Smuggler Archive
Thread: Smuggler profession: Will it be fixed?
I gather Devs are overwhelmed with other, more pressing issues at the moment. Perhaps the first day of live game is not the best time to whine about Smuggler profession. But since for most of us beta testers it was made even to become a smuggler only 10 days before beta's end, we didn't have enough time to test it realistically. Still, I'm sure, those who tried smuggler in beta, have some comments to make now. These are mine:
Name: I don't think we can or should be called Smugglers. We cook drugs, we slice locks, we tinker with weapons, we deal and wheel, but we DO NOT smuggle. Call us Criminals? DrugLords?
Underworld line: Completely useless for anyone not planning to join either Rebs or Imps. And I don't hear about any other faction coming any time soon. When and IF they introduce Criminal faction, it may become of some interest. Till then it's a total waste.
Slicing weapon/armor: Slicer cannot chose what attribute of weapon/armor is going to be improved by slicing it. That's not right! Besides, it's a one-time deal. Once sliced, weapon/armor cannot be repaired by smiths when their condition deteriorates.
Spice crafting: Experimentation does nothing for spice crafting. The only thing we can change is... flavor. Big deal!
Prerequisits:Unarmed Specialist is made mandatory for becoming a Novice Smuggler, even though your smuggler will never have to use it again. Remuve unarmed and replace it with Engineering and/or Business.
Overall, Smuggler profession feels very half-baked. Master Smuggler box don't even have any new mods and/or schematics.
It seems like the profession, at least from what I'm reading, really needs a better hook into the player economy like the transport of illegal components to crafters and such. If the crafter had to use certain equipment that was only available in certain cities and the rare illegal goods were only to be found on another planet you would have the beginings of a valuable player to player service. The spice manufacture and trade may be somewhat worthwhile to players but I'm not sure.
We tried during the last few weeks of beta to get the devs to talk to us about smugglers. There were several threads that pretty much said the same things.
Unarmed needs to be changed to Engineering.
Underworld needs to be re-thought out since the first skills is useless since everyone can learn ALL languages in less than 2 minutes and the other skills are only good for faction people and there is no faction that a smuggler should join.
Slicing had and has many problems, the major one being the very low ability to find boxes that we can slice and the upper skills pretty much ruin a good set of armor or a weapon.
Drug making should not be for smugglers. They are for drug lords or even Chefs. Smugglers get the drugs for the person who makes them and takes them to the person who sells them.
There is nothing about the profession that screams SMUGGLER. Nothing is illegal. Nothing will get you caught by the guards of a city and have them arrest you or confiscate you contraband making you loose faction with the guards of the area. No smuggler mission to deliver goods and no consequences if you fail. There will be no bounty hunters NPC or player sent after you. You can sell your illegal spices out on the street and probably in the bazaar, but I haven't checked that.
A serious lack of smuggler skills like sneak, hide item and such so that you can try to get contraband into an area and if caught maybe make use of that Fast Talk box under the Underworld line.
I don't know about everyone else, but I want to feel dirty or at least a little bit shady being a smuggler.
And the discussion from the beta boards continues... I wonder if it will have any more luck with the new boards.
As Heghie said right now since the profession does not smuggle it would probably be nice to rename it to something more along the lines of criminal or crime lord ect. However if there are plans of actually 'fixing' the smuggling aspect of the profession (ie adding in the ablity to smuggle) then a name change might not be in order.
There is a little bit of confusion as to what the aim of this profession is, half of the skills require pistol xp to advance which would imply that it is a combat profession, but the class gains no new weapon certifications and has only one line that actually deals with combat. Additionally, the unarmed requirement is totaly neglected within the profession and overlaps horribly with the close range capabilities of the pistol. The remaining two skill sets require crafting of some form (slicing or spice making) each of these have more in line with the artisan profession, specifically the engeneering and domestic arts lines.
Next there is the underworld line, while smugglers worked for both the Empire and Rebelion, more often than not they worked for the highest bidder, running what ever goods they were payed to run. The fact that the underworld line deals with faction points makes little to no sense, the only ablity that has any hope of being considered smuggly is the ability to sell your faction points back, effectivly returning yourself to neutral (provided you didnt have negative faction points for the other faction). It would seem to make more sense to change this line, before people get too far involved with it (either by removing it or gating it if more time is needed) and replace this line with the ability to smuggle (ie hiding items in your pack, or on your person.)
In order to be able to actually smuggle certian items need to be illegal and there needs to be a way for these items to be detected on the local populace (and on smugglers who are careless). These items could range from spices (would be intersting if all spices were illegal in towns, not often you see drug dealers selling drugs infront of the cops much less giving them out to the cops) and perhaps certian forms of clothing (rebel or imp uniforms in towns controlled by the opposing faction) and certian weapons. While there is no real way to control what items are illegal since ZoC (zones of control) and Player Cities have not been implmented yet. With ZOC and Player cities the authorities that control cities could set which items are illegal and then those who have contraband on their person when in city limits would be open to attack from the authorities (possibly a TEF to the faction in controll of the city). The trick is to make it so the smuggler can get the items into the city and back out. There is a great deal of problems with this and any attempt to implment smuggling but at least it is a step in the right direction.
As far as spices and slicing go, they have their bugs and their pains, such as only being able to slice containers at first and those are not the easiest things in the world to find. Experimentation and being able to select which attributes you slice on weapons and armors would be a much appreciated addition.
Anyhow there is a great deal of work to be done here and hopefully it will be done once the dust of launch settles.
I can't believe this post was from the first day. I'm not even a full-fledged smuggler and that makes me want to cry.
/cheer