Smuggler Archive

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Tiggs wrote:

HoC chats are an opportunity to discuss the topic at hand. Last night's chat discussion was based upon the new expansion announcement and experience changes from last week.

We can only answer questions that pretain to those chat discussions. Players submit the questions to question takers and they are forwarded on to us during the chat. There will always be certain topics we can't discuss due to trade secrets so to speak.

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Well, from reading the chat transcript you didnt 'discuss' anything. The answers you gave said nothing new about the expansion other than what you already had said in the original announcement.

And if players submit questions before hand, who was the idiot that kept picking questions that were already answered?

Good form there...

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MISTagent01 wrote:
Yeah, I'll repost my original post too, since we got a bit derailed there:

Tiggs:

I'd love to see an Astromech stats where you guys tell us what percentage of those 1 million copies of SWG sold are still ACTIVE subscriptions. You can sell a million copies of anything, but it's subscriptions that really tell a story.

SOE and LA are surely baffled that the most beloved franchise in the history of film isn't doing 1/8th of the business that a generic MMO like WoW is...the turnover rate is so high for this game that it's probably confused all of you...why hasn't SWG performed the way it SHOULD? The simple fact of the matter is this: you can NOT implement an Alpha class into an MMO. It never works, because over time, everyone will have attained that Alpha class (with the exception of people purposefully trying NOT to,) and the game becomes heavily unbalanced and nowhere near "fun." Yes, you looked the other way when it came to Jedi, and I have no problem with that. It's the fact that they remain an Alpha class that has sucked the heart and soul out of this game. Armorsmiths and Weaponsmiths quit everyday because there are less and less players to craft for, since Jedi don't wear craftable armor and craft their own weapons. Entertainers have left in droves because they have no place in the GCW, and have been far removed from the rest of the playerbase. Everyone else (except BH) are cancelling because for the most part, they're treated like annoying flies on a hot summer day.

If SOE and LA only realized that if they stopped directing most content towards Jedi, and subsequently spread out that extra attention to EVERY NON-JEDI profession, the entire game would flourish again. Do you realize that resources being used right now on the FRS system could be used to re-build the GCW, give smugglers smuggling, re-energize the Entertainer professions, and possibly fix so many of the bugs still plaguing crafters?

I know it's just your job to relay information...but as Community Director, you're supposed to be on OUR side, not theirs. You need to want to help us, not just relay one way and not the other.

I'm aware you have other posts to read, but if you do read this, relay it to someone that has some common sense and can do something about it. You weren't around when this game first launched, so let me paint a picture of my server for you:

Theed was a bustling commerce city...people were hawking their wares, dancing, laughing, dueling, and having a rollicking good time. Cantinas were packed with beautiful Entertainers of every race, shape and size...along with scoundrels, Stormtroopers, and drunks. People grouped up and stuck together in the wilderness, and you ALWAYS took a Scout or a Ranger with you. We lived our own Star Wars saga. We created our own personas, our own histories, and it all blended into this wonderful, magical experience that I will always remember.

That magic is gone now, but I'd pay 50 bucks a month to have it back.

/tiphat

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QFmofoE!!!

by the way, Guild Wars is SOOOO much more fun than SWG.

i mean, Sci-Fi is always better than Fantasy, butat leastPlayNC not lying about their product to their Players.

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TomoRainer wrote:
Sometimes I don't understand the levels of secrecy taken with this game. I understand the legitimate business concerns of keeping wraps on stuff from the competition, but when it becomes a legitimate concern that customers are losing faith in your business because they're uncertain about its future, it may be time to reevaluate some policies.

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are they publicly traded? At this point with this much buyer uncertainty I'd be dumping their stock like a smoking turd.

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MISTagent01 wrote:
Tiggs:

I'd love to see an Astromech stats where you guys tell us what percentage of those 1 million copies of SWG sold are still ACTIVE subscriptions. You can sell a million copies of anything, but it's subscriptions that really tell a story.

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I found it!

go here http://www.mmogchart.com/

click on the link Subscribers: 100k - 700k ... thers a lot of other good charts there too.

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EEMAN wrote:

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Lonelan wrote:

I gave up long ago thinking that this game was anything close to Star Wars. I don't know if anyone remembered when development for this game started, but this website has been up since like March-April of 2000. Where are all the suggestions from the first year? Did they include all this craptacular prequal (before quality! hah!) crap? No. Naboo and Lok were the only things from Episode 1 related content that got accepted into this game travesty.

