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Future Plans for SWG?
Warcry has a short article with impressions from someone who was asked to participate in a Star Wars Galaxies focus group. The moderator evidently presented several options, and the group responded. From the article: "The final question/topic was whether we'd choose any one of the pamphlet outlines to add to the game, or if we'd prefer for them to work on bringing things back that were taken out. As soon as he was done talking, the group said 'Rollback' almost as one. The moderator seemed like he saw that coming, because he'd probably heard the term a dozen times already from the other groups."
No, seriously, please. Just move along. For the love of the Force, our dev team has been raping your childhood memories like a Gungan on crystal meth for over three years now, and the only thing we've done that was even remotely cool was sending 1200 donuts to Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade last week.
And you're still here?
Please. Move. Along.
Cautiously optimistic? Don't make me get Ackbar out here.
Focus groups won't save it. During peak house there are some 10k players online (can't find link). During Everquest's peak, SOE announced live that there are currently 100k people online. Looking at EQs subscriber numbers at that time (around 500k), SWG should have about 50k total active accounts. That's down from about 250-300k. Ouch.
The game is butchered, just let it die. The amount of bad mainstream press (Washington Post, CBS et al) it got, it pretty much guarantees that Joe Average probably has heard of it and staying away from SWG.
EQ with very loyal fanbase wasn't able to recover from the clusterfuck of Gates of Discord (and it was far less in magnitude than NGE of SWG), SWG with revamp after revamp won't be able either. SOE already tried saving EQ by inviting uberguild leaders to a weekend in San Diego, baseball game and al, focus groups of course. Result: server merges, continuous population decline.
How many changes have gone into the game that need to be undone for it to go back to a state that a majority of people are happy with? A month? Three? Six? A year or more? And even then, would people who liked the game then want to return to it?
I think I liked the game best sometime after Publish 10.. I liked the Combat Upgrade. Right about then was when my interest in the game peaked. And the very next patch I cancelled.
Maybe an option not explored in the focus groups would be the "sunset" of SWG, and the development of its replacement.
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
delete and reroll.
I think Sony needs to kill off the SWG game. Maybe, if LucasArts gives the rights out, someone will build a good MMORPG out of the star wars universe. Using Star Wars as a MMORPG is a great idea, and Sony did an OK job of it. But "Sony Station" is a big piece of crap that's ran by immature moderators. I would like to play that game again, but won't as long as Sony has control of it.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Requim aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Ok, the prayers have been said IN LATIN, so lets stop beating this dead horse and let it die.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I've always thought the best strategy for building a Star Wars MMO would be to combine something like City of Heroes with World of Warcraft. Yes, I know this seems obvious. "Wow, combine two great game ideas! You're a genius!" But here's what I mean:
Every player character is a jedi. You can totally customize your race, appearance, and style of force use. In fact, you don't even have to use the force if you don't want. But you start out with force potential. And the players can go around the Star Wars universe being good or bad guys, doing quests and unlocking new force powers and crafting interesting weapons.
The reason I say this, is because it makes every player feel like an important part of the action. I can only reallly speak for myself, but I'm not going to pay money for a game just so I can experience the simulated thrill of eeking out a living as a dancer, or a baker or some crap. I want a gun, a lightsaber, and directions to the nearest enemy. I want to be a part of the Star Wars adventure and kick some ass. I don't need to meet Han Solo every ten minutes to remind me I'm in Star Wars, but neither do I want to spent 345 hours farming pubic hairs on some remote moon in the yadda yadda quadrant.
I've never designed a game so my opinion amounts to approximately ass, but I just feel like Star Wars Galaxies was designed by people with no concept of human psychology or game design theory. [shrug]
Seriously, the NGE have provided a much better experience for both vets and new players. The game is much more exciting, challenging, and rewarding. The subscriptions are actually on the rise and I think this game will get back to its glory days in no time. I am vet, since beta, and I completely support the NGE and the direction this game is heading. The game was stale before NGE hit and I can wait for what SOE has in store in the future. I am in no way affiliated with SOE or Lucas Art, just a humble fan of this great game.
- Smed
TOO MANY JEDI!
