Star Wars Galaxies

[hooflung]

Well, just when you thought SOE might not be a brood of vipers... they go and correct you. Don't know if anyone else posted about this... search wasn't coming up with anything.

Basically,

Lucas Arts announced 1 day after credit cards were charged for the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion that there would be a 2 week buffer time before the NEXT major combat/profession upgrade would be put on live. The new system will be a hybrid Diablo 2/FPS/Resident Evil 4 interface for combat. They were condensing all the professions into 9 "Iconic" professions following close suite to their silver screen role model.

Needless to say the SWG community, especially the vets, were pissed off to the nth degree. Not only is this the second major combat upgrade to come in 6 months but it came out of nowhere. Speculation is that this is a Lucas Arts made upgrade while others speculate this is a last ditch secret plan by SOE. Moreover, the community relations team seem to get hit JUST as hard from this information. Either way the SOE producer didn't sign off on this one to the community, it was without a doubt the LA producer.

The expansion came out on Tuesday the 1st with the DVD of Episode III. The test server was put up late Friday night the 4th of November. The initial load was so horribly bugged you could not load out of the tutorial.

Sony has really shot down old vets. Not only this, but one of the most beloved professions of the game, creature handler, is to be completely removed. Yes, that is right. Two weeks after an expansion that had bold marketing for creature handlers to quest for items that would allow for a "fix" to the profession to use a pet at the maximum player combat level the developers, bean counters, or whomever decided to kill the profession. Yes, after the credit cards were charged for the expansion. Not much news has desiminated through the net through major news channels. Gamespot had a jaded article the day of the announcement that excited even the most peeved of players.

Speaking of players, it is not really the fact of the changes that is ticking off the community. Its the timing and lack of communication between the developers and the players. While games like EVE online and City of Heroes/Villians have a growing support structure between dev and player, SOE continues to claim use of polls, focus groups, and internal testing by 'veteran' players to make decisions and commit code to them before asking the community. That, and the fact that bioengineer and creature handler were said to only be 1% of the community ( true or not is irrelevant since SOE BROKE the profession 4 publishes ago ) and the fact that JEDI is now a starter profession is more than justified to the 100s, possibly 1000s since the forums are gaining 1000s posts per hour ) of cancelling accounts. Class action lawsuits for fraudulant actions because of the ToOW expansion timing are starting to fall.

Rumor mills months old are starting to come true. The new game, which I personally tested over the weekend along with other long time subscribers, is clearly aimed at the console. It is also interesting to note that SOE Europe has SWG as a project that will be coming to the playstation 3. The new system smacks of console, laziness, diablo2 combat, twitch based aiming, and disrespect to the customers. Many people who remain openminded to the change, even myself, have even found the new system to feel "more star warzy" than the two systems to come before it. However, it feels more like KOTOR than Galaxies. The user interface is horrible. The profession system is attrocious. Everyone is a cookie cutter build without *choice* and you still only get one character per server. This character per server issue is a big peeve since your toon that might be 2 years old cannot change professions one your obligatory respects are used up. You must delete the toon to change professions or switch servers.

All in all Sony has a lot of 'splanin to do and a lot of tears to dry up. However, this may herald in a new thriving SWG on the Xbox or PS systems where everyone is a jedi and once you reach maximum level you put the game down and pick up another SOE/Lucas Arts title. All this ... and the fact that Star Wars Galaxies in Japan is over and servers will migrate from Japan to US any day now is summing up a drumroll for the beloved game of many.

-SWG player since 06/2004, R.I.P. Galaxies November 15, 2005.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: hooflung
Speaking of players, it is not really the fact of the changes that is ticking off the community. Its the timing and lack of communication between the developers and the players. While games like EVE online and City of Heroes/Villians have a growing support structure between dev and player, SOE continues to claim use of polls, focus groups, and internal testing by 'veteran' players to make decisions and commit code to them before asking the community.

Thanks for the post. But I disagree here. Players, as a whole, seldom know what is good for them and if I were a dev, I would not be asking for their input on the important matters either. That's if you have a really good dev team, of course.

That said, it's a disgusting thought that MMORPGs might begin focussing on consoles. Catering to the Madden/Tekken crowd as opossed to the Starcraft/Fallout crowd would result in a WHOLE different kind of community.

 

[hooflung]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: hooflung
Speaking of players, it is not really the fact of the changes that is ticking off the community. Its the timing and lack of communication between the developers and the players. While games like EVE online and City of Heroes/Villians have a growing support structure between dev and player, SOE continues to claim use of polls, focus groups, and internal testing by 'veteran' players to make decisions and commit code to them before asking the community.

