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Star Wars Galaxies Users Restless Over Rebalancing
Zonk writes "Last Thursday 'Thunderheart', the Community Manager on PC MMO Star Wars Galaxies' forums, dropped a bomb: the long awaited patch rebalancing combat within the game has been pushed off until after the Jump to Lightspeed expansion [which just announced 13 of its 15 spaceships] launches. Given that the JtL expansion is not due until this fall, this puts the combat rebalance somewhere around the beginning of next year. The playerbase has... not taken this well. The original thread on the official forums was locked at 64 pages - it was then picked up again in a thread already surpassing 50 pages. The players are rightly outraged, and the reaction has prompted a response from the Sony Online chain of command. It will be interesting to see how this turns out." Update: 07/21 15:52 GMT by S : There's an interview with producer Haden Blackman over at Game Informer which discusses the issue in more detail.
Why is this interesting to see how this plays out?
I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it any further.
Speaking as a Starwars fan who loved Jedi Knight II to death, I haven't been too happy about the last run of games (not counting the space sims, since don't play 'em I can't comment). What I've heard about Galaxies hasn't encouraged me. So I'm wondering, just how much does it affect play balance. I mean, one the one hand I can see you being mad if the Rebels are constantly getting their asses kicked by the Empire (or vice versa), on the other, if you're playing a dancer, then you kinda gotta expect getting you're ass whupped by Imperial Stormtroopers.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The number one reason SWG fans are pissed is that SOE is charging them 15$ a month telling them that it is going into the maintaining of servers and creation of new free content. but instead SOE has taken that money to develop and expansion that they will then charge full price to their current base.
I guess people might be strictly 'imperial' or 'rebel' but how about this.
Which ever side sucks, give them a 60-40 / 70-30 majority. This can be done ala counterstrike balancing, initiated by all those people on the forums.
Just put a flag up saying save the *insert side that sucks* and people will rally.
Generally, two sides with equal numbers, one side who is better will always win. Unbalance the numbers to reflect the skills involved, and the games are more interesting.
In the star wars universe, there were more potential 'rebels' that imperials, however, the imperial army was larger (I am guessing)
IANASWF.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I grabbed the Fileplanet 14 day free trial and it was enough to convince me to purchase the game (only $29.99 these days). I'm about halfway through my 30 day free trial and the game is running a bit thin content-wise, although I have 'powered' my way through a lot of it. I would like to give the GCW/PvP a try, but as it currently stands, it pretty much consists of jedi/guild gank squads. Funny, I thought Lucas et al. were anal about continuity in the Star Wars universe... guess not! You've got fully declared (overt) Rebel Jedi walking the streets of Imperial controlled towns such as Theed and Bestine, showing off their sabers and force powers, with no opposition at all. This game is supposed to take place between Ep 4 and 5, btw.
I started my character June 29, and as of right now I've mastered a combat profession (TKA) and have around 2 million credits in the bank. Due to the combat inbalance, you can pull in around 500k-1mil credits every three hours doing "solo group" missions (that is to say, a bunch of people max out a group in order to gain access to ~35k reward destroy missions and go solo the missions for the full payout). I don't know anyone (aside from guilds) that currently group for the actual purpose of cooperative gameplay.
I played the beta, and for the buggy POS that it was, at LEAST there was some sense of community. People would form hunting parties and such on the high level planets. Now it's all about getting buffed by a master doctor for 3 hours and soloing (whether for credits or xp). The whole routine is wearing a bit thin, and I'm not sure I'll renew until JTL and/or they fix the combat balance problem.
I don't play Galaxies, although I do play another MMORPG (FFXI) and take an interest in the genre. As such, my rant here isn't going to be specifically about Galaxies, so feel free to stop reading and/or mod me off-topic now.
This is the perfect example of how so many developers shoot themselves in the foot and harm both their own chances of success and the reputation of the industry. This is particularly true of the PC gaming industry, which has seen its credibility battered by behaviour like this over the last few years. I'm talking about this habit that developers have of whipping up interest in a product, claiming it's going to be here "very soon" and then not delivering.
