Smuggler Archive

I've been an active member of the smuggler forums since last August, and I just wanted to post my observations on recent events.

There have been countless recent threads from angry people about how we got crapped on by the devs over and over. I've just come back from a 3 month break from this game, and quite honestly, I don't share the same opinions as most with regards to the current status of our profession. When I left, the devs had finally put a smuggler thread in the dev section which was designed to take our ideas and filter out the good from the not so good. A lot of people bashed TH back then (with good reason), and we finally thought we were making progress. Then I left.

What I'm trying to say here is that for the last 3 months I haven't had to suffer through the misrepresentation of expectations as many of you have had to endure. I never had the misfortune of waiting for any kind of smuggler revamp because I wasn't here to listen to the false promises from the devs. Anyway, having said all that, I've come back to SWG to find a game that is definitely better than before, and I'm having tons of fun being a smuggler. Which brings me to my next point.......

I've read and participated in many a discussion about proposed changes to our profession. The recurring themes for us have been "We want to smuggle" , "We want better combat efficiency", "Spice improvements", "do something useful with the Underworld line", and "additional Slice benefits for masters".

Like most of you, I've read countless renditions and proposals for all of these issues, and have always staunchly supported how great some of these changes would be for our profession.

BUT.........

Nobody has ever been able to sell me on the possibility that our profession is actually broken. Sure, there's a lot of room for improvement, but if we're simply going to discuss improvements then its real easy to critisize and debate which improvements make the most sense. You can look at a Ferrari and find ways to improve that too. But it's still a fun car to drive.

What's bugging me is that I've always enjoyed being a smuggler, but when I come to the boards I see endless posts about how our profession stinks and that so and so is giving up, or "we should boycott", blah blah blah. Mind you, I already mentioned that I haven't had to suffer the broken promises from the dev team like so many of you have. So I understand where all of you are coming from , but I'm just trying to bring some freshness to the boards and keep it positive.

I think that the we've put enough pressure and made enough noise so that the devs have noticed us, and I also think that now we're just taking it too far. It's as simple as this. If being a smuggler is no longer fun for you, then either take a break from SWG, or change professions. Stop playing smuggler for what it COULD be, and start playing smuggler for what it actually is. (That statement will prolly generate a few quotes). One of the best things about our profession is the strength and unity of our community. We're almost like an elite club of SWG players. It's really cool, and I commend all of you for organizing protests and events which again highlite our sense of unity. We also possess some of the most unique slills in SWG. That's cool. And lastly, being a smuggler makes it soooo easy to roleplay a little bit, which in my opinion can dramatically augment the fun factor of playing this game.

So personally, as I said, from the perspective of someone who hasn't been burned by the devs, Smuggler is still fun and fullfilling. And if you intend to hold on to the possible future of our profession with hopes of some kind universal solution to our issues, then fun is not a factor for you.

Think about it, after the revamp does finally arrive, how many other issues are we gonna have to complain about to be fixed? If you always judge the profession on what it could potentially be, you're never gonna enjoy it for what it has already become.

To put it simply, we do not do what our namesake states that we do. We do not smuggle.

I have many issues with the state of our profession, but what it really boils down to is more or less outlined in the link below:

Basically, what I state there is that without consequences for carrying/using Illegal Items, we cannot Smuggle.

Ryutek

Former Teräs Käsi Correspondent, Circa 08/2004 to 02/2005

No longer holding out hope, SWG will never be the game we fought so hard for, that we believed so much in. Farewell friends.

---

[email protected]

Intelerebel, I am going to take a shot at answering this for you. You used the analogy of a Ferrari, and how that it's still a fun car to drive although you can still find ways to improve it. You also don't see how our profession is broken in the first place; let me see if I can tie this all together. If I fail, I fail, but I'll give it my best shot.

I'll use a real life analogy from my own experience. Although its not a Ferrari, I do own a high performance sports car - a 2003 Spiral Grey Corvette Coupe. I ordered it directly from the factory and picked it up at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green Kentucky in October of 2002. The ride home was the thrill of a lifetime - my first new car, and its my dream car. (I liken this to getting the box of a new game at the store and installing it, then playing it for the first time. Its huge - and you won't notice anything wrong with the game at all since its all so new and exciting and you've really got no perspective on how things are working or not working.)

It stayed in the garage most of the winter as there was a ton of snow on the ground. I was very anxious for spring to get here, and even took her out for a drive while cold weather was still around. But I didn't care, I just wanted to drive my car. It was still fun, but now I was able to get past the "new car syndrome" and actually focus on what was going on with the driving - seeing how she handled on curves, how she would accelerate or brake depending on conditions, etc... (This is akin to grinding towards getting novice smuggler, still enjoying the game, but having a focus and/or a goal. You are more aware of how the game is working as you get more experience.)

Early in the spring, I was driving home from work when the yellow "check engine" light popped on. This was unexpected - heck the car was barely 6 months old. So I took it to the dealership and had them diagnose the problem - turns out, my Mass Airflow Sensor went bad and threw a trouble code to the onboard computer, which caused the light to go on. They wouldn't be able to work on it right away, but the car was still drivable - I would just see lower gal milage and a drop in performance until the sensor was fixed. (in a sense, without that sensor, the vehicle was not complete, and was underperforming, much like smuggler was from launch. When I bought the car, I never expected that this could happen, at least so soon, much like you have no idea how incomplete a profession is until you start to play it. For the casual gamer, it could take months to get the pre-reqs out of the way to even start novice smuggler.)

Long story short - the car was in and out of the shop the entire summer, as one MAS after another would blow, putting that light back on. At one point, they thought they had it fixed - but now the light wouldn't come on, but my battery would completely drain in a matter of days. I was cursing GM, Chevrolet, the dealership, the mechanics, the managers, nearly everyone at some point because they could just NOT figure out what the heck was going on. At one point, I was actually standing in a Mazda dealership willing to trade my "pride and joy" in on a new RX-8. The only thing that kept me from doing so was that the dealership had such abysmal sales reps that no one noticed I was there. If they won't talk to me, I won't buy their product. But my summer was screwed - the car was literally in the dealership garage more than it was in my own. And the thing is, regardless of where my car is parked, I am still paying for it. (Liken this to how we've been promised fix after fix after revamp after fix, only to be met with the same issues time and time again. And to top things off, they say that we will get revamps, but the reality is we get more broken with each patch that comes out. And still we get more promises that are unfulfilled. And to play the game, and this profession that we want to play, we still fork out the monthly payment to be here. I don't want to play a weaponsmith, or an armorsmith, or a dancer, or a pikeman, or a doctor. I want to play a smuggler. Much like I don't want to drive a BMW, or a Mercedes, or a Thunderbird, or a....I want to drive my vette.)

Eventually, what they discovered was that during the manufacturing process, where they married the chassis to the body, the wire to the MAS slipped out of the wiring harness somehow and got pinched between a mounting bracket and the engine. Over time, the vibration of the cars motor wore away the insulation around that wire, and started creating a short, which would pop the sensor. Simply replacing the sensor wasn't good enough - the wire needed to be replaced and put back where it was designed to rest. The car was defective from the day I bought it. Its fixed now, and running better than ever - which means that its finally working as it was intended to work. It didn't get supercharged, or a bigger engine, or better gearing - it just was finally put to the initial design spec, which is what I paid for in the first place. The fact that it took months to deal with, andthat I completely lost a summer full of events and driving,really peeves me to this day. (And this solution is what we are all waiting for. We keep saying revamp, and overhaul, but the reality is that we want our profession to finally work as intended. We look around at the other professions, and yes, there are others that need help as well, but we do need a LOT of work. It almost seems as this class was an afterthought in the design of the game. We are NOT working as intended. We are not documented. We don't smuggle. We have so much less content than other classes, and what we do have gets diminished as we go.)

This is a broken class, and was broken since day one. Our principle purpose (smuggling) is not there. We are the ONLY class that does not do what what our title says we should be doing. Marksmen shoot weapons. Brawlers hit things. Scouts do scouting activites. Medics heal. Entertainers entertain. Image designers can change appearances. Yes, bounty hunters are an injured class, but even they can hunt bounties, both NPC and PC. I could go on ad nauseum. So to say we aren't broken is simply wrong. We are broken and have been since launch. We just don't know what is supposed to be our "working as intended" level of completion to lend us perspective on the here and now.

Hope this gave a little more insight as to why a lot of us say our class is broken.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. "

Great analogy Shrendyc. My thought on the hows and why we are in this boat are , we were the last profession to be put in back in beta correct? They probably said"oh sh!t this isnt going work right until the space expansion" and then they threw a bunch of skills into a bucket and called it smuggler, just so smuggler made it into the game.

Just Dak - Flurry