Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Correspondent Top 5 Lists: Where we are and where we're going.
electricnomad wrote:
Thunderheart, I can't be the only one out here who wonders what exactly is going on at HQ.
It seems to me that 6 months into live, we're actually ditching a large part of the three-year development process and starting anew. Combat itself is getting totally reworked. KeyStar Wars professions like Smuggler are being scrapped and sent back for "redevelopment," as if no input up until now has mattered and the profession we had before was a holding pattern.
In short, SWG seems to be dying and SWG2 is already rising in its place.
Granted, this is my first MMORPG, and it seems there are many people like me who have never seen a game develop. Is it typical that a key system like combat is taken out and completely overhauled after six months? That seems remarkable to me.
Have the remaining Devs decided that Holo's vision simply didn't work and agreed to take SWG in a different direction? Is this a sign of complete upheaval, or am I jumping to the wrong conclusions? I'd like to know what the Devs have in mind for this game, becausenow that the coire system is in place and the promised cities, vehicles, and mounts are in place,I get more signs that we're on the verge of a revolution. Am I wrong?
Please, Thunderheart, I've followed the Devs this since Beta. I just want to know where they're going and if it's a different place than we've been told up until now. I want to get my bearings.
I couldn't agree more with you man, I had just wrote the following post when I read yours:
Let me preface this post by saying that I like all the new features that have been patched into the game since launch. They certainly have changed the face of the game since launch for those of us who were there when an improved camp kit during a hunt break was an impressive sight. .....But herein lies the problem.
The game is doubtlessly based on networking between players. The extreme interdependancy of the professions proves this. But as time goes on, this becomes a harder and harder thing to do in-game for newer people. Let's just assume for arguements sake that everyone wants to work with other players, new and old. There are few places where anyone can find more than a fraction of what, or who, they need.
I became painfully aware of this trend when my holocron told me to master combat medic. Having already mastered medic in the past and been a reasonably successful bio-eng, I still had everything I would need to perform this task, harvesters, power generator, factories, resource stockpiles. Yet one thing had drastically changed since my last stint in the medic field, there are nobody in hospitals anymore. In the past you could bank on finding plenty wounded in hospitals of Bestine, Mos Espa, Theed, along with others. Now you are lucky to find anyone in hospitals unless a group hunt went bad and they all came in at same time. A trickle of players is the best you can expect now. Why is this? I was reduced to having to get a guildmate to tumble for damage and duel a TKM to get wounds. Just so I could get my healing xp of off him.
Cities are deserted. With the exception of Coronet, Anchorhead, and sometimes Theed, you can expect not to find any significant number of players, much less any beneficial diversity, in the majority of cities. I don't even bother going to Rori anymore.
So why should we care? Most of us have been playing since launch right?, and really have no need to be in any of these places. This is precisely the problem. Our core population of launch-time or near-launch-time players is a finite number and will only diminish with time as other games, disgruntlement, and annoyed spouses/significant others force us to leave the game. So it has to be a game where the new people coming in can progress and establish themselves just as we have. In fact, it should be EASIER now. Back then there were no heavy harvesters, no T21's or flame throwers, no real good items on bazaars.
This is not the case though. There is no one around anywhere on a dependable basis than in the aforementioned cities. If you dont believe me, create a new character on a server where you know no one and see what life is like on Rori or Talus, the most useless of the "starter" planets. As you use the search function, in futility, you'll begin to understand the problem.
So how did this happen? Well I feel there are two main culprits here. The city patch and the lack of content in-game for a game that has such expanse in its "physical" area of play. Don't flame me for dissin the city patch, especially all you architects and politicians who are insanely rich because of it
. I like it, it is a great idea, but with an overbearingly negative side effect. People now, especially the core population, are isolated from the rest of the game. Once again this is not inherently bad, so long as the people coming into our galaxy can grow to replace us at a rate faster than that of our rate of attrition. Ask yourself this question and think about it honestly, "Since the patch, how often have I been to some of the places I used tovisit unless I just went for the heck of it?". I, for one, can say I quit going to Rori altogether (seeing the theme here? Rori sucks, where's a deathstar when you need one?).
That brings me to the next area, the lack of content.
Can anyone tell me what purpose the rest of Coronet (not encompassing the starport / bank area and cantina) serves other than to be really annoying to run / ride through or around on the way to somewhere?
Even when there were some people in Mos Espa, what is the point of the rest of that incredibly drab city??
Has anyone figured out why Vreni island is even there?
