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Thread: Request for Comment: regarding not recommending JTL until ground game fixed.
Message Edited by ToppDog on 10-09-2004 09:35 PM
Message Edited by ToppDog on 10-09-2004 10:08 PM
Thunderhart's 'The Art of Combat' From DECEMBER 2003
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In a galaxy far far away, a galactic civil war rages on.War is about tactics and in a game about war, combat and tactical game play is vitally important.Over the next couple of months, many major game systems are getting overhauled and combat is right at the top of the list.
I want to take some time to go over all the upcoming changes and the challenges they are going to bring.Instead of tweaking an obsolete engine for short term gains, we are rebuilding the engine for long term success.
Where We Are
As it stands, SWG combat is pretty basic.Get the best pet, the best gun, a healer and go find your target.Pin the target down with your pet, send in the melee artists and start’a shootin’.Spam your best moves and get healers to prevent you from getting incapped as best they can.Players all expect more from MMO combat now the time has come to take things to the next level.
Where We Are Going
Combat has some problems right now. Creatures are tough to size up in combat, weapon differences are limited, HAM costs are inconsistent, enemy consideration (/con) isn’t always reliable in some cases and the player combat professions need more focus and specialization. Now that Player Cities, Mounts and Vehicles are in the game, we can go back to the combat system for a second pass and all of these changes are going to happen and some of these items are even in-progress.
Stage 1: Creature Balance
Creature armor, resistances, damage and all the things that make creatures and pets “tick” are being revamped from the first to the last so that all creatures have a good relationship from what they are to their level and the types of damage, armor and resistances they have.Everything will “make sense” in the greater scheme of things. The creature catalogue has been totally re-vamped and will be introduced into the game world with the next vehicle publish.
Now, for the next month or two, there are going to be a lot of creatures that are going to seem too easyto defeat and a few that will seem impossible to overcome.This is because that the creature balance is 1 of 4 parts of a larger overall change that’s coming in waves.When the weapon changes go in along with the HAM changes and finally the profession specialization, it will feel like a more logical system and a gameplay environment that will be even more fun to play.
Stage 2: Weapon Balance
The next phase of this massive combat balance is the Weapon Balance.When the game was originally designed, certain aspects of the weapon system like certifications and weapon types were meant to be unlocked as players opened the layers of their skill onions, opening up an interesting variety of weapons and having a good game challenge.What happened is very similar to what happens when you try to level off a wooden kitchen table with a hand saw.You take off a little bit off of this leg and a little bit off of that leg and by the time you get it finished, it looks more like a coffee table instead of a kitchen table.What happened with the combat system is that the certifications were moved, the combat and damage types were shifted and this has left the current system a little wobbly, so we’re getting a new “table”
In very basic terms, rather than making the T-21 and the FWG the end-all, be-all master weapons, we are “buffing” the system and putting in a full range of weapons at all levels.We’re going to be adding power progression levels for each type of weapon, a better damage progression for each specific power level, more weapon scalability and more weapons and certifications.We’re also putting in more swooshes and blaster bolts!
What this means is that there will be novice level T-21’s and master level T-21’s, novice level FWG’s and master level FWG’s.From novice to master, there will be a full range of weapons and certifications for each layer of the skill onions for the various combat professions.
In terms of gameplay, this second stage of over all combat balancing is going to bring with it a new wave of change; damage, to-hit, specials and the full scope of weapon combat will be out of whack for a little bit, but keep in mind, creature changes are in and at this stage, weapons will be falling into place; 2 of the 4 basic subsystems will be trued up with each other.
Stage 3: HAM
Some players saw a glimpse of the HAM changes on Test Center this month, but it was just too early to be released onto live servers. Since creatures have been rebalanced in this publish, players were dropping all of the creatures way too easily. It was a game stopper so we pulled it off the docket for this month’s publish with the intention of reintroducing the revised HAM changes after the weapon balance. This gives us more time to fine tune the HAM changes and also balance them against the new weapon tables.
We want to rekindle the exciting strengths of the combat system that were always intened. Some of you may remember Tearforger’s, “Anatomy of a Blaster Fight” posts way back when. That’s where we want to be. Having a focus on a more tactical level in combat, expect to see attacks and counterattacks with back-and-forth rhythms to battles instead of bum rushes and spamming your best move and hoping for the best.
