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Constructive criticism and ideas posted by BMF on official forums
Alboin
Member Posts: 64
If you strongly believe that the game is dead, no one plays it and no need to talk about it ignore this post please.
These Reports have been posted throught out last months on official SWG forums by the guy named BadMisterFrosty, who imo could easily be hired as SWG developer. Those are amazing ideas, thought out criticism and interesting reading. Enjoy!
Report#1: Purple versus Black
Report#2: Diversity and the Role Schizophrenia
Report#3: Fighting the User Interface
Report#4: Improvise A Galaxy
Report#5: The Empire Strikes Back
Comments
It's dead, Jim. It's beginning to stink.
Even if these Devs were capable of fixing the game and making it back into something like what it was (and they aren't) they don't have the money or resources. SWG's subscriber number is on par with Planetside these days. So you are going to see LESS, not more development from here. And they already set it up, with these lame ass "collections" and "heroic encounter" instances they can easily and lazily add some "content".
I don't expect you will see anything added from here on out that doesn't use those two mechanisms.
Are you trying to tell us that a guy using a few neurons and some common sense has managed to do a better job at finding SWG flaws and thinking of ways to correct them than the SOE team in 4 years ? Unbelievable !
"Peace through superior firepower"
Hmmm ones missing the one about block and critical hiting..
The block and crit hit post. Below
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=533942
The post asking why no replys from dev's on BMF's posts. Below
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=548932
Although the ideas might be nice, remember that it is SOE and LucasArts behind the curtains! Since when did those two companies listen to the playerbase?
Even if SOE and LucasArts for whatever reason would listen, I'm sure LucasArst would veto and say NO to at least half of the ideas. For the rest of the ideas, I'm sure they would interpret it as "light sabers for every one. That was what you wanted, right?" lol.
I know that what he stated has already been said before. But what he suggests is pretty awesome! I was amazed at how he re-did the profession selection screen (the first one on the "facing the User Interface" read). I was just amazed that he was able to make it look a heck of a lot more professional than the devs themselves. For shame SOE! Somebody in the forums can make even a better profession selection screen. Something that I'd figure should be easy enough even they (SOE) should be able to fix and make look nice. I think if anything, this guy should be hired on as an artist or consultant because he certainly nailed a lot of technical stuff that a lot of us admittedly missed.
Indeed!
That guy definitely knows what he's talking about....BUT it takes more than ideas to be a game developer. Now, if they wanted to hire him on as a consultant and make developers implement his ideas, that would be great, but I doubt they would hire someone from the forums and immediately put them in a senior position and adopt his vision of SWG (thus throwing out their current, crappy vision).
Since when do the devs listen to the playerbase?
Are you freaking joking? The whole course of 2007 was changed by the players, the devs had a fully different direction that was changed due to listening to the players. No other game listens and actually develops what the players want to the extent the SWG devs do.
And to all the players that want the 32 professions and 250 skill point system remember the dev team back then (70+ devs) could never balance it or make it work.
Too bad they didn't listen on 11/14/2005
Fixed.
Fixed.
They also aren't smart enough to fix the existing, dumbed down, Nancy McIntyre approved mess either. These guys just aren't smart or talented. Reduce the combat system to a single large red button you mash and the weapons available to 1: Rock 2: Stick and they still couldn't make it work.
Besides, the old game being beyond what the Devs could handle has only one solution: Get better Devs. You don't dumb the product down to the lack of talent of your team, you upgrade the team to the level of the product.
Amusingly, each time the devs have "listened", was when a feature was deemed not satisfying, and removed...
"Peace through superior firepower"
To state the obvious, those were certainly among the more well laid out posts that have graced the official boards; yet most BMF's core observations in those posts aren't remotely new. Most of these ideas have been around and stated repeatedly for years. Tactical mini-maps? Objective driven GCW? Fewer Dark Jedi Master Wookiee Imperial Generals and more Star Wars evocative art assets? Cleaner UI?
My question is what will it take to cause BMF and the cadre of other gushing SWG veterans in those threads to see the pattern and reach the conclusion most of the vets around here have:
These kind of solid, common sense design ideas are never coming to Galaxies. Ever.
If they were a real possiblity they'd be in by now. BMF has been around long enough to know better.
SWG Team Mtg.
I don't believe the game is dead and no one plays it. On the contrary, I believe that a few thousand instead of several hundred thousand play it now.
As far as BMF's posts go, I credit him trying to bring up flaws in the game, what's missing, etc.
However, do you think he was the first to do this for SWG in the official forums? We had tons of posts, ideas, pleas for fixes, forum petitions, etc. before the NGE.
We begged for content. We wanted fixes, professions looked over. Ideas to bring the movie themes closer to the movies: The powerful Empire trying to root out and smash the Rebellion with overpowering military might. Bring weapons from the Original Trilogy that didn't make it in SWG (There's a blaster rifle one of the Sandtroopers patrolling Mos Eisley has when the M.Falcon blasts off from 'Eisley's starport that hasn't been seen in any Star Wars game yet). We have had pleas to bring the full set of possible uniforms for the Rebellion (because, believe it or not, the Rebels weren't a bunch of raggedy tag guys that wore anything. Look in the movies: They had uniforms). We pleaded and pleaded and pleaded for the wider color selection and uniform items for the Imperial Uniforms, that includes the rank placards and cylinders, etc. I made a post about wishing to see Stormtrooper / Sandtrooper Pauldrons and the Sandtrooper Backpacks in the game (they sort of allowed Pauldrons by now, from what I hear). I posted about how the AT-ST could be a vehicle for 2 (pilot, gunner), being crafted by one of the Pre-NGE crafting professions. I even dreamed about and mentioned there about having the AT-AT be crewed (commander, pilot, gunner, bunch of pasengers incl. speederbikes in the "body") for major game events.
In short, even back in the day where I was playing and we had tons of people, we posted our ideas, hopes, and wishes. The devs were given tons of input, some put together very, very well, some not. But regardless, the devs were told.
**If SWG's official forum still has his posts, look up Wolfman31's postings about the Rebel & Imperial uniforms (especially Imperial).**
P.S. - I also remember posting about how gameplay between the Empire and Rebellion needs to be different. Other than skins, textures, and people saying "Imps" or "Rebs," there is no differerence between playing either side (other than there being more Rebels than Imperials, which is kinda funny). I had ideas on putting massive Imperial presence in a huge chunk of the game, always looking for Rebels. The Empire had the military might and no qualms about using it (or overusing it). The Rebels fought dispersed, hid when possible, struck when practical, fought when necessary... after all, a single concentration of Rebels would risk detection and annihalation in one massive attack by the Empire.
Anyways, I used to dream heavily about the possibilities... long ago... in an SWG far, far away...
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
The ultimate solution to every problem: more space marines.
I'm not saying anything he's saying is relatively new per se. But I do admit he does point out certain nitty gritty stuff (text balancing on screen etc.) and even went as far as giving some nice, clean, professional looking example of how things should look like. The profession selection screen he did for example. I didn't think much of this before, but after he did his own examples. I agree that it could've been done cleaner and better. How he depicted planetary control bases for GCW goals etc. This I had not seen in the forums before. What I'm trying to say is that as far as I could tell, he went beyond just re-iterating what has been said, but also actually showed us how it should be done. That at least, is worth some merit.
Few points regarding the discussion above:
- IMHO (and I always thought so) all those awfull changes and wrong decisions by diff. swg dev teams are coming not from the fact they did not listen, but from the fact they listened too much. It started right from the beggining, they answered nerf calls (pistoleer, CH, droids), they answered calls for jedi, they answered calls to make jedi even more available, they answered then to calls to make BH uber and so on and so on and so on and so on and so force. That was destroying the game for years, not that they didnt listened to Glzmo or didn't took any other concept written by many thoughtfulll writers on boards.
- yes, most of the things BMF are saying were somehow was already pointed out here and there, what he does though is very effective summarizing, brining up in a clear and yet thoughfull voice. Give everybody citation to a better post if you have one, but please don't make me reAd yet another "wow listen to my cute ideas about how Corrriban planet would be" post. BMF reports are so different, because he talks about SWG, not some other game vaguely imagined by some enthusiastic kid.
- I just think that's an interesting reading, I'm not trying to propaganda anything and it has no special meaning.
The problem is the SWG dev team's average skill level hovers between Shortbus Rider and Knuckle Dragger.
The obvious just doesn't occur to them. Hell, it should have been obvious to anyone of normal intelligence that taking a game that 200K+ played and turning it into it's polar opposite would lose you most of those people and would create a PR disaster. Especially when we screamed that at them for 2 weeks.
So they are either very very stupid people or they just don't give a crap. There is no third option.
You can sprout idea's all over the 'official' forum. Hell, you could even come up with ''The Idea Of The Year''. Where does it end up? At the bottom of the forums with no response of a dev. They just completely ignore it, thinking they still know it better. Communication, while seemed to be improved, its very much 'one way talking'.
I'm unimpressed. This is more of the same crap we've seen since fraggin' SWG beta: otherwise interesting ideas flushed down the tubes because they don't mesh with the low-cost vision for the game. This guy could have all the popular support in the world including public backings and will still be ignored.
No change to the status quo here. Crap before, crap after. Not sure how you interpret this as visionary or how it shows there's any hope for this game to improve.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Instead they nerfed without thinking, then added in purple jumpsuits without thinking, then finally said 'screw the fans, we know what they want' and gave us the NGE, thus proving that they really can't think at all, and were REALLY out of touch with their users.
Actually, I wouldn't say they LISTENED at all, they just REACTED. Listening implies comprehension, which the SWG Devs definitely did not do.
Now, if he had half a brain he would have walked away from SOE products a long time ago. Not only that, but he would also be heading lead design for an indy game which might actually have been playable by now.
The dude's always been an SOE muppet in my eyes. I suppose it's cause he blatently called me a liar on the forums regarding screen shots proving various bugs which he contested.
For a long time after launch, after Koster was kicked upstairs and out of the way, there was no central coordinating vision for this game.
Yeah, the devs listened to those who screamed "nerf" every single time they got pwned in a duel.
They also had both players and marketing types demanding more Jedi out there without any of the designed brakes on Jedi population. The ultimate expression of this trend was the NGE.
You can love Koster or hate him, but at least he was able to give the dev team some focus. I felt te focus during beta3, but right after the game went live, the focus was lost, because, whew, we finally got the game out, let's take a vacation! I confronted Koster on the forum, telling him that things were going astray and he wasn't aware of it because it seemed he wasn't playing the game. I told him that the head chef may not eat every meal in the kitchen, but he has to taste to be sure that things are going right, and it seemed to me that Koster wasn't doin that. Of course, in retrospect we know that he wasn't bothering because he was being kicked upstairs and out of the way, probably at the insistence of the Jedi-centric assclowns at Lucas Arts.
Then they spent the next six months playing catchup on development that should have happened in beta. They had the Cries of Alderaan as an event, but abandoned the entire concept once CoA's third chapter was out.
Then it was all "let's now finish off the professions we didn't bother to work on in beta", like Chef, Smuggler, and Jedi. Of course, they never did tackle Smuggler.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi