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You really just sat in camps and had fun? A new perspective.
ArcAngel3
Member Posts: 2,931
Well as I've mentioned in another thread, I'm marking sociology essays lol. At the moment I'm taking a much needed break.
However, some of the things I'm reading put Helios' comments and player reactions into a new perspective for me--a sociological one of course 
Tbh, I don't think all of the animosity in response to his camp comment was generated by the comment itself. Some of it was, sure, but not all the ferocious intensity. Here's what I'm thinking:
Players were very, very frustrated by SOE's apparent disconnect with their players. Very specifically, we were told by them and LEC that we wanted the NGE. We were also then told that we liked the NGE. Later, we found out from 2 former developers that this was all marketting spin. At first though, it just seemed, to some, like a massive disconnect between the service provider and the players.
We had the same feeling of disconnect when people had input in the the CURB, and then we ended up with the unwanted combat "upgrade."
Enter Helios' comment about camps. This comment, in my mind, served as a lightning rod for all of the outrage connected with the CU, the NGE, and the associated marketting spin.
Was Helios disconnected from the players? Well obviously to some extent he was (to some of us), or he wouldn't have asked the question. I don't think, however, that the intensity of the response was all about him, or his comment.
Also, as it turns out, the problem wasn't really a disconnect at all. We were told that non-player focus groups influenced the NGE decision. We were also told that SOE management knew current players would largely hate the NGE, and that most of us might leave. There's no disconnect here. This sounds more like a calculated decision to risk one group of players (us) in favour of another, hopefully larger group.
So, people may dislike Helios' posts etc., (you're entitled, and I don't want to tell people how to feel) but I think I see the global reaction to his camp comment in a new light. I think the intensity of the reaction for some of us, may have been more properly directed at SOE's calculated management decisions.
Having said that, it's a New Year, and an opportunity for resolutions lol, maybe even from Smed . I believe in forgiveness, but trust has to be earned through an obvious pattern of changed behaviour. I don't think I've seen that just yet.
Comments
I never got that from anything he posted, simply because of his position as a developer (and not the lead one until after NGE). Everyone knew at that point it was the suits that caused the CU and NGE, not the devs.
I saw his comments as simply proving to the world what many already knew -- that he was completely and totally out of touch with the playerbase, moreso than any lead dev I've experienced, before him or after. As much as Blixtev isn't well-liked around here, he was way better than Helios.
So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys...I was terrified. But I pressed on, and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment ... I was a marine biologist.
Let me give you my take on this.
At the time SWG was launched, I worked at a local telephone company. One of my primary responsibilties was dealing with reports of trouble. I used our telephone system to call our customers. I experienced some of the issues they did. I also had a totally "clean" off the local baby bell phone, totally independent of our network as a sort of sanity check on our network.
Part of my job was using the system and reporting issues as I encountered them, to demonstrate to techs that it wasn't the imagination of the customers that they had problems with the system.
I had hoped that SWG designers, developers, coders, CSRs and, yes, suits, were playing the game and noting bugs and reporting them, that insiders were telling insiders that there were issues based on their play of the game.
When Helios made the comment about the camps, that bubble was annihilated. It became painfully obvious that these guys were not using their own product, and therefore could not relate to issues in their own product. When they tried to explain their design and development decisions via ThunderHeart, it was painfully obvious that they were unfamiliar with basic game functions, like summoning a pet or a mount or a vehicle. You could only do this in three places: cities, within a 30 or so meter radius of your declared residence, or in a camp. The developers were apparently NOT FAMILIAR with this basic function of camps, oh, and mind you at the time, only someone with the novice scout skill (which cost 15 skill points) could throw up a camp.
So, when Joe Armorsmith is out riding his swoop on Dathomir to go tend to a chemical harvester in the middle of aggro rancor and gaping spider hunter country, and their speeder poofed out from beneath them (which speeders did right after they were introducted) at random, they were SCREWED. If they did not have scout skills, they could not unpoof their speeder. They had to walk back to civilization, there were no ITVs to safely deposit you back at the trade outpost, you know.
This on top of the fact that they had no idea what a social feature the camps were. A place to rest and relax after taking out the tenth lair of blurrgs/arachnes/crazy blood pigs/wacked out mereks etc on Endor, for example. Or, perchance, for some entertainer to cure the black bar enducing attacks of mantigrue screechers. The entertainer HAD to have a camp to do this, mind you...
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
EXACTLY!!
I know it's not the typical case but I honestly feel that if you believe in the product you are selling, you should USE it and experience it as others do to get a better feeling and understanding of what the majority likes, dislikes, and wants.
Sadly I have seen more devs talk about playing WoW more than SWG.
Thanks Sio, now I'm even further enlightened about the whole disconnect issue. I'll have to revise my opinion to say that apparently there was a massive disconnect AND management screwed us lol. Seems like it was both, not either/or. I stand corrected.
I do still see Helios' comment as a lightning rod for all the bad feelings though. Unfortunate word choice in a very hostile environment and all that.
What Helios' unfortunate comment was just gel a vague feeling by many players that the devs were not paying attention to their own game.
Let me relate another early SWG misadventure, which is intimately related to the entire "camps are fun?" thing.
Being able to "call" a pet (be it critter, droid, or factional) or later a vehicle was one of the most important functions of the camp.
The problem was that you couldn't just toss up a camp anywhere. There were numerous restrictions on camp erection. You couldn't be in a "metropolitan" area. Now these included areas within a certain radius of cities, and the radius varied from city to city. The main reason that Kaadara on Naboo was BH central was that it had a very small "no call/no build" radius, so you didn't have to travel far from the city to launch your droid for tracing biosigns, which told you what planet your mark was on. Originally, Dearic on Talus had a HUGE "no call/no build" radius around it, which meant of CHs, if for some reason your pet poofed back into the datapad (and there were plenty of bugs that would result in this) you had to travel a significant distance toward or away from the city to either call a pet (inside the "city limits") or toss up a camp (outside of the "no build" zone).
Most major POIs are in the middle of "metropolitan" zones, for good reason. You can't erect structures in "metropolitan" zones...so, for example, you can't have harvesters planted around the Woolamander Palace on Yavin, or right next to the Night Sister Labor Camp on Dathomir. No one can block access to a Force shrine on any planet because there's a radius of "metropolitan zone" around them. But aside from that, camps couldn't be tossed up near a player structure, which meant you had to spend time finding someplace to toss up a camp to get back a poofed pet,one that disappeared from the world due to a bug concerning server boundaries, and there were many of these in early SWG, they caused armor to change stats as well. It was a wild and crazy time
When vehicles were introduced, one of their restirctions was that they were essentially another flavor of pet, so you could call them under the rules I indicated in my previous post. This was a problem for a lot of players whose templates did not include novice scout. 15 skill points out of 250 was a lot for some crafter trying to get full master merchant, master armor or weaponsmith or chef or tailor, and perhaps have full master artisan skills (to be able to craft vehichles). It was a hell of a lot for someone working on a full defense stacking build. It was NON EXISTENT for anyone force sensitive prior to publish 9, which eliminated the unlock slot as the Jedi slot (which only could train Force skills, which did not include tossing up a camp!) and just made it a reward for doing enough Village stuff to unlock the padawan trials.
Well the other problem with vehicles when they first came out, as I alluded to earlier, was that they were bugged and would disappear from beneath you as you were riding along, potentiall stranding you in the middle of nowhere. When vehicles first came out they were an ideal method of traveling even near aggro mobs which would get a shot off at you or run after you before losing interest and you're not in any serious danger. A vehicle disapperaing beneath you tossed a monkeywrench in this approach, especially if you didn't have the ability to toss up a camp to get your vehicle back...assuming you could find the right space to toss one up!
