Smuggler Archive

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Smuggler_Caylin wrote:

Smuggler Revamp Community Vision Doc

Spices:

Goal Statement: 1 sentence.

• Redoing unused or superceded spices.
  
• Adding new spices.

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Increase usefulness of spices to more or different professions. (Doc/Medic)

• Add +injury/wound treatment to muon to get buffing docs to use, or add a new spice with that trait.


• Allow smugglers to create optional (as a BE does for chef) medicine components


• Allow smugglers to create replacement (as in Janta Blood for BEC) medicine components.


• Allow smugglers to slice/spicemeds for +power/+duration/+charges/-med use

Being able to drop a stim to med use 0 (even if there are side-effects) would open a market to medics and docs among non-medic players. It would also allow more players to save skill pts on medic. (would require rework of the heal damage command)

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SomaIcarus wrote:

*faints*

ANOTHER LURKER!!!! MULTIPLE DEV'S ON ONE SMUGGLER THREAD!!!

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Yes, it seems that all interaction lately has been with the smugglers. I'm not complaining,but at least maybe now those of you whowere being jerks will stop and take a step back and realize their was absolutely no call for it.

/tiptoes away
(this is not directed at you, Somalcarus, just quoted to point out what you are saying)

Directed at:
You know who you are, whining about the delay so that it can be done right.

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JeffIncredible wrote:
I have a problem with the melee attacks. As much as I would like something new here, there's no reason I would ever want my smuggler (not counting other professions) in melee range during a fight. We just don't have the bonuses to defense that would allow us to fight at close range.

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Right which is why both the attacks I suggested facilitate us getting out of melee range, you might not want to be in melee range but there are many times you can't stop it both these melee moves can get you out of a tight spot.

Hamstring prevents movement. They would still be able to preform actions but any kind of movement would be disallowed for 10 seconds. This gives the smuggler time to get out of melee combat and possibly escape.

Again keeps the opponent out of the fight

An un-nerfed Panic shot does the same thing

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Smuggler_Caylin wrote:

Smuggler Revamp Community Vision Doc

Underworld: (example)

Goal Statement: 1 sentence.

• Specialized Delivery missions that provide PvE encounters during the travel portion. These encounters can come in the form of direct combat, threatened combat in exchange for the smuggled item, or non-combat encounters seeking to bribe or convince the PC to give up the item.
  
  
  
  • Rewards:
    
    
    
    • Immediate Travel Tokens
      (This, for the record is extremely complicated)
      
    • Equipment buff programs
      
    • Datadiscs to further adventure
    
    
  • Ethical decisions that effect the smugglers reputation.
    
  • City and travel combat.
    
  
  
• PvP smuggling whereby a player can contract another player to take a shipment from point a to point b.
  
  (Just as an example, this is a great statement of a single sentence that probably amounts to months of work by multiple teams. Some challenges are, “where do they take it from and to? How is it registered? How is it discovered? How do you prevent it from being exploited by a player with two accounts?” etc…)

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Allow players to interact better with Imperial authority figures.

• Add craftable document forgeries to the underworld tree. When you're caught with contraband, documents can lead the Imperial to believe a Rebel is neutral, or even Imperial. Really good documents could lead a Stormtrooper to believe you acutally outrank him and you should be left alone.


• Require some areas like the Emperor's Retreat or the Imperial Prison to require proper papers to gain entry. Papers can be granted by NPCs as mission payouts, or forged. Players caught with forged documents in restricted areas will be repremanded, fined, or attackeddepending on factional alignment. The better the smuggler that created them, the less chance of getting caught.


• Documents could also be part of smuggler content. Forgeries let them pick up cargo or gain access to mission areas.
  

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SWG-Runesabre wrote:

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Vampirerobot wrote:

So is this thread for suggestions for the Community Vision? If so, I'll contribute a suggestion for the Overview, as I'd like to see it:

Overview

The goal of the Smuggler Revamp is to bring Smugglers in the game in line with the iconic conception of Smugglers in the Star Wars Universe. Our mission is to create a profession that has both utility to other players (Interactivity) and fun and challenge for the Smugglers themselves (Content). In addition we want Smugglers to fill a unique role in the game because of their iconic nature: That of gatekeeper to the illicit and illegal.

