Development Cycle Archive

It seems to me that to become a Jedi one needs a lot of practice in using the force. For instance, Luke spent countless hours honing his powers. It seems to me that the already implemented experimentation system would be perfect for this. You could just revamp the experimentation system a little bit, and it could be used to practice using the force. The more you practice, the more force XP points you get. So for instance you could practice levitating using the force, and as you get to higher levels you will be given more experimentation points and will be able to attempt levitating more and more things, and heavier and heavier things. In this way, you could be sent on a quest into some remote area, to hone your force powers. This way you could be given a waypoint for some isolated area, and whenever you go there you can practice using the force.
Also it would make sense that while you are a padawan; you will have to have a Jedi train you. To make sure Jedi’s are willing to train padawans they should be required to train them to become master Jedi. Also, to make it so that force sensitive characters find Jedi to train them, Jedi should be able to sense the force in non-Jedi character, so that they can go around looking for force sensitive character for padawans. This would seem like the best way to handle things while staying true to the Star Wars story and without making any major changes in the game.
Ok, now that I've covered the basics, let me talk about some more quest based things. I'll start with quests to "open your force slot." It seems to me that the way the game is set up now, does not keep true to the star wars story. In the story, those that are force sensitive do not just suddenly become force sensitive, and so this should be reflected in the game. I think that it's important that any system for becoming a Jedi stay true to the story. Now, keeping with this idea, it should be fairly straight forward on how to become a Jedi, but at the same time it should be vague. I think that a good way to implement becoming a Jedi would be to make it a random thing. In this way, the original system was on the right track, but too specific. My idea would be this. As you play the game, everything you do increases your force sensitivity by a certain amount. Every task should be given a force score range, and then you will get points added to your force sensitivity in that range (it should be randomized). I will call these force points you force footprint. So, in this way, the more that you do in game, the bigger your force footprint will be. This force footprint will be important for Jedi when they are looking for someone who is force sensitive. Jedi will be drawn to those who have a big enough force footprint, but will be drawn more to those who have a larger force footprint. With this system in place, someone who is working harder to become a Jedi (i.e. is doing more) will be more likely to be approached by a Jedi then someone who is less active.
The use of the described system will allow the game to work fairly, and to follow the story flawlessly, given 2 things:
1. Players must not know the force footprint of a task.
2. Players must not know their force footprint. To keep Jedi players from telling people their force footprint, the Jedi players will not be given a number. A system like should be devised where the Jedi will be able to sample the force sensitivity in an area, and the force sensitivity of a player. The Jedi should be able to see an aura around someone who is force sensitive. The more force sensitive they are, the stronger their aura will be. This test should be set up such that there could be false negatives, but not false positives.
If these 2 rules are put in place, then the game will very much stay true to the star wars world. You will not know that you are "force sensitive" unless you are approached by a Jedi who tells you he wishes to train you. To add to the mystique of the whole thing, Jedi could be required to track a force sensitive player for a certain amount of time before they can approach them. Or it could be required that they be approached in a subtle way.
The only problem I could see in this system is if the percentage of Jedi to non-Jedi becomes too high. An easy way to make sure there are not too many Jedi would be to use the force footprinting system and the force sensitivity detection system I discussed before. If you make it so that the force footprint of a player must be above a certain threshold, and make it so that Jedi can not detect force sensitivity until a rather high level in their tree, then you could make it hard enough to become a Jedi. However, it should remain an option to change the thresholds manually in case it is decided that it is currently to hard or easy to become a Jedi.
Obviously this process will have to be seeded in some way. Since I don't know how the Jedi system works currently, I can't say how this could be done. However I could guess that the current Jedi could be used to seed this process.
Now as for telling the community how to become Jedi; the system should be described as follows:
The new Jedi system will function as follows: Everything you do will increase your chances of becoming a Jedi. Some things might increase your chances more than other things. When you are ready to become a Jedi, Jedi looking for a padawan may approach you offering training. I think this should cover everything, and I for one think that this would provide for a hugely enjoyable and exciting Jedi system. Let me know what you think. Questions, comments, suggestions?
Using this system, it should be straight forward to implement the quest system, and any future systems.

