Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
I want this game to be good, but it's not looking good.
Tauceti
Member Posts: 168
Hi all,
I was excited about this game, but that has somewhat lessened with some of the things I've learn about how they are doing the game. 1st let me say the graphic look great and I'm happy that they are going to try to maintain the feeling of exploration, and it sounds like they are going to have plenty of planets. Plus they seem to understand the need to add content on a regular bases. That being said, it's sad [based on current information] that they are not introducing more races and have a limited number of professions { I can't believe they said archtypes...lol] which pisses me off. It like no one in the industry understand that players want a unique avatar [both in look , skill, and abilities]. But, the most disappointing is they are going to make this a level based game. I guess they lack the ability to make a skill & equipment based game, either that or they want yet another WoW clone....LOL.
IMO,
Tauceti
Comments
However, I did listen to the latest VirginWorlds.com podcast today with an interview of one of the SW developers, and I was disappointed at a lot of what I heard. Some of their ideas sound great, but I'm more concerned at the underlying gameplay behind it all. It's almost sounding like, practically every other traditional MMORPG out there, just replace the swords & sorcery with guns & grenades.
I don't want to have to grind everything anymore. I'm tired of it. Repeating dungeon/raid after dungeon raid is still grinding, as far as I'm concerned. If it's interesting and motivating, that's one thing. But just running in and doing the same encounters, play by numbers style, over and over hoping for some "phat loot" ... I'm so over that at this point in time.
I agree. It like most of the Devs and programmers went to the same game design school. If there is any game that needs to be skill based it's Stargate Worlds. This game has so much potential if they do it right [of course we've seen what happened to SWG Pre-CU]. But it not just about it being level based it also has to do with the lack of profession and race types they seem to be offering.
IMO,
Tauceti
Anyway, anything that has invisible dice rolls (parry, miss, hit, crit) requires far less skill. Its called the RPG genre. Levels alone dont make the difference. You want a skillbased game? Go grab yourself a shooter or something. Youre complaining about the wrong things here.
Sidenote: Its WAY too early to be making conclusions and statements about SGW.
While I have my concerns, I have them over any game I want to play. SGW is no different but I am looking forward to at least seeing how this game develops and playing in it, probably as soon as possible.
I listened to the same pod-cast, and I have to say that it is definately worth listening to for the comments. There are alot of possibilities with this IP and it won't be a "stifling" IP (for lack of a better word).
One of the comments in the podcast was how the IP gives them freedom to create alot of very unique worlds, with an efficient means of travel and (what I personally think is good) is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. They refer to some of the more light-hearted or as they put it "toungue-in-cheek" humor of the series, which I hope will help transfer over to an easy-going humourous community.
I came back from listening to it with some good thoughts, some slightly worried but all in all it does make me more interested.
The emphasis on replayability was interesting, and I'm sure will be a common talking point over the next year or so of development.
Anyway, anything that has invisible dice rolls (parry, miss, hit, crit) requires far less skill. Its called the RPG genre. Levels alone dont make the difference. You want a skillbased game? Go grab yourself a shooter or something. Youre complaining about the wrong things here.
Sidenote: Its WAY too early to be making conclusions and statements about SGW. Hi
Geezs!! You really misread this. What I meant was that current trend in MMORPG seem to be following the same game mechanics as WoW. [as in level based ]. In fact many of the games out there are level based games [for example: I'm surprised that VSOH hasn't been sued for copy rite infringment...LOL]. Anyhow, I'm going on what I've heard so far ,both in terms of level gameplay and profession [or what they call archtypes]. The best example I have a true skill & equip based game was SWG pre-cu. You could multi-class and / or choose a combination of skills as long as you meat requirements. Plus the equipment you used played a strong role in your game play [kinfdof the way life is, albeit in a virtual world.
Also, there is a difference between skill & equipment based games and level games beyound what you sited. To me level are the easy way out, [although: I admit I play some. But more out of a lack of choice and hope for a good game.] Here is the main reason I dislike level based games:
1. You are general tied to particular zones based on your level this makes exploring and having fun limiting. So far CoH is the only one who has managed some work around for this..but it requires at least someone to be a few levels ahead of you. Thois pretty much limit you if you might want explore of take a break from group play to solo.
2. IF you have friends who play more than each other you end up creating a large divide in levels between each other which makes continued game play with your friends difficult.
3. In a level based game, you come a across a MOB that is 10 levels higher than you and / or your group and you can't even attack it or if you do you, you get same message all the time like " you missed", "it resisted", " no damage", and so forth.
4. One of the biggest things that gets me is for example, you and another player who is 5 levels above you both have a .45 auto pistol [with same ammo] and yet the higher level players does more damage.
Anyhow, the point is I and many believe games that are skilled & equipment based games are far better.
IMO,
Tauceti
IMO,
Tauceti
Anyway, anything that has invisible dice rolls (parry, miss, hit, crit) requires far less skill. Its called the RPG genre. Levels alone dont make the difference. You want a skillbased game? Go grab yourself a shooter or something. Youre complaining about the wrong things here.
Sidenote: Its WAY too early to be making conclusions and statements about SGW. Hi
Geezs!! You really misread this. What I meant was that current trend in MMORPG seem to be following the same game mechanics as WoW. [as in level based ]. In fact many of the games out there are level based games [for example: I'm surprised that VSOH hasn't been sued for copy rite infringment...LOL]. Anyhow, I'm going on what I've heard so far ,both in terms of level gameplay and profession [or what they call archtypes]. The best example I have a true skill & equip based game was SWG pre-cu. You could multi-class and / or choose a combination of skills as long as you meat requirements. Plus the equipment you used played a strong role in your game play [kinfdof the way life is, albeit in a virtual world.
Also, there is a difference between skill & equipment based games and level games beyound what you sited. To me level are the easy way out, [although: I admit I play some. But more out of a lack of choice and hope for a good game.] Here is the main reason I dislike level based games:
1. You are general tied to particular zones based on your level this makes exploring and having fun limiting. So far CoH is the only one who has managed some work around for this..but it requires at least someone to be a few levels ahead of you. Thois pretty much limit you if you might want explore of take a break from group play to solo.
2. IF you have friends who play more than each other you end up creating a large divide in levels between each other which makes continued game play with your friends difficult.
3. In a level based game, you come a across a MOB that is 10 levels higher than you and / or your group and you can't even attack it or if you do you, you get same message all the time like " you missed", "it resisted", " no damage", and so forth.
4. One of the biggest things that gets me is for example, you and another player who is 5 levels above you both have a .45 auto pistol [with same ammo] and yet the higher level players does more damage.
Anyhow, the point is I and many believe games that are skilled & equipment based games are far better.
IMO,
Tauceti Ah, I see what you mean now.
What I dont understand (still) is what will make people keep playing the game if not some sort of reward (As in levels) is presented? What type of accomplishment would you like to see instead of the basic level-up? Dont forget we are talking about an MMORPG that should aim for players to keep playing it over a big span of time (Say, a year at minimum). If you dont like the whole levelling system (And all the downsides you mention that come with it), what would you like to see instead?
I myself think about a system similar to Planetside, where you basically spend these "talent / skill points" to unlock certain equipment, therefor expanding your usefullness as a class instead of being stronger level-wise. It has to be a lot more complicated though, and very vast in choices.
I'd much rather see a skill-based (and by that I mean character skills, not player skill, or the lack thereof) system where we as players have the freedom to spec our characters to fit our own personal playstyle and allow us to find our own individual roles within a group instead of practically forcing us into generic cookie cutter builds and roles.
Oh, and have I mentioned how much I dislike forced grinding?
http://img462.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sig3wp8.png
not everybody is gonna use the same template especially if ya consider not everybody will be combatant or pvper.. some ppl enjoy pve and others are crafters only.... even if there's a "best" template for a certain class it's not gonna be 100% and still require human factor/skills to work...
Unlike, again I'll use WoW as an example, at end-game Priest are pretty much expected to respec to Holy if they weren't already. Warriors to Protection, and so forth. Unless the player can find a more open-minded group to play with, their options are a lot more limited and the majority of guilds/players are very "in the box" in their thinking along those regards.
