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needed changes to attract to more people
DarthRaiden
Member UncommonPosts: 4,333
SOE Developer our beloved game is doomed to live with empty servers if you don't change it ...
get rid of the classes ....
put more professions in game and the ability to mix match them for example using skills of melle class and skills from a Bio Engineer same time and some smuggling and some medic related crafting .....
get rid of levels......
make Jedi worth play ....
get rid of FPS paradigm....
make the game appear more to mature players (challenging, complex,more social aspcects)...
SOE don't suck on the IP alone , try to create an enjoyable game for the Star Wars fans else you will continue to fail .
-----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)
Comments
Hasn't been one of these in a few months, Kudos to you!
"Don't hold breath about another KOTOR game coming from Bioware" - Chris Preistly
"Bioware is more intrested in pursueing development of it's own Intellectual properties"
- James Henly
The changes they need to complete is getting back pre cu since that would probally bring back 100.000+ subscribers back to the game.
Perhaps if smedley didnt treat his staff without respect they would have stayed, the old devs that is.
But anyhow right now , leave the sinking ship and dont let SOE profit on it.
List of SOE lies
Apparently the ship has been sinking for nearly 4 years now.
"Don't hold breath about another KOTOR game coming from Bioware" - Chris Preistly
"Bioware is more intrested in pursueing development of it's own Intellectual properties"
- James Henly
Changing it back to pre CU would just piss off the few customers they have now, with no guarantee that they'd get back those they drove away 2 years ago.
People were burned but SOE and LEC, and don't forget easily. There is no trust there. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Problem solved:
Put up a few Pre-CU servers.
the current players wont have their game experience altered, and veteran players will get back what we love.
New updates at http://mmograta.voig.com
Current numbers for SOE:
EQ2: 185K
EQ: 135K
SWG: 54K
Vanguard: 35K
MxO: 12K
Planetside: 23K
Total: 444K
EQ franchise: 320K
Non EQ games:124K
EvE Online: 76K
Compare with November 2005:
EQ: 454K
EQ2: 278K
SWG: 255K
MxO: 40K
Planetside: 54K
Total: 1.081M
EQ franchise: 732K
Non EQ games: 349K
EvE Online: 200K
Lost since the NGE:
EQ: -319K
EQ2: -93K
SWG: -201K
MxO: -28K
Planetside: -31K
Total: -672K
EQ franchise: -412K
Non EQ games: -260K
Retention rate in percentage:
EQ: 30%
EQ2: 67%
SWG: 21%
MxO: 30%
Planetside: 43%
SOE as a whole: 41%
EQ franchise: 44%
Non EQ games: 36%
Plus there's the contract with LA, and supposedly LA doesn't want two SW MMOs out there competing against each other. Never mind that they'd appeal to two different groups of players; it's fixed in LA's mind that the audience is a solid block that cannot be divided in any way.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I dont know if those numbers are accurate or not and really the number of subs SWG has does not accurately represent the number of players the game has. Seems that almost everyone has more than one account. Hell I used to have 3 and I knew one guy with 7. Still those numbers are interesting I always knew MXO was in bad shape I just never thought it was that bad off.
Plus there's the contract with LA, and supposedly LA doesn't want two SW MMOs out there competing against each other. Never mind that they'd appeal to two different groups of players; it's fixed in LA's mind that the audience is a solid block that cannot be divided in any way.
The insurmountable problem is SOE itself. I don't think they are capable of running pre NGE. Look at the game as it currently is. They've not solved even ONE of the core problems, the things most complained about:
1. The UI
2. Mobs shooting through walls, hills, objects
3. Animations, or lack thereof
Those have been the most complained about things (besides the NGE itself). They've not made even one serious attempt to handle any of them. Not one. And they've had 2 years. One of the justifications for the NGE was that it'd make it easier for them to fix things like this and add content. Naturally that wasn't at all true.
You could assemble a team of 10 undergrad students in a software engineer program at any college and probably get better work out of them than the team of "professionals" who've worked on SWG since 2005.
I've heard rumors (no way to verify them) that there are serious flaws in the basic SWG world engine that were detected, but not dealt with, early on in development. This may be the cause for some of the fundamental problems you mention, such a mobs shooting through "solid" objects a player cannot, and mobs getting hung up on geometry. Yeah, and rubberbanding that I ran into in beta3 and still ran into on my last vet trial. The decision to go with particle effects and the ridiculous "snappy movement", apparently pushed out to give the illusion of "faster" play over the once graceful animations baffles me to this day.
Not the UI, though, that's pure NGE asshattery; SWG had a perfectly servicable and elegant UI before the NGE totally turned it on its head, destroying the "play with one hand" option, effectively telling many disabled players to go play some other game (like WoW) that allows you to move, shoot, and communicate just with the mouse.
True, they slowly brought back that aspect of the UI, but it's not the default, you have to muck with options to get the UI usable, which is just poor sofware design, period. It's a sign of deep managerial dysfunction that they repeatedly break things that work in order to make everything equally broken.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
The station pass system makes game by game analysis difficult. I know of people who used to play SWG regularly, still play EQ or EQ2, and still have "active" SWG accounts but have not logged into SWG for years. Yet because they're "paying" for SWG via a station pass, they were not considered "inactive" for the purpose of the housing purge...even though none of their avatars have set foot on one of the 10 original worlds since before the CU.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I've heard that the number of station pass subscriptions isn't that high. It never was higher than 25K total, and that was back when it was still $19.99/month (which was a great deal, especially for a EQ2 player). It's $29 a month now, and a lot LESS of a good deal considering that they've practically stopped doing intra expansion "adventure packs" for EQ2 (which you got for free) and no other SOE game is worth even playing if you are already playing EQ2 which is by far their best game.
The problem $OE run into and all SWG fans have now is there is absolutely no time for delaying decisions and actions. The time off Smed's " give it 6 months" or "it slowly gets better" is over.
Too many people perceive already the game as "outdated" (on purpose i don't mention buggy etc.)
With march 2008 and AoC another "big hitter" enters the scenery, EVE's ground expansion along with others in 2008.
Wherefrom should then potential players flow in ? Why should someone join a "outdated" stagnating in addition buggy game if they have innovative fresh alternatives ?
-----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)
Seeing that SOE(and most other companies) don't release their subcriber numbers, those numbers were probably made up by someone as an estimate.
I know everyone has said it over and over, but adding "classic" type servers would give both customer bases a game to play. I think a lot of pre-cu fans would appreciate a classic server even with a skeleton dev team, but the problem is that the current game has a small crew as it is. I also think that adding classic servers would render most of the current servers unplayable, seeing that half or more of the playerbase would leave for the classic gameplay. Sdaly, classic servers won't happen.
While I doubt classic servers would do as well as they could have done 1-2 years ago, they'd still do well enough to make money.
In fact, they wouldn't even HAVE to expand or add to them... In fact, if SOE launched pre CU servers and said "we aren't making any changes" people would probably like them more having gotten their fill of SOE changes in the CUNGE.
I think the biggest thing thats preventing SWG from attracting new players are the comments from old players who say how the game is terrible. Whether its deserved or not, if you see a lot of players say something is bad, you aree very unlikely to invest any money or precious time into it.
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
uhm thats an request for the classic 3 monkeys behavior, close your eyes , ears and mouth before a problem and there is no problem.
We all know thats the wrong way and i will continue to say what i think is right. If me and all the other vets had such powers you described the servers would be 0 pop since 2 years.
-----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)
Why waste time on a dying game? I would prefer SWG go to the MMO graveyard and a company with some skill create a new and original star wars MMORPG that has nothing to do with SWG.
I don't think a new Star Wars game would give me back the things I missed most about pre-CU:
1-The completely player run economy with credits actually meaning something.
2-Some form of decay on equipment and self (wounds)
3-A skillpoint system instead of a linear level system
These things made SWG a real open-ended experience but the crybabies that are used to other MMO games will never want to pay for anything, don't want any form of decay, and expect to get everything else that other players have.
Why waste time on a dying game? I would prefer SWG go to the MMO graveyard and a company with some skill create a new and original star wars MMORPG that has nothing to do with SWG.
I don't think a new Star Wars game would give me back the things I missed most about pre-CU:
1-The completely player run economy with credits actually meaning something.
2-Some form of decay on equipment and self (wounds)
3-A skillpoint system instead of a linear level system
These things made SWG a real open-ended experience but the crybabies that are used to other MMO games will never want to pay for anything, don't want any form of decay, and expect to get everything else that other players have.
The "crybabies" aren't the big part of the problem but the companies who are after whose subscriptions motivated by greed.
Create a good MMO automatically there will be dedicated players who will like it , if your MMO is good and obtain a ceratin reputation the "crybabies" will start ask themselves why they aren't part of it
-----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)
Because all of those ideas couldnt possibly be in a new and improved Star Wars MMO. Shrug..
I think the reply would be... what MMO's released in North America have had anything like that?
*ponders*
UO and SWG... and SWG was a more restricted version of UO. Oh and UO and SWG had... Raph Koster.
As far as I know what Raph is working on won't be a conventional MMO. So do you really expect a skill based system to show up in a new Star Wars MMO?
I mean honestly it seems most developers can't wait to dismantle a skill based game. Then watch it bleed subs.
My personal wish is that some developer.. will buy the clue to give up on the Class/level/uber loot based design. Return to a freedom of choice/player economy design.. and settle for the niche (but profit making) subscriber base they will obtain.
Almost all the economy, balance and design issues in MMO's today... are the same from game to game. Because.. they keep copying the same design theory that just doesn't work.
I'll spare you the rest of that ramble. But.. no I don't expect to see a skill based system show up in a "new" Star Wars MMO. If LEC or anyone they choose to work with were that smart.. we'd have seen classic SWG servers by now..
1986 - Labyrinth
1987 - Maniac Mansion
1989 - Indiana Jones and the last crusade
1990 - secret of Monkey Island
1993/94 - X wing / TIE fighter
1995 - Dark Forces
1997 - Jedi Knight
2003 - KOTOR
2003 - SWG
What all these titles have in common ? First they are related to LA and Second they was an innovative invention that differed from mediocre mass at their release.
With other words these shows you can have success by being innovative and courageous.
You don't have to hide behind the success of WoW (and their paradigm of classes , levels and that crap) or whoever .
-----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)
Because all of those ideas couldnt possibly be in a new and improved Star Wars MMO. Shrug..
I think the reply would be... what MMO's released in North America have had anything like that?
*ponders*
UO and SWG... and SWG was a more restricted version of UO. Oh and UO and SWG had... Raph Koster.
As far as I know what Raph is working on won't be a conventional MMO. So do you really expect a skill based system to show up in a new Star Wars MMO?
I mean honestly it seems most developers can't wait to dismantle a skill based game. Then watch it bleed subs.
My personal wish is that some developer.. will buy the clue to give up on the Class/level/uber loot based design. Return to a freedom of choice/player economy design.. and settle for the niche (but profit making) subscriber base they will obtain.
Almost all the economy, balance and design issues in MMO's today... are the same from game to game. Because.. they keep copying the same design theory that just doesn't work.
I'll spare you the rest of that ramble. But.. no I don't expect to see a skill based system show up in a "new" Star Wars MMO. If LEC or anyone they choose to work with were that smart.. we'd have seen classic SWG servers by now..
Would you consider Tabula Rasa as a skilled based system? I played SWG back in the day. I had a pistoleer/bh. I had a bit of fun with it. Would you consider TR as similar when it comes to skills?
No. TR gives you some options to customize within your class, but not to the degree SWG did by a long shot. No dropping one skill as you level another, no complete mix and matching profs, no taking a character in a 180 degree different direction if you so choose.Relating to the topic in general...hopefully more companies will realize they're not gonna get 6 million subs or whatever wow has and start making smart niche games the way CCP did and the way FLS appears to be.
The core problem will always go back to the NGE itself. It is the problem. Any amount of time spent on reworking it or extending it is wasted time. Had they immediately rolled back and spent the last 2 years putting what we wanted into the CU system they'd have more than twice the number of players and a lot better reputation.
Saying to us, as they have since 2006, "how can we make the game more fun, but no talking about rollbacks" is going to get the same reaction as saying "well, other than the assasination, how did you like the play, Mrs Lincoln?"
Why waste time on a dying game? I would prefer SWG go to the MMO graveyard and a company with some skill create a new and original star wars MMORPG that has nothing to do with SWG.
I don't think a new Star Wars game would give me back the things I missed most about pre-CU:
1-The completely player run economy with credits actually meaning something.
2-Some form of decay on equipment and self (wounds)
3-A skillpoint system instead of a linear level system
These things made SWG a real open-ended experience but the crybabies that are used to other MMO games will never want to pay for anything, don't want any form of decay, and expect to get everything else that other players have.
Because all of those ideas couldnt possibly be in a new and improved Star Wars MMO. Shrug..
You know, maybe a new game engine that lacks all the current game problems like being shot through b uildings. The game could obviously use a visual overhaul anyway...
No those ideas won't be in a new Star Wars MMO and I'll tell you why. It's because people are stupid and lazy. Sadly complex games only appeal to a niche market.
It might sound harsh but this is a trend not only in gaming but in western societey as a whole. People wan't stuff but they won't put in the work to earn it.
When it comes to games all they want to do is jump in do some insta gibbs (how I hate that word) and pwnzorz somebody. They want Fast food.
An example: As you might know player bounties were removed for a while and when I proposed an opt in system where you just tick a box to participate, guess what answer I got ?
"What if I am doing a quest and have forgotten to untick? I don't wanna be killed because I forgot something"
This is the sad state of the current playerbase and I don't think it's only in SWG. With such people being the majority the software companies will never dare to take the risk of a complex game. Just take a look at what games are top sellers. FPS this and FPS that, and it's because they are a "sure thing" from a financial point of view. A few years ago there were the X-wing series, real flight sims etc. There was a game for everybody. Then came Doom and those genres were pushed into a niche market. Sometimes I think that Doom and later Quake partly destroyed the gaming industry, at least the creative and innovative part.
Are you crazy? IF they went back to pre-cu like 2 years ago, they MIGHT bring in 100k more users. But now it's outdated and most people have moved on. It'd probably bring back more like 10k subs....but hey, that'd double what they have now, right?