Game Guides Archive

These are my thought on the game as I currently see it, and I am going to refrain from making combat remarks since the combat update is pending.

This may be a bit of an unorganized stream of consciousness, but I’ll try to make it other wise.

This may also be a little long so if you are not interested in reading a long post I suggest right now you skip this and move on.

The first thing I’d like to say is why the stars in the game do not show correctly, or at least do not show correctly for my nvidia Geforce FX. The last thing I saw was from the tech support forums that Vertex/Pixel Shader needed to be Disabled to see them. I ask why this has not been fixed yet since stars are an important part of the night sky. The second is why the animation for the harvesters or at least some of the harvesters has been turned off. The only animation that seems to be on is the animation for those harvesters that are in the area of npc cities. For those of you who do not know, back when creature mounts were introduced the harvester animation was ended for one reason or another. I would at least like an answer why it has or is broken and if it is going to be fixed or not, this would end these questions.

While on today I saw one that the dev’s have not solved the problem with the new armor for wookies. One of the solutions was to disable the Vertex/Pixel Shader, which makes me wonder why. If the vertex/pixel shader is so problematic then why not just disable it for everyone, or at least address the issue with why it doesn’t work.

The Bazaar still needs work from what I can tell, and the part that seems to be changed is how the Bazaar displays items that are in factory crates. Now the factory crates regardless to what is in the crates are in the misc under factory crates. This should be changed to coincide so the factory crates are in the sections that reflect what is in them.

This is even more important of an issue now that the bazaar is now increased its max from 3 thousand credits to the current 6 thousand credits. Items if in crates should be just another part of the display or a subdirectory of an already existing group. A good example would be weapon powerups, instead of individual powerups being placed in the weapon powerups directory and crates of powerups in misc. The powerups should all be under the weapon powerups directory tree with perhaps another branch coming off weapon powerups for crated items. In addition, other items need to be either removed or updated from what the current list shows things to be. There is a branch or tree for armor powerups which I’ve never seen or heard a thing about these items

I am also annoyed at the great abundance of people that are afk whom are in the entertainer profession. This also extends to the fact that these players are only found in certain NPC cities cantina’s and are often there in such number that they outnumber the patrons. There should be a hard cap limit to the number of entertainers in a cantina at once. Think of it, as the owner of the cantina doesn’t want the entertainment to be more then the customers. This would give the advantage of spreading out the entertainers to other watering holes in the galaxy besides just a few. Another thought going back to the afk mentioning is that a player character should not be able to dance or play music or anything else for that matter if they are afk. If they go afk they should come to a stop so other players who are present can have a fair chance at getting xp.

Time to reach the medical professions, from the little I’ve played of a medic it seems people get wounds mostly from two different ways. One they forget to save their cloning info on the planet they are currently on, or they sampled radioactive samples. To some degree there needs to be a greater presence of wounds then there is currently. By doing so would increase the attention to have medics and doctors in groups. One thought when have you been in a group and had a medic in it? I have never been in a group that had a combat medic that healed the group instead of poisoning and diseasing the enemy. I know I’ve never been on the receiving end of those group heals. I’m also annoyed at the amount of doctors that are doing buffs all over the place. On Bria, they are inside the damn starport and on lowca they are outside it. I understand this, but it increases the problems of lag that are already an issue it seems with these very busy areas. Now this may change with the up coming combat revamp but as I said, I am describing what I see now. I think it would be possible for the doc’s to give their buffs perhaps on the second and or third floors of some of the hospitals. The doctors do not have to worry about people not coming to them for buffs, it’s something everyone is going to do. The first floor left to those that are wounded, so the docs can handle the lines of people on the next floor up. I understand that the docs want to be near where their patrons want to be, but since vehicles and mounts the distances are lower so the complaint that it takes too long to go to the starport after your buffs just doesn’t work to me.

With the thought of vehicles, I thought that perhaps when a vehicle enters an npc city that they slow to the speed that they can travel when under shift. This I think would bring a little scale as to the size of the cities back. Let them go at full tilt back in the open country side, but slow them down a little while in the city. (I can’t believe I’m advocating a speed limit)

As a long time artisan, I think it would be neat to have some thing that artisans or other elite crafting professions could take part actively in faction activities. For those that have difficulty in seeing what they could do, I wish to remind them that we use something called combat engineers in our own militaries for awhile now. The key thing that they seem to do is make stuff to help a side in combat, or blow stuff up in combat.

While on crafting for artisan I’m going to ask a question to the dev’s about their choice in some of the armor that are available to the beginning or new players. Lets start with Bone Armor, an armor that has protection in energy but none in kinetic. From my experience, I’ve done more fighting where kinetic damage is needed more then energy. Particularly for beginning players who are going to be attacking any creature that they believe they can defeat. Also, why does bone armor have a special protection for electricity? This makes this armor no good to anyone, I always feel sorry for new players that I see wearing the stuff. They wanted to buy armor but all they could afford is bone, yet odds are it has given them no protection in the areas of resistance that they need. They instead are harming their Hams just so they can wear some neat armor. I would suggest a change and make kinetic the default resist to bone armor and energy the special protection, or visa versa.

Another issue with artisans are there mission terminals that are an important source of making money if you are a starting artisan. Why are the terminals setup for artisan to base the difficulty of the mission, or what it pays by your combat ability? I’ve seen this mentioned before and I’m amazed that this has not been corrected yet. The introduction of the contractor for the artisan professions is very nice, and although I’ve not used them yet perhaps merits abolishing the old artisan terminals. I’d also like to mention that if this is the same for the entertainers it would explain why they don’t use their profession mission terminals as well, or so I understand. With the entertainers, I understand that there are other reasons that they have for not using them.

Mission terminals of all kinds that I can tell also need some work as well. I have been on Dathomir for example in groups hunting Enraged Rancors and have seen the difficulty level of the missions. All the missions below the difficulty of the rancors on the mission details show as the same difficulty as the Enraged Rancor missions. This shows that quite simply the missions difficulty is listed at what ever the top difficulty is of the missions that show up. They do not necessarily list what the difficulty is of the actual mission. I know that I base the mission difficulty not on what the mission difficulty is listed in the details but by how much it will pay.

For combat missions after you have taken one from a mission terminal or from a NPC the intelligence for placing the lair, base, or individual you are to meet up with needs to still improve. For all the time I’ve played, I still see bases appearing inside buildings that I cannot reach. Another that is annoying is bases or lairs that spawn to close to one another. I’ve been on Dathomir and on Dantooine where I’ve been doing missions only for the lair, or bases to be spawn right next to another lair or base. This isn’t a problem unless the what ever your after is hostile to you, then instead of having to deal with just one lair your having to deal with two at once. Although I do think that things have improved I think, but it still has a way to go before such issues are noticeable.

Next a few thoughts about groups, as the game is now people are not to interested in grouping up, unless it’s for their own personal gain. There needs to be I feel a great incentive to grouping up rather than being able to do more difficult missions. Some people dislike taking people lower then they are because the mission pay for them goes down. I know that there have been times I’ve been in a small group and been personally annoyed that the mission pay has gone down for me, but it’s gone up for my group mate. So, while he is making more money I’m making even less since it is also being split up as well. It is unlikely that you see small groups of people of different abilities doing missions. They maybe grouping but as I see it, it is for other reasons than hunting or faction missions. Things in SWG seem to be very economically based; this isn’t bad, it is in fact for a player of an artisan profession very cool. So one solution is at least making people to want to group is to have a bonus added to the missions. So if the people in the group are all equal in ability then should earn what there share of credits is based on their combat ability, and also make a little extra. This little extra incentive would help bring people together then it currently is which seems to be either indifferent to uninterested. The importance in not dropping the difficulty in the missions if some of the people are below your ability is important since not all people are the same ability. That last should be obvious, but it also adds a bit of adventure for new players and also will allow an easy source for more veteran players of a profession to get apprentice points for teaching other players. Another reason that some people may have in not wanting to take part in groups is they are less likely to get the loot. If there was a way of all members in a group to get loot that would end the need for people to see to that they were the first ones to get to the fallen enemy first so they could get the loot before the others could. In total one of the things I dislike are those players who use solo-groups. For those that do not know a solo-group is a player group that groups for the soul reason to get more difficult missions. They then do those missions not as a group but as individuals allowing them to get even more credits for them selves. I do not take part in these groups so I may be a little mistaken, but I don’t see this as helping the group problem. If the missions are not difficult enough then this is something that the combat revamp should look to address. If this has not been understood, I’m trying to stay away from mentioning things about combat since it may change in the (distant it seems) future.

I also have an issue with the way that the insurance terminal interface works. The interface is fine if you just want to insure everything that is in your inventory. It also works well if you have only a few things you want to insure in your inventory. It is terrible if you have a good number of things you want insured and a whole other group of items that you don’t care. I as a crafter have a bunch of things I want insured, but I also have a good number of things that I don’t care about. I don’t care because I can craft replacement items. It would be nice if there was a way to insure multiple individual items instead of having to do it the current way. The current way being click on terminal, choose insure and not the insure all over it. When insurance window opens click on one item and then click insure. Then repeat for every individual item that you want to insure. I don’t know about you but I often just give up and click the insure all button just so I can move on to other things.

Ok, going back to the Medics and Entertainers for a moment, a thought came to me about how to space these professions into other parts of the game universe. If say medics received additional xp from a needy med center or hospital, it might give incentive for medics to be in other areas. This same thought for Entertainers as well, an example is I’ve hardly ever seen an entertainer in the hotel (there is no cantina) in Restuss on Rori. This same thing goes for the medical professions too, since that hospital stand empty all the time. Since there are so many locations (not even going into player cantinas and med centers in player cities) that stand neglected and empty there needs to be an incentive to be there. An xp incentive could be a modifier that has determined that the hospital is a needy one so they get an xp bonus for healing in one. (Same for entertainers) All that would need to be done is a program to be made to log the number of heals or entertainers in the various medical buildings and cantinas and hotels. At the minimum, a log would show the dev’s what the players are using and what the payers are ignoring. Right now, I feel that Coronet on Correllia is becoming too much like the end all be all location to get everything.

I notice that the dev’s are going to end recursive macro’s, which I think is a great move for them. I would like it if they also took up my suggestion that one can’t use a macro while being afk. While briefly on macro’s I’d like to suggest that I see them as a way of speeding up certain repetitive aspects of the game, but not others. I’m sorry but I do not have any pity for those crafters out there whom complain that it takes too long. It doesn’t, it particularly doesn’t take long if you know the exact amount of resources you need to master a crafting profession. I master droid engineer when I was poor and going from mineral harvester load from mineral harvester load. I couldn’t afford to pay for all the resources like some people could. I credit getting through it by sure wanting to, and by the help of the guild that I was in at the time. When I finally mastered I felt like I really accomplished something. I question using a macro to get you to master in a few hours as taking away from the effort it is supposed to take to master the professions. If the proper way of mastering a profession is to use macros then the dev’s should change the amount of xp needed to reflect the use of macros. I noticed a person suggested that there should be perhaps a grind option for crafters. This is an interesting idea, but how about a alternative one of giving xp based not just on what you made, but say how well you experimented on it. Currently you get the same for either, lets make experimenting worth something when trying to get experience.

Last thought before I post this is would the dev’s please do something about the npc’s in the cities and perhaps other places that all stand in the same area. The appearance does not add to the ambience of the game and breaks it for me when I see it. They should not all be standing in the same small spot one in or atop each other depending on how you wish to describe it. This also makes it difficult for players to want to converse with these npc since you can’t easily click on the npc you wish to converse with. I just ask that you fix the pathing or what ever for this. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is related to the same reason why some bases or lairs are still appearing in houses and such, which I spoke of earlier.

Well I would like to thank you for reading this if you got all the way through this. These are just my thought impressions as to have I perceive the game as I play it currently. If you feel the need to respond or add to this, I ask that you stay off combat. We all know combat has issues so lets talk about other things that also have issues. More to the point things in the game that don’t work right and yet nothing has been done, are bugged but it’s so small it doesn’t get /bug reported, or you don’t see appropriate place to put it in the bug in the report. Oh, if you feel the need to say you agree that would be great too, or if you want to clarify my perception you may do that too. I ask you do not flame me is all.