Development Cycle Archive

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TheLateAnakinSolo wrote:

Conversion Rate:

Padawan Boxes (45% of old * 250)

112 Skill Points.

Apprentice Boxes (36% of old * 250)

90 Skill Points.

Guardian Boxes (19% of old * 250)

48 Skill Points.

etc

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PS. If the devs do decide to give more credit for initiate that would be great too since I'm not 4444 guardian.

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Cliver wrote:

Well i really didnt expect to get punished like this... TH have you ever played jedi? Dont you know that much more effort is needed to master padawan than apprantice or guardian? 4 3 3 4 converts to 4 0 0 2? are you joking...

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Few comments...

New system is completely different, and there are some 'major' advantages to jedi in new system- you spend all your skill points on OTHER profession skills during initiate training. So the jedi defences are far far higher.

Downside? No armor. You need those defences to have a chance (what ever did happen with robes defences anyways?)

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JEST3R wrote:

The Original JEDI XP initiate 4 tier progression went, 50k, 200k, 400k, 800k in the initiate tree. Players could relatively easily make 40k JEDI xp and hour. This XP was made using the DEFAULT attack of the lightsabre.

I personally feel the XP arguments are comparing apples and oranges, with the old system vs the new. One of the 'flaws' in the old system was how rapidly a jedi could get 4/0/0/0 lightsaber and start swinging pretty much their best weapon for the rest of the jedi career. That seemed flat out wrong to the canon. I actually like all the changes to the new Jedi Lightsaber tree, since a 'true' lightsaber master takes a very serious commitment. While I think the base attacks are fairly weak, this seems to be controlling the power in PvE and PvP, and helping keep some balance to the system. The Initiate '4' boxes are where the main XP and time investment took place, with the Padawan and Apprentice being big, hard, jumps- but once you get Flurry, XP is rolling in. It appears a similar case with the new system. Levelling up to your first saber area attacks appears extremely difficult and time consuming, then it gets easier. And as every new box you pick up you get more XP cap, more force, more regen - so your XP/hour will increase.

The main progress boxes of course where the Master level boxes set at 1.6 million or the new starting tier boxes at 3.2 million.

Well, the 'master' boxes were in the Guardian tree after completing a few 3.2 mil boxes. That's where the real power to the old jedi started. There is a huge power shift in going Padawan -> Apprentice, Apprentice -> Knight and Knight -> Guardian. At Initiate, you still had BH concerns. At Knight you had a pretty good chance to beat a BH, at Guardian you hunted BH.

The New Trees 4 tier advancement is more in line with the higher trees of the old system going from 200k-1.6 mil.

That was the pace of Advancement, however the stronger you became under the old system the rate at which your earned XP also markedly increased. TheLateAnakinSolo has it about right as far as progression goes depending on your level of advancement.

So while the least XP the initial grind through the JEDI Initiate tree through the apprentice box was one of the most difficult times. Also it must be noted JEDI could wear armor to mitigate damage taken severly.

Again, I'm trying to play devils advocate- in the new system, you will increase your XP/hour of work exponentially just like the old system. Guardians feel your pain too- we lost about half our skills, which completely sucks, but we gained defences. Initiates gained the ability to use skill points in other classes- that's a HUGE advantage. Yes, does not make up for composite- but I'm hoping Jedi robes are at least light AP, 50% resists for initiates. Then perhaps each jedi 'mastery' or certain amount of skill point use improves the robes so they are at least 75% by full Padawan.

My 4/2/3/3 JEDI was converted to a 4/0/0/0 Sabre character. Now while I apparently "gained" XP only because of the completely new scaled system the developers put in, I lost about 75% of my skill boxes in terms of quantity and not to mention function.

Furthermore post conversion, your default attack is no longer sufficient to fight mobs for XP, instead you must rely on special attacks, which I can agree with. But this markedly changes the metrics for the pace of advancement. Even with "Quality" damage pearls my sabre still uses 7 force or so per swing of a special attack.