The most spectacular example of this recently has been Half-Life 2. I forget when exactly Valve went public with what they'd been doing on Half-Life 2... I think it was some time around March 2003. When they unveiled it, there was a predictable and deserved *thud* sound as jaws hit the floor. More impressively still, at a time when Doom 3 was still stuck in the mystic lands of "when it's done", Valve announced that Half-Life 2 would be appearing in September that year... just a few months away. I remember speaking to some friends about this at the time; the consensus was that Valve had just compltely undermined ID, that ID were going to be a laughing stock and that Doom 3 wouldn't be looking so special by the time of its release, as Valve would have comprehensively stolen their thunder.
Of course, we all know how the story developed. The September 30th release date for HL2 came and went, with no release in sight. Sure, Valve got unlucky (or stupid, depending on how you see it) over the source-code leak, but from what I've heard (I've not seen the leaked source-code, nor do I particularly want to), the game wasn't even close to being ready for release last September. Indeed, there's a growing feeling that the revised release date of *this* September is now looking unlikely. The result? Valve lost a lot of credibility. Their main rivals, ID, gained a lot of ground back, because people felt that while "when it's done" release dates are a bad idea, ID had at least been consistent about it and, of course, it's now gone gold. Much of Half-Life 2's thunder was stolen by Far Cry, which delivered much of what HL2 promised, with far less hype. The overall loser? The PC gaming industry in general, which has further cemented its reputation with its customers as unprofessional, unfocussed and unable to deliver.
The Galaxies fiasco doesn't sound as though it's on quite the same scale. At least the game is out in this case, although it's hardly had the best of press during its first year. However, with a MMORPG, customer trust is an absolutely vital issue. With a standalone game, it helps but it's not vital, as you can generally persuade the punters to "take a chance" on an unknown title, if it looks tempting enough. But the MMORPG model requires both getting customers and keeping them; if you lose their trust, your business is going to decline pretty quickly.
My take on SWG is that SOE have more or less accepted that JtL will be kill or cure and so want to concentrate on that before they do anything else.
Seems like they failed to pull off the MMORPG cleanly and had to push it out the door to get some sort of return on their costs. Having spent a year trying to get that playable, it's getting to the stage where the Star Wars brand is no longer a sufficient selling point in the absence of good gameplay.
By delaying their combat rebalance, SOE admittedly piss off subscribers but many of those were pretty pissed off already and have still stuck with SWG. Why? Basically they hope things will improve. If SOE push out the combat rebalance now and it's no good, they will disappoint again. If they wait, those subscribers are likely to hang on long enough to see what the improvements are like. They squeeze a few more months' worth of subs out of people and buy themselves time.
I expect JtL to be indifferent to good and the combat rebalance to be indifferent to poor. I expect JtL will *far* overshadow the RPG combat rebalance. I don't think combat is a priority for SOE in the RPG and from the pre-launch forums I don't think it ever was. They'd rather have a more peaceful, manageable MMORPG world - essentially backstory to JtL. This way moisture farmers pay their subs to live quietly and those who want excitement will have to look for it in JtL.
Everyone(or a favourable majority) needs to band together and cancel their accounts for a period of one month. Then if the actions on SOE's part are still not satisfactory after this period, extend it to two months and so on.
If SOE counters by threatining the future of the game, then so what; it's just a game. Move on. The players need to be in control, after all it is your money.
If you simply roll-over and wait, nothing will change. Remember your sub is your vote, not some online petition or forum whine. Use it.
Interesting approach (more a boycott than a strike really). I wonder though who will really be prepared to do it if it means that when (if) they come back, they will have to start from scratch.
