Development Cycle Archive

One word: POSSIBLE

I have been playing this game since Beta 3, and watching it progress years before that; All the while dreaming of becoming a Jedi in SWG. Yet after all this time it still eludes me. I'll admit, the one thing that brought me to this game is the hope that I would become a Jedi... actually it's themain thing I like about Star Wars. And after all these years, having nothing to show for my hard work has frustrated me beyond that which I could ever explain. But I refuse to give up after all I have put into this game. I have a job & school to balance, so for me it's just not possible to master 30 professions just to play the one profession I actually want to play. All I ask is this: make it possible for all players to obtain without making us have to wait another six months to a year. You've made it hard enough, why make us suffer even longer? I understand you guys need to keep people paying monthly subscriptions, but making FS take so much time to obtain is not the way to go about it. Extended subscriptions will come from making a fun, dynamic game, not from forcing us to spend a lifetime to accomplish a goal. In my case, I'm tired of the grind to FS. If I forsee another time consuming process that still only grants a chance of becoming FS I won't be able to force myself to continue. From what I hear the actual Jedi xp needed to progress through Jedi is so high you would keep my subscription longer if I were to become a Jedi as opposed to making it another 6-12 month grind to become FS.

It shouldn't be this hard to play a game the way we want to play it... should it? Please, just don't make us have to spend another six months to become FS. I've waited long enough, please make it possible this time for people like me (who don't have 20 hours a day to devote to a game) to achieve FS in areasonable amount of time. Thanks for listening regardless.

Re - Skills, abilities, equipment, quests and other suggestions for a Jedi character. Does not deal with becoming FS.

I've put some thoughts over a couple posts. One post for Initiate/Padawan, one for Apprentice/Knight, one for Guardian/Master, one for Master.

Initiate/Padawan link -

Apprentice/Knight link -

Guardian/Master link -

Master link -

Highlights.

- Adds new skills and abilities, such as Animal Savagery, Force Leap, Blood Surge, My Grandeur, Vehicle Mastery, Force Purification, A Hate so Deep, Nature’s Love, Jedi Mind Trick (new), Shield of Calm, and Hear the Shadows Move, and more!

- Both shared and Unique Lightside and Darkside skills. Unique skills that reflect Lightside harmony and Darkside hatred. One-of-a-kind Skills at the advanced levels.

- Incorporates Robes, including a color hierarchy for Dark and Light Jedi. Armored Jedi not allowed in this design.

- Gives Jedi skills to find or make Force Crystals – no more AFK macro bots

- Awesome Jedi equipment, including boots, gloves, jewelry, rings, and belts

- Epic Quests and minor quests – Read the Sith Histories, Befriend a Force-sensitive Pet, The Imperial Library, Find the lost Lightsaber schematic, Uncover the Droid Master’s Experiment, Betray your Trainer, and more! Unique Darkside and Lightside quests.

My vision

quests:

There should be different kind of types, like Dilivering, Obtaining, Destroying, Infiltration, Hunting.
Your can get these al from your jedi trainer (as if he got notes from the high Jedi cousil)

Dilivering:
This should be missions like Picking up Items somewhere and Diliver them back to the trainer (items that are of no value to you, but are for your trainer) By compleeting much of these quest your trainer can provide you special lightsabres components that he made from the items you gathered for him (1 items for each 20 missions of this type).

Obtaining:
This is much the same as dilivering.
You have to find an amound of resources from a planet, and diliver it back to the trainer.
By compleeting much of these quest your trainer can provide you the best resources for your lightsabre (these resources should be generated by your trainer and must have a greater qualaty then any other resources, as aditional these resources give some extra damage or speed bonusus to the weapon. (you get enought resources to make or upgrade your lightsabre ones, for each 20 missions of this type that you do for him)

Destroying:
This is a mission that gives you additional jedi xp as a reward (variation from 100-2000). For this missions you'll have to destroy a camp or building (which mostly has MOBS around it, these mobs are yellow and will only turn red 10 seconds after when you destroyed it.) If you kill the mobs you will get closer to the dark side, if you run away and spare there life you will get closer to the Light side.

Infiltration:
This is a special type of mission, that askes you to sneak in a base and get the information your trainer askes for (this can be information you get from conversing or information from a datapad or teminal).
You can choose to converse with the mobs around it and pleese them that you will dot hem no harm (This gets you closer to the Light side).
But you can also attack them and obtain the information from a terminal or datadisk, as can you get it from the leader of the mobs while he's dead (loot the corpse) (this will get you closoer to the dark side)

Hunting:
Your trainer wants you to take down a group of creatures that terror the people around it. This is the most common mission which will give you good Jedi xp as a reward. This mission end in a short duration. If you become incapped or being killed, or you yust don't get there in time you failed to protect the people and you will get closer to the dark side.(as it is much easier to go to the dark side then to the light side) But the light side gives you better jedi xp.


Standings:
Someone with +5000 to a faction side (light or dark) becaumes of that faction (this unlockes new Title names)
You will also become of a faction side if you have -5000 of the other faction. (note that you will stay of that faction untill your standing drops below +2500 or the other faction increases above -2500. when you arent of a faction, your neutral and can talk to your old trainer again , if you switched to the dark side.

a jedi can't get missions from a faction terminal, as a Light jedi is a rebel and a Dark jedi(sith) is an Imperial.

Ones you become of the dark side the jedi trainer no longer wants to talk to you, instead you will be given a
new trainer will provide you from new missions.

If you get killed by a rebel or Imperial in combat you will lose Jedi faction as if it was Imperial or rebel standing.

Note froma ll this that it is easyer to become a dark jedi, then become a jedi of the Light side.

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Version 2.2 - Revised 2/11/2004

• Let each side keep all the powers they have now. Many sources of the EU state that "powers aren't good or evil, it's how you use them," and that is a valid point. Nerfing one side or the other isn't going to help that, or make anyone happy.
  
• Give BOTH sidesSOME state defenses to Dizzy, Stun, Knockdown, Intimidate, and Posture change, which they are currently both lacking (How many times in the movies did you see Jedi get dizzied, stunned, or knocked off balance? Not often).
  
• Give BOTH sides some melee and ranged Damage Mitigation.
  
  
  
  • MeleeMitigation 1 at Initiate
    
  • Ranged Mitigation 1 at Padawan
    
  • Melee Mitigation2 at Apprentice
    
  • Ranged Mitigation2 at Knight
    
  • Melee Mitigation3 at Guardian
    
  • Ranged Mitigation3 at Master
  
  
• Add some single-state state heals to the lower parts of the tree. There needs to be SOME way to heal states before Guardian.
  
  
  
  • Move Stop Bleeding to the Padawan Box.
    
  • Add Heal Stun and Heal Blindto the Healing 4 box of Initiate.
    
  • Add Heal Intimidate to theApprentice box.
    
  • Add Heal Dizzy to the 4th Knight healing box.
    
  • Heal States, the all-in-one, should remain where it is.
  
  
• Balance the Force Power & Force Regeneration amounts to be of equal effectiveness for both sides.
  
  
  
  • Currently, Dark Jedi end up with +30 Force Regeneration.
    
  • Currently, Light Jedi end up with +58 Force Regeneration, which isalmost twice as much.
    
  • The 1000 extra Force Power Dark Jedi get to compensate is only about 15% more.
    
  • almost 100% more Force Regeneration Vs. 15% more Force Power does NOT seem to be balanced.
    
  • Either make the stats equal on both sides,give Dark Jedi More extra Force Power to compensate, or make the difference between the two regeneration rates less, to balance it out.
  
  
• Change the Saber crafting system to be different for both sides, as it was in the continuity.
  
  
  
  • Light Jedi foraged for crystals. Light Jedi did not take the time to make Red Sabers, because their sabers were for self defense, not to attack with.
    
  • Dark Jedi crafted synthetic ones. Only Dark Jedi used Red sabers, and Red sabers had stronger cutting power than the other types.
    
  • Stop all Red Force Crystal Drops, and make Red no longer a possible color on pearls. Red Crystals should be synthetically made only, as they were in the continuity.
    
  • Make the InitiateTraining Saber blue or green, not red. Red should be a Dark Jedi only color (Look at what the kids were training with in Episode 2).
    
  • Pearls used by Dark Jedi to craft a saber, would translate the color of the pearl into its red equivalent. For instance, Light Green would become Light Red, Dark Yellow would become Dark Red, and Blue would become Red.
  
  
• Force Run 1 and Force Run 2, should not give a TEF when used.
  
  
  
  • It's generally understood that the purpose of the system is to make Jedi that are "showing off" their powers around others, to make themselves open to attack
    
  • However, from a common sense standpoint, to an observer, a Jedi running using Force Run would look no different to that person than a Non-Jedi using Burst Run.
    
  • The TEF generated leaves the Jedi in a "screwed if you do, screwed if you don't" situation when attacked by a Bounty Hunter around others. They are left with the choice to either use Force Run to get away, and make themselves vulnerable to even more attackers, or not use it and allow that one person to pound on them as they try to get away.
    
  • The Force Run skills are the ONLY Jedi skills that cost Force Points, but do not give any Jedi XP when used. Balance out this disadvantage by removing the generated TEF.
  
  
• Give Jedi some Restricted First-Strike Ability
  
  
  
  • Currently, with the TEF system in place, Jedi can never attack anyone, who doesn't attack them first, unless they go overt, which cannot be removed without dying.
    
  • Give Jedi the ability to attack Overts of the opposing faction, as well as TEFed Coverts.
    
  • Make the TEF on Bounty Hunter Missions two-way.
    
  • Give Jedi the ability to retaliate against those who attack same-faction members in their group.
  
  
• Give each side some new, unique skills, that the other side doesn't have, to make each fit its role better.

Light Jedi

"A Jedi uses the force for knowledge, and defense, NEVER to attack." -Yoda-

• Light Jedi should be the Masters of Defense, and their force skills should reflect this.
  
• Give Light Jedi an effectiveness multiplier to all healing skills, so they can heal themselves better.
  
  
  
  • For powers that cannot be made more effective, such as Total Heal Self, and the heal states skills, give them a cost reduction instead.
    
  • Givea force cost penalty for using offensive skills, such as Lightning, Choke, Weaken, and Intimidate.
  
  
• At Light Jedi Apprentice, grant the ability to forage for crystals.
  
  
  
  • Allow this "quest" to be done only once per day.
    
  • /crystalsense - gives the Jedia random planet to travel to, where they may try to find a crystal.
    
  • /crystalfind - upon arriving at the designated planet, this command will generate a waypoint on that planet. Upon reaching the waypoint, the ability is used again.Makeit possible to take several attempts tofind theexact crystal location (kind of like a treasure map, only you won't be finding a CDEF pistol and 1 unit of crappy metal). Upon finding the "true" crystal location, a message is given, indicating so.
    
  • /crystalextract - The Jedi uses the force to extract the crystal from deep underground. This takes several minutes, during which the Jedi cannot move, or perform any other actions, without aborting the attempt. Using this ability gives the Jedia TEF. Depending on the final location of the crystal, the Jedi may or may not find it worth the risk to extract it. Allow crystals to be found anywhere, except within municipal zones.
    
  • Give crystals found through this ability a significantly lower Force Cost Modifier, than crystals looted, or crafted by Dark Jedi.
    
  • Twin Crystals should be findable with this ability, but only after Guardian level is attained. It would be frustrating to constantly find useless crystals with this ability.
    
  • Make these crystals most likely to be Blue or Green, the two most commonly seen colors.
    
    
    
    • Yellow, Orange, Purple, and Brown should be possible to find, but much less likely. This wouldadd to the coolness effect of having a "rare" saber color.
    
    
  • Make these crystals untradeable, to preventpeople from farming these to sell (Jedi should have no need for money anyway).
    
  • Grant 10,000 Jedi xp for a successfully extracted crystal. This will give Jedi a way to earn xp, other than by running around killing stuff all the time, and would compensate the Jedi for the amount of time spent finding the crystal, which could potentially take up to an hour or more. The "once per day" rule would keep this from being farmed.
  
  
• Modified Power: Jedi Mind Trick- Jedi try to avoid conflict wherever possible, and this should be their main tool for doing so. Keep its current functionality when used on pets, but add the following effect: when used on any player, it renders that player unable to attack the Jedi for 30 seconds. Give this power the following restrictions:
  
  
  
  • Can only be used on one player at a time, with a cooldown of a couple of minutes.
    
  • Will not work on Other Jedi (Obviously).
    
  • Will not work on any player who is a Master of at least one Elite Profession (Mind Tricks only work on the weak-minded).
    
  • In other words, Novice BH (i.e. Greedo) can be Mind Tricked, but a Master BH (i.e. Jango Fett) cannot.
  
  
• New Power: Force Absorb - When activated, provides a chance to absorb incoming force power attacks, from Player Dark Jedi, and from NPC's such as Nightsisters.20-30% chance at Apprentice, 40-50% chance at Knight, 60-70% chance at Master.
  
• New Power: Force Area Heals- Heals all same faction members/group members within a 20m radius of the Jedi.
  
  
  
  • These would be for damage only, not wounds.
    
  • Heal Health Area at Guardian Healing 1.
    
  • Heal Action Area at Guardian Healing 2.
    
  • Heal MInd Area at Guardian Healing 3.
    
  • Heal All Area at Guardian Healing 4.
    
  • Total Heal Other would remain Single Target only.
  
  
• New Power: ForceFocus - A Jedi should be able to calmtheir mind in the middle of battle, concentrating alltheir efforts ontheir own defense. This skill, when active, should make the Jedi much harder to hit,damage, and knock off balance.
  
  
  
  • Apprentice: +5 Lightsaber Block, +10Melee/RangedDefense, 20% reduction to all damage inflicted, +15All State Defenses
    
  • Knight: +10 Lightsaber Block, +20Melee/RangedDefense, 35% reduction to all damage inflicted, +30All State Defenses.
    
  • Master: +15 Lightsaber Block, +30Melee/RangedDefense, 50% reduction to all damage inflicted, +45All State Defenses.
    
  • Keep in mind these numbers would assume that some level of natural defenses/damage mitigationare given to Jedi, and these would be a BOOST to those levels. Otherwise, the numbers would need to be higher for this to be an effective skill.

Dark Jedi

"Use your aggressive feelings! Let the hateflow through you!!" -The Emperor-

• Dark Jedi should be the Masters of Offense, and their skills should reflect this.
  
• Give Dark Jedi an effectiveness multiplier to all offensive skills, so they can deal out more damage.
  
  
  
  • For powers that cannot be made more effective, such as Intimidate, give a cost reduction instead.
    
  • Givea force cost penalty for using healing skills, such as Battle Fatigue, Wound Heals, and Damage Heals.
  
  
• Give Dark Jedi Schematics for Crafting their own Red Force Crystals.
  
  
  
  • These crystals should require a unique new resource, that only Dark Jedi can survey for, and extract.
    
  • Dark Jedi should have to seek out and survey this material themselves, rather than just have a friend's main character plop down a harvester.
    
  • Make the damage and speed statistics onthem superior to regular Force Crystals.
    
  • Make these crystals untradeable. Dark Jedi should NOT be crafting crystals for their initiate friends who have not fallen to the Dark Side, or selling them to Light Jedi (Both of these situations would be REALLY stupid, and would happen without this restriction).
    
  • Apprentice:Grant a schematic for a Red Force Crystal.
    
  • Knight: Grant a schematic for a Superior Red Force Crystal.
    
  • Guardian: Grant a schematic for a Red Twin Force Crystal
    
  • Master:Grant a schematic for anUltimate Red ForceCrystal and a Superior Red Twin ForceCrystal.
    
  • Pearls would still be useable by Dark Jedi, but the outcome color would automatically be changed into the Red equivalent of that color.
    
    
    
    • Light (Whatever) would become Light Red.
      
    • Plain (Whatever) would become Red.
      
    • Dark (Whatever) would become Dark Red.
  
  
• Modified Power: ForceLightning - Add a Knockdown Effect to Lightning Single2, and Lightning Cone 2. (Luke sure seemed to get knocked down by it).
  
• New Power: Force Drain - Steals the Target's HAM, using it to recharge the user's HAM.
  
  
  
  • These would cause damage to the target, and return a % of the damage done to the target to the Dark Jedi's own pool.
    
  • Force Drain Health at Guardian Healing 1.
    
  • Force Drain Action at Guardian Healing 2.
    
  • Force Drain Mind at Guardian Healing 3.
    
  • Force Drain All at Guardian Healing 4.
  
  
• New Power: ForceStealth - "The Dark Side Clouds Everything" - well it sure should. If Palpatine can cloud himself from the entire Jedi Order, including Yoda, a Dark Jedi in this game should be able to cloud himself from one person following him. This could work in several ways, depending on what is possible, and easiest to code. It might even be possible to include all three of these (such as /forcestealth1, /forcestealth2 and /forcestealth3), so that it would be harder for another player to catch on (besides, deception takes many forms).
  
  
  
  • #1 - Hide the Dark Jedi's dot from the radar.
    
