Jedi Archive
Thread: Iakimo's Jedi Revamp Proposal: Yeah, it's a pipe dream, but...
Since certain of our fellow players seem to be enamored with the notion of endlessly suggesting "revamps" of the Jedi profession that mostly revolve around resurrecting the dead Saber TEF as a tradeoff for a slight increase in Jedi power, and since I consider most such proposals to be little more than a plea to return to the worst of the griefing/ganking days of the pre-CU world, I submit the following overview and proposal for what I think Jedi ought to be.
GOALS AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES: Jedi are and always will be the baseline profession for any combat-based Star Wars game. Jedi are the defining element of the Star Wars environment. Without Jedi, no game can legitimately lay claim to being a Star Wars game -- period. Therefore, any profession structure in a game like SWG needs to balance their player professions outward from the starting point of what they want Jedi to be. How powerful do they want Jedi to be? And then, balance the other professions relative to Jedi. The only way to create a workable, durable Jedi revamp is to craft the system as an integral part of a greater whole.
The developers tried to take such a comprehensive approach with their ballyhooed Combat Upgrade." In retrospect, it was a failure. Much of what they implemented amounted to a massive (if necessary) nerf. However, the changes implemented have played out as a buggy, poorly-realized mess. And now,the developers are forced intohaphazardly trying tofix the things they broke.They nerf here, boost there, restructure this portion over there... and with every tweak, the overall balance becomes more and more out of whack, and Jedi become less and less like what they once were in the original source material.
Some of the recent changes are beneficial. A noteworthy example is the Bounty Hunter profession and it's accompanying set of mission terminals. Bounty Hunters now "feel" like Bounty Hunters -- they're powerful, and effective in their role. In a nutshell, they "feel" like Bounty Hunters, at long last.
Jedi, on the other hand, do not feel like Jedi -- especially for those of us who attained our status after theGreat Jedi Nerf, a.k.a., the Combat Upgrade. The tools we need in order to become competitive (high-quality pearls and crystals, especially) are denied us, and our skills undergo nerf after nerf. And now, the vast majority of Padawans are the weakest eliteprofession in the game.
Jedi is currently the only profession in which offense and defense are contained in separate skill trees. As a result, there is tremendous pressure to build one's template as either Master Lightsaber or MasterPowers plus Master Defender, solely in order to survive. And because of this, numerous adverse effects occur, such as an entire discipline (Healer) beingdoomed to permanent "dabbler" status.
My proposal for a Revamped Jedi Profession revolves around the following concepts:
- Eliminating Defender as a separate profession, instead distributing Defense skills through the combat skill trees;
- Breaking the Lightsaber discipline up into four full, separate professions: One Handed Saber, Two-Handed Saber, Double Bladed Saber, and General Sabers, each with it's own collection of combat skills, defensive styles and modifiers, and special attacks. The three "specialist" saber disciplines would correspond roughly to Fencer, Swordsman, and Pikeman, while the General Sabers profession would be more of a "jack of all trades/master of none" tree sacrificing the fine edge that comes with specialization in favor of wide-ranging adaptability to variable situations.
- Powers would also be reworked. Instead of one Powers tree, there would be two Powers trees, one built around the dark forces deployed by the Emperor, and the other more oriented towards the Light Side. The Dark Powers tree would place greater emphasis on offense and destruction, while the Light Powers tree would have somewhat more emphasis on defense and avoidance of damage. Both would, however, have strong offensive capabilities in their own right.
- With these six combat disciplines revamped into self-contained combat professions, the "support" professions within the Jedi tradition would be well-positioned to fulfill their intended purpose. Enhancer would now become a true "Enhancer" profession, inthatit would no longer be a stand-alone profession, but one that improvesthe power ofthe player's other profession(s)-- possibly even offeringseveral different Enhancer-type professions to choose from. Likewise, Healer would once again become viable, because the player would now be able to build a Jedi that didn't need to allocate over 200 skill points to the same two full disciplines just to be viable.
- In general, the Jedi professions' relative power would be upgraded, such that they become once againthe formidable fighting force in PvE that would be fitting for a Jedi.
- With the revamp of the Jedi profession, all the conventional professions would receive a new feature: A "Beyond-Master" upgrade path! This "Legendary Master" feature would give conventional players a means by which they could themselves approach the power of a fully-empowered, full-template Jedi. But this upgrade path would not be something that could be ground out in a day. Instead, the players would have to build their capability over a career of hardships of similar duration and intensity to the Jedi Grind. What would these "Legendary Master" toons be like? Well, I'll leave it to your imaginations to discuss and brainstorm, because I'm not as familiar with all the conventional professions as I would need to be to discuss them in such detail, but I can start with the Bounty Hunter profession:
- Players would learn from the best in the galaxy -- perhaps even the legendary Boba Fett himself!
- They would advance their careers through a system of quests given by NPCs, similar to the way players advance themselves in their Pilot or Force-Sensitive careers now.
- Eventually, they would unlock an entire new Legendary Master skill tree, which would progressively grant them devastating new skills, skill upgrades, weapon certifications, defensive moves, and armor-use certs that enable them to go toe-to-toe with even the best Jedi in the game! But the road to excellence is fraught with peril. Blow the wrong mission, or annoy the wrong crime lord, and you wind up hunted, yourself....
- In all cases, advancement would no longer be primarily accomplished via "grinding," or the endless killing of indigenous wildlife, but by honest-to-goodness, well-written QUESTS! Quests that add backstory to the game. Quests that establish and add depth to in-game NPCs. Quests that are actually FUN, doggone it! For Jedi, quests could be given out by Force Shrines, which would be expanded in their functionality and made to work like mission terminals, perhaps with the majority of quests formatted in a modular style allowing developers and writers to intermix various components for variety -- and perhaps even a few custom-crafted quests here and there. For the non-Force-using professions, certain NPCs could be given similar functional abilities.
- And with all the changes, I would add a primary source for Force Crystals -- a series of caves similar to an idea floated a while back by one of our colleagues, in which certain outcrops of crystals (similar to the crystal beds in the Myrrdil Cave) function as containers for random spawns of rough crystals. These caves, instanced to preserve the feeling of solitudeso critical to immersiveness for a lonely exile in search of precious crystals for his saber, could be "gated by the Force," allowing individual players access only a certain prescribed number of times per month to limit the flow of new crystals into the game and prevent wholesale farming. And within the caves themselves, the crystal-looking "containers" could only be checked once per trip per container, under the assumption that "natural erosional forces" only expose so many crystals over a certain period of time. And perhaps the Forcecould even gate the cavesby level, preventing high-level Jedi from farming low-level caves. But these caves wouldn't be just a walk in the park! Rather, they would be populated by all manner of dangerous creatures that have taken up residence within....
So, whatcha think? Want to help me flesh out the particulars of this idea? /discuss....
ye it's a nice idea expecially the one where all ls disiplines should be divided, that's and excellent post. But pre cu it was like one handed attacked mind two handed attacked the health and dual sided... well they were strong 
. How could this be done now since only thing that can be hit is health, how can u determin who does the most damage etc. I would be 100% willing to trade saber tef and skill point loss for more powers in jedi. And there should also be different fighting disiplines available like in KOTOR.
Message Edited by Platium on 10-27-2005 05:51 PM
Well, we see some of it in the current configurations of the melee classes, sort of. In Jedi, the One-Handed Sabers tree is where we find Bleed attacks. In Pikeman, we find crowd control. And in both Swordsman and Two-Handed Sabers, we find the heavy damage dealers like Power Strike. Some sort of specialization within the parameters of the current environment might offer an excuse for template diversity now. And for all the combat professions (Sabers and Powers), perhaps they could be augmented via the Enhancer profession in some way. This would set up a range of choices in which the player has to choose between extra power for his combat skills or going for Healer.
Platium wrote:
ye it's a nice idea expecially the one where all ls disiplines should be divided, that's and excellent post. But pre cu it was like one handed attacked mind two handed attacked the health and dual sided... well they were strong
Message Edited by Platium on 10-27-2005 05:51 PM
Thanks. Much of what is good isn't original, and all that. I stand on the shoulders of giants.
pulse_born4Women wrote:
Nice work man, theres some real good ideas in there.