I agree that SOE seems to be somewhat contemptous of their subscribers and particularly of views expressed in the forums. I suspect the forums are kept on mainly as a means to allow players to let off steam rather than anything else. Are they still closed to outsiders? That always seemed a particularly cynical move by SOE. This way subscribers bitch behind closed doors and keep paying. Smart move if you know your product falls short of its hype.
I disagree that petitions aren't worth a shot. Particularly if they are backed up by arguments and a proposal for action. Maybe the best approach is a pair of petitions: one for people who are pissed off and threatening to leave, one for those pissed off but staying. Set SOE a deadline and let them watch the names rack up. Of course there will be people who sign as intending to leave but SOE won't know exactly how many. Hopefully it should help focus their minds on the issue.
Petition online is a great free service for hosting petitions like this. It doesn't seem to have a SWG petition active yet.
Okay...
/. stories about City of Heroes-- but there are a ton of SWG stories on here, and nobody mentions exciting COH news.
"RPG based on Star Wars" == "News For Nerds"
Sure, I'm cool with that.
But surely news on a ""RPG based on comic books" is equally nerd-worthy.
And yes, there have been a couple of
Are comics truely more mainstream and less nerdy than Star Wars these days... or is it SWG that is more nerdy and less mainstream than SWG? I don't get it.
#1) It's our game, you just play here
#2) Technical support is the responsibility of the user
#3) Forums may be used to discuss the game at large, unless posts include serious issues with the game or make SOE look bad
#4) The game you purchased out of the box may need to be patched, and then patched some more, and then there will be a requisite gameplay change, and then a mandatory expansion, and then another gameplay tweak, and probably all that over again. Thank you for beta testing with SOE, your monthly fee will be deducted from your credit card.
#5) Game stability, server performance and non-crash level bugs (like spawning as a wall) are second priority to releasing new material which will cost you more money.
I hate these sort of stories. They focus on the thread where all the loudmouths are spouting off, demanding that they be catered to.
-read- Thunderheart's message.
Yes, the Rebalance has been a long time coming. But I'd rather that it take longer in coming than rush it up and have it bug prone.
Come on, any one out there... how many publishes has SOE made for Galaxies that they didn't have to do a fix to solve a problem within a week... for a problem that was noticed on Test centre?
One can hope that they're going to do things right, because this is a huge thing, at least for PVPers.
the long awaited patch rebalancing combat within the game has been pushed off until after the Jump to Lightspeed expansion [which just announced 13 of its 15 spaceships] launches.
The combat rebalance is probably the most important patch they could do. Even more important than the Jedi revamp they did a month or two ago because combat effects everyone Sure the old Jedi system led to crappy hologrinding, but there were plenty of people who weren't caught up in the hologrind who just wanted to play. What good is it for the Jedi now anyway when a good fencer template can still beat most of them? Combat has been borked from day one, and kostner never cared because he is so anti-PvP. Now they are going to rush out a FPS add on before fixing the game for their playerbase? They are going to tank the jump to lightspeed too. They might have attracted FPS players, if they didn't make space combat only optional. That is right folks, it's going to be like playing quake with spaceships, but you have to ASK people first if you can shoot them. DOESN'T that sounds like FUN!!!!
I really wanted SWG to be fun, I played the first few months and quit, I started playing again last april, and quit again because the Jedi Revamp looked like a clusterfuck. I was right. It just keeps getting worse. How could an idea that seemed so good (a SWG MMORPG) turn out so wrong? They've turned Star Wars into the Sims in space. Bleh.
once this patch does hit, the nerfs will piss off the people it hurt most and there will be a huge outcry of bitching.
Dont think for a second it wont happen. Anyone with ANY MMO experience knows this is how MMO's player act. Complain and complain and complain that the Warrior class is too powerful. Then Warriors complain and complain and complain when the nerf bat smacks them over the ass. Standard fare.
