Originally posted by Lepidus The article is more about the concept of change midstream than the actual mechanics. I am not an avid SWG player and it wouldn't be fair to comment in any depth on them.I'm operating with the assumption that they believe what they are doing is for the good of the game and looking at how they approached, if they should have approached it at all and how they communicated all this to the community. Finally, my I'll state my opinion on if (or how best to) change midstream.
A good stance. Please stay away from unsubstantiated rumors from rabid fans - things like the reasons certain actions were taken. Unless you can substantiate such things from an official source, you need to treat these rumors with all the respect and dignity they deserve - none at all.
The real story here is the SWG playerbase, which has got to be the biggest whiners in the history of MMORPG playerbases. SOE gives out Jump to Lightspeed for free - the kind of good will gesture that you'd think would earn them at least some leeway (and not the first one either), but people complain! Additional character slots? People complain. Refund for Obi-Wan? Complain. If you want a fascinating story, it begins somewhere in the past when the community was allowed to grow in this direction and fester unheeded. How was this grotesque monstrosity allowed to become so self absorbed and demanding?
Oh, and remember this quote:
"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to management than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones." (Nicolo Machiavelli)
A good stance. Please stay away from unsubstantiated rumors from rabid fans - things like the reasons certain actions were taken. Unless you can substantiate such things from an official source, you need to treat these rumors with all the respect and dignity they deserve - none at all. The real story here is the SWG playerbase, which has got to be the biggest whiners in the history of MMORPG playerbases. SOE gives out Jump to Lightspeed for free - the kind of good will gesture that you'd think would earn them at least some leeway (and not the first one either), but people complain! Additional character slots? People complain. Refund for Obi-Wan? Complain. If you want a fascinating story, it begins somewhere in the past when the community was allowed to grow in this direction and fester unheeded. How was this grotesque monstrosity allowed to become so self absorbed and demanding? Oh, and remember this quote: "It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to management than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones." (Nicolo Machiavelli)
You are soo blatantly off topic here, and yet you try to preface your post by encouraging people to stay on-topic? This thread and the OP have nothing to do with the SWG playerbase... This thread pertains to overhauling a game's core functions and gameplay mid-stream and what your thoughts are about it... Please reread what Lepidus is trying to do here before making an idiot of yourself...
Originally posted by Lepidus Hello everyone, I'm writing an article on SWG and the concept of making large changes to an existing game after launch. I wanted to get some thoughts from you guys before I publish it. What do you think of the theory and then specifically how it has been applied to SWG? Thanks in advance,
Only thing for me the complete disregard for the community. The community wasnt ready for another complete game revamp so soon off the tail of the CU. And this shows a blatant additude towards the community in the game. Since you haev been reviewing games I am sure even you know that people dont like huge changes. And two huge changes ina year has done and will do irrepairable damage to the community.
Also some players, like myself are suffering from severe motion sickness while playing the NGE and we have yet to hear anything from the developers. Not even acknowledgement. Maybe you can fit something about that in there.
You are soo blatantly off topic here, and yet you try to preface your post by encouraging people to stay on-topic? This thread and the OP have nothing to do with the SWG playerbase... This thread pertains to overhauling a game's core functions and gameplay mid-stream and what your thoughts are about it... Please reread what Lepidus is trying to do here before making an idiot of yourself...
Hmm... I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. Since I didn't actually write it for you, I'm not going to bother simplifying it on your behalf. However, I am going to refrain from calling you an idiot. That would be rude.
You are soo blatantly off topic here, and yet you try to preface your post by encouraging people to stay on-topic? This thread and the OP have nothing to do with the SWG playerbase... This thread pertains to overhauling a game's core functions and gameplay mid-stream and what your thoughts are about it... Please reread what Lepidus is trying to do here before making an idiot of yourself...
Hmm... I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. Since I didn't actually write it for you, I'm not going to bother simplifying it on your behalf. However, I am going to refrain from calling you an idiot. That would be rude.
"The real story is the SWG playerbase" - This was from your post, and it had nothing to do with the OP since 'The real story is overhauling a game's mechanics after it has been released for a significant period of time'... You simply reduced your post to being an attack on the SWG playerbase rather than addressing what Lep is trying to get done here... I said you made an idiot of yourself, not that you are truly an idiot, but your post was indeed idiot-worthy...
If anyone watched the apprentice lately part of what they do in marketing an item is focus groups
Though soe used a focus group many of us are still wondering if it is ex players and or from themselves playing wow or at gaming conventions and folks ignoring there booth.
If there is a pie and it is steady then most businesses would be pleased they had a piece of the pie.
What could have worked is , add a dungeon here and there use existing code, tweak fix balance, what was already working.
In stead they used cu in april one change to game code then once again nge to advance it again
if that time and energy would have been spent totally bug fixing, working on what was there, stop taking away from classes and stop revving things "up" but allowed all access to content we would not be in this position
They made an alpha class they worked continually on two professions, made promises they never kept, and in the end , didn't appreciate what they had always looking for a bigger piece of pie
While it is true a big part of there current player base may not adjust to one profession only or the combat and inability to change keymap, not allowing a portion of the current players to play, they are banking on the other customers they might draw in.
They are forgetting one thing, there own history, publicity , and with the big changes, nada you work for can mean anything in 6 months especially if they just change it again.
While some change tweaking fixing is expected, to take that which is worked for twice in a year period goes completely away, that is something that may be harder to come back from.
Originally posted by zoey121 Though soe used a focus group many of us are still wondering if it is ex players and or from themselves playing wow or at gaming conventions and folks ignoring there booth.
They posted an ad on the front page stating that if you lived in the area, they'd pay people $100 to focus test SWG. My guess is that they also took out ads in local papers as well. To answer your question, they had plenty of opportunity for all sorts of people to be in the focus group - gamers and nongamers, SWG fans and non-SWG fans. In all honesty, if they put me in the focus group not knowing about the NGE, I probably would've made the same suggestions (though perhaps arrived at a different solution).