Now, the issues with camps being required to to call pets and petlike objects had been raised months before by the hated Creature Handlers, who were told, basically, to STFU because the restrictions were due to "exploits and griefing situations" that the developers never seemed to be able to articulate in any way. The system was evenually changed so you didn't need a camp to call pets, but time restrictions were placed on creature pets for fear that CHs might somehow break other rules specifically put in place to prevent things like "rotating" pets in combat. But it was obvious in the entire debate that the devs simply were not familiar with camps, pet calling restrictions, camp erection restrictions, and several other basic game functions. Because the explanations they gave for why things were as they were did not make sense if you were familiar with the basic rules of the game on erecting camps and calling pets.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
ill add a few more (since i was a doc)
to heal wounds you needed a medical bay or... a medical droid and you could only call those out in camps whenyou where out in the wild. so when it was rest time after a good ancient krayt battle. tracker rangers would pop out a bad ass camp with chairs and crafting facilities, so docs can make more stims, pop out their med droid, refresh the buffs, heal wounds, while entertainers would get rid of the black mind bar.
these camps had chairs and a camp fire, for the low ends, and the high end camps looked more like millitary outposts with stations and fancy chairs and a large tarp. with plenty of sitting room to sit of group of 15-20 people (yes a group of 15-20 people i said it...)
and then to pick everything up freiken fast because there is a krayt that is running towards your camp! (yes a bit of comedy relief.)
and when all was over a camp was needed for every one to unpack their vehicles to get back to the nearest outpost or city.
now the new mmos healers can heal anything anywhere. so a rest spot just means anywhere as long as the 6-8 man group is out of agro range. whoever said that new mmos where not overly simplistic was totally wrong.
Camps for Krayt hunters is an excellent example of why camps were important. You could apply this to kimogilla hunting on Lok, or Peko Peko Alb hunting on Naboo. A medic/doc/combat medic could heal/buff in a camp with or without their healing droid, but the droid enhanced heals and buffs so you always called it out. Unless you had it tagging along with you on the long (pre vehicle/mount) trek to the hunting ground, you needed the camp to bring it into the world. Mind you that pet pathing was less than optimal, too, which meant you often did not have your healing droid tagging along behind you.
One of the things that the advanced Ranger camps were supposed to do according to the manual was repel aggro creatures. This did not work, as Squal'Zell noted with Krayts (major fun there!) but I can recall crazed durnis breaching the walls of the most advanced ranger camps on Corellia as well. The aggro repell function DID NOT WORK, and the devs never bothered to even attempt to make it work. Ranger was not an important profession like, say, oh, I don't know, it starts with a J....
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
The thing is you can look at alot of features being really boring like camps and waiting at the starport for 10 mins or a total player based economy where you had to go to player vendors to buy stuff and think WOW that is boring. However for me it wasn't one feature on its own that stood out but it was all these little features that made the community close and balanced the game. The problem wasn't with the core mechanics of the game but the failure of SOE developers to add in content and fix issues like the buffs and comp armour.
I remember when I first started playing SWG we used to have to group up to do content in the game and everything was really hard. However over time suddenly people worked out how to make the best stuff so you could solo everything and thats where the whole comp armour and doc buffs came in and frigging it ruined the whole game and the developers never stuck caps on it to fix it.....
Then they started to add in game breaking things like ADK's and holocrons which while only small things had such a bad effect on the game and they never got removed.
I think the worst thing of all though is when they cut down the shuttle and starport times and then eventually just let you instant jump to anywhere you wanted and then finally what they have now, instant jump to anywhere you want even if your ship isn't there and using instant trave vehicles from anywhere on the planet.
These things took away such a simple feature that you'd think would be annoying of having to wait 10 mins at a Starport. However when you played the game this one simple feature turned out to be where I made most of my friends and got chatting to people and had duels and also what decided alot of PVP because the ship wasn't at the starport so you had to run outta there and try to hide and shit... now you just run there and it'll always be there.
Theres no sense of community anymore because they've taken away all these social aspects.
Even things like the professions all needing eachother to play was an amazing feature which kept the community together but now however you don't ever need to talk to people and alot of people are just out on their own and you never see them because theres no decay or death penalty and no BF and things like that.
I just wish'd that SWG was based on Star Wars because we all know Lucas Arts wanted it this way and that Raph Koster stayed working on the project because he understood what we wanted but it is my understanding that he left at the end of 03 because he didn't like what Lucas Arts had in mind and then left SOE altogether because he was fedup with their management.
Absolutely!
There were no problems in pre-CU that couldn't be addressed and the biggest issue with the game came down to buffs and those went completely unaddressed.
