Slashdot Mirror
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...
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-
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
... that makes the question all the more legitimate. I don't think it should just be "funny"... I would like a serious answer to the question:
Given the recent bad press surrounding some of Sony's intrusive software, what changes, if any, are you planning for the copy-protection and cheat-prevention aspects of the game's software. During these change-overs, are you planning on putting in any special software that will monitor the users, and/or software that will attempt to prevent copying the game? Can you guarantee that such software will not "cross the line" and do things not directly related protecting the game itself?
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.
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
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?
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