Smuggler Archive

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NickHeel wrote:

Well, I'll admit that taking the criticism was harder than I thought. But, it's needed to clear these up as 3/4 of the Dirty Fighting in both Caylin's and the Community docs are the same. The only differences being that of the weapon-equipped melee attacks (which was discussed and I liked...think we should go with that), the addition of "ship tricks", and Caylin is just a 110% better writer than I am...I'm way too wordy.

It'd be good to have some more input but I see where you're coming from on the "over-powered" opinion. I didn't really intend for every single one of the melee attacks to be included, but simply a list of possibilities. I do think we need a melee attack similar to Last Ditch and another useful one.

As far as Panic Shot and it's usefullness. What game have you been playing? As is, Panic Shot is a second tier Elite profession skill that was nerfed to coincide with a Novice starting profession skill. The difference being between 100 credits plus 15 skill points and 220k (rougly) pistol xp and a crap load of skill points. Not to mention getting Warcry 1 is a prerequisite of becoming a Smuggler, so nerfing Panic Shot down to a prerequisite skill is just pure redundancy and a waste. It needs to be brought up to it's previous usage or something different. As is, it's just worthless.

Feign Death...well, I'll give you partial credit for sure. It has saved my life even after the nerf MANY times. The only problem being that it was done in the wrong way. If I work down a Janta to 300/12k HAM and FD 3m from him...then get up, of course he should reaggro. But if I get shot from 64m away by a Tusken Executioner and I don't do any dmg to himbut still FD right away. Then the Tusken moves to 200m away and is getting swarmed by 5 TKs...that Tusken should NOT reaggro on me...it's just logic. There needs to be a fix for FD that goes by the scale of the FD mod. It only makes sense.

I'll go back and redo my Dirty Fighting, cause like I said...it's being used by the Community Doc and about 75% is in Caylin's in one way or another. I think the Ranged/Melee Mit 2 is ok since not all Smugglers are Master Pistoleers/TKMs. I know many that are Droid Engineers or Merchants or evenWeapon/Armorsmiths. I still think we should have a chance at dispatching a Bounty Hunter. I mean, otherwise, what's the point of having Smuggler bounties if you can't fight back and have a chance to win...it'd be the only way to get rid of the bounty unless the hunter just drops it. Same goes for the specials against PvE; if all the specials are designed to just "get out of Dodge" then how do you gain any xp to level without picking up a second combat profession or just grinding with the Pistol 4/Unarmed 4 moves. And that's not very beneficial for a group either...who would take a smuggler who's best special is Health Shot 1?

Last note I can think of before I make some minor alterations is on the switch to combat xp. This only makes sense if you're going to put Unarmed moves in the line. As for your experience with Commando.../raises his hand...it sucks. But the swap will be exactly on par with what we have now since 3000 pistol xp yields exactly 300 combat xp...essentially, take thepistol xp requirements and divide them by 10 and change it to combat xp. Same thing, you just have the option of becoming a true Brawling smuggler instead of a gunfighter.

I'll have the altered version mailed to Geevo by tomorrow night (5am-1pm Sunday is work and I'll need a nap after that hehe) and as soon as he puts it up (if he decides to)...well, you can take a crack at it. Thanks for the input Just wish we had more people voicing their opinion than we do now Hope everyone hasn't given up...these are very exciting times to be an active smuggler

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Hey, I know I can come off as agressive and sometimesmaybe even condescending but that isn't my intent (least not the condescension). I'm an agressive person. It shows in what I write unless I forecefully keep it out. This doesn't mean I don't appreciate all the hardwork put into this revamp doc. On the contrary, it shows how much I want this doc to be accepted by the devs. Think of it like listening to russians. To an outsider it always sounds like they're yelling at each other but they really aren't .

Oh, and Geevo, you're so right. All the ideas did add up to "wow" on my end. It probably contributed to my post being extraordinarily agressive.

Message Edited by Raanan on 05-30-2004 02:10 PM

HAHA...so'k, Raanan. So long as you get your point and opinion across without just saying "This sucks, fix it. But I don't have an answer". People have different personalities and ways of communicating (like you said) so being aggressive to get the point across is cool. You just don't need to be aggressive in the sense that I'm a Dev and all...afterall, I have a cute girlfriend, a decent job, a nice truck, and I'm cool....unlike said SWG Developers

I'm feeling REALLY under the weather today...left work this morning at 7:30 (got there at 5am) cause I was puking my guts up and couldn't do anything besides eat payroll. TMI, I know..sorry. Point being, the alterations and fixes I wanted to do tonight won't be happening. I have neither the brain power or the ability to stay on this inferanal computer to get 'er done. However, I am off work on Tuesday and if I feel better (which I'm getting there) I'm going to try for tomorrow night. Sorry, hate to play it off like TH and say it's the next day...then the next...and so on, but I'll at least update and stuff.

