Smuggler Archive
Thread: Combat Upgrade: Spices
HythosSWG wrote:I miss being able to experiment on spice - regardless of it not having any effect...... It just made it feel like it did something or had some good useLOL
Message Edited by HythosSWG on 11-10-2004 04:57 PM
i thought in the old experimentation days experimentation lowered the downer.
Just to sharethe Dev's original theoryof spice in SWG (the documentation of which is lostsince much of it dates from pre-launch)...
Spice was supposed to provide high-powered but short-term buffs (of up to maybe 30 minutes).
Food was supposed to provide low-powered but long-term buffs (from one to twelve - yes, twelve! - hours).
Some people, myself included, have advocated more creative downers. Puking and stat lossfor each one is boring, and there are a number of other colorful options, from as elaborate as blurred on-screen vision and a lower to-hit ratio for Booster Blue to something as simple and benign as constant burping for Grey Gabaki. Lower-end spice shouldn't give massive downers, but the high-end stuff should make the downer tricky to manage.
Other people, and I also include myself, have asked that Smugglers harvest spice and then process it (ie, use resources to "craft" a spice using the base "spice unit"), which would end the phenomenon of Smugglers who sell 1000-unit schematics to crafters and destroy the spice market. Such a system - akin to the Deadeye formula - could revolutionize the spice market, driving up prices and making it more rare. At the very least, it would open the door for a "spice run minigame," which I believe should be separate from player-based smuggling. The Spice line of Smuggler could therefore offer the ability to process raw spice, while, say, the Underworld line could open up the "spice run minigame" and other missions for NPCs, with higher Underworld levels offering progressively more lucrative raw spice.
In any case, spice needs to have a strong risk/reward factor. Use of high-powered buffs should complicate a player's existence - they should endure tougher scans and face rough downers. Softer spice should trigger less visibility and have less serious downers. It isuninteresting to make spice generic, and unproductive to allow only the highest-end spices to have a role in SWG. Each spice must have its place, and if each one is not sought after by customers, then it is a sign of a poorly-designed spice. Smugglers need every spice to be marketable.
Anyway, that's my advice for spice. The rest, including contraband system proposals, is in my "compiled ideas" thread. Good luck, Smugglers.
Gimme a market, I'll give you the supply
HimFan wrote:Not only would I like to see spices more usefull, I would like to see something illegal about them. As in rare hard-to-find resouces (but that might be a revamp thing).
/mood serious
I agree. I've long thought it was stupid for spices to be "illegal," yet they are sold openly on the bazaar. It's like selling crack through the classified ads. I think if spices and sliced armor and weapons are illegal they shouldn't be able to be bought openly on the bazaar.
It just doesn't make sense, and would seem to be an easy way to offer content to smugglers, which is why it will never happen, because that would mean the devs would have to do something nice for us, which we all know they don't like to do. Call me cynic (and I'm a master cynic), but I don't expect smugglers will ever get anything from the devs. Despite the honorable and Herculean efforts of our correspondants, I can't help but think smugglers are simply punching dummies for the devs, nothing more than people they keep around to abuse to release the stress of bending over backwards to give Jedi everything they want. I figure they need someone to abuse, and we're it.
I've played this game since day two and have never seen the devs do anything good for smuggler, on the contrary, they seem to do little but break it more and more, but I don't have to go on, we all know the story...I expect the next publish will nerf us again
/mood sarcastic
On the bright side, I'm glad Entertainers got content missions. I think it's important for entertainers, a profession so important to the Star Wars Universe, to have more to do than smugglers, who essentially are unimportant to the game and the galaxy. I mean who is this Han Solo character anyways and what did he ever do that was important to the story? He's such a minor character, I don't know why smuggler is a profession in the first place.
sugarman wrote:
Thoughts about spice
What about adding some variety (spice of life and all that) such as havingspecial batches of spices that can only be made by master smugglerswith special schematics and resources?
Smuggler's delight is a useful pre-spice food to halve the downer - but I think if really good quality resources are used then the downer should also be reduced - in the same vein as drinking a good bottle of vino should leave youwith less of a hangover than a similar quantity of rotgut!
I don't think adding new ones is necessary, not yet at least, if we could have a usefull effect for each single spice we can craft, that would already be great. Having some special schematics in the master box would be nice, perhaps as a result for a quest with a difficulty level between RIS armor and Featherweight FGW5.
As for experimentation i do agree that the quality of the resources or the skill of the smuggler should be taken into consideration, but smugglers are NOT resource trackers, we have to work on some developping ideas, maybe including interactions with other professions? (BE, chefs...) we could for instance use some components made by chefs and add to them our own tricks.
electricnomad wrote:
Just to sharethe Dev's original theoryof spice in SWG (the documentation of which is lostsince much of it dates from pre-launch)...
Spice was supposed to provide high-powered but short-term buffs (of up to maybe 30 minutes).
Food was supposed to provide low-powered but long-term buffs (from one to twelve - yes, twelve! - hours).
Some people, myself included, have advocated more creative downers. Puking and stat lossfor each one is boring, and there are a number of other colorful options, from as elaborate as blurred on-screen vision and a lower to-hit ratio for Booster Blue to something as simple and benign as constant burping for Grey Gabaki. Lower-end spice shouldn't give massive downers, but the high-end stuff should make the downer tricky to manage.
Other people, and I also include myself, have asked that Smugglers harvest spice and then process it (ie, use resources to "craft" a spice using the base "spice unit"), which would end the phenomenon of Smugglers who sell 1000-unit schematics to crafters and destroy the spice market. Such a system - akin to the Deadeye formula - could revolutionize the spice market, driving up prices and making it more rare. At the very least, it would open the door for a "spice run minigame," which I believe should be separate from player-based smuggling. The Spice line of Smuggler could therefore offer the ability to process raw spice, while, say, the Underworld line could open up the "spice run minigame" and other missions for NPCs, with higher Underworld levels offering progressively more lucrative raw spice.
In any case, spice needs to have a strong risk/reward factor. Use of high-powered buffs should complicate a player's existence - they should endure tougher scans and face rough downers. Softer spice should trigger less visibility and have less serious downers. It isuninteresting to make spice generic, and unproductive to allow only the highest-end spices to have a role in SWG. Each spice must have its place, and if each one is not sought after by customers, then it is a sign of a poorly-designed spice. Smugglers need every spice to be marketable.
Anyway, that's my advice for spice. The rest, including contraband system proposals, is in my "compiled ideas" thread. Good luck, Smugglers.
This is a great group of ideas. Good to see you here electric, you were missed when you were away.