If there is a pie and it is steady then most businesses would be pleased they had a piece of the pie. What could have worked is , add a dungeon here and there use existing code, tweak fix balance, what was already working.
Not when your pie is a LOT smaller than it could be. With 1.5 million copies of SWG sold and only 250,000 subscribers, it doesn't take a genius to realize that a majority of your playerbase is leaving - and this was pre-CU. What was there just didn't work for people. It worked for me. It may have worked for you. But it wasn't what most people wanted out of a SW MMORPG, myself included. Good MMORPG but not a good Star Wars MMORPG.
They made an alpha class they worked continually on two professions, made promises they never kept, and in the end , didn't appreciate what they had always looking for a bigger piece of pie
Now you are just being selfish. They never lied. Stating one's intention is not a promise. Brainstorming is not a design. Priorities change, and I assure you that it is nothing personal. Things happen, and they have to adapt to it. As for the pie, we ALL want a bigger piece of it. We want more people on Galaxies. We want player cities to be alive again. We want to play with more people. You may not agree with how they are going about getting more subscribers, but I assure you that letting what was there stand wasn't going to do it.
While it is true a big part of there current player base may not adjust to one profession only or the combat and inability to change keymap, not allowing a portion of the current players to play, they are banking on the other customers they might draw in.
Exactly. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omlet. What you are upset about is that you think you are one of those eggs. You might be and you might not, but I don't think you operating at an objective enough level at the moment to tell for sure.
While some change tweaking fixing is expected, to take that which is worked for twice in a year period goes completely away, that is something that may be harder to come back from.
So, you are upset that SWG is changing, not because it will revitalize SWG's stagnating population, make the game more enjoyable for a larger portion of players, but instead because some of YOUR stuff lost some value? The truth is out. It's not what's best for the game, but what's best for YOU. As someone who is not YOU, I'm most unimpressed by your reasoning.
Let's get one thing straight - it is not going "completely" away. There are changes, and some things will lose their value, but the majority of SWG is still there as it has always been. These changes seem way more significant than they are. You are losing a LOT less than if you were to start over in World of Warcraft or some other different game. You are taking a knee jerk reaction to what you assume will happen, and it has neither happened yet, nor will it be as terrible as you are expecting. Just calm down. Take a month break or something. Just relax, breathe and stuff.
So, you are upset that SWG is changing, not because it will revitalize SWG's stagnating population, make the game more enjoyable for a larger portion of players, but instead because some of YOUR stuff lost some value? The truth is out. It's not what's best for the game, but what's best for YOU. As someone who is not YOU, I'm most unimpressed by your reasoning.
I guess we will just accept the fact that this thread is irreversibly hijacked... My beef with your statement is that you automatically think that SWG's population will be revitalized... Given the argument you just picked with Zoey, at least he is offerring facts here, and the main fact is this: He doesn't like the NGE.
Where are your facts? Revitalizing SWG's playerbase? They are experiencing cancellations like never before, yet you come into this thread automatically hailing the NGE a success? Where is your proof that this will revitalize SWG's playerbase? Do you know the history behind SWG's buggy upgrades and publishes? I don't think the NGE itself will kill off SWG, but rather the sloppy launch that will ensue with game breaking bugs and mass discontent amongst the already dwindling SWG population, this will kill it off.. Please notice, I say things like 'I think' and other speculative adjectives and verbs, however, I am pretty good with predictions though...
Originally posted by kaibigan34 Originally posted by Lepidus Hello everyone, I'm writing an article on SWG and the concept of making large changes to an existing game after launch. I wanted to get some thoughts from you guys before I publish it. What do you think of the theory and then specifically how it has been applied to SWG? Thanks in advance, Only thing for me the complete disregard for the community. The community wasnt ready for another complete game revamp so soon off the tail of the CU. And this shows a blatant additude towards the community in the game. Since you haev been reviewing games I am sure even you know that people dont like huge changes. And two huge changes ina year has done and will do irrepairable damage to the community. Also some players, like myself are suffering from severe motion sickness while playing the NGE and we have yet to hear anything from the developers. Not even acknowledgement. Maybe you can fit something about that in there. Kai
That, and I have two friends with disabilities who can no longer play it. They've been devoted to this game since launch, created tons of player content, brought people to the game.. pillars of the community.
So instead of making this SWG2.. they drive loyal fans away.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Ok, that is the funniest thing I have ever read discussing SWG. Anyone who actually believes that statement is either an employee, or has no sensory apparatus whatsoever.
No offense.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Originally posted by Lepidus The article is more about the concept of change midstream than the actual mechanics. I am not an avid SWG player and it wouldn't be fair to comment in any depth on them.I'm operating with the assumption that they believe what they are doing is for the good of the game and looking at how they approached, if they should have approached it at all and how they communicated all this to the community. Finally, my I'll state my opinion on if (or how best to) change midstream.
There's 2 ways of making major changes mid-stream. SWG has done both more than once.
One method is an expansion, such as adding space flight/combat in JTL and instances w/Kashyyyk (or however many Y's it has). While not perfect, I don't think anyone really still expects perfection from SWG, these were accepted, even welcomed by the players. It should be noted that where a publisher wants to make changes such an expansion doesn't HAVE to be sold seperately. Indeed, if people are paying a subscription, they should get additional content for this money. The first game to do so in a significant way will be very attractive to new players and earn loyalty from those it already has. Particularly now that Guild Wars has every subscription payer wondering why they aren't getting more bang for paying more bucks.
The second method is the complete overhaul as with the CU and NGE. This is MMO suicide as illustrated by the SWG subscription death-spiral that began in the spring, has been slowed by newer short-term customers after Episode III, but has begun accelerating again recently. The strangest thing is that SOE knew better and had already demonstrated the way around it. In short, if you want to start over, then start over. Announce this to your community, ask them what they want in the new system and incorporate some of those ideas. When the new system is ready launch it as a NEW GAME. Continue to run the old game with reduced support and limited/no new content. Many will stay with the old one, most will move to the new one and many additional players and/or those that already left will join to the new one. End result the total number of subscribers in the old and new game combined will be much higher than the old game had prior and most/all of your development costs will be covered by initial sales of the new game. This is what SOE did right with Everquest/Everquest 2. This is what should have happened with SWG if it needed a complete overhaul rather than bug fixes (it didn't but that's another matter).
Doing a complete overhaul on a live game instead of making a new game is probably the worst thing a subscription dependent game that's already techonlogically out of date can do from a customer relations standpoint. SWG got a bit of an exception to this at the time of the CU do to the movie and yet it still experienced a net loss of subscribers. It's decline has further been slowed by being the only Star Wars game. There's lots of fantasy MMOs and they couldn't tie a similar change to ride the coattails of a movie. With out the mitigating factors mentioned above for SWG a complete overhaul of a live game may or may not make some of your customers happy. It will make many angry/disappointed/feel betrayed. They are already playing the game they want to play. For most MMOs if they wanted to play a different game they would have left and done so as there are lots to choose from. This is not affected by whether the changes are actually better or worse, it's about customer relations much more than it is about the game. New players play new games, not rehashed old ones. The biggest draw for new players to an old game is that their friends are already playing it. So an overhaul not only reduces the number of players and thus the number of recruiters. When those leaving feel sold-out, they go from being recruiters to actively discouraging others from playing that game or even doing business with any other part of the company, particularly an organization as diverse as Sony.
Hypothetically it might be possible to, over a period of a couple years, do a complete overhaul of the surface of the game. Updating audio/video, replacing single instances causing line-ups with multiple instances, removing/fixing map errors, etc. Just combine the methods above. Expand the scope of the game and at the same time remove one of the old areas so there's still the same amount of gameplay, or replace a zone with one that works on the new system. For the actuall game mechanics, such as combat, only tweak them, never change them wholesale. A major change to a core aspect of the game will have the same effect, though perhaps on a smaller scale, as an instantaneous complete overhaul a la method 2 above.
Originally posted by Dis_Ordur My beef with your statement is that you automatically think that SWG's population will be revitalized...
Automatically? No... no... I assure you, it is a well grounded theory.
Given the argument you just picked with Zoey, at least he is offerring facts here, and the main fact is this: He doesn't like the NGE.
Which is not a "fact" so much as an "opinion". Now, if you're going to chide me as being an idiot, you're going to have to display far more intelligence in your future statements than you currently are - don't want you looking like a hypocrite.
Where are your facts? Revitalizing SWG's playerbase?
I'm guessing you just read the threads that obviously support your opinions, huh? I've been around to multiple message boards out there, several not even distinctly SWG related, and they've all had several people stating that they came back to check the changes or are eagerly awaiting the demo version to try them out. Since the NGE has not gone live yet, it is impossible to suggest one way or another what will happen, but I've seen more people than you can count with your hands and toes saying that if the NGE lives up to the description, they distinctly will come back. These are not active subscribes, in many cases haven't been for a year and some just never played SWG at all. These people aren't having their cheese moved and they don't come to the game already liking the status quo.
They are experiencing cancellations like never before, yet you come into this thread automatically hailing the NGE a success? Where is your proof that this will revitalize SWG's playerbase?
There's that "automatically" again. I have not stated that it IS a success, or even that it will be (I think it will though). What I said was that the reasons they were doing the NGE is to tap into a different player audience than the currently are, and based on what I've seen (as detailed above), it's working. The people who DON'T play SWG now want to, and with a little bit of math, even if SWG lost ALL of it's current subscribers (which won't happen, I assure you), it still has far more to gain by appealing to a different audience. Whether it will or won't remains to be seen - again, the NGE is not live yet.
As for the cancellations, you have no evidence to say that these will be permanent. Lots of people left during the CU and then came back - many even accepting and sometimes, *gasp*, enjoying the CU. The fact of the matter is that people HATE change, and in the face of change, they'll react wildly and selfishly. Given some time to cool down, they will likely find that the changes weren't that severe or, heaven forbid, it's just a game.
Do you know the history behind SWG's buggy upgrades and publishes?
I've been with SWG since the beginning. I was there trying to input my credit card information on launch just like so many other people, and I got into Coronet only to have it crash 15 minutes later. I've been there and I dare say that my awareness of such things far eclipses your own. However, the difference is, I don't take bugs personally. It's not like they intend to let bugs get through. SWG is a complex program (and you obviously don't understand how complex) and bugs happen even to the best of programmers, myself included. It seems to me that the reaction to the bugs far outweighs the actual affect the bugs have. A little patience and understanding is all it takes. But whatever you do, don't think that because YOU can't do the mining ship quest THIS VERY SECOND that SOE has somehow personally insulted you.
I don't think the NGE itself will kill off SWG, but rather the sloppy launch that will ensue with game breaking bugs and mass discontent amongst the already dwindling SWG population, this will kill it off.. Please notice, I say things like 'I think' and other speculative adjectives and verbs, however, I am pretty good with predictions though...
Well, I THINK that the majority of the bugs we'll be seeing are going to affect the higher levels of the game. The newbie area has a few major bugs last I checked, but for all I know, they could be fixed. Thus new players to the game will have a pretty smooth ride compared to the vets who will be spending years complaining about how their pistol now requires CL88. Then, a few months down the line, after bug fixes and patches adding back in Commando heavy weapons and stuff, the vets will start trickling back in. Then when the GCW expansion gets announced in January, they'll start coming back in droves. They'll still maintain that they hate the NGE, because it is very hard for them to admit that they are playing something they made a big spectacle out of not wanting to, but they'll play it and perhaps even enjoy it.
This is how is works: People fear change. Whatever the change. Big changes. Little changes. People don't like them. The SWG fanbase has been subjected to significant changes more frequently than any other MMORPG, and they have learned to hold a grudge forever. People still talk about how much the CU sucked and it will be gone tomorrow. Is there any reason at all to still be carrying around that particular chip on your shoulder? There are legitimate reasons to not like the NGE, but then you don't have to play, and there's never a reason to go all whiney in a forum over it.
