B
BadgerSmaker
Guest
Welcome to this months "Teh Badger Blog", something new for this forums where you lucky people will bear witness to the stream of consciousness from one of SWGs most contronversial players (or so I am heard).
For my first trick:
NO TRADE Removal
For many years, SWG Developers would whack NO TRADE on an item to make sure players actually ran the content they designed to get the associated rewards/achievement rather then throw up a trade forum post for the rewards and log in to pick them up off their own vendor and then complain about a lack of content.
Now they are systematically undoing this game mechanic because the feedback from players was that it is no "fun".
The list of items for a first pass on No Trade removal includes "Heroic Jewellery", profession specific jewellery sets that make your character quite teh uber.
The jewellery comes from high end PvE content, each time a player completes an instance they are awarded one token for that instance. You need 4 tokens from one instance and two from another for each piece of jewellery and this makes for some compelling reasons to repeat the content.
Now you can just buy the stuff, so how will this effect SWG players? Well it seems like a return to sandbox gaming that SWG was famous for and still retains elements of, the Devs are basically giving players freedom to do whatever the hell they want with their hard fought rewards.
It's somewhat radical, I get the feeling that this would never had happened if Blixtev had still been around as this is not the move of a purist game Developer, but someone seems to have taken a long look at No Trade and then figured "Why exactly do we do this? Why don't we just scrap the whole thing?".
Exar Kun awaits another group farming him for credits.
In SWG most veteran players will have a stockpile of hundreds of millions of credits, there are no real credit sinks and making credits is pretty easy. For new players there is always the option to buy TCG Boosters and sell them for credits in game, but there is still no secure trade for this so it's risky, but not as risky as buying from a credit farmer website who will happily **** your credit card and account if you let them.
It's similar to the time when spendable XP went in during the Combat Upgrade and allowed you to buy Force Sensitive XP. All of a sudden XP can be used for something, except in this situation it is credits that you can now use on all new items. Conversely you can put the time, effort and risk into a system to get rewards and sell them to the highest bidder.
Player response to the change varies from surprised happiness to anger, anger because they feel these sets should be earned (which No Trade ensured), but this is either a purist or kneejerk reaction to change in general.
Players are looking forward to kitting out their Traders and Entertainers with heroic sets, which was almost impossible to do before.
Another system that has had the capitalism treatment is Chronicle Master. High end and very desirable reward items that were previously exclusive to those with the time and inclination to grind endlessly through the chronicles system will be available to loaded players. If you ever wanted to buy a complete set of holograms, you can do that too.
You want it? Buy it.
One thing SoE will not likely do, is make their TCG loot card items tradeable. Although this would be the most welcome and radical more, I doubt the suits in charge of the financial implications of such a change would approve it, they still want players throwing dollars at Booster Packs for a chance at loot.
Jedi Nerfed, LOLZ
In other news, Jedi get nerfed. The patch notes says: "The Block chance and Block Value on the meditation buff 'Visions of the Past' has been changed to 3% Evasion Chance and 30% Evasion Value. "
The meditation buff used to give 3% Block Chance & 450 Block Value... that's right, 450 Block Value. This wasn't a problem when the meditiation buff had a really short duration, Jedi players used their powerful Force Whine ability and got the duration extended and enabled Jedi to block tank like a commando, but now it has been nerfed.
I'm not sure how many Jedi will now stack Evasion, it's a pretty random mod as even with Evasion Value through the roof there is no minimum value, you can still Evade for 1% which is risky in terms of throwing all your stat points into. It may be useful Vs Officers and Commandos, but a Smuggler is just going to turn off Evasion and hit you for full damage.
Jedi just got some nice tweaks to expertise so I doubt this will really be missed.
And there you have it, comments welcome!
For my first trick:
NO TRADE Removal
For many years, SWG Developers would whack NO TRADE on an item to make sure players actually ran the content they designed to get the associated rewards/achievement rather then throw up a trade forum post for the rewards and log in to pick them up off their own vendor and then complain about a lack of content.
Now they are systematically undoing this game mechanic because the feedback from players was that it is no "fun".
The list of items for a first pass on No Trade removal includes "Heroic Jewellery", profession specific jewellery sets that make your character quite teh uber.
The jewellery comes from high end PvE content, each time a player completes an instance they are awarded one token for that instance. You need 4 tokens from one instance and two from another for each piece of jewellery and this makes for some compelling reasons to repeat the content.
Now you can just buy the stuff, so how will this effect SWG players? Well it seems like a return to sandbox gaming that SWG was famous for and still retains elements of, the Devs are basically giving players freedom to do whatever the hell they want with their hard fought rewards.
It's somewhat radical, I get the feeling that this would never had happened if Blixtev had still been around as this is not the move of a purist game Developer, but someone seems to have taken a long look at No Trade and then figured "Why exactly do we do this? Why don't we just scrap the whole thing?".
Exar Kun awaits another group farming him for credits.
In SWG most veteran players will have a stockpile of hundreds of millions of credits, there are no real credit sinks and making credits is pretty easy. For new players there is always the option to buy TCG Boosters and sell them for credits in game, but there is still no secure trade for this so it's risky, but not as risky as buying from a credit farmer website who will happily **** your credit card and account if you let them.
It's similar to the time when spendable XP went in during the Combat Upgrade and allowed you to buy Force Sensitive XP. All of a sudden XP can be used for something, except in this situation it is credits that you can now use on all new items. Conversely you can put the time, effort and risk into a system to get rewards and sell them to the highest bidder.
Player response to the change varies from surprised happiness to anger, anger because they feel these sets should be earned (which No Trade ensured), but this is either a purist or kneejerk reaction to change in general.
Players are looking forward to kitting out their Traders and Entertainers with heroic sets, which was almost impossible to do before.
Another system that has had the capitalism treatment is Chronicle Master. High end and very desirable reward items that were previously exclusive to those with the time and inclination to grind endlessly through the chronicles system will be available to loaded players. If you ever wanted to buy a complete set of holograms, you can do that too.
You want it? Buy it.
One thing SoE will not likely do, is make their TCG loot card items tradeable. Although this would be the most welcome and radical more, I doubt the suits in charge of the financial implications of such a change would approve it, they still want players throwing dollars at Booster Packs for a chance at loot.
Jedi Nerfed, LOLZ
In other news, Jedi get nerfed. The patch notes says: "The Block chance and Block Value on the meditation buff 'Visions of the Past' has been changed to 3% Evasion Chance and 30% Evasion Value. "
The meditation buff used to give 3% Block Chance & 450 Block Value... that's right, 450 Block Value. This wasn't a problem when the meditiation buff had a really short duration, Jedi players used their powerful Force Whine ability and got the duration extended and enabled Jedi to block tank like a commando, but now it has been nerfed.
I'm not sure how many Jedi will now stack Evasion, it's a pretty random mod as even with Evasion Value through the roof there is no minimum value, you can still Evade for 1% which is risky in terms of throwing all your stat points into. It may be useful Vs Officers and Commandos, but a Smuggler is just going to turn off Evasion and hit you for full damage.
Jedi just got some nice tweaks to expertise so I doubt this will really be missed.
And there you have it, comments welcome!
