Architect Archive
Thread: Nice, but...
Page 1 of 2
Perilous
Tue Sep 21, 2004 10:10 am
#1
First and foremost, to the devs, thank you for finally getting around to making container furniture actually have the ability to hold things. I really appreciate that. It's a welcome change and I hope it's the sign of more things to come.
Unfortunately, it falls too late and far too short. Sure, it'll be nice to have furniture rather than backpacks lining up in all those storage houses...but the storage houses themselves are the sign of a much deeper problem.
I am an architect and among the folks who have seen it, my furniture is something of a draw for people. They really enjoy buying it because I put some personality into it, and they like the idea of having something ungeneric in their homes. I get tons of compliments on it, I sell a lot of it, and it's great to interact with people on that level. Very rewarding.
Being an architect who is in demand not only for furniture but for interior design, I enjoy decorating my home appropriately, so that folks can come in and not just see row after row of all the different kinds of furniture available, or some storage shack with vendors in it. I have worked very hard on my home and I always get compliments. It brings me business because people seem to enjoy it so much that they hire me to decorate their own homes or guild halls or city buildings, as well.
I hate the large Naboo house. I think it's badly designed and the layout is atrocious and not a very good use of space. I would really love to have a Tattooine home, but unfortunately, the devs inexplicably refuse to allow all the homes to be placed on any planet. It seems they want an almost militarily severe, drab uniformity to the game. Boring, uninspired, and uncreative, but in the grand scheme of the flaws this game has, it's not a playability issue, so it's way down on the list, and that's fine. Since the generic homes are hideous and the lighting in them is glare-city, I am forced, since I want to live on Naboo, to use the medium Naboo house. The colours are disgusting but the house layout is all right, and so I can make do.
However, with the miniscule 150 item cap on the home, I am only able to decorate two and a half rooms...the front "foyer," the main living room, and the downstairs room, which I use as my crafting workshop. The room to the side of the main living room, as well as the two rooms upstairs, are totally empty, and this is a total waste.
We won't even go into the thing about not being able to have patio or porch furniture.
You have no idea how much I would enjoy having those rooms filled with furniture, and decorated nicely to show off not only the interior design capabilities one has, but a lot more kinds of furniture people might want to buy as well. But due to the lack of vision on the part of the dev team, and due to immense and seemingly insurmountable software issues with the database, I am stuck with a measly little unattractive home that doesn't fit anything inside of it.
Now, more than a year after the release of the game, container furniture finally has the ability to hold items...and still, it is of almost no use at all, because anything stored in them count against the item limit of the house itself.
I find it completely astounding that this dev team continues to be so unknowing of their own game. It's really just impossible for me to understand how this can continue to be such an issue. There are games that are years old that have had player houses and huge amounts of player storage capacity in them, but this seems to be a concept that the people who develop games at SOE simply cannot seem to grasp. And to add insult to injury, they add tens of thousands of items to the game, give players no capacity, and then decide to think about taking away the potential for cross-server trades.
The database, people whine. The database, it has issues. Well, if the database has issues, first of all, the game should not have gone gold. Since it did, though, and these issues have become crystal and horrifyingly clear, then what should happen is that the database should be FIXED or CHANGED. Yes, yes, this is a monstrous job involving a lot of down time and hair pulling. And so...tell me what would be different than the way it is now? People who need storage are going to do one of two things: they're going to find a way to store the things they need to store, or they're going to stop playing the game. Now, any business is in business to make money. Losing customers and having bad press isn't really what any right-minded company would want to have happen to them, so the obvious solution is to make your customers happy. Keep your prices low and provide superior merchandise, and folks will stick around.
The database has problems? People are still going to find their storage, and the "strain" on the database will remain the same if it's all in one house, or divided amongst row after ugly row of buildings named "storage 1" and "storage 2" and "storage 3." The folks who don't want to quit and who need storage are going to find it. Period. So again, there is one obvious solution, if you want a game that adheres to the Star Wars legacy and not to some cheap ripoff of names in a totally meaningless environment filled with thousands of buildings that have nothing but backpacks...or now, rows of container furniture labeled "steel," "ore," "copper," and "synthetic cloth." Whether or not the dev team likes it, folks need storage. They'll find it, or they'll quit playing because the game does not provide for their needs.