I cancelled soon after the do-gooders with the glowing swords started showing up by the truckload.
Sure, there are a plethora of other things to pick on, but the whole atmosphere of the game is ruined by the presence of lightsaber-wielding freaks every 10 feet. According to the films, there were two known Jedi in the entire galaxy at the time this game takes place. In-game, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands.
Change rules, change professions, change and publish whatever... unless the amount of Jedi are cut back by 99% the game will never have the proper feel.
v.m
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why do /. mods even bother to post anything SOE related? Regardless of content, all that happens is that the flamethrowers come out. Oh they ruined SWG! Oh SOE is collapsing! This from people who, presumably, don't *play* SOE games any more, so how do they know that SWG or EQ has a dwindling population? Oh, rumors on the net and speculation. That's productive.
As I posted (pointlessly, to a thread from last Wednesday, where nobody will ever see it) this is the same forum where another game which makes you sit for half an hour or longer before you can start playing has people bending themselves into logical pretzels to defend this 'feature'. If SOE put a queue on any of its games it would have been flamed here and people would be screaming about class-action lawsuits because they were deprived of their game time.
Now, nobody should imagine that SOE is a paragon of virtue in MMOGing, but it takes a terminal case of bias to flame a company for asking its customers what they want (and paying them ~$80/hour for the experience).
Why? Well at least with the holo grind people were doing different things while grinding. The holo monkeys gave the rest of the galaxy a constant supply of fresh meat. People needing newbie weapons, needing groups to survive doing from melee to ranged.
Or did the rot set in earlier when they added the doc buffs that allowed the solo group to become the only way to play?
If SOE is going to continue, they just need to start over. Ditch this, and just start over with a new design and really choose what kind of MMO they want it to be.
The original SWG was perhaps the oddest of all MMORPG's as in that it didn't have 'levels'. You had a max number of skill points but how you spend those was up to you. It was when players started to optomize them and become super leet fighters and demanding equipment and enemies to satisfy them that the game went to hell.
At the moment the entire CU and NGE mess is caused in no small degree by the fact that the engine just isn't designed for it. It now reminds me of those quake mods that turned a fps into a flightsim or driving game. Fun for a second but they just ain't up to the task.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Then at level 20 you are supposed to get you final class. Except it is prediced. The only difference that the titel is now based on your alignment. Monk (good) Brawler (bad) unarmed fighter.
So how closed is this? Well, at no point do you choose say something like your stat points. Meaning every half-elf brawler level 18 is EXACTLY the same. Because of the way equipment works you will probably also be using pretty much the stuff.
Now they added some minor choices that make you character slightly unique but in EQ2 you pretty much now exactly what a well played shaman is and isn't capable off. Player X will have the same spell list as player Y.
SWG on the other hand left it totally open how you developed your skills. In fact with a new character most players would dabble in ALL the disciplines, being a medic, ranger and melee combat, a dancer and a crafter with a bit of scout for good measure.
Depending on your style and if you weren't a template stacker you could have some unusual mixed. A medic with a sniper rifle , a doctor jedi. Whatever!
To an extent, it allowed a great deal of freedom. Crafters with a sideline in rifles so they could safely clear their harvesters of nasty critters. Dancers with a sideline in cutting peoples heads off.
In SWG you never knew exactly what the other guy was capable off.
SWG is GTA
EQ2 is Need for Speed.
One is freedom, the other is on rails.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If they rolled the game back to maybe one patch after launch I'd consider going back if all of the original players returned. But I know that will never happen, so i'll just continue with my rant about why this game pissed me off. The game had complexity, was actually somewhat fun, and the grind hadn't set in just yet.
People at that time actually experimented with professions and once they found something they liked, they kept it! there were people in the cantina's, we had real people vendors making stuff, rangers hunting, BH's weren't doing much but had cool weapons, etc. This was when the game had an actual economy, people created pseudo corporations and made a killing!
The game started to go into the shitter once they gave everyone holocrons as a christmas gift. That started the real grinding evolution. A friend of mine actually did 32 professions to get his Jedi. The whole jedi thing didn't outright destroy the game because ppl still played it and worked together to grind out those professions (and some actually discovered hey i actually enjoy this profession, screw jedi). But there was still a need for the interdependicies between the professions. Armorsmiths still needed to get minerals to grind out their profession, which meant they needed architects to build the factories and the miners needed the extractors so everything worked out quite well(I used to be an armorsmith which is why i used this example).
BUt now, they have completely destroyed everything all of the pre NGE players created, everything was scaled back from 32 professions to 9 "iconic" professions (If i hear iconic, or whatever the hell word they kept using i'll puke) . It actually appeared to be the work of lazy ass people. Maybe they fucked up the game so bad that the only way to undo everything was to have this wonderful NGE.
And who the hell made the call to let everyone be a jedi. When the game first came out they said "yes you can be a jedi but it'll take you a long time to figure it out" and they kept up with it for a long time.. I think it took almost a year for the first jedi to appear and now everybody and their grandmother are a jedi.. crap!
I'd go back to the game only if I knew the same players returned, which is highly doubtful because they've probably found a new home in World Of Warcraft.
I've never seen anything in my entire life managed so poorly from a software deployment/change point of view. Hell, MS has a better track record than these clowns. And this game has totally ruined the star wars experience for me. I don't think i'll ever try another starwars game again!!
MrJynx
SWG at this point can't really be saved.
What amazes me is that lucas arts let sony do SWG the way they did. Now Sony, having EQ, you would think we'd have seen everquest in space, if that had been the case (something half way between EQ and EQ2 in terms of technology) it might have been quite successful, maybe not WoW successful, because that didn't have the Sony name attached (the Sony customer service reputation is of course a disaster, although the ticket system in SWG was a huge improvement). Unfortunately what they got was UO on the ground, with space to come later. Granted when the JTL expansion came it was pretty cool, but JTL didn't have any high end content, that is to say, once you got to ace pilot, there wasn't anything to do. Sure you could fly around and kill hordes of crappy npcs for the odd bit of loot. So that's the problem first off the game didn't build on past success (everquest, which at the time was the 400 kilo gorilla in the room), and when they did have content and do things right it fell short. Its like they never expected people to max out their characters at all, let alone in a week or two, which is all it really took. Crafting was neat, and were it easier/more sensible to find resources that could have tied in well with an otherwise EQ style game (the idea being that you get components as loot rather than actual loot).
Now SWG really is beyond saving. Attracting new players to a MMO works one of two ways, either they look at it in the press and decide it looks cool and they'll buy it, or one of their friends who plays convinces them to try it. The negative press for SWG reflects what's happened to the game, its bad, and without players its even worse. The technology looks dated, now that's to be expected with MMO's, but compare to D&D online, WoW or EQ2, SWG looks bad, so its not going to attract new users with eye candy. And its been around long enough that people who do play, have already tried to get their friends in, and have long since given up. The base is what it is, and they aren't getting anyone new, unless they manage to trick them into thinking its empire at war.
One of the fundamental flaws with SWG has always been understanding the fan base. The last 3 movies to an extent suffer from this as well. SWG fans want one thing: Consistency of the universe. Sure they expect that universe to be cool, that's a given and the universide is already cool, now in a game you can expect and allow certain compromises (TIE fighters with shields for players), because its a game everyone gets that, and players are supposed to be 'special' anyway, but balance is important. On the other hand the timeline for SWG never worked, the ground game really didn't make sense, I mean... its star wars and we're out here hunting creatures? Does that make sense? PvP was never implemented particularily well either. That and people want to play jedi, the timeline they picked doesn't allow for jedi, which meant they really had to hack a solution together after the fact, poorly done.
A new SWG, set in one of two periods, either right after episode 3 or right after episode 6, learning a lot of the lessons of WoW, EQ2 etc... could probably have done well, if it was released a year ago. Get the actors to voice some of the dialogue for characters, and give the developers room to be creative with the universe, and take it somewhere interesting. As it was they were trying to fit any idea they had into the time period, which never worked right.
Now though, I think its best to rollback to a UO in the star wars world. That is the fan base, those are the people who were playing and want to play, make it what they want. Don't try and revitalize it, EQ and UO are never going to attract 100 000 more people. The game is what it is, and has the fan base it has, cater to them or shut down. I suspect SWG is sufficiently unprofitable that its time shut down and move those developers to somewhere else, but if it is profitable cater to the people who want a rollback and don't try and get WoW players or D&D players etc...
Apparently the website linked in TFA heard from SOE's lawyers, and pulled the comments based on the NDA.
So, literally, nothing to see here.
Seems that someone who claims to have taken part in the "Los Angeles SWG research focus group" yesterday has posted details about the 2 hour session. From their post: "The discussion began with a round-robin introduction and telling what we felt the best and worst aspects of Galaxies are. Then the real discussion began. The moderator brought out three pamphlets. One, which I believe was entitled Paths To Power, outlined the implementation of a Dark Side/Light Side path a la KOTOR, for every profession. It also went into detail about re-doing missions as either side and seeing the different view on things, different abilities for each, etc. The group was very much interested. The second was entitled "The Galactic Civil War" and I'm sure you can imagine what it outlined: bringing the GCW back to prominence. It discussed controlling Star Destroyers and Blockade Runners, but also seemed to deadlock players as either Imperial or Rebel. The third outline basically discussed morphing Galaxies into Battlefront II, complete with having iconic characters not only immediately available during your mission, but for you to be able to -- yes, you're actually reading this -- play as movie characters. The group was not pleased. Then he told us that these were possibilities for expansion packs, not publish updates. The final question/topic was whether we'd choose any one of the pamphlet outlines to add to the game, or if we'd prefer for them to work on bringing things back that were taken out. As soon as he was done talking, the group said "Rollback" almost as one. The moderator seemed like he saw that coming, because he'd probably heard the term a dozen times already from the other groups. So there you have it. They're either going to continue the trend of "Expansion Packs aren't necessary (nudge nudge wink wink)", or, if they go by what the focus group asked, we will see a rollback of some degree. The number one issue brought to the moderator when he asked about the biggest negatives in Galaxies was the lack of diversity in professions and the overwhelming letdown that was the NGE for people like musicians, creature handlers, smugglers, etc. He was finishing sentences for us because he had obviously heard quite a bit about it in the previous groups. THAT'S ALL FOLKS" Hmm... Light/Dark side for EVERY profession? Awesome, because what SWG really needs is some Sith Lap Dancers. Keep that to Jedi only please. The Galactic Civil War has never been prominent. Unless you are talking about the Imperial Crackdown publish, which may as well have given Rebels 100,000 Faction Points everytime they logged in? As for the third discussion point, If SWG players wanted to play Battlefront II, they would be playing Battlefront II. It also saddens me to hear that the choices at the end were "Pay for stuff you don't want" or "Pay for stuff you want for many, many more months as we try to milk every dime". A rollback will never happen. If a rollback to Pre-NGE does happen, I'm sure I can look up some old Dev posts to find creative ways to say "That's not what I said" or "You're taking that out of context" or "That was a true statement at the time I made it".
Frankly, probably the biggest and most unimaginative mistake of SWG was placing it in the timeline of the original EP4-6 trilogy where, yeah, there are virtually no Jedi left. Not only that limits the availability of _the_ most demanded class by the players, it also severely limits what you can do with the game universe and what story you can tell with it.
You'll notice that the most successful games set in a given universe step outside the timeline that confines them. KOTOR is one example, but maybe World Of Warcraft is a better one: it _doesn't_ happen during the Warcraft 3 battles, but some time later, when they can write a new story and invent their own story NPCs as the need.
Even in the movies business, you'll notice that (for whatever other faults they had), Lucas _didn't_ just pile more story into the same EP4-6 timeline, just for the sake of pimping Darth Vader in the same outfit some more. He took a step back in time where he could tell you a different bit of the story (and when, yes, 10,000 assclowns with lightsabers ran around). And (again, for whatever other fault the prequels may have had), chances are you were more interested in seeing a new story, and seeing for example WTF _were_ the Clown Wars... err... Clone Wars that Yoda mentioned, than if it were "Jolee Littlebottom the cantina dancer eventually gets to see Lord Vader during the same EP4-6 period."
