Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
I would like to state that in no way shape or form that anything I receive from SOE influences my opinion about SWG or their company. Im pretty much a typical average player enjoying the game.
they made jedi too easy to achieve. I know that toward the end of CU, I was so tired of everyone getting jedi that I ended up going back to my pistols. (still kept some enhancer powers too though )
but anyway - the game in its current state, despite its bugs, surpasses all previous iterations of the game. BUt what made the pre-nge better was the community and SGW has never been able to get that back
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
You're absolutely right. The whole 'we listened to feedback' excuse was/is nothing but a carrot. If they truly did listen to the players, we would have had a rollback. I've never seen a player base so unified as I did on Nov 15 2005. If they didn't listen then when anyone in the gaming universe could have answered the question 'what do SWG players want the most?', what makes anyone think they ever did listen.
And before anyone says 'focus groups', I have a secret for you. As a person who has witnessed many focus tests, I can tell you that typically, they're not actually out to discover new data, but prove to investors that the marketing people are correct. If the data from the focus test proves otherwise (and I've seen it happen many times), the marketing team conducting the test get new test subjects that are more more in line with their own ideologies.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
You're absolutely right. The whole 'we listened to feedback' excuse was/is nothing but a carrot. If they truly did listen to the players, we would have had a rollback. I've never seen a player base so unified as I did on Nov 15 2005. If they didn't listen then when anyone in the gaming universe could have answered the question 'what do SWG players want the most?', what makes anyone think they ever did listen.
And before anyone says 'focus groups', I have a secret for you. As a person who has witnessed many focus tests, I can tell you that typically, they're not actually out to discover new data, but prove to investors that the marketing people are correct. If the data from the focus test proves otherwise (and I've seen it happen many times), the marketing team conducting the test get new test subjects that are more more in line with their own ideologies.
Ya pretty much a lame attempt to make it look like they care. Me I agree with others that think SWG has turned into a test bed for SOE and LA. They use it to see exactly what might work for newer games they have in development. I think youll see alot more of the micro transactions they have put in. Youll see card games or other mini games that you buy for items you can get in game.
Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. Umm ok so which is true. What Raph said or that 200,000 players left because of the NGE?
The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
Ok so even Senators posting on this site said that things can be accomplished.
So a few questions.
The first CH nerf wasn't from the mass hysteria on the forums?
Holocrons would have been introduced without the whines?
Holocrons would still have been given out for Christmas?
Perma-death would have been removed anyway?
XP loss reduction, visibility removal and then the total removal of xp loss would still have happened?
BH player missions would have still been removed?
Here's a typical snippet from a whiner. "Sony Online Entertainment's initial implementation of the bounty hunter class had bounty hunters hunting down player character Jedi. This forced PvP option has been removed from the game.
That's definitely an article on an agenda. Forced pvp option? first if it's an option how is it "forced." If you "choose" to play Jedi you have made a choice that at some point you will be perma overt. It was your choice.
/Citywarn would still have been removed?
The list goes on and on.
Come on, you are and so is most everyone here smarter than that!
I would like to state that in no way shape or form that anything I receive from SOE influences my opinion about SWG or their company. Im pretty much a typical average player enjoying the game.
they made jedi too easy to achieve. I know that toward the end of CU, I was so tired of everyone getting jedi that I ended up going back to my pistols. (still kept some enhancer powers too though ) but anyway - the game in its current state, despite its bugs, surpasses all previous iterations of the game. BUt what made the pre-nge better was the community and SGW has never been able to get that back
The game in its current state is easily one of the worst MMOs on the market. It is a buggy, unfun, mess of a game. SWG is a game with a combat system that isn't properly supported by the game engine.
SWG currently has a much larger playerbase than a game of its current quality deserves, due to the IP. That is not to say it has a large playerbase, as that is obviously not the case. Even a mediocre Star Wars MMO would have a much larger playerbase, as shown by the playerbase size prior to the NGE. As the quality of the game declined, so did the playerbase, and with it, the game's community. The reason they haven't , and will not, come back is because the game is, as John Smedley once posted on the OBards shortly after the NGE, 'nowhere near fun'.
