Force Sensitive Archive

They could've done this a lot better. To see how, if you can find it and get it to run, you can try Ultima IV -- Quest of the Avatar. Replace "Avatar" with "Jedi" and you have a system that would've been great, had they adapted it of course.

The thing is, just cranking the "needed XP" up to 37 trillion and letting you go out and grind on random mobs takes ZERO effort. The mobs are there. The "XP Needed" value is just a number in a database somewhere. It takes 2 seconds to make it a really BIG number, and just tell you "go grind." It would take thousands of man/woman hours to produce an "Utlima IV" style Jedi quest system that was actually interesting.

So, they went the easy/cheap way, knowing that most people wouldn't bother, and those who did, would be those who could stand mindlessness/repetitiveness.

Myself... I refuse to grind. My character is FS and has unlocked 6 branches. They're not even GOOD branches for her either -- things like Survival and Ranged Accuracy, which do nothing for her given that she is a non-scout, melee character LOL. They're just the 6 easiest quests I could find at the village. After that, there are 7.5 mil xp to grind... I have filled in like 3 of the 24 boxes. The rest... I won't even fill in. I'm just going to store up the XP till I have it all. In the mean time, I just play the game. When I cap an XP type, I trade it in. Otherwise, I ignore the village and anything to do with it, since it is not fun and just grinding is boring and annoying.

I do wish MMOs would get away from the grind mentality, but I don't think they will any time soon. The "treadmill" has been the MMO standard since UO and EQ got things rolling, and it's so much easier to just make the treadmill longer (by upping the # of XP needed) than it is to add real content (interesting missions, mysteries, puzzles, instanced zones with fun tactical combat situations, etc).

C

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Chessack wrote:
They could've done this a lot better. To see how, if you can find it and get it to run, you can try Ultima IV -- Quest of the Avatar. Replace "Avatar" with "Jedi" and you have a system that would've been great, had they adapted it of course.

The thing is, just cranking the "needed XP" up to 37 trillion and letting you go out and grind on random mobs takes ZERO effort. The mobs are there. The "XP Needed" value is just a number in a database somewhere. It takes 2 seconds to make it a really BIG number, and just tell you "go grind." It would take thousands of man/woman hours to produce an "Utlima IV" style Jedi quest system that was actually interesting.

So, they went the easy/cheap way, knowing that most people wouldn't bother, and those who did, would be those who could stand mindlessness/repetitiveness.

Myself... I refuse to grind. My character is FS and has unlocked 6 branches. They're not even GOOD branches for her either -- things like Survival and Ranged Accuracy, which do nothing for her given that she is a non-scout, melee character LOL. They're just the 6 easiest quests I could find at the village. After that, there are 7.5 mil xp to grind... I have filled in like 3 of the 24 boxes. The rest... I won't even fill in. I'm just going to store up the XP till I have it all. In the mean time, I just play the game. When I cap an XP type, I trade it in. Otherwise, I ignore the village and anything to do with it, since it is not fun and just grinding is boring and annoying.

I do wish MMOs would get away from the grind mentality, but I don't think they will any time soon. The "treadmill" has been the MMO standard since UO and EQ got things rolling, and it's so much easier to just make the treadmill longer (by upping the # of XP needed) than it is to add real content (interesting missions, mysteries, puzzles, instanced zones with fun tactical combat situations, etc).

C

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though i think the road to jedi is, if anything, too easy, i do partly agree with you otse. they could easily put a system emplace that is as time consuming and more difficult as the current grind but more fun. a series of quests for example setup to take a minimum of a year or so might do the trick. providing these quests were difficult enough and took up a large enough chunk of your play time, this would detour many people from persuing jedi as they would want to do other things with the game. it would make jedi a proffession for the dedicated alone, but allow for fun along the way instead of boredom (i'm not saying boring grinds are the only way of getting xp, but grinding is certainly the fastest way and is thus chosen by many players who don't want to fall behind).

And honestly if you feel this FS grind is dumb and mindnumbing, trust me you have no idea and should rethink your wanting to be a Jedi. The Jedi grind, although much easier now, is much more numbing than the FS. (7.5 FS compared to 30+Mil Jedi exp) Not to mention the occasional BH visit that will knock you back some. You gain around 6k per kill now plus combat exp you can cash in, as a Jedi you would gain 600-1200 exp on that same kill based off your trained boxes. Both grinds were not made to be easily attained. They are also your choice to do. If it is too much for you, stop doing the village and do other things. If a Jedi is what you want to become, stop the complaining and just realize that this is what needs to be done, and do it.

ohhh scary forum account But i think that getting jedi should be harder and it to stay as hard as it is now once jedi. That would reduce the number of dead jedi noobs on the floor

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Grunzer wrote:
Even Kotor I and Kotor II don't have puzzles, heh, whatever HAPPENED to the games where ya had to use your brain a bit to figure stuff out.

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Huh?

KOTOR had tons of puzzles. Puzzles are a hallmark of the developers who made it (Bioware). Off the top of my head:

* On Tatooine, the guy whose wife traps him with killer robots and you have to figure out the "code" based on number sequences.

* On Manaan, there is a murder mystery for you to solve.

* On Dantooine there is another murder mystery to solve.

* Also on Manaan, you can crack a sith security card and doing so requires you to solve a number puzzle.

* On Korriban, a couple of the old sith tombs have puzzles in them, my favorite being the energy ring puzzle.

* On Korriban, Ajunta Pall tells you that you can have his sword if you can figure out which one it is, and there are 3 to choose from.

