Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Rountdable Discussion (Week Ending 1-18-04)
Thunderheart, the closing of the swg general forum is really hurting cross server information gathering. We need a general forum for all cross server chatter. The server boards are pretty much dead compared to what we had and information gathering is hindered as well.
These boards are ok but the ideas are too one sided and often watered down IMO.
For those of you who keep rubberbanding or have your bike store while riding, it would help the devs if you /bug it with the waypoint, planet and server the bug took place at.
I have not had problems with this happening. I have had problems with my PC freezing up. It happened once at a store in goontown on lowca and the store owner said it has happened to many of his customers who show up there.It has been reported.
SUGGESTION: Why can't the devs make it so the Empire takes special orders from crafters for resources or items. Like have a tailor make 500 uniform boots for the Empire. They could pay per resource unit used. This could be a reward for accomplishing an Imperial NPC mission or for just being factionally aligned with the imperials.Artisans could make droid detectors,power conditioners etc. DE could make mouse droids.
I frequently see posts about people wanting various changes to game play and functionality. This is understandable but I see one major problem that still needs to be addressed first and foremost.
This problem is existing bugs, exploits and game play balance issues. There are so many problems with game play I'm starting to debate quitting the game. Here are some of the problems I see and why they are discouraging me from playing SWG.
1. Exploits. Duped ATST's, Rifles with greater range than FB turrets.
2. Bugs. Ghosting, mount jumps (whatever the technical term is, world expansion within buildings, and vendor problems.
3. Gameplay balance. PVP decay, shuttle delay, and etc...
This is just a little list and I would hope to see additional replies from people that can add to this. I know everyone wants to see the space expansion, but imagine such an expansion with more bugs to add onto the existing ones.
Last night while at The Isle of Misfits each change of screen with a vendor took 1-2 minutes to load and I lost a crate of Fishak for 40000 credits.
An almost unplayable game with great capabilities is unenjoyable. SOE please for the love of your customers make the game more reliable and playable.
Bryno Naturi
MDOC, ECM, and Novice Pistoleer on Eclipse
BH jedi bounty fix?
Harder missions for Master BH!
Pls confirm if NPC jedi missions are on the cards or not.
Thnx.
ThunderHeart and Felllow SWG Developers.
I feel that attention to the most sarcred Proffesion in game needs imediate attention, Jedi. Currently were are running a pole to see how many people are truely happy with this Proffession and to be frank about it, it seems that many of us feel they have wasted our time. The benifts do not supplement the many hours we spent to open our slot. We have posted many times what we felt our problems are and feel completely ignored. The communication is lacking to the point were players have left the SWG command and started emailing gamespy raising the BS flag on the Haden Blackman interview. Please all we are asking is some insight on with these game stopping bugs will be fixed, so we can reap the benifits of our hard work.
URL For Poll: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=jedi&message.id=216826
Thanks
But this would SCREW medicine crafters, and the Rangers who sell them resources.
Laeir wrote:
I'd like to suggest that Doctor buffs should work similarly to Entertainer buffs in that they should be a multiplier to a character's base stat rather than an addition to that stat. This would seem to solve several problems at once. It would prevent players from minimizing their combat stats to extremely low levels, and it would make the Wookie stat bonuses relatively more powerful to help make up for lack of armor. It would make stat distribution count for something.
As I have had no feedback to my post last weekas of now, I post this again and will continue until I get a definite "Yes, we need a known issues page" or "No, we ignore you anyway". If you start a roundtable, take part please. Else, we could as well meet and chat elsewhere.
I encountered a bug recently that killed me three times over. I'm an experienced gamer and I guess most people here have played countless on- and offline games. Games have bugs. This just happens. So I contacted a CSR. This CSR said SOE would not reimburse me, for this particular bug was a "Known Issue". Fine. I do understand the need for this and I'm more than happy that there is a list of known issues. Now for the funny part: When I asked the CSR where I could check for known issues, there was a long silence. I asked him how I could get to know these known issues and he told me there was no way I could have known this except through player postings on this forums. I suggested you create something like a known issues page as soon as possible and he agreed that this would be a good idea.
This ingame conversation has been the laughing stock of the software department I work at for weeks now. It doesn't get any more ironic than calling something a known issue and telling me there is no way for me to know.
I'm sure you like people talking about this game, but I'm not sure you like this special way of advertisement.
I realize you are working on your communication and it turns out fine so far. I hope you realize that getting it into acceptable shape will take about half a year of steady good work at leastbased on the mess you started from at the beginning of this year.
