19 Questions (As of 6/10/2004)

[Syban]

Week 1:

Architect, Armorsmith, Artisan, Bio-Engineer, Chef, Core Systems, Dancer, Doctor, Droid Engineer, Entertainer, Image Designer, Medic, Merchant, Musician, Player Associations, Politician, Tailor, Test Center, Weaponsmith

Architect

Right now the only method players have of organizing their items inside their house is using Backpacks.. though this is effective it is not very realistic in the whole emersion aspect. Is there any plans on making already existing furniture have the capacity to have open storage windows. For example can the Chest be able to hold items in it. (note this is not asking to increase storage limits of a house but more or less giving Chest/ armoire/ cabinet type furniture the function to be able to replace backpacks as the only source of organizing items in our houses..)

There are no current plans to change this, but this topic is near and dear to my heart. I would very much like to see chests, armoire or other type of in-game cabinet act as a storage container. While researching the answer to this question, I discovered that all that has to be done is modify their in-game image so that it inherits its functionality from the container. I’m told this isn't hard to do and as a result, I’m checking into when this might possibly be sneaked (or snuck if you prefer) onto the schedule.

Armorsmith

You keep saying “wait for the combat balance” - - is there any ETA on when the issues facing each profession are going to be made available?

Yes, once the Combat Balance sandbox server is activated and we have testers on it, there will be many focus threads and correspondent discussion threads. Those activities will happen on or before Publish 10.

Artisan

Artisan Mission fixes/enhancements: Artisan mission provide much needed income to crafters just getting started. We would like to see some changes/fixes in them. First, currently Artisan mission’s difficulty level scales with combat ability, not crafter ability. This requires the crafter to either be good at combat or to group with someone good at combat to increase their mission credit and XP payout. Artisan missions should scale on crafting skill in the same manner that destroy missions scale on combat skill. Can these any of these ideas and fixes be implemented?

Yes, these things can be implemented. The question is “when”. There are two main factors in play here. The first is that when trying to advance the cause of any profession, my first reference is the top 5 list. If the items listed here are truly a top 5 item, then it needs to be on that list so that when the opportunity arises, I have significant community input to demonstrate that this is indeed a top issue and that it is on the Artisan’s top issue report. The second item in play is that the GCW revamp is going to touch all professions to some degree and that work is going to come before any other changes. Any *major* changes will be considered after the Jump to Lightspeed.

Bio-Engineer

What type of damage do creature ranged attacks do and is it the same type of damage for all BE pets and wild creatures?

Bioengineered pets do kinetic damage. Wild animals do a variety of ranged damage types based on their creature type.

Chef

Will JTL add foods that improve piloting skills? Would the devs like a list of community suggestions?

There are no new foods in JTL. Also remember that JTL is twitch-based. Skill is based on the player’s ability, not the character’s skills and abilities. That is the big difference between twitch and RPG skills. RPG skills control the level of ability of what a player can and cannot do with their character. Twitch based skills are a raw translation of a player’s hand-eye coordination.

Core Systems

Are there any plans to increase the amount of music and sounds for a more Star Wars feel? If so, when? (space expansion doesn’t count

There are plans in place to add more music and sounds, but the new items/sounds won’t be added until after JTL.

Dancer

If we can't get anything else right now, how about this one little bug? I am speaking of the /setperform bug. "You direct your attention to %TT." How hard would it be to go in and replace that obviously hard-coded %TT with an actual code that would print the name of our current target? I mean seriously. Please?

I will ask if we can do something about this when I get in on Monday and report back to you in this thread and follow up with the correspondent.

Doctor

Are there any details about how buffs will be effected in the upcoming combat balance?

The only details available at this point are that we are going to look at all the numbers. The types of things that will change is that multi-thousand point HAM buffs will not be available. Over time, as various combat variables have increased in scale such as armor resistances, weapon efficiencies, equipment slices, buffs have also been pushed beyond balanced limits by exceptionally smart players. As this information works its way through the community, it tilts all the numbers to an extreme imbalance. During the combat balance, we will look at these numbers and also post focus threads on any proposed changes. One thing to remember though is that the HAM revamp is going to change the dynamics of combat so it makes comparing old system and new system numbers difficult to realize in terms of raw game play.

Droid Engineer

Why do we have 41 schematics (and now more with publish 8) that depend on Master Artisan parts, specifically the electronics modules the most? Other crafters do have a dependency on these parts for specific items, but most will only rarely need these parts every once and a while. I (and the majority of other DE's I know) run electronics module runs in their factories every other day. No other crafters have this kind of dependency for such a large portion of the items they craft and not have the schematics they need inside their own profession.

During SWG’s pre-launch development, crafting interdependencies were envisioned to be much more prevalent than they currently are. As beta progressed and the crafting professions went through changes and redesigns, many of the interdependencies were dropped for a variety of reasons. Going forward in the game’s development, players should expect to see more crafting interdependency as more and more complex items are added to the game. That is to say, that crafting professions will have interdependencies added. Understanding that the DE”s see this as a saddle, I’m certainly willing to take a strong argument to the dev team to get this reduced.

Entertainer

I wouldn't mind some info on this secret Acrobat/Juggler profession. Is it going to be a Elite entertainer profession or a new novice profession? Is it even coming? Is it going to need Master Entertainer?

The Acrobat/Juggler profession is currently on the shelf and not in the pipeline. As it has been discussed internally, it would be an Elite Profession though some part of it would most likely touch the entertainer tree. Not much else about the design of the profession has been discussed because it was shelved a long ago.

Image Designer

What options are the Development Team exploring to fix the current 62-122-245 hour XP gating of Image Design? Is it possible to have an ETA on this?

We have increased the xp gains on stat migrations. These changes will be headed for Test Center very soon.

Medic

Medics are interested in seeing a share of Faction Points in the same way that we are getting Combat XP. It is considered inappropriate that a medic professional would be out in the field and, being unable to assist in taking out an opposing faction NPC or player (because they are healing those who are doing so), they will not gain FPs and so will progress much more slowly in faction gains, while providing at least as valuable a service as the person providing the offensive capabilities. Other considerations have included gaining FPs for healing Overt faction members, especially considering the dangers involved in gaining a TEF in this manner in a place that is known for finding unsuspecting TEFed characters i.e. The Med Center.

Are the devs considering giving medics and their bretheren (doctors and combat medics) faction points for healing? If so, are we likely to see it any time soon? If not, will they consider it?

It is unlikely that this will be considered. There are a variety of techniques whereby a player or players can set up a scenario to farm faction points at dramatically increased rates. However, Runesabre plans to have the GCW revamp touch all professions. If the community had suggestions on how to involve medic types in the GCW and earn Faction Points, I’m sure they would be considered.

Merchant

Why aren't Master Merchants Granted an extra vendor for achieving the role of Master of their profession? What was is the reasoning behind limiting the Vendors to 6 instead of 7 with the last granted at master?

The reasoning for limiting merchant vendors will forever be hidden in history’s shadows. It was a decision that was made during beta and no one remembers *exactly* why. With the commodities revamp that is currently underway and Runesabre’s plans to tweak the Merchant profession based on Docsavag’s community plan, this is something that can and probably will change (for the better)

Musician

What force skills will you be implementing for specific advantage to the musician profession? Will they be implemented with the Jedi system, or how soon after? If the answer is "NONE" may we provide a list of suggested skills that would be specific to this profession for developer consideration?

The answer is “none”. Please work with NewJedi to develop a reasonable list and I will work with the team to see what is possible and what is not.

Player Associations

When will we be able to 'drop' items on the roof area of PA halls? (Also patio area of large houses, and theater stage/audience section). That's all I want to know

Unknown, but possible. The “cells” that make up building interiors are different than the types of cells that make up building exteriors (patios, roofs, etc). To change the way cells works would take a while and require a lot of programming. I *was* able to find out that a good idea that could be implemented (but longer term) is to allow players to purchase some standard ‘furnishing packages’ that would populate their outside building areas with some furniture arrangements.

Politician

What do developers think of the idea of getting cities to spawn NPCs based on a city factional affiliation (once implemented), different ranks of cities might spawn differen't types of NPCs, with Villages spawning lower-level NPCs, and Metropoli spawning upper-end content, including possibly up to AT-ATs as random spawns in an Imperial city. These would have nowhere near the spawn rate as regular bases, but would have a decent chance of randomly spawning them on occasion.

There has been a lot of discussion on the issue of “City Missions” and this would certainly fall along those lines. There are a lot of versions of city missions being discussed and we definitely want to see player cities involved in some sort of GCW content. City Missions were on the development list, but they were removed in the last schedule review, though some members on the team strongly want to see this soon. Currently, it is cut, but if it comes back on the radar screen, myself or the correspondents will let you know.

Tailor

Currently master tailors seem to get 4-socketed items about 10% of the time (post the wookiee armor patch). Obviously, they would like to increase this percentage, as they were getting 4 sockets consistently pre-patch.

What factors go into determining the number of sockets an item gets? In particular we would like to know about (1) tailor's clothing experimentation level + mods (2) tailor's clothing customization level + mods (3) tailor's clothing assembly level +mods (4) tailor's clothing repair level + mods (5) clothing & armor crafting tool rating (6) clothing & armor crafting station rating (7) use of a crafting droid (8) stats of the resources used (if so what stats matter) and (9) any foods/drinks/spices.

Which of these factors will increase or decrease the chance to gain sockets? If they do increase or decrease socketing chances, are the increased/decreased chances significant or marginal?

I will never reveal formulas or report on numbers, but I can tell you that I want to see this item changed in favor of the Tailor community. It is on the Tailor’s top issues report and it is something I would like to see tweaked in the same manner that critical failures were enhanced. As a tailor goes up the tree, their ability to successfully “socket” items would increase, with a Master receiving a significant bonus.

Test Center

The regular Test Center Denizens are wanting a post from yourself or Rogue_5 or even JustG about the state of TC1's chance for a similar wipe and rollback from when the patch originally hit it. Is there any plans to revert TC1 as well?

There are no plans to wipe/re-roll *all* characters on TC1. It is almost written in stone that we shouldn’t wipe the server because players would lose a lot of hard work and effort. If you are asking me about Jedi Characters though, we will be manually fixing any FUBAR Jedi templates for you.

Weaponsmith

Are stun weapons going to see a major rebalance within the future?

Yes. Stun weapons (particularly stun batons) were never intended to be “the weapon” that everyone wants because it is the most effective. SWG’s weapons were always supposed to have a variety of useful and efficient weapons available, but here again, with all the tweaks and changes over the last 8+ months have caused a series of imbalances. This is definitely something that will be looked at during the combat balance.

(Not to sure I'm so stoked about this 'Combat Rebalance... something smells fishy... no wait that's me, my bad.)