Smuggler Archive
Thread: Smuggler State of the profession
"Is there a more recent "State of the Smuggler" post I could read?"
Considering that nothing has been done to help smugglers since this list was made, not really.
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
Is there a more recent "State of the Smuggler" post I could read?
The following is a repost of a response to ideas for the smuggler class I posted for TH on 12/20/03. The part about spice being an illegal good on the bazaar may or may not come to fruition with the Imperial Crackdown, but since the Devs haven't seen fit to release real information about this subject I can not tell for sure. I really wish that when major game systems are about to be changed that the Devs could be bothered to give us fair warning and real information over hints and inuendo. It is hard to give good "State of the Smuggler" information when we do not know what is being planned a week or two from now.
Repost of my message to TH 12/20/03:
OK TH, since you want to know what I as a player would like to see as the smuggler class...
I am basing these ideas on the two most well-know smuggler types in the official SW universe - Han Solo and Lando Calrissian.
Basically, most smugglers dabble in business and transport, sometimes legally and sometimes not. Smugglers should be able to arrange and carry out gray-area business dealings. This means the manufacture and sales of spice (which is in the game now), but with consequences if caught by imperial patrols with over a certain amount of the stuff. This could be in the form of TEFs, although I'm not sure how you would code the "detection" of spice by imperials. Possibly the same way Jedi are detected when using their powers? I honestly don't know how this is implemented and could be related back to smuggling spice. Also, a similar system should be set up upon release of the space expansion to smuggle spice between planets and planetary locations. To facilitate this avenue of character development, spice should be illegal as far as Bazaar sales (this also meshes well with SW cannon). Since spice offers such large boosts to character stats, I think this could be very popular with the profession. There should be more risk with this activity.
Smugglers also are good at jury-rigging and improving vehicles/ships. With the space expansion, I would like to see smugglers with the ability to "buff" ships and vehicles by either producing or acquiring special components or possibly producing power-ups for vehicles/ships. I would like to see a limited time way of improving vehicles as a smuggler rather than just slicing them. If you decide to slice rather than power-up vehicles, it should cause big improvements (either speed, HAM, terrain negotiation) but have large costs as far as repair cost or decay rate.
Another useful skill for smugglers it to, well, smuggle. I would love to see abilities, especially in the space expansion, of smugglers to quietly transport some not so well liked citizens of the galaxy as far as the empire is concerned, and vice versa. If a skill similar to the scout's "mask scent" could be developed that gives the smuggler a percent chance of masking TEFs or aligned players from the other side temporarily, this could be a very unique feature for the class. I realize this would have to be very carefully balanced and limited to keep from causing serious harm to the GCW, but I think some uses of this could be a cool game addition. For example, maybe the smuggler can only shield a few players in his ship for a few minutes at a space dock with an increasing chance of detection as time went by. This would provide for the ability of limited sneak attacks to be launched at areas close to spaceports. Smuggling of humans as it were. I would also like to see smugglers able to create missions with other players for delivery of goods, legal or otherwise. This would be especially useful for the space expansion. This of course requires the player created mission system the Devs promised they would be working on after they got player cities, mounts, and vehicles out of the way. 
I still find the requirement of unarmed as a little weird for smugglers. Pistol is a natural fit going by the movies and other extended literature. I rarely see anything about unarmed combat. However, smugglers currently manufacture and alter other goods. It makes much more sense that the engineering tree of Artisan meshes more with the current skills of smuggler. Also, business sense should be very important to smugglers and this also has its roots in Artisan.
SWG-Runesabre, at the risk of overwhelming you, here are some (hopefully) helpful threads and ideasthat have been kicking aroundover the many months we've been waiting for a revamp:
"SMUGGLER DESCRIBED . . . in five words"
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=45843&page=1
Asks other Smugglers to give five words describing their ideal Smuggler, and then associates related words to give a generla idea of how people envision the profession.
"electricnomad's compiled ideas for the Smuggler overhaul"
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=44969
Discusses several revamp ideas for broken or useless branches of the skilltree (which is just about everything). Lots of specific ideas, but nothing resembling a comprehensive chart of a restructured profession tree. More of an outline or brainstorm primer than anything else.
"Smugglers unite! Let's get our freaking Master box updated!"
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=38822
Points out that the Master box description is absolutely devoid of information related to the Master slicing bonus that has been proven and in fact verified by GreenMarine on the Correspondents' Forum. We just want the text update in the in-game profession description to save new Smugglers and consumers a lot of time and effort. We only have 2 real bonuses, and the one related to slicing isn't listed. Please make a quick fix to this easily resolved issue.
Well said. My boyfriend is a smuggler, and I think the thing that bothers him most is that he has no control over his slicingor the quality of his spice.
I feel bad for you guys because of how misunderstood slicing is. I was watching my bf play one day, and he sliced some kid's weapon for him. He charged him 2k for a slice that increasedthe weapon'sspeed by 33%. The kid's response..."33%. Is that it?" I doubt he'll ever slice someone's weapon again, unless it's a friend.Bottom line is, he is sick of people getting mad at him for something he has no control over. If he could he would be slicing everything at 40% or higher. Which brings me to my suggestion. As a Master smuggler, or smuggler in general, one should be able to control his/her slices better... get better percentages (much better), and be able to designated what they are slicing a product for (ie effectiveness, encumbrance). Maybe even get to pick and chose how good of a slice he/she does, or have it be based somehow on the quality of the clamps (or more than it already is), etc. This way a smuggler could either charge a client for whatever level percentage they wanted-or could afford-on their slice.The client could also have some way of checking the percentage of the slice, and what it was for, so that they knew they were not getting ripped off. The ability of the smuggler to slice at each level (ie 1 level = 20 % slice, you'll have to forgive me I am not familiar with the exact names on the tree, but slicing 1-4 are each a "level") goes up accordingly, with master smuggler recieving the final 20 %.
Ibelievethe quality of the spice should be determined bythe quality of it's resources only because it just makes sense. The better your resources are when you make almost everything in the game, the better the quality of the product you craft. Why should it be any different for spice?
I also think the mods are a little light. I mean, come on, Master Smuggler gets no new abilities? And by the way...has anything actually ever been changed for this profession since the day it was released? I don't think that I have seen one patch that has included something for the smuggler profession. I really hope SONY starts diversifying their efforts. It seems like certain professions, such as BH, CH, or Commandos, get more attention then the rest of us combined
I am hoping that the devs focusedso much on those professions because the majority of the people playing swgwere BH, CH, and Commandos, and that they are making their way around to each profession. However, you would think that George Lucas's pockets would be deep enough for him to hire a few more employees to help get this gameon its feet. After all, I don't think it was ready to be released when it was...to many bugs, etc. I would rather have waited a little while for swg's release then to buy an incomplete ornon-functioning game.
Nothing has changed since the previous posts. We don't smuggle anything. TH's allusions in the GCW update post suggest that stormtroopers will begin scanning people for certain things. This gives smugglers a chance at actually SMUGGLING. Aside from that, look at ANY of the posts from the past. This is really getting tiresome. I'm perfectly willing to be patient with SOE, but jesus christ, didn't they give you guys some sort of dossier on where the professions stand? Haven't we answered these questions time and time again and STILL nothing changes? Why are we answering them AGAIN??
San, what gives here? I mean, come on, you have to admit this looks pretty freakin' goofy, after TH came in here a short while ago asking us the same questions, we responded, even distilled the issues down for people, and STILL nothing changes AND we get a new guy coming in asking more questions. I'm not blaming Rune for not knowing the answers -- I'm blaming his bosses. When you put a new guy on a project, give him the stuff that the LAST guy who had the project compiled. Then, when you're reviewing what to do next, ask yourself this simple question:
HAS ANYTHING AT ALL CHANGED SINCE THE LAST TIME THE CUSTOMERS GAVE YOU AN UPDATE?
If the answer is a resounding NO, then you know where you stand. Now can SOMEONE please tell us if, when, and what is being done to get us to actually smuggle????
On a side note, I haven't been playing the game much lately, and this is one of the key reasons --we get a lot of lip service, but MAN do the corporate wheels turn slowly. When the game world is pretty much static for certain professions, ESPECIALLY after having been told/promised/suggested that YOU would receive SPECIAL attention (snicker) time and again, you can understand why players may become disillusioned.