If you really wanted the community back, then you as a 'senator' (hell, as a player) should be pressing the developers to make the game better, not just add things to the severely flawed game. No amount of WoW battlefields, WoW talent trees, or zombies will improve the playability of the game. Those additions, minus the zombies, may give the folks who are willing to suffer through the sever flaws of the core game something new to do for a few days, but they will not rebuild the community. People will look past an awful amount of flaws to play an MMO, as can be seen with pretty much every MMO on the market, but when the flaws are overwhelming, you have SWG.
Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. Umm ok so which is true. What Raph said or that 200,000 players left because of the NGE?
The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
Ok so even Senators posting on this site said that things can be accomplished.
So a few questions.
The first CH nerf wasn't from the mass hysteria on the forums?
Holocrons would have been introduced without the whines?
Holocrons would still have been given out for Christmas?
Perma-death would have been removed anyway?
XP loss reduction, visibility removal and then the total removal of xp loss would still have happened?
BH player missions would have still been removed?
Here's a typical snippet from a whiner. "Sony Online Entertainment's initial implementation of the bounty hunter class had bounty hunters hunting down player character Jedi. This forced PvP option has been removed from the game.
That's definitely an article on an agenda. Forced pvp option? first if it's an option how is it "forced." If you "choose" to play Jedi you have made a choice that at some point you will be perma overt. It was your choice.
/Citywarn would still have been removed?
The list goes on and on.
Come on, you are and so is most everyone here smarter than that!
Mr. Koster left the SWG team during the pre-CU period, as he was promoted to Creative Director of SOE and moved from Austin to San Diego. Lack of content was the number one reason during the pre-CU period. The response to it was the CU, and all the crap that came before.
Again, even the developers of the time said in an interview that holocrons were implemented because the dev team really wanted someone to unlock their jedi slot. It wasn't a response to player complaints. Jedi was made the focus of development because the folks directing development, not the players, thought they needed to do so to increase the sub numbers.
When the CU was put on the test center, there was a lanuchpad poll that had around 85% of the playerbase against implementing it. The poll was erased and the CU was implemented. The mass gatherings policy (which made gathering to protest a bannable offense in game) was implemented because the playerbase were gathering outside the starports in the game to protest against the CU. Players were banned and the CU was "here to stay".
When the NGE was announced, the OBoards exploded due to the playerbase being against the proposed changes to the game. When the NGE was on the test center, a launchpad poll was conducted which had around 95% of the playerbase being against it. The poll was erased and the NGE was inflicted on the game. There were several in-game protest that resulted in players being banned, and warnings were placed on the launchpad to inform the playerbase that protesting in-game against the NGE would result in banned accounts. The OBoards were in an uproar for close to a year, and they only finally calmed down as the playerbase dwindled. There are still several posts every week about how bad the NGE is/was. The NGE is still in the game. It has also been admitted by the former lead designer from when the NGE was designed and implemented, that the NGE was specifically intended to appeal to people who didn't play the game, knowing full well the existing playerbase woul not accept the changes.
You keep wanting to believe SWG's decline was the result of doe eyed folks at LEC and SOE that tried their best to do all the things their devil horned customers were violently lashing out at them to do. That isn't the case, as all the things that were done to SWG were intended to appeal to people who didn't play the game, at the expense of those who did. Jedi was made easier, not to appeal to the existing playerbase, but because it was believed it would attract new players to the game.
SWG's history is littered will colossal mismanagement and asinine decisions on the part of the development team and management. It isn't because they listened to their customers, it was because they thought they knew better than their customers, and finally because they thought they could replace their customers with new ones. They were wrong on both accounts, as the current state of the game and the dwindled playerbase can attest.
and again, no I do blame SOE and LA, man is that so hard to grasp?
I guess you'll just circle answer everything to promote your theology and avoid a direct answer to the questions.
That's pretty much what the "stop the forced PVP crowd did."
But now they don't have to because they have the game their way.
I guess it's just one huge coincidence that nerfs and original game designs were altered after forum uprisings.
But hey I love a good conspiracy story...
I would like to state that in no way shape or form that anything I receive from SOE influences my opinion about SWG or their company. Im pretty much a typical average player enjoying the game.
I miss it too. I miss the sandbox. The game where you had to find things to do yourself. No or extremely few quests. You made your own day, your own shcedule. Either this was crafting. hologrinding, being a doctor buffin players, dancing and entertaining in the cantine. Running your mall or malls around the galaxies...
Might sound pathetic to some. But game-wise. I cant get over it. And my old RL friends that played SWG are the same too. We are everywhere now.. but all of us miss that good old game.
Comments
Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
I would like to state that in no way shape or form that anything I receive from SOE influences my opinion about SWG or their company. Im pretty much a typical average player enjoying the game.
they made jedi too easy to achieve. I know that toward the end of CU, I was so tired of everyone getting jedi that I ended up going back to my pistols. (still kept some enhancer powers too though
)
but anyway - the game in its current state, despite its bugs, surpasses all previous iterations of the game. BUt what made the pre-nge better was the community and SGW has never been able to get that back
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
You're absolutely right. The whole 'we listened to feedback' excuse was/is nothing but a carrot. If they truly did listen to the players, we would have had a rollback. I've never seen a player base so unified as I did on Nov 15 2005. If they didn't listen then when anyone in the gaming universe could have answered the question 'what do SWG players want the most?', what makes anyone think they ever did listen.
And before anyone says 'focus groups', I have a secret for you. As a person who has witnessed many focus tests, I can tell you that typically, they're not actually out to discover new data, but prove to investors that the marketing people are correct. If the data from the focus test proves otherwise (and I've seen it happen many times), the marketing team conducting the test get new test subjects that are more more in line with their own ideologies.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
You're absolutely right. The whole 'we listened to feedback' excuse was/is nothing but a carrot. If they truly did listen to the players, we would have had a rollback. I've never seen a player base so unified as I did on Nov 15 2005. If they didn't listen then when anyone in the gaming universe could have answered the question 'what do SWG players want the most?', what makes anyone think they ever did listen.
And before anyone says 'focus groups', I have a secret for you. As a person who has witnessed many focus tests, I can tell you that typically, they're not actually out to discover new data, but prove to investors that the marketing people are correct. If the data from the focus test proves otherwise (and I've seen it happen many times), the marketing team conducting the test get new test subjects that are more more in line with their own ideologies.
Ya pretty much a lame attempt to make it look like they care. Me I agree with others that think SWG has turned into a test bed for SOE and LA. They use it to see exactly what might work for newer games they have in development. I think youll see alot more of the micro transactions they have put in. Youll see card games or other mini games that you buy for items you can get in game.
Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. Umm ok so which is true. What Raph said or that 200,000 players left because of the NGE?
The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
Ok so even Senators posting on this site said that things can be accomplished.
So a few questions.
The first CH nerf wasn't from the mass hysteria on the forums?
Holocrons would have been introduced without the whines?
Holocrons would still have been given out for Christmas?
Perma-death would have been removed anyway?
XP loss reduction, visibility removal and then the total removal of xp loss would still have happened?
BH player missions would have still been removed?
Here's a typical snippet from a whiner. "Sony Online Entertainment's initial implementation of the bounty hunter class had bounty hunters hunting down player character Jedi. This forced PvP option has been removed from the game.
http://internet-games.suite101.com/article.cfm/star_wars_galaxies_bounty_hunters
That's definitely an article on an agenda. Forced pvp option? first if it's an option how is it "forced." If you "choose" to play Jedi you have made a choice that at some point you will be perma overt. It was your choice.
/Citywarn would still have been removed?
The list goes on and on.
Come on, you are and so is most everyone here smarter than that!
I would like to state that in no way shape or form that anything I receive from SOE influences my opinion about SWG or their company. Im pretty much a typical average player enjoying the game.
The game in its current state is easily one of the worst MMOs on the market. It is a buggy, unfun, mess of a game. SWG is a game with a combat system that isn't properly supported by the game engine.