Lack of documentation is getting annoying.
Weekly major changes to proffesions while sometimes positive is frustrating, the game changes all the time, then lacking documentation = confusion.
The invalid pet error disgusts me, nothing broken should be "acceptable" in the game. FIX it or delete it, don't BREAK it.
Medical enhanced clothing is really impressive and fun.
Taming clothing enhances dont do anything that special that I can tell. Simply uping my chanse at a tame, just doesn't impress me the way some of the other clothings does.
FIX BE's, FIX DE's.
When do we get more skill points? I found out that that camelot online game gives people 5 character slots on a server, I was very unhappy when I heard this about other games. 50 points more would make me a very happy camper.
You should allow armor to permanently have the color be altered by anyone, it takes a lot of strain off of crafters (armor smiths). I had not thought of this myself until a armor smith was telling me how he loved this new feature because it made making armor for people less complex and stressful. When he doesnt get the color right and customers get picky. It is hard enough to find crafters who have been crafting sence the beggning, I only know of3 in the game, whom are the SAME crafting proffesion.
CH now seems a bit to slow to level, but I agree it should have been made a little harder.
--- Thats enough for now I think 
Just to make sure . . .
This is a repost from its own thread in the now-defunct Discussion Forum, but I like the idea a lot, and it would help add to the mysteriousness and danger of the high-end adventure planets, emphasize the value of Scout and Ranger skills, and be a nice corollary tothe new "Imperial Crackdown":
FOCUS ON THE WILDERNESS - Ban vehicles and mounts on Dathomir, Endor, and Yavin
PROBLEM: Vehicles have made the planets smaller and opened up what used to be dangerous territory to even the newest characters.
REASONING: But adventure planets should be dangerous. They should be wild. And because of their history, their bordersshould be under tight Imperial control.
Endor is supposed to be a staging ground for the new Death Star, Dathomir is supposed to be a remote prison location, and Yavin is under investigation for its recent Rebel presence.
PROPOSED FIX: As such, the Empire should crack down and ban all vehicles and mounts from Dathomir, Endor, and Yavin.
Banning vehicles on Dathomir, Endor, and Yavinwould accomplish several things that would enrich SWG:
1) It would stress the wild nature of each of these planets.
2) It would make expeditions on these planets more difficult and make distance meaningful.
3) It would force people to carefully avoid aggressive, dangerous creatures rather than cruise by them fearlessly.
4) It would make resources on these planets more valuable due to the difficulty of traveling around them without risk.
5) It would make Rangers and Scouts very useful group members for expeditions into adventure planets.
I'd appreciate any feedback and responses you might have to this idea. Thanks in advance!
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=1006001&page=1
Some criticism and followup comments from the original thread (plus a few extras):
ASHRID wrote:
YES!
and while we're at it lets jedi mind trick everyone so they forget the speeder bike chase on Endor in ROTJ!!!!
I've heard some daft ideas in my time but this is one of the worst......
Imperial Troopers guarding the planet had those speeders.
Not everyday travelers. Not even just regular Imperials. Just like a police officer can't take a gun into an airport, or Fort Knox, or the White House, so too would everyday Imperials be forbidden to bring vehicles into adventure planets for "security reasons."
As for harvester runs, hey, people managed to do it before mounts and vehicles, they can do it again. How quickly everyone forgets . . .
atimes wrote:
Why can't something ever be made simpler in this game without people complaining about how it's ruining something? So Dath the uber death planet is a little easier because we can ride around. All that means is a casual guy like me can have a little fun and explore the planet and just have a good time running around enjoying the content the planet has to offer without having to worry about a trip to the cloning center every 2 seconds.
Mind you if you actually want to get something done on Dath you still have to fight and in order to fight you still have to get off your speeder bike.
Dathomir wasn't intended to be a casual planet you could joyride around. Most planets, sure - in fact, 7 of the 10 are joyride material with player cities on them-but the adventure planets were supposed to be dangerous and not for everyone.
Also, I've always been able to stroll around Dath, Endor, and Yavin without being aggroed. Even during Beta, when Endor was on Super Death Mode and people were bleeding to death after one or two hits, all it took was some patience and strategic use of the overhead map to make my way around. Maskscent also helped, I'm sure, but I only had Exploration 3 or so. Back then, going big distances was an accomplishment and didn't require fighting at all.
