I really appreciate the information Smed has given us about the direction of the dev teams efforts on this thread.
Unlike many other players, I don't see diversity in the profession system as a central problem to the current game. The reality is that there was little practical diversity in the old profession system as most players selected to play a handful of FOTM profs leaving the vast majority of potential combinations of professions unplayed, unbalanceable, and unplayable.
I'm coming up on 1000 days subscribed and I think where the dev team AND the community have gone off course is that the heart of this game has been neglected. Players who subscribe to this game are here primarily for a Star Wars experience set loosely in the original trilogies time period. And the core of that experience that gives context to the professions are the major conflicts of the period. These conflicts are the Galactic Civil War, the Jedi/Sith conflict, and the presumed underworld rivalries that may exist. There is a fourth conflict created by the game system in the form of the guild wars.
Rather then adapting the professions to play the appropriate roles in their respective conflicts there has been an approach that the game should be basically a free for all. For example, in the GCW the military professions that were introduced with the NGE should, logically, play a central role in what should be a military conflict. Instead, BH's are being given a central role with no regard to faction threatening to transform a military conflict into a brawl between BH's. Where in either reality or in Star Wars has it been the case that criminals, as they are described in Star Wars, should be hired by the military to hunt soldiers? Star Wars canon and authenticity aside, making the BH's the central figures in the GCW with no respect for faction, as the new player bounty system proposes to do, was a central complaint against Jedi in the GCW pre-CU. The proposed player bounty system will just bring back an old problem. If there's going to be a dominant profession in the faction war it should be the military professions, not one that should have a central role in the Star Wars underworld.
The same situation is true for players interested in immersing in Jedi lore. The natural nemesis of the Jedi is not the BH. And it isn't the EU invention called Dark Jedi either. It's the Sith. There have been zero movies about BH's hunting Jedi and zero Star Wars movies about Dark Jedi being at war with Jedi. On the other hand, there have been six major motion pictures spanning thirty years involving the Jedi/Sith conflict. I've always hoped there would be a Sith profession, where players cannot become one of the two Sith lords just as Jedi can't be part of the Jedi council, balanced against Jedi with an emphasis on force powers. EU fans intersted in dark Jedi could be accomodated not by creating a Dark Jedi prof but by distinguishing between Rebel and Imperial Jedi- A Dark Jedi is any Jedi who switches faction to Imperial and gets to use dark themed robes and crystals. This would also have the potential benefit of reducing the number of Jedi in the game by half if not more, a major complaint that many players have had.
Looking over at the BH forums there is actually a lengthy thread expressing concerns about /bountycheck. Bounty hunters, as the title suggests, should actually have to hunt their prey. And amd of equal importance, their correct role in the game should be as underworld figures, not footsoldiers in the GCW. It seems that a better use of the /bountycheck system that is proposed would be to apply it to the guild wars, permitting BH's to play their correct role as underworld figures hired for vengence rather then usurping the proper role of the military.
What made the first few months of SWG so interesting and so promising was that the vacuum in game content was filled by the expectations and assumptions players had as to what the main conflicts should be in the game and what their roles in those conflicts should be. Players knew there was a war between the Rebellion and the Empire and chose their sides on the basis of their own assumptions fueling for a few months the footwar between AH and Bestine.
What I would like to see going forward is an approach where the professions in the game were specifically adapted to the roles they should be playing in the major conflicts that should be occurring. This is the heart of the Star Wars experience that I've been looking for the last 1000 days and only rarely tasted. Adding dungeons and skills to professions without this broader context doesn't give the players a Star Wars experience or a role to play.
We recognize that the current profession system doesn't allow for any real level of character differentiation. As such, we're currently working on an "Expertise" system, that grants the players "points" to spend on specialization. The expertise system gives the profession system a similar feel to what we had pre-nge as far as character customization goes. The tech for this system is being developed for the next publish (this won't be visible to you guys). The publish after that, we're looking at pushing out the first two professions's worth of expertise trees, with two professions targeted for every publish after that. Generally speaking, we'll have three trees for each profession to choose from, including a GCW tree and a "path" tree that will hold things like "dark" and "light" side powers for Jedi, for instance (or droid specializtion, vs poisons for Bounty hunters - for instance).