Star Wars was seen as the license that couldn't fail to bring in 1 million players, and they are probably down to the low 200k or even high 100+K players now. After a year of playing, becoming leader of a major guild, going to the Fanfest to meet with the Devs, I can safely say that SWG is apparently a hugely understaffed, poorly managed MMORPG. The response time from the Devs for serious gameplay issues is astounding and there are numerous bugs that date from launch that are still making life crappy for everyone. The absolute inability for SOE to hire enough coders to do the job that they have obligated themselves to do by releasing a MMORPG this complex is shocking. There seems to be a total disconnect between their perceptions of how the game should work and how it is currently working. At fanfest, one of the Devs would repeatedly tell players who felt that there was an imbalance in the game mechanics that favoured/disfavoured one profession over another "You are not playing right" or "You have a role to fill, that's what you do." He seemed totally agog that players might not do exactly as the Devs intended them to do. A very naive statement, if you ask me. Many, many of us are simply waiting for WOW at this point. Hopefully future MMO developers can learn from SOE's mistake.
Looks like SOE or someone deleted that board post as well. Interesting tactic.....
...who still play SWG. I quit in disgust about 6 months into it, when I noted that the game had, by and large, not really changed at all since it started. The clincher for me at the time was the latest "monthly" patch, which had been pushed back for the third straight month in a row. It became pretty clear at that point that SOE had no intention of ever making SWG any better.
Combat was seriously hosed since day 1 of that game -- that's the other part of why I quit. It's quite vindicating to see that not only is the game in the EXACT SAME STATE as it was when I quit half a year ago, but that SOE is still moving at the same glacial pace, promising the world and delivering it... tomorrow.
-E-
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=GCW&message.id=226060
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=GCW&message.id=225900
Posts on the forums about how screwed over the devs have become. The only people happy with this game are the ones who play it one hour a day max and don't have a clue whats going on.
the Political Inquirer
...to the problems behind the curtain. ...to the problems behind the curtain. Look at me! Look at me! I'm exciting new content!
This maneuver by SOE is simply providing a distraction to all of the core issues that are plaguing SWG. Subscribers have every right to be enraged, because it is obvious at this point that the dev team is slow to produce quality, bug-free content. Why would the JTL expansion be any different (in terms of quality) than SWG in its initial phases? After all, JTL is going to be a completely new endeavor by the dev team not only in terms of gameplay, but will most likely unearth a whole new slew of technical issues for users.
Rather than fix what really matters (and thus further alienating their core player base) they're attempting to create excitement via smoke and mirrors. Personally, I find this move misleading and irresponsible. I'm glad I hung up my carbine and stimpacks long ago.
Respect It.
I've been playing SWG for a while now. I play an entertainer, and it's been fun from the first day. It continues to be fun. No, I'm not rich. No, I'm not powerful. But I do have fun. And my character has a wide enough range of talents that if it ever does get boring, I can do something else and it will still be fun.
Here's an idea: instead of seeing how many mobs you can beat up, or how many Rebels you can kill, why not do something different with your playing time? Go to a cantina and actually interact with the entertainers rather than wiping off your battle fatigue and mind wounds in silence and then stalking away. Go to an image designer and change your look rather than sit in stony silence for ten minutes while your stats migrate. Go collect badges. There's a ton of stuff to do and see. Combat is not the be-all and end-all.
And if absolutely none of that sounds fun, then why are you bothering? I mean, it's your LEISURE time. You shouldn't spend your own time on something that makes you so angry that you're not enjoying it anymore.
Not from /.in either. Many major threads covering this issue are now "deleted". *COUGH* COVERUP! *COUGH*
Yeah, us on the forums are pretty fucking pissed. It was a long time coming. Now it's an even longer tie coming. Many are thinking of quitting until the rebalance. Screw JTL.
Looks like SOE is taking this browbeating a little hard: anything /. linked to is gone. I always wonder why people bother to vent all over "official" forums when this seems to be the end result. It takes 5 seconds to issue a delete on a thread and silence any criticism. In the name of "good customer relations" (i.e., those who might stumble into the quagmire from the outside).
Sig under construction since 1998.