My Default attack damage used to be 2500-3000, now default attacks are 350 or so with special attacks doing approximately 1500. This change alone effectively HALVES my XP gain rate I once previously had. However this is not the end of the changes, Jedi can no longer wear armor, and it is the converted initiates who suffer as a result because they cannot get the Force Armor2 line from the defender tree AS WELL AS the basic sabre attacks from the light sabre tree.

Personally I feel the skill points at 8 for the lower levels is flat out wrong. A 4/2/3/3 jedi should be able to pick an entry level skill from a few trees. Possibly the entry box at 1 skill point, then the starting skill at 2, vamping up in power to more skill pts and xp in the higher levels. I know this is a balance concern for the devs, but if they scale the costs correctly , jedi will be able to dabble in lower level powers, but the higher level powers will be far superior. Force Armor 2, btw, uses force on every hit. A lower level jedi will not benefit greatly as they will run out of force that much faster. Honestly, I'm really surprised the Devs did not start with a 'Initiate tree' prior to specializing in skills, since it would handle a number of the conversion and balance issues. (I know I, and others, asked a few times).

NOW for my Sabres.......

No matter WHAT quality components were used to build my sabre.... I got back out in "pearls" the exact same mid level quality items. So my 12 million credits in pearls used to make my Best sabre, gave me 4 "quality" pearls....

What was put in (between 120-196 max damage, -1.0 to -1.6 speed, -5 to -9 force in pearls) gave me back out +18 -+31 damage, -.2 to -.43 speed and -3 to -7 force cost.

Bleah, thats far far worse then I expected

My JUNK sabre made with the worst crystals possible..... all crystals were -damage, + spd, and + force cost.... gave me 4 pearls ranging from +21 to +44 damage, -.2 to -.5 spd and -3 to -7 force cost.

Plus I would dismantle a sabre and NOT get a color crystal!!! so hey you had a sabre you take it apart and now... unless you have an additional looted component.. you cannot make a NEW sabre! **edit**....

Folks really get attached to the color of their saber. At the minimum a color crystal of the current saber color should be provided. Saber in should equal saber out.

Our Sabres need to at a minimum break down to the damage pearls as well as a color crystal! (preferably the same color as our old blade, which is obviously information stored on our old sabres). It would be nice if the quality of our sabres/pearls actually determined the quality level of our new damage pearls.

This sure sounds fair. I thought thats what was promised to us?

Existing Bugs seen on TC3:

JEDI Cure poison and disease are taking 3-4 tries to actually remove relatively weak CM poisons and diseases, furthermore the default target is NOT yourself so you must target yourself. This akward and broken game mechanic means ALL Jedi are now CM chew toys, as was seen on TC-Corbantis last night.

The CM issue was something I tried to PM Just-G to take a look at. Robes really need some sort of poison mitigation, CM's are running rampant in PvP and at 20-200k Jedi XP on a death, it's certainly a big (huge?) problem. The cure of poison and disease is just like Live Apprentices right now, you can cure yourself, or your friends. It's as designed you need to provide a target. Or you can make a macro with your name as target, put on the control bar, to cure self. However, with Havla and Spider Venom poison stacking, a Jedi cannot cure themselves fast enough and a single CM can take down even a Jedi Master right now. Bit of a problem here... IMO...

I'm glad you guys get to test this all on 'live' before the final is produced. I'd love to see the QA and Dev team try and fight a 'live' PvP squad with their 'Jedi Council' and see how well they fare *grin*.

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JEST3R wrote:

The conversion process is bad rubbish....

As simple as that.... The current design severely negatively impacts players still in the Initiate tree the hardest during conversion. Allow me to recap a few things:

The Original JEDI XP initiate 4 tier progression went, 50k, 200k, 400k, 800k in the initiate tree. Players could relatively easily make 40k JEDI xp and hour. This XP was made using the DEFAULT attack of the lightsabre.

