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Star Wars Galaxies To Revamp Jedi System
JasdonLe writes "In a move that significantly changes the game's goals, I just saw on the official Star Wars Galaxies site that plans are in the works to 'revamp' the entire Jedi system, including removing Jedi permadeath." The plan is to "rebuild the Jedi system to be quest-oriented; and to include the familiar elements of Force Sensitivity, Jedi-oriented quests, as well as many other elements the developers and the community feel should make up the process of becoming a Jedi." SWG Stratics also has word that the holocrons, previously needed to be come a Jedi in the PC MMORPG, "won't be in the new system", but may still have value as rare in-game items.
maybe now the path to becoming a Jedi will be based on skill, and not mastering random professions told to you by a magic cube...
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
When various MMORPGs came out, I would complain about the initial outlay, considering you have to pay a monthly fee. I would usually get modded 'troll' or 'flamebait' or, at best, someone would argue that it was to pay for development. Now, how much development was actually done by Sony and LucasArts prior to release of the game? Since release, there's been several very large patches, major revamps to several professions, and now a total revamp of the Jedi system. So, again, why would I pay $50 up front?
Hope this new system gives folks what they want.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I've noticed that when anything major is patched in MMORPGs, it's to make it easier and more newbie-friendly. Seeing how many people were whining about how convoluted and arbitrary the process of becoming a Jedi was, it's most likely that it will be much easier post-patch. Then you'll get tons of Jedi running around until it's nothing special. Sad, but that's how it will be.
just the utter lack of skill required to do so. All it is is a repetitive level grind which makes no sense in the context of a Star Wars universe, and is completely at odds with the what most people consider fun.
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
They really screwed up from the start. What kind of crackhead came up with a system where you spend hours upon hours building up a character that you will quit playing as soon as you unlock the force slot? If they want to make players happy AND make them stick around for a long time, they should make the Jedi class available to everyone from the start. BUT, make it really hard - through both time involvment AND ability/knowledge, to be a good jedi. That way every weenie who wants to be a jedi gets their wish, but only the ones who take time to develop their character actually get to be the kind of jedi that we saw in the movies.
Those 'players' are 'customers'. Piss them off, and they'll go elsewhere. Heck, even just disappoint them, ignore them, or don't meet their expectations, and they'll go elsewhere. This isn't Sony's little sandbox (nor is it the private sandbox of the people who have the time to jump through the hoops to become a Jedi). If they want to make a profit, they have to 'deal' with players and their expectations.
Real life is boring and tedious. Why should I pay $50 plus $15/month to play an imaginery boring and tedious person?
Players *did* figure out the secret. And many people said 'WTF does *that* have to do with becoming a Jedi?' Heck, even random choice after a character is alive for X weeks would be more entertaining than 'go camp the widget'.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I agree that -in terms of the Star Wars canon- there will inevitably be a disparately large number of Jedi across all of the servers. Unfortunately, it seems that most classes are effectively unnecessary in the game, in that a hundred percent of the players on a server could be Jedi and, as long as one of them had a clarinet, they wouldn't have to worry about much of anything. In my opinion, it's a lack of true interdependence that would allow something like that to happen. I'm not saying that it would happen, because some people would probably then gravitate to bounty-hunting, which would then create a use for a crafter-class to make the weapons for said class, but there's no true dependency on any particular classes beyond someone having Musicianship I, just to get the battle-fatigue down.
It reminds me of a history I read of the Virginia Colony during its first years of existence: The people living there eschewed planting corn because they could make money off of tobacco, and so -as a result- a very significant portion of the population died as a result of starvation. The people who came across the Atlantic to work as iron-mongers, carpenters and various other necessary non-farming occupations chose to farm tobacco, which meant that various services were not being met, and the Virginia Colony very nearly went up in figurative smoke. However, since no one is actually truly dependent on anything in Galaxies, there is no real-world kind of check that would prevent Jedi from running as rampant as tobacco-farmers in Virginia.
All I'm saying here is that -at least to provide some sort of consistency in the Star Wars universe- something will have to get done to put the Jedi back into check. Otherwise, it won't be uncommon in a year or eighteen months to hop on a server that has a fifty-percent Jedi ratio, which is just outlandish to me. But, it ends up being a business decision in which Sony has to decide whether they want the fifteen dollars a month from the thousands and thousands of players who will moan if their Jedi lives aren't fairly comfortable. My bet is, they'll take the money.
Forever, if he wasted his time playing video games.
This is classic SOE management. They will release some goal to the playerbase that is extremely hard to reach. A small portion of the playerbase will work extremely hard, and reach that goal.
The process of working so hard, makes the goal have a high social value. People are impressed, amazed, they want to reach that goal too.
Enter round two, the difficulty of reaching the goal is significantly downgraded. Now a large portion of the paying game playerbase, who were unable to reach that goal before, can go for this highly coveted goal.
Round three, they make it even easier.
It's all about making players want something bad, and eventually making sure all (or most) players can get it. It's a good way to ensure your $9.89/month keeps coming in.
Note, they've just announced this. It's not live yet. But I bet a bunch of people who are bored with SWG, who might cancel their accounts, will stick around now because now they can hope they'll become jedi.
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I support spreading santorum
Something as core as how the Jedi system works being revamped tells me once again that SOE have no clue when it comes to effective game design and making sure they get it right first time. It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Everquest, and is a big factor in me not playing any more of their games.
Seeing as they gave out holocrons to everyone for Christmas, I hope the changes in the whole jedi mess won't ingore that. Grinding though professions that the holocrons tell you does indeed suck, but if they do away with the holocron having something to do with the "jedi path" it kind of sucks for the people who couldnt get one until they gave them out for presents (most people for 2 in fact). Whatever the case, I do agree that grinding is probably the only way to make the game hard enough to accout for the path to jedi being hard. I also like that it's way harder to train in the jedi profession once you make it. I want it to be hard, otherwise it's pointless.
That being said, I don't like making a whole new character. That's just stupid.
Now if they could just give the game a real Galactic Civil War, I really think less people would strive for jedi. Let's hope the next patches (Publishes 6 and 7) gets all this fixed.
People only obsess with jedi because there isn't much else Star Wars like in the game!
Just my 0.02 USD
That's something, in my mind that is society wide. This is the sort of thing that sticks in my craw. These people, they have no pride in their work. They think they need to get the payment up front. That in a nutshell, they have to trick people into buying their chairs.
This goes for business, politics, technology, entertainment. It's just a lot of deception. It's about fooling people into thinking you have a good product, not actually having one.