Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The Point of SWG
Wepps
Member Posts: 1,322
This is one of my favorite posts in my archives, in the folder "How not to build an MMO".
This is also one of the classics, so if you are new to the game, and better yet considering playing, THIS is the document to read. It tells you all about...where and how to make your own content, as that is where the SWG developers think games development is going.
So I present...Kevin O'Hara (Q-3P0)
*********************************************
THE POINT OF SWG
For years now the developers have given the cryptic answer “To Live in the Star Wars Universe”. Many people get this and have wanted to do just that for well over 20 years. However “Living” in the universe is too vague for some gamers (heck, most people don’t quite understand what the “point” of living in the real world is – I’ll give you a hint “to be good to one another”).
So for the goal minded folks out there, here is the “Point” of playing SWG:
1) Learn the basics of the game for a while so you don’t appear to be a newbie.
2) Accomplish all the different types of missions, from the quick and straight forward Mission Terminals to the multi-legged and more varied NPC static quests. You may need to travel beyond your starting city to find the more involved ones.
3) Gain enough money to buy (or gain enough skill to make) a good weapon and other equipment that suits your character.
4) Finish a themepark such as getting all the way to Jabba’s Throne Room. Beat at least 1 “dungeon” on every planet.
5) By doing factional missions or joining battlefields, gain enough faction points to rise up through the ranks in the Empire or Rebellion. Make enough points to try out all of the perks.
6) Join a Player Association that fits your play-style. Help others members to accomplish their unique goals and they will help you with yours.
7) Keep tabs on your Badges. You want to get over 100 of these to consider yourself a success in SWG.
8) Spend all of your skill points to master several professions. (Be sure you surrender some skills and learn new ones to find the character combination best for you)
9) Search the galaxy to find the spot you want to call home and build a house there so you can leave your mark on that galaxy. (Be sure to furnish it as an empty house doesn’t count)
10) When you are done with all that, work on figuring out how to unlock the Force Sensitive slot. If you can do that (and very few of you will and it will take several months, at least), then repeat the process with your new Jedi character until you are able to get the Jedi Master title.
When you have accomplished these 10 not-so-easy steps, you can say you have “won” the game”. There you have it. But please note, this list is subject to change as we add new content such as player cities, player vehicles, more quests, and full expansions.
Now, of course, feel free to substitute any of the above with other activities you enjoy in the game, such as becoming a famous entertainer, well-sought after crafter, always in demand doctor or highly feared bounty hunter. Or just have fun exploring, fishing, dueling, getting married, attending parties, meeting new people, helping people stuck in step one or even hosting your own events for each other. Definitely try to Role Play (it isn’t hard, you don’t have to act goofy, just don’t bring real world conversation into the spatial chat).
Kevin O’Hara
community Relations Manager
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Comments
1) done
2) done
3) done
4) done
5) imp and reb, done -- bf's were deactivated about a month after the game went live
6) done
7) I have no idea how many badges I had
8) done (via holo grind)
9) done
10) done
I "won" the game!
so...
Modified for the present and what SOE/LA wants everyone to do....
1) Join game and see the jedi walking around.
2) Gather the badges to open the village
3) Begin grinding out more and more xp veiled in the illusion of content.
4) Do the final quest to be a jedi.
5) Begin grinding xp to get higher in jedi.
6) Show off your lightsaber and l33t ski||zorz to other newbs so they will follow you.
7) Get bored so do JTL unti you get master pilot (2 weeks) then just use it as free travel.
8) PVP in a dead GCW game until your so bored you can do it anymore.
9) Buy our "expansions" that are less content then a EQ2 Adventure pack, but priced 10 times as much, so you can find more things to do.
10) Repeat this process with a new toon on another server.
Kai
Jeez what a moron Q-3P0 is for even typing that crap out. I did everything on that list except #10 because, as I've stated before, I did not agree with the jedification of SWG. The timeline was between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back then through good intentions gone bad allowed anyone with enough time on their hands to get a jedi. Lame.
1-10 done months and months ago.
Guess he is right, I should have quit a loooong time ago. Why didn't I read this post sooner?
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
This isn't a recent post, this is from the time before holocrons.
This is one of the problems, if not THE problem I have with SWG. Whenever you have to have a bigshot come to the forums for no other purpose but to TELL you want to do in the game, then it's clearly obvious that you will not know by instinct what to do.
Not knowing what to you, you have no goals to achieve because you have no idea what they are.
When this post was made, there was a lot of concern about this. Even the testers were pretty miffed, because the 'game' was boring. There was nothing really to achieve. Now, the developers wanted to make a game for everybody, but they actually forgot those achievers in the game play, so they had to inform them what direction to go to achieve...everything.