The main progress boxes of course where the Master level boxes set at 1.6 million or the new starting tier boxes at 3.2 million.

The New Trees 4 tier advancement is more in line with the higher trees of the old system going from 200k-1.6 mil.

That was the pace of Advancement, however the stronger you became under the old system the rate at which your earned XP also markedly increased. TheLateAnakinSolo has it about right as far as progression goes depending on your level of advancement.

So while the least XP the initial grind through the JEDI Initiate tree through the apprentice box was one of the most difficult times. Also it must be noted JEDI could wear armor to mitigate damage taken severly.

My 4/2/3/3 JEDI was converted to a 4/0/0/0 Sabre character. Now while I apparently "gained" XP only because of the completely new scaled system the developers put in, I lost about 75% of my skill boxes in terms of quantity and not to mention function.

Furthermore post conversion, your default attack is no longer sufficient to fight mobs for XP, instead you must rely on special attacks, which I can agree with. But this markedly changes the metrics for the pace of advancement. Even with "Quality" damage pearls my sabre still uses 7 force or so per swing of a special attack.

My Default attack damage used to be 2500-3000, now default attacks are 350 or so with special attacks doing approximately 1500. This change alone effectively HALVES my XP gain rate I once previously had. However this is not the end of the changes, Jedi can no longer wear armor, and it is the converted initiates who suffer as a result because they cannot get the Force Armor2 line from the defender tree AS WELL AS the basic sabre attacks from the light sabre tree.

In effect we lost the composite armor as well as having our damage halved. Still I personally proceeded through this and carefully mixed my converted JEDI to have a powerful "template stack" of Fencer/Jedi/TKA/Medic. With maxed defenses and center of being running I was able to hang on barely vs the same critters I once slaughtered with abandon.

Now to make matters worse with damage halved it takes signifcantly longer to kill the same more as before, (not to mention my sabre went from 1.7 to a 3.2 speed, default attack vs a special attack which has longer pauses between swings) I am using force with each swing. I regenerate at 5 force points every 6 seconds.

I can basically fight through 4 critters carefully before being very low on force power, which makes me take approximately 16 minutes to fully recharge. Another HUGE slowdown in my XP progression.

So roughly on the conversion of my JEDI what occured was I lost 75% of my skill boxes....

Required XP for all boxes was increased compared to the initial Initiate tree (which is not much of an issue by and of itself).

My XP gain rate dropped from .... 40k JEDI XP an HOUR... to about 10k JEDI xp an hour...... thats after its all said and done (loss of force powers, forced to use specials and wait on force regen, no more armor, damage effectively halved, speed of attacks effectively halved.)

So the XP required to progress was increased in its totality and the gain rate is not 1/4th what it once was.

Now to make matters WORSE... as a lowly 4000 sabre player, a single death is costing me 100,000 Jedi xp... Thats right your putting me in the hole about 10 hours of game play, meanwhile you have stripped me of 75% of my skills, and removed all of my armor and means of self defense.

And THAT is Just the character issues......

NOW for my Sabres.......

No matter WHAT quality components were used to build my sabre.... I got back out in "pearls" the exact same mid level quality items. So my 12 million credits in pearls used to make my Best sabre, gave me 4 "quality" pearls....

What was put in (between 120-196 max damage, -1.0 to -1.6 speed, -5 to -9 force in pearls) gave me back out +18 -+31 damage, -.2 to -.43 speed and -3 to -7 force cost.

My JUNK sabre made with the worst crystals possible..... all crystals were -damage, + spd, and + force cost.... gave me 4 pearls ranging from +21 to +44 damage, -.2 to -.5 spd and -3 to -7 force cost.

Plus I would dismantle a sabre and NOT get a color crystal!!! so hey you had a sabre you take it apart and now... unless you have an additional looted component.. you cannot make a NEW sabre! **edit**....

