Game Guides Archive

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Thunderheart wrote:

Creatures are using special abilities, so it may have just been a nasty critter. Though I will share this information with the team so they can look at it in case there is a balance issue here that needs to be looked at.

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My guild matewas killing dune lizards after getting the mission. When arrived to the mission the lizards showed level 60, and he was level 63 (Master Rifleman). Was able to kill 2 lizards (lv 60) with taking abit of damagealmost getting incapped. A 3rd lizard appeared and i ran away after 4 shots. When got back to the mission, the same lizardwas now level 14. After killing it and going back to the lair the next ones popped out level 60. Heres the Question. How can the leveling of the creatures changed in the middle of a fight doing the same amount of damage. Is this going to be normal from here on out in this game?

BTW HOW CAN THE DEVS PUSH THIS CU OUT WHEN IN TEST CENTER 5 THEY HAVE NOT FIXED ALL BUGS. ALSO HOW CAN THEY PUSH THIS OUT WHEN THE JEDI BRANCH IS COMPLETELY BROKEN. ARE WE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS MONTH OF SERVICE, WHEN IT IS BROKEN AND SINCE I CANT PLAY MY CHARACTER TO THE CHARACTERS FULLEST ABILITIES PER CU.

ARE YOU GUYS TRYING TO KILL THE GAME OR SHUT IT DOWN.

BEFORE CU THIS GAME WAS AWESOME, EVEN THE VILLAGE GRIND I HAD FUN, NOW THIS GAME IS UNBEARABLE.

Boogies

Eclipse Server

Yonas Guild

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Nomorenerfs wrote:

Thought I'd share a similar but opposite problem.

All missions on our mission terminal in Mirage (Tatooine) on Corbantis are level 45 missions for me. I am a level 35 rifleman-wannabe. I take a level 45 rock beetle mission, hoof it out to the mission, and the rock beetles are level 18. I kill the two there, get 1 point each. Shoot the lair, two more pop out, kill them, one point each. Take the lair down to half, two more spawn, kill them, 1 point each. Blow up the lair (can you see a trend here yet?) 1 point. So for a supposed level 45 mission on a level 35 guy, I got a whopping 7 points of experience out of a few hundred thousand I need to advance.

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Thunderheart wrote:
Creatures are using special abilities, so it may have just been a nasty critter. Though I will share this information with the team so they can look at it in case there is a balance issue here that needs to be looked at.

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Thunderheart

You mention here that pets are using specials abilities....what would those consists of ?

Thanks

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Thunderheart wrote:

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KalashnikovDude wrote:

okay, i am doing my thing on tatooine, i take 2 missions that are exactly the same, same cl, same creatures. the first nest went great the mob was only damaging me 20 to 30 points a hit, so i proceed to the second nest and start to attack. suddenly i notice the mob is hitting for 130 points a shot and i was incapped before i could reach my bike. is this some sort of bug or is there something i am missing here? please dont start ranting about the cu since there is nothing we can do about it. thanks

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What was your profession and what were you fighting?

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I don't understand the 1xp thing. Why can't I just get normal xp for low level creatures to at least give me a chance on leveling some low level marksman boxes. I'm a swordsman, and am unable to kill any creature 10 levels below me with a gun. Even if it were 3...still only 1xp. Why? Give me some xp like normal...50xp is good when killing capper flies.

and don't get me started on the "well get a group". My guild is nowhere to be found, and everyone else is dueling on Cnet. Besides, I may only have a1/2 hour to hour to play each day. I save my grouping time for when I know I can commit to a group on the weekends.

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hockeyrules wrote:

I don't understand the 1xp thing. Why can't I just get normal xp for low level creatures to at least give me a chance on leveling some low level marksman boxes. I'm a swordsman, and am unable to kill any creature 10 levels below me with a gun. Even if it were 3...still only 1xp. Why? Give me some xp like normal...50xp is good when killing capper flies.

and don't get me started on the "well get a group". My guild is nowhere to be found, and everyone else is dueling on Cnet. Besides, I may only have a1/2 hour to hour to play each day. I save my grouping time for when I know I can commit to a group on the weekends.

Please allow me to play this game. I did pay the $15 a month, right?

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Thunderheart wrote:

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AvimSaba wrote:

I was on Tatooine this morning with a new character, I had Brawler 4/0/4/0 and was working on getting TKA.

I'm CL 10, so I took a CL 10 mission to kill some Eopies. I'd been killing white-con Imperial NPC's all day, so I didn't think there would be a problem.

The single Eopie I fought destroyed me. I never stood a chance. I taken away maybe one fourth of his health when I got incapped. Two more tries were also unsuccessful. I used traps, center of being, lunge, and cycled between Melee Hit and Melee Strike to get in the maximum number of attacks. I had only 4 BF and no wounds. It just didn't seem right, for a CL 10 Eopie to be about five times as strong as a CL 10 Imperial NPC, or that I should be ganked so badly by a mob equal to my level.

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Creatures are using special abilities, so it may have just been a nasty critter. Though I will share this information with the team so they can look at it in case there is a balance issue here that needs to be looked at.

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Starcloud wrote:

The big problem with NPC con and experience is fairly simple:

The person who designed the experience/risk system is incompetant at Game Design.

Let's go back to the basics. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st edition.

