The Phase 3 Captains Mission Rant

[Seret Sajet]

Ok, So far I've been very positive about these FS quests. They've been beneficial, simple and unique. I gave this system nothing but glowing praise... that is until now. If you take missions from the Captain during our current phase I warn you, you'd had more fun teaching a dog to do your taxes.

So lets explain, here's what must be done. First speak to the captain and he will go into the long-winded explanation. Basically you have to find some Sith outlaws and thugs (Thugs have 54K HAMs and 80% resists) somewhere on Dathomir. That's right, SOMEWHERE on Dath. Have fun wearing your speeder down to dust. Once you find and beat them you must loot two things, a waypoint disk and a shield codes disk.

Now that you have both of those go talk to the Captain again. Tell him about each disk and he'll give you the camp locations (yes plural) and a device so you can shut down the shield generators at the camp.

Now you must check each camp and find which one matches your codes. You'll notice some MSE Droids called "<NAME> Surveillance Droids" outside the camps. If the <NAME> matches your shield shutdown device you're in the right place. You just did the easy part, now comes the pain.

You must defeat 5 of the Sith Thugs (see above for the HAM and resists) to spawn the commander. Mind you there is not just 5 thugs at the camp, there is more like 15-20. Someone also told me for every person in our group the Thug's HAMs double but I can't say if that's true, I just know they'll kick your ass. Now it would be fairly easy for a big group to kill 5 people, if not for the fact that only the person who took the Captain's mission can kill the 5 so they count. Maybe if more of the group took the mission it would count but who can tell.

After you kill 5, and proceed to get attacked by the other 10, a Sith Commander will spawn inside the camp. Now you must blow up the Gate, attack and destroy the Antennae and destroy a second gate inside. Whoopee now you're at the commander. You must click on him and choose "capture" from the radial menu. Now you must get him back to the village and stick with him because if he gets attacked and dies its all over. You also get a bonus if one person in the group shuts down the shields while another captures the commander. The bonus is +900 Mind Buff Crystal that works every 96 hours. Not so bad, commander captured, its all over right?

Wrong. Its not over till the fat rodian sings. Seems the Commander is loyal so he takes a toxic suicide pill. You now only have one hour to get him back to the village before he dies. But wait, how far away is the village? Well the camps are generally 8k-9k away from the village and you pretty much have to walk it. HAVE FUN KIDS!

Sure there is a level of strategy here kids. You could go with a large group, kill a bunch and have your buds distract the Sith while you capture the commander. Hey I got damn close the other night with a bunch of strangers and Skarr, Dwilah, Dooo, Oeree and Del'tar. Even our huge group couldn't dent those guys but we fought anyway.

Basically my word to the devs on this mission is what is with all the uber NPC and tedious objective missions? What is the point of SBDs on the vette, the uber droids and death watch at the Death Watch Bunker and these Sith Shadow Thugs? Why make missions like these just to unlock the ability to train in one stinking FS tree so much of a pain? Where is fun is all these. They just end up being tedious, frustrating and eventually tiresome until the reward is no longer worth it.

Maybe I'm bitchy. Maybe I'm bored with these aspects of the game and burned out on failure. If so I accept that. But I'd like to know what you all think of the mission I just laid out. Is the Melee Accuracy FS tree worth all that to you?

[dragunno]

i would have to say just by reading all that the answer to that would not be no. but hell no!!!!!!!!!! i am sorry maybe i dont fs skills now after reading that it really seems like more of qa pain then anything.

[Jabe Adaks]

Oh boy. That sucks. I could rant more, but I really just agree with Seret on that one.

Jabe

[Dwilah]

Meh. =/ I really don't have much to say except there's a reason why I'm not going for Jedi. I recently got kinda pissed that the medical missions on Phase....whatever that I did (which was nothing but tedious crafting) unlocked my Persuasion tree. NOT the Medical tree. What the crap. But I feel your pain Seret...that does seem really ridiculous, especially the suicide pill thing. =/

[Seret Sajet]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Even the FS Crafting missions are wearing thin on me.

I just got Cista to the village for the first time last night and started the phase 3 crafter. It requires me to build any of 6 parts for the shields. Each part takes 10 of the Sith loot resources in varying amounts. Some take 10 ostrine ore while others take 5 or one ore, 4 of another and one enery. It doesn't matter which ones you make but you have to craft 20 total parts.

