Smuggler Archive
Thread: Holy Smokes, the Devs WILL change prereqs for professions...
JTGAlpha wrote:
I was just contemplating this on the can, where all good ideas come from (I think it's all the bad coming out that makes room for the good).
oops i already commented in here...oh well second one is better...
JTGAlpha wrote:
Scooter...you are the ONLY person to ever say that the dev's vision for smuggler was clear. Clearly...it wasn't. Otherwise we'd be smuggling.
No. The Business line changed because everyone cried out and said, "CRAFTING XP IS TOO HARD"
That's why it changed. Because back then there was still a little thing called usage xp. And this is where you're correct about our crafting being minor in comparison. A bunch of people whined and cried saying, "No one uses our stuff but us, except our food which is one use! And there's no experimentation!" The other arguement was made too. But the main arguement I heard was, "Crafting XP (and usuage xp) are too hard!" Usuage xp is gone. It's no longer gating us.
And as for our emphasis being on COMBAT? Psh. Most hybrids get SKILL MODS. We get ONE line of direct combat help and you want to say that our emphasis, by virtue of our tree is on COMBAT? The only thing that leans us to combat is our REVISED pre-reqs because they give us easier access to REAL combat professions. And our OTHER semi-combat line is the one where YOU said those devs with that REAL clear vision, was supposed to support the BUSINESS side of us. But all it does is help us in the GCW and get us discounts in the GCW. Hell, we're more directly tied to crafting than combat! 1 tree gives us tools we have to craft, and the abillity to improve the stats of crafted items. The other gives us food to sell, which we make, which were SUPPOSED to be experimentable, like ANY chef, except for a bug, an oversight, that they never felt like fixing. The combat tree is only 4 abillities. REALLY good abilities, but that's it. No accuracy mods, speed mods, or damage mods or anything. Oh, and damage mitigation. The Underworld tree is a bunch of skills only useful to GCW's and only REALLY useful to OVERT factioneers. The only ACTUAL combat bonus it gives is it reduces your faction penalty for dying and increases your faction award for killing! Neither helps you personally be better at combat.
I'm sorry. I REALLY dont' believe the devs meant us to be mainly combat. I believe the devs meant us to be good at combat. OR good at commerce. OR pretty good at both. Not kung-fu gunfighters that happen to sell illegal goods and services.
Well yes the devs have a vision and yes I do see it clearly. Maybe its because I did a lot of back researching on dev responses and such. Just because there is a vision does not say that it is implimented yet and the vision has changed over time. It is not complete, in fact as you point out we are not smuggling. In fact the underworld tree is broken and the DEVS acknowledge that.
Yes we get combat mods, and underworld needs a lot of work. We dont get crafting mods. But our professionis not all about crafting and vending unless you choose to play it that way. The number of schematics and the requirements of those schematics show that crafting was to be secondary, and slapped in there to get spice in the game.
No they meat us to smuggle. They did not mean for us to be legitimate business people. Illegitimate yes. Hence the underworld tree (which needs completed).
The big thing about pre-req's it does define the BASE profession and not how you want to augment it.
Now we are the only profession that can build a "tripple threat". Balance wise that had to be dealt with. So yes you cannot choose your ranged combat nor melee option because you don't want every combination of the "tripple threat" out there.
And the devs dont envision us as being heavy combat necessarily. They do envision we need to take care of ourselves in the underworld and need some combat skills. Now the choice is up to you how much you do with combat and how much you don't.
What hybrids besides BH have more mods than us for combat. We have two lines where skill mods can occur and one of those is broken (underworld). that could contain both combat and business mods.
If you choose to go crafter first that is your option.
Try reversing it. Explain why the unarmed and pistol dont make sense to a smuggler.
You want to play smuggler a different way than most that is clear. But nothing is stopping you. It seems to me that because you wish to be different you want to change the pre-reqs to get you more skill points to use but you must understand that if you change pre-reqs you force everyone down a path. And if you make the pre-reqs and "either/or" situation you open up balance issues.
I just don't see the support that smugglers by NATURE are legitimate business people which is what the artisan business tree is about. Making that a requirement for all smugglers forces people to play smuggler the way you want to play smuggler.
Why was there whining on the crafting, because like I said crafting is not what smugglers are all about. It is absolutely clear that the only reason we do craft was to get spice and smuggler tools in the game and not have the crafters working above the law craft illegal items. We were not meant to be crafters first.
