Development Cycle Archive

on tracking the GCW:

ever since this was added, wherein the winning side would have some form of advantage.....when you type in /gcw its always neither side is winning.

when will this feature actually be a feature and not another borked addition? when will we really start wanting to be the winning side and want to destroy every base we can find?

Nice letter...

Although all of us that follow the forums closely we know almost everything mentioned there it is nice to have a plan for the future in one place! Even the smallest mentioning of Space Expansion is cool and all the others are nice also...I really liked the unique city identity and the in city content...

Keep up the good work !

Manogr

Wow Shug. Sounds pretty good...there are a lot of specific things that I think have been suggested/clamored-for in that list. That's some nice info. Thanks!

/forgives dev team for not answering any of his questions about upcoming content in the Stratics chat

Haden said: We're already hard at work on the Space Expansion. The design and feature set are almost locked down, so we hope to be able to start sharing more information about the expansion later next year.

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Locked down? With zero community input? Hard to say if this is something to look forward to, or to dread. Maybe we've advanced past the point of wanting pre-release community input, but it's a big risk to assume you are designing a game system the way most of the community want's to play it.

Will we finally move away from "teleportation" style travel on city-to-cityand planet-to-planet shuttles?

Will all travel finally involvethe far more realistic shipboard socializationtime, rather than stand-around-the-starport socialization time?

Will you be incorporating "snow-speeder" style low-altitude atmospheric flight? Oftimes my landspeeder almost seems like it would be allowed, if only 50 feet higher on the Z axis and moving 22 m/sec instead of the swoop max of 17 m/sec. Just enough to "feel" faster and flighty.

Ah well, it's almost locked down so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Lodacai

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NSteelewolf wrote:

Mr. Blackman,

All of it sounds interesting and great, I can sense the excitement you felt while writing it and the spirit behind it as well. However, I seriously believe that you will find that there are many of us here who have been frustrated for going on six months now and who have a difficult time being optimistic in light of the revelations.

For me, it has come to a point where I dread the Updates and Patchs that happen, as I am sure many here feel the same way. And each month when we hear proposed changes and additional content, I hear this little voice inside of my head say: "Yeah, that sounds great, but will it work?"

Perhaps the leading factor to that 'little voice' is the fact that with every update, with every patch, the core game system seems to remain in a constant state of flux. What worked to survive yesterday, won't save your skin the next. When sound advice given in these forums for ways in which to improve this game and perhaps add a needed balance to it go unheard through each 'build', when Test Center personal ask such questions as: "Why did you leave that bug in the code" and when game play issues from six months ago remain unchanged or unanswered with each patch... one can not help but offer to you a fake smile, a slight nod of the head and ask your team...

"Yeah, that sounds great and all.... BUT... will it work?"

~Nate

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Couldn't have said it better.

Please don't forget the MM of MMORPG. We seriously need some content added that is suited for group play. Players are getting frustrated and, believe or not, there are a few of us who would prefer not to chase holocrons and a dozen other professions. I want content for the profession I have. I want challenges for me and my friends to do together, and last but not least, I want to have a GCW that works, with combatants who have some incentive, instead of penalty, to participate.

/salute Haden

I am eagerly awaiting the combat update passes and the GCW improvements.

Keep up the good work.

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Thats all fine and dandy. Just like a magician... gonna start making them look at the SE while you continue to ignore the Repair? How does one balance a broken profession? How do you add content when the old content still is not working correctly ? How does PR and rest of marketing counter the hundreds of players that leave due to the bugs and Broken Professions, Broken Content, losing your hard earn item's and these oppsey bugs like the colored armor,Haverstors that no longer look like they are working, Haven't been fixed in two months now.

Instead of adding ... fix what you have so we can actually play the game. Not have the feeling of, now I wonder what I have lost today? Wonder what works today? Will the house be there will the items in the house be there and if so? WillI be able to access them or even get into said house to begin with.

Those blackman. Is what should be worked on. Now that you have the cities vehicles and mounts in the game. Start hammering the problems with the game. Get it so it starts to grown at an amazing rate. Not slowly grinding to a halt.

This game has the potential to have 10's of millions of players on it.The way it looks your only willing to settle for a few hundred thousand. Quit peeing all over the cow and repair it first and for most.

Then you will make us "old timers" as people like to call us. happy. The word would get out that the game is now coming together and you get more people playing this game again.

Quit Playing the magician start making like a mechanic.

Ok, my first uninformitive post was removed, but there was not mention of the Batlefields fix or improvement. Did I miss something?

Seriously though... Maybe you should sit down and play this game? I have been playing SWG since launch. Ihave pretty much quit playing, and will be cancelling my act after my next 3 months is up here I'm sure. Don't let that discourage you though, read on.

The reason? It's horribly boring. I have advanced my character as far as using all my skill points goes... and I can tell you I really don't want to do anything else. I don't want to grind to become a jedi then lead a crappylife of not using the cool powersI have, in fear of being killed by a bounty hunter (the whole jedi thing to me, is not for casual players, was never meant to be, and it seems to be more of a job of grinding than actually becoming a jedi to have some *gasp* fun...) The reasons things are done in this game, and changed are for marketing reasons. It seems like the obvious agenda is to try to make things take longer, hoping subscriptions will stay if you make something take forever to get...

It's also amazing to see how the "balancing" of the game works, by just raping and pillaging certain proffesions until they are "in line" with whatever view it is, in whoever's mind that decides those things. I know it's not the player base, because look at the petition to remove death and decay. Where's the post to that, saying that you've counted the /signs, and /agree's and the players have been heard? Ask anyone in the game, even if they've gotten used to the 1% decay, they'll still tell you it's lame. (I worked weeks for a set of stormtrooper armour that I have no inkling to even wear, none the less even carry around with me anymore, why was that again...?)

I could probably go on forever here, naming the multiple times I've lost my items, died due to bugs, and so forth and so on... Here is some information that should be considered:

People don't subscribe to jobs, they subscribe to play a fun game in which they feel they make achievments.

There will be no balancing a system that has such diversity to offer players- uselogic (okay, so there seems to be a shortage of this...)and player inputto set it in stone, then LEAVE IT.

Make becoming a Jedi something fun. Not all of us want to play every proffesion to becomea Jedi, and shouldn't have to. (I don't want to hear the continuity arguments of 100's of jedi's running around, because there are so many other continuity breaking aspects of the game, it's a moot point. Not only that)

Let people finish their characters, just because we're done with the job (it's not called a proffesion for nothing.) If there is fun to be had, the subscriptions won't go away, we'll still play! (I still play X-wing alliance over 5 hours a week, why? Because it's so much FUN. sure, i could play games with more technology, better graphics, and all the bells and whistles... But I choose to play the old "crappy" one, because of it's features, and content, not it's tech specs.

I'm sorry, but even though I read the whole thing my eyes glazed over when it became self-congratulatory in regards to "what we believe is the largest free-update to an MMO ever".

Sorry,but it doesn't count if those things were left out of the original game we paid for...there was nothing "free" about them, just delayed.

Audio

The buddy key thing sound a little desperate to anyone else?

I know because Anarchy Online had a similarly disasterous launch with bugs and such, they had to start giving the game away free as well. I guess that worked for Funcom to some extent if Sony is trying it here.

havent we heard the exact same things being said every week since June?

i am always amazed at their ability to say nothing in so many different and varied ways