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ArjunThakur
Member Posts: 15
Hi everyone, its been some time. If anyone doesn't remember me I was the first Jedi Correspondent. I was very active in the community and SWG at the time and bore unfortunate witness to many man many bad decisions by the devs that led to the death of SWG. I was also the only Correspondent that never signed an NDA...ha.
Anyway, regardless of that I never wanted to speak out about anything because regardless of my personaly feelings and experiences SWG was still a business, and if they wanted to run it into the ground it was honestly their choice. What I would like to do is answer any questions there might be about SWG during my time ( I resigned before the NGE) and hopefully bring about some closure for a lot of people who were just as upset as I was about a lot of the changes that were made.
Assuming there's an interest I'll do my best to answer everyone in this thread. If you hated my guts for some reason go ahead and let loose, but at least do me the favor of explaining why so I can respond in kind.
It was an interesting foray into the world of game development for me, and honestly the biggest reason i gave up my pursuit of that dream. So without further ado, please, if there's anything you would like explained ask.
Comments
Well, I'm doubtful that many of the questions people have regarding SWG's past and it's tumutuous changes can be answered by a correspondent.
But if you are who you claim to be I think the first thing I need to know is whether you're here to inist that "changes needed to happen" because "subscriptions were bleeding", and so on? In other words are you here to tow the corporate line for SoE?
And secondly why did you not sign the NDA, and what was SoE's response? Why would they permit you to remain as a correspondent or disclose any information regarding any changes if you did not sign an NDA?
Hmmm. Perhaps you can share, from your own perspective, how the CURB was changed to the CU. I remember the original plan was far more interesting and dynamic than what we eventually got.
For instance, were doctor buffs originally just going to be removed, or were they to be changed?
Was the game originally meant to completely switch to a level system?
Were unique stats to be removed from all animals, to be replaced with bags of HAM, as eventually happened?
I am curious about things like that, plus the timing if you can remember, and what was said behind the scenes.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Yay! Hey Arjun, I remember you well - and the amazing work that you did as the Jedi correspondent. Considering all the tables, guides and analyses that you conducted, I felt then - as I feel now - that it was outrageous that you weren't paid a proper salary by SOE for doing their work for them.
So here then is a long list of questions in no chronological order. It would be very helpful if you could answer as many as you can:
- At what stage after the launch of the game did you become aware that the Jedi unlocking facility had not been implemented?
- At what stage did you find out that the Developers were deliberately rationing/preventing the drops of higher grade crystals and pearls to deliberately 'restrict' Jedi though without telling them?
- Who in the Dev team was actively 'anti-Jedi' and leading the constant nerfing of the profession?
- What was the nature of the communications and feedback of the profession correspondents prior to and after the NGE?
- Why did Tiggs - Diane Migliaccio - leave SOE one week after the NGE was launched?
- Are there any interesting or relevant things you can tell us about your dealings (if you had any) with key SOE personalities including John Smedley, Chris Cao, Julio Torres, Raph Koster, Jeff Freeman, Nancy Macintyre and all the rest of the sorry crew?
...I await your insights into the world of SOE with great anticipation!
I only have 1 comment to this,
"Sony Online Entertainment - Where games go to die"
"Life is not judged by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
Hi suvroc. True, I can't answer some questions because I was not privy to those discussions, but I can tell you at least from my view what information was given to us prior to certain changes, and which changes were just made despite our substantial protest. I guess.
Changes did not need to happen, they were half-baked attempts to "improve" a game that was honestly pretty damn good at its core. I'm not here to tow any line, I'm here to give some brutal honesty. The CURB was a piece of crap, it was hardly even tested before being pushed out. I misspoke when I said I resigned before the NGE, I actually resigned before the CU because it was, for lack of better words, retarded.
I didn't sign the NDA because I didn't attend the correspondent meeting in Texas. They flew all the original correspondents out for the weekend and I declined to go. At the meeting they had everyone sign NDA's. they never followed up with me.
I was pretty much done playing when the CU was being pushed out. I tested it on the QA server and it was a load of crap, utterly broken and not fun at all. I think a lot of these changes were just ad hoc and on the fly to attempt to stop the massive hemmoraging of customers. The correspondent forum was nothing but threads and posts "STOP THE CU ITS GOING TO KILL THE GAME" over and over. Then Tiggs came on board and the devs pretty much locked things down and said either you tow the company line on this or quit. So I quit.
Hi suvroc. True, I can't answer some questions because I was not privy to those discussions, but I can tell you at least from my view what information was given to us prior to certain changes, and which changes were just made despite our substantial protest. I guess.
Changes did not need to happen, they were half-baked attempts to "improve" a game that was honestly pretty damn good at its core. I'm not here to tow any line, I'm here to give some brutal honesty. The CURB was a piece of crap, it was hardly even tested before being pushed out. I misspoke when I said I resigned before the NGE, I actually resigned before the CU because it was, for lack of better words, retarded.
I didn't sign the NDA because I didn't attend the correspondent meeting in Texas. They flew all the original correspondents out for the weekend and I declined to go. At the meeting they had everyone sign NDA's. they never followed up with me.
Cool.
I appreciate your candor and will look forward to reading more from your persepctive.
I'm pretty sure unlocking was always in the game, it was just a matter of time before someone ran through enough professions. I can't tell you how many nights I stayed up with excel spreadsheets trying to decipher some formula. It's possible it wasn't "turned on" but I was never told that.
I never heard anything about "rationing pearls and crystals" That may have happened in the CURB but I had pretty much quit by then. Personally I used to camp the crap out of that one imperial base for holocubes and solo krayts with my rifleman. I also had a huge mining business and would just buy crystals and pearls as needed so I'm not really sure I understand the rationing. They were just rare drops, if you knew where to look and yo uhad characters with the right skill and gear it only took time.
None of the devs were anti-jedi but the BH correspondent was a real hard ass in that respect. He probably caused more nerfs that anyone. He was just bitter, plain and simple because his class wasn't given a lot of attention. I didn't go to the correpondent meeting in texas, but from what I was told it was nothing but 3 days of Jedi bashing. Essentially everyone hated the fact the Jedi got so much attention while their professions were ignored. I don't blame them.
Again I wasn't involved by the NGE.
Tiggs? didn't know her that well, she was very professional though, someone probably could have been beating her over the head with a stick and you'd never know it by her posting demeanor. She was just PR as far as I knew.
I met most of those guys, Ralph Koster JustG was a great guy, totally professional and empathetic to the players. However most of the changes in the game came down from way up high, it was very evident that the designers were fighting with business requirements on a daily basis. Thunderheart was kind of a funny guy though, gamer turned dev out of beta. Always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder because he was kind of in dev limbo, not really a programmer or management yet he had a lot of responsibility.
oh and thank you for the kind words hubert. i really put everything I had into my "job" I pretty much spent every hour of the day trying to better the game and help people. It was an odd way to leave, I wasn't happy with the way the devs took the game but I was pretty satisfied that I did my best. Thanks again.
It was amazing the work that you put in. The contempt that gaming companies have for gamers who help, argue, market and ultimately make their games into experiences far beyond what those same companies ever planned has always amazed me.
If you want to know what the developers really thought of you, read this:
Post 55
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/185167/page/2
Sorry I personally don't recall you from back then but still....WELCOME to this section of this forums,
What I am wondering did you go by a different name? afcourse when seeing this information you gave I sort of try to find some past info on things you have done...asuming this name was also your Jedi Correspondent name? Only found one German website welcoming you as the new Jedi correspondent. And some you tube things with that name. Now this doesn't mean I doubt in who you say you are, but I would like to see some past info on things you indeed have done as a correspondent, mainly by seeing your reply which ain't much different then what we already know/knew or could have said ourselves, again don't get me wrong but thats just how I see it, hope you can provide some info on this. Then might want to ask you some questions mainly targeted at Jedi.
Or perhaps instead of only replying in your own topic maybe reply in some other topics, there are some that have made a few question-like topics, where it's mainly speculation, often with legit complaints (some just go to far) and you could start answering a few of them. (just maybe)
Well, I guess you could doubt who I am. Although, I'm not really sure why anyone would impersonate me, that would be pretty odd. I read through some of the threads but I don't think most people give a lick about my opinion. I saw Delta on one of the threads and I'm sure any of the old school correspondents would remember me. In fact, there's not really anything I know that they don't. I don't even know what possessed me to come post here, I just had a thought to google "Is Star Wars Galaxies dead" and it brought me here . lol.
I have pictures of all the correspondents and devs drinking together on a harddrive somewhere, but I don't think i quite feel the need to justify myself to that level
hey that's my line
SOE the MMO hospice
"We're where games go to die"
I was pretty much done playing when the CU was being pushed out. I tested it on the QA server and it was a load of crap, utterly broken and not fun at all. I think a lot of these changes were just ad hoc and on the fly to attempt to stop the massive hemmoraging of customers. The correspondent forum was nothing but threads and posts "STOP THE CU ITS GOING TO KILL THE GAME" over and over. Then Tiggs came on board and the devs pretty much locked things down and said either you tow the company line on this or quit. So I quit.
That is how i remember the CU, you speak the truth, welcome aboard Arjun.
I tried the NGE, I really wanted to like it, but, alas, it was the worst bitter pill to swallow I've ever had, worse than Codliver oil, trust me.
But, when the CU went live, and I spawned into Dantoonie, and saw so many players frozen in place, asking, pleading, and even yelling for help, I knew the great game that once was SWG was wiped away. After all, when an Ark/Dev, or, GM, spawns in, takes a quick twirl in one spot, then promplty spawns out, while everyone is asking how to get thier characters to move, and what is the Respects for, its just a sad state of affairs for a team of Devs, and, GMs, that run off to find refuge in a closed testing server of the new expansion pack, JLS, when your truely needed the most on the live servers to help players out who doesn't understand what has happened to thier game. And, to add insult to this, don't even answer petitions that were sent forth from players who part way through thier respects, a few of the servers crashed, resulting players losing thier respect points.
I remember you once just shortly after I became a SWG player, from a posting you did about the Jedi Robes, which made me decide to take my character to Jedi Master status at the time, unfortunately, I failed to reach even padawan by the time the CU was bandaged onto the servers, and, Jedi just didn't feel the same afterwards
I was pretty much done playing when the CU was being pushed out. I tested it on the QA server and it was a load of crap, utterly broken and not fun at all. I think a lot of these changes were just ad hoc and on the fly to attempt to stop the massive hemmoraging of customers. The correspondent forum was nothing but threads and posts "STOP THE CU ITS GOING TO KILL THE GAME" over and over. Then Tiggs came on board and the devs pretty much locked things down and said either you tow the company line on this or quit. So I quit.
Hello and Welcome to the Refuge, Arjun! I absolutely remember you - those were in the days I spent all day in the Jedi forums, and at night trying to figure out how to play the damn game.
I thought you did a great job to the best of your ability, as did most of the Correspondents, even the BH one, who I recall as feisty and grumpy but ultimately pretty fair.
It appears you may have misunderstood the question, so I'd like to respectfully help clarify it. If you recall, one of the things talked about heavily from about January 2004 until a year later, was called the Combat Update ReBalance, or CURB for short. It was pushed off until after JTL launched, and rightfully so, but kind of disappeared from public view until maybe October or November 2004. I recall GreenMarine sharing design ideas with all of us on the forums for the CURB. Around January 2005, though, we were told the CURB was shitcanned and the Combat Upgrade, or CU, would replace it. Naturally, this had the net effect of pissing a lot of people off, present company included.