As a 1st level fighter, you required 2000 xp to get to second level. A typical foe for a 1st level fighter would be a goblin. Each goblin had a base XP value of 5, plus 1 point of xp per hit point. Goblins had 1-4 hit points each, so each goblin was worth 6-10 xp. In a group of 4, these goblins were a serious threat. If he prevailed, he would get on average 30 experience points. It would take 267 goblins to advance to second level.

Now, let's drop in on the same fighter at 10th level. Goblins at this point are no threat to him. He's much more capable with his weapons, and his equipment is much much better. Goblins, with their 1-4 hit points each, fall by the score before him. How much XP does he get?

He gets 6-10 xp per goblin. Just like the first level fighter.

However, he's not learning much from fighting goblins. In order to get to 11th level, he needs 250,000 experience points. In order to get that, he will need to fight 33,334 goblins, or move on to much tougher targets, like Hill Giants or Ogres.

In short, the XP penalty for fighting low-levelgoblins is already built into the system, on the *ADVANCEMENT* side of the equation.

Now let's look at Star Wars Galaxies.

In both the new and old systems, to earn a first tier skill will take 1000 experience. A second tier skill takes 5000 experience. Third tier is 15000 xp, and fourth tier is 70000 xp. A novice Elite profession takes 125000 experience.

In the old system, there was a slight decrease in XP granted by low-HAM creatures as you advanced in skill, but overall you could be assured that you would recieve roughly the same XP from the same creature: an amount which varied by the HAM of the creature. What made killing Dwarf Nunasunprofitable as a method of advancement was the fact that you needed more XP to advance to each new tier of skill, so the time invested in killing Dwarf Nunascould be better spent in killing Giant Worrts, which gave far more XP per creature. If you were lucky enough to be in a group that could kill off a lair of Enraged Rancors, well, the XP you got for killing the Rancors was capped; you could not get *more* than the cap.

Sound familiar yet? Seems almost like the penalty for fighting low-level mobs was built into the *ADVANCEMENT* side of the equation, doesn't it? and that being lucky/skilled enough to kill a much higher-level creature didn't unduly advance your character rapidly.

In the new system, there is a dramatic disconnect between the Health of the creature and thus the time it takes to kill the creature, and the XP granted for the kill. A creature with 10000 health takes much longer to kill than a creature with 500 health, yet the experience granted for *both* creatures is the same: none.

Now the system penalizes you *twice* for killing low-level creatures; once by the penalty built into the *advancement* charts, and a second time by a penalty built into the experience grant tables. This is why I say the person who designed the experience/risk system is incompetant at Game Design.

To solve this problem you have to do two things:

First, fire the person who came up with the experience/risk system. I suspect that this person is Blair. Whoever it is will be an obstruction when it comes to the next step, which is dismantling and reworking the XP/risk system.

Second, redesign the xp reward system so that XP is granted solely based on the Health of the mob. This brings the skill advancement system back into balance and allows the player to choose what level of risk he is willing to accept in trade for the amount of time it takes to advance his skills.

Next, of course is the fact that the CL of a character is not accurate. The reason for this is simple: there are actually two combat "classes" in the game, Ranged and Melee. If you are a Melee class, in order for your CL to be accurate, your skills must all lie within the Melee professions. You cannot dabble in the Ranged class. If you are a Ranged class, then the obverse applies.

If you are both Ranged and Melee, then your CL does not reflect your actual capabilities, as roughly half of your special attacks will not work with half of your weapons. A level 80 Rifleman/TKM/Medic is not actually level 80; it would be much more accurate to place this player at level 45-50, as the player's melee specials and defenses will not work with his rifles, and vice versa.

There are a few solutions for this; one is to allow all specials to work with all weapons, with the limitation that Melee specials can only work within 6 meters. The other is to split the CL into two parts; Ranged CL and Melee CL.

The 'con' system itself does not properly account for the difficulty of creatures. Social creatures are more dangerous than anti-social or loner creatures, and this factor varies by the number of creatures in the spawn. Four "green" creatures do four times as much damage as one "green" creature would, and therefore should actually be considered "red" or even "purple". Add to this the problem that creatures *never* miss when they're above level 20, and go into "invulnerable mode" when they're more than 40 levels below you...

Finally, a note about testing future expansions; do not permit open "blue frog" testing ever again. While it's okay to allow the builder terminals to grant equipment and buffs, skill building should be limited to thebasic sixprofessions only, except for hand-picked volunteer testers. Focus tests must beorganized affairs that aredeveloper-led, QA-led, or Correspondant-led.

The massive PvE imbalances you are seeing come as a direct result of the lack of such low and mid-level testing. Most of the players who logged on to the Test Center during the "Blue Frog" periods were looking solely to test out high-end, double mastery templates for PvP purposes. As a result PvP is far better balanced for the minority of people who engage in it than PvE is for the majority of players who play this game.

Those of us who did try to test the leveling experience by copying our in Live mid-level characters were extremely frustrated and promptly ignored, buried underthe mass of "PvP R0xx0rz!" testing feedback.

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This is probably the most comprehensive post on why the new system doesn't work well.. (but can work with some tweaking)..

Milk and Cookies for both of these people.

Message Edited by Treguard on 04-30-2005 04:14 PM