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Ask John Smedley About Star Wars Galaxies
John Smedley: I was going to send you a Word doc, then remembered this was going to /. Including the text here.
Q: In your own words, would you like to lay out exactly what the scope of this overhaul will involve?
John Smedley:
There are two primary elements at the heart of this redesign: the
re-focusing of Star Wars Galaxies's profession system and the
introduction of what we're calling "Fast-Action Combat."
We are taking the 30+ professions and focusing them down to 9 "Iconic Professions." After the changes go live, when a player goes to start a new character in the game, they will see 9 boxes in the profession field. Those boxes will read Bounty Hunter, Commando, Entertainer, Jedi, Medic, Officer, Smuggler, Spy and Trader. Each descriptor will also have an image of an iconic Star Wars character, such as Han with Smuggler, Boba Fett with Bounty Hunter, Luke with Jedi, etc. These Iconic Professions will make it much easier for players to understand which type of character they're going to play and the type of activities and actions they should expect to find with their new profession.
Existing SWG players will be given a special item after the transition. This item will allow them to re-specialize ("re-spec") their character up to nine times. This will allow vets to try out each of the new Iconic Professions to determine which type they want to play.
The second major portion is the implementation of "Fast Action Combat." We're going to strip out the current SWG "select target, start macros, wait for combat to end" gameplay and replace it with a much more engrossing, entertaining control scheme. "Fast Action combat" controls will be similar to action games that our playerbase is intimately familiar with (Diablo certainly comes to mind, as well as our own Untold Legends game for the PSP). Now, every time a player clicks on their mouse button, they will fire their blaster, swing their lightsaber, shoot lightning bolts from their fingertips, etc. The pacing of combat has come way, way up, making the game faster and much more fun.
Fast Action really goes a long way towards making you feel like you're living the Star Wars experience, which is the primary goal behind all the enhancements we've been making to the game over the last few months. Instead of a passive, wait-and-see style of combat, you're now going to be much more involved with the action happening on-screen, which is even reflected in the music that you'll hear while fighting. Additionally, we've boosted the rate player's health regenerates, putting them back into the thick of things right away.
Q: Was there a single game element, piece of feedback, or event that prompted this re-envisioning? This is a very dramatic decision, and the reasons behind the changes seem almost as important as the changes themselves. What prompted you to give this plan the go-ahead?
John Smedley:
There are millions of Star Wars fans out there. SWG should be the game
those players have always hoped for, a game that finally allows them to
live inside the worlds and settings they know so well from the movies,
the books, the comics.
Our main goal with SWG for the last nine months has been to make the game more "Star Wars-y," for lack of a better term. Our two latest expansions, Rage of the Wookiees and the new Trials of Obi-Wan have delivered players the kind of directed, hand-crafted content that they would find in our other titles, as opposed to just having open-ended "sandbox" style of gameplay.
The redesign comes about after hearing desires from our own players on forums and in person at the SWG Fan Fests, multiple focus groups, and our own design team's desire to create something much more grand and sweeping with the game. We have big plans for SWG in the months and years ahead, and we needed this new platform to use as a foundation for creating the vast Galactic Civil War that our players want.
Q: The immediacy of real-time combat certainly seems more 'Star Warsy' than the current system. What is being done to specifically ensure that combat recaptures the energy of the battles we see in the movies? How is this overhaul going to affect the space experience, if at all?
John Smedley:
Simple: by engaging the player, instead of having them watch combat from
a distance. Fast Action is just what it sounds like. Players will find
themselves jumping in and really applying themselves, interacting with
the game like never before. Everything has been sped up in combat,
including attacking, reloading, using special abilities, items and
powers, even the speed with which health is regenerated. This allows
players to fight with large numbers of enemies without having to take
constant time outs to regen. This isn't like any other MMO out there.
The space elements of the game are going to remain as they are, since this action philosophy was already part of that experience. With this redesign, we're attempting to make the ground portion of the game as exciting and adrenaline-pumping as the space portion.
Q: For all of the Star Wars Galaxies players who already have time invested into characters, what plans do you have to transfer their existing characters to the new system?
John Smedley:
When the redesign comes to the live game, there will be rewards for our
veteran players (they should be announced later in the week). As I
mentioned before, all vets will receive an item that allows them to
respect their character up to nine times, allowing them to dive into the
new Iconic Professions and try them all out. Current Jedis will receive
two enhanced items, a special robe and a lightsaber.
Additionally, anything non-combat related attached to the player's character will remain unaffected after the transition, including vehicles, property, collectibles, etc...
Be able to use the Force to remove your Parent Companies rootkit, or will the Darkside of the Force remain to strong to overcome?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Does it also come with a free rootkit? Maybe when its own cheats are hidden they will listen to people.
Do you feel you have any obligation to reimburse the veteran players who payed the premium prices ($30) for each of these expansions when they were first announced (many times before they were even released)? Either monetarily or through in-game items?
I realize that this is a long shot, but with the rise of Mac sales and the upcoming change of Macs from PPC to X86, is there a chance if an OS X client? One of the reasons I believe that Blizzards WoW has done so well is because it allows both major desktop OS's to play together, rather than trying to partition on group on a separate server (or predenting they don't even exist, with all of those dollars itching to be spent).
And please - no wishy washy "Sony is committed to evaluating blah, blah, blah" - if there's no intention, just say so, please.
Thanks for your time.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
swg is rotating at increased velocity around the water disposal oriface...
my question for smed-head:
why are existing players being shortchanged in the Next Great Experiment? no level based rewards unless you regrind your template. swg has always been one of the grind = content games. why is this hated model being pushed again.
and do you think it is acceptable that jedi are only viable if they discard the saber and use a ranged weapon? is master jedi rifleman your vision? because that's what will happen..
-.no
So, I assume that you made the game interesting and exciting....
...and start over completely with Star Wars Galaxies 2?
Could they make the game so it doesn't completely suck and fail to represent the excitement and adventure of living in the world of Star Wars? I somehow doubt people aspire to vendors that sell trinkets in stalls in Tatooine and spend their free time killing womp rats with gaffi sticks. Just a thought.
Where nobody shoots first because you fell asleep from boredom!
When will we be able to play the game on a Macintosh?
it seems to me that if you are paying a monthly subscription to play a MMORPG you should have some say in the administration and changes to the game. after all you have a lot at stake in it, monetarily and time spent. why aren't more of these MMORPG companies allowing for more democracy? i for one would be pissed if an update broke my months of time and money spent developing my character etc. furthermore i think the introduction of a little democracy could very well make it more interesting.
If the focus is on getting players back into the game, would a price level change be in order? Less money per month/deals for longer-term plans?
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
Approximately 6 months ago, you guys did what was supposed to be the holy grail combat upgrade. Why didn't you guys do what is happening now back then?
Alot of people dedicated a lot of time and spent a lot of money to embrace and adapt to the new system 6 months ago and changing again now is a slap in the face to them.
Even finally now that many of bugs from the first CU are starting to be cleaned up.
Response from the test servers all indicate that this is as buggy if not more buggy than when the first CU was launched... basically just throwing away 6 months of development time, and as well 6 months of time and effort from a very dedicated player base. How is this a good business decision?
include a Rootkit?
Would anyone on slashdot even consider giving them a cent? This is the company that installs a root kit when you play a CD.
...The company that is leading blue-ray, the DVD format that allows Sony to remotely update the firmware, has a kill switch, must phone home to get permission to play a disc, and won't let you play a disc at a friend's house.
This is a really stupid question. Did you play JTL during the year and a half it's been out? You got more than your $30 worth through play.
Should JTL purchasers have been reimbursed when anyone who bought The Total Experience got both the base game, JTL and Rage of the Wookies for less than the original game cost at release? Of course not, they'd been playing with JTL for over a year.
Are you implementing all these changes because WoW is kicking your asses in terms of marketshare?
After reading TFA, it seems like you are basically implementing all of the rules that makes WoW a much better game, and slapping a Star Wars wrapper around it all.
Also, didnt your focus groups tell you that all of these features is what people wanted before now? Or has peoples perceptions of online gaming changed since your release?
Played much Guild Wars?
It ... is ... a .... game ... folks.
Like OMG and ROFL and such, like no way they're changing the game!!!
You're all acting like he's invented a new diet cola or something of importance.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Do you ever feel bad about making your millions playing off the social ineptitude of people worldwide?
Surely on occasion you feel a twinge of guilt that you're nothing more than am electronic drug peddler, giving anyone who is willing to pony up the cash their month's worth of e-dope after you get them hooked with a free sample.
I guess what I'm really asking is how do you live with yourself knowing you're primarily responsible for continuing the habits of poor lonely nerds who cry themselves to sleep at night clutching a picture of Princess Leia and moaning like a wookie?
Can we have the name and contact information of the person who was responsible for the decision to withhold the release of information about the NGE until after the release of the Trials of Obi Wan expansion pack? I'm not saying I care what excuse that person will provide, but someone had to make that decision and I'd like to know who was accountable.
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
Mr. Smedley, I have been told that the game was going to be shut down in January, yet your inverview stated that SWG didn't lose subscriptions over the first CU, and that it was growing faster than other SOE titles.
I have heard from multiple sources that the subscriber base was collapsing rapidly, which is why the game was to be shut down, and that NGE is a desperate last gasp attempt to save it.
Why, then, did you decide to do something very very radical, take away ALL our ability to customize our characters and abilities, delete whole professions, and worst of all, make the MOST sought after (took me many months) and iconic Star Wars character, Jedi, the weakest combat class in the new game (you say you play the game, go play a Jedi on TC), the ONLY one that has: No armor, no defenses, no rooting ability, that attacks at HALF the rate of ranged professions?
Why did you do this rather than do what the community has consistently asked and BEGGED you do do, FIX the bugs, and BALANCE what we have?
Corporatism != Free Market
You pay a subscription to use a health club. You don't get any say in who they hire, their usiness practices, etc.
/. ... you probably dont.
o wait... this is
-everphilski-
Our community relations director, Tiggs, was fired yesterday. She has been the ONLY person who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to communicate with the community (staying up to 4AM and still showing up at work after little sleep).
Why did you fire her?
Corporatism != Free Market
What assurances do we have that we can expect a consistent game experience? With SOE getting ready to release essentially a third combat system, can I expect to not have to relearn a new system again?
About two years ago I played SWG for about three months. This is after having spent a couple years dabbling in DAOC, and wanting to try something that was a change from the fantasy genre. On first blush the game looked and played nicely, but in the end I sold my account and then returned to DAOC half a year later.
As a single player I was able to completely "max out" my character in two months, completely unassisted. At the end I was a Master Engineer, Master Droid Engineer, Master Architect, and just shy of Master Merchant. Granted, I wasn't going to be in combat any time soon... but I wanted a change from the combat grind I'd pursued in DAOC.
Part of the problem is that the trade skills are learned in lieu of combat skills. Most mmorpgs have tradeskills seperated, such that you don't give up the classical "leveling" and combat for being a crafter. I can't say this is bad, but it means that making a character like I did results in absolutely no gameplay after spending all of my development points. Sure, I can make guild halls, craft all kinds of gear, and spend time running to and fro gathering up raw materials from my mining installations and making trades... but that has very little in the way of ongoing excitement. In short, there were several ways to make a character that would have no endgame at all, and couldn't directly contribute to the "empire divided" overarching plot.
Granted, this was my choice. But part of that choice was made after experimenting with the mechanics of the combat system. There were so many things I didn't like about their implementation of combat that I was driven away from that choice. For example, I found that kiting a mob (forgive the parlance) was easier in this game than any other... but there was this odd "feature" about doing so: Killing your target made your character suddenly stop in his tracks and pause for a second before you could start moving again. This would typically result in the BAF'd mobs catching up with you and beating you to a pulp on the spot. I considered it very poor design or coding or logic or whatever... and simply abandoned combat-based characters.
