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How Would Have You Fixed the Pre-CU Game?
Paracelsus
Member Posts: 12
A little background about myself: I picked up SWG about a week after it's launch. I saw a game with great potential which sadly never came to be. I quit before the first CU, so never was around for some of the biggest changes, but keep an eye on the game hoping it would straigten itself out. Sadly it now looks like its on its last legs. I have many fond memories of the game in its pre-CU state, and believe it could have been tweaked into near perfection at that point rather than require an entire overhall. I'm writing this mainly to vent my frustration about the game that could have been, but still hold a small glimmer of hope that someone, somewhere is working on the pre-CU code to fix what has become a disaster.
With that said, here's what I would've done to fix the pre-CU game.
-General Combat: The biggest problems here were the rise of doctor buffs and near inpenetrable armor, which led to targeting the mind pool being the only viable method of pvp combat.
The HAM system needed some reworking. Personally I would've liked to have seen action and mind removed from even being able to be incaped by, and rework things so all attacks work off of purely action and all heals work off purely mind. Keep in the combat medic poisons / diseases that attack these pools, as a method of crippling the enemy, keep them about where they were but make poison/disease affecting health much weaker.
Rework combat professions so that all focus on dealing dammage to health, but also while filling differnt roles. The roles were already somewhat there in the ranged professions: cabrines were the crowd controllers, rifles the dammage dealers, while pistols traded dammage for added defense. Model the melee professions after this model. Rework the speed formula so weapons which were intended to attack slowly couldn't reach the speed cap. Deal with defense stacking either by allowing it to not occur at all or actually taking into consideration that it will when defense to be alloted to each profession is looked at. Drop the laser rifle to ap1, the T21 to ap2, and bump up all the comando's expenable weanons to AP3 with added accuracy from what they had, and buff their grenade dammage. Merge the commado's flamethrower and acid rifle lines, adding either a close quarter / defensive line or a pistol line. Add player traps to the bounty hunter's investigation line. Make block work for players (it did for npcs, but never players for some reason). Remove defensive acuity from Teras Kasi, it never worked anyway and their high ranged / melee defense was always good enough.
Give heals an experimentable "cast" time so that doctors making the meds would have to balance power vs cast time, and give all combat professions a way to interupt this. Base buffs on a percentage of the player's base stats, rather than an arbitrary number (entertainers already had this). Allow these new buffs to persist through death.
Allow armor to keep the high resist to certain types of dammage, but make each armor unique in the types of dammage it excels in resisting. Say for example 2 stats at around 80%, 2 at around 50%, and the rest would be vulnerabilites. Make the classic stormtrooper armor and its rebel equivelant armorsmith patterns geared toward pvp.
- Jedi: This was one of the biggest reasons I quit. I never wanted to be a jedi myself, but apparently everyone else did. One of my favorite moments was when perma death and saber tef was still in, and I managed to set up a duel with one of the few advanced jedi on my server. I had to go meet him in the middle of nowhere so no one would see him fighting. I won (this was in the glory days of defense stacking), but did not deathblow even though the opportunity was there, because it would've been too devestating to him after he had gone out of his way to allow me to see him. If I ever saw one blatantly flaunting his powers in public though, damn straight I'd do whatever I could do kill him, and once an attack began many random people from the crowd would jump in and help. This is how it should have stayed. I would've personally like to have seen the "village" changes gone through with, as the holo grinding path was indeed rediculous, but also would've liked to have seen perma-death and saber tef stay in. Also impliment a cap for the number of jedi available on a server. After you've completed the village, you are told something like "we must keep our numbers low to avoid detection" or something to that effect. Then you are put in que. When a jedi dies, he is put at the end of this que and whoever is first in line recieves a system mail saying they have been chosen to take his place. Also buff what became the power tree. I never saw a jedi who had it, and at least to me, this was one of the things that most defined them.
-Galactic Civil War: The final subject I'll touch upon is the Galactic Civil War. This is where the "Star Warsy" feel the developers so desperatly try to find could have shined. The idea of player owned bases which are destroyable was a very good one, and kept me occupied for a very long time. However, the GCW lacked the bite I thought it needed. I woudl've liked to have seen no covert option. If you don't want to be attacked, stay neutral. To compensate for this and provide some sense of safetly, beef up security in towns considered imperial or rebel. With the changes I've listed above, GCW npcs would probably no longer be able to be slaughtered wholesale and in numbers would provide adequete protection. I wasn't around when they added the "combatant" nonsense or whatever it was, but if I would've walked by seeing npcs on my side being farmed unable to do anything about it, I would have cried. Another fun thing I would've liked to see happen was faction bounties, only acceptable by opposable faction bounty hunters, possibly only available to be taken in the largest player placed bases. This would have been easily do-able when they added the combat rating, or whatever it was called. Allow the top 20 or so players of each faction to have bounties placed on their heads. Certainly each army would love to see them eliminated.
I realize I may have been rambling here, and some of my ideas are very vague, but it feels good to post this. Hopefully, the game I once saw so much potential in can one day return to its roots and be all that it could have been.
Comments
Nunas with lightsabers = pre-CU fix
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Take all the ideas for the CU and the NGE and implement them...
IN REVERSE!
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
Scale back buffs.
Scale back encumbrance.
Make Musician/Dancer buffs mirror the levels of the Doc buffs.
Lower action costs of everything, especially Carbines.
And to shut up the PVP whiners, scale back dots.
That would be the start.
------------------------------------------------
Then I'd improve lower classes, not nerf the best ones. Fix all the damn bugs.
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
Would have made it closer to how the movies were. A FPS with melee and skills hotkey_able. Sure similar to BF2 by design but hay thats how the movie was. Star Wars games have always been action packed fps type of games except the last few. I personally think those were created to make folks comfy with the combat system they were pushing with SWG going gold.
To me all the three different damage hits crap, shoot 50 shots to land one hit is a insult to what Star Wars was to its fans. Han didn't think to shoot for mind did he? Nope he was shooting to kill. What we got was EQ with a Star Wars dress on, i cant believe its not butter, crapper fodder. Thats why i quit SWG a bit after release.
But of course not all share my opinion and thats fine, but it was an opinion that was strong enough for me to spend my $$ some place else.
Now from what I've been hearing, they are inching toward what I've written above. Go figure. I think if they are going to do it, then they should just do it and get it over with and stop pussy footing around with it. Then they can fix the bugs and work on the content of the game and its classes.
FoE Fist of the Empire
if they had added defense against fire dots and removed defense stacking at the cu they might have had a chance. However by that point they had already removed tef and made the base combat system relatively worthless. Plus the cu was this unstoppable juggernaught that we all knew was coming since fall of 2003 and that definately influenced the way we played the game.
As far as buffs go they we great. You didn't die right away in pvp like in a fps. The armor got out of hand I agree. I was willing to accept a few glitches as long as the over all game was still compelling, but pay to play the watered down and desolate thing swg has become, I dont think so.
Question is how to fix a game that has not existed since cu
What folks need to remember swg has always had a fast churn rate. Folks would max out there toon go now what, with holocrams folks maxed out professions for that slot and the profession grinding became content
There were things i hated about pre cu , the sure amount of healing lines they were the most convoluted crud i ever saw...... Paying for buffs before hunting, that tells me the game wasn't balanced back then at all and folks will always find the faster way to do stuff
Do you remember the afk grinders at squill cave, cornet, even bestine that would set there macros and even if someone was at key board couldn't compete with afk crowds?
Except that there will be some professions that have plusses and minues and not everyone can be perfectly balanced
The alpha class should have never been, or at least open to all that looked for it
Searching vendors was something i did not enjoy either it wasn't till the patch that made galaxy wide search implemented did shopping get easier
Now back on topic
clearly documented items /skills / bugs worked on
after a set of line of 4 skills a choice of award given rather armor peice or weapon or peice of equipment ( didn't have to be great just usable useful)
fixes for pre cu, balanced mobs out to 1 profession so uber buffs were not percieved as mandatory
Already had mobs devided into skill levels and a place to hunt at a specific skill with mulit mobs not just spawned missions stagnant mobs
some loot to make hunting worth while, a chance to pick up useful items
Jedi just being slightly above normal folks
benefits to grouping rather faster exp and or group bounes
Gifts to cities that kept active accounts based on size populations
Montly planned events
Content for existing planets a reason to visit cities
a developer that actively saught out different folks in different areas of the game that gave out more badges during game play
rather it be for creating player planned events, role playing, helping newbies, guild organzation events,
city layouts, that were actively posted on boards or honoraium page
The list of things needed were far too long. Contrary to popular belief, pre-CU was more borked up than NGE at this point. People had just gotten used to 1.5 years of pre-CU mediocrity and actually began to like it.
SOE has had the right ideas over the years to make SWG enjoyable, however have implemented them at the wrong times and in the wrong fashion. Making a list of the good and bad over the history of SWG is just an effort in futility though, so suffice to say, if they took all the good implementations and eliminated the bad they would have had a very good game.
Daeandor... I guess you mean "contrary to your belief".
It is all a matter of opinion. But if PRE-CU was borked, the NGE is even worse since it's just bugs on top of more bugs.
I guess if all you ever wanted out of SWG was shoot little guns and wave glowsticks around, you don't notice much difference. But us that wanted to actually "live" in the Star Wars universe do!
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
I agree. Too many people claim things were "broken" with the pre-cu game that weren't "broken", just wasn't what they wanted it to be. under/overbalanced in some parts.. but not "broken".
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
I don't want to, but I have to assume you were not playing SWG 1 month after release. SWG was just as screwed up then as it is now under NGE. The only redeeming factor back then was that for the most part only the beta testers knew this and we are basically in the same situation with NGE after 1 month of it being in existance. The difference now is that rather than everyone being focused on low end crafting and combat content, players are seeing the problems throughout the entire spectrum of the game. Pre-CU was still borked after 1.5 years of implementation. So, my original statement stands, if you feel better about it you can add, "Daeandor's opinion is..."
I understand you perfectly, and your quote in red is exactly where I think you go wrong! Even now the NGE is still just bugs on top of bugs. Every release, patch and hotfix breaks more stuff than what it actually fixs. Hell, we still rubberband after 2 years! The sitting-slide bug was fixed like what, a few months ago?
IMO, to say that PRE-CU was more borked than NGE is borked.
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
The CU Ham system with old an option for the old icons, a limited combat queue so you could see what was pending. The doc buff and ent. buff nerf. Weapons revamp on damage only to ham. Armor nerf from 90% max to 75% Max.
Kept the skill based system. Restored CH pets to pve usefulness. Made the Unlock of jedi not a grind since they wanted jedi a bit easier. Made the completion of a village phase the full sensitive branch unlock. (Much better in my opinion to opening jedi to everyone then just allowing it as a starter class. At least this way players have to be somewhat familar with the game and play for some time before they are whipping out a lightsaber.
Not have touched resource requirements on crafting. Decreased lot requirements on all items. Made dropping/managing harvestors require engineering IV (Prevent some cross server trading). Add all NGE quests and locations in game. Re add FRS based on 8 vs. 8 battle style pvp rank system of guild wars which earned it mmo of the year. Added permadeath to jedi after 3 deaths with a visible death decay timer that runs even while logged off. (Doesn't count in frs "arena").
Fixed commando flame specials. Fix BH specials. Made LLC a rifle and gave rifle mods. Made droids comparable to CH pets. Made the AT-ST player driven. Add a rebel tank player driven vehicle usable only on battlefield. Added vader, luke, main character quests beyond the gay theme parks that tell a story.
Made endor accessible to rebels only by flying in (lots of combat to get to station). Made Rori under rebel control. Imps need to fly in. Made dantooine space a giant constint fleet battle with the daily server winner of the battle earning control over the world.
Stuff like that.
I can't think of ONE person who wants a pre-cu server that thinks it should roll back to THE LAUNCH OF THE GAME...
But right after JTL it was mighty stable, and after a few fixes (like I and others illustrated) it would have been a good game. MUCH more fun than the CU.. and a million times better than nge.
Edited to add: I can't think of ONE time I was on Kashyyyk and didn't think "This would ROCK pre-cu"
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
I agree
PIRATE LORDS
I would take a pre-CU version of SWG if we could take 2 years of knowledge and apply it to make pre-CU better. All that I was saying before is that NGE has been in existance for 1 month, it is like the launch of a new game and not that much different than original SWG as far as bugs and class balance. I am saying nothing more than that. I also said that the number of fixes from the day before CU and what I would consider a "rocking" game were too numerous to list. I played and enjoyed pre-CU, I played and enjoyed CU, I play and enjoy NGE. What I do not enjoy is the loss of subscribers. I would play any version of the game if it retained the community that was once so prevailent. Unfortunately, except in some isolated galaxies and guilds, the community that once was, has vanished.
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
Why are you all arguing over buffs and skill mechanics when we all know that Nunas with lightsabers would easily resolve any Pre-CU issues? Regardless if you're wearing 90% resist composite with 2k+ buffs, a Nuna with a lightsaber would offer the challenging battle we were all looking for.
Now, someone recently suggested Quenkers with lightsabers. But that's just crazy talk! How else would the population be able to level? If it weren't for the nightly mass extinction events on Dantoine, not one player would have yet to reach Master (anything). That's such a stupid idea, I'm heading over to his house right now to pimp slap him.
Blurgs, Mites, Borgles, or even Krevols? Pfft, everyone can see Nuna is the obvious choice.
I'll reiterate, Nunas with lightsabers is the ONLY way to salvage the Pre-CU game.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
I have always told everyone what I felt about SWG so I guess its time to write it down. No sense putting it on the SWG servers since it will just get deleted.
I played SWG the day it came out. I waited months before hand for it to arrive. I was a totally new mmorpg player at this time (playing earth and beyond) so 4 months before launch is when I found out it even existed. I think in the end it boiled down to two major problems. First everyone playing the game wanted to be jedi. SOE wanted everyone to THINK they could be jedi but still keep it rare. I know I'm crazy but I personally liked the profession grinding. It forced me into professions I would never have thought about doing. Their second problem was they listened to the whining and tried to please everyone. Wookie armour was a definite example of this. They cried and cried that they were being given the shaft and needed armour.(no word about giving up their extra high HAM). Once they get it, no one wears it.
I have compared SWG to a car with a small swerve. You over correct and go too far the other way. Over correct that and so on. Soon you are out of control. Every change they did fundamentally changed the entire game. In the end, they just couldn't do anything right.
I loved the game when it came out. Would I still be playing? There is a good chance. I had no problem with a lot of jedi on the server but it still should have taken people a year or so to get there. In the end they gave in and saturated the game. Every other profession (other than bh) was useless.
Hopefully SWG2 will come out. I will give it a shot for sure.
Cainethejust
Naritus server
There are only 10 types of people in this world, those that understand binary and those that don't