Buffs made encumbrance meaningless. It made combat specials completely "unspecial". It made a huge part of crafting (enumbrance) totally ignored. It made only one option to weapons - highest damage possible. They made soloing some of the toughest mobs in the game possible.
A very simple fix was to remove secondary stat buffs and pre-CU suddenly became a very different game!
Absolutely!
There were no problems in pre-CU that couldn't be addressed and the biggest issue with the game came down to buffs and those went completely unaddressed.
Buffs made encumbrance meaningless. It made combat specials completely "unspecial". It made a huge part of crafting (enumbrance) totally ignored. It made only one option to weapons - highest damage possible. They made soloing some of the toughest mobs in the game possible.
A very simple fix was to remove secondary stat buffs and pre-CU suddenly became a very different game!
I like the way buffs work in the game now.
They're totally optional and you don't need them to do basic tasks but to go up against elites you'll need them and in PVP you'll need them to give you an edge but they arn't vital to you playing. Also I like how you can't AFK Buff anymore which is something SWG always needed to do which is get rid of AFK buff bots. you have to tell the entertainer what you want which is great for the social game and you build up relationships with people and over time they remember what you have. Also Medics play a buffing role on the battlefield with the quick 30 min buffs so you need them by your side and they ain't just dotting machines.
That just leaves doctors which could have been used to heal wounds and change stats but also you could have given entertainers mind buffs and BF and doctors Health and Action buffs using the NGE system.
Would have been a much better system than what the pre cu had but they never fixed it and it was what everyone was asking for and all SOE could do is patch Jedi some more which was a profession that should never have been in the game in the first place.
there was a very similar comment made 'bout CH after it was RIP with NGE release... somethin' like there was only 6% CH.
never mind the fact that ppl would buy pets and mounts from CHs and didn't have to be CHs in order to use 'em..
it's only 6% on the paper.. not a very big number but there's so much more than just that to CH profession...
comments like this from $0e had epic ignorance painted in pink all over 'em.
Yeh and if they didn't make CH useless then more people would have used it and the proof of that is in 2003 with Pokemon wars.
Not true John, my son still plays and there's 2 buff bots in the local starport, 1 for Imp's and 1 for Reb's. You can't get the buff's tailored like you can with an entertainer, all you get is the stock / standard (for his guild) Pvp buff, but they are still present in game.
Cutting down the starport / shuttle wait times did more to kill the social side of the game than anything else I could think of. My wife lived in the Cantina's dancing, but I never liked the lag in there so my socializing was at the starports and shuttles while I waited. I'd pull out my 'sax' and start wailing and singing away.
Nebless - the singing dwarf bothian on Kett
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Maybe if you learned to move on from "injustices" inflicted upon you through a mere entertainment medium almost three years ago, you might be able to forgive a mistake a company made in customer service management. I played SWG all the way up to the NGE - quitting right after its release (I guess that means I missed out on a whopping $7.50 of that $15.00 monthly fee I paid). Hah, this is too ridiculous - my apologies.
SOE never bothered to connect with the players who believed in the game's original vision because they themselves didn't believe in it.
I'm sorry, couldn't tell who you were directing your comment to. If me, I played up to Dec 07. Started Oct of the release year. Only dropped because the solo PvE 'fun' factor wasn't there anymore.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
That's a lot of words to use to just tell us to get over it...
This is a "heady" post, but I think I can explain why this game is so boring compared with pre-CU.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that pre-CU combat was much more exciting than NGE combat. The difference has very little to do with the interface, or the speed, or the particle effects. The thing that made pre-CU combat more exciting were the camps, the travel times, the shuttleport waits, and battle fatigue.
But how can the "boring" parts make pre-CU more exciting? It's actually very simple. Like a good drama, early SWG knew that in order to create excitement, one needs to start from a position of normalcy. In order for the times of high drama to feel high, there has to be times of low drama. Otherwise, the exciting parts (like combat) don't feel exciting. They feel routine. And if your combat feels routine, your game starts to feel like a "grind," because if combat isn't exciting, there's no other place a developer can take a player to regain a sense of excitement.
Now the key to a good drama is not to make the low drama times "boring," and you'll find that in the best films (including Star Wars films), the "low drama" times are some of the best and more memorable scenes. That's because these are the times when the audience is most receptive to appreciating the underlying theme of the drama. It gives the audience some perspective to value where they've been and where they are going.