The people who spend the most time complaining loudly about the NGE are simply looking for attention. They feel personally assaulted and they want that pain to be made public. Very few of them have valid complaints that stand up to any scrutiny.
Originally posted by Dis_Ordur My beef with your statement is that you automatically think that SWG's population will be revitalized...
Automatically? No... no... I assure you, it is a well grounded theory.
Given the argument you just picked with Zoey, at least he is offerring facts here, and the main fact is this: He doesn't like the NGE.
Which is not a "fact" so much as an "opinion". Now, if you're going to chide me as being an idiot, you're going to have to display far more intelligence in your future statements than you currently are - don't want you looking like a hypocrite.
Where are your facts? Revitalizing SWG's playerbase?
I'm guessing you just read the threads that obviously support your opinions, huh? I've been around to multiple message boards out there, several not even distinctly SWG related, and they've all had several people stating that they came back to check the changes or are eagerly awaiting the demo version to try them out. Since the NGE has not gone live yet, it is impossible to suggest one way or another what will happen, but I've seen more people than you can count with your hands and toes saying that if the NGE lives up to the description, they distinctly will come back. These are not active subscribes, in many cases haven't been for a year and some just never played SWG at all. These people aren't having their cheese moved and they don't come to the game already liking the status quo.
Look bro, you have contradicted yourself multiple times already, and your attempt at being clever isn't achieving it's desire results... You stated, for a fact that the NGE will revitalize SWG playerbase, you state this again with the above first quote, than back off a tad two quotes down... Well, which is it? You can't be on both sides of the argument, when the conflicting sides are your own... Jesus...
Originally posted by Dis_OrdurLook bro, you have contradicted yourself multiple times already, and your attempt at being clever isn't achieving it's desire results... You stated, for a fact that the NGE will revitalize SWG playerbase, you state this again with the above first quote, than back off a tad two quotes down... Well, which is it? You can't be on both sides of the argument, when the conflicting sides are your own... Jesus... /rollseyes
Have you come here to register your opinion on the matter, or are you just in general contrary to everybody else?
Who cares what he said, or what you say for that matter.
My opinion is the only one that's right here, get used to it.
__________________________
"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
In theory, this is the way to go. Be bold enough to make huge changes to the game mechanics and structure when you have reached a point where a whole new game is in order.
You should not do this however until your existing game is largely bug free and all parts of gameplay operate well together.
You should make decisions in part based on what players have requested.
You should let players know well in advance that you are going to make huge changes to the game.
You should not make this type of change twice within a six month period, wait till you can do what you really want to do with the game.
Keep lines of communication open with players.
SWG has done an excellent job with the NGE design but their handling of releasing information about the NGE and their refusal to respond to player questions and concerns has been cold, pitiless, monstrous.
Originally posted by Lepidus Hello everyone,I'm writing an article on SWG and the concept of making large changes to an existing game after launch. I wanted to get some thoughts from you guys before I publish it.What do you think of the theory and then specifically how it has been applied to SWG?Thanks in advance,
There was a link posted to the blog of the SWG developer that is coordinating the NGE. If you read the feedback, there is a post about halfway down from another MMORPG developer that I thought was pretty insightful. To paraphrase:
Making such a huge change to a game with a large existing user base is extremely risky. The idea seems to be to attract newer players who are into more casual games (for example WoW). This is huge gamble.
Making such sweeping changes is guranteed to tick off some proportion of your current users. They like the game the way it is, or they wouldn't be paying. They may or may not like whatever new game you intend to create.
It's also going to be hard to attract custumers that are currenty in to other games to yours. They are already playing something they like, and so in many cases have no desire for something else. It will be quite hard to convince them in large numbers to stop playing something they already enjoy and try out your game.
A more succinct way of saying this: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Originally posted by Kayleigh SWG has done an excellent job with the NGE design but their handling of releasing information about the NGE and their refusal to respond to player questions and concerns has been cold, pitiless, monstrous.
There's really no other way for them to have done it. After the first CU, they learned their lesson about talking about plans up front. People see intent as "promise", and a change in priorities as "lies". If they had announced this change three months in advance, we'd have the EXACT SAME reaction, only we'd have a good three months where the bitching can escalate far out of control (more so at least)
Think of it like ripping a band-aid off all at once.
I don't think they should've announced this the day after Obi-Wan went live, but I'm absolutely positive they handled the rest of this correctly. I was pissed when it was first announced, but two days later, I was playing it on test and my opinion changed drastically - which was possible because I was still in denial/shock and had not yet set my opinion in stone.
Not only that but any progress I would've done since the announcement would've been heavily colored by it. We just stopped playing SWG because we weren't sure how it would affect us. If it had been months, we would've cancelled. As it is, our wait and see attitude worked fine for two weeks as we played it extensively on test. With it going live tomorrow, we are ready for it... eager even.
They've gone to extreme effort to make the transition as smooth as possible. The introduction of space meant that JtL was required, but rather than force old accounts to upgrade (and they could've), they took the loss and gave it out for free. People were complaining that restarting a character was impossible and that anti-decay kits were worthless, so they turned them into profession restart kits. They give you TEN respecs up front - not one. They have announced two character slots per server. And finally, they are offering a refund for ToOW for those who feel ripped off.
Now, there are a dozen different conspiracy theories on each one, but together, they show a company that is really going out of its way to make this transition an upgrade for most folks. Nobody loses anything - you can still be a jedi with two slots in space - and everybody gets something for nothing. There's a lot of resentment here where there shouldn't be, but conspiracy or not, it's no secret that SOE is giving people things they want, even when they will undoubtedly lose money over it (refunds, lost sales, cancelled second accounts).