Did they nerf Yavin 4 yet???
Does Rori serve any purpose other than to waste server space
??
Has anyone ever seen anything on sale at the Imperial Prison bazaar?? What is the deal with that?? (/uses-Seinfeld-voice) I thought about putting a holocron on it just to see what category it goes under and watching my email to see "your auction for Holocron has expired and has not been sold"
These places are pointless cause there is nothing to do in this game but grind out professions for a fscs or master a few of the crafting professions to become a billionaire, satisfying an insatiable need for self-relevance (issues??). The quests are pointless, the dungeons dont even drop harvestable goods beyond one unit, and if I unlock one more container with one unit of crap steel, I'm going to picket SOE myself. Crafters are thinking, "Well we don't want them to drop stuff better than ours, cause then the holocron madness will spread to that loot and we'll become irrelevant as they farm away!" I agree and disagree, there should be uber-loot, or uber-rewards for completeing expansive quests that almost function as a game within the game. However.....these loots should be character specific, maybe untradable, meaning once you are granted an uber-loot, you are on some sort of timer that prevents you from looting that same loot for a set period of time or # of drops. Think the Dark Trooper complex would be so camped if once a holocron was looted by someone, that person couldn't loot another one from DT's for a month? You could raise the spawn rate to make it far more dangerous and it wouldn't get so camped, sure good xp but xp can be gotten anywhere. So crafters are still protected by their ability to produce uber-goods at production-line levels.
Finally the dark horse in whatI believe will be the undoing of SWG, is the number of servers and the corresponding lag issues. Given the points made concerning the desolation of the majority of the planets in the game it can be argued that the total number of players are spread too thin on poorly performing severs. The lag since the vehicle patch is unbearable at times, depending on where you are. And huntingKrayts has become a crapshoot for guessing where it will teleport to (but hey, it does keep the ninja-looters on their toes eh?).Between the lag and the scarcity or otherwise absence of players on a server at off-peak times, only one conlcusion can be drawn here....SOE really skimped on the cash for good servers. With the money Sony has, anyone heard of playstation or everquest?, SWG should be able to run the game and the nation's missile defense grid with baby's-butt-on-a-buttery-silk-sheet smoothness. But they don't. And we are paying $15 a month. We gladly do this, myself included, because we buy into the premise for the game. And we hope for the duckling to become the swan. Our fondness for the Star Wars genre is greater than the aggravation we feel towards the Dev's for falling short in many areas. I have yet to find one aspect of the game where they have outdone themselves, much less one aspect that hasn't been crippled or afflicted by bugs not caught during Beta or Test Center phases. I can't see them resolving this poor server performance issue without bringing the game down for an extended period of time to replace and / orconsolidate servers. I'm not holding my breath. But the problem IS getting worse. So something's gotta give.
This post is not intended to be a " I quit this crappy game and here is why" post. I am still going to keep playing. Like I said my affinity for Star Wars outweighs the frustrations of the game, I was a child of Star Wars, had tons of the toys and was old enough to remember seeing Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in the theaters. I just hope SOE isn't taking shameless advantage of my, our, affinity and cashing in on it with a subpar product, tossing us red herrings (colored armor?) now and again when the level of discontent reaches cresting points. Unfortunately I find it hard to have faith in them when I observe the way most people in-game milk any and all exploits that are discovered.I hope we aren't the biggest exploit in SOE's town
Please post here if you feel the same way, and we can bring this concern to the Dev's as a concern and opinion that a significant number of faithful players have. After all, we are the ones who keep the game running and our word-of-mouth is far more valuable than any marketing or advertising scheme could ever hope to be. Anyone who knows anything about marketing / advertising knows this to be true.
May I be so bold as to point out the obvious combat flaw and the overwhelming feeling I get logging into the game and playing it?
Specials having such an advantage make it a must to grind out professions. Grinding is not ejoyable for anyone. Hence the word grinding. You have built a game where the only ability to compete with another person is to spend your time grinding out 3 primary professions. TKA, pistoleer, fencer. Once that combo is achieved a player can compete on par with his other fellow players in combat with one another.
As a player who has cancelled 2 accounts and is simply waiting for them to expire I have a host of game issues that relate to mechanics.
The amount of time I spend traveling compared to doing action is obscene. It is without a doubt the single most unappealing portion of the game. My brother who doesn't play, will watch from time to time. He asked me why I play this game. He said all you ever do is stand around. Go do something. The mechanics force me to do nothing. The novelity of the star wars theme has quickly worn off. Decrease the timers on shuttles and starports. I hear vehicles are enabling this to occur. I haven't owned one yet but I am always stuck waiting around. Make the cantina heal no matter if an entertainer is there or not. Increase the heal rate in the medical center.
