Business And Economy Archive

---

Gooney wrote:

Human nature.

How does one twelve year old know if hes better than another? Well cause his shiney new Huffy Bike has still got the plastic wiggly things on the hand grips. And his buddies doesnt.

How does one Middle Aged Accountant know that he is a success? When he opens his garage and looks at his new Porche.

How does one SWG player know hes the best? Because he has an uber roxors ackley, kryat, nightsister, pearl enhanced, once in a lifetime drop/craft mandolarian wiffle bat...and the rest of us just run around with normal, yellow wiffle bats that bend in the middle after a few good hits.

Thats all there is to it. Fact is that any player can do anything that the uber awsome equipped players can if they simply use well crafted "normal" items and a little bit of brain power. Might take a bit longer but you can still do it. Of course PVP is a bit of another story, but not critically so.

Its simply a measure that some people feel obligated to rate themselves by.

-Gooney

---

Exactly what I would have posted

Gooeny -- I agree. My post was merely meant to point out how I feel about the current reality of the game and human nature.

---

lordsegan wrote:
Gooeny -- I agree. My post was merely meant to point out how I feel about the current reality of the game and human nature.

---

---

lordsegan wrote:
In WoW, leveling can take a fairly long time. And until you hit level 60 it is NOT just about having the most uber gear -- just leveling makes you fairly "uber."

In SWG a character can level to master in hours or days or at most weeks. At that point it becomes ALL about needing/wanting the best stuff: the best house, the best gun, etc etc etc etc.

---

In my opinion, this is one of the main problems with SWG. Once you've mastered a profession, all there is to do is accumulate items, and it gets old after a while. Why, because you sit there and say to yourself "ok, I'm a Master Wifflebatter, I only need to run X number of the same mission to be able to afford to pay for that best in game wifflebat" That gets old after a while.

You could make a similiar statement about level based games, but they give you something that can't just be handed to or bought by everyone else. Everyone who is level X had to put in play time to get there. You still for the most part cannot buy levels. The actual sale of high level toons is far less prevalent than the sale of gold/credits, and most people don't want a high level toon that they didn't design from the ground up anyways.

Master Rifleman X is no better than all the other Master Rifleman on the server.

I've always said this game needs player power advancement beyond master.

There are a lot of posts about why design traits in SWG make sense (single toons for instance) I don't see a lot of acknowledgment that just because something makes sense from a design standpoint doesn't neccesarily make sense from a fun factor standpoint.

Maybe if people didn't have to worry about grinding credits to be able to afford X weapon becauses they could make it for themselves with an Alt, they might go out an concentrate more on enjoying the game content.

---

Gooney wrote:

---

lordsegan wrote:
Gooeny -- I agree. My post was merely meant to point out how I feel about the current reality of the game and human nature.

---

Ive seen quite a few "vets" posting their worries about the poor, helpless noobs lately. Your first post was similar tho these with your closing lament, concerning the vet Master vs. the noob Master.

These thinly veiled whines havent actually got anything to do with newer players and the "vets" so-called concern for them, but rather how the "vets" fear that changes to the game are going to:

A. Either close the gap between vets and non-vets, thus decreasing personal prestige

B. Decrease the ability to harvest, buy, acquire other uber, status enhancing items.

The first of these supposedly big hearted and dripping with concern posts had to do with the destruction of Solo-Group payouts. Many players were up in arms about losing the ability to earn millions of credits in a single play session. Thats understandable, but what is not understandable is to cloak the whine in such a patronizing way. By evoking the plight of the "Poor Childer...er I mean Noobs".

1. Noobs will be just fine, they dont know any better, and once they do they are fully capable of gathering what they want, need, desire, I mean it cant be too hard after all you did it.

2. All the uber weapons, attachments, items only actually grant a fairly trivial amount of advantage anyway. Ive never had them and I have absolutly no qualms about my PvP/PvE performance.

I imagine that we will see droves of such posts in the future as the CU creeps nearer.

Now Im not saying your one of these "vets" with false compassion for noobs, cloaking your own whine in good intentions... just saying that we will see more and more of these types of posts, and not a single one of them is actually anything more than a whine.

To test it out replace the word "Noob" or "New Player" with "Me" or "I".

-Gooney

---

This is not a game based on leveling a character. It is more like real life: it is a game based on having the best stuff.

Let me explain more. World of Warcraft is about leveling a character. That is, a level 60 character can kill a level 20 character in one or two hits. A level 60 character has thousands (?) of more hitpoints than a level 20 character. You have fun by leveling your character (and in the process complete quests and automatically buy/loot new armor/weapons.) As such, WoW also seems like a more linear game -- you follow a certain set path and just get the items you want as you complete quests. This is also why I dont like WoW.

Let me point out: In WoW, leveling can take a fairly long time. And until you hit level 60 it is NOT just about having the most uber gear -- just leveling makes you fairly "uber."

In SWG a character can level to master in hours or days or at most weeks. At that point it becomes ALL about needing/wanting the best stuff: the best house, the best gun, etc etc etc etc. I bet 90% of the characters on my server either are master professions or were or are alts. The point being -- this is not a game about leveling like WOW. Its a game about items. As such, we need/want as much cash and stuff as we can get.

That is why new(er) players are frustrated. They realize they are masters just like the older players. But they hit for 2200 dmg while the older player has the uber gun and hits for 3400 dmg.

