I started a month or so before the CU, so I don't have the outlook of someone that's been around longer, but in my (limited) view the downfall began with the nasty nasty habit of SOE negating accomplishments and taking things away from the player base without giving anything in return, which started in earnest with the CU. Then it just seems to have snowballed from there.
It seems to me in the limited knowledge I've learned about MMO's to negate ones accomplishments and take things away from an online character (an alter ego to some I suppose) in an MMO world without so much as a by your leave stinks of a few things. 1) No concept of the decision makers of how attached folks get to their characters and accomplishments they've made. 2) Arrogance on the part of those decision makers that eventually things will be 'ok', for example the 'vocal minority' line that Torres spewed, and arrogance in thinking all those who left will be flocking back.
In my opinion there is an implied trust on the developers of an MMO or any game really. You trust the developers to maintain the game you bought and learned to love. Mistrust is a terrible thing to attach to yourself. Once you've gained that mistrust, it takes a lot to get rid of, if at all. SOE/LA has accomplished that in a huge way. Not once, but twice. Not only did you lose things (accomplishments, character abilities etc) but the game was essentially broken once it went live both times.
Tis a shame. But as with all things we all move on and learn to live with it all, as I have (well, sometimes I still get a little maudlin). But I still can't help but wonder "What were they thinking?"
When I think about declining subscriptions from a group dynamics perspective, I keep coming up with one main thought: My experience of the game and of my relationship with SOE shifted dramatically when I began feeling that changes were being made "to" me as part of the playing community rather than in collaboration "with" me.
To be honest, like many other players, I thought the original version of the game needed bug fixes and some adjustments. However, I felt that I could dialogue with SOE folks about this in a collaborative way, and I had confidence that things were slowly but surely being polished. People can argue that the game should have been more polished before release, and that may be valid, but even with the bugs and issues of the the first version, I was enjoying myself, and had the feeling that things would get better over time.
When the CU was introduced amidst much protest, this feeling of collaboration with SOE became strained. This became further strained when I found the quality of the "upgrade" to be more buggy and less enjoyable than the system it replaced. When I learned that more collaborative development plans had been allegedly scrapped in favour of the CU, this "strained" feeling only got stronger.
Still, my professions were intact, and the overall feel of the game was similar, if not really the same. I posted about graphics problems and got a response, and the problems were corrected. I felt that maybe this would be alright afterall, but saw many friends leave the game at that point because of the drastic changes that they felt were imposed on them.
When the NGE was introduced in the way it was, my feeling that things were being done "to" me rather than "with" me regarding my game experience really peaked. I had followed the ToOW stratics chat and marketting very closely and was very excited about playing the expansion as it was designed, under the CU game mechanics. The NGE came out of the blue and seemed to contradict the picture of the game that SOE had just painted in their ToOW previews. I won't go on about losing my professions etc. because that's already been said.
What I'm trying to highlight is the dynamic that at some point, it felt that SOE cut the players out of the loop and begain to do things "to" us that we didn't welcome. In my mind, this approach played a significant role in the generation of all the hard feelings.
I'm posting this with the hope that if it's in some way accurate, SOE can learn from this error in group process, and work "with" players to build (or possibly rebuild) something together.
Doing this well would require a lot of input from someone that has an excellent understanding of people and collaborative problem solving processes. Being good at computer programming and business isn't enough.
Oh, there are way too few data-points on that chart for it to serve as any evidence of a "defining moment".
No shit, Sherlock. In addition, the data is second-hand and even Bruce doesn't consider it the most reliable. Yet you saw fit to introduce it as "proof" of why the NGE was necessary. Since you brought it up, I pointed out the obvious -- the downward trend started six to eight months before the NGE.
But really, Jeff, did we really need the chart for that? I was there when the CU was on Test and after it was released. So were you. Most of the people reading this thread were there. We all knew SWG took a massive subscription hit because of it.
Look, the NGE may have been a desperate attempt to save SWG from the Combat Upgrade -- but by all accounts the pre-CU had stabilized -- like every other MMORPG. Once again -- something happened in November of 2005. The CURB was scrapped, several Devs quit or were let go (GreenMarine being one particularly missed) and the CU hit test four months later.
A CU that was nothing like the CURB, was obviously done in great haste (it didn't take a game designer to see how many obvious shortcuts were taken, and how little design thought was placed into it. Nor did it take a genius to quickly realize that it was nothing like the CURB design).
It's not rocket science here, Jeff. SWG stabilized after peaking. That number wasn't nearly as high as SOE or LucasArts had hoped, but given how EQ2 had gone, they were probably fairly accepting of this. Then WoW happend -- and 150k to 200k subs weren't enough. Hence the CU -- a moronic move if there ever was one.
How much did the CU cost SOE, Jeff? 10% of it's subs? More? 20%? -- some might have come back over the next six months, but the times I poked around I saw a player base that was down a quarter or more from it's peak. No telling how many multi-boxers consolidated their accounts -- that must have hurt even more. Then the NGE came. And I saw that one too. You lost half of your subscriptions in six weeks.
The official SOE line -- and yours too, it seems -- is that SWG as a virtual world was a lost cause, and your WoWization followed by your bastardized FPS design was an attempt to save it. That's bullshit, as anyone who was around during that time period damn well knows.
SWG never lived up to expectations. It never had the 400k or so SOE and LA wanted. It settled around 200k. And if WoW had never been made, it probably would still be going today with around 150k users. But someone got greedy -- and if SWG has even 50k dedicated players now, I'll eat my hat.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt -- you're barred by NDA, not pride. But even the most rigorous NDA doesn't require you to conflate the CU and the pre-CU situations. The CU was enacted out of greed. The NGE out of desperation. The latter would never have happened without the former. Somehow, I doubt SOE learned the right lessons from this.
However, one day I plan to get you really drunk and see if I can get you to spill the beans on the software development processes over at SOE: Austin. I only saw the output, of course, but that had to be the most dysfunctional shop I've ever heard of. Just as an example -- the sheer number of bugs you fixed and then were reintroduced by accident later.....or god forbid, the times I got to watch a player patiently explain to a Dev that regardless of what they intended, here's how a system was working "in game".
I found the CU pretty funny. How long did it take before damage was more than a level/level comparison? Three months? Four? I don't think they ever got elemental damage working, but I laughed my ass off at how long it was before weapon damage meant a damn thing.
Well Jeff says that the Pre-CU game was heading toward basement sub numbers, and while I and others find that hard to swallow, we might just have to take is word for it. He worked there. It would seem though that given a reasonably maintainable codebase, and a decent live team, you could have avoided that by adding content to the damn game (just going with the conventional wisdom here). According to management though, this wasn't possible either, because the codebase was just too unweildy. But how the hell to you let your project get to that point in the first place? You're building and launching something you can't maintain? Unbelievable.
Originally posted by Morat20
However, one day I plan to get you really drunk and see if I can get you to spill the beans on the software development processes over at SOE: Austin. I only saw the output, of course, but that had to be the most dysfunctional shop I've ever heard of. Just as an example -- the sheer number of bugs you fixed and then were reintroduced by accident later.....or god forbid, the times I got to watch a player patiently explain to a Dev that regardless of what they intended, here's how a system was working "in game".
I would absolutely sell the FARM to hear the inside track on how that development team functioned. Sell it ALL. Something was seriously broken there, and the details just have to be fascinating.
Oh, there are way too few data-points on that chart for it to serve as any evidence of a "defining moment".
Clearly you are technically correct.
However, anyone who actually played the game during the CU to NGE period (late March to early Nov 2005) could see quite clearly that the population had declined not a little, but a lot. I played on 3 different servers, and had full player towns go completely belly-up on two of them due to lack of activity. The third one (on my main server) survived only by the Herculean efforts of a few members, who kept buying new accounts and making alts to replace canceled members, and keep the town pop high enough to support a shuttle port. I watched as vendors on all three servers winked out of existence and (unlike ever before) were not replaced by other new crafters. I watched as entertainer groups that had been so large the old 20-person maximum could not accommodate us all, faded such that the new 8-person max was more than enough even on the busiest nights.
It was argued by you people and your fanboi-apologists all throughout that period that this was because "people were out adventuring", but that was patently bunk. It presupposes (inaccurately) that nobody was out adventuring in the pre-CU period... as if pre-CU everyone sat around town, and post-CU they all went out adventuring. That's just not true. And you could see this because regardless of who was where, your friends list did not lie. And those friends lists became more and more depopulated.
The population was clearly declining in a manner very well reflected by that data-poor line on Bruce's graph. You didn't need to see actual subs numbers to know this -- you could see it in the game. Indeed one of the reasons most of us find Bruce's graph (despite its fuzzy and gap-filled data) reasonably believable is because his line on that graph perfectly matches our in-game experience. And the reason we didn't find the "CU is fine! Everyone is out adventuring" line credible is because it did NOT match our in-game experiences.
Hand-wave all you want, the reality is this: the CU broke the game, by destroying the community that had been built up over the previous 2 years. Once the community was shattered, it all fell apart, and nothing, including the NGE, was going to save it. Whoever made the call to go from CURB to CU, and then to tie CU into ROTW and push it live so early that it was bugged into unplayability, is the person most directly responsible for the decline and fall of SWG as a viable MMORPG. Now, it's just a shell, limping along until SOE (inevitably) decides to pull the plug.
I would absolutely sell the FARM to hear the inside track on how that development team functioned. Sell it ALL. Something was seriously broken there, and the details just have to be fascinating.
Originally posted by Morat20 Look, the NGE may have been a desperate attempt to save SWG from the Combat Upgrade -- but by all accounts the pre-CU had stabilized -- like every other MMORPG. Once again -- something happened in November of 2005. The CURB was scrapped, several Devs quit or were let go (GreenMarine being one particularly missed) and the CU hit test four months later.
Your case is better if you keep your dates straight. Something happened in November of 2005 alright: the NGE launched. You might mean November of 2004: that is when WOW launched and blew everyone's expectations of a "good game population" to flinders. The CURB was still on track at that point; all thru December 2004 and the first half of January 2005 we got weekly data dumps about what was coming in the CURB. (SOE erased the evidence of that long ago.) In the third week, it all went silent and it was weeks before the name "Combat Upgrade" popped up.
The proximity of this event to the presumed LEC license-renewal date in February (a widely-held belief, tho I don't know if it's true) makes me suspect the hand of LucasArts was at work. They had always thought that SWG fell short of their IP's potential, and now they had solid evidence that far greater numbers were truly possible. I suspect that LucasArts laid down an ultimatum to bring SWG into line with the mechanics common to other games (levels and classes), or the license gets revoked. The justification SOE offered for adding levels in the CU always struck me as patently bogus.
I would absolutely sell the FARM to hear the inside track on how that development team functioned. Sell it ALL. Something was seriously broken there, and the details just have to be fascinating.
I don't think I can get that drunk.
I have two bottles of some very good single-barrel whiskey and a free weekend coming up. I'll claim it was all told to me by a Senior Administration Official.
Casual: Yes, I got the dates wrong. I think that while you might have gotten CURB updates past November 2004, that was probably when the decision to scrap the CURB was made. A lot of Devs quickly left for other jobs around then -- I suspect they saw the writing on the wall. The CU took at least four months of work, so I suspect the had to start that no later than mid-January. April 2005 was when it went live and SWG lost a crap-ton of subs (from outright quitting to multi-box consolidation). Six months after that, the NGE went live and SWG lost even more subs -- I sincerly doubt they can claim even 100k active players -- 60k or so is probably more accurate. It was a bad year for SOE, and it didn't have to be. Had they simply not gotten greedy for WoW-like numbers, they'd probably still be running around at 150k to 200k subs and doing the standard slow decline of any MMORPG that isn't "World of Warcraft". Plus, the game probably would be a hell of a lot better -- the CURB seemed quite nice -- and the PR shitstorm would never have happened.
Yeah, levels were a really stupid idea. They seemed a quick way to balance mobs in a single pass, and to "fake" real combat mechanics (level based damage mitigation and mulitpliers, anyone? What BS) but the problems were immediately obvious on test -- not even the greenest of Dev teams would have pushed forward without addressing them. Unless they were forced or really rushed.
Oh, there are way too few data-points on that chart for it to serve as any evidence of a "defining moment".
But, does it accurately reflect the numbers?
Exactly --- are those moments of emotion? I mean -- when you announce HEY WE MADE THIS CU -- come and look (It's going to maybe spike for a bit)...
In the case of the NGE it fended people off. I mean really the made me leave.. a true fanboi if you will... and COUNTLESS other people they thought they could force feed the crap.
Some major issues here were the promises made and the set up:
Telling us (using Tiggs and a fan fest) OH OH The FRS is coming... we had to shut it off in the CU sorry...
Or even Ranger or Squad leader..... launching then taking it away is almost just plain fucked up.
No matter the SLOW decline vs the drop the NGE caused... The slow DECLINE WAS DUE TO THE issues your team kept promising on fixing.
So in other words.. the decline was DUE to the fact you guys over promised and under delivered.....it's not like some people wanted to leave because all the things that were promised and brought up were getting handled thats for sure.
Most that left from Bria that I know were sick of the lies and missleadings or issues not getting fixed.
I rather have had someone be honest with us instead of fucking us over.... it just seems that it would be a better concept instead of keeping us all in the dark and then BAM!!! the CU or the Curb (Which I thought was pretty cool) NOT the CU -- the real first Curb that never went live... However the NGE and they way that went down... PRODUCT aside even ... that whole thing was just one bad concept of delivery.
Then add in the product quality and you have one giant mess....
We had SOOO many things fed to us as "being worked on" and in the end we ended up with Jack in one hand and shit in the other...
It was a let down needless to say and everyone here knows it. The real question is was it handled right then after you figured out it was a wreck??? --
No I don't think it was... hence the 10k playerbase right now if they are lucky.
M
______________________________ I usually picture the Career builder commercial with the room full of monkeys and upside down sales chart when thinking about the SOE/SWG decision making process..... SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes." Ref NGE Winner of the worst MMOS goes to.... the NGE and SWG..!!! http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=1034&bhcp=1
I would absolutely sell the FARM to hear the inside track on how that development team functioned. Sell it ALL. Something was seriously broken there, and the details just have to be fascinating.
I don't think I can get that drunk.
Rofl..lol now that is funny too.
Well.... I can see it now.. (Helios) --"I have this idea... NO CAMPS, I mean really what the fuck do they do just sitting around in them anyway??" -- scrap it..!
CH --- SCRAP IT!
Complex thinking --- SCRAP IT!
Skill boxes --- SCRAP IT!!!
lol... Tim TImmerman said it best to me (while being recorded on a video phone) --- "Mike , ignorance is bliss right now in the game" --- HAHAHAHAH
Man I loved that line.... it was true, tragic and yet so fucked up at the same time. He smiled and just could not say anything else...
I simply said, yep you guys are doing so well that 3 servers did not even show up... good job!
Ahh the Fan fest days and Summit days... I won't forget that spin mini city of death... Me asking Grant at out table whos idea the UI was and why did it need changing (Grant) --- "Isk, I really don't know... I have no idea why it was changed... ".... we all just sat there with our mouths open wanting to just cuss him.
Good times those were.... though, best thing about the Dev team was showing them that we pay attention, we are not all as foolish as they thought and even better knowing that alot of us made more money or were very successful.
It's to bad this all went down like this though.... in the end we all lost I think. We really did.
______________________________ I usually picture the Career builder commercial with the room full of monkeys and upside down sales chart when thinking about the SOE/SWG decision making process..... SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes." Ref NGE Winner of the worst MMOS goes to.... the NGE and SWG..!!! http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=1034&bhcp=1
EVERYTHING that Smed posted will never happen until he actually goes to work in thr SWG office and hires additional staff to finish teh game or to complete his statements. Both are never going to happen.
