Smuggler Archive

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JWing wrote:
Keep you heads up guys...

This has been a long time coming, and now is the time that we shine.

There have been thousands of great ideas over the past (gulp)year.

Wes, bring us home baby!

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Message Edited by Drakainen on 11-18-2004 08:39 PM

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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.

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I don't know if anyone's commented on this, because I've read far too much today and can't be bothered reading the rest of this thread, but--

I'm so happy someone else remembers the promises/ideas of the game as it was originially conceived.I really do wish it was more like that.

Here's one other thing though. As originally conveived, this game did not have doctor buffs. Something I feel they should never have added to the game. But add they did. Food is obviously the long term buff, spices, the buff for fighting say, a krayt, and then you don't need doctor buffs. which then transfers all the whining from smugs to docs, who have lost their source of income. The entertainers of course tell the docs to shut their filthy mouths, and then lose their buffing abilities, which then enrages the 1337 pvper community, which then complains louder and more efficiently than everyone else, and Jedi Publish number 3 is released, which allowes Jedi to buff themselves and their 100000 strength health poison knife-wielding buddies, and then we are back where we started. Get rid of buffs, tell the jedi to shut it, rebalance damage/speed issues, fix specials that don't work. give smugs a gun of their own and maybe a groin kick, and we'll be all set.

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kgmkiorys wrote:

Wes, i was thinking about this post again and again...

You didn't do it for the pleasure of doing it, that means you read some news on the C-forum, and that means you were allowed to begin the talking with about it.

From this point, i'll assume we can expect the same kind of thread for slicing and Dirty Fighting.

Am i right do assume this? Have you already started discussing these points on the C-forum (i guess you aren't allowed to tell the results of the discussion, but just saying it's being discussed is no big hurt)? Is dialog open or are you just as ignored as we are?

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You are right to assume that these have been discussed. The Smuggler sandbox team has debated these topicsand we've had some responses; I can't expand on that unfortunately