All Posts by SioBabble

Originally posted by hubertgrove

The levels were brought in because the A Team of Developers, strategic, systematic and visionary, who actually built SWG were fired because they were too expensive and the B Team of Developers, ordinary, uncommitted and short-sighted, whon were brought in between six months and a year after launch couldn't understand how the game worked unless they were allowed to put in levels.

Can't argue with this.

There was a brilliant post on the old official forums, now nerfed into non-existence, that analyzed why the levels were stupid and worked against the publically stated reasons for the CU.  IIRC it was called "A design variance" or something like that.  It explained why levels were imposed on the CU.

One that should not be underestimated was the demand of the Lucas Empire that the CU be ready to go to coincide with the release of Ep III, as part of the global marketing blitz for that release.  A level system made this possible to do quickly and cheaply, as opposed to balancing all the hundreds of mobs on ten planets for three stat pools that they'd have to do with the existing system.

Rumor has had it that Gordon Walton (SOE Tyrant) left SOE because he was told that contrary to promises that the CU would be put into public testing only when it was ready, it would be put out in time for the Ep III release.

Walton balked at this craven marketing asshat driven stupidity.

The irony here is that Lucas in effect imposed the same sort of madness from cretins in suits on SWG that he faced when in post production for Ep IV.

Originally posted by ArjunThakur

Originally posted by Fishermage

Hmmm. Perhaps you can share, from your own perspective, how the CURB was changed to the CU. I remember the original plan was far more interesting and dynamic than what we eventually got.

For instance, were doctor buffs originally just going to be removed, or were they to be changed?

Was the game originally meant to completely switch to a level system?

Were unique stats to be removed from all animals, to be replaced with bags of HAM, as eventually happened?

I am curious about things like that, plus the timing if you can remember, and what was said behind the scenes.

 

To the point, no there was nothing about a level system AT ALL.  Buffs were going to be altered, but I believed it was going to be a percentage based buff instead of a hard number for balance.

Nothing was said about the stats of creatures changing.  If you can ask more and reference how it was before and after the CU it would help, my memory is very fuzzy on a lot of this I'm sorry to say but I do get some nuggets when prodded :)

IIRC (I was on the marksman CURB team) the biggest single change was that you'd have to get all three pools down to zero to incap.

Of course, this would have taken some time to do, and the biggest single complaint that LA had was combat wasn't fast like stormtroopers blasting away down the hallway of the Death Star detention cell.

The levels came totally out of nowhere, never in the CURB process was that particular change, perhaps the most radical of all the changes, every mentioned.

Originally posted by AlkimosX

In my opinion, taking advantage of someone, regardless of whether they're a male or female is unethical. The fact that you (or anyone for that matter) are deceiving someone out of pure greed for items or what ever it is you're after is pretty low in itself.

Also, from what I've seen in the past, it's usually children and lonely teenagers that actually are lured into giving up things to a supposed "hot chick", not to mention being enticed by "dirty talk" . So that in itself is pretty weird.

 

 

Not only that, but the deception is being perpetrated for virtual items.

I'm male, and have some female avatars.  It's interesting how some (very obviously) adolescent males treat someone they think is female.

I do know that a friend of mine with a scantily clad female avatar sold pets in pre CU SWG at higher rates than I did in front of the Coronet starport, so there's something to the notion that female avatars have advantages.

Why there aren't more used car sale bunnies in bikinis distracting men into buying lemons I don't quite know.

Originally posted by themilton

If/when a joined Trill is assimilated by the Borg, what happens to the Symbiont?

ST:DS9 episode Invasive Procedure established/confirmed the host and symbiont couldn't be separated without killing the former host, but would Borg technology have a way around that?  Have a little assimilated symbiont plugged in somewhere while the host became a normal drone?

If the host is about to die due to injury/illness/age, could the Borg keep the Symbiont alive until a new host could be found? Would they bother?

 

Just a random thought I had...

The point of a symbiont is to accumulate several hosts' lifetimes of experience to result in a more intelligent/wise/knowledgable creature.

The Collective pretty much does that as part of its nature, rendering the issue moot.  The memories, experience, and knowledge of each drone becomes part of the collective conciousness in perpetutiy.

