Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Friday Feature Errata: PvP Insurance Yes, 1% decay, not gone.
You guys are killing me.
As a fan of decay, my foot is now planted firmly in my mouth. The whole thing is just plain awful.
You realize how many people die every day thanks to your awful game? How many bugs plauge all things which support decay?
Clothing Repair Kits, Armor Repair Kits, DON'T WORK. They simply don't.
Combat is terribly unbalanced because you gave us a broken game from the onset, and now you tell us your crack team of developers can't code this right?
Why not remove decay totally until you can balance combat? Why not remove it totally until all combat professions have been fixed and revamped properly?
Why not give me a reason why I should keep paying SOE for this game? I am trying really hard here.
Thunderheart wrote:
Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but I made a mistake in the last paragraph of the Friday Feature.
It currently reads:
The Little Things: The little things matter as much as the big things. There were many sound upgrades, improvements to the graphic user-interface and even a few minor activities for players to find. Many POI's and places where NPC's interact with each other (or NPC theaters). One of the "biggest little" things with this publish will be the removal of "insured decay" from the death penalty. Instead of having a 1% decay for items, players will have no decay as long as they have insurance.
It is being changed to:
The Little Things: The little things matter as much as the big things. There were many sound upgrades, improvements to the graphic user-interface and even a few minor activities for players to find. Many POI's and places where NPC's interact with each other (or NPC theaters). One of the "biggest little" things with this publish will be the removal of "insurance" from the death penalty in Player versus Player combat.Players will no longer have to insure their items after each death in PVP.
The reason is because there is no way to tell the difference between a "PvP Death" and a "PvE Death".I will continue to try and get the development team to remove the 1% decay with insurance. (Any good ideas from you folks for an alternative might help).
I sincerely apologize.
Garva is always looking out for you guys and mentioned that it was still a little confusing.
He rephrased it and it sounds better like this...
Ok so this is what you mean...
There will still be a 1% decay penalty in pvp death but you will not have to re-insure after that death.
This is correct and clearer I hope.
Message Edited by Thunderheart on 02-03-2004 07:27 PM
So let me get this straight.... There is no way to determine if it was a PvP death or PvE, but there will still be a 1% decay when insured but we will not have to re-insure if it was a PvP death? So how can the game determine that you do not need to re-insure after a PvP death if there is no way for it to tell the difference between the two?
Sorry but I have to run the BS flag up on that one.
First, I'm not sure that the 1% decay works to the advantage of armorers. Pvp ground to a halt when decay got put into the game. I still run around declared all the time but I rarely find declared rebs in the areas (Lok, Tat, Naboo) that I normally run around in and being one of those icky commandos i win alot of fights. Result, my armor doesn't decay much. Most of the players i fight are naked ( no armor anyway) and their armor doesn't decay either. I'm wearing the same armor that I had when decay went in. It's getting a little low on condition, but it's not quite time to repair. The only armor I've bought since you put in decay was a ubese shirt, just to see how effective it is compared to composite, and a full set of 80% comp that's hanging out in my house waiting for decay to go. The only reason I bought that suit was because it was damned near perfect. My point is that I havn't needed to buy armor since decay came into the game.
The result is that armorsmiths havn't really gotten much of my money since you put decay in. I could go through 2 pieces a night sometimes from pvp battles that lasted hours. I was buying a piece or 2 a week before decay. We're talking about 50k comp pieces. Now I'm not buying any. Probably a good thing since almost all the smiths chased holo's and aren't around anymore. Back to the point, you need to re-evaluate decay and it's effect. I'm sure it's in your database somewhere (well not sure considering what i've heard about your db design) but have you run queries on how much armor people bought in the past compared to what they're buying now?
and this....
did Holo give you this stuff to post? This sounds like some of his quasi-philosophical drivel about game design.
Thunderheart wrote:
Its a faction subtraction. You suffer the same faction loss regardless of what kills you (MOBs have faction as well.)