In all fairness to the Lucasarts/SOE folks, the community relations folks there (specifically Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl) do a really good job of keeping the troll-pits (the forums) under control and happy.
As is always the case with a MMOG, the forums folks only represents maybe 5% of the playerbase. The folks who are having fun with the game are just out there playing.
At the same time, combat is horribly imbalanced. PvP is a joke and from all the commentary I've seen they're losing players pretty quick. This delay in the combat rebalance seems like a very poor choice on their part.
Their institutional decision to favour new content over making their current content solid is (IMHO) a weekness that SOE has on the whole. If you'll recall, the EQ folks pushed back the Omens of War expansion so that they could take care of their problems from the Gates of Discord expansion. The EQ folks have finally gotten it (after 5 years) and I really have to tip my hat to them. You make players happy by listening to them. The SWG folks should learn a lesson from their brethren.
I went to the link about "the reaction has prompted a response from the Sony Online chain of command." and it has been deleted. Did anyone get a copy of this, or do you think it would have been cached?
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
The pvp combat and to a lesser extent the pve combat is unbalanced. PvP is most notable with many classes just not able to take part as their is always some uber-kiddie with every exploit and the one power macro who just can't be stopped.
But the more serious problem is that the game just isn't fun. Whatever made half-life so much greater the quake makes SWG so much less then and this is really nasty, any game out there.
I have played it for a few months and I slowly come to the realisation that there are no unbalances bugs or lack of content. The entire game from beginning to end is just wrong. It seems like every decission they took they took the one that was the least fun. I think that if you really sat down with the game, noted every irritant and then build a game with those you would have the perfect MMORPG. There is something there but sony is unable to bring it out, they tried for two years and honestly it is only getting worse.
Of course those who still play it will defend it, they are like smokers who say they like smoking, SWG has one thing, like EQ it is addicting, the addicition is you searching for the little bit of fun that Sony has missed. You think that just around the next skill box, the next job there is gonna be fun. There isn't.
Perhaps MMORPG's themselves are flawed.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
SOE needs to fire the numpty devs, cause it's well documented around the industry they are the lowest of class and talent. Buahahhahaha BAN ME AGAIN numnuts! LOL
They're retooling the path to become a Jedi as well, from the grind to a quest driven path. I'm sure people will be even MORE open to pursuing the path of Jedi once that goes through.
They basically bowed to player pressure and threw continuity out w/ the bath water.
There's a state of the game on the SWG site where a dev states it is to make the game more fun. Personally I'm not interested in playing a Star Wars MMORPG full of Jedi. That's why they make the Jedi Knight series.
There shouldn't be a Jedi system period IMNSHO. But somewhere along the way Jedi became the selling point for nearly everything Star Wars. (There were only what 4 Jedi [If you consider Anakin to have redeemed himself] and Palpatine in the OT!)
I was planning on trying SWG again once JtL got released but that was contingent of the battle system being altered for the main game. Now I dunno.
No sig for you!!
SOE have deleted the thread that is referenced in the slashdot OP!? ("response from the Sony Online chain of command"). In it a bunch of people compiled a listing of what was said when by the devs...... It was starting to turn nasty.... Overall The one thing that was said is that all devs have been re-assigned to the expansion pack. That means your monthly $15 dollars IS paying for the development of an expansion pack....(minus the cost of hardware etc.) The expansion pack has an anticipated go live date of halloween. That means that ~3 months of subscribtions are being used in this manner... This is wrong in many cases.
It appears they've started editing or removing posts from developers (retrospectively, going back a bit) who were making promises and naming dates for delivery. Good for SOE that they managed to hire Winston Smith.
I played CoH - loved the game, but got bored. Decided to go back to SWG to see if it was fixed, and found bug after bug.
Then I heard this news, and de-installed. A lot of what we're talking about here are what I call "spreadsheet fixes"; things that are entirely evident when you lay the skills out in rows and columns and just eyeball them. More deeply, though, there's a real problem with class balance (and I won't give examples so I don't touch off a frenzy). In some cases, classes have no useful role; in others, some other class can do it all but more, and in still others, dabbling a bit in the class gives you what you need so there's no point in mastering it.
