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Star Wars the MMORPG Take 2
kefkah
Member UncommonPosts: 832
First off, I chose not to say SWG 2 because I do not believe that any company that undertakes the task will want to be associated with the strife that surrounds SOE's effort. Perhaps the will call it Stars Wars: A New Hope to point to the time line or perhaps get a dig in. 
Anyway, I got to thinking about how there is an increase in the want and reference to a second attempt at making this setting work. That being said, I am sure that several companies are licking their chops to have thier try at it. So, in an effort to help them increase the attractiveness of their bids, I propose we start a thread about the features that WE, the Star Wars and mmorpg fans, want to see. Things like professions, combat, crafting, content and whatever else you can think of that would make the game viable and worthy of our time.
I would also like to ask for two other things. 1. Stay away from poor mouthing SOE or each other. It will derail the thread and any brilliant ideas will be lost between the bickering of the two sides not to mention the MODERATORS have shown that they can and will act upon this current hostile mindset. Act like their system does not exist as any new company will not try to replicate any of the previous code and gameplay anyway.
2. Provide examples and evidence to back up your ideas whenever possible and keep in mind no idea is stupid. Viable is another thing all together.
My goal is to see where people would like the possible new game to go and to perhaps even come up with some ideas that may in fact influence the game's design should it ever see the light of day.
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Ok, some thoughts of mine:
1. I would like to see the profession of pilot be a full time profession. Space battles, exploration and seek and destroy missions would make for some great content. Promotions would allow for bigger ships and more command like powers such as deploying squads of npc fighters. Heck even boarding parties would provide pseudo land base pve that coudl be unpredictable at best. Imagine a large ships interior with a random design each time.
2. A time line that occurs AFTER the Battle of Endor. It would allow for factioning on the Imperial side making alliances viable and territory unpredictable. I mean imagine if a certain general defeated another during a said game making your faction with certain sides important in a particular section of space.
3. Smuggling that is exactly how it is portrayed in the Star Wars Setting. Escorting goods through space, taking less secure routes to avoid detection, big risk = big payoffs and after each successful run - an increase in your smuggler reputation which leads to better contacts and contracts.
4. As a former Antarian Ranger, I would like a profession that closely mimicks this if not IS it. Its part of the setting, ripe with possibilities and could easily be done. This is not to be or replace the woodsman model that was introduced by the Ranger community rather provide a more organized form of guard and explorer.
The woodsman concept would still need to be in the game as they would account for a major part of the crafting supplies and thus help the player economy. Thier land based skills would help other classes with quests as well as gather resources.
This is all for now. Its New Years Eve and I'd rather not be in the virtual world at the moment.
Comments
Here is what I would like to see in SWG2.
1) Guild Levels - Guilds in SWG2 need to have levels (much like EQ2), except different. In my opinion, Guild Levels need to be a compile of the following: Guild Quests, Amount of Players, and the Level of Players.
2) Player Cities - This is a HUGE aspect of SWG, unfortunately, it was not done correctly the first time.
Player Cities in SWG2 need to be more pre-set. Let me explain further. Only guilds that are level 30 (Just a random number) will be able to begin cities. Their cities will be aligned with a certian Faction (Imperial, Nuetral, Rebels or whatever the factions are in that time period). Player Cities in SWG2 will be made with a "Template" (A pre-set layout of houses, city halls, cantinas, etc) People should only be able to place houses in a pre-set spot in playercities. Cities should be able to hire defence, turrets, personel, police, and combat Vehicles to defend their city.
3) Space - This, I am sad to say, is really the only thing SOE accomplished correctly. Space MUST be in SWG2.
4) Battlegrounds - No, I am not a WoW fan (I hate that game) but I have to admit, their PvP system is amazing. SWG2 needs to have something simular. In SWG2, there needs to be set places where there is a constant battle going on (NPCs will take part aswell to make the battle "larger" Players should be able to drive combat vehicles (Only players with a high amount of PvP class (or whatever you want to call it) should be able to buy/rent/use combat vehicles. AND PLEASE let their be a few "Battlegrounds" in space. Have you ever seen the first seen in EP3? nuff said.
5) Professions - Professions in SWG2 need to actually be like what they would be in the Movies. Smuggles should actually smuggle things in and out of space ports and planets. Smugglers should also be hunted by Bounty Hunters and should have to sneak into large cities that have a large Police Force. Jedi should have to report to the Jedi Temple for quests. Jedi should only be apart of the "good guys" (forgot the name of the faction... LOL!
6) NPC Cities - Lets get some good RP going in NPC cities. Lets have "Mos Eisly" for example be filled with filth, smugglers, prostitutes, felons. Let Theed Naboo for example be prestigous, have an amazing Police Force, but, let their be a few back allies, or a "Ghwetto" where gangs rule the streets. Also, people need a reason to come to these NPC cities. Quests should only be given in NPC cities, Ports to inscanced "Battleground" Zones should only be in NPC cities. Let players open up shops and have an apartment in NPC cities.
7) Crafting - The crafting in SWG is actually one of the best. I enjoyed it very much. What I didnt enjoy is running into harvestors ever 50 meters. The devs need to figure out a way to make crafting and harvesting without the use of harvestors. Factories should still be in game, but, should be a part of Player Cities and can only be set in a its set spot in the "template."
Uhh, thats about it. Ill add some more as it comes to me
Oh, and, some may disagree, but, SWG2 should still be in the hands of EITHER LucasArts OR SOE. Two companies sharing the rights to one game... of coarse SWG didnt turn out the way we had hoped.
Guilds had meaning at one time, but the pvp in swg was never there to begin with, it was at the start, we had battlegrounds even, Not sure if you were around then, but that was taken out some time back. Professions started off the way you are saying, but in the end, when we finally got to that point, Lucas came in a revamped the whole game. Eh, it might still come, but yes, I agree they need to start fresh with SWG2 . That will wipe servers clean, etc and start the game new. I like allot of your ideas, but surprisingly allot of that was "in game" at one time or another.
To me , what happened in swg was these great ideas were implemented poorly, then because of so many intertwining bugs things got eliminated one after another. I remember the days of going to the battle grounds with 1 at-st pet and 2 storm troopers and taking out bases and the like, too bad personal pets are gone now as well.
The new game version is definite allot more fun, but they took out allot of fun in the game as well, one being factional pets the second being battlegrounds. However the servers now are so anti-pvp, I just don't see that happening anytime soon. I still play, but I am in hopes things will get better or at least I will play till starwars empires at war comes out in feb, but it is not a morph, hehe it definitely looks cool thou
nothing like being able to build your own deathstar and destroy planets in a game, now that is my friends, power! 
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
Space - Got that right. More content.. and smuggling missions that actually spawn pirates & such.
Professions - Less than 32, but MORE than a limiting 9. I like how the crafting professions are intigrated more.. maybe pair them as Weapons/armor Ships/droids or something like that.
They should also toss out the novice levels... just make each weapon one tree you start from novice.
REVIVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE AND MIX LEVELS.
Houses and player cities. They got that right, but could use some refinements. Streets?
Then take the level of content, battlefields, instanced dungeons, and above all.. LACK OF BUGS that WoW has... and you got a winner.
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
Ain't more like take 3?
I mean, initial game.
CU.
NGE.
That is the 3rd version of the game in my book.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Nayh.. it'd be take 2. Especially since the morons claim that it is the same game "we just need to try it".
Take 2 with a good talented company.
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
First of all, I would put the Galactic Civil War right at the heart of the game. I have never played WWII Online, but I'd take a look at that system to see how a MMORPG can be built around a single large scale conflict. It would be a game with group PvP at its core, in space and on land, but where success would depend on the intelligent utilization of different professions within each military unit. There would be no duelling, except for membership of elite groups such as the Royal Guard and all such elite groups would be single-profession groups to prevent morons whinging about inter-profession "balance" issues. Each profession would provide unique group benefits and access to particular faction-specific hardware e.g. spy droids, assault weapons etc so that each class would have something unique to offer.
Player guilds would not exist in their current form, but would have to have some relevance within the military structure of either faction e.g. smaller guilds as companies, larger ones as legions etc depending on their size (guild leaders would have appropriate military ranks). Unguilded players would be able to use in-game recruitment boards similar to WoW's meeting posts to find temporary mission squads and to apply for membership of guilds.
Similarly, player cities would be unlike those in the current game. Guild leaders (military commanders) of certain ranks would be able to establish bases on planets and over time - if they survived enemy attack - these would attract civilian settlements much in the same way that towns used to grow around Roman forts. The management of towns would be about "winning the hearts and minds" of the populace by providing cantinas, low taxation etc - this would effectively become a strategic sub-game with the control of the planet established by winning over a certain percentage of the population. In otehr words, cities would grow NPC populations rather than PC populations. Covert classes would be able to undermine cities, attack supply lines and organise civilian revolt etc.
No jedi.
I would like the galactic civil war to actually exist and feel like I am a part of the struggle on one side or the other.
I would like a game that provides consquences for decisions that are made with the character. SWG started this idea with Faction positive and negatives but never fully explored this feature.
Worlds should be "controllable" by sides. Restricting access and requiring smugglers to get people to certain locations. Each worlds control could be dictated by space and ground situations. Corellia, a galactic core world, would be very difficult to takeover from the Empire but might spawn very good quests/loot once it was "free".
I'd like the "criminal" element to exist ingame and be able to be apart of that.
I want jedi to be meaningful if you make them playable. Leveling a jedi or dark jedi has nothing to do with killing Bols and Pickets and needs substance or it has to be gone.
I would like crafters to exist but frankly I would like the model of weapons stats for the ground to be done in a more standard format. The pre-cu version of weapons was overly complex for most people and while I enjoyed it because of the high level end game weapon "hunting" provided a player most people hated getting pwn'd because of the "rarity" of good items. So some crafting balance needs to exist with caps.
I personally hate the armor factor in swg. Armor in sw was more for show then effectiveness. Sorry armorsmiths. I think it should not be so over done. Clothing should decay and become unwearable. I loved my tailors that I meet ingame. They always where some of the games best players. I want them to be satisfied.
Languages could be played instead of just giving out. This feature never was explored even though it was in release. I would love more ground vehicle combat. Air speeders.
Add Hoth. Hoth would be hella cool to play in space and on the surface.
Yes, the GCW needs to be one of the major themes in the game. One of my more sore points is that mass combat in SWG wasn not viable. We once had this battle on one of the broken planets that was heavily advertised for a week. The end result was the server nearly crashing, people stuck in the same spot that they were after 5 minutes of running due to rubber banding, and literally everything going wrong. Though this occurs in major raids in WoW as well. I guess thats why I would like some kind of variation of WoW's battlegrounds.
Hear me out on this before groaning. An offensive event is started and ques open up. This takes teams of say 10 to 20 from each faction and puts them on a battlefield. These teams duke it out or try to accomplish some kind of goal - say like take out the other side's generators and that instance ends. But wait, that is just one skirmish. A win in this skirmish allows said team to move forward into the next instance which is closer to getting to a final instance which is say to a commander. First team to complete the gauntlet of skirmishes wins the battle and hell go one step forward and say win control of the planet.
Talk about requiring teamwork and encouraging the use of guilds and groups. This alone would be a game to play by itself and in all honesty much more fun than fighting bols by the legion. Which by the way, has nothing to do with the Star Wars setting. Not once did I see Han or Luke stand out in a field to mindlessly maim aninmals by the droves.
Just some more thoughts...
If they had the content, instances, battlegrounds and stability of WoW
Plus JTL, houses and cities.
That's a touchdown right there.
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
Some of my ideas will probably never be implimented in any game so i will just name them.
- okay first off the idea of kind of an FPS after the NGE was really cool, just implemented wrong. Having an FPS feel should definatly be included. Make it more of like a battlefield 2 type gameplay. Ware people with enough comad can drop like artillery and air support. Give people the ability to attack and conqure a town.
- I want massive space battles, i want to be able to get a huge ship like a star destroyer or a corellian corvette. I also want to be able to see these battles from the ground....and hear them, wouldnt it be cool that if there were a big battle you could look op in the air and see the flashes and explosions.
Further than that, wouldnt it be cool to watch as 2 or 3 star destroyers fly down to the planet serface and drop off hundreds of NPC stormtroopers. Then the storm troopers invade a city like theed with at-st and things like that. Hell, i want to fly my nova carier up from a starport and into space then fly to another planet, fly down through the atmosphear and land a small group of people to infultrate an imperial base, een if there is a short loading period between the space and planet surface.
to stop people from leaving there ships everyware, is that they get damaged being out in the open for to long.
- Id like to see dungeons and raid mobs like most mmos, posibilites are renagade robots, giant space monsters...
-I want to see streets in player cities, how about markets, how about store buildings instead of having to use houses, player owned starports. No need for shuttles because as requested above you can fly in the atmosphear.
-new planets,
Corsacaunt, actually full sized, adventure areas could be thugs in industrial zones or gettos, apartments for rent, for stores and living. Give an incentive to be the most popular place to be, like an swg bazzar.
Hath, icy, new house models that can keep the cold out
Degoba, i dont kknow about this, maybee the whol planet is not just a big swamp, grasslands or somthing.
That ocean planet from episode 2.
and the planet with those bug guys.
More playable races, alot of playable races..
- i want smugglers to smuggle and BH to hunt people. Jedis ehould be practichly on another level then normal players, they should be so much more aware then the avrege player, meaning jedi would be tuff to get.
thats it
The new EQ2, better than ever befor !
don't click this link...
While I agree that a lot of us would dearly love to see another company take a crack at the Star Wars universe in an MMORPG, I highly doubt that there are many game companies salivating at the thought of giving it a go. The problems and expenses of licencing alone are prohibitive and make Star Wars a huge risk. SOE's failure with SWG compounds this lack of palatability for game producers by providing a very real example of how wrong such a risk can go.
You have to understand that while we, the players take a lot of this for granted, producing an MMORPG title is a very expensive proposition that takes years to bring to market with little or no garauntee that the investment will ever generate a profit. Even, or perhaps I should say especially, in the case of well-known, much loved properties like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix and countless others fan following and cult status presents problems that homegrown worlds and concepts do not.
Part of what went so horribly wrong with SWG had to do with both SOE and LA's failure to properly understand and plan for the problems that were inherent in attempting to produce a game in a well-known universe with a devoted cult following. They couldn't balance playability with even the most basic Star Wars canon, broke basic timeline strictures and tried to pander to conflicting demographics. The fact that both companies still don't "get it" after repeated conceptual and design failures really does illustrate that if you're going to tackle an intellectual property like Star Wars, you REALLY need to know what gamers who are Star Wars fans expect and want from a game before even starting on a game engine.
We're talking not just the typical gaming demographics here. That's rough enough. With something like Star Wars, companies and investors refuse to be satisfied with competitive subscription and sales numbers. They want to see "bigger than WoW" numbers. They have this mistaken idea that because Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon kind of big that they should be getting cultural phenomenon level sales figures without taking into account the fact that most Star Wars fans aren't MMO gamers and probably never will be. What they see is SOE and LA pouring a lot of money into creating, then recreating, then RE recreating SWG without a fraction of the desired sales and subscription returns to show for it.
The veteran backlash in the wake of the NGE has also no doubt made an impression on any would-be franchise carriers. It's proven that with the big intellectual property of Star Wars is also a big consequence in the event of a failure. Big as in getting notice outside of the MMO trade world big. As much as we like to think of mmo gaming being a huge thing, this is an industry still in its childhood and mmo gaming is not yet what anyone could honestly call mainstream. When mainstream media takes any notice of something happening in mmos, that's huge. And let's face it, SWG's jilted veteran playerbase made itself heard by the mainstream media -- well enough that SOE and LucasArts has had to do some work on damage control. If anyone thinks that other game producers haven't taken notice of this, they're sorely mistaken. And unfortunately, at least for us, most of these game companies will steer clear of taking on Star Wars rather than chalking the failures up to poor planning and inept handling and taking the golden opportunity to do a better job at it.
/sigh
Oh the humanity.
_______________________
Kote lo'shebs'ul narit
Valid points and well said but this is a What If thread. What would you like to see if they did make a second version of Star Wars Galaxies? I am sure that you have some thoughts on that matter as well.
On a side note, Lucas' ego and obsession with getting more money out of his creation leaves me with wondering if there truly anything he wouldn't do. They saw WoW's numbers and good old George and company can't even fathom some concept or setting that should ever outdo his in terms of draw. Who knows what the future holds. Though I would rather it not be anything related to a playstation or xbox.
Offhand, I think the "Virtual World" design was probably the ONLY way to go for the Star Wars IP. There were several poor design decisions -- the inclusion of Jedi to begin with was bad, given the time frame (a virtual world design screams for a consistent world) but the "hologrind" nonsense was even worse.
The very existence of the hologrind destroyed much of the social aspect of the game. Personally, I'd have never have dropped those holocrons in the first place (I'd have also randomized the process a great deal more, including a random delay (of several days to several weeks) between becoming unlocking a Jedi and being notified of it.
I can understand some of the notion behind the "Unlock X random professions" --- those who became Jedi (as long as the process wasn't known) would be explorer-types -- not exactly griefers. They'd be badge collectors and people who wanted to experience the WHOLE game. Not powergamers.
Of course, I would have set the thing in the pre-Republic era or in the New Jedi Order time frame and created a more complex faction system. New Republic, Imperial Remnant, Hapes, Correllian -- and probably had the Vong as NPC enemies.
A non-virtual world system (like WoW's, for instance) would have resulted in much the same mess, I think.
SOE's problem -- and LucasArt's problem -- is they seem to believe that "The People Who Play Non-MMO Star Wars Games" and "The People Who Will Play Star Wars MMOs" are identical. They're not. Fans of FPS systems aren't generally going to enjoy MMO's -- and even an FPS-style MMO will quickly bore them (the engine simply isn't up to it).
Those used to KOTOR aren't going to like "not being the hero" -- in the end, you never DO change the world.
But a chance to live in and play in the Star Wars universe? To be one of those soldiers, or smugglers, or bystanders? That you can deliver. More importantly, those people tend to be fanatical -- they'll play until you close the servers.
In the end, SWG never had great numbers because of a rushed and buggy launch (all launchs are buggy, but SWG hit the trifecta) and because they never buckled down and actually finished the initial game. They were always chasing after the gold ring.
There were MANY design problems at launch, which I can trace back to kind of a half-assed approach to design detail.
No one sat down, it appears, and said "Okay, assuming we have crafter X with the best possible resources, eating the best possible food, and wearing the best modded clothes, how good can he make a T21? A doctor buff? A suit of armor?".
No one thought "Hey, we should probablly statically allocate resource spawns at launch, to make sure everyone has the basics until there's some stockpiles for people to fall back on, then turn on the random ones".
No one min-maxed templaces (They've have quickly moved around the stackable mods -- like dodge -- from one tree to the top of trees.
But what really killed the game was the fact that it wasn't finished at launch and it showed. When I started, I wanted to be a weaponsmith and pistoleer. Right up to the CU, pistoleer had exactly two working specials -- both of which sucked.
Koster put together a good economy and a good "Virtual world" side -- there were some flaws, but they were quickly fixable if SOE hadn't shredded the dev and design teams after launch. The combat side, sadly, never had quite as much thought put into it.
And Sony never tried to fix it. They launched half-assed. They shoved in vehicles and player cities, then moved to JtL -- leaving a bunch of half-working professions.
And for all the bitching about overpowered armor and doc buffs, what really got me was the insane DoT weapons people looted -- I can understand (barely) not min-maxing your crafting, but how do you fail to cap your loot mods? I mean, sure, "We forgot to add in the benefits of skill tapes and crafting food when calculating maximum buff strengths" is a bad oversight, but understandable -- crafting was complex. But "We ended up with infinite use, insane strength DoT weapons that were randomly generated?"
That's worse.
I still think "Virtual World" was the way to go. I think player cities, the economy, and the concepts behind the skill system -- hybrid professions and templates and the ability to change when you were bored -- are necessary and good. But I think the half-assed implementation did more to frustrate and drive away players than the "complexity" did.
In the end, rather than delivering a solid product -- or actually FIXING it -- they kept chasing other people's markets....futile.
And just as a side-note: One rumor floating around was that some company was interested in the pre-Publish 9 code, to run a minimal server set. I don't believe it, personally -- but I find it interesting. Thinking about it, if I was serious about trying to run a minimal server set, that's the code I'd want. That was probably the latest code iteration where the basics hadn't been hosed with too badly -- where programmers could probably still link the code to the design docs. It'd be more...supportable. I'd get rid of the hologrind, though. Probably just ditch Jedi entirely.
Personally I don't think there should be 'professions'. They need to go with a completely open ended skill system like UO had and let players build their own templates based on what they WANT instead of forcing them into a 'profession'. Get rid of the idea of 'classes' altogether. Go with a UO type skill system where the abilities you practice are the abilities you gain. Maybe twist a little EVE in so that there are advanced abilities that key off the base abilities as well but don't lock people into a profession or class.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Still in: A couple Betas
Egad no!
In EVE the absolute most dangerous place to fly is .1 to .4 
Which is counter-intuitive and not right from an SWG security standpoint. At any rate the further out towards the rim you go the more lawless it should get. Players could lay claim to sectors of outer rim and mid-rim space for their faction and hold them and try to expand them.
Use DAOC's example for that if you want to go that way. WoW's PVP absolutely sucks compared to DAOC. Actually for SWG EVE's PVP system might be better. Have .5 and up equivalent be 'core worlds' and then .1 to .4 be 'mid rim' and then 0.0 be 'outer rim' worlds. Only difference is that you'd need to make the .1 to .4 sectors a bit more policed than they are in EVE
No matter what you do don't take ANYTHING From WoW. There are better examples of everything WoW does in the games it actually took it's ideas from.
You'd need to really incorporate space into the game. More like EVE, less like JTL. Make space BIG, HUGE even. Make it take some time to get from planet to planet so that owning a planet MEANS something. Etc.
Problem with the GCW in SWG was that, while we could change control of a planet in the end it didn't really MEAN anything.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Still in: A couple Betas
I disagree on the EVE thing... They actually got JTL right, it felt like the X-Wing series and NOT like EVE.
Don't touch space, just add content.
Eve has a ton of boring with spurts of action. That's what the ground game is for.
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
Nah I don't mean EVE's gameplay, eve's SECURITY system. Like this:
Coruscant, Corellia, Naboo, etc would be "Core Worlds" IE: No PVP at all in space or on the ground, authorities would nuke ya no matter where you try to fight. Carebear worlds
.
Tattoine, Ithor, and a few others would be "mid rim" with limited PVP available but if you start fighting in the cities the local gestapo would come smack you down. Can't really take control of the planet, depending what timeframe it is either the republic, new republic or empire owns it but you can fight each other out in the boonies. Casual PVP only
Dantooine, Hoth, Endor, etc would be "Outer Rim" worlds with no authorities whatsoever, only local constabulary who don't really care who's in charge. Whichever faction can control the planet owns it and whatever custom attributes that world grants their faction. Hard Core territory conquest type PVP.
Matter of fact mid-rim (tat) on out could allow for sections of the planet to be controlled by various factions.
this would heat up the GCW very nicely.
For the space content:
Make space zones MATTER. If you don't own or control the space zone you can't land on the planet (outer rim only). IE: If you wanna land on hoth your faction has to control space. That or you need a person who can smuggle you to get you in
See where I'm going?
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
The problem with this though, is that people refuse to believe that this type of system is near impossible to balance (even more impossible than a class system, if impossibilites can have levels of being impossible
), and is extremely difficult to pin down bugs.
If I were a dev I would NEVER use this type of system simply because players don't seem to understand how difficult it makes things. I mean look on the boards, how many times have you seen someone say "All they needed to do was balance the professions" as if that was something they could accomplish on their lunch break?
Simply put, I would love to see the pre-CU starwars, with combat more balanced.
My ideas for balancing combat in a nutshell:
1) Limit armour resists - 90% resist to everything was ridiculous, and only players with the most money could afford the top armour leading to unbalanced combat and the ability to farm the best loot. Set the limit at say 45%, with an extra 10% for resists the armour is desgned for. (See next point)
2) Balance the resists. Good resists to say cold should result in poor resists to heat.
3) Limit the buffs. I liked the buffs, especially the 2 - 3 hour timescale, but the size of the enhancements was again silly. How about a 20% limit to health and action. Enough to make a difference but not so much that you can go solo a kryat dragon or a ns elder. This would also include CM poisons, etc.
4) Variety of armour. I liked the CU in that different armour was effective against different attacks. Keep that, but allow any player to wear any armour. E.G. make composite more effective against melee and electric damage than Tantel, but not as effective against heat and acid. This would, I believe encourage players to invest in different armour and consider how to equip there toon based on the type of mission / opponent they would be facing.
It would also be effective in pvp as different weapons do different types of damage, and a mix of players wearing different armour types would balance combat.
5) Weapons. Ensure weapons have a minimum and maximum level for damage. Ensure the type of damage will be taken into account based on an opponents armour. Blast damage should not do as much damage as heat damage is your opponent is wearing armour designed to resist blast.
6) More variety in the mission types and more quests / better loot and rewards for gathering badges and visiting pois. Maybe a similar thing to the vet rewards for gathering 50+ badges, then 75+, and also for holding the race track records etc.
I believe the grouping bonuses from the CU should be included, as this really did ensure more community engagement.
More involvement in the GCW should be retained. Perhaps more vet type rewards for participating in the GCW, such as badge of heroisism, medal of honour type stuff from the Emperor or Leia for your role. Keep the Spec Forces / Covert for those who don't always wish to participate in the GCW.
I also believe that the suggested changes would ensure the crafting side of the game would thrive. It would ensure a competitive and healthy market. It would ensure a level playing field for crafters.
Factional armour should continue as in the post CU game, but remove the bio-link part of it. So long as a Reb or Imp is Spec Forces, they should be allowed to wear the armour, regardless of how many FP they have massed.
Well, thats about it for me. The only other thing I would say is ensure SOE has nothign to do with the game because ultimately, it si because of the way they treated paying customers during the NGE / ToW period that I left the game. Much as I dislike the NGE, customer service, or lack of it, was teh final nail in the coffin for me.
Baresh
And you'd be wrong. It's more difficult to balance -- especially if you strive for the "same powers, different skins" approach some MMORPG's take -- but by no means impossible. Players had the relative imbalances pinpointed within two months of launch. The designers did NOT anticipate them, but should have.
The difficulty -- as always -- lies in balancing PvP versus PvE content. PvE players don't really care about "balance" as long as they're able to do what they want to do with the template they've chosen. PvP players, on the other hand, bitch to the ends of the freaking earth if they think Template A has a .0005% damage edge on template B, and act like God himself owes it to them to fix it.
Plus, it's been my experience that the loudest PvP whiners are unable to comprehend anything more complex than "His rock is bigger!". I've seen them whine over a paper/rock/scissors system (Class A has an edge v Class B, but Class B can whip Class C, and Class C can beat Class A -- balanced, but you should hear the whining when Class B loses to Class A).
Balancing the skills system in Galaxies wasn't the chore you want to believe. Hell, the original CU docs did it -- however, those were scrapped four months before delivery in order to mimic WoW. (Did you know that? What a waste -- several months worth of design and early work scrapped for a last minute MAJOR overhaul, because someone had a bug up their ass).
I'd have preferred to avoid capping skills, although implementing hard caps or -- a better, if still poor choice -- diminishing returns would have ended the worst of the unbalances between templates. Armor, looted DoTs and doctor's buffs still needed to be addressed, however.
Only programmers pressed for time -- as SOE's were, when the original CU design was scrapped -- would have "balanced" the game by adding in a level-based damage multiplyer and mitigator. That little gem of stupidity sandbagged the entire CU.
Please explain to me, then, why UO's PVP system was more balanced than anything else I've ever played? Hmm?
Bottom line: In a totally open skill system the SKILLS you choose determine how well you do in PVP, or Not. There were several different methods of being very deadly in PVP combat. Some became tamers, some were top tier archers, some were tank-mages, some were melee specialists without peer who could take half (or more) of your life with 1 swat of their hammer or sword. But in UO PVP was BALANCED, if only because you could change your template however you wished whenever you wished and weren't tied to any specific skills unless YOU chose to be. Your profession was simply a title given to you based upon your highest skill.
UO PVP was among the most balanced PVP systems ever. And it was a 100% completely OPEN PVP system and a 100% completely OPEN skill system. I was never a huge fan of corpse looting in UO but the PVP was top notch.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas