Smuggler Archive
Thread: Tuesday Tip
SmugglinZane wrote:
Warryyr wrote:
Don't feed the trolls. They just multiply.
Sorry, I tried to talk to Tiggs reasonably, but she's gone now. I had to lash out at someone/something. Might as well be someone deserving of it.
/wookieehug
I'm a Musician. I can very much sympathize with your lack of content. We are also sitting at about 1/2 way done with our changes. Though, we have absolutely no idea when we'll actually have profession-specific abilities to benefit the community.
Heck, you guys have slicing, at least. We have Inspiration buffs, which are the exact same quality as Novice Entertainer buffs...but FASTER. At least your profession wasn't made bot-friendly with the CU, to the point where not only can the bots hand out your benefits for free, but they can fish, go golfing, water skiing, whitewater rafting, or just sleep in peace knowing that /covercharge is insuring anyone who uses their bot will be paying them money.
Both of our professions, and several others, are in a pretty bad state.
I only hope the focus on bugs makes a serious dent in the bugginess of this game, if it's coming at the sacrifice of my enjoyment of the game for two subscription periods. It's too bad we couldn't have had some dedication to bug squashing during the past several months of Publishes, instead we have to have everything on hold to fix the bugs.
I thought they hired a bunch of new Devs...whatever happened with that?
Message Edited by Warryyr on 08-10-2005 02:43 PM
Well if thats true make sure nobody looks at these other SOE statments.
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=comtest&message.id=2
Chieftain1900 wrote:
No one is quitting, come on give the dev's a break.
Hmm...no one is quitting eh? Here is my last list, it's two weeks old nowso it might be out of date.
ElectricNomad
Solo4114
Veela
Spinningcloud
DrevenStrobe
Angus
Saarek
Slugeater
LodekDall
NJRagman
Smug-Druggler
dlc3007
Keck
ner0sputnik
Qojan
Isharra
KloudRunner
Makris
Jabourn
SWGuy2005
Datink_Nieleft
Thomen
djlowballer
HythosSWG
MaleusGaryn
NativeUK
2 very good examples of what SWG players should expect from the Director of Community Relations
hitsubacca wrote:
Well if thats true make sure nobody looks at these other SOE statments.
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=comtest&message.id=2
http://psforums.station.sony.com/ps/board/message?board.id=psdevdiscussion&message.id=81501#M81501
Message Edited by SanRa_Ledav on 08-10-2005 02:54 PM
SanRa_Ledav wrote:
Care to summarize those posts for those of us who don't play Evercamp/crap/crack?Message Edited by SanRa_Ledav on 08-10-2005 02:54 PM
basically the EQII thread is an example of the Devs telling the Player community about upcoming changes. an idea which seems to be lost on the SWG team.
Alpha_Bits wrote:Warryyr, it's been mentioned a few times in this forum that the entertainers (among others... ranger, squad leader, creature handlers, etc) have been bent over and it's not the exclusive domain of the smugglers to be persecuted by the devs. Taking away battle fatigue recently just made me shake my head once again... makes me feel less like smugglers are being picked on in particular, more like it's a general "Any non-Jedi prof" persecution. It's still not good, but misery loves company./offer pie
Nope, you are right. We havent been picked on lately - BECAUSE WE NEVER WORKED.
As much as i feel for the brothers and sisters that are SL and entertainers etc.
Smugglers NEVER could SMUGGLE.
We haven't been nerfed ever, well at least not the smuggling portion of our game.
WHY?
Because there is nothing to NERF!
They can't take away something like Battle Fatigue from us - cause we never had ANYTHING.
We are a Pre-Alpha Profession - we don't even have smuggling bugs.
The smuggling that is in there is working perfectly.
It is a difference to other Professions - we don't exist. There is just a Tag over my head.
Magnum
Message Edited by magnum1138 on 08-10-2005 01:00 PM
WesBelden wrote:
Rueger_Karde wrote:
Lotussutol wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tiggs wrote:
We have many un-announced plans that one day soon will be public knowledge. Until we receive the go-ahead nothing will be said, sorry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
can you guess what word I like in Tiggs reply?
public?
I believe it's "soon"
No it is "sorry"
The SWG playerbase is a very passionate playerbase, and I think this is why people seem to get riled up over the slightest things as well as the bigger game issues. It's the reason people who love the game quit over the CU or profession changing publishes. It's a shame cos it's TH and Tiggs who seem to be on the receiving end of it and whether you love them or hate them they are our conduite into the developers and SOE management.
However, I think there is an issue, that SOE needs to address and that's one of 'perception'. I reckon there are a lot of times when what we, the players, perceive is not the truth. Now it might be that the way something is worded caused that perception, it might just be that the players jumped to the wrong conclusions. No-one is lying per say, it's just there's something akin to Chinese whispers going on between the devs and players
The CU was defintely perceived by many that part of the reason for it was that the underlying game engine was broken. This painful change (and I'll hold my hand up here and say I hated it at first and now love it) would fix that engine and would allow bugs to get fixed and new content rapidly added. Now I, and many of my friends, were prepared that a patch this big wouldn't be without it's troubles and it would take a small time to bed it down... others felt the CU would come out perfect, but I know the SOE president was rolled out shortly after the CU and mentioned something about a matter of weeks. Whatever the players thought, the perception was that in a few weeks all the bugs would be fixed.
There was talk that the CU would give the devs a platform to rapidly role out content. Now I had an interesting debate with a Guild Member the other night where we talked about that. I keep looking at Everquest 2's 1100 quests added since launch and wondering why that can't happen to SWG. I took new content to be new quests, whereas he saw it as profession revamps and GCW stuff and not quests.
I don't know about others, but ROTW gave me enough to be getting on with, to give the Devs some time. New publishes came out regularly with some nice touches (I love the multi-player vehicles) but there were some pretty nasty bugs that crippled some professions. Even for those who wanted new content before the big bug fix, there was some concern.
Now I'm not sure where the plan for future publishes (I remember a smuggler and ranger publish mentioned) came from, I think it might have been Fanfest, but again perceptions were set, and even though I'm not a smuggler (my best friend is), I remember spending countless emails discussing the possibilities.
It was shortly after that that things seemed to change. There were notes that teams were changing round (and from what some of us remember from the beginning of the year that seemed to take forever - again a perception). Suddenly the focus was on some major bug fixing publishes. You ask a lot of people, and they say it's a good thing and needed for the game, but you still get people say "wasn't this supposed to have been done as part of the CU". The perceptions seems to be that SOE suddenly did a 180.
The perception is that what little we do know about future plans are like vague carrots on strings (we keep getting told to be patient) and when plans do finally get announced and players have genuine issues, things are too far along for changes to be made before release. I honestly agree with players who say that things need to be told to us sooner but I know that's NOT an easy thing to do. How can people like Tiggs give us better information without catching a load of flack when things change? The whole reason they started keeping information back was because if there was a change, they got moaned at for it, even if more than 50% of the community agreed with the changes.
Now I know that everything has to go through Lucasarts for approval. Even with the best relationship in the world, that's gonna cause some delays. However, things I genuinely can't understand (like all this post, this isn't meant as a rant)
1) Whatever any ranter might say otherwise, I know SOE has some very talented programmers and developers. Why do so many bugs seem to get introduced per publish? For example, the recent CH patch broke some things for DE, it was highlighted by the player community yet still rolled out. Was it deemed the wrath of the CHs would be worse for the game than delaying? Is it only a minor thing to fix and hence the fix is already going through the QA system?
2) Is the reason things get delayed due to lack of resource, complexity of coding, or because as things are coded it breaks other things requiring some rethinking / extra time
3) Why is it that games like EQ2 can add over a thousand new quests in under 6 months, yet adding content is still a problem in SWG even after the core platform has been replaced?
4) Aside from reporting bugs, what can the players do to help the devs?
Remember we are passionate fans of this game. As much as it must be disheartening for the devs to see the players keep beating on them, if we didn't love this game and all it can become, we wouldn't be here.
Shaan'ti Hokai (Kauri) 
WesBelden wrote:
Rueger_Karde wrote:
Lotussutol wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tiggs wrote:We have many un-announced plans that one day soon will be public knowledge. Until we receive the go-ahead nothing will be said, sorry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
can you guess what word I like in Tiggs reply?
public?
I believe it's "soon"
Meh, I've read and reread this a few times all I see is:
No such thing as a Smuggler revamp = Not now, not later, not ever. We've never heard of it and neither have you. See? No documents.
Now here is where I show you how dumb I am. After I unlocked Jedi with my smuggler/rifleman, what did I grind out my new toon as? Smuggler/pistoleer
I just can't leave.
Message Edited by Turd_Ferguson523 on 08-11-2005 06:14 AM
Warryyr wrote:
magnum1138 wrote:
Tiggs wrote:
TashunkaSapa wrote:
Tiggs wrote:
Direction of games change every day due to various reasons. That is why there is nothing definite being posted until it is almost out on Test Center.
Game design requires planning - and the problem seems to be, you guys don't even have a plan. The problem isn't that the "direction" changes every day, the problem is that the company line changes every day.
We make a committment to you each month, it's not unreasonable to expect one in return. Show us that you care about your customers, decide what you need to do to satisfy them, tell us what you've got planned and then MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Stop making excuses and start making progress.
We have many un-announced plans that one day soon will be public knowledge. Until we receive the go-ahead nothing will be said, sorry.
You say this, like it's a good reason.
You (Company not you Tiggs (well a bit)) don't get the problem i fear.
You are just all doing a bad job in making people become excited (again) about your game.
Comments like these do nothing.
MAgnum
It IS a good reason.
It's called proprietary knowledge, and it's what keeps a business ahead of the competition. Sure, some bits and pieces *might* get devulged, but in general businesses competing with other businesses don't want to give out all of their secrets - or a competitor might say, dang we need to steal their thunder - we need something BIGGER and BETTER!
Instead, the competition says, oh dang - they just did this, we need to step up!
And for anyone who regularly reads my posts, stop laughing about me defending the Devs.
I just think Tiggs takes too much heat, too often.
Isn't that what SOE did with games like WOW? Wow look! A level system! warm-up and cooldown timers! 1 health bar, 1 action bar, and 1 mana bar! Lets do that!