The real problem isn't the fact that there is a new way to play, new icons, moved schemtics, etc...
The real issue is that SOE has now shown *in-game* that they have the same amount of respect and concern for their playerbase as they do for the "50 or so unhappy people who post in the forum". I.e. none.
SOE has completely disregarded all the REAL-WORK work that was required to create the online community, and think that it can be regained by 4x exp weeks.
SWG had a 'player economy', yet by devaluing most of what those players hold, by negating whole branches of skills so diligently worked for, SOE have shown that the players' in-game work is meaningless to SOE.
SOE has completely shattered player confidence in the players ability to keep and utilize what they put in so many real-world hours for.
Why, then, would anyone who has spent over 3 months of work into resources, skills, equipment, that was washed away in a single update last week, want to put any bit of effort into doing it all over again, when there is no guarentee, no glimmer of assurance, that it won't happen again?
That is the real problem SoE now faces. And they are unwilling to own up to the fact that they have destroyed the work of so many.
Admin liams this was an interview with Lucas Arts.
You've got to be kdding.
Why didn't you interview the people at SOE?
They're the ones that force fed this POS to us.
Did you happen to see SOE's own ingame pool.
The poll where eighty per cent of the respondents gave the upgrade the lowest possible rating.
The questions were alright. but the amswers????
The responses from this guy is the biggest load of horse manure I've every seen.
As far as I'm concerned the whole interview is a pile of Poo-Doo.
The icons a really pretty and nice to watch- that''s all I can do I can't even tell which creature is biting my legs off.
Of course if you're not color blind you can actually see the icons.
I'm a Master Commando/ Master Smuggelr working at CL80 . I haven't been able to kill anything equal to me. Due to the limited amout of time I can play. - only about 2 to 4 hours a day.- I can't seem to find anything that is my level running around by itself.
Of course I jsumped for joy when I got my 1 XP for killinga creture 40 levels below me. It took about 5 minutes; wow I wish I had that critter's regen rate..
The CU is being tested on LIVE servers that should tell you everything about SOE.
Is it what was promised NO.
Combat = Slow and boring in PvE Level progression = Mind numbingly repetative (see above) Crafting = "Hire a bodyguard" (actual Dev response to crafters being 1 hit incapped) New Content = Sure give us another $30 please Customer Relations = Non-Existant A More Star Warsy Game = A More Cartoony Game (particle effects everywhere)
The only thing that seems to work (sort of) is PvP combat. PvP is ok for players who have a full combat template and a fat credit stash to fund them.
New and existing players who are not 100% PvPers will/do hate the CU. Credits will come in so slow now that it will take a new player (low combat rating) months to get their first set of armor and decent weapon.
We wanted a Combat Balance..........we got shafted.
You can leave your own review of this game by clicking on "Game List" above, then on Star Wars Galaxies, then on the "Ratings" tab. You must be a member to leave a review, however.
Originally posted by Kataar But the problem is, CU did the exact opposite of what it was promised to do. Combat is boring, it's a matter of 'sit there and press the same button over and over again.'
Umm, and thats different then before how exactly? The queue just meant you could take breaks in between the button mashing! Soloing a Kimogila for 20 minutes with god buffs wasn't exactly highlighting my life. Neither was mind numbing slaughtering mobs that were obviously far over my level but couldnt touch me becaue my buffs are worth more then I am.
Ah, dumbed down, that seems to be the word of the year for things peopl don't like in MMO's. Nothing personal, but there is nothing smarter about the old combat system then the new. Atleast with this one I have to be careful with the timers.
Ok, and its boring now over before how exactly? Everything you could do before is still there. Missions, quests, mobs to kill, POI's, and on and on and on. The only catch now is you aren't immortal and you actually have to THINK and apply some thought to what your doing or you could die doing it. That doesn't sound boring to me, that sounds real exciting. Please explain to me how its boring now in comparison to before, because I honestly cannot conceive your standpoint at all.
You think this Q&A was LA listening to you cries and trying to appease you because SOE messed this up? Lucas Arts dodged every single question in the thing and basically said, "can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs".
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
We spend a lot of time considering all the UI changes made to the game. With the changes made to the combat system, we had to do some level of updating the user interface, the most obvious changes being the updated icons. The updated icons are more intuitive in both their look and function. It should immediately be more obvious to players what move/ability/item each icon corresponds to just by seeing the updated graphic. Veteran players were comfortable with the old icons, so to themthis represents something new to learn.
In addition, the new icons serve a dual purpose with the power up/cool off animations. Players will now be able to tell at a glance what special moves and abilities are immediate available to them and which theyll need to wait slightly longer to use. This provides a far more immersive and natural flow to combat than seeing You can not use that ability for X seconds as before.
When did this game ever have a message telling us that we cannot use a combat move until X seconds pass. That only became an issue Post CU. We never used to havev warmup cooldown timers.
Rather than beat a dead horse with yet another lengthy explanation I would just say this. SWG needed fixing and balancing, but rather than that it was replaced with whole new game. I can list numerous simple changes that would have gone miles to accomplish stated goals in the SWG1 system. Simply changing buffs to a maximum 50% stat increase would have gone miles. Buffs could have changed so that 1 single pack would buff all 6 stats, thus cutting down on prep time. With lowered buffs HAM costs of armor would be far too high to make any 80% armor wearable, and players would not have been able to spam out specials because it would have drained their stat pool leaving them helpless. Armor could have been changed so that all types were equally effective and people could wear whatever type they chose based purely on preference. Instead we got this new game, and not even a remotely finished game at that. Everyone could have been happy had they just fixed the original game, including the CU supporters. Instead the devs went with a Level based combat system. No longer do you have to examine a creature to see what damage it is least resistant to, because there are no damage resistances on MOB's anymore. They're just #'s. And only 3 #'s matter, player Combat Level, MOB Combat Level and weapon Damage Per Second. That's it. Simple dumbed down slow and boring PvE combat system. A number with a graphic skin around it that doesn't mean anything at all, because it's still just a number.
One question I would like an answer to, what is the reasoning to make us Bio-link our armor? Another, if you want to attract the young kids with your colorful magic particle effects and colorful icons, why not give us an option to not use them at all for those of us who liked a realistic looking game?
This is obviously spin control. They did not really answer all the questions and added their fluff to make it sound rosy. I wish they would have been asked why they pushed through an at best Beta version. Bugs abound. Granted they are fixing some, however, these bugs were reported during the much abreviated testing and not fixed. This seems busniness as usual. Ok this is Lucas Arts, but they have to have some respomsibility to the end product. The poll the day of release was over 82% I Hate It. Alot of the CU is ok, I even like some of it. But over all it Stinks. It was not ready for live and still is not. What happened to Entertainers that now have most of their skill points sunk into no use skills? Solo exp is nill. I love how they danced around that issue. We should be able to solo most content?? Have they played this game? My padawan now MUST group. Of course this gives vis. ?? I will try it this week and if it does not get alot better 3 more accounts are gone. My city is a ghosttown and my guild is struggling to survive. This is not what the community as a whole wanted. We will have to see if we can learn to live with it or we are gone and so is SWG. Customer service and communication at SOE is a joke.
Originally posted by RaistlinVII When did this game ever have a message telling us that we cannot use a combat move until X seconds pass. That only became an issue Post CU. We never used to havev warmup cooldown timers. Rather than beat a dead horse with yet another lengthy explanation I would just say this. SWG needed fixing and balancing, but rather than that it was replaced with whole new game. I can list numerous simple changes that would have gone miles to accomplish stated goals in the SWG1 system. Simply changing buffs to a maximum 50% stat increase would have gone miles. Buffs could have changed so that 1 single pack would buff all 6 stats, thus cutting down on prep time. With lowered buffs HAM costs of armor would be far too high to make any 80% armor wearable, and players would not have been able to spam out specials because it would have drained their stat pool leaving them helpless. Armor could have been changed so that all types were equally effective and people could wear whatever type they chose based purely on preference. Instead we got this new game, and not even a remotely finished game at that. Everyone could have been happy had they just fixed the original game, including the CU supporters. Instead the devs went with a Level based combat system. No longer do you have to examine a creature to see what damage it is least resistant to, because there are no damage resistances on MOB's anymore. They're just #'s. And only 3 #'s matter, player Combat Level, MOB Combat Level and weapon Damage Per Second. That's it. Simple dumbed down slow and boring PvE combat system. A number with a graphic skin around it that doesn't mean anything at all, because it's still just a number. One question I would like an answer to, what is the reasoning to make us Bio-link our armor? Another, if you want to attract the young kids with your colorful magic particle effects and colorful icons, why not give us an option to not use them at all for those of us who liked a realistic looking game?
