Originally posted by Warmaker It enabled the equipping of 90% Stun Composite Armor and still be able to spam costly HAM skills. It enabled widespread access of armor that had only ONE damage type weakness, despite there being about a dozen damage types such as Blast. Stun weapons became kings. In a game where there were so many damage types and so many weapons with those damage types, there really should not have been a single type of armor that could protect against EVERYTHING but 1 damage type. As time passed, more people were grumbling about this, but the CU came about and changed the armor / damage type system drastically.
Furthermore, the ripple effect of doctor buffs were felt even farther down the line...in the crafting process for armor and weapons...which allowed 90% protection armor in the first place, because the built in tradeoffs for armor crafting were made pointless by doc buffs.
Armorsmiths no longer had to make a tradeoff between encumbrance or protection when crafting armor. There was no longer a need to address encumbrance, because doctor buffs to secondaries made even terrible encumbrance armor trival to wear.
The buffs to secondaries (drain and recharge rates) also rendered a lot of WS crafting tradeoffs moot. Why worry about a carbine's action cost when the action secondaries were rendered trivial by doc buffs? Carbineers no longer had to worry about using their high drain specials when their quickness pool was enlarged and their stamina pool recharged their action much faster.
This also altered the way smugglers operated, although it didn't have the same very serious impact that it did on crafters. Smugglers could, on armor, affect encumbrance or protection, and on weapons, could affect action cost or damage. Obviously with doc buffs taking care of the secondary pool effects, you'd slice for protection on armor and damage on weapons. It was a no brainer to do that.
One time I deliberately put on some padded without doc buffs and tried to play as I normally played and I nearly killed myself doing so, because the secondary recharge and drain pools functioned in a very different way unbuffed than buffed, and this had a direct impact on both your ability to wear armor and your ability to use a weapon.
The early days of SWG demanded that groups very smartly address mission lairs, for example, taking them down in a very disciplined manner, because making a mistake could get you killed, even if you were wearing armor, because armor forced a tradeoff between agility and protection that if you were not careful in addressing would send you to the cloner. This was particularly challenging in the "rings of death" that were created by abanonded missions around the various starports on the adventure worlds. I recall Endor in particular having belts of mission lairs that were a serious challenge to penetrate because mission lairs were packed so close to each other and with social mobs you had hairy fights on your hands. Doc buffs rendred all this content a lot easier because the drain and recharge rates for the pools had a very dramatic impact on your ability to survive, with or without armor.
The first two to three months of SWG were tremendous fun because doc buffs and armor (and some weapons) were not in the game in their supercharged fashion. The game played very differently than it did six months after launch. The power levels of the elite professions, coupled with the massive nerf of nearly every creature mob in the game in December '03 in part to make CH no longer attractive to power gamers, rendered a lot of the PvE content much less difficult than it was before. People started complaining that the game was too easy.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Wow, I'd have to really think. I don't really recall anything being flat-out broken. I was too much of a noob back then. Could you blame me? To think, I was just running around in an MMO having a blast rather than maxing out my stats and having the latest set of gear.
Anyways, I'm not exactly sure, but I remember these classes being mostly broken or not really working at all (at release):
BH, Pistoleer, Squad Leader, Chef...bah, I don't even want to think about this anymore. All those fun times I used to have....
______________________ Give a man some fun and you entertain him for a day. Teach a man to make fun and you entertain him for a lifetime.
The buffs to secondaries (drain and recharge rates) also rendered a lot of WS crafting tradeoffs moot. Why worry about a carbine's action cost when the action secondaries were rendered trivial by doc buffs? Carbineers no longer had to worry about using their high drain specials when their quickness pool was enlarged and their stamina pool recharged their action much faster. One time I deliberately put on some padded without doc buffs and tried to play as I normally played and I nearly killed myself doing so, because the secondary recharge and drain pools functioned in a very different way unbuffed than buffed, and this had a direct impact on both your ability to wear armor and your ability to use a weapon. The early days of SWG demanded that groups very smartly address mission lairs, for example, taking them down in a very disciplined manner, because making a mistake could get you killed,The first two to three months of SWG were tremendous fun because doc buffs and armor (and some weapons) were not in the game in their supercharged fashion.
Sorry I edited out a lot but I just wanted to think back on some of this.
Yes much of the problem was at first many resources weren't spawned.. and you saw what happened later when they were. Makes me wonder if they never had these in beta.. as they should have noticed this. I was in beta but out of country a lot at the time.. so I really couldn't keep up.
Makes me sad to think about it because for me Pre-CU was the greatest MMO that existed (not looking for a debate.. just a mid like crisis statement). I used to say it was UO... but anyway... *sigh*
Biggest thing I remember early on.. was Combat Medics spamming every disease they had one people... and putting them into an infinite incap loop....
