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Star Wars Galaxies System Revamps
Star Wars Galaxies has been out for over a year now, and Sony Online will be attempting one of the most ambitious moves in a MMOG to date. They're completely overhauling the combat and loot systems for their game. Now that Jump to Lightspeed is finally out, they've made available high level concepts for the combat revamp, concepts for the loot revamp, and actual data on the first loot revamp pass. From the combat revamp: "Star Wars Galaxies is making bold changes to its extensive in-game combat system. The goal of this all-encompassing set of changes is to make game play more strategic, more interactive and ultimately more engaging and fun for players of all levels."
I'm glad to see Sony isn't just sitting back and letting their MMOG go down the drain. I haven't played it because I've heard nothing but bad/medicore reviews of the game. While it's not the safest thing (maybe they'll make the game worse!) but it's good to see that they are trying to make changes to a possibly great game. I hope others will follow suit and make major changes to games that are just total crap out of the box. Bug fixes can fix all the problems in a released game and I'm glad to see someone (Sony) is finally seeing this... too bad it's a year and a half too late =-}
Grease & Counterbalance
My guess is that they realized with EverCrack 2 and World of Warcraft that people will probably leave in droves from Star Wars. It's probably too little too late. Sony should just let the game die and go onto something else.
-Dipster
...does Han still shoot first or not?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I too am glad that SOE hasn't given up on SWG. I last played it about a year ago and finally left for FFXI because there just didn't seem to be enough content or people around to play it with. With JTLS out and the announced improvements (plus an upgraded computer!) I'm tempted to dust off that old SWG box and jump back in.
They also announced that they are doing a fully localized Japanese version. I wonder if they will follow the FFXI model and allow NA and Japanese players to play together on the same servers. I know that there are language and culture issues from the FFXI experience. But on the plus side, having players around the globe means that there is almost always someone to play with, which for SWG might mean fewer seemingly deserted cities.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
behind the worst content filter ever, could anyone summarize the changes?
--AC
I played SWG for about 4 months in beta, and about 6 months after release. My questions is, how did they get this so wrong? I mean, combat and loot are two MAJOR gameplay components.
This is a design flaw that was either overlooked or ignored because of the rush to release a product that wasn't ready for release. Either way, this is a project management issue, and should not be tolerated. Why should players wait 1.5 years after release for fundamental game systems to be fixed - especially while paying a monthly fee?
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
"every player will have the freedom to re-allocate their character's skill points as they wish to take advantage of the new, enhanced combat system."
That's nice, since I could only imagine what it would be like to have all of your hard earned and carefully researched character tweaks suddenly be a liability due to a change in the combat system. I don't play the game, but I think its a good thing they thought that far ahead.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I play SWG - the new dungeons and stuff are fun but the real game is the player economy. Its a blast trading and looting.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
If they had fixed combat and instituted real loot a year ago, I probably would have stuck with the game and played many more months.
:-)
As an old board wargamer, it strikes me that SOE's problems are the classic "nice design, poor development". They had lots of nifty ideas, a really well thought-out crafting system, but the game (not even talking about code right now) needed much more development time to flesh out the broken parts and to dump ideas that sounded great but didn't work well in practice.
Oh, and to nerf combat medics too.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
they are fixing shit they should have before it was released? Who would think a MMORPG would have to do things such as this after the game launched?
For me there's really only one Star Wars game I'm looking forward to.
Now I know Bioware is no longer the developer, but I still have high hopes for Obsidian.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
They're CONSTANTLY changing game dynamics. From one patch to the next, the entire game dynamic could change, depending on your profession. If you're one of the professions that was "revamped" then the entire game changes for you - you feel like you're playing a different star wars game with the same graphics. Its not fun.
They're STILL changing the amount of experience you get for certain things, changing how groups work, changing tons of things that don't really need to be change.
if youre game stunk that bad that you have to eventually revamp entire sections of the game design, then DESIGN A NEW GAME.
THAT would be a novel idea in MMORPG games - realize you're game is broken and work on a new game. the SWG revamps are so huge because their mistakes were so huge.
SWG is basically a long term paid Beta test. Players who love Star Wars are footing the bill for the development process. I played for a year, and the game felt like Beta the whole time. Constant changes, huge balance issues, rampant bugs, etc... The only thing that kept it from going the way of Motor City Online (Fast Crash), was the attached Star Wars license. The question isn't "will the masochists who still play SWG like it" but "will the hordes of veteran players who left(and may have moved onto newer MMOs) come back for it?" Given the way that trust in Sony has gone downhill, they have a tough job ahead of them, and their team has never really been up to the job.
SWG is not the same game it was a year ago, and I like the organic nature. I actually appreciate that SOE is willing to invest in rethinking major parts of the game, mostly driven by user feedback. Any good software evolves over its life cycle. And in an MMOG it's impossible to know what the in-game dynamics are going to be until you have an active population.
I know a lot of people get frustrated when their chosen profession gets nerfed, but you should just roll with the punches and treat them as new challenges. Think of it as similar to adding a new quest. As a Droid Engineer I went through some major revamps of the way droids work, but the end result has been better for the game. And while I have sympathy for Creature Handlers who went from the most envied profession to insignificance, it is much more Star Wars-like to use droids and vehicles than it was when everyone had three pets.
The loot revamp serves to respond to how much players like loot, adding more dimension to the loot drop experience. Everyone loves getting low-use schematics to craft rare items and the revamp is expanding on that idea.
Combat on the ground is a big issue, being very much a turn-based experience. You queue up your actions and hope they beat out the sequence of actions your opponent (player or mob) queues up. The JTL expansion has FPS combat between ships, which is in sharp contrast to the ground combat system. A better system for combat is definitely desired.
Predictability: All NPC's should have loot and players should have a rough idea of what loot is available from which NPC and to some degree the lewt should be phat.
Ugh...
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
or turn one into a diamond.
These are changes that were promised well before the jump to lightspeed expansion. The day they announced further revamps would be after the expansion, I cancelled my account.
Another problem is fanbase--with so many leaving, what you have left are the real hardcore fans--which like some of the [cough boring] aspects--steering the game in an increasingly fringe direction. That attributed to Jump to Lightspeed turning into a Nursery School playground, where TIEs and X-Wings peacefully fly by each other.
Plus balancing out the classes means really toning done the powerhouses that 90% of people choose--Tera Kasi. People were fuming when creature handlers got nerfed, they'll be going berserk when this happens. (No more knocking down AT-ST Walkers with fists and brass knuckles? An outrage.)
What the game should do is take some cues from World of Warcraft and make the factions more divided--like overt Rebels getting attacked by high level Imperial mobs if they go to Naboo. But ehhh, don't think that'd be happening either.
So much more of the game is broke, that there's not much that can bring the game back IMO. People never wear anything better than composite armor because weapons/armor eventually deteriorate beyond repair, so they keep valuable items as only trophies.
If they keep Jedi in there, it will NEVER be a true post-ANH setting.
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
After six months of broken promises and useless in-game support I quit and will never play another SOE game again. That was over a year ago, and we are supposed to be pleased they are fixing combat at last, now they've finally finished using the money of subscribers who were playing a bugged game to produce something new to sell to those subscribers?. Forget it.