Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Space Expansion, a few questions.
SOE prides itself in using feedback from the community to develop the game.
Why have we not heard any questions asked regarding the Space Expansion? Our ideas have not been discussed nore questioned. SOE, if you don't want the space expansion to to dive, wouldn't you be asking of our take on it, ideas, etc...? SOE, why in your letters on the homepage do you say that you pride yourselves in using consumer ideas to develop future instances of publishes, releases, etc...?
I mean no flame here, it is just a valid question, I feel.
The devs arleady stated that the space exp will be discussed openly in a fewmonths on the SWG boards. The space exp discussions go live after the big game conference where they will unveil it to the industry/public.
If you do a little diggingthis isstated on the boards.
I understand that, but they have also said that the Expansion would come out this summer. So...they are going to ask us what they think when release is a month or 2 months out? That really doesn't offer them much time to modify their concepts and programming.
Ablon wrote:
If you do a little diggingthis isstated on the boards.
Barfalomue wrote:
I understand that, but they have also said that the Expansion would come out this summer. So...they are going to ask us what they think when release is a month or 2 months out? That really doesn't offer them much time to modify their concepts and programming.
Ablon wrote:
If you do a little diggingthis isstated on the boards.
Well, remember, the design of the SE was done long ago - long before the land beta every happened. It was all designed at once, just not programmed that way.
I totally agree, it would have been nice to be asked for direct input, but I think they are pretty clear about what players want in terms of major features. We want multi-person ships that we can walk around, for starters. Though we haven't had "focus" threads, we have made the "major" suggestions in many places and hopefully they were heard.
Until the SE is in beta, we really won't know anything. Until people can actually play the game, it's all speculation even if the Devs laid out the systems textually. Go back and read the pre-beta SWG FAQ, and you will see while much of it may not seem close to what we have at first blush, if taken another way they do. What I'm trying to say is that even if they said, "Space flight will work like this..." we'd spend all the time arguing about the meaning of the statements before we could get any constructive suggestions out. This is why I never participated in the public pre-live boards, because I didn't see the point of discussing the details of the game based on speculation and PR. I mean, how many, "I'm going to kill Vader and this is how!" threads did we have, when it could have simply been answered with : "Vader is an unattackable NPC. Period," yet dozens of threads and hundreds of posts debated the minutiae of how it could possibly be done.
Finally, it really comes down mostly to marketing, I'd assume. The SE is a tightly held secret in many respects, and the moment they ask us something they are going to inherently release some information because of the virtute they asked about it - "Do you think player cities should have access to shipyards?" would tell us a bit about the building of ships. This is why the politician forum thread about the SE is hard to answer; because you have to qualify everything with, "Well, if the system is set up this way, then...if the system is set up another way, then..." That doesn't work well - as Droid Engineers know all too well.
When it comes to the core systems, as in what is included initially and what won't be, I don't think we ever had much input - I think it's more a question of what technologically they could do in the time given. Hopefully in the future we will be able to contribute more in this area - but to be honest, I imagine beta of the SE will be like SWG - just trying to stop (most) of the showstopping bugs and get it out the door ASAP.
While I have great hope for the gameplay of the SE, and would like detailed information regarding features locked, etc., I don't have an awful lot of faith that the method of delivery and development will be much different than what we had with the land version.
That said, I understand if they don't want to release visuals until E3, but just SOMETHING would be nice, either a partial locked-features list or some indication of what we can expect our activities should be. My big, nagging-in-the-back-of-my mind, conspiracy-theory fear is that they have been so closed lipped about it because they are afraid the countless players who have said, "I'm just waiting for the SE"won't like what they hear - like "only single person starships, and you can't leave the cockpit".
Right now, I'm hoping it's just that the marketing people won't let 'em. 
Though I'm not big fans of the marketing guys since the "advertising" material from Publish 7...
AO
AO