Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)
EXP:
Current System
. 5 minute wait would help this.
"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).
Armor continues to:
1. Break immersion
2. Discourage soloing
3. Force cookie cutter style gameplay
with or without stun pistols.
Done right, armor would:
1. Penalize player def mods
2. Have varying strengths against different attacks
3. Vary the defense penalized and the strengths against attack types across armors so that even chittin or padded could have some usefulness.
4. Allow for craftable faction armor that fits within this system.
my god are you people insane. keep the current starport routes intact? Immersion my ass. When I miss a shuttle I am not more immersed in star wars universe. I am bored. This is a damn game not a time sink.
Forget the 5 minute wait. You ever see the movies. Shuttles and ship are flying all over the place. You like the immersion then just set an alarm for 9 minutes and then take the shuttle. Casual gamers should be able to spend their time playing this game not waiting for a damn shuttle.
So to sum it up.
1) No wait on shuttles. None.
2) Yes let me take a ship from any startport to any other starport, if you need immersion show me my path on the loading screen. Why they hell would I have to get off 3 times and reboard.
3) If there is a wait then let me buy my ticket from the ticket taker or let me have a multipass I can fill up with credits.
4) I want to play, not wait. I have never heard or found a valid reason to wait.
Other issues
- Other players disapear and one or the other have to relog or drive far away and back to become visible again
- if you relog buff icons disapear even though still buffed.
- Warping when exiting a vehicle
- radial menus have to be called twice to update correctly - enter/exit vehicle - start manufacturing - and others
- when harvestor runs dry have to load operate menu twice to turn back on.
- random vehicle storing
- precision laser knives used from crate use up a whole item of knives (10) instead of 1 at a time.
- vehicles customization needs to last longer. droids too - hint paint is usually permanent and definately does not change to a different random color when it does fade.
- candles and lights in crates lose time while on vendor, singles dont
- vehicles decay too fast - should need montly maintenance - should not fall apart so fast. is star wars universe engineers really that crappy?
- make jedi fun and not a solo grind fest. hard is one thing and super hard is good but make it fun.
- fix loot in droid engineer cave. I mean really. 10k meters one way for credits and total crap. also the droideka do death animation on KD - they fall apart and then reassemble when they stand up.
- item rotate - I was completely surprised this was not implemented when you added up and down. Why is everything done halfway. When you address and area take the time and do it all the way so you dont have to go back to it. This is a hint for the shuttles. Do it right this time remove the time sink and fix the ticketing issues so you (and we) dont have to worry about it again.
- how about fix the you cannot do this in your current state - example you walk up to ticket machine use it, get that message (it still things you are moving) - or you try to place a deed and get that message, or you try to meditate and you get that message. it is annoying.
- make adding resources in crafting tool 1 click for those who cannot get their mouse to support double click. this is an ergonomic issue and a real time and wrist saver.
This was in the patch notes for publish 7.
* Nothing has changed regarding shellfish harvesting
* There has never been anything mentioned on the Test Server about any changes.
Simmeon wrote:
They need to take another pass at the Apprentice Point = AP system. I'm not sure that it's fun or fair for a new player (or any player)to spend 3 days spamming that he's training in whatever 4444 to get master. Advanced players have the advantage because if they need to learn a skill then they can pay well for it from the people who are charging for AP at the star ports. A new player has a hard time gaining AP and I don't think it is fun at all or in any way. An earlier post suggested doing a mission. I think this is a good idea, some way that has to use all the skills you've learned in order to obtain master points or other players can teach them but we shouldn't have to rely on other people teaching or learning skills because it'll get to a point where there are few people wanting to learn new skills making it much harder to get master status.
I suggest they cut the AP xp requirements in half... that would help a great deal and would be fair to players that don't have someone to train and surrender skillsover and over.
Not sure if i should even post this because i love this bug 
Player city on Shadowfire has lost its shuttleport, i can still shuttle into the city and appear where the shuttleport USED to be. i have to find my own means back to any major city but i can still get into the city with ease. I have shuttled in from both a player city's shuttleport as well as the spaceport in Theed.
Compared to most others I´mpretty new toSWG (playing MMORPGs since 2001,SWG since 10/2003).I´d like to sum up my playing experience on SWG and mention a few mayor issues.
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Mostproblematic issue:
It seems the DEVs are more going for inovations and new stuff than for fixing bugs and solving problems.The armor-topic isbest example:4 of 8 Armors are bugged. I´m not sure on the 4th(R.I.S.),that´s something I just heared, not experienced myself. One of the best looking and important armors - the only base SP Energy - shifts stats. Padded seems to calculate kinetic damage wrong (something mixed between blast and kinetic). Composite is bugged during the experimentation process. Don´t know how long others had to live with these problems. But hearing that new armor is coming up, instead offixing the old, causes real miss-feelings. I still appriciate the fix of old problems, instead of makingforget about the old by gettingnew -whichbrings in result just an cumulativ increase.
More over I agree with my former posts on the discussion about armor. Just adding a new point of view: I think PvP is getting as more challenging as longer it lasts. It really decrases fun, if people cankill you with 3 shoots, even when full buffed and wearing nice eqippment. I´m sticky to the solution of de-powering buffs. You don´t need armor, you don´t need groups,all you needis askilled doc...
Some addition: I´dlike to seean exakt description on how armor works and I´d like to see it ingame. 80% of my costumers don´t even know the difference between special protection and effectiveness or themechanics behindarmor-rating andarmor-piercing, and I´m very bored by explaining it again and again. It´s no secret of the game, so why do I´ve to search up the net forexplanations or test it myself?
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The missing of a real "Dragon":
Another thing I´d like to mention is the missing of a real "High-End-Mob". There´s nothing you can´t killin SWG. You just need buffs, equipment, a fewfriends,endurance and muchtime. I´d really like to see something challenging. Something that needs lots of people's coorperation to kill. Something everyonerespects.Something unique to SWG...
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The "Best" weapon problem:
The objective of diversity was surely respected, but never reached. Doesn´t eachcombat-profession finally ends up with even the same type of "best" weapon? That fact is just lil infected by new weapons then and when. Finally we´re all running around with the same- the marginaldifferencein speed and damage-rate doesn´t affectthis problem at all. Being uniqueends up in being disadvantaged to everyone else.
A wide range of different weapons with different advantages and disadvantages would solve this. Get weaponsmiths the opportunity to choose damage, skin, speed, range and so on. A rifle with acid-ammunition, powerfull on short range, in reverse one with energy only powerfull on high range, something between, but please NO best. Get players the opportunity to stick to their style, not only inchoosing a profession, butbytheir usedequippmentaswell.
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Compliment to some real inovations:
- Fantastic Costumer Support ingame - never seen such
- Dev-Player-Forum
- Character Creation
- Crafting-System
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Final suggestion:
I´ve seen a very nice idea once playing AO.While playing AO you´re able to make use of the following feature:You can pull every item in the chat-box (even a "schematic of your character") .After this it appears as a link. You can send it like normal messages to everyone everywhere. By clicking on such a link the "Examine-Window"shows up. So everyone cancheck thestats ofyour item. It makes trading much more easy and saves you the time wastedin typing down all the stats by hand. Surely much work to integrate such a system, but neverthelesssomething worth to take over in SWG.
Treat me wrong on what I am,
Vyc out. =)