Dont think of the system process death, the challenge is in measuring what kills you - - a laser blast is a laser blast and a slash from a blade is a slash from a blade.
I think the Devs REALLY REALLY need to re-think think this one out.
As it is now...PVP is DEAD...
Continuing with this trend...all you guys are doing is throwing more dirt on the grave..
a "decent" suit of armor costs about 240k..
The "good and great" ones can be form 450k - 1 mill
My Clothes and Jewelry have been at 0 % condition for weeks..
I still wear them , (ie this is NOT helping Tailors)
You tell me why I need to bo pay the Armorsmith 250k -1 mil EVERY WEEK
Then Ill tell you its Ok too keep this HORRIBLE Idea of Decay in this game...
Seriously guys..this is almost laughable...Just remove the freaking thing....
_________________________________________________________________
So I got into a car accident and messed up my car, luckily it was insured but they still said they are taking my passenger seat away because of decay.
Do you see the point here? Ppl insure things so we dont have to worry about losing them!!! That is the foundation of insurance! ARGH.
Thunderheart wrote:
*hangs head*
Nope. It really was wishful thinking...
They removed the need to insure after each death. The 1% decay is tougher to do technically, though I wont give up.
The biggest obstacle to that is if nothing decays then Tailors and Weaponsmiths don't get repeat business...and we need to love them too.
Just to clear this up TH, that's BS. The only thing in this game that doesn't wear with use is Tailor items. This whole decay on death farce is solely about clothing wearing out, and it doesn't even work because the clothes remain when they hit 0. I go through pistols like there's no tomorrow just through normal use, so obviously there is no need for extra decay to "help" weaponsmiths.
This correction does absolutely nothing to improve the PvP situation because the measly 1500 credits to insure isn't the problem, it's the 1% decay on a 1 million credit piece of armor that's the problem.
You might as well not even have made the change.
I would gladly pay 2000-3000 credits to insure myself after every death. Please remove the 1% penalty.
Just using my armor causes it to degrade it as it absorbs damage. It is currently not worth the risk to have an Armorsmith try to repair it due to the high failure rate of repairs. I still have to purchase new armor from time to time.
It really gets expensive to replace armor after every 100 deaths using the current system. A good PvP battle results in at least 5 deaths for me. I now don't bother to use my armor with PvP, so how am I helping my local Armosmith? I'm not buying his armor anymore.
Thunderheart wrote:
Gravez wrote:
So how do you lose Rebel or Imp faction inPVP when you die if the game can't tell the difference between PVE and PVP death?
Its a faction subtraction. You suffer the same faction loss regardless of what kills you (MOBs have faction as well.)
Dont think of the system process death, the challenge is in measuring what kills you - - a laser blast is a laser blast and a slash from a blade is a slash from a blade.
News flash for TH.
Imperial player kills Rebel player, Rebel player loses Rebel faction
Imperial NPC kills Rebel player, Rebel player doesn't lose Rebel faction
Any MOB kills Rebel player, Rebel player doesn't lose ANY faction.
The game MUST be able to tell the difference between PvP and PvE death.
Thunderhart, I know your trying to put a good spin on the situation but the truth is that you guys dropped the ball. If you cant get rid of the decay for pvp then you shouldnt have said it was gonna happen.
I really think you need to figure out a way to make this work because as we all know, the GCW is suffering from this. This game would be so cool if only PvP were actually fun and worth doing, DAoC anyone?, but its almost "broken" in the current state.
I encourage you to stress this point out to the devs. Item decay in PvP NEEDS to be removed.
Thanks
Why lie?
If you all can do "No need for insuring againif you die in PvP" (and you can) you guys can surely track the death happened in PvP... and if you can track the death was in PvP, you all can do DECAY = 0 for PvP.
Don't lie to folks and say that there is no way to track PvP death or if its a PvE death.... programmers can track that.