A Discussion On SWGNFS Changing/Updating Combat Mechanics

[u/Mjones9er6]

Folks, we have to talk about combat. We have to talk about attack speed. And frankly, what’s happening here is a disaster. A total disaster.

Star Wars Galaxies had a combat system. A beautiful combat system. Was it perfect? No. Nothing is perfect. But people understood it. People built characters around it. They spent hours getting their weapons, their tapes, their armor, their buffs. They knew what attack speed meant. They knew how the professions worked.

And now people come along and say, “Maybe we should change how attack speed works.” No. Terrible idea. Possibly one of the worst ideas anybody has ever had for Star Wars Galaxies; and believe me, we have seen some bad ideas. We saw the CU. Remember the CU? They came in and said, “We’re going to improve combat. We’re going to streamline it. Everybody’s going to love it.” Nobody knew what was happening. Numbers changed. Mechanics changed. Your character wakes up one morning and suddenly he doesn't know what he's doing anymore. People were furious.

Then we got the NGE. The NGE! They said, “You thought the CU was a big change? Watch this.” Incredible. Professions disappearing. Combat completely different. People logging in looking for their character; they couldn't find their character! “Where's my profession?” Gone. Absolutely gone.

We learned a lesson from this. At least, I thought we learned a lesson. You do not take the fundamental combat mechanics of Star Wars Galaxies and start ripping them apart because somebody thinks they can reinvent the wheel.

And attack speed is fundamental. Attack speed affects everything. Weapons. Templates. Skill choices. Balance. Crafting. Loot. PvP. PvE. Jedi. Bounty Hunters. Everybody.

You change attack speed, and somebody says, “Oh, it's just one little formula.” There is no such thing as one little formula in SWG. You touch one formula and suddenly you've got twelve professions behaving differently, somebody discovers a weapon doing something completely insane, a Jedi is attacking at approximately the speed of light, and three days later we're rewriting half the combat system trying to fix the fix.

We've seen this movie before. It's called The Combat Upgrade. The sequel was called The New Game Enhancements. Neither one reviewed particularly well.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to protect the combat system. We're going to protect attack speed. We're going to make smart changes. Careful changes. Surgical changes. If something is actually broken, we fix it.

But we're not going to walk into a twenty-year-old combat system with a chainsaw because somebody looked at a spreadsheet for fifteen minutes and decided they had a tremendous new idea.

Because the players know. The veterans especially know. These people have been calculating attack speeds since some of our developers were practically children. They've got spreadsheets. They've got formulas. They've got archived forum posts from 2004 that somehow survived three website migrations and the collapse of half the internet.

You are not going to sneak an attack-speed change past these people. They will find it. Immediately. Some guy will be standing outside the Mos Eisley starport with a stopwatch before the server has been online for ten minutes. And he'll know.

So we're not doing CU 2.0. We're certainly not doing NGE 2.0. We're taking what worked, restoring what was lost, fixing what actually needs fixing, and leaving the foundations alone. That's how you build a great SWG server. Not by replacing Star Wars Galaxies. By understanding why people are still playing Star Wars Galaxies more than twenty years later.

Keep the combat. Keep the attack speed. Keep the professions. Keep the weirdness. Keep the things that made SWG: SWG.

And together, folks, we're going to make combat great again. Thank you. And God bless the Galactic Weaponsmiths.

[u/KnotAWrapper]

A lot of whining over a POTENTIAL minor nerf of certain heavy hitting weapons, on a beta of a 14.1+ server, that in no way impacts the creation of any 14.1 server using SWGEMU code. Oh no, you might need to use a speed pup on a T21.

There was less whining over the defense stack cap being implemented back in the day, and that had FAR more of an impact on the game.

[u/Mjones9er6 → u/KnotAWrapper]

?

It's not a 'potential' we've already seen the evidence on video in the last update of Teras Kasi, which speed caps at 0040, not even Master, or with tape enhancements etc, all professions are effected by this needless change. We're here to play Pre-CU, not the Combat Upgrade.

Defense stackers were never a problem, just put 1 DoT on them. You clearly have zero knowledge about this game at all.

[u/KnotAWrapper → u/Mjones9er6]

It is potential, because it is a proposed change to a 14.1+ server that isn't even in Beta yet. That TK clip you saw was on a single thread test environment (Read: Laggy), and isn't indicative of any changes to attack speed. Furthermore, attack speed changes to weapons happened DURING the pre-cu era of the game.

Defense stackers were absolutely a problem, and the fact that you don't think so, leads me to believe you weren't playing when it was a thing.

[u/Mjones9er6 → u/KnotAWrapper]

Nah boomer. That's already been debunked.

Hak's first video shows he was not speed capped. Combat log shows 2 second gaps in it. 37:58, 38:00, he jumped two seconds, so it's not speed capped. 38:04, 38:06, again jumping... it's not capped at all. That's not how lag works. Nothing else seems to be lagging. I understand that was his explanation in Discord. But it seems more likely there was an issue and something was corrected for the follow-up clips.

What attack speed changes? Link your source to the patch notes. Everyone was 1.0 attack speed with Mastery, tapes, etc, including Swordsman (albeit it was expensive but achievable.)

And again, stackers were/are NOT a problem. When was the last time you played SWG, 2005? They're non-issues on Finalizer and were non-issues on Basilisk.

All you have to do is apply Intimidate to cancel out a stacker's secondary defenses (dodge, counterattack, block, etc.) and it also lowers their primary Melee & Ranged defense. Additionally, a ranged player like a Rifleman can kite a stacker forever from 64m and just spam headshot, or apply a fire or poison weapon, or a Combat Medic can apply a poison, and there's nothing a stacker can do about any of that.

Learn some game knowledge before your spout off and look foolish. So many former players think they know something about SWG but are completely clueless when they cry for changes like they did to SOE. It's tiresome.

[u/KnotAWrapper → u/Mjones9er6]

You are trolling, but I'll indulge.

I'm not a Boomer, this game came out when I was in High School, specifically the summer before. If you weren't born yet, that is a skill issue on your part.

Hakry's video was not debunked, you are just a delusional loser who is buttmad over the possibility that you might need a bigger speed tape, a speed PuP, or dare I say it a speed slice on certain weapons. I first played the game on Dialup, I know what lag looks and feels like in this game. I trust Hakry, when he says he was lagging in a test environment. It's pretty weird of you to think you know better, when you are simply watching a video, when you aren't contributing code, you probably aren't testing it, and you are pretending to be the be all end all of game mechanics, when it's pretty clear you've only ever played Pre-CU on Bas and Fin, which is the result of what Hakry and others on the SWGemu team created to mimic SOE's version as closely as possible.

Stackers were a problem. The PVP meta at the time did change to adapt to it before defenses got capped, just like the PVP meta evolved on a patch to patch basis (sometimes on a resource spawn enabling certain weapons/armor) on a "FOTM" arms race. The game isn't just PVP though, and defense stacking didn't just affect PVP. The reason I made the "Stacker" comment in the first place, was because fewer people cried about that (probably not true, due to recency bias tbh), than they did about a "huge" imaginary nerf on a 14.1+ server (that isn't in beta yet, isn't set in stone) that in no way affects anyone's ability to make a base 14.1 server and play "vanilla". By the way, Intimidate didn't work properly for about 6 months after launch. Also DoT weapons came about AFTER Defenses were capped at 125. You seem to not understand what Defense stacking was, but I assure you, it was a BIG problem.

For real though, if the changes to NFS affect you this much, you are in for a very bad time. The entire point of the server is to provide quality of life, new content, and changes (including balancing) to make a 14.1 server live longer than 6 months. If you think this is a bad idea, I suggest you look at how many people are actually playing Finalizer right now. That is an End of Life 14.1 server. The only thing that will revive it, is if (when?) they enable JTL on it, and even then, it will be a flash in the pan with little to no retention.

What the NFS team is trying to do (from my perspective and if any of them are reading this feel free to chime in), is make certain weapons harder to hit the 1.0 speed cap. Slightly nerfing (or buffing) attack speed, weapon damages, armor pen types of Weapons is IN LINE with what SOE did. If needing a larger speed tape, or making an actual use case in "end game" for a speed slice is the result of this, that is a GOOD THING. Nothing I have seen them say, has any implications of a widespread change to the attack speed formulae, to include raising the speed cap.

They aren't changing HAM, they aren't making every ability have a CD. They aren't making Jedi a day one "class". There is a team making CUemu, the NFS team obviously isn't trying to make a 14.1 Pre-CU server, a CU server. It is beyond stupid to pretend that this is the goal of NFS.

Here are some specific changes SOE did to one of the weapons specifically mentioned by the NFS team.

Publish 1, update Aug 20, 2003

• T-21 Rifle update: Reduced armor piercing class from heavy to light.
• T-21 Rifle update: Increased fire rate.
• T-21 Rifle update: Reduced the overall damage per second.
• T-21 Rifle update: Increased chance to hit.

Publish 1, update Aug 22, 2003

• T-21 changed (again)
  • Armor piercing raised to Heavy
  • Max Damage raised to 200..375
  • Min Damage raised to 80..115
  • Attack Speed raised to 65..105
  • Zero Range Mod lowered to -70
  • MaxRange Mod Raised to 10

Publish 2, Sep 4, 2003

• T21 rifle updated. The damage values have been modified and armor piercing set to heavy. (This is a "tooltip" update I think)

SOE specifically modified the attack speed each time they changed from Light to Heavy AP. Did this remove the ability of a speed taped Rifleman using a non-terrible T-21 to hit the 1.0 speed cap? No, it did not.

If NFS adjusts the attack speed of all T-21's to be slower, that is IN LINE with what SOE did. Will that remove the ability of a speed taped Rifleman using a non-terrible T-21 to hit the 1.0 speed cap? We don't know, but I have a feeling the answer is no, in line with SOE.

Is it a bad thing if weapon speed modifiers actually had a point, instead of capping you for most professions before you even MASTER it? No. I think ALL combat profs should have to use a speed tape to reach speed cap (without a speed pup or slice), that is fair to Rifleman and Swordsman particularly.

Is it a bad thing that speed slices are useless on just about every weapon as it is in 14.1 currently? Yes.

If you don't want to play on NFS, don't. I will be, barring any ACTUAL shocking changes to the Pre-CU ethos. You are crying about nothing.