Thus the final Smuggler "vision" isa profession which has two components: First, the ability to acquire highly desirable but illegal goods and services for other players. Second, drawbacks to the acquisition of those goods and services (representing their illegal nature) andabilities to help overcomeand survive those drawbacks. Smuggler Interactivity is in their utility to other players via the first part, and SmugglerContent is in the challenges presented by the second part. What will make Smugglers useful is the first part. What will make them unique and fun is the second part.

How does that strike you?

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I think this is excellent.

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I'll share with you a funny moment I just had while reading through this thread. When I first read this particular post quoted above, I thought Thunderheart had taken our internal design documents for the Smuggler and crafted a very excellent summary of what my overall design goal is for the Smuggler Revamp. As I was about to email Thunderheart and congratulate him on what a great job he did distilling all of the design details into such a concise summary, I realized this wasn't written by Thunderheart, but, merely commented on by Thunderheart and in fact this summary was written by a player from the Smuggler Community.

So in short, this little summary that was written by Kelsin Redgravevery closely coincides with what my design vision and goal for the Smuggler Revamp is. Very nicely written and I'm glad to know that at least our design goal closely lines up with player expectations.

Message Edited by SWG-Runesabre on 05-06-2004 12:06 PM

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/looks around

your kidding...right?

/lick TH

/lick Rune

My take on the Good and the Bad. I'll post in other subjects when I get the time.

• Overall




• The Crackdown: The Crackdown gives us a glimpse of what could be done with imposing a criminal sector in SWG. Such a sector will not be generated on its own through player interaction. It needs in-game mechanics to do so.


• Skill Tree




• Underworld




• Faction Trading: Provides factioned Smugglers the ability to provide affiliated players with a quicker, albeit more expensive, alternative to gaining FP.


• Reduced Faction Costs: Provides an incentive for PAs to seek out Smugglers for membership, as they can purchase bases and other high-cost faction items for their PA at a reduced cost.


• Reduced Faction Loss on PvP Death: A minor bonus, but useful if you plan on doing some intense PvPing and don't want to lose too much FP in case of death.


• Slicing




• Mission Terminals: Perhaps an oft-neglected ability, allowing the Smuggler to get 75% (I think??) increase in their mission payouts is an ability I know I use all the time. Soloing Enraged Rancors on Dathomir at 50k per lair can generate a very healthy revenue stream.


• Weapons/Armor: What Smugglers are most often hired for, Slicing weapons and armor for other players provides a steady source of income.


• Dirty Fighting




• Feign Death: Using Feign Death in the middle of a battle in order to regenerate lost HAM is a must when confronting otherwise unbeatable enemies.


• Spice




• MG/NP: Both Muon Gold and, to a lesser extent, Neutron Pixie currently provide an emergency buff in times of desperation. I don't know how many times I was fighting and my Vasarian Brandy ran out, and I was unable to consume more due to the limitations of the Drink meter. Popping a MG gives everyone a chance to keep their mind up in emergencies, long enough to either the finish the job or make a quick getaway.


• No Resource Quality Dependency: Artisans are the resource scavengers, and allowing Smugglers to craft spice free of resource quality dependencies frees us from hunting down high quality resources, which requires at least Novice Artisan and some SP spent on Surveying.

The Bad

• Overall




• Crackdown Ignore: Currently the effects of the crackdown are, let's face it, a bit laughable. Sure it provides a sense of immersion, but little effect on the actual behavior of players. The penalties are not as severe as they should be, and they are far to infrequent to stimulate a true black market.


• Crackdown Exploits: Currently Imperial Officers can completely bypass contraband scans, and Players with droids can simply stuff any contraband into their robotic friends and store them in their datapad, which apparently doesn't get searched. This needs to be immediately looked into if the Crackdown is to be expanded.


• Lack of Documentation: Currently much of the Skill Tree is undocumented. For example Master Smugglers do get a better chance on their slice returns than those with Slicing 4, however such a bonus is not documented inside the Master Box. Such documentation is neeed so that:




• Current Smugglers know what abilities they have


• Future Smugglers know what abilities they will get


• Skill Tree




• Underworld




• Language Skills: Possibly the most useless Skill in the game, as most Players learn all the languages necessary to play as soon as they land on their starter planet.


• Faction Purchase Limit: The current limit on buying FP makes it an incredibly tedious process. I would prefer a slider interface where a Smuggler can purchase as much faction as they want up to their current limit.


• Faction Delegate Cost: Currently Smugglers get no bonus to the delegation rate of FP. While I would prefer to keep the Overt-Only limitation, and some limitation on the cost per delegated FP, this ratio should be lowered for Smugglers.


• Slicing




• Unbalanced Demand: Currently there is an almost exclusive desire for damage slices on weapons across many if not all SWG servers, as weapon speed becomes irrelevant at combat profession mastery. This needs to be addressed in the combat balance.


• Randomness: Tying in with the above issue, the fact that Smugglers have no choice in what attribute they pick can be a major hassle and often results in destroyed weapons that have been given a "useless slice".


• Obsolete FANs: Upon being able to craft Molecular Clamps, or simply buying them from a someone who can, Flow Analyzer Nodes become useless. Even Novice Smugglers use Clamps when slicing locked containers.


• Precision Laser Knives Crate Bug: While Upgrade Kits and Clamps are accurately removed from cartes when used in slicing, PLKs are not. While a crate of 25 PLKs should contain 250 individual knives, in reality they are not. I am not sure on the exact number, but it seems after the first set of knives are used up, the remaining sets contain only a single knife. Currently PLKs have to be removed from the crates prior to slicing.


• Dirty Fighting




• Feign Death: While useful in regenerating lost HAM, Feign Death does not un-aggro NPCs, and it has absolutely no function in PvP.


• Panic Shot: While the delay lands more often that warcry (and perhaps even warcry 2), the fact that it breaks on damage makes it an infrequently used special.


• Low Blow: From my own experience I have seen this land with less frequency than even Level 1 KD specials in dedicated Combat professions.


• Last Ditch: While a decent special, it doesn't fit the "aura" of the Dirty Fighting Tree. DF should entail state-effect specials that give Smugglers a slight edge in combat. As it stands we have the highest damage pistol special while several of the existing pistoleer specials are broken or useless.


• Unarmed: While Unarmed IV is a prerequisite for Novice Smuggler, there are no Unarmed Specials within the DF tree.


• Spice




• No Experimentation: While many consider this a reasonable trade off vis-a-vis the lack of dependency on resource quality, many others would prefer some kind of experimentation when crafting spice.


• No Variety: As all Spices are essentially HAM boosters, the lower-level Spices become obsolete once Spice IV is attained. There needs to be a larger variety of bonuses for consuming spice, similar to food/drink buffs.

That's all I can think of for now. And I agree 100% with VampireRobots synopsis.

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JTGAlpha wrote:

So Caylin...remember the idea I had for tying your Language cap to your Mind score? And how we could make that WORTH something by having missions in people's native tongues? So that you'd have to have a smuggler? And how the big problem was people just migrating their stats?

Well now they've made it so ONLY ID"s can migrate your stats so, whaddya think? Is it still possible? It'd be a small part of the Smuggler's missions, and an easy way to make languages worth something.

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Hmm, interesting idea... if they can find a way to implement it, having a smuggler along to translate for you could be cool if done right (and it doesn't detract from and/or distract the Devs from working on actual smuggling and the many other things we're asking for )

I'd also like to ssay a very big "Thank You!" to the Devs. Having you actually posting on this thread has made me feel all giddy inside. Sad of me, I know, but it was a heart warming moment each time I saw a new post with a red name by the side of it. So thank you, and keep it up !

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Smuggler_Caylin wrote:

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Ipseck wrote:
lets get greevo to pop that in the summary thread Indeed, it is very descriptive and concise. Well done.

- ug my spelling's horrid today

Message Edited by Ipseck on 05-06-2004 10:53 AM

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I'm sending him and several others an email containing that very thing.

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• Implement contraband system environment where the "law" enforces. The only home of a criminal environment. Please see my post below for details.
  
