Time goes by Mudflation kicks in. This is constant for all MMO's. Old "the best" items become replaced by new "the best" items. Wonderful part about SWG is you can always display them in your house.
Way to avoid the question, Do you even understand? You said the reason why you weren't giving innate armor was because YOU WERE NOT GOING TO MAKE OUR JMC'S USELESS.
Still waiting on a real answer, 99% of people want innate armour and stats, JMC's are now useless, yet we have no innate armour.
-----------------
"Toilet Boy" caught in a lie, and evading the questions. Anyone who keeps falling back on the argument that "the old Devs who made the NGE are almost all gone, they were liars, the new devs are doing it right" has now been shot down.
The new devs lie, obfuscate, nerf, and don't listen to what the player want, just like the previous ones.
The only difference between Heliass's team and Toilet Boy's is that Toilet Boy is and commands EVEN LESS competence, experience, and ability.
He's just as good at lying though.
Folks, the wheels are coming off. And I suspected this might happen when the "jedi update" didn't do anything to over HALF their "expertise" and STARTED OFF with a major nerf (healing becoming more expensive to buy).
Add to that you are LOCKED into lightside or darkside (can't dabble without severe penalty), and now have even LESS choice of appearance (light and dark robes now suck if you aren't wearing the right one for your template) this isn't much of an update at all.
And, the cake topper: an ability added to lightside that SHOULD be a proc or chance to fire, simply to give them "one more button to mash".
For those who think that Jedi will be overpowered from this update. Don't worry. Blixtev will never allow anything like THAT to happen. By the end of the CU, he had an alpha class reduced to being WORSE than templates you could grind in days. Soon as this thing releases, if anything is found that is good out of it, they will shut the servers down in prime time to publish a nerf patch.
At any rate, Team Toilet Boy continues to do MY bidding, by doing a better job at bringing a swifter end to the NGE than I could do on purpose, if I were in his job. And the beauty of it is that the fanbois, not me, are paying him to do it.
Life is good
Here is what could happen at this point:
1. Pull the Jedi portion of the update out of the publish and promise to revisit it later when they have time to address BOTH expertise trees as they did with all other professions, and make changes to address the huge disagreement in their community, in the best interests of the game. This of course being the sensible course is the one they WONT do. Blixtev isn't competent enough to do this, and his team is too inexperienced to suggest it. Valara is no Tiggs, I don't see her standing up for the players.
2. Shove it down everyone's throats with vague promises to "revisit it later". Which will never happen at this point, this update goes live, and the life expectancy of the NGE, already down to well less than a year, drops by half.
I've run into boxes of broken hammers that were both smarter and more useful than Blixtev.
But then again, I spent hours catching the poodoo for brains idiots that are the SWG dev team in logical fallacies, poorly argued platitudes, and outright lies from launch onward.
These guys WONDER why their sub numbers keep falling, and keep flailing around with the same old "you'll play this game our way or get lost" attitude, and then the players get lost, and they wonder why the servers are ghost towns.
I mean, really. No sense of cause and effect at all with this bunch of Niemoidian assclowns.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
I've run into boxes of broken hammers that were both smarter and more useful than Blixtev. But then again, I spent hours catching the poodoo for brains idiots that are the SWG dev team in logical fallacies, poorly argued platitudes, and outright lies from launch onward. These guys WONDER why their sub numbers keep falling, and keep flailing around with the same old "you'll play this game our way or get lost" attitude, and then the players get lost, and they wonder why the servers are ghost towns. I mean, really. No sense of cause and effect at all with this bunch of Niemoidian assclowns.
Truly an epic Fail. These guys are so stupid that not even the "school of hard knocks" can teach them that lesson, not even after a graduate level course in it (losing 90-95% of the player base).
I've run into boxes of broken hammers that were both smarter and more useful than Blixtev. But then again, I spent hours catching the poodoo for brains idiots that are the SWG dev team in logical fallacies, poorly argued platitudes, and outright lies from launch onward. These guys WONDER why their sub numbers keep falling, and keep flailing around with the same old "you'll play this game our way or get lost" attitude, and then the players get lost, and they wonder why the servers are ghost towns. I mean, really. No sense of cause and effect at all with this bunch of Niemoidian assclowns.
it's people like blixtev that bring more and more people onto our side people who see that the best way that swg can go is to a rollback of the pre-cu or to be shutdown and do an swg 2 with a pre-cu system in place.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
I've run into boxes of broken hammers that were both smarter and more useful than Blixtev. But then again, I spent hours catching the poodoo for brains idiots that are the SWG dev team in logical fallacies, poorly argued platitudes, and outright lies from launch onward. These guys WONDER why their sub numbers keep falling, and keep flailing around with the same old "you'll play this game our way or get lost" attitude, and then the players get lost, and they wonder why the servers are ghost towns. I mean, really. No sense of cause and effect at all with this bunch of Niemoidian assclowns.
it's people like blixtev that bring more and more people onto our side people who see that the best way that swg can go is to a rollback of the pre-cu or to be shutdown and do an swg 2 with a pre-cu system in place.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
First off, I agree that SWG Pre-CU was good, it was my favorite game.... was! But don't be dissin' my xbox! If I wanna play Madden or Halo or whatever over live with my friends, it's all good! I am a gamer, probably have been since before you were born, and like all things, changes happen! I love my computer and the gaming opportunities it offers, but I won't be pigeonholed into playing just that!
It seems that a rigid computer or nothing gamer who can't enjoy other aspects of gaming is not really a real gamer, it's someone who can't evolve or learn new things perhaps.
it's people like blixtev that bring more and more people onto our side people who see that the best way that swg can go is to a rollback of the pre-cu or to be shutdown and do an swg 2 with a pre-cu system in place.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
Wow what an angry post...
We live now in the world of the casual gamer its time we hardned old timers have to get used to this fact the days of gaming being a "geek" pastime are truely over with grandma and grandpa playing the Wii for fun,truth is you either accept that fact or it you who'll have to move on,becuase devs will go where the money is (and i'm talking across the board gaming here) and care not a jot about thier past customers.
I wonder if these were the same internal testers that gave the humbs up to the NGE? I'm being a little sarcastic. It was the mythical "focus group" that did us in.
it's people like blixtev that bring more and more people onto our side people who see that the best way that swg can go is to a rollback of the pre-cu or to be shutdown and do an swg 2 with a pre-cu system in place.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
Wow what an angry post...
We live now in the world of the casual gamer its time we hardned old timers have to get used to this fact the days of gaming being a "geek" pastime are truely over with grandma and grandpa playing the Wii for fun,truth is you either accept that fact or it you who'll have to move on,becuase devs will go where the money is (and i'm talking across the board gaming here) and care not a jot about thier past customers.
Given that MMOs take years and tens of millions of dollars to develop, catering to flighty "casual" fans isn't a great plan to recoup that investment, is it?
I certainly wouldn't want businesses like THAT in my 401K.
Time to live in the now..ALL games cost a fortune to devolp nowadays,the times of bedroom coding are gone,so publishers want to see some return for thier investment,and usualy (not always) the simpler the game is the more copies it sells.
More and more we're seeing cross platform games exclusives are becoming rarer and rarer for this very reason and given the worlds current climate regarding money matters i can see its only going to get worse.
Who (talking about consoles here but its relevant) would have put money on the Wii being such a massive success? i know i wouldnt thats for sure,that console (alongside the DS) has opened a whole new market for publishers to have a go at,now sooner or later that market will move on from consoles and look to the pc for thier gaming and may be interested in an MMO and the dev and publishers know this,they can see it coming and the money it'll bring them if they have a product like WOW thats as easy as pie and more importantly works as well as that game.
So when you look at it it IS the best way to recoup thier investment (granted any game can go tits up but thats by the by)
Time to live in the now..ALL games cost a fortune to devolp nowadays,the times of bedroom coding are gone,so publishers want to see some return for thier investment,and usualy (not always) the simpler the game is the more copies it sells.
More and more we're seeing cross platform games exclusives are becoming rarer and rarer for this very reason and given the worlds current climate regarding money matters i can see its only going to get worse.
Who (talking about consoles here but its relevant) would have put money on the Wii being such a massive success? i know i wouldnt thats for sure,that console (alongside the DS) has opened a whole new market for publishers to have a go at,now sooner or later that market will move on from consoles and look to the pc for thier gaming and may be interested in an MMO and the dev and publishers know this,they can see it coming and the money it'll bring them if they have a product like WOW thats as easy as pie and more importantly works as well as that game.
So when you look at it it IS the best way to recoup thier investment (granted any game can go tits up but thats by the by)
Well said.
As someone that has been gaming for well a long damn time let me say this much, yes Games are getting dumbed down. Look at games like Rainbow 6 or Command and Conquer! Rainbow 6:Vegas plays much more like an action movie or something like 24 or The Unit. Granted it's not like it was back in the 90's with the first Rainbow 6 or Rouge Spear, but ya know what? It's fun! Same go's with C&C, the new C&C titles are much faster and more about rushing, where the older C&C Games played a bit slower.
Things get dumbed down, why? So more people can play it and enjoy it. Granted gone are the days of games like X-Com or Master of Orion. Those games are still around, just well more "Nitche" now then anything...
That is not a bad thing really, now you will have a Developer that does aim to please those older fans and maybe make a few new ones as well. Still get used to more games coming out on systems like the Xbox. Get used to more titles being made with "everybody" in mind rather then a few "hardcore" people! And get used to the fact that as much as many of you hate to look at it, Gaming as a whole has changed. The old days are gone, over and done with.
See and this is something I have learned in my life, you cannot live in the past. And Gaming must move forward! Yes some games can and will go after the hardcore people, however other's are going to try and be open for anyone and everyone.
In the case of SWG, or really any MMO. Your going to get things that you won't like and your going to get things forced on you. Believe me EA did alot of that with UO, I've heard people say that with games like WoW. It's nothing new in gaming or with MMO's really...
it's people like blixtev that bring more and more people onto our side people who see that the best way that swg can go is to a rollback of the pre-cu or to be shutdown and do an swg 2 with a pre-cu system in place.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
Wow what an angry post...
We live now in the world of the casual gamer its time we hardned old timers have to get used to this fact the days of gaming being a "geek" pastime are truely over with grandma and grandpa playing the Wii for fun,truth is you either accept that fact or it you who'll have to move on,becuase devs will go where the money is (and i'm talking across the board gaming here) and care not a jot about thier past customers.
You did know that swg was likely the most casual friendly mmo on the market before the changes, no levels, and player skill trianing made it easy to jump in and just join people in whatever they were doing, try that now.. Most mmos now require that you grind levels and gear before joining the big boys in much of anything this also now includes SWG, any grouping with low/high levels means the low level is just along for the ride as the high levels rush him/her through quests/missions.
The hardest part of the old swg was crafting and that wasn't to hard to overcome if you did something that seems to be getting pushed out.. that would be reading and socializing... of course a decent in game crafting tutorial could have overcome even that tough spot.
Unless of course what you mean by casual is the ability to solo to level cap without even so much as saying high to anyone else in which case I wonder why those people would pay a fee to play alone ::shrugs::.
Check out EVE Online, especially after ambulation comes out.
In some ways, EVE is going where Pre-CU already has been. But at least it's going there. EVE is truly the ONLY MMO out there that isn't to one degree or another, a WOW clone.
I was reading some of the Devs posts on this Jedi release. I think what they are doing is taking the mighty Jedi down a bit to make room for the other professions to taken the Jedi down a bit in PvP. In reading these posts I am also seeing that the current devs are pretty much stating indirectly how they need more staff such as "artists". They are pretty much stating they are understaffed and still it goes ignored by Sony. I am no supporter of the NGE- I just know their pattern over there at SWG. It is such a strange thing this SWG and such a shame that such a great IP has been really pushed aside. I wish they woudl just hire the classic server being made that we are not allowed to talk about or mention- a classic server would be wonderful.
Eve Online-yep I can see crafters really going for life on the space stations and the stores they can run in the space stations. I know I will be there. I used to be a Master Droid Engineer and a proud cantina owner. Both of which really tanked with gameplay.
Eve is doing exactly what SOE/LA should have done with SWG.
They are adding to the game and improving it slowly over time. They are offering people a quality game and making it better by the day.
Eve shows us that a sandbox can work and work well if you have a good development team. The subscriptions have been on the rise for sometime now and when Eve offers ground-based toons this year it will only make the subs jump even more.
It is highly probable that EVE could hit 500,000 subscribers or even more if they keep adding.
500,000 X $15 = $7.5 million/month or $90 million/year.
I'm so down for EVE if they add interactive avatars and ground game, I can see why it's a rapdily growing game now. I hope the rest of the MMO industry starts to see what we're REALLY interested in, and rather not interested in 100's of WoW clones.
You did know that swg was likely the most casual friendly mmo on the market before the changes, no levels, and player skill trianing made it easy to jump in and just join people in whatever they were doing, try that now.. Most mmos now require that you grind levels and gear before joining the big boys in much of anything this also now includes SWG, any grouping with low/high levels means the low level is just along for the ride as the high levels rush him/her through quests/missions.
The hardest part of the old swg was crafting and that wasn't to hard to overcome if you did something that seems to be getting pushed out.. that would be reading and socializing... of course a decent in game crafting tutorial could have overcome even that tough spot.
Unless of course what you mean by casual is the ability to solo to level cap without even so much as saying high to anyone else in which case I wonder why those people would pay a fee to play alone ::shrugs::.
It wasnt by any means casual friendly..not like i remember it anyways
After a very short tutorial that told me next to nothing i just got dropped onto Tat not knowing where to go and what to do (it was my first MMO back in '04) thankfully i knew someone who played and came to get me from the middle of nowhere..do you really think that my expeirence was "casual" friendly?
It wasnt fun..indeed other than the fact people where good to me i would have got rid of my sub but i perservered and learned to love the game,so yes i knew the game and its many faults back in the day,but it was not in any way shape or form "casual" friendly,not in todays terms the WOW effect has changed MMOs (for the worst IMO) but like it or not its here to stay.