I think that their complete overhaul of SWG is an indication acknowledging that they really didn't know what they were doing in the first couple years of creating and expanding their mmorpg. But, then again, I've got some pretty specific ideas about where I want the mmo genre to head, and I've yet to see anyone who's willing to abandon the old tabletop RPG conventions that have been translated over to CRPGs and move onto something more suited to large, highly-detailed, persistent worlds.
But that is material for a long, long discussion.
how do you intended to get any hold in a market in which you a) have already tried with the same game and b) has the mighty 800lbs gorilla known as WoW sitting in the corner? it will be tough to uproot a lot of those dedicated players.
In interviews you have stated that everyone who tested the new NGE is very happy about it and your are recieving very positive feed back. Me and about 20 other friends I have have tested the changes on the test servers. NONE of us prefer it to the old system. 16 of us have canceled our accounts.
Why are you ignoring what your current community wants? Is your community not worth listening to? Are you planning to replace us with a new community? Are you aware that people are getting bored of the NGE very fast due to lack of depth and while you may recieve many subsciptions at the beginning many will quicky leave?
Why havent you talked to your community personally via the forums?
Do you care at all?
Why was this change announced 1 day after all the pre-orders got charged for the latest expansion? Are you dumbing the game down for a console release? Why are you removing all the complex interactions that your hard core star war fans and veterans loved (see: crafting)? Are you worried about class action lawsuits regarding the latest expansion, and California law that concerns advertising a product you have no intent to sell (see: items advertised for ToOW, now removed from game)? I played this game for quite a long time, learned and adapted to the new system, previously. These most recent changes make me sick. I will say, I tried them, and after playing them for a bit, I immdiately went and cancelled my account. People are leaving in droves, including the real SW fans that made this game fun. Also, did Tiggs quit or get fired?
NGE was dropped on us on 11/2, the day AFTER we were charged for the Trials of Obiwan expansion. Why did you deliberately withold this announcement until it was too late for veteran players to cancel their pre-orders so they could play on Test Center to see if they liked the changes?
Corporatism != Free Market
There's a lot of gnashing and wailing by veteran players, but as a vet player myself I have to say I think SOE is doing the right thing to the game. I'm going to have to adjust like everyone, but for the future of the game this is what had to happen.
The most obvious change is combat. It is FPS-like (with a 3rd- or 1st-person perspective, similar to MDK), where you shoot at whatever your crosshairs are on. The previous combat was move-based, where you'd select a target and then issue a series of attack commands. No matter how you moved you'd keep your target locked. It's too early to tell what this will really play like since the test servers have some lag issues, but overall it seems to work well. The combat players will cry a lot because you can't sloppily just shoot when you feel like it. But hey, they all complained about the last combat upgrade and then adjusted to it.
The "iconic professions" is really not an accurate way to describe the changes to professions. The SWG concept of professions is being replaced with character classes. Currently in SWG, you could change what your toon does by dropping professions and learning new ones. With NGE you have to delete your character to change classes. Once a smuggler, always a smuggler. You want to be an entertainer now? Delete your character and start over, losing not only your skills but your equipment and, most significantly, your actual toon's physical design and name. I think this part absolutely stinks. SWG players grow attached to their virtual identities, and now we're facing a change that forces us to sacrifice those identities.
The professions themselves aren't going away (well, Creature Handler and Bioengineer are), but rather being combined for the classes. Every trader now becomes artisan, merchant and two crafting professions. Marksman, Pistoleer, Carbineer and Rifleman are rolled into the new "ranged combat" tree, which a number of classes have. Melee combat professions are similarly combined.
Jedi is now a starting class, which has veteran jedi up in arms. But seriously, this is why people play Star Wars games. And in NGE the starting jedi are simply melee fighters with pole arms. A lightsaber doesn't come along for them until they get to level 30, and even then it's not a great lightsaber. Testing has made this seem somewhat like a kung-fu movie, with a few masters and a huge horde of minions running around.
One of the very cool things about NGE is the player tutorial. New players actually play in a separate introductory area on a space station. There are lots of quests that walk players through learning the game, and there's plenty to do there in terms of earning money and even traveling to another station and going into a dungeon. Once a player decides to leave the starting area, they can never go back. But the area is rich enough that there's no rush to leave. This is so much better than being dumped into the world and having to find your way through the advanced players and the communities they've created.
All in all I think NGE is going to breathe fresh life into SWG, providing the kind of interest in play that WoW has. It's clear this is what the gaming market wants, and SOE is delivering a very worthy update to achieve this.
I won't buy it unless it support Ogg!
I will preface the question with a little background. I played SWG quite heavily for the first 2 years of availability. I finally cancelled my original account in September, having played consistently since launch, built a guild and succesful player city, unlocked Jedi status, mastered piloting, run a successful crafting business, participated in player and roleplay events, and even earned an accolade badge from and talked briefly with the Events coordinator. (Suffice it to say, I've seen almost everything in SWG from launch through CURB, and have done my best to improve the SWG community.)
The quality of the software released in SWG has been lackluster. This eventually led to the disinterest of most of my guildmates; once my play group fell apart, I slowly drifted away. But, some concrete examples:
- Architect "Master Armoire" schematics were broken for quite some time after launch. The graphic was incorrectly the "furniture 2" image. Then this was "fixed" according to the patch notes, after many months. Oh wait, it wasn't! Now, the "Furniture 3" armoire was also set to use incorrect art (the "factional/tech" armoire), and the Master Armoire was STILL broken. Several months later, this was finally fixed...
- Architects were unable to craft a vital component (I believe it was the "Harvesting Mechanism") for, again, several months after launch. This bug was not even acknowledged until well after launch.
- City Management Terminals were broken for many months (and still broken when I retired from the game). A player could view the terminal menu once per access -- so, if I logged in during my semi-precious free hour at night, and checked the city's treasury balance, I was unable to make a deposit until the next day. Assuming I remembered....
The list goes on. As a professional software developer myself, I understand the difficulty of making upgrades and bugfixes in a complex system. But, this level of bugginess was a constant -- and, in fact, bugs were frequently reintroduced after resolution (as in the case of Recycler crafting). The constant stream of bugs -- and, in particular, bugs that rendered significant game features completely nonworking -- is what led to most of my fellow players' exit from the game. What obstacles are there in the QA process at SOE that cause this to be such an ongoing issue? Is there an expectation that reducing the overall level of complexity (~30 -> 9 classes, etc) will improve this problem?
seven two six five
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Star Wars is one of the most popular licenses in the world, and yet, Blizzard comes out of nowhere with World of Warcraft and takes ownership of the MMO realm.
How do you feel about Galaxies failure to reach a mainstream audience, and has WOW influenced any of the recent changes made to the structure of Galaxies?
Tiggs was the community relations go-to person on the official SWG forums. Why is it that she parted ways with SOE only six days prior to the deployment of these changes? Does this signify some sort of internal conflict over the direction of the game?
b oard.id=communityrelations&message.id=15830#M15830 .
Tiggs spent many long nights and odd hours doing her best to keep the community informed. Though people often disagreed with her, she was undoubtedly very dedicated and tightly-knit with the community. In spite of this, we received no goodbye post from her. Our only official notice was a vaguely worded message located at: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?
State of the Jedi Profession: NGE Conversion
Introduction
So far with this NGE we have seen numerous "nerfs" to our Jedi profession. In this context, the definition of "nurf" would be to reduce the effectiveness of a character class (in any form).Many of these have been quite devastating to what we have come to know as our alpha class over the last two years. Applying an alpha class to a mmorpg was a decision that Sony made for SWG and unfortunately players are not only asked but expected to adapt and adjust according to the decisions Sony makes without taking into consideration its effect on long term players. A basic philosophical discrepancy exists here between Sony, Lucasarts, and the customers of this game. That discrepancy is the issue here. Public announcements stating that the players think the game is too complicated and difficult is a farce. A majority of the players that have been playing for a length of time continue to play because of the diversity, and complication. The "instant action" style of play has (up to this point) never included RPG as a primary component. The reason for this is because most "instant action" players are not interested in content, storyline, or quest based playing.
With the last two test center clones we have been able to shed some light on certain portions of the conversion process and how unbalanced our profession will wind up when its all said and done. To most of you I am sure this has been a tremendous let down from what we have come to know and for many of you this will be the end. Our profession is about to be utterly destroyed by the unbalances put forth by this New Game "Enhancement". An Enhancement that will soon take away all the diversity we had, resulting in the Jedi profession being nothing more than a Starting profession.
Combat Level Conversion
On both TC-Corbantis and TC-Ahazi we have seen characters Pre-NGE converting to CL80. This is totally unbelievable. Most of use Vets are finished templates by now and to be converted to CL80 is an insult. It just means one more thing; back to the grind. As a Jedi we have ground out numerous templates from double masters to dabblers and back again. Why should we be forced to grind again. We also have been without the FRS for countless months and from what Tiggs said a week or so back, we will be without it for the rest of our time in this game. Again this is unacceptable.
Experience (xp) Conversion
Again on both TC-Corbantis and TC-Ahazi our negative xp is being cleared to zero. For some Jedi who are in the negative due to numerous BH encounters, FRS deaths, and/or PvE deaths this must be great. But to the Jedi that have been careful throughout their life as a Jedi this must be a downright slap in the face. To have survived all the hardships of being a Jedi and still come out on top is a great accomplishment. This great accomplishment will mean nothing in the end if we don't get a reward for it. Show us what our time and effort was worth. Give us our xp so that we can convert above CL80. As it is our grind will be hindered due to lack of weaponry (no 4th Gen until CL86). Getting nothing for our time and efforts again is completely unacceptable.
Abilities from new Skill Tiers
Most of us are use to the many diverse templates that we once accomplished. With the new NGE we will no longer have that ability. We will no longer have any of those abilities. To quote a player from the community "I am not upset about the new NGE, it actually seems pretty cool. What I am upset about is what we (Jedi) are losing. We are losing all of our skills. We Jedi are being watered down to a no
Corporatism != Free Market
Will players be able to drop whatever the new analogue of skill boxes are in order to go back and try something new? Or will class choices now be permanent like in other MMORPGs?
Aw crap, this is an "ask" post. Well damn, I didn't mean to shill here. Honestly. I have nothing to do with SOE, except pay them. So let's see, what can I ask...
With the release of SWG for XBox and PS2, will there be differences between the console version and the desktop version? I've seen with the new user interface that function keys don't seem to be used the way they currently are. Will the console interface design mean a "dumbing down" of what I can do from my computer with a full keyboard?
I played UO for 2.5 years (from the year it was released), Daoc for 1 month, AC2 for 3 days, SWG for 2 months (I say this because I like to point out relative MMORPG mediocrity :) ). I can remember that ping times in UO was a huge factor in PvP. Because everybody was 7X GMs, the guy with the best ping usually won (of course, in faction wars (ohh, these were nice!), it was something else).
How will you make sure that your new "Fast Action" change will not turn SWG PvP into a ping war?
perception is reality
In retrospect, do you think it was a mistake to hire Raph Koster as lead designer for SWG? He has a lot of great ideas about virtual world design, but SWG at launch was much more of an economic simulator with a Star Wars skin than it was a game.
(For reference, I was in SWG starting in early Beta 1 -- Shuttle 3, specifically -- and played for about six months after launch.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I'm going to name my character $sys$Skywalker. I'll beat you all and you'll never even know what hit you!
Jedi invisibility, biatch!
