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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.
Now since a company can make potentially hundreds of dollars from each player in subscriptions fees, why not just sell game cheap, like with a month free at $15 dollars or so? In order to get the player hooked. I'm guessing this hasn't occurred since the competition hasn't gotten intense enough between MMORPGs.
Maybe in the next couple years with the coming glut of these type of games, companies will take a risk and drop the initial fee to attract customers.
True, true. When it comes to software of any kind, the cost is 95% dependent on what people are willing to pay, and only 5% based on actual cost. I think this is mostly because marginal cost-per-unit is negligible.
What do you think cost more to make, Photoshop CE or Warcraft III? And which one costs much, much, much more?
Yeah, it's SOOOOOO fun to master 10+ professions and camp MOBs for holocrons to unlock a Jedi slot... just to have permadeath. Oh yeah, the fun... it was so fun I forget why I cancelled my account.
Oh wait...
(In other words, too little, way too late for a lot of people. I predict a mass exodus when WoW beta starts.)
As someone who's been playing SWG for less than a month, I'm very torn about this revelation. I'm still rather early along in any skill progressions, and haven't gotten anywhere near aquiring even a single holocron, so I was nowhere near being a Jedi. But because the game is still pretty new to me, I've been enjoying it a lot. Even without the prospect of becoming a Jedi any time in the near future, I've enjoyed running Rebel missions and exploring the Star Wars galaxy (excuse the pun).
But I can see the grind of leveling getting old and the feeling that some gamers might have, of their 'right' to become Jedi in a Star Wars game. And as a gamer, I can relate. Part of the fun of almost every Star Wars game has been the excitement of being a Jedi. But as a Star Wars fan, I have to agree with other posts: the universe of the origonal trilogy was almost entirely devoid of Jedi. The Empire was hunting them down and killing them, one by one.
And even outside the origonal trilogy, even at the HEIGHT of the Jedi Order, we're talking a couple thousand Jedi, tops. Even with tens of thousands. Even (and this is just silly) MILLIONS of Jedi. In a galaxy populated by billions and billions of sentient beings, that's less than one percent of the population.
So I don't think it's unreasonable that it's hard as fuck to become a Jedi, and it's kind of a bitch to be one once you've achieved it. That's consistant with the rules the origonal trilogy laid out.
I know some people may say, "Yes, but it's just a videogame." But it's a videogame set in a specific universe with specific rules that it has to follow to be able to truely claim it's in the Star Wars universe. And if it doesn't follow those, then I don't know why I would want to bother playing it. There are a number of other MMORPGs out there, and have their own cool sets of rules and characters and stories, without having to conform to an already existing background universe. But SWG has chosen to constrain itself within specific boundaries, and I expect it to do so.
I guess I'll have to wait and see. I've been having a good time, but have also been annoyed with certain things. For example, the Rebel mission terminals are sitting out in the open. Even though certain systems may be doing a better job than others resisting the Empire, I think it's fair to assume a Rebel standing in the middle of a public square yelling "COME WORK FOR THE REBELLION!!!" would be killed rather quickly...
And it's one thing to get a repeating mission to go deliver something or go kill a lair of some beast, but to get a mission to kill a specific person, and then to get it again? With the same mission description? So what did I do the first time?
These aren't complaints on the game mechanics, just on the implimentation. And a sign that maybe the creators don't care about keeping true to the SW Trilogy as much as I'd like. I'm waiting to pass judgement on the revamped Jedi system, but will be extremely pissed off if there's a new Jedi Mission Terminal in every city and you can get force points by completting them.
If I wanted to play a game where I could get magical powers simply by leveling, I'd have chosen something else. An inherent nature of the Jedi is that they're more powerful than pretty much anyone else. Maybe that's an impossible thing to achieve in an MMORPG, and I know there's no "accurate" way to portray The Force in a MMORPG, but I really hope they can do a little better than having mission terminals or some such shit.
-Trillian
You're absolutely right that the price is what the market will bear. Unfortunately, it takes a rather short term view of things. Players like myself won't pay ~$80 to see if I like the game ($50 box plus two months @ $15/month). It's just not worth it. OTOH, I WOULD pay $30 to see if I liked it. Then it becomes: is the game worth sticking around. If so, the marginal profit on the $50 box should be exceeded at some point in time (say, six months). So even though they have to wait, they'll get the money. Now, the real loss comes from raising the barrier to entry. Like you say, get 'em in cheap, get 'em hooked, and go to town cashing checks.
Let's say 100,000 people are playing SWG. If it were only $15 for the first month instead of $65, might that number not be double that? At that price, who cares if the first month or two is alpha/beta quality?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
While I agree that being a Jedi should be unreachable to all but the most dedicated of players, I can't see why the game designers can't implement something easy to limit the number of "in-game Jedi" without destroying gameplay and player enjoyment.
Allow me to propose an idea: Have an in-game Jedi limit comprised of a hard and a soft threshhold. Both thressholds are based on a small percentage of the number of accounts in the system (note, this is accounts, not players). Once the soft threshhold is reached, the game becomes slightly more difficult for all Jedi in the game (for example: mobs will target Jedi characters more than regulars with a greater chance to hit and greater damage as well). As Jedi attrition increases the in-game number may drop below the soft threshhold and the game is as normal. Of course, this assumes permadeath for force-sensitive characters -- which I think is fair. If you don't want permadeath, don't play a Jedi. Obviously, if the hard threshhold is reached, no more force-sensitive characters will be allowed.
With this scheme, it would seem that a soft-threshhold of 0.25-0.6% and a hard-threshhold of 1-1.5% would be along the lines of what was seen in the movies, and could be adjusted dynamically by the game developers, and could be server dependent.
This seems to me to be a simple way to allow players to reach being a Jedi, give them challenges while being a Jedi and also allow for new players to become Jedi if they are willing to go through the trials and tribulations necessary to activate their Force-Sensitive character slot.
Disclaimer: I have never played SWG, as I am waiting for SOE to finally deliver on the promises they have made from the beginning, however I have been following the game and am wondering why the game designers haven't thought about implementing such a system on top of hard-to-find Jedi-oriented quests. I agree that being a Jedi should be difficult to extremely hard, but establishing population limits on top of that seems to be a no-brainer.
I can't preview this comment due to a bug in Slashdot, so I apologize in advance for any errors in formating/spelling/etc.
Thats why you build up another class before venturing into it. Thats like trying to learn how to drive a tank through a warzone before learning how to drive a car downtown.
The use of the term 'wizard' is not a fair argument since 'wizard' is a general term and has already been done in games. How about the term 'Dark Knight'? (From FFXI)
If becoming a Dark Knight was easy to obtain, say 1 month work for a non-hardcore gamer, then why the hell would you play a game where you're already the number one force (no pun intended) in the game?
Guess what? This works. Just because its a game doesn't mean you're always gonna get things served to you on a silver plater. YOU may want to run around town lobbing heads off left and right with a double bladed lightsaber, but when you play with other people you play by the same set of rules and restrictions. The whole point of a RPG is to build up and develop a character, not to have a watered down game where your role is too similar to someone else because its too accessable.
Their vision was that hardcore gamers, being the insanely clever people they are, would unlock the Jedi slot within the first 3 months of release. Considering the fact that there are people who have fully mastered over 3 different classes on one character in the game at this moment of posting, the idea of SOMEONE SOMEHOW stumbling upon the secret beforehand is not outrageous.
The one class that is even remotely special, the one class every wants to play, is an accomplishment in itself just if you can actually even try to play that class.
Isn't that the whole point? Why would you want to play as a class with unique skills, unique abilities, unique weapons, unique RULES; if so many other people could unlock it easily? Unless the majority of SWG players are looking for ego trips, if the Jedi slot was easy to open I'd rather play as a bounty hunter turned Jedi hunter. My character would certainly be more interesting than your "Good Jedi" "Bad Jedi" character.