Development Cycle Archive

grind out 31 professions and getting excited to see what jedi is all about, about the last thing left to do in this game, now i cant till september? lost another customer

I can honestly say that if you decide to push JTL BEFORE these needed fixes, we won't be seeing any combat balances or GCW changes for at LEAST a year. Why? You haven't even tested this expansion fully, especially with the core game mechanics. How is it even possible to have an excellent project (in theory) such as JTL be perfect at launch, if you haven't even started testing it by now?!? IT WON'T BE!! And guess what, for the next6 months, you'll be diggin your little hole trying to fix JTL, when you STILL haven't fixed the core game.

And jedi....It just makes me sick how much favortism you've shown them these past8 months, it just blows my mind. Now I understand why the combat balance/GCW changes have NOT occured, because you've had your eyes set on jedi and your ass sitting on the rest of the community.Now for the next year I have to watch my ass get creamed by Jedi and Combat medics, as soon as I get a nice buffing TEF, or maybe just TRY to have some fun.

Thank you devs, you have essentialy griefed the community.

I'm looking forward to ships and shooting down the baddies, but i'd much rather have some good gameplay on the ground first.. I was planning to stay till about the combat revamp... Well I don't know if I wanna take that risk and waste all my money.. Frankly all this is now isa hyped up chat room for me at the moment.. I might take a shot at jedi along with the thousands of others after the jedi quests come out.. Atleast i'd be a profession the dev's actually notice then...

_/\__/\_Phlat-Line______

N00b-E With a Year of Experience!

What will this be, 6 patches now the revamp has been pushed back? Is it because its so far gone noone knows where to start? Color me gone as well, all 6 accts. Thank god i got in WoW beta test.

Baucent' & Kenelm Grayson

About 700 posts in 8 hrs.. Thats gotta be a record...

_/\__/\_Phlat-Line______

N00b-E With a Year of Experience!

Why are there even jedi in SWG? This game has a certain timeline. Why don't you just add a jedi expansion that would change the server so everyone can become a jedi and fight each other? Keep it off the timeline that SWG is set in.

Better yet you could have just had something in the game called "force sensitivity." Where you could gain some non-jedi force skillz if you unlocked. New skillz never seen before. You know... innovation.

I bought the game after the trial and now all the people I play with are leaving except for what ... two. So, instead of gaining a subcriber you're already losing me. I wish I had read up on these boards before buying it. I knew there were problems at launch so I never bought it. I assumed after a year everyone had come together and the game was nice a smooth.

SOE strikes back! Dun DUn DUn Da Da dun da da dun.

As yoda and a friend of mine tongith said, "...try not. Do or do not. There is not try." YOu guys make yoda and my friend sad in the pants, and if Yoda was in this game, he would unsubscribe and erase himself.

Yeah, I'm off to WoW too as soon as it launches. I've waited over three years now to play a working game of SWG, and I'm done with waiting.

*hugs Shug & the rest*

You tried guys, but you failed. I'll bide my time here probably until October or so, but past that, nice knowing you.

Dag. I don't think I've ever seen a thread on this forum with as many lengthy, well reasoned, and eloquent posts on a topic matter-- almost all of them with a unanimous consensus: That the Devs have made a grave mistake...or rather, a string and series of them since product launch, simply because they've always put new features and thematic gimmicks abovework on thecore systems, none of which have ever lived up to the excitement injected into their announcements.

Today's development only castswhat's been going on with the game, where priorities lie, and whatdevelopment philosophies the teamactually follows all these many monthsin the harsh light of reality, and makes it hard for even those of us who've held onto faint hope to deny the plain truth.

Don't even feel the need to put in my full 2 cents, as the rest of the posts have put in more change than I've got and then some.

I suppose what's done is done, and maybe delaying both the GCW and Combat Balance is the only way we'll ever see them done properly. Not that I didn't see this coming, as not a single real peep has been said about the Combat Balance, as pivotal as it would be,even though it was supposedly only a few publishes away. And maybe holding out until after JTL's launch is the only way the current team can hope to do those elements of the game justice, considering their current situation, their lack of foresight, lack of commitment, and lack of planning. Leaving JTL totally alone completely at this point might bewasting resourcesand complicate the development process further. Maybe this is the right course of action. Maybe none of us really have a choice.

However, their past track recordhas shown that they have difficulty producing sound designs and equal difficulty implementing them. Regardless of what's donefrom here on, the doubt remains whether these particulardevelopers are the ones that should be doing it... the very ones that have gotten us into this present situation and the game into its current state. If we've waited an entire year for glimmers of brilliance, for sound, elegant, watertight design... and have only been met with cursory hacks that often produce more problems than they fix, and gimmicks that make us wonder what the month or two was actually spent on-- what makes us expect anything more, regardless of how much time more we give, and how much time more they claim to need?