HAM costs and special move costs are going to go up, but in the new system, its not a finite number where you use X number of special moves and then scramble for a heal. The effectiveness of moves are going to go up along with the costs, but the costs won’t be simply based off pool points in a linear fashion ala slug it out/shoot ‘em up until incapacitation. For example: execute a move, HAM will drop, a short time will go by and the HAM element will re-charge. While the HAM dips, a player is vulnerable for a little bit, but if they fall back for a second or two and let it recharge (it happens pretty quickly), they can get back into combat without suffering an illogical permanent penalty as opposed to just spending straight “endurance” points until there are none left with no chance of re-charge without a healer. This essentially makes special moves have a short time delay for each move rather than an attrition effect. As such, this will make combat rely on “turn and timing” and “attack and counterattack” instead of the amount of damage dealt as it was stacked each turn. What this will give us is a true “round combat” with a way to pull back, feign, take a breath and get back into combat. All in all, the HAM will be mighty.
Stage 4: Profession Specialization
Lastly, once the creatures, the weapons and the HAM have all been truly balanced within a larger, single combat design, we can really begin to flesh out the combat professions.Professions will all be adjusted to have stronger combat tactics, each specific to its profession and all fulfilling a unique roll in combat.Combat tactics will expand in new dimensions.Different melee professions such as Fencers, Pikeman and Swordsman will be different kinds of tanks.Some will deal more damage while others absorb more damage.Ranged melee professions such as Pistoleers, Carbineers and Riflemen will all have distinct differences and all will be valuable in different scenarios.Each profession will take on exciting differences and really be what we all want them to be and all part of a larger Galactic Civil War.
When all of this is said and done over the next couple of months, the pain of these changes will subside. At first, creatures will seem weak *cough*AT ST*cough*, the weapons will seem too powerful in some cases and too weak in others because they will still be dependent on old systems that are still active. After that, the HAM changes and profession specializations will be added and then we will all be playing in a game environment with sensibly balanced combat system that is fun and challenging. One rich with a full range or fierce creatures, a full gamut of weapons available to all players, a dynamic HAM system and a tactically driven combat engagement within the scope of a larger Galactic Civil War.
Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager
What ever happened to these changes? We have been waiting for a very long time for these changes to go into effect. Our profession forums have done their part by testing, listing, and explaining all the problems we are having. The outstanding issues reports have been available and stickied so that developers can see what needs to be fixed. Many times the developers have asked us to prepare questions for them to answer, we did, and most of their answers were been "It will be fixed in the Combat Balance" or "The Combat Balance will take care of that"... Time is running out for this Combat balance. The player community has done everything asked of them to help improve SWG, but still professions have broken skills, and the promised changes have been put off and put off.
How can their first goal of the new year be the only one they have not worked on? We were lead to believe that progress was being made... Smugglers, Creature Handlers, Squad Leaders, Droid Engineers all have been promised revamps and improvements for over a year now… so show us the progress we have been waiting and paying for. And do not show me JTL, I am paying $15 per month for improvements to SWG: An Empire Divided.
So based on the fact that this dev team has broken more promises that a crooked politician
Based on the fact that Player Cities and Dev cities are ghost towns due to bad implantation and mass player exodus
Based on the fact that the game is overflowing with Jedi who do should not be so visible in the current Star Wars time line
Based on the fact that I have ethical problems with the way the SWG developers are taking our subscription fees to make an add on product, when the original product is in bad need of repairs.
Based on all that and more, I will not be recommending SWG or JtL or any future expansions to any of my friends.
I know that youd lose a lot of work but if rather than wait for the sun to rise in the west the way you want....?
ToppDog wrote:
Oh, & Cuality, just to clarify... I'm not saying I want the ground game fixed first... I just want to be told that it will be fixed at some point. It doesn't matter to me if it's before JTL comes out or not. I still want JTL to be a kickass game too! I have a dream of playing the ultimate StarWars game where I can do everything in the starWars universe in one single seamless gameworld, & this is the closest thing to that yet, & still has a ton of potential.
