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Why SWG- NGE was right - a crusade
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
First off, this is a declaration of crusade against all those who repeatedly call out against SOE for the so called disaster of NGE. I think this has become such a reflex, I can no longer stand idly and silent.
Second, I kindly ask the chivalry of my contestors to really hear me out and reply seriously and thoughtful. I respect you as a person, but I seriously think the flames against SOE and NGE are undeserved and unjust.
What is the idea if the flame? The idea to hear all the SOE and SWG hate is based on this assumption: SWG was the perfect game, running great and well and out of nowhere SOE made the NGE and ruined the game. I contest this assumption - in every part of it. It is a myth.
I played SWG for 2.5 years since a short time after launch and beyond NGE. SWG was my one big MMO love. I played it daily for hours, I was in a big and successful guild who had created one of the biggest and most thriving player cities on our server. My character was Creature Handler & Pikeman, so I lost both my professions with the NGE and all my collected animals. I that, I am a direct victim of the NGE.
However, since I played daily at the time and long before the NGE, the basic premise of the critic is a myth: SWG was not perfect and at the time before the NGE is was NOT thriving. On the contrary. I had watched my friends list and the population in constant decline. It had started with EQ2 and WOW was a huge blow. The TRUTH is, with every new MMO the number of active players were in constant decline. So NGE did not come to a well running game. NGE was a REACTION to what was going on. Going on were two things: first, SWG was in great decline of players, and second: every new and successfull MMO totally turned away from the principles of the sandbox game, on which SWG was based.
Both EQ2 and WOW, as EVERY new MMO coming since then was not sandbox, but guided quests experience. Mark me: I loved the sandbox game in those days. We did not quests and had no quests, and still we enjoyed the game. But those days clearly were coming to an end. Look at the MMO genre today. Look at the great failure of Vanguard, which is basically because they have far too much sandbox and far too little guided experience. One of the important skills of a thinking adult is to differ between HIS/HER preferrences and the trend. I can do that, so I see what was going on for REAL, not the myth people made around it. I respect ppl who love sandbox, really. For 2+ years I loved it too. But times DID change, the market changed, the majority of the players started to want quests, things to guide them, things to do, to be entertained. You can bemoam that as passive expectancy if you will, and with some right you could, but the facts remain.
SOE & Lucasarts saw a constant decline in players and a great rise of quest-based, guided MMOs, a trend which holds up until today unbroken. How could they NOT react to this? Sure, they could have stayed in a niche. But I dont think the great Star Wars franchise, of which I am a great fan, deserves that.
What did NGE do? For once, it remade the combat system. Sure, not every detail of the NGE was right. But what did we have before? My pikeman had almost 3 dozens of attacks. 3-4 attacks to the legs, 3-4 to the head - it was a HUGE assortment of attacks, but if we are honest: in real combat we ALL just made button bashing. The entire complexity was more or less superficial, because in the hectic of RT combat it doesnt really matter. I never saw anyone who did not just mash all the buttons. They had really little relevance. It is a myth. Sure, you used some special abilites once and then. But in real, most were quite a pointless complexity.
Second, yes the loss of s skill based system was bad. I agree on that. But it wasnt THAT bad. It is not that my life depends on it, and if you make specializations, why not? So many games are enjoyable even though they have no skill but level based system. I bemoan the losses of my professions, but I understand the reality of MMO market of those days just WAS that a lot of players were used to "inconic" classes instead of a obsucre mix of everything. People played tanks, wizards, scouts. They identify with it, and there just IS a great plausibility in this.
