Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-22-04)
Snikrop wrote:
I wrote this in another thread, but I thought I'd put this in here too:
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One facet that all of the past weeks' discussion was getting away from is that the only goods being bought on the servers are master produced goods. It seems to me that upon entering a crafting class there should be a few components that a master and a lucky novice produce at the SAME level.
Taking DROID INVASION as a recent example, what has it added and what has it accomplished?
WHAT HAS OCCURED -
Not a lot frankly. And that's being kind. To be brutally honest about the game mechanics of the idea, why would people want to buy CL 10 droid pets that have a maximum ham limit of about 1.3k when there are BE's out there producing lvl 10 pets of 2-3k? (and I bought and taught a non CH pet for my DE friend which is lvl 10 and has 4.3k ham! a gualama)
THE SOLUTION -
Even before DI patch came out. It was blatantly obvious that if the devs wanted people to use combat droids for non CHers, they have to make these droids BETTER than the creature pets available at the time.
The very fact the devs dont understand that NO ONE wants lvl 10 pets because they arent worth calling from your datapad to fight with, is a very disturbing fact indeed.
Nearly anyone who plays would be able to tell you lvl 10 pets arent worth the effort, and to get buffed or to take up CHing if you want a tank pet.
1) They dont understand the mechanics of their own game, and arent capable of fixing a profession that today is just as broken as it was last week (DE)
What did it add?
Apart from adding a sky texture of star destroyers, and putting a few imperial patrol battalions in lesser towns that are the least visited, nothing. A rebel can still go overt and attack THEED (supposed Imperial Stronghold, much close to Emperor's heart) without problem.
I got scanned outside the Geonosian bunker the other day, admittedly im imperial but ONLY a private. I was wearing
- a sliced composit helmet
- 2 sliced padded shoulder pads
- 2 sliced chitin bracers
- 1 sliced tantel chestplate
- 1 sliced pair of ubese pants
- 1 sliced pair of ubese boots
- 1 sliced flame thrower
- 1 more entire set of sliced armor with different best stats
- 2 more sliced flame throwers
- 1 crate of neutron pixie
- 1 crate of muon gold
- imperials in MOST cities and towns, since the whole galaxy is SUPPOSEDLY owned by the Empire.
- Rebels would be scanned and FOUND to have sliced stuff and attacked.
- Said attacks would take place by Stormtroopers without the fighting strength of a spiced out gnort.
- More ATSTs would be included in Imperial Strongholds like Theed
But are we suprised by Cosmetic patching? The only thing that lends credence to the OTHER supposition (that the devs dont know the mechanics of their own game) is the fact of other inconsistencies to the crafting and other parts of the game.
- Droid Customization, Vehicle Customization, and now lighting sources fade/break.
---Did r2-d2 ever loose his colouring? no.
---Did the speeder troopers in Return of the Jedi stop to colour up their speeders? no.
---Did you ever see Luke, Han, Leia, or any of the others, stopping to change a lightbulb in any house? no.
As my friend, Eacomo says. "How come this is an era where they can build star destroyers that roam the galaxy, yet they cant design a lightbulb that cant last longer than 20 days?"
###Furniture doesnt degrade over time, why should our lightbulbs?###
This e-mail comes fromprofoundfrustration.
I'm deeply disappointed by this new patch (don't call it a publish you insult our intelligence by making it soundas though it adds depth). And my anger, sparked by the fact you can'televate household itemsexcept by using the radial menu, 1 degree at a time, has caused me to consider the more aggravating flaws of this game.
I'm disappointed in you, Thunderheart, developers, marketing people, for calling this latest patch the "Droid Invasion." Such false advertising hasn't been so blatant since, well, the last patch,the whimsical"Imperial Crackdown." Had the crackdown been sporadic stormtrooper invasions of known rebel cities, who knows? it could have been great.That was done one night in Anchorhead, never again to be seen.
There is NO new content in publish 7. The droid invasion is a euphemism for "things we should have done a long time ago." A more accurate title would have been the "now you don't have to pitch a tent to pull out your speerbike patch." Bravo!
Sure, sure. Someone out there is already saying "if you don't like it there's the door." I've been playing this game for more than six months. Promises were made, money exchanged. Where are the results? I haven't been playing this long because I hate the game. But your love for a genre wanes when game play becomes something akin todata entry.
The only people getting new content, apparently, are the Jedi. The most difficult of all the professions to enter will have quest based missions that generate xp. The rest of us poor slobs will continue to blow up another mound, or craft another muzzle, or heal another tumbler. Where are our xp-generating quests? (Not thatsuch questswill be anything grand for them. Just look at the rebel theme parks to see how limited the imagination of the developers.)
To this point,I've beenwaiting for the space expansion. I read recently one of the developers saying he couldn't say too much about the expansion because the marketing people don't want the information out until E3.There's the loyalty to what Thunderheart calls "the customer." Thanks!
No doubt the space expansion will include the grand X-wing. But for the first several weeks, we won't be able to get into the cockpit and when we do, we'll just be blowing upmounds or each other in extremely lopsided PVP.
Prophetiv wrote:
One thing I'm getting sick of all this lagg. The main cause is all the afk macroing. They think it does not effect game play. For about 90% of the players out there its just a star wars version of the sims online. Spend all their time chatting. Or will only go overt if they are in a group bigger then 10 and hide in the star port. But I don't wan't to go on about that. Since most of the time I am covert. But I'm a crafter. A covert BH. Oh well.
I'm just getting sick of this policy of allowing people to AFK macro. It does effect my game play when i start lagging. It effects everyones gameplay. If its ok for dancers to gain skill while afk. (BULL) Then why not let crafters. Well they can but that would be by using a third party progam. Why not allow tamers. because if they did it would be lame.
AND HOW IS TUMMBLING NOT A EXPLOIT!
Well I could care less how you gain your skills thats not my problem. what my problem is because they allow it the game is laggy. I wish they allowed PKing in this game. Please then just allow that to. Cant they add a spam timer to the game if you send to many commands to the server it will dump it.
PLS JUST ALLOW PKing IN THE GAME IT WILL SOLVE THE AFK ISSUE.
AND IT WILL BE LIKE A REAL GCW
I think it is funny how everyone wants to blame afking and the servers for the lag all the time.
I had mad lag in Coronet and other places when I first started playing and for the first 6 months.
Then I got a new computer. 3.2 gHz processor, 2 GB Ram and a 256mb Video card.
Guess what. I have not experienced one bit of lag since.
I have my graphics in game set to the maximum levels and I can ride my speeder thru Coronet seamlessly, with out a bit of Lag.
I understand some may not be able to buy a new computer, and that is fine. But stop complaining and blaming it on the servers and afking. It's your computer 99% of the time that is causing your lag.
Thunderheart...
I just want something very simple. I would like some kind of privacy option. At times I avoid logging in because of too many tells. There needs to be a way for players to control their online time a little more. I can use the afk message but it doesn't stop the tells and then people think I am being rude and as Mayor and Tailor I do not want to appear rude but at the same time, I would like to do other things with my time so a privacy feature is really becoming a must. I experience burn-out because there is no way to escape in the game if I want to experience other parts of the game.
As I am not home I cannot verify but I assume the crafting fix was pulled this morning.
Now that that is over with can ANYONE PLEASE tell us if multiple stat SEA's are working as per TH's Friday Feature?
Watch out what you say about or to the developers! Even if you have a valid point, if they don't like it or if it hits too close to home, they will delete it between one breath and the next! I've seen it again just last night!!! Then this morning the message was gone, gone, gone from the publish forum! A guy there was making absolutely dead-on valid points about this recent publish and how it affects BE and this morning when I looked, it was deleted. One person happened to take a section of it for his own reply to it, but that is all that remains.
Don't tell the developers what's wrong. They won't listen if it means they have to admit they are not doing it right. I'm getting fed up myself with the way each profession is being tweaked. Pretty soon, none of the special abilities that exist now, will be particular to each profession. Andlately, Jedi's are going around boasting 200+ kills of Bounty Hunters! What is special about a BH anymore?? They are taking the fun out of each profession just as soon as it gets interesting to play it!
I really love most of the game play, but I play my game in the cantinas. I hear alot of talk about what would be good for this game and about what is wrong with it. I have some gripes of my own about the Entertainer professions. But, people are getting fed up. Maybe they need to sneak in a developer (like they haven't already) to play for real and get the honest to goodness truth about what the game is really like - and make them pay a subscription fee to play it, too!!
SOE needs to start listening to the players if they don't want anymore subscribers bagging the game. (And I'm taking a screen shot of this after I submit it, just to make sure at least I know I submitted it and it was here for however long)
Watch out what you say about or to the developers! Even if you have a valid point, if they don't like it or if it hits too close to home, they will delete it between one breath and the next! I've seen it again just last night!!! Then this morning the message was gone, gone, gone from the publish forum! A guy there was making absolutely dead-on valid points about this recent publish and how it affects BE and this morning when I looked, it was deleted. One person happened to take a section of it for his own reply to it, but that is all that remains.
Don't tell the developers what's wrong. They won't listen if it means they have to admit they are not doing it right. I'm getting fed up myself with the way each profession is being tweaked. Pretty soon, none of the special abilities that exist now, will be particular to each profession. Andlately, Jedi's are going around boasting 200+ kills of Bounty Hunters! What is special about a BH anymore?? They are taking the fun out of each profession just as soon as it gets interesting to play it!