Thanks for the post. But I disagree here. Players, as a whole, seldom know what is good for them and if I were a dev, I would not be asking for their input on the important matters either. That's if you have a really good dev team, of course.

Important aspecs of asking what the players might enjoy? If they want a game they have played for over 2 years to be wiped out without even a months knowledge of the changes coming? Understanding the time sink the majority of SWG players have put into their "hard, complicated, openended profession, social oriented" game that is in 2 weeks changing into a "simplistic, point and click, linear progression, self oriented game" that not only has destroyed "iconic" worthy professions such creature handler which more than 1% of the players use (despite SOE's claims) and wipe out 4 months of Jedi grind without compensation that has led to a fierce rebuttle and mass exodus? And anouncing it 1 day after a 30 dollar charge to the expansion buyers credit card where the majority of buyers would not have bought it otherwise because of most of the incentives to purchase for half of the people will be gon in 2 weeks time? A system that is still incomplete because they won't even have collision detection until febuary of 2006... a crucial part of the combat system. Changes that the DEVs pledged to the individual professions which will never arrive? The fact that they said that they were fixing bioengineers which now is a farce because they are just being plain removed? And recent work that is now useless, such as the creature handler update that spanned whole publish recently to fix a profession compaints is now wasted work? The fact that the new system is just as, if not buggier, than the first two that were in place and they gave themselves a 2 week window to go live? The fact that more than 1% of people are Creature Handlers yet they say their data mining has said otherwise? I guess you can take inactive users into the fray but SWG has about 140K total subscribers if their lucky. When this hit the fan Master Creature Handlers started piping up on the forum... which was at 50k posts in a brand new thread before the initial announcement day was up. 18k posts in anothe thread by friday.

In a jar jar voice, "When'sa you'sa thinking we'sa gonna be in trouble?"

No I am not a creature handler.

That said, it's a disgusting thought that MMORPGs might begin focussing on consoles. Catering to the Madden/Tekken crowd as opossed to the Starcraft/Fallout crowd would result in a WHOLE different kind of community.

I agree. Now SWG is going to be littered with console kiddies who want the next Star Wars title they haven't played yet. And now with their new dumb dumb interface and class system they can take a month out of their time and become Jedi and "pwnx0r your box0r n00b" around the vets who have been playing for a long time who either have to deal with it OR leave. As if there weren't enough "h@x j00 nUb" kiddies in MMORPGs enough.

Sure SWG needed a change. Sure it needed a more "star warzy" feel. Sure we wanted balance so servers would be somewhat full. But at the cost of the game's profession system? At the cost of the Social elements? To still money grub only 1 toon per server with a 8 total per account? To not be in control of our characters destiny but in reality to play as Luke, Han, Fett or Commander Cody? Seems to me SOE is out just for the money and Lucas will let anybody tarnish their cash cow.

 

[Auryg]

Wow..Jedi is a starting profession?

That alone...ugh.

I remember before this game came out, all the hype...it really sounded like it was going to be good. And then it came out, and I have to be honest-I hate the 3 pool combat. It was just stupid, and even worse to group with.

So I cancelled. Then I heard about the CU, so I rejoined. Had some fun, but it got boring...And I didn't like the amount of Jedis. So I cancelled.

And now this? Wow.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: hooflung
Speaking of players, it is not really the fact of the changes that is ticking off the community. Its the timing and lack of communication between the developers and the players. While games like EVE online and City of Heroes/Villians have a growing support structure between dev and player, SOE continues to claim use of polls, focus groups, and internal testing by 'veteran' players to make decisions and commit code to them before asking the community.

Thanks for the post. But I disagree here. Players, as a whole, seldom know what is good for them and if I were a dev, I would not be asking for their input on the important matters either. That's if you have a really good dev team, of course.

That said, it's a disgusting thought that MMORPGs might begin focussing on consoles. Catering to the Madden/Tekken crowd as opossed to the Starcraft/Fallout crowd would result in a WHOLE different kind of community.

But it's also a much larger community.

Personally I wouldn't even bitch about it at this point. Either this is an early April Fools or all of the people who bought that expansion just got Jedi pwned. Everyone who complains and continues to play is just continuing to fuel the 'screw the players they'll take it!' fire.

 

[microAmp]

Glad I don't play SWG anymoe. But did I understand this right, the OP said Jedi is a starting profession? For example when I 1st started I choose Medic as my starting profession, now I can do a Padawan? If so :Q Before I left there were a lot of Jedi on Wanderhome, played BH at that time, I would hate to see what it looks like now

This move doesn't surpise me at all, especially when they put a Dev just to work on the smugglers and never even did anything for them.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: hooflung

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor
Thanks for the post. But I disagree here. Players, as a whole, seldom know what is good for them and if I were a dev, I would not be asking for their input on the important matters either. That's if you have a really good dev team, of course.