The bottom line is there are serious design issues with the combat system, and in a year of play they have not only failed to deal with many of the simple-to-see ones, but they've also failed to come up with an approach for the larger issues.
One interesting contrast is Asheron's Call 2 - they've wholely revamped many systems (e.g. crafting) and classes, and are attacking things like bots and PvP with a clear design. You may not agree with the decisions, but I give them credit for laying their decisions out, getting comments from the community, making modifications on some things, sticking to their guns on others, and then implementing.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
For the first time in recent memory I'm at a point where I might reasonably consider having the time to play an MMORPG. And here they are announcing that fundamental issues with the game are a lower priority than the next paid expansion pack. Problem is that, as a new potential customer, I'd MUCH rather buy one product that works well than buy TWO products that both have flaws (as I'm to understand new releases usually do). (Complete ignorance talking here - does one at least get extra "free" play time with the expansion packs, or do you only get that for the base game?) Looks like a good way to get me to look at FFXI/CoH/WoW instead....
When was Daikatana dethroned?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I think this shows that fundamentally Star Wars Galaxies design is flawed. If a year of bug fixes doesn't make the game more fun, the bugs weren't the main problem. Just look at the core design decisions that have messed up how the game can be played.
1. Setting - Galactic Civil war during the middle of the OT.
This basically means that you have to limit Jedi, can't have any quests, mob kills, or loot that have far reaching consequences because it would interefere with the continuity. The devs just painted themselves into a corner where the power of the players had to be artificially kept low
Contrast this with the popular KOTOR which the devs had pretty much free reign. Want hundreds of Jedi running around? sure. Want a homicidal assassin droid? okay. Want to kill the dark lord of the sith? It's Cool.
2. Economy - Pure player driven
Players are by their nature greedy, People want new, useful, shiney things, just look at the successful camp-n-loot gameplay of EQ. Well the pure player economy means that adventurers have to focus on cash missions rather than exploration. What incentive do you have to explore if you don't get a reward, and infact you are penalized, since those who are just running baz nitch money missions are driving up prices. Finally the devs understood and included more useful loot drops. I think they are slowly getting to balancing loot-vs-player.
3. Character Development - pure skill based
Major balancing headaches. A pure class driven structure makes balancing so much easier, since you can have very specific roles. We are still looking at balancing issues a year later in SWG. It used to be the uber creature handlers walking around with 3 rancors within a day. Then it was the pistoleers able to waste people with ultra fast guns, then there were 1 shot kill rifle men, and then there have always been the pvp medics. What makes it so hard is there are so many combinations, and you can't make 1 combination significantly worse/better than another.
4. Size of the Universe - HUGE
I remember the devs bragged that the universe would be several times the size of EQ and RoK expansion together. Of course, they forgot to mention it would have half the content. They basically decreased the density of "interesting" stuff. So instead of 5 minutes between an interesting dungeon, or camp like in EQ, it was a 20 minute boring run where you would see nothing. Vehicles have definately helped, since you get the sense of size along with being able to get from point A to point B quickly. But all the content still feels diffuse.
5. Combat - Typcial RPG Style
It just breaks down the "feel" of Star Wars. I don't remember a Stormtrooper running up 2 feet from Luke and both of them standing there for a few minutes taking shots at each other (including several hits). In the movies they had long gun battles, it was just because people were dodging, running around, taking cover not because they had huge amount of hitpoints. I had hoped SWG would have created an innovative way capturing the feel of battling with blasters, but they didn't.
Like I said, to me the game design is inherently flawed. I think that is why they are focusing on the JtL expansion. Because it will be their way of breaking away from the contraints of their original decisions. If it works out I think we will see a focus on the space aspects of SWG, probably to the detriment of the land based RPG game that is being played now.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
If the game sucks, just don't play. **ESPECIALLY** if it's a subscription-based game!!