So after using the resources we had stored on Lok, a ton from Dooo, a ton from Snewpy, a few I bought from various people around the village, a ton I bought from a nice gal on Dantooine (to Alexandria Nexus here on the forum, thank your neighbor Aarolin again for me) and a big chunk of what we have stored on Corellia I still only had enough to craft 18 parts. I was about to pass out from tediousness.

[Keer]

Damn! Captain America would pass on that mess.

I've been up and down on this FS thing since it started. First I decided to pass on it outright due to Role Play considerations of not having my character touching The Force with a 10 foot pole. Then I figured that I might as well do something with all of the extra XP that I have and will have more of, plus the 3 floating Skill Points that I will have after my last box of Teras Kasi is done.

So I planned to start on it, but gradually, so I could take a break from the levelling aspect of the game for a while and concentrate more on Role Play. I've been mostly grinding a triple master template since April.

THEN, while hunting, I noticed one player in my Solo Group just raking in the juicy loot. From the Group messages I could see that we were both hunting Enraged Rancors, but all I had gotten was Rancor Bile and a few armor segments. So I called him and he told me that he had the "Luck" FS skill and that it gives you a chance at better loot! This I had kown prior, but I didn't think that the payoff would be that high for having the skill. So then I'm thinking maybe I better ratchet up my FS quest plans, because my taste for loot has done nothing but increase the more I play this game.

Now, I see Seret's outline of what's to come and I'm back to Square Zero :lol: Fuuug Dat! I ain't chasing the leprechaun to get the FS Lucky Charms. Keer'll just have to get by without the midichlorian symbiotes. I'll Role Play Teras Kasi Master as a mystic and spiritual road to Loot gathering on some "Buddha provides" type shtit. :lol: Whatever.

I'll concede that I'm a bit ornery myself now, because I can't get into the damned game for Keer to even pretend to think about this stuff, but I'm sure that I won't be dealing with El Force now.

I will give SOE credit for making it a hard road for just Force Sensitivity not to mention Jedi. It is supposed to be very rare. And it IS more quest related which is what most people asked for. It's not grinding professions so much as grinding quests but I'll buy that. It's just not for me. And this time the already shakey economy didn't have to suffer to do it.

[Keer]

Basically my word to the devs on this mission is what is with all the uber NPC and tedious objective missions? What is the point of SBDs on the vette, the uber droids and death watch at the Death Watch Bunker and these Sith Shadow Thugs? Why make missions like these just to unlock the ability to train in one stinking FS tree so much of a pain? Where is fun is all these. They just end up being tedious, frustrating and eventually tiresome until the reward is no longer worth it.

My last post was responsive toward the FS quest, this one is my opinion regarding the "uber NPC tedious mission objectives" part.

My general answer is that we are still dealing with an incomplete product of a game here. This is not a the start of an anti-Galaxies tirade, just bear with me.

Apart from the concept of "no MMO is ever really complete" the evolution of Star Wars Galaxies to it's current point has been largely dictated by:

1.) having been released to soon in the first place, and >>

2.) pacifying customers in regards to the game's shortcomings with >>

3.) fixes of those same shortcomings that sometimes mimic the symptoms of #1, which leads>>

4.) SOE Developers and programmers to become too overwhelmed to consistently create new content and further the old (hello GCW?).

Hit Re-Start at #1

How does this relate to the specifics of missions and quests?

Take the playable planets as an example. You've got your new player planets, mid-level worlds, and the nasty ones for higher level Elite professions to knock around on. Same thing with the dungeons and missions. Obvious stuff, right?

Well, if the you have players that have been though all the old stuff dozens of times, have a fundred milion credits, all the high end loot, then they'll want to keep them reaching. These players are not necessarily power gamers, but look at this as a point that everybody will reach if they play the game long enough.

What I see is that they make this content challenging and difficult to a point to keep players occupied because they know that they won't have serious time to address their appetites later. #4 above and expansions like Jump To Lightspeed are like huge meals to them that they have to sit on the couch for and unbuckle their belts to digest.

"Here ya' go! Chew on this. We made it extra tough and stringy so we'll have time to rush off and do the XYZ Profession Revamp and fix the ABC Trade Window bug. See ya as soon as possible!"

It's like having one teaspoon of blood rushing around your entire body.

It's trying to heal old wounds and at the same time accomplish the everyday necessary functions. It couldn't do everything and you'd be having fits! As this game has at times.

