Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)
Just a quick suggestion to R2DADROID and other people who dont like the high grass on (eg) Corellia:
I hated that graphic, until I noticed that you can turn it off, I think on one of the options menu, turning "off" the grass/weeds, whatever they call it.
You get TONS better visibility, and I enjoy the planet graphics much more. You can always turn it back on if you don't like it that way 
Perhaps being unarmored is unviable in PvP, since I don't care for PvP I can't really comment on that. But it is by no means unviable in PvE. I do not wear armor anymore, because I am more effective without it. Without doc buffs, special move costs and crippled regeneration mean I either do more damage to myself using specials than the armor is protecting me from, or I take so much longer to kill the target that the same overall damage is done to me. With doc buffs and a swig of brandy, I regenerate damage done to me quickly, I can spam specials with no significant HAM penalty, and if my H/A drops too far, I can use a heal without crippling my mind pool.
In fact, the only time I do use armor is when I'm unbuffed and surrounded by six or more creatures, and even then I'm only wearing it to buy a little extra time while I fumble for the cavellian creams. My armor is 76% Ubese, not Composite.
As for encouraging soloing to the virtual exclusion of grouping, I disagree. I solo exclusively, but I've soloed exclusively since launch. It's the way I like to play. But when I encounter people out in the wilderness, far more often than not I see them in groups of two or three, not alone. I've never been to the Geonosian Bunker. I'll probably never go to the Corellian Corvette. I'm not even going to talk to Victor until he's ready to play ball with my flag, and if I do talk to him, I won't be asking about the Tusken Campfest, because I don't want to group up.
It's possible you were just exaggerating the situation to emphasise your point. However, I'm not sure what you think should actually happen. Due to the practice of minmaxing, if it's more effective to wear armor, "everyone" will wear it. If it's more effective not to wear it, "noone" will wear it. So it can be reduced to the point where it's barely better than not wearing it at all, but every template character out there will still wear it. Or it could be reduced beyond that, in which case every template character won't wear it.
I would prefer to see it changed so that armor provides very specific protection. You'd wear Ubese for Kinetic protection, but it would offer little or nothing to everything else. You'd wear Composite for Energy protection, Chitin for Heat and Acid, and so on. People would then need to worry about the weapon type their opponent is using, or the armor they're using, and you'd get a whole subgame of trying to mix and match armor to weapon. Better than making armor completely ineffective, yes?
Kade_Deveron said: I'd like to comment on the issue of armor. Armor in SWG is clearly too powerful. It encourages soloing to virtual exclusing of grouping, makes being unarmored an unviable option (esp in PvP), and creates a cookie cutter environment where everyone is wearing their 70%+ composite. It also leaves factional armor (and uniforms) unviable (the cost on faction armor doesnt help).
I think you overstate the issue on all points. I know plenty of people who go without armor, or without wearing a full set of composite. It's not the armor system that results in a cookie cutter atmosphere. Laziness and a lack of creativity results in a cookie cutter atmosphere. People who just wear a full set of composite because they like the big numbers, and because someone told them to, are going to do the same thing if the armor system gets changed. And the armor or buff system is not the reason people are soloing. Even if you got rid of all the armor in the game tomorrow, most of those people would still fight ungrouped.
I also think that a big reason that composite is the default armor that people wear is due to the fact that armorsmiths make a lot more profit on composite than other armors, so that's what most of them sell. I once spent a full day trying to find a vendor that sold anything but composite.
Kade_Deveron said: ...forget penalties to secondary stats. Try penalties to defensive skills (ie ranged/melee, KD, dizzy, etc..) or to weapon speed. Armor is cumbersome and should make players easier to hit as they are less mobile (but allowing the armor to absorb damaage of course),
While I disagree with your argument, I do like this idea. The main problem with it is that defensive bonuses given through professions will have to be boosted. Otherwise it will have very little impact. If it's a difference of wearing armor and having a +0 defense versus not wearing armor and having a +15 defense, I think it'll be a pointless change. But if you had to choose between a +5 anda +40, I think you'd see a lot more though go into putting on armor or not.
Formica said: The fact that all mobs do Kinetic doesn't help, either
Since when? I get shot with acid all the time. Nearly every Mauler I run into has got a rifle or something. I think that creature damage being mostly kinetic is a good thing though. It allows people to specialize in fighting creatures by wearing armor that protects against kinetic damage, without taking on any specific profession.
Atteke said: Let Pikeman dual wield.
lol, what? Where would you hold the other staff? Never mind, don't answer that (ugh).
nolan007 said:
How about fix the issue where we warp 100m from a /dismounted vehicle?
How about fix the bug where we have to close 100 extra "compose new message" dialogs?
How about let Wookiees use the C12 grenade that everyone else uses for combat xp?
How about giving creature mounts +25 terrain navigation or more? Give us a reason to use creature mounts.
All great points that I agree with.
AltharXXX said: I strongly disagree with this. I've mastered 3 combat professions and I've seen 80% armors go to ruin in as few as 24 hours of play. The costs of 80% armors are prohibitive. The people who can "solo" geno lab in 80% armor are the same people who can solo it in the nude (yeah you know MCH with BE pets and maybe doctor or tkm.) 80% armor is nothing compared to master level defences. I've burned through padded and ubese in less than 8 hours of play. funny how you can loose more than 500 condition on a single lair.
Very good points. This is killing me. I play as a pikeman, a profession that does need to be wearing armor in many situations. But my armor just got down too low the other day so I replaced it. Four days later I realize all the new armor I got is below 50%. With the current success rates in armor repair, even if I find a master armorsmith who's willing to take the time to repair all my stuff, I'm going to need to replace this new armor in two weeks. Armor that cost me about 300K. With my other expenses, I can't afford 600K every month, it's just not possible. I'd much rather see changes made to the item repair system (to allow any joe to use a repair kit with at least 75% success) than any change to armor stats.
Simmeon said: They need to take another pass at the Apprentice Point = AP system.
I disagree. I think the system works wonderfully well. When I needed to master Scout before I could take Novice Ranger, I had about 30 AP. So I got out and started traveling. I actively saught out other scouts, worked deals to group with them so I could help them gain skill so I could train them, and had a great experience.
If all you're doing to get it is sitting in front of a starport spamming, then it's your own fault that you don't like it. Think a little harder and do something you'll like instead.
ultraddtd said: Center of Being doesn't seem to work very well
No kidding. With the HAM cost being so high on this ability, and the absolute lack of any affect (that I've ever seen) I stopped trying to use it at all months ago.
Vonliege wrote:
The 6 week rule is killing us!
We have a LVL3 city that we built in a canyon. It is a really nice location, but since we got held up at LVL 3, we couldn't expand out like we wanted to. We lost5 citizens to the 6-week rule last night, and we don't have room to place houses for the folks who want to become citizens. There is just no buildable space! We pulled up all the decorations, and got rid of the two factories that were in town. We even pulled up the clone center to get one house in. Unless those 4 houses can be removed, we will loose a rank next week. The CSR response pretty much told us tough luck.
The offhand weapon should have some serious limitations. Not to the point of being useless, but it shouldn't be possible to wield two large weapons. A Fencer, for example, should be able to wield a gaffi stick and a vibro blade, but not two gaffi sticks. (Like in d20 games)
TH:
What is the status of the hermit quest on Tatooine? Another major piece of existing content that is being ignored to rush out new shiny things to distract the masses.
Some of us are proufoundly unimpressed with chrome being applied to a product that has out of the box things still broken, 9 months after release.
Kade_Deveron wrote:
Nolan, in response to your post:
"From someone that has PvP'ed exclusively since release, armor is very vulnerable now due to the uber stun pistol that everyone is using (ie. composite armor is almost pointless now)... composite is a joke with this pistol since it's vulnerable to stun.
These claims would have been somewhat true a month ago... now, they're not at all."
I respectfully disagree. Aside from the fact that not everyone carries stun weapons, NPCs most certainly do not. Beyond that, stun weapons do quite a bit less damage than other weapon types. Put a fully comped player against an unarmored player with a stun pistol and the unarmed player will uniformly drop faster (against say a scout blaster or scatter or fwg5).
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FIX TAPE DROPS
It is sickning the afk looters on rori 24/7
FIX IT ... random tape spawns, or high lvl npcs ... ie NS ... not afk loots !
Something started to irritate me while i watched the ctrl V planetary map the letters are yellow and i can hardly read which is the vendors name if im on tatooine,
could u change color its really easier to read if we get a other color i think