I know. I really wasn't flaming you. Just pointing out that you are not recommending people to get the expansion because you were let down on the core game. Its not a bad thing, i'm not flaming you or calling you out or anything, just pointing out to the original poster that the reason why people say these things is not because JTL is a bad game, but because they had a bad experience with the ground game. I am just of a different breed, i haven't had any issues with the ground that i felt would feel to be devastating for me, and the reason why i play this game is for the spaceflight anyway, so i like the expansion and what it promises.
BlueCelt wrote:
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TH
12/8/03
There is content in the works, GCW stuff, the combat revamp...
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TH 12/23/03
I know a bunch of this is in development, but it really is . The combat system is being rebalanced and going forward, its important to get your critical issues to klawlegna so we can act on it. The big bottleneck is communication and after the holidays, a lot of this will be ironed out and smoother.
Instead of "fixing this" and "tweaking" that and ending up with a wobbly 4 legged table because so many number are over-tweaked, we are just revamping the system, but that takes longer.
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TH 12/23/03
The short answer is that these items will be taken care of in the weapons balance. Specials, weapon stratification and the like will all be accounted for
(what ever happened to the weapons balance????)
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TH 12/23/03
I could, but everything is getting revamped. Id be more interested in hearing what you folks have to say on how you WANT it to stack since we are doing the combat balance.
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TH 12/23/03
If its big, its coming in the revamp and the Combat Balance
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TH 1/16/04 (does this one sound familar)
We are going to be revamping PvP, but in the meantime, we have to make some killer fixes to keep what is in live now, fun.
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TH 1/23/04
The combat balance is near and dear to my heart as are all player issues. I just have to juggle time, manpower and scheduling as well. What I do is I keep track of all the issues, label them and sort them. That way when I go to Blair, JustG and Runesabre and say "players need this fixed", its based on how many players are being effected.
The combat balance alone is the single largest player issue. It encompases about 34% of the Correspondent issues and much of the pain combat players are having. Pikemen, carbineers, commando heavy weapons, the cost of specials, HAM costs, all of that will be better when the combat balance is done.
The thing to remember is that because the combat balance touches so many other systems in the game, its going to take a while. The team thats working on this is working very hard and thats the best I can offer.
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TH 2/6/04 (holy cow...the combat revamp is mentioned INFRONT of the jedi revamp)
2. For PvP and Base battle folks, your time is coming. Once we get past the Combat Balance and the Jedi Revamp, the PvP balance is scheduled. Its a multi-publish update (roughly planned atm) where will consider battlefield possibilities, PvP upgrades and so on.
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TH 1/28/04
There are lots of ideas for sure, but right now, the team is focused on the Combat balance, the GCW, the Jedi Revamp, Correspondent/CSR issues, the publish theme, getting the existing professions improved and the dungeons.
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TH 1/19/04 (HAM revamp...assuming this is combat revamp)
The HAM revamp will address all of that. It will repair everyone's specials, it will solve the slow downs in combat and many other things. The challenge is that its a core game system and its going to take a bit because people from many different teams have to be involved.
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TH 2/12/04 (ouch...when I first read this...I thought it might come back to haunt him)
One message that is load and clear is that the combat balance is very important and we all know it is. So that means we have to get the combat balance done and in and polished.
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TH 2/13/04
For the most part, the combat balance is just coding atm
and this
There is much more to the combat balance. The biggest change you will see is in the way the HAM works. It will have more of a regen effect rather than a "diminishing returns" kind of effect. On top of this, defense stacking, specials and all of the combat "components" will be tweaked for more fun and challenging play
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TH 1/21/04
No, the development for the combat balance is being done all along. The develpment time for things like this is longer than most players realize. The "In Concept" cycle for combat roles per se is so that if players have any really great ideas pertaining what defines a profession's combat role, it can be added.
Once the basic design is done and the combat balance moves to the In-Dev phase, things can be tweaked a bit, but no major additions can be included. I thought it was important to get players ideas on combat roles and the dev team agreed.