Why not address the issue by simply raising the storage caps on houses, and giving us viable storage furniture that does not count against those houses? Lower the storage cap on the furniture by all means; 50 items in a bookcase is very generous indeed. Halve it. Or, as someone said elsewhere on this thread, I believe, have the items count against the house cap, but at a vastly reduced limit. Have every 10 items count as one item, for instance. Put in some use for furniture experimentation, and have it so that the better the item is crafted, the more storage potential it has. A basic chest will hold 10 items at, say, 50 percent reduction. And as you go up the furniture line and become a more proficient architect, make the furniture experimentable to attain a potential 90% or 95% item reduction in it, so that in a full cabinet of 50 items, it only counts as 5 items against the house cap.
THAT would be innovative and thoughtful, it would address some of the database issues, and it would give players a real and viable means of reducing storage woes. Raise the house cap, and make the container furniture experimental to reduce the item count therein. Considerate of the player base, imaginative, thinking, creative solutions, guys. You must all wear suits over there, and dream of being accountants. I haven't seen such a lack of imagination in Star Wars since Episode II. Is Lucas the head of your design team? If he is, someone should kick him upstairs and distract him with coffee, crumpets, and an Ewok or two so that you can get your jobs done properly. I weep for your lack of creativity and imagination. I really do. So much of this game just comes...so...close! But very, very little of it actually hits the mark, like the animal AI does, for example, and that doesn't even have anything to do with Star Wars. It's just brilliant animation and programming, which is truly admirable and one of my favourite parts of the game.
Newer, bigger, and better games are on their way. SWG, as it stands, is far too little, far too late. Why dont I quit? Because I've been here since beta, and because Star Wars as a legend is near and dear to my heart. I grew up with Star Wars and I waited a long, long, long time for this game to be a reality, like so many others did. It's hard, very hard, to give up on that hope that someone in those offices over at SOE will finally, at last, grasp that elusive clue and begin to actually address the real issues instead of giving us half-cheeked perks every once in a while that seem like gifts from the gods simply because the game is so terribly boinked already that giving us something which should never have been an issue...like light sources and vehicles and cabinets that hold items...seem like upgrades. Strictly speaking, they are upgrades. But that's like saying you've gotten an upgrade to your car...now it has wheels!
Yes, having container furniture that acts like a container is delicious, and I'm glad that it's finally been implemented. But I'd far rather see this dev team get to work on the things that could actually change the game for the better and start making fans again of the fans they turned away or have made miserable with their refusal to understand their player base or even attempt to do so.
I was extremely excited a few days ago to get a beta invite to Jump to Lightspeed. The beta for SWG was some of the best fun I've ever had online. It was outstanding. I was all excited for a while, and instantly downloaded and patched everything I needed...and you know, while it was downloading, I had time to think of all that was horribly wrong with this game, and all that hasn't been done despite huge outcry and pleading from the player base, and all the ways that SOE is abusive to their customers and does bad and unsavoury business, and I never logged to JTL. I still haven't, and let me tell you that I resent SOE and this dev team for doing that to me. I hung on for the better part of four years for this game, rooting for them and hoping against hope that things would be awesome, and not only are they not awesome, they are downright insulting.
Cabinets that can hold stuff, 15 months after gold?
Please.
Wake up folks. There's nothing wrong with loving this game. That's the only reason I'm still here. But don't be blinded. This isn't a gift. This is simply catching up on stuff that should have never been an issue in the first place. Cheer when they do something right, not when they correct a wrong. A thank you will suffice, and I've already said that. Now, if they want to really impress me, show me the magic that I was promised while the game was being designed and created. Right now, this is just a boring misrepresentation of one of the greatest stories ever told. I came here expecting more, and so did everyone else.
You wanna impress me? You wanna make me really grateful and a lifelong customer? You want to make sure I, and many, many like me, don't move on when the next game comes out? You can do it. It's easy, if you know how. They said they did know. I want to be impressed. I want to be a fangirl. I want to live in their world.