You claim that we are vocal minority, why has my guild seen fallout form your doings for the last 2 years we went from 250 at launch to 180 first Combat Upgrade to 60 (New Game) in the last month So I guess what alot of us bought the game for to play and be apart fo Star Wars to live our Saga, (Remember the adds?) Is Gone. So Hows about opening up the Testing Forums to the General Press! Let them all come in and see what the hell is really happening ole chum. Anyone who puts another signle penny into this fiasco should have thier heads cat-scanned and if you like it, well you deserve it. My Two Cents..
How do you deal with the people who are going to whine no matter what you do? Can you afford to risk just ignoring them, or do you try to address them knowing it will fall on deaf ears, or have you come up with a better plan?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
I think the main difference is that in SWG, every single item is unique.
In WoW, for example, every Dazzling Mithril Raiper is the same as every other Dazzling Mithril Rapier. The only variants are, what single enchant has been added to it and how much durability is left? So when one drops, the game just adds one more simple record to your inventory, and it's done.
In SWG, every single item is different from every other one. Very few items can even stack because they can differ ever so slightly. The quality of the resources that you use to craft, the skill of the crafter, and a bit of randomness luck make each item unique. You can do factory batch jobs to craft multiple identical items, but those max out at 1000 or so (and far less for items which rely on other facotry runs to be made first). The database requirements must be enormous.
Also, in SWG, you can interact with and change the environment. You can build houses, place harvesters, start towns, have passive and active defenses, etc. In WoW, there's none of this at all. Except for the players, every WoW server is exactly the same. You can't build player cities, can't place harvesters, can't craft an especially high quality Dazzling Mithril Rapier, etc.
So SWG really is much more intricate (for better or for worse) than WoW, but I think the revamp is going to reduce this unneccesary complexity.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Instead of putting bad money after good in developing the NGE why didn't SOE fix the bugs, and add content? I'm not talking loot drop schematic content, I'm talking changes in profession content? For example, there are a lot of furnishings in the game world that isn't available for the architect class to create? How hard would it be to add those items to the architect list?
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
if by meg you mean Megabyte, then your math is off.
This message brought to you by Food (for trolls) not bombs.
face the world with eyes of fire.
Why are you only willing to answer ten questions, when the player population is so high and deserves a better coverage of their interests?
1. Why do you bald-faced lie when you say that the majority of players who test the NGE like it? If you read the forums in a cursory manner, you will see this is not true. Any journalistic source (like SlashDot) should do a little homework before accepting propaganda. Anyways, back to the question for Smedley, does lying make you feel good in your naughty place?
2. Could you please make a public pledge to continue adding your secret sauce to SWG which consists of: (a) ignoring 99.9999% (six sigma efficiency) of feedback on the forums (b) rarely adding any free content (c) dramatically re-writing the rules of the game mechanics every 6 months so as to render all high end loot/weapons/armor accumulated/bought COMPLETELY useless. You did it to us with the CU. You are doing it again with the NGE. I fervently plead with you to try to do this again 6 months from now. Otherwise, the game is too easy.
3. How many more devs and CSRS (like Tiggs, the Director of Community Relations) will you be laying off in the next 6 months?
4. Which Indian offshoring firm created the new NGE application for you? a. InfoSys b. Tata c. Wipro d. Other
5. How soon can we expect this new revamp to fail resulting in the closing down of SWG entirely due to a total loss of subscribers? 3 months or 6 months?
6. How soon can we expect you to be promoted for your brilliant management of SWG, brilliant conception for EQ2 and brilliant acquisition of MxO? I know that if were the President of Sony, I would be itching to promote you further ASAP.
Actually it should be...
1 byte per character customization = 255 bytes
1000 x 4,000,000,000 bits = 500,000,000 bytes
So half a gigabyte of storage per character (not the 4k (It was 4k not 4M) you computed).
I think you meant something along these lines...
1 byte per character customization = 255 bytes
1000 x 200 bytes for 20 10 byte floating point attributes.
For around 200k per character.
Of course I was always under the impression that they limited character slots because of the limited number of lots to build on.
Mr. Smedley,
Day 1 customer here. Love Star Wars, love SWG.
This NGE revamp has to have been in the works, under design and development, for quite some time now. Yet, you failed to announce it until literally 48 hours after selling the latest expansion pack, "The Trials of ObiWan". Many of the selling points of this expansion pack (i.e. loot items for Creature Handler) are for professions that are about to be DELETED from the game.
How do you respond to your loyal customers, those who have paid their monthly dues for 2.5 years and bought your expansions, who feel they were misled into buying an expansion with loads of features & items you knew were about to be scrapped? Why the secrecy around this NGE? The previous combat upgrade was announced long before its release.
She was late to work one morning?
All kidding aside, that's a very good question. I personally look forward to seeing it addressed.
Remember, people: If you disagree with the policies of these mega corps: hit them where it hurts. Don't send them money. Don't buy their products, consume their media, or support their advertisers.
If you can't help yourself because you've _got_ to consume their content, then you have no self-control and therefore are ripe for the pickings. Can't blame them really. Blame yourself.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Hi John,
Let me start by writing that I'm a player from the early hour: my account has been activated 2 days after the servers were put in operation - this delay being the consequence of my Frenchness.
I lived through all the changes you put on SWG, being the Combat Upgrade, the many balancing changes of the skill trees, the Jump to Lightspeed space extention, etc, etc...
What I'm currently wondering is how you would caracterize the NGE, considering the following facts:
- pre-NGE, the character you had on a server was free to be whatever the player wanted. The player could pick a little bit of everything, or choose THE one destiny for his character. Post-NGE, the "class" of the character will be fixed for the life of the character
- pre-NGE, and I'd even say pre-Combat Upgrade, the combat system was in line the RPG expectations of the players: a good slice of strategy, another good slice of knowledge of your character's strong points and weaknesses, a bit of luck and nice equipment. Post-NGE, it will be more like a good aiming, and a very, very low ping
- pre-NGE, crafting was something... crafty. An item could (and in the beginning of the tree, often did) failed to be crafted, and each and every item could be customized in a few specific attributes: fast or powerfull weapons, strong or long-lasting armors, etc... Post-NGE, only 4 trades are still available, with the aim of simplifying the game, I'm sure.
So, the MMO part of the game is definitly apropriate, but I doubt about the RPG part. The post-NGE Starwars Galaxies looks not completely unlike a themed Planetside (for the combat), with some chunks of World of Warcraft (for the classes).
Now, my question is: do you think that your current customers will be following you in this adventure, as it really looks like a dumbing-down of the game, making it more like the mainstream online games, and removing from it the parts that were making it unique?
Thanks,
Arkan
The biggest problem with this game besides the constant "do overs" with the game play is it's failure to make Star Wars it's own without upsetting the masses or breaking Star Wars. Have you ever thought coinsidered wiping the universe and starting over after RoTJ? That side of it is more open to change and wouldn't limit you as much nor have people as upset when you fiddle with Star Wars.
Jason
I've played a lot of MMORPGs, and one thing that leapt out at me playing SWG is how slow and cumbersome resource gathering was. If you wanted to be a crafter, you had to commit to spending hours sitting around while your hapless character extracted minerals. I understand this got better in the late game, when you could afford expensive stuff, but in the early game it was a huge timesink of the sort that Sony is best known for, and that was one of many such time sinks I experienced in the ten day free trial that pretty much summed up my SWG experience.
I suppose my question is this: Do you have any plans to make a game that's sole purpose isn't to keep people paying your subscription fees for as long as possible? That particular facet of Sony ideology has turned me off to every Sony game I've ever played.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Well duh, this is Sony we're talking about. They fired her because she was fooling the players into beliveing that Sony gave a damn.
I read the internet for the articles.
Why the fuck are you answering questions here on Slashdot instead of answering questions in your own goddamn forums? Are you defective? Do you give enough of a fuck to talk to your players instead of going on these idiotic public relations jaunts? The fact that you are here answering questions instead of your own forums answering questions just shows how little you give a damn beyond reaping the subscription rates and ripping your players off by announcing a major game change the day after release of an upgrade.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
How do you answer the security concerns being raised by people who have been burned by the DRM Sony has distributed on it's audio CDs?
Will this practice be expanding to other product lines, such as game CDs or clients?
How will the ability to hide a file from the OS by prepending $sys$ to the file name impact the anti cheating measures in SWG? Will this make the game more vulnerable to cheaters?
How do you feel about a division of your own company creating a root kit that may enable rampant cheating in Star Wars Galaxies?
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Because she had the guts to stand up for us players, because she worked her arse off for SOE, and like the players she got shafted despite her hard work and dedication.
Taking questions here, prior Gamespy interview referenced in the Article and I happened to see this almost simultaneously:
0 05/id20051109_602467.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/nov2
Actors do all the Oprah's and Letterman's they can before their movies are released to drum up publicity, seems this is a similar tactic.
Why did you guys announce this "upgrade" the day after ToOW release? I mean heh... sounds a bit strategical to me, an "upgrade" like this would take months if not years to create, this total revamp is bigger than the normal CU itself (which by the way was announced months before) and will change the genre and remove very many reasons to playing this game. You have said that every upgrade will be on the "In development forums", and step by step be shown to the players. Was this "upgrade" too small to ever be put there? You knew well that very many players wouldn't ever have bought the expansion if they knew the game was going down the trashcan 2-3 weeks later. If not illegal, this is fraud and you are cheating your players... I doubt I will get an answer to this, and if I won't, I will take it as my statements in this post are correct (I know you read all of them so no response will mean as much as a response really...). By the way... people probably have cancelled their accounts, and most responses you have been getting have probably been negative, do you really think that I should believe you when you say that most people are optimistic about this? What do you take people who play this game for? Don't you think they play it for a reason, that they are happy with the current system? Of course some people may want the NGE, however I don't believe the majority of the subscribers enjoy complete revamps which take time to get into and fix bugs etc... each 6 months. Just my thoughts, I really have lost all my trust to SOE/LA for first removing the original combat system pre-cu and then removing what's left of the fun from it from CU1 by adding CU2. I am sorry to say this but it's the way I feel... Thanks.
Surely on occasion you feel a twinge of guilt that you're nothing more than an electronic drug peddler, giving anyone who is willing to pony up the cash their month's worth of e-dope after you get them hooked with a free sample.
You want to go home and think about your life... And don't call me Shirley!
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Why should we trust any software that Sony wants us to install on our computers, after the recent well-known rootkit incident?
What are you going to do to get out from under this rock?
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
Only people who have purchased The Trials of Obi-Wan have access to that content.
What the grandparent poster is complaining about is that as of yesterday, SOE has activated ALL Accounts for JTL (Jump to Lightspeed) Content. Which means everyone now gets to use the space portion of the game that was released two years ago as a $30 expansion, and which was included as a part of the Total Experience package, when Rage of the Wookies came out about 6-8 months ago.
He is demanding a refund of $30 for something be bought two years ago, and has been playing all this time, so your comparsion to Trials of Obi-Wan just doesn't hold water, as only people who have purchased the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion, have access to the content.
FUCK YOU. Have a nice day.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
Just curious. Does Han shoot first in this game?
to revitalize one critical missing aspect of the SW experience, IE the actual war?
currently you have allowed the galactic civil war to sink into obscurity by going out of your way to accomodate those who feel both sides should be balanced, and by making it supremely difficult for sides to fight and get a sense of accomplishment.
how do you plan on rectifying this post NGE? do you plan on actually letting players feel the oppressive might of the empire, or will you continue to cater to a vocal minority who would prefer balance over immersiveness? what will be done to alieviate one of SWG's core problems, namely the inability of the game servers to support epic massive battles of over 100 players?
