Force Sensitive Archive

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gera wrote:

Hi MsNil,

Play the game while you still can then move on.

There is absolutely nothing you can do other than destroying your and our nerves by showing facts we already know but want to ignore "to have fun a bit". Mathematical balance in your mind will not going to happen. I assume you are not developer, you did not work for any gaming company comparing your knowledge / balance theories to an giant MMORPG expertcompany developers.

Ofcourse we all want for the best of ourselves. If you are displeased and lost your enthuasism for play, go on Cancel if you can (which I believe you will not at all) but stop trying to end other's enthuasism at least a little left to play.

There is other MMORPG's waiting for you. Mark my words you will notice same stuff in every MMORPG even it does not look like that from the external view.

Sorry, unlike others, I'm not going to support you on this cause. You are the paying customer, you have the power to quit. But stop dramas here. Last thing this community needs are dramas which seperated all player base from each other. As I said in CU: Love it or Leave it. You are clicking on "I agree" everytime you start the game to term: Game experience may change.

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MsNiL wrote:

I am sure you heard this several times before. You can find similar posts dated around 2003 and 2004, or early 2005.

Somewhere in the beginning of 2004 something happened in SoE. While we do not know the exact details, we see the results. Somewhere in the beginning of 2004, someone decided that SWG was no more a prime interest of SoE anymore.

What happened after that is history. The clear sign is that every planned future for Starwars Galaxies was cancelled (which includes things like Battlefields and Smuggler Revamp). As a replacement SoE installed a gigantic grindbased themepark that rewarded players who stayed at least 8 months, to be rewarded with an attractive Jedi Character.

We who play both sides of the field know that actually playing the game, with a Lightsaber or not, is unrewarding. Once you have finished your grind (Jedi or non-Jedi) there's not much to do. Available pve content is rare and unfortunally alot of it is broken. Pvp is what you do with it, unless you feel rewarded with increasing a number (pvp rating) that means nothing for your character more than a sign of how many hours you put down to it, pvp is unrewarding, repetitive and the battles neither bring you or your faction any permanent progress or rewards.

The amount of redundant professions in the game is high. The majority of the players crowd around 15-20% of the professions and combat is about 5 specific "fotm" templates. Professions that completely lost their role is not unheard of. Among Combat Professions we see Smugglers who still cant Smuggle. Commando that cannot do damage or practice military warfare. Squad Leaders who's tactical boost to their group is almost unnoticeable. Rangers who are the last profession to pick if you would like to pick down big game hunts. We have dabbler professions like Doctor, Force Wielder and Force Healer that is ripped off by dabblers but unrewarding at master. Even Jedi have very small connection to the fiction the game is based on. We see brawlers who earn no additional damage reduction compared to marksmen, we see pistols and carbines redundant becouse of broken speed and the ability to fire Rifles at -35m as well as 75m.

Beyond Combat Professions we have professions like Architects, who have no 'consumeable' product and therefore no trustworthy income. They cannot produce pve bases and they cannot design their own houses/furniture. Not even change color of their furniture. We have Droid Engineer's who's only role is to produce an occasional meddroid/pilotdroid and spend their rest of the time doing probedroids and storagedroids. Entertainers who are replaced by afk-bots and have almost no reason to pass from their Novice Entertainer box. Armorsmith, which is so broken, that finding an armorstore right now is almost impossible. Weaponsmith, who are limited to a maximum of 4-6 products. etc. etc.

We see broken features that stay in game month after month, that is so broken people notice it at once.Teras Kasi Combo Hit is divided by 3 after the hit, so their main attack do x0.5 damage while the newbie "Hit" do x1.0. Personally I have a skilline in Healer called "Force Assist" that do not give me any assistpowers but attacks, yet the descriptions in the boxes describe abilities who havnt existed in the game for four months, directly contradicting what power you earn for that box.

We have been promised over and over and over again that things will be adressed now, right now there's a future, right now the devs will increase their effort on profession bugs and issues.

Well, last publish had 15 bugfixes and 12 non-bugfixes/non-issues. The majority of both kinds where not player requested. Instead of instantly deal with the most notorious bugs (chat tabs?), we see small balance tweaks that sometimes remove an entire profession from the face of the earth. The old retiring Correspondant once said that "Behind the scenes, it's all about stalling issues. There's no plan, there's no future, the only available action for the devs seems to be stalling". Looking up the "issues" topics under each of the professions own forum we see some drastic issues that are completely ignored, some for years. Was there anybody else who where surprised when Thunderheart suddenly revealed that he had no clue that ArmorBreak was broken, despite being toasted by both the Jedi and Swordman correspondant since before the Combat Upgrade even came live?

Is there anyone who realise how little the correspondants issues are adressed? When where the last time you heard a change in this game that was directly caused by a correspondants wishes (that in turn is community requested).

But we do have Aurilia, unrequested and implemented as a replacement for everything else this game promised, with not a single revamp ever since. New players are offered to play about $120 to grind up a Jedi, and that actual grind is the essence of what this game have to offer. Actually playing a non-Jedi who's role is not killing creatures, have no content, nothing to do to progress further. The only way to progress from a non-Jedi is to grind a Jedi, and thats where some people cancel and some people start to go Jedi even if that wasnt their plan with the game.
Once you have finished running endless repetitive terminal missions and finished your grind, that's the end of the game. The FRS was unfinished and now closed. You cannot even finish the Knight trials or wear your Knight Robe. And Jedi do not even have access to Level 80 balanced weapons becouse proper pearls/crystals do not drop becouse of a broken loottable. A finished Jedi post-cu (without a pre-cu saber) is not even equal to a non-Jedi for pvp and pve. A majority of the Jedi's available skillsets are pre-cu, outdated and redundant, which is shared with so many other non-Jedi professions.

Pub 22 throttling the XP reward means only one thing: Paying more for nothing. Since grinding is the only thing this game have to offer, the further you grind, the further you go on without realising you have nothing left to do, and the further you stay in game and pay. The money you pay fuels other SoE games, most noteworthy EQ2. Matrix Online is quickly decaying as much as SWG do right now. I guess both SWG and Matrix share the feature of printing money on license, not quality. The last thing thoose money go to is to support programmers who work on quality assurance for this game.

If there was a future plan for this game, I would like to see the following happen:
1. Correspondants called to select a new sandbox.
2. A testcenter installed with a Blue Frog.
3. Respec re-enabled on the live servers.
4. A proper system/website for listing issues/bugs for the sandbox teams is put online.
5. SoE pools up extra manpower on SWG and adress each of the reported issues until the list of remaining issues is small enough to adress with a single publish.
6. Finishing the Combat Upgrade, and making sure both Artisans and Entertainers have a value.

But there are no such plan to finish this game. As long as people are willing to join the game based on the starwars license and pay $120x4 dollars on earning their own unrewarding Jedi, this game will continue to print money with little or no effort involved.

The XP change have four impacts on me:
1. It stops me from regrinding my 2 non-Jedi.
2. It stops me from regrinding my Jedi template. Since the value of the templates are changed from publish to publish, this locks me up even more.
3. It halts me from playing with thoose friends who still havnt cancelled and are in limbo due to unfinished templates.
4. It halts new blood from entering the game to refill the void of now cancelled accounts.

After most of my friends who did not go fotm or pre-cu sabers have left the game, and thoose still existing is in limbo due to unfinished templates (that also plan to leave) I have seriously started to consider if it's time for me to move on as well. A Roleplaying Game for me is a game where people create unique characters to play with. When that is limited to max five different templates, it makes the game repetitive, static and boring. There's other games that offers that, while not allowing critical/gamebreaking bugs to stay in game for weeks.

If you read this far. Thanks for listening. Now go into the game and /bug every single issue you know. Thanks.

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Great post!

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ShortTimer wrote:

The most frustrating part is that SWG could be the best game to ever hit the MMO market but SOE's lack of vision is fookin' everything up.

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MsNiL wrote:

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WinkerPeeper wrote:
Interesting speculation: "around the end of 2004 something happened to SWG".

This is what happened:
The original team who developed SWG - people like Raph Koster and Gordon Gaddis (sp?) - were promoted upwards.

At the same time, EQ2 was launched. The programmers concerned with the launch were brought over to SWG to fill in the gaps.

A distinct change of "vision" became apparent and, equally, a certain incomprehension with the ethos and the workings of this very sophisticated game.

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I know EQ2 was a great impact to the changes, but I hadnt thought about Raph Koster and Gordon Gaddis.

I know that Raph Koster is the author of this masterpiece:
www.legend
mud.org/rap
h/gaming/gd
c_2002_com
munity_files/f
rame.htm

This nice feature tells alot of truths behind the scenes (note that I severed the link here to avoid getting banned for posting it, copy and assemble in notepad).

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He he. Yes, I have seen that presentation before. It is never a good thing to apply gaming principles to community communications.

But Koster originally came from Ultima, a very immersive, deep-level game. SWG is, I'd say, it's natural descendant. When he left, he seems to have been replaced by people from EQ2 which has, of course, EQ as its ancestor. Different games, different approaches. No entirely integrated yet when it comes to the continuing development of SWG.

/kudos

(5 accounts down to 2 ... and counting ...)

/agree w/the lady jedi...

Friends & enemies ( still friends! ) keep me playing

Message Edited by gildrian on 08-18-2005 01:57 PM