Important aspecs of asking what the players might enjoy?

Thing is, most players probably don't know what it is that they actually enjoy about the game. And what some love others find just neat. Also, if I'm going to flush a game down the toilet, it's gonna be because my ideas failed, not because a bunch of vocal players advice made it fail.

Still, your compaint about changing a game all of a sudden is 100% valid. It's happened to all of us who've played pretty much any MMORPG long enough and it's a terrifying reminder that, while you invest so much time and energy into these games, everything that exists there does so at the discretion of an accountant with two different colored pens.

 

[Kerouactivist]

I really like that game for about 3 months a long time ago but, the were always playing around with everything too much.... The only good thing about this is that I know I'll never play the game again since they are getting rid of CH, that was really the only fun character when I was playing....

 

[CKent]

just when you thought SOE might not be a brood of vipers

I never thought that

 

[ShotgunSteven]

I saw this coming way back when they started nerfing based on the whining that was taking place on the forums. I'm glad I abandoned that POS game long ago.

 

[hooflung]

Yes Jedi is a starting profession from the VERY start. Not that I mind this so much, because it doesn't in itself break the canon of Star Wars at this time period ( aka there are still jedi in the galaxy just not a council and the midiclorians didn't just turn off the force since the sith can still use it and there are according to the Expanded Universe Dark Jedi who aren't neccessarily bad, just selfish.)

My problem doesn't even come from them trying to change it. Everyone knows the game was going the way of the toilet and they promised to fix it. The problem is HOW they are doing it. They basically, imho, stole 30 dollars from every creature handler and bioengineer flat out. They ripped everyone else off who wanted to play the character that is on the live server NOW in the expansion longer than two weeks.

I mean... THE DAY AFTER a DIGITAL DOWNLOAD ONLY expansion (aka no customers able to go directly to the store and get a refund ) is just down right insulting. I love the expansion don't get me wrong. I would like to play it with my current character for more than a freaking couple of weeks. Not to mention the new system is so buggy that its laughable. Not to mention that they haven't thought about how little they care about their veterans. Not to mention that they have poorly thought about how long people will continue on subscription that have reached the hight of their build.

I feel the combat system is probably a move in the right direction. I think that they could have reorganzed the professions somewhat to help balance PvP and Galactic Civil War. But to rob money and gameplay from their customers without a word of input ( they have 2 or 3 threads for this type of planning and testing for this type of feedback ) is just pathetic. If you see kaylanasyi on their forums... you can check my posts and see I have fought through the jackasses on the forums and defended the game and developers. I am not just bringing doom because I got ticked off. I even was excited to be on test server to try things out. Afterwards... it was just like... "wow this is star wars... but its KOTOR... wow the interface is ugly... where is my City of Villians desktop shortcut again?"

If you want to see some screenshots of the buggy tutorial go here http://www.gametek.us/screens/SWG_CU2/

 

[Auryg]

Bah, SOE ruins everything they touch...especially my beloved Infantry.

 

[Mrpilot007]

Today I not only canceled my City of Heroes account that I have played faithfully for the past year, but I also deleted all of my 20 or so characters. I have no earthly idea as to why so many game developers focus on their own agenda and leave the customer out of the equation. We can learn from any industry that if you lose sight of the customer you lose the customer all together.

You just cannot let a game play one way for a year and then suddenly turn it into something that is less and less fun. I am only assuming that the COH or Star Wars Devs had one thing in mind, "let's see how fast we can go out of business!"

 

[Seeruk]

I played SWG from launch for about 6 months. SWG has always been a dumbed down MMORPG on the combat side, whereas the crafting side is second only to Eve Online.
Anyway in that 6 months I mastered Creature Handling and got bored of it, so then mastered Rifleman, got bored of it, Mastered some other combat prof, got bored of it. The whole combat system was so shallow there was just no depth nor fun in the fights. Anyway on the crafting side I mastered armourcrafting, was pumping out the best composite armour from factories with little input from myself so ultimately got bored and left.
Anyway in a pique of intrigue whilst waiting for SOG start I have been revisiting some old mmorpgs and SWG is one of them. I left just before JTL I think and was curious to try this out. So I reinstalled and reactivated a few days ago.

Now I quite like JTL (I'm 1-1-1-1 rebel pilot atm) and dont know how to judge it yet as I dont think I am far enough into it - but I really do like the arcade combat of it. They have done a good job of that it seems and I am intrigued to find out how they are going to do the same thing in SWG proper. It could be great and kudos to them for trying it - they have proved its possible with JTL, and of course have done it before with Planetside. So I don't think that is a bad thing.
As for the reorg of the combat professions, well I aint too bothered because none of the old ones were fun for me anyway.

But I didnt realise they did that stuff to the CH and the release timing (with regards to the Credit card charges etc) sounds absolutely unforgivable to me. Even though I am curious to see the neew changes I have already cancelled my account again because noone should expect to treat its customers that way and the only way Big Companies will learn is if they are abandoned en masses by the their customers.

What is it with Sony cockups recently? This, rootkits, no 'Live' for PS3, etc

 

[sourceninja]

well thats what you guys get for paying lucas and sony monthy. You might as well send me a check each month and I will send you back a turd in a box. Didn't learn much from everquest and planetside did ya?

 

[Seeruk]

Everquest is pap admittedly, but Planetside was great

 

[hooflung]

I am thinking about playing EVE online again. I still have one account active there with quite a bit of SP ( though its not my minmatar queen of pwnage.)

To the hater of City of Heroes a few threads up... I played CoH for over a year. I got bored with it so I quit after mastering 3 builds to lvl 50 and 5 others in their 30s. They needed to do something about herding, I was one of Omega Sanity's friends on Victory and we were pumping out lvl 50s in 12 hours for people. That was just plain rediculous. Fire/Invuln tanks were just way too uber. Fire / Ice tanks negated EVERY attempt to balance firetanks pre-issue 5. My stone / stone tank now... after Issue 5/6 it is the best tank I ever played at lvl 50 that actually tanks. My Claws / Invuln scrapper used to be able to tank / scrap 8 +3 freak mobs and I would power level people on drek mission with it. It was way too powerful. Now with 3 Enhancements maxing out your attribute its more on line with how EVE has balanced their stacking mods. I think City of Heroes/Villians is very acceptable in how Cryptic has balanced the system. SWG is not a balance. It is a totally different system that is replacing a totally different system that replaced the original. All three systems were bug ridden.

SOE can kma. I feel like sending CCP montly checks just to show approval of their community EVE. As it stands no other company has backed a game like they have. Leave it to the left field icelandic folks to create something unique in this era of vipers.

 

[Mrpilot007]

Hooflung you make a good point about how COH tanks may have been a bit over powered. However, my point is that once you get used to that (a better part of a year), you can never get used to being part of the City of Below Average Heroes. We were able to feel like a superhero for a year and then we were turned into tinker toys. So that is why I hold a grudge against them. I also believe they did that so we would conveniently buy the Villains game. Whatever you do don't recommend another MMO because I think I'm done with them

p.s. And for those of you that have not started an MMO, I don't recommend it because its like being on [insert very addictive illegal substance] and you may not escape its grasp.

 

[Gheris]

Originally posted by: Mrpilot007
Hooflung you make a good point about how COH tanks may have been a bit over powered. However, my point is that once you get used to that (a better part of a year), you can never get used to being part of the City of Below Average Heroes. We were able to feel like a superhero for a year and then we were turned into tinker toys. So that is why I hold a grudge against them. I also believe they did that so we would conveniently buy the Villains game. Whatever you do don't recommend another MMO because I think I'm done with them

p.s. And for those of you that have not started an MMO, I don't recommend it because its like being on [insert very addictive illegal substance] and you may not escape its grasp.

I agree, since I have given up World of Warcraft I have found myself having alot more time for more important things. Will I ever play another MMO again? Maybe, but for now I do not see that happening for a long time......I have played many and learned a lesson from each. I am not surprised by what Sony is doing with SWG. I think their are probably many factors to it.....we will see with time. Sony, in my opinion, is at a delictae stage as far as gaming goes. With EQ, Playstation, and Playstation2 they had been flying high....but the pendulum swings both ways for everyone. Time will tell.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Looks like i will not be trying SWG then.

 

[hooflung]

I am payed up with CoV for the better part of next year because my clan ( that was previously a jedi knight 2 / academy only ) is mainly in CoH/Cov and its a game I can put down without a thought. No addiction there whatsoever... anymore. I agree if you value your time and you don't want to be at the hands of people who just want your money then no MMO is the way to go.

I do feel, that if you want to engage your time in a game... and you like sci-fi then there is no substitute for EVE. Just don't let it be an addiction as it easily can rob that blind. But their developers are spot on and are avid eve gamers... so they get a thumbs up.

And to respond to the "I feel not super anymore after issue 5 and the ED"... you felt super and I felt super and but not many others did. Any time 1/3 the builds in the game could take out a ArchVillian while others couldn't even take on a boss 1v1, something about you feeling super or not makes any argument you could propose moot.