Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Desired Rewards
1) Temporary items - powerups for weapons would be a good example. They may compete with crafters, but it would be temporary at best.
2) Unique items - It's not the best helmet in the world, but it actually adds to your focus (doesn't subtract like normal). Crafters will stay make better, but maybe a doctor or rifleman would appreciate this more.
3) There is no three!
4) Rare, 900+ quality loot in 100 or 1000 increments.
5) Cash is always nice. :-0
6) A book that teaches skills at no cost.
7) A book that grants apprentice points.
All the above would be random - no camping quests because you know some powerful item is guaranteed to appear.
-jeff
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I'll state this very clearly: It is a design objective to keep crafter integral to the game economy. We do not want to put crafters out of business by making dropped loot better than the best crafted items. Overall SWG is not an Uber-Loot game (like EQ or DAoC) and we don't intend to make it so.
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Let's talk Uber-Loot, I spent sometime around Coronet killing basic Thugs and after about 300 of them I had received about 100 assorted junk parts (Rebel Dead-eye project), 50 assorted CDEF weapons, 15 locked containers (filled with CDEF weapons and single units resources), and to my supprise 5 lightsaber force crystals. (Yes, I heard the force crystal were dropping and I grinded for a few).
Now since I'm not a rebel, everything but the force crystals is junk, crap, worthless, a waste of inventory, UBER-GARBAGE!!. Most of these items have reduced condition or have far worse stats then the items players start with, So what does that mean, Not even A DAY-ONE NEWBIE would keep it. I went to the Woolymander temple on Yavin4, Killed lots of Woolymanders and 3 of my pets, but I found 4 magna-sealed containers. All but one was locked and so I left with a CDEF rifle that had 360 of it's 750 condition. These Items are not loot, cause you see loot would have VALUE to either players or game content and none of this Uber-trash has VALUE.
Now, I recently spent sometime on Dantooine (Yes, I was looking for a Holocron, and No I didn't camp out at the cave, I tracked each kill) and after several days and killing 400+ Force crystal hunter, crypt crawlers, renagades, wielder of the Dark side, and any other force people I could find, I Looted 1 force crystal, 1 Wookie smock, and Imperial plans 1/4. Now this would seem greatly out balanced since the "Force Wielder" NPC's cause a great deal of damage and took me several pets and other players to kill them and yet dropped almost no "loot". This is not "Uber-loot this is NO LOOT, do you know the difference? And if you thinking big money, you're wrong 79 - 300 credits with more then half having nothing, not a dime.....
So what would I like to see? I would like to see items dropped by the NPC's based on how difficult they are to kill. Not everything has to give off great gifts, but why should I try to kill "Force People" (15K HAM) if the "common thugs" (300 HAM) have better loot, are easier to find, spawn like crazy, and offer me no chance of death.
If an Item is "Faction based" (like the dead-eye decoder for the rebels) then it should drop from killing the oppisit faction.Not every player needs this garbage and it drops like crazy. Why?
And really If your not going to do anything with the Broken Items, 1 unit resources, or other garbage loot, then get rid of it, save some space on the server, free up the bazaar. You have created a galaxy of Uber-crap!!!.............. Or maybe you could have a player profession fix the broken decrypter (and other broken garbage) and then maybe player's could use them to decode encoded disks or am I thinking to far outside the box for ya....
Now lets talk Crafters, if you want the crafting professions to succeed in the SWG economy you need to make several changes. First thing is to remove or fix the current Bazaar system, but since that's not really our subject at hand, the one thing you could do would be to make the dropped/looted items useful to crafters.I'm talking about the armor segments, handlers, barrels, and all the other componets from Krayts to Kliknicks that could be worth something. SO WHAT IF THE ITEM IS BETTER THE ONE THAT CAN BE MADE BY A SMITHY, THE ITEM CAN ONLY BE USED BY THE CRAFTERS TO MAKE THE FINAL PRODUCT....THE CRAFTER CAN STILL MAKES THE MONEY!!! Oh what a novel idea!, you mean items that make crafter's goods better, increase crafter profits and don't forget the little guy who found the item he makes money too......wait did we just......yes I think we just made several proffessions integual part of the game economy...oh happy days.
So whats the real skinny here, I would like to see you ask yourself what VALUE does this item have in the game. Does this item add to the CONTENT or is it really just a piece of junk. If an item is junk(and you plan to keep them in the game...Why?....you don't even really know do you), treated as junk. Do not allow these item to be sold on the bazaar. Player's can keep them, destroy them, or sell to the junk dealer....that's it!!.....Oh and if it's not too much trouble.... I would like you to THINK before you act and then THink about it again. And really what do you want me to do with 1 unit of a resource?
If a non-bh is going to recieve a LLC as a reward (rebel theme park) I guess it doesn't matter that it only does 13-130 dmg, or the hpbc that only had medium armor peirce instead of heavy and had 1/10th the damage of ones I have. If weapons are going to be given as rewards, give them decent stats. 75% of what current crafters are making would be decent, since crafted items are supposed to be better, but the current 10-20% is worthless.
1) The oft mentioned schematics for a rare weapon or armor.
