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An Army of Bounty Hunters
Wepps
Member Posts: 1,322
A long time ago, some of us warned that if other, more interesting professional content wasn't added into the game, everntually everybody would be - either a Bounty Hunter, or a Jedi.
It seems that with the very first full respec that arrived with the Combat Upgrade, the ease in which a person can suddenly become a Master Bounty Hunter has created precisely this situation.
The most common Jedi whine today is that there are 5 bounty hunters for every jedi! Apparently, being allowed to hide in mobile homes and on an entire planet isn't enough, Bounty Hunters need to be nerfed etc ad-infinitum...
But it seems it's not JUST about hunting Jedi! In fact, it's not USUALLY about that at all!
Personally, I see no value in being griefed to death by a Jedi and their entire guild of chuckleheads defending them. I find no entertainment value in showing up at Theed, seeing a saber, then taking the mission and standing there - waiting for the proper time to run over and DB them. This is not what I'm paying for, and it's not good game play.
What I am paying for - is the BOUNTY. The thrill of the hunt, the return of credits to my pocket greater than anything else in the game. This is easily role-played, by nature of how it was designed!
A bounty Hunter takes a mission to find a mark. They then must see a spynet operative, and get a bio-signature to be used for the probe droid that must be called from space. Once that is sent, it findds the planet the mark is on, and when you arrive there you deploy seekers to pinpoint their position.
Search, find, hunt, kill.
Take the money and run.
When I was correspondent for the BHers, I tried like hell to get across to the developers that THIS was precisely what each and every profession was seeking!
CONTENT IS FOUND - IN THE PROFESSIONS THEMSELVES.
In this type of game, devoted to the Star Wars Universe, this must be the case. People play this game to go and do the things that were done in the movies, and live that life and lifestyle.
Every profession should have the same type of content as Bounty Hunter. I believe they began to implement that type of reasoning in the form of Entertainer missions, but Scout missions were (and still are) a joke. They were not designed for actual SCOUTS per-se, and were thrown in unbalanced and never corrected later.
They then stopped implementing this philosophical IWIN.
Commandos, all the combat professions, and Smuggelrs MUST have this content implemented if the game is ever to truly succeed.
I still hold out hope that with 20 they are FINALLY getting around to Smugglers. I sure hope they do it right.
The other night, I was hanging out waiting for the inevitable Sith attack on me, as I had just seen the old man. Another person begged me to help them, because the sith were coming after them too and he was lower CL. So, I formed a group with this guy, and for the very first time in his experience, I took him on a BOUNTY HUNT.
By the time we found the mark out in the middle of Corellia, he was so excited, he kept going on and on about maybe forgetting about Jedi and making a Bounty Hunter instead! He never realized that this content was available to him!
Well, now with the respec I am finding an Army of Bounty Hunters, many of them asking ME for directions on how to hunt - or even how to finish those last skill boxes.
MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, they aren't even asking me about Jedi. They are just having a ball tracking down and killing marks. Collecting the big payout is everything. And it's not personal, it's just business!
They love it!
Seems most of the complaints from Jedi are null really, the newbie Bounty Hunters are just enjoying the content! So, go to Kashyyyk, they don't care. Neither do I.
If the SWG development team ever gets around to implementing the mission preofessional content throughout the game to ALL the players, this game will really be on the move and they will no doubt have to add more servers.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Comments
Bounty hunting was definately one of the better parts of the game for me. Of course, I enjoyed the profession much more in the early days prior to having droids remotely work.
I'm not sure how content would flow for other combat professions, but I would like to see an xp requirement replaced with a requirement to pass certain quest based items. This is done already for the pilot professions. After the Novice box in the elite tree is filled, just take out xp all together. IMO, this would make having an elite profession mean something more then killing a bazzillion x npcs or beasts.
Lol, I will disagree on one point Wepps. I've always enjoyed the ensuing smack talk after I hit a jedi. If you're not trashed on the forums the next day, you didn't do a good job.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
You know, I always envisioned the Commando as this:
You are a trained elite element of one side or the other. To become a Commando, you should be required to chose a side in the GCW. (Unlike Bounty Hunters, who should always be neutral btw)
Now, we all know the jobs that Commandos are trained for in Star Wars. For the most part, an Imperial Commando is trained to defend important facilities. For the most part, a Rebel Commando is trained to destroy them.
Here lies the content for Commando then.
Missions go something like this -
1) Imperial Commando takes a mission at the terminal. "Defend the Tie Hangar out here in the middle of the desert" and it gives a waypoint. The Imperial Commando arrives at his asigned duty, there are a number of Imperial npc comrades there waiting for him. He then proceeds to check over the approaches, settuing traps, checking lines of fire and so forth. This facility has an objective, like all other missions, that must be destroyed. He is there to defend it.
2) Rebel Commando takes a mission at the terminal. "Destroy the Imperial Tie Hangar at ...and so forth". The Rebel Commando gets a waypoint to a number of NPC Commandos, waiting for him to arrive and give the order to attack.
Both the Rebel and Imperial have the same mission. Both missions are placed on the terminals simultaneously. Therefore, it's conceivable, BUT NOT REQUIRED, that these two will meet at the objective and duke it out.