To me it seems that the SOE Galaxies team doesn't have a "Status Quo Squad" and an "Expansions and New Content Squad". Status Quo to keep the current and older content attended to, New Content to forge ahead and test. If they do have it organized that way, it doesn't show and/or they are doing a bad job at it. There's no way anyone can tell me that they actively planned to not have another GCW Story Arc since "Cries of Alderaan" ended. Or that the Factional Battlegrounds were planned to be disabled at this point in the game's storyline.

To me the answer is that they are hobbled by the the results of laying a flawed foundation from the start. Any house will have problems when this happens.

I do believe that one day Galaxies will "catch up to itself". More staff couldn't hurt. But it will be a while (more than a year?) before that happens.

In the meantime do Yoga. :lol:

[Hashum]

Well I have to say I'm glad to a certain extent. I want most people to get tired of these and stop going after Jedi I admit. I've been working for Whip however and while the enemies are easier then the combat NPC's (frankly they've been a cake walk so far). Except that they give you a waypoint you go out there and then you have to search for the camp which can be just about anywhere. But I've enjoyed it, I enjoy it being complicated. I want to have a hard time finishing it and hope others are so there aren't going to be 2500 jedi out there.

I have not however started phase III so I can't say if it's gotten crazy. It sounds as though you've had to fight tough guys like those in this mission before and without understanding the prior mission it's hard for me to say if I agree. However if you'd like help sometime let me know my Pistol and LLC will be glad to help in anyway possible.

[Ekade]

Well.. things are getting better, just a little more slowly than we would like.

I cannot argue any of your points, they are all dead on.

I totally agree with Seret in that there needs to be something between Impossible (SBD level) and "Hard" (rancors and such). They need to find that sweet spot where things are fun and challenging to hunt.

I remeber when hunting meant you needed to have a variety of professions in your group, working together, to succeed. I hope they can get back that "party of adventurers" feel to the game. I think the players were smarter then they expected.

[Seret Sajet]

Can I just freak you all out a bit?

I just began grinding XP for the one tree of FS Crafting Expermination that Cista unlocked.
Lets break down what that entails.

In order to fill that tree I need to grind 1,275,000 FS XP

At a conversion of 5 to 1 for Weaponsmith XP that means I have to grind 6,375,000 XP.

That is the equivalent of grinding the ENTIRE profession of Weaponsmith more than 7 times over.

All that for 2 extra stinking experimenation boxes.

I don't think you'd see any Crafting Jedi any time soon.

[Hashum]

and the kicker is you don't even get any extra experimentation points to spend when you get the 2 FS boxes.

[Seret Sajet]

and the kicker is you don't even get any extra experimentation points to spend when you get the 2 FS boxes.

Not sure what you mean. Each box of FS Crafting Expermination gives you +5 and +10 gives you one box of experimentation so 2 boxes should give you that one point. Did I miss something?

[Jaminos]

Just yesterday I finished me force ranged mission and for my loot I got a stupid muscle reflex thing that has five charges and gives +10 to ranged for five mins. The missions themself were easy just took three days to do them.

[Raevas Kreig]

and the kicker is you don't even get any extra experimentation points to spend when you get the 2 FS boxes.

Not sure what you mean. Each box of FS Crafting Expermination gives you +5 and +10 gives you one box of experimentation so 2 boxes should give you that one point. Did I miss something?

Hate to break it to you, but he's right. Pasted from the FS FAQ in the FS Forum...

Experimentation [+20] Increases your Experimentation Roll *DOES NOT GIVE EXTRA POINTS*

You can find that faq HERE for more info.

Basically, for that +20 to experimentation, you get a better chance to roll "amazing success!" or whatever.

[Seret Sajet]

and the kicker is you don't even get any extra experimentation points to spend when you get the 2 FS boxes.

Not sure what you mean. Each box of FS Crafting Expermination gives you +5 and +10 gives you one box of experimentation so 2 boxes should give you that one point. Did I miss something?

Hate to break it to you, but he's right. Pasted from the FS FAQ in the FS Forum...

Experimentation [+20] Increases your Experimentation Roll *DOES NOT GIVE EXTRA POINTS*

You can find that faq HERE for more info.

Basically, for that +20 to experimentation, you get a better chance to roll "amazing success!" or whatever.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. Now I can honestly say TO HELL WITH THE CRAFING QUESTS AT THE VILLAGE. Is it worth grinding the equivalent of the entire Weaponsmith profession 7 times over just so I can get better experimentation successses? Hell no!!! Whey would I got through that much pain when I can just use Bespin Port instead? As a master weaponsmith I hardly ever get failed expermination anyway.

Wow, thanks to the Devs for making something extremely tedious into something extremely useless.