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Smedley Interview
admriker444
Member Posts: 1,526
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1557&Itemid=2
Wow this guy is so full of cow dung.
Comments
Actually, everything John Smeldy said was COMEPLETELY correct. It was the author of the article who added a bunch of Bull $h!t.
No, I am not a supporter of this change (although, I DEFINATELY see its potential. SOE needs to hold back the patch alittle bit longer and sort out the bugs, and physics etc.
YOU COW DUNG!!!!
So they changed it?
So they reduced the number of professions?
THIS is what's wrong with SOE.
Anybody starting to get the picture?
It has traditionally been, and still seems to be, as if they make the opposite changes to address the wrong problems!
/shrug I don't get it.
Hey, I'm sure it's something really deep and meaningful. These guys are schmart.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
So they changed it?
So they reduced the number of professions?
THIS is what's wrong with SOE.
Anybody starting to get the picture?
It has traditionally been, and still seems to be, as if they make the opposite changes to address the wrong problems!
/shrug I don't get it.
Hey, I'm sure it's something really deep and meaningful. These guys are schmart.
I'm going to take a wait and see approach to this.
I am cancelled. When the NGE goes live they're going to release a free trial. I will probably DL the trial to see what it's like (I will NOT resubscribe until I get to try it free). IF, and ONLY IF, I find it as fun, or more fun, than I previously did SWG I MAY resubscribe.
Otherwise I'm gone for good.
I'm actually hearing good things about this update from people I know who are trying it on the test servers... which is scary. I was really dead set against it but folks I know who are trying it really like it. I can't understand how... I really loved the skill based game... but I'm a big enough person to be willing to admit I might be wrong. Who knows... maybe it will be fun. I liked the KOTOR games after all. Maybe that's what's inspiring these changes.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
"It's mixed. It's very positive [feedback] from the people who are actually playing it. And we also have the expected push back from the people who haven't actually logged in to try it," says Smedley. "Once people get in there, it's overwhelmingly positive. It's the "the sky is falling" crowd on the forums that's still going to take some converting. I understand that. These are big changes."
*cough* Bullcrap *cough*
More than half of actual player feedback on the forums in the feedback thread from those who have played it is indeed negative!
Most of the feedback is also centered on the entire "Get aboard the falcon kid this palce is going to blow" bug. THis ass clown is full of garbage. Interviewers who don't challenge lies are just corporate mouth piece a-holes.
Agree hax... i'm not taking this at face value. Which is why my account will stay cancelled until they put out a free trial so I can see it for myself without having to pay to beta test it for them. IF it is as good as they claim I may resubscribe. I do know some folks who are testing it and they do have some good things to say. So I'm keeping a relatively open mind. But closed wallet.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
How can you tell Schmedley's lying?
When he says anything.
Come on.. like you didn't see that coming.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Nah El, I already made up my mind to try it again
We go in with an open mind, and come back out with an open mouth.
Honestly, I think they just got tired of the work. Listen to Smedley, "too many professions" wonk wonk wonk. My opinion would normally be, well you just don't belong in the business then.
But I'm always willing to try something new. Even if it sounds like hell.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
On the official NGE forums, of course they are complaining. The NGE is bad. The only thing it has going for it is a couple of new cutscenes, a couple of new locations(Tansarii Station and Gamma Station) and some story driven quest(that are actuallypretty good), but the rest of the NGE is complete garbage. Combat is horrid. They try and make it play like an FPS and fail meserably. The new professions, GUI, controls, key mapping, everything else sucks. They have gutted the game and dumbed it down to total crap.
Smedgly <---spelt wrong for a reason, is lying if he says this combat system has been out for months. It is debuting on the TC's. He is also full of crap if he thinks the only place people are complaining about the game is on the official forums. They are complaining on gaming websites all over the internet and also on the TC's. In fact at one point they had to take the TC's down because they were swamped with chat spamming protesters.
Face it, SOE has killed the game. Tell you what, don't believe me. Do the free trial downlaod on the 15th or 18th or whatever day it is and try it. You'll see.
I played it on test and was one of the first ones. Logged 8 hours. It sucks. Not one of the never played it but complaining about it.
Gui sucks, controls suck, combat is completely redunant, new content ends post noob tutorial, jedi everywhere, and dumbed down system.
If you want further evidence you can just check this boards past messages. If you enjoy depressing the 1 key to activate a special to your right mouse button then having to click the right mouse button awesomely faster paced combat you are lying to yourself. FPS Style combat right? Bullcrap. You hit or miss souly on skill modifiers like percision. There is no bullet tracking. There is no fps in this at all accept autoattacking your target is removed and requires you to follow the target by holding down your left mouse button to autoattack! WOOOO! Big Improvements....
