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Star Wars Galaxies: To those of you who played, what are the key features that defined that game fo
Foomerang
Member UncommonPosts: 5,628
All this talk about spiritual successor to SWG, I have seen a lot of different viewpoints on what actually made SWG, well, SWG!
To me, Star Wars Galaxies had a handful of truly unique features that if I were to consider a spiritual successor to this game, they would have to include the following:
1. A dynamic resource system. Resources were always unique and in constant flux. Each had a set of unique stats that could benefits different crafters in different ways. Most of the time it was architect fodder, but it was still fun to scour the planets in search for something truly rare and valuable.
2. The Entertainers: Classes dedicated to promoting socialization. Dancers, Musicians, Image Designers. These classes were made for the sole purpose of bringing players together in a social atmosphere. This, imho, is sorely lacking in most mmos today.
3. The Bio Engineer. To me, the beauty of this class wasnt the pets. It was the fact that SWG had a class that could support other crafting classes. Bio Engineered additives and enhancers made chefs food better, doctors medicine better etc. How many mmos have support classes for combat? Now how many of those have one for crafting too? Yeah not many, if any at all.
There are plenty more but those are just a few of the big ones for me. What were some singular features that made Star Wars Galaxies unique to you?
Comments
The crafting system and the amount of freedom you had to choose things are all going to be major things for everyone I'm sure but something SWG had that you'll never get back is a game full of real mmorpg players.
The market is saturated now with people who like the idea of playing mmos and enjoy playing games online but a game full of people looking to live in a world and be part of it rather than just be a tourist and go on all the rides is something the genre lost a long time ago.
It was crafting and character building, but more importantly, how important people's characters were for building societies. I truly felt like I was a small person in a large galaxy. I never felt annoyed waiting for a ship to take me to another planet. I loved how I could go on my speeder and explore the lands on planets and sometimes for great distances there wouldn't be much of anything, as a world SHOULD BE.
Then occasionally finding some town out in the middle of nowhere built by players! It just felt like a big galaxy that players really built from the ground up. Games don't do this anymore then again, there are very few noteworthy sandbox games at this current time. Worlds in games these days are just so crowded with 'mobs' etc., and don't feel like convincing worlds.
Point is, the world felt alive and whether going into the cantina to watch people dance and play music, going to the doc to get some wounds healed, going to check on your stations and pumps out in the world for collecting resources, waiting for rides or trying to get somewhere as fast as possible that's far away or even having your damn speeder break down! CRAP!
The game just had so much to do and places to go and it felt like your character was a living, breathing person who not only had adventures, but also had problems that needed to be solved. The MMO really felt like a virtual life in the Star Wars universe, and me not being a big fan of Jedi, I really liked the game a lot. All of this is Pre-CU, of course.
freedom, community driven content (SOE provided none), sandbox, Star Wars original timeline.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
1. The world(s)
And really, in retrospect, that was the one big thing I will continue to remember vividly about it. SWG did have worlds filled with stuff that would amaze you at every turn. For my first MMO, it was truly a breath-taking experience to scrape together enough money to take a shuttle to another place and be amazed once again.
Whatever you can say about SWG, it succeeded in making a living world. That didn't only mean some interesting mechanics like complex behaviour for NPC's, it also meant that the game miraculously succeeded to make players *want* to do activities that resulted in the whole thing feeling genuine.
When you went to a bar to get buffs, there was a reason to be there, both for you and the entertainer trying to level up his profession. There was a reason why people were choosing to be Empire or Rebel, it all meant something.
2 A great community, but a walled off one
When I tried SWG, I was still a pretty young kid. And while there were friendly people who would help you around every corner, you couldn't help but feel like there were big walls to climb before you could actually call yourself a part of the whole experience. Walls that I never succeeded in scaling at the time.
Being an established crafter was something great sure, but it also meant being part of a small elite. Of the people who got their extractors out to the right locations when the game started, who had theorized enough about it to know the right route to take.
The same went with many aspects of the game.: there were big hurdles to take that really weren't that easy to (not for me at that time at least). From joining guilds to building a network to going all political on people's ass and so forth.
In many ways only a small community was truly playing the intended game, with a lot of outsiders playing another one. The same goes for some other sandboxes out there btw, in some I've succeeded to join the few who are *in* to it, in others I haven't.
3. Despite everything, a grind
When I had just started the game, I decided to level up as a brawler and go from there. I read a certain guide on the internetz that adviced me to go kill rats here, insects there then lions here and so forth. Until I could repeat a similar process when going for the advanced Teras Kasi mastery later.
The guide also had a special piece of advice: to get some stickers on your keyboard so you could keep certain keys pressed indefinitely, once you had enough power to smash through the local critters quickly.
I thought it was a silly piece of exaggeration. Until I actually went ahead and did it for more than a month.
Ultimately, SWG was an oldschool game with oldschool mechanics that focused on people who had lots of spare time on their hands. The world might have been great, but it was also empty by today's standards, and required you to spent weeks on menial boring tasks.
The grind was what made me quit and it's also the reason why an SWG clone won't succeed in this day and age.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
The space combat was a really great addition, and made everything feel that much bigger.
Yeah I think its one of the only mmos to pull off a legit ground and space game.
Another thing that always astounded me was the variety of creature resources accompanied by the scout and ranger professions.
Hide,meat,bone,fish,mollusks,crustaceans,milk,eggs,bait. All part of the dynamically changing stats on resources. Just the sheer variety of resoirces by itself was staggering. Hundreds of raw materials ready to be harvested in a dozen different ways all with shifting stats.
All of you nailed it!
What was great is how everyone loved Star Wars and could relate to one another and talk about it.
Just the little adventures we all shared in 1 game was epic.
All we have today are games driven by level cap to get to a endless hamster wheel for rewards.
SWG was a game you could just sit around and absolutely do nothing and still feel like you did something.
One of the few things in the MMO genre that the majority of people can agree on eh? :P
1) Player Bounties. I absolutely loved actually hunting down jedi and killing them. However, I didn't love tracking them to their locked houses while they were afk grinding meditation.
2) The size of the game world and the feeling of Star Wars, minus all of the jedi players running around which annoyed me thus forcing me to switch to bounty hunter to rectify SOE's mistake of having them in-game in the first place.
3) Making my name as a smuggler/business man who ironically later turned to bounty hunting. See above.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
The crafting was a large part of it but I think interdependency is huge. HAVING to depend on other players made the game live. What created this is many things but I think only having one character per account, only being able to get things from other players, and decay had a lot of things to do with this interdependency.
It created the need to rely on other players and thus have to be nice to other people if you wanted things. This I think created a better community as well. If you look at things like the dungeon finder in a lot of the games now its the exact opposite of this. You see people who are jerks to others because why not? There are no repercussions to being rude and no positives to being helpful or nice.
In SWG if you were rude you either had to find your own bunch of people who didn't care if you were a complete ass or you got put on a lot of blacklists. Those blacklists often prevented you from getting doctor's buffs, entertainer healing/buffs, best weapons and armors from vendors, and before doctor's buffs being included in the group job hunting groups that made a lot of money.
In WoW or FF14 right now if you are a complete douche to people what's the downside? Maybe being kicked from a group and waiting another 30 mins for another?
I have a lot of fond memories of SWG and all of them revolve around other people playing the game. We had fun raiding imps bases and defending ours from them - then after everybody was total black bars us all (rebs and imps) kicking it in the cantina having a good time chatting about the awesome fight we just had - until we were all healed and ready to do it again. I remember crashing the server over and over cause we had sooooo many people pvping in one area. I remember being parts of atleast 10 weddings. I remember the first time 900+ resources spawned and I got emails from my friends to hurry and log on and place harvesters. I remember walking from Doaba to our 'town' (there weren't real player controlled towns then) with 0 points in scout and taking FOREVER (no speeders at that time either). I remember when player cities came out and the made dash to place the town halls so youd get one of the few cities per planet. I remember going out with friends not long after launch to dathomir in nothing but starter clothes because we KNEW we were going to die a crap ton trying to tame rancors.
Notice none of those were I soloed so and so, or I created something for myself.
I am thinking the correct question for this should be "How much about SWG could be changed before a game cant be called a spiritual successor anymore".
Just having the gathering, crafting and building of it sure doesn't make it a successor.
Just having its class system doesn't make it one.
Just having entertainers and bio-engineers wont make it one.
Just having a sandbox wont make it one.
Just having a space and ground game wont make it one.
Just being a star wars game wont make it one.
Just having massive RPing elements wont make it one.
For it to be the spiritual successor, it has to have the spirit of the game. No modern setting, especially one around zombies and pvp, can be it. It was a stupid move by Smed to even bring up SWG at all in my eyes, I cant look at the game seriously now even though I doubt I would have as "real world" is boring for an MMO and "real world" with most of the population dead is even more boring.
No fantasy or sci-fi = why the hell am I playing this game for a long time?!?
So I posted what I remember as being the good things of the game now I will post what I disliked about the game.
The game had a ton of features that SOE never got around to actually making them work right. For instance the player controlled bases were bugged often and it was a crap shoot if youd actually be able to take them down when they were actually vulnerable. Another would be the absolutely useless spawned battles. They were present and not working for a LONG time and when they were made usable they were often buggy and not fun in any way. The quest hubs (rebel, Imp, and jabba) were atrocious. There wasn't much background or story to them. Sure you got to meet some of the heroes from the flicks but they were just awful.
Other bugs such as skills not working correctly or some command functions having very bad consequences (there was a tip bug that I can remember very well that would actually take all your money and spread it amongst the group instead of the amount you typed). I think carbineers had half their skills not working and LOL squad leaders.
I HATE HATE HATE the jedi grind. I am one of the few that never did the whole jedi grind. I was the profession I wanted and was more than happy with it, but to see so many people afk was a very big shame. It ruined the world and started the downfall of the game. They sucked up resources (computer and ingame) and made the world feel so dead.
I hated the limit on stuff you could have in your house. I know this is needed but some of the decorated houses were awesome but could only have one room decorated due to limitations on space.
Hanging out in a medical center with my doc and healing people. I was a much more sociable player back then. JTL. Tatooine at launch, before the blight of player cities. Being a wookie. A massive, hairy, two-tone wookie.
SWG was an epic, buggy, sprawling mess of a masterpiece. Better and worse than anything I had played before and anything I have played since. It was just 'more'.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
In no particular order:
- Star Wars (doh^^) - any "spiritual successor" needs to be a Sci-Fi game IMVPO
- large open planets, NOT littered with mobs every 5 meters
- cool non combat classes, like Entertainers and Creature Handlers
- open housing & players cities
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Working on it.. (game style, that is.. not SW)..
..because we're gamers, damn it!! - William Massachusetts (Log Horizon)
The early GCW where imperials and rebels fought throughout the open world. The greatest BH system in the world and the pure sandbox feel of the game.
Incognito
www.incognito-gaming.us
"You're either with us or against us"
Nice story and good explanation. The social aspect of SWG was indeed unique and great.