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TH 2/13/04
I pushed very hard for the combat balance and the team agreed so basically they did the crackdown stuff and then did as much of the Combat Balance as possible. The combat balance items that were selected because they effected creatures so much. The first part of the combat balance was balancing the creature table
AND
I'll be preparing some Combat Balance stuff for next week that will help everyone get on the same page for going forward
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TH 3/3/04
This is something Im checking to see if we can address in the weapon balance part of the larger combat balance, but I don't know what the answer might be. And in any event, concentrating on these minor things before the weapon balance isn't productive. We'll want to look at things when the combat balance is on TC
AND
Actually the game will be easier at the high end because the "invulnerable" templates will be fixed and all professions will be on a level playing field, but in any event, this is something we need to focus on after the HAM revamp goes to TC in Pub 8 and after the Combat Balance goes into effect (tentatively Pub 9 and holding...)
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TH 4/12/04 (time for another meeting???)
We did have a meeting today and I fought hard to get the combat balance put back on the plate. By my reckoning, it represents about 35-40% of the player issues. Would you say thats a wrong direction? I'm always open to ideas that speak to the most players at any given time.
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TH 3/2/04
As far as combat template stacking, this is all part of the combat balance. I mentioned early on that we'd be going through a painful period and this is it. Once the HAM revamp hits the system (keep your fingers cross, it should be in Publish 8) all of these changes will make more sense. It will change the way combat plays and the majority of the discussion points regarding combat will change. Many players are still seeing the way the system was or is, and not as it will be.
The core interaction of combat pools will still work the same, but the way it feels in combat will be different. Once it goes to TC, Im hoping to see all the combat experts get online and play it out so we can tweak it - - it will be a critical period. I know Im anxious to see it
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TH 4/13/04
Atteke wrote:
Thunderheart could you guys put the combat balance on Test Centre in it's current condition like you did with the new HAM system in January? just so we can take a look at it.
-Thanks
Not really. Not for now anyway. You see, if we put it on Test Center, we'd have to push it out in Publish 9 with the the way the process works. Once a clump of code is integrated, "its in there". Thats where the sanbox that we've been talking about comes into play. This sandbox would be like a second Test Center, but configured in a way where it would be insulated from the live code and we would be able to push different versions out much easier without interfering with current process.
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TH 4/19/04
Originally, the Combat Balance was delayed and I worked with the correspondents to get a list of "must haves" from the various profession communities. Since that time, I've have stressed the importance of the combat balance with the team and we are getting it back into the mix, though as you might guess, the schedule is pretty full. Because of logistics, its going to take a couple weeks of information gathering on the technical side before we have a plan to move forward on. We will see the CB soon though.
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TH 4/19/04
We're in the planning stages now. I want to help set expectations as best I can. At this early stage, I would make the following comments:
- The biggest change in the CB that will be a "sensation", and by that I mean something that players will
change them after the CB gets published.
5/04
29/04
What will change is the mechanical balance - - especially with the HAM revamp portion of the CB
We can also further tweak the Smuggler’s combat role in the combat balance
The combat balance will bring elements of both to a Swordsman’s specials with the lions share of focus on re-tweaking the current specials to be more effective
These are two very important melee considerations for the combat balance
1 Answer to rule them all…
In closing, one thing that is very important to keep in mind is realistic expectations.The reality is that there are a huge number of player questions and answers that hang on the combat balance.What I don’t want to see happen is that because many questions revolve around a tight group of answers that the scope of the work gets expectations set so high that they are impossible to meet.We all have high hopes for the combat balance and the certainty that the Combat Balance is very, very important.We are putting a strong focus on special training and hardware to give the effort a leg up and will make this as cool as possible, but I wouldn’t look on it as a magic bullet, but more as an exciting change in direction.
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TH 4/22/04 (OUCH OUCH)
Why is it going to take more than a year post-launch to make this happen?
It's not. We've been talking about things internally a lot. I've stressed the importance of these changes and everyone agrees. We've been going over the implementation details for a couple of weeks now so that we can get this back on track. JustG will be going into more detail in his next State of the Game letter which will be coming out in the next couple of days.
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TH 6/3/04
This is definitely a topic we can discuss further in our upcoming Combat Balance focus threads.
...and this is another great example of something the correspondents and I will want community input on during the testing while the CB sandbox is up.
