Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept Open Discussion (6-7-04)
- Music for cities; I hear music everytime I land at Nym's. Where's the rest of the love?
- More than one choice to "battle" music.
- Music keyed to factionally-aligned base destructions.
- Ambience
- Background "chatter". (e.g. Cantinas, Hospitals, Starports, Bazaars, etc.) There is also a starport loop that has been in game since release and has yet to be keyed to play.
- Beeps, bells and whistles
- Fix "wrong sounds" on weapons.
- Only one Corellian Corvette between every planet? No? Alter the pitch/tone for variance. Also, address the scale issue.
- Stormtroopers should be saying "Move along," "Nothing to see here," and "Hey, you there!" for starters. They did once, they can be made to do so again.
- Is there an enviornment in Star Wars Galaxies? Other than Lok,I haven't heard it.
- Where is my Imperial March music?
2. Factionally-aligned crafters:
- Armoursmiths: Republic/Imperial armour.
- Weaponsmiths: Republic blasters are in the game, where is the Imperial Blaster?
- Tailors: Republic/Imperial Uniforms.
- Droid Engineers: Faction specific droids. RX-7 (Republic) and RA-7 (Imperial Death Star Droid) as examples.
3a. Droids> Pokèmon
- 10 available droid-types, but how many creature-types are available as pets?
- Droid CL should be higher than CL. Creatures have a will; Droids are a pre-programmed set of routines with no "will to live"
- Allow either more than one droid out at one time, or remove the formation commands from the radial menu. It looks horrible to see that on a menu when it is useless.
- Return the Pre-nerf, "Legacy" Probots armour. If you can't do this, than do this to everything. I have houses I built when I was an architect that can't be placed on planets other than what they were created for. If you can go in and remove armour from a droid that old, then you can modify everything else old to reflect new. You nerfed the pre-nerfs, then raised the level of the combat probots. Now my pre-nerf is't even the same level of power as a combat model, it's less.
3b. Make droids do what they should do.
- Protocol Droids should translate languages. Remove the ability to learn languages, or make them cost skill points.
- LE Repair Droids should repair droids. This droid should be callable no matter the other droid you have out, so you can actually repair your own droids, and not waste money on a droid that repairs everyone elses droids but your own.
- Power Droids should recharge droids (this is currently implemented and fine.) This droid should be callable no matter the other droid you have out, so you can actually recharge your own droids, and not waste money on a droid thatrecharges everyone elses droids but your own.
- Surgical Droids should heal players. Make this a Doctor/Combat Medic droid only.
- Binary Load Lifters should allow you to carry a larger amount of items inside of it automatically. Make this droid work as a harvestor and/or resource "container".
- R2 astromechs should give a bonus to slicing and to later inclusion of X-Wings.
- R5 astromechs should give a bonus to the later inclusion of Y-Wings.
- Probe Droids should be Imperial only. Their primary function isn't combat, it's recon. Give the Probot the ability to travel to xx / xx waypoint, and provide the ability to "view" from the Probots current location, in a 360 degree view. Rebels should have the same type of droid available to them, but it should not be of Imperial design.
3c. AT-ST
- Give us a way to repair our AT-ST already. It's not a Pet so I can't heal it, it's not a Droid so I can't repair it and it's not a vehicle so I can't take it to the garage. It's not a pet, droid or vehicle, it's a burden.
- Give us the option to trade in our AT-ST. Some of us purchased ours at the start of the game, and would not have bought one had we known how bad you were going to screw them up.
4. Addition of Hutt faction (the game is programmed for it already.)
- Rebel and Imperial forces may attack known (or overt) Hutt aligned faction players.
- Hutt aligned forces may attack Rebels and Imperials that are known (or overt.)
- Placement of a new negative faction system.
- Introduction of "Player Bounties/War Crimes"; Once a player hits -5000 faction(if a new negative systemwere implemented,) a mission would be given out randomly to 3 players to kill them. In order to prevent a bounty (Hutt) or a war crime (imp/reb) from occuring, players could seek out an NPC and pay them X amount of credits in order to "raise" their standing with said faction. Negative faction should also "decay over time," giving a player the choice between spending credits to keep on slaughtering, or "taking a break" from their crimes.
5. Addition of new "faction capture points."
- These points contain Cloning, Insurance, Healing, Missions and a "Declare" terminal.
- These points cover a radius of 1-300m. Faction who controls capture point receives a bonus to defense while in the area of the capture points.
- Doors on any entrance for the control point.
- Doors must be destroyed whichX of time.A Master Smuggler can slice thru it 50% faster.