I was in beta 3, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that high end elite professions were not adequately tested...either the combat profs to see if the various specials worked as intended, nor, even more importantly, the crafting profs who provided the weapons and armor to the combat profs.
Part of this has to do with the nature of the resource system in SWG. As brilliant as it is, the thing about it is that it takes about six months, on average, for enough high end (900+ quality) resources to spawn to allow you to see what will happen when those resources are used in the crafting system and what they will produce in the way of every one of the crafted items that impact the combat system. Doc buffs, armor stats, weapons stats, food stats, BE pets...the list goes on.
Because of the depth and complexity of the original crafting system (the current crafting system is but a shadow of the original, but it's still among the deepest on the market) it just was not fully stressed in beta. There's no way it could have been by "natural" means. Some weapons, for example, had specific resource types that were needed for crafting. Flamethrowers, to offer an example, were gated by a specific metal that had to spawn to build them. The odds that the specific metal would spawn with high qualities was quite low, so the first FTs might not have such awesome stats as they could have had, so the full effect of the FT on PvP, for example, might not be seen on Bloodfin, but might well be seen on Starsider, because each server had its own resource spawn tables.
The devs didn't go and test everything maxed to see what would happen. As a result, they wound up nerfing things willy nilly because they didn't bother to test the high end, in terms of crafted goods or skill system abilities in beta 3. They just shoved it out the door and hoped for the best.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
When I started I went for marksmen. I did not notice any bugs the first month but then again I was addicted to leveling and sat outside cities till I felt safe enough to wonder alone. In the days when all you could do was walk. Man that took some time out of the night lol. I ended up focusing on CH and got master after my 2nd month of playing. Tha't's when I saw my bugs. Ceatures not following you past city lines. You had to pack them and recall them. In the begining MCH could call 3 rancors, but that was knocked down to two and then eventually 1 if I remember correctly. But there was a time when you could only call 2, that if you went past city lines your rancors would stop, unjoin your group and you could call another rancor. People freaked out about it cause your other two rancors would eventually rejoin your group and just spawn right next to you.
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).
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.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
There were 1 thing, IMO, that sent the combat system astray:
Composite Armor: There is a major problem, IMO, when you allow a single type of armor to have such outstanding resistances across the board except for one (Stun). But the hindrances on HAM recovery by this type of armor was very steep. It *would* have been fine if it wasn't for Doctor Buffs that allowed the wear of such costly armor and still have great HAM regens.
Now, I'm not laying alot of blame on Doctor Buffs. But I place alot of the blame on Composite Armor itself. It really, really needed more weaknesses.
The armor also limited the weapon selection PvPers would use. Either you were a DOT whore or you relied alot on Stun weapons. Movie-iconic weapons such as E-11 and DL-44 Blasters were worthless.
Speaking of movie-iconic weapons, one of the very few things I liked with the CU was making such weapons more desirable, and especially the introduction of the E-11 Mk.II Carbine.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
You know when I read all of these issues regarding bugs, armour imbalance, megabuffs etc. I can't help thinking about the CURB work that was being done to address many of these very issues. My next thought, unfortunately, is how and why this was scrapped. Oi vey. So many lessons to be learned.
Comments
Furthermore, the ripple effect of doctor buffs were felt even farther down the line...in the crafting process for armor and weapons...which allowed 90% protection armor in the first place, because the built in tradeoffs for armor crafting were made pointless by doc buffs.
Armorsmiths no longer had to make a tradeoff between encumbrance or protection when crafting armor. There was no longer a need to address encumbrance, because doctor buffs to secondaries made even terrible encumbrance armor trival to wear.
The buffs to secondaries (drain and recharge rates) also rendered a lot of WS crafting tradeoffs moot. Why worry about a carbine's action cost when the action secondaries were rendered trivial by doc buffs? Carbineers no longer had to worry about using their high drain specials when their quickness pool was enlarged and their stamina pool recharged their action much faster.
This also altered the way smugglers operated, although it didn't have the same very serious impact that it did on crafters. Smugglers could, on armor, affect encumbrance or protection, and on weapons, could affect action cost or damage. Obviously with doc buffs taking care of the secondary pool effects, you'd slice for protection on armor and damage on weapons. It was a no brainer to do that.
One time I deliberately put on some padded without doc buffs and tried to play as I normally played and I nearly killed myself doing so, because the secondary recharge and drain pools functioned in a very different way unbuffed than buffed, and this had a direct impact on both your ability to wear armor and your ability to use a weapon.
The early days of SWG demanded that groups very smartly address mission lairs, for example, taking them down in a very disciplined manner, because making a mistake could get you killed, even if you were wearing armor, because armor forced a tradeoff between agility and protection that if you were not careful in addressing would send you to the cloner. This was particularly challenging in the "rings of death" that were created by abanonded missions around the various starports on the adventure worlds. I recall Endor in particular having belts of mission lairs that were a serious challenge to penetrate because mission lairs were packed so close to each other and with social mobs you had hairy fights on your hands. Doc buffs rendred all this content a lot easier because the drain and recharge rates for the pools had a very dramatic impact on your ability to survive, with or without armor.
