John Smedley On The New Galaxies

Gamespot has part one of an extensive interview with SOE CEO John Smedley about the recent and controversial changes made to Star Wars Galaxies. From the article: "Star Wars never hit that excitement level around here. It never got--there never was a critical mass of people here that wanted to play it. So we knew we could do way better. And I guess as much out of a love for making these kinds of games, even though that sounds corny, though it's true, we wanted to make this game better." We had our own talk with Mr. Smedley not too long ago.

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NYT has a much different view...

[WCMI92]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/arts/10star.html ?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1134234111-qM+OBZTgCE9+jbFl687Dv g

Must read.

Smedley is a liar and a thief. I'd normally never say that, but in his case, it's true.

How about content?

[Somatic]

Smedley: We spent quite a bit of time and money doing product research. We did a number of focus groups and talked specifically about changes that we could make to the interface, to the combat, and to the overall gameplay experience--to make it a lot more fun. We also did surveys asking the current user base what was missing, what were things we could do to make the game better.

And in all of these user surveys, apparently no one ever said they wanted content, and that's why there was none, right?

Let me spell this out for you future game developers. Randomly generated content is not content, it's crap. The brain of even the slowest human can smell the difference between hand crafted and computer generated content. It's why the Turing test hasn't been passed, it's why automated customer service menus piss people off, and it's one of the reasons SWG failed.

Creating a massive world that was 99% empty might have seemed like a good idea on the surface, I know. You'd save all that time on programming, writing, implementing... you'd create beautiful cities (and you did), players would go to them and be merry... but all the rest of the world would be random. It didn't seem like a bad idea, I know. I can follow the thought process that led to SWG's design, and on paper, I can see how it might have sounded good.

But what you've got to understand, devs, is that there is no substitute for the human hand. Technology is great when used right, but it is not a good babysitter. Random levels worked for Nethack because it was a single player game, an ASCII game, and the design was genius for its time. But random will not work in a modern MMOG.

People need to fall in love with the world they're playing in, and a computer-generated design just can't inspire that love. Only the human hand can do that. Maybe in the next 20 years a genius programmer will come along who will write the algorithm that will be able to trick the human brain into loving it that way they love something painstakingly crafted by a human... but for now, you have to do it by hand.

I'm serious, game devs. I'm trying to save you millions of dollars. Don't do it. Hire a bunch of high school aged D&D DMs if your budget is that tight. Just hire a human, k?

(oh yeah, and crippling bugs wrapped in unstable code that never get fixed are bad too)

SWG is a fun game

[SmallFurryCreature]

For the first month. Maybe two. When you are still new to the world and everything is new and a challenge. When you tame your first bantha, get your first landspeeder, make your first firework.

The first time you go in a group to dathomir and engage a lair of rancors. Well at least if you go in a good group (non buffed to the max group that can solo a rancor lair)

And that last bit is the problem. As you learned the game you found out that in the beginning you were hopelessly crippling yourselve. Your "action" points (health action mind) depleted only because you hadn't bought the proper buffs. Without buffs taking on a bunny could be a challenge. With them you could stand in a circle of enraged giant rancors and kick their but.

But this also ruined the fun. Gone were the carefully prepared expeditions. Do you know that at one point nobody went to dathomir without a medic in the group? When I left EVERYBODY including dancers and musicians were making the dathomir village run (if you don't know don't ask) 2x a day. (oh alright if you must know, to become a jedi you had to trade regular xp you gained by doing your chosen proffesion in the village. a 15 minute drive across dathomir wich turned the most hostile planet into a freaking highway)

Unlike other MMO games there was usually no problem in finding a group. Finding the members of the group was another matter. SWG may be the first MMO game to come up with the concept of the solo group. You see a high level combat character could easily handle the thoughest missions BUT was unable to get them when alone. You had to be in a group of about 5 to get the best missions (payout) so people grouped just to get missions wich they then did on their own. WEIRD.

After a while SOE realized the game was not going well and started changing things. One of them was the addition of dungeons. Not a bad idea in itself except that SOE populated them by enemies wich insane hitpoints and resists. So it became less exploring a carefull crafted story line in a dangerous location and more a constant 5 minute kicking contest. Most people just created a macro to trigger their best attacks and went to make coffee while clearing a room.

Remember those early usermade doom levels? Were every room had a dozen endbosses? Those levels that absolutly sucked? That is SWG "high level" content. Do a corvette mission once with a non maxed out combat character you will be death before you know it.

And that was SWG's biggest failure. It provided nothing in the middle. Once you had gone past the initial learning period it had a big void and then only the high level endgame were you either created a tricked out combat specialist and copied exactly the perfect template or you just didn't have a chance.

Same with crafting, nobody had any use for a mid level crafter. From almost the very beginning if you wanted to make money creating stuff you first had to grind to max level and then recoup your money by selling your high level goods. I tried chef and couldn't even give away my low level stuff.

Strangely enough it wasn't really the combat that was boring. What was boring was that sony decided that high level meant giving just 1 million hitpoints and 100% resists (yes 100% meaning they NEVER took damage) on all but one type of damage and if your proffesion didn't do that kind of damage, then though luck.

This meant that the end fights always became just a matter of having a good buff and then just beating away for 20 minutes. As a tka I even had "fights" were I would engage a night elder wich I couldn't damage but to keep her attention while a rifle specialist attacked her mind pool. Both of us used macro's and we chatted about how much it sucked we didn't get in the WoW beta.

SWG tried a lot but it also failed in a lot of areas. I think that they forgot during the initial design to hire somebody from out side to review it and give an unbiased opinion. There were just to many problems for the game to have a chance of success. What SOE is doing now is fixing symptoms not causes.