This is an early answer and is subject to change, but one of our goals for Commandos in the Combat Balance is to change the way Heavy Weapon modifiers work
...but we wont know until the Combat Balance sandbox is live).
When the Combat Balance begins (which will be soon), the correspondents and some players will be brought on to a special Combat Balance server
Lightsabers have been balanced against the system after the combat balance
The most important component to this is to keep giving good, solid feedback to your correspondent so I can bring these opinions to the development team while the CB sandbox is live.
You can look forward to sweeping changes in terms of functionality, speed, etc.But again, I stress, we talk about this topic a great deal in a conceptual form.The rubber is going to meet the road when we bring the correspondents and other players onto the Combat Balance Sandbox server
Again, absolutely.These changes are the types of things we want to address in the Combat Balance
Squad Leader
What is the SL revamp timeframe?. It's still going take place after the combat rebalance, correct?
Its going to be released in the same publish
To answer your question though, this is something we can, and will, talk about during the Combat balance
Yes, Black Sun Razor Knucklers will be back in the game after the combat balance
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TH 6/14/04
Waste93 wrote:
How about some info on the combat revamp. There are lots of rumors floating around on this one. And since the answer to just about every question the combat professions ask is "wait for the rebalance" it would be helpful.
Once we get through the Jedi Revamp, I'll be posting lots of thread. We'll have a lot of focus threads and the like and after P9, I'll start making the weekly roundtable have a CB focus to cover specific issues.
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TH 6/10/04
Weaponsmith
Are stun weapons going to see a major rebalance within the future?
Yes. Stun weapons (particularly stun batons) were never intended to be "the weapon" that everyone wants because it is the most effective. SWG’s weapons were always supposed to have a variety of useful and efficient weapons available, but here again, with all the tweaks and changes over the last 8+ months have caused a series of imbalances. This is definitely something that will be looked at during the combat balance.
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96)?96:this.scrollHeight)"
TH 7/15/04: I will be immediately working with the correspondents and the community to develop a list of pre-combat balance fixes
Gary Gattis's State of the Game Letter (around pub 8!): We are cranking on the Combat Balance, and we think development on it will span 2 more publishes.
(So...which is it? Were we lied too? mislead? or ???)
Message Edited by ResourceMan on 10-10-2004 01:26 AM
"Once is happenstance ... twice is coincidence .... three times is enemy action." (Auric Goldfinger, Bond villain)
The devs aren't the enemy, but when it comes to competently managing the project .... well, the longer you've been here, the less confidence you have that they'll get it together .... because they just never have.
fatgato wrote:
I am beta testing and I would not recommend JTL to people nor i am going to renew my subscriptions. The devs have yet to put out any content that is GOOD....why do you expect JTL to save the day???
/hi5, yet another recomendation from someone upset with the ground game.
Cuality wrote:
fatgato wrote:
I am beta testing and I would not recommend JTL to people nor i am going to renew my subscriptions. The devs have yet to put out any content that is GOOD....why do you expect JTL to save the day???
/hi5, yet another recomendation from someone upset with the ground game.
Billpom wrote:
I understand what you mean, but can you give me specifics? At one point you said "It's still just not a very good product." What makes it a bad product? Further you said that "Bad code and bad decisions just keep on comin'..." What bad code do you speak of and specifically, what bad decisions do you think have been made?
Finally, where those bad decisions reversed and code re-vamped so that you felt your views were being addressed would you return?
Even though this was not directly addressed to me, I will try to help out with any answers that I can provide:
Bugs:
- Can't sit without warping away from your seat - has been present ever since beta to my knowledge.
- Title bug where once you chose to display a title overhead, you will ALWAYS log in with one. This was an issue that was even more important when people started becoming Jedi & couldn't conceal their identities when logging in.
- NPC's warping or spawning directly on top of you so you have no chance of avoiding them, especially annoying to non-combat chars who can't even kill a beetle before dying.
There's a whole lot more, but I don't do combat to be aware of many of them, & many others are escaping me at this moment. To be fair, there have been many bugs that have been fixed as well.
Bad Decisions:
- Making AT-ST's pets instead of vehicles.