Good ideas and input...I like that people are starting to give more feeback. Only thing I wish is that when people don't like something or totally hate it, they say how they would change it or fix it instead of doing what I said in the second sentence.

Later...keep up the feeback!

/target Geevo

/puke

Raanan, in response to your concerns with Panic Shot, what do you think if we asked if it is technically possible to change the parameters of how it works. Maybe the solution is as simple as the delay not sticking if the target is on the ground? If the sole reason for the nerf is to prevent the KD/delay trick then maybe this simple solution would allow us to regain the glory of Panic Shot.

It's worth asking about, I think. Maybe we can word it in the doc to say, "If Panic Shot could be changed to not be able to affect targets on the ground we would like it to be reverted t oit's old functionality with that one change."

-Arashi

• We would never have to worry about resources


• Our non-crafting prereqs would make sense


• Our products/services would fall outside the traditional crafting scheme and so we would be outside the regular economy


• Completing the Missions would satisfy the Risk/Drawback requirement of our Overview to account for the illegal nature of our acquisitions.


• If we wanted, Bounties/Infamy could be worked into the Mission system.

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Vampirerobot wrote:

Just to change the subject for a moment guys:

We've talked about taking the crafting out of Spices by having them be mission acquired. But can we for a moment take this idea all the way, and consider removing ALL crafting from Smuggler?

What if Slicing Tools were acquired through Smuggler Missions?

Then we wouldn't have to craft ANYTHING, it would all be about the Missions. Even though I was arguing against completely removing crafting from Spices, something about this idea intrigues me.

• We would never have to worry about resources


• Our non-crafting prereqs would make sense


• Our products/services would fall outside the traditional crafting scheme and so we would be outside the regular economy


• Completing the Missions would satisfy the Risk/Drawback requirement of our Overview to account for the illegal nature of our acquisitions.


• If we wanted, Bounties/Infamy could be worked into the Mission system.

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Absolutely not. Sometimes thinking outside the box is a good thing, but in this instance I just dont think this is a good idea. You are essentially gating an entire tree. If you want slicing, you have to have underworld (or have all tools acquired at the lowest level missions). Additionally, you are making slicing incredibily difficult to level.

Also, consider this. What if you cant access smuggler missions without slicing a terminal to see them (an idea constantly floated around here). If both of these got implemented, it would be next to impossible to level half of the smuggler profession. You cant go up underworld without slicing, and you cant go up slicing without underworld. Thats a problem, to say the least.

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Broken_Smuggler wrote:

Also, consider this. What if you cant access smuggler missions without slicing a terminal to see them (an idea constantly floated around here). If both of these got implemented, it would be next to impossible to level half of the smuggler profession. You cant go up underworld without slicing, and you cant go up slicing without underworld. Thats a problem, to say the least.

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Ye Gods, it's nice to see people understand that...

About my sentiments as well as to the rest of it.

The Infamous Caylin Borealis - First Master Smuggler on Bria
One of the Four Horsemen of the Smuggler Apocalypse!
:The Ghost with the Most:

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Broken_Smuggler wrote:

Absolutely not. Sometimes thinking outside the box is a good thing, but in this instance I just dont think this is a good idea. You are essentially gating an entire tree. If you want slicing, you have to have underworld (or have all tools acquired at the lowest level missions). Additionally, you are making slicing incredibily difficult to level.

Also, consider this. What if you cant access smuggler missions without slicing a terminal to see them (an idea constantly floated around here). If both of these got implemented, it would be next to impossible to level half of the smuggler profession. You cant go up underworld without slicing, and you cant go up slicing without underworld. Thats a problem, to say the least.

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Smuggler_Caylin wrote:

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Broken_Smuggler wrote:

One other thing that I would take out is the state resists section in underworld. I dont think this is very smuggler-related, and dont really like its addition in either this or Caylins document. It just seems to be stepping over the boundry in terms of what we should be looking for.

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I'd like to think about this for a moment. Some have obviously felt the same as you, but many have also supported this, especially when thinking of roguish characters in other stories or movies. It is also very practical for smugglers to have resistance or an awarenessto things that could be used to bump them off.

One way or another, I guess I'd like to see more defenses for the smuggler that is not offensive in nature.

One thing I suppose I was toying with was instead of 'Resilience' was 'Bravado' which would focus on allowing smugglers more easily resist or almost instantly recover from intimidating or delaying attacks.

