Game Guides Archive
Thread: I dont get it, combat question
My ranger (lvl 80) tried to get a mission right at the Coronet star port mission terminal. I was only offered lvl 15 missions. Then I shuttled to a player city (actually, i wanted to
Edit: Wow, I just read the posting above mine. I didn't bother much to find out what actually went wrong because I don't care and it is not my job and even if I knew, I'd be ignored. (I already tried to cancel my subscription 2 days ago, but it didn't let me. Honi soit qui mal y pense....). Sounds like a plan at least, and I am starting to comprehend some things.
Message Edited by Caljostro on 05-01-2005 01:48 AM
Thunderheart wrote:
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.
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.
Sounds like things that this should have been sorted out in the testing stages?
I was a Jedi Knight, still am I think, andLevel 80 now. Went out this morning and found a Mutant Womp Rat, attacked it.................... then ran like Forest Gump on speed! That thing was beating me bad! 
3 hours later am in my house and a Master BH rolls up. I go out, he attacks me, I hit him 6 times and heis one very dead level 80 toon. About 2 hours after that me and 2 friends, Level 80/80/71 go to Dathomir and find a NightSister Level 84 and we attack her. Not only was she doing LightSaber moves with a Sword (LS sounds included) but she killed us all in a matter of sec's.
Something don't seem right here........ 
An inbalance that is a understatement. Im a leval 59 Jedi Padawan and can't even kill a leval 15 narlatch on Dat. Let alone kill anything close to my leval I would probablely be luck to kill a chubby on naboo. I've done everything crafted new lighsaber tuned a near perfect pearl tuned a ne color crystal done IT ALL what is up with the poor testing and UNDERDEVELOPEMENT from a multi Billion dolor Co. like Sony. Hope they like building a new client base because it will be needed after this tabackal.
Gunman21 wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
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.
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.
Yeah TH, there seems to be issues with the system. I'll fight a level 81 and do fine, then go find a level 75 and not even scratch it (I'm lvl 80). Others are reporting similar things.
Special abilities my fat butt!
I played ALL DAY yesterday (~7a.m. to~10p.m.). Level 14. Brawler - unarmed IV, Marksman - Pistols IV. I can kill creatures below level 6 okay but get 1 XP per kill. Creatures level 6 and up are able eat me for lunch no matter what I try. MOBs attack from 2-5 times faster than I do and most do about the same damage I do per attack (I have a Scout Blaster I made before CU using Krayt Tissue). The only way I was able to gain ANY XP was to have my level 80 MCM follow my level 14 around (Ungrouped) and stim him. But I had to be careful not to stim too much or I wouldn't get any XP at all. At the end of the day I was level 18. However, I only earned one of those levels. I got the other three by respec-ing. At level 18 I found pretty much the same results, anything that gives more than 1 XP gives NO XP cause I can't kill it. The main difference is that at level 18 I get less XP than I did at level 14 when my MCM protects me.
I tried for about two hours to find other players of near my level to group with. Couldn't find any. Couldn't find a doctor either. What I did find was all the PvP maniacs were in Coronet putting on a hidious light show.
I'm not sure how the heck brand new players are supposed to play.
Treguard wrote:
SaleusCorwen wrote:
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.
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
Absolutely, phenominal post!!! I agree this is exactly what is killing this game atm. I cant even play my CL 68 jedi atm cause it takes me over 25 minutes (and thats NO exageration) to kill one quenker level 68. I incap about 3-4 times and I use about 4-6 diff foods plus buffs and its complete MISERY fighting under this new system as a jedi. Once I do kill it I get 860 xps and I need 800,000 to get the next level!!!! THIS IS INSANE!!!!!
At this rate it would take 12 days of NON-STOP playing to get one jedi box thats 3rd tier. This is completely ridiculous.