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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.
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.
First of all, let's get this out of the way: I think it sucks, and I cancelled my account today.
Okay.
After playing with the CU for a couple of days, I decided to hop onto another server and start a new character to see what the n00b experience would be like. I was surprised: for a new player, the CU is actually better than the old system was, or at least is its rough equivalent. With the addition of some Medic skills, the basic melee classes played just fine: as long as I could drop healing on myself, the combat itself went smoothly. I earned good amounts of experience and was able to progress.
On my veteran characters, the experience is entirely different. Like someone else here, I had a Master Rifleman. I was completely unable to kill anything at my own level--and since killing things at or near your own level is the only way to earn more than about 1 xp that was a problem. I also had a Teras Kasi Master, and while I was able to successfully defeat single mobs of the appropriate level, if I drew aggro from more than one creature, I was dead. In addition, the specials in Teras Kasi--an Elite-level profession--do LESS damage than the specials from the Brawler class--a Basic-level profession. This is unacceptable.
The game has slowed down, a lot. It now takes a HUGE amount of time to kill anything, on the order of several minutes. It would seem that to get anywhere, grouping is required, and some of us don't want to HAVE to find seven other players to gain experience. Medic skills--preferrably as much Doctor as you can manage--are essential to staying alive.
Jedi characters are screwed beyond belief. If you're progressing through the Jedi skills as a Master in any non-Jedi combat role, you're hosed: you will not be able to kill anything with your lightsaber. The aforementioned TKM is also a Jedi, and I can get in about a dozen hits before I run out of Force because I have exactly two skill boxes in Jedi, but I draw missions that are "appropriate" for my TKM level.
On the SWG forums, there's a lot of counter-bitching that people like me are leaving because we're no longer "uber." I'd just like to say that I never was uber (gah, I hate that word). I never had the best armor, or the best weapons, or the most money. What I did have was fun.
The idea of an upgrade to combat was something everyone wanted. Some tweaks to armor, chnges to buffing, some class changes to balance things out were all we were looking for. What's being forced on us is in no way, shape or form an "Upgrade".
The day testing began on the Test Servers(there was no closed alpha test. "Alpha" consisted of a handful of people being emailed some excel sheets), SOE placed a Poll on the forums asking for people to rate the CU. It was reset everyday, and sometimes after a patch was applied to the Test servers. Every single poll resulted in 65%-85% of the voters choosing the lowest possible rating. Everyday. Without Fail.
SOE's public stance was that the majority of players loved the CU and couldn't wait for it. Recently, at C3, the Community Relations Director for SWG stated that only 50 vocal people were against the CU.
We already knew these public statements by SOE were lies, which became painfully apparant the day the CU went live and the community responded.
While the CU was still on the Test servers(TCs), those players who were actually testing posted detailed, comprehensive discussions to both the Test Center Forum and the In Testing - Dev forum. A large percentage of the bug reports were ignored. Many which detailed the reasons why SOE's attempt at importing a Level-based combat system into SWG's Skill-based character system was flawed were deleted without comment. Since going live, this Level-based system, has shown it's inherent flaw in SWG, and all further posts by players experiencing it for the first time get deleted from the SWG forums as well.
A day before the CU went live(a week earlier than it was supposed to, with all bugs intact), every single "official" bug thread on the In Testing - Dev forum was deleted. None of the bugs had been fixed, and the players/testers were basically told to do it all over again. However, posting any bugs which were originally posted in the deleted threads(and never fixed) resulted in more deletions, and some bans.
To be honest, it appears that SOE has no desire to hear about bugs, expecially those which show the basic design flaws in the CU, and no desire to fix said bugs.
Besides the Bugs, and broken Combat system, there are a number of other reason why players are so upset and cancelling.
The UI has been changed dramatically. It now resembles a Fantasy MMO more than anything else. Colorful hotbar Icons have replaced the funtional, datapad-like buttons. They don't resemble the actions they're supposed to represent, many of themlook like they were exported straight out of a fantasy game(horses for 'mounting' vehicles, archery arrows to represent range attacks, etc..). When asked if the players would have the option of using the old icons instead of the new ones at a recent Dev chat, we were told "no" without any reason why.
