Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars Galaxies Overhaul Continues
With the combat update to Star Wars Galaxies coming up soon, you would have thought the design changes to the game would have slowed. Instead, the development team is making major changes to just about every system, with looting changes, a complete revamp of the PVP system, the addition of a Planetary Control Meta Game to the design, and for good measure a well thought out Veteran Rewards program is going to be added to the game. Criticism of the game's real or percieved flaws aside, you have to be impressed with the team's dedication to the virtual world.
Who wants to bet the developers have been playing World of Warcraft and have discovered things that work?
"Hey Bob! Check out this looting system!"
Now get to work!
"Greifers always blast meesa ears!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
hopefully the anti-decay kits dont all get applied to the galaxies best dot weapons.
Shouldn't these issues have been caught during the design aspect of the game. Some of these things are so stupid, it shouldn't have taken a year and a half after launch to fix.
- Separate special action costs from damage - no more dying from using your special actions!
- Tough NPCs and creatures will require groups to take them down.
- Counter-move and Recovery effects - You now have ways to recover from attacks - no more one sided combat!
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Here is a list of everything you need to paste into slashdot's future MMORPG threads.
If this is a new game:
"They Better fix this problem or I'm going to sue!"
If the game has been out for while and is now fixed:
"Why hasn't this already been fixed"
Remember, as an MMORPG consumer it is your job to always be upset and post everywhere how much your MMORPG sucks, it helps drive innovation!
DocVego
fngeeks.net
I hadn't logged in to SWG in many months. I let my house and factories rot after I got frustrated because I'd worked so hard to craft unique and high quality items, and couldn't sell any of them, and many times there were bugs with the vending systems that made matters worse. On top of that, I was generally frustrated with the design of the skill point system. It's all too easy to max-out points and then have nowhere to go, and this can be especially bad if you're pursuing a dicipline that isn't in high demand. All that work for nothing.
I recently logged back into the game to check things out. It was a ghost town. No wonder they're scrambling to fix things. Based on the absence of players in game, I'd say SWG is hemmoraging revenue at this point. They need to do something fast to keep the game from sliding into the void.
I always felt that SWG had potential, but the implementation of this universe is profoundly flawed. This MMORPG suffers from many of the same ailments the worst MMORPGs have, specifically an advancement system that becomes redundant and boring very quickly, high end gameplay that becomes tedious and time-consuming to organize if it's even remotely interesting, a market system which is terminally broken, and a universe that is so heavily based on preset corporate or mythological constructs that exploration isn't as exciting because you know what to expect, and last but by no means least, a tremendous disparity between new and veteran players that serves to intimidate new players and frustrate old ones.
... Star Wars Galaxies is still just a bunch of boring planets with boring professions and no real reason to advance at all. I played the game for nine months of beta and three months of retail and all I really got was twelve months older. I've been following it for ages and I'm still not sure what the real purpose of the game is. I know MMORPGs are suppose to be less linear then they're single player counterparts, but SWG takes it to the extreme. They plop you down in an empty, boring, EMPTY landscape and say "Go!" and then expect you to have fun.
.. okay, I can't really complain about free stuff. But geez, none of this stuff really excites me, and I was hardcore into Star Wars Galaxies before beta.
Faction bases? They're exactly the same as before except some of them will have defenders! Looting changes? What loot? Crap you sell at vendor for 5 credits in a world where a new shirt will cost you 1000? PvP changes? Isn't that how covert and overt factions worked before, just without the ability to accidentally become overt? Veteran Rewards?
If it weren't for the Star Wars licence, I don't think SWG ever would have made it out of the starting gate. It's just not a fun game.
Now, World of Warcraft... Blizzard did it right.
Was that I constantly felt like I had to log on
,the weight of the world felt like it was gone.
-I needed to get on to check my factory
-I have to go one and check to see which of my items were sold
-Have I collected my resources from my farms?
Then a shared multi-guild base was razed by a bunch of 12 year olds when no one else was on.
I ended up quitting since it was affecting my relationship with my wife.
Then right after I had quit, the game
How could Sony mess up SWG as badly as they did? Out of the gate SWG was supposed to be the most successful MMOG ever. To bad the designers forgot to make the game fun! The only thing SWG has going for it is the Star Wars license. SOE has always ignored their player community when it mattered. At least now SOE doesn't have to the throngs of players screaming SWG isn't fun--they have all moved to World of Warcraft.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I would have to admit that my choice of server was based entirely on what server my friends were playing on as they had been playing for a month or longer before we bought copies of the game. It's a fairly high pop server (Proudmoore) but it's also a server with a lot of Aussies on it, so there are generally people around who understand when I say it's bedtime - for us it really is and I really have to go.
It does mean that I rarely adventure during in game daytime, it's normally the few hours before dawn in game. So I haven't seen many of the zones by day yet. And when you have a problem, GMs never seem to be around - I get a response by mail when I next log in.
If they moved our whole guild to another server, it might be OK, but part of playing in a multi-player game is being able to play with your friends if you want to - and if they're all on a given server, chances are you'll play on that server too. The more people you talk to who want to play too, the more people there'll be on your server - it's a vicious circle, but it's happening.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World