Eve Trial <- Try 14 days of Eve for FREE
Im against SOE
I remember SWG in the beginning, and it was great. I only Play EVE Online right now, and the biggest draw of the game is that someone who is only 2 months old can keep up with someone who is 4 years old. It's all just a matter of skills and equipment.
I have to say, grinding is simply intolerable anymore (and a LOT of gamers are really getting sick of it). Perhaps East Asian gamers love it, but I don't. It's boring, repetitive, and so utterly pointless. Games are supposed to be fun. Having to grind levels to be able to DO anything worth wile is not fun for me. I play to get away from work and stress... not substitute it with a different form of work/stress.
Anyway, first of all, I would play this game regardless of what type of system they use. I'm just a SG fan period and since I equally love video games for what they provide and not what I want them to provide, I'm good with adjusting to play just about any game. If I feel something isn't worth my time, then I move on to something I think is.
As far as wanting a skill based system, I think reason why developers stay away from it is because of the failure of SWG at it. I have to admit, there has not been a MMORPG before or after the original SWG that I find better. The first year of SWG was an awesome game.
However, with a skill based system, you have major issues with game balance. SWG clearly showed a problem in that area. It got to a point were a skilled based system gave players too much power. In some case, such as rifleman, tera kasi artist, Combat Medic..etc, those professions become purely dominant at some point in either PVE or PVP. A master rifelman in full composite armor for example could dominate pvp or pve and never die, never get less than half health. You wanted to be invincible, then you become a rifleman. Toss in a mix of another profession or two (yes you could take 3 professions worth of skills in one template) and you had an invincible toon which pretty much made 50% of the other professions useless. Jedi didn't make things any better once they started filling the servers.
So the devs, in an attempt to fix the balance issues had to pull a bunch of nerfs to professions and tweak skills and such. That created more imbalance throughout the whole game. The devs failed to thoroughly test how a skill based game would affect players at higher level (or highest level). Because of that, the game was becoming incredibilly difficult to manage on the developer side. They couldn't handle fixing the bugs and balance issues and still put new content into the game (which is why the monthly story arcs stopped coming after the third one in early 2004). It also didn't help that the creator of the whole skill based system in SWG left the developer team, so the new devs couldn't manage the work and/or figure things out (though they'll never admit it). Eventually, the devs had to migrate to a level based system which is a thousand times easier to manage, update, code for and keep balance (since it's the game industry standard anyway). In a level based game, all you need to do is tweak some numbers or formulas to fix things and at worse case scenerio, they can just put level restrictions on things. In a Skill based game, since things are based on players skills, there is no real way to control the use of those skills without affecting weaker or stronger skilled players. The possible mix and match of skills would always create an imbalance somewhere that was significant enough to render certain professions worthless. Trying to balance the game (PVE and PVP) between jedi and other professions is the clearest example of such balance issues in a skill based game.
So when you get to creating a skill based game these days, other developers look at SWG's failure and simply steer clear of that potential headache and stick with what has worked for the past 8 years or so.
I would love to see a skilled based game that can be managed as well as a level based game, but I'm afraid there has to be someone or some game company who puts in a monumental effort to first of all sit down and script a good way to do it from beginning to end, not just to get a game jump started. This means, you can't just create a starting concept for a skill based game and develop for it as the game grows. You literally have to have a plan in place to make sure certain aspects of a game don't or won't cause major balance issues that can't be fixed reasonably without totally taking skills, items and such away from players. Heaven forbid it leads to changing a game like SWG did. Honestly, SWG gave me the feeling like I bought an exotic car from the car dealer and a year later the government says my exotic car is banded from being driven in the US, but I can't get my money back or anything to compensate my loss. Oh but it sure was fun to drive my shiny new car for a few months, now it's just a trophy sitting in my garage. That's how SWG made me feel which is why I left after 3 years of committed play (hoping for the best out of the changes). I simply do not want to see another game (especially one from a story that I love such as Stargate, Star Wars or Star Trek or anything Sci-Fi really
I'll agree that some professions like TKA were very powerful compared to some of the others, but that is more of an issue with the attributes of the skills themselves, not the skill based system as a whole. Simply modifying the attributed of a skill would have fixed that.
