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.

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

[Joe the Lesser]

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

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

[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

[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.

"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.