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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."
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.
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.
I couldn't think of anything witty to say, so...you're stuck with this.
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.
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.
The ______ Agenda
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.
The ______ Agenda
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.