I really love most of the game play, but I play my game in the cantinas. I hear alot of talk about what would be good for this game and about what is wrong with it. I have some gripes of my own about the Entertainer professions. But, people are getting fed up. Maybe they need to sneak in a developer (like they haven't already) to play for real and get the honest to goodness truth about what the game is really like - and make them pay a subscription fee to play it, too!!
SOE needs to start listening to the players if they don't want anymore subscribers bagging the game. (And I'm taking a screen shot of this after I submit it, just to make sure at least I know I submitted it and it was here for however long)
I'm pretty new to the game, and this is my first post. However, I'm having issues with the new Publish.
I'm a Creature Handler, and I often come across pets that aren't quite worth my time to keep, but they're CH only. Normally, I give one of these pets away to a friend so they can trade them in and get something nifty without too much effort from me. Now, apparently, non-CH players cannot even hold CH pets. This puts a damper on things, since now I have a near inability to get anything worthwhile for friends. Why exactly was this system changed? Why was the trade in system even put in in the first place? Sorry, but I'm still in the dark here.
What I disliked:
In my opinion, it takes too long to get past the point of killing butterflies and durnies. Every time a Swoop Gang member notices me there is a 40% chance that they'll see me, aggro me, and incap me, and I hated that with a passion, but then, I probably have extraordinarily bad luck. That and I don't have much time to play to get exp. with all of my honors classes dumping homework on me like there's no tomorrow.
Whenever I tried missions from NPC's I would often get a waypoint that sent me to the other side of the planet from where I was, and ended up not getting much money or losing a lot of my already thinly stretched time. Can there not be a way of asking where the mission objective is, or how far away it is, before I agree to do an NPC's mission? Also, maybe there could be a kind of consider for these missions where the NPC says "It looks like this will be a tough task for you, blah blah blah."
If this is Star Wars, why am I killing animals, dinosaurs even, with an axe? Having melee professions is well and good, but do the weapons really need to look archaic? This problem could possibly be solved as simply as replacing current graphics with something that looks a little more space-age. As for the animals, I would like to know about what niche(s) the vynock has in the ecosystem, or just basically how the ecosystem works. I'm not saying that you have to add a million more animals to make it work, I just think that you should keep that idea in mind when creating more in the future.
Broken features. I could write several pages on this if I wanted but I'll try to stay simple: whose game is this? Ultimately the devs should not let the players dictate everything they add/change, but their imput has its place. As it stands right now, the devs are working too much on new content (which I don't mind) and not enough on fixing current content (which I do mind). With so many players clamoring for new content, who would expect anything else? I think the best solution would be to delay the Space Expansion, *gasps heard all around* and send some people to cleaning up/organizing code/fixing bugs. I mean, why add a large amount of content to a buggy game, when you could stomp out a lot of mistakes right now for an even better game later?
Jedi, Jedi, Jedi. In the movies and books that cover this spot in the Saga, the Jedi are hunted, and their lives are extremely tough. Where is this? When Yoda dies in RotJ, he says that Luke is the LAST of the Jedi. Hmm, thimk about that. By taking out the perma-death on FS characters, you've taken out the best way of somehow returning the state of the Jedi order to this cannon. You do plan on that by-the-way, don't you?
This being my first MMORPG, I had extreme financial trouble (ingame, although this was somewhat true out of the game too
), and I found it to be very stressful. Missions were always too long and boring, expecially while I didn't have any of the terrain navigation bonuses. As a rebel, I had a chance of slightly more interesting missions, and a chance to hunt low-level NPCs. A question though: why are there Wookie brawler camps alligned with the Empire? Aren't a lot of them supposed to have been enslaved? I saw no evidence of this at the many Wookie brawler camps that I destroyed. But anyways, back to money. I never seemed to be able to find a convenient way of earning money for the amount of time that I have for playing. This game seems to be very hardcore-gamer oriented with the exp. and money required to do anything.This being Star Wars, the cites seem to be a little on the small side. It is especially strange-looking to have starports with only room to land two or three interplanetary shuttles. It's probably not in anyone's best interest to make the starports much larger, so I'll just stop there.
This is Star Wars, where are the epic battles? Right now there doesn't need to be player participation in this, but couldn't we see a battle above a planet every now and then, probably just a Star Destroyer capturing/destroying a pirate or smuggler ship. And while I'm talking about the skies, what is up with the swirly clouds that all look exactly the same. Variation of something that small should be easy to do as a part of a publish.
The above is stuff that in my opinion should have already been in the game, but anyways, enough of the bad.
What I liked:
I finally get a non-linear part in the greatest Saga ever created.
Bestine looked pretty good, although small for a Imperial outpost.
The ability to build your own character, appearance and skills.
Weapon variety was pretty good.
Neat new-player introduction.
User Interface that is somewhat customizable and easy to use.
Well, no more time, I guess that's my 2 cents for now.