- Each point captured counts toward the /GCW
- Capture points to execute "NPC events." (think Bestine Political Quest.)
- Allow "Detention Center" feature w/i control points. Similiar to the warning of Battlefields, a player could be given the choice to take part in a "prison break" feature, or could also pass on the feature, if they did not want to feel "punished" by the game for error.
- Instead of a Picture of a Jawa with information on Selonians maybe we could find a tad more "immersion" to chuck in.
- "animated" load screen depicting planet lift-off/landings
- "animated" load screens depicting town-to-town shuttle flights. (small video plays of flying over the vast, vacant deserts on Tatooine as Mos Eisley appears on the horizon, etc.)
7. Variety is key.
- If you must use a solitary corvette model as our only planet-to-planet ship, can we at least have different coloured stripes/markings based on planet? At least try to make us think there's more than 1 corvette out there.
- Shuttles should vary in striped/markings colour as well.
- Spaceports shouldn't look the same on every planet. Are all spaceports pre-fabs from the same manufacturer?
8. Scripted Events. (Yes, these sorts of things are background...but vital for immersion sake.)
- Tatooine: Sandcrawler should be moving across the desert from the Jawa Fortress to another point, then return. Imperial Patrols should be found patrolling outside of cities/deserts with Dewbacks. Slave-1 should be seen arriving to/leaving Jabba's Palace. Sand Skiffs dumping hapless victim into Sarlacc, etc.
- Endor: Imperial Speederbike patrols should be seen all over theplanet. Ewok hunting parties raiding enemy camps, etc.
- Dantooine: Imperial presence should be more visible. AT-ST patrols, AT-PT/AT-AT patrols.
- Dathomir: Larger, sweeping Imperial presence near the Prison. Nightsisters dropping slaves into the Lesser Sarlacc, etc.
- Corellia: Larger, sweeping CorSec presence. Shuttles arriving/leaving Hidden Rebel Base, etc.
9. Armour
- We have lots of armours, and only Composite is used. Are the players the only ones who notice this?
- Armour should slow (speed/dodge/etc) players down. Wow...an encumberance that doesn't encumber speed?
- Armour should only cover a few types of DMG max. This prevents a world of BLAND. This will also help foster a bit of variance between players. (e.g., Armour protects against (2) DMG types. One for 60% and the other for 40%.)
- Imperial armour needs to stay human-specific. You've screwed way to much continuity wise to just screw everything else up.
- There needs to be species-specific Imperial factional armour (Veers wears the non-ST variant in the movies) to replace the Stormtrooper armour for aliens.
- There should be a species-specific armour for each alien race.
10. Player Cities
- Return /citywarn to us already.
- If you will NOT return /citywarn, give us the option of NPCs that will enforce our city for us.
- Give us pavement. (seriously TH, we can afford a City Hall but not roads?)
- Give us bridges.
- Give us walls.
- Give us the ability to remove players from our city. (I suggest a council profession that ties in with Mayor so we can govern and responsibly vote out someone, and not the ability to just boot them with no say.)
- Remove the ability recently added to allow a player to undeclare residency in a city.
- If a player removes themselves as a "citizen" of the city, they should be forced to move from the city so we can recover our lot space w/o losing our City Rank due to poor planning on the development end.
- Example of above comment: 8 players "quit" the game and never come back - but paid 6 mos maint. We can't remove those houses and lose space needed to refill the city to keep out City Rank. Since we can't remove the houses or recover our player count, we lose our City Rank at next election, and then we lose more radius in the city, effectively booting active players and civic buildings from our City, costing us millions in credits lost in civic buildings due to a poorly conceived, poorly implemented "Lemming-based" system.
- Cities are democratic-only, and yet we live in a Dictator-controlled Galaxy?
11. Add Imperial/Rebellion Banners as faction-purchased items from the Recruiter.
12. Immediate Concerns/Priorities needed in order to at least make this game playable.
- Bugfixes > New Dungeons.
- Bugfixes > Content. (When issues like the Imperial Hat and Necklaces not displaying graphics have been in game since launch and it's been almost a year into the game...they should take some kind of priority.)
- Hotfix covert/dead/feign death base shutdowns.
- Hotfix "poison/disease" decay incap for Combat Medics.
- Hotfix "Greater than 64m" poison/disease throwsfor Combat Medics.
13. Implement Vehicular combat.
If I sat down and really thought about it, I know there's a lot of things I could add to this list. But I'll be happy with having some of the important things looked at.
Ideas 5.1: Mining.
Most of this is intended for changes within the current system, rather than suggestions for a full mining profession. The changes are not necessarily intergrated. For example certain new vehicles could be introduced, even if the new transportation system were not used.
Summary:
* Mining platforms that offer living space and mining bonuses.
* Selection of vehicles available in the Survey skill branch.
* New resource trasportation system.
My intention with these changes is to add a cool factor to mining, rather than overly complicate the system.
5.1a: Mining Platforms.
Originally this section was to be about static resources, but as I started to type it suddenly dawned on me that the current system of seeminly shifting resources is infact quite realistic. A seam of resource will eventually run out and, in reality, the mine is extended to find more. In Star Wars, we move the mining station. Although we often have to move it some way. Also, while trying to locate a new, rich seam (or as the case maybe a poorer quality one) it's likely the miners would stumble across other resources. Mining accidents involving breaking through to a gas pocket are not unheard of.
This idea then suggested a new idea. Mining Platforms. These are large structures (but still one lot) that are capable of gathering 2 or 3 different types of resource. Not so much at the same time, but if mineral runs dry and no high effeicency spawns are around anymore, the miner could switch the platform to extracting chemicals instead. I see this appealing to "grind" miners, who mostly extract grind quality resources for quick sale.
Possibly, larger multi-lot platforms could offer higher than normal extraction rates and living space. Further, a new city specilisation might be added that boosts efeciency, and lower maintance and power consumption, leading to the creation of mining towns/colonies.
5.1b: Resource Transportation.
I suspect that I'm not the only person who's ever considered that being able to carry several tonnes of ore, chemicals and flora is alittle unrealistic. Of course, the current system is practical. You need to be able to carry materials in your inventory ready for crafting, and you need lots of material to grind.
The system runs like this: At Novice Artisan you get a new Manifest window. The manifest window shows you the contents of your ship (not a spaceship - vehicles covered next). Materials are directly downloaded from the hopper to the Manifest, and the mainfest can be accessed directly through a crafting tool.
Potentially, when you travel the contents of the manifest are subjected to a shipping tax (planet to planet only).
A new building, a storage facility, might be added that will automatically gather resources to a single location (the facility). These might also have living space. (Part of the construction concept of this building is the requirement of two binary load lifters to make it, these might be seen trundling about the facility then).
5.1c: New vehicles.
Firstly a variant on the X34. Same speed and terrain negotiation, but no passenger seat. Instead it carries equipment that enables the driver to survey while riding the vehicle. This would be avialable at Surveying 2. It isn't the same as a survey tool however. While the vehicle can be set to survey for all resource types, and can match the range and resolution available at Surveying II, it doesn't improve as you progress to Survey III and IV. At Suvery IV an improved version of the Survey II vehicle becomes available. Just to name them, let's call them the X35 and the X35 Mk II. 
Secondly. The ships. And by ships I mean boats. And by boats I mean hover barges much like those seen in Return of the Jedi. Bet you can all guess now where all this nonesense evolved from .
Ships would become available as you progress up the survey branch. Starting at small vessels with room to store 5 seperate stacks of resources, leading upto big barges that can hold 20 stacks. Ships would be of equal speed and terrain negotiation to a swoop. Possibly with better terrain negotiation.
At novice artisan a player would get +1 to ships. And then +1 again at survey 4.
That's pretty much it. Admittedly I have much more in mind for mining, including expanding it to its own profession. One idea even involved mining platforms "growing" cave systems beneath them which would become populated with creatures, thieves, ore thieves and so on that the miner would need to keep cleared periodically to preserve the extraction rate of the system. Even paying someone else to do it if they so wished.
Enjoy
Sal.
Well I'm going to write my wish list one more time, with a few new idea, again this is mostly about combat balance and Star Wars feel to the game (and yes I know some of it may be planed, but I'm not sure sins we don't know much about the combat balance):
Melee combat, is so overpowered that it's hurts. I know there is a combat balance on it's way, but some major changes to what a melee characters role in the game must be made. Melee should not be the best type of combat character -not even by a long shot -this is Star Wars, a time of the Blaster Pistol and Blaster Rifle. Reflect this in the game, does not make it an requirement to have melee skill inorder to be a good PvP player og PvE player. But what should the roles for melee be you might ask, well melee should be for support and bonus to Jedi traning. Melee should be a good character for killing small to medium creatures (not the large creatures, seeing a TKA, Fencer, etc...kicking 8 rancors is just plain wrong, therancor would eat the person in one bite).
In Star Wars melee is only used for ritual weapons and by Jedis (lightsabers), so makemelee bonus to Jedi traning, TKA should give bonus to Force powers, Fencer should allow a Jedi to use two lightsabers (one in each hand), Swordsman should give bonus with one lightsaber, Pikeman should allow the player to use dual bladed lightsabers. But making the extreamly underpowered will make it hard for them to even being able to kill creatures wich should not be the case. So I had an idea how to reduce the vastly amount of melee in the game, change how suppression fire works. Make it a combat mode you can go into, so when a character is in suppression fire mode enemies cannot get within 15m of the character. Any characters with in that range will automatic make a jump roll out of the 15m to avoid being shot. There must however be a few requirement of going into suppression fire, first the character must be kneeling secondly no special attacks is allowed while in suppression fire mode. Suppression fire should not only be used by players but also squads of NPC characters. So a squad of imperial stormtroopers cannot get there ass kicked by some melee type of character. Also suppression fire should only work on humanoids not creatures, when firing on a rancor it just don't care how much you shoot at it. It will still wants to eat you. This also give CH the ability to flush out any characters in suppression fire mode.
1) FIX BUGS. This can't be stressed enough. The little annoyances really add up.
2) Change turrets to where they can only be destroyed while a base is vulnerable. Have them to where they can still be knocked out for PVP raids....but let them repair during the next repair cycle.
3) Change bases to only require 5 lots
4) Change guild halls to only require 5 lots, or the item capacity to 600-750
5) Allow the placement of a small turret on a large house, and a medium turret on a guild hall. (City defense purposes)
6) Widen the range of covert faction scanners
7) (Prolly the most important other than #1) Either reduce CM poisons and diseases by 75% like everyone else or just remove them from the game. This is for PVP only of course.
8) Remove TEFs and GTEFs from the game totally. Just make these things overt players instead of flagging them.
9) Make players groggy for 3-5 minutes after being cloned to help prevent clone center zerging. (sending tells and speaking in group-guild chat will still be allowed)
10) Fix the stomach bug where you are cloned with a full belly.....that's incredibly annoying.
11) Let players take missions on high end mobs, or just make them spawn a lot more often. The game is supposed to be friendly to the casual gamer....and spending hours looking for a monster is by no means friendly to anyone.
12) Actually fix the slingshot effect from dismounting.
13) Make all missions actually reward the players when complete.
14) Add special forces to each faction. These would require PVP kills to gain rank and maintain rank. Make new missions for these special forces that have better loot and better pay.
15) Enforce policies the company set up. Giving multiple warnings to abusive players doesn't stop them from cheating or being obnoxious. Character resets or bannings will do the trick.
16) Let players continue to advance their characters after spending all 250 skill points.
17) Have a lot more votes for the community. Let the players decide what they want for the game.....and what is most important to be changed. If you want us to voice our opinions and provide feedback, at least show us the things we say actually matter to you.
I could keep listing things for prolly half the night.....the game has a lot of problems right now.
I place a lot of structures .. a whole lot of them.. Is it possible to have the No build zone shown when I go to place a house. I can't tell you how many time I have come to a area I want to place a Harvester or a house and it shows up as green.. only to be told that I can't build there. I'm totaly cool with no build zones. though I think the closer you get to a real city the more the upkeep should be.. inside a city zone should be 5x the upkeep for a house or harvester. That's just a pie in the sky idea. I am really hoping for a way to see no build zones (or at least make it show up when going to place a house.. Hate seeing a green ok sign when to place it only to be told " Building not permitted" anyways thank for the input. or even just reading it.
Skill XP and Relearning
Everyone is familiar, I am sure, with the fact that relearning a skill after it has been dropped can require an xp hit of up a million points, and I think it is time this was changed. If I become a master Swordsman and bank 900,000 two-handed experience, and then decide to try something else that requires the points, if I return to two-handed I should not lose the experience that I have earned from the previous round.
Some, I am sure, would say that this makes it too easy to exchange professions, but consider that the professions has ALREADY been earned and that the xp cap opver master is not high enough to give someone an elite profession from scratch. Only a leg up.
Please address this matter in the new profession revamp for Patches 9 and 10.
Profession Aesthetics
For some time now many of us have been waiting to see more aesthetic depth to the professions that we enjoy, and I think this is a perfect time to implement some of these ideas, with the coming of the profession revamps and Patches 9 and 10. Such things as pistol snaps for Pistoleers that allow them to do non-mechanic but purely enjoyable things like whip their pistol out and do tricks with it, or perhaps even a simple /pistoltwirl or something along those lines.
In this same theme, Jedi should have the option of being able to ignite their lightsabres for purely roleplay and ambience purposes without having to be challenged to a duel. I am sure many Jedi players have brought this up, but I didn't think it could hurt to mention it one more time.
Please address these issues now in this perfect window of opportunity.
Thank you
I for one would like to see night-vision implemented. I have posted about this before in the past, and will continue to do so, as the light we are given is all but useless. I'm sure night-vision could be incorporated into goggles or even a helmet via a the use of a SEA or similar socketed item. Given the level of technological advancement, it would only make sense to have such a thing. AO is a good examploe of a game where such a thing is implemented and it certainly makes a world of difference when trying to plod through the darkness, crashing into anything and everything your little flash-light doesn't pick up.
Additionally, I believe there should be racial modifiers built into the game for night-vision. Surely all races would not share the same level or even type of vision. Wookies are meant to have excellent night vision for instance, and more than likely Trandoshan would have some sort of infra or ultra vision. It would not be difficult to implement either, anyone who has played EQ will have seen the effects of those types of vision.
And finally, how about working scopes? It could either allow a small area to be amplified or the entire area for say 30 seconds, which is more than long enough to get off a few critical pot shots. I know when I was a Rifleman I would have loved to use something like that. It could allow for a concealed sniper-shot that had devestating effect, at say an obscenely high HAM cost. But that would just be one application for it. Most ranged weapons allow for the attachement of a scope, and it would be an added bonus if they didn't only affect the quality of the weapon.
- Improve upon dynamic/mission lairs... give us dynamic/mission dungeons. I am mostly a solo player, and my content options are seriously limited by the fact that A) the dungeons I can take by myself are usually camped, and B) all the other dungeons are Instantly Lethal to the solo player (unless they're a Commando). I'm tired to slaughtering swamp gurrcats...
So, why not figure out a way of implementing dynamic dungeons? Go to a mission terminal, pick up one, go to the waypoint and dive in. Have a boss monster or control point at the bottom of it to destroy. Make it so that only that player (or the group the player is in) can enter.
- On a slightly more complicated scale, let us *build* houses. Rather than prebuilt deeds of predesigned floorplans (I am of the opinion that the designer of the Corellian/Generic floorplans needs to be shot), give us 'Lego blocks'... predefined wall sections, floor sections, etc. Give architects a tool to build a house design from these parts and make a schematic from that. Pop into a factory with the appropriate parts to build the house from that schematic, out pops a deed, and you place it like a normal house.
On a side note, I think SOE would benefit from looking at what Second Life is doing. A MMORPG world built of textured 3D primitives... oh, the flexibility possibilities!
- Let artisans build signs, datapads, and other things that people can write on and stick in their house. It'd be nice to have price lists and notes and what not written on these, instead of CDEF pistols stuck in a vendor priced at 99 billion credits with a long description. Or be able to pass information without the email system. Keep journals of your adventures.
- A Resource Market. I've harped about this before, and I'm going to keep harping about it. Have a cluster of Resource Exchange terminals in the major city on each player planet (Corellia, Naboo, Tatooine, Dantooine, etc.)
Player A goes to the terminal with 10k units of Foobarium Titanium Aluminum, and feeds it into the system with a minimum sell price of 3 credits per unit.
Players B and C go to the terminals, both wanting Foobarium. B puts in an order for 5000 units at 3 credits per unit, and feeds 15000 credits to the machine to cover that. C puts in an order for 6000 units at 4 credits per unit, and feeds the machine 24000 credits.
Once ever five minutes or so, sales and orders are processed. Since C is willing to pay more for a unit of Foobarium, his order is completely filled, and 6000 units of Foobarium become available for pickup from the terminal. The 24000 credits that C paid is transferred to A's account, since it was A's sale that satisified the order.
Now, there are only 4000 units left for sale. Player B's order is partially filled at 3cpu, 12000 of the 15000 credits he paid is transferred to A, and 4000 units becomes available to B. B's order is then automatically modified to a 1000 unit order at 3cpu.
The terminals should also have a seven-day history of low/high/average cost per unit prices for resources it has handled. Resources should include metals, ores, chemicals, gases, meat, eggs, milk, hides, grains, wood, etc. Things you can harvest.
Advantages? Less people standing in front of starport shout-spamming resource sales. Newbies can sell to crafters without having to deal with people only wanting 10k or more of something, and newbies would get ripped off less if they actually knew what the going rate of the resources they have...
- A 'road' object that can be crafted and placed in player cities would be nice. Its hard to feel metropolitan when there's amber waves of grass between your house and city hall...
- Some general client performance improvement would be nice. I've got a Pentium 4 2.4ghz, a gig of memory, and an ATI Radeon 9800 128mb. I don't think there's any good reason why my framerate will be below 30fps a good deal of the time...