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Star Wars Galaxies: Correspondent - Does Crafting Matter
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Star Wars Galaxies Correspondent Jef Reahard writes this article on crafting and the recent crafting changes that have come with Update 5.
The crafting game within-the-game of Sony Online Entertainment's Star Wars Galaxies was easily the most complex, rewarding, and intricate MMORPG economic system this side of EVE Online, and it was one of the great tragedies of the infamous New Game Enhancements (NGE) that this sublime system of resource management, trade, and customization was nearly blown away in an attempt to appeal to a larger audience. Happily, all is not lost, as the current Star Wars Galaxies development team has been taking baby steps in the general direction of recapturing the magic of the old system, despite runaway server inflation and the misgivings of some players weaned on the simplistic auction house systems of other games.
Read it all here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I played Star Wars Galaxies for close to three years. In the beginning the game was beutiful. It had lots of great features that many other online games did not had, but which really set the game above everyone else, with items like housing and a true crafting profession, and the decay made the profession useful! Jedi where ofcource my main goal. Or rather a Dark Jedi. After 1,5 years of dedication I reached my goal! It wasnt easy, and it wasnt pretty, but in the end i got there, to the envy of many!
For a while the game was fine. There where something for everyone, and each class had a true depth in it. Crafters could really sink into the profession to the smallest details. jedi where a true power and hated. So hated that we had truly dedicated Bounty Hunters who hunted us. It created a nice PvP system! Want to be a jedi? Well, the price is: you get hunted! Then we had other professions which had just as much immersion and depth as the allready mentioned classes. For a while, it was nice! Not perfect but nice!
Then NGE where supposed to be launched under a cloud first of secrecy. In the beginning no word leaked out, so we where not really asked what we wanted! And one day it smashed on live server. Jedi where now more common then the sand on the desertplanet Tattoine. Crafters where told to stick it. Completely shafted. Complete new stupid control mechanism - to a new system I LOATHE with passion! so many things changed! And nothing to the better! Worse: SOE proved they did not listen either! LOADS out of outcry on the forums. Result: people got banned. The insurrection spread into the game. We had huuuuge demonstration outside most of the cities. SOES answer in the end: ban the players! So much for the listening.
I am usually a very patient player. I am an adult and I know that if you want to get things through the system you present your arguments in a calm manner! But when we got told to stick it litterally my last words to a SOE DEV where. F**K YOU SOE! F**K YOU ALL! F**K OFF YOU DEVS AND MAY YOU ALL GO TO HELL AND TAKE YOUR GAME WITH YOU!
My words still stand.
I got banned efcource with so many others. We had one things in common: we loathed the totally ignoranse of SOE. And their arrogance to their playerbase!
I had spent so much time in this game to accept such a complete screwover! Even worse not being listened to at all! Heck, there where thousands who demostrated in the weeks following the NGE! But they told us in diplomatic wordings: STICK IT!
Those demonstrations where the last time I have seen the cities crowded.
In the time following I got banned and left the game I have got 5 please return mails from SOE. The first two offered me free 7 days trial. The third a 14 day trial and the fourth and fifth a whole month!
All have been ignored.
Just as I ignore all the games from SOE
Good bye SOE and good riddance
"Finally, the new update features a radical change in the resources required for munitions trading, with an eye toward starting all prospective smiths on relatively equal footing and negating any advantages enjoyed by folks who've been hoarding rare resources for years. "
What's the point then? I was one of those crafters (Armorsmith) who had to start with just any junk resources. I still sold my stuff because it was cheap...but eventually I had great resources. It took 6 months before I was making the best armor on the server. If everyone starts out on equal footing, what's the point of being a long-term crafter? How could you possibly differentiate your stuff from any one-day-old crafter if everything you produce is the same?
Im not bitter about the NGE. I loved SWG, gave the NGE a couple of months, then quit. It's SOE's game, they can do what they want to with it. If they would truely bring back crafting to the point where though hard work/play you could make stuff better than your competition, I would probably come back.
