Development Cycle Archive

"Our first thought is to enhance droids so that it can at least become Droid Wars, which is Star Warsier. - Holo"

With that line, you admit to abject failure in gameplay design, how sad.

Here's another idea - work on making the PLAYER'S skills more of a determining factor in the outcome of events than their total pet level (this includes faction pets and droids).

There is something wrong in your game when pets > players

Read Enix_Dayspring's post on page 5and take it to heart, please, particularly this section:

"Gee, let's make a tamer class that can control powerful creatures the size of a spaceport to do their fighting for them at very little risk to their own characters with minimal skill investment. I don't see any problem with that."

With the creation of this class in its present form (not to mention its previous form with 3 rancors), you make point 4) in my sig quitenicely for me - better in fact, than I ever could. Thanks!

Oh boy, here I go. This has gotten me started. /rant on

Yes, it's going to be tough to fix, but you should have seen this coming a long time ago. The fact that you didn't shows horribly substandard analytical abilities, which doesn't exactly inspire optimism or confidence in me that you have the abilities to fix the situation. Many of us were good enough to pointthis problemout to you, especially back when you were going to scale pets back to reasonable HAM numbers. But instead you buckled under to the horde of CH's that you had created (which ironically, was smaller than the horde of CH's in the game now) and left pets and CH's grossly out of balance. I'm guessing you'll give in to the CH's again (based on $$$, it makes sense - heck, I'm even one now, because I have to be, although I hate it), and soon we'll see nearly everyplayer with MCH pets, AT-ST's, and improved droids, fighting otherplayers with MCH pets, rebel pets, and improved droids.

The fact that you have the word P-O-K-E-M-O-N edited shows justhow far this has gone. "Droid Wars" is just another version of the aforementioned"dreaded word", only this time the pets will be metallic in nature - big improvement in gameplay there....

/disgusted; /rant off

Thanks for the detailed reply Holo. It's relly nice to see that the powers-that-be take an interest in addressing the players' concerns.

My question/suggestion is that have you ever thought as to why there are so few Master BHs?

I would venture that it's probably due to the huge amount of skill points required to even make Novice BH. Would it be possible for you to change the advancement tree to Novice BH to exclude Master Scout and the Trapping branch of the Scout tree? That would really help us in freeing up a few more skill points. As it stands, being a BH means that you can dabble in 1 'other' occupation if you ever hope to make Master. The removal of the Trapping tree would greatly aid us in advancing through the BH profession. Alternatively, you could offer skill point 'rebates' for every Master title attained.

Just my $0.02 Any and ALL comments would be appreciated.

AnviL
"Novice Scout"
Ahazi

To build community I have come up the following idea. I think it could be put into the game pretty easily but I an not a coder so I could be way off.

People seem to really like unique items such as npc drops, the night sister armor, and now the alien dust and paintings. I believe these items give a player a sense of individuality and accomplishment. Two things all games should give a player in my honest opinion. I think when a player has something unique they tend to show it off. Such as "hey, come to my house and see my painting"or they will wear something that is different. Which gets back to community in that a player with a unique item such as a painting will tell another player, show other players and those other players will in turn will tell more players "have you seen x" and "LOR has an X" and so on. I could not tell you how many people I showed my speaker too I got from a rebel base mission as a reward. I did not go out of my way and say "hey come see my speaker" but everyone who comes into my house says nice speaker and I tell them the story. Or they will ask about the missions and I will them what the missions are like and that always leads to "what do you get?".

That said here is my idea. There are all sorts of faction standing. I must have 40 of them now. Some -5,000, some +5,000 some -367, some + 2,360 and so on. I look at it often and laugh sometimes at how bad one is or how good one is. Pople will ask your faction standing with such andsuch or say "Oh I need to avoid" such and such becuase my standing is low". It creates conversation. But once the faction standing hits plus or minus 5000 it stops there. Why not take this and expand on it?

Why not let the totals plus or minus to continue and once a certain level is reached a player gets a badge. You couldtake the badges and have different names for different levels much like you have in the skill trees now. You could also ramp up the faction points needed for the next badge much like the skill trees do now or much like the ranking system for Rebel and Imperial. Once you hit a new level the old badge falls off automatically. For example:

Faction Standing:

Hutt +5000 (no badge just normal good standing)

Hutt +25,000 (Badge called Hutt Warrior)

Hutt +50,000 (Badge called Hutt Enforcer and the Badge Hutt Warrior Drops)

Hutt +100,000 (Badge called Hutt Champion then Hutt Enforcer drops off)

I propose keeping the pro's and con's of what your standing means with one faction or another the same. There is no added benifit for someone with a +50,000 faction standing. I propose making the points needed for the badges high but not so high they are not attainable by the normal player.

I think this would be an amazing conversation starter. It would cause the ohhh and ahhhs to go around. People would interact, ask questions, tell stories and so on. I think thiswould increase community grealty. I think itwould give a player a sense of more indviduality at the same. Not that it is bad now mind you. I think the game captures both community and indviduality very well now. The buzz about badges is huge as well. I think the diving force is the hopes they lead to becoming a Jedi but others likebadges becuase it makes them unique and gives them something others do not have.

I am not the best writter so I hope everyone can follow my train of thought. Some people will say bugs need to be worked out first with which I agree to some point but I also think improvemetns can be made along side.

If you put this in do I get a badge? lol jk

On the other side you would have a minus Badge ranking system.

Faction

Hutt -5,000 (Normal and no badge)

Hutt -25,000 ( Hutt Outlaw Badge)

Hutt -50,000 (Hutt Hunter and Hutt Outlaw Badge would drop off)

Hutt -100,000 ( Hutt Fugitive and Hutt Hunter Bagde would drop off)

I propose keeping the name of the Badge the same so as not to cause confusion and everyone would learn what the different Sub names would mean.

Example:

Hutt Fugitive, Ewok Fugitive, Gungan Fugitive would all mean the player or players have a minus 100,000 standing with that respective faction.

Nice post Holo. Kudos.

Honestly what would make the state of the game comments mean a lot more is to get your opinion on some of the facts. Does the most popular profession have any significance on how you approach development? Does it mean that some professions that maybe SHOULD be popular aren't? Does it maybe mean that you've madesomething too powerful?

Is the sourceor rateof money sinks a good or a bad thing in your perspective? Is this how you envisioned the economy to work?

Is this where you want the game to be? Is the progress you see acceptable?

I see your list of what are the top priorities and I'm a bit baffled. Sure those are big problems. None of them affect me or anyone I know in the game, but they obviously ticked off a lot of other people. But are those few thingsso huge that you have to dedicate the whole team to just them? Is your team that small? If so... man I'm sorry.

I think the most telling poll results are what do player WANT to do, and what do we think should be the highest priority. Most people want PvE and even more people think you guys should focus on content and professions over game balance and exploits. And yet to date all I've read about it seems are PvP related game balance nerfs, and smashing "exploits" (many of which I don't understand why they were deemed worthy of being addressed).

Can we expect this to change now that the people have spoken?

Good grief, Anteraan -- why so upset?

Look, I agree with you on several key items:

• allowing multiple very strong creaturepets is bound to makefor powerfulcombatants


• this should have been realized in preliminary design discussions


• tacking on very strong droid pets may just make matters worse

But you're not going to get anywhere just ranting about this stuff. The right to criticizehas to be earned bymaking constructive suggestions -- if you can't find something helpful to say, then you haven't spent enough time thinking about the problem.

Additionally, I also agree with you that analytical skills are both useful and in frighteningly short supply in far too many places these days. BUT it's also the case that analytical skills, whilenecessary, are not sufficient. Any group designing complex systemsbenefits froma mix of thinking styles, ranging from blithely creative to analytically critical... and a good leader knows when and how to use each style. You have to generate ideas before you can analyze them, after all.

To sum up: I actually agree with your opinion that somebody somewhere didn't think CHs through enough, and simply amping up droid pets seems unpleasantly like more of the same. On the other hand, can't we also agree that, despite an imperfectimplementation, the fundamental conceptof"pets"is pretty creative and deserves a shot at inclusion in this game (albeit in a more balanced form)?

Maybe it can't work; certainly there's no need to try ten different versions of CH. But for pete's sake, let's let the creative types have a chance to make a few mistakes before we flay them alive!

--Flatfingers

LORlargeB, I'm guessing thatHan Solo must have been an early winner ofa Hutt Fugitive badge, no?

--Flatfingers

On the housing issue, we observed (and documented, and /bugged) an issue where personal harvesters could perform wildly differently in the same place (put 2k credits in each, one would be on fire a day later, the other would be fine and have the correct amount of maint left). We stopped seeing it happen, but never noticed anything get posting. Something like this could definitely be in effect...
Suggestion: Make it impossible to pick up or drop anything, or call pets, or heal wounds, or entertain, etc, until the repairs are fully completed, and a positive balance is in the maintenance pool. This takes away all advantage to the house without altering its placement or contents at all. If you make them inaccessible, no one can get to the control panel to pay them off, neh?

"LOL CS Tickets aren't being posted anymore because people know they won't get answered inside two weeks and even if they do its some kind of automated form letter.

If that were the case, we wouldn't see notable drops in callsright after posting particular fixes."

Don't get cocky, kid

FWIW the people I talk to, to a man,regard CS tickets as a joke, and news of anyone getting any benefit from them is a surprise. We don't get surprised often.

Oh, I have a suggestion: why not erase all of the tickets? That'll really lower the numbers.

I lost intrest in this game months ago,main reason being lack of rewards,i spent a long time trying to level up and when i did didnt really seem to change a whole lot.I went for some artesian skills and that was ok then but after crafting the same thing 5000 times it did become very boring and tedious.Then I finally made it to novice weaponsmith.Whoopty doo!!What a waste of time.Also scaled up the carbine path.Made it tonovice carb specialist.Once again......Whoopty doo!!!!I think SWG has a problem with new ideas as well.This game is pretty much the same as the rest of them just more complex.If some things have changed then let me know I havent kept up in the last month or so.

CH most popular and most commonly mastered?? Hmm, what a surprise. I wonder why......only profession that can solo high lvl mobs without faction pets, only combat profession that really doesnt need armor if they are smart. This is becoming creature wars online!!! Please fix this! aka, im sorry to say this....they need to be nerfed. I'm sure CH love their profession and its all great fun, but its not balanced or true to the movies. They must be nerfed.

---

Holocron wrote:

The vast majority of money is still earned via missions, but loot as a percentage of earnings has been rising slowly.

I've been playing about a month now, and have never found missions to be lucrative unless I'm tanking with a group. I make 80% of my money with harvesters and resrouce mining. It's my "job" and I use the proceeds to fund my "hunts" (missions to go kill things!) Perhaps it's just an older player finding their niche in the game, but I'm glad it's broad enough to accomodate so many different playing styles.

Two points to make:

1. Player Cities should be put on hold
I think Player Cities are a waste: Why not open up existing cities -- you've got lots of structures there, and nobody lives in them. Case in point:

Example: Corellia / Intrepid.
Everyone hangs in Coronet. Field players run missions all over the map, but cannot get prof. healing outside of Coronet. Finding an entertainer or med ctr staffed in outlying cities is rare. Prob. because there's not enough traffic to gain XP if you're a med or ent. So the trick is, to get more people to hang in those cities. Let them open shops there, vend there, live there.

2. Market transfer fees
Certainly a civilization as advanced as SWG would have FedEx. If I purchase an item on another planet and don't want to go there, charge me a delivery fee to have it retrieved from a remote location. Right now I don't believe there's any way for me to "hire" another player to get it.

--Pezdah Spencer
Calamari Bros. Mining Co.
Calamari Power & Light
Corellia/Intrepid