What you see listed above was the complete list of things to do in SWG at the time. It wasn't even Star Wars yet, it was Ground Wars. And after suffering 6 different nerfs already, the highly 'feared' bounty hunter was actually the highly 'queer' bounty hunter. It was Star Wars, yet nobody knew how to put out a fire. You had to go get your corpse, and it was 'too far away' half the time, and people were leaving skeletons all over the planets. There were no speeders, you walked wherever you went. Lag was so bad that Tusken Raiders were killing you from 100 meters out, before you even saw them. Every time you hit the spaceport, the shuttle was leaving as you were handing the ticket to the droid, and you had to wait 10 minutes for the next ship. In fact, some people were taking the ticket droids and putting them in their houses! The factional themeparks were broken, the NPC quests were broken, and the rewards were absolutely lame - 146 credits and a broken datapad, that you couldn't turn into the junk dealers because they were broken too. The only place to go on Tatooine, and that's where pretty much everybody started by their own choice, was the Tusken Fort, and that had already been nerfed 3 times on the way to 6 nerfs, because people were having too much fun. Maneuver and tactics were declared exploits, and players banned for using tactics.
But these were heady days. There was hope in those days that there was a greater vision, and it would be realized in a short period of time because they were the SWG devs. Things would work out in time.
It's now two years later, and then some, and the list still stands as what the point of SWG really is. Go make your own content because there still isn't actually a game to play to speak of. After 5 years of development, these developers haven't yet figured that out! Lag is just as bad now as it ever has been, but with the advent of Jump to Lightspeed, you can now lag in space. The funny part is, it made it easy to escape. You don't have to fight your way past the Star Destroyers in orbit, in fact you can openly sell your goods to Rebels on blockaded planets with no fear whatsoever of interference from the Empire.
And you know they are talking SWG-2. They haven't yet even seen the obvious. They can't actually fix this game, because they are always too busy making the next expansion. The teams, though hard at work changing the professions (and I really hope they finally 'get it' in the process of doing this), have no time to actually fix the code, and properly document it. It has been bastardized now, and likely to the point of it being un-repairable.
So you KNOW they have been talking 'SWG2'.
The thing that really bugs me is that these were professional developers, and there were SIXTY of them the largest team in the industry. There are more now, but they were led by the tag-team of the industry leaders themselves, Raph Koster and Rich Vogel. THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER.
They relied too heavily upon the fact that it was a Star Wars license to be 'successful', and they thought it would be easy because all the graphical work, music, and sound effects had already been done for them. They thought that actual creativity wouldn't be required, and they got lazy. So what you end-up with is...this. A game...that isn't actually a game. Even today the arguments exist between the devs themselves and their management. Just look at the Smuggler scandals in process now. "We can't add Smuggler missions." "We are adding Smuggler Missions" "That has not yet been determined". Make up your freakin minds already to build the GAME finally!
They are soooo close, and yet so far away when their own management won't let them do it.
Hope is fading in a storm of red-tape right this minute, and nobody really cares anymore.
I'll always be a die-hard supporter of what SWG COULD have been, but I will never allow myself to paint a smile on and kiss it onto the backside of the worst management team in MMO history.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
I honestly don't know if they can perfect SWG-1. While there have been a lot of good improvements it's foundations are still the same. Foundations are usually very hard to correct unless you rip the whole infrastruture above them down first.
Maybe to stand a chance of a true Star Wars feeling mmorpg we need the second version.
I agree, but after this debacle, Lucas Licensing would be stupid to give it to SOE again.
SOE has tons of things going for them, but they don't have the vision. They don't have that magic to make it happen, like the old Lucas teams did in the early days of the New Hope - Return of the Jedi.
Lucas himself said it best - he had become a corporation, that which he despised most.
Now, people who have little clue of what creativity is made serious blunders that made the episodes I - III so lame, and it carries over to this product as well.
What they really need is a team of Mozarts, or those that can hear the music before they start writing the notes. Those that see clearly the vision. This SOE did not do. They started from scratch with no vision, and that is their primary failure. After 5 years+ of development, and not being able to realize the true vision of Star Wars, their failure is now complete.
SWG-2 would do well to be in the hands of true Star Wars fans, a development team devoted to game play as well as all the perpheral necessities of releasing an MMO. Ones with a clear vision of what it means...to live in the Star Wars Universe.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Who would they give it to though?
Its a sad thing to have to say, but I wouldn't have faith in another company doing a better job. Most mmorpg companies produce terrible games.
That's right, they do lol.
You need new blood out there. What they really need to do is hand-pick the team based upon their qualifications.
Lucas himself should give the interviews, as this is really his baby, or allow the hand-picked creative director to do it for him if he has the foresight to choose devs with the proper qualifications.
Then, build the company infrastructure around them.
A coder without your vision will only serve to make the game you weren't talking about. A company who's only connection to Star Wars is a guy that has no clue about continuity, yet is the representative from Lucas Licensing, will only serve to give you SWG.
Lucas remembers the vision, and the kind of people he needed to make it happen. It was his genius that brought it all together initially, and it's that sort of thinking (Gene Krantz - NASA apollo program) that makes great products, especially those that require heavy creativity as well as proper priorities.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
I guess that could work, although its a lot of trust (from LA) on the unknown.
Also not entired sure if LA/Lucas isn't part of the problem. I know its not an uncommon belief that Star Wars would now do better out of Lucas' hands. Although personally don't feel that.
I don't think it would do well out of Lucas the person's hands.
I do believe it would do much better out of the corporation's hands though, for sure.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
LucasArts games and ILM did just merge on the same physical location so they can start sharing resources.
so...
I can't believe how many of read that and thought it was a bad thing. Please name something you can do in another MMO that you can't do in SWG. Now let me name the thousands of things you can do in SWG that you can't do in any other game on the market.
When you say the game has so much potential but doesn't live up to it, most of the reason it doesn't is because of you. You have to do the work, you have to use your imagination. You mention that WoW, AC and the others don't have instructions, that's because they've taken the imagination out. They hand you a task you do it etc. In SWG they give you the tools to create your own tasks.
I compare them to books. WoW and most of the rest are choose your own adventrue books. You read the book make a couple of choices and it leads you to the end of the story. SWG is a blank book with a few paragraphs here and there that allows you to write your own story. This type of game isn't for everyone, and it seems every day it gets further and further away from what societiy wants. I mean today it's why read the book when I can watch the movie. WoW is the movie SWG is the book. Not saying one is better than the other they are just different.
As far as Lucas himself picking out the Developers, that's a horrible idea.
Dev1: I've created the greatest engine/game ever seen on the planet.
Lucas: How much?
Dev1: I need to break into the genre, I'll give it to you for 100 dollars.
Dev2: I've got this worthless piece of crap, but people can play it.
Lucas: How much?
Dev2: $99.99
Lucas: SOLD
So you're saying SWG sucks because I lack imagination? Imagination kept me playing for 2 years.
I think you mean a lack of DELUSION so I could overlook the bugs and gameplay problems.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Ok, first the Lucas thing. WTF makes you think GL is going to buy the cheap product to save a penny? Have you ever seen the equipment that they use? They don't buy stuff to develop on, they have in-house developers that build tools specifically for what they do. You get it? They don't contract out to build a tool. They KEEP their staff to develop the tools for the job. Anyway, it's clear that was just something you were pulling out of your butt.
You said "SWG is a blank book with a few paragraphs here and there..." -- What separates that from any other MMO? The fact that there's no content to the game? That's a good thing? You could just as easily ignore the quests in WoW and say it leaves everything to your imagination. Anyway, I played SWG for a long time and did everything I could do many times over. Some of it was fun, but in the end it's a game that lacks purpose. If you don't mind logging in and crafting, making harvester runs, crafting more, stocking your vendor, and repeating that loop for your entire experience, then I guess the game is for you. As a combatant, I found no purpose for my being there. There were no goals, no objectives, no rewards, no penalties, nothing. Even base busting was boring. Anyway.. blah.. I've put too much into this conversation already.
so...
I like a lot of star wars galaxies. I absolutely hate jedi being the end game of swg. It is that vision and attention paid to the end game that is why swg isn't a huge success by today's mmo standards. Obvious? Maybe, but its still the truth.
Fix swg? Not likely. Either live with the facts of poor developers and enjoy star wars feeling you can get once in a while or find a better mmo.
I also highly doubt anyone will ever develop another sw mmo because of this games and other sci-fi mmo's lack of major success. It will take a sci-fi mmo to break some numerical barriers before I think another gaming company would consider redoing star wars.
Just my thoughts.
The purpose of SWG was supposed to be the Galactic Civil War. And of course it is burned beyond recognition.
Now the purpose is make up your own content through the joy of crafting(haha)? Or through PvP reputation? Or loot-whoring? Or Jedi?
All of these new purposes have failed miserably.
1 - Done
2 - Done
3 - Done - Was a WS for a long time, and made a bunch of nice weps before dropping it :P
4 - Done all themeparks at least one toon. My main only has the rebel one to finish and he has done em all.
5 - Imperial Colonel on 2 toons... twice... and high rank on rebel just for the sake of it while I do Themepark and the pilot stuff
6 - Done
7 - Done - 118 so far and still a bunch more I can get quickly if I want to
8 - Done - Mastered all proffs on my main except Musician, BE, SL and Politician. BE has been done on an alt though... I have also (at one time or another) been master of all 5 Jedi disciplines
9 - Done. I also have a GH which is a museum of rares. Includes pretty much every loot item and clothing except NS bracer.
10 - Could have done it, had I fancied fightclubbing for a week or 2. Once they legitimised FC, I dropped out of the FRS
When I have done all of this, and I am rewarded for my efforts with a shitty expansion that is nothing more than an EP3 tie in with nerfs, I had to hit cancel.
The only good stuff in the Mustafarce are the new house (should have been for architects, or an anniversary gift) and the new Vehicle (should have been for artisans or an anniversary gift). The nerfs I have seen make the game a joke. The fact that a snare will completely ignore a burstrun or forcerun is a joke. It means that the CM is now king with his 2min snare. Once that sticks he can kite forever!
Mustafarce... Good one. I'm SO using that.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0