Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Jedi Punchlist Feedback
Thunderheart wrote:
Jedi are not being designed to be the perfect solo character that can defend against all other classes. Jedi are not “scrappers” and by definition, Teras Kasi was developed specifically to fight Jedi at close range.This will be especially true when Jedi are given the ability to block ranged attacks back at their opponents. Melee attacks are something the Jedi should be wary of.
All I can say is BOOYA! As an ex-TKM, Swordsman, Fencer, and Pike... I can testify to how much this breaks PvP. Ranged mitigation is evil too imo. Suffice it to say that it does not surprise me a TKM would be the one asking Why.
OnlyMaestro wrote:
Melee mitigation is going away for PvP for everyone very soon.We are evaluating alternate ways to make the Defense Tree more desirable.
Why?
- Jedi powers
Balance ongoing. Difficult to comment except for the discussion between devs and the testers on test for the powers balance. The powers delay is not something I'm aware is modified in the council mods, I just made Knight so will play around and see if any noticeable difference- but a 3 second delay on a regular heal self iscrippling in battle at the level Jedi need to play.
- Crystal Drop Rates
I have found 2 crystals on test 2, after killing about 300-400 nightsisters. One was nice low force, the other moderate dmg , moderate force. I did not need to replace a crystal during this time, so it seemed fair. However, I must comment it seems very difficult to find color crystals - but then again I'm not attacking the lower level mobs so it might not be a valid concern from my testing.
- Jedi Council
Just starting this. The Knight trials that involved the Death Watch Bunk Overlord, Akalay and those rare , never seen, mobs, seem a bit unfair. I don't mind hunting 'rare' , but extinct is something else. I personally wish there was a 'interesting' quest such as visit a number of POIs, Shrines, meet someone and deal with some Jedi lore questions just as warmups. The Krayt, Kimo, Peko, Nightsister Elder type missions seem fun and fair- excuse to bring a group out. And Jedi Knights should be familiar with the corvette mission- it's another nice excuse to get your group out and about, do something fun. I think these quests have great potential, but need some tweaking.
- Jedi and Combat
If there is no xp loss on Ranked PvP players, they just start falling to the bottom of the heap again, then it seems a fun and fair competitive system. Jedi do not get a TEF like the 'old days' so PvE grind and levelling is not terribly difficult, barring attacks from BH. I think the robes lack of resists is a fundamental problem, however. In response to looking jedi like and 'ditching' the composite armor look, Jedi players made a HUGE sacrifice. I don't believe ignoring this is fair or nice at all to Jedi players. Every other profession gets up to 90% resists in PvE, at the minimum a Jedi robe should have light armor and 50% resists - it's weaker then the average composite, but gives starting Jedi a fighting chance. It is , as well, what was promised.
- Lightsaber Crafting
Lightsaber crafting is 'decent' given that the specials and multipliers can be tweaked by the devs. I do hope the random factor is removed on tuning existing pearls/crystals since some folks have -7 force cost ,-8, -9 pearls they have saved for a rainy day. The conversion code seems a bit broad. The old -9 pearls were very hard to come by, and made 'uber' lightsabers. But this is not a complete show stopper, just something the community will be angry about.
- Jedi Conversion Process
I still feel the current 8/6/4/2 conversion system is backwards to how it should be. I have been playing Knights of the Old Republic this weekend to get that loving Jedi feeling back. I would like to see the development team revisit this, since there really is a canon of basic powers, that are utility in nature and expected in 'all' jedi, that we just do not see in this current form revamp. Meditation at lvl 4 is a 100% regen bonus to force- very powerful, but a 10% in Enhancer? 25% lvl 1, 50% lvl 2, 75% lvl 3 along the meditate line appears very reasonable to me and gets jedi 'recovering' from battles. It's a interesting aspect since we'll see BH looking for those resting jedi.
One way to address balance is introduce a 'Padawan' box that costs a certain number of jedi points, to offset the jedi dabblers- TKA/Lightsaber master is a fearsome foe. Heck, Master Fencer/Lightsaber master may be one of the most powerful in PvP with their high dodge abilities, state defences and mitigation.There really should be some sort of step to take a jedi along the basic Initiate -> Padawan path FIRST, that allows the elite normals to 'dabble in' but only gain basic jedi powers, then once completed this Padawan training they have 150 skill points left to use in the 5 'elite' trees. Guess it's too late to redesign things though
Comments on a few answers:
B. The immense amount of negative XP that will happen in PVP will not gate you from retraining.
Experience loss has been changed back and forth a bit. There has to be some death penalty associated with PvP deaths because of the inherent power level of Jedi and also to prevent Jedi from selling their deaths to Bounty Hunters. Without a penalty, it leaves the possibility of a “Death-credit” loop.
However, we are going to remove XP loss for Force Ranked Jedi when they fight each other because it is required to gain rank.
*** If you have any class that suffers XP loss on death, they MUST be unbalanced to other classes, and fairly powerful. It's nice to reduce the XP loss on ranked vs Ranked, but there is too much room to exploit. Get your BH buddy to give the deathblow, as one easy example. PvP XP really needs serious thought. We want BH to hunt jedi and keep their numbers low, so sure a BH should hunt Jedi, have the tools they need to beat them, and reduce a Jedi progress if the Jedi gets caught. But the way group TEFs are abused, the ease of exploiting CM poisons, means that Jedi will die a LOT and gain huge XP losses against 'normals' unless you are making some serious changes to tweak up the PvP exploits to killing folks, and fixing up TEFs.
We are making some tweaks to the combat system to increase accuracy across the board. It should no longer be possible to never hit or always hit an opponent.
WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK ON HOW PvP and PvE after this change.
First tests to run will be against the TKA/Fencer and stacked folks
Melee mitigation is going away for PvP for everyone very soon.We are evaluating alternate ways to make the Defense Tree more desirable.
I'd personally like to see some dodge introduced in the master level. But what we really need are some actual powers. Anyone taking master defence has one single power in master, and not much else. Maybe bring the state defences into master defence to help complement the state resistances? I can understand having Master Def with the force armor is a bit powerful, but there really needs to be 'something'.
Poisons fire/etc.
The Jedi Development team is against balancing these combat features with the robes. We will work to balance resists to poisons/fire/etc.in a different manner and report back to you.
This is really not a Jedi specific problem, though of course with the XP loss it affects them a ton.Regardless of your comments at the Fanfest, I think most of us werein shock whenit was said CM's were not overpowered. They are. You canuse havlato throw one poison PER second, and stack up to 6 poisons on the samestatisic. IE- 6 poisons on health. The total tick is easily over 1500, not even usingrare components.
Group TEF is the other problem. One overt engages a Jedi, and 19 others can attack at their leisure. The simple combo attack is a Flame DOT by one covert (with or without poisons) followed up by a Warcry2. This results in a instant dead Jedi - does not matter if they are a council master or not.
Some general things that need to be fixed - Warcry2 should not work on players/characters under influence of a damage DOT, and poisons need to be restricted to only one affecting one stat, from one player (highest takes effect). Now that poisons are so extremely powerful, it's time for a PvP reduction in damage/and orthe area cure we've been asking for, for months. This will be one of the healthiest fixes for PvP, ever. Most of my friends refuse to PvP since it's just so 'silly' right now.
16. Move Forcerun1 to Novice Enhancer, it really only adds some terrain negotiation and its silly that Jedi have none to begin with.
No. Jedi have a 50% run increase which helps with this and Jedi can choose terrain negotiation skills along the way if they choose.
One of the most basic canon to jedi is the ability to do physical feats. Once a jedi is 'master', even a master LS/Def/powers would have the basic abilities to run with the force. But I won't say this is 'game breaking' one way or another, but it seems silly to not have it as part of the basic jedi starting skills.
Jedi are not being designed to be the perfect solo character that can defend against all other classes. Jedi are not “scrappers” and by definition, Teras Kasi was developed specifically to fight Jedi at close range.This will be especially true when Jedi are given the ability to block ranged attacks back at their opponents. Melee attacks are something the Jedi should be wary of.
I disagree strongly here, in all the canon, the lightsaber/defender Jedi masters are very akin to a mix of TKA/Fencer in the SWG skill set. They avoid most attacks, and block is very common, part of the jedi canon. All games, stories, battles, everything around Jedi combat centers on the lightsaber excelling in melee and ranged. It's the only weapon they have. The TKA in the canon were singly devoted to one profession, and one task. There is no equivalent in SWG since we have TKA/Fencers/Doctors mixes. Jedi at the high end do not get such luxuries. If a jedi specializes in just combat using almost all points (IE- master defence/master lightsaber) then you are basically saying a TKA/Doctor should be far superior. This is, as we said, unacceptable. If a TKA is expected to beat a Jedi one on one, then the Jedi may as well have more skills to dabble in, since their combat abilities are set at a mediocre level.
Do jedi players want to be 'Gods' ? No, but neither should a single TKA/Fencer who does not receive any penalty on death be immune to a jedi lightsaber master. Nor should they EASILY defeat a master defender. The sacrifice to become master of either of these, means the jedi is already very low on other options. I'm hearing too many jokes from folks saying they as as well go Fencer/Tka/Lightsaber and stay there since it's far far more powerful then any Jedi could ever be. That is not acceptable risk/work vs reward.
This may be, but it’s a reality of the engine. We are currently investigating giving the robes themselves backpack functionality because Jedi are always pulling neat stuff out of their robes, but it will not happen with this publish.
On the topic of clothing/items- Jedi are now limited in what additional items they can wear granting skill mods via clothing attachments. This is again a 'nerf' to jedi, since I know many folks with +10-25 defences vs states, knockdowns, melee defence, etc... clothing. Jedi cannot wear robes and an undershirt. How odd
Overall, I'm still very very disappointed.A number of reasonable promises were made which included:
* There would be box for box conversion in the new system, so that the powers of old would be equivalently rewarded in new
* Jedi robes would be given defences equivalent to the composite of old, to make up for the fact jedi would not be able to wear armor such as other melee classes (who have dodge, mitigation, toughess as well...)