Show me...Star Wars.
Unfortunately, it falls too late and far too short. Sure, it'll be nice to have furniture rather than backpacks lining up in all those storage houses...but the storage houses themselves are the sign of a much deeper problem.
I am an architect and among the folks who have seen it, my furniture is something of a draw for people. They really enjoy buying it because I put some personality into it, and they like the idea of having something ungeneric in their homes. I get tons of compliments on it, I sell a lot of it, and it's great to interact with people on that level. Very rewarding.
Being an architect who is in demand not only for furniture but for interior design, I enjoy decorating my home appropriately, so that folks can come in and not just see row after row of all the different kinds of furniture available, or some storage shack with vendors in it. I have worked very hard on my home and I always get compliments. It brings me business because people seem to enjoy it so much that they hire me to decorate their own homes or guild halls or city buildings, as well.
I hate the large Naboo house. I think it's badly designed and the layout is atrocious and not a very good use of space. I would really love to have a Tattooine home, but unfortunately, the devs inexplicably refuse to allow all the homes to be placed on any planet. It seems they want an almost militarily severe, drab uniformity to the game. Boring, uninspired, and uncreative, but in the grand scheme of the flaws this game has, it's not a playability issue, so it's way down on the list, and that's fine. Since the generic homes are hideous and the lighting in them is glare-city, I am forced, since I want to live on Naboo, to use the medium Naboo house. The colours are disgusting but the house layout is all right, and so I can make do.
However, with the miniscule 150 item cap on the home, I am only able to decorate two and a half rooms...the front "foyer," the main living room, and the downstairs room, which I use as my crafting workshop. The room to the side of the main living room, as well as the two rooms upstairs, are totally empty, and this is a total waste.
We won't even go into the thing about not being able to have patio or porch furniture.
You have no idea how much I would enjoy having those rooms filled with furniture, and decorated nicely to show off not only the interior design capabilities one has, but a lot more kinds of furniture people might want to buy as well. But due to the lack of vision on the part of the dev team, and due to immense and seemingly insurmountable software issues with the database, I am stuck with a measly little unattractive home that doesn't fit anything inside of it.
Now, more than a year after the release of the game, container furniture finally has the ability to hold items...and still, it is of almost no use at all, because anything stored in them count against the item limit of the house itself.
I find it completely astounding that this dev team continues to be so unknowing of their own game. It's really just impossible for me to understand how this can continue to be such an issue. There are games that are years old that have had player houses and huge amounts of player storage capacity in them, but this seems to be a concept that the people who develop games at SOE simply cannot seem to grasp. And to add insult to injury, they add tens of thousands of items to the game, give players no capacity, and then decide to think about taking away the potential for cross-server trades.
The database, people whine. The database, it has issues. Well, if the database has issues, first of all, the game should not have gone gold. Since it did, though, and these issues have become crystal and horrifyingly clear, then what should happen is that the database should be FIXED or CHANGED. Yes, yes, this is a monstrous job involving a lot of down time and hair pulling. And so...tell me what would be different than the way it is now? People who need storage are going to do one of two things: they're going to find a way to store the things they need to store, or they're going to stop playing the game. Now, any business is in business to make money. Losing customers and having bad press isn't really what any right-minded company would want to have happen to them, so the obvious solution is to make your customers happy. Keep your prices low and provide superior merchandise, and folks will stick around.
The database has problems? People are still going to find their storage, and the "strain" on the database will remain the same if it's all in one house, or divided amongst row after ugly row of buildings named "storage 1" and "storage 2" and "storage 3." The folks who don't want to quit and who need storage are going to find it. Period. So again, there is one obvious solution, if you want a game that adheres to the Star Wars legacy and not to some cheap ripoff of names in a totally meaningless environment filled with thousands of buildings that have nothing but backpacks...or now, rows of container furniture labeled "steel," "ore," "copper," and "synthetic cloth." Whether or not the dev team likes it, folks need storage. They'll find it, or they'll quit playing because the game does not provide for their needs.
Why not address the issue by simply raising the storage caps on houses, and giving us viable storage furniture that does not count against those houses? Lower the storage cap on the furniture by all means; 50 items in a bookcase is very generous indeed. Halve it. Or, as someone said elsewhere on this thread, I believe, have the items count against the house cap, but at a vastly reduced limit. Have every 10 items count as one item, for instance. Put in some use for furniture experimentation, and have it so that the better the item is crafted, the more storage potential it has. A basic chest will hold 10 items at, say, 50 percent reduction. And as you go up the furniture line and become a more proficient architect, make the furniture experimentable to attain a potential 90% or 95% item reduction in it, so that in a full cabinet of 50 items, it only counts as 5 items against the house cap.
THAT would be innovative and thoughtful, it would address some of the database issues, and it would give players a real and viable means of reducing storage woes. Raise the house cap, and make the container furniture experimental to reduce the item count therein. Considerate of the player base, imaginative, thinking, creative solutions, guys. You must all wear suits over there, and dream of being accountants. I haven't seen such a lack of imagination in Star Wars since Episode II. Is Lucas the head of your design team? If he is, someone should kick him upstairs and distract him with coffee, crumpets, and an Ewok or two so that you can get your jobs done properly. I weep for your lack of creativity and imagination. I really do. So much of this game just comes...so...close! But very, very little of it actually hits the mark, like the animal AI does, for example, and that doesn't even have anything to do with Star Wars. It's just brilliant animation and programming, which is truly admirable and one of my favourite parts of the game.
Newer, bigger, and better games are on their way. SWG, as it stands, is far too little, far too late. Why dont I quit? Because I've been here since beta, and because Star Wars as a legend is near and dear to my heart. I grew up with Star Wars and I waited a long, long, long time for this game to be a reality, like so many others did. It's hard, very hard, to give up on that hope that someone in those offices over at SOE will finally, at last, grasp that elusive clue and begin to actually address the real issues instead of giving us half-cheeked perks every once in a while that seem like gifts from the gods simply because the game is so terribly boinked already that giving us something which should never have been an issue...like light sources and vehicles and cabinets that hold items...seem like upgrades. Strictly speaking, they are upgrades. But that's like saying you've gotten an upgrade to your car...now it has wheels!
Yes, having container furniture that acts like a container is delicious, and I'm glad that it's finally been implemented. But I'd far rather see this dev team get to work on the things that could actually change the game for the better and start making fans again of the fans they turned away or have made miserable with their refusal to understand their player base or even attempt to do so.
I was extremely excited a few days ago to get a beta invite to Jump to Lightspeed. The beta for SWG was some of the best fun I've ever had online. It was outstanding. I was all excited for a while, and instantly downloaded and patched everything I needed...and you know, while it was downloading, I had time to think of all that was horribly wrong with this game, and all that hasn't been done despite huge outcry and pleading from the player base, and all the ways that SOE is abusive to their customers and does bad and unsavoury business, and I never logged to JTL. I still haven't, and let me tell you that I resent SOE and this dev team for doing that to me. I hung on for the better part of four years for this game, rooting for them and hoping against hope that things would be awesome, and not only are they not awesome, they are downright insulting.
Cabinets that can hold stuff, 15 months after gold?
Please.
Wake up folks. There's nothing wrong with loving this game. That's the only reason I'm still here. But don't be blinded. This isn't a gift. This is simply catching up on stuff that should have never been an issue in the first place. Cheer when they do something right, not when they correct a wrong. A thank you will suffice, and I've already said that. Now, if they want to really impress me, show me the magic that I was promised while the game was being designed and created. Right now, this is just a boring misrepresentation of one of the greatest stories ever told. I came here expecting more, and so did everyone else.
You wanna impress me? You wanna make me really grateful and a lifelong customer? You want to make sure I, and many, many like me, don't move on when the next game comes out? You can do it. It's easy, if you know how. They said they did know. I want to be impressed. I want to be a fangirl. I want to live in their world.
Show me...Star Wars.
JacenTerek
Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:17 am
#2
I have to say that was the most intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful,and complete critique of SWG that I have ever heard.
LadyGrey
Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:29 am
#3
I have tried most of the open-beta's and first-30-days-free games that have come out in the last year, and all except one have driven me back to playing SWG. That one exception will probably be the one I finally go to, once it is open beta. Thethings I have noticed about SWG is the reasonable GUI that exists in this game,use of the mouse (rather than keyboard) for movement, ease of beginning and ending the game, and ease of chatting with other characters. The one thing I really like about the game is the ability to use three monitors for playing, which has really enhanced the feeling of immersion, by letting me have a sense of "out of the corner of my eye." It has saved me several times, as I'm out prospecting, to see some movement just to the side, in time to get moving just before something charges at me.
I am grateful to Sony for this great experiment of theirs, because it has set a standard by which I measure all other MMORPG's. It is unfortunate that they have not measured up to the great promise which they seemed to hold. But it was a good try.
Message Edited by LadyGrey on 09-21-2004 12:33 PM
MrMon
Wed Sep 22, 2004 4:23 am
#4
/bow Perilous. G R E A T post.
....BTW.....can I have your JTL beta invitation? 
Samiani
Wed Sep 22, 2004 9:29 am
#5
/bow
/agree
: thinks that Soe should read this carefully line for line
: knows they won´t
/agree
: thinks that Soe should read this carefully line for line
: knows they won´t
Cafa
Wed Sep 22, 2004 9:38 am
#6
/agree
/emote thinks you got a chance in hell of anyone on the dev team giving a crap about this as they are either playing with JTL or their Dark Jedi Masters, which they instantly create.
The problem with this game is that the people in charge forget that emotional attachments to our characters are one of the most fundamental parts of the game. Devs or dev representatives that discount that attachment and tell you to "Just create another character" are a poor excuse for public relations within SOE.
Indene
Wed Sep 22, 2004 1:18 pm
#7
LadyGrey wrote:.... The one thing I really like about the game is the ability to use three monitors for playing, which has really enhanced the feeling of immersion, by letting me have a sense of "out of the corner of my eye." It has saved me several times, as I'm out prospecting, to see some movement just to the side, in time to get moving just before something charges at me.....
Quick how do I do that? I only have 2 monitors at the moment but that would be so cool. Might even keep me interested in the game for another month (Hint Hint SOE)
-Indene-
Elyssa
Wed Sep 22, 2004 1:21 pm
#8
I've been wondering that too.
I've got a dual monitor setup but only play on one monitor.
How do you add a 3rd?
LadyGrey
Wed Sep 22, 2004 2:47 pm
#9
Three monitors: Buy a Matrox Parhelia, plug three monitors into the card (yes, into ONE card). Had to go into a file and set the monitor resolution by hand. When I get home tonight, I'll post which file it is.
My husband and I have the same setup, sitting side-by-side. Very impressive to see two systems side-by-side, each having three 19" monitors.
Matrox makes two flavors of the Parhelia, one is 256k, the other is 512k. I have the 512k, my husband has the 256k, and we really don't see much difference between the two. But since I built both computers, I got to choose which card went where. hehe
Indene
Wed Sep 22, 2004 3:56 pm
#10
Thanks. I will look into it and will look forward to the additional info
-Indene-
-Indene-
antares_Kauri
Wed Sep 22, 2004 4:58 pm
#11
I don't think it's a bad thing that certain houses are restricted to certain planets, though.
antares
LadyGrey
Wed Sep 22, 2004 6:23 pm
#12
The file is called options.cfg
under [ClientGraphics] there is
screenWidth and screenHeight
You will need to set those, in the file, to your desktop width and height settings
My file has:
screenWidth=3072
screenHeight=768
And then, voila,the game is displayed across all three monitors.
Not all of the computer geeks are young males, some of us are, uh, mature (yeah, that's the word) females.
royalewitcheez
Wed Sep 22, 2004 11:42 pm
#13
Great post.
You need a special card to do the 3 monitor thing?
Btw, great post.
You need a special card to do the 3 monitor thing?
Btw, great post.
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