Weapons usage limited to particular classes to be effective. This is a pet peeve of mine but I am sure its among many new players. Most of us have limited time to enjoy a game. To have to spend countless hours in order just to use a weapon we want once again punishes the new players and rewards the powergamers. If you want to keep the specials limited to particular professions I see no problem with that. If I want to use a flamethrower to try it out don't make me grind hours of time. When I say use I mean its full effectiveness to see how it is in combat.
The death penalty wearing away at your items has made me so annoyed that I turn off my machine when I die. Warping creatures, and other mysterious acts of programming means I am bound to die. Now I can afford to replace my items. What about the new players? They clawed scrapped and fought tooth and nail for those items. How would you feel losing your bone armor when release came out? These individuals benfit from our pioneering but they still have to learn the game. Stop punishing new players or those more likely to die frequently.
Redoing skill trees especially CH. Did you stop and consider who your hurting? Try everyone. Instead of fixing and addressing everyones desire for high quality combat droids you nerfed a profession. I am in the progress of dropping that skill tree entirely and will move to TKA, Fencer, pistoleer. Open your eyes and watch the game flow. CH was choosen to have good quality tanks. So those of us who don't have time to be in a PA or care to be tied to someones organization can have fun against NPC's. We could also organize groups and have young players take part as our tanks allowed them to fight bigger and better things. Now I am forced into a PA and have to drop CH to play the game. Since I am a rich 0-0-4-4 BH I can go to any PA, but new players must rely on the good will of others to take them along. Which I don't see much good will or trust. The typical response is. He will ninja loot us. Kick him out of the group.
Skill Points and trees are the proverbial carrot on a stick that you will chase till death (or cancellation of account). If you want to run a game with this mentality of killing off your base go ahead. I believe the logical course is to adopt a method where skill is more important than time spent playing. Since everyone is paying 15 dollars a month you might consider revamping the system to make all specials extremely miniumal in there effectiveness and setting up combat like battlefield 1942 or other first person shooters that makes peoples own hand eye coordination a factor in there success. You will never have the success of a Madden or a gameday by rewarding "geeks". I find that combat in this game is horrible. I have reverted to BF1942 and Call of Duty. Some reward must exist to those who spend the time, but it must be balanced with the ability to the new players to compete. Which no new player can even get lucky against a good vetern.
Slow paced bad combat systems are the down fall of this game. Remember your powergamers will play no matter what. Target the correct audience.
That being said, I hope you continue to release and improve the game. I have time left on one account. Enough to see some changes. If combat changes as I hope I may reactivate it. If not I won't lose much sleep over it.
xnicholasx wrote:
Read them all, looking forward to playing this game over the next year. If everything falls into place SWG should def start living up to its name.
I've been going to college and majoring in game design for over two years now and i know that doesn't make me special, smarter, and/or know more than others about the pains of game designin any way what-so-ever but i cant help but be a jerk andsay this..
To those of you who feel the need to cry and complain about how something doesn't fit exactly what you wanted. Stop.
If you think developing, coding, keeping content true to Star Wars, sorting out bugs, etc., is in any way easy.. You need to educate yourself. Go to borders and start reading books on coding and design, get 3d Studio Max, Maya, any of the various coding programs and/or whatever you think you may need to create the game your looking for, come up with a team of people whocan work together undersevere pressure,and get to work. Sadly it isn't possible to magically think an idea right onto a CD that makes things happen on your computer, sorry to break the news!
If you have something to say, find a way to constructively word your complaint, take action in a positive way, or just keep it to yourself..Devs might pay more attention to it. Remember, you choose to pay for and play this game.
You guys are doing a great job getting things under control, keep it up. Game has come a long long way since launch.
"but i cant help but be a jerk andsay this" .. at least you recognize it.
Your rambling about game design being "hard" is completely irrelevant. I am so sick of this stupid answer. It's hard. So **edit**ing what it's hard? My job is hard, it doesn't mean I get a free pass to SUCK at it! This is their job. Remember, they CHOOSE to work and get paid for working on this game. "It's hard' is no excuse for incompetence. I'm sorry to break the news to you, but you're wasting your time in school if you expect to go get a job as a computer professional and coast along sucking because coding is complicated. Sadly, it isn't possible to magically get paid for merely having a degree, you actually have to DO the work. And yes mr. pompous, I AM a computer professional. You'll find a vast number of computer professionals playing this game and visiting these boards. We're a natural match, a perfect market target.
You tell people to keep it to themselves if they can't be "constructive". Well take your own advice, you said nothing constructive. You merely took the opportunity to spout off about coding being "hard" and whined about people whining. Therefore according to your rules, you should keep it to yourself.
As for the thread topic, I too find this information less than inspiring. A person who's job it is to keep us informed went around doing his job. Whoopie. The fact that this involved regurgitating the "we are working on it" line a hundred times is even worse. I can't fathom why people are all giddy and thrilled that they got their top 5 issues bumped to the top of a bunch of forums that clearly aren't being used by the devs in the first place, being that they seem to think we need to post some ideas rather than recognizing that we already have.
OH by the way, what inspiring news for the politician profession. No top 5 response or anything, but hey, we have a 'surprise' coming. hooray. /sarcasm
Well this will be my last post as my account is comming to fuition at last. But before I leave I wanted to express my absolute final gripe regarding where this game is ultimately headed.
1.) I have played 2 MMORPGs before this one and I must say that I havnt seen a game so unprepared and mismanged in my life. It is sad but none the less true that with every single patch the game has gotten worse and less fun to play. Every patch has been more focused on nerfing instead of making the game better. Even with mounts, vehicles and so forth, nothing can elude me from the fact that this game is centered on nerfing professions to the point of being useless. I watched a great profession go from being so **edit** fun it was pathetic to being a absolute joke. The best creatures I have are ones that I had in my data pad well before this accurssed patch. I have no idea why the DEVS said this patch would help stop dabblers when in fact it encourages it. A Novice CH can have BE pets that are just as good as my Toxic Mereks with half the CL rating. I am also convinced that rare pets meant any pet with light armor. Taming pets went from being a joy and a challenge to being flat discouraging and now, boring as hell. I have very little hope in finding any pets out there better than the ones I have now.
We wanted more pet variety and thats what we got, more pets that suck! People were sick of everyone having the same pets and that one unltimate pet..well guess what, nothing has changed. The same old pets are still kept and now the new flavor of the decade is the Screecher! I see people cheering and screaming with joy, "I got my Screecher, hooray!" Thats good and all but guess what, the Screecher sucks! It is a suck pet but the most sought after. No one really knows what in the hell the new so called "Uber rare pets" are or where they can be found. I have no real benefit to being a MCH anymore cause dabblers can get better pets than before the patch and some just as good as any 40-50 level pet I have now.
2.) Balance does not equal benefit: Ok, let me explain. Blance is the center ground between two opposing forces, those forces being positive (benefit) and negative (loss). How is it that when we go up our skill trees to get the next great skill that we only find that it is so costly to use that is isnt really worth it? There should be benefit to working so hard up a skill tree. But what we find is that for every benefit there is always some opposing factor that nulifies it and makes it a moot point. There should be incintive to being a Master at your profession no matter what it is. The DEVS dont want us to have advantages over the environment or other players.....ok, so then tell me what is the point to mastering any profession if you cant have advantages? With every step you take forward in this game there is another opposing factor that brings you back a step and your back where you started. You must either have benefit OR balance...the two cannot exist together. It is like Evil and Good...you cannot be both..you must be one or the other. A house cannot stand against itself. So many combat professions find themselves discouraged even at the Master levels because the cost to use special skills is so heavy that is is not worth using them and thus no fun at all.
3) Changing professions and grouping does NOT equal content: This has been the long standing theme of this game since day one. How many interviews did you read where Q3PO was interviewed where he refuted the charge that there was not enough content by saying "There is tons of content, I would ask those people have they tried grouping or changing professions." The whole point of all the nerfs is to bring our professions to a place where we either have to change professions or we have to group to be effective. Dont believe me? Look at the holocrons, what is it that they tell you to do? Thats right, change professions. Why? because that is the main focus of content in this game. The whole point of the holocrons was to keep people from quiting the game cause at the time alot of people where quiting because they were bored and sick of the nerfing. ENTER THE HOLOCRON. SOE was gambling that the holocrons and the Jedi Mystique would keep people from leaving until the mounts and vehicles came out, and they were right. Holocrons have really screwed this game up if you ask me and took alot of the Jedi mystery out of the game. Holocrons have nothing to do with true Jedi lore. But they were a way for plyers to be manipulated into what the DEVS considered content in this game and people fell for it. I myself have never found or have used a holocron and I will not subject myself to manipulation. Now, what about groups, well I will agree that the whole point of a MMORPG is playing and interacting with other people but it should not be the exclusive theme in this game. I hate groups! Groups are annoying, undependable, they take away Money and XP by dividing it up and alot of people hate waiting for me tio make stupid ass camps just to call pets, (which is another reason I am quiting). We should not be forced into groups, out characters should be good enough at Master levels to solo if we want to.
4) The game is getting to hard to play alone and many of the mobs (Mokks, FS Characters, ect) are too dang hard to fight. I used to fair well as a TKM and MCH but after this last nerf, my pets are weak and easy to kill. I dont understand how a Mokk which is basically a neandratal, while wearing only animal skill as clothes can have Medium armor and sometimes 100% kenetic resis! That is stupid as hell. I have seen a single Mokk destroy my Rancor single handedly...maybe Luke should have been thrown into a pit with a Mokk instead of a Rancor! Stuff like this makes no sense and takes away from what Star Wars is and has always been. This game suffers from poor management and a serious lack of foresight.
Final thought: Someone at SOE needs to find out who is making all these stupid decisions and fire them or simply start doing what the customers want. Otherwise this game will drift into the black abyss of bad games.
Thank you and good journey-
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1. - If im not wrong, you havent posted any question at all. You answered the 22 questions we DEs were demanding from months, most of them related to already existing bugs and exploits. And they were pretty vague answers, actually.
The questions we made and TH's answers can be found here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=43428
2. - Could someone posibly tell me where in hell is the "In Concept" part of the web site?
3. - To give some feedback previous information is needed. We do not have such information so we cannot provide any feedback at all.
Hope this was just a bad joke
I want to know why since day one the doctor issues have been the same and not addressed. DO SOMETHING.
We have issues to be dealt with and all we see is that our class is being comprimised by prt stims, buffing food and more.
Neologist, your an ass. The guy was only trying to give you food for thought. Hate to break it to ya, but he's right. I know what kind of crap these Devs have to put up with. In fact every Dev I know puts up with the crap. Doesnt matter which game.
Everybody wants their problems fixed...and now. The forums of every MMORPG are full of whining people who don't have a clue about bringing a game to life. And they don't want to hear the answer...it makes them 'sick'. Am I totally satisfied with the game? No, but I know the Devs are working on it. It is a never-ending job. When they aren't working on it anymore, then you can kiss the game goodbye.
I would like to see more content. I would like to see new quests. But, griping because the shuttle runs every ten minutes? Doesnt bother me.Griping because it takes so long to travel from one place to another? Doesnt bother me...impresses upon me that this place is massive. I for one like that.
Try, from a RP aspect, to make the game better for you and others. I've been here from day 1 and have alot of memories...good and bad. I will take them both...adds depth to the game for me. I also tend to find that some of those that gripe on these forums (some mind you) are the same that treat people like crap in-game.
I think the Devs are doing a great job, but then again...I know what they do. Griping at a Dev is not the way to get things changed. Bringing forth great ideas with thought will get their attention.
It took the devs 6 months to skin a vehicle and make it go foreward fast. Good god thats pathetic. Sorry, but personally I think you guys at sony need to get a few buisness seminars, you people need to do less slacking and more getting on the ball.
I agree that the galaxies devs suck and management of this game is poor. Crashes to the servers following a patch illustrate just how badly managed this game is. If you cannot simulate a full load on your servers before deploying a patch you don't know what your doing.
If you cannot get the code written fast enough. Hire more developers. Pay them more. Fire the ones lagging behind and bring order to the chaos that reigns in this game.
Stop with the bull. No one but fools believe you. Since day 1 of this release the game has been unstable. Things in the game are broken all over the place. Stop telling us lies that all the quests work. We are working on it is not an acceptable answer. Give timelines and a number of the developers assigned and possibly a name or pysdonyme.
When you add new content and it is broken, warpping special protections across server boundries and it being harder to get than anything in game and it totally not working (RIS) you piss a whole lot of people off. If you add an exceptionally rare item the compensation must be of equal value in return. Be that an armor rating of 2 or 80% protection.
Take away the power of Nerf. Be more creative in the resolutions of preceived inbalances in the game. (most of which are not even real).
I will tell you one thing. I dropped CH. That is what you wanted right? No creature handlers? We wanted droids.
I am surprised you all haven't been fired. This game is not what it was billed as. Not very good at all.