SOE tried to balance out things, but honestly had no clue what they were doing.... which is why it ended up sucking. Even after most of the original players left (because everything was changed too much) SOE still refused (and continues to refuse) their screwup, instead reworking and remarketing the game time and time again.
The problem was not the system, but the incompetence of those implementing it.
At any rate I'm likely to at least try SGW whatever they use (I'm a fan of the license myself), just as long as they don't do all that instancing nonsense that I see in a number of MMO's now (I find it very annoying and counter productive to MMO's, though Wow used it well.)
I have a pretty good imagination but no matter how hard I try I just cannot fathom how this game could turn out to be any good. I would love to be wrong though as I enjoy the series a great deal.
I have to admit that if I was going to turn a TV franchise into a MMORPG I would have considered Battlestar Galatica as the best crowd puller.
Lots of space to patrol, 2 sides (or more) to choose from. Able to change the playing realm by capturing or losing territory. How about forming a huge alliance and driving the Cylons from Caprica. I am already more excited at the BSG prospect than SGW and the BSG game doesnt even exist (hint hint).
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW
The franchise simply doesn't have enough to pull from. There would be little to no content. You would just sit in space as a human and kill incoming cylons as you run for your life (or flip that role as a cylon). That's the jist of the series, and pretty much all you could do with a game based on it while preserving the integrity and main appeal of the franchise (or you make things up and change everything, there by upsetting the audience that you wanted to make the game for in the first place)
Stargate, Star Trek, hell even Harry Potter would make for a more engaging and content rich environment.
All these different franchises tell a specific story (that's how they are presented to us in books, movies, shows, etc). But not every story has a very good supporting universe to go along with it. Galactica is one such franchise which has a VERY limited supporting universe.
I thought of the BSG idea after typing the first paragraph when I was considering "what would make a better franchise?" I had never wondered about a BSG MMORPG before that point. The Harry Potter idea woud probably be popular but think of the likely maturity level of the players
. The playing community would be devided into those that do have a set bedtime and those who do not.
Either way I do have a hard time imagining the SGW game working out. Its just an opinion, or perhaps a hunch, either way it doesnt have to hold any weight and I am not a game designer (unless they want a game based on excel spreadsheets) so you could easily be right about the crowd limitation of BSG.
I hope SGW does succeed but I am rather negative about it. This is unusual for me as I usually want to see it before I judge it. The only other game I felt this way about was Matrix Online.
*back to Spidy3 on the PS3*
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW
but for me SGWs tips the balance. It has more Races, more problems, like for example.
The replicators land on a goa'uld world, and a massive firefight ensues and the replicators are still incoming! or, an unlikly alliance is formed, Asgard and Goa'uld vs Humans and Jaffa.
The Wraith infiltrates Atlantis and settle into a world in the Milkyway galaxy or a massive fight breaks out in Cheynee mountain complex.. now THAT would be good!!!.
Then you got Star Trek. Federation and the Klingon join forces, and fight the Dominion on there own lands. Bolians and Tholians hammer out an alliance for the federation. Or the Romulans and Cardassians ally and destroy earth. it's insane, but that is what could happen.
But for BSG... its Cylons Vs Humans.... Cylons Vs Humans. Human Terrorists capture a ship plow it into a cylon battleship with millions of innocents aboard. Cylons destroy a Human city and... more lip wresling... are you serious?!
Serious?...... No. Think I made that clear in the post that followed the one quoted. It was an idea off the top of my head with nore more than 2 mins consideration. Just a brief thought about an alternative SCIFI MMORPG that was added onto a post which seems to have been taken much more seriously (for reasons I cannot fathom) than my primary point = that something does not feel right about SGW. I just have a bad feeling about it.
My concern now is that someone will take the above Harry Potter post seriously too. If someone takes that on board and starts production I am gonna get my Amiga 1200 out of mothballs and stick with it.
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW