Dancer Archive
Thread: So What Will Be The Point of Being a Novice Doing Basic 2?
See? That wasn't too bad, dear.
Besides, I really did not want to bite you anyway. I'm a vegetarian. 
Chessack wrote:
That's all well and good. I agree it would be nice to have these other elements in the cantina. However, there are two issues. #1, the practical one, is that although this is all very nice in theory, in practice, it won't happen any time soon. We know that right now, we are getting BF taken out and some new window dressing put in. We know that at some point in the future new inspiration buffs will be added... if we are lucky this should happen in a couple of months. These other things you have mentioned are, so far as we know, not even on the drawing board, and even if they were to be implemented, it'd be 6 months to a year. So the question remains -- what is to keep us, as well as patrons, going into the cantinas in the mean time?
Development is a slow process as a certain Red Tag likes to say... it's even slower when you have two different company's bean counters to answer to from what I've seen. 
I think that's just as frustrating for the creative types (the real devs) as it is for us. Nothing to be done for it though other than try to help give them good feedback to take as justification to the bean counters. Really all we can do to try to help speed things along is continue to ask for these things and try to generate support from other players so they will ask forthem too.
See the problem?
Or better yet, imagine it's another subscription service rather than an MMO. Let's say, oh, it's your cable service. Let's say that they decide (without asking you) that "Showtime" has lousy programming and they'd rather offer their customers HBO. But let's say that requires them (for the sake of argument) to lay new cable. So they yank showtime now, in July, and tell you not to worry, HBO is going to be coming down the pike. They then don't finish laying the cable till the next January. Meantime, you have no premium cable service.
Would you keep paying the premium cable service (i.e the cost of subsribing to showtime or HBO) for that 6 months? How many people would?
"Development is a slow process" washes just fine for a company like bioware, which puts out one-shot games that you pay for once. If it takes them a long time to put out an expansion, people might get antsy but hey, "development takes a long time."
In an MMO setting, "takes a long time" == "takes a lot of my money." I don't see them saying, "Well you can play for free until we take your now-broken profession (that WE broke) and fix it." They wouldn't offer to refund my money if I had a 1 year subscription and with 9 months to go took BF out of the game and I, wanting to be a healer, decided that (through no fault of my own) their changes had made it so I don't want to play anymore.
If they're going to take my money, they need to provide me with actual service, NOT take it and tell me that the service is coming "some day."
And before you ask, I haven't cancelled mainly because of all my guild mates. But trust me, it has been very tempting for a very long time.
C
Chessack wrote:
Yes but that slow process and 6 months of "nobody needs to go into the cantina"? I have to PAY for that.
See the problem?
Or better yet, imagine it's another subscription service rather than an MMO. Let's say, oh, it's your cable service. Let's say that they decide (without asking you) that "Showtime" has lousy programming and they'd rather offer their customers HBO. But let's say that requires them (for the sake of argument) to lay new cable. So they yank showtime now, in July, and tell you not to worry, HBO is going to be coming down the pike. They then don't finish laying the cable till the next January. Meantime, you have no premium cable service.
Would you keep paying the premium cable service (i.e the cost of subsribing to showtime or HBO) for that 6 months? How many people would?
"Development is a slow process" washes just fine for a company like bioware, which puts out one-shot games that you pay for once. If it takes them a long time to put out an expansion, people might get antsy but hey, "development takes a long time."
In an MMO setting, "takes a long time" == "takes a lot of my money." I don't see them saying, "Well you can play for free until we take your now-broken profession (that WE broke) and fix it." They wouldn't offer to refund my money if I had a 1 year subscription and with 9 months to go took BF out of the game and I, wanting to be a healer, decided that (through no fault of my own) their changes had made it so I don't want to play anymore.
If they're going to take my money, they need to provide me with actual service, NOT take it and tell me that the service is coming "some day."
And before you ask, I haven't cancelled mainly because of all my guild mates. But trust me, it has been very tempting for a very long time.
C
Unfortunately, what we are paying for is the development. IRL you pay for development for say new meds in two ways, charitibale contributions and higher prices for your presecription meds.
These new meds take years to make it to market as they must be tested and approved by the FDA. Even this system is not foolproof as problems do sometimes arise. We get our new "product" faster as there is little testing and no one needs to approve it's application.
Somehow, a comparison to this industry with the perscription medication industry does not really give me much comfort.
After all, I have health insurance to defer the costs.
Hey! I just thought of something! MMORPG insurance! You pay a credit premium to an in game insurance broker, and if your profession is nerfed, you can file a claim.
Message Edited by PoetDancer on 07-12-2005 10:11 PM
I'd rather not do that...I like SWG and the people I've met here.
Cindal wrote:
Unfortunately, what we are paying for is the development. IRL you pay for development for say new meds in two ways, charitibale contributions and higher prices for your presecription meds.
These new meds take years to make it to market as they must be tested and approved by the FDA. Even this system is not foolproof as problems do sometimes arise. We get our new "product" faster as there is little testing and no one needs to approve it's application.
Well OK that's a cute analogy Cin, but I'm sorry, I just find the whole "well they have to develop it" and "well bugs are inevitable" argument to simply not wash. Let's look at another MMO -- City of Heroes. That game has (or at least had at the time I quit for reasons having nothing to do with bugs) no bugs that are worth mentioning. The absolute worst I ever saw was when some of the "mez" defenses weren't working the way they were supposed to. This was fixed in a matter of weeks. Beyond that, other than the occasional mission goal "not spawning" on you (which usually could be fixed by just re-doing the mission), there were no bugs. These few that cropped up were tracked down and squished mercilessly by the dev team. Their dev team didn't put out as many publishes in their first year as SWG did (4 total, I believe, vs. 10 or so). But every publish was rock-solid, heavily tested to the point where players were getting very antsy. Their policy, though, is absolutely no releases until they are sure it's solid.
So you see, it doesn't HAVE to be like this. Stuff doesn't HAVE to be pushed out prematurely to meet some arbitrary deadline. COH missed a couple of their hoped-for deadlines on publishes, because they wanted to put out something solid. Know what? For all that everyone says, "oh the players will freak out," whenever their lead developer got on the boards and said, "Sorry guys but we have some bugs and we just do not want to push it live until it's bug-free", 99% of the responses were favorable -- people want new content, classes, whatever, but they also know that if all that new stuff is bugged, it may as well not be in the game.
I may have some quibbles with COH over the nature of their content (too similar, too monotonous, for my taste) but their iron-clad policy that nothing goes into the game until it is more solid than Superman, is something the devs of this game could learn from.
"Give them time" people say? We have given them two years, and all that that entails. That's enough time. They need to stop screwing around and start getting this stuff right. Their benefit of the doubt is long-since expired.
C
None of any of the above will help any of us. The problem on Chim is that the greater majority of players are grinding to become Jedi, I assume this is pretty much the same across all servers. They head for Dant MO for the hunting groups. The cantina there is stuffed full of AFKers and most of the players rarely leave Dant and and many cantinas elsewhereare close to empty as a result.
There is a hard core of us, many ATKers who resolutely stick to Theed or Bestine. Our friends come to us to chat and relax, but the days of meeting new people and making new friends through mind buffing is long gone. Since the CU, I can't say that I have got to know more than a handful of new people who have come back for inspiration buffs. As soon as they hit CL50, it's off to MO for the hunt groups.
Mos Eisley is busier with new players, but the spam in the cantina is close to unbearable. Yes, I could go to MO and join the spammers there, but it is soul destroying, the grinders come in, get a buff and go as quickly as they can.
I have come close to leaving the game, but have hung on and found some fun again by joining Nebula and showing people that entertainers can enhance other people's gaming experience by performing at their parties and events. I have accepted that entertainers will be nothing much more than candyfloss in the devs' eyes and the majority of players couldn't care much whether we existed or not.
So now I dance because it's fun, even if there are no patrons in the cantina, just fellow ents.