SWG Combat Upgrade Final Details

lunatick writes "After a year and a half in the making, details for the fabled Combat Upgrade for Star Wars Galaxies are posted to the message boards. It is being met with cheers, boo's and a certain amount of skepticism. Can the game truly survive such a massive reconstruction almost 2 years into live?" From the post: "The Combat Upgrade focuses on the entire spectrum of the combat experience, combat-related professions, their special abilities, and all of the weapons and types of armor in the game. Choices players make about each of these elements will be more intuitive and be significantly more impactful in the new system. Individual profession abilities and attributes, terrain and environmental elements will take on more consequence, making combat more engaging and fun."

Comments

MMOs with actual gameplay?

[mattgreen]

This is the collective realization that MMO developers are coming to - not every gamer enjoys the mindless, automated, watered down combat that is associated to these games. I despise it: it takes no skill whatsoever, with advancement being based solely on how much time you spend in the game. Concessions are ALWAYS made to players on laggy links, too; as a result you'll have people exploiting this to cheat death.

WoW's proponents argue for things like quests and instanced dungeons, but it strikes me as an MMO that isn't as annoying as other ones. That doesn't make it a GOOD game, it just makes it suck less than the alternatives.

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

And once combat is up to par with every other MMO, you'll still have a game totally devoid of content.

SWG

[Joe the Lesser]

SWG needs to do anything it can to come back to life and be a viable option for those who aren't SW nuts.

Re:SWG

[Mitijea]

Why? Isn't the whole point to create a MMOG for SW nuts? There are plenty of other games out there for everyone else. Personally I don't play this game, not interested. But, if I was a big SW nut, I'd be hardcore into it and I definitely wouldn't want them adding any content that didn't cater toward keeping me - the SW nut. Why change it into something for those not interested in SW? That really defeats the purpose of the game in my mind.
Now that whole different issue of whether they do a good job or not catering to the SW nut is obviously debatable, and like I said I don't know enough to go there.

Re:SWG

[Joe the Lesser]

I was under the assumption the point of it was to make money. *shrug*

Re:SWG

[Mitijea]

So you are saying they aren't making money? I thought it went without saying that they wanted to make money (what commercial game maker doesn't?), and I assumed they weren't having difficulty doing so. What I was getting at, and you avoided, is this idea you have that they need to cater to non SW fans. I still don't believe it is in their best interest to change the game to attract players that do not like SW. They are paying a lot of money for the licensing of the SW universe, and jumping through many hoops to satisfy LucasArts that they are treating the property right. If they want to make a popular nonSW MMOG, then why go through this hassle? The reason is because they want to make a game for the SW fan, this is the reason they are paying this money and working under the impossed limitations. They are gambling that there are enough SW fans to keep them in business. If they alienate them in order to gather nonSW fans, then they should have just made up there own world in the first place and saved all that money and extra effort.

Re:SWG

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more with you... the reason I continued to play SWG instead of moving to WoW, EQ2,CoH or MxO was because I like playing and being in the star wars universe.... This CU doesnt make it feel like SW at all

Hell

[GweiLeong]

Most of them would settle for a bigger "chest" slider. Darth Parton pwnz j000

SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[EngineeringMarvel]

I played SWG for about 3 months starting back in October. It is true, the game had serious combat issues. PvPing was very boring and was based around who had the best macros. Towards the end of my play period I started to see more and more people playing one of two professions (Rifleman and Tera Kasi Master). This is because they were heavly favored in winning in PvP due to the combat imbalance.

The PvE system was quite messed up too. SWG was by far the most boring for leveling out of the 4 MMORPGs I have played. Like PvP, there was zero skill required and was merely about pushing the same two buttons over and over again. That and finding someone to buff you. You will not see me returning to SWG. The severe lack of support and the fact it took them until now to attempt to fix something they promised to fix 1.5 years ago will keep me out of this game forever. I looked over the changes and they are very drastic.. I just do not see this overhaul making people go back to the game. If anything, it could make the people who have stayed this long quit.

