SWG Players - Comment on the Combat Upgrade

Since last week my inbox and submissions bin has been overflowing with complaints and rants about the Combat Upgrade put into Star Wars Galaxies last week. Players are speaking out all over the internet, and the media is responding. If you've had first hand interactions with the combat upgrade (either positive or negative) please leave a comment below describing your experiences with the changes, and pass on word of this thread to all the players you can. Think of this as a call for interview questions, because I'm going to formulate queries as best I can and see what sort of information I can get from the folks that I know at Sony Online. Here's your chance to be heard, folks. Use it well.

Comments

SWG Upgrade Broken Again

[KeithGap]

I'm a rifleman in the game and while I have been subscribed to SWG since one of the later betas, I really haven't played since shortly after the release of Jump To Lightspeed. (I've been playing "World of Warcraft".)

I was excited to hear about the combat upgrade to SWG, because I thought it might finally make the game playable to me. Since the devs have made some of the changes in the last few months that I have been asking for since beta (PvE galactic civil war for one) I thought this change might make me want to play the game and maybe even buy the latest expansion.

Lo and behold, none of my Rifleman special moves appears to work. I was killed by a green (easy) creature my first time out. I went to the boards and discovered a bunch of posts about how, once again, as they have in the past, SOE is beta testing their "improvements" to the game in live.

I've decided I don't need to play this game anymore, and I'll be deleting it from my hard drive, finally. Goodbye SWG Beta. I've been paying for you for far too long.

Re:SWG Upgrade Broken Again

[Xaielao]

KiethGap your post is another of those who don't understand how the new combat system works. "none of my Rifleman special moves appears to work" Because professions have all new ones that are balanced and give each profession a 'role' to play. Trust me I was playing a Rifleman/Commando on test and the Improved Sniper Shot with a rocket launcher was freekin awesome fun. You can use skills between professions now :) It adds a lot of flavor and variety and lets you set up different combo's and stuff :) "I was killed by a green (easy) creature my first time out." Did you convert your armor? Were you wearing armor? Did you use any of the new specials? Did plan your attack? Unlike before combat isn't 'blam blam your dead' It takes time, lasts longer, takes planning. Even a green can give you a challenge if you aren't careful. Once you figure things out.. greens are cake. See this is what I'm talking about. Most the complaints are from people who just don't understand or know how to take advantage of the new system. You left the game obviously. Once things get smoothed over, bugs fixed, you may miss out on one of the best combat systems in the genre.

Re:SWG Upgrade Broken Again

[KeithGap]

Hmmm...well, here's the thing. I did actually try to do the "knee shot" ability to slow the creature I was fighting down. I saw the critter get +snared+, but it didn't slow down at all. I later checked the rifleman board, where it was advised that there was a bug where higher level critters weren't being slowed down any by the root abilities.

I also tried the sniper shot ability, which made a nice little yellow thermometer on my screen and did nothing. No shot. No damage. Nothing. Reading further on the rifleman boards, I discovered that there was a bug where this ability was only intermittently working.

I even gave them a second chance. Logged in today and tried again. The sniper shot never worked. The knee shot ability had no effect on the greens I was fighting. These abilities are bugged, and they just shouldn't be. Not on live. You can have these kinds of problems on test, but not on live.

I did try to play on test when the CU patch went live there. The seven or eight times I tried to play there, I was CTD'd. Never once could I stay in the game longer than about 5 minutes. I don't have this problem in live.

Pretty much every time they put in something I thought was going to kewl, it was broken. They rushed it in to keep me hanging around to wait to see if it was kewl when it fixed months down the road. Not weeks, mind you. Months. As in $14.95 per.

I'm not playing that game anymore. No more paid beta testing. I know MMOs are complex beasts, but even EQ and UO were better than SWG in terms of bugs.

All that said, I have to say I thought SWG was going to turn things around with the JTL expansion, I really did. I enjoyed that. And it kept me in the game for months, actually playing. But at that point I was ignoring the ground game. And the space game just wasn't quite enough for me.

Funny, you mention how combat is going to become slower after the CU. See, I hate that idea, too. This is Star Wars, and Star Wars really isn't about long, drawn out battles. (Well, except maybe the lightsaber fights...) I guess it just seems to me that Star Wars wasn't meant to be an MMO.

Re:SWG Upgrade Broken Again

[frayedends]

No, not everyone was "gung-ho". The initial reports were greeted with anticipation and skepticism, but by and whole people wanted to test them. The inital review of the docs didn't prepare even the most hardened veteran for what came next: The EQ-ification of SWG. Instead of a combat upgrade, we received a GAME REMAKE. Big difference. If they had left it to just the combat changes, without the level system, cooldown timers, stupid cartoon icons, magical particle effects, ruined sounds, broken con system, and destroyed professions, then we might have had something worthwhile. But no, after ditching the CU they _had_ been working on in sandbox testing with the sandbox testers, someone at SOE made some decision that the only way to do it was to change the game into Everquest 2 using Star Wars graphics. We have been screaming for a combat upgrade, and no one - none of the sandbox testers, and none of the profession correspondants - asked for, or even suggested 3/4 of the crap we got in this pathetic pile. I know, because i was a sandbox tester, and this isn't anything close to what we were working on. Not only that, the player correspondants were all against these changes once we actually saw what was done. Opposition was high, so high the armorsmith correspondant was FIRED over his objection to that SOE told everyone they were doing. They had the audacity to code the EP3 Wookiee expansion in the new system, effectively forcing this crap live. The objection of a LARGE portion of the players is this: Immersion is ruined, and if we wanted to play Everquest, we would be playing Everquest. But we're not, so don't screw with the game itself. Sure there are people that like it, you could release the worst thing in the world and somebody will stand up and say it's great. But by and large, those who call themselves supporters are only taking into account what CU fixes, without acknowleging what it destroys. Sure, it's nice to go out without buffs, it's nice to take the defense stacking out, and it's nice to remove DOT weapons....but is it worth what you got in the long run? All that was achieved by the CU could have been implemented in the old system, without destroying what was a very original and exciting system that differed from the run of the mill MMORPG's out there. Now it's Everquest with f*cking ewoks. My suggestion for prospective players: Don't waste your money - cause there isn't much left anymore. Not to mention the empty servers. www.swgpetition.com has almost 13,500 sigs now, and if you figure 2 accts per person, that's close to 27,000 subscriptions. I know a ton of people still playing because they bought 1yr or 6mos renewals a few months ago, and now they're stuck with it and SOE will not give refunds. Instead they delete all forum posts in opposition, ban players who protest in-game, and outright lie to players at events with developers, like the recent breakfast meeting that was held.