Note the discussion of HAM and how they were going to change it so that you had to drain all three pools down to get an incap.
To be honest, I never understood why draining action and mind down to zero incapped you. It seemed to me that health should be the only pool you need to worry about for incapacitation...draining action or mind would limit your ability to use specials, to heal, and so forth, but making the health pool harder than it was to drain down (since health regen was one of the most basic things a medic type could do) was the key here.
But making it so all three had to be drained below zero would work too, solving the "unhealable pool" problem that plagued PvP in the preCU period. The catch of course was that requiring the draining three pools, not one, was going to prolong combat, and one of the incessant complaints was combat took too long. Nevermind that early on PvP damage was deliberately nerfed in order to prevent single digit hit kills...that combat was moving too quickly for a lot of players...they were dying too fast!
A really huge advantage of an all three drain system would be that duelling would be pointless, and would create a situation where you had to have balanced combined arms teams of players to be effective in PvP. No longer would the whining of the duellists be driving the nerf calls, which invariably were basically complaints that someone other than the nerf caller had an "I win" button that could be used on the nerf caller.
Futhermore, a three pool drain system would have severely limited the uberness of defense stackers, for example, because it would te tough to defend all three pools. I might as an aside point out that an even easier way to deal with defense stacking was to spread the stackable defenses across the skill trees, not concentrating them in a single skill branch, which would frustrate the min/max types who zeroed in in the most SP efficent way to build a template. Another technique that wasn't used enough was to give the master box serious power...something that was accomplished to the detriment of the game in the CU by requiring two combat masteries to get your artificial level up to 80 to deal with the PvE combat that had the obscene combat multipliers to prevent mere one combat profession masters from being able to compete with full combat templates.
Above all else, requiring the draining of all three pools would address the biggest single issue of preCU SWG PvP: the "unhealable pool", the mind pool.
Of course a lot of the problems with HAM depletion were directly tied to the PvP game and the best way to approach that. Which led to the problems with riflemen, heavy swordsmen, and CMs who could focus on the "unhealable pool" and became the be-all/end-all of PvP combat...particularly the CMs who could actually reduce your total pool points regardless of immediate heals with mind disease, which temporarily reduced your potential pool. Mind disease could only be cured by downtime with an entertainer...it could not be dealt with in combat.
Thus, along with the ablity to inflict damage through solid objects, made the CM the most feared profession on the PvP battlefield. My main was a CM for a time (first holoprof) and not only did he kick ass and take names, he was the one everybody on the other side wanted dead, dead, dead as fast as possible. Mind diesase attacks sent the other guys into pure panic.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
You guys crack me up... How were the CU and the NGE good ideas? Explain that one to me. Neither one was worth a crap to start off with, the CU got better towards the end, the NGE is better than it was but will never be good, it can't be good, it's too fatally flawed. Did you mean the need for a combat revamp was good? I agree with that. Pre-CU combat was too stale and slow. It never felt like combat. So I agree it needed an upgrade. However, what we got wasn't just an upgrade to the combat of SWG. Even the CU changed the foundation of the game enough to impact the other GREAT parts of SWG negatively. SWG has something unique to WoW and EQ, it had a great skill-system. I think it was even better tha UO, but that's just my opinion. That didn't need a revamping at all. People complained about balance, guess what, people STILL complain about balance. There will always be balance issues with games, especially complex ones. The NGE hasn't helped that much, if at all. So SOE removes the skill-system, which was rich and complex and puts in this crap level/class regurgitation. The professions are just lame. Melee combat is removed aside from Jedi. Crafters are nerfed and decay is removed as well. So NO, the ideas of the CU and the NGE were NOT good ones. The idea of a COMBAT REVAMP was. If SOE spends the year it spent developing the CU and the NGE simply working on a combat revamp that worked with the existing systems, SWG is alive and thriving today, and Obriak, Gutboy, and ummax are off playing EQ or WoW. The CU and the NGE were aweful attempts at innovation. A good idea would have been to fire the brainchild behind either of them on the spot. A 12 year old kid could come up with better solutions than those.