I hope people have to chose between keeping old skills that don't decay or replacing them with hard to get force skills that do decay.

I hope that the quests to get force skills will be difficult and complex, and have no static spawns.

I don't want camped areas.

I was dynamically spawning NPCs that people must find in order to progress.

I'd also llike it if there was no way of completing the quests if the player trying to do them is grouped with anyone else.

There should be a choice between brain power and brawn power routes, and best of all a combination of both.

In changing the Path to Jedi it is very important to be fair to those who have made many sacrifices to grind their way through so many professions. When I learned about what it took to get the FSCS I lost hope. This game is not a job, it shouldn’t burn you out to do it nor should it take 6 or more months to complete.

Those who have mastered a certain amount of professions should be given credit for this. So for someone who has mastered 20 or more professions they should be about done with their path.

The more professions mastered should affect how much of the quest based system they will need to complete. Instead of open a holocron to find it silent they should get a waypoint to some npc. This could be say someone who tells you that he was once training to be a Jedi but he didn’t make it. He can say something like, “I see you have made many sacrifices and are very wise. I know someone you may be interested in meeting.” And then he can provide you with another waypoint to the npc that will give you a set of missions.

The missions should be based on a person’s current strongest profession. Give all professions a different weight to them to base the missions on the best one. They can then finish this quest to open their slot.

The missions should be random and varied. Puzzles, figuring out a problem the npc will have, obtain a certain few items to assemble, settle a quarrel, dance for someone, whatever. For those who have mastered a lot of professions they would have fewer quest stages to go through, maybe just one. For someone who has not grinded through with the current system they should have to go through many more stages. As they progress through, finding the npc who gives you the mission waypoint to the next will give you an idea of where you stand in your quest. He could say you are still not ready or wise enough, etc. You could also make it necessary to complete other npc missions to find the npc you are looking for. And I second Imperio59’s idea of your character growing more force sensitive through the quest. Great ideas there.

Faction should matter-If you have been slaughtering plainsfolk it should count. Depending on current faction standings you could have a lightside/darkside rating which will determine what type of missions you are given.

Jedi Quests: Though I am not a Jedi I certainly love doing missions for npcs. How about a system that makes Jedi get special missions from npcs that others won’t be able to get? Say a Jedi comes upon a Gungan out in the middle of nowhere and he has one of those little blue signs on his head. The npc could recognize that the player is a Jedi and give him special missions to do. They should give much better payout than a regular mission.

Hear Hear! Shyfty is correct. PLEASE make the system give full credit to those who have labored long to find the elusive missing profession. Do not simply leave it at holo silence. Many have sacrificed much to obtain Jedi, including sacrificing the enjoyment of gameplay and the GCW just to attain Jedi. Give them the credit they are do.

The risk is that everyone will become a jedi. I see a way arround this without it being ultra super hard and cutting casual players out. The distinguishing feature between jedi and Force Sensitive is the light saber. So make the access to saber require all other quests and skills be completed.

My previous post outlined that non linear quests would give access to one or other force skill box, the skill box then needed to be bought in order to progress to the next quest. Its very dificult and slow to gain force exp without a saber so that imediatly makes it slow but the quests could be relativly short. You'd need to do a lot of them (12 or more) and get a lot of exp in order to enable a saber so jedi will remain rare, also if you charge skill points for FS advancement many people will just stick at force knock down or force mind heal. The casual player would have cheerfully found that it is practical to start on the path.

Force Sensitive economy
As there will be many diferent types of Force sensitive player their other skills *could* feature into thier jedi skills, such as giving them the ability to craft better sabers etc. I'm not sure how much effort its worth but if jedi are going to be realy common then there needs to be some variety in them, perhapse even have difrent jedi paths: teacher, warrior, technician, sage, poet?

