In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight.
Probably a fair chunk of them though, me included and the best counter argument against this myth that pre-cu players are all hyper intelligent mmo players that appreciate the finer things in their games is destroyed by the fact that at some time or another most have played WoW, lots still do in fact.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
Folks tend to have short memories and some werent around for all the lies. So here's a list of lies SOE has told us. Also please consider sticking this
1. SWG wont launch until its ready - SOE repeatedly told us this game wont launch until its ready to go. This early on was to include space, JTL wasnt ever supposed to be an expansion. Lets also not forget key components not included at launch like player cities, vehicles, and jedi. As a beta player, I still remember the notice in beta forum that the game was going gold in 2 weeks. Everyone agreed it was a huge mistake but SOE ignored us.
2. Jedi - We all know that jedi was NEVER possible at launch. Yet SOE made post after post dangling that carrot and offering encouragement. They told us to get married, explore every world, build a home, etc. It made some think that jedi was some random amazing quest to be discovered. Soon though we learned the truth when SOE patched in several .tre files with obvious jedi implications 5 months after launch. Then the day after a patch several unlocked all at once.
3. Rebel Theme Park - Sorta ties into # 1 as it wasnt ready either. However SOE repeatedly lied about the theme park. If you recall, it was broken after Han's quests. Han tells us to seek out Lt. Lance on Dantooine, but there isnt any Lt. Lance anywhere. SOE tells us its working as intended despite nobody having found Lt. Lance after months and month of looking (my guild personally had several major expedition searches done over many weekends looking for him). Suddenly we learn the truth after a patch...Han now tells us to seek out Ackbar on Dantooine and the once empty abandoned rebel base now has several rebel nps in there. My guild who had followed the game for years in development was soooo pissed off they immediately disbanded and quit.
A. The Combat upgrade (curb) was top priority - Remember how SOE told us over and over again that the CURB was its number 1 focus. It would be first to get completed over the JTL expansion.
B. There were two separate teams working on JTL and the CURB.
We later learn both are lies. JTL gets pushed over the combat fixes AND we find out the CURB team has been merged with the JTL team. Whats really insulting is SOE goes on a PR campaign and tells the public that we players demanded JTL first. Another fat lie as every poll posted strongly stated we wanted the CURB first.
5. Combat Revamp - whatever you want to call it, this was meant as a reward for the vets who stayed around and played a broken game. Talk about a slap in the face when SOE announces the CU...a system as the devs told me at Celebration 3 was meant to "have a more broad appeal". This was SOE's 1st attempt at screwing over its current community for the wow crowd. All the promised fixes never happened. The armorsmith rep quit and was banned after he started a massive protest over changes they never asked for. In fact the CU brings in many more bugs than it fixes and never balanced anything.
6. The CU is here to stay - Smedley comes and makes his first post on swg forums asking for calm and patience. He states that in 6 months the cu will be working as intended so give them time to make things right. FAT LIE...during that time the NGE is either in design stages or already being worked on.
7. FRS - CU disables the end-game for jedi, our force ranking system. SOE tells us its being worked on. Later they state its al most done and just awaits final approval from LA. Of course we learn there wont ever be a FRS system and the nerfs we've been getting oover the past 6 months were done on purpose to weaken jedi into a regular class. For me personally, this is one of the more disgusting lies as it was obviously done to keep us jedi players paying.
8. Jabba Palace disappears - The last patch before the NGE garbage makes Jabba's palace completely disappear. SOE acts surprised and promises a fix is coming..another fat lie as we learn why after the nge hits. Jabba's palace was taken out to implement th new nge quests.
9. village breaks - Same patch breaks the village and the old man stops visiting people. SOE again lies to cover its tracks and tells us its being looked at. Of course it was just a cover for the nge.
10. Expansion - SOE presells an expansion with several promised features. One desired item is a creature handler necklace that will allow for the taming of higher lvl pets. Im not sure if that necklace was ever found but it didnt matter because 1 stinkin day after the nge launched Torres of LA announces the revamp of the game and removal of over 24 professions.
11. starter kit - SOE tells us the starter kit is an eroneous listing and will be removed. They deny the rumors of impending changes.
12. SOE tells us fixes will be faster. SOE says the whole reason behind the nge was to make balancing the game easier and would allow for faster publish fixes. In fact, it has slowed the game down to a crawl as publishes now seem to come every 4 months as opposed to almost monthly before the nge.
13. smuggler revamp - this one could have its own page on broken promises and lies.
14. Capitol ships - a dev at a fanfest shows the players capitol ships he has been working on. Later on SOE tells (months and months later) that it was just a dev fooling around with his laptop and this was never being considered. Of course SOE could have tol the players this months earlier rather than ignore the posts asking for more information. To flyboys, the capitol ship dream was their FRS system...ie end-game content they so very much wanted. It didnt hurt SOE to once again lie a little and let people keep paying while they waited for features that would never ever happen.
15. profession revamps - ranger comes to my mind foremost because my alt was a master ranger for years. It was painful to see rangers slowly dwindling in numbers as the profession remained broken forever. I still recall one of the camo kits (i think it was for Lok) required a type of meat to contruct, only problem was that meat didnt even exist ! And the final tease, SOE says ranger is the next revamp coming in the next publish...oops the next publish turned out to be the NGE.
Then there were the professions that got sorely needed revamps weeks before the nge hit. Why did SOE even bother to revamp squad leader if they were going to turn around and remove the profession entirely a few weeks later ? Maybe it was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.
16. Broken quests - How many times did SOE tell us a fix was in the works and it either never came or it took a year to do. And even when they finally did fix something like the Hermit quests, they turn right around and re-break them weeks later. My personal pet peeve for broken quests was the ones at the gungan sacred place. It pissed me off that not only were the quests incomplete, one of the npc's chat bubble was blank ! How tough would it have been to code in some simple words ? These quests were broken in beta, remained busted through launch right up to the nge.