Is the profession broken? yes. Will it get fixed? Eventually
This thread all came about because of the BH changes. Well ask yourself why did that occur. Because THEIR pre-reqs were intensive and did not help their elite profession. Hunting, tracking, survival did not augment their BH skills. Exploration does not really either if you look at that but it is still there. They had to master scout with left them at a great disadvantage for their role. So the devs helped their skill point issue. From a vision point of view does scout in BH make sense, the answer is yes. From a skill perspective of what they got, no not directly. Would they take away all of scout, no because that would give them too much of an SP advantage.
Now in our case unarmed makes sense and so does pistol becuase of the profession. If they take one away it places us at too much of an SP advantage unless they replace it with something else. Replacing it with any of the brawler opens up other balance issues. Now replacing it with a line that is defined for legitimate business makes no sense at all. All smugglers should not be legitimate vendors and that is what you are asking for by asking for a pre-req change.
What we need is the underworld tree fixed so it handles the business end of the smuggler much better than it does today.
When you alter a pre-req you alter the way everyone plays smuggler. It should be a careful decision. You should first check what in our trees can be augmented to add flexability to snuggler for the many faceted ways it can be played.
I gues we have to agree to disagree.
JTGAlpha wrote:
Removing a pre-req could entirely unbalance the profession. Removing pre-reqs threatens the future. Adding or changing pre-reqs threatens the past. Neither are safe, nor headache free.
Remeber your own words, they are very true
In the original design, SWG was suposed to have skill trees related to use: a pistol tree, a rifle tree, etc. Not a pistol-for-pistoleers and pistol-for-smugglers separate skills with separate prereqs and separate abilities.
Smuggler_Caylin wrote:
You can make a business out of it, but a smuggler by himself is not necessarily a businessman.
It takes little to no business sense to follow orders, pick up a box of spice, try to move it through hostile areas, to collect your payment.
Nope it doesn't take much sense to just follow orders but that's not what we doing. We set prices for our work, we go out looking for jobs, we haggle over prices. The thing is, if this was not a business, we wouldn't be smuggling. Why would we go do things for people at such a risk to ourselves if we did not have a fundimental stake in it, such as if we weren't making money off it?
The problem here lies with the prereqs as they are (whcih I have already noted most likely they will not change) which as it is they are both combat related which as far as spending points makes more sense simply to go in the direction the Devs are pushing us and to continue to go combat. Yes we still have points left over to go to ther skills if we so want to but when the current is pushing you in one direction it makes it a lot harder to go in another.
Two main problems come with business. the first being much of this game is based on combat skills. The other problem is people mistakenly taking business to be solely a goody twoshoes profession which doesn't fit in their minds of what a Smuggler is.
I do not see them changingprereqs for Smuggler but I would love it if they did. It would be nice to see Smuggler with different templates running around. Though if they did do this and made it to where Smuggler just had to be any two skills from whatever trees we would have a lot more dabblers, who depending on how SMuggler is redone could ruin the enjoyment factor for Masters because they flood the market place or get simply too much good stuff at the lower levels.
Personally what I would like to see happen is, first off if a changing on the prereqs is allowd that it include business. If this doesn't happen (don't think it will) I would like to see Smuggler be given in their class two skills. One would be survey skill, minor level, just say at the most we would be able to get Surveying I/II so we can find the materials we need since it appears we will get experimentation for our gear which we would need good resources. The second skill would to be place a "thug" vendor. This would be a humanoid vendor of "thug" looks and appearances to fit in with the criminal element. Smugglers would get one vendor only and it would have a limited selling space of say fifty items. This way we do not tread too much into merchant or business lines. Also I do not see Smuggler being an uber combat class (which some have and still trying to do), we should be a support class. Our styles reflecting in the escape flavor of combat. We should be a support work similar to Carbineers. This as in groups gives Smuggler a nichethat is important and decent fighting skills but not a main fighter.
Yes we get combat mods, and underworld needs a lot of work. We dont get crafting mods. But our professionis not all about crafting and vending unless you choose to play it that way. The number of schematics and the requirements of those schematics show that crafting was to be secondary, and slapped in there to get spice in the game. This is incorrect. Our crafting is EXACTLY like our combat in terms of skill mods. EXACTLY. We get NO combat skill mods. We get spice exp. which is useless. We get lots of schematics (the crafting equivalent of abillities) and we get 4 new abilities. So, our crafting in our profession, mod wise, is, if you assume that everything was working as intended, and all things being equal, ARE equal to our combat abillity. They are the same. This profession is NOT all about crafting. But my point is it is JUST as much about crafting as it is about Combat. I'm not saying one's better than the other. THEY ARE EQUAL.
No they meat us to smuggle. They did not mean for us to be legitimate business people. Illegitimate yes. Hence the underworld tree (which needs completed). I'll let the "Meant us to smuggle" line pass. Because if they did, why didn't they put in smuggling? But let's let that go. Illigitimate business men aren't all that different from legitimate ones. And the Underworld tree doesn't need completion...it needs EXISTANCE for your argument to work. There is NOTHING in it which allows me to be a illigitmate business man, unless I wanna be a GCW business man.
The big thing about pre-req's it does define the BASE profession and not how you want to augment it. Yeah, you've said that already, and I'm just going to say again that while that's true, that it does define the base profession, it ALSO defines the path of least resistance to augment. Yes, I can be a merchant smuggler. But I can't be as effective as a merchant smuggler as you can be as a combat smuggler because you can get 2 elite combat professions, and I can only get 1 elite crafting profession and change. That's it. Cut and dry. You cannot argue that because that is a straight up fact. So...because our pre-reqs are combat, then it's easier, more efficient to be a combat smuggler because you can be better at that than crafting. The pre-reqs HAVE defined the path of augmentation. You can say they're not supposed to all you want. But they DO. That's why the dev's CHANGED the Bounty Hunter's pre-reqs to begin with, because they prevented them from Augmenting their profession enough to effectively do their jobs.
What hybrids besides BH have more mods than us for combat. We have two lines where skill mods can occur and one of those is broken (underworld). that could contain both combat and business mods. But NONE of those SKILL mods occur in smuggler. They ONLY occur in our novice level pre-reqs. NONE OF THEM. We have NO combat skill mods in any of our trees. We have abilities. Not skills. There is a difference.
If you choose to go crafter first that is your option. That is my option. So why am I punished for it by being forced to do it with FEWER skill points?
Try reversing it. Explain why the unarmed and pistol dont make sense to a smuggler. I have. Several times. I have no problem with pistols, but I've explained many times in this thread why I think the unarmed pre-req makes less sense than the old business pre-req.
Why was there whining on the crafting, because like I said crafting is not what smugglers are all about. It is absolutely clear that the only reason we do craft was to get spice and smuggler tools in the game and not have the crafters working above the law craft illegal items. We were not meant to be crafters first. Smuggling is what smugglers are all about and in the absence of that they gave us combat and crafting skills. And I don't believe we are EITHER combatants or crafters first. We're both in equal measure.
I gues we have to agree to disagree.
Yeah yeah yeah...the way it always ends. But I WILL say this because I'm tired of it. It's easy for you guys to agree to disagree because YOU have what you want. You all get to be combat smugglers, and that's cool. I don't want to take that away from you. But it's easy to agree to disagree when you've got your template exactly how you want it. You can whup ass in combat, and make enough money to make you happy. But not me. And I never will. Nor will anyone who wants to be good with a pistol (which, by the way, in reality, makes NOT a badass, as pure Master Pistoleers aren't ownerizers) and good at business. Or just wants to be a really good crafting smuggler. They get penalized in their skill points for wanting to NOT be a Kung Fu Gunfighter Smuggler, which is what YOU guys get to be, though I can't think of anything less smugglerish in StarWars.
But I suppose that is a little bit of sour grapes. So yeah. Sure. Agree to disagree. Congrats on getting to keep what you want. I'm out of this discussion. It has once again become fruitless.
I would very much like to see the unarmed 4 requirement dropped, it makes absolutely no sense currently as we have no unarmed skills except those in brawler and no weapons.. I can see unarmed as something that would make sense from a roleplaying/common sense aspect, but lets face it, SOE doesn't use common sense or reason and seemingly just pick changes, tweaks, revamps and nerfs out of a hat for each patch.
I don't expect much from them seeing as how instead of fixing BH by making it a more powerful profession they decided to take the easy route and drop 42 SP off their requirements basically telling them go out and take a working profession to help out your gimpyness..
I'm sure all of this has been said before and more then once, but after being lied to since at least September, I am quite frankly just about at my peak for tolerance on the matter. I have been a master smuggler since the first few weeks of release and we have received nothing but nerfs and lies and I am fed up.
Edited for Spelling
Message Edited by Drakainen on 07-12-2004 09:43 PM