• Have NPC criminal factions and their affiliations strongly affect who a smuggler takes jobs from and who he/she avoids
  
  
  
  • Smuggler/BH visibility and warning system via NPC "friends"
    
  • Potential employers/enemies/allies
  
  
• Define the proper role of spices in the galaxy and it's importance to the smuggler profession

The Good and the Bad

Good: The smuggler profession is fun to play despite the lack of content. This mainly comes from player interactions during slicing - an interaction that puts the "customer" in a position never knowing what to expect from an interaction with a smuggler.

• Interaction with public through slicing/faction point selling.
  
• Useful dirty fighting skills (despite nerfs and provided you have pistoleer mods for PvP use)

Bad: Smugglers don't smuggle. Spices don't have the place they should in the profession nor in the galaxy. Spices aren't sought after by the law nor by the player base.

• No smuggling
  
• Spices mostly obselete, most are considered usless by players
  
• Lack of smuggler tie to underworld organizations
  
• Lack of any real "law" to avoid
  
• Nofighting mods

Skill Tree Changes

Underworld:

Introduce smuggling as the primary experience for the smuggler and also create an NPC "underworld" through making the criminal factions useful, active, and lively.

• Specialized Delivery missions that provide PvE encounters during the travel portion. These encounters can come in the form of direct combat, threatened combat in exchange for the smuggled item, or non-combat encounters seeking to bribe or convince the PC to give up the item.
  
  
  
  • Rewards:
    
    
    
    • Immediate Travel Tokens
      
    • Equipment buff programs
      
    • Datadiscs to further criminal NPC factions adventures
      
    • Ethical decisions that effect the "smugglers reputation" xp and also the associated NPC criminal faction standing/points
      
    • Spice components that increase spice stats/mods
    
    
  • City and travel combat

• PvP smuggling whereby a player can contract another player to take a shipment from point a to point b. - This is beingcurrently debated.
  
• Allow buying NPC criminal faction points

Spices:

Spices are the predominant focus of a smugglers occupation (aka income) and are needed to be substantially useful to the player base.

• Make spices useful by redoing unused or superceded spices and including skill mods
  
• Add new spices and spice components as mission rewards.

Slicing:

Enrich the experience of slicing through improved interface options and through augmenting sliceable real world objects.

• Enrich slicing options beyond speed/damage such as HAM and durability
  
• Improve interface and/or intructions
  
• Add smuggler "personal weapon" that is specifically modified (limit to one weapon and untradeable)

Dirty Fighting:

Provide means to escape and/or avoid fights in the first place - with emphasis on gaining ground on the enemy

• Increasing melee bonuses and abilities.
  
  
  
  • Toe Smash: Melee attack that immobilizes enemy for 10 seconds provided no continuing damage.
    
  • Trip: Melee Knockdown attack.
  
  
• Add pistol/melee mods - particularly accuracy to land specials in PvP

Details:

• Update/fix Smuggler skill box descriptions
  
• Fix laser knife crate bug that counts a stack of 10 knives as only 1 knife
  
• Make feign death more applicable in PvP and PvE

Pool of Wishlist Items:

• Allow "hiring" of NPC faction thugs through faction points
  
• Allow "buying into" NPC criminal factions
  
• Allow smuggler to "buy into" factions in larger quantities at a time

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chown2 wrote:

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Vampirerobot wrote:

So is this thread for suggestions for the Community Vision? If so, I'll contribute a suggestion for the Overview, as I'd like to see it:

Overview

The goal of the Smuggler Revamp is to bring Smugglers in the game in line with the iconic conception of Smugglers in the Star Wars Universe. Our mission is to create a profession that has both utility to other players (Interactivity) and fun and challenge for the Smugglers themselves (Content). In addition we want Smugglers to fill a unique role in the game because of their iconic nature: That of gatekeeper to the illicit and illegal.

Thus the final Smuggler "vision" is a profession which has two components: First, the ability to acquire highly desirable but illegal goods and services for other players. Second, drawbacks to the acquisition of those goods and services (representing their illegal nature) and abilities to help overcome and survive those drawbacks. Smuggler Interactivity is in their utility to other players via the first part, and Smuggler Content is in the challenges presented by the second part. What will make Smugglers useful is the first part. What will make them unique and fun is the second part.

How does that strike you?

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