The mission has a timer. If the Rebel doesn't arrive in time to his squad, the squad leaves without him and the mission incompletes. Something appropriate.
Assuming everyone arrived, the Rebel targets his sergeant and orders the assault.
They sweep in, let's assume they overwhelm the Imperials.
The Rebel has choices. He can fire rockets at the objective, but he could also sneak in undetected (now having those abilities) and place charges on the objective, then leaving the area.
The result...massive series of big bangers, lots of TIE parts strewn across the desert.
The reward - faction, and money. Mostly faction though, since this is what a Commando in the GCW SHOULD receive.
Increases in factional rewards would also be appropriate.
THIS is how the Commando's game play should be. If nothing else, they need a complete rework now, being so buggered up after the CU.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Smuggler is easy, just copy Star Wars.
It's much the same idea as the Bounty Hunter really. Smuggler takes mission "Take the cargo to some unknown guy, you will be notified later who" etc.
Smuggler meets his contact in a Cantina, or Jabba's, Valerian's, maybe the Starport. Maybe in a player city!
Contact gives waypoint to the goods. Once he has the goods in inventory, he gets to his ship and launches. (no travel)
Once in space, he is updated by radio where to take the goods. Could be a rendezvous in space, could be a ground target on any planet. Whatever it is, the Smuggler has to get past the Imperials at most to get the goods to the destination. If found out, the Imperials, or other security forces on duty, should become attackable allowing the Smuggler to fight his way out of the situation.
If he succeeds, the reward should be quite a bit, something near Bounty Hunter pay, or at least a sizeable portion of that depending upon difficulty.
If he fails, the organization he was working for MIGHT place a bounty on him!
If he does too much work for Jabba that ends up ticking off Valerian, SHE might put a bounty on him.
And so forth.
Smuggler bounties should be rare though, not the constant overt bounties existing with Jedi.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
The other combat professions are all at a basic level Mercenaries. Working for money to do a job, just something more attuned to assassinations, or protecting some npc from an attack.
Artisan missions of all types are okay, but they don't seem to give enough xp per assembly to warrant pursuing that content on a more than limited basis. (I understand reason here, but I think the extremely limited xp gains are just not good game play)
Entertainer missions are okay, but they require 10 minutes of performance AFTER arriving at the waypoint. Should be no more than 5 really.
All missions, with the exception of Bounty Hunters, should somehow lead a player towards joining a side in the GCW. This is really the end-game here in Star Wars, without which it's just...Star.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
I just like to add the smuggler bounty should work off of a fame based system. The more infamous a smuggler you are the highly the chances a bounty will be on your head. Death by bh knocks down your fame reducing the payout for a bounty on your head. The fame number should be public and a smuggler can choose to surpass the requirement by running missions that will place them over the fame limit. Fame decays with time just like jedi visibility. It should be easy to port that code over to smuggler and make the fame visible on the character sheet.
Space deaths should be allowed and ENCOURAGED for smugglers bounties.
SOE is dumb they could have added smuggler player bounties and done it right. It is really a shame this discussion for a game this old is still in debate format. Player bounties where promised on this game beyond jedi during beta and the same excuse still exists. We want to do it right and make certain there is no griefing or exploitation of the system. I hope someone at soe wakes up the developers on tuesday morning and has them do some actual work. I know surfing the net, getting coffee and recapping the drunken weekend is "important" but I would really like soe to do a little real work above and beyond there normal 15 minutes a day.
I agree it would be nice if they open up missions for the various classes. I think they plan to. As they revamp each class... starting with Smuggler.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
I agree with the smuggler mission and bounites on the failed smugglers.
To mix up the bounty hunter regimine a suggestion would be to give the different neutral faction or the smuggling rings (like jabba, cobral, nym, valarien, theres alot of them) the boutny hunter mission terminals. The leaders or their assistant npc's could give out all of the missions that would include smuggler fails, jedi, reg npc bounties, and bounty hunters from other factions. This would turn the bounty hunter into almost a soldier for the faction which is not the intended purpose (they could crossover i guess, that would make it nteresting). This idea would also kill off the massive bounty hunter numbers a little bit and get them not to focus on the jedi as much. I personally think that there are already too many jedi atelast on my server (chilastra) and this would probably promote the jedi numbers which also need to be atleast halved.
None of this will probably happen, but one can dream can't he...
I am kind of torn between letting BH hunt the Smugglers who fail too many missions and such. For the most part I like the idea, but if it is implemented similar to Jedi bounties, all the BH will be hunting Smugglers because they will be easier to find and stalk. Not necessarily easier to kill since they all will have Last Ditch unlike Jedi, but Smugglers don't tend to hide out grinding exp in the instanced zones.
True but it'll be much harder for smugglers to wind up on the terms if you think about it. They'd have to fail X number of missions first. Or get lower than X faction with one of the crime syndicates (Jabba/Valarian/etc).... you can control that easily if you pay attention.
When was the last time you failed a mission? Or couldn't raise your faction with Jabba or Valarian pretty quickly?
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
True but I doubt SOE will make it that easy to get on the terms for your average player. I suspect it'll be a criminal faction only thing. If they made it reb/imp every player in the game who's declared a faction would be on the terms
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas