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So I tried the veteran trial. Dazed and Confussed.
haunsolow
Member Posts: 1
Hi gents. I'm Rob, and I'm a former SWG player. I began playing on the 2nd day of launch and played steadily until I canceled some time in mid 05. I was a commando as well as a rifleman/doc on Chilastra. I stopped playing for numerous small reasons but I don't want to rant about history. During my hiatus I did hear about the NGE and how the game practically imploded. Lately I caught word that SWG was free till some time this summer so I decided to give this trial a shot because hey, its free so it couldn't hurt; in turn it felt like i was shot right back, in the face, point blank. I was so wrong. It did hurt. I experienced changes I couldn't have imagined.
(I'm certain there are a lot of people who share my view on swg suckage so skip my criticism and head to the red *** below for a question I have that is itching for answers)
At first glance there are some obvious changes from the classic version of the game and I can't figure out any of them. Please fill me in if there is a rhyme or reason for anything below:
A totally new UI: What? The old one was amazing, not only from an artistic point of view but from a functional point of view. A step backwards really... Why the change? Was the old UI holding swg back from some greater glory?
Camera and movement wha??: Ever play an action platformer that has no "platforms"? Doubt it, but somehow I got the feeling they tried turning galaxies into an action fps platform with character movement what would make a crack head envious 
. The classic standard 'select and lock on' targeting with a smooth sense of movement gave it a good pace for any one regardless of profession. Why the change? Was the old free moving camera and running speed holding swg back from some greater glory?
Yet another new combat system: Granted I was expecting the new combat system while i was installing the game, but I wasn't sure the details on it. From what I saw in my quick trial its basically this; everyone has an 'energy' bar like rogues from wow, and you have to point and click to shoot like a poor mans fps. Excuse me? They put in a first person esque combat system in an mmo that now has characters who can juke left and right across your screen like a guy from quake arena but in fast motion? I'm dazed and confused. I am a very open guy but I can't think of a reason for this style of combat to be put into an MMO that is already old.
Ready for this? A lot of the changes I've seen in NGE seem to shamefully copy what world of warcraft has, but with a SoE twist to it. But then suddenly SWG is a shooter style where I hold down the mouse to attack? They just did a 180 on the "lets copy wow" direction with something that is at the core of the game.
***
Well now that I blew off some steam... I have a question.
What the hell was the point of the NGE? Even taking it a step further, what was the point of any of the overhauls this game has seen?
At the core of my curiosity is this observation: There is nothing to progresses in galaxies. The story doesn't continue. Only a few new toys are thrown in along with an ugly painting every now and then and its called content. During the entirety of SWG's existence, there was always the sense of overwhelming potential but at the same time, there was never a sense of direction. The game stood still at "lets play dress up with guns and shoot people until you're bored". If the goal of the game was star wars immersion, then they lost me early on during the time where a TKA could solo a krayt 
.
There is nothing to do. Sorry to say, but there isn't. I spoke to one imperial during my quick tour and the best he could give mne was "galaxies is really great now! there are tons of quests and collections now!" Woah... so that's what the game has to offer? Doing missions that probably don't change anything and collecting stupid furniture that no one is going to look at. Not my cup of tea.
Okay so lets look at PVP. Oh wait I can't because for some reason I have to go grind to level 90 to experience that because some genius thought a sandbox should have character levels when the world wasn't built with that in mind. But regardless, does pvp have any meaningful effects and rewards? Like can imperials conquer zones and give static city benefits to other imperials or anything that can benefit a faction as a whole?
To sum up my aimless post about how dazed and confused I am about what the hell I just played and how it could have possibly turned out this way is this.....
They spent so much time revamping the game to accomplish absolutely nothing. What was so hard about making abilities a,b, and c do slightly less damage, and x,y, and z do slightly more damage? Couldn't they have just adjusted abilities instead of trying to start over? Surely if they had just done that, they could have had countless hours open to them to add content like a progressing story line that changed depending on the activies of the players etc.
P.S. who the @#% is this meat lump king ? 
-
Comments
True dat.
I have a hard time deciding what the bigger blunder was in computer entertainment: E.T. for the Atari 2600 in 1984, or the NGE nearly 20 years later.
The game just flat out doesn't work, and it plays like a jury-rigged haphazard design because it is a jury-rigged hapahazard design. It boggles the mind to think that they took a more or less stable, engaging game and turned it into junk just to make some sort of statement.