The NGE broke several old quests as well. When I tried the 21 day free trial I started the krayt skull quests, some of my favorites with a great storyline. I got to the last part where I needed to talk to Darklighter only to my surprise he has no chat option. The NGE is 1 year old and Im assuming this quest remains broken, pathetic.
17. 6 month promises - Smedley has repeatedly made the 6 month promise for fixes. His very 1st post following the CU debacle asked the players to give SOE 6 months to get things fully working. He then makes the same promise after the NGE launches, needing 6 more months. Ironically, the post after nge is almost identical to the cu one (asking for time to fix things) and yet somehow the gullible desperate players buy into it AGAIN. Later SOE promises major revamps to each profession each coming within a month or two o each other. Later after MONTHS of no publishes and silence (the swg forums were literally rioting), SOE announces yet ANOTHER series of profession revamps. Typically, the pathetic player base thanks SOE devs in posts for answering their concerns. A year into the NGE, it remains broken, unfinished, with no end in site.
18. Item Conversion - Recall that the players were very concerned over losing their gear with the coming CU. We were repeatedly told that everything would convert properly. If you had an exceptional weapon with amazing stats, it would convert to an equal type of weapon for the CU. They were full of crap though and not only did our exceptional weapons and armor NOT convert properly, in many cases we now couldnt even equip them anymore !!!
CA's and AA's didnt convert because SOE took out several stats like dizzy, knockdown, the poison and disease resists, etc. Players that spent years and millions of credits to collect were overnight ruined. The final insult in classic SOE fashion, SOE adds in melee def and ranged def clothing that tailors can craft. They didnt even bother to take into account the thousands of players who spent their credits by the millions to get these things as ca/aa drops. A +12 melee def tape would possibly sell for 15-20 million, 1 day after the cu and a player now can buy a shirt with +17 melee AND ranged defense !!! So much for really being concerned with ca/aa conversions.
RIS Armor - Not only did the conversion for this armor become crap, it also got very common. I and some friends of mine were the few around who had even had any ris armor. Before the revamps, RIS armor was something one could try and get as a trophy to their hard work and dedication. Plus it took real skill to get. You had to know where the components dropped. You had to know spawn rates. You had to know where to find the giant dune kimos. You had to find addon components like shards to boost the completed armor's stats. In essence, it was a lot of hard work for players that yet again was totally tossed out the door. My ris helmet once had offers of 15 million credits, suddenly its for sale on vendors for 15k bleh.
BE Tissues - nge takes out bio-engineers and their tissues that make chef foods better. Now something that was once extremely common is the rarest most sought after item by crafters. And since food is a consumable, eventually there will be no more bio tissues around.
The theme here of course is SOE didnt give a damn about how their revamps would hurt or help their CURRENT community. I seriously doubt based on the evidence that they even looked at the changes, much less tried to ensure the conversion wouldnt screw us.
19. pearl drops - sometime into the cu pearl drops got really messed up. At first, over a weekend flawless and premium pearls are dropping like crazy and not just off krayts. Soon SOE hotpatches a "fix" in to correct whatever they were trying to fix before and the pearls stop dropping. Now premiums and flawless dont drop anymore. SOE responds to player concerns by telling them its working as intended. Later they admit there "might" be a problem but there were other things more important to fix. SOE lies and promises its being looked into.
According to my source, the pearl drops were broken or gated on purpose. This was done to remove the elite power items so jedi could be better balanced for the nge. I hear sometime
20. Gating content - According to a source who wrote a letter to CBS newsbag, SOE purposely gates its content to finish it. In other words, SOE breaks something to hide the fact that it remains unfinished. Why would SOE do this ? Well according to this person, it was done to basically use player subscription fees to pay for the finished development of that content. This source reported that this was done repeatedly for EQ1 expansions. Devs would then lie on the forums claiming that a fix was being worked on when in fact it was busted on purpose.
This of course is outrageous but not unexpected by SOE. To take subscriber money and finish something that the money from the expansion was already supposed to have paid for is unforgivable. Smedley responded on some other site he posts on that this was a fabrication and SOE had (allow me to quote) never once released an unfinished product to the public LOL. This same person later admits the nge is unfinished...oh and the CU is unfinished...my oh my how the lies grow.
From the original message "Once Combat Upgrade is done, we will immediately work on upgrading all the non-combat professions in another series of publishes.".
That paragraph lays out our high level Live development strategy. I'm sure every time in the past a mention was made of something we intended to do it was true -at that moment-. But the team does not set all the priorities for the game and things have changed quickly and often since launch. LucasArts and we are aligned on this development strategy and we are going to make it happen by hook or crook. If anything holds us up or slows us down, we will let the community know.
Combat Upgrade is the basis we need in place before revamping the other professions. And we need all the professions to be solid to build a complete and compelling GCW, because it will affect everyone. We will do all this as quickly as we know how, but it will be high quality first and foremost.
LOL I remember that response by TH and they even said they wanted to release the CU BEFORE JTL, you also forgot another one: Smedley said on the forums that "the combat upgrade is here to stay" in early Octobor- about 3 weeks before the NGE went live.
Cookie cutter templates only existed for ppl who PVP'd and that goes for any game but atleast you still had freedom to be what you wanted. For me who just did the PVE side of things I could be whatever I wanted and just dabbbled in things I found fun that were really gimped but that didn't matter in PVE.
SOE is a company, pure and simple. People act like they shot their mom and got their dog pregnant. They didn’t lie to anyone, unless you have direct contact with any of them. They made business decisions based on marketing which changes like the wind. And I am not trying to stick up for SOE. Most of their games are ok, but nothing great. What I don’t get is all the people still harping on the same subject for years, freaking NGE. If you don’t like a change, don’t pay for it and don’t play it. Leave the company; stop giving your money to them. But whining about something that happened that long ago is psychotic. I have seen people get over death of a loved one quicker.
