Smuggler Archive
Thread: On the Creation of a Fuller Star Wars Underworld Especially for the Smuggler
- Regular smuggling missions - these missions could be the simple package A to point B type or any kind of variant where different "troubles" could be introduced at different points in the mission.
- Intercept shipments of spice or weapon/ship components in order to undercut rival smugglers.
- Slice important computer system or just slice to break into a facility to bypass the security system. This mission type can range from breaking into CorSec spice depots or breaking a buddy out of prison. This mission could be given to a smuggler who is in good with a criminal faction and is looking for a more risky yet lucrative payout.
- Chase and Kill/Assassination mission - chase and kill or assassinate rival criminals/smugglers/politicians that get in the way of you doing your job.
- Grant smugglers the ability to steal NPC vehicles staged at these spawn points.These could be vehicle modelsthat can be obtained exclusively through smugglermissions. Stolen NPC vehicles can be returned to your crime boss or keptand sold at the risk of increased visibility. Such vehicles could be used in smuggler missions to move goods past checkpoints in stolen law-enforcement speeders and a trillion other applications. Vehicles could also be stolen from authorities and used to smuggle goods past check points in them. To include crafters into the system, allow captured vehicles to be reverse engineered for public use.
- Kill random enemy gang spawns for clout ina crime syndicateto make up for some bad shipments.
III. Encourage criminal territories.
- Spawn mid-level thugs and gangs of certain organizations in different major cities. This would make a smuggler think a little more before just walking into any old town.
- Allow player cities to declare an affiliation with a criminal organization. Such cities would enjoy spawns of criminals of that faction for "protection", but would pay a fee for it.
- Allow smugglers of different criminal factions to war each other with a fully functional overt/covert/tef system. This alone would create criminal faction guilds and encourage territorialism amongst players for different areas of a planet. This territorialism could be expressed in criminal building such as casinos or smuggling outposts, which will work much in the same way as GCW bases. Instead of the casino being "blown up" like a GCW base, require the security to be disabled, a entertainer to infiltrate the casino's building layout schematics to locate the money safe's location, and a commando/smuggler to slice/destroy the locking mechanism. The credit vault will be emptied and the casino "disappears" 3 days later... gone bankrupt, unless the crimefaction owning the casino can raise a HUGE fee to keep it in business.It would be a system heavily run by money, something crime breeds in.
- Allow players to create their own criminal factions, much like Smuggler_Caylin's Crime Lord proposal. Also allow cooperative aggrements between player factions that wish to work together.
Message Edited by Ternque01 on 11-20-2004 01:07 PM
Ternque01 wrote:
I'll break this up real simple.
I. Create criminal theme parks for various criminal organizations. Hutt, Valarian, Black Sun, etc.
1. Make player choose which organization they want to join and have them complete the theme park before allowing them to gain Novice Smuggler.
This will allow a player to get a feel of the criminal organization they join and that organization's methods and stomping grounds. This is also pretty immersive.
Existing smugglers could choose to simply pick their organization or choose to complete a theme park at their discretion.
II. Create various criminal mini-games just like in Grand Theft Auto
1. Create shifting waypoints in various cities where a number of tasks can be completed for your organization.
- Chase and Kill/Assassination mission
- Grant smugglers the ability to steal NPC vehicles staged at these spawn points. These could be vehicle modelsthat can be obtained exclusively through smugglermissions. Stolen NPC vehicles can be returned to your crime boss or keptand sold at the risk of increased visibility.
- Kill random enemy gang spawns for clout in your organization
- Intercept shipments of spice or weapon/ship components
- Slice important computer system or just slice to break into a facility to bypass the security system.
2. Encourage criminal territories.
- Spawn mid-level thugs and gangs of certain organizations in different cities. This would make a smuggler think a little more before just walking into any old town.
- Allow player cities to declare an affiliation with a criminal organization. Such cities would enjoy spawns of criminals of that faction for "protection".
- Allow smugglers of different criminal factions to war each other with a fully functional overt/covert/tef system. This alone would create criminal faction guilds and encourage territorialism amongst players for different areas of a planet.
On the whole, we are talking a buttload of content here. Buttload by definition is more than a truckload and an assload combined. At heart, this idea brings life into criminality by tapping interest in the best of what being a criminal entails: proud territorialism, breaking and entering, murder, reputation, tricked out rides, and bling bling.
Furthermore, if mission waypoints and other features can be placed to give the "open ended" feel that Grand Theft Auto captures then being a smuggler will be one helluva lot of fun.
You could go to a rival city, kill some gang members, steal their ride, and sell it for some mad cash. You could also hack (er.. slice) into say one of Lady Valarian's bank accounts and steal all the cash, watch out though because missions of this difficulty end you up on the wrong side of abounty hunter'sblaster. You could go from city to city robbing banks until a player BH finally catches up to you and you smoke his ass.
In closing, I feel there is much that SWG could learn from a game like Grand Theft Auto. An open-ended ticket to being a dirty criminal in this land of crafters and uptight military personel could hold alot of possibilities.