* Pearls and crystals would have equivalent stats in the revamp after conversion
* Ranked council Jedi would be very powerful in PvP. (We are nowhere near there yet- tough enough for a Jedi Master to beat a prepared TKA/Fencer, not to even mention the numerous ways to exploit Group TEF, Warcry2, DOT and poisons... Jedi master means little)
I'll stop here for now, already 'ranting' enough though I hope you see a few concerns/points.
Ren
Please bring back the buffered deaths. I was happy thinking that I could PvP up to 3 deaths a week without worry for skill drop (even 3 deaths in PvP is very low). With no death buffering for experience penalties, I will be forced to PvE until I can take the Knight trials.
This is rather disturbing because I didn't start grinding to Jedi until Perma death was removed and I was told that I would have a few buffered deaths to play around with before skill loss. Now that buffering will be completely gone.
Jedi is supposed to be a PvP class. But I will not risk a 200k exp penalty risk for PvP before I become a knight. This lack of death buffer will force many Jedi into a long lonely grind up to knight were we finally get the removal of PvP penalties.
I understand the need for a penalty to prevent credit exploits. I have suggested that you only give a death penalty when killed by a BH who is actively seeking you as a mark. So that the experience you loose would be proportional to the payout that the BH gets. Then BH would only get credits when the Jedi looses experience.
Message Edited by rexan on 06-22-2004 06:43 PM
Thunderheart wrote:
Force Power need mods to +speed for their respective skills. Why would anyone use force lighting if the delay is 3 seconds when they can saberthrow at 1/second. Additionall Master Healing has no benefits other than Total Heal which is no longer even a total heal.
The +speed benefits exist within the Force Ranking System. Total Heal has benefits in the Fire Cure addition along with the Force costs being adjusted for how much damage it heals. So there may be times where it is cheaper and times where it is more expensive based on how much damage it heals.
But TH forget the healing part for a second. The Force Powers tree is under powered ... and not all of us are going to go into the FRS. There is no reason why any Jedi would want to be a Master Force Weilder ... they'll do far better as a Master Saber.
If the Force Power tree had some speed mods such that at master powers was roughly as strong as master saber ... only then would we see real diversity in the jedi.
And since we're only asking for it to be on par with master saber ... this isn't about unbalancing anything ... its about bringing a tree up to par with the others.
Ok, moving away melee DM is a good thing (cause it would help Jedi to fend of melees).
Any thoughts you like to share on HOW you will make defense tree desirable again?
19. You said (regarding FS-skills): Once a character becomes a Jedi, they have already moved past those skills and in effect developed their Force powers from sensitivities into full blown powers.
Again, I have to state otherwise - this time using your own words in matter of logic. The FS-skills do not develop into Jedi skills. They stay what they are and are worthless to Jedi. If they would develop AS YOU STATED, they would add into the Jedi skills which they do not. But we have to pay for them (a very high prize regarding the costs of Jedi boxes). Thus this either need to be changed or dropped when reaching Jedi Knight to give more room for DIVERSITY so many speak about.
21. You said (regarding ability of melee defense): Jedi are not being designed to be the perfect solo character that can defend against all other classes.... Teras Kasi was developed specifically to fight Jedi at close range.... Melee attacks are something the Jedi should be wary of.
Well, I can live with that. But melee templates are whiping the floor with Jedi, especially fencer/TKA/xxx combinations. You argue what TKA is meant to be in Star Wars Universe (something that does NOT comply on fencers, pikemen and swordsman, but on BH) - on the other hand you do not accept arguing what a Jedi is meant to be in th SWU. This is flipside logic. As to bring it to the point: I can stand a TKA-template having a good chance against a Jedi as well a BH, but I cannot stand Fencer/TKA/XXX-Templates or CM-combinations that cut down hapless Jedi like they want to - with or even without the dreaded mind DoT weapons. Thats neither fair nor argueable in any way.
Please do NOT TWEAK so much (except fine tuning) after the revamp is in place - it will be close to impossible to REWORK a Jedi template cause of a massive change.
Adding additional skill points or reducing the skill costs just further homogenizes Jedi making them all have the same basic abilities. That is completely counter to one of the major goals of this rebalance.
On the contrary. Think about it.With the current way this revamp goesalmost EVERY Jedi is going to be Master LS, Master Enhancer and 4004 Healer. Can it be any more homogenized? Simple answer - no. And you are very well aware of that (i assume its one of the reasons for a delayed revamp).
But - against what you have stated - Jedi are MEANT TO HAVETHE SAME BASIC SKILLS. Its what they master what makes the difference. I do not what everyone to be master of all, but having spread out skills in all parts should seem neccessary. Who can be called a full Jedi who neglects specific aspects of the force?
Thunderheart wrote:
stuff
JEDI POWERS
Jedi should have trouble vs multiple ranged opponents, or multiple opponents period. (as it would be more taxing to sense and deal with multiple targets) Message Edited by T-Bone78 on 06-22-2004 07:40 PM
Message Edited by T-Bone78 on 06-22-2004 07:40 PM