Datachips

"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.

I agree with Skiia. Although questing isn’t all that hard, I can level most of the classes in a day or so, except for diplomacy.

Datachips would bring you… to the land of RP! Now, most of people are too afraid to go out and do something.

Quests could either bring more experience, or bring back datachips.

Thanks for your feedback on this topic. We’ll post the plan when the staff has reached a consensus.

[u:1z03nqs6][b:1z03nqs6]Datachips:[/b:1z03nqs6][/u:1z03nqs6] The questing system needs to be expanded, and this is being addressed, but the expanded quests won’t come until the new timeline. More quests need to be added, and quests need to be written to use skills. Datachips will be added, however, to supplement the questing system.

Datachips that are class specific and not skill specific will be implemented that give between 1,000 and 2,500K experience per successful hit.

Datachips will not raise any skill at all.

Datachips will deteriorate with use, and need to be replaced.

I understand that datachips are back in already. I’m not sure if they’ve been coded according to our agreement, but it is still my intention to bring this plan to fruition. The datachips in game will remain as they are until the new plan is finished, if it’s not coded already.

Also, the quest system has been expanded, and is still being expanded. The experience payout has increased significantly, as well.

I agree with Anna. Additionally, I don’t think datachips should be brought back to the game. Leveling skills is easy enough as it is, being able to bot all your skills in such a simplified way devalue the gameplay of the mud in a number of ways.

I could explain in breadth and depth the reasons why you are wrong and dumb, but it would only serve to waste time and frustrate me, and it would teach you nothing.

Sorry to bust your bubble Fishy, but you are already frusterated. I read through the posts here, and don’t really understand the argument that datachips bring you to the land of RP. LOTJ as much as we’d like to say its an RP mud, is also very much an action mud. The action side of the mud should be respected just as much as the RP side. Grinding and leveling is a part of the game, and this is something that every action game has. Someone who doesn’t mind spending the time to grind out levels, grind credits, find the max stats, max eq, should be rewarded.

Part of being in an action game is taking part in the quests, exploring the planets and leveling/statting out your character and perhaps even engaging in PK.

You want to RP? Go ahead and do it..don’t want to level? then don’t..

I look at datachips like the bumper lanes in the bowling alley. A pro bowler shouldn’t be in the same game as someone who is getting a handicap. I understand why fishy would think otherwise..

I’d quote Fishy’s argument, but that’d be a bit redundant.

Datachips as they are now seem fine, and it seems like one of the better ways to get things done seeing as there’s been a lot of setbacks for people. Both in lost items and time what with the crashes and lag, and plenty of lost time due to traveling now that things are farther apart and ships are slow right now.

My concern with the new 1000-2500 exp per ‘hit’ thing with datachips is how often is that going to happen? If it only happens about as often as you get a science percentage when you’re after 90%, then there’s no point at all. imo, datachips help people who don’t have hours and hours and hours and hours to spend leveling, much less be on the mud period, still be an active and able part of the environment.

Aside from that, there’s not much way I can keep repeating I think datachips are fine as they are right now. If there’s suddenly twenty million of them on every subject being passed around like candy, then that’s one thing, but there’s not. And right now if you -want- to take the shortcut and level up with a datachip, you still have to put that bit of effort forward generating funds to buy the datachip to begin with. And as far as I’ve seen, they’re all being sold for quite a pretty penny.

Researching in a library and studying in the plaza ARE NOT PACKAGE QUESTS. Standing around studying an object in the plaza and RPing is something you do with DATACHIPS.

The huge gay package orgy is waiting around for some fucking object to spawn so you can pick it up and spend 20 minutes flying to cash it in for XP. Medical has nothing but packages up until diagnose. Smug is primarily packages or the stupid annoying Nal Hutta quests that need high combat and gear to do.

Espionage is fucking worthless except for like.. 3 skills (and that’s being generous). So there goes that (terrible) argument.

Nobody’s saying take away research, nobody’s said ANYTHING ABOUT research except you because you somehow think "research" = "doing package quests". All I’m saying is "there should be other feasible ways to level besides package quests because package quests are terrible, and datachips are a reasonable thing that should continue to exist". More bad quests is not the solution, and never will be. Hell, more good quests isn’t the solution either. If I want to play fucking World of Warcraft, I will.

"package" classes: slicer ( new schools might alleviate this), espionage (IDs are still packages), science (ugh…), smuggling (diamonds and, again, rifles are still packages). Packages are a real headache this early in the TL when everyone is scrambling to level up. It’s a problem if i’m seriously considering incapping people for getting to packages before me.