Message Edited by Ternque01 on 10-28-2004 07:40 PM
And then I read you mention assassination missions. Who better to assassinate than politicians?
Geevo wrote:
If they were to do something like this (I like some of it) ... I would say remove the pistol xp requirement to become a Novice Smuggler and change it to a quest (that is long ... like 5-10x Jabba) and goes to numerous places like the Rebel themepark.
I disagree with the war thing. I see Smugglers (even competition) ... as a professional relationship. At some points (ref: Han Solo Trilogy) there were points where Smugglers got along well, or didn't ... and points they worked together ... or against each other.
WesBelden wrote:
Ternque01 wrote:
I'll break this up real simple.
I. Create criminal theme parks for various criminal organizations. Hutt, Valarian, Black Sun, etc.
1. Make player choose which organization they want to join and have them complete the theme park before allowing them to gain Novice Smuggler.
This will allow a player to get a feel of the criminal organization they join and that organization's methods and stomping grounds. This is also pretty immersive.
Existing smugglers could choose to simply pick their organization or choose to complete a theme park at their discretion.
I like this idea a lot and think it a great way for players to enter into what essentially should be a content profession. I wouldn't limit this to just criminal theme parks however; for those that want to work primarily fora GCW faction, the current theme parks could be extended to cater for this.
II. Create various criminal mini-games just like in Grand Theft Auto
1. Create shifting waypoints in various cities where a number of tasks can be completed for your organization.
- Chase and Kill/Assassination mission - chase and kill or assassinate rival criminals/smugglers/politicians
- Grant smugglers the ability to steal NPC vehicles staged at these spawn points. These could be vehicle modelsthat can be obtained exclusively through smugglermissions. Stolen NPC vehicles can be returned to your crime boss or keptand sold at the risk of increased visibility.
- Kill random enemy gang spawns for clout in your organization
- Intercept shipments of spice or weapon/ship components
- Slice important computer system or just slice to break into a facility to bypass the security system.
These extras sound like good fun and very fitting to the whole 'GTA' style you've mentioned, but other than the slicing part, these don't really seem all that Smuggler orientated. Infact, these would seem more at home in something like Caylin's Crime Lord proposal. That's not to say they're not without merit. For example, being able to steal an NPC vehicle would be a great get away tactical option should a Smuggler be found out and persude by the authorities or rival organisation members.
Well the intent is to create a set of missions in your crime organization's territory so that your smuggling experience is in the context of actually working for someone. Having randomized waypoints to pick up missions is alot more immersive than just picking missions from a terminal. Also, having to scan your city or territory for "jobs" is alot cooler. While you argue that these missions have little to do with smuggling and more to do with being a thug, please note that smuggling should be more than just moving package A to point B. Smuggler's do a dangerous job and sometimes the simple act of delivering a package entails other "thugy" activities. I also think that you don't look into the mission ideas that i have listed in the right context. You view these in the context of a "crime profession" instead of smuggling content.
For example a smuggler might decide to make an extra buck when he/she notices another smuggling deal might go down. Our smuggler could decide to take the mission of assaulting the other smuggler making this delivery, taking it for themself, and selling it to the buyer. Grant it, this goes beyond just smuggling, but is an activity that a smuggler might do.
Your example of adapting NPC vehicle theft is another way to integrate the idea into smuggling. Hell, Han and Chewy stole and hotwired an Imperial AT-ST and used it to fight.
The idea of chasing and killing/assassinating rival smugglers/criminals/politicians/competition also fits hand in hand with what a smuggler would face on the job. You can bet to high heaven that if a rival or authority tries to interfere with a smuggling job that they can and will be "taken care of" in order to complete a job. I cannot see how this has little to do with smuggling.
I'll be honest, some people who play as smugglers do so because they want to be a "bad (wo)man". Let's say that you are tired of running smuggling missions, have only a few minutes to play one day, and feel like causing some trouble. At the risk of sounding sadistic, you could just roam from one city to the next just killing rival organization members for fun. This is one aspect of GTA that many enjoy. It feels great to just go up to anybody and mug them. Gaining clout points in your organizations gives you just enough excuse to go around and be violent.
The idea of slicing into a facility has a TON of applications. One smuggler might slice into a governmental storage of spice to steal it. Another missions could be to slice (break) a friend out of jail. One could be to bypass a security sensor in order to allow someone in their crime sydicate to pass a shipment through undetected. This has many applications.
All of these ideas that I list are direct and immediate situations that a smuggler would face in the Star Wars universe, and you would be hard pressed to convince me otherwise. Han and Chewy were armed for a reason, and anyone who stood in their way (Greedo) got the business end of their blasters. Just because they blew people away, stole vehicles, and sliced security doors doesn't make them simple thugs. This is a great opportunity to include and discuss vibrant smuggler situations that can occur while smuggling, and I think dismissing them as "thugish" incorrectly limits what a Star Wars smuggler is all about.
2. Encourage criminal territories.
- Spawn mid-level thugs and gangs of certain organizations in different cities. This would make a smuggler think a little more before just walking into any old town.