That's good story telling and/or game design versus just merchandising. Any idiot can take a DIKU MUD and place Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, etc, in it, just for the sake of whoring the franchise. But again, that's merchandising, nothing more. But taking a step outside or sideways and telling your own story is what makes a good game or movie.
There are tens of thousands of years of Republic history to place your story in, most of which had plenty of Jedi. Or you could go into the future, after Luke rebuilt the Jedi academy and the Sith are again some secretive group lurking in the shadows. (It's not like people are gonna stop falling to the Dark Side any time soon.) Maybe a new war broke out, or maybe they're just plotting a new infiltration. Maybe a new wannabe Palpatine is looking for new Anakins to take over the world with. Maybe just a group of people are still nostalgic about the Empire and secretly plan to rebuild it. Or whatever.
See? It wasn't even that hard, and it allows you all the freedom you want.
And again, on the topic of 10,000 assclowns with lightsabers, that's what the vast majority of the galaxy's history was all about. They had a whole freaking council and academy on Coruscant. Being a Jedi wasn't about achievement, it wasn't about grinding through all the professions first (how many professions had Luke mastered anyway?), it was simply about being born that way. Even assuming that only one in a _billion_ was born sensitive enough to the Force, a planet like Earth would have some 6-7 of them. And we're talking about a whole galaxy to hand-pick them from.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've split the message into two, because it's really two different issues, and I'd rather not mix them up. Plus, the crafting one is really of minor importance, compared to the constant (other) changes to everyone's characters.
The problem with crafting is this: over-simplifying it won't make it more attractive to those who weren't in that category, since it just replaces one boring grind with another equally boring grind. If anyone can make 10,000 swords a day by just clicking a "make sword" button, limited only by the quantity of ore on hand and the recipes, then you just replaced the old grind with a grind for ore and recipes. Hope you like it more when you run around looking for a tin vein, or when you get some equivalent of WoW's "collect 1000 heavy lether for the Thorium Brotherhood" grind for recipes. In the end, it just makes people do another boring grind in the same time, so it still won't be exciting to more players.
It can however piss off those who were into it in the first place, by breaking the economy. If the bottleneck is the ore, and making swords is easy, then ore prices go way up and sword prices go way down. Have you looked at the Auction House in WoW recently? At any tier, the materials sell for more than any item you could possibly make out of them. To pick a low level example so anyone can check it out without grinding to level 60, look at the materials for a low level sword: light leather, iron and stone. Now look them up at the Auction House, and look up the same sword there. Ah-ha, you could actually sell those materials for more than twice the price of the finished product.
So simplifying it didn't make it more exciting, it just made it stupid too: you're essentially throwing money out the window to pursue a crafting carreer.
It also just made farming profitable. _The_ way to make money in WoW is to farm raw materials and sell them. I fail to see this as an improvement to the game for the following reasons:
1. It's a thankless activity, other than the money itself. While a player _might_ take some pride in being the best swordsmith in town, virtually noone will feel a sense of accomplishment for farming skins and ore for 8 hours straight.
2. It's a slap in the face for those players who actually liked virtual crafting. (Call them "obsessive compulsive grinder" if you will, but you're still making them unhappy anyway.) Being told all the time "geeze, ditch smithing already and start farming if you want money for that mount" is basically denying them any sense of achievement for their virtual craftsmanship level. They're just keeping getting told that they're doing something stupid and actually counter-productive.
3. It presents a no-brainer income source for the gold farmers, and puts everyone else into direct competition with those. While you might not get annoyed that 5 other people are cooking at the same time in that room, a lot of people _will_ be annoyed when they have to compete with resources with some 5 bots farming fellcloth 24 hours a day, nuking every single NPC in sight. Heck, even without even wanting the resources, I know I've been annoyed before when I had to spend an hour killing 20 NPCs for a newbie quest because some level 60 mage was nuking them in wholesale for linen cloth.
So, at any rate, I'm predicting that the upcoming simplifying it even more in EQ2 will have the same effect. It won't make crafting more exciting. If you hate it now, I honestly think you'll still hate it just as much after the changes. Maybe it just can't be made exciting to more people. It might, however, bring in some of the annoying side effects that WoW already has.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.