Regardless, if people could do it before, they can remember how to do it again. Making it to the Imperial Prison used to mean something. Now it's just a few minutes' ride away on a speeder, and you can pretty much buzz past anything that might have made you cower in fear before. That reduces the danger in what's supposed to be a supremely dangerous place, and so I'd like to get us back to the days when crossing Dathomir was an adventure.
atimes wrote:
Vehicles were always meant to be in. They were supposed to be done at launch. If we had them at launch like the devs intended then this post wouldn't even be here.
The worlds are large by design. Adding vehicles makes the game no less difficulty. It just means you can ride around in relative safety. Remember to FIGHT these mobs you still have to get off your bike and then you are in the same boat as the l337 d00dz
Just because the Devs meant for vehicles to be in at launch doesn't mean that they would have kept them in on adventure planets. The devs have made a lot of changes based on feedback and based on how they've seen the game pan out. Krayts got bumped up in power because people were taking them down with ease. Same goes for many creatures.
The Devs have always stressed that they wanted adventure planets to be high-end content. Well, with vehicles, they're no longer high-end, since people can travel very far very quickly. Why is it that many of thehigh-end resources in the galaxy - I'm thinking Combat Medic and Doctor, especially, but also Tailor- come from adventure planets? The answer I'd give is that the Devs intended for those resources to be difficult to recover. Well, with vehicles, especially, they're VERY easy to recover. Ride out, drop some harvesters, ride back.
What did Doctors and CMs do before? They got help from friends. They took out expeditions to protect them. And it helped with the interdependence of the game. Nobody could just stroll out like it was 500 m from Bestine and drop a harvester, and then stroll back every few days to check it. In many cases, the rares market was driven by danger.
And it's danger that's once again lacking now that you can access distant locations more easily than ever. Even on regular planets it's a bit too easy, but on adventure planets, rapid transport isvery much against the concept of having a dangerous place where not everybody could safely travel.
Close to the heart of it all is that Rangers and Scouts seem fundamentally worthless now. I'm neither, really, other than a bit of Scout, but I'm bothered by the fact that Rangers, especially, have basically been severely marginalized by vehicles and mounts. Why bother to travel with a Ranger? What's their role now that people can travel very quickly by themselves? Who needs camoflauge when they can get in a Swoop and buzz by red cons? There should be areas where only Rangers can travel quickly and where Scout skills are highly useful. The adventure planets should fulfill that role. Going there should be like climbing Mount Everest or cave diving- you go in by foot and face the world on your own.
Kershakk wrote:
I would invite the original poster to sweep these planets for resources, three times a week without fail, and every third time go find a 80% density of a particular steel, in an available flat surface and do this on foot alone. Also be sure to run back to it at some stage to retrieve the stuff from the input hopper so it doesn't overflow and also do this on foot. By the way also do this with no more than 40-50 points invested in *any* combat profession.
I understand you would like to feel like when you visit these planets it's dangerous and exciting but you see - that's your choice to go there. To stay abreast of the resource game, crafters must go, and go often. Crafters typically do not have a lot of combat skills or a personal army at their beck and call.
So what it was done before? It didn't mean it was FUN. Humans lived without electricity, cars and planes for millenia. You try take them away now and see what happens.
Option A) Pay Scouts and Rangers who have Surveying skills for waypoints to great resources.
Option B) Use other resources that are easier to access.
Option C) Pay for the resources you need and let others harvest them.
And there are other options, too, but those are the big three.
I've seen plenty of crafters burn out fast because they wanted to do everything themselves rather than divide the labor. A good many of them had multiple millions of credits, but instead of paying people to do some of the work, they insisted on soloing 100% of the game. To some people, profit is all that's important, not sanity. There's something to be said for outsourcing work you don't want to do so that you can focus on what you like. There's always SOMEBODY who will take your job and the odds are that they'll even like the work. It's a player mission and is something unique, after all.
It doesn't have to be that hard for a crafter to get the resources. It should just take some cooperation when you want to go into dangerous places for their resources, just like it should take some cooperation to take down the most dangerous enemies in the game.
PS - I used to run a high-end med component harvester operation for a Doctor friend of mine back on Dantooine and Lok in the early days when my feet were my only means of transportation. Dangerous? You bet. Challenging? Yep. Could the Doc have gotten into the areas I went to drop the harvesters? Not safely. But did she need to? No, I arranged to get free stims in exchange for handling it for her. It was a great operation, I had lots of fun, and she got the resources she needed without having to leave her home. It would work just fine for others, and the general odds are that you can find great veins of resources about 500-1000 meters from any given Starport.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=1006001