Come on guys, let's get our acts together and get this profession finally FIXED. We've essentially been the same (aside from a few nerfs and minor bug squashings) since launch. WHAT MORE INFORMATION COULD YOU POSSIBLY NEED??
hehe chill guys... he only has 20 posts so that means he must not needlessly post things. Give him a chance before ya hang him 
The poster above me is correct, however... smuggler hasnt changed at all, so although you can easily find stuck posts in this forum regarding features we want, any combination of those posts will tell you everything since we all feel the same way.
Kav's Smuggler Vision 2.0 - Quite detailed, elaborate post. Main points include pets, smuggler missions and removal of GCW abilities.
Smuggler Revamp 1.13 by Caylin - Full overhaul, lots of documentation. Updates to the document that is posted here is accessible in his sig.
One of the Four Horsemen of the Smuggler Apocalypse! 
So what do you guys think should i redo the state of the profession?
Personally I dont see any reason to since nothing has changed.
sadly i'd say this is current as it gets.
and anything not here is in the Smuggler Bugs thread.
The only change in the past few months has been to Feign Death. Whether that means the thread gets redone or not, I don't know. But if Runesabre needs to know what's new, the FD change is it.
SanTsu wrote:
So what do you guys think should i redo the state of the profession?
Personally I dont see any reason to since nothing has changed.
1.) For the record, I'm not pissed at Rune. He's just doing his job. But he's spending time that he shouldn't HAVE to spend asking us questions to which the answer is "Nothing's different, unless you count the Feign Death change." All of this, the current state of the profession, the fact that nothing's changed but FD, and all the rest are things he SHOULD have been told by whoever gave him the project. It's just lousy management to do otherwise. When the new guy comes on, you give him all the notes from the OLD guy, which SHOULD put him in good shape to just move forward. Essentially, he should get a little memo that starts out "Previously on Days of Our Smuggling..." so that he DOESN'T have to take a day, an hour, or ten minutes even to come on the forums and say "So, what do you guys want again?" Rune's just doing his job. It's his bosses or the guy who gave him the info who should be embarassed (unless the guy gave Rune everything he needed, in which case Rune should be embarassed). On the other hand, it could just be that Rune was checking to make SURE nothing's changed in terms of what WE want (not whether things are different as far as how the profession operates). If THAT's the case, then what we have here is a simple problem of phrasing the question properly. If the question is truly "So what's the current state of the profession" meaning "So, is anything different for how you play the smuggler profession?" then my previous comments stand. If the question is "So what's the current state of the profession" meaning "So, do YOU guys feel any different about things" then that's a different question entirely and a perfectly legitimate one (and a good one to ask in terms of customer relations). The first question, however, is BAD to ask in terms of customer relations, because it only reinforces the notion that we're back to square one with ANOTHER dev. First GreenMarine (who never showed up), then the comments about "The top five professions that will be fixed are...", then TH's posts saying "Can you give us some more info?", now THIS post, you can understand our frustration. We've handed over all the data. We've given all the information. The profession and how its played has not changed. We shoot stuff. We spam that we sell spice. We spam that we're unlocking containers for free guaranteed at the starport and that we'll slice your gun for you or your armor. And that's it. No further info is needed, unless you'd like to catalog our latest gripes (which are probably the same as before).
I'll sum up what I think is the KEY gripe right here, right now in three words: WE....DON'T....SMUGGLE. That's it. Fix that, and you've got happy smugglers (assuming you fix it well). At this point, that's all I want. I don't care about a weapon cert. I don't care about damage mitigation (though it is nice, I'll admit). All I want to do is do my job -- Smuggling. Not slicing, not drug dealing, not shooting durni with sneaky crotch shots. Smuggling. I suspect I'm not alone in that sentiment. If the question was the second question, that's fair. I'm hoping that it's a mere formality, just to make sure the attitudes are the same WHILE changes are being made, and that it's not "Well, let's put everything on hold just to make sure for the eighteenth time that they really honestly and truly do want to smuggle." Long as the wheels are a-turnin' and changes ARE happening, I'm a happy camper. But please, no moreDELAYS to ask for more info (asking for info's fine, just don't hold up the changes while asking). We've posted PLENTY.
2.) San, the state of the profession is unchanged. Thus, there is no need to redo it. The simple fact is we don't do what our job is: smuggling. There is no smuggling in the game at all. Period. What we can do is cool, and useful for people, and there are some bugs that could stand fixing and some clarifications on info that we could use. But for the most part, the state of the profession is this: we don't do what our profession is supposed to do. End of story.