Development Cycle Archive

First and foremost the TEF and Group TEF (GTEF) systems must be revamped or at the very least adjusted in such a way to close the loopholes and associated poor game design flaws with them.

The TEF or Temporary enemy flag is one of the core designs which allow combat between players of opposing factions to take place. Primarily the TEF was a way to ensure that players in covert status could be held accountable for their actions when they choose to get involved with or against a faction in the GCW. Some of the core examples of the TEF design include flagging a covert player as a PvP target when they engage factional NPCs, this allows overt players to prevent the enemy from killing their factional allies but more importantly help prevent the enemy from weakening static NPC defenses, most notably at both NPC faction and player faction bases. Other examples which cause covert players to get a TEF is when they attempt to interfere with an on going PvP battle, by healing or trading an overt or TEF having covert player ally. By choosing to interfere with the conflict they become subject to the risks of PvP conflict. I do not believe people have problems with the above stated systems but rather take issue with how the effects are applied, one example being ejected from your own home for trading with an overt in your house and the overt remains inside.

Another aspect of the TEF was to encourage grouping and team play. People in beta expressed dissatisfaction with being forced to watch their fellow group members get killed by other players while being able to effectively do nothing about it. In this respect group TEF was born. Though similar to the TEFs described above there is an important difference in group TEF. In the above situations when you gained a TEF, you got a flag on you at that point which made you subject to all the risks of PvP however you could not initiate PvP conflict, in simple terms you were more of a target then an offensive combatant. Group TEF does not flag you, you are not subject to the consequences of PvP, and in effect you as part of a group who is attacked are given the ability to initiate PvP on the aggressors of your teammate. During this entire period of when you have the choice to attack you are still in effect covert and there fore unattackable. People use or abuse depending on your point of view the group TEF to launch ambush attacks, preposition themselves in combat, use a group TEF to continually fight post cloning, and to defend fellow team members.

Reasoning: Coverts are using and abusing group TEF to get off a first strike attack while they are unattackable which unbalances game play by placing the benefit in favor of the covert player. Group TEF allows players to form grief squads of 19 coverts and 1 overt to enter an area; the Overt is purposefully there to get TEFs so the covert group members can decimate the opposition who cannot fight back until fired upon. Having first strike ability in a game that generally rewards the person who fires first with victory this system is extremely over powering.

Solutions: The player base is divided on how to resolve the issue, the largest call is for PvP to be reduced to an Overt vs. Overt only situation and to do away with the TEF system completely, however this would be more then likely impossible to code given how the TEF system is the very basis of the entire combat syste.

Alternatively the basic desire is to have all players accept the risks of PvP before being given the opportunity to offensively engage in it.

Commonly this is referred to by the player base as a Temporary overt flag. The general idea is that when a GTEF is passed to the group members and you as a covert group member decide to initiate an attack on a hostile target you immediately become attackable yourself, however your first offensive action is delayed for a period of time (30-60 seconds is recommended) meaning you must accept the risks before being able to offensively participate.

Alternative suggestions are to shift the decision point of being involved and accepting responsibility at the decision point of deciding to group with an overt member of your faction. When you group with an Overt you are immediately given a temporary overt status flag. Covert members with a TEF who are attacked while grouped would in this situation not pass a GTEF to fellow group mates.

The key difference in temporary overt status over a regular TEF status is the fact that as a temporary overt you are attackable by all and have the ability to attack opposing faction members with a TEF or are overt, however in temporary overt status you may not use the faction specific pets, perks, or participate in overt only actions such as setting or disrupting base destruct sequences.

Abuse of GTEF to continually Revenge TEF (post cloning):

Reasoning: People use being in a group to purposefully allow a fellow group member who died to get a new TEF via the group TEF system post cloning. This leads to a series of repeated attacks and in effect when a skilled “team” of group TEF abusers use the tactic to revenge TEF leads to near endless conflict, making battle pointless without end.

Solutions: With instant respawning and the ability to attack through a passed group TEF, battles simply cannot be won through any sort of planning or skill, but instead are a matter of attrition. A great majority of the PvP encounters in the game are won by the side that refuses to give up and performs the most continual GTEF type attacks post cloning.

Long ago in the FPS genre of games it was realized that continual respawning for a never ending battle did not exactly retain the attention of the elder players. Gradually over the years it has become widely recognized that battles simply must end at some point so that a certain amount of accomplishment could be felt or at least obtained by successfully defeating your enemy in battle. The majority of FPS games now prevent a player’s re-entry into a battle after being killed. A similar style approach to PvP is required for SWG.

A great many suggestions have been made as to how to resolve the situation however the best is probably the simplest. Already SWG tracks whether or not a player dies as a result of factional combat or not, and uses this information to determine whether or not to apply decay to the players items. This exact same check could be used to see if a player died a factional death and if so, apply a temporary neutral flag status on the player.

A temporary neutral flag would in fact be the exact opposite of a TEF. While flagged temporarily neutral a player could have no interaction with any player or factional NPCs beyond what a normal neutral player can do. This temporary neutral state should last approximately 15 minutes so that skirmishes have a chance to end before these already once defeated participants can have an opportunity to re-enter the engagement via going overt or using a GTEF. 15 minutes is recommended as a result of a polling of player opinion on the GCW forums and 15-20 minutes was the average suggested length of time a 10 vs. 10 player battle should last, battles of that size and smaller are generally the common fights seen throughout the day as skirmishes near cloning facilities and larger battles tend to use doctors to resuscitate the fallen allies of your faction.

Reasoning: Covert crafters who do business with overt players out of their private residence are ejected from their own homes while the overt player who passed them the TEF remains inside. The Overt person is allowed inside that crafters home because they have not been in combat recently, them passing a 5 minute TEF to the crafter ejecting the crafter from their own home is highly annoying and has diminished covert crafter personal dealings with overt players, So to get personal attention generally it is up to the Overt player to go covert to deal with player crafters, this reduces the number of overt players in the game world.

Solutions: Recently Thunderheart requested that we poll the player base for possible solutions to this issue.

By and large the majority of the player base who replied see TEFs being passed via trade as an outdated system when combined with the fact there is really not enough time during a conflict for a traded item to do much good during a battle under the SWG combat system design, simply put trade TEFs should simply be removed.

Should that not be an acceptable resolution, it was alternatively suggested a TEF would only be passed as a result of a trade if the overt faction member had engaged in some sort of TEF causing activity within the past 5 minutes. Apparently this information is tracked as Overts who engage in such TEF causing activities are also blocked entry from structures so hopefully you could put in a check for an overt in this state. The end result is fairly simple though, if the person they are trading with is inside of the structure no TEF would be passed.

Reasoning: Players are in effect pulling their internet connection cables to enter a LD state then they load back in. This is being used to all players access to pass NPCs and base defenses in a covert state while actually being overt as well as being abused to allow an overt to run past enemy players as a covert to facilitate quick base destruction sequence shutdowns which are nearly impossible to prevent. Lastly player smugglers often times use the (LD) covert trick to get up and heal from a feign death state with 60 seconds of free time to heal themselves and run away effectively making them nearly impossible to defeat in PvP.

Solution: The 60 second grace period was instituted as a result of player load killing generally at shuttle and star ports. While the intent was good, the subsequent exploits which have resulted from this feature are having an undeniably widespread and negative impact in the PvP aspects of the GCW as a whole. Players must simply pull their LAN cable from their internet connection and go (LD); from there they simply reconnect and gain a 60 second covert grace period. The entire process of disconnecting and reconnecting on an average computer takes about 10 seconds, leaving the player 50 seconds covert status time to do a variety of things in.

The 60 second covert time period is commonly used to get a break in heated PvP so that you can heal your damage and wounds (most often used in conjunction with the smuggler skill feign death.). It is used to by pass factional NPCs and to enter bases during their vulnerability window while in this temporary covert status mode, it is used to get into bases and to shut down base destructs so quickly via a macro that these players are impossible to stop. The time period is further used to load a large force into an area who then can see opposing faction members who are overt and the have 50 seconds to get into position and launch unstoppable sneak attacks. These and just about any other grief tactic that could be used by having an instant covert switch in the game is being used as a result of the 60 second covert status upon loading in feature.