The other graphical changes further create the Fantasy-based atmosphere which has no place in a Sci-Fi game, particularily a Star Wars game. "Magical" particle effects now go off for every possible action in the game. Every basic punch shows a dazzling effect. Mounting and dismounting from a speederbike displays an effect. Medics(clerics?) wave a hand and a cloud of sparkly magical dust surrounds everyone for a PBAoE Heal. None of this was ever asked for by the players. Especially when the accompanying special effects result in FPS loss on a grand scale.
All Crafting professions and Entertainer professions have been decimated by the CU. There's no reason for anyone to master an Entertainer class as the lowest Novice can now give the same single buff as anyone of higher rank. RPing these entertainment classes is no longer as "fun" as it was prior to the CU since a change was put in to make the largest available group consist of 8 players(from 20). This means it's no longer possible to create a full band of musicians with accompanying dancers. What Nerfing the Entertainers had to do with "Upgrading" Combat, I'll never know.
This post from SOE's forums was originally posted by "Handsnake".
/con result.
I believe it gives excellent insight into not just what is broken in the new version of Galaxies, but also why:
I think that this should be here, as it bears on the subject of this forum.
Please take the time to read all of the points as well as the conclusions. Keep responses civil, please.
I have tested the CU since it hit Beta and have been following the CU since publish 7.
There are a number of unexpected problems with the implementation of the CU as it stands in Live (and how it developed in beta) that do not track with the available information given over the year since it was announced.
The way the current implementation of the CU is made up has several glaring variances from the previously released info - in that there was one central item that I have identified has caused the majority of the imbalances and problems encountered with the CU.
Putting a 'level' system on top of a skill based system.
This was not in the original CU documentation released on 03/31/05, and data from public statements of sources inside the CU 'sandbox' scheme (without violating NDA) have confirmed that it was never discussed with them to the degree it was implemented.
Herein I will list the worst issues reported about the CU and show that they are all tied directly to the 'level system' implementation that was added to the functional design of the CU.
1. Crafter Death - Crafters are 1 shotted by every aggro mob on every starter planet. The fragility of crafter characters at 'combat level' 1 is extreme. Surveying alone is impossible since spawns will appear under vehicles in motion and mobs will kill crafters in less than 2 seconds.
The ability to at least run away has been removed - this makes crafters unable to function at a basic level.
The 'level' system has a damage multiplier. You will see this in further points. This damage multiplier makes anything higher level than you equivalent to instant death. Five levels above you will always kill you. Again, this point will be repeated.
Since crafters will not have any combat rating unless they become a hybrid and drop pure crafting, they will always take max damage.
Furthermore, every animal will use the damage multiplier against a base value. There is no such thing, therefore, as a 'safe' enemy for crafters.
This is the result of the 'level' system.
Before, each mob had different resists and damage ranges. They had a "threat" level, which was based on how high their offensive and defensive values were. Under the old system, that was the basis of the
This threat level has NO relationship to the current 'combat level' system, no matter what the devs claim in the HOC chat.
The threat level was an EVALUATION of an existing mob.
A 'combat level' is a MODIFICATION of a base value mob "angry bag" put into whatever 'skin' is appropriate, i.e, a level 34 dune lizard is the same as a level 34 peko peko.
The new COMBAT LEVEL defines the offensive and defensive values - not the other way around.
This is an important distinction, and is critical to understanding the conclusion about the combat level system and why it was added to the CU at such a late date.
2. XP gains and lack of same: A significant number of people are finding odd results from attacking mobs slightly below their level and higher - as in getting little to no XP. The response of the devs is to have people focus on just fighting even leveled mobs.
The real question is: Why was the XP variance put in the CU in the first place?
XP gains or rates of gains was NEVER addressed as a concern in the Combat Upgrade. It did not affect combat in any way, shape, or form in PVP, nor were there "problems" about the flavor of combat that were caused by XP being gained by anything you defeated.
It was never an issue at all.
However, in 'level' based systems, the paradigm is that LEVEL DETERMINES