MMO's With Actual Consequences
- Thread starter nuzik
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I never really played SWG but understand it took a long time to unlock the 'Jedi ability'.... could people play for months to unlock it and then die within 5 minutes because they lagged out etc? Surely there must have been a few horror stories of this type of thing happening?
you got a few deaths before permadeath iirc
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Beware incoming wall of text.
As I recall in order to unlock a jedi character prior to the combat upgrade and the NGE (new game experience) you had to master 5 of the 32 professions. Each character would have a randomly selected 5 to master from the 32. Now to find out what professions you needed to master required you to loot (or buy) holocrons. These dropped from high end mobs that generally required groups to kill - and only one holo would drop at a time.
This lead to a lot of ninja looting and people grinding in game credits to buy holocrons. To fix this SOE gave each player a holocron as a Christmas gift.
Next problem was that holocrons only showed you the first 4 (possibly 3) professions you needed to master. Then it was a guessing game as to which profession you would need next. This lead to some very lucky people mastering 5 professions to get a jedi while others ended up mastering all 32 professions to get one.
Due to the nature of professions it was also much easier and cheaper (in terms of time and in game credits) to master combat professions over crafting ones.
Now you had a jedi character with a weak sabre and the skills and damage of a level 1
At this point jedi had to face a system called visibility. This was a stat that was not shown to players in game but it was there. It would get higher if players or npc's saw a jedi character using any force abilities or a light sabre.
When visibility got past a certain point your jedi character would get added as a kill bounty on the bounty hunter mission terminals. This was bad for any jedi who was not full template (fully levelled) as they would be an easy kill for a bounty hunter.
This led to jedi levelling up in very remote areas on the less popular and less populated planets in game to avoid being seen by players and npc's.
This system didn't last particularly long - it gave Bounty Hunters some fun content I think but it was a huge grind for most players who wanted to try playing a jedi.
The system was changed to a more quest based system surrounding a mysterious Force village. In the end though this was also a HUGE grind - I got my jedi this way - roughly 5 hours+ per night grinding combat xp for around 6 months to get a level 1 jedi then months more to level him up) to access a Jedi and although permadeath was removed at this point you get still get Bounty Hunters perusing you - death simply meant loosing some experience if you were not full template.
After this came the NGE and Jedi became a playable profession for anyone to chose (just weeks after I finished my full template Jedi - Smedley and SOE - I wont forget that!)
Phew
PS I have seen new, fresh Jedi running around cities showing off there newly acquired force skills or light sabres only to get smacked down by Bounty Hunters. SOE helped this a little by removing visibility caused by other Jedi - so you could group with other Jedi to level experience without the risk of building up visibility and if a BH did come for someone there would be 5 of you with the chance of two or three being jedi masters (or close to it) and a BH would get annihilated. I miss Jedi spin groups ( bunch of jedi would group, all take 2 missions each in the same direction. The group would go to each mission and spam area attacks - sabre spin was a jedi's potent area attack.)
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Asherons Call.
Everytime you die you drop items and receive vitae. Vitae lowers your stats by 5% each time up to a maximum of 40%. You can lower your vitae by killing monsters. The item drop is random but the more expensive an item the more likely it is to drop - so you could loose your armour or weapon for example.
You can tink your armour to add a no-drop on it or carry death items around with you but that adds burden. If you're overburdened you get hit more as you can't evade. You run slower. You use up stamina more.
Very well designed in my humble opinion. You could be about to log off and see a rare spawn and then it really is risk versus reward.
M.
Everytime you die you drop items and receive vitae. Vitae lowers your stats by 5% each time up to a maximum of 40%. You can lower your vitae by killing monsters. The item drop is random but the more expensive an item the more likely it is to drop - so you could loose your armour or weapon for example.
You can tink your armour to add a no-drop on it or carry death items around with you but that adds burden. If you're overburdened you get hit more as you can't evade. You run slower. You use up stamina more.
Very well designed in my humble opinion. You could be about to log off and see a rare spawn and then it really is risk versus reward.
M.