And one thing I sure as hell remember was that Jedi was to be a rare and little-seen profession. Like 2 or 3 per server until the GCW progressed to Endor and beyond. WHAT THE F HAPPENED?

And oh my god w-t-f is now 'prohibited content'

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SOE wasnt the game programmers that wrote the game. That special title goes to a different set of genius'. SOE programmers are more like maintenance code tweakers. Every attempt to write new code always returns with bad results. Just like the JTL programmers werent the perma SOE guys either, hence why latter attempts to do ships have met with horrible results such as the Y-8 etc. In fact, if you remember, there was a time in JTL beta where they hosted a 'kill a dev day' .. and it was then decided that the A-wings hit box was rediculously imbalanced being as small as it was. So what did they do later? release the jedi starfighter with an even smaller hitbox and give it a second gun to boot. There is no way that the first set of designers would have let the hitbox be that small, and LA may call the shots but theyre too stupid to know or bother to find out about specifics like hitboxes, they call the shots on graphics, weapon designs etc.

back to the point, the original game coders are way long since gone from development and all of their ideas with them. Ask yourself WHY make one of the race bothan? They never appeared in any movie. Why are there bothan spynet npc that dont do anything? Perhaps the real game programmers planned future expansions going FORWARD in game timeline and thus laid the groundwork for some EU material.

Night and day isnt it? Programmers coding for future tie-ins versus programmers dragging clone war crap into the game non stop since .. when did this start happening... oh yeah... since the Geonosian cave.. thats right. Right about the time that all the first wave of SOE programmers bailed.

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This is an interesting viewpoint

SO once again SOE decides to jump on the Epsiode 3 badn wagon and ignore the time line. Aren't we in between Episodes 4 and 5 supposedly? I guess not. Wouldn't it make sense to listen to 2 planets that the comunity has asked for since day one? Hoth and Bespin are the nest planets in the time line. Each would grant great opurtunities for game play. But hell no... let's just biggy back on the episode 3 DVD launch...

and I ask WHY THE HELL IS OBI WAN's BLUE GLOWY GHOST HANGING OUT ON MUSTAFAR, when he is talking in Lukes head? I mean seriousy, doesn't he have more important things to think about? Such has becomign more powerful than Darth Vader can imagine by training luke from beyond the grave? I mean if he's on Mustafar, how does Luke find Yoda? Or get enough training to not get his ass handed to him on a porcelain platter by vader @ Bespin. Oh wait that's right. SOE rewrites the entire Star Wars story to fill their pockets.

Now see with Hoth we could have gotten a GCW boost... could have even maybe been a GCW expansion. Many things could be added, espionage, crafting, and destroy missions, from Vader, Leia, and others. Rebels could try to craft better components for the shields around the power generator, or better capacitors for stronger weapons. The espionage, and destroy missions are kind of self explainatory, finding out where the enemy is located and then blowing it up.

With Bespin, you could get some cool adventure quests through cloud city. Crafters, would get the ability to mine gas from the gas mines for special new schematics and components. Player could get quests from Lando to help his cloud city prosper. Could even write in a sub story about a rival trying to sabotage his mine.

Also there could easily be included into both ideas a chance for smugglers, to oh I don't know, ACTUALLY SMUGGLE! Smuggle shipments from one mine to a seller, or smuggle weapons in and out of enemy camps.

it seems obvious to me, that SOE has no clue where they want this game to go, and that they only care about making a quick buck, and they don't care if they destroy parts of Star Wars in the process.

I am very disapointed, as I was actually starting to enjoy the game again. But right now, this expansion to me is well for lack of a better term... BANTHA POODOO!!! I really hope they offer more than running quests for a Main Character that is in a spot, that it makes no sense for him to be in. But this to me seems like it's going to make or break SWG, I for one hope the DEV's come up with somehting and let us know what it is soon, but I will not be getting this expansion until I know that there's something i am going to like, so far, from what I've seen... We can't tell you but you're going to love it... isn't cutting it, and it's a total BS answer... SO you know what SOE, i can't tell you I am going to buy this, but you may not like it!


just my 2 cents.

/end rant

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EEMAN wrote:

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MISTagent01 wrote:
Tiggs:

I'd love to see an Astromech stats where you guys tell us what percentage of those 1 million copies of SWG sold are still ACTIVE subscriptions. You can sell a million copies of anything, but it's subscriptions that really tell a story.