More like Mycoplasma genitalium steps, It's 2008 now and the NGE happened in 2005 I think, yeah, that development team is on top of things. Maybe after their done looking at crafters they can start looking at what really happened to the Mary Celeste.
Good article, heavily biased in both directions. Regardless of what Archemedes thinks, the crafting system is onyl as good as the game behind it, though. An awesome crafting system bolted onto a trainwreck of a game such as the NGE is a crafting system wasted. I understand the thrust of the article was to point out that particular facet of the game, but in all reality, reintroducing what was torn away with crafting without reintroducing what was torn away with the rest of the game would only appeal to savants. Complex mechanics in a game designed to be so simple a lobotomized monkey could play it just seems so counter-productive.
SOE: Reintroduce the 32 professions, make Jedi an alpha class that you have to role-play to keep (and make it extremely difficult to obtain), pay no attention to the duelists who complain, and concentrate on mass-scale PvP battles. Oh, and might as well get me a mocha latte while you're at it; I know that's about as likely to happen. But all of the above would improve the world we live in.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
This is a perfect example of how mismanaged SWG was and still is. I'm not applying blame or negativity against the corespondent; but rather using the statement as another supportive measure.
According to the management, SWG was too complex and required too much reading...
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
Cripes.
There's still no decay. There's still a simplistic, poorly implemented ripoff of WoW combat system, with the added stupidity of the default pseudo-FPS interface that is totally inappropriate for a game only played over the Internet.
The NGE is still there. The NGE is utter garbage.
The game was destroyed, and the pathetic attempts to bring back the "old game" will be futile as long as you have overt levels and rigid classes. Crafting is as dumbed down now as it was when the NGE took away all the tradeoffs in crafting that there were under the original game.
Do not get me started on what a pathetic mess Beast Master is compared to CH or BE.
Just don't.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Is it fear i smell, insert new BioWare SW mmo, or the other guys SWG. It's not only a little to late for SOE to be making statements that they are trying to bring back the old magic, but it is retarded for them to think they can stay with the NGE format and think people will be falling over themselves trying to resub with this new crap of a patch.
SOE can screw up a iron ball, and will continue to do buisness as usual on all other games they create. In actuality, do they really seem like a company that gives a rats ass about this particular product. If they did, they wouldn't have changed it in the first place and or would have seen the mistake shortly after the change and changed it back.
It's kinda of funny how they can boast their advancements of SWG, yet are still forcing people to pay for a transfer off one of the 20 out of 25 dead servers, without feeling one bit of guilt.
Does crafting matter in SWG? Not as long as the uber items that are obtained off the the instance boss is still in game, as well as no deacy on anything.
So what that a WS can make a great weapon and it's a bio-link item. Without decay it will last forever and all it really does is keep inflation sky high.
SWG is shot and they know this. They know that their days are numbered and are trying to grasp for anything to keep the little players they have and bring a few more on board until that time comes.
To be clear, Sony hasn't said any such thing, those are my words, and I am in no way affiliated with them other than paying my $30.00 - $45.00 a month since launch. The new dev team isn't stupid, they know that they're on a sinking ship, or at best, a very small ship catering to a niche audience, but the point is that this hasn't stopped them from trying to work with what they've been given and improve the game.
For that, they are to be commended, not ridiculed. I have as much reason to hate SOE as any of you, perhaps more (given the amount of time and money I have invested in SWG since beta), but the hate in this thread is misdirected, since nearly everyone responsible for the NGE is no longer there.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.”
Its funny, that the thing that went untouched front he NGE (except in regards to the final items, the process and mechanic is still the same) Is the best part of the game, and only thing worth talking about...still.
----------
"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
To be clear, Sony hasn't said any such thing, those are my words, and I am in no way affiliated with them other than paying my $30.00 - $45.00 a month since launch. The new dev team isn't stupid, they know that they're on a sinking ship, or at best, a very small ship catering to a niche audience, but the point is that this hasn't stopped them from trying to work with what they've been given and improve the game.
For that, they are to be commended, not ridiculed. I have as much reason to hate SOE as any of you, perhaps more (given the amount of time and money I have invested in SWG since beta), but the hate in this thread is misdirected, since nearly everyone responsible for the NGE is no longer there.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.”
Wow, sorry for ruffling your feathers. Smedley is still in charge and that's enough of a reason to not ever play a SOE game again. I feel sorry that you are such a NGE fanboi that you can sit and defend all the wrong doing that SOE still does to it's current customers.
Sad but SWG is a dead game.
Would it have a real FPS system NGE would have been successful.
Now it isn't an FPS, socialisation is dead, crafting isn't as good as it was even merging the servers would not help as it only takes 3 days to bot-level a char to 80.
Pre-CU servers could attract some players but would be the death of SWG.
Now the word is out, Bioware is indeed making a SW MMO, every SW fan is looking towards it.
SOE is just milking the players as much as they can.
As any others I don't want any business with a compagny that treat their customers as SOE did, that's why I will never ever buy a Sony product anymore, either console, game, TV, MP3 player, you name it.
God I loved the crafting in this game, there was nothing else like it. Too bad that game is gone. Oh well, moving along, these are not the droids I'm looking for.
"Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard drive?"
From the Classic Tag Lines collection.
To be clear, Sony hasn't said any such thing, those are my words, and I am in no way affiliated with them other than paying my $30.00 - $45.00 a month since launch. The new dev team isn't stupid, they know that they're on a sinking ship, or at best, a very small ship catering to a niche audience, but the point is that this hasn't stopped them from trying to work with what they've been given and improve the game.
For that, they are to be commended, not ridiculed. I have as much reason to hate SOE as any of you, perhaps more (given the amount of time and money I have invested in SWG since beta), but the hate in this thread is misdirected, since nearly everyone responsible for the NGE is no longer there.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.”
Wow, sorry for ruffling your feathers. Smedley is still in charge and that's enough of a reason to not ever play a SOE game again. I feel sorry that you are such a NGE fanboi that you can sit and defend all the wrong doing that SOE still does to it's current customers.
You didn't ruffle my feathers at all, I just wanted to be clear on the fact that I said those things, when your comment attributed them to Sony. As far as me defending them, that's comical, but I forgive you for not knowing me well enough to know how laughable that truly is.
Cheers.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
Very nice article and I will give you credit, you are 99% correct, except people will never come back!!
As a vet from day one, 5 accounts purchased in the first month, 3 master crafters running one of the best known armor crafting and clothing service on Flurry in the old days, I cry for those days back. Few side notes though..
everything that has been added in the last 3 years are what was in the system prior but working corrrectly now.
MOD bits- SEA's in the old system (100% working better now)
Creature handler= (grind fest now to get them up to level, but I like that you can make what you want) 50% better in some way I say.
Heck - we could put our pets on display PRE CU (i had a crayte head in my large house), now we can stuff pets........ WOW.. but it was in 5 years ago..
Mods to guns- WOW we had that 4 years ago. Remember killing Kraytes for pearls before JEDI for tissues......
I agree the new game is just now getting awsome and has some very nice things. However 2 problems will allways make it so that the old players (well most ) will never come back.
1-THE CLASSES HAVE BEEN GUTTED!!!- How can I play 1 of 9 classes now when prior I could make 1 of 32, and I could have even one box from all 32 classes if I wanted. (SORRY but the versatility of char creation is about 1% of what it was)
2- SOE/SWG staff LIE!!!- Sorry but I stayed around and payed for almost 2 years after it was junk, and I even went to 3 BS sessions. I drove 6 hours each way the last one, just to hear them tell us it would get better... I was told that weapon smiths was going to be next upgrade IN LA 2.5 years ago, and again in vegas more than a year ago. They made collections and EPIC encounters .. WOW.. (sorry but they never cared about anything we said at those meetings)
It took them 3 years to fix the loot system- Ill be their are still tons of items that are usless (broken quests).. How about the parts of a printer (that use to make a killer poster) They still have junk dropping but took away +to HP Peko Peko (spelling) feathers 3 years ago..... (heck they are least work but dont drop!!)
3.5 years to fix weapon smiths. SOrry I watched a major upgrade to every other fighting class twice at least before they fixed it.
