Smuggler Archive
Thread: Revamp Discussion: Contraband & Smuggling Missions
OldLard wrote:
As a bounty hunter I have read a lot of this thread (not all of it ... 44 pages is tooo much) and I have to say I am a little disappointed at the suggestion of NPC bounty hunters and PvP "switches" etc..
It's clearsome smugglers don't want to be forced into PvP. I can understand that - PvP does tend to attract the worst of people playing this game .. griefers and lame twelve year olds just trying to prove themselves to the world. But I would stress that they are still in the minority - most of us BH's treat the whole thing clinically. We have a target, we go kill (or at least try to kill) said target, we get paid, we move on. No taunting, no jumping all over your corpse, no camping clone centres, nothing. And as for the person who was killed - well what have you really lost? A little time perhaps, maybe a little dignity but nothing more.
The thing I want to stress is this is a perfect opportunity for both of our professions to gain a lot of much needed content. NPC bounty hunters may seem like a great idea, but once the best technique for killing them has been discovered then that content will be obsolete. It will become just another grind or hindrance. PC bounty hunters on the other hand will be unique every time. You don't know when they will come, they will attack differently and you will get 100x more pleasure should you defeat them.
The other point I would like to make is that of all the classes that would even suggest NPC bounty hunters I thought smuggler would have been last. Aftertheoutcry from this forum followingimperial colonels being immune from scanning and thetalk of NPC smugglers in starports,I thought this class of all others would have understood that handing over the very basis of yourprofession to an NPC is simply unfair. BH's desperatley need content, as it is we currently have the choice of NPC's who are ludicrously easy to kill and Jedi who are next to impossible to find. The very idea of seeing some lame NPC doing my job when I am reduced to killing another NPC and getting no satisfaction from doing it gets me pretty wound up. Just aswound upin fact as NPCsthat can slice your weapons orcarry illegal goods from one starport to another would get you wound up.
Finally, I understand it is proposed that smugglers will have an ability to monitor visibility in some way and even have themselves removed from terminals if they manage to slice it. This seems like another good idea - smugglers gain more content and will be sought out by Jedi's and other players who find themselves on terminals. At the same time, if you can see roughly how visible you are then those who are desperate to avoid being hunted simply need to avoid doing risky things until such time that your visibility has reduced again. In that way, you should never even have to PvP if you play your character carefully.
good post
but some of the complaining has been general public as well due to the fact that if they get caught with illegal goods enough times they will go onto terminals as well. And the NPC issue was an idea to keep those who prefer not to PvP cuz they can only kill AI happy..
Did you read my suggestion above...what do you think??
KodaVeers wrote:
OldLard wrote:
good post
but some of the complaining has been general public as well due to the fact that if they get caught with illegal goods enough times they will go onto terminals as well. And the NPC issue was an idea to keep those who prefer not to PvP cuz they can only kill AI happy..
Did you read my suggestion above...what do you think??
I like your suggestion- I just think its a shame that people would be willing to pass up such a good chance to liven the game up for everyone concerned. All I would say is that the fine should be steep - steep enough so that most people dont automatically just hit pay fine without thinking about it. Six figure fines would be an absolute minimum given the state of the economy at present.
I can see that all this will lead to some sort of compromise and as such I think your idea is very good. Just so long as all the people whining about the proposal dont win utterly and the whole visibility thing is completely scrapped. I think that would be a very sad day indeed.
Unless when this revamp is done Smugglers get their true skills of being the game's "Rogue" profession which intitles them to have high evasion and luck styles and actually give the Smuggler time to escape then PVP bounties should NOT be added. Without these skills a Smuggler as a class simple can not survive against a BH'er in one on one combat setting.
Smuggler "Rogue" styles need to be able to pin an enemy down and delay their attacks for ample amount of time so the Smuggler using their "Rogue" skills can evade them. These Skills should be based on skill mods that increase in level from Novice Smuggler to Master Smuggler. The higher the skills the better chance of this style(s) being able to "hit target" and allow the Smuggler to escape. Unless the Devs give Smuggler better "hit and fade" attack styles to counter BH'er combat skills, then PVP bounties should not be added into the game. As the game is set now Smugglers have a 1% chance of avoiding death from a BH based on pure class to class skills. A pure Smuggler should be be able to kill a BH'er, but a pure Smuggler should be able to escape one as our class is supposed to be.
Well after thinking about this some over the last day or os I have beenworking on ideas that could work for the Smuggler in the form of escaping styles. The first being Panic Shot being transformed into a single target delay. Allow the enemy, in this case the BH'er to move around walking/running normally but unable to attack or call or mount a speeder for 20-30 seconds (yes this has to be worked on so it's not a uber tool for PVP general combat). Have the shot on a 20 second timer with it's ratio of success in favor of the smuggler but by no more then 65-70%. The second skill would be the unique ability to call something out of your data pad instantly (ex: most likely used would be a speeder to get away). This skill would also be on a timer of say 1 hour so this too could be be abused in the everyday happenings. With these skills it would give the Smuggler their chances to escape as it has been stated our class should be doing rather then trying to duke it out with a superior fighting class compared to Smuggler.
Message Edited by Bamsee on 06-21-2004 03:55 PM
Message Edited by Bamsee on 06-21-2004 03:57 PM
majorslappy wrote:OldLard, Kodaveers and others,I like the idea of having a payoff system in place but we already have something that could be worked quite nicely to do just that. Faction and Underworld.Bribes to local authorities, regular payoffs, faction (and I don't mean Imp or Rebel) purchases of "favors" to reduce or eliminate visibilty.Also, if BHs want smugglers on the terminals then it has to go both ways. Smugglers should not only get visibility and have the ability to reduce their visibility, they should ALSO have the ability to ADD BHs to the BH terminals as targets or missions. Smugglers should have the ability to slice the terminal and ADD bounty hunters to the terminals so that they can add confusion and stress and pain the BH world. If you want to simply hunt targets down, how about some BH targets? The Bh community has come in here and said that even MBHs can't stand up to anyone in combat (which I don't believe for a second). How about hunting each other? If I as a smuggler add you to the BH terminals as a mission and you get hunted down by a BH, you should be able to fight them and have a good chance of winning.
I don't like the idea of adding BHs to the terminals- if they break the law enough they will end up there themselves. Giving a player to ability to put another player on the terminals WOULD lead to outright griefing.
majorslappy wrote:
To all of you saying a player doesn't lose anything,
I am a smuggler working missions and I have gotten buffed (10K credits at least), I haveeaten BE foods to enhance my skills or HAM (usually several thousand credits), I have eaten Neutron Pixie and Muon Gold that I had to spend time making, I went by the cloning center and cloned/insured (1000 credits plus insurance usually several thousand), I have purchased armor and BE clothing to enhance my skills and defensive status (usually well over 200,000 credits), and most importantly of all I have spent MY TIME finding out about and setting up my smuggling mission (or even just going hunting for fun with friends).
All it takes is for you to find me and kill me to have all that money go flying out the window. Buffs gone. BE foods gone AND my stomach didn't clear. Spices gone. BE clothes and armor take significant damage (I am assuming you are a mature player and simply kill me and not grief me by blasting my armor to 1/1) which I have to pay to repair. My time wasted because I didn't get to play the scenario I setup for myself and with friends.
Please don't try to shine me on by telling me I lose nothing. Saying that I lose nothing is a load of bull.
Are you even thinking here? Want to know the difference between a NPC and a PC BH? A PC BH does all the things you mention. A NPC BH does all the things you mention plus 1-5% decay on all of your precious armor and clothes. NPC BH's are more expensive in terms of your losses. If you are worried about wound/armor griefing, don't use feign death. Take the death like a man.
Secondly, I don't think you are really complaining about losing something in the first place. I know I don't hear that.
Last I checked you have risks for breaking the law. If you break the law, you subject yourself to risk. No more simple does it get. Complaining about getting your ass kicked because you continually break the law is laughable to say the least.
Maybe a good idea to do when you're out buffed, stuffed, and ready to go is to make sure that any banned items are not located on your person.
WedgeStarkiller wrote:
So there is a huge community sentiment that we want to deny the entire bounty hunter community the content that bounties on us would allow because we don't want them to call us names?
We aren't talking about the template stacker, mind disease, pvp only leet doods that run around trying to find an unsuspecting person to beat up on who may be overt unintentionally. I'm sure there are some jerks in the BH community, all professions have them.
Is there a reason besides not wanting to read a few insulting text strings after dying? I'm not trying to be a jerk, I really don't understand where you guys are coming from.
Every BH attack on a Jedi I have seen has been very honorable. There are definately some reasons, such as BHs not wanting a TEF war taking on 20 people...but after the initial problems with the bounties ... what I see is an honorable 1:1 fight.