(for those of you who don't know, this is currently impossible in SWG)
Given the history this game and development team has for pushing publishes to live with scores of bugs and balance issues, including the last "Combat Upgrade" which went live with bugs that are still unaddressed in the live game, why such a short schedule from announcement, and public testing to live? The massive changes were announced slightly more then two weeks before you are slated to make these changes to live servers. Why such a condesed timeframe, especially considering this announcement was made 1 day after your most recent expansion went live with the same abundant bugs that all your publishes and expansions have been rushed to market with?
I don't mind game changes whatsoever. Even though I am a huge Star Wars fan - I will be cancelling after what I consider the '3rd Strike' from Sony Online Entertainment.
I will be cancelling because while I do not mind signifigant game altering changes - I do not appreciate being lied to. The 3rd Strike Lie (bait & switch on expansion purchasers) did not even affect my character.
As a matter of fact - by all accounts I'll be able to respect into a full template Jedi under the new system.
The prior two lies were a result of underhanded publish changes that were not even listed in the patch notes for Publish 22 & Publish 23. I recall the uproar that forced SOE to remove the changes after they went live.
I sold my Playstation 2, and I sold all my games. I will not be purchasing another Sony product. Sony's DRM technology is now being used to cloak game hacks and Trojan programs. Sony is reportedly in the works on removing the ability to play Playstation 3 games on more than one console - so that everyone has to buy their own copy.
Sony is about the dollah dollah bottomline. They believe they can reach this via underhanded tactics and deceptive business practices.
Not off my wallet.
Oh and my question:
Why don't you and your company go fuck yourselves?
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
So I guess what alot of us bought the game for to play and be apart fo Star Wars to live our Saga, (Remember the adds?) Is Gone.
:)
Words fail me. I'd say they've failed you, too.
You bought the game for to play and be apart? Fo' Star Wars to live your saga? Do I remember the additions? What is gone?
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
>Those boxes will read Bounty Hunter,
>Commando, Entertainer, Jedi, Medic,
>Officer, Smuggler, Spy and Trader.
What if my daughter wanted to be a diplomat? Something tells me that's not the same as Officer. You mentioned each class would show up as a familiar Icon, and I wouldn't call Princess Leia any of the things above. Only three out of the nine are even remotely "non-agressive" in nature. That doesn't speak well for a game that was once geared to be more of a world to explore than just a massive wargame.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Smed's not too concerned about the poor lonely nerds -- he's concerned with good/great gameplay in a MMO environment (now whether or not he's attained that is a topic left for others to debate/flame).
Here's a great (and I believe true) story regarding his vision (and kind of how this gamble led him to where he is today):
He was hired to retool/redesign a game way back in '95 (maybe before that, it's so long ago now...). He told his superiors one thing, but designed another -- Armorgeddon (now Tanarus)*. He was looking, way back then, at what the future of gaming was and took the risk. The game wasn't supposed to incorporate online play. It worked for him. The beta period had thousands of die-hard fans and then it went subscription and held on well for a year or so, by which time he'd been congratulated/rewarded and the company owning Tanarus got bought out by Sony.
Tanarus development was dumped for Everquest. EQ has its own history, but was certainly groundbreaking.
I visited Verant's (their name before being bought out by Sony) studios in San Diego the day EQ came out of beta and went live. It was bustling in the cubicle farm they had then, but one thing I remember distinctly was meeting an online acquaintance of mine (also from Hawaii) Danny Han (aka Blackbird in Tanarus) with another guy sitting by themselves in a conference room literally with pens and papers talking about their newest (and shh-shh) project/game they were going to make -- Star Wars Galaxies. I thought that was WAY cool and wished them luck. It certainly seemed ambitious at the time (because this was before anyone knew just how successful EQ was going to be financially), but everything worked out in spades. EQ quickly became a cash cow and SWG was built/licensed and released (followed by EQ 2).
I think that after all this time (and it *has* been all this time for many of us) the genre's gotten stale. I think Smed's doing the right thing, and I think it's going to be great, but I do expect it to have its growing pains.
I never got to meet Smed when I visited San Diego back in the day. He happened to be out of his office in a meeting or something. Oh well. I was going to ask him about putting some developers back onto Tanarus because it was starting to rot, but he was looking to the future come hell, high water, or disappointment to those of us who'd become hooked to his latest project to be deemed 'complete'...
He's a great guy, but he doesn't wallow in past projects. He sees something then goes for it.
Chris aka Tatyana of DoW/ArmedLemmings in Tanaus - Hailhammer Thunderstrike in EQ (FV/roleplaying server)
* - Tanarus was where many of us learned about his motivations. The game had (still has really) so much promise, but technologically it was/is dated. The gameplay aspect still has a lot of life in it where wonderful things could be done to it, but that doesn't/didn't interest him. Still, I'm grateful that he brought it (with other programmers of course) into existence...
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
Most players do not care about items, time invested, or veteran rewards when compared to the lack of communication and feeling betrayed. I would like to know why you decided to push this out, unannounced, immediately following a $30 expansion. Furthermore, given the absurd amount of bugs and unadressed issues discovered in the brief 5-day 2-server "test", why must the NGE be deployed 4 days from now in such a horrid state?
Q: One of the greatest strengths of SWG has always been it's flexibility. You could change everything about your character from appearance to professions. So over time, people became quite attached to their toons. With the new iconic profession system, we're locked into a single profession. My questions are: 1) After those initial 9 respecs are used up, if someone wants to change to a new profession, even if it means resetting to CL1, will they be able to do that? 2) And as a followup, if they have to delete their character and create a new one what will happen to all of the "Once per account lifetime" veteran rewards, and pre-order bonus items that they've been given? Will there be a way to get them again, or are they just gone for good?
One of the truly unique things about SWG was the depth and breadth of the so-called 'support' professions. Crafters, resource gatherers, entertainers, medics, etc. all contributed to the game economy, as well as provided a more immersive expreience of actually living a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. While simplifying 36 professions down to 9 is notable for the amount of future development work that can be assigned to each of them, how do you feel this reduction in diversity contributes to game immersion?
http://ngedidit.ytmnd.com/
:)
It's FUN and very Star Warsy!
Corporatism != Free Market
How important do you feel actual communication between the developers and publishers of a game with the players of the game is? Actual communication meaning not having everything filtered through a PR team like the World of Warcraft team is notorious for.
And as a follow up, do you feel that developers being sat above the playerbase in an "ivory tower" not being allowed to interact with the playerbase except through "community managers" and pr departments is a good or bad thing for the longevity of a game.
Games+OSX should not be Sony's first priority. Until they do something to appease the thousands of owners of USB-compatible Sony MiniDisc players, you are unlikely to see them catering to Apple Mac owners who want to play games. Sony has singlehandedly wrecked the MiniDisc train by writing jukebox software that is only Windows 98/2000/(ME lol)/XP compatible. Minidisc owners have been bitching for years and getting nothing from it, so you're unlikely to see a quick change for whining game owners.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
My question is: What are you doing to rekindle old player's interest in the game?
I loved and played SWG for about a year. Unfortunately, despite the dazzling variety in the game, I couldn't stay interested. (Even in spite of my strong desire to stay interested.)
The proverbial straw was the original Combat Upgrade. It finally killed the last bit of my joy in the game.
If you can bring back the original wonder and excitement, I would leave WoW in a heartbeat.
TomB
"You can't take the sky from me..."
You should have bought The Total Experience, which includes both JTL, and Rage of the Wookies. It's not their fault if you waited 2 years to buy an expansion.
SOE has made a previously-unthinkable change in their product -
Releasing an expansion to a premium dollar game within weeks of a radical game revamp that the customers were previously unaware of. Historically, the customer base had been both supportive, and constructive in their innovative suggestions of how to improve gameplay.
How does SOE quantify such a drastic change to the game so close to releasing an update as less than a bait-and-switch marketing ploy? Simultaneously, how does SOE justify their apparent apathy towards their customers' responses on the official feedback channels of their product (the official forums)?
Mr Smedley,
I have played on Testcenter and it is loaded with bugs. Your company has given 2 weeks from announcement to release. This a huge change in the game.
Why are you rushing to put it out? Why not do it as bug-free as possible instead of pushing a buggy product out to your customers?
Regards,
Trospar (Tempest)
There is little point on me arguing against the NGE. The forums are rife with enough negative comments and posts regarding cancelled accounts. Clearly dumbing down the game for the sake of "focus groups" and "steep learning curves" has alienated the overwhelming majority of veteran players, myself included. The richness and variety of professions truly let you live your own Star Wars story, but that is in the past now and what we are left with is a Cliff Notes version of a rich mythology.
Given this simplification, this boiled down witches brew you claim the fanbase asked for, I ask what your real intentions are with this game? A number of sites now show "Star Wars Galaxies" as a forthcoming title for the PS3. Is it your intent to simplify this game enough so that console players can join?
And I would agree with a number of posts that furiously stated the complete and total slap in the face to only provide responses to questions through Slashdot. There are literally hundreds of questions going unanswered on your forums. Paying customers deserve answers. The real tragedy in all this how poorly you communicated with your own customers, which in the end, is what is going to kill this game.
"The game you knew, gone it is, replaced by the NGE."
Just in case there's a remote chance in hell this is possible.. any chance of selling off the code-base and resources as they existed prior to jump to lightspeed and the combat upgrade junk? Or some sort of binary only server release from the same era? How about a seperate pay server or 2 that people can join for $10/month or something from the same era, especially if you can get a seperate dev team that can develop the game as it was originally intended instead of stripping all the good systems out and replacing them with MMO-battlegrounds? (whatever the name of the starwars battlefield clone was)
I find it funny that in 125 comments, I didn't find more than 10 questions I would submit to John Smedley if I was Slashdot... I haven't played SWG yet but those comments just make me NOT want to play. The answers have just been Sony and SWG bashing... I wonder if Smedley is reading those comments... Would be pretty funny somewhat :)
So... a question maybe?
What do you plan to bring new and old players wanting to try again? A free trial? Will you ask websites to review it again also? If I'd want to try the game, I'd like an overview.
Six months ago the CURB was supposed to change SWG for the better. Now for the second time in one year SOE is changing the formula again. How is the NGE goin to succeed where the CURB didn't? Would you agree that drastically changing an MMORPG twice in one year is taking quite a gamble?
Ok here it goes.
Shouldn't you be answering questions from the SWG community first?
I've been playing SWG for 3 months now and have tried to be atleast a semi-active member in the SWG community. And after seeing the blind eye and deaf ear turned to the player community HOSTED BY SOE, where most people thought the game would have been fine if the bugs were fixed, the professions rebalanced, etc, why do you instead ignore people, revoke forum access when they put up a post that you (meaning the guys @ SOE) didnt seem to like much, and then turn around and say "you're responding to what players want"?
Mr Smedley,
e nt&task=view&id=1468&Itemid=35)
Would you care to comment on words of Jeff Hickman's speech at the Austin Game Conference? For your information Jeff Hickman is the Executive Produce for Dark Age of Camelot.
The transcript of his speech follows:
My rant is about how, as game developers, the fact that we often make changes to core pieces of our games after we launch. It's a critical error. We've made changes to our games that were core changes and, while I can't say they were detrimental to our game, they probably didn't achieve the goals we wanted them to achieve.
As we make these games, we attract a certain type of player. They come to our game because of the things we put in there. The core functionality, the systems, the gameplay we put in, and then for whatever reason, because we see another game that looks really cool, that's maybe doing better than us, or we want to change our billing structure to make more money, or whatever the reason happens to be, we come out and make a systems change to our game, and what does it do? It alienates our current players. The people who are playing our game right now.