Re:SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[Gunfighter]

I started playing in November. I think they're looking to bring a few players back, but the main focus is probably to bring in new players. The combat upgrade will be released at the same time as the new expansion pack. With both hitting the shelves two weeks prior to EP3, I have a feeling we'll see some new players.

On the other hand, I have a feeling a lot of the veterans will hate the new combat system and quit in disgust. For years they've been used to hitting the "I win" button and pretty much owning anything and everything in the game. This new system will definitely change things up a bit and level the playing field.

I love SWG and play it every night. From my perspective, I'll continue playing, adjust, adapt, etc. Sony has definitely made some stupid mistakes in the past. For all I know, this may be yet another stupid mistake; however, I'm willing to give it a chance whereas others are already griping.

P.S. I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but I believe you can actually play the new combat system beta on the test center SWG servers.

Re:SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[aztektum]

I decided to play again to see what the new combat is like, as that was where my interest lied the first time around (at launch). (that and I got a 30 dollar gift card for some issues @ CompUSA, so I basically got a 60-day gamecard for free)

A year and half is a long time and nearly 2 years from launch to redesign your combat system altogether is a big red flag. Sure their customer service blows, and yeah outside of the new combat fixes there's a lot that needs to be done...

Wait why did I decide to play again?

In their credit though, they did more than just balance a weak system, but redesigned it from nearly the ground up. I'd prefer they admit to their original flaws and take the time to do a major re-working of it rather than just bandage it up continuously.

I noticed something else this time around too. I finally realized what the game was designed to be like from the outset. It is more of a economy simulator with Star Wars graphics and combat tacked on. Taken from that view it's easier to understand why some things are the way they are. I like the approach, but their execution, to this point, is way lacking.

But like I said before, combat was my main reason to play. Being able to play with friends in a big Star Wars battle that offers more than an FPS can in terms of strategy and tactics was a big draw. I felt burned at launch though. I am willing give this a try, mostly because I don't have any other games I want to play right now. If it doesn't trip my trigger though I'll be burning my SWG discs after uninstalling it.

Test Center doesn't have the combat system on it yet. If they are gonna have this ready to go with to new wookiee expansion, I'd expect to see it there soon, at least by Mid-April.

Re:SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[the Man in Black]

Wait why did I decide to play again?

Not to be rude, but you have heard of WoW, haven't you?

Re:SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you want a mmorpg for adults that involves cooperation among players, http://www.everquestii.com/

Re:SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[aztektum]

Yeah I heard of both of those. I'm not a swords and wizards kind of guy.

I've said it before, if Blizzard had made a Starcraft MMO, I'd be there.

Re:SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Cute.

Course, you could say the same for any "failed" mmorpg, that it has a strong community.

I mean, when you're playing a glorified chat room like EQ2, you'd leave if it wasn't at least a good chat room.

Re:SWG Has More Than Just Combat Problems

[miu]

Like PvP, there was zero skill required and was merely about pushing the same two buttons over and over again.

PvP was slightly more complicated than PvE, much of the PvE game I would literally start a macro and just let it run unattended through the combat.

The game really was more a "builder game" than a combat game. Sure the combat was pretty bland, but the player cities and bases and guilds made it fun because it had an actual effect on the world - at least until the melee upgrade, introduction of holo-grinding and finally the massive proliferation of jedi destroyed the game and drove players away.

looks kinda promising

[MuNansen]

First off, I'll start by saying my opinion that most of SWG's problems are no fault of the developers, but instead the fault of deciding to do an MMORPG in the Star Wars universe in the first place. All the fighting in Star Wars is either with vehicles, blasters, or lightsabers. That's it. Doesn't allow for much variety in professions/classes. SWG has plenty of professions, but they're really forced variety, and it deludes the usefulness of each profession just for the goal of having plenty of professions. I would've preferred they'd done Planetside in the SW universe. Can you imagine that?! Wow. Anyways, the CU looks promising. For combat it's really a "wait-and-see" standpoint, but healing-wise it looks very good. Although I enjoy crafting, crafting for Docs and CMs was so expensive that it was very prohibitive, with Docs and CMs really not having many options for income. I think SWG is a great game with some big problems, so hopefully the CU will fix or reduce the problems. The ground combat was really the only thing keeping me away. The JtL expansion is truly amazing.