I don't know what some of the other guys said - haven't read this whole thread - but the CU was a good idea on paper. Everything to do with combat in SWG was broken. Armor, weapons, loot drops, buffs, and combat moves were all broken. They needed fixing, and a 'combat upgrade' was exactly what SWG needed. A complete overhaul of the combat system, mins, maxes, and all that stuff was absolutely needed to fix the game and get more people staying instead of cancelling.
What the game didn't need was new flashy particle effects and more half-assed implementations. Too bad that's what they 'fixed'.
Do you know what the saddest thing about Star Wars Galaxies is?
IF THEY WOULD HAVE SPENT THE AMOUNT OF TIME THEY TOOK REVAMPING THE OLD SYSTEM INSTEAD OF RELEASING THE CU AND NGE, THE ORIGINAL WOULDN'T BE AS BAD AS THEY SAY IT WAS!
Yeah, I read the entire thing. Well, at least he's admitting that the NGE was a fuck-up. That's a ... step ... towards the right direction.
You guys crack me up... How were the CU and the NGE good ideas? Explain that one to me. Neither one was worth a crap to start off with, the CU got better towards the end, the NGE is better than it was but will never be good, it can't be good, it's too fatally flawed. Did you mean the need for a combat revamp was good? I agree with that. Pre-CU combat was too stale and slow. It never felt like combat. So I agree it needed an upgrade. However, what we got wasn't just an upgrade to the combat of SWG. Even the CU changed the foundation of the game enough to impact the other GREAT parts of SWG negatively. SWG has something unique to WoW and EQ, it had a great skill-system. I think it was even better tha UO, but that's just my opinion. That didn't need a revamping at all. People complained about balance, guess what, people STILL complain about balance. There will always be balance issues with games, especially complex ones. The NGE hasn't helped that much, if at all. So SOE removes the skill-system, which was rich and complex and puts in this crap level/class regurgitation. The professions are just lame. Melee combat is removed aside from Jedi. Crafters are nerfed and decay is removed as well. So NO, the ideas of the CU and the NGE were NOT good ones. The idea of a COMBAT REVAMP was. If SOE spends the year it spent developing the CU and the NGE simply working on a combat revamp that worked with the existing systems, SWG is alive and thriving today, and Obriak, Gutboy, and ummax are off playing EQ or WoW. The CU and the NGE were aweful attempts at innovation. A good idea would have been to fire the brainchild behind either of them on the spot. A 12 year old kid could come up with better solutions than those.
I don't know what some of the other guys said - haven't read this whole thread - but the CU was a good idea on paper. Everything to do with combat in SWG was broken. Armor, weapons, loot drops, buffs, and combat moves were all broken. They needed fixing, and a 'combat upgrade' was exactly what SWG needed. A complete overhaul of the combat system, mins, maxes, and all that stuff was absolutely needed to fix the game and get more people staying instead of cancelling.
What the game didn't need was new flashy particle effects and more half-assed implementations. Too bad that's what they 'fixed'.
I'd also say it didn't need a level system instead of the skill points, and it didn't need to make crafted stims obsolete, replacing them with "magic" heals.
Whatever crazy-ass patch brought in armour certification was also unnecessary, as was getting rid of innate armour for Teras Kasi. A lot of people got burned on all of these issues, for no helpful reason whatsoever. They just got burned.
If SOE would have cared to listen to the feedback from players on test, they would have realized all of this, and implemented changes and fixes that were desired and had been frequently requested.
People did want to deal with the unhealable mind pool, they did want more armour options than composite, and many did want to be able to go hunting without standing in line and paying for a doctor buff. They also wanted profession abilities to function and quests not to be broken.
All of these desires seem perfectly reasonable to me, and certainly not impossible to address. We've seen, however, that none of these realities mattered to SOE and LA once they got WoW in their eyes, and forgot about their own product's potential, and the desires of their own customers.
Is it just me or did he not once mention anything that we tried to tell them. Not one of our posts or complaints prior to the CU and NGE are mentioned in his blog. This just confirms what everyone has been saying all along, they don't listen or give two shites about their player base, only about the $ they bleed from us.
You guys crack me up... How were the CU and the NGE good ideas? Explain that one to me. Neither one was worth a crap to start off with, the CU got better towards the end, the NGE is better than it was but will never be good, it can't be good, it's too fatally flawed. Did you mean the need for a combat revamp was good? I agree with that. Pre-CU combat was too stale and slow. It never felt like combat. So I agree it needed an upgrade. However, what we got wasn't just an upgrade to the combat of SWG. Even the CU changed the foundation of the game enough to impact the other GREAT parts of SWG negatively. SWG has something unique to WoW and EQ, it had a great skill-system. I think it was even better tha UO, but that's just my opinion. That didn't need a revamping at all. People complained about balance, guess what, people STILL complain about balance. There will always be balance issues with games, especially complex ones. The NGE hasn't helped that much, if at all. So SOE removes the skill-system, which was rich and complex and puts in this crap level/class regurgitation. The professions are just lame. Melee combat is removed aside from Jedi. Crafters are nerfed and decay is removed as well. So NO, the ideas of the CU and the NGE were NOT good ones. The idea of a COMBAT REVAMP was. If SOE spends the year it spent developing the CU and the NGE simply working on a combat revamp that worked with the existing systems, SWG is alive and thriving today, and Obriak, Gutboy, and ummax are off playing EQ or WoW. The CU and the NGE were aweful attempts at innovation. A good idea would have been to fire the brainchild behind either of them on the spot. A 12 year old kid could come up with better solutions than those.
I don't know what some of the other guys said - haven't read this whole thread - but the CU was a good idea on paper. Everything to do with combat in SWG was broken. Armor, weapons, loot drops, buffs, and combat moves were all broken. They needed fixing, and a 'combat upgrade' was exactly what SWG needed. A complete overhaul of the combat system, mins, maxes, and all that stuff was absolutely needed to fix the game and get more people staying instead of cancelling.
What the game didn't need was new flashy particle effects and more half-assed implementations. Too bad that's what they 'fixed'.
I'd also say it didn't need a level system instead of the skill points, and it didn't need to make crafted stims obsolete, replacing them with "magic" heals.
Whatever crazy-ass patch brought in armour certification was also unnecessary, as was getting rid of innate armour for Teras Kasi. A lot of people got burned on all of these issues, for no helpful reason whatsoever. They just got burned.
If SOE would have cared to listen to the feedback from players on test, they would have realized all of this, and implemented changes and fixes that were desired and had been frequently requested.
People did want to deal with the unhealable mind pool, they did want more armour options than composite, and many did want to be able to go hunting without standing in line and paying for a doctor buff. They also wanted profession abilities to function and quests not to be broken.
All of these desires seem perfectly reasonable to me, and certainly not impossible to address. We've seen, however, that none of these realities mattered to SOE and LA once they got WoW in their eyes, and forgot about their own product's potential, and the desires of their own customers.
there are some valid points in this post, as well as a couple ones that I don't agree with. I was a doctor on my alt and definitely appreciated the Buff lines it forced players into a central Hub where one could meet other players. I agree that it was implemented wrong, it may have needed a buff all skill to lessen some of the wait. I can agree the Mind pool was the most hated, and the most overly attacked bar. it should have been used in a way that when the mind pool was down to zero that dizzy attached, knock downs occurred more frequently, you miss more frequently causing it not to be the end all be all, but part of a strategy.
Tera Kasi was probably the most over powered off all professions, which made no sense to me especially in a ranged weapon world. now Indoors in a cantina breaking out a can of tera Kasi whoop Arse where the person could not run would have balanced out the profession. infact now that I think about it if they had just took the range on the knockdown from say 15 to 20 in game feet, and placed it at a more reasonable level at say 3 in game feet it would have had the desired effect. Making Tera Kasi virtually unusable in a open enviroment. That would have balanced the profession right there.
Comments
I think he wanted just the curb documents
here
Yup, those are the CURB docs I remember allright.
Note the discussion of HAM and how they were going to change it so that you had to drain all three pools down to get an incap.
To be honest, I never understood why draining action and mind down to zero incapped you. It seemed to me that health should be the only pool you need to worry about for incapacitation...draining action or mind would limit your ability to use specials, to heal, and so forth, but making the health pool harder than it was to drain down (since health regen was one of the most basic things a medic type could do) was the key here.
But making it so all three had to be drained below zero would work too, solving the "unhealable pool" problem that plagued PvP in the preCU period. The catch of course was that requiring the draining three pools, not one, was going to prolong combat, and one of the incessant complaints was combat took too long. Nevermind that early on PvP damage was deliberately nerfed in order to prevent single digit hit kills...that combat was moving too quickly for a lot of players...they were dying too fast!
A really huge advantage of an all three drain system would be that duelling would be pointless, and would create a situation where you had to have balanced combined arms teams of players to be effective in PvP. No longer would the whining of the duellists be driving the nerf calls, which invariably were basically complaints that someone other than the nerf caller had an "I win" button that could be used on the nerf caller.
Futhermore, a three pool drain system would have severely limited the uberness of defense stackers, for example, because it would te tough to defend all three pools. I might as an aside point out that an even easier way to deal with defense stacking was to spread the stackable defenses across the skill trees, not concentrating them in a single skill branch, which would frustrate the min/max types who zeroed in in the most SP efficent way to build a template. Another technique that wasn't used enough was to give the master box serious power...something that was accomplished to the detriment of the game in the CU by requiring two combat masteries to get your artificial level up to 80 to deal with the PvE combat that had the obscene combat multipliers to prevent mere one combat profession masters from being able to compete with full combat templates.
Above all else, requiring the draining of all three pools would address the biggest single issue of preCU SWG PvP: the "unhealable pool", the mind pool.
Of course a lot of the problems with HAM depletion were directly tied to the PvP game and the best way to approach that. Which led to the problems with riflemen, heavy swordsmen, and CMs who could focus on the "unhealable pool" and became the be-all/end-all of PvP combat...particularly the CMs who could actually reduce your total pool points regardless of immediate heals with mind disease, which temporarily reduced your potential pool. Mind disease could only be cured by downtime with an entertainer...it could not be dealt with in combat.
Thus, along with the ablity to inflict damage through solid objects, made the CM the most feared profession on the PvP battlefield. My main was a CM for a time (first holoprof) and not only did he kick ass and take names, he was the one everybody on the other side wanted dead, dead, dead as fast as possible. Mind diesase attacks sent the other guys into pure panic.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I don't know what some of the other guys said - haven't read this whole thread - but the CU was a good idea on paper. Everything to do with combat in SWG was broken. Armor, weapons, loot drops, buffs, and combat moves were all broken. They needed fixing, and a 'combat upgrade' was exactly what SWG needed. A complete overhaul of the combat system, mins, maxes, and all that stuff was absolutely needed to fix the game and get more people staying instead of cancelling.
What the game didn't need was new flashy particle effects and more half-assed implementations. Too bad that's what they 'fixed'.
Do you know what the saddest thing about Star Wars Galaxies is?
IF THEY WOULD HAVE SPENT THE AMOUNT OF TIME THEY TOOK REVAMPING THE OLD SYSTEM INSTEAD OF RELEASING THE CU AND NGE, THE ORIGINAL WOULDN'T BE AS BAD AS THEY SAY IT WAS!
Yeah, I read the entire thing. Well, at least he's admitting that the NGE was a fuck-up. That's a ... step ... towards the right direction.
