Development Cycle Archive

I like to say when i first heard that you could command a squad on npc troops in swg, I thot that would be the coolest thing. When SWG came out and we got to command the troops i hade alot of fun with it, but you guys made it to only one troop. I was bumed out, but then i thot maybe you guys would make it to you could aonly call more soldiers at a time concidering your rank. So 3 soldiers depending on your rank. like each rank you go up you get +5 to faction pet lvl so you can have 3 storm troopers out, or 2 dark troopers, or one at-st. I hope you really consider this cuz it was alor of fun going to a missions and sending your storm troopers in and haveing a battle.

Are you planning on having a species pass any time soon? Bothans everywhere suffer from useless skill mods and lousy stats! My quickness can only be 50 higher than any human's and all other stats have way lower caps. How is this agile species better in the action department than a human? It's not...

We can't go to Hoth yet because one of the Rebel Theme Park missions tells us to deliver a list of possible new basessince our Yavin base has been found out by the Empire, after the player has finished it the NPC says "hmmmm this Hoth planet looks interesting" so us Rebels haven't built the Hoth base yet.

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Thunderheart wrote:

I hav'e N'Rass's proposal right on my desktop. Right now, I dont have an answer. The schedule is packed through the Jedi Revamp. After that things will open up and this is at the top.

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I've asked before, I'll ask again...

scenario 1: See dragonet (CL 29, special: dizzy attack), charge in, prepared for a fight, knowing that you might die and face some minor wounds and a little bit of BF

scenario 2: See diseased vrelt (CL 8, special: mild disease), run away hoping that they don't hit you, so that you don't have to kill yourself to avoid hours of wounds and BF

I have a few "suggestions," if you will humour me.

1. Make use of the Skywalker Sound archives.

• Music for cities; I hear music everytime I land at Nym's. Where's the rest of the love?


• More than one choice to "battle" music.


• Music keyed to factionally-aligned base destructions.


• Ambience


• Background "chatter". (e.g. Cantinas, Hospitals, Starports, Bazaars, etc.)


• Beeps, bells and whistles


• Fix "wrong sounds" on weapons.


• Only one Corellian Corvette between every planet? No? Alter the pitch/tone for variance.


• Stormtroopers should be saying "Move along," "Nothing to see here," and "Hey, you there!" for starters.


• Is there an enviornment in Star Wars Galaxies? Funny, I haven't heard it.
  

2. Factionally-aligned crafters:

• Armoursmiths: Republic/Imperial armour.


• Weaponsmiths: Republic blasters are in the game, where is the Imperial Blaster?


• Tailors: Republic/Imperial Uniforms.


• Droid Engineers: Faction specific droids. RX-7 (Republic) and Death Star Droid (Imperial) as examples.
  

3. Droids> Pokèmon

• 10 available droid-types, but how many creature-types are available as pets?


• Droid CL should be higher than CL. Creatures have a will; Droids are a pre-programmed set of routines with no "will to live"


• Make all droids useful in one-specific area. Medical should heal, R2s should give bonuses to x-wing flight and slicing, R5s bonuses to y-wing flight, Power Droids recharge, Repair Droids repair, Protocol Droids translate alien speech, Binary Load Lifters are mini-harvestors, etc.


• You can heal a Creature's health, action and mind. Inclusion of Droid Health Kits and Droid Wound Kits vital.


• Allow either more than one droid out at one time, or remove the formation commands from the radial menu. It looks horrible to see that on a menu when it is useless.

4. Addition of Hutt faction (the game is programmed for it already.)

• Rebel and Imperial forces may attack known (or overt) Hutt aligned faction players.


• Hutt aligned forces may attack Rebels and Imperials that are known (or overt.)


• Placement of a new negative faction system.


• Introduction of "Player Bounties/War Crimes"; Once a player hits -5000 faction(if a new negative systemwere implemented,) a mission would be given out randomly to 3 players to kill them. In order to prevent a bounty (Hutt) or a war crime (imp/reb) from occuring, players could seek out an NPC and pay them X amount of credits in order to "raise" their standing with said faction. Negative faction should also "decay over time," giving a player the choice between spending credits to keep on slaughtering, or "taking a break" from their crimes.
  

5. Addition of new "faction capture points."

• These points contain Cloning, Insurance, Healing, Missions and a "Declare" terminal.


• These points cover a radius of 1-300m. Faction who controls capture point receives a bonus to defense while in the area of the capture points.


• Doors on any entrance for the control point.


• Doors must be destroyed whichX of time.A Master Smuggler can slice thru it 50% faster.


• Each point captured counts toward the /GCW


• Capture points to execute "NPC events." (think Bestine Political Quest.)


• Allow "Detention Center" feature w/i control points. Similiar to the warning of Battlefields, a player could be given the choice to take part in a "prison break" feature, or could also pass on the feature, if they did not want to feel "punished" by the game for error.

• Instead of a Picture of a Jawa with information on Selonians maybe we could find a tad more "immersion" to chuck in.