Very well said and I have to agree with your ideas on how the CU should have went. Granted there is alot of gray area in there but thats certainly a very fair start to fixing the HAM system they had already in the game. I am not real happy about the game now focusing on combat instead of it focusing on the players like it did before. I am having fun still, but I think its going to kill alot of aspects of the game that I thought were the good parts before and that I liked. Like a game that actually had completely non-combat professions that had a purpose in town.
Also I don't care for them claiming they had to do this for future content. That really grates me because I know its pure bull. Its programming, there is no rulebook that says you have to do it this or that way or you can't do it at all. When a developer says something can't be done that ALWAYS means "its more work then I want to do".
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
MMORPG.com:Can you explain the combat upgrade and what you think it adds to Star Wars Galaxies?Juli
The Combat Upgrade in SWG gives us the ability to offer players more engaging combat by increasing the pace of and combat better defining combat roles. To capture some of that seat of your pants combat excitement that provided one of the fundamental reasons we love Star Wars, we had to change the way our game is played.
This is NOT true. The pace of combat now is EXTREMELY slow now compared to pre-CU. Where it took 3-4 minutes to kill a Mob in the old combat system, it takes at least double of that time to kill a grey-con, which only gives 1 exp point. Way to go!
We realized after about three series of design documents that bringing a better combat system to Galaxies would require significant changes to the basic way the game is played. What these changes are going to allow us to do is add much more excitement and consequence into adventuring, especially at the highest levels. Going forward, our new combat system will capture the intensity of the galactic struggle during the time frame of our game.
Maybe this seems like captureing the "struggle" and "intensity" to the Devs, but so far all it seems to us players is increasing the Grind of the the game. What fun.
MMORPG.com:Why do you believe that there has been such a furor in some quarters of the community against this change to the game?Juli
This is a fundamental change to the combat system and therefore to the way people have been playing Galaxies for almost two years. Any change this dramatic is going to elicit passionate responses, especially from some of our more accomplished players.
No Duh! You are basically pulling the rug out from under the feet of LOTS of Veteran players, and telling them if they dont like it, to kiss off! And you call THIS Community Relations?
Its important to realize that no one would ever undertake a publish this ambitious, knowing full well that there is risk of alienating many current subscribers unless we really honestly believed that it will greatly benefit the game overall.
Risk? risk? It was a certainty of alienating us! Especially the way you have handled the community relations during this so-called upgrade! Deleting critical posts and banning people for CONSTRUCTIVE critical poists does NOT help at all! Nor does keeping a virtual wall of silence between us and the Devs. Lack of communication really killed the credibility of this "upgrade".
The entire development team is encouraging our players to give the new combat system a thorough try by utilizing the skill migration (Respec) over the course of the next couple of weeks.
And EXTREMELY poor implemented and buggy skill migration system!
We are confident that once people find their ideal skills and play through some of the new content, theyll very much enjoy our new way of playing Star Wars Galaxies.
Confident are you? Many of the players expressing thier HATE for this new system HAVE tried it! But you dont care about them, do you?
MMORPG.com:One unexpected consequence of the upgrade was an error that forced you to roll back the Bloodfin and Chimaera servers by three and six days respectively. How did you arrive at this decision and what do you have to say to those upset players who in some cases lost nearly a week of play? Will accounts on those servers be credited with that time?Juli
Unfortunately, there was an error during a portion of the conversion process for those two servers that could not be safely fixed. The most secure way to do the CU conversion correctly for those two servers was to roll them back and re-convert. This was the only option left to us to ensure that the conversion process succeeded.
Unfortuanately my hairy behind! You when you guys pushed this BUGGY "upgrade" far too soon with LITTLE testing, it was INEVITABLE that this huge of an FUBAR result will happen!
We are giving those players 4x XP for a week, so that they can more easily recover any progression they lost due to the rollback. Certain skill gains that were erased can also be recovered by our Customer Service team.
Oh wow. Like, this will REALLY bring back all those ticked off already with this poorly implemented "upgrade".
MMORPG.com:The new UI has been pointed at by many as a big reason for their displeasure with the combat upgrade. What solutions, if you any, will you offer to this problem?Juli
We spend a lot of time considering all the UI changes made to the game. With the changes made to the combat system, we had to do some level of updating the user interface, the most obvious changes being the updated icons. The updated icons are more intuitive in both their look and function. It should immediately be more obvious to players what move/ability/item each icon corresponds to just by seeing the updated graphic. Veteran players were comfortable with the old icons, so to themthis represents something new to learn.
We are NOT objecting to the new icons because it was something "new " to learn, we are objecting because they are UGLY, they are NOT intuitive, they stick out like sore thumbs and they are NOT starwarsy! The new Icons would look in place in EQ2 or WoW, but they do NOT fit in at all in a Star Wars game!
In addition, the new icons serve a dual purpose with the power up/cool off animations. Players will now be able to tell at a glance what special moves and abilities are immediate available to them and which theyll need to wait slightly longer to use. This provides a far more immersive and natural flow to combat than seeing You can not use that ability for X seconds as before.
Glad to hear it! Now you can make a whole NEW set of Icons that can pull off these neat tricks, icons that fit in a Starwars game and that are not as ugly!
Again, we recognize that any change in the UI is going to take time to get used to, but were confident that the new UI look and feel is essential to achieving the immersive Star Wars-y combat everyone wants from Galaxies.
Whats really depressing is that this is coming from a LA Dev! If LA cannot recignize on how non-Starwarsy these icons are, then this game is REALLY in trouble!
MMORPG.com:MMORPG.com readers cmcmaha and Erillion pointed out that some crafters in SWG have complained that the recent updates have unintentionally made dramatic changes to the way they operate. Can you comment on what happened here and what is being done to address it?Juli
The crafting changes that were made are intentional and did change the game play for the crafters. Crafters still play a key function in supplying weapons and key items to the game; this has not changed, the difference now is that the weapons and items they make stay balanced within the new game parameters.
Oh yea, balanced to the point that there will be hardly ANY difference between basic armor and high end armor using krayt scales and such. There is NO encentive for armorers to excell at anything. No need to harvest the best resources, no real use for high end components. And speaking of harvesting resources, is it intentional to restrict all pure crafters to citys and thier houses or face unavoidable death? If it was, then you guys are REALLY dont know what you are doing and need to be fired post-haste!
MMORPG.com:There have also been wide reports of players being unable to fight alone after the changes. To what do you attribute this?Juli
There will of course be the ability to solo a large percentage of the content in Galaxies with the new combat system. There will however be an emphasis on grouping for the higher level content in the game.In Star Wars, though individuals certainly have made quite an impact to the story line, it is the grouping of often unlikely characters fighting together for either side that really counted in the larger struggle. This is the feeling we are capturing.
If at the highest levels grouping is required, then you might as well kiss goodbye to the majority of your playerbase. Many, MANY of your players HATE to run around LFG for hours just to get the slightest exp. This killed any and all enjoyment for EQ for me, and it will do the same for this game.
Yes, it will be more difficult for some characters to act alone at higher levels, but we believe this change will strengthen the community and bring more of a sense of Star Wars realism to the game.
No, all it will do is make those frustrated at not finding groups LEAVE. Thats another well done!
MMORPG.com:Now that the upgrade is live, could you give us a post-mortem on what went right, what went wrong and what you need to address in the future?Juli
What went right Overall we have been successful in redefining and distinguishing the roles of every combat profession. Weve also added new highly differentiated faction and function-based armor that will add variety to the way players look and are protected while playing. Weve also added incentives to completing every skill box in the skill trees. Progression means something each and every time now to the players and thats an improvement. Weve also successfully added a whole slew of new very Star Wars weapons that enhance the immersive player experience of our game.
What could have gone better The obvious being the conversion of two of our servers could have been more smooth. We also would have like to have seen fewer balancing issues immediately following the publish.
Moving forward, we are placing maximum effort on continuing to balance this new system while keeping the informative feedback from our player base front of mind. We firmly believe that weve designed a greatly enhanced way to play Star Wars and are committed to continue delivering that experience to our players.
OMG. The only thing that they acknowledge that went wrong was the rollbacks of the two servers. What a crock! No mention of:
A) The piss-poor communication between the Devs and the playerbase.
The pushing of the CU to the Live servers before any decent Beta testing was completed, effectively making all of the live servers Beta servers.
C) The inaccurate (to put it mildly) information given to us by the Devs. Only 50 veteran players posting against the CU on the forums? Tiggs, you really blew it with that statement!
D) The inclusion of many, MANY non-starwarsy elements like the icons, the Rebel armor, the replacement of the proper starwarsy blaster sound effects with effects that sound like farts, man I could go on for ages!
Over all, this interview just spouted the proper partyline and arrogantly dismissed (Again!) the concerns of its playerbase, only its comeing from LA instead of SoE.
So tell me, how does this make you all feel?
Me, im extremely depressed after reading this interview and discovering that bothe LA and SoE really dont give a damn about us. I guess I really should have expected this, but I guess I was to optimistic that there was a possibility that SOMEONE cared.
Lucas Arts does not know all! I have been playing this game since June of 03 and loved it. My wife has been playing for a couple of months and this game created a brand new Star Wars fan! She actually had us watch all the Star Wars DVDs in a weekend because of this game. Then the CU came out....
I didn't want a brand new game, if I did want to try a new game I would have bought one! After the CU came out we purchased EQ2 and guess what? It's the same combat system as post-CU SWG!
So here is what I don't like...
Teaming with newbies and helping them out now is not worth it. Before you could take a newbie out hunting let them start the fight on tough critters and when they need help I would step in. Both the newbie and I would get a fair share of XP. Now I get 1 xp for anything weaker then me and the newbie gets killed in one or two hits!
I LIKE TO SOLO! Prior to the cartoon upgrade being able to solo tough creatures was something to work towards, a right of passage. As a newbie you had to search out groups and ask veterans to hunt with them. This created an atmosphere where senior players taught the newer players the "tricks of the trade". As you progressed in your levels you could take on the tougher NPCs solo. The first time I solo-ed a Kimo it felt great! Now it's all backwards and that has ruined a key aspect of the game in IMHO. I dont even group with anyone not my own level now because there is no reason to.
Several of the weapons and armor I have spent countless hours saving money up for, searching out, and stockpiling in case of emergency is now unusable. After the CU I had no armor to wear and a low end pistol. My weapons are all altered by a smuggler and after the CU those weapons can only be used by a Master skill level. So now I have to start over again and as soon as I'm back to a comfortable stockpile again will they do the same thing to me? Lucas Arts just betrayed the key element in customer service, TRUST.
There has got to be a better way to do things then to color coding everything! The skills respec boxes were all color coded. Light green, dark green, light red, dark red, light blue, dark blue, you get the point. Try respecing when you are color blind! I now it sounds funny but, give me a break!
When attacked the only thing that tips me off is the music changes and my health bar starts dropping. Can we get an auto target to the MOB that is attacking? This doesnt even cover when your are AFK and something spawns on your toes, your toon won't even try to defend itself. So I take a phone call or check on dinner and when I come back I have to clone, GRRRRRRRRRRR.
Queuing attacks needs to come back. During a fight I can not communicate with my groupmates because I am constantly watching my attack buttons to pull the trigger again. What's the point of having strategic groupings if you can't communicate in the middle of a battle?
Jump to light speed... I didn't even buy this upgrade because I felt that buying a Star Wars game should come with this. I understand that it wasn't ready when SWG came out but it would have been a better upgrade for us then this joke of an upgrade! When someone say Star Wars instant images of x-wings and the falcon come to mind and LA makes us PURCHASE this as an expansion?
I would have liked to seen some more content development such as new planets, creatures, NPCs, droids, weapons, armor, quests, professions. Instead we got a new game with the same content as the old game.
For fairness this is what I do like
Increased server stability... oh wait that didn't happen
hmmmm, well some of the new animations are kind of cool but the impact to my FPS isn't worth it.
My master bounty hunter can kill Jedi's no problem now. That's nice as far as making money. That is if I can beat the other 50 bounty hunters to my mark.
The sudden exodus of player accounts has reduced the lag when near a starport! This is a very nice feature.
Planned outages now seem to happen more often so I know that they are "fixing" something, and it's always exciting to see what that change is. Of course finding out your server is going down right after you formed a good hunting party is a bummer.
In closing...
Lucas Arts seems to have lost its touch. I firmly believe that the fool who thought JAR JAR would be a good addition to the Star Wars saga also had a hand in this CU. I only ask one thing...
PLEASE DON'T RUIN INDIANA JONES THE WAY YOU HAVE STAR WARS!!!
well FADEUS, i may not be an "ELITE MEMBER" such as yourself, but i CAN READ. look at all the posts on this forum alone. do you disagree that at least 80% of them are anti cu? most of these posters go on to state that A) they are cancelling accounts boycotting future SOE products.
many of these people have paid up their accounts for many months to come. so a few of them might still be around. but i guarantee you, that in 6 months time, the servers will be much less populated than they were before the CU came out. if you read this forum and many others, such as allakhazaam and file planet, you will see the overwhemling disappointment the CU has wrought. if it is so great, where are the positive posts? im not talking about the censored SOE forums either. so, yes, i believe that in the end( a few months time) SWG will face a account loss rate of around 75%. time will tell.
I would like to see some numbers from Sony on how many accounts were canceled. How about pre-orders for ROTW? I know of two guilds on Flurry that are now ghost towns. My wife and I canceled our accounts and pre-orders due to our distaste for the CU and the lack of response from LA and SOE.
I like how he admits that part of the risk was "alienating" many current subscribers...is alienate and lose the same word? Because I think if Julio checks recent records he will see that MOST, not many have been lost completely. I think that statement in itself proves that they dont really care about thier current subscribers and how they felt about this change. That statement means to me that the 8 accounts I currently hold with them means nothing because "it will greatly benefit the game overall".
The new "grouping" system does work....BUT...that's only IF you can find a group! Jedi now are certain to be put on the terminals by doing it this way. My husband played his Jedi last night in a group of other Jedi and did get better xp than when he was by himself (too bad he got killed 3 times by Bounty Hunters in the meantime, losing all of his gained xp).
Also, Julio only mentioned weapons in the interview as far as crafting professions being greatly affected....what about everyone else? My message to SOE and Lucas Arts is WE NEVER ASKED FOR A NEW GAME!!! I have played for over a year now with so many accounts because I liked the game I was playing. I think the upgrade was a huge mistake. Good luck to them with the "overall improvement" I hope you can get anough new players to replace the thousands who have left
With the obvious "qualifications" added to the end of each statement I'm more sure about quitting then ever...
[quote]"during the time frame of our game"[/quote] What he really is saying: So screw the Jedi that shouldn't exist anyway.
[quote]"knowing full well that there is risk of alienating many current subscribers unless we really honestly believed that it will greatly benefit the game overall."[/quote] What he really is saying: We really only want to get some new copies sold with the buzz surounding the movie, long term there is no viability so who cares about the existing players...
[quote]"The entire development team is encouraging our players to give the new combat system a thorough try by utilizing the skill migration (Respec) over the course of the next couple of weeks"[/quote] What he is thinking: Cause if we loose too many at once or the press catches hold of the true amount of cancelations and it reflects negativly on the movie or the StarWars frachise... we'll all be out of jobs.
[quote]"We are giving those players 4x XP for a week, so that they can more easily recover any progression they lost due to the rollback"[/quote] What he is thinking: Because the game won't be around long enough to recoup any refund if we were to offer one.
[quote]"Veteran players were comfortable with the old icons, so to themthis represents something new to learn. "[/quote] What he is thinking: And of course they are all just idiots who don't know what's best... mind you none of us acctually play the game, but we do know what is better for them.
[quote]"Crafters still play a key function in supplying weapons and key items to the game; this has not changed, the difference now is that the weapons and items they make stay balanced within the new game parameters. "[/quote] He is thinking: Please god don't rephrase the question because I have no idea how a crafter is suppose to actually collect resources now that 90% of the PvE content is able to one-shot kill them anywhere on any planet.
[quote]"We also would have like to have seen fewer balancing issues immediately following the publish. "[/quote] He is thinking: But of course that would have required that we actually read the feedback from the test-center forums and game exit polls... I mean really come on.
this julio guy is a moron. can you believe the BS coming out of his mouth? i bet his boss was standing next to him while he answered those questions! its only a matter of time before the house of "CU" cards comes tumbling down. watch, this will go down in the history of online gaming as the biggest screw ups of all time. its to the point now, where every forum, every gaming magazine and every gaming new site is covering this debacle. the SH*T rolls downhill people, and this is turning into one big rolling stone!! mark my words, jobs will be lost over this. it is too bad that some poor DEV will be the scapegoat. of course, the slimeball execs at SOE and LA, who pushed this through, will get off scott free by passing the buck. but the blame lies squarely on THEIR (the execs) shoulders. WE in the community KNOW who is to blame. so you people at SOE and LA, don't think many of us will ever buy anything of yours again! the damage is done, you have betrayed us, censored us, and treated us with contempt! i don't care if you bring back the pre CU swg, i'll never give you one cent! never again. thats the only way you coporate skeezers will understand what you have done...... by lowering your profit margin! we RPG'ers need to support the smaller gaming companies. they have shown that they WANT to listen to the fanbase. im sure that TURBINE's upcoming D&D online and LOTR online will be what most of us will be looking for after this mess. it's like getting the choice to go to Mcdonalds, or getting a home cooked meal by your grandmother. there is no competition.........granny wins everytime!
Well... sigh... I'm glad someone was able to reach someone at LucasArts or SOE and at least get them to talk, but also wished the interview could have been more to point about the adverse impacts to players, including the complete destruction of my 2 years of crafting role development, and the destruction of my crafting profession, and the fact that it is, in fact, an all new game we've had shoved on us, one that is not an improvement.
Also, its interesting to note that there are leaders in LucasArts who are holding hands with SOE on this new SWG2 game, and who also can't be sleeping at night any better than the SOE leaders who have mismanaged this game since day #1 with a bad launch and since their first major stumble with the holo-grind. Those two early mismanagements alone have lead the ongoing decay in player attrition that has continued to this day.
SOE has consistently mismanaged the SWG project, and delivered deplorable communication and customer service to the player/customer community.
From a player relations standpoint, they delete threads and posts by players, myself included many times, that disagree with the direction they are taking with the game. The threads have been constructive, non-inflammatory, and in detail demonstrate the issues with the existing game, the dissatisfaction with changing the game, and in detail how the existing game could be remedied. Most of these types of threads are deleted. If we persist in creating threads of this nature, our forums rights are temporarily banned for anywhere from two days to a week, for "trolling" (what they at SOE call, "inciting trouble," by disagreeing with their direction and design.)
I have cancelled 5 accounts. I have been a veteran 2003 customer, and have worked the game daily... daily... since that time. I have earned a jedi account, attained jetpacks and just about every other fun high-end content, and have just played the heck out of the game from the beginning. I had accumulated millions of quality crafting resources, being a medical crafter of grand repute, and having applied my own labor, passion, and sweat to the MMORPG game environment with gusto.
SOE was supposed to give us game enhancements, combat balance enhancements. Instead, what they sprung on us out of the blue, against the stated feedback of the community Correspondents, is a "Combat Upgrade" (so-called by SOE) that is really a New SWG entirely.
My two years of daily work, resources, effort, is being destroyed. In the New SWG, I can no longer craft items as a Doctor, and the items that were crafted are being eliminated from the game entirely. My role and reason for existing, my business, my everything, is being destroyed. Half a dozen non-combat professions are being made obsolete and their roles are destroyed. All of the combat professions are redone from scratch, completely foreign to what we have played for the last two years. The interface has changed, the commands have changed, the look and sounds have changed, its a new game with a new learning curve, and we have to start over building our role in the new environment.
Instead of a so-called "Combat Upgrade" our game is being destroyed and a new game is being slipped in from nowhere. We did not ask for a new game, or to have our MMORPG roles and efforts be destroyed, to start from scratch with an all new game.
SOE can not be trusted. We worked hard over the last two years to build guilds, to build businesses, to build roles, reputations, customers, to gather and harvest and mine millions of units of resources, to pay millions of units of credits for other brokered resources - now worthless - would have been better off keeping the credits rather than have all that blood, sweat, and passion representing two years of work thrown in the garbage. Why would I ever, having loved a crafting profession, ever trust SOE to respect my daily work and not throw away my value, role, and resources again in the future? Why would I ever put effort into the roles in the game when SOE just wasted and destroyed everything I have worked for, for years!?
I cannot fathom how SOE has remained in charge of the SWG project, given their disrespectful, power-mad rule over the forums, given their deplorable communication with the community (the positive and enthusiastic Jon Hanna, SOE's recent Community Relations Rep, lasted less than 90 days after being put into a position of being squeezed between performing for the community and being put into an untenable position by a hardline and non-responsive SOE - you can find Mr. Hanna representing Middle Earth Online now), given their dismal project management all the way back to the game-breaking introduction of the Jedi hologrind that brought the game to a halt as everyone stopped playing their roles to grind 32 professions in order to unlock a Jedi character, to the Jedi revamp that was supposed to (via the Village quests) stop the hologrinding madness, but out of the blue (and similar to this out of the blue New SWG instead of just combat balancing) they also redesigned from scratch all of the Jedi skill trees for no apparent reason (making us relearn and have a different gaming experience for what seemed like whim,) and introduced the much player maligned FRS system, negative XP, and skill loss (the latter since revoked and the others should have been revoked also,) all uncommunicated upfront, unanticipated, and unexplained; typical for SOE.
The player community has no idea what is going on with SOE project management. They design everything in an ivory tower. The so-called community/player Correspondents are simply powerless, ineffective decoys to deflect player frustration away from the devs and onto these player reps, who have no power, no voice, and no input. SOE does nothing to solicit player feedback, to evaluate such feedback, or to replay to the community how they've integrated such feedback into solutions. It does not exist. You would expect that correspondents would be asked to compile and coalesce the players ideas and present them to SOE for evaluation, but that would only be if SOE actually wanted such input to their ivory tower designs. Instead SOE only asks for brief bullets from Correspondents in a Top 5 list, such as "More dances for entertainers," rather than compiling all of the great ideas floating around the forums. They're not really interested in hearing ideas, they just want the players to spin their frustration around vapid and shallow Top 5 lists, so they can continue to spring surprises on the community in their endless iterations of game fixes.
The correspondents had no input to the New SWG game we're being force fed, and the feedback they did give was negative. The correspondents have said that the game they were previewed was received negatively, and that the game that actually hit the test servers was much different entirely from what they even tested. It's all ivory tower work, and nothing representative of the players desires, or respecting the continuity or efforts which the players have invested in the game thus far.
I will not return to the game until our game is returned to us in its current Classic SWG form, rather than the New SWG they are forcing on the players, and most likely not until SOE is fired for their longstanding mismanagement of the SWG project in all regards from planning to communication, and gross disrespect for the customer. For this player to return to the game, at the least we would need to see our Classic SWG restored, with a significant recommitment for new SWG project leads to reach out to the community, to listen to the community, to evaluate our feedback, commit to loop back and tell us how our needs were integrated into solutions, and work with the community to make the best MMORPG online, because as a Star Wars game, it should be nothing else.
I have numerous examples of how the existing game could be readily improved without making obsolete existing professions, efforts and passion, while at the same time bringing balance to the game and combat. I would be glad to share them again. Our ideas have been well received on the forums, before moderators deleted them and banned us. Namely moderator Garva.
I wish everyone luck, and hope that it is not too late to save our Classic "pre" Star Wars game. We've put so much into it. We have no idea what's driving SOE's ivory tower design decisions, as they don't talk to us. However, lacking that knowledge, SOE's misfires in planning, design, and communication are worse than anything I've witnessed in my 20 years of successful business leadership. Maybe LucasArts leadership overall, not those currently holding sweaty hands with a bungling SOE, is in a better position to save the game from SOE's mismanagement.
Man, I haven't seen this many actively posting new accounts in one day since Mourning was pulled from the forums! Thats gotta be saying something...
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
The thing that bothers me most about it is the lack of concern that was displayed to the player base. Right before, and for a good few days after the CU was pushed live, the forums became ablaze with protests and complaints, and the answers recieved were deleted threads and banned accounts. Accounts banned for speaking against the CU.
I myself have played SWG for well over a year, and working towards the Jedi profession was my main goal. After I achieved that goal, it took me even a few more months to almost level it. I say almost, because I was not quite completed when the CU went live. The reason most say that Jedi is unplayable is because the rate of xp gain has been substantualy lowered, the Mobs made stronger, and buffs removed, in a way that highly encourages group play and highly discourages solo play. Yet Jedi is still tied to the same laws and penalties of the old system, which is a system that forces us to grind solo, penalizes us for grouping, penalizing by massive amounts of xp losses per death (and these xp loss amounts have remained the same as before, so the xp loss in the old system would only take a few hours at most to regain, now that same xp will take days or weeks to regain).
So have the belief that this move was intentional, to sublimely "purge" the servers of the Jedi population in order to better fit the timeline of the upcoming movie. And in the few responses we get from the developement team are along the lines of "Yes we know there is a problem, and we will get to them eventually, but we cannot promise when." it would appear these assumptions could be closer to the truth than I wanted to believe.
So, just as EPIII (the episode III of the game) is trying to keep in line with the EPIII movie, it would appear we are truly in the midst of what will later be refered to as "The Jedi Purge" of SWG.
I think it's really cool that his response to soloing concernes was essentially "Screw you, we don't want you to be able to solo at high levels any more." Given that SOEs attitude is generally "You will like what we tell you to like peons!" I would be really surprised to see them back off of their new stance. I was thinking of trying this, since I have SOE all access, but now it seems like it would be pretty stupid to do so (I play 95% of the time solo). Maybe the space battles are still fun, but if I want fun Star Wars themed space battles believe I have better options available than SWG.
I still may try it once the "total experience" package hits, but I personally found his responses completely disheartening.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
So many people posting about SWG recently .... it does not matter if its pro or con .. but its obviously a universe you love ...
You love SWG .... or you love to hate SWG .... but its hard to be indifferent. Which means ... even if you love to hate it ... its because you WOULD like to love it, but something soured the experience for you. But you are still passionate about it .. enough to post here.
Comments
The real problem isn't the fact that there is a new way to play, new icons, moved schemtics, etc...
The real issue is that SOE has now shown *in-game* that they have the same amount of respect and concern for their playerbase as they do for the "50 or so unhappy people who post in the forum". I.e. none.
SOE has completely disregarded all the REAL-WORK work that was required to create the online community, and think that it can be regained by 4x exp weeks.
SWG had a 'player economy', yet by devaluing most of what those players hold, by negating whole branches of skills so diligently worked for, SOE have shown that the players' in-game work is meaningless to SOE.
SOE has completely shattered player confidence in the players ability to keep and utilize what they put in so many real-world hours for.
Why, then, would anyone who has spent over 3 months of work into resources, skills, equipment, that was washed away in a single update last week, want to put any bit of effort into doing it all over again, when there is no guarentee, no glimmer of assurance, that it won't happen again?
That is the real problem SoE now faces. And they are unwilling to own up to the fact that they have destroyed the work of so many.
Admin liams this was an interview with Lucas Arts.
You've got to be kdding.
Why didn't you interview the people at SOE?
They're the ones that force fed this POS to us.
Did you happen to see SOE's own ingame pool.
The poll where eighty per cent of the respondents gave the upgrade the lowest possible rating.
The questions were alright. but the amswers????
The responses from this guy is the biggest load of horse manure I've every seen.
As far as I'm concerned the whole interview is a pile of Poo-Doo.
The icons a really pretty and nice to watch- that''s all I can do I can't even tell which creature is biting my legs off.
Of course if you're not color blind you can actually see the icons.
I'm a Master Commando/ Master Smuggelr working at CL80 . I haven't been able to kill anything equal to me. Due to the limited amout of time I can play. - only about 2 to 4 hours a day.- I can't seem to find anything that is my level running around by itself.
Of course I jsumped for joy when I got my 1 XP for killinga creture 40 levels below me. It took about 5 minutes; wow I wish I had that critter's regen rate..
edited for a bunch of typos
The CU is being tested on LIVE servers that should tell you everything about SOE.
Is it what was promised NO.
Combat = Slow and boring in PvE
Level progression = Mind numbingly repetative (see above)
Crafting = "Hire a bodyguard" (actual Dev response to crafters being 1 hit incapped)
New Content = Sure give us another $30 please
Customer Relations = Non-Existant
A More Star Warsy Game = A More Cartoony Game (particle effects everywhere)
The only thing that seems to work (sort of) is PvP combat. PvP is ok for players who have a full combat template and a fat credit stash to fund them.
New and existing players who are not 100% PvPers will/do hate the CU. Credits will come in so slow now that it will take a new player (low combat rating) months to get their first set of armor and decent weapon.
We wanted a Combat Balance..........we got shafted.
You can leave your own review of this game by clicking on "Game List" above, then on Star Wars Galaxies, then on the "Ratings" tab. You must be a member to leave a review, however.
Umm, and thats different then before how exactly? The queue just meant you could take breaks in between the button mashing! Soloing a Kimogila for 20 minutes with god buffs wasn't exactly highlighting my life. Neither was mind numbing slaughtering mobs that were obviously far over my level but couldnt touch me becaue my buffs are worth more then I am.
Ah, dumbed down, that seems to be the word of the year for things peopl don't like in MMO's. Nothing personal, but there is nothing smarter about the old combat system then the new. Atleast with this one I have to be careful with the timers.
Ok, and its boring now over before how exactly? Everything you could do before is still there. Missions, quests, mobs to kill, POI's, and on and on and on. The only catch now is you aren't immortal and you actually have to THINK and apply some thought to what your doing or you could die doing it. That doesn't sound boring to me, that sounds real exciting. Please explain to me how its boring now in comparison to before, because I honestly cannot conceive your standpoint at all.
You think this Q&A was LA listening to you cries and trying to appease you because SOE messed this up? Lucas Arts dodged every single question in the thing and basically said, "can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs".
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
We spend a lot of time considering all the UI changes made to the game. With the changes made to the combat system, we had to do some level of updating the user interface, the most obvious changes being the updated icons. The updated icons are more intuitive in both their look and function. It should immediately be more obvious to players what move/ability/item each icon corresponds to just by seeing the updated graphic. Veteran players were comfortable with the old icons, so to themthis represents something new to learn.
In addition, the new icons serve a dual purpose with the power up/cool off animations. Players will now be able to tell at a glance what special moves and abilities are immediate available to them and which theyll need to wait slightly longer to use. This provides a far more immersive and natural flow to combat than seeing You can not use that ability for X seconds as before.
When did this game ever have a message telling us that we cannot use a combat move until X seconds pass. That only became an issue Post CU. We never used to havev warmup cooldown timers.
Rather than beat a dead horse with yet another lengthy explanation I would just say this. SWG needed fixing and balancing, but rather than that it was replaced with whole new game. I can list numerous simple changes that would have gone miles to accomplish stated goals in the SWG1 system. Simply changing buffs to a maximum 50% stat increase would have gone miles. Buffs could have changed so that 1 single pack would buff all 6 stats, thus cutting down on prep time. With lowered buffs HAM costs of armor would be far too high to make any 80% armor wearable, and players would not have been able to spam out specials because it would have drained their stat pool leaving them helpless. Armor could have been changed so that all types were equally effective and people could wear whatever type they chose based purely on preference. Instead we got this new game, and not even a remotely finished game at that. Everyone could have been happy had they just fixed the original game, including the CU supporters. Instead the devs went with a Level based combat system. No longer do you have to examine a creature to see what damage it is least resistant to, because there are no damage resistances on MOB's anymore. They're just #'s. And only 3 #'s matter, player Combat Level, MOB Combat Level and weapon Damage Per Second. That's it. Simple dumbed down slow and boring PvE combat system. A number with a graphic skin around it that doesn't mean anything at all, because it's still just a number.
One question I would like an answer to, what is the reasoning to make us Bio-link our armor? Another, if you want to attract the young kids with your colorful magic particle effects and colorful icons, why not give us an option to not use them at all for those of us who liked a realistic looking game?
Very well said and I have to agree with your ideas on how the CU should have went. Granted there is alot of gray area in there but thats certainly a very fair start to fixing the HAM system they had already in the game. I am not real happy about the game now focusing on combat instead of it focusing on the players like it did before. I am having fun still, but I think its going to kill alot of aspects of the game that I thought were the good parts before and that I liked. Like a game that actually had completely non-combat professions that had a purpose in town.
Also I don't care for them claiming they had to do this for future content. That really grates me because I know its pure bull. Its programming, there is no rulebook that says you have to do it this or that way or you can't do it at all. When a developer says something can't be done that ALWAYS means "its more work then I want to do".
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
The Combat Upgrade in SWG gives us the ability to offer players more engaging combat by increasing the pace of and combat better defining combat roles. To capture some of that seat of your pants combat excitement that provided one of the fundamental reasons we love Star Wars, we had to change the way our game is played.
This is NOT true. The pace of combat now is EXTREMELY slow now compared to pre-CU. Where it took 3-4 minutes to kill a Mob in the old combat system, it takes at least double of that time to kill a grey-con, which only gives 1 exp point. Way to go!
We realized after about three series of design documents that bringing a better combat system to Galaxies would require significant changes to the basic way the game is played. What these changes are going to allow us to do is add much more excitement and consequence into adventuring, especially at the highest levels. Going forward, our new combat system will capture the intensity of the galactic struggle during the time frame of our game.
Maybe this seems like captureing the "struggle" and "intensity" to the Devs, but so far all it seems to us players is increasing the Grind of the the game. What fun.
MMORPG.com:Why do you believe that there has been such a furor in some quarters of the community against this change to the game?JuliThis is a fundamental change to the combat system and therefore to the way people have been playing Galaxies for almost two years. Any change this dramatic is going to elicit passionate responses, especially from some of our more accomplished players.
No Duh! You are basically pulling the rug out from under the feet of LOTS of Veteran players, and telling them if they dont like it, to kiss off! And you call THIS Community Relations?
Its important to realize that no one would ever undertake a publish this ambitious, knowing full well that there is risk of alienating many current subscribers unless we really honestly believed that it will greatly benefit the game overall.
Risk? risk? It was a certainty of alienating us! Especially the way you have handled the community relations during this so-called upgrade! Deleting critical posts and banning people for CONSTRUCTIVE critical poists does NOT help at all! Nor does keeping a virtual wall of silence between us and the Devs. Lack of communication really killed the credibility of this "upgrade".
The entire development team is encouraging our players to give the new combat system a thorough try by utilizing the skill migration (Respec) over the course of the next couple of weeks.
And EXTREMELY poor implemented and buggy skill migration system!
We are confident that once people find their ideal skills and play through some of the new content, theyll very much enjoy our new way of playing Star Wars Galaxies.
Confident are you? Many of the players expressing thier HATE for this new system HAVE tried it! But you dont care about them, do you?
MMORPG.com:One unexpected consequence of the upgrade was an error that forced you to roll back the Bloodfin and Chimaera servers by three and six days respectively. How did you arrive at this decision and what do you have to say to those upset players who in some cases lost nearly a week of play? Will accounts on those servers be credited with that time?JuliUnfortunately, there was an error during a portion of the conversion process for those two servers that could not be safely fixed. The most secure way to do the CU conversion correctly for those two servers was to roll them back and re-convert. This was the only option left to us to ensure that the conversion process succeeded.
Unfortuanately my hairy behind! You when you guys pushed this BUGGY "upgrade" far too soon with LITTLE testing, it was INEVITABLE that this huge of an FUBAR result will happen!
We are giving those players 4x XP for a week, so that they can more easily recover any progression they lost due to the rollback. Certain skill gains that were erased can also be recovered by our Customer Service team.
Oh wow. Like, this will REALLY bring back all those ticked off already with this poorly implemented "upgrade".
MMORPG.com:The new UI has been pointed at by many as a big reason for their displeasure with the combat upgrade. What solutions, if you any, will you offer to this problem?JuliWe spend a lot of time considering all the UI changes made to the game. With the changes made to the combat system, we had to do some level of updating the user interface, the most obvious changes being the updated icons. The updated icons are more intuitive in both their look and function. It should immediately be more obvious to players what move/ability/item each icon corresponds to just by seeing the updated graphic. Veteran players were comfortable with the old icons, so to themthis represents something new to learn.
We are NOT objecting to the new icons because it was something "new " to learn, we are objecting because they are UGLY, they are NOT intuitive, they stick out like sore thumbs and they are NOT starwarsy! The new Icons would look in place in EQ2 or WoW, but they do NOT fit in at all in a Star Wars game!
In addition, the new icons serve a dual purpose with the power up/cool off animations. Players will now be able to tell at a glance what special moves and abilities are immediate available to them and which theyll need to wait slightly longer to use. This provides a far more immersive and natural flow to combat than seeing You can not use that ability for X seconds as before.
Glad to hear it! Now you can make a whole NEW set of Icons that can pull off these neat tricks, icons that fit in a Starwars game and that are not as ugly!
Again, we recognize that any change in the UI is going to take time to get used to, but were confident that the new UI look and feel is essential to achieving the immersive Star Wars-y combat everyone wants from Galaxies.
Whats really depressing is that this is coming from a LA Dev! If LA cannot recignize on how non-Starwarsy these icons are, then this game is REALLY in trouble!
MMORPG.com:MMORPG.com readers cmcmaha and Erillion pointed out that some crafters in SWG have complained that the recent updates have unintentionally made dramatic changes to the way they operate. Can you comment on what happened here and what is being done to address it?JuliThe crafting changes that were made are intentional and did change the game play for the crafters. Crafters still play a key function in supplying weapons and key items to the game; this has not changed, the difference now is that the weapons and items they make stay balanced within the new game parameters.
Oh yea, balanced to the point that there will be hardly ANY difference between basic armor and high end armor using krayt scales and such. There is NO encentive for armorers to excell at anything. No need to harvest the best resources, no real use for high end components. And speaking of harvesting resources, is it intentional to restrict all pure crafters to citys and thier houses or face unavoidable death? If it was, then you guys are REALLY dont know what you are doing and need to be fired post-haste!
MMORPG.com:There have also been wide reports of players being unable to fight alone after the changes. To what do you attribute this?JuliThere will of course be the ability to solo a large percentage of the content in Galaxies with the new combat system. There will however be an emphasis on grouping for the higher level content in the game.In Star Wars, though individuals certainly have made quite an impact to the story line, it is the grouping of often unlikely characters fighting together for either side that really counted in the larger struggle. This is the feeling we are capturing.
If at the highest levels grouping is required, then you might as well kiss goodbye to the majority of your playerbase. Many, MANY of your players HATE to run around LFG for hours just to get the slightest exp. This killed any and all enjoyment for EQ for me, and it will do the same for this game.
Yes, it will be more difficult for some characters to act alone at higher levels, but we believe this change will strengthen the community and bring more of a sense of Star Wars realism to the game.
No, all it will do is make those frustrated at not finding groups LEAVE. Thats another well done!
MMORPG.com:Now that the upgrade is live, could you give us a post-mortem on what went right, what went wrong and what you need to address in the future?JuliWhat went right Overall we have been successful in redefining and distinguishing the roles of every combat profession. Weve also added new highly differentiated faction and function-based armor that will add variety to the way players look and are protected while playing. Weve also added incentives to completing every skill box in the skill trees. Progression means something each and every time now to the players and thats an improvement. Weve also successfully added a whole slew of new very Star Wars weapons that enhance the immersive player experience of our game.
What could have gone better The obvious being the conversion of two of our servers could have been more smooth. We also would have like to have seen fewer balancing issues immediately following the publish.
Moving forward, we are placing maximum effort on continuing to balance this new system while keeping the informative feedback from our player base front of mind. We firmly believe that weve designed a greatly enhanced way to play Star Wars and are committed to continue delivering that experience to our players.
OMG. The only thing that they acknowledge that went wrong was the rollbacks of the two servers. What a crock! No mention of:
A) The piss-poor communication between the Devs and the playerbase.
C) The inaccurate (to put it mildly) information given to us by the Devs. Only 50 veteran players posting against the CU on the forums? Tiggs, you really blew it with that statement!
D) The inclusion of many, MANY non-starwarsy elements like the icons, the Rebel armor, the replacement of the proper starwarsy blaster sound effects with effects that sound like farts, man I could go on for ages!
Over all, this interview just spouted the proper partyline and arrogantly dismissed (Again!) the concerns of its playerbase, only its comeing from LA instead of SoE.
So tell me, how does this make you all feel?
Me, im extremely depressed after reading this interview and discovering that bothe LA and SoE really dont give a damn about us. I guess I really should have expected this, but I guess I was to optimistic that there was a possibility that SOMEONE cared.
I should have known better.
Lucas Arts does not know all! I have been playing this game since June of 03 and loved it. My wife has been playing for a couple of months and this game created a brand new Star Wars fan! She actually had us watch all the Star Wars DVDs in a weekend because of this game. Then the CU came out....
I didn't want a brand new game, if I did want to try a new game I would have bought one! After the CU came out we purchased EQ2 and guess what? It's the same combat system as post-CU SWG!
So here is what I don't like...
Teaming with newbies and helping them out now is not worth it. Before you could take a newbie out hunting let them start the fight on tough critters and when they need help I would step in. Both the newbie and I would get a fair share of XP. Now I get 1 xp for anything weaker then me and the newbie gets killed in one or two hits!
I LIKE TO SOLO! Prior to the cartoon upgrade being able to solo tough creatures was something to work towards, a right of passage. As a newbie you had to search out groups and ask veterans to hunt with them. This created an atmosphere where senior players taught the newer players the "tricks of the trade". As you progressed in your levels you could take on the tougher NPCs solo. The first time I solo-ed a Kimo it felt great! Now it's all backwards and that has ruined a key aspect of the game in IMHO. I dont even group with anyone not my own level now because there is no reason to.
Several of the weapons and armor I have spent countless hours saving money up for, searching out, and stockpiling in case of emergency is now unusable. After the CU I had no armor to wear and a low end pistol. My weapons are all altered by a smuggler and after the CU those weapons can only be used by a Master skill level. So now I have to start over again and as soon as I'm back to a comfortable stockpile again will they do the same thing to me? Lucas Arts just betrayed the key element in customer service, TRUST.
There has got to be a better way to do things then to color coding everything! The skills respec boxes were all color coded. Light green, dark green, light red, dark red, light blue, dark blue, you get the point. Try respecing when you are color blind! I now it sounds funny but, give me a break!
When attacked the only thing that tips me off is the music changes and my health bar starts dropping. Can we get an auto target to the MOB that is attacking? This doesnt even cover when your are AFK and something spawns on your toes, your toon won't even try to defend itself. So I take a phone call or check on dinner and when I come back I have to clone, GRRRRRRRRRRR.
Queuing attacks needs to come back. During a fight I can not communicate with my groupmates because I am constantly watching my attack buttons to pull the trigger again. What's the point of having strategic groupings if you can't communicate in the middle of a battle?
Jump to light speed... I didn't even buy this upgrade because I felt that buying a Star Wars game should come with this. I understand that it wasn't ready when SWG came out but it would have been a better upgrade for us then this joke of an upgrade! When someone say Star Wars instant images of x-wings and the falcon come to mind and LA makes us PURCHASE this as an expansion?
I would have liked to seen some more content development such as new planets, creatures, NPCs, droids, weapons, armor, quests, professions. Instead we got a new game with the same content as the old game.
For fairness this is what I do like
Increased server stability... oh wait that didn't happen
hmmmm, well some of the new animations are kind of cool but the impact to my FPS isn't worth it.
My master bounty hunter can kill Jedi's no problem now. That's nice as far as making money. That is if I can beat the other 50 bounty hunters to my mark.
The sudden exodus of player accounts has reduced the lag when near a starport! This is a very nice feature.
Planned outages now seem to happen more often so I know that they are "fixing" something, and it's always exciting to see what that change is. Of course finding out your server is going down right after you formed a good hunting party is a bummer.
In closing...
Lucas Arts seems to have lost its touch. I firmly believe that the fool who thought JAR JAR would be a good addition to the Star Wars saga also had a hand in this CU. I only ask one thing...
PLEASE DON'T RUIN INDIANA JONES THE WAY YOU HAVE STAR WARS!!!
well FADEUS, i may not be an "ELITE MEMBER" such as yourself, but i CAN READ. look at all the posts on this forum alone. do you disagree that at least 80% of them are anti cu? most of these posters go on to state that A) they are cancelling accounts
boycotting future SOE products.
many of these people have paid up their accounts for many months to come. so a few of them might still be around. but i guarantee you, that in 6 months time, the servers will be much less populated than they were before the CU came out. if you read this forum and many others, such as allakhazaam and file planet, you will see the overwhemling disappointment the CU has wrought. if it is so great, where are the positive posts? im not talking about the censored SOE forums either. so, yes, i believe that in the end( a few months time) SWG will face a account loss rate of around 75%. time will tell.
I would like to see some numbers from Sony on how many accounts were canceled. How about pre-orders for ROTW? I know of two guilds on Flurry that are now ghost towns. My wife and I canceled our accounts and pre-orders due to our distaste for the CU and the lack of response from LA and SOE.
I like how he admits that part of the risk was "alienating" many current subscribers...is alienate and lose the same word? Because I think if Julio checks recent records he will see that MOST, not many have been lost completely. I think that statement in itself proves that they dont really care about thier current subscribers and how they felt about this change. That statement means to me that the 8 accounts I currently hold with them means nothing because "it will greatly benefit the game overall".
The new "grouping" system does work....BUT...that's only IF you can find a group! Jedi now are certain to be put on the terminals by doing it this way. My husband played his Jedi last night in a group of other Jedi and did get better xp than when he was by himself (too bad he got killed 3 times by Bounty Hunters in the meantime, losing all of his gained xp
).
Also, Julio only mentioned weapons in the interview as far as crafting professions being greatly affected....what about everyone else? My message to SOE and Lucas Arts is WE NEVER ASKED FOR A NEW GAME!!! I have played for over a year now with so many accounts because I liked the game I was playing. I think the upgrade was a huge mistake. Good luck to them with the "overall improvement" I hope you can get anough new players to replace the thousands who have left
Demoku: Anarchy Online (Rimor)
With the obvious "qualifications" added to the end of each statement I'm more sure about quitting then ever...
[quote]"during the time frame of our game"[/quote]
What he really is saying:
So screw the Jedi that shouldn't exist anyway.
[quote]"knowing full well that there is risk of alienating many current subscribers unless we really honestly believed that it will greatly benefit the game overall."[/quote]
What he really is saying:
We really only want to get some new copies sold with the buzz surounding the movie, long term there is no viability so who cares about the existing players...
[quote]"The entire development team is encouraging our players to give the new combat system a thorough try by utilizing the skill migration (Respec) over the course of the next couple of weeks"[/quote]
What he is thinking:
Cause if we loose too many at once or the press catches hold of the true amount of cancelations and it reflects negativly on the movie or the StarWars frachise... we'll all be out of jobs.
[quote]"We are giving those players 4x XP for a week, so that they can more easily recover any progression they lost due to the rollback"[/quote]
What he is thinking:
Because the game won't be around long enough to recoup any refund if we were to offer one.
[quote]"Veteran players were comfortable with the old icons, so to themthis represents something new to learn. "[/quote]
What he is thinking:
And of course they are all just idiots who don't know what's best... mind you none of us acctually play the game, but we do know what is better for them.
[quote]"Crafters still play a key function in supplying weapons and key items to the game; this has not changed, the difference now is that the weapons and items they make stay balanced within the new game parameters. "[/quote]
He is thinking:
Please god don't rephrase the question because I have no idea how a crafter is suppose to actually collect resources now that 90% of the PvE content is able to one-shot kill them anywhere on any planet.
[quote]"We also would have like to have seen fewer balancing issues immediately following the publish. "[/quote]
He is thinking:
But of course that would have required that we actually read the feedback from the test-center forums and game exit polls... I mean really come on.
Well... sigh... I'm glad someone was able to reach someone at LucasArts or SOE and at least get them to talk, but also wished the interview could have been more to point about the adverse impacts to players, including the complete destruction of my 2 years of crafting role development, and the destruction of my crafting profession, and the fact that it is, in fact, an all new game we've had shoved on us, one that is not an improvement.
Also, its interesting to note that there are leaders in LucasArts who are holding hands with SOE on this new SWG2 game, and who also can't be sleeping at night any better than the SOE leaders who have mismanaged this game since day #1 with a bad launch and since their first major stumble with the holo-grind. Those two early mismanagements alone have lead the ongoing decay in player attrition that has continued to this day.
SOE has consistently mismanaged the SWG project, and delivered deplorable communication and customer service to the player/customer community.
