Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IC4: Path of the Jedi
I would like to see quest given by Holocrons ....
Holocrons are the knowledge of the jedi and the sith ... you seek knowledge , there is where you can find it !
what about a holocron givs you a wp to a new dungeon .... only you canenter it and you have to complete the Quest it gives ....this could be quest about ....
finding force artifacts , helping ligh .. or dark side npc doing something ( so player can deside witch way they would like to go ... ) just like the dantooine jedi quests 
what about an FS exp bar ... you do some quest an gain exp on it ... ? ( not visiable by players )
also every thing you've done before could be granting some exp ... mastering profesions , doing static quest and so on ....
also there should be a way to loose exp ... you fail a quest you loose a litle bit of exp .. but you should be able to do the quest again .)
geting some of the old random spawn quest back would be grate ...
I think it would be a problem to have Jedi NPC or Jedi Quest Giving NPC just because the Bounty Hunters could easily camp the NPC out. One might say that these Static NPC could be kept a secret within the Jedi community, but I beg to differ. There are always moles within every situation of SWG, major PVP rebel raid emails meant for rebels only will get intercepted by an imp and BAM! You have yourself a bonified ambush on the rebels. This all happens because of a mole. Geonecian Labs being raided days before the release, codes flying by email left and right. Through various "pay for your strat" web forums... Who is to say this wont happen for any jedi or jedi NPC.
Below are my proposed ideas for quests once the Force Sensitive Character Slot has been Opened.
Guides: It would be an awesome idea to have a "neutral" jedi guide, a dark guide, and a light guide. Only Jedi would be able to see them. Only jedi would be able to hear them. The blue glowie guides could then inform the jedi of their next quests at hand, whichNPC to go to (which would have random names, random professions, random races, random sexes, and random spawn points), and also, send a recap email of the dialouge that just took place (just incase our hypothetical jedi decided to go afk when the blue glowie guide decided to pop up and say "heres the mission"). After the guide has dissapeared, the Jedi would be able to use a special command to call out to the guide, so that the Jedi would be able to accept or decline the mission/quest.
Guide Spawning Triggers: One thing all my jedi friends love (and hate) doing is Jedi xp. I believe this to be an important and humbling experience in the path up the profession of Jedi. While I believe this should be changed with the new guides idea, I also believe it should still play an important role in leveling your Jedi Character. A blue glowie guide might spawn once a certain amount of jedi experience has been gained, offering certain missions/quests to enhance the available attributes. This could be used as a trainer device for when the jedi decide they want to learn a skill. Upon completion of the mission, the skill is given to the jedi.
Example: Jedi Bob has just gained enough experience to get Force Power 2, but decides it is best to wait until he may have enough for Force Healing 4. Poof! Little blue glowie guide appears to Jedi Bob and approaches him with a quest which involves expanding his force powers in some way. After the guide's dialouge has ended, the glowie will dissapear, fade, whatever.... And Jedi Bob is left with decision; do i do the Force Power Mission, or do I wait and continue grinding Jedi experience for Force Healing 4. After some thought, Jedi Bob decides it is still best to wait, so he calls out for the blue glowie guide, and the guide prompts him to accept or decline this mission. Then a box comes up (I would prefer one similar to the surrender skill box in which you have to type yes... just incase Jedi Bob's owner has butter fingers or horrible hand-eye coordination) and either type accept or decline. After the decision has been made, the blue glowie guide fades out, and Jedi Bob may continue his xp grinding.
The Neutral Guide: The neutral blue glowie should give certain mission options in which the Jedi may choose the light side or the dark side. The guide would offer two different missions at once: an obvious Dark Sided mission, and an obvios Light Sided mission.Upon completion of the mission, a certain amount of Dark or Light Jedi points are awarded. As the Jedi increases his or her skills, they will recieve more obvious and more difficult missions to award a higher amount of Dark or Light Jedi experience points. After a certain amount of Dark or Light Jedi points have been accumulated, the neutral blue glowie guide will appear, and prompt the Jedi that he or she now has enough experience todedicate their path to the Dark or Light side of the Force. If the Jedi decides on a side, the neutral will fade out, and a new Dark or Light Sided Guide will appear. The jedi should have the option to always call upon the neutral guide, who will offer missions which award the Jedi with Dark Jedi experience points (or vice-versa), though as the Jedi gains more experience with one side, he loses the other side, equally. I do not believe the exerience points should reach below zero, I think after a certain number of Light or Dark Jedi xp has been earned, it will simply deminish the other points.
Experience Points and Leveling: The Jedi would, for the most part, have the same leveling the way it is done now. I believe the Jedi should have the initial choice of the three Sabre styles, though I do believe if they are to become a Jedi Master, they should have ample knowledge of all three Sabre styles, thus requiring them to master all three styles. I dont know how this would appear on the Skill Trees, but you silly DEVs can come up with something creative.
Jedi Sabre Combat:
One-handed Sabres give you One-handed Sabre xp, and Jedi xp. Work your way up the generations. (New) In order to gain access to the new level, one must complete a mission given by the blue glowie guide. Work your way up the generations
Two-handed Sabres give you Two-handed Sabre xp, and Jedi xp. Same thing as above.
Polearm Sabres give you Polearm Sabre xp, and Jedi xp. Same thing as above.
As suggested above, in order to gain a skill level, the Jedi must undergo skill specific tasks/trials/quests/missions:
Force healing: could require the Jedi to preform some "healing related" task, such as helping a medic deliver supplies to various planets, hidden NPC spawned houses. Maybe the jedi must heal him or herself a certain amount of times... Maybe if the skill will allow, the certain amount of healing others. Since the Jedi would be using his skills infront of other players, it would give him or her a TEF, thus making it somewhat of a challenge; not only to stay alive, but to heal the players. Also, maybe being sent on a mission to protect some NPCfrom others, and being required to keep the NPC alive. I think those would prove to be most challenging, and at the same time, serve proof to the Jedi that he or she has earned that level. The Light Side should have more proficient healing abilities, especially when healing others; though not so much to the point of where it makes it unfair for any Dark Jedi.
Force Power: could require the Jedi to spend a certain amount of time in meditation. The higher the level, the more time of meditation required. One thing you see every Jedi do in all of the Star Wars sagas is meditation. I believe this is keen in the building of force power. I believe that Force power should be its own type of experience. This would keep certain Jedi AFK grinders from meditating their way to master. It would be nice to have the Jedi have an animation where they could either stand, with their hands held together behind their back (as Anny Skywalker did in Episode 2 as he meditated), or have an animation where the Jedi would sit indian style. This would be a perk for the Jedi community because they could show off the fact that they are a Jedi without getting the TEF above their heads. I believe that Force Power requiring meditation would either a) humble the Jedi into a world of patience, or b) give the Jedi a break from all that hard fighting they've been doing out in the wild. As the force power levels increased, the Jedi could recieve new Jedi meditation techniques, or perhaps the ability to have an increase in xp per minute or tick. Missions might include the guide directing the Jedi to a certian randomly spawned NPC Jedi who will be able to teach the him or her a new form of Jedi meditation. The missions wouldnt be that hard, but after all those many hours spent meditating, it would be only fair to give an easy mission of "chase down the NPC in the furthest reaches of the planet" type quest. Also, to make it not-so-glamorous to AFK grind meditation, the Jedi could have a multiplier affect if he or she meditates within a certain time period of being in combat. This would add incentive to get out there and fight, while also adding incentive to meditate. Upon quest completion, the new skill would be granted. Special Light Side and Dark Side meditation techniques could be added as insentive toward one side or the other. These skills and modifiers should be relatively equal (at least equal by the mastering of Jedi). This would include regeneration rates and Force Pool Points.
Force Manipulation: could require that the Jedi, after earning the adiquite amount of xp, do some kind of oddball quest that will end up requiring them to use their force manipulation and combat skills. This will teach the Jedi to properly use his or her combat skills WITH force manipulation. Im rather out of ideas as to how to level this skill type. Light and Dark Side specific force manipulation skills should be awarded. Dark Jedi should be more proficent in this feild of skills, but not so much to the point of where it is unfair for the Light Side.
Killing as a means for Experience: I believe that killing should be able to be a neutral means of experience. No light or dark sided points should be awarded to the Jedi.
The Light Side: I see healing and protection when I think of the Light Side. I dont see how the Light side of the force involves killing every mob creature you come across just to get some xp, though I understand that killing is necissary.I believe the Light Side should involve the defense of others as a means for experience. I am not at all sure how xp would be earned with not killing, but I dont think that it is right for a weilder of the Light Side to be off killing left and right. Maybe adding certain xp multipliers for healing others, or something that shows that they are working for the greater good. When they do the Light Side specific multipliers for xp, they would then earn a small amount of Light Side experience. Healing abilities should be granted earlier in the Light Side of the force with slightly better modifiers for group healing. In order to progress to the next Master or Novice Jedi Profession within theLight Side,one must first have enough Light Jedi Points accumulated. The Light Jedi will be able to call upon his blue glowie Light Jedi guide who can provide the Jedi with quests or missions to increase his or her Light Jedi experience points.
The Dark Side: I see much death and destruction with a splash of curruption when I think of a Dark Jedi. The Dark Jedi should get certain damage multipliers to their Force Manipulation powers, as they should also be granted more powerful abilities earlier on in the skill advancement, seeing as how the Dark Jedi approach knowledge of the force in a slightly more wreckless way than that of the Light Side. In oder to progress to the next Master or Novice Jedi Profession within the Dark Side, one must first have enough Dark Jedi Points. The Dark Jedi will be able to call upon his blue glowie Dark Jedi guide who can provide the Jedi with quests or missions to increase his or her Dight Jedi experience points.
This concludes my proposed Ideas for Jedi Specific quests. I hope you silly DEVs enjoy these ideas along with the rest of the SWG community
For example, Dantoonie tribes are attacking a settlement...let's say it's the Junta. You are to stop the attacks, but they don't know where they are coming from. You need to hunt down the source of the attacks and put an end to them. Possible solutions are:
1. If you have high Junta faction, you can talk to the leader and convince him to stop the attacks. You may need to take quests from him to prove your loyalty. You should not just have a wp to the base of the Junta. YOu need to figure out were it is.
2. Junta are a primative people and scared of *blank* god idol. (You don't know this initially.) You must find and construct a "god" idol to scare the attackers off without loss of life.
3. You can hunt the tribe down. You must determine the location of the Junta tribe base. This can involve scouting, talking to NPCs, bribes to NPCs and other tribes, etc. Once you've found the base, you can exterminate the tribe. Make this no easy task.
Other types of quests...
A. goods recovery...I've lost my heirloom...find it. possible solutions include, you can make a new one (must find the schematic and parts) and convince him that it's the original or actually find the old one.
B. escort duty. You actually escort people across the planet and prevent harm to them. The choices you take on places to go to avoid detection/trouble matter and it's not always possible to fight your way out of it easily. Rangers may have an easier time with this one with camos, artisans/dancers would need to be "crafty". (talking to the person and zooming off 10x faster than they are capable of moving is not escorting)
C. Jedi are often looked to for despute settlement. Investigate some crime and determine what happened.
D. our city is without power/water/etc. find a "source" of new "resources" or fix the current problem. the source of new "resource" might not be in the ground.
E. Put an end to a spice smuggling ring.
F. And of course, find the parts and craft a lightsaber. Finding the parts should be deeper than camping spawn points for days.
For all of these quests, I'd like to see a minimal use of "handed out" waypoints. You need to figure out where to go and it's totally random for each quest-taker. You must interact with the NPCs in that area or possibly other areas. These NPCs give hints on places to go to figure it out and may not always respond to you initially. "I know what you're looking for, but first..."
As for opening the FS slot I have been silent for a while now on my holocron and I've mastered 4 professions since then (14 total) so I would be severly disappointed if I lost all of that. I would quit the game cold turkey - which is something I would hate to do. I don't care about hurting this company or that company or any of that nonsense. I just would feel like I have wasted a ton of time and I would quit the game.
I say if you are already silent you should have the option of doing the jedi FS quests or of taking another holocron and it telling you your last profession that you have to master so people from both sides would be happy (say if it is something completely boring to master)
Also when you start off I don't think you should be a jedi - I think you should be a force sensitive character - then you could go up a tree to the jedi or sith apprentice - and from them higher titles like Knight then Master. So it would be a very long time to become a master. At least 6 months imo.
As for the lightsaber issue - I don't think having to buy materials for the saber for 1 million credits or more is fair at all - all this does is basically endorse those auctions on ebay which is prohibited in the TOS. People will keep doing this as the EQ team has found out. If you ignore this problem it will only get bigger. Money in this game is very overrated and shouldn't be the #1 most important thing, it should be your skills (level). I know that the devs are trying to shy away from the level 55 bard thingy, but it is a goal based system that is readily visable - when you master all of your professions or unlock your jedi and master him/her up then what???
All I know is that this is an alternate Star Wars world - it doesn't mirror the books or the comics or the canonical movies and I really don't think that it should or that it is possible to create a fun game within the confinement of the canon laws.
- Start the quest by having a generic trainer (perhaps the players starting job trainer) give the player a name or location of the NPC to start the quest to unlock the slot (giving the player a waypoint to said quest npc). This could be randomly generated and thus cut out the ability for BHs to 'spawn camp'.
2.) The FCSS Quest
- Each quest should include the usage of some skills from base Professions (excluding Politician) or the Elite professions not exceeding 4 profession specific 'trials'. This should do away with any ‘silent’ quest or guessing made by the player as to what they do. See Time Sinks below.
4.) NPCs Players might interact with.
Spirits of Light or Dark Jedi
Descendants of some known Jedi (this doesn’t have to be ‘movie’ jedi)
Fallen Force sensitive or npc’s that refuse to walk the path of a jedi that have the talent.
Protector (or Overlord) of <insert city name, planet name, PoI, etc> after completing all Jedi quests in a particular region or planet
- Shouldn’t even exist. You are playing a Jedi in an era where they are virtually extinct. Aside from a Jedi needing some device or item that another profession can craft the dependency on other professions shouldn’t exist. Sure Luke backing from his friends in the Original Trilogy. But just about everything he did that was Jedi related was done on his own or from instruction of another higher-ranking Jedi.
- Give the ability to tier the quests based on the skills learned, i.e. use force knockdown and force run in quests. Make the quests very difficult without those skills or even impossible.
- Since the Lightsabers go up in ‘generation’ have continuing quests to ‘upgrade’ the 1st gen saber to the 2nd etc, instead of continuing to make a new saber from scratch.
Have a padawan trial pitting the Jedi against a danger room like course, which expects them to use all of their skills to their best ability. This could be anything from fighting other ‘fallen initiate’ npcs, surveying for a lost crystal, running across a rotting tree suspended over a high cavern while sand people are shooting blaster at the character.
Have the ending of the padawan trial force the player to pick his path. Light or Dark based on his performance during the trial.
- Send the Jedi to a planet, poi, etc. of particularly strong ‘force power’ to ‘attune’ themselves to their new path. At this point a more powerful spirit (Freedon Nadd, Qui-Gon, etc.) would then be able to give the player the new clues on the quest to become a master in the force. (i.e. more quests).
- There would also be another Trial to become Jedi Knight, this possibly being the Jedi infiltrating a Sith/Jedi compound and either destroying an item/reclaiming an item, trying to save a fallen jedi from his wrong choice or destroying a light jedi, etc. This trial should also test all of the jedi’s new skills
- The majority of these quests should involve other lower ranked Jedi PCs or NPCs. The jedi at this point is trying to get Master and in doing so needs those Aps
Some of these quests could involve training an NPC initiate up thru his ranks to get to Padawan.
More quests to test the Guardians new skills
- Once the AP points are acquired the player should have to go through one final ‘dungeon’ this being some great place of signifigance to the Jedi. Whether this is the Sith Burial ground on Korriban or the Frozen Planet of Rhen Var where Ulic isolated himself and found redemption.
*****
Please, whatever you do, no EQ-esque type quests. No "epic quests" or "missions" that require an uber guild of 100 people to help you with. Please no rare mobs/items people fight over and camp 24 hours a day. Please don't make any mobs you have to kill that require 100 people to take down, in a zone that's hard to get to and you have to get on a "list" because 20 guilds before you have already reserved it. Sorry, nightmares of EQ returning...
WIth EQ it got to the point I would log in and I couldn't do anything because every encounter, every zone, every mob, every quest at the high end was geared towards the hardcore powergamer/uber guilder. At the end game I couldn't do *anything* by myself - I would sit around in the Nexus for a few minutes, talk to a friend or two, then log off out of boredom. After awhile I realized it was just an expensive chat room so I cancelled my account.
If you want the quests to be long and "challenging", great, but give the solo, casual gamer just as much of a chance as the hardcore powergamer and his guild of 100 who do nothing but play video games all day.
Don't have time to read all the posts, but here's my idea.
Crystals should either be foraged, or crafted.
If crafted, give Jedi experimentation points to improve the crystal's stats (probably not for the saber since those stats will be affected by the crystal). This not only solves the overall problem of saber decay, but allows for a Jedi Master to create bettersabers than a Jedi Initiate. Of course,make the crafted crystals untradeable, and the schematic somewhat painful to construct (large ammount of resources / use rare resources).
Keep pearls the same, I have no problem with an optional rare loot as long as Iam able to craft myweapons with non-untra-rare loot/items.
No matter what new system you put in, it must work side-by-side with the old system (the pre-Publish 6 system, to be specific). The devs set up a system where people had to do things they absolutely hate in order to get to the high level content of this game, so people did them. You told us flat out that the only way to get the coveted FS slot was to Master professions (Holocron), that Holocrons would never be going away (Q-3PO), and that you were developing new Jedi-only content (JustG?). You can't pull the rug out from the people who have been diligently now. Doing so would send a powerful signal: Look at those fools that believed the devs.
Grandfather all current characters in by leaving the current system in place, stopping the dropping of Holocrons, and not generating random professions for newly created characters. Your paying customers deserve the spoils from their work. No, nobody made any of them grind, but you did throw that carrot right in front of their faces. It is now up to you as to whether you are going to snatch it back. If you do, why should they believe you next time?
Player Classification:
1) Those who have not done a single holocron.
2) Those who have done 1-4 holocrons.
3) Those who have done 5-32 holocrons.
Parsing these users into the new system:
1) Starts at 0%, has to do all jedi quests.
2) Starts at X% (obviously your giving credit for holo work, how much is up to you).
3a) If Player has mastered less than X badges - quest given to reveal silent profession.
3b) If Player has mastered X badges - Special holocron placed in inventory that tells silent prof.
3c) If Player has mastered greater than X badges - Slot is unlocked
Here me out:
At some point in the development of this game, you all (developers) came up with an average number of professions that a player would have to do to unlock, and an average amount of time it would take. Maybe that number was 10 professions, maybe it was 20 professions, and maybe it was 6 months. Either way, you had in your mind an optimal amount of time you wanted to see people put in to unlock their FSS slot.
I don't have a problem with changing the way the system works, but I think you need to remain true to your original timeline you had when you considered Jedi.
The harsh truth is that there is a difference between someone who has mastered 4 professions, and someone who has mastered 30 professions.
My point is that those people who have exceeded the 4 holo point need to be evaluated, if they have exceeded a certain number of badges they should either be given an item to reveal the silent, or unlocked if they have exceeded your original design parameters.
2. We jedi are asking for more jedi-like involvment and quests.