We go out and say, ''you know what, we want more of those players, we want that 3.5 million from that game over there.' So instead of sticking to the thing that our players really love, we changing it. And now we're alienating the players playing our game, losing our subscribers. The 3.5 million who are over there playing that game, they're happy. They're playing that game already. We're not attracting them - or, it's very difficult to attract them. So the chance that you're taking as a developer making those changes is so huge. And you see it happen all the time. If you look at the games out there, there's not many big games - or small games that have not made that error. So, that's my rant.
(taken from: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_cont
Regards,
Trospar (Tempest)
What is your plan to reach out to all those players who left before the combat revamp, doctor buff changes, and now this new revamp? Do you hope to draw them back somehow? Will there be any incentives for old veterans to return?
$8.95/mo web hosting
Hey Smedley: I've been playing this game since day one, and PvPing nightly for 2 years (Khyras of ATO on Bria). With the CU1, the game was severely slowed down and dumbed down. The same is happening in CU2, with only 3 specials per profession and only nine total professions. Now, 3 specials seems to fit nicely onto a console controller, as does the "Point and Click" Style of targetting. Is this CU2 an attempt to dumb down the game enough so it can fit on a console platform (XBOX 360 to be precise) and appease the console kiddies?
-Khyras
http://forums.g4tv.com/messageview.cfm?catid=59&th readid=515423&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=&STARTPAGE=4
At that URL is my rant why Satan Online entertainment and its leader doesnt give a crap.
My full name was intended to be Varlorg the once pleased customer
Where you can get from level 1 to 60 in a month of play, instead of the usual no life games which require 12 hours (and 50 other people) every day for 3 years to get anywhere?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Under the old / current SWG system, players could drop abilities and unlock a second character per server when they got far enough into jedi (once you were a padawan). In the new system, why are these two things being removed? I currently have two accounts and was very much looking forward to having 4 characters on Bria, but now I'll only have two, and once I use their "respec" points I have from being a veteran player, if I dont like my professions, I have to blow my character away and make a new one? Why are these being changed? ...The force prompts me to dictate SOE probably won't be getting $30/month from me much longer, so...I now pose a question to the /. community: What other MMO's are fun to play and not bugged to hell and back? (I hate FFXI b/c i like to play solo more than deal with party memebers, and I have less than no love for forced PVP thanks to WoW)
How can Smedley possibly answer this? You think Smedley has every played an MMORGP? That moron should stick to golf and i hope he gets gangraped by gophers on the 9th
What's Tennessee Tuxedo really like? I bet he's a hoot to party with.
D00d, you got 14,000,000th ps0t!
-1, offtopic, but couldn't resist.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Why dont you SWG folks just go ahead and come on over and play some WoW.
SWG is a clusterfuck.
Just dont roll on Warsong. It's populated enough.
I left SWG for many reasons, most talked to death long-since so I won't re-hash.
But one thing people don't mention: I don't want to be a Jedi's groupie. I don't mean the name "jedi" either (or padawan or whatever you are going to use). If there are people waving light sabers, I want to be one of them if I'm playing star wars. If this is outside the reach of casual players, then I won't play. I'm not joining a star wars game to be one of the little guys.
Don't take this the wrong way, you have every right to make Jedi's the kings of creation, untouchable by all but the few who play long-enough. But don't expect me to join up, cause I'm not playing a star wars game where there's Jedi and I ain't one of 'em.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Did you read what Jeff had to say? It doesn't anything about a specific MMORPG. It talks about not doing sweeping changes to your game because you'll piss off your current player base...aka the ones paying your bills.
...be readded at a future date? Especially Creature Handler, which some say should have been iconic. If not, will the skills be put back in at a later date?
Not really a question, but a comment.
:)
If you want to give existing players the chance to try out every profession in the game before deciding, then you need to give them 10 re-specs, not nine. The first 9 re-specs would be used to try out each profession, and the 10th would be used to switch back to the one you liked best.
(Otherwise you can only try out 8 of them before making your final choice, right?
In the two plus years this game has been out, your developers have repeatedly ignored the live game to work on expansions. In your one post to the SWG forums you asked for the players to be patient as SOE worked so hard to fix bugs and make the game fun, yet to this day, some 6 months or more later, there are still several broken quests in the Rage of the Wookiee expansion. Please convince me that the same inept managers that have brought the game to this point deserve my business.
These changes fundamentally change the entire game, to the point where it seemingly invalidates all the work previously sunk into the game by your more devout fans. Sure there's the ability to respec, but especially for those who worked so hard to become Jedi, this shift tosses all that work to the wind. Sure there'll be the 10 level delta between existing Jedi and the re-spec'd Jedi, but that doesn't take away the sting for those who went and mastered every single profession in an attempt to unlock their Jedi slot back around launch.
How is this revamp fair to the people who invested years of their time into the game, only to have the same level of accomplishment essentially given away for free through the re-spec system (Jedi), or totally trashing that work in the case of eliminating Creature Handler and Bio Engineer?
These people are your bread and butter since they're the ones who have stuck through all the bugs, the downtime, the first combat revamp etc... Are you worried that this may drive away those who have stayed loyal?
Can you say mass exodus? I guess you'd still have to HAVE a large player base to have it qualify as "mass" though. When I left 18 months ago my server was a ghost town. If I was told "Oh all that time you spent gathering materials and grinding out your crafting skills? Forget about it.", my head would have exploded. /glad I left when I did
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
when a player who was at the Austin conference, and who was able to play the game along with the media was told that the NGE would be released on the fifteenth? In other words, why all the doubletalk?
By looking at your forums it's obvious there is much more interest in the Jedi profession than any other: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg?category.id=nge _testing_boards
/end of question
The number of posts in each profession category shows the Jedi interest to be 10-20x that of other profession in most cases. Does it concern you at all that most of your subscribers will create new Jedi and that's all you will see in the game? Based on the link above this doesn't seem unreasonable does it? Is this why you recently announced a second character slot per server for all subscribers? So at least people would create other professions?
I would just like to say how stupid an idea I think this is personally. Thank god I ebayed my Jedi. If I hadn't already, I would be trying, but of course it would be worthless.
I see this move as the equivalent of firing all the management from a business. It only happens when things get really bleak. It's a last ditch effort to stem the hemmoraging but comes with a lot of negative side-effects. Obviously, you do not have any alternatve to save the game.
I see you having two types of subscribers at this point:
1. The veterans who hung around because they liked the game the way it was.
2. New subscribers reached through the tireless efforts of the LucasArts marketing machine.
Seems to me your probably getting a very good influx of group #2. Unfortunately they aren't sticking around very long. You don't have enough of group #1 even left to care about angering them all into quitting. So you have nothing to stop you from doing anything to make the game more fun for group #2.
Good luck, though I doubt it will work. Especially since the general tone on the forums is that your new combat system is more awkward than the last.
--------
Linux is only free if your time is of no value.
I have played on the TC, and one of the things that stands out is the new UI needing two hands to operate (keyboard and mouse).
There have been complaints from those with disabilities that the new keymap is unusable for them.
The playstyle for my wife who is visually impaired has also been impacted by the new changes. Before, she would be able to target a groupmember (tank) and her character would fire at whatever the tank was targeted. Now she has to try to find the small crosshairs and aim at a moving target in real-time.
Both of these examples have Star Wars Galaxies having less accessability to the disabled that they currently provide.
Developers on the forums have not acknowledged these complaints on the forums, and the customer service rep my wife called on the telephone would not help, or transfer her call to someone who could address her concerns.
The game as it is accessable to the disabled -- they are playing it. The NGE is not accessable. Removing accessability from a service could be seen as in violation of the American with Disabilities act. What actions will you be taking to keep this game accessable?
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
None of these new features seem very innovative. You said yourself, the fast-action combat is like Diablo. The professions are pre-packaged derivatives of classes that exist in other roleplaying games. By keeping the setting of the game between episodes 4 and 5, you continue to dilute the continuity of the Star Wars Universe rather than make your own mark (I don't see George Lucas congratulating you on your work).
Will there be any innovative features added to this game after these enhancements are made?
I thought Q was a fictional Star Trek character...OMG, I am so out of touch!
I have a lot of feelings revoling around the current state of SWG. As someone who enjoyed the game before the great nerf known as the CU, I would like the following to be answered as detailed as possible (I'm probably going to get the standard company line but hey it's worth a shot):
1) What will the status of solo playing in the future? I am not an anti-social person by any stretch of the means. However, the game as it currently sits makes it near impossible to solo anything without a group. I, as I am sure most of the Slashdot crowd is, am involved in some sort of computer-related work and designating time for groups is something that I just cannot do given my professional and family responsibilites as well. While I think the ability to solo a Krayt Dragon is ridiculous, the ability should be present to solo other creatures and mobs without too much fear.
2) What are you doing now or are planning to do to address the economic situation being brought about by the removal of ADKs (Anti-Decay Kits for those not familiar with the game)? Decay is a natural part of the physical world with any item currently in the game and fosters the continued economic relationship between the combat and crafter classes. Removal of this as it stands seems to render the crafter class in the current version useless. Have you stopped to consider that by doing this you are fostering an environment where the crafter profession will be sub-standard?
3) Why are you removing the player bounties? What is your justification for doing so? Bounty Hunters now become just like the Commando class for the most part. Have you stopped to consider that Bounty Hunters play an intricate role in the game right now in that Jedi who expose themselves go on the terminals for bounty hunters to hunt down. The era in which this game takes place is between Episode IV and V; therefore, it makes sense that Jedi should still be in hiding since Palpatine and the Empire are still hunting down what Jedi survived Order 66.
4) Speaking of Jedi.....why are you unlocking them straight off the bat for everyone to play? Jedi are suppose to be extremely rare given the current time period in the Star Wars universe. A lot of people who put a lot of game time and effort into becoming Jedi feel cheated now that this is happening. Jedi should take LOTS of hard work to get once you become Force Sensitive; becoming Force Sensitive in the game should also be random in how it happens. How do you explain how you are going to control the population now that everyone and their mother can be a Jedi once they start out in the game?
5) What do you plan to do with the professions you are now eliminating, specifically Creature Handler? I know a lot of vets complained about the great "Pokemon Wars" in the original release of the game and the class got nerfed. Now that you release The Trials of Obi-Wan with Creature Handler-specific items only to eliminate this profession in the NGE is outrageous. How do you plan to address this? How do you compensate the people that have stuck with the game and played this profession?
6) For those of us who have only wanted the original game system fixed in terms of the bugs, why can't SOE make pre-CU systems for players to log into? I have yet to hear one reasonable explination of this. I would assume that the old base-code has been archived off somewhere. Dark Ages of Camelot has done this, why can't Galaxies?
7) Why the need to introduce a system that a lot of people I have talked to both in the current live system and test centers do not like at all nor asked for? Why the need to introduce the CU also given the fact that most people who tested it out - myself included - did not want? Why do you ignore your player community like you have who asked for the fixing of the skill tree professions for those that were broken and a reduction of doctor buffs in the first place?
8) Why not just kill Galaxies completely and start over from scratch - Star Wars Galaxies 2 - instead of adding new c
All kidding aside, that's a very good question. I personally look forward to seeing it addressed.
I think it's been made pretty clear that either Zonk is not asking or else Smedley is not answering any questions that don't suit Sony's marketing requirements.
So, uh, how about that rootkit then Smed?
that they made Jedi a starting profession then. Because (Sith) Lord knows, Sony would hate to to lose YOUR money. Retard.
Doesn't the name "Star Wars Galaxies" imply that there is more to the game than the movies themselves, and so the game should support a broader range of experiences than the movies?
Are you considering renaming the game to "Star Wars Galaxies: Attack of the Movie-Character-Clones"?
Read all the stuff he's spinning in current interviews. We SWG vets have heard it all before. This is from the first Combat Upgrade, back in May, 6 months before having this new horror dropped on us like a nuke:
Hello Everyone,
We realize that the recent Combat Upgrade has caused quite a stir. Yes, we've seen the petition. Yes, we're reading your emails very carefully.. in fact I've responded to many of you personally. From our perspective the Combat Upgrade was a crucial thing for us to do for the long term health of the game. In order to make the experience in SWG more diverse and to breathe new life into this game we felt it was important for us to entirely overhaul the current system and to make sure that it's balanced properly. Are we finished? Not by a longshot... by doing this what we've effectively done is to provide a new baseline to add a lot of new content into the game in a very short time, and to make sure that the professions really mean something in the game. We recognize there are problems that have arisen from this, and what I'd like to ask your help in doing is to target these problems so that we can knock them down very quickly. As you've seen in the last few days, the team is working tirelessly towards fixing any problems that have arisen.. and with your help we're confident we can get the rest of them taken care of as well.
Please understand that we love this game too.. our goal wasn't to upset the existing userbase.. but we do recognize that changing a game does inherently mean some people aren't going to like that change. What we're trying to do is to insure that we can accomplish a lot of what you've all been asking us to do (things like Galactic Civil War) in really cool and meaningul ways.. and frankly speaking, we just couldn't do that with the old combat system in place.
What would really help us is to give us ideas on how we can improve the new system and cool things you would like to see us do in the near term. We aren't going back to the old system, but with your help I'm confident in a few weeks you're going to feel this was the right call. Obviously you are our customers, and you pay the bills around here... we're trying to make changes that are going to make your experience better in the long run. Please bear with us while we make that effort, and give us a little time to respond and address your concerns.
Thanks a lot,
John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment
jsmedley@soe.sony.com
Corporatism != Free Market
She was a useless idiot who after a years time still didn't know a damn thing about the game and never learned how to handle herself as a community rep to at least *look* like she knew a damn thing about the product she was working on.
Who cares if you liked her or you thought she would make a good best friend, guildmate or cantina buddy. She just flat out sucked at what she was hired to do. Its only a shame that BlunderHeart didn't get the escorted out of the building along side of her.
And pleeeeese don't get all worked up about how I'm some dumb ass who doesn't know a dev or producer from a PR person and glorified forum mod. I know her role and what she was given to work with. But that still doesn't change the fact that she doesn't know how to relate to people or communicate info in a way that moves the project forward instead of simply creating confusion, or worse -- animosity.
Completely swapping out the old combat and profession systems for new ones will make a number of long-standing bugs disappear, but there are still dozens of bugs related to quests, interactions with NPCs and the like. Will these finally be addressed post-NGE?
If you had been paying any attention to your forums, you would have noticed that you have a lot of people with physical handicaps that the new system of targeting, attacking, and no auto lock and auto attack are making it very difficult to play the game. We have tried it, the remapping does not work. We need an auto lock and an auto attack in order to play this game around or disabilities. We have been able to play for over 2 years now, and can no longer do so. Will you please do something about this?
I'm sticking to Neverwinter Nights..
There is a war going on for your mind.
At what point did Sony decide that this significant investment in changing the engine of the game would bring in new players (additional income) without completely alienating your existing fan base? How were you able to justify to the decision makers at Sony that you wouldn't lose a large percentage of your existing paying customers by alienating them and convince them that this overhaul would bring in new players or players of other existing MMO games? How are you going to draw people to the game now that it has been out for some time and the press/word-of-mouth has been so bad? Is your marketing machine really that good?
Go with SWG 2.
The changes appear to make the interface of the game much more greatly based on "twitch" reflexes, action, and general accomodation of players with shorter attention spans. Does this indicate that Star Wars: Galaxies is going to be released on consoles? If so, will it be available for next-gen, or current-gen consoles?
:)
(If this information has been released somewhere, forgive me... and please give me a link to the answer.
I know some people who played, up until this week, SW:G. All are fairly hardcore MMORPG'ers who really liked the depth and breadth of character customization and crafting available in SW:G. With that gone, they've all cancelled their accounts, in the (probably vain) hopes that SOE will keep the old ruleset servers around and let n00bs play on the new ruleset.
How many cancellations have happened since the announcement?
Alternatively, how many would it take to change SOE's mind?
SMED IS DEAD!!!!
Slashdot in 5 Paragraphs
Hey, doesn't want to make me buy the game. Now if you just spent a year making an entire sequel (with graphics that don't look incredibly ugly) I might consider it.
Is doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different response.
Hey John,
Former SWG and EQ player here, but you know WoW...
Bluntly my question is this:
Why should I have any faith in the SWG team making something good given their track record so far. SWG has gone through multiple radical changes througout its lifspan. Each one has promised to make it the game we were originally promised. Each time the suck factor has remained undimished. So what's different this time?
As an additional question was there any talk of simply creating a SWG2 that was more in line with what people wanted instead cobbling these changes onto SWG?
Lastly, has lucasarts made any rumblings about pulling the plug given the general shoddiness of the game.
John Smedley: I was going to send you a Word doc, then remembered this was going to /. Including the text here.
/. in weeks.
Funniest thing I've read in
Free tiggs! Seriously, after spending all weekend listing to people complaining that they couldnt get into test center, it was a big slap in the face to let her go.
I played EVERQUEST once for about 10 minutes and found the combat to be very boring. Push a button and wait. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.... I'm 99.999999% FPS player. Are the changes in SWG going to be more FPS-centric? Of all the MMO's out there, this change sounds like it would appeal to gamers like myself. Besides...it's STARWARS!
It's a trick....get an axe.
In an interview dated 7/29/2003, Julio Torres was quoted as saying: "When Sony and Lucas set out, we said, 'How can we do this and not make another EQ?' We didn't want it to be all about Luke, or combat, or lock our players into a class. So we created a system that would allow players to switch professions during the game, and there would be a lot of gameplay around making that change. If you want to go from architect to scout we've created a system to make that happen."
Now with the new system, you are locking players into their classes, making it all about combat, and making oversimplified "iconic" classes like Luke (Jedi). The person who announced these new changes to the online community was none other than Julio Torres.
In your FAQ on the new changes you announce that crafters are not being phased out. Quoting: "...Galaxies has one of the deepest and most engaging crafting systems of any game that offers one. We are still supporting crafting, but as a profession unto itself included in the nine iconic professions (Trader). What is really fantastic about crafting now is that we are allowing for skill branching within the crafting profession so that crafters can specialize in certain skills and thus help maintain the diverse Galaxies economy."
Let us ignore the obvious fact that specialization is possible under the current ruleset thanks to the ability to mix and match professions, and move on to note that in the very same FAQ the following was revealed: "Item decay has been completely removed from the game." The only inference I can draw from that simple statement, is that as soon as there are enough items created on the server, no new ones will be necessary since nothing decays. Leaving traders with nothing to do but buy and sell used goods. Leaving this essentially just another combat game.
My question to you, Mr. Smedley, is what justification do you have for recreating the game completely contrary to its initial formula, if that formula is what gave the game the degree of success it has achieved up to this point? Most of us players are agreed that the combat system is in serious need of an overhaul (especially after the botched disaster of the first combat upgrade), but that doesn't explain the reasoning behind dumbing down the game to the point at which it no longer appeals to the type of player that it was originally intended for. Please enlighten us.
The reasons I cut my Galaxies connection had nothing to do with the changes mentioned in the article.
The reason I dropped out was that the game was not structured to allow me to log in, play for one to three hours, and make a reasonable advance. Once you got past the low-level missions, accomplishing anything of significance required hanging out for two hours in a cantina, then jumping on a ship and fighting like crazy before all your buffs wore off. It's those hours in the cantina, gathering a group, then buffing, that drove me off.
Understand, I'm not discounting the social aspect of playing. What I'm saying is that the content forced the social interactions into a single mode: Go to cantina, find a group, buff for two hours and chat, then go play for a while. If I wanted to spend two hours chatting, I'd be on an IM client.
Will the changes fix that? I somehow doubt it.
I had forgotten how much cooler teenagers look when they are smoking. Oh, wait
How could anyone expect SWG, a game funded by the same company as EQ, and designed by the same team who originally created EQ, to be anything other than a massive exercise in greedy Pavlovian sado-masochism? Seriously.
nuff sed
There are many rumors that this change is being made so that SWG can be expanded to the console market given the new "twitch-based" combat style. With the way the key mapping is laid out (with no alternative layouts for players to choose from), it is very stressful on the hands and lots of beta users have complained of pain after a couple hours of playing (whereas many play for much longer periods in the current system). There is also no auto-attack or auto-run, which means we have to continually hold down keys and mouse button for long periods of time. Many in the community have had this as a main complaint on the new system. Is SOE aiming to make SWG a gamepad-based game now or are there plans on helping to reduce the physical stress caused by the new combat design?
Hello Mr. Smedley,
I have been playing SWG for around 7 months now (just got in pre-CU - in time to have my crafting doc nerfed, but hey, happens), and my melee combat specialist is wondering whether or not the last few months of village xp grind will be wasted? Should I keep my force sensitive skills or trade them in for regular combat skills? Will the branches I have unlocked matter for my new character?
From a more general perspective, can you offer the community some reassurance that no further massive changes will occur to the SWG codebase (for a reasonable amount of time, like say 18 months), so that we can count on some time to get used to this new version? I for one treat my characters like a somewhat separate person (i.e. I try to "roleplay"), and I get attached to them after a while, I don't want to have to change up every time the system gets "upgraded."