Instanced Zone
There should be an instanced zone rolled out after the publish as a specific jedi hunting/questing area, perhapse two zones one for quests in initial publish and one for hunting as an addition. This would give somewhere for jedi who wish to avoid PvP a place to hunt, maybe visability free so they could hunt with friends, it would be accesable to non jedi and be part of the quests.

Detailed quest
Firstly to even begin you would need to do 4 fairly dificult quests, one less for each holocron done, thoes who have got silent get their reward by being close to the extra slot, thoes who have unlocked would be unable to do them at all (except with their jedi). These quests can be linear as the objective is to start the ball rolling, also as few people will do them they need not be very interesting (holocroners will skip them and a lot of people just wont bother trying)
Given by rareish random spawn NPC (or alternatives below)
Will only talk to the first person to use converse
Conversation will be cryptic
Specifics of each quest would be randomised - everything that can vary should!
You can only visit the NPC once every 24 hours - it will respawn for 5 mins at that exact RL time every day until you complete the quest.

Social quest: writen first but should be last - i.e. anyone with a 'cron profesion to do should do it.
1) return as leader of a group of players
1a) Told to take them to carry some parts of a ship
1b) you must pick up 100 items (or 100 volume of items in a variable No of items) from the specified waypoint.
1c) NPC gives you some items and asks you to get them repaired (weapon or armour or clothing), NPC insists that only the best repair is acceptable and the stuff is badly damaged (I.e. you'll want a specialist to do the repair). Poor repair and you get another bit to repair (may be diferent skill required).
1d) NPC gives you some items and asks you to get them combined (like an artisan quest but requires an elite proffesions to do the combine - need not be you)
1e) NPC returns the item to you and asks you to deliver it to someone, that NPC is under attack and tells you to go to the instanced zone entry point where the quest is completed.

reasoning
OK this cuts out the power player and levels the field for casual gamers, essentialy you need to do some quite dificult stuff in 24 hours - a good casual gamer can do it just as well as a 50 hour per week player. The long quest has a reward which is access to a locked area of the instanced zone and perhapse some trinket usefull to jedi (i.e. existing jedi will want to do the quests too).

Exploration quest
2) "My vision needs investigation: black depresion, sticky, gloomy, the force is there all around. Go, go quickly! I will be here in a day exactly tell me what you find"
I.e. travel to the Dathomir tar pits POI

Maybe do six and the last one is the instanced zone, not all POI would need to be described in this cryptic way but there should be at least ten and maybe twenty so that the spoiler sites have some gaps for a few days.

Artisan quest
3) Bring me 100 units of Dathomir Avian meat, Lokian water, Tatooine fungus and some Aluminium
3a) bring me a droid storage device, Breath of Heaven, a blaster barrel, a wall unit, and a D18 pistol
etc. etc.
four of these as they are more effort, then the instanced zone.

Kill quest
The first one asked of you - NPC is clearly mad and after a long background preamble suddenly refuses to talk more unless you...
4) Kill 112 of the beautifull winged pests (corelian butterflies). I dont know why and I don't care if you do it or not
4a) Kill 19, no I mean 91 erm split the diference call it 95 of the weak rodents persecuted by amphibians and arachnids (frail squals rori)
4b) are you bored yet? Ok, kill stuff on Tallus (you actualy need to kill 55 of any newbie mob)
4c) You have proved your prowess in battle, truely a great warrior, go to the instanced zone and kill *everyone* ha ha ha ha

Again on a 24 hour cycle these should level casual and powergamer. Each days quest would take one or two hours, quite easy for a casual player.

Alternative to random spawn NPC would be that its an existing NPC but diferent for everyone, its quite time consuming to go arround and talk to every NPC but not so much diferent for casual or crazy gamer - as soon as Ms Casual starts on the quest it wont be more than a few days before she finds her first NPC - Mr Driven will find it on day 1. Or you could have everyone recieve an email with a Waypoint to thier quest giver but randomly (or weighted against play time) over the first month (e.g. someone with low play time may get it on 2nd day after the publish, someone with high play time may have to wait three weeks to get the email).

After this the player could start on the quests that would grant force powers

I personally think this is great. however i don't agree with taking out the second character as jedi. i think that you are gonna continue to keep losing people if you continue down this path. you'll see current jedi sell there accounts and end up quiting the game. you shouldn't go this route and try and persuade people into buying second accounts this way. now back to the original subject of ideas. i think you should consider putting up jedi npc's that dish out jedi assignments or missions like in the movies. make them big money missions that grant more cash, but also grant additional force abilities or make current force powers even stronger. I also think BH jedi missions should pay alot more and be tougher/harder to find the jedi players. I don't think taking the main character to jedi slot is a good idea. it will affect the way some people play the game alot more than others. theres equipment/housing lots to consider and Pa hall issues, not to mention those of us who also like to bee involved in merchant careers as well as wanting to pursue the jedi profession.

Keep up the good work, just don't get greedy for money....seen to many other mmorpg die from this!

I think alot of the answers to this thread can be found in the host of jedi games backed by Lucas Arts, ie jedi academy, jedi knight, and KOTOR.

Look to those games. I mean, why reinvent the wheel? The sorts of quests in those games, ranging from save the farmer, to negotiate a peace between battling families, to duel a nasty opponent, etc, were all really fun and memorable. Being a jedi MEANT something, as you contributed to the game world and felt you had an impact.

I will not address the becoming a jedi quests, as I think thats been elaborated on quite well by others. I'd just say, make it long, make it worthwhile, but also make it so it cant be posted as a 100% solution on the web: i.e. maybe there are 500 involved quests, and each character gets 100 of those on the way to becoming a jedi.

As for jedi quests: Again, borrow from KOTOR or its predeccesors. And why not also diversify the jedi skills so no 2 jedi will be alike? ie some can be more combat oriented/using saber more, some usingmore force power users, and some more balanced between the 2. No reason to have every jedi knight, or master, be the same.

Just my 2 cents.

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Jediforcefighter wrote:
I have to agree with Inferno_Intellgence about you getting jedi footprints from everything that you do. But the flaw is that players would have to be trained by another jedi is not a good idea. If that were to happen there would be a complete imbalance in the force because players of opposing faction, that know your guild, or who you are, they wont want totrain you. And to add, mostly one faction side would achieve jedi, which would be unfair to others.

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Maybe, I agree that can be abused, but there are ways to placate this. Anyway, if you are dark sider, you won't probably train someone you feel is going for the light, so it Has sense in some way. Petty feuds are another thing, but I suppose they are the small part.

When some time passes I think that "sensing" the force would spread and a lot of people would have his appotunity, but, I think that some other support system could be good too. I mean, Inferno's is a good idea, that can be supported by some NPC system so you can do it socializing or the hard way, with a Dev's system, being approached by -blue glowie, red ghost whateveryoulike-

This is an idea for the upcoming Jedi revamp. We are all currently worried what is going to happen to our current Jedi slots and toons. Force Sensitive and being a Jedi are 2 serperate things. The witches on Dathomir are force sensitive yet are not jedi.

How about over time our main characters gain some form of force sensitivity. This enables us to enhance our current characters. Perhaps a method of fine tuning our characters. Once we have fleshed out our final templates in this game there is not much else to do. Through quests and other interactions with the world we should be given additional force points to spend on a new force sensitive tree. This force sensitive tree would be there for all characters. Making acquiring force sensitive points a long drawn out journey as well. As we advance our characters the additional skills that could be purchased could aid our current template. For artisans they could be given an extra experimentation point. For combat professions they could be given additional defences and accuracy bonuses. Let them learn the ways of the force enhancing their everyday lives. This could even flow forward into the space expansion giving additional bonuses while piloting just as it was seen in the films. After a while of fine tuning your character, with a hidden amount of specialized training and experience a force sensitive should be given the option to begin life again, this time as a Jedi.

When you begin your life again as a full blown Jedi that is when you acquire the current secondary slot. This slot should have a very limited amount of skill points and be naturally force sensitive to using those skills. But we would maintain the current Jedi abilities being able to use light sabers and the specialized force powers. Light and Dark side should not be tied to factions. They should merely be a difference in skill trees. (There is an excellent guide on how to make each light and dark different). Let us decide which side of the war we wish to be upon or even if we decide to be nuetral.

This would be more of a manner of extending the current system as it stands. This would reduce the number of actual saber weilding Jedi as people would be tempted to continue playing their FS character over their new Jedi character. This would also add more depth to the game and a challenge to creating the best character you could, while keeping it customizable and unique.

The reward for the hologrinders when this system goes in could be force sensitive points to spend. We current Jedi could keep our slots and our current progression, and through time and dedication people could attain their additional slots as well. Current Jedi should not get the additional freebies to force sensitive points and should be able to run the quests and do the things that give fs points, so we could decide to go back to our mains and make them a more advanced player over time. Our benefit would be already having our Jedi character to play.

This gives both sides something to strive for and doesn't take away the current abilities.

In regards to Titles, here are my suggestions:

I think the starting Jedi character should simply be given a title of Novice Force User or Force Sensitive. (If someone really wants to be calleda Padawan, I think that should be a quest where you have to ucover some of the history of the Jedi to change your Novice title to Padawan... at least to reflect the idea that what Jedi did remain in the galaxy didn't really know much about the titles.)

That being said, the other titles should have a progression to them:

1) Jedi *simply put, after you've gone up a primary tier in the profession you should gain this title only for the recognition that this is a Jedi*

2) Jedi Knight *should be bestowed when a Jedi has completed his lightsaber training and has attained the title of Jedi* -I'm really thinking we shouldn't actually see a pro-bono repeat of Knights of the Old Republic and from what We've seen in the first movies in the game. The idea is for it *not* to be too accurate afterall.

3) Jedi Master is clearly the last title one should get with a Jedi character.

Really, to recap, progression in titles in this class should look something like this and honestly should be limited in titles:

Force-Sensitve *Novice with the option to quest for a Padawan title*

Jedi *after completing a tier*

Jedi Knight *after completing the lightsaber tree and attaining the Jedi title*

and finally, Jedi Master.

Short, simple, and about what it should be like in this era of the game.

A last item I think is of relavance is trying to make it possible for the *unlocking* character to become a Jedi without having to create a new character. The slot should still be limited to one per account and the first character in an account to do it should lock the others from doing it. That at least would make it more enjoyable to continue to play our original characters as we wanted to from the beginning... there is nothing more satisfying than watching an evolution like that for a character. A suggestion for those that do want to make a new character is to give an option of either accepting the path with that character or declining *to make said new character or let a different character in that account unlock instead* I believe this could be balanced to work for everyone so they can keep just the one character if they want and still be a Jedi, or choose to play 2 characters *the unlocking and the new Jedi*. -regardless of how many total characters one plays, I hope this gets my point across-

The Lunatic Fringer

I have only three big desires for the Jedi revamp.

1. I understand that currently the character who completes the Jedi path is not the character who becomes a Jedi. Don't like this at all. Doesn't make much sense that the character who does all the work and quests gets to sit on the sidelines and watch a new Jedi character enter the world. It would be better for that character to become a Jedi. If a standard character slot is still desired, let it be the new character with Jedi advancement disabled.

2. I'd hate for the Jedi quests to end up like EQ epics. I and my 60 closest guildmates are needed to be a Jedi. Ideally it should be a solo quest (perhaps with individual 'dungeon' spawns like EQ's LDoN). Small group quests at worst.

3. I'd like credit for the already completed part of the current path.