Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars Galaxies - No Crushbone Factor?
Tark writes "Over at Warcry.com, there's a new column from Warthog discussing his post-launch impressions of the PC MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, a month after official release date." This opinion piece is from the writer whose entertaining review we featured just after game launch, and it's interesting to see how his opinions have changed over time - he still says SWG lacks the "Crushbone Factor", referencing a particular area of Everquest which "..had quests... unique monsters... cool, level appropriate loot drops... [and] personality."
"Shortly after posting this article, I realized something that had somehow gotten past me about the last update by SOE, just two days ago. SOE in their wisdom decided that they needed to slow down the respawn rate of some static spawns, because people were "camping" them. Camping is, apparently, a bad thing. (Does it matter that most players want lots of spawn points to camp? One must wonder...).
I went to one of the very few locations with some content today (the Tusken Fortress), and hunted for a while. The tuskens located there spawn much, much more slowly now. There is less to hunt, basically. It was frustrating.
That's right, folks. SOE took a game with little content and, by reducing the spawn rate of static spawns, actually reduced the amount of content, hunting, and other things to do.
Pure genius."
oh god... I was in Beta 3... (actually, I was BANNED from beta 3 near the end because I was a little miffed when medics got the shaft, and suggested that if marksmen had to go through the same crap to shoot as medics were forced to in order to heal, people would tell SoE to shove the game up their ass... or perhaps it was Holocrons (Raph Kosters) post about "how they had decided to drop vehicles at launch in order to focus on 'content'" and my subsequent posting of a WoW screenshot showing players on horses... who can say?)
Regardless, the games "content" has been 0 since the day I got the beta, and it seems like it hasnt gotten any better. Sad really, THIS is that SW MMORPG we get. There wont be another one 6 months from now (like, AC and EQ are both fantasy MMORPGs, so there IS "choice")...
oh well, WoW will be out in a year or so...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
The problem is that content is expensive. The hand-crafted feel of EQ's zones (and the game I work on, Meridian 59) take a long time to create. It takes specialized people with a good eye to create those cool level, to write up the quests, to create the cool items that drop off the monsters.
SWG had to go toward randomly-generated content in the world because they simply could not generate all the needed content by hand. Especially with more modern players expecting a wealth of new content at launch and on a regular basis. New games have to compete with EQ's content, which has been added to over the years.
In the end, content is expensive. Generating some of the content randomly helps create more content that doesn't feel repetitive, but it loses a bit of soul in the process.
My view on things,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
Dead? Hardly. Warthog's main beef is that it isn't everquest. And he's an idiot. Many, many of us do not want everquest. We do not want ph4t l3wt drops off mobs. We don't want to camp Crushbone for weeks till we can ding so we can go camp crocs in Oasis until we ding again. Everquest was designed as a game, SWG was designed as a world. I'm sick and tired of seeing all the little pellet chasers that Everquest brought to the genre trying to turn every game into the next everquest. The fact I can log in, play at my leisure and log out whenever I feel like it and not feel guilty about "only putting 6 hours in today" is great. I can play one or two hours a day and still make progress with some of my online friends. SWG was made for people who have outside lives and are more socially adapt than a paperclip. I like it that way...Don't turn it into another Everquest pandering to the catasses who play 70 hours a week.
You want Everquest? Go play Everquest and stop trying to turn every other game into a Everquest clone.
I had this problem once back in beta. Toggling my "Chase Cam" fixed it. I think it's the numericpad decimal point key which toggles this.
The problem with being in-range to attack as a brawler is quite valid. Range for attacking purposes is calculated to the center of the beast you are attacking. Some of these beasts are HUGE, and you can be literally standing beneath them visually and still get "out of range".
I also heard from one player that the beasts attack from the space where their head is located, but since they can only receive damage at their 3D object center, it gets kind of difficult to battle in any sensibible way.
The worst problem with these unannounced 6-8 hour "emergency maintenance" sessions is that some people can't get to their harvesters during their gaming window that day, which can result in some seriously nasty losses, which the CSRs are very unlikely to rectify.
But harvesters are a very very sore point all their own in this game. Harvesters are horribly implemented and have irrational costs considering their hit-and-miss usefulness.
I wonder how much the Franchise Approval process is slowing them down. This could be a significant liability if it is not streamlined.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
pvp sucks.
if you want to pvp, play quake.