From a player relations standpoint, they delete threads and posts by players, myself included many times, that disagree with the direction they are taking with the game. The threads have been constructive, non-inflammatory, and in detail demonstrate the issues with the existing game, the dissatisfaction with changing the game, and in detail how the existing game could be remedied. Most of these types of threads are deleted. If we persist in creating threads of this nature, our forums rights are temporarily banned for anywhere from two days to a week, for "trolling" (what they at SOE call, "inciting trouble," by disagreeing with their direction and design.)
I have cancelled 5 accounts. I have been a veteran 2003 customer, and have worked the game daily... daily... since that time. I have earned a jedi account, attained jetpacks and just about every other fun high-end content, and have just played the heck out of the game from the beginning. I had accumulated millions of quality crafting resources, being a medical crafter of grand repute, and having applied my own labor, passion, and sweat to the MMORPG game environment with gusto.
SOE was supposed to give us game enhancements, combat balance enhancements. Instead, what they sprung on us out of the blue, against the stated feedback of the community Correspondents, is a "Combat Upgrade" (so-called by SOE) that is really a New SWG entirely.
My two years of daily work, resources, effort, is being destroyed. In the New SWG, I can no longer craft items as a Doctor, and the items that were crafted are being eliminated from the game entirely. My role and reason for existing, my business, my everything, is being destroyed. Half a dozen non-combat professions are being made obsolete and their roles are destroyed. All of the combat professions are redone from scratch, completely foreign to what we have played for the last two years. The interface has changed, the commands have changed, the look and sounds have changed, its a new game with a new learning curve, and we have to start over building our role in the new environment.
Instead of a so-called "Combat Upgrade" our game is being destroyed and a new game is being slipped in from nowhere. We did not ask for a new game, or to have our MMORPG roles and efforts be destroyed, to start from scratch with an all new game.
SOE can not be trusted. We worked hard over the last two years to build guilds, to build businesses, to build roles, reputations, customers, to gather and harvest and mine millions of units of resources, to pay millions of units of credits for other brokered resources - now worthless - would have been better off keeping the credits rather than have all that blood, sweat, and passion representing two years of work thrown in the garbage. Why would I ever, having loved a crafting profession, ever trust SOE to respect my daily work and not throw away my value, role, and resources again in the future? Why would I ever put effort into the roles in the game when SOE just wasted and destroyed everything I have worked for, for years!?
I cannot fathom how SOE has remained in charge of the SWG project, given their disrespectful, power-mad rule over the forums, given their deplorable communication with the community (the positive and enthusiastic Jon Hanna, SOE's recent Community Relations Rep, lasted less than 90 days after being put into a position of being squeezed between performing for the community and being put into an untenable position by a hardline and non-responsive SOE - you can find Mr. Hanna representing Middle Earth Online now), given their dismal project management all the way back to the game-breaking introduction of the Jedi hologrind that brought the game to a halt as everyone stopped playing their roles to grind 32 professions in order to unlock a Jedi character, to the Jedi revamp that was supposed to (via the Village quests) stop the hologrinding madness, but out of the blue (and similar to this out of the blue New SWG instead of just combat balancing) they also redesigned from scratch all of the Jedi skill trees for no apparent reason (making us relearn and have a different gaming experience for what seemed like whim,) and introduced the much player maligned FRS system, negative XP, and skill loss (the latter since revoked and the others should have been revoked also,) all uncommunicated upfront, unanticipated, and unexplained; typical for SOE.
The player community has no idea what is going on with SOE project management. They design everything in an ivory tower. The so-called community/player Correspondents are simply powerless, ineffective decoys to deflect player frustration away from the devs and onto these player reps, who have no power, no voice, and no input. SOE does nothing to solicit player feedback, to evaluate such feedback, or to replay to the community how they've integrated such feedback into solutions. It does not exist. You would expect that correspondents would be asked to compile and coalesce the players ideas and present them to SOE for evaluation, but that would only be if SOE actually wanted such input to their ivory tower designs. Instead SOE only asks for brief bullets from Correspondents in a Top 5 list, such as "More dances for entertainers," rather than compiling all of the great ideas floating around the forums. They're not really interested in hearing ideas, they just want the players to spin their frustration around vapid and shallow Top 5 lists, so they can continue to spring surprises on the community in their endless iterations of game fixes.
The correspondents had no input to the New SWG game we're being force fed, and the feedback they did give was negative. The correspondents have said that the game they were previewed was received negatively, and that the game that actually hit the test servers was much different entirely from what they even tested. It's all ivory tower work, and nothing representative of the players desires, or respecting the continuity or efforts which the players have invested in the game thus far.
I will not return to the game until our game is returned to us in its current Classic SWG form, rather than the New SWG they are forcing on the players, and most likely not until SOE is fired for their longstanding mismanagement of the SWG project in all regards from planning to communication, and gross disrespect for the customer. For this player to return to the game, at the least we would need to see our Classic SWG restored, with a significant recommitment for new SWG project leads to reach out to the community, to listen to the community, to evaluate our feedback, commit to loop back and tell us how our needs were integrated into solutions, and work with the community to make the best MMORPG online, because as a Star Wars game, it should be nothing else.
I have numerous examples of how the existing game could be readily improved without making obsolete existing professions, efforts and passion, while at the same time bringing balance to the game and combat. I would be glad to share them again. Our ideas have been well received on the forums, before moderators deleted them and banned us. Namely moderator Garva.
I wish everyone luck, and hope that it is not too late to save our Classic "pre" Star Wars game. We've put so much into it. We have no idea what's driving SOE's ivory tower design decisions, as they don't talk to us. However, lacking that knowledge, SOE's misfires in planning, design, and communication are worse than anything I've witnessed in my 20 years of successful business leadership. Maybe LucasArts leadership overall, not those currently holding sweaty hands with a bungling SOE, is in a better position to save the game from SOE's mismanagement.
SOE = A "No Confidence" Vote
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE CU.. NOTHING TO SEE!!!!
Man, I haven't seen this many actively posting new accounts in one day since Mourning was pulled from the forums! Thats gotta be saying something...
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
The thing that bothers me most about it is the lack of concern that was displayed to the player base. Right before, and for a good few days after the CU was pushed live, the forums became ablaze with protests and complaints, and the answers recieved were deleted threads and banned accounts. Accounts banned for speaking against the CU.
I myself have played SWG for well over a year, and working towards the Jedi profession was my main goal. After I achieved that goal, it took me even a few more months to almost level it. I say almost, because I was not quite completed when the CU went live. The reason most say that Jedi is unplayable is because the rate of xp gain has been substantualy lowered, the Mobs made stronger, and buffs removed, in a way that highly encourages group play and highly discourages solo play. Yet Jedi is still tied to the same laws and penalties of the old system, which is a system that forces us to grind solo, penalizes us for grouping, penalizing by massive amounts of xp losses per death (and these xp loss amounts have remained the same as before, so the xp loss in the old system would only take a few hours at most to regain, now that same xp will take days or weeks to regain).
So have the belief that this move was intentional, to sublimely "purge" the servers of the Jedi population in order to better fit the timeline of the upcoming movie. And in the few responses we get from the developement team are along the lines of "Yes we know there is a problem, and we will get to them eventually, but we cannot promise when." it would appear these assumptions could be closer to the truth than I wanted to believe.
So, just as EPIII (the episode III of the game) is trying to keep in line with the EPIII movie, it would appear we are truly in the midst of what will later be refered to as "The Jedi Purge" of SWG.
I'll not bother going into detail of what I think about the combat downgrade,I'll just say...
Bye bye soe.
Thanks for destroying swg.
'cancel's 2 accounts'
I think it's really cool that his response to soloing concernes was essentially "Screw you, we don't want you to be able to solo at high levels any more." Given that SOEs attitude is generally "You will like what we tell you to like peons!" I would be really surprised to see them back off of their new stance. I was thinking of trying this, since I have SOE all access, but now it seems like it would be pretty stupid to do so (I play 95% of the time solo). Maybe the space battles are still fun, but if I want fun Star Wars themed space battles believe I have better options available than SWG.
I still may try it once the "total experience" package hits, but I personally found his responses completely disheartening.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
So many people posting about SWG recently .... it does not matter if its pro or con .. but its obviously a universe you love ...
You love SWG .... or you love to hate SWG .... but its hard to be indifferent. Which means ... even if you love to hate it ... its because you WOULD like to love it, but something soured the experience for you. But you are still passionate about it .. enough to post here.
Have fun
Erillion