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Why I hope SOE games never ever will see the light of the day again! ><
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
Ya know... I have played SWG since the first year. And even when the NGE came, I belonged to those who defended SOE, saying, it wasnt all bad, and it could be a better beginning. In so many painful discussions did I defend SOE's handling of SWG, saying there was "still good in them".
Now after returning and looking how it is, after some absence, I am shocked, angered and disappointed. And I regret ever hanving defended SOE for so long.
This is not against players who still enjoy it. Each to his. But the reality is... brutal. SOE, you did not evolve a single sphere into any meaningful way, after DAMN five years! Why? Why is it so difficult to make a halfway decend, working game experience after FIVE YEARS?
Quests are still practically non existend. Sure, you have the old ones that always existet, but even a handfull of illiterates would have come up with SOME ideas. I mean, ok maybe they are there hidden somewhere. But running all over planets seeking "some fun stuff to do" and finding none. Hello? What DID you do in the time. Sure, there is a ton of small changes and stuff, but instead of adding fluff like new colour palettes, maybe you make something where people can just go and do quests, no?
And it is not possible to ask, since after all those years SOE is STILL UNABLE create a frigging planetary channel! How the heck is anyone supposed to find a group in a mute world? After looking into FreeRealms, which also has no chat channels, I am starting to suppose that deleting global channals is the new SOE concept for gaming experience. Whatever the reason is, it is ENTIRELY and TOTALLY stupid. Sorry, but how else can communities form? How can noobs find guidance? It is one of the most vital parts of a working MMO, and you just took that out and never ever added it again. Galactic Silenece.
Or Entertainers. We used to have so much use with the good buffs and the combat fatigue. I found that such a wonderful feature in SWG, and sure Entertainers have buffs again, but its not really worth the hassle anymore.
Or the LAG. Sheesh this is a FIVE YEAR OLD game and even in medium settings I STILL get lag like this was released 2 months ago!
There is such a myriad of things not working and not right and just not there, I spare you the rant, save one thing which really was the bottom line for me.
Mind ya, I am no PVP expert, but I thought having played a Firemage in WAR I knew the pinnacles of being squishy. Nothing prepared me for Jedi in SWG 2009 however!
When you are Jedi, a NORMAL post NGE Jedi, not an over stuffed Elder Jedi with a gazillions of buffs, mind ya, then you are as pointless in SWG PVP as a granny with a handbag. And I tell ya, walking in the PVP zone of Restuss was... disheartning. Invisible Assasins (with limitless Invis!) could 1-hit kill me. I looked at them - usually with my face in the dirt - and OH MY GOSH they had a dozen buff icons, whereas even with all buffs I knew I had 3 or 4! Neverthless, it is quite.... odd. As Jedi you expect, somewhat from the movies, to be.... well STRONG. At least somewhat. Here, one or two hits from one of those spies and you are dead. Usually I dont even SEE them, I just fall and suddenly a list of possible respawn points pops up.
Really, if you think Fire Mage in Warhammer is squishy, try out Jedi in SWG. Its NOTHING compared to SWG. Now usually, you'd think a squishy char then makes great DMG to balance it. Oh no. Not so in SWG. You are a squishy Jedi with just a Robe and all melee in a world of running ememies, but when I get toe to toe with a player, I realize I am usually making even LESS damage than a well equipped ranged fighter! What a farce!
Later, joining a group, it is equally pointless. (IF you get a group. Usually in Restuss people DONT invite you. Or rez you.) People, naturally, all run like mad, and the only thing you can do is hide behind the ranged fighters, then run in, make a AoE attack and hope you hit someone, then run back into hiding. It is not only hilarious, it is humiliating how pointless Jedi is in SWG these days. You practically hold out your lightsaber and hope someone runs into it. I mean, ok, comparing the movies isnt fair, because a MMO needs balance. But looking how it got I really shook my head.
I recall well Jedi used to be on top of the food chain, and people of course whined and bitched, and it seems they got their wishes. Most classes now can shred a Jedi a seconds, unless he is hiding behind many many strong ranged fighters.
Good Job, SOE. ><
I was stupid enough to defend SOE so often, and to my shame I must say, I was blind. Seeing from a distance and with more experience with MMOs now, I can say... folks, you got treated MILD and MERCIFUL, compared to the mess that your games are.
Yes it is trolling, but I am not sorry the least. After years and years of talking and waiting and looking how you develop things, this is the BOTTOM line for me. And thinking how many had so much hopes. SWG could easily have become the best MMO out there. And what did you do? THIS! I cant believe it. I so cant believe it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
Soe creates the best games out there. Then they're like Lenny from mice and men... They pet them, and love them til they kill them. All the money they have too..if their fans loved soe as much as they loved their games, they'd have fans like Turbine's or CCP's only times 1000. They would win every vote based award out there, and IP holders would be begging them to make MMO's out their IP's.
Now all their great ideas just make other games better. Why play an SOE game when other dev's will listen and even implement things their fans suggest. If you like something from and SOE game just bring it up in the game your playing and if its good enough the devs will put it in. No need to risk playing an SOE game. Free realms, the Agency, and DCU are all completely dismissed by all my friends. They don't even bother watching a trailer or looking at screenshots. Just becasue its SOE. Not saying that means anything, but im not gonna play a game with out any of my friends. And it's beyond any doubt SOE will go for any quick buck they can get.
SOE should have went the quality, high priced MMO business, instead of the cheap quanity deal they offer. I understand they have to survive somehow. But with their resources and the Sony brand they should have been making cadillacs, not different color lawn mowers. But Soe never understood their own customers, they could have milked the same amount of money out of them as they do with their gimmicks, and still had 300k+ subs, plus a great reputation for making the highest quality MMO out there. Hell even if they only had their reputation, their new micro-tranny games might be successful. Now if you play them you mine as well tattoo the word sucker on your forehead.
Sorry just rambling. I used to love SOE. To see what the king has become is disappointing. They gave my friends and I so much enjoyment in the past, more than any other dev house, and thats more than likely never gonna happen again. Its sad from a gamers point of view. All my favorite developers came from SOE too...even Rubenfield . They were so good, look waht SOE did to them. Meh.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
yes we all kno soe is horrible ... swg is still horrible.. this is like beating a dead horse OVER AND OVER AGAIN everyone knows they never really updated swg besides ruining it with the NGE =/
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
Well, unfortunately for the poor bitter OP who can't LET GO, SOE is doing alright now, Free Realms is very well made and likely going to make them lots of money.
The Agency and DC Universe are also receiving stellar support from the media and looking to be excellent titles.
Whilst SOE may not have been able to repair SWG after the damage was done, they have been able to develop three quality titles since then.
Thats just it..SOE always makes the best games in the world...then they fuck em up. What the OP is describing, and I hardly think you can lump the OP into the same group as me for instance, so you cant really just dismiss what he's saying cause he's one of the bitter mentally ill vets, is pretty much how I see SOE future games going. What he said could be said for all SOE games in their past...it's somehow illogical to assume that all their future games would go the same route? It's almost to the point where no one even cares if DCU or the Agency are the best games ever released, with SOE history, you can make a pretty acuurate prediction on these games future. They start off better than average...then 6 months in begin to die. And everything SOE does to try and fix them will only accelerate their decline.
Thats not a valid opinion? I am biased obviously, so If my bias is interferring with my reasoning, please explain to me why that opnion is wrong?
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
You enter the argument armed with evidence that is entirely opinion based. No one knows for sure if Free Realms is going to make them lots of money. It's just launched and has yet to prove anything with substantial numbers.
The Agency and DC Universe have only recieved lip service from advertising supplimented websites. They have not, in fact, launched nor even been put to the test by an unaffiliated opinion. Even more to that argument, the style of play in DC is quite different from standard mmo fare and has put off various sets of players who debate whether it is a true mmo.
And as for quality, we've yet to see the whole iceberg let alone how they steer the ships after the fact.
Just thought I would clarify seeing as you've put in your two cents on the op's opinion.
Elikal, you do realise that different teams work on different mmorpgs at SOE right? I kind of get sick and tired of people saying that SOE sucks just because of the SWG thing. They have done a good job with EQ.(did not like all the changes but most were good). They have done a great job with EQ 2 and they have only improved Vanguard. I have checked out Free Realms and for the game that they were trying to make, it was nicely done.
Also for someone that hates SOE, you sure do love there newest creation as shown in this post -
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235256/Why-I-ended-up-in-Free-Realms.html
Also the bottom line is this. SWG had stalled and was slowly dying. They were only holding or slowly losing subscribers. Which is disappointing for a Triple a franchise like Star Wars. They(Lucas Arts and SOE) felt that they had to try something new to kick start it.
While I do not agree with how they did it and I feel for the players who loved pre NGE. I do agree that they had to do something. Sure they should have done something different and communicated more with the player base. But I do not think that they should have just let the IP rot away either.
And yes I used to play SWG before the NGE. I have moved on. There are way too many games out there to play for me to dwell on one game for years.
You enter the argument armed with evidence that is entirely opinion based. No one knows for sure if Free Realms is going to make them lots of money. It's just launched and has yet to prove anything with substantial numbers.
The Agency and DC Universe have only recieved lip service from advertising supplimented websites. They have not, in fact, launched nor even been put to the test by an unaffiliated opinion. Even more to that argument, the style of play in DC is quite different from standard mmo fare and has put off various sets of players who debate whether it is a true mmo.
And as for quality, we've yet to see the whole iceberg let alone how they steer the ships after the fact.
Just thought I would clarify seeing as you've put in your two cents on the op's opinion.
Even more than that, how many customers has SOE lost forever because of what they have done before?
Not just SWG players either, but those from EQ2 over the broken RMT promises and unwanted revamps and the whole blunder that was Vanguard.
I know plenty of people that will not be playing another SOE game from here on out. I am one of those. Most of my friends wouldn't play another SOE game, even for free. I don't care if the game is the best received thing out there since WoW. Their behavior shows the contempt they have for their own paying customers, and I don't expect that to change. They have lost me and for good.
Treat your customers as disposable, and they will be.
I have the strangest feeling that if Biowares attempt at entering the MMO market with their starwars game fails to live up to your lofty expectations, that we will be seeing plenty of similar posts to this one about SoE, claiming them to also be the spawn of satan.
I've known a few friends who where avid starwars fans who played SWG, they quit within the first month becuase it wasn't how they pictured the starwars universe at all, that probably would have been your best option considering your negative outlook on most things MMO here on this website, infact I'd recommend you just leave the whole MMO scene if things are that bad, and save yourself some money and heartache.
As a long time fan of Vanguard that is a false statement. When Soe first took over yes they did a great job. They made Vanguard a wonderful playable game. Now they have stripped it bare.
One of the things I loved about Vanguard in the early days of Soe was the weekly bug fixes. That is dead and gone. Vanguard is a dead game with to sony. So please dont bring it up in this discusion
Indeed, they did need to do something: they needed to actually support the game they had. Instead, SOE consistently pumped out publish after publish for the Jedi and ignored everyone else's issues. Their customers came to realized that they were being dissed so they started to leave. While some of the developers had a clue (see the CURB work), someone higher up had no patience and no clue, and convinced themselves that turning SWG into a bog-standard MMO was "just the thing!". And the deathspiral accelerated.
SWG peaked at 250,000 users, EQ2 peaked at less than that, whatever SOE has lost from mistakes in those games is nothing compared to size of the actual market.
The global MMO market is well over 100 million users, do you really think they care about a few thousand or tens of thousands?
I think the NGE was an absolute disgrace and it did ruin SWG for me. But I play GAMES, I don't give a crap who makes them provided they are fun and give me value for money whilst I play them.
People need to stop judging a game based on its label and start judging it based on how good it actually is to play.
That is the viewpoint for some, but not for others.
If I went to a restaurant, and had bad service, but the food was ok, I might go back.
If I went to a restaurant and had repeated bad service and food that made me sick (only to be told it was working as intended), I'd never go back.
Don't care if they would change the menu.
Same is true for SOE.
That is the viewpoint for some, but not for others.
If I went to a restaurant, and had bad service, but the food was ok, I might go back.
If I went to a restaurant and had repeated bad service and food that made me sick (only to be told it was working as intended), I'd never go back.
Don't care if they would change the menu.
Same is true for SOE.
Working as intended, I hope I never see that phrase again. With SOE it usually means we stealth nerfed it or we really dont care enough to change it back since what we do is always correct. The OP is right SOE is a company that likes to release make that quick buck then they mainly put the game on life support right away. Not really life support but just enought to make it look like thier doing something. The fanboys that still play are jumping wih joy over the new sets of armor coming out, and this is because development is sooooooo slooooow that this is a big deal.
I always complained about how SOE developes SWG, it always seemed like they would play with something in game, tweek this tweek that but never ever add anything new. Just look at the CU and NGE, all that development boils down to taking the skills from 32 proffesions and cookie cutting into 9 and then making some new icons to fool the player into thinking these are actually new skills. Then changing the combat speed to make it seem like a FPS, when we all know its just a broken turn based combat system underneath.
Its SOE's game plan or buisness model to provide as many mmos as they can, the Station game plan is what they are banking on. If they can get 20 or more games with a few people playing each they will make money. But with that model of more for less makes each game stagnant since thier are not enough developers to keep each one going. Thats the main reason why SWG never succeded you did get players with expansions but the ingame development has always sucked. And thats a main reason why they made the NGE, 9 professions can be managed by 5 monkey devs, which keeps costs down and profits higher.
The OP also complained about Lagg, heres what happened after the NGE, they turned down the bandwidth to all the servers, thier is noticable lagg now no matter how many people are in one spot. They mentioned that lagg is also caused by lack of people and load in time, if no one goes to a place then you do, the server needs time to load in those resources. Thiers alot they did do to keep costs down on thier monthly IP bill. But it did cost players alot with game loading and latency.