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The Mystery Of Star Wars Galaxies
Tim Burke writes "I've got a piece up on my website that acts as a form of independent postmortem for Star Wars Galaxies, discussing my initial impressions and lasting conclusions on the PC MMORPG." Burke argues cogently enough that SWG lead designer Raph Koster comments that it's a "good essay" over at GameGirl Advance, despite direct criticism of his team as having a "prevailing assumption... that players make content, not designers", and the suggestion that Koster is "muleheaded" about "the importance of creating a sense of achievement in a persistent world entirely through barriers of time and repetition."
Ralph Koster was the worst thing to happen to UO.
SWG is a massive collection of screwups and random decisions that managed to pick up a large subscriber base, based on it's being starwars(Even though it's not). Proving that if you throw enough money at an mmog, it will suceed.
and still I get the second? post. This MMOG really MUST be dead.
I don't understand the relevance of creating and selling a MMOG (Multi-Massive Online Game).
I mean. It requires a lot of resources in creation, development, manteinance, and it also requires a lot of marketing in order to reach a vast audience. It is strenuous on resources, and with human nature of the players, a MMOG experience may be even worse than Real Life.
Ok, I am biased against MMOGs, I only played freeware ones and I find hard to collect the necessary time to play one anyway (I still prefer usenetting). But this "let's do a MMOG" craze looks to me like the other crazes that there were back in the days, only worse.
Example: after playstation came out, every single industry tried to put a 3d videocard for pcs (and now only NVidia, who played well, and ATI, who was relatively out of the high-end 3d business until late, are the top of the market).
Another Example: In 1996, how many IPSs were proliferating trying to replicate the success of Compuserve, AOL and Prodigy?
Third Example: Wizards of the coast came out with Magic the Gathering in 1992/1993, then everyone and their dog published their own C/TCG. (When WoTC grabbed the patent on C/TCGs the market was sweeped by WoTC fees, leaving WoTC with a monopoly).
Ok, this process of everyone investing their asses in the product may incentivate innovation, but how many wrong investments were made? And now, what MMOG should I play first without having time sinkholes, idiotic admins (problem that is seen also by the linked article - see the highly censored SWG forums), and ton of bugs et al? At least AOL delivered you the packet you wished to retrieve on the internet (yeah, ok, along with SPAM, but this is the problem of the internet in the whole, not of AOL), and 3D cards delivered you pixels arranged to resemble 3d solids on the screen... but after SWG and the other batch of would-be-evercrack, how can we say that these services are delivering FUN?
+ + + + ;_;
I thank the AC who stole my first meaningful first post
"I am slashbot, hear me roar!"
nth post
"Three page rant" would be a better title, though it is very well written.
I'm with you 99%.
This bears less a resemblance to "an independent post mortem" and more of one to the rants on the SWG boards. It's stated with less venom but for example he refers to the "viciously boring" character advancement method. As opposed to????
Yes it can be absolutely boring but generally only if you are a power gamer, someone who demands instant advancement with as little work as possible. No, I would NOT enjoy spending an hour grinding out couplers and grips: so I don't!
This is basically an attack on Koster and as such it is not worth deep analysis.
NEXT!
The problem with Star Wars games is that everyone wants to be a Jedi. Period. Sure, you'll get the odd weirdo who wants to be Watto's sex slave, or the guy who thinks Corellian starship mechanics is the place for him, but by and large, everyone wants to be a Jedi. That's why every Star Wars game lets you
Back on various Pern-themed MUSHed, based upon the Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider books, you had a very similar situation: everyone wanted to be a dragonrider (and, even more pointedly, the higher level gold/bronze dragonriders). Folks who could not obtain a gold dragon in one of the MUSHes would start their own MUSH (generically called the "gold-of-their-own" MUSHes since the person starting the new MUSH always gave him/herself a gold dragon). Guess what? It isn't all that fun when everyone wants to play the same type of character.
Imagine playing a Star Trek game: folks would most likely want to be a Captain or a bridge officer, NOT Ensign Red Shirt or Dumbass Diplomat. In vampire games, you'd want to be a vampire (or, these days, a vampire slayer, I guess).
The problem is that it is NO fun being a Captain, or a Jedi, or a Vampire if EVERYONE else is a Captain, Jedi or Vampire. That, invariably, is why MMORPGs based upon the concept that one type of person is better than everyone else is destined to fail, unless care is given to balancing all the different career paths.
Movies tend to focus on extraordinary individuals, and Star Wars, Matrix, Star Trek, etc, all have that "bias." Creating games based on those extraordinary people works perfectly fine in single-player experiences (where everyone CAN be the Captain), but suffers greatly when spread across hundreds or thousands of people.
I think that's why more generic MMORPGs like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot tend to be more interesting: while there are some balance issues, there's not a clearly superior "endstate" class, like Jedi or Captain or Vampire. There's no pre-conceived notions of how to do things, and no reference material (like movies) to inform the experience.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I'm playing SWG, and i enjoy it a lot. Of course it's not for everybody. I don't ask everyone to like it, but this guy says plainly wrong things like :
... but it's really exciting, and new stuff is coming (player city with an elected mayor, ...)
* Advancement system is boring : this has already been discussed here. It's boring if you wanna be master in 2 days. Normal people will find it ok.
* You cannot sell anything until you are at high level : plainly wrong. I used to sell GOOD weapon powerups for a good price, and that's among the first items you can build. Now i'm tailor and i'm making tons of money, even though i'm only novice.
On the other side the game is full of bugs, servers are slow
Yes i have played swg during the beta period.. but lack of content made me quit after the beta was over. I still read swg boards to see if the situation has improved but allas it hasn't.
:) *maybe i'm just weird :P*
:P*
I played ao for over 2 years and was looking for a sci-fi mmorpg. AO became old pretty fast.. no storyline.. not enough quests.. It's current state is how i percieve swg to be in a year or 2.. of sony get their act together that is.
What i'm missing in all these discussions is a game that has grown a lot lately. I've recently restarted my old earth and beyond account. And i'm loving every minute of it.
I quit last time because the storyline and overal feel was 'unfinished'. But the dev's have made a lot of improvements. A new enemy.. a large scale war.. loads of solo quests that fit in the storyline. And best of all... a galaxy filled with things to discover.
The pace of the game is still too slow most of the time.. Warping takes ages... but i find it relaxing to look at the warp screen and see all the planets fly by
It;s just the attention to detail that rekindled my love for this game. Starbases feature warning messages.. commercials for new weapons.. News reports from the front. Not just random stuff but it pays to listen to them !
Any other people playing this game atm? In all the mmorpg discussion i read here on slasdot i see no mention of earthandbeyond.. wich is a shame really.. cause in my eyes it's the best scifi mmorpg at the moment. *after i restarted ao i got bored in 2 weeks
And yes.. in this game everyone is a starship captain.. and it's still fun.. even explorers gain expe for flying around the galaxy or looking in places where noone has been.. or can't go due to the dangerous enviroment.
I'm another one that left SWG. I did that yesterday. I gave away 500k credits, a medium sized house, and a lot of resources to a friend. He said he'll probably go another month and quit too.
It's not for lack of interest in MMORPGs... I've played Everquest since near the beginning.
I have to say, I'm quite disappointed in how SWG turned out. I can tell that the SWG team must not have had anything to do with the EQ team, or they wouldn't have made the mistakes they did.
I could write a long list of things to SOE about why I think the game failed, but I think it'll just fall onto deaf ears. It's time to move on to something that's more fun.
If another company decides to look at the MMORPG area, take a cue from Everquest. A system that rewards players little by little, adding to the characters power over a long period of time works well.
Add a ton of content, and I mean a ton. Don't rely on your players for this, because that's not what players will pay to play. It's like going to the movies, only to find that once you get there, you're responsible for entertaining everyone else.
Rewards should be items, not just money. Money should be hard to get. Too much money will ruin the economy.
Whether or not he hates Koster and based this whole essay upon it, his points are still valid. The fact that he doesn't provide solutions for all the problems doesn't make SWG any less tedious.
The essay is an effective attack on SWG despite the screed against Raph, not because of it.
-e-
Look I was in the SWG beta and didn't like it enough to buy it after release but, I got over it. Why is it Slashdot gets to be used as another whine board for SWG bashers ? No other game is treated like this on this site. It sounds you have personal issues over this game and are making the rest of us pay for it. Please take your pain back to the SWG boards where it belongs and get back to reporting real news. Nobody cares or if they do they are already on board the bash SWG train. It's really very simple. If you dont like a game don't play it. This continued use of Slashdot to bash SWG and Sony is making you look bad and hurting the reputation of this board.
I'll have to agree with the article author that there are fundamental problems with the economy in SWG (or, at least, there were - I cancelled my account about a month after the game went live).
The most glaring issue is that there is no real advancement through manufactured goods in terms of the scale of the economy. A top-end weapon costs roughly the same order of magnitude as a newbie weapon in terms of the cost of materials required to construct the weapon. Because of this (and the players' evident unwillingness to charge the exorbitant prices they should for top-end crafted items), the best crafted weapons cost about the same order of magnitude as the bottom-end crafted weapons.
Because of this, there is very little room for more than a few people in the sellers' market. Get a factory fired up, and one person can produce a significant portion of all the goods their local customers need, and can use their spare time to produce special-request items on the side. Thus, new entries into the market must either undercut the market or go completely without sales while they skill up to Master in order to be competitive.
The crafting professions should have been designed so that top-end items were multiple orders of magnitude more expensive than bottom-end items, in terms of material costs to produce. The same % markup would result in a significantly larger inflow for those who specialized in top-end items, thus decreasing the impetus to bottom-feed (make items available at lower levels in the skill tree). This would open up those lower-level markets to relatively unskilled crafters, and would permit them to sell their items rather than simply using the "practice" mode on every attempt.
Additionally, crafting should have been designed so that lower levels of skill permitted the production of widgets necessary in the production of higher-level items. This is true already, in some cases, that you need a few of some crafted item in order to make another crafted item. But in order to prevent high-skilled players from simply cranking those bits out themselves, the quantities needed should have been in the dozens or even hundreds - enough to ensure that there would be a market for those items from lower-skilled players (if for no other reason than to save the high-skilled player a lot of time and trouble).
There are various other flaws with the game in terms of design and the expectation that players would do more than they are doing now. However, there are far more achievers in these games than designers would care to think (almost everyone has a bit of Achiever in them), and not coming to that realization was the design team's fundamental mistake.
Great. Why don't we all just rattle off endless lists of stupid complaints without any sort of responsibility for whether or not what we're complaining about can even be fixed/changed/adjusted.
I'm so tired of the people out there who are apologists for every damn netizen with an axe to grind.
His argument does not hold water but is simply based on whines about what he finds boring and his hate for Koster.
Do you know what I want to see in a MMOG? I want to see an expiry date. I want to know that the game is going to have a beginning and a middle and an end. Every great game and every great work of fiction ends at some point. There should be a story arc that changes the world over time so that I have a reason to log in every day and see what's changed. I should be able to get involved in these changing events. There should be high-level, DM-run NPCs on both sides that give meaning and order to the lives of their respective players. An Emperor DM telling the Imperials to attack X. A Mothma DM ushering the Rebels to secret base Y.
There should be epic battles that are announced in advance. Players log in and fight for their side. The results of those battles should affect which side controls which world. Eventually, there is a final month-long epic campaign to take over Base X and at the end victory parties for all and then the server gets reset. It would be like a television series.
There should be no RPG-like persistent experience-points and levelling system. This creates a barrier of entry to the wide casual market, which is your ultimate goal, financially. A linear advancement system that does not reset just means that late entrants will always be behind and people who only have a few hours a week will always be behind. (I've never understood this. It seems to me that your ideal customer in MMOG plays a few hours a week but pays the full monthly subscription. They don't put a heavy load on your servers but you get tha same income. MMOGs should be encouraging these people to play.)
Instead of experience points and levels, players should accrue items and bonuses more like they do in action or adventure games (mind you the game doesn't have to be an action game, I'm just saying that the special advantages should be easy come, easy go). Players who are dedicated will still do better in general casual players due to skill but the casual people won't be so far behind. Even the lowly slave can get a lucky shot with the gun.
In other words, you either need a linear advancement system that resets easily (like Quake) or you need a non-linear system. Ie, every plus has a minus in another direction so you're always hovering around zero.
Right now, persistent seems to mostly mean "unending". It feels like 1984 "We are at war with the East because we have always been at war with the East." Constant, unending conflict with no real ability to make a mark on the world.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
So are you saying that Galaxies is actually a great game well worth the financial/time investment despite what most everyone else is saying? Cause if you are, you have very low standards my friend. Personally I have no problem with someone complaining when they invest that the kind of time/money that this game requires only to find that it was a complete waste. You......need not pay it no mind. Free speech brother, power to the people!
I am very familar with Kosters work. The man is a genius, and, this bonehead fails to realize it. Someone writing a 3 page rant about a game doesnt deserve this much attention. His critique is way off and I take it with a grain of salt. What he may fail to realize is Lucas is still holding the reins to the game and Koster and company cant just put any old content they want in. They have to stay consistent with the Star wars universe to a degree that pleases Lucasarts. Also, a lot of the stuff also may be hindered by technological barriers. The first week was hell because of all the server optimising that had to be done. I see SWG as a great open ended game that has many challenges. Im sorry most people dont like to pay to be challenged. Maybe these games arent for them, any $50 single player game will be loaded with content, and most have the replay value of pong, Khaldun is welcome to it. I still havent done everything there is to do in SWG and have been a avid, and casual player for 3 months now. The essay is bumpkis.
He may not be, but I am. I have loads of fun playing this game and find that I spend much more time in it than I should. In fact, I can't wait to get home so I can spend even more time playing instead of doing other things I should be doing.
Seriously, if you just enjoy the game and quit worrying about being "l33t" immediately, the game gets much funner. I've found that joining a PA is a great way to enjoy the game as it gives you other people to "hang out" with. There is fun content in the game, but in the end it's mostly the people that make the game enjoyable.
The funny thing is, it was a review on slashdot that first got me to try the game. If I had only read the stuff that I've seen posted here since that review, I probably never would have tried SWG and would be missing out on a lot of fun.
Life has many choices. Eternity has two. What's yours?
Raph is SUCH a genious that he admitted on a thread that krayt dragons were, in his opinion, supposed to be the "big Nasty" of the SWG universe. Yet he included the krayt dragon in the inital release and watched helplessly as creature handlers mauled them with graulers with ease. He then said on that thread that he can't think fo any greater challenges in the SW universe. Because Raph can't think of anything further to challenge players in combat with, he wants across the board character nerfs. The entire game industry thought SWG would be a cash-cow for SOE for years to come. Now, SWG is already being found in discount bins. SWG could be the most spectacular failure in computer game history. They ought to name the next SWG expansion, SWG: Return of Ishtar.
Galaxies absolutely sucked. I can't believe how many hours I wasted just hitting the "up" key to make my character either run to a mission (which invariably involved shooting wild animals and piles of leaves) and running back, all to hear really bad music in the cantina.
When I bought the game, I envisioned sci-fi like things - not boring hunting missions and being hunted myself by magically respawning NPC's.
In fact, the game would be much better off without any NPC's. Gameplay blew, without any realtime control of aiming or running, it was like watching a stupid puppet.
Well, I want my money back. If I wanted a MMORG centered around hunting wild animals and not getting killed by NPC's, I would be an idiot.
Here's a good chance for the Activision Star Trek teams to do what Lucas could not - turn their universe into a playable game.