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I found it!

go here http://www.mmogchart.com/

click on the link Subscribers: 100k - 700k ... thers a lot of other good charts there too.

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Very enlightening, but no surprise.

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cpz wrote:

Questions reposted for answering.

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cpz wrote:

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Tiggs wrote:

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cpz wrote:

Typical

Tiggs fliles in here, answers some fluff, posts a nice big smiley, then runs off into the wilderness

How about, Tiggs, you stand up and show us your metal.

I challenge you to come here and answer the real questions your community would like to see answered. I lay the gauntlett down. Live up to your title and prove yourself to be a real Director of Community Relations, rather than the semi-skimmed diet Fluff poster some of us believe you to be.

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I have not run off into the wilderness and I am here answering questions that were posted. I answer what I know is solid bring back information to the team from all communities.

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Okay Tiggs

Many players feel marginalised by the direction the game has taken over the last few months. These fans are largely Original Trilogy fans who tend to migrate towards the more RP professions - Smuggler, Ranger, Squal Leader- despite not necessarily being heavy RP players. These players reject the notion of the Jedi grind as the centerpiece of the game, and favour a more canon verison of the game, with the Galactic Civil War being the centerpiece, as in the OT movies. These players believe they and their professions are being neglected by the Development Team and by the Community Relations Team, with the Jedi grind and Prequel-orientated content have the main focus, as is indicated by the ROTW and TOW expansions. These players, many of them veterans, are leaving in droves.

Now show us your mettle, prove yourself worthy of the Director tag you wear:

• Have the Producers been made aware of this swell of attitude?


• If so, what are their plans for addressing the concerns?


• If not, why not?

Three simple questions to which I think we deserve honest and open answers.

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Actually, the development of the game has been a runnaway trainwreck since they implimented Jedi into the game. I said way back when they were considering it that if Jedi were put in the game, they'd have inherant balance issues, that they'd never be able to control the population, that it would ultimately ruin PvP.

The original intent of the game, the focus of the game, was always the Galactic Civil War. We have strayed FAR from that, catering to the whims of the super player class ever since.

Devs! Get a grip on the original vision for the game if you hope to save this sinking ship!

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Tiggs wrote:

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WesBelden wrote:
Personally, I think the person in charge of picking the questions needs a good hard prod up the backside from a heavily shined boot; for some reason questions that were answered kept being repeated (and it's not as if there weren't a wide variety to choose from). Ah well, here's the log:

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Before a chat starts everyone is notified of what will be dicussed. Question takes post questions to the Dev teams and we get to sort through them. I can tell you last night it was a chore due to the same questions getting spammed over and over and they had nothing to do with the expansion. We stay on topic because we have members of that particular team present to deal iwth the questions asked.

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Sounds to me like that is a symptom of a greater problem. Like the DEV team is spending more time trying to hype an expansion that wasn't asked for rather than fixing current issues in the game.

Message Edited by Orange-Lazarus on 08-26-2005 08:06 PM

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MISTagent01 wrote:
Ok, let's stop the fighting and get back on topic.

We hate HoC chats!

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HoC chats were invented by jedi Actually, I do find the HoC chat thing to be rather useless. Now that it has been confirmed that the Devs choose which questions are even presented, it is really nothing more than a marketing effort. Any question on topic should be answered in the order they are presented (except for repeats). I also find it interesting that even considering their editorial control, the Devs specifically chose the questions that they could not give specific answers to. That is pretty bad.

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Jawa-Sith-Lord wrote:

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MISTagent01 wrote:
Ok, let's stop the fighting and get back on topic.

We hate HoC chats!

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HoC chats were invented by jedi Actually, I do find the HoC chat thing to be rather useless. Now that it has been confirmed that the Devs choose which questions are even presented, it is really nothing more than a marketing effort. Any question on topic should be answered in the order they are presented (except for repeats). I also find it interesting that even considering their editorial control, the Devs specifically chose the questions that they could not give specific answers to. That is pretty bad.

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QFE!!! and agree

What really annoys me about HoC Chat:
I was in the chatchannel 2 hours before because I thought they might start aggregating Questions before the actual event. That way you don't get them all at once in such a short amount of time, but you have time to pick ones with proper spelling, questions that are interesting and that the developers can read while one of them answers another question.

The chat was full 2 hours before it started, why that time was wasted I don't know.