Thanks,
Andrew
P.S. I don't know if you also want suggestions, but wouldn't the profession system be better if you just created different kinds of skill points? i.e. each character could have 200 combat, 200 crafting, and 200 social skill points, maybe 50 general skill points, set up an unlocking system for Jedi skill points once you'd used up the previous kind? Anyway, just a suggestion for keeping the complexity, it's really what separates SWG from the other MMORPGs. *thanks!*
John, Doesn't SOE feel even a LITTLE remorse about the way the SWG revamp (the "NGE") was announced in comparision with the sale of the last expansion? The REAL cause of most player's anger, is that SOE purposefully and blatently HID the fact that they were doing a revamp to encourage people to buy Trials of Obi-Wan. To explain the chain of events as I observed them: (1) By SOE's own admission, they have been working on the new combat revamp (the "NGE") for at LEAST 6 months, at the same time as the Trials of Obi Wan (ToOW) expansion. (2) Over the past 1 to 2 months, SOE has promised bug fixes and changes to MULTIPLE SWG classes/professions to keep people in the game. Some of the professions they have promised fixes to within the past 1 to 2 months will NOT EXIST after the NGE. Among those professions that were slated to be fixed were Ranger, Squad Leader, and Commando. SOE published documents detailing fixes for each of these professions that bear NO resemblance to what will exist after the combat revamp. (3) Less than a month ago, SOE added a bunch of new special moves to the commando class/profession. Looking at the revamp documents, it is apparent that the commando profession will not have these specials after the combat revamp. The ONLY reason SOE would have added these specials, less than 2 months before the combat revamp was to go live, would be to preserve the illusion that there was no combat revamp coming. (4) In advertising the Trials of Obi Wan expansion (ToOW) over the past month. SOE has continually published screenshots of new weapons, armor, crafter schematics, and items and their stats. Some of these items included items that allowed the creature handler profession to tame higher level pets. The expansion planet itself, Mustafar, was advertised to have new high level pets to tame that were available no where else. In fact, many creature handlers have specifically stated that the ONLY reason they bought the expansion was for the new abilities. (5) Two weeks ago, several players noticed there was an item called the "Star Wars Galaxies: Starter Kit" on sale at amazon and several online gaming stores. Somewhere in the documentation of the kit or otherwise, some players ran across something about "Jedi as a starting profession." Players asked SOE's representatives (i.e. Tiggs and Thunderheart) about the Starter Kit, who specifically stated that it was an erroneous entry and meant nothing. Tiggs stated that she was asking the vendors to remove the entry because the product did not exist. SOE denied that Jedi would be a starting profession anytime soon. (6) The day before (ONE day) SOE made the NGE revamp announcement, SOE sent out an email to most SWG subscribers, that basically said "Buy the Expansion; we are revamping many professions including Ranger and Squad Leader." The email linked to the "fix documents" mentioned in #2. You will note that NEITHER "Ranger" or "Squad Leader" will exist after the combat revamp. There will be "Spy" and "Officer" professions, but they are totally different from what SOE was promising. (7) Around Tuesday (Nov. 1), Trials of Obi Wan, the new SWG expansion, went live. (8) On the afternoon of Wednesday (Nov. 2), SOE/LA dropped the bombshell they were totally revamping the game (both combat and crafting) and that 2/3 of the current professions would be cut from the game. SOE announces that all stats for almost all items in the game will be changing (including the ones they published to advertise the expansion). SOE also announced that (1) players would only be able to choose ONE profession (no mix and matching, or switching, like many players enjoy); (2) that "trader" (crafting) would be a mutually exclusive class, so players that dabble in both crafting and combat will have to choose between them; (3) that the SWG "Starter Kit" DOES exist (contrary to their prior statements), and will be like the "Trial of the Isle" for EQ2...a starter zone where you get to try the first 10 or 20 levels of the game out; and (4) Jedi will be a starting profession, meaning that some of
...who just recently bought this game in anticipation of this update. I'm actually looking forward to it.
Though I'm an avid gamer and Star Wars fan, I'm also a fan of the Empire; and one reason I passed on buying SWG was that it seemed to offer me little opportunity to act as a part of the Galactic Empire (or, for that matter, the Rebel Alliance) and make an impact in the flow of a Galactic Civil War. Reading the description of the new overhauled "intro level", it sounds as if the game will now entirely assume the player to have a Rebel affiliation. Have the game designers completely abandoned those of us interested in roleplaying a fearsome Imperial oppressor?
I am not sure how SOE came up with the notion that the player community wanted this. Those who attend focus groups are NOT representative of the true player demographic. *NO ONE* I know WANTS this new game style, and that is clear to see from the forums. It is NOT more attractive to the RPG audience (especially those with slower Internet connections) and 1% of the voiced community actually say they like it. What players wanted was simply more content and more flexibility. This new system does just the opposite. A majority of the customer base are dedicated players who maintain multiple paid accounts. I'm not sure how SOE's Market Analysis works, but common sense would indicate that the number of accounts lost by veteran players (given multiples, and their friends that follow) outweigh the number of new customers that will sign up for more than three months. Offering two items in replacement of years of character development for veteran players makes it clear that SOE is not listening to their customers.
So based on that rant, my question is: What does SOE do to ensure their current customer base needs are being met? Are there plans for future customer-relation discussions, polls, in-game moderated discussions with staff, web-based focus groups, etc. ?
This occurred several years ago on Rallos Zek, before he was promoted to President of SO. I still have the screen shots of our conversation, which included a memorable meltdown from Mr. Smedley over the loss of his lowbie bracer. Also included are excerpts from the GM\Guide he summoned to have me banned.
I'm probably the *only* person on record to knowingly pk the head of Sony Online in the wild.
If anyone's interested, I can upload some of the juicy screen shots.
I wish I had mod points. Well said.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I'm moving this over here before it gets jacked again from the SWG Community Forum. She pretty much puts everything out on the line. And people will wonder why the community is so rabid against SOE....
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Copied from an earlier message (alias account), posted before Tiggs was sacked:
For any of you that were around since this game's launch, thing back to November 2003. Two years ago this month SOE introduced vehicles and player cities to SWG. This was a very exciting time, and arguably the pinnacle of this game's existence.
The day the player city and vehicle publish was to go live was very intense. There was a lot of excitement. Many of us were on the old Gorath Imperial IRC server talking about grand plans, wishing each other luck on getting our spots. Many had architects lined up to make city halls. A lot of us had our would-be mayors logged out right by where the politician trainer would be located when the server came up. A LOT of people did not go to work or school that day hehe.
Player cities actually came to define this game early on. It gave guild's a sense of pride and ownership. It gave folks places to gather. Gave us territories to defend/assault. This gave us rise to the GCW and the massive PvP that ensued.
But while all this was going on, there were many underlying problems that were creeping up on us slowly. See the game had only been out for a few months. People had not fully realized to what extent things could be crafted. We had not had many good resource spawns, and not substantial quantities either. Almost no crafters had any experimentation tapes, nor did they fully understand how the intricacies of the crafting system worked.
But over the next couple of months, people realized they could make armor that would resist 90%+ all damage. Or that they could make MIND poison that would kill everyone within a 30 yard radius in three ticks. Or they could make buffs that would more than DOUBLE our stats.
These were all items that for some reason or another were never capped before the game went live as they should have. This was a direct result of SOE's short-sightedness. They underestimated the resourcefulness of their player base.
Combine those factors with bugs and exploits (faction bases had MANY that took MONTHS to patch), unbalanced classes (TKA, CM, Rifleman) and eventually the revelation of HOW to unlock Jedi (effectively taking a huge part of the player base OUT of the game as they pursued the grind) - and you had the begining of the decline.
Before all this, the GCW was super addictive and I would say in November 2003 the majority of players were actively involved somehow. Not sure how many remember the battles at Maelstrom that went on for over 8 hours. Only reason it ended was because people had to leave to go to work or school lol. The game was FUN and MUCH more addictive then. Faction meant something. We had a LOT less faction hopping back then because the war was in full swing.
Well, the game kept deteriorating so SOE came up with the plan to fix it - originally called the Combat Revamp, later to be known as the Combat Upgrade. I was one who was privy to a LOT of the early documentation on the first CU. Let me first point out that the CU that did go live that you all call CU 1 is actually CU 2. There was another version of the CU prior to what you saw that IMHO was MUCH better, but for some reason or another they took it upon themselves to redo the CU before it even went live.
But the CU 1 that I was shown was the game I wanted. It was basically the same game we all loved, but solved the long-standing problems that revealed themselves since launch. Being able to target the mind pool was no longer going to be an advantage for only a handful of professions - each profession was going to get a move to be able to target each of the three pools. Weapons, armor, buffs, foods & drinks were all going to be capped. DOT's were going to be nerfed so hard they were going to be a nuissance, but not make or break in combat
With the complete revamp of the game will there be a returning player incentive program? Something so that those of us who left earlier can come back with a minimum of pain and check out the rework and see if it's something that is compatible with our particular playstyles?
:) )
Thanks,
Min (ex master doctor
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Waxing philosophical here:
I think what it boils down to is this: It feels like the heart of what was a WORLD is gone. What is left is a rather soulless game -- at least, so far, that's how it feels to me. True, I have not been able to test much -- some Newbie Island quests as a Bounty Hunter and I spent a few terribly disturbing moments with a low-level, realy-played character I had on Corbantis (SOE copied that server's info to a test server).
SWG had bugs, sure. Balancing was a tough issue due to the incredible and wonderful diversity of the skill-based system, the natural resources with which goods could be crafted (no "caps" or at least they were fairly well hidden) and the intelligence, will and creativity of the players themselves. We felt that we could excel at crafting, at entertaining, at combat, at earning a living, at living itself. And we did.
And yes, the game was not easy as pie (just like the REAL WORLD) -- but that's why we loved it. You could be anything you wanted; any combination of combat, crafter, entertainer, creature handler, doctor, etc. that your 250 skill points could buy. You could surrender your skills and learn new ones at will. (And it was NOT only a sandbox; there were orignally some story arcs, and there was other quest-based content.)
Those of us with (in general) above average maturity (both age and mind), intelligence, creativity and resourcefulness excelled... and stayed here. Lived here. It seems we became an unusual demographic in the MMORPG playerbase and we are apparently not a large enough number to sustain this SWG WORLD from a business perspective.
This has been a fascinating study: set up the closest thing to a virtual world that there has ever been, and see what happens. Who excels? Who enjoys? And how do the companies who created the game handle the world they created?
It wasn't easy. The first CU was the beginning of the reining in of this world because it was just too complex to manage from a development perspective. As well, graphic nuances were removed (such as the "tiles" of the terrain becoming smaller and more noticeable, and the ocean no longer lapping at the shore).
And now, the world is being further constrained: it is now a "class-based" system -- you are stuck with one class (or you must delete your years-old avatar) and no "hybrids" -- which is patently NON lifelike, and they have removed "item decay" which means that crafters will not be able to make a living. This has been done to accomodate a much lower common denominator as well as to enable the developers to manage development more easily.
It is my belief that the pendulum has swung to the opposite side of the spectrum of possibilities. There had to have been a way to keep more of the WORLD of SWG alive.
I have hope that someday, somehow, another world like the one that SWG was will be created again. I have hope that those who do it will have learned from LA/SOE's experience with SWG and will have found a way to manage the possibilities that a virtual world presents.
Lilac Moon, who remembers when the waves used to lap at the shore on Corellia...
Will you ever provide your online games to Linux community, or will you always remain with Microsoft?
I am fairly certain that legal issues prevent him from commenting on this situation.
Are writers of emulator/3rd party software still threatened with cease and desist letters?
;)
People like to mod games, especially MMORPGS - why not be more supportive of modders?
Greets
narhsA
ps.: You guys are still great at creating addictive and fun (did I mention addictive) games
How many re-imaginations of a single game can you come up with before you finally admit that everything you have tried so far was in error? When do you scrap the game?
I noticed an ad in the CompUSA flyer this weekend that listed SWG as being for the X-Box and PS2 as well as the PC (which was the original vision long before the game was released). It might have been a misprint, but I wondered if it was possible you were now planning to produce SWG for all platforms to broaden the market for the game? The "fast-action" gameplay sure seems to point to a certain amount of consolization for the game. I'm actually an SWG player who left the game long ago because it was a grind and lacked real Star Warseyness. The changes make me feel a little more positively towards the game and like I might try it again after the changes go in.
From all i ever heard about it, it sounded like it would be EQ with lightsabres and blasters intead of swords and bows - same game with differents models and labels.
some of the best mulitplayer gameplay ever.
One of the things I like best about DAOC and WoW is how stylistic they are. Have you ever considered putting style and class above polygon count?
I have two, hopefully one will be judged worthy... 1) When SWG launched it took me a while to realize how the game had been envisioned. SWG is a giant sandbox (no Tatooine jokes), where players create a character, pick and choose the skills they want, and then... That was always the problem. There was never anything worthwhile to pit your character against, this sandbox was devoid even the simplest plastic shovel and bucket. However, the entire profession system being replaced by this new one makes me feel that the entire game will just become a linear romp up your profession. Now when a player gains XP they get automatic skills in their profession. There isn't any reason to diversify your gameplay experience. Why was the decision made to essentially REDUCE the skill system to a straight line progression rather than reducing the headaches and injecting fresh content for them? (A quick note I am not against the REDUCTION of professions as a whole, I like the ala carte system in place now though.) 2) Because this rumor is all over the forums: When can I buy the PS3 version of SWG?
No sig for you!!
Since SWG has no plot the force is dead.