SWG currently has a much larger playerbase than a game of its current quality deserves, due to the IP. That is not to say it has a large playerbase, as that is obviously not the case. Even a mediocre Star Wars MMO would have a much larger playerbase, as shown by the playerbase size prior to the NGE. As the quality of the game declined, so did the playerbase, and with it, the game's community. The reason they haven't , and will not, come back is because the game is, as John Smedley once posted on the OBards shortly after the NGE, 'nowhere near fun'.
If you really wanted the community back, then you as a 'senator' (hell, as a player) should be pressing the developers to make the game better, not just add things to the severely flawed game. No amount of WoW battlefields, WoW talent trees, or zombies will improve the playability of the game. Those additions, minus the zombies, may give the folks who are willing to suffer through the sever flaws of the core game something new to do for a few days, but they will not rebuild the community. People will look past an awful amount of flaws to play an MMO, as can be seen with pretty much every MMO on the market, but when the flaws are overwhelming, you have SWG.
Originally, you couldn't. Jedi was a feature that was claimed to be in the game at launch, but wasn't added until later (as opposed to all the features that were supposed to be in at launch, but never made it into the game at all). Eventually, a patch added Jedi to the game, where you had to master five random professions to unlock Jedi.
Nobody did so for a few months, so they added holocrons to the game that told you four of the five professions you needed to master to unlock your Jedi character.
A few people unlocked after this, but it still wasn't enough, so for the Christmas holiday, they gave everyone free holicrons, to help nudge everyone away from actually playing the game in a manner they enjoyed, to grinding the game by doing things they had no interest in doing, which convinced many of them to quit.
This was remedied by changing the path to Jedi from mastering random professions to a quest unlocking grind. When this grind was implemented, the vast majority of the playerbase began doing it. It was interpreted by the morons in charge of the game as everyone wanting to be a Jedi. What was never considered by those idiots was the fact that the new Jedi grind was the only real content added to the main game since launch. They could have added a Candyland adventure and the majority of the playerbase, who had been begging for some content since the game launched, would have done it. Looking back, Candyland based content would have been better than what they actually did.
Yep the player base was in an uproar! Players were whining all over the forums that Jedi still weren't in the game and that finding out was too hard. 4 months after release!!!!!
They added holocrons and then the player base was whining that holocrons were too hard to get!
So they gave em out as christmas gifts. And yet the players still whined that Jedi was too hard to unlock.
Then players playing Jedi started to whine about how hard it was being a Jedi. So they nerfed the xp loss and then did away with perma death.
And the players still whined so they did away with visibility, then they did away with xp loss as the players still whined.
So SOE forced people to go after Jedi? They forced them to stop doing what they enjoyed? Obviously if a player wanted to be a Jedi then they weren't playing what they wanted....
This arguement fails every time people come up with it. Especially from the Jedi h8r's.
If the masses were gong for Jedi then the masses wanted to play Jedi.
If there are too many Jedi why is that? Because players want to play Jedi?
It's pretty simple math. For every Jedi one sees there is a player that desires to play that profession.
The player base that whined their way to Jedi got what they wanted while the rest of us got screwed.
The number one reason given for canceled accounts, according to Raph Koster, was the lack of directed content in the game. Umm ok so which is true. What Raph said or that 200,000 players left because of the NGE?
The response by the dev team was to focus on jedi and nerfing/buffing professions. Former dev team member "GreenMarine" posted in the comments section of the Broken Toys blog that the SOE producers of the game thought they knew better than the players what the players wanted, so they ignored feedback and did what they wanted to do instead (much like how the upcoming zombie patched were conceived).
It wasn't the players that caused the game to devolve into the state it is currently in, it was the developers, management, and complete disregard of their customers that is endemic to SOE. You have a false impression of how much influence the playerbase had on development of the game. The reality was that the playerbase had little to no influence on the game's development, no matter how loud they complained about the idiotic decisions made by the folks developing the game.
Ok so even Senators posting on this site said that things can be accomplished.
So a few questions.
The first CH nerf wasn't from the mass hysteria on the forums?
Holocrons would have been introduced without the whines?
Holocrons would still have been given out for Christmas?
Perma-death would have been removed anyway?
XP loss reduction, visibility removal and then the total removal of xp loss would still have happened?
BH player missions would have still been removed?
Here's a typical snippet from a whiner. "Sony Online Entertainment's initial implementation of the bounty hunter class had bounty hunters hunting down player character Jedi. This forced PvP option has been removed from the game.
http://internet-games.suite101.com/article.cfm/star_wars_galaxies_bounty_hunters
That's definitely an article on an agenda. Forced pvp option? first if it's an option how is it "forced." If you "choose" to play Jedi you have made a choice that at some point you will be perma overt. It was your choice.
/Citywarn would still have been removed?
The list goes on and on.
Come on, you are and so is most everyone here smarter than that!
Mr. Koster left the SWG team during the pre-CU period, as he was promoted to Creative Director of SOE and moved from Austin to San Diego. Lack of content was the number one reason during the pre-CU period. The response to it was the CU, and all the crap that came before.
Again, even the developers of the time said in an interview that holocrons were implemented because the dev team really wanted someone to unlock their jedi slot. It wasn't a response to player complaints. Jedi was made the focus of development because the folks directing development, not the players, thought they needed to do so to increase the sub numbers.
When the CU was put on the test center, there was a lanuchpad poll that had around 85% of the playerbase against implementing it. The poll was erased and the CU was implemented. The mass gatherings policy (which made gathering to protest a bannable offense in game) was implemented because the playerbase were gathering outside the starports in the game to protest against the CU. Players were banned and the CU was "here to stay".
When the NGE was announced, the OBoards exploded due to the playerbase being against the proposed changes to the game. When the NGE was on the test center, a launchpad poll was conducted which had around 95% of the playerbase being against it. The poll was erased and the NGE was inflicted on the game. There were several in-game protest that resulted in players being banned, and warnings were placed on the launchpad to inform the playerbase that protesting in-game against the NGE would result in banned accounts. The OBoards were in an uproar for close to a year, and they only finally calmed down as the playerbase dwindled. There are still several posts every week about how bad the NGE is/was. The NGE is still in the game. It has also been admitted by the former lead designer from when the NGE was designed and implemented, that the NGE was specifically intended to appeal to people who didn't play the game, knowing full well the existing playerbase woul not accept the changes.
You keep wanting to believe SWG's decline was the result of doe eyed folks at LEC and SOE that tried their best to do all the things their devil horned customers were violently lashing out at them to do. That isn't the case, as all the things that were done to SWG were intended to appeal to people who didn't play the game, at the expense of those who did. Jedi was made easier, not to appeal to the existing playerbase, but because it was believed it would attract new players to the game.
SWG's history is littered will colossal mismanagement and asinine decisions on the part of the development team and management. It isn't because they listened to their customers, it was because they thought they knew better than their customers, and finally because they thought they could replace their customers with new ones. They were wrong on both accounts, as the current state of the game and the dwindled playerbase can attest.
My lawyer says answer the questions.
and again, no I do blame SOE and LA, man is that so hard to grasp?
I guess you'll just circle answer everything to promote your theology and avoid a direct answer to the questions.
That's pretty much what the "stop the forced PVP crowd did."
But now they don't have to because they have the game their way.
I guess it's just one huge coincidence that nerfs and original game designs were altered after forum uprisings.
But hey I love a good conspiracy story...
I would like to state that in no way shape or form that anything I receive from SOE influences my opinion about SWG or their company. Im pretty much a typical average player enjoying the game.
I miss it too. I miss the sandbox. The game where you had to find things to do yourself. No or extremely few quests. You made your own day, your own shcedule. Either this was crafting. hologrinding, being a doctor buffin players, dancing and entertaining in the cantine. Running your mall or malls around the galaxies...
Might sound pathetic to some. But game-wise. I cant get over it. And my old RL friends that played SWG are the same too. We are everywhere now.. but all of us miss that good old game.