Development Cycle Archive
Thread: The Status of Battlefields
[NOTE: Excuse me for the extreme irony there, as that's what happened with this whole game. I wouldn't have minded waiting for SWG to release at a later date without bugs, because you only feel the pain of delay if you know when it was supposed to happen, but now is a good time to just get the job done. TC should be a dirty, buggy place, but it's where innovation should happen. Like I said devs, go crazy with your ideas. TC is SUPPOSED to have bugged additions. DO NOT delay things because you want them to hit TC perfect. Let them hit buggy and just but your back into it and hotfix the crap out of it until it's ready. Make lots of small hotfixes, not one huge hotfix that makes everything fine and dandy but takes weeks to get done; weeks that we spend in this buggy hell that you've created. Go from top priority to bottom and just GET. IT. DONE. /cheer 444 devs!]Delay between battles? Hah! It's a step towards realism, but considering it would in reality take hours to set up again, we'd be better off getting rid of delay entirely
. Waiting? Pfft. Nah, anyone can join at any time, and there's no limit to the number of PCs on each side, which won't really matter considering there are still huge armies on both sides of the playing field wether the odds are 3,720 to 1 or the other way around.
Point being, don't leave players on the sidelines. All action, all the time. If it must be done, put battlefields on their own separate planets so you don't have massive lag in one concentrated area.
Oh, and btw, no decay on battlefields. We WANT people to hang there and fight for hours on end without worry. Okay so it's not realistic, but we're having fun and in this case that fun is worth my 15$ a month.
irulual wrote:
1) Double FP bonus in BFs.
2) Make interesting things to be bought upon enterring the BF. Like a load screen with a recruiter that will rent you a Heavy Repeating Blaster (Commando use only) with tripod, or AT-STs or Military Grade Rebel Speeders. Toys to make the combat on BFs different. Make sure they are at cheap prices as they are short term use only. I.e. AT-ST for one battle, 400 FPs.
3) Leave no decay.
4) 50% FP loss as compared to outside BF.
5) Ability to use up to five Faction pets, or one AT-ST.
6) Mountable AT-STs and Rebel Speeders.
7) Give non-combat classes specific tasks to perform, but don't make them imperative to victory. I.e. Weaponsmiths can deactivate minefields for FPs. Every class should be covered however, so everyone can play a part.
Just throwing ideas out there.
That would be so fun....Hop on shuttle, arrive, commandos set up heavy defensive weapons, artisan's build trenchs and turrets and towers while the commander get in to a safe spot(you don't just go rushing across the field to attack) Npcs are running around fighting each other. If we could get speeders...drool.
*pokes devs* Err, some great ideas guys, e.g. planetary battlefields, which I have been saying for months.
Along with areas of space that should also be in contention, this would be fantastic.
However, the problems are as follows:
Hoth - just no. The thing about this is that the Rebels HAVE TO LOSE! I don't care what a lot of the whiners are going to say, about SWG being it's own game, and things don't have to be set like that, they do. This game has got to follow doctrine, we are not trying to create another Infinities here. Frankly, I get annoyed everytime I see an overt Rebel, not because I support the Imperials, or the GCW at all, but because you shouldn't be able to walk around in the streets of a city with that crest above your head, unless you are in somewhere like Anchorhead, which is too small to come under Imperial Scrutiny. Rebel recruiters etc., these should all be hidden, still in the same cities, but you should have to go to a certain apartment in a certain building, they should not be walking around in broad daylight.
Obviously there is a balance between continuity and keeping the game fun, because people will always want to feel like they have a chance. The Imperials are in control now, but they HAVE TO LOSE in the end, and the Rebels have to accept that right up until post ROTJ, they are the losers, still tiny, very lucky, and on the run, all the time. The thing about Hoth is that there is already a set winner, but I am not saying don't do it. Here are some of my ideas:
Have a new battle planet every second week, for a week. Yes it is a war, but battle is not raging constantly, because think about it, if the Imperials knew there was a constant Rebel presence ANYWHERE, they would send some Star Destroyers over, or reinforcements which the Rebels don't really have the benefit of, and nuke the f*ckers. This also gives the devs 2 weeks to create each battlefield, instead of one, and gives everyone enough time to enjoy each battle an appreciable number of times. A planet, even a battlefield only one, is a big thing people, thinkhow long we had to wait for the devs to create the first set. Something for which we should all be more grateful. Dev bashers who have nothing constructive to say, whether they be 14 year old amateur hackers from California, or 47 year old bitter divorced Swedes, have no place in this society, or on these boards. To accuse the devs, who have a lot to do, of lying, is something of a juvenile move. I can understand the frustration, but being immature about it gets us nowhere.
So how (after my little rant, sorry!) can we solve this problem? After a week of Hoth, at an undertermined time of day (so everyone can't leave beforehand), Rebels on the field will be given objectives to help carry out the evacuation. They can still help and earn points, and effectively win, by escaping. In fact, there could be a set number of people, NPC's, who must be evacuated, and the Imperials win if they kill enough, while the Rebels win if they evacuate enough.