That's the plan.
Does this mean for example that the first 2 professions will have this edge over all other professions and then 2 more approx 2 months later until all are completed? If so, which 2 professions are first to be elite?
Oh and Devs, Smed... you see what you guys are doing right now.... THIS IS CALLED COMMUNICATION.... please, let this COMMUNICATION be a Constant... and not a "once every blue moon"
d Lord Vincent Takaab Blackbird (Altyrell) ~MEOW~.
-VtS-Maddix wrote: Haven't seen anyone ask the REALLY big question yet. Smed, are you a Rebel or an Imperial?
I think we know the answer to this one.
The Imperials have always had the better music.
Besides, what do you really expect me to say here? I was the guy laughing when Luke's hand got cut off. What can I say.
Smed
Even Rebels laughed when Luke got his hand cut off. Just like we all laughed when Vader went "Noooooooooooooo!"
Fun stuff today, makes a couple of months of forum hanging kinda worth it.
Please make the game better. My personal pet peeve currently is how annoying it is to try to target something far away and keep hitting it when in a pulled back 3rd person view that I prefer. It's horrible. Some kind of basic long-distance target lock, even a temporary buff effect or something, would be so nice...
-Bob is Robii D'Luminatii ~NOT a Jedi: Drifting away into The Great Dark~ Assassin & former Mayor of Perdition/Grendin Waste, Lok: Ahazi
Fix yt-1300 yt-2400 firespray needs to be pob dwb is camped for loot now thats fun. hard to get does not have to be me sitting waiting for the drop from a over camped spawn. smugglers cannot smuggle, kessel run would be nice.
I'm going to ask this for the 4th time now, hoping you'll shed some light on this. I'm a day 1 (beta 3) vet, so I'm hoping you'll answer this for the sake of a long time vet.
You mentioned the possibility of guilds having their own capital starships such as star destroyers. I'd like to know what is the status of capital ships given that there is now no expansion on the horizon. Will we be seeing them implemented as free content? What about combat vehicles such as AT-ATs (which I've yet to see in a combat role in 3 years)?
If we got to the point where we had the time to do this, I suspect it would be an expansion. It was in the plans for the future. Right now we're focused on the core game and making it better.
What you said would be cool.. and it's a dream of ours and has been for a long time!
Smed
what about mini expansions like eq2 get theres a vampire one it costs like 4 dollars
DUS XOT
Dark Jedi
Imperial Ace
You close your eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone....
There has been an outcry on the forums for a roll back. As i understand the term Rollback it would mean rerurning to the old system and scrapping everything that happened since the NGE.
Please clearly state weather this is even possible and discribe what the end results would be if it were?
I will jump in and answer this honestly:
We are not doing a roll back. We are not planning a roll back. We are not discussing a roll back. Once again, we are not doing a roll back.I
Can you see the game being bug free? I can't.
I want a rollback mainly to get rid of the bugs, the bugs are the main things killing SWG, not the actual NGE. NGE code on top of the CU and pre-CU has just totally stuffed things up. I can't see the game ever getting fixed, unless there is a rollback, and the CU is worked upon.
Here's a bold goal -
Let's get all the bugs out of the game within 6 months. Maybe we won't hit it, but that's what we're shooting for.
Smed
Smed strikes again! You are on a roll...
/deepbow
Onildera Oodo
Elder Smuggler
Vendors at -320 -5500 Corellia. 850m outside the gates of Coronet.
Why take away crafting spice? I enjoyed it and if some smugglers didnt they didnt have to.
Why take away slicing - same? I enjoyed it and if some smugglers didn't they didn'y have to.
Why take away bases - I enjoyed grouping with friends on a regular basis for this and now vets are left with nothing execpt pvp for the "GCW"
Why take away faction pets? They werent that good anyway...but most enjoyed them.
Slicing type gameplay will return with the reverse-engineering game for traders. GCW bases (not to be confused with battlefields) will be making a combeback in an upcoming publish. One of the systems guys is looking into updating these as we speak. Faction pets are coming back as part of GCW expertise trees (see my post above).
I hope u consider a cap on the amount of bases which are able to be placed on a planet. Otherwise we all gonna enjoy the major lag again, like we had during the CU. U always can try to clean up the server first, by removing houses from inactive accounts. Lots of people wanna see that, but it gets delayed or canceld everytime.
Please enlighten me as to WHY you think anyone with more than 3 or 4 years of experience in Networking or Programming wouldn't instinctively know SQL inside and out?
Oh, and Smed. I'm getting the feeling you are cherry-picking posts. I'd very much appreciate a response to mine.
Not what I was saying. I know SQL/Oracle, it's hardly "easy stuff" and anyone who thinks they can recreate the pre-cu game (and for more than 4 people playing at once) is high. Seriously. Good luck with that far fetched dream though.
"cherry picking" posts? you've got to be kidding me. I should only answer the "this game is great.. keep up the good work posts"
Smed
Could you respond to an Entertainer's post then please? It would be nice to get a response on why our revamp was cancelled.
2+ month Publish cycle means I am waiting over a year before Entertainers are scheduled to even have a use again. Not before they DO. Just before they are scheduled to.
I don't think that's right. And more than that, I do not think that my profession should be an AFK grind mechanism to help people exploit respecs and get to level 90 in hours/days.
We recognize that the current profession system doesn't allow for any real level of character differentiation. As such, we're currently working on an "Expertise" system, that grants the players "points" to spend on specialization. The expertise system gives the profession system a similar feel to what we had pre-nge as far as character customization goes. The tech for this system is being developed for the next publish (this won't be visible to you guys). The publish after that, we're looking at pushing out the first two professions's worth of expertise trees, with two professions targeted for every publish after that. Generally speaking, we'll have three trees for each profession to choose from, including a GCW tree and a "path" tree that will hold things like "dark" and "light" side powers for Jedi, for instance (or droid specializtion, vs poisons for Bounty hunters - for instance).
That's the plan.
AWESOME!
Rieke Mysadwy--Pre-CU Jedi (MLS, MDef, Nov Healer, 3xx2 Enh) & Professional Scoundrel, Leader of CCEF Davaj Knyghtsyde--Bounty Hunter Trawwl--Wookiee Commando Grewaulk--Rodian Structures Trader
Loot and Structures Vendor at: -2634 -9, Caldara Cove on Dantooine
There has been an outcry on the forums for a roll back. As i understand the term Rollback it would mean rerurning to the old system and scrapping everything that happened since the NGE.
Please clearly state weather this is even possible and discribe what the end results would be if it were?
I will jump in and answer this honestly:
We are not doing a roll back. We are not planning a roll back. We are not discussing a roll back. Once again, we are not doing a roll back.I
You seriously might want to make that statement a sticky somewhere because I will guarantee that some moron will ask that same question again and again.
I have played since a month after launch, doc buff lines sucked, DOT weapons sucked, mind poisons/fire sucked, classes that were broken (carbineer/pistoleer/ranger/commando) sucked, people bitched you could not fly, I can't beat a Stacker, if you didn't have doc in your template forget hardcore PvP, I could go on and on about how much of this game SUCKED Pre-CU but I won't.
Do I like a lot of the NGE no but some of you got what you wished for, so deal with it. Worst thing that ever happened was the unlocking of Jedi's, then everyone complained about how HAARRDD it was, please make it easier, so they did, then everyone complained there were to many Jedi.......get my point, You got what you wished for, sucks huh!
Crafters I feel your pain I really do miss making someone's armor go red in the cloner, please give the crafters some love Smed they were just as much a part of this game as anyone else. (FYI I was never a crafter it bored me to tears)
Thanks Smed for communicating I think this is the first time in almost 3 years I have read 60 something pages in a thread.
Message Edited by Wolf_Scout on 03-24-200604:36 PM
"Weapons are made to kill, but it is the human mind that decides the amount of pain they will inflict"
-Bob is Robii D'Luminatii