I hope to be proven wrong, finally...but so far, regarding this game, I've been uncannily right... much more right that I really care to be. And I don't pay 13 dollars a month to be right, as morbidly satisfying as it is occasionally.

I read 3 pages (frankly cuz I had a post in the middle one ) and I found 1, ONE positive response to your "news".

As many others have posted in this thread and in other threads throughout this forum, I am also a developer and have some knowledge of how a software product goes from Requirements to Design to Implementation to DEV TESTING (do you do this?) to QA to ALPHA to QA to BETA to production to customer. Of course there are many loops after implementation but we'll just keep it simple.

Although the projects I have been on are not as large as what you have here, I am very surprised that the development/marketing teams have made such a glaring error with this product. I do believe that SOE and Lucas Arts has completely forgotten that this product is made for the "players".

Now I know about deadline slippage. I know how designs at first look good and are tested positivelyin a controlled environementabsolutely fall apart when put live. But I am simply astounded at the lack of direction (controlled direction) that your entire SWG team has shown.

Only one positive response in 3 pages... and more negative responses are posted after a single minute. JTLS should not be an expansion. It should have been delivered with the original product... but hey, you had to start making money sometime.. I understand this and so does EVERYONE with a current account. But I myself have volunteered to give a "1 year later perspective as a Jedi" to a very well known gaming site, and I'm having a very hard time coming up with positives about your team.

The product must first work. No software is perfect, but the maintenance is DIRECTLY controlled by what the customers want. If 85% of my customer base (who uses my code) screamed as much as your customer base... gosh if 15% screamed I'd be canned. This includes features, enhancements, bugs, release slippage etc etc.

My biggest fear now is that what most people here are starting to assume. You have a very short-staffed engineering department with a very short staffed QA department and you cannot keep up. No doubt about it. Hard to believe with the amount of money SOE & Lucas Arts has but it must be true all the same. No self-respecting developer with the talent your devs MUST have to code this type of product, would ever perform in such a way. I would be incredibly embarressed if I wore an SOE or Lucas Arts badge.

If JTLS comes out twice as good as SWG did on launch, you are in trouble Not because JTLS will be bad, but because it will suffer from all project launch woes on top of an already extremely buggy product. And I mean to define buggy here for SWG. It definately has the typical glaring, game breaking bugs.. but the LOGIC and DESIGN bugs are what im talking about.

Well... goodluck. I will stick around for JTLS like the majority of players here. I was hoping that the combat balance would be done prior to that, but eh... I expected this. But if JTLS does not exceed (and I do mean exceed) your hype, you will lose my 2 accounts.

PAR

Retired MBH
Master Armorsmith / Master Doctor
Hockey Player / Mountain Biker / Software Engineer
Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Thunderheart all I can say is your playing with fire here.

You want our feedback and I am going to tell you this has been a huge let down although your reasoning is sound. Here are some suggestions. Thunderheart here is what I would suggest you do:

1. disable poison and disease capabilities of all weapons/players until such a time as you can cope with it in a revamp.

2. Cap dodge, counter attack, melee defense, block, range defense to 75 to remove the temploiters.

3.Restore the old loot system. The one where you actually got 3-5 pieces of loot for killing factional creatures (this gives us a reason to do faction missions and more importantly it buys you time.

4. Add smaller quests to this game that will give neat rewards so that you can buy time.

5. Try to reduce the lag this will help not only me as a 56ker but it will help everyone enjoy themselves more.

6. Stop answering Combat Rebalance with your questions.
7. Stress to the design team that from now on any changes that are made cannot be questionable in fun value (for instance the VERY CUMBERSOME armor/weapon delay).

8. Add more random spawns into the game that does things. Just tell us you added x random spawns that give special rewards.

I hope it survives JTL Thunderheart. I really do because I have to tell you something. Every day I hear more and more of my guildmates talking about EQ2 and WoW. The common theme is were bored. Some can't enguage in the GCW because they are sick of being killed by combat medics. Others are just plain upset that the loot tables are dropping useless things like those faction disks still.

You could do alot right now Thunderheart. I really believe upping the loot table slightly (like maybe 5-15% across the board) as well as adding random encounters would help us be entertained and would help you buy some time. Add more things like the junk dealer quests or maybe tie some in with existing POI's like the Tusken Fort or the Jawa city.

Natanial Storm

NatanialStormTRGA
Master Bounty HunterMaster Carabineer
32 Professions completed, RIS made, Next up: Mandelorian Armor
SemiRetired, but loving the NGE


Forum Badges Earned:
... Has proved GarVa's guilt and performed a great service to the boards!
... Wheres his one stars with pride!
... proud to have been a former officer and member of TRGA

Wow. After 30 pages of reading exactly what I have been thinking, I have nothing to add but, wow. I suppose you will just delete this thread and act like it didnt happen.