It's probably a mistake to think most people got bent out of shape about one unwanted revamp. You'd need a few pages probably to list all the ways people felt (and still feel) shafted by this unethical (my opinion) company. It's one broken promise after another, and people make a good case for outright lies as well. The latest frenzy generated by SOE's way of doing business was probably the TCG loot items, and the new TCG expansion. If it wasn't that, you could look at the way people feel used and ignored on the SWG senate. If it wasn't that, you could look at Smed's comments against RMT in EQ, followed by the introduction of RMT in EQ. It's hard to find a time over the past 5 years where SOE wasn't the center of some kind of controversy regarding how they treat their customers and manage their games.
NGE was probably the pinnacle of their failures, so I think it gets mentioned as an example more than the others. It's really just one sample, though, of an ongoing pattern of misdirection and mismanagement.
P.S. You realize that by even suggesting that Smed got someone's dog pregnant you're going to start rumours...
Some interesting opinions throughout the thread. I personally really enjoyed Pre-CU, but admitedly canceled my subscription shortly before the NGE was implemented, this was due to the same old same old. There were only so many times you could camp theed for overts, grind Janta missions for credits, and adventure out on a shopping spree in various player cities coming across some interesting items!
I scanned trough all the posts, and i either missed it, or it really wasn't mentioned.
Another thing that SOE messed up was that, Pre-CU, the economy was player driven. Crafters were a big part of the game. Pre-CU, armour and weapons didn't drop as loot, and if you wanted better equipment you HAD to buy it from a crafter (that also applies to any other item in game).
I came back to NGE a few months ago just to try it out, and i got from lvl 1 to 50 in like 3 weeks. Worst of all, i didn't really need to buy anything from the trader. All weapons and armour i needed were just either dropped by NPCs or given as quest rewards. It wasn't from lack of money either. First time i logged into Tatooine, i was running to the Bazaar when this veteran crafter player walks up to me and tells me he wants to give me everything he owns. Why? Because he was a Pre-CU crafter and just couldn't do anything anymore. He handed me 16 million credits, all his items, his large house deed, some furniture, and just logged out. Never saw him since.
Also doesn't help that there is a bug with the crafter profession (which happaned to all the crafter characters i made tot est it out on). I go back to NGE every 4 to 6 months to check things out, and first time i noticed that thought when i stopped my subscription my crafter was a level 10 at best, when i re-activated it, it turned into a lvl 90 master craftsman, and i hadn't done ANYTHING to it. Made a few more characters in other servers, repeated, and the same result. So now i have 4 lvl 90 crafters, one of each kind, in 4 diferent servers, without moving a finger.
Anyway, I agree with the original post, but having played both versions, i think that in some aspect Pre-CU was way better than it is now.
SOE is a company, pure and simple. People act like they shot their mom and got their dog pregnant. They didn’t lie to anyone, unless you have direct contact with any of them. They made business decisions based on marketing which changes like the wind. And I am not trying to stick up for SOE. Most of their games are ok, but nothing great. What I don’t get is all the people still harping on the same subject for years, freaking NGE. If you don’t like a change, don’t pay for it and don’t play it. Leave the company; stop giving your money to them. But whining about something that happened that long ago is psychotic. I have seen people get over death of a loved one quicker.
comparing the end of a game to the death of a person? tacky.
... But when the time came to say, "great! what do I do? Can I kill Stormtroopers?" The answer was: "Wait til' you get doc buffed and some composite armor. Otherwise, you won't have a chance til' level 40." ....
I think ya and I played different preCU.. I remember eatin' STs for breakfast as I was "grindin'" my TK and rebel rank up.. I didn't have any medic skillz(so no heals), no armor, no buffs... they weren't that tough. could kill 'em one on one even though they tried to kite me lol
PreCU wasn't that good, but it had potential. Unfortunately, the most incompetent MMO management team in the known universe was in charge of it. It was released untested for game play at the high end, with too many bugs, a tiny fraction of the obviously originally planned content, all about six months to a year prematurely. The NGE has reached its potential, and there was never much potential to be reached.
Totally agree SioBabble; SWG on the whole was an amazing idea, and that's about it. If not for the community and IP, I doubt SWG would've lasted more than a few months.
At the time some patience was expected from players, but lets face it the game was utterly borked.
As for the numbers, I'd speculate SWG never breeched 100k concurrent distinct players (not accounts).
Ico Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
OP you have some good points, but I think the loss of subs after NGE speaks for itself. They never recovered from that either, so SOE was flat out wrong and the gamers have already spoken on which version they prefer.
Also you say, 'It's just a game'. Yeah. Football and soccer are just games too, but I know people who take them VERY seriously. To you perhaps games mean little, but to others they mean a lot. Just like people can have different opinions on a game, people can also be different in terms of how much importance they put on various aspects of their lives.
SOE is a company, pure and simple. People act like they shot their mom and got their dog pregnant. They didn’t lie to anyone, unless you have direct contact with any of them. They made business decisions based on marketing which changes like the wind. And I am not trying to stick up for SOE. Most of their games are ok, but nothing great. What I don’t get is all the people still harping on the same subject for years, freaking NGE. If you don’t like a change, don’t pay for it and don’t play it. Leave the company; stop giving your money to them. But whining about something that happened that long ago is psychotic. I have seen people get over death of a loved one quicker.
SOE lies to it's players quite a bit, the NGE was just one example. You are either ignorant of this fact which has been elucidated upon exhaustively by many players across several games, or you are just a fanboy.
In your post you talk about shooting mothers, getting dogs pregnant, and SOE doesn't lie. I am thinking you are the psychotic one.
OP you have some good points, but I think the loss of subs after NGE speaks for itself. They never recovered from that either, so SOE was flat out wrong and the gamers have already spoken on which version they prefer.
This is all that needs to be said when people argue that the NGE is better (lol) than the original game. 250k-350k players back then...less than 10k now.
OP, Pre-CU SWG definitely had flaws. Not even the most die-hard Pre-CU fan can deny it. There were SERIOUS flaws in there, such as 90% Stun Composite Armor in conjunction with the buffs that enabled players to wear them.
However, warts and all, Pre-CU offered quite alot, even in today's general style of MMORPG gameplay. Pre-CU SWG **was** good, IMO.
+ You were not stuck on the tired, old, static "Class + Level" system. The Skillpoint / Template System gave you the freedom to build your character's skillset the way YOU want, not what some nitwit said that you will do.
+ You COULD be a Lemming and be a FOTM Templater and be devoid of any imagination whatsoever. There were a bunch that did. But guess what? The Skillpoint / Template System allowed creative individuals to come up with effective templates of their own.
+ Tired of your character's current template? No problem. Drop skillboxes bit by bit and work towards your new template little by little. No need to roll a new toon.
+ Show me any other MMORPG ever since SWG came out in 2003 that had anywhere the same level of gameplay and depth as Pre-CU SWG crafting did, while retaining a true player run economy.
+ How many other MMORPGs had deep enough gameplay in NON-COMBAT aspects where a good number of players *rarely or never* engaged / sought combat?
+ Complaining about the Grind in old & newer versions of SWG? Then you haven't played much other MMOs, since there are some that put Pre-CU SWG's grind to shame. I recall most vividly (more accurately, "agonizingly") Lineage II. Playing that game made me realize my definition of an MMO grind had to be redone with these new horrific standards. Anyways, ALL MMORPGs have grinds. That is their hook to keep you playing. WoW has it, LotRO has it, SWG has it, etc.
Kill X amount of critters to get enough XPs / Levels.
Do a dozen petty quests and be an errand boy across the same landscape.
Execute a special move X amount of times to get an improved ablity.
What's the difference? Not a god-d**n thing. They all force you to devote time in playing the game, that's it. It's what all developers do to players in all MMORPGs. That's inescapable.
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Just some of the reasons why I still hold Pre-CU SWG up even among the current stock of MMORPGs.
It was and IS different from the current stock of MMOs. It gave the freedom of gameplay back to the players.
Warts and all, Pre-CU SWG was good. But the problem was the devs themselves who fixed the game in a half-a**ed, slow manner. Not to mention working secretly in the background in dropping the system altogether.
Where would SWG be now if SOE had bothered to actually fix the d**n thing instead of bringing in unwanted revamp after unwanted revamp?
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Originally posted by Nebless BECAUSE its the only one SOE now offers. IF SOE offered both pre & post versions than you could argue which one, but they dont.
Well, actually... It's not SOE sponsored (that i know of) but it IS playable. And from what i see, they are making goof progress in completing the project. Just look up SWGEmu.
... But when the time came to say, "great! what do I do? Can I kill Stormtroopers?" The answer was: "Wait til' you get doc buffed and some composite armor. Otherwise, you won't have a chance til' level 40." ....
I think ya and I played different preCU.. I remember eatin' STs for breakfast as I was "grindin'" my TK and rebel rank up.. I didn't have any medic skillz(so no heals), no armor, no buffs... they weren't that tough. could kill 'em one on one even though they tried to kite me lol
I was probably halfway through pistols by the time I could comfortably stand toe to toe, from what I recall. Seeing as how Master TK's could wipe out 5 Rancor in about 30 seconds, what you say wouldn't surprise me. Just reminds me of yet another way pre-cu wasn't Star Wars.
"Hey Luke! Go kick that rock over there until more critters come out!"
I think one thing the OP is missing is the fact of what old SWG could've/should've evovled into - thus making it a hands down no comparison to the changes and which was truly better. Yes it had a ton of bugs, a whole lotta imbalance, and needed refinement in a major way. But the fact remains that there's not been a game since that had the potential and the downright fun of what swg once was.
True, although SWG was destined to be forever hampered by its engine, which was nearly obsolete when the game released.
But yes indeedy, they'd have had much more bang for the buck for their resources had they implemented content that worked with that engine, instead of creating all new gameplay that it couldn't handle.
"Hey! Let's take the engine from Neverwinter Nights to make the next Gears of War!"
They weren't looking too far down the road when they agreed to use an engine that didn't even allow for a functional jump.
Pre-CU was that good for a ranger-miner like me. No other game made mining fun, the way you explored and sampled, then put a thumper down to collect the almost infinate variety of resources. In Pre-CU it was fun to mine, in any other game mining is a grind. Any other game, you name it, resource mining is a grind.