I don't know what some of the other guys said - haven't read this whole thread - but the CU was a good idea on paper. Everything to do with combat in SWG was broken. Armor, weapons, loot drops, buffs, and combat moves were all broken. They needed fixing, and a 'combat upgrade' was exactly what SWG needed. A complete overhaul of the combat system, mins, maxes, and all that stuff was absolutely needed to fix the game and get more people staying instead of cancelling.
What the game didn't need was new flashy particle effects and more half-assed implementations. Too bad that's what they 'fixed'.
I'd also say it didn't need a level system instead of the skill points, and it didn't need to make crafted stims obsolete, replacing them with "magic" heals.
Whatever crazy-ass patch brought in armour certification was also unnecessary, as was getting rid of innate armour for Teras Kasi. A lot of people got burned on all of these issues, for no helpful reason whatsoever. They just got burned.
If SOE would have cared to listen to the feedback from players on test, they would have realized all of this, and implemented changes and fixes that were desired and had been frequently requested.
People did want to deal with the unhealable mind pool, they did want more armour options than composite, and many did want to be able to go hunting without standing in line and paying for a doctor buff. They also wanted profession abilities to function and quests not to be broken.
All of these desires seem perfectly reasonable to me, and certainly not impossible to address. We've seen, however, that none of these realities mattered to SOE and LA once they got WoW in their eyes, and forgot about their own product's potential, and the desires of their own customers.
No, they gave it to me, and I'm not giving it up, because it sucked so bad.
____________________________________________
im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Is it just me or did he not once mention anything that we tried to tell them. Not one of our posts or complaints prior to the CU and NGE are mentioned in his blog. This just confirms what everyone has been saying all along, they don't listen or give two shites about their player base, only about the $ they bleed from us.
I don't know what some of the other guys said - haven't read this whole thread - but the CU was a good idea on paper. Everything to do with combat in SWG was broken. Armor, weapons, loot drops, buffs, and combat moves were all broken. They needed fixing, and a 'combat upgrade' was exactly what SWG needed. A complete overhaul of the combat system, mins, maxes, and all that stuff was absolutely needed to fix the game and get more people staying instead of cancelling.
What the game didn't need was new flashy particle effects and more half-assed implementations. Too bad that's what they 'fixed'.
I'd also say it didn't need a level system instead of the skill points, and it didn't need to make crafted stims obsolete, replacing them with "magic" heals.
Whatever crazy-ass patch brought in armour certification was also unnecessary, as was getting rid of innate armour for Teras Kasi. A lot of people got burned on all of these issues, for no helpful reason whatsoever. They just got burned.
If SOE would have cared to listen to the feedback from players on test, they would have realized all of this, and implemented changes and fixes that were desired and had been frequently requested.
People did want to deal with the unhealable mind pool, they did want more armour options than composite, and many did want to be able to go hunting without standing in line and paying for a doctor buff. They also wanted profession abilities to function and quests not to be broken.
All of these desires seem perfectly reasonable to me, and certainly not impossible to address. We've seen, however, that none of these realities mattered to SOE and LA once they got WoW in their eyes, and forgot about their own product's potential, and the desires of their own customers.
there are some valid points in this post, as well as a couple ones that I don't agree with. I was a doctor on my alt and definitely appreciated the Buff lines it forced players into a central Hub where one could meet other players. I agree that it was implemented wrong, it may have needed a buff all skill to lessen some of the wait. I can agree the Mind pool was the most hated, and the most overly attacked bar. it should have been used in a way that when the mind pool was down to zero that dizzy attached, knock downs occurred more frequently, you miss more frequently causing it not to be the end all be all, but part of a strategy.
Tera Kasi was probably the most over powered off all professions, which made no sense to me especially in a ranged weapon world. now Indoors in a cantina breaking out a can of tera Kasi whoop Arse where the person could not run would have balanced out the profession. infact now that I think about it if they had just took the range on the knockdown from say 15 to 20 in game feet, and placed it at a more reasonable level at say 3 in game feet it would have had the desired effect. Making Tera Kasi virtually unusable in a open enviroment. That would have balanced the profession right there.