BHs are looking for content (as we are). There will be some bad ... but most that want BH do it for the passion of the profession. The 'uber' jerks out there thrive to win/grief people and understand that they can win more by being something besides a BH.
The thought of having some uber leet 12 year old boba fett wannabe tracking me down to 'pwn' me does not appeal in the slightest.
This content needs to be balanced more to the non-pvpers as there are far more people that dont participate in PVP than do.
OldLard wrote:
As a bounty hunter I have read a lot of this thread (not all of it ... 44 pages is tooo much) and I have to say I am a little disappointed at the suggestion of NPC bounty hunters and PvP "switches" etc..
It's clearsome smugglers don't want to be forced into PvP. I can understand that - PvP does tend to attract the worst of people playing this game .. griefers and lame twelve year olds just trying to prove themselves to the world. But I would stress that they are still in the minority - most of us BH's treat the whole thing clinically. We have a target, we go kill (or at least try to kill) said target, we get paid, we move on. No taunting, no jumping all over your corpse, no camping clone centres, nothing. And as for the person who was killed - well what have you really lost? A little time perhaps, maybe a little dignity but nothing more.
The thing I want to stress is this is a perfect opportunity for both of our professions to gain a lot of much needed content. NPC bounty hunters may seem like a great idea, but once the best technique for killing them has been discovered then that content will be obsolete. It will become just another grind or hindrance. PC bounty hunters on the other hand will be unique every time. You don't know when they will come, they will attack differently and you will get 100x more pleasure should you defeat them.
The other point I would like to make is that of all the classes that would even suggest NPC bounty hunters I thought smuggler would have been last. Aftertheoutcry from this forum followingimperial colonels being immune from scanning and thetalk of NPC smugglers in starports,I thought this class of all others would have understood that handing over the very basis of yourprofession to an NPC is simply unfair. BH's desperatley need content, as it is we currently have the choice of NPC's who are ludicrously easy to kill and Jedi who are next to impossible to find. The very idea of seeing some lame NPC doing my job when I am reduced to killing another NPC and getting no satisfaction from doing it gets me pretty wound up. Just aswound upin fact as NPCsthat can slice your weapons orcarry illegal goods from one starport to another would get you wound up.
Finally, I understand it is proposed that smugglers will have an ability to monitor visibility in some way and even have themselves removed from terminals if they manage to slice it. This seems like another good idea - smugglers gain more content and will be sought out by Jedi's and other players who find themselves on terminals. At the same time, if you can see roughly how visible you are then those who are desperate to avoid being hunted simply need to avoid doing risky things until such time that your visibility has reduced again. In that way, you should never even have to PvP if you play your character carefully.
You know what, I couldn't agree more. I think the major beef here is that PvE smugglers don't want the "inconvenience" of monitoring thier visibility. I have said many times that playing your character carefully is all that one must do to avoid PvP. Smugglers are all about being careful, but they want nothing to do with it. I think that instead of the punishment of PvP, PvE oriented smugglers should have the punishment of RP'ing a real smuggler by doing whatever is necessary to protect #1.
If PvE smuggler don't want the punishment of PvP, they should get the punishment of having to cover their ass. They already get all the PvE content they could possibly ever want from smuggling missions as they are planned. Plenty of PvE thugs, plenty of PvE authorities, plenty of PvE content. Then they are given a cool PvE tool to keep themselves away from PvP. They complain about that.
I have put valid suggestions on how to fix this problem without putting in cardboard NPC BH's. The arguments continue here because we need word from GreenMarine on what's going to happen given these considerations.
I personally say grow some balls people,if you don't want to PvP, then for the love of dirty underwear use all of that beautiful PvE content that GreenMarine listed to make sure you don't have to PvP.
PvE smugglers see having to monitor their visibility as a punishment. You're damn right it's a punishment. As a PvE smuggler you beat up NPC's on smuggler missions for the PvE content they are so screaming for now, reap the great rewards that come with smuggler missions, but where is the drawback? There's is none. NPC's are dumb and easily out-thought. You PvE guys get your PvE content, but you don't want any risk? Your risk is having to clear your name, mine is getting my ass kicked by another player.
I'm afraid to say you miss the point about pvp entirely.
I'm sure i speak for many when i say that playing versus other players is not what we play for. I don't even want to associate with these pvp types, I've spoken to many and can not stand the 'haha owned' attitude that is part and parcel of PVP.
I had enough of that when I played FPS's it's what made me quit them and come to SWG for a nice quiet life. being forced to PVP would certainly stop me from picking smuggler up again in time for the revamp.