Arif Khan

Master Bounty Hunter Chose Not To Be a Jedi So It Doesn't Really Matter What Profession I Am

Arif Khan
Master Bounty Hunter
Master Rifleman
Master Pilot
BH/TK-734 So Cal Garrison

To the DEVS and THOSE IN CHARGE:

You need to realize that people aren't going to wait around forever for a promised fix, while the game sucks for the time being!

Incase you didn't notice, there are some big mmog's coming out soon that may actually be fun to play RIGHT AWAY - not in "a month or two".

Your priorities are WAY out of line (Chasing subscribers and money instead of making a quality game).

The holo grind started the ruin of the game, and untill you realise you need to stop angering your PAYING customers, you're going to keep losing subscriptions.

Wow, TH -- there are so many days when I envy you your job... This is not one of them.

But I have to hold the Devs feet to the fire on one thing -- we are being sold a bill of goods on Jedi. Here are a couple of quotes that have popped up in the past day:

Really? Are you sure? Because so far, being a Jedi has played NO part of my Star Wars experience in this game. For crying out loud, there weren't any Jedi in the game for months when it started, now they're "a big part of the Star Wars experience?" Bottom line: if you don't play as a Jedi, then being a Jedi isn't that big of a deal. And regardless, it's certainly no more or less of the Star Wars experience than being a bounty hunter or a smuggler.

and

Couple of things here: 1) People aren't up at arms right now about "having Jedi in the game," it's about seeing them everywhere with their lightsabers out and their titles on. 2) As I understand it, the holocron/profession system was all about how you became a Jedi. And yet, Publish 9 has nothing to do with how you become a Jedi. If getting rid of the holocron/profession system was the priority, then why didn't you do it before what you did in this Publish? And if you couldn't get rid of the holocron/profession system without making the Publish 9 changes first... then maybe it needed to be thought out a little better.

and

Okay, here's a crazy idea -- if you want to control the Jedi population and keep them hidden... then why the scratch did you change the system that controlled the population and kept them hidden??? You can't on one hand tell us this is something you want to have happen and then release Publish 9, which removes all the old restrictions. If something's not broke, you don't fix it. So the question here is -- WHY?? Why did you get rid ofthe system that controlled the population just to now have to turn around and create another system that does the exact same thing?? Don't you guys have enough work??

Brannoc - *Jordan|Starsider* i got a question to submit.. Don't you Feel it ruins the Star Wars feel along with the sync of the timeline to have Player Jedi ingame?

and

Okay, I'm sorry, but -- bull. "Worked very hard to put in a system that fits within the context of the timeline??" Are you kidding me? What we had before Publish 9 could arguably be called that. Jedi were in hiding. Now they're everywhere with no fear of repercussion? This is what was "worked very hard" on? Really?

So having Jedi fighting for the Rebels and Dark Jedi fighting for the Empire, this is how you're "working carefully with the continuity?" You call this "survived in secrecy?" Are you being serious?

Thisseems patently disingenuous. It flashes me back to when we were told that Hutts were really an interplanetary army that wanted to take over planets militarily like the Empire and the Alliance so the Devs could toss them into the GCW without really having to think about it too much.

I'm sorry, but we are paying attention and you can't quote continuity ("We do know that some Jedi exist during this period in our timeline") and then turn around and tell us that Dark Jedi fighting for the Empire is keeping with that continuity. We're in there playing the game, and we know that what's going on is not consistent with what you're saying. The current experience does not fit with continuity even remotely, nor does it "fit within the context of Star Wars."

And this, at long last, brings me to my point. TH, you've said repeatedly that one of your big goals is to make the game more Star Warsy. I've seen you on the boards for years now, was a member of Scomplink,and have no reason to doubt you. But in order to accomplish that goal, someone out there has to be made to see that the current Jedi situation is in direct opposition to that goal. You can't tell us you want the game to seem more Star Warsy or that the Jedi are meant to be controlled and hidden, then tow the party line when the Devs do the exact opposite. You can't tell us one day that you want to make this a better Star Wars experience, then turn around the next and tell us that Dark Jedi will now fight for the Empire. It doesn't work, mainly because it means I feel like I can't trust the motivations behind what is being done.

Okay, maybe I didn't really have a point after all. I guess I'm mainly disappointed that SOE can't be bothered to hire you guys some help because they know enough Star Wars geeks like me will stick with the game no matter what. Well, it saddens me deeply to say so, given that I've waited so long for this game, did my best to make it better during Beta One, and have been here since launch, but even geeks have limits. And knowing that very little is going to change between now and JTL just pushes us all closer to it.

GotBlueMilk (-777, -4041)
"I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid... and I went ahead anyway." -- Crow T. Robot

On 9/11/05, Holocron posted: "In plain language, we believe that letting you know of possible changes so that you can affect them, letting you know exactly what is going to change and why, giving you details so you can try out changes in testing and make sure they go smoothly, and making sure that all changes are well-documented is critical to good service."