Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Mini-publish 8.1 Feedback: Image Designer Enhancements, HQ Vulnerability Timer, and other fixes.
Publish 8.1 brings us the Image Designer profession enhancements
Additional Changes:
Droid ModulesGuild Hall
HQ's
Manual Turrets
Stat Migration
Tips
Turrets
Give us your feedback on the listed changes for mini-publish 8.1!
Since the ID stuff is all I really played with on TC or Live I'll only comment on that. (Although getting confirmation emails again on bank tips is nice—almost panicked a few times there
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
Publish 8.1 brings us the Image Designer profession enhancements
Image Design Building (tents): The new Image Designer tents located in Theed, Moenia, Coronet, Bestine and Vreni Island are now active. These locations are where players will go for Stat Migration and Image Design. This radically alters many ID's play style, and invalidates hours of work in setting up salons in order to present customers with a comfortable, pampering, RP'd ID experience. At the very least IDs need to be able to duplicate the advantages of tents in their own cities in the same way that entertainers and medics can.
Stat Migration: Image Designers now have the sole ability to migrate player stats. The process will take 10 minutes and requires the Image Modification Booth located inside the ID tents. This functionality has been revoked from the general player base and now requires an Image Designer. 10 minutes is exploitably short, and irritatingly long. In addition, nerfing 100% of players to provide less than 5% of players a "critical function" is rather unsavory. Please reconsider removing the slow stat migration method from the playerbase at large.
Image Modification Booth: Image Designer booths grant the ability to facilitate the new stat migration aspect of the profession and reduces the amount of time needed to perform an ID change in half. Again, this needs to be available in more than 5 static locations. Player city tents (placeable by MIDs) and droid modules would be ideal.
Holo-Emotes: A new type of "holo-emote" particle effects have been added to the game. Image Designers will sell these limited use, special use emotes to players. There are 16 unique holo-emotes that represent a "holographic" image for a short period of time.
Increased Colors for all Palettes: Hair color, Skin/Fur Color, Lip Color, Cosmetics, Eye Color, Markings and the existing tattoos will all have new colors added to their current palette choices. Very nice, from what I've seen of them.
Price Information on UI: During the Image Modification session, the Image Designer and client can now agree to a price for the displayed design changes. Only upon selecting the confirm button for the Image Designer's changes in the "after" window will the client be billed and the changes take effect in a secure fashion. Also very nice.
Dynamic, Real-Time Updating to Client's Interface: The image designers and their client's interface windows will be linked and dynamically synchronized. Both players will see the "before" and "after" images as it is happening. Clothing changes after the beginning of a session do not update; the UI on the designer's end lacks a zoom override; but other than that very nice.
Image Designer Bug Fixes: Changing a client's hair style from bald can now be undone, eye shapes and eye angles now alter the proper areas, and IDs have the ability to change all male freckles. (i.e. Zabrak and Twi'lek). Eye shape is still missing from certain species/gender combos. A client going LD during a session forced the ID to relog to regain functionality (and due to timers, wastes whatever time the ID spent waiting for the timer to tick down.)
There is a known issue where hair color changes may not take effect until after the player relogs. Players can also leave range (i.e. no other players displayed on overhead map) to have hair color changes display correctly.
Give us your feedback on the listed changes for mini-publish 8.1!
)The timer for ID session, coupled with the new UI and xp changes seems to be overkill. No timer for masters would be nice but do we REALLY need a timer with the addition of the other changes?
The timer for the Stat migration is ok, but timers for changing lip colors?
Congratulations on the work to make ID useful and part of the game. Kudos for that! Nice changes so far for ID...
Structure Management Modules - thanks for stealth nerfing them while you implemented the fix after you broke them with a hotfixa day after the publish 2 weeks ago. They no longer stack as originally intended and you did not document this change wasting many DEs resource yesterday and severly limited their use. BAH! You have no idea how many people you ticked off for no legitimate reason at all other than Dev grief. All of the other modules stack and it is obvious MANY players maintain more than 9 structures. Some players have admin on even more than 45 structures(9 per droid max x 5 droids). Most of these types of players are the leaders of guilds or communities. This was a slap in the face to DEs and them as a whiole - intended or not.
Kwee wrote:
2/ Cosmetic/Body Timers
Both Image Designers and customers feel that the current timers for cosmetic and body changes, 2 and 5 minutes, are unbearably long.
a) Why were such long timers chosen?
b) Are timer reductions being considered?
7/ Exp Gain Too Slow
The ID community is very concerned about the current rate of gaining exp. At the very bare bones minimum it would currently take someone roughly 60 hours to master, and that’s under ideal conditions (willing friend to click at perfect intervals for at least 60 hours). Those of us who are casual players and did not make use of mind-altering substances or buffs under the old system know from experience that the ID exp grind is a mind-numbingly-boring carpal-tunnel’s-inducing nightmare. We wanted our profession’s exp gain to be non-trivial, but not torturous. 60 hours or more might be reasonable if the process of getting the exp were fun, but sadly it is not.
a) What is considered a minimum amount of hours a profession should take a casual player to master?
b) How many hours a week is a casual player assumed to play?
c) Is the exp system under consideration for major tweaking?