- Allowing Taras Kasi Masters to be able to destroy AT-ST's by punching them with their bare hands.
- Allowing any melee profession to deliver damage when they are clearly not even close to making contact with their weapons.
- Adding in Buffs that were so overpowered that it killed spontaneous combat & forced everyone to always get a full set of buffs before engaging in any sort of combat because they wouldn't stand any chance of winning otherwise.
- Taking the ability to do Stat Migrations away from the entire player base & forcing it on the ID profession that never wanted it in the first place.
- Forcing ID's to remain in tents to do these Stat Migrations with absolutely nothing to do for ten minutes at a time, no reading emails, no chatting or answering tells, nothing.
- Not realizing that this ten minute timer where the ID & their customer can only stare at an ID UI causesmany players to repeatedly go LD due to being auto-kicked for being inactive for such a long period of time, & then still not doing anything to fix it.
- Allowing player cities or player owned structures to be placed directly on top of, or extremely close to POI's & other important StarWars locations.
- Not providing rentable apartments in the NPC cities, or the ability to add suburbs onto the NPC cities, which resulted in the main cities being ghost towns. I specifically remember one case where a brand new player was logged in at his starting NPC city & didn't see another real player for a whole 4 hours during primetime play.
- Making badges viewable by all without giving the players a way to toggle that feature off or select which ones were okay to be viewed. This was again more important to Jedi trying to play the game correctly & conceal their identities.
- Restricting item counts in PA halls so they would not hold more than any large house would.
- Restricting item counts in general, using the excuse that they use too much data space, while at the same time having thousands of different versions of every possible resource when only one version of each would have worked fine & would have greatly reduced the strain on that very same data base.
- Making all the vehicles decay at a hyper-accelerated rate where they are all smoking & backfiring & giving of flames within a couple hours usage, when simply making them require fuel or energy would have accomplished the same goal & been much more immersive & appealing.
- Giving the Jedi robes that only they can wear when they are supposed to be in hiding during this timeline.
- Attaching force defensive abilities to these robes instead of to the Jedi themselves where it makes the most sense & is more true to the whole Jedi concept.
- Not realizing that those robes were never Jedi specific in the first place & were common attire for almost every citizen of Tatooine during this timeline.
- Not making the main chars able to do quests to become FS themselves in the first place.
- Then doing a complete 180 with the Jedi revamp & destroying a whole years worth of effort for many players without even trying to rectify the situation to be fair to those caught in the middle of the switch.
- Making Ewok babies more deadly than full grown Wookiees.
- Not alowing smugglers to smuggle anything.
- Making the range that object render within be so small that they litterally pop up & smack the chars in their faces, & if they are on a vehicle or mount the chars will suddenly find the building spawning around them with them inside. This isn't in the bug category because the ranges keep being shortened on purpose to save on their hardware demands.
- The whole concept of apprentice points, because as the influx of new players goes down, the veteran players have no way to advance, & therefore might have reason to not play anymore & cancel their accounts.
- Not providing an NPC alternative to buying resources, services, or loot items in the game. Anytime a game has relied purely on a player economy withouthaving anNPC check & balance system in place, it has always led to real fraud, inflation, & selling on ebay.
- Not providing a worthwhile system for players to reliably find the things they wish to purchase in-game. Players wander aimlessly for hours from empty vendor to empty vendor. It may seem to be working as a time sink, but that's the kind of time sink that has forced many players to cancel their accounts. They had millions of credits & couldn't find anything to spend them on.
And, the last bad decision is by far the biggest one, & is literally responsible for the loss of millions of dollars that may never be able to be gotten back:
The failure to realize that reducing the number of Jedi automatically means reducing the number of paying customers. The two are linked & always will be, because the majority of players who ever bought a copy of this game did so with the intention of becoming a Jedi. This is StarWars, & StarWars equals Jedi, period.
What they failed to see was that keeping Jedi rare, & making them "appear" rare are two completely different things... & if they had gone with the second option & let the majority of players play as Jediin a system that still made them seem rare, then tens of thousands of players would probably still be paying their $15 a month or more & would still be enjoying the game.
Message Edited by ToppDog on 10-10-2004 12:37 AM