If nothing else, we saw plent of that from Han Solo.'She'll hold together!!... hear me baby? Hold together...'

Just playing with alternatives or additions.

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I definitely see the point your trying to make, and in a perfect world I could see something like this being added. But when you consider it from a gaming perspective, it just really seems (to me at least) that we would have to really stretch to justify this. Additionally, such a mechanic would probably be considered powerful enough to take another item off our list somewhere, and thats something I dont want to see happen. As is, poisons/diseases play a major role in combat in SWG. If a particular class had resists to such tactics, then your going to see every one and their mother dabbling in underworld to get them. This to me, is something that alot of people would enter our profession not to smuggle, but to get the resists. In general, I think thats bad for the profession, espicially if the developers are going to add (hypothetically speaking) only a certain amount of new mechanics to Smuggler. If this was one of those few ideas selected, then that means something else (that is probably more relevant) gets bumped off the list.

From a smuggling perspective,I still dont see how a type of resilence would be considered smuggler-like. Smugglers are rogues, and can survive in a harsh, dirty, and very criminal world. But I dont think that necessarily implies that they should be resilent to diseases. They were resilent to their enviroment, but in this game you rarely ever get diseased except by creatures you engage in combat or in PvP by Combat Medics or other Foes. Those arent enviromental concerns per se, and thus I dont see the justification.

Now if its defenses your looking to incorporate, then I personally think that your "Luck" proposal is a much better way of getting that represented in game. Whether it makes us dodge more, or get hit less - I think its a very subtle mechanic that will do us a lot of good. Maybe even this resilence thing isnt such a bad idea, but Im just somewhat apprehensive about adding poison/disease resists. The other state defenses (i.e. knockdown, blind, stun) I dont see nearly as big of a problem with. Maybe put this as a wishlist item instead?

Just my two cents.

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Geevo wrote:

For the GCW, the security terminal could be moved outside of the bases and the Smuggler would have to slice the terminal for the group to enter (think of Endor with Han trying to open the door to the shield generator) ... it would also have to change the order requirements for base destruction to Smuggler being the first step.

Fast Talking

GCW: A Smuggler can bribe an NPC at a base to get the Vulnerability time ... will also need a method to avoid the Covert Faction Scanner.

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I was hoping to get feedback from people on these ideas ... any comments?

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JediArashi wrote:

Raanan, in response to your concerns with Panic Shot, what do you think if we asked if it is technically possible to change the parameters of how it works. Maybe the solution is as simple as the delay not sticking if the target is on the ground? If the sole reason for the nerf is to prevent the KD/delay trick then maybe this simple solution would allow us to regain the glory of Panic Shot.

It's worth asking about, I think. Maybe we can word it in the doc to say, "If Panic Shot could be changed to not be able to affect targets on the ground we would like it to be reverted t oit's old functionality with that one change."

-Arashi

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Hey, I don't really care what the change is to make it more useful so long as it doesn't mitigate the risk of engaging in combat. Risk is, after all, what makes it fun in the first place. I was just offering possible other ways to change panic shot so I wasn't doing exactly what Nick was talking about and saying, "This sux. Fix it." Those posts are REALLY annoying.

I think for your idea of delaying sticking if not kd'd is alright but it would need to be limited to 10 seconds max as 20 seconds is ample time to be incapped in pvp. In pve, it wouldn't make a difference but there is little in pve which is difficult outside of Night Sisters/ Singing Mountain Clan (even then, only the upper tier ones), and the dungeons like the DWB, Corevette, and Geo caves. Honestly, and I'm not just plugging my own idea, I do think keeping it as it is but making the delay longer and the area of effect cone larger would be more beneficial to both pvp and pve. Of course, that's assuming your group is using things such as /assist to refrain from breaking the delay on the other critters. Maybe I'm being idealistic about people actually using their heads in a battle and not relying on the CM/Rifleman to do everything but I can't help seeing the potential for panic shot. Either way, you're right. It is worth asking about.

Now for whomever it is who keeps one starring posts in this thread. STOP IT! This is a discussion to make the revamp doc what the community in general wants not what you specifically want. If someone disagrees with you fine, debate with them about it. Just stop one starring so they disappear for most people.

Message Edited by Raanan on 05-31-2004 01:33 AM

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Geevo wrote:

Spices:

We hope to make smugglers no longer ‘crafters’ of what should be highly illegal and valuable spice, while extending the flexibility of the skill tree to accommodate for potential new abilities not necessarily tied to the creation of spice itself.

• The Tree:
  
  

  
  

  
  
  • Change the skill tree’s name to Profiteer, or something equally suitable, that way the smugglers have more ‘play’ room so in the future the tree would not be limited to strictly spice. Yep, like this name, all good
    
    
  • Find a different fourth tier title more suitable for Profiteer, as Fence tends to get players confused. Agreed; in light of the simplistic naming of lightsaber damage, how about a simple 'Smuggler'?
    
    
  • Change the XP required to progress to the XP gained when a Smuggler Mission is completed. Yep, it'd be silly to have to have spice crafting XP if we don't craft it anymore
    
  
  
  
  
• The Spice
  
  

  
  

  
  
  • Give the NPC criminal or GCW factions’ factories as seen in Act 3 of Dead Eye, where smugglers with friendly faction can interact with that organization to acquire spice as opposed to crafting it. I think this is a great idea, making us actual Smugglers instead of two bit drug pushers/crafters!
    
    
  • Increase the power of all spices to be more competitive with Chef foods and Doctor buffs. Yep, I think pretty much everyone can see this is needed. Also, perhaps the equivilent of a stomach for spices? something that represents how many spices you can take before temporarily turning into a vegtable (perhaps those maxed out at the time of the downer get x2 the effect?)
    
    
  • Add new spices. Agreed! Here's two suggestions from your resident moron : 'Red Rage', causes the character to go off on a spice fueled bender, hacking and smacking or blasting awaywith insane agression (think 28 days later ); could give a damage multiplier along with a possible negative accuracey modifier, probably with a fairly hefty downer and wouldn't last too long;'Blue Chill' - this relaxes the user so much that all they can do is giggle when someone tries to frighten them, point and grin at the bleeding gash in their leg and sigh lightly as toxin reaks havok on their nervous system (defends against/prevents SoEAs and mitigates against dot attacks).
    
    
  • A form of Spice experimentation is needed to make spices vary in quality between smugglers where extra time and effort should be rewarded. Yep, would like to see this (the idea of Caylin's where by you getan unusablesample of the spice, which you then spend experimentation points on to alter and then hand back to the foreman for it to be made is a very nice one imo).
    
    
  • Add special effects to all spices, increasing their usefulness to the player base. Mmhmm
    
    
  • Some spices should be more rare than others and exist as quest rewards only. Glitterstim is a very good example of a spice this could apply to. I'm not sure about this, if it's good enough to warrant it, people will just grind the hell out of the quests to get it; if other spices are just/nearly as good as it, then most people simply won't bother with the quests.
    
    
  • A form of spice addiction that is gained through abusing the power and abilities spices grant by taking more than previously allowed but at an increased downer and other side effects. Not entirely sure about this one either; If the spice is good enough to warrant it (i.e. people are going to get it regardless of the addiction), then yes, go for it. My only problem is I don't know if spice will, or can be made that good (don't want to tread on chefs or doctor's toes entirely). Perhaps some way to get over the addiction, such as visiting a doctor or eating large amounts of food over a period of time (not the same I know, but there's nothing like a good fried breakfast on the morning of the dreaded hangover ).
    
  
  
  
  
• Profiteering
  
  





• Additional locations for smugglers to land and take off from, for themselves and their party members, such as Jabba’s Palace. (I know you said no Space Expansion...but...) I really like this idea; It's a shame that GCW craft aren't required to take off from faction bases and theme parks anyway imo, so this would be a great step in the right direction (not to mention very smuggler esq! )
  
  
• Allow smugglers to enable a limited amount of special ‘corrupted’ vendors for merchants, so they can sell illegal goods. (Providing the request that all illegal items be removed from bazaar and normal vendors is worked with), Possibly the Smuggler would get a share of the sales (a negotiated percent of the sale upon modification, interface possibly like the Image Designer interface). Hmm, aslong as we're still required to get the stuff there for them, yeh, sounds a nice idea
  
  
• Move the contraband detection evasion skill to this skill line, whatever form it takes. Yes, this makes sense.
  
  
• Vehicular Control and Speed bonuses as seen in the new force sensitivity lines, affecting any and all vehicles/ships. This certainly would be nice, but given a choice between this and the next point, I'd go for the next point every time.
  
  
• Access to interesting vehicles and ships that assist with smuggling, which could bring up smuggler specific vehicles. Yes please!
  
  
• Allow space for more abilities that can be taken advantage of in the future. Hmm, if this is for JtL stuff, or we simply don't get enough done in our revamp, then yes, I think the Devs need to be open to having more stuff added at a later date (just don't let them use this one as the be all and end all of the profiteer tree )
  

Message Edited by Geevo on 05-29-2004 09:32 PM

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