And neither is NGE. Face it, it’s time for both sides to take off the rose-colored glasses and admit that SWG; be it orig/pre/post or whatever was and is a flawed game. Which one is more flawed? Can’t say, that’s so subjective as to fall into the ‘how many digits can you take Pi to?’ argument. Which IS more playable? Hands down its NGE; BECAUSE it’s the only one SOE now offers.IFSOE offered both pre & post versions than you could argue which one, but they don’t. A lot of players voted with their dollars when NGE came out and it didn’t seem to have as much or enough effect. Will anything down the road? Who knows? So on that happy thought let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at some of the flaws in both... - Professions
Old
32 skills. Be all you can be, how ever you wanted to be. Except there quickly became THE template everyone just had to have to be the best. So you can say 32 different, but the reality was a bunch of template clones New
9 choices. Some variation, but not enough - Jedi
Old
Super hard to get (way too hard?), the fix: holocron’s. You finally unlocked it? Now take a number and wait for the old man to come get you and take you to the super secret training village. I was all for only having a few in game, but they just handled it in such a strange way. New
Starter profession, now it’s way too easy - Leveling
Old
Level grinding and even worse macro level grinding. Camp a good NPC spawn point, set up your macro, go to bed and wake up the next day with a shiny new high level toon. Or go out and slaughter so much wildlife that PETA would drop dead from the shock. New
Quest level grinding. One size fits all professions, factions and flavors. Some good stories, some bad, some really bad. - Clutter
Old
Housing everywhere you could think of. The Theed and Moinia Vendor lines. The Valley of the Lag between Bestine and AH. New
It’s still there except it’s just a dead world. - Broken things
Old
Broken/nerf’d story lines, professions and missions. ‘I went there, where’s the NPC?’, Carbineer, mission points inside buildings. New
Left over animations, crafting lines, missions. If you’re going to put in new, clean out the old! Mission points still inside buildings. - Canon
This would pop up from time to time usually in the context of ‘we can’t do that, it’s not canon’.
Old
Mummer thugs, fighting pets New
All the Clone Wars marketing tie in’s And we could go on and on. Both games have their problems. I’d say NGE’s are worse if only because they have so many pre-NGE one’s they didn’t clean up. Something I personally think, is that WE the players helped to screw up the pre-NGE game. Why? - Buffing a level 1 to the max, outfitting him in the best comp armor around and running him through the hard missions to level him up fast. And then whining that the game needed more and more harder high level stuff to ‘challenge’ them. This is where the DWB and Corvette came from. No one wanted to take their time and just play at a lower level, everyone just HAD to be max’d out. And because the dev’s were stuck in this rat race of coming up with new challenging stuff, they blew off the low level bugs and nerf’s since players were just blowing by them anyway, so why fix them. How often did we hear the mantra ‘X profession is nerf’d; we’ll fix it next build’ and it would just get pushed farther and farther back? How far? I think they were hoping so far back that people just forgot about it. So in the end what did we end up with? I’d have to say two totally different games. SOE should have just given SWG:NGE a different name. Linking it to the old was one of the biggest dis-services they could have done.
aye, it just goes to show that even when they develop a good game system (the underlying system) they will screw it up some other way... I still say to this day that the two best character development systems were SWG (original) and AO... both of which flopped for reasons other than their character development systems...
Comments
Probably a fair chunk of them though, me included and the best counter argument against this myth that pre-cu players are all hyper intelligent mmo players that appreciate the finer things in their games is destroyed by the fact that at some time or another most have played WoW, lots still do in fact.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
wait, you're talking about SOE?
Wondered about that statement myself, perhaps a small refresher is in order here.
Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:58 am
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Folks tend to have short memories and some werent around for all the lies. So here's a list of lies SOE has told us. Also please consider sticking this
1. SWG wont launch until its ready - SOE repeatedly told us this game wont launch until its ready to go. This early on was to include space, JTL wasnt ever supposed to be an expansion. Lets also not forget key components not included at launch like player cities, vehicles, and jedi. As a beta player, I still remember the notice in beta forum that the game was going gold in 2 weeks. Everyone agreed it was a huge mistake but SOE ignored us.
2. Jedi - We all know that jedi was NEVER possible at launch. Yet SOE made post after post dangling that carrot and offering encouragement. They told us to get married, explore every world, build a home, etc. It made some think that jedi was some random amazing quest to be discovered. Soon though we learned the truth when SOE patched in several .tre files with obvious jedi implications 5 months after launch. Then the day after a patch several unlocked all at once.
3. Rebel Theme Park - Sorta ties into # 1 as it wasnt ready either. However SOE repeatedly lied about the theme park. If you recall, it was broken after Han's quests. Han tells us to seek out Lt. Lance on Dantooine, but there isnt any Lt. Lance anywhere. SOE tells us its working as intended despite nobody having found Lt. Lance after months and month of looking (my guild personally had several major expedition searches done over many weekends looking for him). Suddenly we learn the truth after a patch...Han now tells us to seek out Ackbar on Dantooine and the once empty abandoned rebel base now has several rebel nps in there. My guild who had followed the game for years in development was soooo pissed off they immediately disbanded and quit.
4. two part lie -
A. The Combat upgrade (curb) was top priority - Remember how SOE told us over and over again that the CURB was its number 1 focus. It would be first to get completed over the JTL expansion.
B. There were two separate teams working on JTL and the CURB.
We later learn both are lies. JTL gets pushed over the combat fixes AND we find out the CURB team has been merged with the JTL team. Whats really insulting is SOE goes on a PR campaign and tells the public that we players demanded JTL first. Another fat lie as every poll posted strongly stated we wanted the CURB first.
5. Combat Revamp - whatever you want to call it, this was meant as a reward for the vets who stayed around and played a broken game. Talk about a slap in the face when SOE announces the CU...a system as the devs told me at Celebration 3 was meant to "have a more broad appeal". This was SOE's 1st attempt at screwing over its current community for the wow crowd. All the promised fixes never happened. The armorsmith rep quit and was banned after he started a massive protest over changes they never asked for. In fact the CU brings in many more bugs than it fixes and never balanced anything.
6. The CU is here to stay - Smedley comes and makes his first post on swg forums asking for calm and patience. He states that in 6 months the cu will be working as intended so give them time to make things right. FAT LIE...during that time the NGE is either in design stages or already being worked on.
7. FRS - CU disables the end-game for jedi, our force ranking system. SOE tells us its being worked on. Later they state its al most done and just awaits final approval from LA. Of course we learn there wont ever be a FRS system and the nerfs we've been getting oover the past 6 months were done on purpose to weaken jedi into a regular class. For me personally, this is one of the more disgusting lies as it was obviously done to keep us jedi players paying.