But SWG-NGE? There is no drama there, no greater theme there, no sense of journey there--and consequently--no excitement there. It is merely pushing around a boring toon killing boring MOBs in boring mathematical calculations of the combat engine; things that are supposed to be exciting, but lost all excitement the moment it started becoming "routine."
So what's the lesson here? The reason Helios doesn't get it is that he understands games, but has no conception of drama. The reason camps are important has nothing to do with how "fun" or "not fun" they intrinsically are. The reason camps are important is because without camps, your combat doesn't seem all that special. I don't care whether your combat is FPS, with tons of explosions, über monsters, and cool graphics. Without things like camps to separate one high-action time from another, all it will be is one repetitive grind fest with no sense of purpose. It would be like one of those multi-million dollar action flicks that is forgotten about in a few weeks. In other words, combat alone, no matter how well done, doesn't create excitement. A good balance of high-action times and well-designed low action times does.
/endLecture
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
If you read (or understood) the OP, you might see that this is a bit of an olive branch to Helios on one hand, and an analysis of some of the sociology behind why he became the focal point for so much anger those 3 years ago.
To reiterate, briefly, it appears that one comment he made became a lightning rod for all the frustration people felt over the apparent disconnect between SOE and it's playerbase. He appeared to have a part to play in the disconnect certainly, but his one comment did not generate the intensity of the response. That had been building for a long time. It just became focused on him, which is why I chose the metaphor of a lightning rod.
Also, if you read further in the thread, you'd see the forgiveness element for past management decisions (bitterness eats the soul of the one who nurtures it, while leaving the offender untouched). You'd also see a respectful thought about how SOE management might consider building trust with MMO gamers.
All in all, your assumption that ongoing anger and unforgiveness are motivating factors for this post, appears to be off target. Maybe this follow up post will help put things in context.
Also, I think you fail to understand some of the community dynamics associated with MMOs that go beyond mere individual entertainment. MMOs form communities of people that have emotional connections and investments. Dismantling the focal point of this community (as was done in SWG) evidently can have far-reaching social repercussions. When this broader perspective is embraced, I think a lot can be learned about people and MMO service provision as "community management."
What you people don't remember - and this is something that 'Kai' has kept very quiet about - is that he was the developer who specifically pushed for the reduction of jedi down into a 'normal' class, a key component of the NGE and a horrible development for those many of us who had spent months and even years getting, grinding and supporting our jedi.
What is worse is that this rotten, dishonest man was in charge of the deliberate sabotage - uh, 'rebalancing' - of Jedi in the long period before the NGE. Who was responsible for nerfing Jedi specials? Helios. Who ensured that premium krayt pearls no longer dropped? Helios? Who downgraded all Jedi defence stats? Helios. Who told one attendee at a 2005 Con that 'Jedi never should have been an alpha class'? Helios. Well, god rot him.
Yes, I totally agree
. Fun post. Also, the camps added an element of immersion and role-play to the game. This was fun on a social-emotional level, and helped build community between players. This was very rewarding in numerous intangible ways. Add to that the technical importance of camps to the game mechanics (like Sio has pointed out) and you can clearly see just how important they were, on practically every level.
Point taken, feelings respected, and thank you for the information. It seems like his camp comment may have been a lightning rod for feelings around the disconnect. It also seems that people had specific (and very understandable) reasons for not appreciating how he shaped their experience.
Excellent post Beatnik!
what it comes down to:
the players were reeling from having the rug pulled out from under us. erased were our accomplishments,items, and in some cases our characters. gone was money paid for an expansion now worthless and some lost as much as a years worth of sub money. at this point the damage was done. both to our trust and soe. however if we just had a post or two from some devs explaining things and maybe a "this is what soe management has decided to do" or maybe a " as a mmo player myself i understand how this must feel" at least we would have felt like someone at soe gave a damn. but no. they twisted the knife. helios and others knew the reaction they would get from their respective assinine comments. they deserve to wear the scarlet nge.
Excellent post Beatnik!
agreed. if we were to ever bring soe to court beatnik is our mouthpeice!