I was happy to see several people on the forums claiming to be cancelling their accounts. Hopefully more will follow suit. It's the only way that SOE will realize that they are handling this game VERY poorly.
In addition, Blackman's repetition of something like the following:
is really problematic. One of the posters in the second SOE thread took the trouble to compile statements about the combat revamp from Sony's own Community Relations Manager.
According to that compilation, SOE had been doing whatever misleading was going on. I don't play SWG, and this makes me rather glad I don't; sounds like the playerbase got an essential revamp to the existing game pushed back for a revenue-generating addition.
organize a mass account cancellation. that will get their attention in a big way.
When the game is designed put a "Damage Modifier" in the calculation for each combat skillset's damage inflicted.
All the DM's start at one.
If a particular special ability of a skillset gives an unbalancing advantage then more people will be training that special ability, and more people will choose that skillset.
The game must automatically reduce the DM of the skillset with the unbalancing special ability and increase the DM of every other skillset.
Skillsets with super abilities get less effective damage automatically, and skillsets without unbalalcing abilities get more effective damage.
Every skillset should have one or two basic attacks that are exempt from the DM, to allow newbies and players on solo missions to be effective.
Skillsets like the force which are meant to be unbalancing get a DM that is twice what they ought to get otherwise.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
i picked the game up a few weeks after launch, and played for about three months. the game was decent, but the buginess and all around lack of content brought me to cancel. i reactivated in december, and played for another two months. player cities and vehicles had just gone live, and jedi were starting to pop up here and there. but there still wasnt much to do in the game, and things were terribly unbalanced. i got bored with it, and cancelled again.
fast forward 5 months, to the end of june. at the request of some friends, i reactivated. Man was I in for a surprise. there are literally jedi EVERYWHERE. openly whipping out their lightsabers in public, acting like idiots, etc. combat in the game is a joke. everyone runs around in high resist armor, with mega buffs, making them almost untouchable in most PvE situations. and PvP is just as unbalanced as ever. people exploit the grouping feature of the game, so they can take harder missions than they could normally get, then solo them with thier uber armor and buffs, making ridiculous amounts of money. the combat revamp was a glimmer of hope, that things would change, and people would start playing the game together again, rather than arguing with one another when someone in the group got part of the payout from their mission because they were within a few hundred meters when it was completed.
i was considering paying for a 6 month subscription, which would have had me covered through the combat revamp, which was generally though to be coming in the next publish (major patch), the PvP revamp, which was generally thought to be in the following publish, and then JTL. After hearing about this announcement, instead i promptly cancelled yet again. I am just now in the process of finishing selling off all my stuff in game, and will sell my millions of credits on ebay or some such place. three strikes and you are out SOE. this is one player that won't be coming back for more of your lies and deceit.
and one last comment: hayden said " The pace of our updates has been phenomenal and we?ve been adding major new things to the game, like player cities, player vehicles, the whole Jedi Revamp. These are not easy tasks to undertake and they?re not done in a week. This is months and months and months of work."
umm, mr. producer man, these were features that were originally supposed to LAUNCH WITH THE GAME. your jedi revamp would not have been necessary if they hadn't half assed the system the first time they implemented it. don't come to us about all this 'content' you have added, when it is stuff that was promised to the playerbase well before the game even launched. then it took 6 months to get it in the game. *cough* hack *cough*
Every PvP conflict results in winners and losers.
The winner's skillset's DM gets modded down, and the loser's skillset's DM gets modded up.
This is only applied to the skillsets actually used in the fight by each player.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
I'm not. I'm a crafter. It doesn't really matter to me if the killers
can kill each other more efficiently. All I know is I have to fill
a moisture vaporator order for some annoying little nerfherder or
there'll be hell to pay.
Can't fault SOE for trying to stem the bleeding. As I posted previously here I think, SOE's subscription numbers for SWG have been steadily dwindling. If they had any good numbers to report, they would. They went free-trial VERY quickly for such a large and auspicious undertaking. My guess is: SOE is in the red ink on SWG, and is trying to find a way to black ink.
They can't fight the street-knowledge that the game is pretty boring, that the game fell FAR short of the hype surrounding it, and that they have serious and intrinsic flaws in the foundations of the game itself that may not be able to be overcome.
So, they know that the space expansion (Jump to Lightspeed) is something that nearly every Star Wars fan would want. They know that Tie Fighter vs. X-Wing sold big numbers and was not that complicated to recreate years later in their (alleged) MMORPG. They are hoping against hope that it will save the game.
It will not.
And furthermore, they are making another flavor of the same disastrous mistake they made with their Christmas Holocron Giveaway...
At x-mas they gave away a holo to everyone. Some folks got two. Then roughly 80% of the playerbase started 'hologrinding'. This entailed working through anywhere from 6 to 32 different professions, all the way to master, in the hopes that the player would unlock their Jedi slot. Dev's later quoted as saying, 'We don't like the hologrind any more than you do'. Ummm... Duh?!
The result was a serious hit to the playing community. Master crafters doffed their crafting stations and took up whatever new profession the holo's dictated. The economy (in sad shape at that point already) took an even sharper turn for the worse. Macro'ing was rampant, and player interraction went from slim to nearly non-existant. Whole planets appeared to be completely devoid of any player life.
Fast forward to JTLS expansion. Everyone takes off into space, and appreciates the new experience. Leaving the population even MORE dispersed, the planets even MORE devoid of life, the economy even MORE screwed up as shipwrights charge silly amounts of credits for the latest and 'best' ship...
This of course assumes that they manage to pull off the expansion, and a whole new type of gameplay, WITHOUT serious game-breaking bugs and other associated problems. Many of us, have no doubts in this. We have gone passed doubt long ago. Many of us simply believe that history will validate our suspicion that this game continues to circle the drain... and the spirals are getting tighter...
My advice: hit the silk now. They don't have the subscriber base to justify throwing the needed development muscle at this pile o' poo. Too far gone to bring it back with anything less than an exceptional effort and some real quality decisionmaking, not to mention wheelbarrows of cash (which contrary to their projections just never materialized).
I predict this game closes its doors in 2005. There will be too many other games competing, and many of them look FAR more compelling than SWG.
Nice try SOE. Very auspicious undertaking. Many thanks to you from the future MMORPG development community for a lesson in how NOT to do things.
Don't forget to turn off the lights when you lock up... Your passing will not be lamented.
- Zhirem
However, I do feel for the veteran players (pretty new myself)--the combat revamp was thrown around back in the latter half of 2003, with Thunderheart promising that they were prioritizing work on it. Hence the recent 1000+ exodus.
Honestly, I'm not sure the combat rebalance would ever happen (at least, completely). Aside from staffing problems, corporate politics, the larger issue is that the combat system is in such utter disrepair that they'd have an overwhelming number of things to change. And each time they release a new publish, it just adds another layer to the things that they need to fix, especially with Jedis getting tweaked so much.
With the combat rebalance, not only do you have to change the almost impervious 90% resistant composite armor, but then you'd also have to change the doctors, who buff players so they can wear that armor. Then you gotta change all the monsters (mobs), who SOE adjusted in response to all the uber powerful armors and powerups (Death Watch Bunker, Corvette are some examples). Then you also have to change all the classes (Smuggler, Ranger, etc.) that are comparitively weak.
More than anything else, what can potentially ruin SWG is that you can become Jedis by following a quest system--there's already more Jedis in the game than you can point a stick at in the game, with publish 10 it'll only get worse. If 50% were clammoring for Jedis (as the interview said), then you'd potentially have 50% of the world swinging lightsabers around--if the game's supposed to take place between Episdoes IV and V where Jedi's are scarce or extinct, it totally destroys that universe.