Now, they made these optional, so if you went dark side and just chose to kill everything you might not see most of them (except the ones in the sith tombs). But there were certainly puzzles in KOTOR. You couldn't hack your way mindlessly through it even as a Dark Sider, and if you choose Light Side and made the effort to try to talk things out, you could solve most conflicts without fighting. It was definitely not simply a grind/kill game.

C

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eddytheone wrote:
Silly noob wants a glowstick. Wants FS to be easier than it already is.. grind out 15 professions then whine about FS, Not before

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try grinding over 20 professions only to have them change the system and have to start all over with no free unlocks. then having to fulfill the village requirements. Oh, and no free branches due to being bugged. nice

please stop asking to make it easier, its easy enough as it is, if you hadnt noticed theres like 1000 jedi out there i think it should be at least 5 times harder than it is and the phases should be longer this would make jedi a lot more rewarding theres just too many jedi out there

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Fiobi wrote:
please stop asking to make it easier, its easy enough as it is

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You're making his point. It is not difficult to just do the same successful activity over and over again. Tedious and boring and expensive in that you have to pay for a lot of months' subscription, maybe, but not difficult.

Nobody's asking them to make it easier. In fact his point is that grinding is so mindless that *anyone* with enough time to kill can do it -- no skill is necessary at all, no thought is required... just time, which anyone can do, as long as they have the $15/month to spend on keeping their account active long enough.

Making it interesting and more varied would not make it easier, but it might make it so it was less boring to grind. It also might make it more challenging, because with things like puzzles or mysteries to solve, or other sorts of non-grinding challenges, you'd have to actually do something other than click the same attack button over and over again.

What, exactly, about going "click-click-click" is hard? It isn't -- you say this yourself by saying it is too easy as it is. That's right -- because grinding is just mouse clicks. If you had to actually think, plan, use some tactics, solve some brain-teasers, balance Dark and Light sides in terms of which quests you do, and other things that go beyond "click-click-click", that would be a lot more challenging to most of us...

I mean imagine that... more fun AND more challenge. What's not to like?

C

The problem with a solely quest driven system is people will find a way to complete it in a week. Just look at the process of getting glowy. It has a few quests involved, although yes they are often just "go here, kill this" stuff, and there are more an more new players who just activated going to the village within a week or so of logging in. Besides...if they make quests with riddles or stuff like that most people (including, i'm guessing, many of those who want more challenging quests) will just come to the forum for a walkthrough anyway. Just look at all the guides here. "Guide to becoming glowy", "guide to fs phases", "guide to padi trials", etc etc. I'm not saying either side is really better than the other, but I don't think ANY system will ever make everyone (or even a majority) happy.

My biggest problem with the current path to becoming a Jedi is how inconsistent it is with the canon of the story. Mindlessly slaughtering 50,000 bols just doesn't seem suited to the Light Jedi, and seems a pointless waste of time for the Dark Jedi who could be better spending their time achieving something malevolent.

IMHO they need a system that has these features:

* Is hard to unlock, and is only unlocked by a random event you are not aware of, and which cannot be pointed to by others on a webpage somewhere. Once you have completed this task, performed this action - randomly chosen from say a list of a 1000 or so that constantly changes - you are considered FS.

* Each path of FS powers is driven by a different quest - but that quest is randomly determined for you by selection of 1 quest line from amongst a pool of 100 or so.

* Each quest is randomly generated from amongst a varying list of elements (constantly being changed and updated by the devs) and completion requirements so it can never be accurately detailed on a website somewhere.

* The path to Jedi powers is similarly randomly generated from pre-determined but changing elements and is unique for each candidate.

* Current Jedi are once again subjected to permadeath until the population drops below 5% of the server population total when it can be removed again.


If becoming a Jedi is going to be the focus that they push at new players, the least they can do is ensure that its a fun and challenging process that each person approaches differently and never requires any grinding per se (unless a drop is needed for a step say). Trash the experience exchange system entirely.

It will never happen of course. The devs have already completely screwed the game with their current development and there will be "no putting the toothpaste back in the tube". All the currently paying Jedi would quit in frustration if permadeath was introduce, and that would hurt the bottom line, so we are stuck with 1000 Jedi per server flooding all the big centers waving their lightsabers around like they are 12 year olds amazed at their first woodie, and we are stuck with the endless grinding. Its too late for this game although it still has redeeming elements elsewhere, maybe Star Wars Galaxies 2 can be done properly

Agree that SWG is too severely loaded with Jedi now to make a difference. You can't take Jedi away from them without a lot of bad things happening.

As noted by others, reaching Jedi is currently little more than a testament to your ability to read the forums ( or ask someone who knows how ), click buttons many, many times, and wait 14 weeks or so. Any system that is not heavily randomzied is going to be discovered and published. If it is heavily randomized, then nobody is going to know if it works or not, and people will quit for not knowing for sure that a path exists, much less how that path is to be discovered.

In hindsight, if SWG were mostly the same, a simple solution would have been to ditch the village, and make players choose to use veteran rewards ( 3 mos, 6 mos, ... 18 mos at a minimum ) to unlock their six FS branches. Sure, it's no real sense of accomplishment, but would slow down the incursion of Jedi dramatically and make people decide if they really wanted that glow-stick, or if they'd rather (for example) want a ADK for their current weapon or whatever.

I'm currently grinding Jedi, but just because I want the second character slot so I can have a warrior and a crafter. Otherwise, I'd be skipping the whole thing.