I no longer have confidence that the game I pay for will be the same game 6 months from now. While every game is an "entertainment experience," I at minimum expect that if I invest my time into pursuing goals in-game, that they will not be made completely obsolete on a whim. Please give me a compelling reason why I should continue to pay $15.00/month if SOE fundamentally changes the game every 6-8 months. To make the game more "Star Warsy" is not an adequate answer, there are tons of games already out there that are.
For the incurably curious:
Slashdot comment #1,000,000 - 15th June 2000
Slashdot comment #2,000,000 - 1st March 1999. It's unknown why the date of this comment is earlier than the previous one. My guess is the comments weren't numbered sequentially this early on in Slashdot's history and were renumbered at some later date.
Slashdot comment #3,000,000 - 13th February 2002
Slashdot comment #4,000,000 - 2nd August 2002
Slashdot comment #5,000,000 - 2nd January 2003
Slashdot comment #6,000,000 - 20th May 2003
Slashdot comment #7,000,000 - 19th September 2003
Slashdot comment #8,000,000 - 16th January 2004
Slashdot comment #9,000,000 - 28th April 2004
Slashdot comment #10,000,000 - 18th August 2004
Slashdot comment #11,000,000 - 5th December 2004. My hat is off to evilmrhenry (542138) for finding this for me.
Slashdot comment #12,000,000 - 21st March 2005
Slashdot comment #13,000,000 - 7th July 2005
Slashdot comment #14,000,000 - 10th November 2005
A graph of these values can be found here.As you can see, the rate of posting has been almost perfectly constant for several years now, but comment #14,000,000 was due to occur on 23rd October 2005 and is over two weeks late. Regardless, at the current rate, comment #15,000,000 should occur on or about 1st March 2006. See you all then!
(PS: cuuuurses)
qntm.org
I leveled two chars to 60 (Shaman and Warlock) but finally got bored with WoW and frustrated with Blizzard and canceled my account last month. I think that will be a growing trend.
Blizzard's doing their very best to do a reverse-alchemist trick and turn gold into lead. Arrogant (or non-existent) customer support, inconsistent flailing, buggy releases, and spending time and energy in places other than where they need to focus (e.g. four different versions of PvP and an expansion pack, instead of revisiting instances and classes).
No doubt, Sony did look at how the (long-gone) Blizzard designers simplified an MMO. Things like not having draconian death penalties, etc. If they deliver what's been described, I think they'll fare well.
Mr Smedley, you have made ONE post on the SWG forum. Why won't you make a greater presence there and answer your customer's questions there?
Corporatism != Free Market
The only way you're going to get away with "don't mess with star wars" to that extent is to skip a couple thousand years into the future. I don't think there are any books written for that time period.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Where was the courage in releasing this two days after the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion went live (and was charged to everyone who purchased it)?
Where was the courage in not telling the playerbase that the much vaunted CURB was an abject failure and was going to be replaced months earlier? (This isn't a 3 month project, it had to have been started pre-CURB)
Where was the courage in taking a game, different from any other, and turning it into Enemy Territory Online w/ perma XP save?
As for the last one: Sorry Splash Damage, didn't mean to insult you. RTCW:ET is a very fun FPS, and it's FREE.
I, and nearly all the people in my friends list (about 90 players confirmed, 15 still holding out), have cancelled all accounts, and wish we could cancel ToOW. Of the 15 left, they still hold out hope the game will be good. The rest of us realize that if we want to, we can play a First or Third Person Shooter without a monthly fee.
I, and all the rest of those who have cancelled (some with 3-5 accounts due to SOE's stupid 1 character per server limitation, which will still exist in the new system), will NEVER play a Sony Online Entertainment game ever again. The customer support was by far the worst we had ever experienced, and many of my us have been playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online first came out. Many of us are heading to WoW or waiting for something like Pirates of the Burning Sea or Dark and Light. To John Smedley and Julio Torres: I hope someone, somewhere, screws you as hard, monetarily, as you've screwed the Star Wars Galaxies playerbase.
The thing I noticed with EQ was that people would get hooked into something...an epic weapon quest or something, and it would take MONTHS to finish it, and the whole time they'd be saying, "I just want to get my epic, then I can stop."
They did the same kind of thing with Jedi status, initially...you could get it, but it'd take for freaking ever. Seems like they're making it easy now, in an effort to draw in more players. I tell ya, I had enough and more of that game in the five free days I played. I could see grinding spanning out in all directions.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Wish I could MOD this as well. They need to answer to this chain of events; this seeming bait and switch.
Get ready to double your fun. In the coming months, every active player will get two characters per galaxy spread over four different galaxies (eight total max)! Stay tuned for more information.
This changes nothing really. You were ALREADY limited to 8 character slots, just 1 per galaxy unless you unlocked your jedi slot. If you already had your 8 characters and unlocked your jedi, you had to delete one of your pre-existing characters to make room for your jedi character.
Way to go again with the bullshit marketing Sony. This is nothing more than the same system with a different wrapper on it.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
I've never seen any game, much less a dynamic MMORPG, go through as many fundamental changes as SWG. The combat systems, the crafting systems, the mission systems, the classes, the level system, mob experience, item decay, penalties for death, etc., have all changed more times than a Sand Giant's underwear.
My question is, when will you all know that SWG is dead? You didn't do this with EQ when it started losing market share. You created a new game; you didn't insist on trying to hack the original product into something dramatically different. So why is this horse on life support? Is it Sony or some special contract you have with Lucas? No other game developer has ever spent so much time and energy trying to desperately patch a system which has never worked, ever, since day one. Who will be ultimately responsible for pulling the plug on this project, and what's the real reason behind not spawning this sinking ship into a new game, built from the ground up based on what you know does and does not work?
When SWG first came out, it seemed like SOE was trying to bridge the gap between casual and power players. The Artesian, CH, Entertainer classes and other aspects of the game seemed geared towards a different play style from the Jedi, Bounty Hunter, and fighter groups. I really enjoyed the "Sandbox" aspect of the game, which I found to be revolutionary and very creative.
The problem I found was that the system just never seemed to balance itself out, creating a thriving market for any of the classes. Subsequent changes to the game have failed to address this.
Do you think that it is extremely difficult, or impossible to create a single game that can appeal to these different types of players? Can you honestly discuss how your future approach to gameplay addresses the different play styles? Are you gravitating towards more power gamers or casual players?
Personally, I've felt the crafting system was one of the most ingenious aspects of the game. The problem is there has not been much of a market for crafted items to make artesians self-sufficient. In many ways, I still think the original design of the game may have been the most balanced, except it was dependent upon a thriving community of participants that never seemed to materialize. Do you think that perhaps more marketing efforts to attract players might have made the game more feasible instead of trying to alter the world to balance the gameplay based on a subscriber base that was lower than anticipated or unbalanced class-wise?
What this all comes down to, is what went wrong? Was the initial game design flawed, or did you not get the numbers you needed to make the world self-propagating?
The Customers who play Starwars online are outraged, more so by this than the last major overhaul of the game (CU or Combat Upgrade). The Major Upgrade was announced just days after the next expansion for Starwars Online came out (Trials of Obiwon).
b oard.id=nge_discussion&message.id=1101
THe next upgrade turns the MMORPG into a FPS style play, it removes 26 classes from the game, dramtically alters the GUI, while further removing the already limited content in the game. Under the current system players are given a choice on what they can do and learn, and skills are spread out over multiple classes / templates. This gives each player the choice of being within the scope of the game, someone unique, as there are multiple possible skill combonations. THis goes away on the 15th with the NGE.
For those of you ever concidering playing Star Wars online. I wouldnt suggest it. Go buy a copy of Knights of the Old Republic, as that is exactly the same style boring limited game you will be playing, save for Knights of the Old Republic had a plot and a clear definate time line where Star Wars Online has no definate time line, the quests are all "fetch the stick" still quests of doing either, Go here and bring back this, or Go here and kill someone. You add to it the lack of content (no , you can not go to Corrisant, you cant go to Hoth, there is no Deggoba System,No Bespine, and Jedi are less powerful than your average stormtrooper)
You add to it Star Wars Online does not respond or care about its fan base, has horrible customer service , In fact they closed their customer service line. You will be disapointed in your experience with Star Wars Online
This post here has at this time of writting just under 2000 responses, almost all of which do not agree with the NGE
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?
You are forced into one of the 9 iconic professions once the NGE goes live, and then you have a stone that lets you change 9 times, which gives you 1 each at the other 8 professions, and a final choice.
They've already answered, a refund is available for anyone who purchased the Trials of Obi-Wan prior to the New Game Enhancements announcement.
But seriously...I have a hard time playing your game without trying to figure out what skills I am getting from your game that I can place on a resume. Typing? Socializing? Anti-socializing? Fluent in languages like twi-lek, wookie, and etc?
Can you envision a future when games like these can actually teach skills that can applied to the real world?
I'll take my answer off-the-air.
Yes it is - it's exactly like WWII Online. After spending many months playing WWII Online this was an element that Sony's own PlanetSide team tried to recapture. It allows smaller numbers of players to create a larger apparent battle that continues its flow. In the same way that CoD continuously spawns replacements to give you that "big army" feel.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
The game is now nothing like it used to be for role playing, or for learning skills.
Used to be, you had this large number of various skills out there. All kinds of stuff, hundreds of skills. Whatever you trained in, that's what you were, and your skills defined you, not a class.
Skill points could be cashed in and forgotten, and you could train in a new area any time you wanted to. A level 80 bounty hunter could renounce violence and decide to train as a musician, etc. A pilot could become a doctor instead. That kind of freedom let you redefine your character at any moment; this was unique in MMORPG play as I know it, and I had the pleasure of creating essentially BarbWire: a Master Dancer, Master Marksman, and Pilot. It's even cooler than the concept of "multi-class" in AD&D.
Whatever you trained in, that's what you were.
Now you pick from 9 hard classes, and there is little development past that. No more can I be a dancer who can shoot and fight and handle herself in a wide and interactive world.
Entertainers are stuck at combat level 1. I used to be a Master Dancer and combat level 16, Master Marksman. I could train in lots of nifty skills like simple medicine... hand to hand fighting... hair design... scout stuff... piloting... you were never pigeonholed into a class or a certain skill set... this alone made SWG unique and very, very enjoyable.
There are lots of nifty things about this game that have nothing to do with Star Wars at all. Mountains are all real and can be climbed, way up there... terrain all real... your character automatically emotes as you speak based on keywords in your text... they are so much more alive than in other MMORPGs I have played, even the beautiful EQII.
The whole crosshairs/mouse/camera interface has been simply ruined.
If the point is to make us all beta-test this thing for the PS3 style controls, they shoulda made the old PC interface available for those who find their game experienced ruined.
I'm giving Sony about 30 days or so to react with some responses of some kind to the avalanche of complaints. I'm adding mine to the list. They messed up my movement, rendered my mouse useless, and I had to dig into menus to find out how to see my own character's face again.
If they will make the "old" mouse interface available again I will keep playing, because a Master Dancer doesn't mind being a Master Entertainer too much... but only if the game is still playable. It's an abomination now. I can't even rotate the cam around my character while she's moving anymore, as the mouse has been rendered useless.
What was so bad about left click selects, right click examines/uses? Why did that have to be changed? It's so absurd it boggles the mind.
i have so much to say and many others have said it more specificly on the forums on SWG unfortunatly you dont consider the SWG forums only the Fan fest forum, ill make you clear the guys at Fan Fest
are just bunch of geeks like you that want all easily.
you destroyed the game from listening to the very small amount of players in SWG that want this patch
watch the SWG community forums and see what they think.