Hmm... I just started my third character on the same server (read third account). For the change of things I wanted to make him more a social character since my other characters are mainly combatants. Musician has always been interesting me and reading about the new changes to the ID profession, I really wanted to give that profession a try, since it looks quite interesting for a secondary character (at least to me, no offense to other players with different priorities).
Since I live in a player city, I do not really feel inclined to move to an NPC city, where I know nobody, and can becertain to getalmost nocustomers, since the existing master Image Designers will probably get them. To be honest: Why would I go to a newbie, if I could get the service of a master with a much broader range of products.
Now I started to ID a bit, the first 1000 XP went nicely enough and took me about 30 minutes total. Now I look at the prospect of 5000 XP required for the second level, with not much more to do but hairstyle and haircolor. Not too funny a prospect. Especially if I consider that it now will take about 150 minutes. Taking for granted that I actually find a victim. The next levels become appaling considering this.
Also I have to admit I am inclined to compare this with the novice combat professions, where there certainly isn't a timer as interesting as this one. I certainly am willing to concurr that a profession should be an achievement and take some time. But this is already feeling slightly rediculous and very frustrating for a new player. There are only so many hairstyles, colors or patterns to try out and we have seen most of them in the game already. Furthermore somehow this waiting already looks excessively boring compared to the thrill of combat. And seriously how many customers with whom you can have chit-chat and a cup of coffee while designing their new outfit can you expect.
I will continue to give this a try, but I cannot abide the thought that for a casual, non hard-core design-around-the-clock player, any progress will be excessively slow. Most other professions can be grinded either without other players or at least be aided and abetted by macroing. Considering all the afk entertainers and tumble-to-standing medics, I guess not many players like endless boring grinding.
Furthermore, considering the notes of Runsabre about player interaction, I have to admit I am somewhat confused. This game mostly revolves about combat. Levelling in combat can be done alone or in groups, but usually is most effectively done alone or in a very small team, using buffs. The social interaction is a very important issue, considering the long-term attraction of SWG as a game, but it is by all means not the focus. If I consider the role-playing conclaves on the servers, they are an astute minority. Enforcing interaction for a few classes, while other can progress entirely on their own is an awkward prospect. Especially if you consider that the classes needing interaction already are at a disadvantage to those without those requirements.
To finally come to a conclusion: You made some very nice improvements on the ID profession, but you made the profession very hard and unattractive to achieve. It is uncomprehensible to me, why you try to make one of the rare social professions so much harder to achieve then the very common combat classes.
Removing the slow stat migration from all players was a poor decision. Not giving even the people who you burden with this responsibilty the opportunity to discuss this, because you knew it would cause backlash from your player base was an even poorer decision. To do all this in order to force a player social interaction that you deem correct is probably the worse choice yet.
I honestly do not understand how you can feel trying to force all players to interact socially in the manner you feel is best is a good thing. Most of us enjoy the grouping and social interaction, I certainly do. Honestly, with some of the issues, and resulting frustration from them the friends i have made in game have kept me coming back when I would have quit. This does not mean that you should be able to force me to interact with others. That is a choice we should be able to make on our own, to suit our style of game play. This game was supposed to include all types of gamers from uber serious gamers,the casual gamer, the player who like to solo, the player who likes to group, and the player who falls into all of these categories depending on their mood. More and more of your content seems to be aimed to forcing gamers into the SOE gamer cookie cutter.
Including dungeons and the like that need groups in order to complete is fine, that is a good way to encourage interaction. Removing a game feature that was available to all players and the giving it to one group, who can't even use it on themselves, to force social interaction is not the way to do this. More large player events, perhaps some even organized by SOE would help in this. The Droid invasion attacks on cities was a great way to get people to interact with each other. The battles were a ton of fun and it was awesome seeing opposing factions battling side by side. At the same time, you were not forcing people to jump in the fray. Why not more things along these lines. Tusken raiders attacking cities on Tatooine would be great to see, and would bring the players in those cities together to beat them back. Please consider better non forcing ways to encourage social interaction in this game. this something we play to get away from our jobs, school, and the rest of RL, so we are not forced into doing what we don't want to.
Syzygy-Gorath wrote:
There is a known issue where hair color changes may not take effect until after the player relogs. Players can also leave range (i.e. no other players displayed on overhead map) to have hair color changes display correctly.
Side note: Thisseems possiblyrelated to the "invisible player" bug, where the clients are not updating a character within their viewing range correctly? There's a few little bugs with real time client updating that require a relog, or moving out of range, which sometimes results in the "invisible player" bug.
Seriously though...great job...I like the new colors and interface.
