Fencer Archive

Special thanks to Masselin for the info! Unfortunately, no news about the Bleed Attack getting fixed yet, but still good stuff.

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masselin wrote:

hey guys i sat in on 3 dev meetings today at the anaheim hilton.... julio torres, dallas, blixtev, a guy named dave and a few others were answering questions.

there was 1 hour of general discussion hosted by dallas, followed byone hour of'ranged combat' discussion with just dave and blixtev plus one more hour of 'pvp' discussion with dave and blixtev. there were more discussions afterwards but i left to go to work.

i didn't take notes but here are some of the things that i recall. please ask me about any issues i don't mention because they may have discussed them and i can tell you what they said.

smuggler revamp

now that the combat revamp is implemented, they are going to do a series of revamps starting with smuggler, ranger and squadleader in that order. smugglers are going to get a "mini game" to replace slicing and possibly quests...

creature handler tweaks

dave has been working on the creature handler profession. expect to see the results of his efforts in the next few publishes. creatures should receive adjustments to make them more effective.

mobs and levels

one of the things dave explained has happened, is that there is a new combat system, but the world and the creatures in it have remained the same. this has resulted in things like level 5 critters outside noob starter cities who incap level 1 players in one hit.... it has also let to areas with a wide range of levels of mobs. there is a content team going through the entire game world, adjusting levels so that instead of areas with mobs of a range of levels, you'll find instead mobs with all close to the same level... like 40-42 for example... so depending on you skill level, you will know where you need to go to grind... and be able to wander around with your group killing everything you see and getting go xp for it instead of having to pull missions to get good xp.

root

big news for root. the root code as it went live initially for the cu and currently.... has code that is implemented but is not working. they are going to fix what is not working to make it work as originally intended which will 'diminish the effectiveness of root'. i'm not sure exactly what the change will be, but root will probably not be as powerful after the fix as it is now.

jedi, houses andbounty huntermissions

right now a jedi who is agro'd by a bounty hunter can run into his house. according to dave, what he would like to see for jedi vs. bounty hunter is a fair one vs. one battle. he would like for the bh and the jedi to have the same options. he is very against more than one bounty hunter attacking a jedi at a time. when the bounty hunters asked if the devs would make it easier for multiple bounty hunters to find the same mission, dave responded that he doesn't want to make it easier. he would prefer if bounty hunters could not team up against a single jedi at all. his vision for jedi vs. bounty hunter is a one vs. one battle on a level playing field. jedi should be stronger than bounty hunters. but the bounty hunter has the advantage of deciding when and where to initiate combat.

riflemen, pistoleers, commandosand carbineers

the audience brought to the attention of dave and blixtev that right now pvp consists of jedi and riflemen. there is no incentive to use pistols or carbineers. players use skills from those trees, but not the weapons. the main reason is because of the range. rifle range is up to 65 meters whereas pistols and carbineers are limited to around 35. the concept of "minimum range" was discussed which means that a rifle would not be able to attack at less than 35 meters. it was explicitly stated that this "minimum range" concept was tested and rejected and will not be implemented. they said it was too confusing to players who did not understand why they could not attack something right in front of them.

the only mention of a fix to the imbalance of rifle, was blixtev mentioned that he could slow down the rate of fire of rifles. he said 'its' slow now but we can slow it down more' and smiled.

the issue of commandos was brought up when someone asked that heavy weapons actually be heavy and do real damage. the devsexplained that commando weapons have utility to them that prohibits making them compete with rifles to be the most damaging ranged weapon. one utility of commando weapons is the area attack on some. they said it would not be a good idea to combine for instance "sniper attack", which is the most damaging ranged attack in the game, with an area attack from a weapon that is the highest damaging in the game.

ships

dallas mentioned in one passing comment that there will be new ships and he smiled. someone asked if space resources would replace terrestrial resources and the answer was no they will coexist like they do now.

spawns, the spawning system

it was explained by dave that currently in game there are something like 40 different ways to trigger spawns in the game. this system is being looked at and hopefully will be replaced by a system that uses far fewer triggers like 3 instead. the result of this improvement would cut down on times when a player for instance travels across dathomir only to find themselves instantly surrounded by 8 rancors and dead. remember, that what you see on your client is not necessarily what is happening on the server.

dual weilding

the devs would love to incorporate dual weilding into the game. dave mentioned that initially there was discussion of adding a duel weilding profession but they decided that was not a good idea that what they should do is incorporate dual weilding weapons into the existing professions. he said there are a few programmers who would love to make it happen. unfortunately, dual weilding would take too much time and resources to incorporate, and it is not a high priority. therefore, due to scheduling and prioritizing, do not expect dual weilding anytime soon.

bounty hunter droids on kashyyyk

the issue of bounty hunters not being able to track jedi on kashyyyk was raised to dave and blixtev. they responded that initially, there was a technical problem that caused droids not to work correctly so they took them out. since then, there has been a favorible response overall to this decision and droids were not planned to work on kaskyyyk anytime soon.

states

the states dizzy, stun and blind were discussed. here is the breakdown.....

dizzy --- dizzy lowers your defenses a lot and your accuracy a little

blind --- blind lowers your defenses a little and your accuracy a lot

stun --- stun should STOP your action regen as long as you are stunned

mezzes --- mezzes like snare that affect movement SHOULD break on receiving damage. not root.

food and be clothes

the ranged and melee defense benefits from clothes are capped at +25. the benefits from food are not capped. clothes were capped because of the old system, and possibly the cap on clothes could be removed in this new system.

force drain

the cool down timer on force drain will probably be extended to slow down how often it can be used.

elemental damage

dallas mentioned that they were going through the code and found an entire section regarding elemental damage commented out. they fixed it and elemental damage should be working soon.

entertainers, dancer and musicians

the entertainer professions are being looked at to see how they can adapt to be more useful now than they were before the cu. currently, they aren't very usefull regarding battle fatigue or of course healing mind wounds or buffing mind and musician is no different from dancer.

armor break

the problemcausing improved armor break to not work as intended was discovered and the fix should come along soon in one of the publishes.

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there may be more that i am forgetting but i am going to post this now so i don't lose the post... i'll add more as i recall it and also answer any questions you guys have....

i'm going back tomorrow for more. tomorrow i'll be able to sit through the jedi hour which i missed today.

the biggest impression that i got today is that there are devs, dave and blixtev to be specific, who have a clue and have ideas about how to make the game the way we would like to see it, and are responsive to good ideas.... the trick is to find correspondents for the professions who have the ability to relate accurately what the problems and solutions to issues are. these guys are on our side. i have a lot of hope for the game over the coming years....

Message Edited by masselin on 06-03-200509:31 PM

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This is from Ezekeal, from the Starsider Forum.

right, here are the high lights:

no battlefields, ever

mumbling about new planets - nothing conclusive

new clothing, night sister outfits for women - I take it NS is happy

smuggler revamp - should be commencing in june ( no addidtonal info )

vehicle weaponry will be looked into - also, turning the AT-ST in a vehicle is also being discussed

NPC storm troopers should get their voices back

if I missed anything, get stuffed... I am drunk.

• As Tanks said, Force Powers will likely soon see a 50% (or more) reduction in Force Powers.


• As far as the Devs are concerned, Visibility is working as intended and there are no currently plans for any changes to the system at this point in time. The Devs did say that they'd review it though.


• They said that elemental damage has been fixed (again) and should be going to test next week. This should give lightsabers about a 25% damage boost. On the flip side, no elemental damage is working anywhere so non-jedi weapons will be getting approximately the same boost.


• The devs have stated that they are considering adding a mind cost to force healing to limit the amount of times a jedi can heal. They think that force heals are still to cheap and easy and are unbalanced. They seemed pretty set on this one.


• They are currently looking into removing Jedi names and levels from the BH mission terminals. This way, a BH won't be able to bottom feed as easily as he won't know the strength of the mark until he actually finds and /cons him.


• A bunch of new lightsaber animations should be hitting test center next week.


• They are extending the cool down timer to Force Drain so that it isn't as spammable.


• Force Run will be a toggled ability so that you can turn it on and off at will.


• Force usage for Force Run will most likely be changing as well. There will be a lower initial cost for enabling FR, and then a small recurring cost to keep it going.


• BH Roots are NOT working as intended. BH should not be able to chain them together. A fix for this should be introduced within the next few weeks.


• They have acknowledged that there are not enough single attacks at Master levels and will either be reducing the number of area attacks or introducing more single attacks.