8. Jabba Palace disappears - The last patch before the NGE garbage makes Jabba's palace completely disappear. SOE acts surprised and promises a fix is coming..another fat lie as we learn why after the nge hits. Jabba's palace was taken out to implement th new nge quests.
9. village breaks - Same patch breaks the village and the old man stops visiting people. SOE again lies to cover its tracks and tells us its being looked at. Of course it was just a cover for the nge.
10. Expansion - SOE presells an expansion with several promised features. One desired item is a creature handler necklace that will allow for the taming of higher lvl pets. Im not sure if that necklace was ever found but it didnt matter because 1 stinkin day after the nge launched Torres of LA announces the revamp of the game and removal of over 24 professions.
11. starter kit - SOE tells us the starter kit is an eroneous listing and will be removed. They deny the rumors of impending changes.
12. SOE tells us fixes will be faster. SOE says the whole reason behind the nge was to make balancing the game easier and would allow for faster publish fixes. In fact, it has slowed the game down to a crawl as publishes now seem to come every 4 months as opposed to almost monthly before the nge.
13. smuggler revamp - this one could have its own page on broken promises and lies.
14. Capitol ships - a dev at a fanfest shows the players capitol ships he has been working on. Later on SOE tells (months and months later) that it was just a dev fooling around with his laptop and this was never being considered. Of course SOE could have tol the players this months earlier rather than ignore the posts asking for more information. To flyboys, the capitol ship dream was their FRS system...ie end-game content they so very much wanted. It didnt hurt SOE to once again lie a little and let people keep paying while they waited for features that would never ever happen.
15. profession revamps - ranger comes to my mind foremost because my alt was a master ranger for years. It was painful to see rangers slowly dwindling in numbers as the profession remained broken forever. I still recall one of the camo kits (i think it was for Lok) required a type of meat to contruct, only problem was that meat didnt even exist ! And the final tease, SOE says ranger is the next revamp coming in the next publish...oops the next publish turned out to be the NGE.
Then there were the professions that got sorely needed revamps weeks before the nge hit. Why did SOE even bother to revamp squad leader if they were going to turn around and remove the profession entirely a few weeks later ? Maybe it was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.
16. Broken quests - How many times did SOE tell us a fix was in the works and it either never came or it took a year to do. And even when they finally did fix something like the Hermit quests, they turn right around and re-break them weeks later. My personal pet peeve for broken quests was the ones at the gungan sacred place. It pissed me off that not only were the quests incomplete, one of the npc's chat bubble was blank ! How tough would it have been to code in some simple words ? These quests were broken in beta, remained busted through launch right up to the nge.
The NGE broke several old quests as well. When I tried the 21 day free trial I started the krayt skull quests, some of my favorites with a great storyline. I got to the last part where I needed to talk to Darklighter only to my surprise he has no chat option. The NGE is 1 year old and Im assuming this quest remains broken, pathetic.
17. 6 month promises - Smedley has repeatedly made the 6 month promise for fixes. His very 1st post following the CU debacle asked the players to give SOE 6 months to get things fully working. He then makes the same promise after the NGE launches, needing 6 more months. Ironically, the post after nge is almost identical to the cu one (asking for time to fix things) and yet somehow the gullible desperate players buy into it AGAIN. Later SOE promises major revamps to each profession each coming within a month or two o each other. Later after MONTHS of no publishes and silence (the swg forums were literally rioting), SOE announces yet ANOTHER series of profession revamps. Typically, the pathetic player base thanks SOE devs in posts for answering their concerns. A year into the NGE, it remains broken, unfinished, with no end in site.
18. Item Conversion - Recall that the players were very concerned over losing their gear with the coming CU. We were repeatedly told that everything would convert properly. If you had an exceptional weapon with amazing stats, it would convert to an equal type of weapon for the CU. They were full of crap though and not only did our exceptional weapons and armor NOT convert properly, in many cases we now couldnt even equip them anymore !!!
CA's and AA's didnt convert because SOE took out several stats like dizzy, knockdown, the poison and disease resists, etc. Players that spent years and millions of credits to collect were overnight ruined. The final insult in classic SOE fashion, SOE adds in melee def and ranged def clothing that tailors can craft. They didnt even bother to take into account the thousands of players who spent their credits by the millions to get these things as ca/aa drops. A +12 melee def tape would possibly sell for 15-20 million, 1 day after the cu and a player now can buy a shirt with +17 melee AND ranged defense !!! So much for really being concerned with ca/aa conversions.
RIS Armor - Not only did the conversion for this armor become crap, it also got very common. I and some friends of mine were the few around who had even had any ris armor. Before the revamps, RIS armor was something one could try and get as a trophy to their hard work and dedication. Plus it took real skill to get. You had to know where the components dropped. You had to know spawn rates. You had to know where to find the giant dune kimos. You had to find addon components like shards to boost the completed armor's stats. In essence, it was a lot of hard work for players that yet again was totally tossed out the door. My ris helmet once had offers of 15 million credits, suddenly its for sale on vendors for 15k bleh.
BE Tissues - nge takes out bio-engineers and their tissues that make chef foods better. Now something that was once extremely common is the rarest most sought after item by crafters. And since food is a consumable, eventually there will be no more bio tissues around.
The theme here of course is SOE didnt give a damn about how their revamps would hurt or help their CURRENT community. I seriously doubt based on the evidence that they even looked at the changes, much less tried to ensure the conversion wouldnt screw us.
19. pearl drops - sometime into the cu pearl drops got really messed up. At first, over a weekend flawless and premium pearls are dropping like crazy and not just off krayts. Soon SOE hotpatches a "fix" in to correct whatever they were trying to fix before and the pearls stop dropping. Now premiums and flawless dont drop anymore. SOE responds to player concerns by telling them its working as intended. Later they admit there "might" be a problem but there were other things more important to fix. SOE lies and promises its being looked into.
According to my source, the pearl drops were broken or gated on purpose. This was done to remove the elite power items so jedi could be better balanced for the nge. I hear sometime
20. Gating content - According to a source who wrote a letter to CBS newsbag, SOE purposely gates its content to finish it. In other words, SOE breaks something to hide the fact that it remains unfinished. Why would SOE do this ? Well according to this person, it was done to basically use player subscription fees to pay for the finished development of that content. This source reported that this was done repeatedly for EQ1 expansions. Devs would then lie on the forums claiming that a fix was being worked on when in fact it was busted on purpose.
This of course is outrageous but not unexpected by SOE. To take subscriber money and finish something that the money from the expansion was already supposed to have paid for is unforgivable. Smedley responded on some other site he posts on that this was a fabrication and SOE had (allow me to quote) never once released an unfinished product to the public LOL. This same person later admits the nge is unfinished...oh and the CU is unfinished...my oh my how the lies grow.
http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=140564#M140564
Thunderheart
Dev
Posts: 14078
Registered: 07-02-2003
Reply 19 of 146
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Gravez wrote:
So which parts of this combat balance will be in Publish 8?
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Should be all of it.
Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager
From the original message "Once Combat Upgrade is done, we will immediately work on upgrading all the non-combat professions in another series of publishes.".
That paragraph lays out our high level Live development strategy. I'm sure every time in the past a mention was made of something we intended to do it was true -at that moment-. But the team does not set all the priorities for the game and things have changed quickly and often since launch. LucasArts and we are aligned on this development strategy and we are going to make it happen by hook or crook. If anything holds us up or slows us down, we will let the community know.
Combat Upgrade is the basis we need in place before revamping the other professions. And we need all the professions to be solid to build a complete and compelling GCW, because it will affect everyone. We will do all this as quickly as we know how, but it will be high quality first and foremost.
Nah i don't see any lies either /rollseyes
LOL I remember that response by TH and they even said they wanted to release the CU BEFORE JTL, you also forgot another one: Smedley said on the forums that "the combat upgrade is here to stay" in early Octobor- about 3 weeks before the NGE went live.
Cookie cutter templates only existed for ppl who PVP'd and that goes for any game but atleast you still had freedom to be what you wanted. For me who just did the PVE side of things I could be whatever I wanted and just dabbbled in things I found fun that were really gimped but that didn't matter in PVE.
It's probably a mistake to think most people got bent out of shape about one unwanted revamp. You'd need a few pages probably to list all the ways people felt (and still feel) shafted by this unethical (my opinion) company. It's one broken promise after another, and people make a good case for outright lies as well. The latest frenzy generated by SOE's way of doing business was probably the TCG loot items, and the new TCG expansion. If it wasn't that, you could look at the way people feel used and ignored on the SWG senate. If it wasn't that, you could look at Smed's comments against RMT in EQ, followed by the introduction of RMT in EQ. It's hard to find a time over the past 5 years where SOE wasn't the center of some kind of controversy regarding how they treat their customers and manage their games.
NGE was probably the pinnacle of their failures, so I think it gets mentioned as an example more than the others. It's really just one sample, though, of an ongoing pattern of misdirection and mismanagement.
P.S. You realize that by even suggesting that Smed got someone's dog pregnant you're going to start rumours...
Some interesting opinions throughout the thread. I personally really enjoyed Pre-CU, but admitedly canceled my subscription shortly before the NGE was implemented, this was due to the same old same old. There were only so many times you could camp theed for overts, grind Janta missions for credits, and adventure out on a shopping spree in various player cities coming across some interesting items!
I scanned trough all the posts, and i either missed it, or it really wasn't mentioned.
Another thing that SOE messed up was that, Pre-CU, the economy was player driven. Crafters were a big part of the game. Pre-CU, armour and weapons didn't drop as loot, and if you wanted better equipment you HAD to buy it from a crafter (that also applies to any other item in game).
I came back to NGE a few months ago just to try it out, and i got from lvl 1 to 50 in like 3 weeks. Worst of all, i didn't really need to buy anything from the trader. All weapons and armour i needed were just either dropped by NPCs or given as quest rewards. It wasn't from lack of money either. First time i logged into Tatooine, i was running to the Bazaar when this veteran crafter player walks up to me and tells me he wants to give me everything he owns. Why? Because he was a Pre-CU crafter and just couldn't do anything anymore. He handed me 16 million credits, all his items, his large house deed, some furniture, and just logged out. Never saw him since.
Also doesn't help that there is a bug with the crafter profession (which happaned to all the crafter characters i made tot est it out on). I go back to NGE every 4 to 6 months to check things out, and first time i noticed that thought when i stopped my subscription my crafter was a level 10 at best, when i re-activated it, it turned into a lvl 90 master craftsman, and i hadn't done ANYTHING to it. Made a few more characters in other servers, repeated, and the same result. So now i have 4 lvl 90 crafters, one of each kind, in 4 diferent servers, without moving a finger.
Anyway, I agree with the original post, but having played both versions, i think that in some aspect Pre-CU was way better than it is now.
comparing the end of a game to the death of a person? tacky.
I think ya and I played different preCU.. I remember eatin' STs for breakfast as I was "grindin'" my TK and rebel rank up.. I didn't have any medic skillz(so no heals), no armor, no buffs... they weren't that tough. could kill 'em one on one even though they tried to kite me lol
It's over 'hyped' how good it was. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed it and everything but it wasn't that special.
(\ /) ?
( . .)
c('')('')
Totally agree SioBabble; SWG on the whole was an amazing idea, and that's about it. If not for the community and IP, I doubt SWG would've lasted more than a few months.
At the time some patience was expected from players, but lets face it the game was utterly borked.
As for the numbers, I'd speculate SWG never breeched 100k concurrent distinct players (not accounts).
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
OP you have some good points, but I think the loss of subs after NGE speaks for itself. They never recovered from that either, so SOE was flat out wrong and the gamers have already spoken on which version they prefer.
Also you say, 'It's just a game'. Yeah. Football and soccer are just games too, but I know people who take them VERY seriously. To you perhaps games mean little, but to others they mean a lot. Just like people can have different opinions on a game, people can also be different in terms of how much importance they put on various aspects of their lives.
SOE lies to it's players quite a bit, the NGE was just one example. You are either ignorant of this fact which has been elucidated upon exhaustively by many players across several games, or you are just a fanboy.
In your post you talk about shooting mothers, getting dogs pregnant, and SOE doesn't lie. I am thinking you are the psychotic one.
This is all that needs to be said when people argue that the NGE is better (lol) than the original game. 250k-350k players back then...less than 10k now.
OP, Pre-CU SWG definitely had flaws. Not even the most die-hard Pre-CU fan can deny it. There were SERIOUS flaws in there, such as 90% Stun Composite Armor in conjunction with the buffs that enabled players to wear them.
However, warts and all, Pre-CU offered quite alot, even in today's general style of MMORPG gameplay. Pre-CU SWG **was** good, IMO.
+ You were not stuck on the tired, old, static "Class + Level" system. The Skillpoint / Template System gave you the freedom to build your character's skillset the way YOU want, not what some nitwit said that you will do.
+ You COULD be a Lemming and be a FOTM Templater and be devoid of any imagination whatsoever. There were a bunch that did. But guess what? The Skillpoint / Template System allowed creative individuals to come up with effective templates of their own.
+ Tired of your character's current template? No problem. Drop skillboxes bit by bit and work towards your new template little by little. No need to roll a new toon.
+ Show me any other MMORPG ever since SWG came out in 2003 that had anywhere the same level of gameplay and depth as Pre-CU SWG crafting did, while retaining a true player run economy.
+ How many other MMORPGs had deep enough gameplay in NON-COMBAT aspects where a good number of players *rarely or never* engaged / sought combat?
+ Complaining about the Grind in old & newer versions of SWG? Then you haven't played much other MMOs, since there are some that put Pre-CU SWG's grind to shame. I recall most vividly (more accurately, "agonizingly") Lineage II. Playing that game made me realize my definition of an MMO grind had to be redone with these new horrific standards. Anyways, ALL MMORPGs have grinds. That is their hook to keep you playing. WoW has it, LotRO has it, SWG has it, etc.
Kill X amount of critters to get enough XPs / Levels.
Do a dozen petty quests and be an errand boy across the same landscape.
Execute a special move X amount of times to get an improved ablity.
What's the difference? Not a god-d**n thing. They all force you to devote time in playing the game, that's it. It's what all developers do to players in all MMORPGs. That's inescapable.
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Just some of the reasons why I still hold Pre-CU SWG up even among the current stock of MMORPGs.
It was and IS different from the current stock of MMOs. It gave the freedom of gameplay back to the players.
Warts and all, Pre-CU SWG was good. But the problem was the devs themselves who fixed the game in a half-a**ed, slow manner. Not to mention working secretly in the background in dropping the system altogether.
Where would SWG be now if SOE had bothered to actually fix the d**n thing instead of bringing in unwanted revamp after unwanted revamp?
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Well, actually... It's not SOE sponsored (that i know of) but it IS playable. And from what i see, they are making goof progress in completing the project. Just look up SWGEmu.
I think ya and I played different preCU.. I remember eatin' STs for breakfast as I was "grindin'" my TK and rebel rank up.. I didn't have any medic skillz(so no heals), no armor, no buffs... they weren't that tough. could kill 'em one on one even though they tried to kite me lol
I was probably halfway through pistols by the time I could comfortably stand toe to toe, from what I recall. Seeing as how Master TK's could wipe out 5 Rancor in about 30 seconds, what you say wouldn't surprise me. Just reminds me of yet another way pre-cu wasn't Star Wars.
"Hey Luke! Go kick that rock over there until more critters come out!"
That would've made a GREAT movie.
True, although SWG was destined to be forever hampered by its engine, which was nearly obsolete when the game released.
But yes indeedy, they'd have had much more bang for the buck for their resources had they implemented content that worked with that engine, instead of creating all new gameplay that it couldn't handle.
"Hey! Let's take the engine from Neverwinter Nights to make the next Gears of War!"
They weren't looking too far down the road when they agreed to use an engine that didn't even allow for a functional jump.
"Pre-CU Wasn’t that Good"
Pre-CU was that good for a ranger-miner like me. No other game made mining fun, the way you explored and sampled, then put a thumper down to collect the almost infinate variety of resources. In Pre-CU it was fun to mine, in any other game mining is a grind. Any other game, you name it, resource mining is a grind.
To the OP:
Yeah, it had bugs. Yeah, certain templates were far superior than others. Yeah, jedi was a long grind.
But to say it "wasn't that good"......well there's about 200,000+ people who will disagree with you.
The PRE CU was a great game, or rather a game with great potential.
Yet the way this game was programmed made it hard to impossible to do any major changes withour severly messing up the code aswell as gameplay.
I think if SOE and Lucasart had managed to integrate all the nice content they made, into the old game I would still be a paying customer.
Now, I will never again be a SOE customer.
Theo - Pax Gaming Community
www.scapes.net/pax/forums
SWG, Veteran Commando forever
aye, it just goes to show that even when they develop a good game system (the underlying system) they will screw it up some other way... I still say to this day that the two best character development systems were SWG (original) and AO... both of which flopped for reasons other than their character development systems...