CUEmu - Thread Posts

Va-Mei

Sun Apr 03, 2005 4:44 pm

Searaptor, if you agree with me here, can you bounce this off the other coros, make adjustments as needed, and push this up to the devs? With just over a month left, I think they may be setting themselves up for failure...

We all know that the devs are trying to give us the best game they can deliver. They're taking a game with huge imbalances caused byinteractions unforseen, and doing what they can to restore balance. The problem is those things unforseen. The devs in their closed testing, will test things from the bias of their preconceptions. Don't read this as laying blame on them for lack of forsite, that's how any complex design project goes, we test things the way we think they'll work. When things don't work right, it's usually because of something unforseen that throws off the model and skews the results. This is an enormous project that will, directly or indirectly, effect or be effected by every aspect of the game. There is no posible way the dev team will be able to acuratly predict everything that will happen in a system as complex as SWG.

With this in mind, it's my opinion that the results of this beta project will not be accurate until it's tested under live conditions. In live, combatants use player made weapons, armor, food, meds, pets, droids& clothing to get through what it is they do. Many (if not most) times, their gear is loot enhanced, crafted from the finest materails available on the server, under the most favorable conditions. The CU beta will not reflect that, unless the craftsmen are able to craft under live conditions. I know that the frogs are now releasing player quality gear in place of the generic items they were offering before, but how can the devs forsee what player crafted gear will look like?

I would wager that I have thrown out more weapons, than the entire dev team has ever created. Again, this is not to downplay what they do, but this is what I do. I make weapons, lots of weapons. In every variety I can imagine being useful, and more than a few that were just novelties. I've made weapons that no player would ever use, just to see what the extreames are, what could be done if the game were changed to make this or that more desireable. I know that I'm not alone here, we all dabble to some extent.

In order for the CU Beta to be a real success, I think the following needs to happen:

Enable Elite crafting professions at the frogs.

Generate a 1-2 year history of resources, or copy one from an existing live server. Then publish that resource database in csv format. Preferably in a format compatible with J&Fs crafting tool.

Make 30k resource kits available from the frogs. This is what they'll face on live. Everyschematic they release will eventually be crafted with the finest materials ever available on the server. This is what they need to test.

Make high quality crafting tools, crafting stations, Research centers, Experimenentation & Assembly SEAs & possibly FS crafting skills available. Testing what a 10pt smith can make with the tools & equipment we can generate in the next month, will not be an accurate representation of what will appear in a live market.

If the devs candeliver that, we can test every combination of factory produceable product in the game, and provide those to combatants for a real test in the field.

That would cover the factory stuff, but we all know that the base items are not where imbalances come from. The real imbalances come from the enhanced gear. The devs can control the gear that drops, but they can only give a best guess at what we'll do with looted comps. If they really want to know, give us the loot and we'll show them what we can do. Make loot schematics & components available from the frogs. If a quest can be compleated or a creature killed, it will happen. If it can happen once, it will happen a thousand times. Every loot comp will eventually find it's way into every item that could be crafted from it. Loot with random stats should be issued to the players randomly; ie. if I request tissues, I should get a random number of matching tissues with randon stats. The same would need to apply for every looted comp in the game.

Another problem that may arise untested is schematics, resources & comps from RotW. Will the flora & fauna resources from Kashyyk follow existing resource caps, or will we see Kashyykian conifer woof with 900sr in weapon stocks 9 months from now? What happens when I place a prime Geo core into this new wookie weapon?

We have just over a month before before the target release of the CU. I'm sure the devs do plan to let us test master level crafting at some point, I just don't know if they realize the extent of our obsticles and the volume of testing that should be done before most of the possibilities can be said to have been tested. In the end, I think that if the devs don't enlist the active help of every crafting profession crafting the best we can make, and take out all the roadblocks of a live server, a year from now we'll be back where we are.

Things that weren't forseen will break the model they have.

Standardlager

Sun Apr 03, 2005 4:57 pm

#2

This I could not agree more with.

I cant help but think that this upgrade is being rushed in much too fast. In the end it is going to hurt this game.

They PROMISED us a well tested product a couple of months back. This seems a far cry from well tested.

Boondizzle/Saxamaphone/Shogun/Slayre/Phu/Phu-

Derp-on-Flurry

Sun Apr 03, 2005 6:04 pm

#3

We're testing the CU in the open Beta (we are, including you)

No they haven't removed the restrictionsto the low level stuff because, they're still testing it. Instead of askingfor the frogs (tobe fully enabled), be patient like the rest of us and help test this low level stuff to get it out of the way.

Q) If they added fully usable "bluefrogs" on day one, how many people would even test low level marksmen?

I know a few people who have, but only because that's all they can do (including doc heals., some skills are there even if you're not qulified to use them)

|JTF| Master Trader with over 930 Points of Experimentation

Va-Mei

Sun Apr 03, 2005 6:12 pm

#4

Derp-on-Flurry wrote:

Q) If they added fully usable "bluefrogs" on day one, how many people would even test low level marksmen?

Did you actually read what I posted? It said nothing about enableling any combat related functions. I'm only suggesting that they let the pure crafting professions be set & ready to provide real Weapons, real Armor, real food, real meds and all the other gear that players become certed for, so that when the devs allow combatants to become certed for gear, they can test combat under real conditions.

Anything else is is a simulation of the devs preconceptions.

A Q: for you... how long do you think it will take for a WS to set up shop & gear, determine the resources he wants to use, gain those resources, begin experimenting on comps, produce those comps, experiment on weapons, produce weapons and distribute those weapons to combatants for use in the field, gain feeback on what stats need tweeking, loop back to experimenting comps...so that the devs can get valid datato consider in balancing the needed dificulty level of a spineflap?

Message Edited by Va-Mei on 04-03-2005 06:16 PM

Whrlwnd13

Mon Apr 04, 2005 1:01 pm

#5

I'm hoping that the devs are listening to this idea and once elite profs are opened up they'll have some of the best resources and loot available for us to test with.

I haven't checked stats on all the resources but so far what i've seen is pretty good.

desh copper with 364 UT (371 UT is highest on my server) and some good polysteel copper.

Hopefully the limited testing time wont be a total waste as far as high end crafting is concerened.

From what ican seethis CU is going through so like it or not we'll be stuck with whatever the final outcome is. I just hope that i'm still able to survey and harvest resources with my limited combat abilites.

Message Edited by Whrlwnd13 on 04-04-2005 04:04 PM

Xyrek Lok
Master Weaponsmith
12pt WS, +20 FS Experimentation
Crafting High Quality Weapons Since 03/2004
WP 1190 -3620 1km NE of Coronet at the Omega Force Guildhall

- I supported keeping & balancing the old combat system SOE didn't care and gave us the WoW/EQ2 clone anyway

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