  • #2 -Makethe Dark Jedi'sradar dota different color to fool anyone that would be looking. For instance, make his name and dot purple to the player looking at it, even though that Dark Jedi might be TEFed and would still be targetable (the person looking mightnot figure out he is TEFed, or not figure out soon enough for the Dark Jedi to escape)
    
  • #3 - Removethe Dark Jedi'sname from over his head, or replace it with a Fake, randomly-generatedNPC name and title.
  
  
• New Power: ForceRage - Harnessing the power oftheir anger,Dark Jedi unleash adevastating flurry of attacks againsttheir opponent. When used, this should give the Dark Jedi greatly increased Movement Speed, Attack Speed, Attack Damage, Attack Accuracy, and the ability to knocktheir opponent off balance. Grant this skill at Apprentice, and make its effectiveness increase with level.
  
  
  
  • Apprentice: 60 second duration, +35 1H/2H Lightsaber Speed, 50% bonus to all damage inflicted, +50 1H/2H Lightsaber Accuracy, 10% chance of Knockdown added to all basic attacks.
    
  • Knight:90 second duration, +70 1H/2H/PA Lightsaber Speed, 100% bonus to all damage inflicted, +100 1H/2H/PA Lightsaber Accuracy, 20% chance of Knockdown added to all basic attacks.
    
  • Master:120 second duration, +100 1H/2H/PA Lightsaber Speed, 150% bonus to all damage inflicted, +150 1H/2H/PA Lightsaber Accuracy, 30% chance of Knockdown added to all basic attacks.

There should for sure be Jedi and Sith missions... A combination of Holocron Unlocking and Force Mission XP could work. One thing is for sure, if and when a change occurs, those of us who have unlocked Holocron Professions should be given Force XP equal to Holocron skills they have achieved.

I think one way to start off your quest to being closer to the force would be to find a holocron and then it would tell you the begining of your quest.

I have been

I have been following the quest to become a Jedi through Star Wars Galaxies for many months now. I have mastered scout, Ranger, and am approaching pistoleer.

What I hear among players in the community is that nobody is really sure what it takes to become a Jedi. There wasa vague holocron system which nobody understood fully, but which is being disbanded, I understand. This only further clouds ourunderstandingof what it takes to become a Jedi.

If the developers want to stay close to the Star Wars culture and themes, which were presented in the movies, then they err by making the Jedi quest such a mystery. I don't see that it was such a mystery to Luke, Anakin, or any of the other characters who wanted to become Jedi. Didn't they simply apply to and attend the Jedi Academy? Wasn't the Jedi Academy like a college ... a training program open to all really as long as you showed some aptitued for completing the course? Why then do the developers make it such a mystery in Star Wars Galaxies? Why is it this inocuous, amorphous "thing" that nobody seems to be able to grasphold of ... like trying to pick up spilled mercury .... something that seems to just come upon you by chance or serendipity, if you happen to be "chosen"?

I suggest that the developers follow a much more rational course. Create a Jedi Academy. Create a skill tree like any other skill tree, and require all players to train to become Jedi. Make it a difficult tree, so that many will not have the skills, the patience, the intellect, the compassion, the temperment, the generosity, whatever ... to complete the course. Then, if any player meets the test, let him become a Jedi. If he becomes a Jedi and then fails to perform up to the standard of a Jedi, then take away the Jedi rank, and make him start over.

Make the qualifications for the Jedi academy reasonable. A Jedi candidate should be required to master an elite combat profession. After that,let the rigors of the academy itself testwhether a player has what it takes to become a Jedi. As in the movies, the padawan is tested, and if found worthy, is accepted into the ranks of the Jedi.

A system like this is needed to bring focus to SWG and give players hope that someday they will be able to be Jedi and help bring down the evil empire.

Here goes…

Path to Jedi:

Create a master list of tasks (a big list, a really big list), from which a random selection of tasks will be chosen for each account, say 100 or more but not a fixed amount. I will refer to the player’s list as the FS (Force Sensitive not Force Slot) task list. These tasks could be anything like completing a specific theme park, crafting a shirt, harvesting 100 units of Dathomir incest meat, sampling 1000 units of minerals, getting married, killing 20 rancors, visiting a specific POI, owning a small Tatooine house, meeting a specific NPC or cooking biscuits (you get the idea). In addition to the above, this player FS task list would also include a static list of required force sensitive specific quests.

Each task on the master list would be assigned 3 cryptic, brainteaser type descriptions or hints, each one equally cryptic (more on that later). The tasks on the master list should not be too difficult, like kill 100 Krayts, but should represent a wide variety of possible activities not just quest, combat or faction related things – definitely not mastering professions, although it may be necessary to get some basic training in a starting profession. The hints themselves should not be easy or obvious, but solvable.

To help players along, there could be random NPC spawns that reward the successful competition of their missions with one of the hints associated with a player’s FS task list. These would be one-time use NPCs. Another nice feature would be a new command such as, /fstaskcount, which would return the number of completed tasks, but not the number outstanding. These NPC missions would not be a requirement, just a means of helping a player along.

What I mean by one-time use NPCs is this, say a FS task list NPC spawns and gives a player a mission. Things could happen one of 2 ways, (1) the NPC gives the player a standard mission, but rewards them with a hint or (2) the NPC gives the player a special mission and promises to give the player a “special tip” for completing the mission. Well that player would know that it is a FS task list NPC and may tells all of his/her friends about it. So they come to take the mission too, as well as any other players that happen to wander by or catch wind of it. The NPC would send them off in different directions BUT, the NPC will “leave” after the first player to complete their mission returns, giving the others players a “Mission has Failed” message.

Unlike the holocron approach, this will encourage players to explore the galaxy and seek out new game play experience without having to drastically alter their characters professions. It also has the benefit of not creating a rare loot (holo) economy because the clues to unlocking the FS would come in a random order from random NPCs, appearing anywhere on any planet at any time. If the task clues are cleverly written, they would be a lot of fun to figure out and friends could work them out together.

The reason for 3 clues is that it would slow down the creation of an inevitable “Post your FS task list quest solution here” thread. First off, the master list would need to be very big, that with the random FS task list for each account, the randomly selected hint and the rarity and lifespan of the FS task list NPCs, the mysteries should be slow to unravel.

Solving or being given the solution to a FS task list item may be the easy part in the end; after all, knowing what you have to do and doing it are 2 completely different things. One final note on this, the hints and tasks on the master list could be replaced or changed at anytime without disrupting the players’ progress, which would help foil the list makers out there.


So what’s next?

I lean toward a player’s main character becoming force sensitive as apposed to opening a force slot character, but the following could be adapted to a force slot character.

The opportunity to become force sensitive should only be available to the player’s main character – no second character. (I have suggestions farther down as to how to deal with current Jedi characters and those who have invested a significant amount of time on their holocron “quest”)

Your main character just completed his/her last FS task and you get the wonderful mystic music and message, so what happens now?

A new, single level profession is added to your available skill trees and you gain a force meter that gages your tendencies toward the light or dark side of the force. This could be called/considered, the Force Sensitive profession. Now, the Force Sensitive profession starts at Force Initiate and ends at Force Adept (equivalent of mastering a starting profession) and does not have anything to do with being a Jedi, although, mastering it will be required before the opportunity to pursue the path of a Jedi can become available.

Whatever your faction affiliation or lack of, i.e. Rebel, Imperial or Neutral, would be retained. The only thing that has changed in a characters life is the sudden discovery that they can use the force. This means, that unless you tell someone or someone sees you practicing the force, no one will know or be able to tell that you are “different”. Your bio will still show what you have mastered, and until you decide to surrender your current professions, those titles will remain available to you.

Factioned characters that become force sensitive could still conduct business as usual, with the addition of gaining a TEF for using force powers. Force sensitives should be exempt from BH missions, mainly because they are not Jedi and the galaxy is crawling with force sensitive NPCs that the Empire isn’t too concerned with. Neutrals however will gain a GEF (global enemy flag) making them attackable by Rebels, Imperials and other Neutrals when they use the force. This makes the neutral force sensitive player character akin to an NPC force sensitive in the wild. This could be considered the price for their indifference to the GCW and would encourage those people to join a faction, unless of course they enjoy the challenge.


So what’s on the Force Sensitive tree?

Basically all the same items that are on the Jedi Initiate tree minus everything related to lightsabers, minus the Jedi titles (replaced by “Force Initiate” to “Force Sensitive Adept” and other familiar force-sensitive titles such as “Force Mystic” for the 4 th box titles), plus the addition of a few new force skills.

The new branch of the Force Sensitive profession, the one replacing the lightsaber branch, could be a Passive Force skill branch, that is, force skills/skill-modifiers that do not cause a TEF for using or are always on, like defensive skill mods. Skills such as basic camping, foraging, harvesting, terrain negotiation and natural resists, would be perfect in this branch.

Experience would be gained only by using force sensitive skills, unlike Jedi that get most of their experience from lightsaber combat.

Completing a skill box in the Force Sensitive profession would require a lot of training to gain the necessary experience. Once the required experience is gained, the force sensitive must seek out a Force Sensitive NPC trainer. Not the safe, static ones, but the ones you find in the wild on Dantooine and Dathomir. Once you find one, you would try to convince it to train you in your available skill box through a special radial menu option that would appear for FS characters only.

If you have a good faction standing with or the NPC is non-aggressive, you can try to convince them to train you. Of course most of the time they will want something done, or could charge you a handsome fee for their tutelage.

Opening the radial menu would start a menu dialog with the “wild” trainer that can have a couple outcomes depending on your choices.
(1) The NPC agrees and gives you a mission to complete your training. (if the trainer is killed or removed from the game world the player could lose the mission or it wouldn’t matter, simply complete the quest and you would gain the training at that time without needing to return)
(2) The trainer doesn’t like you and refuses (you are done with this trainer, find another as this one won’t talk to you again)
(3) You offended the trainer and it attacks you.

If you have bad faction points with the NPC type, say a Nightsister, then you would get attacked, as usual, and you wouldn’t be able to initiate a dialog with them.
These “wild” trainers should be categorized and flagged as dark or light trainers. Getting training from a dark side trainer will move your force meter in that direction, as a light side trainer will move it in the other.

These trainers are not Jedi, they don’t care about you and your noble or not so noble intentions, be prepared to pay.

There are 2 options that could be implemented to find these “wild” trainers, (a) search for them in the wild or (b) use a new, TEF force power called /findmytrainer, when you arrive on a “force-sensitive planet”. Using /findmytrainer repeatedly would locate other trainers, but because they are “Real” force sensitives, they may be dead by the time you find them as player characters can attack them.

The Force Sensitive profession and later Jedi professions would have to cost skill points (assuming your main becomes force sensitive). This would allow for a transition of skill points from other professions, should a player decide to go beyond the Force Sensitive Adept.

I don’t believe that the Force Sensitive profession would make existing “mature” characters overly powerful. They will not have the use of a lightsaber but will gain abilities that give them an edge. The Force Sensitive tree should have the same skill costs as a regular starting profession, but once you enter the Jedi trees, the cost should be higher than usual, which will quickly force skill points away from the characters other professions.


Finding your Jedi Trainer

So, Force Sensitive Adept wasn’t enough for you? Its time then, for you to unlock your Jedi Trainer. Finding your Jedi trainer should be similar to the way a BH finds a mark, only instead of using mission terminals, investigative skills, droids and spies, you could use a new TEF power granted at the FS Adept level called /foresee. When a FS Adept uses /foresee, they enter a meditative state that will generate random feedback in the way of text messages over a period of time based on your force pool, that is to say, every second you /foresee uses up force pool points.

The messages, should any appear, would be clues to finding your Jedi Trainer. The catch is, you must be at a place where the force is strong in order to use this ability and once you have used a spot, you would have to find another.

This requires the use of another new TEF FS Adept force skill that could be called /forceseek. /forceseek could be implemented in a similar fashion as surveying - guiding you from one planet/location to another for more meditation. Be warned, some places would be strong with the dark side of the force, if you seek out clues to your Jedi trainer and /foresee in dark places, you would begin a journey down the dark path… leading to a Dark Trainer, of course a dark trainer would not be interested in you if your force meter was attuned to the light, but by the time you find him/her, you could be well on your way.Jedi trainers would be static NPCs like the current trainer system; the only difference is that finding them becomes a quest.

Found him, but he doesn’t think you are worthy for training and tells you to come back later. Well, Jedi trainers are aligned to the light or dark side of the force. A trainer would require that you reach a certain level of dark or light before accepting you. (More on the force meter later)


Epic Jedi quests

Before your trainer will accept you as an Initiate Jedi or Dark Initiate Jedi, you must complete an epic Jedi quest that should span the galaxy, put you in moral and mortal peril and require the use of every force ability that you have gained so far. The quest should tempt you away from your “chosen” path, meaning if your potential Jedi trainer is light side, you will be tempted during your epic Jedi quest by the dark side and lose force alignment points for any indiscretions. If you loose too many force alignment points your quest will fail.

Having completed your quest, the Jedi Initiate profession (Dark or Light) is added to your list of available professions and you have become a Jedi Initiate. I hesitate to say Padawan profession because I don’t know if the term Dark Padawan is appropriate.

The Jedi Initiate profession would be the same as it is now. The passive branch from the Force Sensitive profession would be replaced with the lightsaber branch and the other branches could offer slightly improved versions of the heal, power and manipulation branches.


Jedi Experience:

Jedi Experience need not be an endless slaughter. A simple solution to this aspect of experiencing a Jedi is Jedi practice droids. I don’t remember if they have a proper name or not, but the practice droid that Luke uses on the Falcon could be crafted by droid engineers. The Jedi could release up to 3 practice droids at a time (outside and with TEF of course) and gain a moderate amount of experience training with them. The experience points would not be as much as fighting “live” opponents, but enough to make it a viable option for players who don’t like PvE for Jedi xp. Each successful hit (be it saber or force) and saber block will earn the Jedi xp. The droids will NOT deathblow, but will cause the Jedi damage, which will allow the Jedi to earn healing xp. Practice droids could be activated by grouping them and assigning a command to begin and stop training - /tellpet starttraining and /tellpet stoptraining.

Overtime the practice droids would wear down and need to be repaired and eventually replaced, making a new market for droid engineers, both in repair kits and construction. These would be usable by Jedi for training only.

Completing a skill box on the Jedi Initiate tree would be similar to completing a skill box on the Force Sensitive tree. Experience through healing, combat and force use, then return to your Jedi Trainer. Your Jedi Trainer will require a quest to be completed before consenting to train you – this would happen for every skill box.

After the initiate tree would come the Jedi and Guardian trees as it is now.

So, just to review, I am suggesting Force Sensitive, Jedi Initiate, Jedi Knight and Jedi Guardian trees, upping the trees required for Jedi to 4.

Although there is nothing that says double-ended lightsaber skills can’t be learned by Jedi, I would suggest that it be restricted in SWG to Dark Jedi as a perk on their tree. Jedi could earn a dual wield skill as their perk. I don’t see a need for any other types of lightsaber.


Force Meter:

The force meter is a basic concept. The meter shouldn’t have a maximum or minimum cap, but positive would be for light side Jedi and negative for the dark side. No cap means that the longer you are on the light or dark side, the harder it will be for you to change your alignment. There should be a minimum amount of points required before your Jedi trainer will train you. Say –100 for dark and +300 for light. For example: You locate a light Jedi trainer and your force meter reads +200, although the trainer will recognize that you are not aligned to the dark side, he would instruct you to further prove yourself worthy before he will consider you for apprenticeship. Gaining points should always be more difficult than losing them.

There should be things in the game that have a light/dark bonuses/penalties associated with them.
For example: A Dark Jedi kills a Dark Jedi and gains dark force points, a Jedi kills a Jedi and loses light force points, a Dark Jedi kills a Light Jedi and gains dark force points, a Jedi kills a Dark Jedi and gains light points. In this example the Dark Jedi gains for killing his own kind whereas the Jedi loses points for killing another Jedi.

If your force meter drops below your Jedi trainer’s required level, you will not be able to receive any more training until you bring it back up. If your force meter drops below 0 for Jedi or above 0 for Dark Jedi, your trainer would abandon you for good. (you would have to seek another)

For example: Say you are training on the light side and you drop below 0. Your Jedi trainer will no long acknowledge you. You would have to seek out another, but the catch would be that light side points would now be 2 times as difficult to gain. Each time you cross over the 0 boundary, it would become more and more difficult to go back, eventually it would become almost impossible. Also, if you are a part of the Rebel alliance and fall to the dark side, you will get the boot from the Rebel faction and become neutral. Don’t worry though, the Imperials might consider you after a 1 month’s cooling off period as a neutral (remember that neutrals would get GEFs). =) This would apply to Imperial Dark Jedi moving toward the light as well. Neutrals would not gain or loose faction points based on their force alignment. They would have to earn faction points the way everyone else does, through faction missions but a Dark Neutral even with enough Rebel faction points would not be permitted to join)

Other ways for gaining and loosing force meter points could be through missions (ones you should take gain you points and ones you shouldn’t will loose you points). Some things may only affect the force meter in one direction, for example, a Jedi killing a non-hostile NPC (yellow dot) could loose light points for that, whereas a Dark Jedi would neither gain nor loose.

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