- Allow player cities to declare an affiliation with a criminal organization. Such cities would enjoy spawns of criminals of that faction for "protection".
- Allow smugglers of different criminal factions to war each other with a fully functional overt/covert/tef system. This alone would create criminal faction guilds and encourage territorialism amongst players for different areas of a planet. Also allow cooperative aggrements between player factions that wish to work together.
Again, some of this really falls under the Crime Lord idea, as Smugglers aren't all around cut throat bad guys, they Smuggle items, information and sometimes people. However, again, the ideas are good. For example, if cities were to have faction alignment to various criminal organisations, you could find in some places getting your package through is extremely easy, because the faction in control are your friends and they've got the local authorities in their pocket. Conversely, in cities where rivalorganisations are in controlyou could find getting through far harder because both the local authorities and the local scum are gunning for you. This is where the spawns you mentionedcould come into play and affect Smuggling missions, perhaps even encourage the use of partners in crime (people playing the role of decoy, or just saftey in numbers). Anyway, just food for thought
Please take this with respect, but if all a smuggler were to do is smuggle items, information, and people without every getting cut throat, just bury the profession now. Caylin's idea of a Crime Lord profession would be a good idea if one were ever implemented. However, my bet is that smuggler will be SWG's only criminal profession. If you let these ideas "fall" under his idea, we will never see them. Again, I emplore you to consider not only integrating these ideas into smuggling missions and a more developed smuggling environment, but also drop the mental limitation that these kind of activities are somehow part of being a thug and not in any way connected with what a smuggler would do on the job.
On the whole, we are talking a buttload of content here. Buttload by definition is more than a truckload and an assload combined. At heart, this idea brings life into criminality by tapping interest in the best of what being a criminal entails: proud territorialism, breaking and entering, murder, reputation, tricked out rides, and bling bling.
Again, sounds cool, but isn'ta Smuggler thing. I'm really wanting this Crime Lord profession now though
Talk with the developers on this. If they are reluctant to create a Crime Lord profession, I would ask you to consider the huge benefit to the game that would come of including these ideas into smuggler missions and our profession.
Furthermore, if mission waypoints and other features can be placed to give the "open ended" feel that Grand Theft Auto captures then being a smuggler will be one helluva lot of fun.
I think the feeling that things are open ended and somehow different each time are essential to a successful Smuggling mechanic. While you're not going to get a unique experience every time, having something become mundane because you've done it too many times is something to be avoided if possible.
One thing that beats doing similar missions over and over again is feeling an immersion with the content in which they exist. By making players feel like they belong to a crime organisation, like they can increase or decrease it's power through their actions, or like they can even create their own content through criminal PA's, territorial control, and pacts/wars, you introduce an element to the world on which our smuggling lies that is far more interesting than delivering package A to point B.
For players who bore of structured/repetive missions, they can just kill time by going from city to city and blowing up rival criminals just for the sheer, sick fun of it. You are still indirectly serving your syndicate, and you get to do it in a fun way. Maybe you might want to introduce some excitement by killing alot of them and having a player bounty put on your hide.
The mechanics to create such a system are already in place. We have the mechanics for player associations and player city options. We have the art assets for each type of missions I detail above.
I for one want our profession to be a whole lot more criminal than just making shipments. Let's have these shipments run into complications and let them be influenced by a player-created world. The boring linearity of just making shipments could and should be made more interesting when this "line" of a simple smuggling mission is interestingly diverted into you guessed it, criminal persuasions.
You could go to a rival city, kill some gang members, steal their ride, and sell it for some mad cash. You could also hack (er.. slice) into say one of Lady Valarian's bank accounts and steal all the cash, watch out though because missions of this difficulty end you up on the wrong side of abounty hunter'sblaster. You could go from city to city robbing banks until a player BH finally catches up to you and you smoke his ass.
In closing, I feel there is much that SWG could learn from a game like Grand Theft Auto. An open-ended ticket to being a dirty criminal in this land of crafters and uptight military personel could hold alot of possibilities.
Message Edited by Ternque01 on 10-30-2004 02:02 PM
I think there are some nice ideas here that can be used and/or addapted for any revamp we may get, but there's also a fair bit that just doesn't fit with the ethos of being a Smuggler. Either way, nice post and good ideas
Ternque01 wrote:
Please take this with respect, but if all a smuggler were to do is smuggle items, information, and people without every getting cut throat, just bury the profession now. Caylin's idea of a Crime Lord profession would be a good idea if one were ever implemented. However, my bet is that smuggler will be SWG's only criminal profession. If you let these ideas "fall" under his idea, we will never see them. Again, I emplore you to consider not only integrating these ideas into smuggling missions and a more developed smuggling environment, but also drop the mental limitation that these kind of activities are somehow part of being a thug and not in any way connected with what a smuggler would do on the job.
, rather that there's a time and a place to do it. What you describe however, at leastthrough my initial interpretation of it,entails random violence, murder and theft, more befitting the actions of someone from the Sopranos TV show.