Third: I said Jedi will be playable and should be playable from day one of SWG. Why? Because its logical. It is just (obviously as you can see now) the dream of a great number of players! How can you make a Star Wars based MMO and NOT include Jedi? Sure, it does not fit well into the setting of Episode IV - V. So what? Is Star Wars the holy grail of history play? I always thought it was a bad setting in time and going back or far ahead would have been better because it would allow greater flexibility. I would have loved a SWG in the KOTOR era. But it was at it was, and with Jedi being what many potential player wanted, how could they NOT include it. And TBH, the entire system of the Aurilla-Jedi-questline was a joke. It was implementing an ENDLESS mindnumbind grind, the worst grind i have ever seen, and no fun at all. Being a Jedi has what to do with grind? It wasnt difficult, it wasnt dangerous quests, clever roleplay or anything, it was a mindnumbind grind, so taking Jedi to a normal profession was right. Killing 100000s of mobs did not really qualify a good Jedi player above someone else. It just proofed you were more tolerant to idiotic grinds of the worst kind I have seen. What did THAT have to do with being a Jedi, with playing a MMORPG - a sort of roleplaying game? If there would have been real tests, quest and trials, but it was only grinding, pure, mindless, idiotic grind. Taking that out by the NGE was bad? I dont think so.
I could go on about many things. I wont defend all things NGE did. Granted, it was a far too great simplification. Too less professions and too less alternatives from making a standart character. But it was in NO way the disaster to the well running game myth makes of it. Besides, all realistic evidence points out it was Lucasarts who pulled most of the strings, so blaming SOE is just that blind fanatism to find someone guilty and tar and feather him as witchhunters usually do. In the days before NGE, SWG was a game in decline in a new era of MMO gaming where the sandbox idea was about to fade away. Thats the truth. Even though I dont like everything NGE did, it was a courage I admire. A MMO can not only build on the always shrinking niche of vets. It must open up. We all cry always for innovation, we always blame companies who rest on their laurels and dont dare to innovate. SOE did dare. And what did the vets do? The started a witchhunt and flame war of unseen propotions.
I had sadly watched the official SWG forums those days. Besides some true claims, the majority of ppl where aggressive witchhunters, seeking to vent off and exaggerate, knowing no reason nor restraint and thus bringing ruin to the game with the emotional frenzy and the always spread false myth of SOE ruining the perfect game. SWG was NEVER perfect. It was great in many ways, but it was also heavily flawed. If something really ruined the game, it was the merciless and unreasonable flame war of veterans, who did no accept that the modalities of gaming had changed and they were dinosaurs of MMO gaming now.
Truth hurts. I am sorry it does, really. But after all this year we still hear this false myth against SWG and SOE. It is not reality and despite several great errors NGE had, it is undeserved. Before you flame me, pls now after all these years now really think calm and without prejudice about all thise before you go to auto-flame mode. Thanks.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
Countdown to flaming in 5...4...3...2...
What we say is, we enjoyed the old game. We played the old game for a long time. The old game was more fun, and complex. The old game Had our friends still in it. The old game had the history we created in it.
SOE removed all the above things directly, or indirectly, in search of, less literate, more instant gratification audience. This is fact.
Now go play your crappy game.
PS:
Not to mention, you seem to want to rewrite history. All combat related concerns were pushes to the wayside with "It will be addressed in the combat rebalance". All of them. Then we got the CU. Ok. Then shortly after the Expansion went on sale for preorders, they COMEPLY CHANGED THE GAME FUNDAMENTIALS AND LIED ABOUT ANY MORE SWEEPING CHANGES TO THE GAME.
You may think that your correct, or you may disagree that Pre-CU was more fun. And you would be wrong. Anyway, you don’t sell someone a Beamer, and then send them a letter that reads "We upgraded your car" while your looking out your house window as someone tows your beamer and places a moped in its place.----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
First, and most likely to be pointed out (probably many times by the time I can hit submit here) is that very few of the Pre-CU veterans would claim that version of the game was perfect. Far from it, they are among its most vocal critics.
Combat DID need a rework. There was NOT enough content (directed, mini-game or otherwise). Many would say the GCW was not all that it should have been.
Evidence does not show that LA pulled the strings to pressure SOE to develop the NGE. The evidence, for those that followed this closely, shows that the NGE was SOE's brainchild. At best, LA was a complicit if somewhat silent partner in that decision.
Again, my time is limited, but many of the things you argue here just aren't so.
SWG Team Mtg.
And you know what you ask anyone SWG Castaways and they will tell you THAT EXACT THING. NO ONE has ever said SWG was perfect. Its YOU NGE Fanboies that want claim that we said that ... because thats your only defense for the new system.
"sure NGE may not be as good as it was before but the old game wasn't perfect either" - Sound familiar?
Any castaway you ask will tell you the game had its flaws ... every game did. But there was much more to the game that we could look past those flaws.
heres what most castaways will say Pre-NGE was not perfect ... but it was still better than the P-O-S we have now.
And tell that to the legion of NGE fans so they can stop making stupid threads like this.
I would go back to pre-NGE, but not Pre-CU.
What myself and most veterans argue is that Pre-CU was one of the best MMORPG instances ever constructed. Beautiful PvP, well-integrated Profession System, mature community, it was a fricken metropolis. So when they go and trash the game, its hard to just acquiesce.
Damn, my match just died, the flame just ran out.
So many assumptions in this Anti-Vet post....
No, the pre-NGE content was never upgraded and new content was never added. Other than the rebel/imperial storyline quests(which were fun) there wasn't much more than that to continue your journey. Everyone knew this and this was one of our main gripes.
To date the crafting professions and resource gathering were the most complex and well put together in any MMO. Contrary to what you're saying, people loved spending the time and effort in collecting the best resources and then putting them together to make some pretty impressive items. If you wanted to craft then you put the effort in, you may not immediately be able to make the best things but if you were smart eventually you could be competitive. Sorry but time invested should = greater rewards, not this pathetic 'everyone is equal' mentallity that we have in all the current games.
Jedi should NEVER have become commonplace in SWG, the original system that they had in place was as close to perfect as possible minus Perma-death. Sorry but not everyone wants to be Luke(whiney) Skywalker, they should've stuck with their guns on the Jedi issue instead of caving into the lightsaber envy. For the record I was never a Jedi and never truly wanted to be, all I wanted to do was be a smuggler. Not going into that gripe but check Green Marine's old posts on the forums if you don't have all that info, SOE never implemented any of those excellent ideas.
The strength of SWG was how unique it was, yes WoW is successful and influenced the decision making at SOE. The original downfall of SWG was never updating content, incredibly slow bug fixes and just a general lack of giving a darn about their playerbase. The most glaring example is they way they swindled their subscribers into pre-ordering the expansion and then several weeks later announcing the NGE, these decisions aren't made overnight and this was the plan from the start of the expansion development. That is not how you treat paying customers.
If your arguing that the CU sucked and basically put the game in the hospital I agree. The game needed a combat fix badly. How wide sweeping and how far reaching is debatable.
However, where your argument takes a nose dive is by very defination of "fixing". A fix is to repair something that broke hopefully also improving upon the broken object. SOE didn't go into the NGE looking to "fix" what was broken with the combat system. They went in to tear out the existing model and rebuild ontop of the old foundation.
I am sorry but you don't tear down your house to fix a plumbing problem. You don't bulldoze it when it needs a new roof.
Clearly combat pre-cu, CU and even still the NGE has problems. The main reason the NGE was so "Wrong" is because they didn't attempt to fix the problems with combat. They by the name of the release created a New Game ontop of the old one. You simply cannot do that especially if the game is 3 years old. People had alot of time and energy and creativity invested in the old version with its skill trees and crafting and economy. To tear the 3 core components that people loved for absolutely no logically reason is beyond my understanding.
How does going from a crafter-centeric skill based economic model have anything to do with the broken nature of the combat system? In my mind they aren't even remotely related. Because you advanced with a skill tree and the economy of weapons and armor where handled by players verses NPC's/Looting combat was broken?
Even if I give you that the skill tree inhibited the fix for the combat system. How does that have anything to do with non-combat systems like crafting and entertaining? You will be hard pressed to find any support that the pre-cu economic model was in need of repairs here. Even with the standard credit dupe, exploits, and other standard MMO issues to the economy SOE's diverse economy was its gem among MMO's. The breaking of crafting alone is enough to forever condemn the NGE and its "managers".
Don't even get me started on how wrong the entire implimentation of the NGE was. Completely unpolished, untested, buggy, laggy, and doomed by its own 2 weeks of testing. When the first thing coming out of your testing is Han stuck in "This place is going to blow." for the first 1-3 days of testing you outta rethink pushing something onto your live servers.
But nooooo. SOE just blazed forward. Testers warning be damned, correspondents warnings, forum flames, death threats, crafters, jedi just about everyone gave that staff AMPLE feedback that the NGE just wasn't quiet right.
How it was missed that the NGE wasn't completed? who knows. No who was a part of it is saying anything about exactly who wouldn't listen to everyone telling them the NGE sucked. Now look at that game. Its pathetic. A Star Wars MMO that draws so few subs?
You have to have done something really aweful to be designing the only swmmo and be under 100k subs.
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Thank you,
The Staff
MMORPG.COM
Nice write-up Elikal. Better then, "Hey Vets quit your whining" BS.
I currently play SWG and enjoy it a lot. I was not around Pre-CU but do you have any idea what the subs were like before and after? What I am getting at, was the game really in a decline Pre-CU or was it just a few customers moving to experience Wow? Regardless, I think we can both agree that their (SOE & LA) gamble did not pay off. I say that because it appears instead of plugging a few holes in then dam they simply blew it up. The bad press alone has harmed this game to a point that even in it's current upward momentum (in terms of developer community relations) it may never recover. Unless someone can show me the cancellation rate and development costs before the Pre-CU I really can not sympathize with the SOE/LA position. There lies the problem also, speculation. Everyone has opinions and some have tried to play gumshoe detective to figure it out but the bottom line is we don't know all the facts. One thing is really clear, they treated their customers rather badly.
I would like nothing more then to convince Vets to come play it again. Tell them that the good times they used to have can still be found in this game. I can not and will not however, they have a bad taste in their mouth from their experience and really can not find a way to blame them for those feelings. I just ask they not get in the way of my own desire to play.
First off, I think there are very very few people who will ever say that SWG-PreCU or even CU was perfect.
My issue is that they never attempted to fix the game! Instead of fixing bugs they made expansions. Instead of fixing broken quests they revamped Jedi..twice no less! (a rare profession in the beginning). Instead of balancing combat they built entirely different combat systems!
SWG-PreCU was never allowed to mature as a game. It was led by bad management from the get go. I think some developers tried but realized they cant fight the flow against them sometimes. So, they disappeared.
We had idiots running the game saying that the game was too complex and that we wanted it dumbed down to a mere kill, loot, repeat scenario. Total BS. Just look at WoW. That game can be ridiculously technical with the mods you can use. The 40 man raids and the tactics and strategy involved. Saying SWG was too complicated was sheer stupidity and ignorance.
Lastly, I will comment on the bait-n-switch that they committed when they released ToOW. They released it for digital download and then less than a week later they released the info about totally revamping the game. They said it was "bad communication" Thats such a blunt faced lie. They did it to get the revenue of the expansion since they knew...THEY KNEW! that the changes would cause them to lose much of their playerbase. Smed even stated later that they did lose more than they anticipated.
SWG PreCU wasnt perfect but it had so much potential. Thats what kept me around. It was so good even buggy and broken I couldnt imagine what it would be like if they had actually fixed it. I looked forward to every publish thinking of what they would fix or what new stuff they would add.
SOE/LA failed miserably in their management of SWG. They got greedy and were led my really stupid close minded people who never really played the game.
I too played SWG from Beta to NGE.
