Image Designer Archive
Thread: What I'd like to say
/sigh
Lessee here.
Firstly, I believe this forum has a different tone than a lot of the others due to the type of people who decided to take up and keep the Image Design skill. These people tend to be community oriented and more academic than the average gamer. What I mean by "academic" is that they'll sit and discuss pros and cons, offer positive feedback as well as alternative ideas.
People tend to cringe at change, they like their routine and knowing about everything they do of their occupation. One of the big fears that I've seen expressed here is that ID's would become buff bots or become swamped in tells to perform a function we really don't want.
So we were granted the only avenue that stat migration could occur. I disliked this when I first heard but I mulled over it a few days and have decided it wasn't a bad decision. It does make ID's more sout after, even by the "l33+" players. However I highly doubt we'll be swamped with tells like some people think. How often does one person change their stats? When asking several of my friends whom I've met here how many times they've changed their stats on average they changed them 1-2 times within the first 2 months of creation and that was the end of it. Stat migration isn't used all that much. The major use of it now is with hologrinding, which will soon become history. Also, Image Designers are not hard to find. True you won't see them like doctors or dancers but it doesn't take long to locate one.
Tattoos, scars, and hairdos. We were given an entirely new interface, new color pallettes, as well as an offshoot of the droid publish in holo-emotes. Creating tattoos, scars, and new hairdos does require a considerable amount of effort and time. If you're bored then try making a new hairstyle in a paint program so it draws at all angles, looks decent in various angles and lighting, then set it so it attaches and stays with the skeleton so that the hair doesn't float/look fake. Scars...I don't see much the point. You'd have to be right up close to someone to even notice it and it just gives more data that has to be loaded everytime you walk in an area. Tattoos is much the same argument. Maybe SWG should just go the way of some of the FPS games like Unreal Tournament and have 3 dozen avatars to choose from who have pre-placed scars and tattoos. Perhaps putting something like a PA symbol as well as the Initials would be more visible and make more sense I think.
SWG has *the* best character customization (even devoting an entire profession to it) of any game out there, yet people want more. That's understandable, but let me ask this. How much is a small graphical detail on your avatar going to hinder or help your gameplay? There's a reason this game is an *RPG. I feel kind of lost here at times because we have so much given to us here that people's creativity takes a back seat to "lets ask the devs for this." Ultima Online never had player cities as part of the gameplay and there have been a numerous amount of them despite that. I've learned one major thing from MMO's, people only need each other to have fun in them.
One of the big problems I've noticed here is far too many people created Image Designers on Test Center. What I'm inferring is that it takes a person with generous helpings in patience, creativity, documentation, and communication to be a helpful tester. The ID changes are on test center..the place to discover, acknowledge, and report bugs in the system. People complaining that the interface isn't giving changes, xp isn't being given tot he IDer, etc.. really have no reason to. The whole reason of test center is to speed up the debugging process. Things are supposed to be buggy there.
Now before someone says the devs suck and are idiots again let me say this: they are in essence inventing these systems from previous systems and code. How many times have you invented something and it worked flawlessly the first time? How many times have any first iterations of invenctions actually worked the first time? How many times have existing inventions had additions that didn't work right out of the box? Look at the multitude of programs out there...they all are revisions of an initial release. It takes time and testing to get things right.
The devs don't listen? I'd say that's just heresy. I have not seen any comparable effort in any other game to how SWG attempts to gather, organize, and listen to the players. But they didn't give you what you wanted? Neither did your parents. Giving a child everything they want is nearly ludicrous, because they don't always know what's best for them. Parents see a bigger picture than a child does and is better apt at making the decisions of giving what to whom and when. Likewise the developers are the same way. They have to look at the entire picture of 30 some professions and how they interract with each other and the game itself. If any profession was given what they wanted then they should remove all targets from the game save for gnorts and durnis, because nobody's going to be happy until they are the best in the game. When that does happen they grow bored and leave for something else. In the long run people are not happy with having everything. Challenges and companionship are what gives life flavor and creates stories
Always remember the devs do listen. Positive constructive criticism is always better received than shouting and calling one stupid. The latter is nothing but acting like a poutie child which I hope most of us are above. Let's talk about the changes we've been giving, discuss the affect they'll have, and offer alternatives we think might work better. Our wish list is the ideal we'd like, but reality is based on compromises.
I'd like to close with one word of caution: let's calm down. Kwee is likely being torn up about all that's going on and she might end up leaving as correspondent. I've seen it happen in the past several times, and we don't want to lose someone like Kwee.
Welp there's my thoughts. If you want to talk about it or discuss post here or pm.
Tootles!
Chad, the person behind Tobie'
Nevs wrote:
Most combat junkies have their stats set already. They have their template already set to include buffs (in part because they tend to have accounts that easily provide buffs.) I don't really see the usefulness of constantly changing stats around whenever going out to hunt (especially because it's going to be pain for them to go and fetch them.) I think laziness will prevail and many won't adjust their stats regularly. The combat revamp will change things, however, and we'll have to see what happens then.