Items And Loot Archive

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Xalya_Shadowalker wrote:

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canova wrote:

Well, admitteldy Xalya, hunting a giant dragon was boring like hell... I remember shooting at those with a group for half an hour... Problem with the old system, is that the only way there was to make a thingy harder was to raise its HAM and raise its protection (and sometimes raise the amount of damage they would do).. you ended up with stuff like DWBs or Nova troopers or whatever you needed to shoot at for ages until they would get down... And a few shots from them would kill most players. You needed a full equipement food etc... to be able to fight those and the issue was if yuo died, the fun was over for the night (clone, rebuff, wait for stomach to empty etc...) NOw at least, you can keep playing and enjoying your time even after a

death. I prefer a system where a fight never lasts forever. Either you win, or you loose but it does not take 3 hours of pointless shooting. Now when you fight an enemy of higher level than yuo, kiling it might take time, a few minutes, but never half an hour. I prefer to have dungeons hard cause of numerous mobs you need to control (with crowd control) etc.. that super uber killing machines and bullet proof armors. I admit they need to adjust levels on a few things but that new system is compatible with a much funnier PVE.

Krayts never took that long, and if they did, well that was why you took a group with you and they went faster.

Well they did, I remember going in the desert to kill the biggest krayt one, with a fine group : 2 swords, 2 rifles, and like about 4 to 5 more people. It took us a LONG time. If not 30mn, then 20mn... but still, I remember I was getting so bored I was studying in the same time.

You didn't need a complete combat overhaul to fix things, you needed buffs balanced, armor balanced, and specials fixed.

well precisely this is here that I disagree. Undoubtedly those changes would have improved the game but I sincerely do not beleive it would have made the system viable.

Furthermore, the time spent on a Krayt was fun, and I always had a blast doing them. You mention a few shots from a DW or SBD would kill most players... guess what, now it only takes some mobs one. Level based damage multipliers suck. The stomach emptying, yeah, real great that now clone zerging is worse than ever (my english being poor, I don't understand the concept of clone zerging). Sure, the old system needed fixing, but what they did hurt PvE because of something I will again stress below.

Well sincerely I am not sure. Look at how boring SDBs were before. Now once you are level 80 they take a few seconds to kill or it takes a few seconds for them to kill you. In the DWB, death can happen very fast. If you do not operate wisely as a group, loosing your group, forgetting to assist your mates, getting distracted etc... you can easily be taken down fast.

Fights are more exciting because they are fast, they look more like in movies where one or two hits in the droid would destroy it. But it also takes 2 to 4 hits to take you down. The whole challenge is to try never to be outnumbered, to assist each other etc..

I admit the DWB is currently too easy, but provided they increase the number of spawn a little and /or the level of some mobs, you will really need to have a group with complementary skills who know how to use group control abilities and medical support.

Level system surely has its boring side: if you face an opponent from a much higher level you are dead in one hit. But was it much different with the old nova troopers? What I mean is that now, the game seeks (it is not achieved yet but is on the way) to offer content for all level of players. Provided you understand the system, you can find opponents challenging for your level all over the galaxie. Someone who levels up from 0 to 80 will go through all sorts of areas and fight many opponents. he will have incentive to level up to access the high end part.

What wuold happen before? well with buff and food you could go almost everywhere solo. A marksman with rifle 4 could take down lairs of quenkers on dantooine or rancors on dathomir... now at least you need a group to protect you if you attempt this, and death is never far away if you do not pay attention.

Also, since the max level of players is about 80, it is easy to adjust the level of content. It used to be hard. In order to ensure challenge, the devs had to create mobs (nova troopers) with insane HAM and damage output and resists. Now, you only need a few mobs with a few levels above 80 and it becomes an challenge.

Finally, why do I beleive that a simple nerf of buffs and armors and dot weapons would not have been sufficient to save the game is that:

- Buffs were too strong armors too, but their strength was also the result of the community's adaptation to a game system. Thing is, buff were necessary since the use of specials = the enjoyement and practice of your profession and the acccomplishement of your mission in a group would cost HAM and sometimes a huge amount of HAM when it was carbineers or riflemen for example.