Message Edited by lordsegan on 03-21-2005 12:04 AM

---

lordsegan wrote:
This is not a game based on leveling a character. It is more like real life: it is a game based on having the best stuff.

Let me explain more. World of Warcraft is about leveling a character. That is, a level 60 character can kill a level 20 character in one or two hits. A level 60 character has thousands (?) of more hitpoints than a level 20 character. You have fun by leveling your character (and in the process complete quests and automatically buy/loot new armor/weapons.) As such, WoW also seems like a more linear game -- you follow a certain set path and just get the items you want as you complete quests. This is also why I dont like WoW.

Let me point out: In WoW, leveling can take a fairly long time. And until you hit level 60 it is NOT just about having the most uber gear -- just leveling makes you fairly "uber."

In SWG a character can level to master in hours or days or at most weeks. At that point it becomes ALL about needing/wanting the best stuff: the best house, the best gun, etc etc etc etc. I bet 90% of the characters on my server either are master professions or were or are alts. The point being -- this is not a game about leveling like WOW. Its a game about items. As such, we need/want as much cash and stuff as we can get.

That is why new(er) players are frustrated. They realize they are masters just like the older players. But they hit for 2200 dmg while the older player has the uber gun and hits for 3400 dmg.

And that's precisely why they are changing Combat. Buffs, Foods, Weapons and Armor are going to matter less, and skill of the player & tactics are going to matter more. Incidentally, when the game started, it WASN'T about items - It only became so the more that we the players went above and beyond the expectations of the Devs. We weren't meant to have 80% across the board protection, which you could augment with Synthsteak to make yourself invulnerable, and so on.

Message Edited by lordsegan on 03-21-2005 12:04 AM

---

---

Milgram wrote:

I totaly agree with the main post. Getting the gear has been extremely enjoyable. It also produces a vibrant galactic economy. Hard to have a vibrant economy when experience is the main measure of the man. I have heard many say that the profession doesn't start untill you are a master. I completely agree.

As for the poster who said the devs never meant for us to have 80% comp: Well what the hell did they intend? Did the devs just assume that we would be so star struck that we would spend hours at a time basking in vader's presence at the emp's retreat? If the max pissible for armor is 80%, how could they think we would not reach it? Either the devs planned for 80% comp and 2600 for 4 hours buffs, or they have a very patronizing view of the MMORPG payer, and severly underestimate who they are dealing with.

I'd say it's a mixture of the 2 - They knew there was the POSSIBILITY of the numbers we now reach.. But I actually think they EXPECTED that their random number generated spawns wouldn't push out the type of resources we get.. As such.. I fully expect there to one day be a spawn of resources that pushes the limits. Perfect 1000s in every needed stat - And imagine HIGHER than 80% or 2800 being developed... Interesting that weapons, Armor and Buffs are changing in the CU when you think along these lines....

Lesson 1 for all presant and future game Developers: If there is a possible best in your game, the players will get there. No matter how hard, and how unlikely you think it is, players WILL become teh ubah.

---

Yes - And we will do it FAR FASTER than you can ever imagine.

---

Phaelyn wrote:

---

Milgram wrote:

...

As for the poster who said the devs never meant for us to have 80% comp: Well what the hell did they intend? Did the devs just assume that we would be so star struck that we would spend hours at a time basking in vader's presence at the emp's retreat? If the max pissible for armor is 80%, how could they think we would not reach it? Either the devs planned for 80% comp and 2600 for 4 hours buffs, or they have a very patronizing view of the MMORPG payer, and severly underestimate who they are dealing with.

I'd say it's a mixture of the 2 - They knew there was the POSSIBILITY of the numbers we now reach.. But I actually think they EXPECTED that their random number generated spawns wouldn't push out the type of resources we get.. As such.. I fully expect there to one day be a spawn of resources that pushes the limits. Perfect 1000s in every needed stat - And imagine HIGHER than 80% or 2800 being developed... Interesting that weapons, Armor and Buffs are changing in the CU when you think along these lines....

Lesson 1 for all presant and future game Developers: If there is a possible best in your game, the players will get there. No matter how hard, and how unlikely you think it is, players WILL become teh ubah.

---

Yes - And we will do it FAR FASTER than you can ever imagine.

---

Yes I've wondered myself how the DEVs could possibly fail to see that we'd eventually max out the stats on our armor and buffs etc. They designed the system so they must be able to realize what the maximum figures would be and realize we'd hit them sooner or later. And if most of us have anything to do with it then we'll hit it sooner.

I think its likely they made some assumptions that didn't happen or they failed to predict things that did happen. They assumed players wouldn't work the system as efficiently as we have. They didn't look at it long term to see that once an OQ 1000 material has spawned that will become the new standard forever rather than just a temporary thing to be replaced by the next spawn. They assumed that when materials with high stats spawn that we wouldn't mine them in mass quantities and horde them. They didn't think crafters would routinely setup multiple factories and mass produce things in large quanitity. They didn't realize we'd do cross server lot trades to get around the 10 lot limits. They didn't realize we'd setup storage houses and stockpile uber materials from 17 months ago. etc.

If you make one single assumption like characters being limited to 10 lots then build a system around that assumption, breaking that one variable will throw the whole thing out of whack.