HELL it took them 3 years to make a armor re- die kit. (that was asked for when color was added to armor 4 years ago when we still had HAM)
SWG with advertising could of beaten WOW hands down, if they had put the polish on the system like they have been doing now to the original 32 professions. .. WOW would be a word for SWG.....
Just my 2 cents.. take it or leave it..
"skinning has been added" they are still a WoW wannabe
"the scatter pistol may return with capped stats" why the capped stats?
as long as decay is out (or you dont loose items like in EvE) this crafting system shall forever be a useless pile of crap. bring back the decay and that will solve so many problems
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
I agree, I wish decay would return as well, but unfortunately those of us that feel that way are in the minority. People are now weaned on easy mode it seems, and it's practically unthinkable for a game to come out that has consequences like breaking equipment.
Given that, this new system is about the best you could hope for if you're still into SWG crafting. No, its not as good as the pre-NGE system, but its quite a bit better than it has been, which is good enough for folks that either a) love Star Wars enough to stay, or b) love the sandbox/roleplay/virtual world elements enough to stay.
As a side note, all of the folks who are mentioning the Bioware SW mmo as the second coming, I'd say don't get your hopes up. Given the current market, there's very little chance that that game will be anything other than a WoW/LotRo style themepark (which is not to say it won't be successful, I'm sure it will be, but it will not recapture what SWG once was). I would be very surprised if it has even half of the sandbox elements that made pre-NGE SWG unique. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
QFT
This sight has a swg correspondent? Did you just pick names out of a hat?
Let me spell it out for you, anyone possessing the knowledge neccessary to really give you an in depth insiders perspective concerning anything in star wars galaxies quit playing this game years ago. It is a blight on the face of the genre and completely tarnishes any value found on this website by association.
Don't Subscribe to the Lie.
Honestly, whats the point of tweaking the crafting? I don't know anyone or any old guild members that play this game. With a new SW MMO in the works, who is gonna give a rats ass about a crafting change. I just don't understand who is playing this game still . It boggles the mind this game isnt dead yet.
Ok, first of all, you’re an employee of this site and shouldn’t be keeping a scarcastic flame war going. That said…
SWG was a truly Amazing experience for me, and my friends. It truly immersed you in a world that you SO wanted to be a part of since childhood, and was the funnest game you could ever play. Then, it was destroyed. I often find myself daydreaming about pre-CU/NGE, with that euphoric feeling, go look at the site/forums, and get SLAMMED back to reality.
There were a few awesome things about this article:
1) The people responsible for NGE are gone. Thank God. They ruined the game.
2) “Recapturing the magic of the old system”… all their doing is scrambling to fix the überest mistake in the history of online games. Seriously, they need to stop trying, they will never fix it. Even IF they brought back EXACTLY the same game as at launch, bone armor and all, a rare few would come back. They’re already over it, and wouldn’t want to deal with SOE, nor give them their money or time.
3) The great thing about even the “broken” items was what people did with them! Creating statues or decorations inside your house/guild hall was awesome! Remember there were competitions for decorating. Players would join guilds simply because they knew how to make an extraordinary guild-hall.
4) AS/WS – I have to say, I do like the skinning idea, but decay def needed to be a factor.
5) Why are they starting people over… again!? This is another point-in-fact that they DO NOT care about veterans of the game, people who kept their company going from the beginning, and even those crazy die-hards who still play now. Other MMOs REWARD veterans (e.g. - CoX/Eve-O), and care about their input, even appointing representatives from the player-base to help make development decisions (remember this started to happen briefly on SWG forums, but it was a huge lie as nothing was implemented, and NGE swooped the rug out from under it anyways).
6) EVE-Online is the closest thing there is to the crafting/player-run economy of this game, and thus there are sO many SWG refugees on that game, including myself.
7) I only pray that before Bioware installs the original discs of SWG, and takes a LOT of notes. Then reads every forum post ever written on SWG on the web (that will give them an idea of how much hype and amazement there was to that game… and then how much disappointment and hatred), and takes more notes. Then read every fan-site with suggestions/wishlists for SWG, and take even more notes. – Take the lead of Blizzard with Starcraft2 development, but not with World of Warcraft game mechanics or ideas.
8) I hope George Lucas understands how Bastardized his storyline was by NGE SWG… And I’ll be very surprised if he allows (2) games of the same type to co-exist with each other in competition with each other, especially while one is completely non-canonical.
9) I’m sorry but I must completely disagree with your statement to commend the developers. As individuals, perhaps they are doing the best at their job description, and bringing home paychecks for their families. As a whole, they have utterly failed and taken the game in BUNK directions, consistently. As a company, the direction to the developers has been obviously horrendous. No matter how much you improve a sinking ship, it won’t look any better at the bottom of the ocean. In fact, all you’ve done is wasted effort on what will soon be junk, effort which could have created a splendorous new ship for people to enjoy for future to come.
10) I also do not believe that the responses on this forum represent the minority of SWG-enthusiasts/MMO gamers however. Why do you think there is NO_ONE on the SWG servers these days…? Any have you seen one comment in support of the anything SWG on this site as a whole? … tell me who the minority is then, and tell me to whom SOE has been catering?
11) PLEASE do not spend anymore company time publicizing or reviewing a dead game! Not only is it dead, but it is an now an embarrassment and learning lesson for all MMOs… don’t give them fuel to keep going. Instead, spend this time investigating what your users really want to know about: Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. Add it into your lists of games under development, create a forum for it, work hard to influence the development of the game toward the liking of your users. Then this website will actually be a useful resource and voice of the gaming community instead of a promoter of CRAP like [dead]NGE-SWG.
</rant>
I apologize if I have offended anyone, this post has just been 3+ yrs in the making now.
Cinori Aluben - CSM6 2011
Fix The Little Things First!
www.littlethingsfirst.com
EVE-Online
Not sure how to catagorize this thread. Certainly have to disagree drastically with the OP.
Without item decay you still have a fancified FPS. How absurd to think that this MINOR change makes anything different.
Just because the copied Wow's method of attaching weapons to the avatar does necessarily make a good crafting system. Wow's crafting system is probably it's weakest link.
I love this quote:
"I can say without a shadow of a doubt that crafting in SWG is the best crafting system I have ever encountered."
Not since NGE. The existing crafting system in SWG is pretty much the laughing stock of the industry. I even think DAoC's crappy system is far better.
Sorry to the OP, but you are living in a very surreal world, time to get back to reality.
Oh and by the way, Smedley, the original NGE architect is still there, does not matter if no one else is, he was the one responsible for the NGE debacle, he put the team together that created the NGE mess and told them what he wanted. So let's just ignore that "the original team left" comment because it too is a silly observation.
He is not an emplyee of this site.
Let me quote Craig:
Heh, I felt the original system was hideously complicated for no good reason. Tiny stat modifiers? Useless.
Hundreds of materials of various qualities? Stupid overkill. Hasn't anyone here ever heard of "refining"? I should be able to take that low quality ore/leather/whatever, and refine it to make it better... sheesh. That way, I have ONE stack of it in my limited inventory space, instead of 100.
I find it humorous that the original author thought that the 2nd slot is a big negative to crafters. Not so.
It let more people do it, rather than just the people like my good friend who had 6 accounts and borrowed three others to dominate the rare materials on his server and utterly control the weaponsmithing profession.
Yeah, it was so great one guy controlled his server's weaponsmithing... great for the casual player who wanted to play one. Try to sell something? He'd undercut and drive you out of business.
He did pay for his college education and rent with the money he made ebaying the credits, however.
This crafting change is huge, there is now not 1 loot drop weapon that holds a candle to player crafted weapons. You can even "de-construct" some of the loot drop weapons and use their appearance and select your own elemental damage type.
I just had another Nym's carbine redone by a weaponsmith
It was 908 dps 31 acid elemental
It's now 1120 dps 50 heat elemental, with a socket an additional 225 health, and +25 to crit
Which one would you prefer?
Although I most admit this change is a step in the right direction, it is not enough to bring me back to the game I once loved so much. I will be keeping my eyes on it in the next few months though.