Re:looks kinda promising

[cgenman]

2-wheeled, 4-wheeled, hovering, 2-footed, 4-footed vehicles, animals of all sorts, blasters, rifles, mini blasters, mega ground-mounted blasters, light sabers, double light sabers, short sabers, mind control mind attacks, environment control attacks, flying sabers, wrist-mounted tow ropes, tazers, harpoons, giant glowing balls, arrows, slings, giant logs, traps, biological weapons, roll-out droids, torture droids, small spacecraft, large spacecraft, super large spacecraft, space stations...

There is plenty of variety of weapons in Star Wars to design a decent combat system even without getting creative or dipping into the millions of other Star Wars games. There is more than enough material to design a good MMPORPG.

Don't blame the source material: the developers dropped the ball. And they know it, and this is part of their attempt to fix things and make a better game. And more power to them for that. I hope it works out for them.

Re:looks kinda promising

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not quite variety when everything's only a little bit different.

EQ2 claimed to have 48 unique classes. Honestly, they stopped at 4 and just added fluff.

Re:looks kinda promising

[cgenman]

Area-effect thermal detonators: all of the players around a boss have to scatter for a second or they'll get toasted. Repeating ion cannons: someone in the back fires but people on the front lines have to be properly equipped with a repeater to magnify the attack. Plasma shields: people in the front of an attack pull out a shield and click rapidly to absorb damage, and which falls after several seconds and takes a minute to recharge. Force Modifiers: One player uses the force to lift an enemy, increasing their force powers and reducing their physical defenses, while another group safely lobs area-effect thermal detonators at it. A chain of force users form to lift eachother up in the air, granting great power to the last player to be levitated.

I'm not saying SWG is doing any of these, of course, but there are ways to make a MMPORPG with interesting combat from the Star Wars Universe.

Re:looks kinda promising

[Liquidrage]

The Star Wars Universe can be done correctly.

Look at KoTOR. It doesn't matter that it wasn't an MMORPG. Make an MMORPG with a few different jedi classes (warrior-tank, rogue-dmg, priest-doctor, mage-force dmg, etc...) Can easily be done. Add in a bounty hunter class, maybe a droid class (that are *just* as powerfull as the jedi classes), and you can come up with around 10 base classes to work with. More if you want to specialize (I think 10's plenty, look at WoW) into enchanter like classes (easily doable with jedi powers), monks, etc...

Now, they should have also done what KoTOR did and pick a time in the extended universe that wasn't already filled so they would have more leeway and there could be tons and tons of jedi.
Ignoring this, SWG still just had a crappy system. Wasn't like AD&D or EQ or anything. More like UO style basic combat.

Really, it's the worst designed MMORPG ever IMO. Horizon's kicked it's ass in gameplay (it just didn't have the SW name attached to it) and that's sad cause Horizons was pathetic.

Re:looks kinda promising

[C0rinthian]

A MMO set in the KOTOR era would definitely be the way to go. Armies of Jedi vs armies of Sith...

Re:looks kinda promising

[miu]

The problem was that anything different was met with howls of derision and demands for nerfs. Creature handlers went from being ridiculously overpowered to nearly completely worthless, Bounty Hunters went from being an elite class that was actually fairly interesting to being a "dabbler" class that people took a single track in so they could be a TKM and hunt jedi, commando, combat medic, ranged combat in general was reworked and made weaker over and over till you had nothing left but: buff bots, crafters, melee monsters and jedi. The other options still existed, but only someone with ridiculously good gear (often since made unavailable for new players) could make it work.

Absolutely someone at SOE dropped the ball, but I really blame marketing much more than I blame the development team - they had a design vision of a builder world and player generated content that was actually moving in the right direction, then someone decided that the "elder game" had to be jedi because that is part of the brand and the game fell apart.