Nice luke skywalker pic in your character advancement screen. Lame arses couldn't even code it to put a pic of your toon in there. 2 active skills as opposed to 24? ROTFLMAO. Over the shoulder lock view is not even the best view for this new system. L33t jedi everywhere. Ya. I want a jedi tooooooooooo.
This game went from deep and complex to noob-centric. Now they axed tiggs probably for asking them to stop lying and stop making false statements. SOE is run by those monkeys from the career builder comerical.
We did awesomely cool market reach and determined you players want this! WTF! ROTFLMAO. Here is a thought you idiot. Ask the damn players and LISTEN TO THEM. NO ONE ASKED FOR 300K JEDI! NO ONE SAID RUIN CRAFTING! NO ONE ASKED FOR PROFESSIONS TO BE DUMPED! NO ONE ASKED THERE 2 YEARS OF GAME ACCOMPLISHMENTS BE ERASED!
SOE supporters on this nge can kiss my white hairy backside.
Hmm, 8 hours, at the beginning of the testing. There's been what, 4 patches since then?
I see these posts about the UI sucks, but it differs very little from the current UI (apart from the skills window). The only real difference is the new artwork surrounding it. This seems more like looking for an argument to me. What level did you get up to? I'm a level 14 commando at the moment and the quests are still going on (the profession specific quests don't start until you hit level 14 when you recieve a item in your inventory that you inspect to start).
Um, you do realise on Live that most of the combat is constantly pressing hotkeys on your keyboard to activate specials? The thing is generally only alive long enough now for you to do one special. Thats alot faster then on Live. I think you'll find that the official statement is that the combat RESEMBLES FPS style combat but still keeps some of the old style. The idea is that they want you involved in whats happening in the combat on the screen, not looking at your hotkey bar at the top of your screen or on the keyboard. This new system does achieve that.
I'll agree with you on the skills window, it is pretty cheesy and I do hope they change that. Not sure what you're talking about with the 2 skills thing tho. The reason it's over the should at close zoom is 'cause it's kinda hard to target the opponent when your head's in the way
. Again, they want you to be involved in the combat, not have something obscuring it.
Why Tiggs was axed we'll never know. If she didn't agree with SOE she certainly didn't make it obvious in her posts. She did however show signs of stress towards those that were being asses with *roll eyes* stuff and everything. Maybe they saw that she just wasn't up to it anymore and the constant nagging and whining was getting to her? We could sit here speculating all day and we'll be no better off.
Lets put it this way, why ask the current players for their opinion on the game? They've sold 1 million copies of the game, but only 250k-300k play the game. There are more people with copies not playing then there are people with subscriptions actually playing. Obviously, they're going to ask the people that left why they left and what they can do to improve it. This is the solution they've come up with. Many people that did quit are coming back, and guess what? So far it seems the majority of the current players are positive about it too.
Sadly i have to agree i loved that game precu i still enjoyed it post cu but this broke the preverbial camels back. im not too chuffed to say it but i ebayed and managed to just get +$400 for my char and now i look at ebay and there are better chars going for less and barely getting bids.
im gonna pray that lucas arts cancelles SWG with soe and releases SWG2 with a differant company till then im out but will continue to keep an eye open for the CU3
I tested it on TC, there is nothing good about it. There is nothing fun about it.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
the combat is "point here, hold down a button and wait until you or the other person goes down" running or dodging is pointless, aiming while doing that is quite difficult.
I dont know which one is the best?
So how is the fan base reacting?
"It's mixed. It's very positive [feedback] from the people who are actually playing it. And we also have the expected push back from the people who haven't actually logged in to try it," says Smedley. "Once people get in there, it's overwhelmingly positive. It's the "the sky is falling" crowd on the forums that's still going to take some converting. I understand that. These are big changes."
or
"Despite some of the rhetoric coming from the existing player base, we've not noticed any rise in people canceling their subscriptions. It's just a very small, very vocal minority."
I guess if your defending a load of sh1t you have to speak a load of sh1t.
The higher up you go, the further away from having your feet firmly planted you are, and the less oxygen you get.
Smedley is way high up there in SOE.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
I agree with you, SOE has most likely killed the game.
But I do plan to DL the free trial just to see what they've done. They won't get a penny from me unless it's as good as they're hyping it to be. And even then I may not resubscribe... I'm pretty tired of the rambo changes going on with SWG.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
What I find the most amusing about Schmedley's lies...
He said the playerbase has been growing "Faster than any other $OE game" and there weree no significant cancellations.
YET
He said they needed a new system.. and here it is.