Unfortunately the only statement they made is how little you can depend on this online entertainment industry to give you the things you like.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
"Well now that I blew off some steam... I have a question."
I am thinking you didn't stop blowing off steam by that point in the post. :P
Otherwise, I am playing the vet trial now and have to echo a certain level of disappointment. I left when the CU hit originally and checked in once since then. Heard there was a vet trial again so figured "why not".
It's interesting, as there seem to be a decent number of vets using their trials (at least on Chilastra). It is sort of neat to see "Elder <profession>" titles over a bunch of heads. Otherwise, I haven't really been impressed by anything.
I was interested in "collections", but after talking to a couple collector NPCs, these seem like a fancy name for a quest/mission. I suppose it is content in the loosest sense of the word.
Oh well, I have 26 days left on my trial. I am pretty sure that will satisfy my curiosity for another long period of time....
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
The point was to replace the 200K or so players the game had, with the millions of players WoW had. Yes, there are a handful of folks who honestly believed that the CU and/or NGE were so great that they would attract enough new subscribers to not only replace every subscriber the game already had, but enough to also compete with WoW. Unfortunately, those folks were in charge of LucasArts and SOE, so they actually went through with implementing the CU and NGE. The level of stupidity that displays makes me wonder how those people are able to function in normal society, let alone how they were put into positions of authority at multi-million dollar companies.
Hell, the former lead designer of SWG, the guy who came up with the NGE combat system, recently posted on his blog that the only reason the NGE failed was because the folks in marketing dropped the ball. He still thinks the NGE game is great and that we are morons who need to "eat a dick" and go fuck ourselves for not being able to understand how great it is.
Ive long suspected the UI changes and quasi-fps combat was done to make porting the game to PS3 easier. Once the players all quit that plan died.
The chat functions alone was majorly stripped down and simplified. There can be no other reason for this than porting to console.
Smedley swears up and down there were never any plans to port SWG to console.
Of course, Smedley has no credibility at all, so this exclamation is worth bupkis.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Smedley swears up and down there were never any plans to port SWG to console.
Of course, Smedley has no credibility at all, so this exclamation is worth bupkis.
For some reson I see him as the type of person that would dump toxic waste into your local lake but then say, "it is ok since it has a minty aftertaste".
I never could get over the over the shoulder camra for me.
Smedley swears up and down there were never any plans to port SWG to console.
Of course, Smedley has no credibility at all, so this exclamation is worth bupkis.
If Smeds swore the sun would rise in the east I wouldnt beleive it.
Smedley swears up and down there were never any plans to port SWG to console.
Of course, Smedley has no credibility at all, so this exclamation is worth bupkis.
we know for a fact that Smedley is lying (what a surprise). Many gaming sites had a tip / guide book about SWG - Console version for sale. SOE even admitted during beta that plans were in the works to port SWG to PS2.
Clearly many of the changes with the NGE benefit a port to console. However the loss of 80% of the player base, getting no new players from wow, and the dismal launch of PS3 killed off any console plans.
You can change that and you can also change it from FPS shooter style to Target lock style combat and back again.
I'm not a huge fan of the NGE. I'm a pre-cu Vet. But I am enjoying myself in game currently. After a 2 year break I've come to terms with everythng SOE done, everything the players brought on themsevles, everything LA did and the fact alot of things I once had are gone.
The way I've come to terms with it is to remember what I complained about back in pre-cu. I was one of those people that thought.
Its not Star Warsy because....
a) Factional Armour was pants and worthless to wear in combat
b) Melee was king......where were all the blasters?
c) Combat medics?...... Mind fire dot lances.......WTF is Star Warsy about that.
d) Lack of GCW
I never read the books. I saw the films. I guess most people that played SWG back then had only seen the films. Even though TK, Vibro blades etc exisited in the Star Wars Universe if you'd only seen the movies you wouldnt of known this. Sooo no wonder people thought it wasnt Star Warsy. However there were many elements pre-cu that were just... not Star Warsy or dare i say it.......Iconic.
Pre-cu there were only so many things one could do
1) Max a template
2) Grind Jedi
3) Craft
4) Hunt
5) Blow Player bases / PVP
6) Fly in Space / PVP
7) decorate your house / City / shop
8) Badge collect
OF course it was sandboox. Obviously there were many things to do but they all really boiled down to the above. What made pre-cu so special was the fact everyone needed each other for the SWG world to go round.