Why will NO ONE from SOE ever even admit to the existence of the original CURB that was scrapped...and why it was scrapped? Strange. Whats the deal?
It was only ever "in design", I think.
If so, there'd be no point talking about it, getting a bunch of "release CURB!" posts when there's nothing to "release". Or maybe no point to that anyway.
So, I'm a lot out of the loop there - I went to JtL shortly after launch.
For JtL, we weren't even on the same floor as the live team. So I was not tuned-in to what the live team was doing or why. I didn't go to any of the live team's meetings (never went to important meetings even when I was on live, not being of any particular importance), etc. When I read the forums, I was reading the JtL beta forums.
I knew the combat system played poorly with related systems: buffs, healing, dot's, weapons, armor, etc. etc. etc. Those systems and the core combat system seemed really mis-matched to me. But I thought they could be "matched up" without a total rewrite of everything. Just as a personal opinion, I mean, not having worked near any of those myself, except to make AI fight.
I don't know why the live team was still designing a solution. I don't know why the tutorial and newbie quests we had were re-done, instead of mid-to-high content we didn't being added. Surely some things I am not even remembering were also done, but the combat solution still being designed in the time it took to make JtL really shocked me.
But I also don't know all the facts that the people who make those decisions did. Metrics and data and info and such. I'm not as quick to assume incompetence or malice as you folk here. Maybe that design started much later than I thought on account of post-launch fire-fighting. 'Dunno, as I said, 'wasn't on that floor.
Heh. I'm not really even clear on who made those decisions. Normally a creative director would be doing that sort of thing, but they made Raph an executive and moved him to San Diego shortly after launch, and there was no creative director until... hrm.
Rofl..lol now that is funny too. Well.... I can see it now.. (Helios) --"I have this idea... NO CAMPS, I mean really what the fuck do they do just sitting around in them anyway??" -- scrap it..! CH --- SCRAP IT! Complex thinking --- SCRAP IT! Skill boxes --- SCRAP IT!!!
Blaming Helios or BlixTev for any part of the NGE is, seriously, just really, really wrong.
That's what Cao meant by "The types of tumultuous changes brought about by the NGE, of which Thomas(BlixTev) and Kai (Helios) were not a part, will not happen again."
Last weekend we had our first ever Influencers Summit. It was a lot of fun, and I have to say I learned quite a bit. We deliberately brought people in that were some of our biggest criitics. We wanted to hear directly from them and understand the issues they had.
At one point I spent an hour or so talking with a group of the Star Wars Galaxies players that had come. It was a very interesting and enlightening discussion, and I wanted to thank all of them for their candor.
I wanted to make sure I close the loop on that discussion because I walked away with some new priorities.
Here are my thoughts:
1) Content is the single biggest thing people playing SWG want. - this surprised me. From our perspective we had thought revising the systems in the game (i.e. expertise revamps) was a bigger deal. While they did say this was important, I was susprised they ranked this higher than working on PVP. Content is important but not as much as fixing all the broke stuff thats been in this game since launch..Content only helps if your game isnt a pile of poo swg has become 2) This lead to a discussion about involving the community in the decision making process. They pointed out that we do a lousy job at this, and they're right. As such, you can expect a poll in the near future to help us prioritize things for the next 6-12 months.We did this allready back when the CU was on TC back when you decided to dumb the game down..No you do a lousy Job of making shit we dont want.. 3) Guild Management tools in SWG aren't up to snuff - I went ballistic when I heard you can only manage your guild through the terminal. We need to fix this.LOL thats one of the funniest things ever its so easy and its one of the few things that actually still work.. 4) Server consolidation - we need to fasttrack this - it's a very hard problem, and the team has had other priorities.Um wouldnt be needed if the Old game was in..Server consolidation means Low server population..So how does this NGE save the game again? 5) We need to explain ourselves and the thinking behind changes a lot better Um i dont want explainations to why your incompetant and would Rather play WoW instead of fixing this mess of a game..OK start explaining but i have 1 condition leave the PR BS out..and shoot straight. 6) Once we got past the "please bring back the pre-NGE servers" (no, we're never going to do that) the discussion really got down to brass tacks. Many people ask me why I don't post a lot here, and the simple answer is that it's hard to follow a thread when many of the posts end up being "bring back pre-NGE servers" and other issues we've moved past. Please don't misunderstand me on this - I get why some people want this. It's just that it isn't possible and at some point if we're going to move the game forward new ideas are at the top of the list of things we should be discussing. That's my view anyways. You say you should listen more to us??? But yet once you got past the PRECU FTW stuff got to your typical Pr blah blah..Um you just asked for our input and in the same you dont want to hear Precu precu precu..God Smed are you Deaf??? Smed Nothing will save SWG now except classic coded servers..We know and you know this..So why not be a good sport and get off your high horse and make it so..SWG cant move forward its never moved forward since april 05 only down..You cant polish a Turd and expect it not to still be a turd..You wont see your game gain any kinda player base now if the NGE stays..What i want Smed to have the nuts to answer is if the NGE is a failure(you admitted it was) why keep that turd in place? thats my view..
Smed
So...pre-cu isn't possible eh? Hmm...We need to ask ourselves why he believes pre-cu isn't possible.
Why will NO ONE from SOE ever even admit to the existence of the original CURB that was scrapped...and why it was scrapped? Strange. Whats the deal?
It was only ever "in design", I think.
If so, there'd be no point talking about it, getting a bunch of "release CURB!" posts when there's nothing to "release". Or maybe no point to that anyway.
So, I'm a lot out of the loop there - I went to JtL shortly after launch.
For JtL, we weren't even on the same floor as the live team. So I was not tuned-in to what the live team was doing or why. I didn't go to any of the live team's meetings (never went to important meetings even when I was on live, not being of any particular importance), etc. When I read the forums, I was reading the JtL beta forums.
I knew the combat system played poorly with related systems: buffs, healing, dot's, weapons, armor, etc. etc. etc. Those systems and the core combat system seemed really mis-matched to me. But I thought they could be "matched up" without a total rewrite of everything. Just as a personal opinion, I mean, not having worked near any of those myself, except to make AI fight.
I don't know why the live team was still designing a solution. I don't know why the tutorial and newbie quests we had were re-done, instead of mid-to-high content we didn't being added. Surely some things I am not even remembering were also done, but the combat solution still being designed in the time it took to make JtL really shocked me.
But I also don't know all the facts that the people who make those decisions did. Metrics and data and info and such. I'm not as quick to assume incompetence or malice as you folk here. Maybe that design started much later than I thought on account of post-launch fire-fighting. 'Dunno, as I said, 'wasn't on that floor.
Heh. I'm not really even clear on who made those decisions. Normally a creative director would be doing that sort of thing, but they made Raph an executive and moved him to San Diego shortly after launch, and there was no creative director until... hrm.
Well, that's probably not important.
Wow, thanks Jeff. Didnt expect to get any reply at all. Better to hear an "i dont know either" than nothing at all.
Didn't the "curb" hit Test center? Seems like that would be a little farther along than just "design". But, maybe not i dunno. Wasn't the 'curb' what Gordan W. was working on before he left?
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Why will NO ONE from SOE ever even admit to the existence of the original CURB that was scrapped...and why it was scrapped? Strange. Whats the deal?
It was only ever "in design", I think.
If so, there'd be no point talking about it, getting a bunch of "release CURB!" posts when there's nothing to "release". Or maybe no point to that anyway.
So, I'm a lot out of the loop there - I went to JtL shortly after launch.
For JtL, we weren't even on the same floor as the live team. So I was not tuned-in to what the live team was doing or why. I didn't go to any of the live team's meetings (never went to important meetings even when I was on live, not being of any particular importance), etc. When I read the forums, I was reading the JtL beta forums.
