because it doesnt make sense from a story perspective. Yes its true that people in RL often change 'focus' and lose old unused skills... but its also true that the older you get the more experienced and generally 'wise' you become. We have one of those paradigms in the game, why can't we have both?


3. Juggling skills is an inherently frustrating task. It's extremely frustrating to get yourself trained by another player only to find that you have to make a sudden decision before the shuttle takes off whether to drop some well-loved other skill topurchase your shiny new one. Another good friend of mine is our town's mayor. She is completely fed up with juggling dancer, chef and politician (with a dab of medic). She isn't interested in all of these professions because she wants to play solo and not contribute to the interrelationship of professions. On the contrary she is a fantastic group player. Giving her the option to (slowly, over time) master all of those professions would keep her playing. This frustration alone is whats driving her away.


4. The current skill limit does not allow me to play the sort of character I would like. It's not possible for me to fulfill my character's goals (master squad leader, master swordsman and basic medicwill pretty much fill up my total). I have no ability to learn any ranger which would complete the image i have in my head of who my character is. I am not an ubergamer by any means and it takes way too long for casual gamers such as myself to master something only to have to drop it for something else they want to try. I started onheavy swordsmanin october and still amonly 2342. Im not trying to ruin the interrelationship of professions, I simply want to have a varied, interesting and dynamic characterwithout a lot of tedious grinding followed by aheart-wrenching dropping of skills. This need of mine could be partially solved by giving us more than one character per server, but frankly I would prefer to play the same guy over time... letting him grow.

I firmly believe that a gradual, slow increase in the skill point cap over time would allow a nice balance between those of us casual, RP types who want interesting characters and those more hard-core simulation types who want challenge. A lot of the simulationists either burn out on a game after they 'win' (master some or all professions) meaning that many of them would not even be affected by this increase. And those players who stick to their character over time should be rewarded.

Please let me know what you think.

Top Issues

• Borgle Cave Cheaters

Catering to cheaters and the ultra-rich, especially with the crafting nerf, is not good. You know why.

• Storage in Furniture rather than Backpacks

TOP issue for gameplay. Backpacks in houses are UGLY. We have Armoires, Bookcases. Let us store in them.

• Politician Gameplay

Can't stress this enough. Abandoned Profession.

• Uber Loot is not what this game was advertised to have

The Uber Loot is exactly what you promised us we would not have in the game. This game is to be CRAFTER driven, and player content is supposed to be king - not uber loot drops.I suppose the same logic explains why blasters are the weakest thing in a Star Wars game?

• CONTINUITY ALERT

There is a lot of talk of including Hoth in the game. Hoth is an UNKNOWN, UNINHABITED planet. NO ONE should go there, or even know it exists. Why else would the rebel hide there? This would be the last continuity straw on my back. It comes, I go.

RbT

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kalmank wrote:

Hey all,

I have an idea for a new dungeon: The Spice Mines of Kessel. This is a "long-term" dungeon, which means you can possibly stay a few days in it. Here's the story:

Jabba the Hutt needs more raw spice, now that Imperial troops are seizing random shipments during the Crackdown. So now, Hutt mobs are "kidnapping" players randomly on Tatooine, and hiring bounty hunters to kidnap those with low or negative Jabba Faction points, and bringing them to work in the spice mines. When you are DB-ed by specific mobs, instead of cloning, you are brought to the lowest level of the spice mines.

All ofthe player'sinventory and clothing are gone, stored in a lockbox which he can access if he manages to "escape." He is equipped with a prisoner's uniform. There are three ways to escape. The first is to pay off the level supervisor with a large sum of credits. This will bring you back to the closest starport to where you were kidnapped.

The second method is to work your way up to the top level of the mine. Each level has a quota of spice to mine before you can move on. Spice is mined like sampling resources. Also, you can get more spice to move things up by doing missions for fellow prisoners (NPCs) or supervisors. Once you get to the top level, You can bribe (with spice) your way into the Lockbox storage, which acts like a temporary bank, where you can retreive as much of your belongings as you'd like (in case you want to leave room in your inventory for the loot you've gotten in the mines), and run past the guards to a shuttle. This method does take a while, maybe a few days for a casual player, but you end up with the most amount of raw spice.

The third method is to get smuggled out. The only way to get to Kessel is to be kidnapped - but Smugglers with the Underworld and Spices trees can travel there from Tatooine spaceports. They are free to walk around, but they cannot actually mine the spice. There are missions they can do to get spice and loot, and they can also buy spice from prisoner players. Their best function is the ability to smuggle players (by grouping with them)to the surface of Kessel where the lockbox and shuttle are, usually in exchange for spice and/or credits.

New spices will be introduced that are mined. One idea I have is Glitterstim, from the novels. What it does is double the amount of whatever doctor and chef buffs you have when you take the spice, for 30 min (the downer is for 10 min you'll have no buffs at all). The raw spice that is mined cannot be taken as is - smugglers use them in crafting eatable spice. Something as good as this will encourage smugglers to come to Kessel.

More ideas arefor Bio-Engineers to get themselves kidnapped to get dna samples from underground creatures in the mines. Maybeanyone who is grouped with a smuggler can fly to Kessel (with their inventory and weapons), to try to take over the spice mining facility by killing certain npcs, and while they control it, they get a flow of raw spice into their inventory.

Lastly, since the planet Kessel's atmosphere is mostly unbreathable away from the mines (this is from the novels), very little of the planet's surface would need to be created, and the focus would be the mine itself. Also, since the Kessel system has a black hole in it, the sky could look really cool.

Ok, that's it for now. What do you all think?

-Isildur

Intrepid

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I felt that was worthy of being read a second time.

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Rancorrider4 wrote:

TH,

Still waiting on some indication as to what is happening with Ranger and Scout camps once they're no longer needed for calling vehicles or pets. Our former coorespondent, N'Raas slaved over the Outdoorsman proposal. Can you tell us when we'll be able to get some info on this please? Also when we'll be getting an answer to our ten questions?

Respectfully,

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Ideas to improve server latency and to ease database usage/storage:


1) There have been many ideas to raise the stack values on crates and stackable items such as resources. This can help with database issues, for example: lets say you have 1000 units of item X in one or more crates. If the max stack is 1000, you have 1 entry in the database for it, with all its attributes. If max size is 40, you now have 25 entries for what could be considered the same exact thing. That repeats the same attributes (stats, names, locations, etc) 25 times. Doesn't that waste storage? Access time? Although this is a very small example, if extrapolated to all the servers and tested, I would think there would be a lot of memory saved.

2) Dealing with shuttles, there are a lot of frustrations, concerns, and server lag possibilitys. First, shuttle hopping across the galaxy isn't fun, and can be terribly frustrating if you keep missing shuttles. If one could buy a single ticket, even at an increased price, for the full trip, what would it solve? Less player downtime at loading screens, and shuttle waiting. More credits back into the system. Less server transfers! Why trasfer all your character and inventory data, from the Lok server, to the Tatooine server, to the Corellia server, to the Talus server?? All that waiting, that transfering?!? One quick transfer would save SO much bandwidth, wouldn't it?


These are ideas mainly from other ppl and other boards, but hope they one day can see the light of day

Thank you, I thought about it during the weekend, and I hope a dev notices it

-Isildur

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damocles88 wrote:

I have a suggestion that might help some of us long-time players continue to play.

As characters age and do certain activities, they could receive 'life experience' in the form of an increase to their 250 skill point cap. An example of things that could increase the skill point cap would include (the numbers are there as examples only and probably need to be tweaked):

• 2 points per month of game time (providing a total of4 hours of total play time in that month)


• 1 point for finishing 'major tasks' such as theme parks andmajor quests (first time only, no resets)


• 1 or 2 points for completing the current story arc quests


• 1 point for attaining the first level of an officer rank for your faction (first time only)


• 2points for attaining the highest level of rank for your faction (first time only)


• 1 point for mastering a basic profession (the first time only)


• 2 points for attaining an advanced profession (the first time only)


• 1 point per major badge (compassion, explorer, etc... not the individual exploration badges)

Every time a character receives a skill point increase we could get a system message or email that says "Your character has gotten a little older and wiser". It would be an immersive way to give us something we desperately want.

And why do we want it?

1. Because even those of us who are not 'uber gamers' find ourselves being discouraged when there is little else we can do to improve our characters. EXAMPLE: My wife is a dedicated role-player who has maxed out her combat medic (plus some doctor and some pistoleer). Simply the feeling of knowing you have nowhere else to go is discouraging her from healing, hunting, PvPand any other game activity related to her profession. She wouldn't mind picking up a few more combat skills, creature handler or maybe entertainer, but the current skill system prevents her from doing that without completely trashing months of hard work. Allmy wifehas left is signing on to the game, talking with friends and helping to run our town.


2. The current skill system may make sense systemically but it doesnt work IMMERSIVELY.My wifeand several others I know can't bring themselves to dropskills to free up points to do something else because it doesnt make sense from a story perspective. Yes its true that people in RL often change 'focus' and lose old unused skills... but its also true that the older you get the more experienced and generally 'wise' you become. We have one of those paradigms in the game, why can't we have both?


3. Juggling skills is an inherently frustrating task. It's extremely frustrating to get yourself trained by another player only to find that you have to make a sudden decision before the shuttle takes off whether to drop some well-loved other skill topurchase your shiny new one. Another good friend of mine is our town's mayor. She is completely fed up with juggling dancer, chef and politician (with a dab of medic). She isn't interested in all of these professions because she wants to play solo and not contribute to the interrelationship of professions. On the contrary she is a fantastic group player. Giving her the option to (slowly, over time) master all of those professions would keep her playing. This frustration alone is whats driving her away.


4. The current skill limit does not allow me to play the sort of character I would like. It's not possible for me to fulfill my character's goals (master squad leader, master swordsman and basic medicwill pretty much fill up my total). I have no ability to learn any ranger which would complete the image i have in my head of who my character is. I am not an ubergamer by any means and it takes way too long for casual gamers such as myself to master something only to have to drop it for something else they want to try. I started onheavy swordsmanin october and still amonly 2342. Im not trying to ruin the interrelationship of professions, I simply want to have a varied, interesting and dynamic characterwithout a lot of tedious grinding followed by aheart-wrenching dropping of skills. This need of mine could be partially solved by giving us more than one character per server, but frankly I would prefer to play the same guy over time... letting him grow.

I firmly believe that a gradual, slow increase in the skill point cap over time would allow a nice balance between those of us casual, RP types who want interesting characters and those more hard-core simulation types who want challenge. A lot of the simulationists either burn out on a game after they 'win' (master some or all professions) meaning that many of them would not even be affected by this increase. And those players who stick to their character over time should be rewarded.

Please let me know what you think.

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Thunderheart wrote:

Im sure we'll find out this month. One of the new design tasks is to have the Hermit Badge Quests fixed in Publish 8.

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