Heres what you can do in the NGE.
1) Max a profession
3) Craft
4) Hunt
5) Blow up player bases and PVP
6) Fly in space
7) decorate houses, cities shops etc
8) Run heroics
9) Badge collect
10) Collections
Slighty more things to do. But what the NGE lacks for me peronsally is a meaning to see people. The community. I'll will admit that now in the NGE, just like in Pre-CU, i wil get a dancer buff and a medic buff before I go PVP, kill Krayts or Night sisters. They are not really as neccesary as back then but.... They do help. And from my experiance they make me live that little bit longer :P. The only problem is trying to find someone to buff me lol. There arnt as many people on Eclipse as there used to be :P
If I forgot things you could do in my lists above, I'm sorry. I'm tired.
Infact I dont know where I'm going with this post. Its a different topic all together
It all boiles down to the community. If all the old people were playing now. The game would just as fun for me
I could buy that. The smoking gun was the Amazon.com page that existed (albeit briefly) for SWG on PS3.
So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys...I was terrified. But I pressed on, and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment ... I was a marine biologist.
Smedley swears up and down there were never any plans to port SWG to console.
Of course, Smedley has no credibility at all, so this exclamation is worth bupkis.
Smedley's completely full of shit on that one.
So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys...I was terrified. But I pressed on, and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment ... I was a marine biologist.
Smedley swears up and down there were never any plans to port SWG to console.
Of course, Smedley has no credibility at all, so this exclamation is worth bupkis.
Smedley's completely full of shit on that one.
Of course they were going to port it to PS3.
If you read some statements made by Hayden Blackman of LEC... They started their plans for multi platform the same year as the NGE.
Amazon didn't just mysteriously have a listing for a SWG guide for PS3 because they thought it was a good idea. They were sent information and prematurely listed it.
blah blah
epic fail and complete BS on the denial.
its not only SWG. SOE has ruined its own reputation and towards Sony its self. I have personally not bought one sony product since the swg. i Delibrately avoid anything that is assosiated with sony, and i am not the only one.
I accualy know some Cheif System Administrator, who also refuse to buy sony stuff for the company he works for.
Some people might think this is extreme, buy sony showed total disloyalty towards their custometers, and they also directly LIED to us. (Well SOE has but Sony Online Entertainment is a consortium of Sony). Why should i advise to buy, or buy something from a company that had lied to me in the past? and which i have NO trust in???
Smedley swears up and down there were never any plans to port SWG to console.
Of course, Smedley has no credibility at all, so this exclamation is worth bupkis.
Smedley's completely full of shit on that one.
/two thumbs up
Reminds me of the "oh no, there's no such thing as a starter kit listing only 9 professions" line we were fed before the NGE came along. A couple months later, whaddaya know.
i still can't believe smed is still employed. if you treated your customers like this in any other market you would be done.
well, if you want to be completly honest, you can recover the old UI and the camera system . This last one is easy, remove chase camera method (numpad 0) and you get the free camera like in the old days. As for the UI. there is a user made pack you can download .
Once i got insight about those 2 things, and used them, the NGE 2.00 - notice the 2.00, since the NGE 1:00 completely sucked- is playable.
Having said that, let me move to the second point, combat.... combat sucked pre-cu. Yes it did, stop gloryfying it, I had a pvp ratting of 2300 (what was pretty high), and i just queued perfect macros with the attack of choice, what basicly just allowed me to move without worries about attacking.. The second reason that made me succesful was DECAY. I had a lot of cash so could buy a new set of armor and socket it if needed every day, and ofc also buy Krayt weaponry,,, so I was a fully TOP geared character fighting people that were in shorts and similars to avoid decay and preserve their gear... it was like shooting ducks...
The thing i miss about pre-cu is the professions. That was the big mortal strike laid by nge.
I also agree with many that stuff like TKA's , swordmans, fencers , combat medics and pikeman's were as star warsy as ninjas in western movies....
where is this user pack UI to download? Also do you know where I can dowload an animations pack.
They did bring back the animations but alas with the speed of the games combat they hardly fire. You press ur attack keys and no animation. You just see the targets health drop. Its quite funny when the target dies and then 4 seconds later your lightening animation fires... LOL
in relation to animations, i think there is an option to make give animation priority. as for the mod pack, as far as i know they are forbidden by soe, but i'll send you a mail in game since we play on the same server.
cheers mate.
I did try messing with the animation priority option but it didnt seem to help me. Maybe I'm just a laggy mofo
You can change that and you can also change it from FPS shooter style to Target lock style combat and back again.
I'm not a huge fan of the NGE. I'm a pre-cu Vet. But I am enjoying myself in game currently. After a 2 year break I've come to terms with everythng SOE done, everything the players brought on themsevles, everything LA did and the fact alot of things I once had are gone.
The way I've come to terms with it is to remember what I complained about back in pre-cu. I was one of those people that thought.
Its not Star Warsy because....
a) Factional Armour was pants and worthless to wear in combat
b) Melee was king......where were all the blasters?
c) Combat medics?...... Mind fire dot lances.......WTF is Star Warsy about that.
d) Lack of GCW
I never read the books. I saw the films. I guess most people that played SWG back then had only seen the films. Even though TK, Vibro blades etc exisited in the Star Wars Universe if you'd only seen the movies you wouldnt of known this. Sooo no wonder people thought it wasnt Star Warsy. However there were many elements pre-cu that were just... not Star Warsy or dare i say it.......Iconic.
Pre-cu there were only so many things one could do
1) Max a template
2) Grind Jedi
3) Craft
4) Hunt
5) Blow Player bases / PVP
6) Fly in Space / PVP
7) decorate your house / City / shop
8) Badge collect
OF course it was sandboox. Obviously there were many things to do but they all really boiled down to the above. What made pre-cu so special was the fact everyone needed each other for the SWG world to go round.
Heres what you can do in the NGE.
1) Max a profession
3) Craft
4) Hunt
5) Blow up player bases and PVP
6) Fly in space
7) decorate houses, cities shops etc
8) Run heroics
9) Badge collect
10) Collections
Slighty more things to do. But what the NGE lacks for me peronsally is a meaning to see people. The community. I'll will admit that now in the NGE, just like in Pre-CU, i wil get a dancer buff and a medic buff before I go PVP, kill Krayts or Night sisters. They are not really as neccesary as back then but.... They do help. And from my experiance they make me live that little bit longer :P. The only problem is trying to find someone to buff me lol. There arnt as many people on Eclipse as there used to be :P
If I forgot things you could do in my lists above, I'm sorry. I'm tired.
Infact I dont know where I'm going with this post. Its a different topic all together
It all boiles down to the community. If all the old people were playing now. The game would just as fun for me
I"m sorry...how can u say there is MORE in NGE than pre-cu? Can you have a fully functioning trade system with fellow towns because you depend on each other for weapons and armor? Does the city still have to actively try and recuruit because you need enough ppl to have a shuttle port? Can a crafter make ANYTHING better than a looted drop? Is there any point at all to going to a dancer or musician after having a long combat session ? Is there any point to ppl making up their city to attract commerse? Does a rebel city have any base to protect? or an imperial base to attack? Do ppl put down harvesters to get the best steel quality so they can make a better robot?
In pre cu, BH's hunted jedi...and from what I saw, the BH's one most of the time...unless there was a RARE well templated jedi who could defend himself (At that time seeing a jedi was mysterious and something to gawk at....When the village came out...they started coming out of the woodword and became completely common and unspectacular) ... I never wanted to be a jedi (tho when the village came out i said "wth, why not"
Did they fix collision?
Community started to die with modal chat.
Faxx
If you read my post carefully you'll of noticed I did mention the need for each other pre-cu. I just said that everything in my opinion boiled down to a few things. Which i mentioned. Which version would I chose? Pre-cu of course with some features the CU and NGE have brought us. Will that ever happen. Nope.
I got an invite just now as well, My response was to propmptly print said invitation unto a roll of toilet paper so that I may make better use of it.
SWGNGE might as well be a single player game.
Don't really need anyone for anything. Everyone gets 2 toons a server, one combatant, one crafter to sell loot and make the very few things a person even needs. Play jedi? No need for conventional weapons or armor, at all, and you can loot everything else or get them as quest rewards.
Pathetic.
perfect!
IMHO>>>>SWG should have been shut down after the first 6 months. The dev/marketing/legal teams just never really saw the loss and have since been wasting resources that coupld be put towards other games. Truely by now... they could have a new Star Wars MMORPG up and running. This is a classic case of more money than brains. <<<<IMHO.
FINBAR
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