2) Someone on page 1 (all I read before replying) made mention of epic, multi-stage quests, for schematics and components for professions specific armor, expand that to weapons as well.
3) Rare inks, to give to tailors and armorsmiths, to get even more color options, perhaps even true black.
4) Limited use devices - will work for a little while, and are very nice while they do, but like commando weapons, they run off of charges. Great for energy shields, and weapons.
5) Cyber or Bio engineering contract. Get to add to your characters stats, either through genetic manipulation or the addition of cyberware. Limited use.
6) Allow the player to target the city in which gets attacked by the (robot tank, platoon of droideka, swarm of <creature> that he/she (found, stumbled into the lair of, accidently activated) and managed to (chase outof theirlair, rewire the control panel, convince was an ally). This also keeps the cities from being completely safe and stagnant. Reminds everyone that their in a warzone, and the universe isn't all that safe to begin with.
7) Favors. Either get a liftbetween cities or planets for no cost, or with no waiting. Call in a favor with a local doc for fast healing, once.
I think someone mentioned a schematic with 3-5 uses on it. I think that's a really good idea, so if I did find one to give to a crafter, he wouldn't have to overcharge me for the item, in fact he would probably pay me for the schematic, and give me one of the prototypes for free, because he can sell the rest of the uber-prototypes from the schematics at an even greater profit. Also, if it only had one use, and the weaponsmith had a critical failure, well...that would suck. I think there needsto be a lot of varied type of schematics though:
1) armors, weapons, furniture, clothes, musical instruments. These would be really really unique, and only 3-5 of them could come from one schematic. There could be lots of new things that could be added: each piece of Mandalorian armor, scout trooper/snow trooper/dark trooper armor, old antique clone trooper armor, Han Solo's special modded up pistol, those cool guns that the flying aliens used in episode II on the assembly line, very intricately designed clothes, and actual eyewear andearrings (there's a space on the bazaar, but none for sale) etc, etc. These would be so rare that only25-50 people would have them in the galaxy, to keep the coolness factor up. There needs to be a lot of different types of these schematics so that people's toons would actually look different. Because, basically, right now, almost everyone is either wearing blue/black composite armor, or wearing a black cloak/gunman's duster. (me included 
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2) tools, food, spices, power ups, super stimpaks. For theseonce use sort of items,the schematic size might be larger, ie 100-500 items. These would have longer durations, better effects, and maybe even some special effects. How cool would it be to have a power up that could add poison to an attack, or add armor piercing to a weapon.Or a spice with downer effects that are lowered. These would probably be slightly less rare, but still pretty hard to find.
3) Maybe even weird Frakenstien pets for BE's (ie a wrix's head mounted on a dalyrake), or as someone mentioned before a new song/dance? Or a droideka/battel droid/etcschmematic for a DE. The BE and DE stuff would probably be again 3-5 uses, and the new song/dance would be one use, and could not be taught to anyone else.
And these drops would have to berare, and completely random (ie 1 out of 10,000 swoopers might drop one, and the odds get slightly better as npc difficulty increases), or else people will all do the quests and the rare-uber items won't be rare/uber anymore. I think adding these "epic item" drops would go a very very long way in adding high-level content for people who are very jaded with the game, and also to add more variety in a game where basically everyone of the same profession is using the exact same weapon, wearing the exact same clothes/armor.
Just my two cents
For general missions, uber schematic is cool. It can either supplement the current player made items, like a new powerup, or be a new piece of equipment. There should not ever be an item drop as far as I'm concerned, there should only be components or knowledge. Schematics would be knowledge, just as holocrons are knowledge, etc. Frankly you hit the nail on the head, it the game ever even starts to smell like EQ, I'll quit. I play SWG because I love the player economy and I absolutely hate EQ. Don't shoot yourself in the foot.
If it's a factional quest, then you can add title rewards, faction boosts, a special uniform, you own AT-AT, a ceremony where the Emperor himself bestows a plot of land around his retreat to you or something. The possiblities are pretty much endless as far as faction rewards go, and some kind of super quest should be required before attaining the rank of Admiral or whatever is the highest.
As a Crafter I'd like to see Quests that are made to be solved by Brain & not Brawn so that a crafter with limited combat skills could do it.
As a Crafter I'd like to see rewards that benifit me & my customers. Some examples would be
A schematic that when used with the proper resources gives extremely low ham layers.
A schematic to different armor(ie like the up comming RIS)
A schematic that give us the ability to make unwearable decorative armor(each schematic would be for the full suit)
A rare resourse that we can use to enhance/upgrade with (ie a rare polymer that when applied increases the resists to one type of damade)
Again I'd like to see more Quests that are made to be solved by Brain & not Brawn so that a crafter with limited combat skills could do it.(Every answer should not come down to having the most firepower gets me the uber item)
Quests that DO NOT promote camping...
Rewards that are targed specifically to masters. ie obtaining extra skill & experimentation from usage of your product based on the complexity of the item.(ie. so I can't make a million auks & expect to get usage exp from them.. I'd also note here to drop complexity if items that are mass produced vs custom made)This would rewaed those crafters that contune to craft their product as a profession & not as a hobbie.