Now WHY IN THE HECK would they completely overhaul the game and give us the nge mess.. if the game was as successful as he's saying?
That, and his "vocal minority" line worked when he lied about the love for the CU.. why not dust that monkey off for this mess too.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I could say this, and I have, until I'm blue in the face and nobody at SOE listens.
The important thing about the CU was that it was designed to more easily create a balanced and playable end-result. In that respect, it worked. Because it was balanced, the people most upset were those that THOUGHT their skills were all-that, when in fact their Pistoleer/Smuggler was NOT supposed to be all that great versus a Bounty Hunter as one example.
All they had to do was apply the changes...to STAR WARS. NOW they seem to be on the right track. They are going to make each choice of profession worthy of mention in the immersion aspect of the game.
At least...this is the plan. And this has been what ALWAYS has been wrong with SWG. It's not the combat system's fault, but the developers who didn't see the game in all the math.
I have often stated that SWG was a graphical chat room with guns. And this is true. There is no PURPOSE for doing anything! Your profession of choice was crap. Sorry, but it's true. They gave you no purpose in the SW universe.
What they did essentially was put Jedi in a universe...that didn't require the Jedi presence for any reason but just to be there.
A better example, they put Han Solo in a universe in which nobody needed anything smuggled. He had no purpose.
This has always been the problem. Now, I can BUY into what they are saying that this makes it easier to apply these changes addressing this problem, if it weren't for the fact that they NEVER TRIED TO DO IT TO-DATE. They didn't take the base design and make it Star Warsy, they tossed it out to make things easier on themselves, and now they are marketing it for PS3 because they KNOW tons are going to leave.
But really, if they can get it RIGHT instead of pushing it onto the client early, they may yet save the game for this reason. If they refuse to hold it until it works right, they could kill it utterly. And few will buy it for PS3 either for the same reason. Why would you want to?
The same crappy game on a different platform?
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Anybody who thinks the forums are indicative of the majority opinion is using faulty reasoning. There are currently 250-300K players on SWG. How many of them post on the forums? I'm willing to wager less than 1/10 of the gaming population, possibly even much less than that. Despite what you hardcore players who visit the forums daily may think, the average player is not going to visit the forums frequently, or even at all. So no, the public opinion on the forums is not the public opinion of the majority of players.
Frankly, Smedley is right. This is a case of those fans who are claiming the sky is falling. It happened with the first CU, where people said the game was destroyed and there was supposedly mass account cancellations, and yet SWG's gaming population increased. It also happened when SOE enabled the Station Exchange servers for EQ2. A lot of clamoring on the forums, supposedly mass cancellations by players, etc... Same thing with the combat revamp for EQ2. And now it's happening again for SWG, and will happen later on for Matrix Online when that combat revamp goes live.
Either way, the bottom line is, regardless of how sucky you think the change is, and regardless of what you believe others feel about the change, SOE does not stay in business by making bad changes that pisses off the majority of their gaming population. They only upset a small but very vocal minority that wants to spell doom and gloom at the first sign of anything they don't like and denounce the game. And hey, don't take my word for it, just look at the facts. Next to WoW, SOE's games still garner a very large player base for each of their games compared to other games. If the opinion of the majority of players who play SOE games was that SOE sucks and ruins their games, why would they get so much business?
If you rely on forums to tell you how good or bad a game is then you're cheating yourself, usually. People who post honestly on forums are fairly few and far between. Most folks who post on forums do so because they are MAD about something. A very small minority of posters are folks, like myself, who post because they just enjoy talking on message boards.
If you want to know how you'll like a game play the trial of it. If there's no trial get a friend to let you borrow their account. If you don't have a friend who plays then either wait for a trial or take a chance on the game. Worst case you're out the box price of whatever game you're trying.
And, while certain folks will try to deny it:
The Message boards ARE the "Vocal Minority". And the majority of any "Vocal Minority", regardless of how good the product is, will be the folks unhappy with a product. Simply because people who feel unhappy or angry are 99% more likely to post than someone who is content or happy with a product.
A simple way to estimate how well you're doing is to put up official forums (like most MMORPG's do). Then monitor how many unique posters you have on the forums in any given time period (1 month, 1 week, whatever) and subtract 10% of that number. That should give a good representation of how many of your total player base is unhappy
Then divide that number by your total *active* subscriber base and you will know roughly what percentage of your players are unhappy.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Hmm, 8 hours, at the beginning of the testing. There's been what, 4 patches since then?
Nothing has changed since then bub. So eat my arse. How many beta hours you logged chumpet?
see these posts about the UI sucks, but it differs very little from the current UI (apart from the skills window). The only real difference is the new artwork surrounding it. This seems more like looking for an argument to me. What level did you get up to? I'm a level 14 commando at the moment and the quests are still going on (the profession specific quests don't start until you hit level 14 when you recieve a item in your inventory that you inspect to start).