Was the pre-cu game perfect? NO!!. was the CU perfect? NO!!. Were they both better than the NGE? a resounding YES!!
If the developers would have spent 1/10 of thier time perfecting the pre-cu game, and not constantly working on revamps the game, there would have never been such a loss of subscriptions or such a divide within the community.
I have moved on to other things, maybe not better, but diffierent none the less. I still have a soft spot for SWG, but whenever I revisit the game it holds my attention for about 10 minutes before I can't stomach it any longer. SWG as I knew it is dead, and has been for over a year now. Maybe someday a good Star Wars MMO will come back around, but this isn't it.
It is a shame that pure greed, by the people in charge at SOE/Lucas Arts, let them completly destroy the community that had been forged within the SWG universe.
But here's the fatal flaw in your argument.
You claim the game needed a change. You claim that "sandbox" games were dying and "guided content" games were what was needed. So the nge was the step needed. That is a false statement.
Why?
Because the #1 complaint of all players since launch was CONTENT. Funny how they just realized that a month ago. (Go see Smed's "You mean you wanted content???" post a month back). The players wanted stuff to do, they PROMISED us a new story arc bi-monthly and failed. They had 2 years to try to catch up to the level of content that WoW has, and they only added 3 dungeons. You can't count the expansions, because they were supposed to be "above and beyond" what they were promising us for free.
Even the "constant decline" you cited as a reason for the nge is flawed. SWG's #1 complaint for departing members was "lack of content" closely followed by "bugs". They wasted resources for 2 years and didn't make any significant progress for either. That, and a small decline pre-cu was nowhere near the GIANT LOSS that was post nge.
So it wasn't "sandbox" that was the problem. Thus the nge was NEVER necessary.
The nge was clearly a disaster. From the playerbase, to the horrible way the players were treated, to the bad press, to the game itself. How is any of how the nge was carried out even justified? How can $OE not be held accountable?
Fatal flaw #2... we never said pre-cu was PERFECT. It was just lightyears above the abortion of the nge. it had it's faults, but the nge is just a poorly constructed mess that only a YEAR LATER shows a modicum of going into beta.
The proof is in the pudding. Pre-CU there were 350k playing it. 250K a year later. Now the playerbase is only a fraction of it. If the game was really as good as you claim it was wouldn't more than 50K be playing it?
But just to take to task your later points starting with "Second".
The skill base loss wasn't bad FOR YOU. You didn't have a problem with it. But to MOST of us it was a major hit. Freedom was 32 professions of "What would I like to be today?" followed up by "What would I like to be tomorrow?". What came with the nge? "Choose one of 9 and learn to love it, even though most are broken right now and you can not change."
Your third Jedi point would be great if it weren't set where it was. Sure, you can take it with a grain of salt, and probably didn't mind when Greedo shot first.. but to most Star Wars fans it was WRONG. A few Jedi maybe, but they should stay hidden. NOT GLOWSTICK WEILDING MEATLUMPS FIGHT-CLUBBING OUTSIDE THEED STARPORT OR AFKING ON THE RAYTT TRAIL. It felt good to get that out.
Your point to LA calling most of the shots has yet to be supported in ANY way. That, and LA never coded one line of code.
You say the "truth" hurts. Well, what you say is "truth" is only your opinion and lowerd standards.
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
Yep what he said..
And the fact Smed himself finally admitted the NGE was bad all the way around says enough..Your desperate attempt to win back Vets makes me
UO-EQ1-SWG-DAOC-WOW-EQ2-WAR-GW2-RIFT
I played from Beta to NGE, I also dont think the game was perfect back then. No matter how many times we told them and gave them ideas, on the game they never got implimented. Things that did get implimented wasn't anything the community was asking for and introduced bugs.
I'm far from the rose colored glasses you fit on all vets here in the forum. I know the bugs I saw them in beta and when they said they were going out of beta and going gold I was one of the ones on the forums saying WHAT?!
The drivel which is the game today is nothing compared to what it was in Pre-CU and CU. The diversity is gone! Yea yea you can say there are talent points Ala WOW that you can spend that make you different from another Spy or *insert one of 9 professions* from others. BUT you know what ?!! that's not diversity like Pre-CU the facts dont lie some of the talent calculators are still out there. Skill boxes, what they did, descriptions, how many skill points it cost to buy it.
Fact is if I wanted to be a Weaponsmith with a little bit of merchant and a whole lot of pistoleer I could. I made the decision not some stupid developer that said this is what you'll like or leave. That's what the majority of the population did do afterwards. To this day they are still trying to get it back. To this day they are still brazen enough to say hey come back 14 days see if you like it ... Wow I still cant be what I want I have to be what THEY WANT. I am the customer, I am the one they need to try to sell the product to. I dont pay for things usually that arent up to par on things in the same industry. SWG was the only thing that made be break that rule because it was even with all the flaws a very addictive and complex system of subsystems and gamestyles.
Once I saw that was all gone I went to the game they decided to copy *Poorly I might add* World of Warcraft. Once I played that game *My 2nd MMORPG* I realized exactly how bad SWG was with polish and bug free play. Would I play a game like pre-CU over WoW. A resounding YES! Would I do it with $OE... A resounding NO! You can't treat people like crap and expect them to come back to you ever.
So I'll just use "generic flame 1", "trolling 2" and "personal attack 1".
/QFE
OP - too many of your assumptions couldn't be more incorrect, they're already detailed by the other posters so I won't belabor the point. Simply put, you're wrong on near every important point, Shayde has an excellent retort, 'nuff said.
SWG Veteran and Refugee, Intrepid server
NGE free as of Nov. 22, 2005
Now Playing: World of Warcrack
Forum Terrorist
The "fast paced combat" is so easy the OP died before you hit the "personal attack 1" hotkey.
SWG pre NGE was not perfect. But it had vast potential.
The NGE shrank the player base overnight to a fraction of what it once was. Every move since NGE has been to re impliment pre NGE. That alone is an admission the NGE was a mistake.
The failure of the Pre-CU and CU is when they could not implement smuggling.
SMUGGLERS WANTED TO SMUGGLE. Yet this seemingly simple task could not be done.
I could go on, but that simple game mechanic could not be created by their team nor could it be implemented. It shows a lack of creative vision and structure.
Now think of the other professions and their issues. If the team making SWG could not create one simple game mechanic that would satisfy smugglers, how do you think they dealth with the 32+ other professions?
There is no way you will ever convince me that something gets better when you take away the freedom to choose. I could have cared less whether they added quests. The quest system actually isnt even all that bad but they didnt need to get rid of the skill system in order to implement them.
What made SWG different and in my opinion better was the ability to be unique. Not being pigeonholed into a specific class without variation (no, expertise trees dont really make up for it since one configuration usually wins out) I dont want to be bounty hunter # 2,348 or jedi # 4 billion. I want to be me and that meant picking a few skills here and a few skills there not being forced to choose a whole class.
Scrapping the skill system in favor of the WOW system was a serious mistake. One that cost them tons of subscriptions and brought shame on SOE where ever they go. The game is now a ghost town and it doesnt matter what server you play on it is still empty. This game is dying my friends let it go.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
SOE disobeyed the unspoken rule of MMO's. Don't mess with the core of the game. Keep your changes small and incremental.
If SWG was failing prior, that's not an excuse to swap out the game people are playing for an entirely new one. If they wanted to release the NGE, they should have ended SWG and released it as SWG2.
I think the problem was that the developers didn't understand what the gamers wanted. They held study groups, they held meetings, they read posts, but they took all the wrong information away from them. The players wanted open ended things to do. In short, content. Huge maps of vacant space with random spawns does not a sandbox game make. You need to give them things that they can do whenever they want, and lots of interesting places to go.
What the SWG devs did was gave players the box, but promised the sand later.