Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 10 Feedback: Jedi Revamp Part 2, The Jedi Trials
Cyg
Tue Sep 14, 2004 2:25 am
#1067
I had fun with this publish for about 2 days. After post after post on the merchant changes(very weak) and reading all the other complaints, I decided to play for a while and see if publish 10 was really all that bad.....maybe I'm the one with the problem here and I'm just being a complainer. After careful reflection and inner soul searching, I have come to this....My buisness has suffered...I hardly get the sales I was getting everyday, and the Jedi quest revamp has made a large boring grind even more so.I was kindof excited when I discovered that I had only to do "The Warren" to get my "glow" and be visited by the Old man. Once that happened and I reached the Village, the fun stopped. Another grind....and a boring one at that. Flying around the perimeter in circles "patroling" just got me to thinking that this game isn't all that exciting anymore. I would rather have the holocrons back. Even though I got my "silent" holo a long time ago, there was a mystery to it in that you never new which Master was going to be the one to unlock a second character. Now, the grind is even longer and not all that exciting when you show up and see 50 or more ppl doing the same thing which takes away from the mystique that was described to us about "The Village". You still have to grind out professions to gain the XP to transfer to the Force Sense stuff. Very bland with no sense of immersion into the "star wars universe" that every fan of the saga had hoped for. Simply put, this "game" is now a hassle. I find myself and my friends are now starting to question what it was that got us so into this game for the first 6 months. A couple of them have had it with the bugs, the nerfing of some professions and now this last publish to the point that they are not going to stay on. This will blow myGuild apart and make a new hassle for my "game" that I'm supposed to have fun with. Another thing I have noticed is that players with two or more accounts or the Open slot Jedi that gives ppl 2 characters are the ones who will reap the rewards the most and are less affected by all this. Advantage goes to them now and they will be the elite of the game while we poor suckers are left to try to make it with just one character. To say it's fair is like saying the income tax system favors the middle class.
It feels like we are being strung along....almost like TV promos for the evening news...."Later in the program...we'll tell you how you can get rich!!!" That is a tactic to increase TSW...or, Time Spent Watching. An old trick to keep you hanging on a little longer so you will not change channels. We've been hearing about these great fixes to the game....Droids, Merchant, smuggler, combat(boy will THAT mess up the game even more!)...all going to be "adjusted" to make the gameplay better and when the publish finally comes....it's nerfed, bugged, or adjusted in a way as to make the profession one that really is less fun and more of a grind than it was in the first place. In my opinion, Merchant should go the way of the Mining profession and be open to all and Jedi should have never been put in the game. But, ppl want what they want and the Devs/SOE wanted to make their customers happy...nothing wrong with that. But not all are happy, are they? Sure you can't make everyone happy but from the posts I have read through out on this new publish, the people you WANT to make happy are slowing finding themselves in the same place: Is this worth anymore of my time and money?
Jump to Lightspeed looks great from what I've seen, but I forsee the same problems with bugs and lag. The profession juggle is going to get more complicated...unlessyou give us more Skill points and the issue with storage was already a problem that is now worse. Increase the house/guild hall capacity and make the main city bizaars worth using. The storage problem is hitting me and my friendshard. All my slots,and theirs, are for storage buildings now. If you want to have a house set up nice with the collection of rewards and trophies the you get from the theme parks and such, then you can forget about storing items needed for crafting/etc. So you set up a another house for storage...then fill that. OR you get around the crap publish 10 by setting up factories all around the Village and elsewhereso you can store the loot you can't store on a vendor anymore. See? Fix one problem, and another occurs. Trying to change human nature through publish/fixes only results in another exploit. Even in the virtual world, people will behave as they do in the real one. To be fair, the empty vendor removal, speeders able to be added to the HUD slots, the new readouts for resources and the crafting/resurce changes are the only good thing I found in this publish.
I will say this; You guys did the best you could and your hard work on this labor of love is recognized. When one thinks of how much code, and hours went into SWG, it boggles the mind. I just feel like you have bitten off more than you can chew and it is bigger than you can handle. JTLS will be cool with lots of oooohs and ahhhhhs but once ppl realize that they are going to have to keep the grind going to get the money or XP to improve, build, fix, or even FLY ships,they will feel less like playing or trying to schedule time to play. By the time all the tweeks and fixes and publishes are "done", this MMORG will be outdated...but maybe it will help SWG2 be a little more solid.
The question now is this; Should I pay for an expansion and more months of service in pursuit of flying a starship of my own into space....only to find that I need moreland basedgrinding to make my space grinding easier and fun? Hard to say....I'm starting to wonder if I will be on that much longer and that sucks. I always wanted to have a game like this. I would have NEVER paid monthly for a game nor would I have been involved with a MMORG untill SWG came along. I will never play another as it was the Star Wars aspect that got me into this. If I do stay on until JTLS goes online, it will be that expansion that will decide the fate of my character and my account. Let's hope it transforms the game to where it deserves to be. If not....Star Wars Battlefront and the Jedi Knight games look like the instant gratification we SW nuts are yearning for. Maybe another X-wing simulator would do the trick! Hmmmm.... now where is that X-wing Alliance I used to play.........
CaffineWarrior
Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:53 am
#1068
I want to commend Cyg on the post they made. Thatwas the first really constructive post ive read so far in this thread, keeping in mind that I have not read them all btw.
I have to agree whole heartedly that this game is quickly becoming more and more of a bore. Grinding is not playing a game, its more work than play. I would venture to say that the bulk of the gamers right now either have a job they spend 6-8 hours a day at, or have school for 6-7 hours a day +homework. Now really, who wants to come home after that, and then waste their time grinding out a billion xp points to achieve the one thing that got them into the game?
Playing devils advocate, I can understand a limited grind, as one does not become a master at anything without practice, but the rate of exchange is just mind boggling.
Looking back at Ectyo's post, it just really brings things into perspective. SOE wanted to slow down the numbers of new Jedi coming into the game. What they have accomplished with thispublish is virtually eliminating them from the game, and probably a good number of active players with it. The grind was never really necessary, as you cant even unlock enough trees to reach Initiate for at least 6 months, unless you were a holo grinder. That would have sufficiently reduced the Jedi influx without a grind, or at least a more reasonable one.
SOE needs to open up more responsible channels of communication between the players and the developers, and more importantly, they need to be a little more proactive at listening to what the gamers want, and responding to those requests... after all, we are the ones paying for this venture...
jopenack
Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:06 am
#1069
I posted several times in this thread trying to update my glow - quest experience to help others not make the same mistakes I was making. I figured I'd help and try not to fall into my usual ranting and raving in anger lol
Well after a week of grinding fs xp wich is totally out of wack lol I may not rave or rent and for that matter try to help here anymore. The quest are boring, lack content, are very repetive oh and I mean very repetetive.
As far a a stawrsy feel that ive heard for months from people lol sorry but its funny as hell, this is about as starwarsy as the pimple on my butt from waiting and waiting and waiting ive done for soo very long.
I might pop into the village occasionally but as far as excitement goes i go there from boredome with the rest of the game lol I have no idea why im even here anymore still playing lol I actually miss the profession grind lol and the many friends who have quit in the last 3 months. :-(
So fare thee well im off this thread and totally disapointed with jedi, jedi quest, and the direction the game has been going in. very sad so much promise so little imagination
xthornzx
Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:39 am
#1070
account name : xthornzx
server : kauri
character name : thithe cloudstrider
member since : june 2003
here's my problem :
I am a post 9 - pre 10 unlocker.
I unlocked when mastering my 32rd profession on august 27th of 2004
I got the visit from the old man, killed the siths, looted them, got to
the village...talked to paemos and never got any opportunity of getting
my 6 free branches!
server : kauri
character name : thithe cloudstrider
member since : june 2003
here's my problem :
I am a post 9 - pre 10 unlocker.
I unlocked when mastering my 32rd profession on august 27th of 2004
I got the visit from the old man, killed the siths, looted them, got to
the village...talked to paemos and never got any opportunity of getting
my 6 free branches!
the option to get those free branches is missing when talking to paemos. this bug cannot be bypassed in any way at this moment.
Arjun has sent private messages to DEVs according to his previous post, but no result has been shown yet
I NEVER GOT ANY FREE FS BRANCH AND XP TO LEARN THEM WHEN PROMISED OTHERWISE.
SirLithium
Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:10 am
#1071
Can't think of a better place to ask this...
Will there be an official announcement at each Village Phase? Or will it be a mystery? I'd prefer Plan B, but would be happy with clarification either way.
Will there be an official announcement at each Village Phase? Or will it be a mystery? I'd prefer Plan B, but would be happy with clarification either way.
Nytur
Tue Sep 14, 2004 10:22 am
#1072
It would have been better if you had US go find the old man, instead of him visiting us. Seems that the game is pretty buggy, and anything could mess it up. Im not exactly pleased with the new jedi system
telexx
Tue Sep 14, 2004 10:58 am
#1073
WOW...Still no responses from SOE/devs on the failures of publish 10 (i.e. same ole grind, time gated quests - STILL waiting for something to do/new content). Seems like they are only interested in $$$ (i.e. Jump To Lightspeed, character purges.) How sad =I...
FCA
Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:57 am
#1074
I have a quick question...we have to fill up 24 skill boxes, but do these have to be 6 complete trees? Let's say I recieved 3 free unlocks, and I trained in Luck, Ranged Defense, and Ranged Speed. I then did my quest to unlock Ranged Accuracy, and filled my first 2 boxes with XP conversion. What if every 3 weeks I would just unlock a tree and just fill the first two boxes. That would be a total of 2,550,000 FS XP. Where, if I went up 3 whole trees, it would take 3,750,000 FS XP. It would take 15 weeks to do, but approx 1/3 less grinding. I would then be able to enjoy other things other grinding. Just a thought.
Irel
Kauri
Isleh
Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:06 pm
#1075
Ectyo wrote:
Ok, I've spent the better part of the last 4 days grinding experience (manually because I don't use scripts or macros for crafting). Ive managed to fill half of the Crafting Mastery novice box.
This box takes 50,000 of Force Crafting experience to fill.
I decided today to experiment with the numbers and here is what I've found:
Grinding out Structural Modules > Structural Walls > Medium Houses,
I can generate 121,000 experience in almost exactly 2hours. I can trade that in for 3361 of Force Crafting experience at a trade in rate of 1:36. (Please note: 121000 is the amount of Structure Crafting experience necessary to fill one box on the top tier of the Architect profession).
So, repeating this effort, and trading Structure Experience for Force Crafting Experience will result in my getting the Crafting Mastery Novice box filled after 29.7 hrs of grinding.
Now, to fill every box in the Force Crafting Tree, requires 4,320,000 in Force Crafting Experience.
Based on my calculations, this will take 2570 hours of grinding. So if I start grinding now, and do not stop for anything including sleep or work, I will be able to complete the tree in 107 days (3.5 months).
Now, if I grind for 20 hours a week (mind you, this isn't "playing" the game, but rather it is grinding experience) I can fill the tree in 128.5 weeks (2.47 years).
Ok, now let's look at this realistically. I *might* be willing to craft in this game a total 10 hours a week. Ive been a Master Architect/Master Artisan for about 7 months of the 8.5 total months I've played this game, so I'm no stranger to crafting and I think 10 hours a week commited to a tangible goal isn't terribly unrealistic. However at 10 hrs per week it will take me very nearly 5 years to fill the Force Crafting tree.
Also bear in mind, that as a primary crafter this is still only 16 of the necessary 24 boxes needed to unlock the ability to become jedi.
Is this what is intended?
-Ectyo Co'Va
Sadly we have to assume that the answer is yes. they did plan it this way. I don't think the DEVs are idiots. I'm sure someone saw what this truly is and maybe tried to warn the upper echelon. Obviously, we see what was done about it.
The content that SOE has offered to keep me in the game is so seriously flawed that it not worth my time. Nothing SOE has done in the past few months has kept me in the game. Their hold on me is tentative at best. All that is keeping me from canceling is the friends I've made in the game and the content we make. If that goes, then I'll go. All it will take is some other MMORPG with even a hint of potential to do that I'm afraid.
I wonder what a chart of the SWG active users looks like over the past year.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when that chart hit the board room.
Etyrnal
Tue Sep 14, 2004 10:34 pm
#1076
I have to say something after reading this thread. We are not talking getting Jedi here we are talking about a force sensitive character and unlocking the second slot. This new grind is for a Jedi Initiate not a full blown Jedi. I think the devs screwed us on this point. The grind should not be hard to get to that level it should be hard during the Trials that follow. I really think that I would not be complaining if they would lighten up on this end and make it hard to get Padawan and harder yet to get Knight.
NothingShocking
Wed Sep 15, 2004 12:03 am
#1077
You have to fill up the whole tree, you can't just do 2 skill blocks and move on. Come on did you think it would be that easy? If it was, there would not be thousands upon thousands of post complaints. Not knocking you down just answering your question.
FCA
Wed Sep 15, 2004 12:11 am
#1078
My fault....I should have double checked the Village write-up again. It states 6 branches for Jedi. I stand corrected.
Irel