Level 10 Jedi stopped there to do the jtl missions. The Chat locked position. The toolbar location. The login logout locations. The Keymapping. The spacebar=jump. The way secondary specials are activated. First you click the corresponding number for that special then you can right click the mouse to activate the special. That is just plain stupid.
Um, you do realise on Live that most of the combat is constantly pressing hotkeys on your keyboard to activate specials? The thing is generally only alive long enough now for you to do one special. Thats alot faster then on Live. I think you'll find that the official statement is that the combat RESEMBLES FPS style combat but still keeps some of the old style. The idea is that they want you involved in whats happening in the combat on the screen, not looking at your hotkey bar at the top of your screen or on the keyboard. This new system does achieve that.
The thing living a few shots is not true. It only applies if you are a higher level. If the oppenent is higher then you the retarded damage modifier based on your level vs. your targets level applies. Remanents of the old cu that stunk then and stink now. IT IN NO WAY RESEMBLES AN FPS. ALL SOE DID TO MAKE THIS AN FPS IS REMOVE THE AUTO ATTACK. DISPUTE IT ALL YOU WANT. 1 ACTIVE SPECIAL. SPAM 1 TPE OF HIT. I WAS FAR MORE INVOLVED BEFORE. Where is bullet tracking in an fps? You still have the magically blaster bolt that follows you everywhere!
Hmm, 8 hours, at the beginning of the testing. There's been what, 4 patches since then?
I see these posts about the UI sucks, but it differs very little from the current UI (apart from the skills window). The only real difference is the new artwork surrounding it. This seems more like looking for an argument to me. What level did you get up to? I'm a level 14 commando at the moment and the quests are still going on (the profession specific quests don't start until you hit level 14 when you recieve a item in your inventory that you inspect to start).
Um, you do realise on Live that most of the combat is constantly pressing hotkeys on your keyboard to activate specials? The thing is generally only alive long enough now for you to do one special. Thats alot faster then on Live. I think you'll find that the official statement is that the combat RESEMBLES FPS style combat but still keeps some of the old style. The idea is that they want you involved in whats happening in the combat on the screen, not looking at your hotkey bar at the top of your screen or on the keyboard. This new system does achieve that.
I'll agree with you on the skills window, it is pretty cheesy and I do hope they change that. Not sure what you're talking about with the 2 skills thing tho. The reason it's over the should at close zoom is 'cause it's kinda hard to target the opponent when your head's in the way
. Again, they want you to be involved in the combat, not have something obscuring it.
The over shoulder is not the best view. Hit alt. Zoom out turn off chase cam. Follow any target you wish hovering mouse over them. 2 skills. You can only have 1 active skill at a time which is bound to the right mouse button. To change said active skill you have to press 1-0 key to bind another special to the right mouse button. Even gamepad controllers allow for more active button specials in crappy console games.
Lets put it this way, why ask the current players for their opinion on the game? They've sold 1 million copies of the game, but only 250k-300k play the game. There are more people with copies not playing then there are people with subscriptions actually playing. Obviously, they're going to ask the people that left why they left and what they can do to improve it. This is the solution they've come up with. Many people that did quit are coming back, and guess what? So far it seems the majority of the current players are positive about it too.
They never asked or polled former players. They did a market research targeting pre-teens and retards who know nothing of computer gaming.
Faulty logic, my friend , faulty logic. If SWG subscriber numers were not going down to a critical level recently, there would not have been a need for such a drastic change. SOE HAS been making bad business decision lately and wasted a lot of potential. The dramatic success of WoW shows them what they COULD have accomplished in the last 2.5 years.
They WERE getting a lot of business 2 years ago. Compared to todays MMORPG market, their market share has dropped freefall .. see this website http://www.mmogchart.com/
So ... SOE is falling behind big time and they know it. Due to bad business decisions, bad project managment, mediocre coding and customer support. And due to a mediocre reputation amongst the computer journalists and players, as you can see in almost any gaming website or magazine lately.
Have fun
Erillion
PS: This is coming from someone who is defending SWG here on this website for months now as a good game that needs improvement. Radical redesigns and kicking the veteran players into their marbles is not "improving" the game. Its a desperate move to set a new course before the iceberg sinks the ship ... risking all for their target of reaching a new record (amount of subscribers in that case, not the fastest Atlantic crossing).
All he's saying is that it's growing faster than games like EQ, EQ2, MxO, Planetside, and Toontown, none of which are exactly breaking growth records right now...