Datachips

Yeah the clan eq thing is always iffy….in the past on clan EQ, when viewing the gear that your opponent had, the IMMs should be getting the brunt of the complaints. They’re the one’s who approved it and they’re the one’s who set that gear so twinky in the first place. I’m completely fine with there never being another set of clan eq again since it always seemed to be a battle between one IMM and another, as to who was going to give their side a slightly better edge, without it being enough to set off red flags. It’ll be good to see this go forever, so that there are less temptations to help your side out….and less things for people to complain about when getting stomped by the other side.

And yes, Mando’s did get clan gear: Armor, repeaters, medpacs, bracers…and…I feel there is something else I’m forgetting. The bracers were the only piece non-Mando’s could use and are still on a few characters, I know I have one or two in a locker somewhere.

I’ve said before that at the time, I really didn’t support the removal of datachips. I worried that any sort of quest based levelling system might end up being boring, and prolong levelling unnecessarily.

My MAJOR issue was also one gained in hindsight, and a completely different one to any that people have yet to mention here – from the standpoint of someone logging in, they are far more likely to stick around when the mud says ’30 players connected’ than they are if it says ‘8 players connected’, even if 22 of those 30 are botting. Call it weird, but I want those morning botters, because they push our numbers up.

Having SEEN the quest system Anna’s poured a lot of work into, I like. A lot of previously empty and otherwise empty worlds are given purpose by having these npcs, and it gives said newbies a great chance to explore when they stick around. As such, nerfed datachips are not a bad idea. I don’t necessarily think they should reward less xp than the skills give (with the exception of engineering, some class skills still give -minimal- xp. who’s ever levelled mid-level piloting by spamming radar, slicing by shorting a door, or combat by spamming gouge to level 100?) but having them set to specific classes rather than skills seems like a good compromise to bring them back in.

His point was that with datachips, people would leave themselves connected and botting all night so that at off-peak times there’d still be the appearance of healthy numbers. Without datachip botting, fewer people in general are botting which means they’re logging off when they’re not actively at the computer which gives the appearance of less healthy numbers at off peak times.

Also, keep in mind with all this datachip bashing, you’d STILL have to get science up to 30 WITHOUT datachips, so it’s not like you just roll out of the academy and overnight you’re 150s across the board. They’re not magic.

Maybe have them be for classes rather than skills, and have different qualities based on the skill % in hypothesize and theorize of the makers, and have the different qualities give different amounts of XP?

Alright, since my last post was erased, I’ll be brief:

The problems you claim come up with datachips, happen with quests. Nobody gets practice with their skills with quests the way they are, it’s just a different brand of monotony. Botting? I can almost guarantee that if you go to the Arkanian village, you’ll find someone camping the crystal shards.

Please put datachips back in. If you’re worried about them flooding the MUD, give them a charge like datapads and have them wear out once they run out of charge. There, now people need to buy new ones when they’re burnt out.

I’d be happy with class-based datachips instead of skill based. But as for function, I have another idea.

Why can people study a datachip just by itself? Datachips don’t work that way. I say kill two birds with one stone: Make datachips require a datapad to be readable. In addition, makes certain strength of datachips require certain datapad settings. That’ll require more gathering to level on datachips, and it’ll give more meaning to the sub-functions on datapads. As it is right now, nobody would have a real reason to own a datapad that isn’t master set, and it’ll make sense, instead of "What are you doing, reading the tiny print on the datachip over and over?"

Having a quest system to level is well and good, but the problem I see is one that’s been mentioned a lot already; Why so much work on code-enforced character development when the point of the game is really roleplay? Anyone who says LOTJ isn’t for roleplay is off their rocker. It’s definitely not some sort of action shooter. The fact that it’s a text based game precludes that notion.

Also, I don’t see where any of the quests really acclamate players with their class’ skills. By and large, the quests are "Go get this, which only spawns on an ungodly timer, and which will be camped by bigger or multiple players! Then bring it back to me for a couple dirty credit chits and an unsatisfying experience payout."

The quests for leveing should be more dynamic if they’re going to be our only reliable mode for leveling our characters. I know it’s not easy to write a long, involved quest, but that’s what makes it a quest, instead of a grind. Don’t you think there are plenty of players who stand at the spawn point with a timer going to snatch up the delivery items?

The quests need to be doable at any point in time by one character without another character interfering, so far as that interferance is them trying to do the same quest. They need to be replicatable. That issue, the backlog of players scrambling for one item/mob is WAY common in a lot of online games, and for no good reason.

I love the idea of quests. But they need to require some interaction. Smuggling quests should require a player to go around nicking goods (At appropriate levels), or well, smuggling things for clients. Slicer quests should have minigames where you hack computers, or intercept comm transmissions. Some of the classes should STAY with the delivery style turn-ins. For instance, combat, bounty hunting, and piloting. Pilots could haul literal items that are cargo, and maybe the items should even be tied in with their ships in some way, like the cargo running system we have now. They barely need quests anyway, except to circumvent boredom. Hunters and soldiers obviously can just go kill something and bring back the spoils; I see little issue there, although some spawns need to be either faster to meet player numbers, or be triggered so the mob’s always available.

Maybe some science quests could involve solving some math problems. Nothing really complex, but enough to give a sense of accomplishment. Maybe even scale the experience by the difficulty of the math problem, so if you can solve a complex one, you get a bigger reward.

I don’t know how much of this could be managable by the staff, but my point is that quests should be more than simple deliveries and waiting for respawns.

If we can’t get quests like that.. bring back the datachips. More generalized chips sounds great. It never did make sense to master certain skills that way.

As a side note: While it’s cool that you can _theoretically_ level slicing using only it’s skills, it’s still a long, tedious process. I think that the speed at which a player levels should only be restricted by how much effort they’re willing to put in.

Final note: If you made it through my whole post, you deserve a cookie. I know I’m long-winded.

Cool idea, though some may be difficult to represent via text. Tower of Hanoi, anyone?
| |
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– |
– –
– –

or something

Tower of… what?

As for the point of the actual thread, I think that datachips should be allowed back in with a ‘timer’ on them that was suggested by… someone back on the first page. You could use a master-crafted datachip a hundred times or so before it loses its effect due to wear and tear ( And I know even then that’s not enough to master a subject, ) so that’s… reasonable. You need credits to be able to get your fast-way-out. So that means even if you want to bypass questing, you still have to credit-raise to get to be able to do so.

"Do nothing at all and get everything."

This is true. I absolutely loath levelling. I hate sitting in one place for a week, picking up packages or diamonds or whatever else is laying around and have no ability to leave my keyboard and do something enjoyable. I hate researching for six hours to get skills. (Put practice back!) I hate tediously levelling piloting by flying around from planet to planet to planet.

As a result, every time I make a new character, fully over half of my levels remain un-worked on because I would rather jump into the roleplay aspect of the character, the reason I am here.

Solution?

– Return datachips for the ‘tedious grinding’ things like engineering and science, but DON’T for classes that actually should require some effort to learn, and be fun while doing it!
In that:
– Put in SHIP SIMULATORS, so I can go pirate hunting and fight my friends with any class of ship I like and actually get experience (both exp and the real kind) doing it without a risk to my life
– Improve combat training centers. I don’t want to stand in one place for an hour and shoot droids, I want to have some kind of mission to accomplish, fight my way through a zombie hoard and liberate the crown jewel of Coruscant from the evil, holographic boss droid ten rooms away, then fight my way back with increasing difficulty in both directions and put it in a receptacle to get more experience (along with the zombie hoard I just killed)
– Make blades, axes, knives, swords, whatever – worth something in combat to the average joe, please.
– More heart-pounding "they almost got me!" smuggling quests would be great.. ones that actually posed real danger instead of buying 50 blasters and standing in the spaceport twiddling your thumbs for ten minutes while the exp sink goes to work.