People who have flooded into the MMO and lets be fair gaming market want to see something for thier efforts,those who dont want to sit around camping for hours on end,they may have 30 mins or so to play and want to see something for thier time playing.
I'm not saying i like it but games ARE being dumbed down,like it or not they cost huge ammounts of cash to bring to market and investors want to see thier money back.
You did know that swg was likely the most casual friendly mmo on the market before the changes, no levels, and player skill trianing made it easy to jump in and just join people in whatever they were doing, try that now.. Most mmos now require that you grind levels and gear before joining the big boys in much of anything this also now includes SWG, any grouping with low/high levels means the low level is just along for the ride as the high levels rush him/her through quests/missions.
The hardest part of the old swg was crafting and that wasn't to hard to overcome if you did something that seems to be getting pushed out.. that would be reading and socializing... of course a decent in game crafting tutorial could have overcome even that tough spot.
Unless of course what you mean by casual is the ability to solo to level cap without even so much as saying high to anyone else in which case I wonder why those people would pay a fee to play alone ::shrugs::.
It wasnt by any means casual friendly..not like i remember it anyways
After a very short tutorial that told me next to nothing i just got dropped onto Tat not knowing where to go and what to do (it was my first MMO back in '04) thankfully i knew someone who played and came to get me from the middle of nowhere..do you really think that my expeirence was "casual" friendly?
It wasnt fun..indeed other than the fact people where good to me i would have got rid of my sub but i perservered and learned to love the game,so yes i knew the game and its many faults back in the day,but it was not in any way shape or form "casual" friendly,not in todays terms the WOW effect has changed MMOs (for the worst IMO) but like it or not its here to stay.
People who have flooded into the MMO and lets be fair gaming market want to see something for thier efforts,those who dont want to sit around camping for hours on end,they may have 30 mins or so to play and want to see something for thier time playing.
I'm not saying i like it but games ARE being dumbed down,like it or not they cost huge ammounts of cash to bring to market and investors want to see thier money back.
Well, casual-friendly is really a combination of two things, learning curve and lets say design. Design is the part that has logging in for short times still being 'worth it' to the player. Design includes gameplay that rewards those that play a little, and those that play a lot. SWG pre-CU was had casual-friendly design to it for sure. If you just logged in and wanted to run with a friend, you could. And you could be adding meaningful contributions to the battles in a short time. What completely stunk in SWG pre-CU was the learning curve. I know a lot of people that never got past the learning curve to where they understood how to play SWG and then found they enjoyed it. Instead the interface and lack of tutorial / direction left them unsatisfied with SWG and they quit before they really gave it a chance.
Who remembers that green droid that never went away even if you deleted it? LOL That was around May 2004 or so, dev's attempt at making the game more friendly for new players but it didn't go too well. I remember one time sitting on the grass in my town and a random guy drives by on a swoop and 2 minutes later a green droid goes zipping by in his path... I couldn't stop chuckling about it for a while.
The combat upgrade's starting tutorial was actually pretty awesome, the two Jedi at the end and one tells you "GO ON GET OUT OF HERE WHILE YOU CAN!".
eve will in the next 2 years be the mmo that all other mmo's will try to be like. swg won't last another 2 years as the game has under 7k subs and that is going to drop in half with this lame jedi nerf.
If EVE surpasses half a million subs (which I believe it will by next year) it almost certainly will be cloned by someone. Indeed, there is already in development a game (Jumpgate Evolution) that is an EVE clone. Not a very good one though, as it will have twitch based combat and will have multiple servers.
I think of empty suits like John Smedley trying to develop an EVE clone and laugh. He, and his mentality (which pervades the industry) would be completely incapable of sticking to developing new stuff, new game systems and leaving how things go (the economy, even control of GAME AREAS) completely to the players. Griefing, scamming, stealing is not only allowed in EVE, it's ENCOURAGED.
He'd have a nervous breakdown thinking of all that profit in invalidating progress, selling expansions that raise level caps, and introducing new loot gear treadmills would "lose" him.
Of course, the interested observer would ask Smed just how well that business model is doing for SOE these days?
The real reason why the Smeds of the world dislike sandboxes isnt' because they don't work and don't attract players (EVE has more subs currently than any SOE game, and Pre-CU SWG would be the most popular SOE game today if it were still around), but because of the LOSS OF CONTROL that it causes for them.
In a linear "directed' content game, the Developers already know how you are going to level your character because you follow a set path. The NGE tries to enforce this whenever it can, a classic example being whenever anyone discovers a way to beat 'Foozle' in the NGE instances in a way that the Devs themselves didn't do, they immediately block that path.
Frankly, I dont' think cloning EVE is the answer to the industry's woes either. If I get tired of EVE, why would I want to go play another game that is an attempted clone of it, just not done as well?
That said, there are lessons learned in EVE that every developer would do well to learn.