So Fish's question was how the original design of the Combat Update ReBalance got changed to the Combat Upgrade in those several months after JTL (please correct me if I'm wrong, Fish). I do remember the official line was that combat was "too complex" and they needed to streamline it, but of course it turned out to be the horrible POS that most of us thought it was.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I remember Thunderheart emailing us a document on the CURB which essentially was a wish list of everything that was broken and how it could be fixed with a lot of very general concepts. Supposedly they were "working" on this for a while and there were no updates other than "we are still working on it" until BLAMMO they released the CU with pretty much no warning.
My view is, it could have been done. If we had someone at the helm with the right vision and balls to take it on, but we didn't. Haaden Christiansen or whatever his name was did nothing. Man, I get so mad thinking about all this, we had some real potential.
I'm pretty sure I remember the only things the CURB and the CU had in common were the letters C and U. I think they basically looked at the scope of work, and the timeline they had to do it in and said there's no way its going to happen lets just throw something else together and try to make it stick. I do remember an email though, but I don't think I have it anymore, would be interesting if I could dig it up.... however though I never signed an NDA I think republishing an internal document like that isn't something I would do sorry.
I basically never played the game again after the CU was released, I had made a test character on the QA server to try it and it was just so terrible that I realized there was little hope for the future. I packed up all my stuff, closed down all my harvesters etc etc and decided to take a break for a bit. This is off topic but I personally never even bought JTL, I thought it was also a pile of crap. There seemed to be a lot of people who thought it was amazing so I mostly kept my mouth shut in the correspondent forum. My expectations had to do with X-Wing vs. TIE fighter, and being able to LAND on a planet. As soon as it became "click here and presto you are in a shitty space sim" I think I made one or two posts trying to get them to extend development which fell on deaf ears.
To the point, no there was nothing about a level system AT ALL. Buffs were going to be altered, but I believed it was going to be a percentage based buff instead of a hard number for balance.
Nothing was said about the stats of creatures changing. If you can ask more and reference how it was before and after the CU it would help, my memory is very fuzzy on a lot of this I'm sorry to say but I do get some nuggets when prodded
To the point, no there was nothing about a level system AT ALL. Buffs were going to be altered, but I believed it was going to be a percentage based buff instead of a hard number for balance.
Nothing was said about the stats of creatures changing. If you can ask more and reference how it was before and after the CU it would help, my memory is very fuzzy on a lot of this I'm sorry to say but I do get some nuggets when prodded
IIRC (I was on the marksman CURB team) the biggest single change was that you'd have to get all three pools down to zero to incap.
Of course, this would have taken some time to do, and the biggest single complaint that LA had was combat wasn't fast like stormtroopers blasting away down the hallway of the Death Star detention cell.
The levels came totally out of nowhere, never in the CURB process was that particular change, perhaps the most radical of all the changes, every mentioned.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
To the point, no there was nothing about a level system AT ALL. Buffs were going to be altered, but I believed it was going to be a percentage based buff instead of a hard number for balance.
Nothing was said about the stats of creatures changing. If you can ask more and reference how it was before and after the CU it would help, my memory is very fuzzy on a lot of this I'm sorry to say but I do get some nuggets when prodded
IIRC (I was on the marksman CURB team) the biggest single change was that you'd have to get all three pools down to zero to incap.
Of course, this would have taken some time to do, and the biggest single complaint that LA had was combat wasn't fast like stormtroopers blasting away down the hallway of the Death Star detention cell.
The levels came totally out of nowhere, never in the CURB process was that particular change, perhaps the most radical of all the changes, every mentioned.
The levels were brought in because the A Team of Developers, strategic, systematic and visionary, who actually built SWG were fired because they were too expensive and the B Team of Developers, ordinary, uncommitted and short-sighted, whon were brought in between six months and a year after launch couldn't understand how the game worked unless they were allowed to put in levels.
Can't argue with this.
There was a brilliant post on the old official forums, now nerfed into non-existence, that analyzed why the levels were stupid and worked against the publically stated reasons for the CU. IIRC it was called "A design variance" or something like that. It explained why levels were imposed on the CU.
One that should not be underestimated was the demand of the Lucas Empire that the CU be ready to go to coincide with the release of Ep III, as part of the global marketing blitz for that release. A level system made this possible to do quickly and cheaply, as opposed to balancing all the hundreds of mobs on ten planets for three stat pools that they'd have to do with the existing system.
Rumor has had it that Gordon Walton (SOE Tyrant) left SOE because he was told that contrary to promises that the CU would be put into public testing only when it was ready, it would be put out in time for the Ep III release.
Walton balked at this craven marketing asshat driven stupidity.
The irony here is that Lucas in effect imposed the same sort of madness from cretins in suits on SWG that he faced when in post production for Ep IV.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Wow Arjun Thakur, you sound like me (were you Songuku?)
Anyway - I started playing in Oct 03 and all I wanted was to open my Jedi slot. Almost every minute I played the game (which was a lot of minutes) was dedicated to opening the Jedi. Unfortunately for me, it took about a year and a half if I remember correctly.
My friends were all shocked when I didn't buy JTL. I just told them, it has nothing to do with being a Jedi so I don't care.
So I FINALLY opened my slot - after so many months of busting my ass. I had to go through that crappy village - the worst storyline I've ever seen in a game. Why weren't the SWG purists who were constantly complaining about the game not following the canon not all over the place about that? I think the twelve year old who wrote that should be slapped. But I digress.
Anyway all I did was grind my stupid Jedi for months and months and months. I only got a handful of levels. I started to get bored - this was on the heels of the stupid grind to unlock the Jedi character (for me anyway). So I decided to go out with some friends and start risking being seen publically.
The handfull of levels did NOTHING. I couldn't take out any of the NPCs we were fighting and there was an army of bounty hunters that killed me after our adventures. That was less than a week before the CU came out.
Then I started hearing stories about needing to group to do missions. Supposedly characters in your group would give you visibility if you pulled your lightsaber in front of them. And I knew it was finished. There is NO WAY I could grind my fledgling Jedi up after the CU hit.
Worst still - they made Lightsabers energy weapons, meaning armor could then resist them. So every BH hunting you could resist your attack. Meanwhile Jedi still couldn't wear armor.
And the same band of 12 year old rejects who came up with the village also decided to give Lightsabers extra damage based on their color (frost damage for blue, heat damage for red, and so on.) Give me a BREAK.
After working so hard and being so loyal to get kicked to the CURB like this? What a miserable slap in the face.
Some of my friends thought I was "being a baby" when I quit over the CU. I stopped talking to them but can't help but wonder what these same people thought of the NGE. *grins*
Can't argue with this.
There was a brilliant post on the old official forums, now nerfed into non-existence, that analyzed why the levels were stupid and worked against the publically stated reasons for the CU. IIRC it was called "A design variance" or something like that. It explained why levels were imposed on the CU.
One that should not be underestimated was the demand of the Lucas Empire that the CU be ready to go to coincide with the release of Ep III, as part of the global marketing blitz for that release. A level system made this possible to do quickly and cheaply, as opposed to balancing all the hundreds of mobs on ten planets for three stat pools that they'd have to do with the existing system.
Rumor has had it that Gordon Walton (SOE Tyrant) left SOE because he was told that contrary to promises that the CU would be put into public testing only when it was ready, it would be put out in time for the Ep III release.
Walton balked at this craven marketing asshat driven stupidity.
The irony here is that Lucas in effect imposed the same sort of madness from cretins in suits on SWG that he faced when in post production for Ep IV.
When the CU first came out, I thought Sony was trying to copy the "success" of EQ2...even as EQ2 was dumping it's "you have to have a group to survive" style of playing...