From what I understand, the negative aspect of having Jedi was that people then stopped fulfilling all of the other roles in the game that made it great. No one wanted to be an entertainer when they could be a JEDI! No one wanted to be a Medic when they could be a JEDI!!
Am I correct on this?
If that is the case, get rid of the entertainer and medic, and focus on Jedi.
You just said it .. Jedi is much more preferable than medic and entertainer by most players. So why provides classes people want less, rather than the one that everyone likes?
Did you miss the part where that was what killed the game?
This is why game design is a profession that goes beyond "having an idea".
and yet TOR is way more successful because everyone can be a Jedi. There is certainly no entertainer in TOR, or any other successful Star War games.
I guess SWG wasn't designed that well in the first place .. obviously games focused on Jedi work.
Apples and oranges. But that pretty much sums up your logic. Just because a different product is more successful than another one does not make the other one a bad product.
And actually SWG was very well designed and popular. It was the changes that they made which ended up killing it. (Cuz the devs listened to people like you.)
I would revamp the combat system in the game as the one change I'd make.
It was, essentially, just a tab-target game, but the combat was a lot more simple. My first and favourite profession was pikeman, so I'll give you an example of typical PvE combat (leveling / grinding missions)
1) Set up a macro for main rotation - Clear Queue -> Target Nearest Creature -> Area Hit -> Repeat
2) Set up macro to heal: Clear Queue -> Heal
3) Set up CC macro: Clear Queue -> Dizzy -> Dizzy -> Knockdown
Then, you just set off your rotation macro and run towards the enemy. If you were buffed an in armour, thats it. Just literally run to the nest, AoE down everything, smash the nest and move on. If you found a cave, you'd literally just run around in circles, gathering up tons of mobs and AoEing them all for hours. It was very easy.
Against high end mobs, you'd have a separate single target macro set up, targetting the mind pool, but essentially it was just a case of smashing away whilst keeping the enemy dizzy and kd'd. For most classes, the skill in PvE combat was just in building the right template (combination of professions).
PvP was a different matter, but I never got particularly good at it.
I still loved the game, and still enjoyed the combat, but something more engaging would have been great. I'd rather have placed the outcome of combat more on the shoulders of player skill rather than template, buffs and armour.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
From what I understand, the negative aspect of having Jedi was that people then stopped fulfilling all of the other roles in the game that made it great. No one wanted to be an entertainer when they could be a JEDI! No one wanted to be a Medic when they could be a JEDI!!
Am I correct on this?
Somewhat but I'd say it was more combat oriented players who were affected. The pure entertainer players didn't really partake in those aspects of the game (combat oriented roles). Combat oriented players who had entertainers were mostly multi-boxers, so those entertainers were mostly afk bots to begin with anyway.
There was a big thing going on in which entertainers wanted to have combat skills. The devs finally gave them old brawler skills that had been dropped. There were a sizable amount of entertainers who loved what they did and fought against bots, they just wanted their roles expanded after awhile.
Jedi was the new shiny and nearly everyone had to have one. They finally just made it a class because the player base was going crazy on what it took to become one.
The Dev in charge said originally he estimated it would have been 6 or 7 years before someone stumbled on becoming force-sensitive. Even if they had went with that plan eventually the same thing would have happened. Players would have speculated and tried all kinds of things and just wore the devs down until they made it accessible for everyone.
Yes, after the fact it would have been best to have no player Jedi at all.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
and yet TOR is way more successful because everyone can be a Jedi. There is certainly no entertainer in TOR, or any other successful Star War games.
I guess SWG wasn't designed that well in the first place .. obviously games focused on Jedi work.
Apples and oranges. But that pretty much sums up your logic. Just because a different product is more successful than another one does not make the other one a bad product.
I did not say it is a bad product. I said games focused on Jedi works. TOR is an example. Do you dispute that?
Jedi ruined this game. I'd have made it so no players could be full fledged Jedi. I'd have taken the queue from the Table Top SW RPG from West End Games. Players had access to force sensitive skills, but those skills were weak compared to actual Jedi. This preserving the balance of the game without destroying the essence of the IP (**Looks at SWTOR**)
There was a big thing going on in which entertainers wanted to have combat skills. The devs finally gave them old brawler skills that had been dropped. There were a sizable amount of entertainers who loved what they did and fought against bots, they just wanted their roles expanded after awhile.
lol .. pretty said that the old entertainer role was not satisfying to players.
and yet TOR is way more successful because everyone can be a Jedi. There is certainly no entertainer in TOR, or any other successful Star War games.