For the same manner, those who get tired of WOW, why would they want to go play another game that is an attempted clone of it, just not done as well either?
That is why the WOW clone era will end in tragedy for the investors foolish enough to fund them...
When I did the trial of EVE, it wasn't exactly casual friendly. Now, granted, this was a few years ago, but this one incident drove me right out of the game and it's something incredibly stupid.
Upon my initial login, I couldn't make my ship go... as in go anywhere, turn, accelerate, nothing.
Seems like I wasn't the only one as there were a good 50-100 other ships just clustered in the same spot.
/uninstall
mm... now THAT was fun.
Point: Both SWG and EVE have/had horribly introductions to gameplay, although I really expected to be able to fly a friggin ship just by randomly mashing buttons, but nope.
Comments
Another good thread. Blixtev caught in a lie, and he poorly evades the question:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=640859�
Blixtev wrote:
Way to avoid the question, Do you even understand? You said the reason why you weren't giving innate armor was because YOU WERE NOT GOING TO MAKE OUR JMC'S USELESS.Still waiting on a real answer, 99% of people want innate armour and stats, JMC's are now useless, yet we have no innate armour.
-----------------
"Toilet Boy" caught in a lie, and evading the questions. Anyone who keeps falling back on the argument that "the old Devs who made the NGE are almost all gone, they were liars, the new devs are doing it right" has now been shot down.
The new devs lie, obfuscate, nerf, and don't listen to what the player want, just like the previous ones.
The only difference between Heliass's team and Toilet Boy's is that Toilet Boy is and commands EVEN LESS competence, experience, and ability.
He's just as good at lying though.
Folks, the wheels are coming off. And I suspected this might happen when the "jedi update" didn't do anything to over HALF their "expertise" and STARTED OFF with a major nerf (healing becoming more expensive to buy).
Add to that you are LOCKED into lightside or darkside (can't dabble without severe penalty), and now have even LESS choice of appearance (light and dark robes now suck if you aren't wearing the right one for your template) this isn't much of an update at all.
And, the cake topper: an ability added to lightside that SHOULD be a proc or chance to fire, simply to give them "one more button to mash".
For those who think that Jedi will be overpowered from this update. Don't worry. Blixtev will never allow anything like THAT to happen. By the end of the CU, he had an alpha class reduced to being WORSE than templates you could grind in days. Soon as this thing releases, if anything is found that is good out of it, they will shut the servers down in prime time to publish a nerf patch.
At any rate, Team Toilet Boy continues to do MY bidding, by doing a better job at bringing a swifter end to the NGE than I could do on purpose, if I were in his job. And the beauty of it is that the fanbois, not me, are paying him to do it.
Life is good
Here is what could happen at this point:
1. Pull the Jedi portion of the update out of the publish and promise to revisit it later when they have time to address BOTH expertise trees as they did with all other professions, and make changes to address the huge disagreement in their community, in the best interests of the game. This of course being the sensible course is the one they WONT do. Blixtev isn't competent enough to do this, and his team is too inexperienced to suggest it. Valara is no Tiggs, I don't see her standing up for the players.
2. Shove it down everyone's throats with vague promises to "revisit it later". Which will never happen at this point, this update goes live, and the life expectancy of the NGE, already down to well less than a year, drops by half.
Toilet boy being who he is, he'll go #2.
I've run into boxes of broken hammers that were both smarter and more useful than Blixtev.
But then again, I spent hours catching the poodoo for brains idiots that are the SWG dev team in logical fallacies, poorly argued platitudes, and outright lies from launch onward.
These guys WONDER why their sub numbers keep falling, and keep flailing around with the same old "you'll play this game our way or get lost" attitude, and then the players get lost, and they wonder why the servers are ghost towns.
I mean, really. No sense of cause and effect at all with this bunch of Niemoidian assclowns.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Truly an epic Fail. These guys are so stupid that not even the "school of hard knocks" can teach them that lesson, not even after a graduate level course in it (losing 90-95% of the player base).
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
First off, I agree that SWG Pre-CU was good, it was my favorite game.... was! But don't be dissin' my xbox! If I wanna play Madden or Halo or whatever over live with my friends, it's all good! I am a gamer, probably have been since before you were born, and like all things, changes happen! I love my computer and the gaming opportunities it offers, but I won't be pigeonholed into playing just that!It seems that a rigid computer or nothing gamer who can't enjoy other aspects of gaming is not really a real gamer, it's someone who can't evolve or learn new things perhaps.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
Wow what an angry post...We live now in the world of the casual gamer its time we hardned old timers have to get used to this fact the days of gaming being a "geek" pastime are truely over with grandma and grandpa playing the Wii for fun,truth is you either accept that fact or it you who'll have to move on,becuase devs will go where the money is (and i'm talking across the board gaming here) and care not a jot about thier past customers.
I wonder if these were the same internal testers that gave the humbs up to the NGE? I'm being a little sarcastic. It was the mythical "focus group" that did us in.
Um, the devs did NOT go where the money was!
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
Wow what an angry post...We live now in the world of the casual gamer its time we hardned old timers have to get used to this fact the days of gaming being a "geek" pastime are truely over with grandma and grandpa playing the Wii for fun,truth is you either accept that fact or it you who'll have to move on,becuase devs will go where the money is (and i'm talking across the board gaming here) and care not a jot about thier past customers.
Given that MMOs take years and tens of millions of dollars to develop, catering to flighty "casual" fans isn't a great plan to recoup that investment, is it?
I certainly wouldn't want businesses like THAT in my 401K.
Time to live in the now..ALL games cost a fortune to devolp nowadays,the times of bedroom coding are gone,so publishers want to see some return for thier investment,and usualy (not always) the simpler the game is the more copies it sells.
More and more we're seeing cross platform games exclusives are becoming rarer and rarer for this very reason and given the worlds current climate regarding money matters i can see its only going to get worse.
Who (talking about consoles here but its relevant) would have put money on the Wii being such a massive success? i know i wouldnt thats for sure,that console (alongside the DS) has opened a whole new market for publishers to have a go at,now sooner or later that market will move on from consoles and look to the pc for thier gaming and may be interested in an MMO and the dev and publishers know this,they can see it coming and the money it'll bring them if they have a product like WOW thats as easy as pie and more importantly works as well as that game.
So when you look at it it IS the best way to recoup thier investment (granted any game can go tits up but thats by the by)
As someone that has been gaming for well a long damn time let me say this much, yes Games are getting dumbed down. Look at games like Rainbow 6 or Command and Conquer! Rainbow 6:Vegas plays much more like an action movie or something like 24 or The Unit. Granted it's not like it was back in the 90's with the first Rainbow 6 or Rouge Spear, but ya know what? It's fun! Same go's with C&C, the new C&C titles are much faster and more about rushing, where the older C&C Games played a bit slower.
Things get dumbed down, why? So more people can play it and enjoy it. Granted gone are the days of games like X-Com or Master of Orion. Those games are still around, just well more "Nitche" now then anything...
That is not a bad thing really, now you will have a Developer that does aim to please those older fans and maybe make a few new ones as well. Still get used to more games coming out on systems like the Xbox. Get used to more titles being made with "everybody" in mind rather then a few "hardcore" people! And get used to the fact that as much as many of you hate to look at it, Gaming as a whole has changed. The old days are gone, over and done with.
See and this is something I have learned in my life, you cannot live in the past. And Gaming must move forward! Yes some games can and will go after the hardcore people, however other's are going to try and be open for anyone and everyone.
In the case of SWG, or really any MMO. Your going to get things that you won't like and your going to get things forced on you. Believe me EA did alot of that with UO, I've heard people say that with games like WoW. It's nothing new in gaming or with MMO's really...
I am so happy to be free of this epicenter.
also more and more people are pulling this kind of crap in the gaming world. i like many of you am sick of it. blizzard forcing warcraft and it's fisherprice game play on us. old great titles being turned into plotless actionfests. microsoft forcing xbox live onto the world and telling us we want it. it's thanks to people like those at $OE that gaming is going downhill.
i also blame you fanbois and fanbots for it. here we are fighting to give gamers freedom and make the devs see that they need us more then we need them and you morons sit there like zombies and pay for this crap. if you pay for swg if you own a xbox if you are not fighting the good fight then you are no gamer. you are a fanboi moron who should have his pc taken away and be banned from playing anything.
i have had it with all of the fanbois devs and fanbots. i want swg to be shutdown or rollbacked to when it was good. quit telling $OE that you like this crap and start saying bring back pre-cu or get out of gaming for good.
Wow what an angry post...We live now in the world of the casual gamer its time we hardned old timers have to get used to this fact the days of gaming being a "geek" pastime are truely over with grandma and grandpa playing the Wii for fun,truth is you either accept that fact or it you who'll have to move on,becuase devs will go where the money is (and i'm talking across the board gaming here) and care not a jot about thier past customers.
You did know that swg was likely the most casual friendly mmo on the market before the changes, no levels, and player skill trianing made it easy to jump in and just join people in whatever they were doing, try that now.. Most mmos now require that you grind levels and gear before joining the big boys in much of anything this also now includes SWG, any grouping with low/high levels means the low level is just along for the ride as the high levels rush him/her through quests/missions.
The hardest part of the old swg was crafting and that wasn't to hard to overcome if you did something that seems to be getting pushed out.. that would be reading and socializing... of course a decent in game crafting tutorial could have overcome even that tough spot.
Unless of course what you mean by casual is the ability to solo to level cap without even so much as saying high to anyone else in which case I wonder why those people would pay a fee to play alone ::shrugs::.
The thrill is gone so to speak with today's MMOs.
I am going to sit back and hope that something comes along that brings back the feeling of satisfaction.
The sad thing is the future will be ever more compact. This was the first year where Notebooks are expected to exceed Desktop PCs in sales.
The trend will continue and so does the way MMOs are being developed.
They will constantly be dumbed down in order to meet the expectations of the "ON The Go" Players.
In 5 years it is expected that mobile entertainment will surpass everything the Desktop PC had to offer.
Desktops will still be around but the online virtual worlds will be ruled by that little tiny device known as mobile technologies.
So enjoy the moment fellow gamers for we will be ruled again by consoles because thats the way the world wants it.
It might seem like a fricken pipe dream to believe otherwise but face it the "FAD" is going away like Disco in the '70's.
Check out EVE Online, especially after ambulation comes out.
In some ways, EVE is going where Pre-CU already has been. But at least it's going there. EVE is truly the ONLY MMO out there that isn't to one degree or another, a WOW clone.
I was reading some of the Devs posts on this Jedi release. I think what they are doing is taking the mighty Jedi down a bit to make room for the other professions to taken the Jedi down a bit in PvP. In reading these posts I am also seeing that the current devs are pretty much stating indirectly how they need more staff such as "artists". They are pretty much stating they are understaffed and still it goes ignored by Sony. I am no supporter of the NGE- I just know their pattern over there at SWG. It is such a strange thing this SWG and such a shame that such a great IP has been really pushed aside. I wish they woudl just hire the classic server being made that we are not allowed to talk about or mention- a classic server would be wonderful.
Eve Online-yep I can see crafters really going for life on the space stations and the stores they can run in the space stations. I know I will be there. I used to be a Master Droid Engineer and a proud cantina owner. Both of which really tanked with gameplay.
Eve is doing exactly what SOE/LA should have done with SWG.
They are adding to the game and improving it slowly over time. They are offering people a quality game and making it better by the day.
Eve shows us that a sandbox can work and work well if you have a good development team. The subscriptions have been on the rise for sometime now and when Eve offers ground-based toons this year it will only make the subs jump even more.
It is highly probable that EVE could hit 500,000 subscribers or even more if they keep adding.
500,000 X $15 = $7.5 million/month or $90 million/year.
Pretty good.
Tecmo Bowl.
I'm so down for EVE if they add interactive avatars and ground game, I can see why it's a rapdily growing game now. I hope the rest of the MMO industry starts to see what we're REALLY interested in, and rather not interested in 100's of WoW clones.
eve will in the next 2 years be the mmo that all other mmo's will try to be like.
swg won't last another 2 years as the game has under 7k subs and that is going to drop in half with this lame jedi nerf.
You did know that swg was likely the most casual friendly mmo on the market before the changes, no levels, and player skill trianing made it easy to jump in and just join people in whatever they were doing, try that now.. Most mmos now require that you grind levels and gear before joining the big boys in much of anything this also now includes SWG, any grouping with low/high levels means the low level is just along for the ride as the high levels rush him/her through quests/missions.
The hardest part of the old swg was crafting and that wasn't to hard to overcome if you did something that seems to be getting pushed out.. that would be reading and socializing... of course a decent in game crafting tutorial could have overcome even that tough spot.
Unless of course what you mean by casual is the ability to solo to level cap without even so much as saying high to anyone else in which case I wonder why those people would pay a fee to play alone ::shrugs::.
It wasnt by any means casual friendly..not like i remember it anywaysAfter a very short tutorial that told me next to nothing i just got dropped onto Tat not knowing where to go and what to do (it was my first MMO back in '04) thankfully i knew someone who played and came to get me from the middle of nowhere..do you really think that my expeirence was "casual" friendly?
It wasnt fun..indeed other than the fact people where good to me i would have got rid of my sub but i perservered and learned to love the game,so yes i knew the game and its many faults back in the day,but it was not in any way shape or form "casual" friendly,not in todays terms the WOW effect has changed MMOs (for the worst IMO) but like it or not its here to stay.
People who have flooded into the MMO and lets be fair gaming market want to see something for thier efforts,those who dont want to sit around camping for hours on end,they may have 30 mins or so to play and want to see something for thier time playing.
I'm not saying i like it but games ARE being dumbed down,like it or not they cost huge ammounts of cash to bring to market and investors want to see thier money back.
You did know that swg was likely the most casual friendly mmo on the market before the changes, no levels, and player skill trianing made it easy to jump in and just join people in whatever they were doing, try that now.. Most mmos now require that you grind levels and gear before joining the big boys in much of anything this also now includes SWG, any grouping with low/high levels means the low level is just along for the ride as the high levels rush him/her through quests/missions.