The first two to three months of SWG were tremendous fun because doc buffs and armor (and some weapons) were not in the game in their supercharged fashion. The game played very differently than it did six months after launch. The power levels of the elite professions, coupled with the massive nerf of nearly every creature mob in the game in December '03 in part to make CH no longer attractive to power gamers, rendered a lot of the PvE content much less difficult than it was before. People started complaining that the game was too easy.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Wow, I'd have to really think. I don't really recall anything being flat-out broken. I was too much of a noob back then. Could you blame me? To think, I was just running around in an MMO having a blast rather than maxing out my stats and having the latest set of gear.
Anyways, I'm not exactly sure, but I remember these classes being mostly broken or not really working at all (at release):
BH, Pistoleer, Squad Leader, Chef...bah, I don't even want to think about this anymore. All those fun times I used to have....
______________________
Give a man some fun and you entertain him for a day. Teach a man to make fun and you entertain him for a lifetime.
Sorry I edited out a lot but I just wanted to think back on some of this.
Yes much of the problem was at first many resources weren't spawned.. and you saw what happened later when they were. Makes me wonder if they never had these in beta.. as they should have noticed this. I was in beta but out of country a lot at the time.. so I really couldn't keep up.
Makes me sad to think about it because for me Pre-CU was the greatest MMO that existed (not looking for a debate.. just a mid like crisis statement). I used to say it was UO... but anyway... *sigh*
Biggest thing I remember early on.. was Combat Medics spamming every disease they had one people... and putting them into an infinite incap loop....
I was in beta 3, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that high end elite professions were not adequately tested...either the combat profs to see if the various specials worked as intended, nor, even more importantly, the crafting profs who provided the weapons and armor to the combat profs.
Part of this has to do with the nature of the resource system in SWG. As brilliant as it is, the thing about it is that it takes about six months, on average, for enough high end (900+ quality) resources to spawn to allow you to see what will happen when those resources are used in the crafting system and what they will produce in the way of every one of the crafted items that impact the combat system. Doc buffs, armor stats, weapons stats, food stats, BE pets...the list goes on.
Because of the depth and complexity of the original crafting system (the current crafting system is but a shadow of the original, but it's still among the deepest on the market) it just was not fully stressed in beta. There's no way it could have been by "natural" means. Some weapons, for example, had specific resource types that were needed for crafting. Flamethrowers, to offer an example, were gated by a specific metal that had to spawn to build them. The odds that the specific metal would spawn with high qualities was quite low, so the first FTs might not have such awesome stats as they could have had, so the full effect of the FT on PvP, for example, might not be seen on Bloodfin, but might well be seen on Starsider, because each server had its own resource spawn tables.
The devs didn't go and test everything maxed to see what would happen. As a result, they wound up nerfing things willy nilly because they didn't bother to test the high end, in terms of crafted goods or skill system abilities in beta 3. They just shoved it out the door and hoped for the best.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
When I started I went for marksmen. I did not notice any bugs the first month but then again I was addicted to leveling and sat outside cities till I felt safe enough to wonder alone. In the days when all you could do was walk. Man that took some time out of the night lol. I ended up focusing on CH and got master after my 2nd month of playing. Tha't's when I saw my bugs. Ceatures not following you past city lines. You had to pack them and recall them. In the begining MCH could call 3 rancors, but that was knocked down to two and then eventually 1 if I remember correctly. But there was a time when you could only call 2, that if you went past city lines your rancors would stop, unjoin your group and you could call another rancor. People freaked out about it cause your other two rancors would eventually rejoin your group and just spawn right next to you.
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.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
There were 1 thing, IMO, that sent the combat system astray:
Composite Armor: There is a major problem, IMO, when you allow a single type of armor to have such outstanding resistances across the board except for one (Stun). But the hindrances on HAM recovery by this type of armor was very steep. It *would* have been fine if it wasn't for Doctor Buffs that allowed the wear of such costly armor and still have great HAM regens.
Now, I'm not laying alot of blame on Doctor Buffs. But I place alot of the blame on Composite Armor itself. It really, really needed more weaknesses.
The armor also limited the weapon selection PvPers would use. Either you were a DOT whore or you relied alot on Stun weapons. Movie-iconic weapons such as E-11 and DL-44 Blasters were worthless.
Speaking of movie-iconic weapons, one of the very few things I liked with the CU was making such weapons more desirable, and especially the introduction of the E-11 Mk.II Carbine.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
You know when I read all of these issues regarding bugs, armour imbalance, megabuffs etc. I can't help thinking about the CURB work that was being done to address many of these very issues. My next thought, unfortunately, is how and why this was scrapped. Oi vey. So many lessons to be learned.