I guess SWG wasn't designed that well in the first place .. obviously games focused on Jedi work.
Apples and oranges. But that pretty much sums up your logic. Just because a different product is more successful than another one does not make the other one a bad product.
I did not say it is a bad product. I said games focused on Jedi works. TOR is an example. Do you dispute that?
BTW, what happened to "not talking to me"?
Go back and (very slowly) reread his comment; you'll find your answer there.
You're welcome and no problem.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I would have removed the jedi/holocron mess. No jedi period. That was the first big mistake that started the downward side in population. People just abandoned what was fun and started grinding out skill after skill to get a jedi. Auction house became a mess and no one wanted to do anything but grind professions.
I would have put more effort into the galactic civil war. There was not much purpose to being involved in it.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
From what I understand, the negative aspect of having Jedi was that people then stopped fulfilling all of the other roles in the game that made it great. No one wanted to be an entertainer when they could be a JEDI! No one wanted to be a Medic when they could be a JEDI!!
Am I correct on this?
If that is the case, get rid of the entertainer and medic, and focus on Jedi.
You just said it .. Jedi is much more preferable than medic and entertainer by most players. So why provides classes people want less, rather than the one that everyone likes?
I never chased the lightsaber dragon. I danced, and harvested meat for my BE friend, and hides for my tailor friend, and bones for my armorsmith friend, and escorted them on trips to place harvesters and maintain them. Tsiya Ama, Dancer/Master Creature Handler/Pistoleer, founding member of BEAST, at your service.
From what I understand, the negative aspect of having Jedi was that people then stopped fulfilling all of the other roles in the game that made it great. No one wanted to be an entertainer when they could be a JEDI! No one wanted to be a Medic when they could be a JEDI!!
Am I correct on this?
If that is the case, get rid of the entertainer and medic, and focus on Jedi.
You just said it .. Jedi is much more preferable than medic and entertainer by most players. So why provides classes people want less, rather than the one that everyone likes?
Did you miss the part where that was what killed the game?
This is why game design is a profession that goes beyond "having an idea".
and yet TOR is way more successful because everyone can be a Jedi. There is certainly no entertainer in TOR, or any other successful Star War games.
I guess SWG wasn't designed that well in the first place .. obviously games focused on Jedi work.
Apples and oranges. But that pretty much sums up your logic. Just because a different product is more successful than another one does not make the other one a bad product.
And actually SWG was very well designed and popular. It was the changes that they made which ended up killing it. (Cuz the devs listened to people like you.)
Read Koster's own analysis of SWG's development. Not going to make you think that the game was well designed. It was released half baked, and a lot of design decisions were not good, they were perceived 'lesser evils.'
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
From what I understand, the negative aspect of having Jedi was that people then stopped fulfilling all of the other roles in the game that made it great. No one wanted to be an entertainer when they could be a JEDI! No one wanted to be a Medic when they could be a JEDI!!
Am I correct on this?
No. From day one Jedi was a Hidden Profession, with a secret unlock. e A few people stumbled upon the solution and unlocked Jedi first. A segment of the community demanded clues to the method of unlock. Eventually it was revealed that every character was assigned 5 secret professions, select POI badges, and select Themepark Quest lines to complete to unlock Jedi.
Again a segment of the population felt this was not enough help. So Holocrons, that revealed one of the Five secret professions were added to the game. This were rare loot drops off Inquisitors (unlike SW:Rebels these were non-Saber wielding).
But back to being a Medic in SWG. SWG was a Flavor of The Month (FoTM) type game. This meant that Combat (Killers) type players were only interested in the deadliest builds. These were usually made up of 2.5 Combat professions. Adding the total Defense and Offense Modifiers. Medic was a Non-Combat profession, that only lead to one 2nd Tier Combat Profession (Combat Medic). Doctor and Bio-Engineer where part Crafting, part Support. By Non-Combat profession, I mean that XP comes from use of medicine in the act of healing. Most players only had time for Master Doctors and their Stat Buffs. That 0.5 Profession Was usually made up of the Scout Terrain Navigation (Movement up Incline buff) Branch, and the Novice Medic Self Heal (Use Heal Stims A & Branch. I know I probably got the names wrong again, but I am not trying to get the names right. Just the concept has to be right.
Another aspect of FoTM and SWG. You beat someone in a Duel one day. They read the forums, learn the counter to your spec. They unlearn the un-need branches. Run an AFK combat macro overnight, and they are respec the next day. They challenge you to a duel and wipe the floor with you. You wonder how can someone you beat yesterday, beat you today? Thing was, class and build were not visible to others in SWG Pre-CU/NGE. You had to screen grab to get a look at the weapon used, read the combat spam to ID the skills used. Then guess about the second class that wasn't visible. The forums would mostly like tell you what the FoTM was for that hidden second class.
The point being, SWG was all about class SAMPLING. Players didn't hold on to classes for months or years. They held them for days. Sure the Race to Jedi had uninterested people climbing the Entertainer paths, Crafter paths, and Combat paths. But the PvP crowd was also racing up and down the different builds. You might feel all powerful for three hours, until your Mom sends you to bed. Everyone rebuilds. And the next day, the tables have turned and you're a scrub once again.
It's not that no one wanted to be a Medic rather than a Jedi. Leveling Medic and Doctor was hands on. and part Crafting. Both had a Crafting branch, four out of 16 boxes done only by crafting xp. Then Doctor (Advanced Medic + Buffs) had four boxes only filled by wound treatment xp. Wounds were a permanent HAM damage not healed in combat or by regular meds. They were also rare and slow to come by. If you didn't have a hefty supply of wounds you could not level or master Doctor or the Healing/Buffing Entertainers. Luckily I knew how to get wound Fast and in large Quantities. I mined radioactives by hand. Most people used Harvesters to mine radioactives, so they didn't know about the wounds they caused. I digress.
The point. Combat professions were fluid. PvPer that expected to be king of the hill for a long time didn't like this. Those that liked PvP and liked switching to meet the challenge didn't care one bit.
Socializer who liked hanging out in Cantinas and chatting loved to play the slow leveling Entertainers. This was a hands free class that could level slow. Or you could AFK macro level just like the combat class fast, plus pay me for mind wound to be healed.
75% of the population left to play WoW, and never came back. Less than 10% (a single digit percentage, possibly even less than 1%. It was small and therefore irrelevant) left because there were plenty of Jedi around. That why I say Jedi are not at fault.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
NGE was the ending of the game...all there was to it.
If you spell NGE, WoW then you are right. I stayed and played the NGE. The real problem was that everyone who asked for twitch combat had left to play WoW with its cool graphics (for the time) and loads of quests and visually identifiable classes.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Another thing that used to piss us off to no end, was that the mobs didn't use the same rules that the players did. Stormtroopers were stupidly buffed with far more armor, stats and hit points than a player could ever get. A skill based game with level based NPCs.
From what I understand, the negative aspect of having Jedi was that people then stopped fulfilling all of the other roles in the game that made it great. No one wanted to be an entertainer when they could be a JEDI! No one wanted to be a Medic when they could be a JEDI!!
Am I correct on this?
No. From day one Jedi was a Hidden Profession, with a secret unlock. e A few people stumbled upon the solution and unlocked Jedi first. A segment of the community demanded clues to the method of unlock. Eventually it was revealed that every character was assigned 5 secret professions, select POI badges, and select Themepark Quest lines to complete to unlock Jedi.
Again a segment of the population felt this was not enough help. So Holocrons, that revealed one of the Five secret professions were added to the game. This were rare loot drops off Inquisitors (unlike SW:Rebels these were non-Saber wielding).
But back to being a Medic in SWG. SWG was a Flavor of The Month (FoTM) type game. This meant that Combat (Killers) type players were only interested in the deadliest builds. These were usually made up of 2.5 Combat professions. Adding the total Defense and Offense Modifiers. Medic was a Non-Combat profession, that only lead to one 2nd Tier Combat Profession (Combat Medic). Doctor and Bio-Engineer where part Crafting, part Support. By Non-Combat profession, I mean that XP comes from use of medicine in the act of healing. Most players only had time for Master Doctors and their Stat Buffs. That 0.5 Profession Was usually made up of the Scout Terrain Navigation (Movement up Incline buff) Branch, and the Novice Medic Self Heal (Use Heal Stims A & Branch. I know I probably got the names wrong again, but I am not trying to get the names right. Just the concept has to be right.
Another aspect of FoTM and SWG. You beat someone in a Duel one day. They read the forums, learn the counter to your spec. They unlearn the un-need branches. Run an AFK combat macro overnight, and they are respec the next day. They challenge you to a duel and wipe the floor with you. You wonder how can someone you beat yesterday, beat you today? Thing was, class and build were not visible to others in SWG Pre-CU/NGE. You had to screen grab to get a look at the weapon used, read the combat spam to ID the skills used. Then guess about the second class that wasn't visible. The forums would mostly like tell you what the FoTM was for that hidden second class.
The point being, SWG was all about class SAMPLING. Players didn't hold on to classes for months or years. They held them for days. Sure the Race to Jedi had uninterested people climbing the Entertainer paths, Crafter paths, and Combat paths. But the PvP crowd was also racing up and down the different builds. You might feel all powerful for three hours, until your Mom sends you to bed. Everyone rebuilds. And the next day, the tables have turned and you're a scrub once again.
It's not that no one wanted to be a Medic rather than a Jedi. Leveling Medic and Doctor was hands on. and part Crafting. Both had a Crafting branch, four out of 16 boxes done only by crafting xp. Then Doctor (Advanced Medic + Buffs) had four boxes only filled by wound treatment xp. Wounds were a permanent HAM damage not healed in combat or by regular meds. They were also rare and slow to come by. If you didn't have a hefty supply of wounds you could not level or master Doctor or the Healing/Buffing Entertainers. Luckily I knew how to get wound Fast and in large Quantities. I mined radioactives by hand. Most people used Harvesters to mine radioactives, so they didn't know about the wounds they caused. I digress.
The point. Combat professions were fluid. PvPer that expected to be king of the hill for a long time didn't like this. Those that liked PvP and liked switching to meet the challenge didn't care one bit.
Socializer who liked hanging out in Cantinas and chatting loved to play the slow leveling Entertainers. This was a hands free class that could level slow. Or you could AFK macro level just like the combat class fast, plus pay me for mind wound to be healed.
75% of the population left to play WoW, and never came back. Less than 10% (a single digit percentage, possibly even less than 1%. It was small and therefore irrelevant) left because there were plenty of Jedi around. That why I say Jedi are not at fault.
1st: The original unlock was based on 5 random professions mastered, period. No badges etc were required.
2nd: 75% of the population absolutely did not leave to play WoW and saying so is absurd to the extreme.
Some real losses caused by Jedi were not simply burn out chasing after Jedi. Inclusion of Jedi, via the hologrind, created deep waves that washed across the entire game.
There were Entertainers/Dancers/Musicians/Image Designers who quit because their extremely personal social gameplay was suddenly derailed by 100s of afk bots ruining the cantina scene.
There were scouts and rangers who left the game as the market fell out of the meat/bone/hide gathering because 1000s of fly by scouts and rangers flooded their market and tanked it hard. Leaving them in a tough spot to replace their armor and weapons as they wore out or to get their ent/medic buffs to go hunt in the 1st place.
There were social oriented Doctor's who were suddenly forced out of their buff businesses due to dozens of persons buffing for a loss just to get xp to holo grind the xp. Let us not forget you could get xp for parts of other profs playing totally different ones. For Example: I leveled most of Doc with Combat Medic Area Bs in cantinas because well, healing xp was healing xp.
Then there were the numerous "stats don't matter goods" that grinders produced and dumped on the market. House deeds, furniture, and such from architect for instance. This killed any architect who couldn't produce max BER harvesters (one of the few things they made that required high quality resources).
These are some examples of the ripples moving through entire sections of the player base by the inclusion of the Jedi system.
That was WoW, that caused artisans to suddenly disappear not Jedi. The original system added a second character slot to the account to level as a Jedi. The original Crafter was uneffected. The was still the time know as the holocron grind. Before the CU/NGE they switched to the original character slot (Main) being the Jedi, and the new character slot being non-force sensitive (To re-level old professions). This is when I became a Jedi. After the Jedi perma deaths, but before the repeal of Jedi Bounty Hunting.
Commenting on what I changed to bold: This is only true if the last ground profession for unlock was a crafting profession. Otherwise people were taking the Armorsmith they were happy with 1 day then respecing the next to something else to chase Jedi. Either because they received a holocron or attempting to guess their way through the professions. Then respecing again after that, then again after that, etc
The burn out was palpable. Die hard players were burning out because they felt they had to have a Jedi to compete. They burned themselves out chasing after it. Sure it is, in part, their own fault because they didn't have to. It is also SOE/LA's fault for creating a system that was completely opposite the spirit of the game and then make it the prettiest dangled carrot you could imagine for a Star Wars fan.
Believe me when I say crafters were lost in large numbers as they suddenly became Rifleman, swordsman, fencers, medics, scouts, squad commanders, etc...all chasing Jedi.
True, what you describe was called the Hologrind (I thought of it as the Profession grind). This was how the developers expected the player base to play the game. Grinding out all 30+ classes by hand for years. Even though they had a system in place to speed up the process (the AFK macro system), to 3.5 month (a guide was posted on the SOE forums).
The system was designed to be fluid and ever in flux. This was one of the reasons that current Profession was not visible. No player was locked into a class. Unless they decided they loved that class and wanted to stay with it. It was always player choice.
If Jedi was a carrot, then 1977's Star Wars did that.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
That was WoW, that caused artisans to suddenly disappear not Jedi. The original system added a second character slot to the account to level as a Jedi. The original Crafter was uneffected. The was still the time know as the holocron grind. Before the CU/NGE they switched to the original character slot (Main) being the Jedi, and the new character slot being non-force sensitive (To re-level old professions). This is when I became a Jedi. After the Jedi perma deaths, but before the repeal of Jedi Bounty Hunting.
Commenting on what I changed to bold: This is only true if the last ground profession for unlock was a crafting profession. Otherwise people were taking the Armorsmith they were happy with 1 day then respecing the next to something else to chase Jedi. Either because they received a holocron or attempting to guess their way through the professions. Then respecing again after that, then again after that, etc
The burn out was palpable. Die hard players were burning out because they felt they had to have a Jedi to compete. They burned themselves out chasing after it. Sure it is, in part, their own fault because they didn't have to. It is also SOE/LA's fault for creating a system that was completely opposite the spirit of the game and then make it the prettiest dangled carrot you could imagine for a Star Wars fan.
Believe me when I say crafters were lost in large numbers as they suddenly became Rifleman, swordsman, fencers, medics, scouts, squad commanders, etc...all chasing Jedi.
True, what you describe was called the Hologrind (I thought of it as the Profession grind). This was how the developers expected the player base to play the game. Grinding out all 30+ classes by hand for years. Even though they had a system in place to speed up the process (the AFK macro system), to 3.5 month (a guide was posted on the SOE forums).
The system was designed to be fluid and ever in flux. This was one of the reasons that current Profession was not visible. No player was locked into a class. Unless they decided they loved that class and wanted to stay with it. It was always player choice.
If Jedi was a carrot, then 1977's Star Wars did that.
I disagree. The ability to change what you were was so that you could find what you liked because you only had a single character per account per server. Not so you would play everything.
If Jedi was a carrot, then 1977's Star Wars did that.
Also, no. George Lucas cira 1977 didn't design or code the game to include Jedi. SOE did. Of course people like Jedi. That isn't and wasn't a problem. Their inclusion in the game both as an Alpha Class and a disparate system of play was.
Memory serves me that jedi in SWG was permadeath class,and the change i would undo would be the nerf they did to the same that made them infamous .I left the game after that nerf and my choice
That's a good point as well. Once the one disadvantage became a non-issue, they exploded in popularity, an alpha class with no real detriment will have that effect.
Yah the moment they went from perma death to perma death but with death decay it all changed.
If you didn't play: Originally if you died 3x POOF! toon was gone. You had to remake a new Jedi and start from square one. Later they added decay into the death total. Die once, no real worry....log out and don't play the Jedi for a week and the death you suffered was gone (can't remember the actual time required but a week seems to recollect about right)
Memory serves me that jedi in SWG was permadeath class,and the change i would undo would be the nerf they did to the same that made them infamous .I left the game after that nerf and my choice
That's a good point as well. Once the one disadvantage became a non-issue, they exploded in popularity, an alpha class with no real detriment will have that effect.
Yah the moment they went from perma death to perma death but with death decay it all changed.
If you didn't play: Originally if you died 3x POOF! toon was gone. You had to remake a new Jedi and start from square one. Later they added decay into the death total. Die once, no real worry....log out and don't play the Jedi for a week and the death you suffered was gone (can't remember the actual time required but a week seems to recollect about right)
It should also be noted that the entire original jedi system was conceived of and implemented in a 2 week time period AFTER the game launched.
This was a response to "executive questions" about the fact that there were no player jedi in the game, nor really planned for, at that point.
So the whole jedi profession as originally implemented was put together in a hurry with not a lot of forethought.
Memory serves me that jedi in SWG was permadeath class,and the change i would undo would be the nerf they did to the same that made them infamous .I left the game after that nerf and my choice
That's a good point as well. Once the one disadvantage became a non-issue, they exploded in popularity, an alpha class with no real detriment will have that effect.
Yah the moment they went from perma death to perma death but with death decay it all changed.
If you didn't play: Originally if you died 3x POOF! toon was gone. You had to remake a new Jedi and start from square one. Later they added decay into the death total. Die once, no real worry....log out and don't play the Jedi for a week and the death you suffered was gone (can't remember the actual time required but a week seems to recollect about right)
It should also be noted that the entire original jedi system was conceived of and implemented in a 2 week time period AFTER the game launched.
This was a response to "executive questions" about the fact that there were no player jedi in the game, nor really planned for, at that point.
So the whole jedi profession as originally implemented was put together in a hurry with not a lot of forethought.
Aye. There were many bad decisions spawned. If I had to point at one moment where it all went bad, it would be the free holiday Holocron then entire player base received. Suddenly people who never were going to do it used their Holocron and started grinding.
I would have changed the NPC sub faction system a bit. It was very hard to tell which ones your were fighting at any one time. As it was that system did add some color to the game. And there were quite a few sub faction -gangs- where if you played it right you would have better access to certain areas since you were at peace with them. One bad attack and you might end up with a whole planet of angry NPCs
I also would have tweaked the skill system. I liked how the builds were done but what I waned was to be able to drop the requisite skills once unlocking the higher tiers. Freeing up skill points to allocate otherwise.
Id like to note about the starports for just a second. This was a scheduled starship that allowed you to travel between the worlds. Around a 15 minute wait in between. Meaning if you walked in just as the ship left you had to wait. This system I think was something about 100% of us would never stand for but...it was what made the game work.
And as for the jedi. I know for me there was nearly zero chance I could have been a jedi. I did research I learned bout holocubes and the whole path to becoming a jedi and I KNEW I would never do it. And for me that made seeing one in game exactly what it was supposed to be.
I would have changed the NPC sub faction system a bit. It was very hard to tell which ones your were fighting at any one time. As it was that system did add some color to the game. And there were quite a few sub faction -gangs- where if you played it right you would have better access to certain areas since you were at peace with them. One bad attack and you might end up with a whole planet of angry NPCs
I also would have tweaked the skill system. I liked how the builds were done but what I waned was to be able to drop the requisite skills once unlocking the higher tiers. Freeing up skill points to allocate otherwise.
Id like to note about the starports for just a second. This was a scheduled starship that allowed you to travel between the worlds. Around a 15 minute wait in between. Meaning if you walked in just as the ship left you had to wait. This system I think was something about 100% of us would never stand for but...it was what made the game work.
And as for the jedi. I know for me there was nearly zero chance I could have been a jedi. I did research I learned bout holocubes and the whole path to becoming a jedi and I KNEW I would never do it. And for me that made seeing one in game exactly what it was supposed to be.
Awe inspiring!
The waits for shuttles (originally 10, shaved to 5 and then to 1 minute by late game) and Ships at starports created so much community interaction. The number of persons meeting new people, making new friends, working out trades, etc all because we had to wait a couple minutes. The positive effect can seriously not be overstated.
From what I understand, the negative aspect of having Jedi was that people then stopped fulfilling all of the other roles in the game that made it great. No one wanted to be an entertainer when they could be a JEDI! No one wanted to be a Medic when they could be a JEDI!!
Am I correct on this?
If that is the case, get rid of the entertainer and medic, and focus on Jedi.
You just said it .. Jedi is much more preferable than medic and entertainer by most players. So why provides classes people want less, rather than the one that everyone likes?
I never chased the lightsaber dragon. I danced, and harvested meat for my BE friend, and hides for my tailor friend, and bones for my armorsmith friend, and escorted them on trips to place harvesters and maintain them. Tsiya Ama, Dancer/Master Creature Handler/Pistoleer, founding member of BEAST, at your service.
That is you ... the question is what the majority of players want to play.
Comments
And actually SWG was very well designed and popular. It was the changes that they made which ended up killing it. (Cuz the devs listened to people like you.)
It was, essentially, just a tab-target game, but the combat was a lot more simple. My first and favourite profession was pikeman, so I'll give you an example of typical PvE combat (leveling / grinding missions)
1) Set up a macro for main rotation - Clear Queue -> Target Nearest Creature -> Area Hit -> Repeat
2) Set up macro to heal: Clear Queue -> Heal
3) Set up CC macro: Clear Queue -> Dizzy -> Dizzy -> Knockdown
Then, you just set off your rotation macro and run towards the enemy. If you were buffed an in armour, thats it. Just literally run to the nest, AoE down everything, smash the nest and move on. If you found a cave, you'd literally just run around in circles, gathering up tons of mobs and AoEing them all for hours. It was very easy.
Against high end mobs, you'd have a separate single target macro set up, targetting the mind pool, but essentially it was just a case of smashing away whilst keeping the enemy dizzy and kd'd. For most classes, the skill in PvE combat was just in building the right template (combination of professions).
PvP was a different matter, but I never got particularly good at it.
I still loved the game, and still enjoyed the combat, but something more engaging would have been great. I'd rather have placed the outcome of combat more on the shoulders of player skill rather than template, buffs and armour.
This site classified it as a MMORPG. I guess expecting people who come to this site to respect its game classification is too much to ask?
Jedi was the new shiny and nearly everyone had to have one. They finally just made it a class because the player base was going crazy on what it took to become one.
The Dev in charge said originally he estimated it would have been 6 or 7 years before someone stumbled on becoming force-sensitive. Even if they had went with that plan eventually the same thing would have happened. Players would have speculated and tried all kinds of things and just wore the devs down until they made it accessible for everyone.
Yes, after the fact it would have been best to have no player Jedi at all.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
BTW, what happened to "not talking to me"?
lol .. pretty said that the old entertainer role was not satisfying to players.
You're welcome and no problem.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I would have put more effort into the galactic civil war. There was not much purpose to being involved in it.
Read Koster's own analysis of SWG's development. Not going to make you think that the game was well designed. It was released half baked, and a lot of design decisions were not good, they were perceived 'lesser evils.'
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Again a segment of the population felt this was not enough help. So Holocrons, that revealed one of the Five secret professions were added to the game. This were rare loot drops off Inquisitors (unlike SW:Rebels these were non-Saber wielding).
But back to being a Medic in SWG. SWG was a Flavor of The Month (FoTM) type game. This meant that Combat (Killers) type players were only interested in the deadliest builds. These were usually made up of 2.5 Combat professions. Adding the total Defense and Offense Modifiers. Medic was a Non-Combat profession, that only lead to one 2nd Tier Combat Profession (Combat Medic). Doctor and Bio-Engineer where part Crafting, part Support. By Non-Combat profession, I mean that XP comes from use of medicine in the act of healing. Most players only had time for Master Doctors and their Stat Buffs. That 0.5 Profession Was usually made up of the Scout Terrain Navigation (Movement up Incline buff) Branch, and the Novice Medic Self Heal (Use Heal Stims A &
Another aspect of FoTM and SWG. You beat someone in a Duel one day. They read the forums, learn the counter to your spec. They unlearn the un-need branches. Run an AFK combat macro overnight, and they are respec the next day. They challenge you to a duel and wipe the floor with you. You wonder how can someone you beat yesterday, beat you today? Thing was, class and build were not visible to others in SWG Pre-CU/NGE. You had to screen grab to get a look at the weapon used, read the combat spam to ID the skills used. Then guess about the second class that wasn't visible. The forums would mostly like tell you what the FoTM was for that hidden second class.
The point being, SWG was all about class SAMPLING. Players didn't hold on to classes for months or years. They held them for days. Sure the Race to Jedi had uninterested people climbing the Entertainer paths, Crafter paths, and Combat paths. But the PvP crowd was also racing up and down the different builds. You might feel all powerful for three hours, until your Mom sends you to bed. Everyone rebuilds. And the next day, the tables have turned and you're a scrub once again.
It's not that no one wanted to be a Medic rather than a Jedi. Leveling Medic and Doctor was hands on. and part Crafting. Both had a Crafting branch, four out of 16 boxes done only by crafting xp. Then Doctor (Advanced Medic + Buffs) had four boxes only filled by wound treatment xp. Wounds were a permanent HAM damage not healed in combat or by regular meds. They were also rare and slow to come by. If you didn't have a hefty supply of wounds you could not level or master Doctor or the Healing/Buffing Entertainers. Luckily I knew how to get wound Fast and in large Quantities. I mined radioactives by hand. Most people used Harvesters to mine radioactives, so they didn't know about the wounds they caused. I digress.
The point. Combat professions were fluid. PvPer that expected to be king of the hill for a long time didn't like this. Those that liked PvP and liked switching to meet the challenge didn't care one bit.
Socializer who liked hanging out in Cantinas and chatting loved to play the slow leveling Entertainers. This was a hands free class that could level slow. Or you could AFK macro level just like the combat class fast, plus pay me for mind wound to be healed.
75% of the population left to play WoW, and never came back. Less than 10% (a single digit percentage, possibly even less than 1%. It was small and therefore irrelevant) left because there were plenty of Jedi around. That why I say Jedi are not at fault.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
If you spell NGE, WoW then you are right. I stayed and played the NGE. The real problem was that everyone who asked for twitch combat had left to play WoW with its cool graphics (for the time) and loads of quests and visually identifiable classes.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
2nd: 75% of the population absolutely did not leave to play WoW and saying so is absurd to the extreme.
Some real losses caused by Jedi were not simply burn out chasing after Jedi.
Inclusion of Jedi, via the hologrind, created deep waves that washed across the entire game.
There were Entertainers/Dancers/Musicians/Image Designers who quit because their extremely personal social gameplay was suddenly derailed by 100s of afk bots ruining the cantina scene.
There were scouts and rangers who left the game as the market fell out of the meat/bone/hide gathering because 1000s of fly by scouts and rangers flooded their market and tanked it hard. Leaving them in a tough spot to replace their armor and weapons as they wore out or to get their ent/medic buffs to go hunt in the 1st place.
There were social oriented Doctor's who were suddenly forced out of their buff businesses due to dozens of persons buffing for a loss just to get xp to holo grind the xp. Let us not forget you could get xp for parts of other profs playing totally different ones.
For Example: I leveled most of Doc with Combat Medic Area Bs in cantinas because well, healing xp was healing xp.
Then there were the numerous "stats don't matter goods" that grinders produced and dumped on the market. House deeds, furniture, and such from architect for instance. This killed any architect who couldn't produce max BER harvesters (one of the few things they made that required high quality resources).
These are some examples of the ripples moving through entire sections of the player base by the inclusion of the Jedi system.
True, what you describe was called the Hologrind (I thought of it as the Profession grind). This was how the developers expected the player base to play the game. Grinding out all 30+ classes by hand for years. Even though they had a system in place to speed up the process (the AFK macro system), to 3.5 month (a guide was posted on the SOE forums).
The system was designed to be fluid and ever in flux. This was one of the reasons that current Profession was not visible. No player was locked into a class. Unless they decided they loved that class and wanted to stay with it. It was always player choice.
If Jedi was a carrot, then 1977's Star Wars did that.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
The ability to change what you were was so that you could find what you liked because you only had a single character per account per server.
Not so you would play everything.
George Lucas cira 1977 didn't design or code the game to include Jedi.
SOE did.
Of course people like Jedi. That isn't and wasn't a problem. Their inclusion in the game both as an Alpha Class and a disparate system of play was.
If you didn't play:
Originally if you died 3x POOF! toon was gone. You had to remake a new Jedi and start from square one.
Later they added decay into the death total. Die once, no real worry....log out and don't play the Jedi for a week and the death you suffered was gone (can't remember the actual time required but a week seems to recollect about right)
This was a response to "executive questions" about the fact that there were no player jedi in the game, nor really planned for, at that point.
So the whole jedi profession as originally implemented was put together in a hurry with not a lot of forethought.
There were many bad decisions spawned.
If I had to point at one moment where it all went bad, it would be the free holiday Holocron then entire player base received. Suddenly people who never were going to do it used their Holocron and started grinding.
I also would have tweaked the skill system. I liked how the builds were done but what I waned was to be able to drop the requisite skills once unlocking the higher tiers. Freeing up skill points to allocate otherwise.
Id like to note about the starports for just a second. This was a scheduled starship that allowed you to travel between the worlds. Around a 15 minute wait in between. Meaning if you walked in just as the ship left you had to wait. This system I think was something about 100% of us would never stand for but...it was what made the game work.
And as for the jedi. I know for me there was nearly zero chance I could have been a jedi. I did research I learned bout holocubes and the whole path to becoming a jedi and I KNEW I would never do it. And for me that made seeing one in game exactly what it was supposed to be.
Awe inspiring!
The number of persons meeting new people, making new friends, working out trades, etc all because we had to wait a couple minutes. The positive effect can seriously not be overstated.