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ShortTimer wrote:

Let me address some issues here:

“Master Pilot is a choice”

Yes and so is playing the game, but this argument completely misses the point. This argument misses the point because for some people Master Pilot IS NOT EVEN A CHOICE THEY CAN MAKE. It exists outside even the realm of possibility for, I’m guessing more than a few, casual players. MP is a blocked to them because of (what will surely become, with more and more people camping Kessel) the near impossibility involved in hunting down mobs in a PvP free fire zone. Not everyone has the time to play this game like a part time job and make thirty or forty friends to bring along with them. For the casual player MP is not even an option for them because of this.

This, in effect, makes MP a more difficult achievement than Jedi. Jedi takes a lot of time; Master Pilot takes a lot of friends. So the next time I see a MP running around I’ll know that they aren’t a mastah pilot, I’ll know they are a mastah of online l33t dood social skills.

The design philosophy from the start of SWG has been to allow for players to choose to pursue any profession they desire and to participate in consensual PvP. Master Pilot violates this design philosophy because those who would choose not to participate in PvP cannot become Master Pilots.

I also have an issue with the actual difficulty (not related to skill) and rational of the Master Level mission but I’ll get to that in a minute.

“MP should be an achievement.”

As I touched on briefly in the last part, not everyone has the time or the will to make this game a part time job. For someone who doesn’t play 20+ hours a week racking up 7.5 million XP is a HUGE achievement for them. I’m sure there are players who could pump that out in a day or so. Of course when you play 26 hours a day that’s going to happen.

Let’s take a page from real life here. Do you know what it takes in real life to be an ace? The last time I checked you become an Ace in the air force when you have 5 enemy kills… FIVE. Can you imagine if that were true in this game as well? Maybe that’s not such a bad idea actually. The dev’s could make three ways to the Master Box:

1.)Complete the two missions

2.)Acquire 7.5 million XP.

3.)Kill 5 enemy players without being shot down (or maybe allow being shot down depending on how hard that would actually make it).

Difficulty of the mission.

In real life the title Ace is the results of the skill and actions of a pilot. Certainly his wingman and his squadron help in this achievement but never the less it is rewarded to an INDIVIDUAL. The missions at the Rebel tier 4 and master level do not reflect individual achievement. They are the results of you having uber-l33t dood friends. Now I will admit the tier 4 missions I’m thinking of (the last two, well actually just the last one because I was able to cheese-ball my way through the second to last) may become solo-able once shipwrights start having access to better space materials and the best way to tweak equipment is found. (Before you bust on me for being a 4/4/4/4 Rebel pilot in one week you should know I didn’t work this last week either. Had work been an issue there would be no way that would have happened.)

Right now the last two Rebel master missions do NOT reflect individual skill or achievement. Going to Kessel and living through that experience pretty much requires a group now and it will only be a greater requirement in the future as more people enter that zone. Now I do think it would be possible to shoot down 30 tier 5’s (for the Rebel mission) on my lonesome if one or two shot PvP were not a factor.

Right now with my gear and piloting abilities I can take on about 8 to 12 tier 4’s at once, depending on what kind of ships are shooting at me (rear turrets are a killer). This is around my limit because at some point I am just crushed by the shear weight of numbers. Even Bruce Lee would get his but whupped if attacked in the open by a hundred guys at once. Without a large group of friends along there will be no way I can sink that Corvette on my own. As I stated earlier this is a problem for those who don’t make this game a part time job and have 30 uber-l33t-dood friends along to help them out. This also makes it so the box is not a symbol of individual accomplishment (which ace is in the real world) but a symbol of my social-networking skills.

Right now I am in a guild. If I remember correctly we have the largest player-run city on Corellia on our server. When I try and martial our forces to go do JTL stuff I’ll get about 5 to 7 other players. This is no where near the number I would need for Kessel. The guild I’m in isn’t small either, this just comes down to the logistics of the situation of people having outside lives.

Conclusion

The devs could make Master Pilot achievement accessible to all if they allowed for several routes to its achievement. My original suggestion shouldn’t be hard to implement while the 5 player kill route would take some time. Heck, I write the pseudo code they could use in the Admiral’s conversation (for Rebels) for master pilot.

void main()
{
…
…
object oPC = GetLastPCSpeaker;

if( (GetLocalInt(oPC, MasterMissionsComplete)) == 1) || (GetPCPilotXP(oPC, 7500000)) )
{
AwardMasterPilot(oPC);
}
…
…
}

There ya go dev’s I’ve written the code for ya. Now if that’s not player involvement I don’t know what is.

Message Edited by ShortTimer for formating issues.

Message Edited by ShortTimer on 11-08-2004 08:25 AM

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