SWG is a community game, and in order for you to enjoy the game, you must actually take part of communities, and do things together. trust me, its far funner. there are VERY few pvp things to do in SWG unless you want to play on a battlefield. sure you can knock the guts out of someone easy in the cantina but what fun is that? none. that's why you're not having any fun.
the fact that everyone always waits for the next game to come out tells me that no one is happy with any current game. lets not even get into the fact that you take what is said on forums as the pulse of the entire community - which it simply isn't.
the true test of a game is its replayability. if you're constantly eyes on the horizon for the next game you can never really, truly enjoy the one you're playing. I still play Quakeworld and I still love it. I don't give a crap what's on the horizon, i play what is fun. SWG is fun. don't like it, then don't play it. i'm quite sick of the arsewipes that introduce themselves to me by sending a duel request.
PVP in SWG was an afterthought. I wish it was totally skipped. PvP ruins the game for me, so thank God i haven't taken a side in the "epic conflict" yet.
you have to have a rebel backpack (your regular inventory doesn't count) and 1500 faction points before you get your reward. or so i've heard. I've also heard that they've taken out that message if you can't get the reward or there is no reward to give.
If you can't get the reward you shouldn't be able to do the quest. Also the first missions are simply run here run back missions so there is no reason to limit who can do them and who can't. The message has been changed so that you don't see "Your reward has been placed in your backpack." when the only reward would be faction points and credits. The problem is that you didn't even get the faction points or credits.
first you guys bitch about how its not out yet and to "release it already"
This is completly out of context. I would never bitch about releasing it already. I jumped all over the funcom people for the state of Anarchy Online. I'm constantly griping about companies releasing games or other software that isn't finished and expecting people to live with it, and I'm always griping about people not telling these companies to go to hell. I cancelled my AO account when they started billing because the game still wasn't done. I just got billed the first time for Star Wars, and that is the primary reason I'm upset about the lack of content. They are telling me that the game is done, and that I need to be paying to play it. I don't think there is enough content and if at the end of the month it is the same way they can not count on my $15.
then you complain about its level of completeness when it is finally released. when does the madness end?
I agree there are people that fall into this category, but I would much rather wait an extra six months or a year to play a game if that means it will be done when it comes out. Since SWG is obviously lacking and it was sold to me as a finished product I have every right to be upset and bitch about it.
No Stars
No Wars
No Wars in the Stars
No Galaxies
No Star Wars Galaxies
WTF?
I think Star wars, I think of Cruising around in my Millenium Falcon shooting Tie Fighters.
I think of flying low on Hoth taking out AT-AT's.
I think of Lightsabers, blasters, and Stormtroopers in White Armor blasting everywhere.
When I heard that you couldn't fly anything, and how the PvP system was implemented, I was like, you're kidding right?
I want barfights, I want to jump in my spaceship and fly around.
I want my fellow rebels to all hop in THEIR spaceships and try to take out a few Battlecruisers or something.
I want to be able to attack a planet.
SWG seems more like an experiment in MMORPG addictiveness rather than entertainment.
I'm glad I listened to everybody and passed on this game.
You know I think half of the problem is that people are comparing SWG to the wrong game.
While in looks and interface wise, EQ and SWG are very similar and either could pass for a clone of the other, fundimentally they are different games. I think it would be more accurate to compare post-launch SWG with early Ultima Online. If you look at the Dev team you can see why, I'd be willing to wager that half of the original UO dev team was recruited for SWG and that has an influence.
Anyway, Ultima Online had NONE of the "Crush Bone" factor due to the fact that UO NEVER was about loot. If you went out and killed a bunch of monsters, you didn't go out to get uber Sword of XXXXX, you went out to get gold to buy player made armor and weapons. UO was made interested by a vastly superior PvP system that to this day, in my humble opion, has never been equalled or bettered; a VERY immersive world; Player Markets; a very tight and involving society and (upon later discovery, and un-intended system of...)rares.
What I believe has happened to SWG is that Raphael Koster has tried to make a 3d sw-based version of UO, and people are expecting EQ. These two are apples and oranges and your expectations will taint your experience within the game. Not saying that SWG isn't lacking because make no mistake, it is greatly lacking, but people have their expectations the wrong way around. I don't think that SoE had those big mobs you need 34523453 people to take down in mind when they designed the game.
The quest/unique mobs is NOT a required feature of an MMO. And a game that can be designed to be fun WITHOUT camping will succeed alot better than one that does. The reason being, these camps cause alot of competition, grief playing and headaches that the majority of gamers really don't want to deal with. However, UO did have static minor mobs for players to hunt. And they had them in abundance. Not only that, but dungeons were made 10x more interesting, not by mobs, but by players. Player killing added something to dungeon hunting that a super hard monster never will.