Next the pearls in my inventory, also "converted" and dropped to similar quality junk +20 or so max damage, -.3 spd, -5 force.....

All my crystals which I paid millions for, became useless color crystals (well atleast I could build a sabre now.)

I KNOW the max damage on pearls were dropped to abot tops +50 max damage... I am unsure of speed and I think best force is still -9. What is readily apparent is that there IS no system determining what the quality of our pearls were during sabre creation under the old system, instead your just giving everyone "quality" pearls for everything.

Our Sabres need to at a minimum break down to the damage pearls as well as a color crystal! (preferably the same color as our old blade, which is obviously information stored on our old sabres). It would be nice if the quality of our sabres/pearls actually determined the quality level of our new damage pearls.

All of our crystals should convert into Color crystals that have DAMAGE crystals as well. Color crystals with damage values EXIST on TC2, instead of forcing one or the other down our throats, please simply recognize this is a conversion process and basically some people want thier old crystals to be damage, others want it to be color... eventually the combo crystals will decay out of the system, but the only FAIR solution is to make all old crystals (single and twin) become Color crystals WITH damage as part of the conversion.

JEST3R

PS

Existing Bugs seen on TC3:

JEDI can enable Force armor2 then wear Composite and have both runnning...

JEDI have been seen in composite and using light sabre special attacks.

JEDI Cure poison and disease are taking 3-4 tries to actually remove relatively weak CM poisons and diseases, furthermore the default target is NOT yourself so you must target yourself. This akward and broken game mechanic means ALL Jedi are now CM chew toys, as was seen on TC-Corbantis last night.

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You should let Arjun know about this if you havent already. Unfortunately ive been unable to test this type of conversion (my chracter became jedi knight type)...its been a little borked in terms of testing because of that cuz we have tons of feedback on jedi knight levels, but relatively few - until now - live jedis reporting what their experience was with the new conversion.

I hope this gets fixed. As it looks, however, it probably wont be =(

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JEST3R wrote:

The conversion process is bad rubbish....

As simple as that.... The current design severely negatively impacts players still in the Initiate tree the hardest during conversion. Allow me to recap a few things:

The Original JEDI XP initiate 4 tier progression went, 50k, 200k, 400k, 800k in the initiate tree. Players could relatively easily make 40k JEDI xp and hour. This XP was made using the DEFAULT attack of the lightsabre.

The main progress boxes of course where the Master level boxes set at 1.6 million or the new starting tier boxes at 3.2 million.

The New Trees 4 tier advancement is more in line with the higher trees of the old system going from 200k-1.6 mil.

That was the pace of Advancement, however the stronger you became under the old system the rate at which your earned XP also markedly increased. TheLateAnakinSolo has it about right as far as progression goes depending on your level of advancement.

So while the least XP the initial grind through the JEDI Initiate tree through the apprentice box was one of the most difficult times. Also it must be noted JEDI could wear armor to mitigate damage taken severly.

My 4/2/3/3 JEDI was converted to a 4/0/0/0 Sabre character. Now while I apparently "gained" XP only because of the completely new scaled system the developers put in, I lost about 75% of my skill boxes in terms of quantity and not to mention function.

Furthermore post conversion, your default attack is no longer sufficient to fight mobs for XP, instead you must rely on special attacks, which I can agree with. But this markedly changes the metrics for the pace of advancement. Even with "Quality" damage pearls my sabre still uses 7 force or so per swing of a special attack.

My Default attack damage used to be 2500-3000, now default attacks are 350 or so with special attacks doing approximately 1500. This change alone effectively HALVES my XP gain rate I once previously had. However this is not the end of the changes, Jedi can no longer wear armor, and it is the converted initiates who suffer as a result because they cannot get the Force Armor2 line from the defender tree AS WELL AS the basic sabre attacks from the light sabre tree.

In effect we lost the composite armor as well as having our damage halved. Still I personally proceeded through this and carefully mixed my converted JEDI to have a powerful "template stack" of Fencer/Jedi/TKA/Medic. With maxed defenses and center of being running I was able to hang on barely vs the same critters I once slaughtered with abandon.

Now to make matters worse with damage halved it takes signifcantly longer to kill the same more as before, (not to mention my sabre went from 1.7 to a 3.2 speed, default attack vs a special attack which has longer pauses between swings) I am using force with each swing. I regenerate at 5 force points every 6 seconds.

I can basically fight through 4 critters carefully before being very low on force power, which makes me take approximately 16 minutes to fully recharge. Another HUGE slowdown in my XP progression.

So roughly on the conversion of my JEDI what occured was I lost 75% of my skill boxes....

Required XP for all boxes was increased compared to the initial Initiate tree (which is not much of an issue by and of itself).

My XP gain rate dropped from .... 40k JEDI XP an HOUR... to about 10k JEDI xp an hour...... thats after its all said and done (loss of force powers, forced to use specials and wait on force regen, no more armor, damage effectively halved, speed of attacks effectively halved.)

So the XP required to progress was increased in its totality and the gain rate is not 1/4th what it once was.

Now to make matters WORSE... as a lowly 4000 sabre player, a single death is costing me 100,000 Jedi xp... Thats right your putting me in the hole about 10 hours of game play, meanwhile you have stripped me of 75% of my skills, and removed all of my armor and means of self defense.

And THAT is Just the character issues......

NOW for my Sabres.......

No matter WHAT quality components were used to build my sabre.... I got back out in "pearls" the exact same mid level quality items. So my 12 million credits in pearls used to make my Best sabre, gave me 4 "quality" pearls....

What was put in (between 120-196 max damage, -1.0 to -1.6 speed, -5 to -9 force in pearls) gave me back out +18 -+31 damage, -.2 to -.43 speed and -3 to -7 force cost.

My JUNK sabre made with the worst crystals possible..... all crystals were -damage, + spd, and + force cost.... gave me 4 pearls ranging from +21 to +44 damage, -.2 to -.5 spd and -3 to -7 force cost.

Plus I would dismantle a sabre and NOT get a color crystal!!! so hey you had a sabre you take it apart and now... unless you have an additional looted component.. you cannot make a NEW sabre! **edit**....

Next the pearls in my inventory, also "converted" and dropped to similar quality junk +20 or so max damage, -.3 spd, -5 force.....

All my crystals which I paid millions for, became useless color crystals (well atleast I could build a sabre now.)

I KNOW the max damage on pearls were dropped to abot tops +50 max damage... I am unsure of speed and I think best force is still -9. What is readily apparent is that there IS no system determining what the quality of our pearls were during sabre creation under the old system, instead your just giving everyone "quality" pearls for everything.

Our Sabres need to at a minimum break down to the damage pearls as well as a color crystal! (preferably the same color as our old blade, which is obviously information stored on our old sabres). It would be nice if the quality of our sabres/pearls actually determined the quality level of our new damage pearls.

All of our crystals should convert into Color crystals that have DAMAGE crystals as well. Color crystals with damage values EXIST on TC2, instead of forcing one or the other down our throats, please simply recognize this is a conversion process and basically some people want thier old crystals to be damage, others want it to be color... eventually the combo crystals will decay out of the system, but the only FAIR solution is to make all old crystals (single and twin) become Color crystals WITH damage as part of the conversion.

JEST3R

PS

Existing Bugs seen on TC3:

JEDI can enable Force armor2 then wear Composite and have both runnning...

JEDI have been seen in composite and using light sabre special attacks.

JEDI Cure poison and disease are taking 3-4 tries to actually remove relatively weak CM poisons and diseases, furthermore the default target is NOT yourself so you must target yourself. This akward and broken game mechanic means ALL Jedi are now CM chew toys, as was seen on TC-Corbantis last night.

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