The hardest part of the old swg was crafting and that wasn't to hard to overcome if you did something that seems to be getting pushed out.. that would be reading and socializing... of course a decent in game crafting tutorial could have overcome even that tough spot.
Unless of course what you mean by casual is the ability to solo to level cap without even so much as saying high to anyone else in which case I wonder why those people would pay a fee to play alone ::shrugs::.
It wasnt by any means casual friendly..not like i remember it anywaysAfter a very short tutorial that told me next to nothing i just got dropped onto Tat not knowing where to go and what to do (it was my first MMO back in '04) thankfully i knew someone who played and came to get me from the middle of nowhere..do you really think that my expeirence was "casual" friendly?
It wasnt fun..indeed other than the fact people where good to me i would have got rid of my sub but i perservered and learned to love the game,so yes i knew the game and its many faults back in the day,but it was not in any way shape or form "casual" friendly,not in todays terms the WOW effect has changed MMOs (for the worst IMO) but like it or not its here to stay.
People who have flooded into the MMO and lets be fair gaming market want to see something for thier efforts,those who dont want to sit around camping for hours on end,they may have 30 mins or so to play and want to see something for thier time playing.
I'm not saying i like it but games ARE being dumbed down,like it or not they cost huge ammounts of cash to bring to market and investors want to see thier money back.
Well, casual-friendly is really a combination of two things, learning curve and lets say design. Design is the part that has logging in for short times still being 'worth it' to the player. Design includes gameplay that rewards those that play a little, and those that play a lot. SWG pre-CU was had casual-friendly design to it for sure. If you just logged in and wanted to run with a friend, you could. And you could be adding meaningful contributions to the battles in a short time. What completely stunk in SWG pre-CU was the learning curve. I know a lot of people that never got past the learning curve to where they understood how to play SWG and then found they enjoyed it. Instead the interface and lack of tutorial / direction left them unsatisfied with SWG and they quit before they really gave it a chance.
Who remembers that green droid that never went away even if you deleted it? LOL That was around May 2004 or so, dev's attempt at making the game more friendly for new players but it didn't go too well. I remember one time sitting on the grass in my town and a random guy drives by on a swoop and 2 minutes later a green droid goes zipping by in his path... I couldn't stop chuckling about it for a while.
The combat upgrade's starting tutorial was actually pretty awesome, the two Jedi at the end and one tells you "GO ON GET OUT OF HERE WHILE YOU CAN!".
If EVE surpasses half a million subs (which I believe it will by next year) it almost certainly will be cloned by someone. Indeed, there is already in development a game (Jumpgate Evolution) that is an EVE clone. Not a very good one though, as it will have twitch based combat and will have multiple servers.
I think of empty suits like John Smedley trying to develop an EVE clone and laugh. He, and his mentality (which pervades the industry) would be completely incapable of sticking to developing new stuff, new game systems and leaving how things go (the economy, even control of GAME AREAS) completely to the players. Griefing, scamming, stealing is not only allowed in EVE, it's ENCOURAGED.
He'd have a nervous breakdown thinking of all that profit in invalidating progress, selling expansions that raise level caps, and introducing new loot gear treadmills would "lose" him.
Of course, the interested observer would ask Smed just how well that business model is doing for SOE these days?
The real reason why the Smeds of the world dislike sandboxes isnt' because they don't work and don't attract players (EVE has more subs currently than any SOE game, and Pre-CU SWG would be the most popular SOE game today if it were still around), but because of the LOSS OF CONTROL that it causes for them.
In a linear "directed' content game, the Developers already know how you are going to level your character because you follow a set path. The NGE tries to enforce this whenever it can, a classic example being whenever anyone discovers a way to beat 'Foozle' in the NGE instances in a way that the Devs themselves didn't do, they immediately block that path.
Frankly, I dont' think cloning EVE is the answer to the industry's woes either. If I get tired of EVE, why would I want to go play another game that is an attempted clone of it, just not done as well?
That said, there are lessons learned in EVE that every developer would do well to learn.
For the same manner, those who get tired of WOW, why would they want to go play another game that is an attempted clone of it, just not done as well either?
That is why the WOW clone era will end in tragedy for the investors foolish enough to fund them...
Ya know, I know this is not on topic but everytime I read Bixtev's name out loud it comes out Blistex. Oh well..
When I did the trial of EVE, it wasn't exactly casual friendly. Now, granted, this was a few years ago, but this one incident drove me right out of the game and it's something incredibly stupid.
Upon my initial login, I couldn't make my ship go... as in go anywhere, turn, accelerate, nothing.
Seems like I wasn't the only one as there were a good 50-100 other ships just clustered in the same spot.
/uninstall
mm... now THAT was fun.
Point: Both SWG and EVE have/had horribly introductions to gameplay, although I really expected to be able to fly a friggin ship just by randomly mashing buttons, but nope.
Intuitive it was not.