So once the assimilation of a joined Trill takes place, we're done, and it doesnt matter what happens to the host or the symbiont from the perspective of the Borg.

SWG before SOE and LA decided to kill it with the CU and NGE.

Originally posted by Tzimiscechi

I hated that Teras Kasi Artists could wear armor. I mean, when was the last time you saw a Kung Fu master wearing full plate mail? It just made no sense.

It also would have been nice if there were more types of armor. Late in the game, the vast bulk of the people I saw were in full Composite - with that one guy wearing an Ubese helmet, and two other guys wearing Mando (one had only parts of Mando, the other had a full suit.)

The only RIS armor I ever saw was worn by a Jedi (I didn't know she was a Jedi until a couple of months of running in to her on a semi regular basis).

 

There were a number of armor types, but the problem was, each had its own strengths and vulnerabilities, some of which were just non-issues the way the combat system worked.  Composite offered the most protection across the board.  People would go with composite for dealing with foes using energy weapons (which means nearly all PvP) and padded for kinetic (which was mostly critter combat).  The other issue with armor was that there was supposed to be a tradeoff between protection and the ability to use specials that was rendered irrelevant by doctor buffs, so that the drawbacks to wearing full composite were obliterated if you had full doctor buffs.

The result: everyone and their mother running around in composite, all the time.

Originally posted by bboneheadd

ty for the info, is there any new servers because this game is pretty old and i dont want to be a lvl 1 among full serv of lvl 90's lol.

That's the situation you'll be in on any server.  No point in PvP until you're 90, for example, regardless of the population of the server.  This game is even more level stratified than WoW is.

My suggestion to you is yeah, free trial before buying, and take advantage of Tansaari Point station (the n00bie area) to level yourself up to 10.  Then have Han Solo take you to Tatooine to see how the real game functions.

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by SioBabble

The biggest one is that it makes server merges more complicated.  You have to deconflict real estate claims when merging servers.  One group of players will not be happy with whatever solution the developers come up with.

I think player housing is a huge plus, but it does complicate management of the world.  There's still a great deal of clutter in SWG caused by player structures, even after modification of resource extraction structures and one housing cleanup.

So there are tradeoffs to be contemplated.

True, but if you didn't completely destroy the game with changes and "Upgrades" to run the player base off, there would be no need for server merges in the first place now would there?

I think with enough preventive measures, player housing could pose little to no complications. For instance, make the game worlds big enough to where a player city does seem like an oasis in the middle of no where, making it take a lot lot more players to clutter the ground. SOE had a good thought in making house pack up. Simply make it so that if your account goes in-active for 30, or 60 days, your house and all of your other buildings get packed up. You will still have your house and items, but they won't clutter the ground any more. This way, only people playing will have buildings down. Worried about people that will pay there subscription without playing and clutter things up, make it so that they have to pay maintenance on the house, but limit the money they can deposit to a one month time period. If their maintenance runs out, they have 3 days to put more money in or the house gets packed up.

There are many simple solutions to prevent the problems of player housing that anyone could implement.

You're right, server merges wouldn't be an issue if the devs hadn't put months of work into depopulating the servers via the CU and NGE.

One of the reasons that SWG hasn't been more aggressive in cleaning up "abandoned" player housing is that the last thing they want to do is provide any new players with "empty" worlds.  Never mind the lack of avatars in say Coronet or Mos Espa might clue them in...that can be dismissed as "they're not online right now", while the illusion of player cities with dozens of structures creates the appearance of a "lived in world" that is important from both a PR and a lore standpoint.

It used to be that if you ran out of maintenanc in a strucutre, in a matter of days it would "poof" and disappear from the landscape.  But then for some inexpliable reason they changed that, and I know of buildings that still are "condemmed by the Empire" on Ahazi that didn't get flagged "abandoned" for last year's TIE bomber runs.

Originally posted by M1sf1t

Why not play Sims Online. Seriously if I wanted to decorate and furnish my house I'd either play Sims Online if I couldn't afford to do so or actually do it in real life.

Sorry, can't decorate my house with krayt skulls in SIms Onlilne.  Furthermore, cannot decorate my house with a stuffed peko peko.  Or a Xris Acid Sword.  Or an Endorian landscape painting.

Housing in SWG allows you to put YOUR mark on the world.  People can enter my house in a player city east of Keren on Naboo and see some of the things I managed to accomplish in SWG.

In WoW, instead of selling rare weapons to a vendor, or disenchanting them, to free up bank space after you've outgrown them by leveling, you could display them so that your fleeting accomplishment of getting Cookie's Tenderizer on a Dead Mines run isn't so fleeting.  You could put it in your kitchen as a trophy!

It's the RP in MMORPG that so many players of this game shy from like Dracula avoids garlic or the cross.

Originally posted by Obraik

Originally posted by Xiaoki

Player/Guild housing is probably the least important feature an MMO could add.

Why spend so much in time and resources just so a few people can role play? EA needs to make a fantasy version of The Sims for these people.

The housing in MMOs like SWG, EQ2 and most recently AoC have caused nothing but problems.

Developers don't want to deal with the head ache that housing creates and get nothing in return for it.

 

What problems has housing caused for SWG?

The biggest one is that it makes server merges more complicated.  You have to deconflict real estate claims when merging servers.  One group of players will not be happy with whatever solution the developers come up with.

I think player housing is a huge plus, but it does complicate management of the world.  There's still a great deal of clutter in SWG caused by player structures, even after modification of resource extraction structures and one housing cleanup.

So there are tradeoffs to be contemplated.

Originally posted by renstimpy99

August recess?

Regular folks only get 2 weeks vacation a year.  Politicians I loath them so much.

US military personnel get 30 days leave a year.  BTW this applies from the instant you join up...you earn 2.5 vacation days a month, and can have up to 60 days accrued at the end of any fiscal year.

BTW, the GOP was outraged when the current House convened and the Democratic leadership announced they'd be working four days a week, unlike during the prevoius Denny the Hutt regime in which  the House only worked three days a week.

Originally posted by Finwe

Originally posted by SioBabble

Originally posted by Torak

China will handle it the same way they handle any sort of civil disobedience.

They will brutally crush it anywhere they find it.

 

 

 

 

Yup, that's how totalitarian asshats deal with this sort of thing.

 

 Sometimes that's what you have to be to keep almost 2 billion people in line.

If you're a totalitarian asshat, the number of people you need to "keep in line" is irrelvant to the method used.

Keeping them in line is the most important thing.

Originally posted by Torak

China will handle it the same way they handle any sort of civil disobedience.

They will brutally crush it anywhere they find it.

 

 

 

Yup, that's how totalitarian asshats deal with this sort of thing.

Originally posted by Sawtooth

This just in! Ann Nichole Smith is still dead.

General Francisco Franco is also still dead.

"Fightclubbing" was the inevitable result of yet another system that the developers never thought through.  So, when the CU came along, they just threw up their hands and said the hell with the whole thing.

What we're about to experience is why you have all those restrictive regulations and banking laws.

To prevent this sort of speculative bubble crap from happening.

If you allow this sort of thing to take place, you're asking for this sort of instablity created by "Irrational exuberance" to happen.

Also, another thing you should NEVER do is allow anyone with an MBA anywhere near the levers of power.  EVER.

Blizzard's IP was kicking the ass of George Lucas, and the game was kicking the ass of John Smedley.

"Unions destroy the economy."

Then, pray tell, why is it that US economic growth was highest in the 1950's, when both union membership was at its peak, and marginal tax rates were highest?

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by SioBabble

Originally posted by TookyG

Short answer is that the game's original design was perfect.  Wasn't perfectly implemented, but the design was perfect.

 

I don't know if I'd go that far.

IMHO, there were some pretty glaring flaws in the design.  Specifically that going to zero in action or mind incapped you.  A lot of problems could have been avoided by that not being so.  It created the "unhealable pool" phenomenon that came to dominate all PvP play in the game.

Blue milk and muan gold , Or a cm buddy ? It was matter of knowing when to pop the Muan and when to use the blue milk. Mind poison or fire ? Heal it before it starts ticking.

Temporary fixes that paled in comparsion to a CM tossing a health or action heal bomb your way.  They didn't have mind heal bombs.  So mind attacks became the be-all and end-all of PvP combat.

Make it so mind pool depletion can't incap you, and the dynamic totally changes.