Unbuffed, you would kill yourself in a very limited number of specials or you were forced to only /attack with default attack.

The action bar seems to me a much better system, it prevents you from spaming too many powerful specials, but you can use them as needed to accomplish your role withouth needing a buff that makes you invincible.

- The way professions were designed you had a deep problem. It would have been really very hard to balance them all in PVE. Strong damaging professions needed to be slow (rifle) when the others (pistols) needed to be faster... If you took into account the AP problems, you would need to make a pistoleer shoot even more often in a given time than a rifleman. But the capacity you had to add accuracy, speed and defenses, stacking them from different professions would ruin any attempt to balance things. If you did all this you would have gotten a result extremly close to what is in live now: beyond a certain limit, the increase in speed and accuracy is not that strong, that all same level weapons have about the same DPS, you can only benefit of professions' skills when actually using the relevant weapon.

Now people will choose their profession according to their taste (blasters look better than rifle for ex) or to their skill in a certain kind of tactic (some players will enjoy more the crowd control role for ex). You do not have to choose between stronger and weaker.

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First the fact that you use more attacks is already an improvement. And when you PVP in groups, with complementary skills, even more special attacks become useful. And yes you kinda needed

As far as the 4000 damage T-21s go, I had a nice T-21, but I could still be beated 1 on 1. 400-1800 damage T-21 does an average of 1100 damage, so with HS3, it would do 1100 pvp damage. Well, then add in armor. 90% Energy to 110 damage. Synthsteak to 50 damage. Plus, it was inaccurate as hell so I would miss every other shot. Just because a weapon has a high damage doesnt mean its an I-win button. DoT weapons, were unbalancing once the DoT reached a certain point, but small dots under 100st made things more interesting.

well first your 4000 dam T21 would maybe only do 1100 dam in PVP but compare it to regular nice dam sliced T21? everything is relatively unbalanced. Synthsteak and PSGs would be used on both sides.

Also I agree little dots were interresting but the thing is all regular PVPers had strong ones.

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Well the problem with the old system Xalya is that sincerely the level of preparation you needed to be able to do anything significant in PVP was way too high. I admit it gave incentive to work hard for months in order to be able to afford it, but let's face it, since anyway there was not enough of legendary weapons anyway, that was limited to a very tiny proportion of players. The resustl of such system was that PVP became a restricted sandbox of a very small proportion of players, always the same, maybe 0,005% of the server population, who would fight each other again and again. PVP should and was meant to be a popular part of the game, it was meant to be the most fun thing in SWG, look at early documents: civil war etc... But instead of this the system pushed 99% of the players to avoid the best they could any PVP experience.

This is the excuse given by people who didn't try. I pvped as a commando, I pvped as a TKM, I PvPed as a Fencer, I PvPed as Rifleman. I never had my uber rifle for the vast majority of my PvP engagements and I know most people didn't. What PvPers did do was buy a lot of weapons, slice them for the best damage they could, buy powerups, use those, meaning more crafters made more money. There was incentive to make the best, to get better things, but now why get the best when 'ok' is good enough?

First it is not an excuse. I did PVP as rifleman doc, and as a Mpistoleer/desperado/fencer. Those were not the best recommended templates for PVP but they were decent ones. I had done everything you are mentioning: buyingbunches of weapons (best non sliced T21 and jawas and DRX6) and having them sliced, keeping only the best. I did have a very good equipement (even ADK psg) but nothing legendary / exceptional. Result is that before the GCW my PVP encounters would be summed up as such:

1- the pathetic encounters: this is basically 6/8 of the times I would run into overt players. I dies in less than 10 seconds because I can't hit them (melee stackers I guess), they have uber dot pikes (happened to me numerous times...the thing would kill me even before I had a chance to heal my mind), they used exploits (would happen usually when I would come back with friends in order to get revenge).

