The CU I got used to playing and I did like some of the stuff. Once armor break was fixed though it started having problems just like Pre CU did.
They need to dust off those old Combat Revamp / Combat Balance Documents. That was a good direction to go in, still needed some work but it was very good.
It really sucked that as a squad leader since July 03 (day 2 vet) we finally got our revamp (most buffs, not exactly what we wanted but good) only to get it all taken away from us. Officer is a POS.
At this point it's too late to roll back. Too many people would be just as negatively affected as the change from Pre-CU to NGE. The games are so dramatically different that this would cause as many problems as it solved. Seriously now, how many of us that left because of their incompetance are going to ever put money into this game again? I sure as hell won't. How can I trust that they won't turn around and do it all over again or worse? This company has no ethics at all. They aren't worth spending even one dollar on ever again.
I'm waiting for another MMO project to happen based on the SW ip. Screw SWG and SoE.
Originally posted by Fignar An easy solution would have been to get rid of the ability for you to take on more then one combat profession. So you would only be allowed to take on one master prof and say one novice profession and changing the skill point requirments so it used all your skill points to learn those. This would indeed mean that each novice proff and master would need tweeking to have the skills needed by the ultimate Master proff you would be but it would have eliminated the stacking. Whilst still allow you the freedom to decide what you wanted to be i.e.
Crafting & entertainers would still be allowed to dabble as having crafting, merchant and entertainment combos didn't affect combat so they could still use their skill points as normal.
This would have made it so much easier to bring balance to the game whilst still allowing people the freedom to chose various paths according to what Novice profs they took provided they still had the ability to drop their skill boxes and chose another profession without having to delete their characters simply by making use of the old trainers.
Its simple but effective however I can't believe they didn't consider this and am resigned to thinking that someone at Lucas Arts pushed the NGE knowing the old system could be balanced just to take a gamble and see if they could bring in more players. I have a suspicion it could have been Jim Ward as he essentially was taken on because of his ability to market goods and bring in money.
I would not play that system, it's just fixed classes with a different cover sheet. The ability to mix and match (or min and max) was what made the old system great.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt Im quite drunk tonight, a bbq party and a 6 pack of beer + a couple of whiskey has done it for me tonight. Night all I love this forum. I wear my tin foil hat all the time while reading it. Sorry for the offtopic.
Oh and ontopic... yes I would go back. But I wouldnt like it.
lol you might not play it but it would still fix the balance issues by not allowing you to stack skills or they could hard cap it so you could not go over X value for doge etc so if you already had +100 you simply couldn't go over it by taking something else from another profession they could overcome that issue by letting you dabble in the master trees but fixing the system so it was impossible for you to stack skills.
At least that way its easy to balance yet still allow some freedom in what you can choose and not affect the whole game as the NGE and CU did.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
Originally posted by Fignar lol you might not play it but it would still fix the balance issues by not allowing you to stack skills or they could hard cap it so you could not go over X value for doge etc so if you already had +100 you simply couldn't go over it by taking something else from another profession.
At least that way its easy to balance yet still allow some freedom in what you can choose and not affect the whole game as the NGE and CU did.
They did hard cap it, you could not go above XXX dodge, ranged defense, melee defense, counterattack, etc no matter how you stacked. I think the number was 200 and change. I wish more people knew how the old system worked. And what freedom in your system? You would choose 1 thing to master, just like you can choose 1 class now.
The solution was the original CURB that they scrapped when they saw WoW explode. CURB kept everything Pre-CU and made additional caps on armor resistances, doctor buffs, dancer buffs, food/drink buffs, and removed (or severely limited) mind pool attacks.
No i mean if a particular profession had a tree which gave you +100 so in effect if you took that tree to all its max boxes you hit the cap. So if you wanted some skills from another Master box you could but it would mean that if you invested points in the defences tree of say fencer hoping they would stack they won't but you would get the benefit of other skills available. Now if you don't like that it theres no point arguing because at the end of the day you want to stack and simple fact is stacking = never being balanced. If you actually read what I wrote I said you could chose skills from other master professions branching off your particular novice proff. So yes it would give you some freedom but not exactly like pre-cu. Just make it easier to balance at the end of the day by limiting some of the possible templates because pre-cu you had infinite combinations which made it impossible to balance as every time they nerfered one combo something else became FOTM. At least this way you can lock down how many possible combos you could have and make it
a) easier to balance
b) still allow quite a bit of freedom branching off your chosen novice box.
c) Get rid of the Temploiters so they would have to play a balanced system if they didn't like it plenty of other games out there.
d) Allowing the Devs more time to actually add free content to the game instead of constantly having to deal with nerf calls, FOTM, Jedi being uber etc as all could be balanced from the off (all though i think its impossible to balance 100% but you could get very close).
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
Theres no point getting all rattled up just because you wouldn't be able to stack which is what I take it you did. Some compromises need to be made and no the original curb was not the answer as it placed very low unrealistic hard caps on armor which meant it was pointless experimenting as it was too easy to reach the max cap not just on armor but weapons. taking what you said " I wish people knew how the old system worked" that applies to you aswell
The curb touched on too many things in the game that weren't combat and screwed them, if you weren't a dedicated crafter you wouldn't know this if you weren't an entertainer you wouldn't know this.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
If Smedley were forced to resign and all the managers of SWG were fired (including LA people).
Then I might...
--When you resubscribe to SWG, an 18 yearold Stripper finds Jesus, gives up stripping, and moves with a rolex reverend to Hawaii. --In MMORPG's l007 is the opiate of the masses. --The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence! --CCP could cut off an Eve player's fun bits, and that player would say that it was good CCP did that.
Originally posted by iskareot Originally posted by Malickiebloo Originally posted by Wildcat84 The CU wasn't as good as pre-CU, but at least it had most of the elements of the game.
However, what would they do about all the respec Jedi?
If they do classic servers, they may do CU servers instead of pre-CU ones, as the expansions would work. That would disappoint me, if I am going to have to start over (and I don't mind doing that) I'd rather it be pre-CU.
What if they brought Pre-cu back and kept Jedi As a starter class yet not an alfa ? /shrug
Naaa, bring it back to it's glory days. This was the best time for Jedi and it was earned. At all of the summits every single person there wanted the class to be strong but with risks like we once had. Making it a goal in game was great, giving it away easy was a mistake as we can all see now.
There is nothing wrong with it being alpha if the risks are there to counter it -- in pre-cu and pre-9 they were there trust me. People forget this, I have yet to figure out why... they all just think Jedi roamed free and powerful, when this is the farthest from the truth.
They always cry and whine about them being hard to get, or too strong... but see this kept a balance to having 85378727 of them running around. We hid, we hid because the loss was much higher then the gain -- THIS made it fun and exciting, granted I like hard games with some complexity so that helps with my comments I'm sure.
The day they made Jedi a starting class is when Jedi took the worse turn ever, it was made into a joke and a mere shadow of it's former self. As told at the summits, it was done for marketing, nothing more.. Grant hated that he had to do it, he said so.. but it was not his choice.
In the end, losing the force bar and Jedi feel made the NGE worse...using a pole arm and running around with no risk was not the Jedi way, at one time we really did have it good, I just think so many things got involved that made it worse, from jealous people that did not want to earn it, to Bounty Hunters that felt like they should always win no matter what. So many things were handled wrong, instead of them standing up and holding true to it like they did the NGE, they gave in to the kids and gave it away.
I can tell you that 95% of the people at 1 FanFest, 1 Summit I met did NOT want Jedi to be like it is now, free and easy... and most of them did not even unlock, they wanted the old Jedi not this NGE version. In a way I wish that some people could have had that chance to live Jedi the way Raph wanted it -- I think alot of hard core players would have loved it. Risk vs Reward did work, it was the support factor and marketing that took that all away. But alas , they also took away the real game.
I really need to start writing /sarcasm on more :P
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by Fignar No i mean if a particular profession had a tree which gave you +100 so in effect if you took that tree to all its max boxes you hit the cap. So if you wanted some skills from another Master box you could but it would mean that if you invested points in the defences tree of say fencer hoping they would stack they won't but you would get the benefit of other skills available. Now if you don't like that it theres no point arguing because at the end of the day you want to stack and simple fact is stacking = never being balanced. If you actually read what I wrote I said you could chose skills from other master professions branching off your particular novice proff. So yes it would give you some freedom but not exactly like pre-cu. Just make it easier to balance at the end of the day by limiting some of the possible templates because pre-cu you had infinite combinations which made it impossible to balance as every time they nerfered one combo something else became FOTM. At least this way you can lock down how many possible combos you could have and make it
a) easier to balance
b) still allow quite a bit of freedom branching off your chosen novice box.
c) Get rid of the Temploiters so they would have to play a balanced system if they didn't like it plenty of other games out there.
d) Allowing the Devs more time to actually add free content to the game instead of constantly having to deal with nerf calls, FOTM, Jedi being uber etc as all could be balanced from the off (all though i think its impossible to balance 100% but you could get very close).
I don't deny that it would be easier to balance, but it is not impossible to balance the other more complicated system. And there was a limit on how many combos you could have and mix, you had a fixed number of skill points to spend, that was the limiter. Get rid of the Temploiters? Temploiters, like myself, were people who read what the effects were of the skill boxes and spent their skill points to maximize the benefits to their character in combat. But there were crafting and support "temploiters" as well who did the same with non-combat skills. I know this because I had a full time Master Weaponsmith with mixed skills in Merchant and others that benefited him and his weaponsmithing production and business. It was balanced in the sense that anyone could do any of it, because everyone had all those skills open to them as well with the same limit on skill points.
Nothing will stop calls for nerfs and balancing. Read the WoW General forums. There is a game with fixed classes, no mixing and matching. Still the balancing and re-balancing and nerf calls continue. As long as somebody recieves some beneifit that somebody else has dificulty countering then there will be people calling for nerfs.
Jedi are another matter.
Also, I am not in any way angry, I just fervently believe that players often destroy their own games with constant calls for changes to benefit themselves instead of learning to counter their problems using the existing tools provided in-game. In fact, I had 3 toons in SWG. I had the weaponsmith I mentioned, but I started with a Bounty Hunter/Carbineer that I used to hunt down Jedi. When Jedi got 80% ranged block, I didn't go to the forums and cry for nerfs, I went and created a stacked melee character because he could be effective in fighting Jedi. The tools were there for me to solve my own combat problems. When I wanted to play my Bounty Hunter in PvP I found that I was having a difficult time taking down stackers. I knew that accuracy mods were key in hitting them. So, I created a Weaponsmith (with the help of my guild and friends) that specialized in weapons with high accuracy mods and scopes etc. I could Dizzy/KD the most stacked of stackers if I had the right foods and weapons. The system was complex, so complex that you could find a counter to everything in the game given enough effort.
The only problem in the game I thought players could not counter effectively was the non-healable but targetable mind pool. Players compensated (as did I) with buffing the living daylights out of their mind pools and adjusting all of their stats to the mind pools, allowing buffs to compensate their now tiny remaining pools. But, as I mentioned, the CURB was supposed to address this.
No, I don't think I would ever come back to SWG from what SOE and LA did to this game. The customer service is really bad and I don't think I could come back to that. They would really need to revamp customer service, dev's, etc.. before I would even think about coming back to this game.
It's really to bad too because this game was great in it's time.
Been there done that: Asherons Call,SWG,AOC,D&D,COH,Anarchy Online,DAOC,EVE,Guild Wars,LOTRO,POTBS,WAR,WW2, and Rift
Comments
They need to dust off those old Combat Revamp / Combat Balance Documents. That was a good direction to go in, still needed some work but it was very good.
It really sucked that as a squad leader since July 03 (day 2 vet) we finally got our revamp (most buffs, not exactly what we wanted but good) only to get it all taken away from us. Officer is a POS.
At this point it's too late to roll back. Too many people would be just as negatively affected as the change from Pre-CU to NGE. The games are so dramatically different that this would cause as many problems as it solved. Seriously now, how many of us that left because of their incompetance are going to ever put money into this game again? I sure as hell won't. How can I trust that they won't turn around and do it all over again or worse? This company has no ethics at all. They aren't worth spending even one dollar on ever again.
I'm waiting for another MMO project to happen based on the SW ip. Screw SWG and SoE.
Former SWG beta tester and player
/wink
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Temploiter
WDMKR | Incarnate
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt
Im quite drunk tonight, a bbq party and a 6 pack of beer + a couple of whiskey has done it for me tonight. Night all I love this forum. I wear my tin foil hat all the time while reading it. Sorry for the offtopic.
Oh and ontopic... yes I would go back. But I wouldnt like it.
The Second Day Vet
lol you might not play it but it would still fix the balance issues by not allowing you to stack skills or they could hard cap it so you could not go over X value for doge etc so if you already had +100 you simply couldn't go over it by taking something else from another profession they could overcome that issue by letting you dabble in the master trees but fixing the system so it was impossible for you to stack skills.
At least that way its easy to balance yet still allow some freedom in what you can choose and not affect the whole game as the NGE and CU did.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
They did hard cap it, you could not go above XXX dodge, ranged defense, melee defense, counterattack, etc no matter how you stacked. I think the number was 200 and change. I wish more people knew how the old system worked. And what freedom in your system? You would choose 1 thing to master, just like you can choose 1 class now.
The solution was the original CURB that they scrapped when they saw WoW explode. CURB kept everything Pre-CU and made additional caps on armor resistances, doctor buffs, dancer buffs, food/drink buffs, and removed (or severely limited) mind pool attacks.
Temploiter
WDMKR | Incarnate
No i mean if a particular profession had a tree which gave you +100 so in effect if you took that tree to all its max boxes you hit the cap. So if you wanted some skills from another Master box you could but it would mean that if you invested points in the defences tree of say fencer hoping they would stack they won't but you would get the benefit of other skills available. Now if you don't like that it theres no point arguing because at the end of the day you want to stack and simple fact is stacking = never being balanced. If you actually read what I wrote I said you could chose skills from other master professions branching off your particular novice proff. So yes it would give you some freedom but not exactly like pre-cu. Just make it easier to balance at the end of the day by limiting some of the possible templates because pre-cu you had infinite combinations which made it impossible to balance as every time they nerfered one combo something else became FOTM. At least this way you can lock down how many possible combos you could have and make it
a) easier to balance
b) still allow quite a bit of freedom branching off your chosen novice box.
c) Get rid of the Temploiters so they would have to play a balanced system if they didn't like it plenty of other games out there.
d) Allowing the Devs more time to actually add free content to the game instead of constantly having to deal with nerf calls, FOTM, Jedi being uber etc as all could be balanced from the off (all though i think its impossible to balance 100% but you could get very close).
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
Theres no point getting all rattled up just because you wouldn't be able to stack which is what I take it you did. Some compromises need to be made and no the original curb was not the answer as it placed very low unrealistic hard caps on armor which meant it was pointless experimenting as it was too easy to reach the max cap not just on armor but weapons. taking what you said " I wish people knew how the old system worked" that applies to you aswell
The curb touched on too many things in the game that weren't combat and screwed them, if you weren't a dedicated crafter you wouldn't know this if you weren't an entertainer you wouldn't know this.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
If Smedley were forced to resign and all the managers of SWG were fired (including LA people).
Then I might...
--When you resubscribe to SWG, an 18 yearold Stripper finds Jesus, gives up stripping, and moves with a rolex reverend to Hawaii.
--In MMORPG's l007 is the opiate of the masses.
--The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!
--CCP could cut off an Eve player's fun bits, and that player would say that it was good CCP did that.
Naaa, bring it back to it's glory days. This was the best time for Jedi and it was earned. At all of the summits every single person there wanted the class to be strong but with risks like we once had. Making it a goal in game was great, giving it away easy was a mistake as we can all see now.
There is nothing wrong with it being alpha if the risks are there to counter it -- in pre-cu and pre-9 they were there trust me. People forget this, I have yet to figure out why... they all just think Jedi roamed free and powerful, when this is the farthest from the truth.
They always cry and whine about them being hard to get, or too strong... but see this kept a balance to having 85378727 of them running around. We hid, we hid because the loss was much higher then the gain -- THIS made it fun and exciting, granted I like hard games with some complexity so that helps with my comments I'm sure.
The day they made Jedi a starting class is when Jedi took the worse turn ever, it was made into a joke and a mere shadow of it's former self. As told at the summits, it was done for marketing, nothing more.. Grant hated that he had to do it, he said so.. but it was not his choice.
In the end, losing the force bar and Jedi feel made the NGE worse...using a pole arm and running around with no risk was not the Jedi way, at one time we really did have it good, I just think so many things got involved that made it worse, from jealous people that did not want to earn it, to Bounty Hunters that felt like they should always win no matter what. So many things were handled wrong, instead of them standing up and holding true to it like they did the NGE, they gave in to the kids and gave it away.
I can tell you that 95% of the people at 1 FanFest, 1 Summit I met did NOT want Jedi to be like it is now, free and easy... and most of them did not even unlock, they wanted the old Jedi not this NGE version. In a way I wish that some people could have had that chance to live Jedi the way Raph wanted it -- I think alot of hard core players would have loved it. Risk vs Reward did work, it was the support factor and marketing that took that all away. But alas , they also took away the real game.
I really need to start writing /sarcasm on more :P
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I don't deny that it would be easier to balance, but it is not impossible to balance the other more complicated system. And there was a limit on how many combos you could have and mix, you had a fixed number of skill points to spend, that was the limiter. Get rid of the Temploiters? Temploiters, like myself, were people who read what the effects were of the skill boxes and spent their skill points to maximize the benefits to their character in combat. But there were crafting and support "temploiters" as well who did the same with non-combat skills. I know this because I had a full time Master Weaponsmith with mixed skills in Merchant and others that benefited him and his weaponsmithing production and business. It was balanced in the sense that anyone could do any of it, because everyone had all those skills open to them as well with the same limit on skill points.
Nothing will stop calls for nerfs and balancing. Read the WoW General forums. There is a game with fixed classes, no mixing and matching. Still the balancing and re-balancing and nerf calls continue. As long as somebody recieves some beneifit that somebody else has dificulty countering then there will be people calling for nerfs.
Jedi are another matter.
Also, I am not in any way angry, I just fervently believe that players often destroy their own games with constant calls for changes to benefit themselves instead of learning to counter their problems using the existing tools provided in-game. In fact, I had 3 toons in SWG. I had the weaponsmith I mentioned, but I started with a Bounty Hunter/Carbineer that I used to hunt down Jedi. When Jedi got 80% ranged block, I didn't go to the forums and cry for nerfs, I went and created a stacked melee character because he could be effective in fighting Jedi. The tools were there for me to solve my own combat problems. When I wanted to play my Bounty Hunter in PvP I found that I was having a difficult time taking down stackers. I knew that accuracy mods were key in hitting them. So, I created a Weaponsmith (with the help of my guild and friends) that specialized in weapons with high accuracy mods and scopes etc. I could Dizzy/KD the most stacked of stackers if I had the right foods and weapons. The system was complex, so complex that you could find a counter to everything in the game given enough effort.
The only problem in the game I thought players could not counter effectively was the non-healable but targetable mind pool. Players compensated (as did I) with buffing the living daylights out of their mind pools and adjusting all of their stats to the mind pools, allowing buffs to compensate their now tiny remaining pools. But, as I mentioned, the CURB was supposed to address this.
Temploiter
WDMKR | Incarnate
No, I don't think I would ever come back to SWG from what SOE and LA did to this game. The customer service is really bad and I don't think I could come back to that. They would really need to revamp customer service, dev's, etc.. before I would even think about coming back to this game.
It's really to bad too because this game was great in it's time.
Been there done that:
Asherons Call,SWG,AOC,D&D,COH,Anarchy Online,DAOC,EVE,Guild Wars,LOTRO,POTBS,WAR,WW2, and Rift