I knew the combat system played poorly with related systems: buffs, healing, dot's, weapons, armor, etc. etc. etc. Those systems and the core combat system seemed really mis-matched to me. But I thought they could be "matched up" without a total rewrite of everything. Just as a personal opinion, I mean, not having worked near any of those myself, except to make AI fight.
I don't know why the live team was still designing a solution. I don't know why the tutorial and newbie quests we had were re-done, instead of mid-to-high content we didn't being added. Surely some things I am not even remembering were also done, but the combat solution still being designed in the time it took to make JtL really shocked me.
But I also don't know all the facts that the people who make those decisions did. Metrics and data and info and such. I'm not as quick to assume incompetence or malice as you folk here. Maybe that design started much later than I thought on account of post-launch fire-fighting. 'Dunno, as I said, 'wasn't on that floor.
Heh. I'm not really even clear on who made those decisions. Normally a creative director would be doing that sort of thing, but they made Raph an executive and moved him to San Diego shortly after launch, and there was no creative director until... hrm.
Well, that's probably not important.
Wow, thanks Jeff. Didnt expect to get any reply at all. Better to hear an "i dont know either" than nothing at all.
Didn't the "curb" hit Test center? Seems like that would be a little farther along than just "design". But, maybe not i dunno. Wasn't the 'curb' what Gordan W. was working on before he left?
IIRC, they announced the closed alpha testing (with the selected group of player testers) was going to start within a few days and then announced the CU instead. It was supposedly in a playable state, but they wanted some player input to help them tweak it into a releasable state. They did have a downloadable test client for the alpha testers (it was a different client version than the live and test center ones) I seem to recall. I know it said by the developers (at least one or two red named claimed it was) to have been past the design point before it was scrapped.
So what do you think then is the probability of any real development on the NGE platform being done? Assuming that is indeed the real problem of running two versions side by side. I mean we have seen a development staff undergo a 3rd or 4th change in leadership. What purpose does it serve SOE to solicate feedback and ask veterans for things from the Pre-CU they'd like to see reimplimented if realistically there just isn't the will at SOE to seem to invest any more dollars into the project? Any changes they would do probably won't satisfy the disgruntled ex-swg players. It just makes it look like more poor communication.
Ah... Depends on what you mean by "real development". Thing is, when I read the forums and then look at their publish notes and plans, I see that they are listening to the players: working on the game they have now, for the players they have now. But I also see that they're savaged the entire time for "ignoring the players", because so many are asking for pre-CU and of course, not getting it.
I don't think you can get a combat revamp. (de-vamp?). I think you might be able to get some things implemented which bring back aspects of the old system which you find missing now. Maybe not a whole crafting revamp nor a loot-downgrade-pass applied to all the quest rewards, but maybe some items that are better crafted than loot drops, etc. Maybe not a conversion back from class to skill-based, but something like the addition of subclasses drawn straight from the old professions.
I agree they face a terrible challenge there, because if they can't convince you that pre-CU servers are impossible, then no matter what they do, you'll say they aren't listening to you.
I cannot see the numbers but at this point if its not profitable either way with the NGE having a lower total subscriber base how much real ingame improvements could we expect to see in the future with this product? I mean the developers seem to be between a rock and a hard place. Rolling back to them is like taking the game backwards and really has a subscriber ceiling apparently of about 200k users, which according to John Smedley just wasn't enough.
That's not exactly what he said... I'll snip some, because the whole post muddies the waters with references to codebase complexity, fun-level and such-n-such:
With the game the way it was we knew we would never be able to attract enough people to really keep SWG viable as a business. It certainly would have kept some portion of our existing playerbase for a good long time, and we would have put out new expansions and new content as well as fixing bugs.. but it wouldn't have appealed to the really large Star Wars fanbase out there.. and frankly over time the existing userbase would have churned out as happens in any game like this.
While not all that accurate, the mmochart.org are the most accurate publicly available numbers there are. Plus we just need to look at the trend here, not the accuracy of any specific point:
Those numbers were dropping. The "do nothing" option wouldn't keep SWG alive. If they'd looked at the numbers and found 200k subs holding steady, I doubt they'd have gambled that. Looking ahead, and you're risking much closer to zero.
The comparison we keep seeing here is the top unofficial number of subscribers SWG ever had, to the number estimated today. But compare how many were projected by this time to the number today, and it isn't much lower. It's a little lower, with a better retention rate, a game which can be maintained by a smaller team, with better content creation tools.
Not saying this to defend the decision or anything like that. I wish we hadn't done it. I'd rather thank everyone for playing and turn the damned thing off than create the level of hate this change did.
Or I'd at least like to change my name first.
Just pointing out: it can be profitable to run the game even though there are fewer subscribers than before, cause there would have been fewer than before no matter what. Given the right framework, it might even be profitable to run two, three, or ten versions of SWG with micro-teams and a small core uber-team of ace developers (that should be working on something more profitable) ... but I know they don't have the license to do that.
Ah but you see they werent doing nothing, they had just released a kick arse expansion, possibly the best of the 3 and also made some kick arse promises for smuggler, ranger and squad leader, but none of it had time to be implemented.
Its like hurtling a bus towards a cliff, yanking on the handbrake and not thinking you are going to stop soon enough, so you jump out and roll off the cliff anyway, yet the bus stops. If only you had waited and stuck with it.
One way may have a bad outcome, but the other is going to throw away all your previous work and definitely have a bad outcome. I think id prefer to choose to stick with the bus, because at least I have some nice padded seats to fall back on.
a) The team was not "allowed" to act together nor act effecient. This begins already with being seperated on diff. floors (communication=bad).
b) The NGE was supposed to be a solution to dropping subs.
If the NGE was supposed to stop the subscriber cancelling, but at the end even more cancelled, the NGE-plan must be declared as a failure. It becomes a fact.
Of course, its oracling - no1 knows if the CU would be in place still, if the subs situation would be better now, but as a fact - the NGE isnt the cure for sure.
So, if you are the responsible person for a game and you face dropping numbers, even more dropping after you introduced a completely new game (aka NGE), isnt it quite logical to declare it a failure and try finding another (real) cure fast?
If i read the responsible person correct (Smedley) saying "The NGE is here to stay", isnt that completely against all logic and business interest?
I remember the maingoal of the NGE was "fixing" the situation of: a) need and amount of buffs b) armor stats (way to high resists) c) disbalance of professions
When i read the official forums i see problems with: a) need and amount of buffs b) armor stats (way to high resists) c) disbalance of professions
S O R R Y ?!?!
But i thought exactly THAT was subject to fix? And now its in again? And the old problems are still/again existing ?
I dont get it, so at the end: The NGE was NOT helping the subs The disbalance of professions has not been cured The armorproblem has not been cured The buffsituation has not been cured
Uhm...any1 willing to explain why the NGE then is still alive?
When ALL of the "projected" advantages of the NGE are simply not existing and on the other hand are even doing worser to the subbscription-situation, why is this responsible person (Smedley) still clinging to it?
Is this kind of a delusion? Or is he simply not the right man? Or simply harming the title by intention? (Do not reply with "all 3"...tho it comes to mind..)
I would think it should be pretty "normal" in such situation to go back to the system you had once, which was the last "working" system and then take a new (better) approach fixing the existing problems, WITHOUT reinventing the wheel...(aka new game).
Microsoft calls this mechanism "Restore Point" - something SoE should look up...
The team was not "allowed" to act together nor act effecient. This begins already with being seperated on diff. floors (communication=bad). b)
The NGE was supposed to be a solution to dropping subs.
If the NGE was supposed to stop the subscriber cancelling, but at the end even more cancelled, the NGE-plan must be declared as a failure. It becomes a fact. Of course, its oracling - no1 knows if the CU would be in place still, if the subs situation would be better now, but as a fact - the NGE isnt the cure for sure. So, if you are the responsible person for a game and you face dropping numbers, even more dropping after you introduced a completely new game (aka NGE), isnt it quite logical to declare it a failure and try finding another (real) cure fast? If i read the responsible person correct (Smedley) saying "The NGE is here to stay", isnt that completely against all logic and business interest? I remember the maingoal of the NGE was "fixing" the situation of:
a) need and amount of buffs
b) armor stats (way to high resists)
c) disbalance of professions
When i read the official forums i see problems with:
a) need and amount of buffs
b) armor stats (way to high resists)
c) disbalance of professions
S O R R Y ?!?! But i thought exactly THAT was subject to fix?
And now its in again?
And the old problems are still/again existing ?
I dont get it, so at the end:
The NGE was NOT helping the subs
The disbalance of professions has not been cured
The armorproblem has not been cured
The buffsituation has not been cured
Uhm...any1 willing to explain why the NGE then is still alive? When ALL of the "projected" advantages of the NGE are simply not existing and on the other hand are even doing worser to the subbscription-situation, why is this responsible person (Smedley) still clinging to it? Is this kind of a delusion?
Or is he simply not the right man?
Or simply harming the title by intention?
(Do not reply with "all 3"...tho it comes to mind..)
I would think it should be pretty "normal" in such situation to go back to the system you had once, which was the last "working" system and then take a new (better) approach fixing the existing problems, WITHOUT reinventing the wheel...(aka new game). Microsoft calls this mechanism "Restore Point" - something SoE should look up...
No? /baffled
That's the most outragous thing of all. There hasnt yet been one person able to come up with anything the NGE added or improved in SWG other than the Manual Aim. Everything else is either Less, Worse, Broken, or same. Even the stuff that is same is often worse, like the UI and the auto-aim.
Anything that may have improved or been added is something that would have taken very little time (less than 15 months) to put into the CU (eg. Manual Aim, GCW quests, Starter Station)
So after this 15 months, we have manual aim as an option in SWG.Yay!
The trouble is, if SOE's licence only allows one version of the game and they have to make a decision of which version to pursue and they didnt run the CU or ToOW long enough to work out if it would work and I can imagine they took too much loss already.
Now we are stuck with bland, poorly implemented knock off. Or /cancel.
While not all that accurate, the mmochart.org are the most accurate publicly available numbers there are. Plus we just need to look at the trend here, not the accuracy of any specific point:
Those numbers were dropping. The "do nothing" option wouldn't keep SWG alive. If they'd looked at the numbers and found 200k subs holding steady, I doubt they'd have gambled that. Looking ahead, and you're risking much closer to zero.
An important thing here: When looking at this graph, you must not forget that it is based on a small set of punctual data, and does not necessarily show a general trend.
This graph does not show that "the numers were dropping before the NGE" but only the following:
The game peaked at 300k shortly after release, then dropped a bit, but stabilized at around 255k. What happened between June 05 and the NGE cannot be seen from the diagram at all. Did it drop because of the NGE or before? Only SOE knows....
But we see clearly a strong negative trend after the NGE.
While not all that accurate, the mmochart.org are the most accurate publicly available numbers there are. Plus we just need to look at the trend here, not the accuracy of any specific point:
Those numbers were dropping. The "do nothing" option wouldn't keep SWG alive. If they'd looked at the numbers and found 200k subs holding steady, I doubt they'd have gambled that. Looking ahead, and you're risking much closer to zero.
An important thing here: When looking at this graph, you must not forget that it is based on a small set of punctual data, and does not necessarily show a general trend.
This graph does not show that "the numers were dropping" but rather the following:
The game peaked at 300k shortly after release, then dropped a bit, but stabilized at around 255k. What happened between June 05 and the NGE cannot be seen from the diagram at all.
But we see clearly a strong negative trend after the NGE.
In other words, the last DOT was around july 05 then the next one it connected to was under the NGE line then the next in jul 06.
So if you had taken a measurement between Jul 05 and just before NGE, it may have actually been going up.
So all we can be sure is, that somewhere between Jul04-jan05 the subscriptions leveled out over 250k, then somewhere between jul05 and jan05 they dropped off, but we dont know if that happened before, after or during Nov05 (NGE), Looking forward to seeing the next one
The team was not "allowed" to act together nor act effecient. This begins already with being seperated on diff. floors (communication=bad). b)
The NGE was supposed to be a solution to dropping subs.
If the NGE was supposed to stop the subscriber cancelling, but at the end even more cancelled, the NGE-plan must be declared as a failure. It becomes a fact. Of course, its oracling - no1 knows if the CU would be in place still, if the subs situation would be better now, but as a fact - the NGE isnt the cure for sure. So, if you are the responsible person for a game and you face dropping numbers, even more dropping after you introduced a completely new game (aka NGE), isnt it quite logical to declare it a failure and try finding another (real) cure fast? If i read the responsible person correct (Smedley) saying "The NGE is here to stay", isnt that completely against all logic and business interest? I remember the maingoal of the NGE was "fixing" the situation of:
a) need and amount of buffs
b) armor stats (way to high resists)
c) disbalance of professions
When i read the official forums i see problems with:
a) need and amount of buffs
b) armor stats (way to high resists)
c) disbalance of professions
S O R R Y ?!?! But i thought exactly THAT was subject to fix?
And now its in again?
And the old problems are still/again existing ?
I dont get it, so at the end:
The NGE was NOT helping the subs
The disbalance of professions has not been cured
The armorproblem has not been cured
The buffsituation has not been cured To the NGE Dev's defense the imbalances where added, post NGE. Buffs got added post NGE deployment, professional imbalances came with Expertise, Armor issues came about by adding armor and the sub issue I think we all agree soe didn't intentional try and cause less subs.
Uhm...any1 willing to explain why the NGE then is still alive? When ALL of the "projected" advantages of the NGE are simply not existing and on the other hand are even doing worser to the subbscription-situation, why is this responsible person (Smedley) still clinging to it? Is this kind of a delusion?
Or is he simply not the right man?
Or simply harming the title by intention?
(Do not reply with "all 3"...tho it comes to mind..)
I would think it should be pretty "normal" in such situation to go back to the system you had once, which was the last "working" system and then take a new (better) approach fixing the existing problems, WITHOUT reinventing the wheel...(aka new game). Microsoft calls this mechanism "Restore Point" - something SoE should look up...
No? /baffled
The pre-cu wasn't viable for SOE to run long term. According to Jeff and John Smedley for a few various reasons. Apparently a roll back isn't an option because it appears we are keeping the NGE or SWG shuts down. That is the distinct impression I am hearing. I support closing it down if pre-cu isn't viable though.
Comments
It seems to me in the limited knowledge I've learned about MMO's to negate ones accomplishments and take things away from an online character (an alter ego to some I suppose) in an MMO world without so much as a by your leave stinks of a few things. 1) No concept of the decision makers of how attached folks get to their characters and accomplishments they've made. 2) Arrogance on the part of those decision makers that eventually things will be 'ok', for example the 'vocal minority' line that Torres spewed, and arrogance in thinking all those who left will be flocking back.
In my opinion there is an implied trust on the developers of an MMO or any game really. You trust the developers to maintain the game you bought and learned to love. Mistrust is a terrible thing to attach to yourself. Once you've gained that mistrust, it takes a lot to get rid of, if at all. SOE/LA has accomplished that in a huge way. Not once, but twice. Not only did you lose things (accomplishments, character abilities etc) but the game was essentially broken once it went live both times.
Tis a shame. But as with all things we all move on and learn to live with it all, as I have (well, sometimes I still get a little maudlin). But I still can't help but wonder "What were they thinking?"
Jeff Freeman
When I think about declining subscriptions from a group dynamics perspective, I keep coming up with one main thought: My experience of the game and of my relationship with SOE shifted dramatically when I began feeling that changes were being made "to" me as part of the playing community rather than in collaboration "with" me.
To be honest, like many other players, I thought the original version of the game needed bug fixes and some adjustments. However, I felt that I could dialogue with SOE folks about this in a collaborative way, and I had confidence that things were slowly but surely being polished. People can argue that the game should have been more polished before release, and that may be valid, but even with the bugs and issues of the the first version, I was enjoying myself, and had the feeling that things would get better over time.
When the CU was introduced amidst much protest, this feeling of collaboration with SOE became strained. This became further strained when I found the quality of the "upgrade" to be more buggy and less enjoyable than the system it replaced. When I learned that more collaborative development plans had been allegedly scrapped in favour of the CU, this "strained" feeling only got stronger.
Still, my professions were intact, and the overall feel of the game was similar, if not really the same. I posted about graphics problems and got a response, and the problems were corrected. I felt that maybe this would be alright afterall, but saw many friends leave the game at that point because of the drastic changes that they felt were imposed on them.
When the NGE was introduced in the way it was, my feeling that things were being done "to" me rather than "with" me regarding my game experience really peaked. I had followed the ToOW stratics chat and marketting very closely and was very excited about playing the expansion as it was designed, under the CU game mechanics. The NGE came out of the blue and seemed to contradict the picture of the game that SOE had just painted in their ToOW previews. I won't go on about losing my professions etc. because that's already been said.
What I'm trying to highlight is the dynamic that at some point, it felt that SOE cut the players out of the loop and begain to do things "to" us that we didn't welcome. In my mind, this approach played a significant role in the generation of all the hard feelings.
I'm posting this with the hope that if it's in some way accurate, SOE can learn from this error in group process, and work "with" players to build (or possibly rebuild) something together.
Doing this well would require a lot of input from someone that has an excellent understanding of people and collaborative problem solving processes. Being good at computer programming and business isn't enough.
ArcAngel
No shit, Sherlock. In addition, the data is second-hand and even Bruce doesn't consider it the most reliable. Yet you saw fit to introduce it as "proof" of why the NGE was necessary. Since you brought it up, I pointed out the obvious -- the downward trend started six to eight months before the NGE.
But really, Jeff, did we really need the chart for that? I was there when the CU was on Test and after it was released. So were you. Most of the people reading this thread were there. We all knew SWG took a massive subscription hit because of it.
Look, the NGE may have been a desperate attempt to save SWG from the Combat Upgrade -- but by all accounts the pre-CU had stabilized -- like every other MMORPG. Once again -- something happened in November of 2005. The CURB was scrapped, several Devs quit or were let go (GreenMarine being one particularly missed) and the CU hit test four months later.
A CU that was nothing like the CURB, was obviously done in great haste (it didn't take a game designer to see how many obvious shortcuts were taken, and how little design thought was placed into it. Nor did it take a genius to quickly realize that it was nothing like the CURB design).
It's not rocket science here, Jeff. SWG stabilized after peaking. That number wasn't nearly as high as SOE or LucasArts had hoped, but given how EQ2 had gone, they were probably fairly accepting of this. Then WoW happend -- and 150k to 200k subs weren't enough. Hence the CU -- a moronic move if there ever was one.
How much did the CU cost SOE, Jeff? 10% of it's subs? More? 20%? -- some might have come back over the next six months, but the times I poked around I saw a player base that was down a quarter or more from it's peak. No telling how many multi-boxers consolidated their accounts -- that must have hurt even more. Then the NGE came. And I saw that one too. You lost half of your subscriptions in six weeks.
The official SOE line -- and yours too, it seems -- is that SWG as a virtual world was a lost cause, and your WoWization followed by your bastardized FPS design was an attempt to save it. That's bullshit, as anyone who was around during that time period damn well knows.
SWG never lived up to expectations. It never had the 400k or so SOE and LA wanted. It settled around 200k. And if WoW had never been made, it probably would still be going today with around 150k users. But someone got greedy -- and if SWG has even 50k dedicated players now, I'll eat my hat.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt -- you're barred by NDA, not pride. But even the most rigorous NDA doesn't require you to conflate the CU and the pre-CU situations. The CU was enacted out of greed. The NGE out of desperation. The latter would never have happened without the former. Somehow, I doubt SOE learned the right lessons from this.
However, one day I plan to get you really drunk and see if I can get you to spill the beans on the software development processes over at SOE: Austin. I only saw the output, of course, but that had to be the most dysfunctional shop I've ever heard of. Just as an example -- the sheer number of bugs you fixed and then were reintroduced by accident later.....or god forbid, the times I got to watch a player patiently explain to a Dev that regardless of what they intended, here's how a system was working "in game".
I found the CU pretty funny. How long did it take before damage was more than a level/level comparison? Three months? Four? I don't think they ever got elemental damage working, but I laughed my ass off at how long it was before weapon damage meant a damn thing.
Well Jeff says that the Pre-CU game was heading toward basement sub numbers, and while I and others find that hard to swallow, we might just have to take is word for it. He worked there. It would seem though that given a reasonably maintainable codebase, and a decent live team, you could have avoided that by adding content to the damn game (just going with the conventional wisdom here). According to management though, this wasn't possible either, because the codebase was just too unweildy. But how the hell to you let your project get to that point in the first place? You're building and launching something you can't maintain? Unbelievable.
I would absolutely sell the FARM to hear the inside track on how that development team functioned. Sell it ALL. Something was seriously broken there, and the details just have to be fascinating.SWG Team Mtg.
However, anyone who actually played the game during the CU to NGE period (late March to early Nov 2005) could see quite clearly that the population had declined not a little, but a lot. I played on 3 different servers, and had full player towns go completely belly-up on two of them due to lack of activity. The third one (on my main server) survived only by the Herculean efforts of a few members, who kept buying new accounts and making alts to replace canceled members, and keep the town pop high enough to support a shuttle port. I watched as vendors on all three servers winked out of existence and (unlike ever before) were not replaced by other new crafters. I watched as entertainer groups that had been so large the old 20-person maximum could not accommodate us all, faded such that the new 8-person max was more than enough even on the busiest nights.
It was argued by you people and your fanboi-apologists all throughout that period that this was because "people were out adventuring", but that was patently bunk. It presupposes (inaccurately) that nobody was out adventuring in the pre-CU period... as if pre-CU everyone sat around town, and post-CU they all went out adventuring. That's just not true. And you could see this because regardless of who was where, your friends list did not lie. And those friends lists became more and more depopulated.
The population was clearly declining in a manner very well reflected by that data-poor line on Bruce's graph. You didn't need to see actual subs numbers to know this -- you could see it in the game. Indeed one of the reasons most of us find Bruce's graph (despite its fuzzy and gap-filled data) reasonably believable is because his line on that graph perfectly matches our in-game experience. And the reason we didn't find the "CU is fine! Everyone is out adventuring" line credible is because it did NOT match our in-game experiences.
Hand-wave all you want, the reality is this: the CU broke the game, by destroying the community that had been built up over the previous 2 years. Once the community was shattered, it all fell apart, and nothing, including the NGE, was going to save it. Whoever made the call to go from CURB to CU, and then to tie CU into ROTW and push it live so early that it was bugged into unplayability, is the person most directly responsible for the decline and fall of SWG as a viable MMORPG. Now, it's just a shell, limping along until SOE (inevitably) decides to pull the plug.
What a shame.
C
I don't think I can get that drunk.
Jeff Freeman
The proximity of this event to the presumed LEC license-renewal date in February (a widely-held belief, tho I don't know if it's true) makes me suspect the hand of LucasArts was at work. They had always thought that SWG fell short of their IP's potential, and now they had solid evidence that far greater numbers were truly possible. I suspect that LucasArts laid down an ultimatum to bring SWG into line with the mechanics common to other games (levels and classes), or the license gets revoked. The justification SOE offered for adding levels in the CU always struck me as patently bogus.
I don't think I can get that drunk.
I have two bottles of some very good single-barrel whiskey and a free weekend coming up. I'll claim it was all told to me by a Senior Administration Official.
Casual: Yes, I got the dates wrong. I think that while you might have gotten CURB updates past November 2004, that was probably when the decision to scrap the CURB was made. A lot of Devs quickly left for other jobs around then -- I suspect they saw the writing on the wall. The CU took at least four months of work, so I suspect the had to start that no later than mid-January. April 2005 was when it went live and SWG lost a crap-ton of subs (from outright quitting to multi-box consolidation). Six months after that, the NGE went live and SWG lost even more subs -- I sincerly doubt they can claim even 100k active players -- 60k or so is probably more accurate. It was a bad year for SOE, and it didn't have to be. Had they simply not gotten greedy for WoW-like numbers, they'd probably still be running around at 150k to 200k subs and doing the standard slow decline of any MMORPG that isn't "World of Warcraft". Plus, the game probably would be a hell of a lot better -- the CURB seemed quite nice -- and the PR shitstorm would never have happened.
Yeah, levels were a really stupid idea. They seemed a quick way to balance mobs in a single pass, and to "fake" real combat mechanics (level based damage mitigation and mulitpliers, anyone? What BS) but the problems were immediately obvious on test -- not even the greenest of Dev teams would have pushed forward without addressing them. Unless they were forced or really rushed.
Exactly --- are those moments of emotion? I mean -- when you announce HEY WE MADE THIS CU -- come and look (It's going to maybe spike for a bit)...
In the case of the NGE it fended people off. I mean really the made me leave.. a true fanboi if you will... and COUNTLESS other people they thought they could force feed the crap.
Some major issues here were the promises made and the set up:
Telling us (using Tiggs and a fan fest) OH OH The FRS is coming... we had to shut it off in the CU sorry...
Or even Ranger or Squad leader..... launching then taking it away is almost just plain fucked up.
No matter the SLOW decline vs the drop the NGE caused... The slow DECLINE WAS DUE TO THE issues your team kept promising on fixing.
So in other words.. the decline was DUE to the fact you guys over promised and under delivered.....it's not like some people wanted to leave because all the things that were promised and brought up were getting handled thats for sure.
Most that left from Bria that I know were sick of the lies and missleadings or issues not getting fixed.
I rather have had someone be honest with us instead of fucking us over.... it just seems that it would be a better concept instead of keeping us all in the dark and then BAM!!! the CU or the Curb (Which I thought was pretty cool) NOT the CU -- the real first Curb that never went live... However the NGE and they way that went down... PRODUCT aside even ... that whole thing was just one bad concept of delivery.
Then add in the product quality and you have one giant mess....
We had SOOO many things fed to us as "being worked on" and in the end we ended up with Jack in one hand and shit in the other...
It was a let down needless to say and everyone here knows it. The real question is was it handled right then after you figured out it was a wreck??? --
No I don't think it was... hence the 10k playerbase right now if they are lucky.
M
______________________________
I usually picture the Career builder commercial with the room full of monkeys and upside down sales chart when thinking about the SOE/SWG decision making process.....
SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes." Ref NGE
Winner of the worst MMOS goes to.... the NGE and SWG..!!! http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=1034&bhcp=1
I don't think I can get that drunk.
Rofl..lol now that is funny too.
Well.... I can see it now.. (Helios) --"I have this idea... NO CAMPS, I mean really what the fuck do they do just sitting around in them anyway??" -- scrap it..!
CH --- SCRAP IT!
Complex thinking --- SCRAP IT!
Skill boxes --- SCRAP IT!!!
lol... Tim TImmerman said it best to me (while being recorded on a video phone) --- "Mike , ignorance is bliss right now in the game" --- HAHAHAHAH
Man I loved that line.... it was true, tragic and yet so fucked up at the same time. He smiled and just could not say anything else...
I simply said, yep you guys are doing so well that 3 servers did not even show up... good job!
Ahh the Fan fest days and Summit days... I won't forget that spin mini city of death... Me asking Grant at out table whos idea the UI was and why did it need changing (Grant) --- "Isk, I really don't know... I have no idea why it was changed... ".... we all just sat there with our mouths open wanting to just cuss him.
Good times those were.... though, best thing about the Dev team was showing them that we pay attention, we are not all as foolish as they thought and even better knowing that alot of us made more money or were very successful.
It's to bad this all went down like this though.... in the end we all lost I think. We really did.
______________________________
I usually picture the Career builder commercial with the room full of monkeys and upside down sales chart when thinking about the SOE/SWG decision making process.....
SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes." Ref NGE
Winner of the worst MMOS goes to.... the NGE and SWG..!!! http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=1034&bhcp=1
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
If so, there'd be no point talking about it, getting a bunch of "release CURB!" posts when there's nothing to "release". Or maybe no point to that anyway.
So, I'm a lot out of the loop there - I went to JtL shortly after launch.
For JtL, we weren't even on the same floor as the live team. So I was not tuned-in to what the live team was doing or why. I didn't go to any of the live team's meetings (never went to important meetings even when I was on live, not being of any particular importance), etc. When I read the forums, I was reading the JtL beta forums.
I knew the combat system played poorly with related systems: buffs, healing, dot's, weapons, armor, etc. etc. etc. Those systems and the core combat system seemed really mis-matched to me. But I thought they could be "matched up" without a total rewrite of everything. Just as a personal opinion, I mean, not having worked near any of those myself, except to make AI fight.
I don't know why the live team was still designing a solution. I don't know why the tutorial and newbie quests we had were re-done, instead of mid-to-high content we didn't being added. Surely some things I am not even remembering were also done, but the combat solution still being designed in the time it took to make JtL really shocked me.
But I also don't know all the facts that the people who make those decisions did. Metrics and data and info and such. I'm not as quick to assume incompetence or malice as you folk here. Maybe that design started much later than I thought on account of post-launch fire-fighting. 'Dunno, as I said, 'wasn't on that floor.
Heh. I'm not really even clear on who made those decisions. Normally a creative director would be doing that sort of thing, but they made Raph an executive and moved him to San Diego shortly after launch, and there was no creative director until... hrm.
Well, that's probably not important.
Jeff Freeman
That's what Cao meant by "The types of tumultuous changes brought about by the NGE, of which Thomas(BlixTev) and Kai (Helios) were not a part, will not happen again."
Jeff Freeman
If so, there'd be no point talking about it, getting a bunch of "release CURB!" posts when there's nothing to "release". Or maybe no point to that anyway.
So, I'm a lot out of the loop there - I went to JtL shortly after launch.
For JtL, we weren't even on the same floor as the live team. So I was not tuned-in to what the live team was doing or why. I didn't go to any of the live team's meetings (never went to important meetings even when I was on live, not being of any particular importance), etc. When I read the forums, I was reading the JtL beta forums.
I knew the combat system played poorly with related systems: buffs, healing, dot's, weapons, armor, etc. etc. etc. Those systems and the core combat system seemed really mis-matched to me. But I thought they could be "matched up" without a total rewrite of everything. Just as a personal opinion, I mean, not having worked near any of those myself, except to make AI fight.
I don't know why the live team was still designing a solution. I don't know why the tutorial and newbie quests we had were re-done, instead of mid-to-high content we didn't being added. Surely some things I am not even remembering were also done, but the combat solution still being designed in the time it took to make JtL really shocked me.
But I also don't know all the facts that the people who make those decisions did. Metrics and data and info and such. I'm not as quick to assume incompetence or malice as you folk here. Maybe that design started much later than I thought on account of post-launch fire-fighting. 'Dunno, as I said, 'wasn't on that floor.
Heh. I'm not really even clear on who made those decisions. Normally a creative director would be doing that sort of thing, but they made Raph an executive and moved him to San Diego shortly after launch, and there was no creative director until... hrm.
Well, that's probably not important.
Wow, thanks Jeff. Didnt expect to get any reply at all.
Didn't the "curb" hit Test center? Seems like that would be a little farther along than just "design". But, maybe not i dunno. Wasn't the 'curb' what Gordan W. was working on before he left?
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
If so, there'd be no point talking about it, getting a bunch of "release CURB!" posts when there's nothing to "release". Or maybe no point to that anyway.
So, I'm a lot out of the loop there - I went to JtL shortly after launch.
For JtL, we weren't even on the same floor as the live team. So I was not tuned-in to what the live team was doing or why. I didn't go to any of the live team's meetings (never went to important meetings even when I was on live, not being of any particular importance), etc. When I read the forums, I was reading the JtL beta forums.
I knew the combat system played poorly with related systems: buffs, healing, dot's, weapons, armor, etc. etc. etc. Those systems and the core combat system seemed really mis-matched to me. But I thought they could be "matched up" without a total rewrite of everything. Just as a personal opinion, I mean, not having worked near any of those myself, except to make AI fight.
I don't know why the live team was still designing a solution. I don't know why the tutorial and newbie quests we had were re-done, instead of mid-to-high content we didn't being added. Surely some things I am not even remembering were also done, but the combat solution still being designed in the time it took to make JtL really shocked me.
But I also don't know all the facts that the people who make those decisions did. Metrics and data and info and such. I'm not as quick to assume incompetence or malice as you folk here. Maybe that design started much later than I thought on account of post-launch fire-fighting. 'Dunno, as I said, 'wasn't on that floor.
Heh. I'm not really even clear on who made those decisions. Normally a creative director would be doing that sort of thing, but they made Raph an executive and moved him to San Diego shortly after launch, and there was no creative director until... hrm.
Well, that's probably not important.
Wow, thanks Jeff. Didnt expect to get any reply at all.
Didn't the "curb" hit Test center? Seems like that would be a little farther along than just "design". But, maybe not i dunno. Wasn't the 'curb' what Gordan W. was working on before he left?
IIRC, they announced the closed alpha testing (with the selected group of player testers) was going to start within a few days and then announced the CU instead. It was supposedly in a playable state, but they wanted some player input to help them tweak it into a releasable state. They did have a downloadable test client for the alpha testers (it was a different client version than the live and test center ones) I seem to recall. I know it said by the developers (at least one or two red named claimed it was) to have been past the design point before it was scrapped.
Ah... Depends on what you mean by "real development". Thing is, when I read the forums and then look at their publish notes and plans, I see that they are listening to the players: working on the game they have now, for the players they have now. But I also see that they're savaged the entire time for "ignoring the players", because so many are asking for pre-CU and of course, not getting it.
I don't think you can get a combat revamp. (de-vamp?). I think you might be able to get some things implemented which bring back aspects of the old system which you find missing now. Maybe not a whole crafting revamp nor a loot-downgrade-pass applied to all the quest rewards, but maybe some items that are better crafted than loot drops, etc. Maybe not a conversion back from class to skill-based, but something like the addition of subclasses drawn straight from the old professions.
I agree they face a terrible challenge there, because if they can't convince you that pre-CU servers are impossible, then no matter what they do, you'll say they aren't listening to you.
While not all that accurate, the mmochart.org are the most accurate publicly available numbers there are. Plus we just need to look at the trend here, not the accuracy of any specific point:
Those numbers were dropping. The "do nothing" option wouldn't keep SWG alive. If they'd looked at the numbers and found 200k subs holding steady, I doubt they'd have gambled that. Looking ahead, and you're risking much closer to zero.
The comparison we keep seeing here is the top unofficial number of subscribers SWG ever had, to the number estimated today. But compare how many were projected by this time to the number today, and it isn't much lower. It's a little lower, with a better retention rate, a game which can be maintained by a smaller team, with better content creation tools.
Not saying this to defend the decision or anything like that. I wish we hadn't done it. I'd rather thank everyone for playing and turn the damned thing off than create the level of hate this change did.
Or I'd at least like to change my name first.
Just pointing out: it can be profitable to run the game even though there are fewer subscribers than before, cause there would have been fewer than before no matter what. Given the right framework, it might even be profitable to run two, three, or ten versions of SWG with micro-teams and a small core uber-team of ace developers (that should be working on something more profitable) ... but I know they don't have the license to do that.
Ah but you see they werent doing nothing, they had just released a kick arse expansion, possibly the best of the 3 and also made some kick arse promises for smuggler, ranger and squad leader, but none of it had time to be implemented.
Its like hurtling a bus towards a cliff, yanking on the handbrake and not thinking you are going to stop soon enough, so you jump out and roll off the cliff anyway, yet the bus stops. If only you had waited and stuck with it.
One way may have a bad outcome, but the other is going to throw away all your previous work and definitely have a bad outcome. I think id prefer to choose to stick with the bus, because at least I have some nice padded seats to fall back on.
Ok so:
a)
The team was not "allowed" to act together nor act effecient. This begins already with being seperated on diff. floors (communication=bad).
b)
The NGE was supposed to be a solution to dropping subs.
If the NGE was supposed to stop the subscriber cancelling, but at the end even more cancelled, the NGE-plan must be declared as a failure. It becomes a fact.
Of course, its oracling - no1 knows if the CU would be in place still, if the subs situation would be better now, but as a fact - the NGE isnt the cure for sure.
So, if you are the responsible person for a game and you face dropping numbers, even more dropping after you introduced a completely new game (aka NGE), isnt it quite logical to declare it a failure and try finding another (real) cure fast?
If i read the responsible person correct (Smedley) saying "The NGE is here to stay", isnt that completely against all logic and business interest?
I remember the maingoal of the NGE was "fixing" the situation of:
a) need and amount of buffs
b) armor stats (way to high resists)
c) disbalance of professions
When i read the official forums i see problems with:
a) need and amount of buffs
b) armor stats (way to high resists)
c) disbalance of professions
S O R R Y ?!?!
But i thought exactly THAT was subject to fix?
And now its in again?
And the old problems are still/again existing ?
I dont get it, so at the end:
The NGE was NOT helping the subs
The disbalance of professions has not been cured
The armorproblem has not been cured
The buffsituation has not been cured
Uhm...any1 willing to explain why the NGE then is still alive?
When ALL of the "projected" advantages of the NGE are simply not existing and on the other hand are even doing worser to the subbscription-situation, why is this responsible person (Smedley) still clinging to it?
Is this kind of a delusion?
Or is he simply not the right man?
Or simply harming the title by intention?
(Do not reply with "all 3"...tho it comes to mind..)
I would think it should be pretty "normal" in such situation to go back to the system you had once, which was the last "working" system and then take a new (better) approach fixing the existing problems, WITHOUT reinventing the wheel...(aka new game).
Microsoft calls this mechanism "Restore Point" - something SoE should look up...
No? /baffled
Claude
That's the most outragous thing of all. There hasnt yet been one person able to come up with anything the NGE added or improved in SWG other than the Manual Aim. Everything else is either Less, Worse, Broken, or same. Even the stuff that is same is often worse, like the UI and the auto-aim.
Anything that may have improved or been added is something that would have taken very little time (less than 15 months) to put into the CU (eg. Manual Aim, GCW quests, Starter Station)
So after this 15 months, we have manual aim as an option in SWG.Yay!
The trouble is, if SOE's licence only allows one version of the game and they have to make a decision of which version to pursue and they didnt run the CU or ToOW long enough to work out if it would work and I can imagine they took too much loss already.
Now we are stuck with bland, poorly implemented knock off. Or /cancel.
This graph does not show that "the numers were dropping before the NGE" but only the following:
The game peaked at 300k shortly after release, then dropped a bit, but stabilized at around 255k. What happened between June 05 and the NGE cannot be seen from the diagram at all. Did it drop because of the NGE or before? Only SOE knows....
But we see clearly a strong negative trend after the NGE.
This graph does not show that "the numers were dropping" but rather the following:
The game peaked at 300k shortly after release, then dropped a bit, but stabilized at around 255k. What happened between June 05 and the NGE cannot be seen from the diagram at all.
But we see clearly a strong negative trend after the NGE.
In other words, the last DOT was around july 05 then the next one it connected to was under the NGE line then the next in jul 06.
So if you had taken a measurement between Jul 05 and just before NGE, it may have actually been going up.
So all we can be sure is, that somewhere between Jul04-jan05 the subscriptions leveled out over 250k, then somewhere between jul05 and jan05 they dropped off, but we dont know if that happened before, after or during Nov05 (NGE), Looking forward to seeing the next one