2- the easy win (2/8 of the times): this is when I would run into tefed players, or unprepared low level overts (strange people who run around around overt being unfinished templates or helpless stuff like MCH/MSL lol...) I would incap them in two, three hits and most of the time, I would not DB.

3- the actual fight: happened to me three times. I am overt, scouting around for someone to fight, an imp spots me, and after assessing my probable strenghts, declares. That person does not have exceptional/legendary stuff. The fight is fun usually, the one who ends up wining is the one who had the best timing in terms of stomach filling/use of foods. That happened to me 3 times in my whole PVP experience.

I am not mentioning the times I would run into a jedi.

This is what I meant when I was saying the system would create opponents who would necessarily win or loose against the other. When I was starting a fight I would know most of the times whether I would die or win. Extremly rarely would there be any challenge. The legendary weapons would create such invincible templates, this is why challenge was limited to owners of such things. But the skill system was also responsible since some professions would necessarily win over some others.

Now it is true that you have a difference of levels but other elements enter into consideration. You can use terrain, you can use tactics (agroing NPCs on the opponent), you can use friends (two level60 fighters have a good chance to win against a level 80 fighter, in the precedent level, no matter how many friends I would bring to help me against a regular PVPer he would defeat us all in no time).

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You needed to pick a particular specy. Not all species were good at PVP. Humans had a tremendous advantage on twileks,I can tell, I have both. So if you dreamed to play a rodian, not good.

And this problem has only gotten worse with the CU and the new species hardcaps. Buffs were an equalizer for many species, but those are gone now, now some species have even greater bonuses than they did before.

well the only bonus species have now is in the length of their health bar. In the previous system, the only thing that mattered was mind. The species who had twice more mind and focus / willpower than others did have, I think, a stronger advantage than they have now with 200 more health.

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First you needed a particular template. Not all professions were available for PVP. So, even if what you did like/wanted to be was a carbineer /CH you had to forget it and either go for a Mrifle something or some sort of inconsistent unfinished addition of different melee skills that would allow you to get enough high defenses.

The issue with needing a particular template is not one based upon uber weapons, as TKM was popular forever and there weren't manyExceptional VKs around,it was based upon professions not havign workign specials and upon their abilities not being properly in tune. This was fixable without putting hardcaps on weapon damages.

TKM was popular for the defenses it would provide.I rarely saw players use TKM attacks in PVP. They would stack defenses and generally either use sword or most often fencing, or range weapons. and my example was not limited to professions who had legendary weapons. There were some professions / templates viable for PVP and those pointless.

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Then you needed to buff (Doc + musician +dancer), of course, and that meant delay every time you died. Crates of uber food. That meant also lot of cash.

Then you needed a good equipement: Very good armors, but also all these looted stuff that would make the difference between cannon meat and an invicible god : SEAs, legendary weapons, high dot weapons etc... Those were necessary, cause they were sometime so unbalanced that they would give no chance to a regular opponent. I had personaly aquired all the above stuff but the legendary stuff. Since every regular PVPer had his Mind fire lance or his uber T21, there was nothing I could do in most PVP encounter. I had not a single chance to win except if shooting at them when they were afk (which i did not do). A simple krayt nice damage slice T21 was not enough (or DRX6) to compete with the true PVPers.

Buffing took 8 minutes to do a group of 20. if you had buff bots, or if you had afullgroup of friends available to buff youright when you log in. Also, after one death, you had to makethe whole travel through the galaxy to getthem back.Food was great because it decreased your effectiveness as the battle wore on or if you died, since there is no way to simulate fatigue. If food is unnecessary then it becomes clone zerg ftw. True, but the problem is that without food you were dead instantly. Now you still cannot eat food but food is not a condition precedent to do anything in PVP or PVE (in hard places). If you were rezed in the corvette or in the geo bunker or the DWG or near a PVP battlefield there was nothing else you could do, the whole thing was over for you. Rezing was only a way to avoid decay.

SEAs you could live without, helpful but they wouldnt win for you. I hardly had any except my Rifle Speed +5 and I got that late in my career, I was a non-speed capped rifleman for a long time. And every regular PvPer did not have his Uber 21, very few did. Vall usually fought with a stock T21 damage sliced, I went out sometimes with unsliced guns.

SEAs would make some people impossible to hit for me when meleers for example. I did not realize how important they were until I read a post by Addy on the forums. With the same template exact than him, I wuold be very vulnerable, but with all the collection of SEAs he had, I would never hit him . Great post by the way, helped me to understand a lot about PVP, why I was loosing sometimes when I thought I was doing everything well.

You couldn't always use your best weapon because eventually it would break. DoTs on weapons are another issue, and should have been removed, I wil concede that. However, DoTs actually made Doctors important on the battlefield, curing diseases, poison, and fire. Uber weapons don't make an uber player, you still had to know what to do with them.

First, most of the DOTs weapons which were used in PVP were too strong to be countered by doc abilities. As a doc I experienced it, either on the battlefield trying to heal people while others would put fire, poisons or desease on them: you would need one doc by fighter or the HAM was dropping too fast, or on 1v1 PVP, I would keep myself healing, being damaged more and more, unable to counterattack... I remember some lances that would drop 1/3 of my mind in on hit...

Also, Docs are still useful on the field even more than they were before. You are needed to heal the health, cure the poisons of CMs and rez cause rez became important.

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Once you had all this, you also needed to join the right guild, i.e. a guild of uber PVPer powergamers. Soon or later, a good PVPer would end up needing to join one of those guilds.

No, most good PvPers joined those guilds because they are like-minded individuals. I know many uber PvPers and they invite me to join them all the time, even though Im in an RP guild.

What I meant is that if you don't group with those people, learn their way to play/fight, you cannot keep up with the always renewed ganking tactics, and exploits (especially now with the jedi/bh war) and sophisticated combinations of skills boxes.

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Are all those things above necessary? maybe not, you could maybe decide to neglect one by going twilek for example... but still you'd carry that disadvantage a lot.

No you didn't. Buffs equalized things, perhaps too much, but you could find some combination of buffs and foods to decrease your weaknesses. Good luck now.

Buff would not equalize the only thing that mattered : mind. That advantage would, on my opinion, be much stronger than the little difference in health that some species have now. One shot or two more on your opponent and the difference is deleted. A clever use of terrain or of some skills lowering the opponents speed or capacity to attack can easily compensate this.

Getting all these stuff meant of course lot of cash. In order to purchase all those you needed millions. Even if you were lucky enough to loot the legendary weapon yourself (which can take years) you still needed tones of cash to purchase the right SEA, the food crates etc... That means you needed to play the game a certain way: either getting an alt crafter who would factory mass produce a popular thing (compo armors) or camping some popular POIs hours and hours long in order to loot the thingy you'd have a chance to sell. Or going imp, buying an ATST and running solo missions for days long on dantooine.

Playing that way means boredom for many players, which is why they were reluctant to make such sacrifice.

So in other words, effort should not equal reward.

That is not what I meant, efforts should equal reward, but it is unhealthy and fun killer to allow efforts to result is such a tremendous difference in power between players. A game that creates "I win button" or "I win situations" will not encourage players to fight each other and compete. It will result in what happened in the old system: a very elitist system enjoyable only for the few who had the time and boredomproof abilities to catch up with the tremendously high requirements. I feel that now those people will still win cause of experience, slightly better equipement, better knowledge of their skills, more sophisiticated group tactics, but all those things can be reversed by anyone if he is clever enough and they don't resustl in frustration ( you loose but you know this is because you were not as good as the other, and that you could have done better, you don't feel like you we dead even before starting the fight). In the old system, it was beyond wingspan. And also, I didn't play the game a certain way, I played it my way. Yes, I have an uber gun. I looted it by freak chance while hunting for fun. I didnt have it for most of my PvP career. Most of my PvP career i spent with a stock T-21, Brandy, and Canape. I did fine. The most money I ever had was 40m, and I earned that through dealing smartly on the Auction boards, buying high and selling low. Well, I know you did not do it only cause you were forced to. But some did, and also, for people who wanted to start PVPing well, they had to camp Nyax and kill hundreds and hundreds of geonosians and NS... honnestly it gets boring very fast. I beleive that if some people like you ended up doing such things for the fun, this is because of the lack of content in the game (see my first lines in this post). I beleive the new system offers more content by making the exsiting content more challenging and promising after a few adjustment (what will be interresting will be to see the ROTW hard dungeons created by devs with the new system in mind already..cause they won't be existing POIs nerfed like the DWB).

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So the system would discourage the large majority of players and encourage lame tactics. Since the system would amount to making some poeple invincible to other people (for example a casual PVPer would have 0 chance to defeat a PVPer with a 1000mind fire dot lance) that would lead to frustration and entice players to look for the "weaker" target. Which is why camping newbee areas overt to gank Tefed newbees or unprepared players was common. Someone who had been slained 30 times by the same PVPer realizing he had no chance to even getting close to win, would feel entitled to do the same with the player who would be an easy target for him. So the system would lead to lame behaviour, lack of ethic in PVP which was badly reflecting on the community as a whole.

Well duh, a n00b shouldnt be able to beat a fully templated person. They still can't. Changing the TeF system fixed the ganking, not the CU. People did things like that because they're jerks.

A n00b should not be able to beat a fully templated person, but two fully templated persons should be vulnerable to each other. The veteran should have an advantage (cause of slightly better equipement, experience and better knowledge of his skills) but ifthe recently finished template proves to be clever, improvise better in combat, use his skills with more talent, he should win. Under the old system, that was not the case.

And I maintain that the huge amount of jerks that were common to pass by in the PVP side of SWG and the very low ethics of PVP of our community is the direct result of a system that would create frustration and encourage people to look for the "I win" situation. There was no way or almost you could find a fair fight: either you would loose for sure, or win for sure, for 99% of players. So either you would keep getting killed only or to get your revenge you would tend to seek to inflict the same thing on those you can kill without risks (and feel entitled to since it was obvioulsy the system).

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So of course now, the system allows lesser diversification. The difference between players in terms of equipement and therefore strength will be decreased. Once you reach the same level, players are way more even than they used to be. The equipement will still make a difference : the person who will have the weapon making 10% more damage, the amor with 10% more protection (against the right type of damage), the food/spices, the enhancements will still have an advantage over the other one, but that advantage won't be totally unbalanced. It will also be compensated by the fact that other factors will enter into account and give a chance to the opponent to get the advantage, like the use of the terrain.

And this is the crux of why PvE sucks...we had 10% better before, now we have a hardcap that says "no better than this".

This is why I think the current system is an improvement. I hope that it will lead much more people to PVP on a regular basis, and make the fun and challenging content of the game affordable to everyone provided a "reasonable" investment in the game.

To summarize, I think that even though it reduces the incentive for players to look around for loot, it is making that game much more healthy.

By placing hardcaps on abilities it only becomes useful to a point. Once that hardcap is obtained, why bother? PvE sucks because people used to enjoy getting that rare loot that would give them a nice gun. Now they get a gun five damage better than someone elses. Woo. Why try for excellent, when 'ok' works just as well?

Your weapons and armors will decay faster than they used to, especially since I beleive people will tend to fight in PVE and PVP more than they used to since the system is challeging and fun again. If you want to always keep stock of the best possible weapons and armors, that will still require some work.

And maybe you will not go hunt solo in the hope of uber loot, you will go hunt in group to help a friend level up, to accomplish a quest, to loot a schem for your guildmate, to harvest ressources for your future armor... All this sounds much more fun to me.

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those are just my thoughts, they depend greatly on what is fun to me which is a very subjective thing. I don't pretend I am right nor you are wrong, I am just trying to underline that our opposite point of view takes its roots in a different perception of the game.

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