The Combat patch is here?

[KDR_11k]

Okay, I'm off to a store, picking up my copy of Duke Nukem Forever.

Eats, shoots, and leaves

[Anonymous Coward]

> It is being met with cheers, boo's and a certain amount of skepticism.

As Dave Berry said,

Romeo, O Romeo, you sure look good in them tight's!

"Playing" WoW now... considering SWG after upgrade

[Holdstrong]

I spent a year playing SWG afer launch. It went from ok, to bad, to unplayable faster than anything I have ever witnessed before. The affect that hologrinding had on that game, and how bad the combat system was initially planned out, was truly stunning. WoW is a superior game in almost every aspect, save for maybe crafting. SWG does have a well thought out and complex crafting system. But the problem with WoW is that they so woefully underplanned their capacity, that it is basically a 6 day a week game right now. They just can not keep their servers up. 2 hour maintenance windows turn into 24 hour down times. Players are at their breaking point with WoW it seems. What good is a great game when you cant log in to play? I will be closely watching SWG and this upgrade, if it looks remotely interesting and if WoW is still having troubles... I'm switching back.

SWG CU

[BrainsVolpe]

This is going to improve SWG IMMENSELY. I subscribed to SWG after not playing for over 6 months because of the upcoming CU. I really do believe they will gain subscribers from this. I can't wait till May 5th.

Re:SWG CU

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been playing SWG since about launch, This system isnt that bad, the only thing that needs tweaking is Armor and Buffs, and add health increase with character growth, stims heal mind and lower the power and everything is gravy.

With the CU also comes the Crafting nerf, no more Doc crafters, BEs craft all medicines, crafters will be useless at combat.

Have you people even played TC-5 ? the CU is horrible, it looks ugly as hell, you spend most the time watching your toolbar animation to recharge so you can hit the special again. theres no queue so your constanly mashing buttons. you can select an auto attack, which is like the old system except it's a special, so WHATS THE DIFFERENCE? basically combat is going to come down to who has the best macros... because if you dont have a macro to queue your attacks you have to watch your toolbar, which means you arent watching your character!

The new combat special effects are ugly, the sounds are horrible... when you hit someone with a melee weapon is sounds like your beating a war drum, ranged weapons sound like someones running their nails down a chalkboard

Basically Instead of fixing things that are broken, they decided to mask this new crappy combat with a new ugly UI

I've enjoyed SWG while it's lasted, now that it's EQ in Space conversion is finally complete I'm out

Re:"Playing" WoW now... considering SWG after upgr

[Maserati]

The high population WoW servers suck and are often offline. The low pop servers are fine. SIgn up, make a character on a server listed in green, and have fun. My server has 10k people, the ones people whine about have 20k+.

Re:"Playing" WoW now... considering SWG after upgr

[Holdstrong]

Population affets things such as waiting times, and city and auction house lag... it has nothing to do with the uptime problems of late, or the bugs that brought us down from the recent patch.

I am on a low population server - and was not able to play at all last night. I will also be affected - as will all of us - by the ill concieved "compensation" downtime that will hit us on the 31st.

This is not just a High Population vs Low Population issue.

Re:"Playing" WoW now... considering SWG after upgr

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd read the Blizzard support forum, you'd see that the high-pop servers shared infrastructure with low-pop servers, and that was causing issues for everyone. I'm on a low-pop server (Terenas), and we weren't down last night. :-)

From the sounds of it, Blizzard is working their tails off to improve things. Kudos for them.

Anarchy Online with a skin

[faloi]

I played SWG some... And maybe it's because I was burned out on MMOG's in general at the time, but I never could escape feeling like it was essentially AO with a Star Wars license. The combat was as mindless as any other MMOG (although EQ2 and WoW at least have a bit more interaction than hitting a button and walking away). The crafting system was there, but not worthwhile, at least until you've spent tons of time doing it. I'm looking forward to a sci-fi based MMOG done right. Preferably a Shadowrun theme...