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Star Wars Galaxies Overhaul Continues

Posted by Zonk on from the there's-a-noise-under-the-hood dept.

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.

9 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Seems familiar by ummcdou4 · · Score: 3, Funny


    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!

    1. Re:Seems familiar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The game actually had loot options when it launched, but they didn't work so Sony turned them off.

  2. Bad design decisions by servognome · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Bad design decisions by Crash+Culligan · · Score: 2, Insightful
      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.

      Maybe, but I've worked around software quality control people. I've seen plenty of times when a bug has been found, they guess its likelihood or its impact wrong ("Even if someone does find it, it won't do much damage."), and then mere days after the release scramble to come up with a rational plan to correct or patch what is now a gaping breach in their business plan gushing money.

      These things especially happen when working with complex software (increasing the likelihood of trouble), software which a lot of people come into contact with quickly (increasing the likelihood of discovery/occurrence), and concepts belonging to young, "immature" industries (increasing the likelihood of management guessing wrong about how bad they're gonna screw the pooch and how little the pooch is gonna enjoy it).

      The MMORPG industry is the trifecta, man.

      --
      You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
    2. Re:Bad design decisions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The problem was the people designing SWG envisioned creating a "world" the way they wanted it, rather than the way the customers wanted it... oops. The forgot they were making a game, not a world.... call it the wanna-be-god syndrome...

      Most of the developers ideas were indeed idiotic. They also focused their energies in the wrong areas. They are now essentially completely redeveloping the game since their original designs have been proven to be flawed and unpopular. The subscriber base of SWG is about 1/20th of what it should/could have been.... And with WOW out they won't ever recover from that.

  3. Desperate times call for desperate measures by mabu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  4. Despite the changes... by TheOnlyJuztyn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... 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.

    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? .. 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.

    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.

  5. My Grief with SWG by Krizhek · · Score: 4, Informative

    Was that I constantly felt like I had to log on
    -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 ,the weight of the world felt like it was gone.

  6. Sony had a slam dunk by HycoWhit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.