• "animated" load screen depicting planet lift-off/landings


• "animated" load screens depicting town-to-town shuttle flights. (small video plays of flying over the vast, vacant deserts on Tatooine as Mos Eisley appears on the horizon, etc.)

7. Variety is key.

• If you must use a solitary corvette model as our only planet-to-planet ship, can we at least have different coloured stripes/markings based on planet? At least try to make us think there's more than 1 corvette out there.


• Shuttles should vary in striped/markings colour as well.


• Spaceports shouldn't look the same on every planet. Are all spaceports pre-fabs from the same manufacturer?

8. Scripted Events.

• Tatooine: Sandcrawler should be moving across the desert from the Jawa Fortress to another point, then return. Imperial Patrols should be found patrolling outside of cities/deserts with Dewbacks. Slave-1 should be seen arriving to/leaving Jabba's Palace. Sand Skiffs dumping hapless victim into Sarlacc, etc.


• Endor: Imperial Speederbike patrols should be seen all over theplanet. Ewok hunting parties raiding enemy camps, etc.


• Dantooine: Imperial presence should be more visible. AT-ST patrols, AT-PT/AT-AT patrols.


• Dathomir: Larger, sweeping Imperial presence near the Prison. Nightsisters dropping slaves into the Lesser Sarlacc, etc.


• Corellia: Larger, sweeping CorSec presence. Shuttles arriving/leaving Hidden Rebel Base, etc.

9. Make droids do what they should do.

• Protocol Droids should translate languages. Remove the ability to learn languages, or make them cost skill points.


• LE Repair Droids should repair droids. This droid should be callable no matter the other droid you have out, so you can actually repair your own droids, and not waste money on a droid that repairs everyone elses droids.


• Power Droids should recharge droids (this is currently implemented and fine.) This droid should be callable no matter the other droid you have out, so you can actually recharge your own droids, and not waste money on a droid thatrecharges everyone elses droids.


• Surgical Droids should heal players. Make this a Doctor/Combat Medic droid only.


• Binary Load Lifters should allow you to carry a larger amount of items inside of it automatically. Make this droid work as a harvestor and/or resource "container".


• R2 astromechs should give a bonus to slicing and to later inclusion of X-Wings.


• R4 astromechs should give a bonus to the later inclusion of Y-Wings.


• Probe Droids should be Imperial only. Their primary function isn't combat, it's recon. Give the Probot the ability to travel to xx / xx waypoint, and provide the ability to "view" from the Probots current location, in a 360 degree view.

10. Add Imperial/Rebellion Banners as faction-purchased items from the Recruiter.

I'm sure I have more...but I'm sure that's more than anyone wants to read already.

I agree with limbonic. Nice post.

HUTT FACTION

also can we get our own damage type for lightsabers that is unblockable by cheezy armor? Kinetic damage is weak.

(To be posted in every weekly In Concept discussion thread until SOE tells me to bugger off. Or actually responds.)


- Improve upon dynamic/mission lairs... give us dynamic/mission dungeons. I am mostly a solo player, and my content options are seriously limited by the fact that A) the dungeons I can take by myself are usually camped, and B) all the other dungeons are Instantly Lethal to the solo player (unless they're a Commando). I'm tired to slaughtering swamp gurrcats...
So, why not figure out a way of implementing dynamic dungeons? Go to a mission terminal, pick up one, go to the waypoint and dive in. Have a boss monster or control point at the bottom of it to destroy. Make it so that only that player (or the group the player is in) can enter.

- On a slightly more complicated scale, let us *build* houses. Rather than prebuilt deeds of predesigned floorplans (I am of the opinion that the designer of the Corellian/Generic floorplans needs to be shot), give us 'Lego blocks'... predefined wall sections, floor sections, etc. Give architects a tool to build a house design from these parts and make a schematic from that. Pop into a factory with the appropriate parts to build the house from that schematic, out pops a deed, and you place it like a normal house.
On a side note, I think SOE would benefit from looking at what Second Life is doing. A MMORPG world built of textured 3D primitives... oh, the flexibility possibilities!

- Let artisans build signs, datapads, and other things that people can write on and stick in their house. It'd be nice to have price lists and notes and what not written on these, instead of CDEF pistols stuck in a vendor priced at 99 billion credits with a long description. Or be able to pass information without the email system. Keep journals of your adventures.

- A Resource Market. I've harped about this before, and I'm going to keep harping about it. Have a cluster of Resource Exchange terminals in the major city on each player planet (Corellia, Naboo, Tatooine, Dantooine, etc.)
Player A goes to the terminal with 10k units of Foobarium Titanium Aluminum, and feeds it into the system with a minimum sell price of 3 credits per unit.
Players B and C go to the terminals, both wanting Foobarium. B puts in an order for 5000 units at 3 credits per unit, and feeds 15000 credits to the machine to cover that. C puts in an order for 6000 units at 4 credits per unit, and feeds the machine 24000 credits.
Once ever five minutes or so, sales and orders are processed. Since C is willing to pay more for a unit of Foobarium, his order is completely filled, and 6000 units of Foobarium become available for pickup from the terminal. The 24000 credits that C paid is transferred to A's account, since it was A's sale that satisified the order.
Now, there are only 4000 units left for sale. Player B's order is partially filled at 3cpu, 12000 of the 15000 credits he paid is transferred to A, and 4000 units becomes available to B. B's order is then automatically modified to a 1000 unit order at 3cpu.
The terminals should also have a seven-day history of low/high/average cost per unit prices for resources it has handled. Resources should include metals, ores, chemicals, gases, meat, eggs, milk, hides, grains, wood, etc. Things you can harvest.
Advantages? Less people standing in front of starport shout-spamming resource sales. Newbies can sell to crafters without having to deal with people only wanting 10k or more of something, and newbies would get ripped off less if they actually knew what the going rate of the resources they have...

- A 'road' object that can be crafted and placed in player cities would be nice. Its hard to feel metropolitan when there's amber waves of grass between your house and city hall...

- Some general client performance improvement would be nice. I've got a Pentium 4 2.4ghz, a gig of memory, and an ATI Radeon 9800 128mb. I don't think there's any good reason why my framerate will be below 30fps a good deal of the time...

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Thunderheart wrote:

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StarchMonkey wrote:

Any more details on the Aqualish Cave badge? We are still confused as to whether you know its just a POI badge and not actually part of the Hermit Quests. If there is something we "don't know " then I can live with that, but some of the answers we got were kind of vague.

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Im sure we'll find out this month. One of the new design tasks is to have the Hermit Badge Quests fixed in Publish 8.

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Strikke wrote:

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Druc_Beinad wrote:

When are you going to add a reset for the Krayt Skull Quest?

I'm stuck on the Borvo the hutt protion because I started this quest when it was broken and now that it is fixed I can not continue. I asked a CSR to reset my quest and he said they can not do that.

In fact, the auto-response made it sound like I was trying to scam some loot or the get a free skull.

I personally know people who had this quest reset, so you either have CSR who are doing things they are not suppose to being, i.e. resetting quests, or you have CSR who don't know what they are allowed to do.

I'm not trying to bash the CSR because they have a tough job, but I really wasn't happy with the response.

Anyway, just slap a reset NPC next Borvo so those of us who did the quest when it was broken can finish it.

Thanks.

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TH said about 4 weeks ago in the Roundtable "Discussion" that he was going to look into it, but then he never came back with any substantive information. I've been complaining about this since late October/early November, when I got stuck, but there has never been any movement by the development team towards fixing the problem for all of the people who have been gated by the bugs from October & November.

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Imperial and Rebel Banners a faction perk attainable from the recruiter in the furniture section

cuz i know i wanna 10-20 banners around my house w/o having 20 accounts or buying 19 more

I was wondering if it's possible to develop a shuttle punch card type pass, for shuttling between two specific cities. Or even starporting between planets. Say from a certain player city, where one's home is, to Theed (if your home player city is on Naboo, that is), or whatnot. It would take up one inventory slot (already a plus, because the one-way tickets take up one each, so two for the trip). You could buy them for 20 or 40 or whatever roundtrips between the particular cities you want that travel pass for. Somehow, if it was one pass in the inventory, it would have to keep track of each leg of the trip, how many times it's been used. Ie, for this example, we'll use Immortal City to Theed, and back. Sometimes I fly from IC to Theed, and if I had a roundtrip multiple use pass, it would have to track the number each direction of the trip i s used, as sometimes I fly to Theed, intending to fly back to immortal city (under the current system, I end up with to and from tickets, the to Theed ticket being used up when I fly there), and then perhaps a resource spawns, or something else draws me into the surrounding countryside and I end up eventually driving all the way home myself. So this travel pass would have to keep count of each "side" of the trip, the to Theed side and the to Home side, and keep count of them, as they might eventually end up being uneven with each other, as sometimes things happen that you end up driving elsewhere, and then home, and not using one side of the trip. But of course, with a travel pass, one could always use up any extra trips later on, even if it was all one-way, the remaining trips on the pass, and just buy a few tickets the other way until the travel pass/punch pass was used up.

Anyway, this would be a real convenience, and one possible caveat would be, if any player city is one of the two destinations, that such a punch pass/travel pass would have to be purchased IN the player city, so they wouldn't lose out on their travel fees that help pay the maintenance for the shuttleport. Ie, if these were purchaseable in NPC cities, with player cities as one of the destinations, currently round trip purchases in npc cities that involve a player city, do not end up with any fee going to the player city. Only when single or round trip purchases are made in player cities, is there a fee on the ticket that goes to help support the cities maintenance or whatnot.

BUT, it would be good to purchase these travel/punch pass dealies IN npc cities, if they only involve NPC cities.

Anyway, for all I know someone else has already had an idea like this, but of course I can't read every post. So, humbly submitted, there it is, and forgive me if I'm repeating something, or not sure of how these Open In-Concept or whatever threads work.

Iree