Force Sensitive Archive
Thread: The state of the game, the CU & the discontinued/unfinished parts of SWG (long)
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.
The state of the game, the CU & the discontinued/unfinished parts of SWG (long)
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..
AbsofrickenLutly...SIGN
I love this person. He hit upon everything in the game that I could think of Nice Job..
/bump
Nuff Said really this says it all....
Jedi Padawan
Rebel Colonel
To add to this, I think a few more SOE workers should be hired, just to read the forums.
well said.