This is only a problem with doctrine planets. Having new worlds, new battlefield planets, either not detailed or not mentioned in the SWEU, makes things a lot easier, as the winners are of course entirely decided there by the outcomes of the battle. However, it should always be more difficult for the Rebels, I'm sorry guys, but just like the Jedi, you've chosen the hard life, and if you wanna champion the cause of justice and liberty, you gotta be prepared to die for it. You can't stick it to the man and not expect to get b*tchslapped back!
First person view - again, just no. This is SWG. Not Planetside. I didn't enjoy that game, partially because the penalties for being new, i.e. bad, were so severe, and partially just cos it got boring dying and killing, endlessly. I'm sure there are PvPers who want to merge it, so they can interest their Counterstrike friends in SWG, but to me this would destroy the fact that tinker, tailor, soldier, commando, Jedi, TKA, whatever, your character is a character. As a serious roleplayer (as much as I can be), I detest the idiots who run around the PvP battlefields shouting "1 pwned U!" and similarly stupid and illiterate statements. It ruins the game for those of us who wnat to revel in the characters we have created through years of hard work (and I'm talking pen and paper RP here). Sony might be out to make all the money it can, and it knows that people like me love the game and the genre too much to leave over things like that. But I die a little inside (no really:smileywink everytime I think the devs are giving in to corporate greed and taking advantage of us.
Jedi death - you guessed it, again just no. They should have on the battlefield the same death penalties as everyone else. The way to balance this game (which te devs haven't seemed to notice yet) is to make xp harder to come by the more skilled you get. Jedi are combat masters (as BH's should be), and as such they should, on a battlefield, get a fraction of what say a novice pistoleer would get for a kill. Why? Because the novice pistoleer had to work a lot harder to stay alive, and to overcome his opponent. Maybe he had to use tactics, or maybe he was clever enough to work out a really useful combination of specials. He didn't have to just draw his lightsaber, slash once, and walk away looking for the next "n00b2 pwn"!
Radar - yes, actually I do agree with people on this. In a batttle unless you have access to special equipment (maybe in a squad lead by a Squad Leader?), you have to use your wits to work out friend from foe, and where people are. Having that information handed to you takes a lot of the realism out of a battle, and while it's fine to have it outside a battlefield, so you can avoid things if you wish, inside it is making things to easy.
I think that's all I have to say.
Except vote Hallivar!
1. The "Battleplanets":
Ithink, there should be 2 different kinds of Battlefields: Ones, that are on the normal planets, and ones, that you can only visit by a shuttle.
The ones you only reach with a shouttle could be implemented in a number of 1 per month. I suggest here, that you create them as small areas (about 5% of the surface of the normal planets). There you could set up some complex "level"-like scenario with 2 main positions(A hunge base with many towers, atst ect.) and a terrain with much cover minefields subterran tunnels and other objects in between. Make sure, these are not just placed randomly, but make some sense. Also try to plant some awesome things on these fields, like BIG ruins a fulcano and huge cristall formations some nice grafical effects like many lightsources could also be there...... Starwars is awesome.....so should be the view of the terrain of these battlefields. Also implement some special music for these fields. Starwars is not only, but also about huge battles.......make them actually happen.
2. The Rewards:
It is always a dangerous thing to reward too much for pvp.
Then again, pvp is considered as "the endgame" in many games. So i think, you could make the rewardsystem like that: The Npcs on these battlefields should dropp better loot, than they normally do.(I think here about components for REALLY nice equipment, but only components not the actual equipment). Also you should get some money, if you reach certain points on the batttlefield if you hold them for a certain period of time. The side with the most victories at the end of the month gets this small planet as reward for one month.(After this one month downtime, its a battlefield again). For this month you can remove some of the warlike stuff from this planet, and replace it with a small settlement. Tis planet is then only reachable for the winning faction. In this settlement you can get a few new quests for all classes.(You only get the quest there, but you have to do it on another normal planet)
3. The Restrictions:
Does it feel starwarsy, if there are ppl running around naked or with multicolored composite? I dont think so.....
My conclusion: You may only vistit this Planet naked(for the fact, that any other solution would be a bit difficult to implement). When you actually land on the planet, you will autoequip a free factionarmor or a factionuniform(depending on you profession). This equipment will be removed, after you leave the planet, but you cant remove it while you are on this planet.
To avoid too much lag, you could restrict the number of players on each side. If this number is reached, then a new battleplanet will be created ect.
Also could limit the actual time a player could be on a battlefield per day.(2-4 h perhaps)
4. the Reality
Hehe.... we wont keep updated.... i knew it...and
due the fact, that none of this will ever happen, nor a dev will actually read this, ill stop wasting my time here. But dreaming isnt forbidden, so I still posted it
I mean just 2004 is kindof a wide spectre
-Jeff
P.S. For resources, do something like this: when a resource spawns, all of its values are automatically upgraded by this formula: oldvalue*.7 + 300. That will push the values up towards 1000.