A new patch went out to Test Center on Star Wars Galaxies today, containing one interesting little tidbit:

Vehicles
  • There is no longer a 15-45 second delay on calling vehicles.

For those of you that don’t know, there used to be a delay of 15-45 seconds (15 when doing nothing, 45 right after combat) before you could generate your vehicles or mounts. This was to prevent people who would ride into a fight & quickly store their vehicle (to keep it from getting destroyed), then quickly generate it and ride off if things got too hairy. This short pause would force them to fight, or attempt to flee on foot to safety.

Well, of course this new change removes the delay. While talking to my friend Patrick, we had a discussion on just what this means. In my mind, by removing this delay they’ve passively acknowledged the kiting issue and decided that it’s unimportant, therefore legalizing it (unofficially, of course). Patrick claims that it’s about friggin time, and it made no sense all along. This turned into a discussion about the following.

  • Does removal of a control, with knowledge of the behavior that it’s meant to prevent, constitute essentially legalizing the behavior?
  • If they took down all the radar guns and speed limit signs, is that essentially saying “Drive as fast as you want, we don’t care anymore?” Or does it mean “you know how fast you should be going, and so do we”.
  • Patrick claims a fairer comparison would be speed limiters in cars, that restrain vehicle speed to 100 or 120. If you remove the limiters, does that mean you can drive as fast as you want?

I think the real difference in our two mindsets was what exact was the 15s delay? Was the delay a control, or was it a punishment? I think it was simply a control to prevent kiting behavior, but Patrick believes it to be a punishment to all the players caused by the actions of a few bad apples. I wouldn’t think a vehicle speed limiter or speed limit signs are punishments, but I can see how people who want to drive 150 (for what reason I don’t know) would see it as such.

Which is right? I don’t rightly know. I suppose we both have our points. In this case, I tend to believe it was merely a simple control. 15s was hardly what I’ld call punishment, and it never caused me any real problems or headache. Especially given the other “special case” stuff like the fact that there was already no delay if you were in a city when you generated your vehicle. So it only affected you when you were out “in the wild”. I never liked that mounts could be used as a “get out of jail free” card, and I still think Sony will remember why the 15s was there and put it back (perhaps in a modified form).

Thoughts?

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