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Vortex500
Member Posts: 392
This Blog makes Homer go crazy. 
(on another note. Bye bye original SWG. See you in heaven.) *Mourns and let go of all NGE anger* *Turns eyes towards STO.* *Smiles* (and yeah I take drama classes... lol)
J.Freeman Blog
Formerly available at http://mythical.blogspot.com/2005/11/shenanigans.html
SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.
Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.
So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now – how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.
Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."
A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3…2…1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.
In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.
That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.
This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.
But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.
Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.
So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.
Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.
Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!
As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.
Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.
So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.
So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"
It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."
There's no way we can do that.
There's no way we should do that.
Man that's fun.
The Man will never let us get away with doing that.
We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it.
Oh man that is fun.
When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".
My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.
And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.
It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.
First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.
And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.
The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.
There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.
Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.
Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.
For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.
Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.
So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair.
(on another note. Bye bye original SWG. See you in heaven.) *Mourns and let go of all NGE anger* *Turns eyes towards STO.* *Smiles* (and yeah I take drama classes... lol)J.Freeman Blog
Formerly available at http://mythical.blogspot.com/2005/11/shenanigans.html
SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.
Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.
So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now – how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.
Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."
A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3…2…1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.
In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.
That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.
This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.
But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.
Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.
So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.
Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.
Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!
As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.
Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.
So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.
So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"
It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."
There's no way we can do that.
There's no way we should do that.
Man that's fun.
The Man will never let us get away with doing that.
We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it.
Oh man that is fun.
When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".
My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.
And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.
It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.
First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.
And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.
The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.
There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.
Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.
Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.
For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.
Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.
So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair.
Comments
It was written in response to some negative things non-SWG players were saying about Raph.
I know I came off sounding like I was taking credit for the NGE in a "I didn't do it, wink wink, nudge nudge" sort of way, but I was being literal there. It sounds like I "pushed it through", but again, I was being literal, not ironic, in reassuring that just one specific thing - clicky combat interface - was possible to do on a live server.. It sounds like I was talking about the entire NGE and every change in it, but I was speaking of just one specific thing: the clicky combat interface, which I found more fun than CU. I'll admit, I disliked CU, and I liked clicking to shoot the thing I clicked. I have also been told it sounds like I was saying that I myself believed that "removing the Raph" would make SWG better, but I wrote this as a response to people who were saying that. A retort. Not to say that myself.
Please don't take this to mean that I designed the NGE, pushed it all the way up to executives in both SOE and LEC, railroaded or bedaffled with bunkum 'til they were on board the crazy-train with me (I really don't have that sort of personality), then implemented it on my own computer and surprised the players with it out of wicked spite.
I do sincerely apologize for how insensitive this post was for you.
A previous reply:
Argh. I hate to reiterate (frequently) that it was possible. They had a hard time believing we could do that combat system with multiple players and multiple opponents that fast on a live server (And I think the speed even got toned down a bit to reduce suckage from the ridiculous rate that it started at). Also I exaggerated, when I said, "I had to say this about forty times a day for two months". It was much less than that.
I was gung-ho about the combat system, and tried to be gung-ho about everything else (more discreetly). It's part of the job.
But the point of that blog update was to criticize some folk who'd been implying the changes were SWG team, SOE exec's and LA's way of saying, "Removing the Raph will make the game fun."
The point of the update was right at the end: "So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair."
Jeff Freeman
If I worked for you and you told me to do something, how would my telling you, "No!" go over?
Jeff Freeman
The context in which the line you're taking to mean "I cheer-led the NGE" was first, not about "the NGE", it was about one of the changes which went in with all the rest of the NGE changes.. Second, the statement itself was my attempt to avoid taking credit for the combat interface style. Since I wasn't the one who made it, I didn't want co-worker s (any of them), reading my blog and thinking I was taking credit for their work. I designed and implemented very little of anything in the NGE, and I didn't want that blog post to come off as my taking credit for it all.
Well, no worries there. Turns out no one actually wanted credit for it.
But if you're going to tell people what I did and what I said, you could at least base it on my posts, rather than other peoples' posts about what they think my post said.
Argh. I hate to reiterate (frequently) that it was possible. They had a hard time believing we could do that combat system with multiple players and multiple opponents that fast on a live server (And I think the speed even got toned down a bit to reduce suckage from the ridiculous rate that it started at). Also I exaggerated, when I said, "I had to say this about forty times a day for two months". It was much less than that.
I was gung-ho about the combat system, and tried to be gung-ho about everything else (more discreetly). It's part of the job.
But the point of that blog update was to criticize some folk who'd been implying the changes were SWG team, SOE exec's and LA's way of saying, "Removing the Raph will make the game fun."
The point of the update was right at the end: "So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair."
* fps = first person shooter ... tps = third person shooter
i'll tell you .... the FPS/TPS " clicky" combat engine is what made me leave the game ...
if i wanted to play an FPS/TPS game id play one with PRECISE controls .. one that is as close to perfection as i can find .. something like half-life, battlefront, jedi academy, ect... ..SWG became a half-assed FPS/TPS game that didnt even play as well as phantasy star online for dreamcast, which was made years before SWG.. ...controls were jerky .. animations at the NGE's onset were non-existent ... and strategy of old thrown out the window .... it was sub-par for the style it was trying to adopt ...
player housing .. professions ... the economy .. all good stuff which COMPLIMENT combat ....but NOT the core of the game...the CORE of every video game ... what its remembered for ... what its style becomes to be known as ... is the way you do battle, defeat foes, and advance ... whether that game be street fighter ..super mario ... or star war galaxies ...
the best way i can explain this is by using one of my all time favorite games for comparison...Street fighter ... you know how many revisions there are to that game? about 20 ... which i can name if need be ... now one can ask themselves with ALL of the clone 2d fighters out there ... samurai showdown, king of fighters, fata fury ... ect.. why or HOW did street fighter end up with 20 revisions and ultimately stay more popular than the rest? Because the CORE of the game was never changed ... things were added ... newer more complex levels of mechanics were added ... but the CORE of the game, its combat engine was never changed .. just improved upon ... people bought street fighter .. and played street fighter KNOWING what they were buying ... they WANTED that same combat engine ...
i Bought the game(SWG) knowing the type of combat it would have ... i played the game and got used to the type of combat it had... and then ... it became a different game ...
why would i play a wannabe street fighter clone with less precise timing and hit mechanics when i could just go to the source, the real deal ...
it may be fashionable these days for mmo's to be FPS or TPS ... but ill tell you the brunt of the mmo players dont play MMO to play an FPS game ... any MMORPG that does adopt a quicker battle engine similar to battlefront ect... or NGE, .. BETTER make it top notch and comparable to other action games out there .. cuz gamers will not forgive a less than stellar engine just because its an " mmo"
and when i say engine i mean combat mechanics
So how did
"We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it."
Turn into 'This is going live as soon as we get done billing the current players for the expansion that had brand new creature handler stuff in it that we are removing two weeks later'
If I worked for you and you told me to do something, how would my telling you, "No!" go over?
It would go over a hell of alot better then having you say "Yes" then it blowing it up in my face.......
I own a business. If I all of a sudden said "Hey lets stop selling fossils and sell novelty T-Shirts instead." and you said "Yes we can do that" then it backfired guess whose getting the axe? But if you said no and told me why then you would probably get a raise.
Kai
Other reason is sure the feeling of you "lost anything" after you tried hard to progress your char. After CU - NGE you found yourself "lost anything" gained in 2 years PLUS you lost simply the "technical" (simple some things like profs no longer existed) ability and motivation to earn back what you lost because just of that poorly implementation of "Fast Action Combat" and "Classes".
Unlike what stated in the linked blog changing these 2 main elements of the SWG World was like throwing the vision of original developers out of the window.
SKILLS ! over levels , PROFESSION 's ! over ehhhm..."iconic"..... classes.
btw. "iconic". Te good version of SWG referred to as "PRE CU" was inspired from the world of the classic 3 films , these films have "die hard" - core fans and happens to be mature people. The "fast paced" 3 newer films are a bit "lousy" and have lesser mature fans. These fact adds to failure of NGE , that i believe was a try to implement paradigm of newer Films.
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Other reason is sure the feeling of you "lost anything" after you tried hard to progress your char. After CU - NGE you found yourself "lost anything" gained in 2 years PLUS you lost simply the "technical" (simple some things like profs no longer existed) ability and motivation to earn back what you lost because just of that poorly implementation of "Fast Action Combat" and "Classes".
Unlike what stated in the linked blog changing these 2 main elements of the SWG World was like throwing the vision of original developers out of the window.
I agree. My post very much understated the actual impact of all the NGE changes.
I do believe it's possible to have a "worldy" sort of game even with classes and a clicky combat interface, but erasing players' advancement by converting that late in the day was an un-worldy erasure of continuity, then combined with quest-loot marginalizing crafters, and a tight-rope-narrow content path... not so worldy.
Jeff Freeman
Jeff Freeman
Here is something that I have never seen asked:
Was PlanetSide originally an engine developed for SWG?
If so, then we can see from the very beginning the division of two camps within SOE. One preferred the EQ style and the other a more modern FPS style. PlanetSide for all of its shortcomings has a great interface and a combat system that supports lots and lots of players in a given area with little lag. It is a combat system looking for a game. If PlanetSide's engine were the basis for SWG from the beginning, we would not be talking in here but instead be playing the game.
Perhaps Jeff, this is what you are speaking of regarding the clicky style interface? What they gave us in SWG is an abomination, but what PlanetSide runs on is really fun, fast paced, runs great with dozens of players, and relatively easy to get back into the action upon a death...
Akevv Ostone
No Longer SWG Free
Your marketing department comes to you and says, "We can sell 4 billion novelty t-shirts. Can you make novelty t-shirts?"
You ask me if we can make novelty t-shirts. I say "Yes we can do that."
You think the risk is that you'll get to zero fossil customers much more quickly than you would otherwise, but 4 billion t-shirt customers!
Knowing what I know now, I would say, "I'm out."
...but was a time I'd have just come up with some t-shirt designs, instead. And your fossil customers would hate me for it.
Even pretty cool ones, like this.
* made-up number
** made-up period of time
Jeff Freeman
I agree it is a nice combat system.
I think it might take a performance hit with avatar customization anywhere near SWG's, algorithmic terrain generation, data-heavy objects from a unique-snowflake crafting system... maybe some NPCs, creatures, AI, pathfinding, dynamic objects, etc.
Jeff Freeman
Actually I disliked the clicky combat system almost as bad as the rest of the NGE.
It was way too fast, and too uncomfortable to play in long sessions. This is why I don't think a MMOFPS will ever be more than a niche.
ehhh jeff, speaking from a marketing kinda view, if a product is in the shitter, and only your real loyal customers stay, its never alright to sacrifice them.. it woulda alot better (and i mean alot) if you just shut the game down. you dont ever want to alienate your self from your loyal customers, becaues they are the ones that is easiest to transfer over to another product (Eq2, planetside etc etc...).
you dont ever say "we dont care if we loose some of the veterans, if we MABY can get 10 times as many new customers".
If a product has low and stil declining market share, and it is a small share of your company (SOE), you NEVER sacrifice your loyal veteran customers on a chance, YOU SHUT THE PRODUCT DOWN.. shit i learned this my 1st year at Business akademy.. no wonder Sonys market share is declining....
You guys should really know something about simple marketing,
http://www.brs-inc.com/models/model14.asp <---- basic Bosten model
Dogs (like you clame SWG was)
Low growth
Low share
Business is a cash trap.
focus on short term
avoid risky project
limited future
kk focus on short them, limited future and avoid risky projects, kinda hate to brake it to you, the neg WAS a risky project, and you got your hands burned.. now you have a 100k+ players that HATE (and mean that in the strongest way) SOE... if you just had shut it down, no one woulda hated soe. yea they would been unhappy but not hated. Look at turbine, they shutdown ac2 (also played that :-)), people where saddened, but they wherent mad at the company. many of their ex players play ac (the predecessors is still alive and kicking) and D&D online.
Of cause SOE's main goal should be to make money, they are company, but then try that. the NEG goes against every marketing model that exists! That you try and claim the NEG was for to make more money, REALLLY worries me, because then SOE really gotta fire some of its employees, if they think that they can make money by alienating their customers, because they want to try a risky project with a dying product.... i mean... reallly.. Education my friend.. try it..
Me personally i have never felt this betrayed, iv personally taken the stand that i will never buy another product in my life that is just a little affiliated with sony (not just Sony Online Entertainment), no matter if its a CD-R, or a game.
Its funny, before SOE just pissed me off as a gamer, now they also pissed my of as a capitalist, and a salesman..
Come late 2007 they're all going to get a nasty shock, especially WoW with all the new MMORPG's coming out and finally maybe this quite frankly crappy form of games industry will get back onto their feet, at least, that's what i'm hoping for.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
I think at the highest levels, they disbelieved the vets would alienated to the degree they were. Not that they were tossing you out for their new customers.
I hope some day you'll reconsider, as you're punishing so many thousands and thousands of people for the actions of a relative few.
Most development studios don't even have a marketing department, since publishers make the marketing decisions.
Jeff Freeman
the amount of MMO's that go thru sony's hands , and they feel they had the right to change one two years in ??
if anything , its that koster experience that all us refuges are trawling the internet searching for , it was his idea's that got all the subs in the first place , it was ignorant of sony to think its customers would stay around after the defacing of there beloved game .
you killed the game when you killed crafters in the CU imo . rather than just adding more looted components for the crafters to use , you made them worthless by handing out better rewards than they could make .
surely if the accountants were on your back , you would be best trying to make the old game better , rather than scrap it and make a new game ? instead of fixing what was broke , you threw it out and took and even bigger chance on a game none of your subscribers had any interest in playing , we were there for a worldy rpg ffs .
i dont wanna come off to bitter here (altho i probably am) , i respect the fact you have had the arse to chat about it ,
PS . What are you working on now jeff? i can only imagine this whole experience has taught you alot , be nice to see what you have learned put into practice .
If you remember GreenMarine, he's my boss, now.
Jeff Freeman
[/b][/quote]
Personally, I cost Sony about $30K worth of plasma screens and DVD players alone when my company was looking to roll out a videoconferencing setup. I took Sony out of the bid spec for the screens and the DVD players we bought (they were originally there). We bought another brand (RCA).
The moral of the story: Don't piss off the geeks. We wield a LOT more power than you suits believe.
I can understand not having a marketing department, but clearly SOE is greatly lacking in public relations/customer relations. All you have are some glorified forum mods called community managers. That's not good enough, there should be a senior position up in management in every suit meeting who represents customer relations.
That is how the veteran player base wasn't considered. There was no one in the NGE decision meetings who ever came into contact with players (or even those who do).
Still, I don't buy that theroy anyway, either the managers who made the NGE decision deliberately decided to throw away the customer base for a new, larger one, or they were incompetent. Or both. I vote both.
Even the Illuminati dont hold a candle to the almighty "THA GEEKS".
Obay us, or be destroyed
(Humorous statement, not to be taken very seriously)
Yep, what suit is going to risk being on the hook for overriding a "technical" recommendation by the network engineer? Especially when it's as trivial as what brand of X is bought (and the RCA plasmas were cheaper).
Also, my company doesn't buy any Sony media (CDR's, DVDR's), nor do we buy any other Sony hardware at all, such as DVD recorders, memory sticks, or anything else.
How do I achieve that? Simple: I am the one who comes up with what we need to do what the end user/department wants done. I write the specs. And the word Sony will never appear on it until there are pre-NGE servers.
I estimate I cost Sony $40K in retail sales last year alone. I get a lot of personal satisfaction over that. Just yesterday one of our salespeople wanted to replace their personal notebook. He brought me an ad for a Sony Vaio. He ordered HP
When you consider what a high percentage of SWG players worked in IT, I seriously doubt that I am the only one out there doing this...
As for taking it out on "innocents" at Sony... A corporation, like a fish, rots from the head.
Seriously. This could be a case study in a university marketing class. I think it was even measured.
Oh, Sony has a marketing department because they are also publishers. LEC published SWG though.
'Definitely decided to risk the number of players they projected would still be playing within the next six months to a year.
Jeff Freeman
Beside the fact that Combat shouldn't be primary activity in an MMO (be part of an big complex world offer you many possibilties and many activities to participate -thats it ) if its not smoothly implemented it ruins your overall experience.
If i ground out millions of XP in many hours and/or
done many quests to gain skill X (let say unarmed 3 ) then i don't wont the ability to place mouse pointer over my target to bother me anymore or to click x milliseconds faster then my opponent. Maybe it has his place as a newbie skill (chars happend to be novice and not gained auto-target skill yet).
I am more interested in "strategical" fight style.
For example in combination of moves and in respect to possible counters. For example you have gained ability "torsoshot 2" which destabilizes posture , then ability "blastershot 2" which applies dizzy to a target and then a ability "headshot 3".
Blastershot and headshot are shortcuted but appear inactive. A sucessfull torsoshort 2 would activate blastershot 2- if counter of opponent fails.
You then fire blastershot 2 and apply dizzy to target and only then "headschot 3" becoming active for an amount of time where you can fire and in case of an hit you knockdown you target.
See this active/inactive abilities similar to /deathblow was avaiable only if target was in state of incap.
Don't played all MMOS out there so don't know if thats already implemented but anyhow it was an example how "Game enhancements" should be to an already wonderful existing Game.
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
EG like John Smedley
i mean if Gaming ever should turn into a religion, he would be the bad guy in it (and jack Timpson would be the 2nd bad guy)