There is no way, NO WAY, to make changes even remotely significant to a live game without a backlash, especially when they are as significant as the NGE. I mean, there are people who haven't played SWG in six months jumping into conversations about how much it sucks. You just can't ever anticipate or appease such hard feelings, deserved or not. But SOE has done everything they could and should to make this transition as fast and painless as possible. I don't think having open lines of communication to the players is a good idea right now, but when the righteous indignation and screams of torment calm down, they can reopen those lines for true constructive criticism to take place. Right now, get it out there and get the worst part over with so the rebuilding can begin. Just like ripping off a band-aid.
In this situation, the players are their own worst enemies.
My point of view is that of a subscriber who played about 6 months,left after change no 1 (the game didn't go into the direction i would have liked-more content-"raid dungeons"-better worked out "galactic civil war"-....instead they messed around with the old,existing stuff-it was like playing the "old swg" with new rules)-
i always hovered around to see if something changes,then came nge.i went to the swg forum and what do i see?hundreds of people talking about "fraud",taking away professions,..and also a few people saying that it is so much fun.??????????
"the concept of making large changes to an existing game after launch" - in the way it has been done here there has to stand "STAR WARS" in huge letters on top of that all to intercept all the negative aspects.(maybe even that name has suffered a little bit)
the purpose of that all?i think with great mmorpg-titles standing in row to be released they have given up the (mature)pc-audience(maybe a good decision?).
2 good points to overthink i have read in other posts(sry,don't remember the genuine posters)
.) the expansion holds content which is obsolete with the new game changes-only playable for 2 weeks or so....smells like "team-war"
.)making this huge changes and not making "classic"servers or a swg2 - a quarrel over the license?
i also think this all goes a bit deeper than the obvious ......(or swg really was nearly dead) and the question if this whole thing may bubble over to the "consoleros" ("has been disappointing on the pc and now they want to sell it to us"-and it's old)-maybe it comes free in a bundle with ps3?maybe SOE tricks to use one license for 2 platforms?
All MMOs can expect to see some minor changes and tweaking to core game mechanics. It's a good thing that needs to be done to preserve the integrity of a game. However, major changes to a live game are enerally not desirable and when they are on the scale and frequency of changes that have been made to the SWG MMO, they are not only undesirable, they approach the realm of the bait and switch.
"Play may vary" is generally taken to mean "we're going to be balancing things and fixing bugs" not "you're going to have to learn an entirely new game next week". They've drasticly changed the core game mechanics twice in a single year, and every new publish has noticably changed the way the game is played. This kind of instability in "the rules" is something one might expect in a drunken game of poker, not an online game one must pay a monthly service charge to play.
Sony Online Entertainment has a VERY poor track record for keeping the faith with its customers. It does not give any real consideration to bug control, makes no effort to gather factual and accurate feedback from its players and testers, and has a very nasty tendency to think it knows better than its customers what they actually want. They simply don't listen. It seems very much as if rather than attempting to boost their sales by providing a reliable, stable and engaging game, they do it through offering new product (still buggy and poorly supported as the old) in the form of frequent expansions. When this tactic failed, rather than doing what they should have (fixing and balancing), they replaced the core game with a different one, then raked in whatever profit they could from returning and new accounts. This is a very poor tactic, since any gains are offset by massive losses and the new and returning players end up leaving once they realize the "shiny new" game is just as bugridden and poorly supported as the old.
If you're going to make massive changes to an existing game, advance warning and a great deal of open communication needs to come well in advance. Ninja-swapping a new game into the title of a years old live MMO immediately following the sale of a new expansion is just crazy bad business. Consistantly lying to your playerbase is also crazy bad business. Not actively taking advantage of information from free live beta testers is terminally stupid. SOE is guilty of ALL of these things and shows no signs of ever mending their amazingly witless management of the SWG game title. Honestly, their behavior this last year really makes it seem as if they were actively attempting to alienate and drive off their entire customer base.
Originally posted by azhrarn when they are on the scale and frequency of changes that have been made to the SWG MMO, they are not only undesirable, they approach the realm of the bait and switch.
I don't see how. Yes, having large changes too frequently is quite disruptive, but it's not fair to describe it as bait and switch. It's just change, and it's nothing personal or maliciously motivated.
"Play may vary" is generally taken to mean "we're going to be balancing things and fixing bugs" not "you're going to have to learn an entirely new game next week". They've drasticly changed the core game mechanics twice in a single year, and every new publish has noticably changed the way the game is played. This kind of instability in "the rules" is something one might expect in a drunken game of poker, not an online game one must pay a monthly service charge to play.
They could've chosen to do that, but they decided (quite rightly, I believe) that a significant change was required in order for SWG to have any long term survival at all. I know you liked the game, but if the choice was between shutting it down and changing it this significantly, then by golly, the NGE is a smaller change than not having SWG at all.
Sony Online Entertainment has a VERY poor track record for keeping the faith with its customers.
Some of this is completely imagined. Not that they haven't screwed up royally, but they are frequently blamed for things out of their control or that they didn't even do in the first place.
It does not give any real consideration to bug control, makes no effort to gather factual and accurate feedback from its players and testers, and has a very nasty tendency to think it knows better than its customers what they actually want. They simply don't listen.
SOE is a large company with literally hundreds of employees split amongst a dozen different teams. Grouping them all together is unfair to the teams that really go the extra mile. I've found the EQ2 community team to be near perfect, and EQ2 has bug fixes nearly every day.
As for knowing better than their players, by golly, if that wasn't true, we'd be playing the worst game ever made. Have you seen some of the suggestions that have been made recently? Either wildly unpractical or just plain stupid. With a few hundred thousand voices shouting all at the same time, not only can't they make everyone happy, they can't even hear the constructive comments over the noise.
It seems very much as if rather than attempting to boost their sales by providing a reliable, stable and engaging game, they do it through offering new product (still buggy and poorly supported as the old) in the form of frequent expansions. When this tactic failed, rather than doing what they should have (fixing and balancing), they replaced the core game with a different one, then raked in whatever profit they could from returning and new accounts. This is a very poor tactic, since any gains are offset by massive losses and the new and returning players end up leaving once they realize the "shiny new" game is just as bugridden and poorly supported as the old.
Your Honor, I move to have this baseless speculation removed from the record. Man, it's hard to have a decent conversation about SWG without people just making up stuff.
If you're going to make massive changes to an existing game, advance warning and a great deal of open communication needs to come well in advance.
I disagree, and the first CU is the perfect example of why. When planning significant changes, intention will change as it gets closer to complete. If you tell people ahead of time what you are PLANNING to do, they will mistake it as a PROMISE and resent it forever, even when good plans need to be laid to rest for outstanding technical impossibilities. By golly, it was promised to them and thus must haves it! I'd say that unless your playerbase is mature enough to handle loose plans (which SWG's players most certainly are not), announcing anything too soon is a huge mistake. Only when it is feature complete and all but ready to roll out the door can you say "this is what is DEFINITELY going to happen". Trust me, I've been a programmer for fifteen years and worked in the game idustry - which I left because of the stress. I won't say the SWG couldn't do it better, but they are being crucified over the smallest things.
Ninja-swapping a new game into the title of a years old live MMO immediately following the sale of a new expansion is just crazy bad business.
I've said I don't agree with announcing the NGE post Obi-Wan, but it looks like it was just a matter of bad timing than any sort of malicious effort on their part. They weren't allowed to announce it sooner because it was based off the release of the new Starter Kit, which itself was decided based on holiday marketing decisions. Release it mid November to get the Christmas crowd.
Consistantly lying to your playerbase is also crazy bad business.
Outside of the Obi-Wan thing, what lies are you specifically talking about? And remember, a failure to live up to intended plans is a natural and unavoidable side effect of development.
Not actively taking advantage of information from free live beta testers is terminally stupid.
I don't think you understand how long it takes to make changes to something as complex as SWG. Just the communication alone lengthens the process considerably. You tell the community reps, who then organize the information and pass it onto the QA department. They'll try to substantiate the issues, breaking them down into the simplest repeatable steps. Then they'll open a ticket to the dev team, which will be sorted according to severity. The dev team will make these changes to their internal test machines, then pass that back to the QA team - who will then try to break it. If they do, they open another ticket and the cycle repeats. If they don't, then it will be appended to the publish schedule which already has probably the next three months worth of bug fixes already queued up. Then it is put on test center for two weeks, wehere people mark a bunch of other bugs that won't be fixed for months, before finally being pushed out to live, ready or not. If the change is something that requires LucasArts's approval, such as introducing a new outfit or a design change of any insignificance, it will go through a very lengthy process of back and forths until it is finally okayed to go in the game. I heard one of the artists say that no matter what you make, it will take a minimum of 40 days to complete because of this process.
My point is that they are taking information from testers, but it could be literally months before such info becomes useful and hits live. I'm sure they could speed this up, and indeed, they've been skipping steps with the NGE on test (sometimes for the worst), but the development process is so spreado ut among so many different teams that just the time it takes for a statement from a public tester to reach a dev's ears is significant.
SOE is guilty of ALL of these things and shows no signs of ever mending their amazingly witless management of the SWG game title. Honestly, their behavior this last year really makes it seem as if they were actively attempting to alienate and drive off their entire customer base.
If such baseless accusals are the norm from their customer base, can you blame them for not wanting to hang around you? You seem to think that you should be able to be the biggest jerk in the world and they should still treat you like royalty. I have no problem with them mistreating you, even if most of it is just made up in some sort of sick victim complex, because you are obviously so self absorbed and spoiled that nothing short of annointing your toes with oil would EVER be acceptable respect in your eyes. You want to know what real player abuse is? Go play some of those games where they sell your credit information, or charge you for pre-orders even when the game hasn't shipped, or otherwise really do screw you over rather than merely subject you to the horrible reality of change.
Originally posted by Squidi Now, there are a dozen different conspiracy theories on each one, but together, they show a company that is really going out of its way to make this transition an upgrade for most folks. Nobody loses anything - you can still be a jedi with two slots in space - and everybody gets something for nothing. There's a lot of resentment here where there shouldn't be, but conspiracy or not, it's no secret that SOE is giving people things they want, even when they will undoubtedly lose money over it (refunds, lost sales, cancelled second accounts).
Wow. I don't even know how to respond to that. It is like watching the abused spouse go back to their husband after he gets out of jail.
What exactly are they giving us that we want?
To be pigeonholed into one class for life? Sure, they claim we can have alts soon.. but they also claimed there's be a ranger update soon too.
JTL for free? That's only because they designed the tutorial to make it necessary... and they include it to the new players in the starter pack. So yeah, it is the kindness of their hearts.
The real issue is the fact that they shoved this down our throats even before they FIXED ALL THE BUGS FROM THE CU. They claim the nge was in development for over a year, so WHY EVEN PUSH THE CU? Why screw up the game only to re-screw it up in 6 months?
Why sell an expansion that features tameable pets and rewards for a class thet WON'T EXIST in 15 days? They sold that expansion on BAD FAITH. They offered refunds because they were open to lawsuits.
Going out of its way my left cheek. They are despirately bailing the sinking ship.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Shade thank you for your response because i was about to really yell at the the fish
Let me make one thing perfectly clear it is not about the changes it is about the fact that i as a handicap player cannot manage nge! I could have accepted the level based game one proffesion but my disablity is to the point i cannot manage aim target or play even a partialy twiced based game
Yes i am mad i am mad about the inablity to work on or adjust key map i am mad i have found no work around on test center to be albe to continue to play a game i love and for that reason the fact i can't is why i am tead.
While i reconize those with disablites are few in the gaming maket i want to remind you and fellow gamers who do they they think they play with during the day?
So for all your great pondering over what is to come, this change will be long remembered by the community and just add a bunch of other folks that have hard feelings toward soe and will be remembered in future products they bring out.
For the record it is not the teens and console based crowd that had dispoable income for there gaming products consoles games, but the older folks that could do it . When they by pass us and ignore our needs as a whole they lose a vauable customer base that would be customers , for the record not a he
and i guess not in the demographic target for there new customers either
First I would like to say that both parties hear are acting like children. This is atypical of these threads. You asked for some comments and you get people debating there comments. It is beyond stupid which is why I cannot resist and will comment. Poster please just ignore everything I have to say because this post is sort of irrelevant to your request just as what I am responding to is. I just need to set the record straight a bit.
Originally posted by Squidi
Originally posted by azhrarn when they are on the scale and frequency of changes that have been made to the SWG MMO, they are not only undesirable, they approach the realm of the bait and switch.
I don't see how. Yes, having large changes too frequently is quite disruptive, but it's not fair to describe it as bait and switch. It's just change, and it's nothing personal or maliciously motivated.
I buy windows XP. In 6 months a mandatory patch comes automatically updates out that makes me run windows ME. That is called baiting and switching. I bought a completely different game. IT had 32 different professions, a skill based combat system and a heavy reliance on crafting. THE NEW GAME ENHANCEMENT IS BY ITS OWN WORDS A NEW GAME. Bait you into buying the old system then handing you one you may not have wanted or asked for. Bait and switch doesn't have to be malicious. You do not need to prove intent to harm. I do not think I deserve any money back. Only those who had pre-bought time and that subscription fee that may be paid from nov. 15-31 is owed back to people. Mainly because you CANNOT GET THAT MONEY BACK FROM SOE. THEREFORE IT IS A BAIT AND SWITCH. IF I PAY YOU FOR X AND YOU GIVE ME Y AND SAY ITS NEW AND BETTER DOESN'T MEAN I AGREE TO IT. Any argument here beyond that is foolish nonsense. WANT TO KNOW WHY. I HAVE TO ACCEPT THE TOS EACH TIME THEY CHANGE THE GAME. I REFUSE TO LOGIN TO THE NGE. I HAVE A LEGAL GROUND TO STAND ON FOR A BAIT AND SWITCH CASE AND I HATE THAT IT HAS COME TO THIS RETARDED SUING PEOPLE AGRUMENT OVER A VIDEO GAME! WHAT A BUNCH OF FREAKS!
"Play may vary" is generally taken to mean "we're going to be balancing things and fixing bugs" not "you're going to have to learn an entirely new game next week". They've drasticly changed the core game mechanics twice in a single year, and every new publish has noticably changed the way the game is played. This kind of instability in "the rules" is something one might expect in a drunken game of poker, not an online game one must pay a monthly service charge to play.
They could've chosen to do that, but they decided (quite rightly, I believe) that a significant change was required in order for SWG to have any long term survival at all. I know you liked the game, but if the choice was between shutting it down and changing it this significantly, then by golly, the NGE is a smaller change than not having SWG at all.
First, Smedley or anyone else never once said swg was shutting down in the states. There public statements have stated everything is fine. Until you have some empirical evidence to back up it was shut it down or NGE then you are just making things up to support your views. If that was the case then it may have been treated differently among the playerbase knowing it was the only choice SOE had at the time to keep the game alive. We all know it wasn't. They would have used that card by now. It was to make it for the PS3 as all signs indicate. The first console/pc mmo! They want to cross platforms. Of course mine is just speculation. However, mine is based on written statements that said at the time of swg beta that it was impossible because of the console. Now that is changing with the lastest consoles and swg being built where a controller is just as apt as a keyboard for play.
Sony Online Entertainment has a VERY poor track record for keeping the faith with its customers.
Some of this is completely imagined. Not that they haven't screwed up royally, but they are frequently blamed for things out of their control or that they didn't even do in the first place.
This is imagined? Did you follow this game through beta? Do you know what was said about soe when it was announced they got the star wars mmo? Many of the same things as now. Do you know why many people didn't pick up Everquest? Because every few months there was a new expansion on the shelves that you had to buy to go along with a monthly fee. Read these boards much? How about sony's? Try out G4? I just think your in denial.
It does not give any real consideration to bug control, makes no effort to gather factual and accurate feedback from its players and testers, and has a very nasty tendency to think it knows better than its customers what they actually want. They simply don't listen.
SOE is a large company with literally hundreds of employees split amongst a dozen different teams. Grouping them all together is unfair to the teams that really go the extra mile. I've found the EQ2 community team to be near perfect, and EQ2 has bug fixes nearly every day.
As for knowing better than their players, by golly, if that wasn't true, we'd be playing the worst game ever made. Have you seen some of the suggestions that have been made recently? Either wildly unpractical or just plain stupid. With a few hundred thousand voices shouting all at the same time, not only can't they make everyone happy, they can't even hear the constructive comments over the noise.
Excellent points here. Blaming the developers is like blaming the customer service rep for not fixing your issue. BLAME MANAGEMENT. I think he was hinting at that somewhat because I do not see in your quote him blaming developers but the SOE gaming division. So you may be right on the EQ team. So they know they have 1000's of voices shouting DO THIS! NO THIS! Realizing this they decide they need profession correspondants to filter the noise and bring sound suggestions and real problems. Pretty good theory. They are handpicked with applications sent in. They are highly experienced and for the most part bright. They decide a NGE is needed. Do they Correspond with there correspondants? Do they follow there own procedures to make a good NGE as they stated they would after the last f*ck up? NO. So please stop telling me soe is incapable of hearing the right feedback and that the community is to blame. SOE DIDN'T USE OR LISTEN TO ITS CORRESPONDANTS. IT IS NO DIFFERENT THEN TELLING EVERYONE IN THE COMMUNITY TO GO F*CK THEMSELVES.
It seems very much as if rather than attempting to boost their sales by providing a reliable, stable and engaging game, they do it through offering new product (still buggy and poorly supported as the old) in the form of frequent expansions. When this tactic failed, rather than doing what they should have (fixing and balancing), they replaced the core game with a different one, then raked in whatever profit they could from returning and new accounts. This is a very poor tactic, since any gains are offset by massive losses and the new and returning players end up leaving once they realize the "shiny new" game is just as bugridden and poorly supported as the old.
Your Honor, I move to have this baseless speculation removed from the record. Man, it's hard to have a decent conversation about SWG without people just making up stuff.
People complained they couldn't do missions past lvl 15 in the nge on test. That stuff didn't convert right. The devs admitt they didn't put in a 5th gen saber yet for the jedi profession and intend to. The falcon bug is questionably fixed. The NGE is buggy. The existing bugs that existed to numerous to bother naming still exist. That is not speculation. That is fact and SOE so states it.
If you're going to make massive changes to an existing game, advance warning and a great deal of open communication needs to come well in advance.
I disagree, and the first CU is the perfect example of why. When planning significant changes, intention will change as it gets closer to complete. If you tell people ahead of time what you are PLANNING to do, they will mistake it as a PROMISE and resent it forever, even when good plans need to be laid to rest for outstanding technical impossibilities. By golly, it was promised to them and thus must haves it! I'd say that unless your playerbase is mature enough to handle loose plans (which SWG's players most certainly are not), announcing anything too soon is a huge mistake. Only when it is feature complete and all but ready to roll out the door can you say "this is what is DEFINITELY going to happen". Trust me, I've been a programmer for fifteen years and worked in the game idustry - which I left because of the stress. I won't say the SWG couldn't do it better, but they are being crucified over the smallest things.
You are a moron. They DID NOT TELL PEOPLE ABOUT THE CU. THEY TOLD PEOPLE ABOUT A CU THAT WAS NOT WHAT WAS ALPHA TESTED. NOTHING OF THE LEVELS OR MASSIVE COMBAT CHANGES WAS IN THE CU TESTING UNTIL THE "BETA" WHICH WAS THE LIVE VERSION WENT OUT. What else did they do. OH THE EXACT SAME THING. IGNORED THERE CORRESPONDANTS. 3 FROM MY SERVER. ARMOR, WEAPONS, SHIPWRIGHT ALL SUMMARILY RESIGNED WHEN SOE REFUSED TO LISTEN TO THEM. You sir haven't any clue to what you are talking about. The same stupid idiots come out and support there development processes when they violate there stated development process and then just point there crocked retarded fingers at themselves and state the community if full of stupid a-holes and the devs shouldn't listen to us. Just because you are a stupid a-hole please don't lump the community into it. I have seen brillant responses to question and problems with the game from the community. I have seen more viable options presented by the community then ever presented in game by a paid developer. I have witnessed correspondants daily battles to be heard on issues. Tanks and Wepps for instance. They fought hard to have BH work. To have player bounties work. They worked with jedi and there correspondant alike to fix the issues. You know what SOE did to reward that work after it finally worked to everyones satisfaction? They fucking deleted an end game. Hunt jedi with your BH. But the community is stupid.
Ninja-swapping a new game into the title of a years old live MMO immediately following the sale of a new expansion is just crazy bad business.
I've said I don't agree with announcing the NGE post Obi-Wan, but it looks like it was just a matter of bad timing than any sort of malicious effort on their part. They weren't allowed to announce it sooner because it was based off the release of the new Starter Kit, which itself was decided based on holiday marketing decisions. Release it mid November to get the Christmas crowd.
Bull crap. They asked people who saw it to say NOTHING till the day after they sold that expansion.
Consistantly lying to your playerbase is also crazy bad business.
Outside of the Obi-Wan thing, what lies are you specifically talking about? And remember, a failure to live up to intended plans is a natural and unavoidable side effect of development.
Ranger revamp, CH lvl 80 taming, gcw revamp, smuggler revamp, nge being done, and so on. I could name about 100 instances pre-cu where TH outright lies because there was an entire section of the forums lambasting him.
Not actively taking advantage of information from free live beta testers is terminally stupid.
I don't think you understand how long it takes to make changes to something as complex as SWG. Just the communication alone lengthens the process considerably. You tell the community reps, who then organize the information and pass it onto the QA department. They'll try to substantiate the issues, breaking them down into the simplest repeatable steps. Then they'll open a ticket to the dev team, which will be sorted according to severity. The dev team will make these changes to their internal test machines, then pass that back to the QA team - who will then try to break it. If they do, they open another ticket and the cycle repeats. If they don't, then it will be appended to the publish schedule which already has probably the next three months worth of bug fixes already queued up. Then it is put on test center for two weeks, wehere people mark a bunch of other bugs that won't be fixed for months, before finally being pushed out to live, ready or not. If the change is something that requires LucasArts's approval, such as introducing a new outfit or a design change of any insignificance, it will go through a very lengthy process of back and forths until it is finally okayed to go in the game. I heard one of the artists say that no matter what you make, it will take a minimum of 40 days to complete because of this process.
My point is that they are taking information from testers, but it could be literally months before such info becomes useful and hits live. I'm sure they could speed this up, and indeed, they've been skipping steps with the NGE on test (sometimes for the worst), but the development process is so spreado ut among so many different teams that just the time it takes for a statement from a public tester to reach a dev's ears is significant.
I am getting tired of restating the same things to you. They don't take feedback from there correspondant.
SOE is guilty of ALL of these things and shows no signs of ever mending their amazingly witless management of the SWG game title. Honestly, their behavior this last year really makes it seem as if they were actively attempting to alienate and drive off their entire customer base.
If such baseless accusals are the norm from their customer base, can you blame them for not wanting to hang around you? You seem to think that you should be able to be the biggest jerk in the world and they should still treat you like royalty. I have no problem with them mistreating you, even if most of it is just made up in some sort of sick victim complex, because you are obviously so self absorbed and spoiled that nothing short of annointing your toes with oil would EVER be acceptable respect in your eyes. You want to know what real player abuse is? Go play some of those games where they sell your credit information, or charge you for pre-orders even when the game hasn't shipped, or otherwise really do screw you over rather than merely subject you to the horrible reality of change.
Fine ignore the rest of the community. I am ok with that. Dont ignore your correspondants. Stop blaming the community. They community is represented by correspondants the devs appointed. They don't like that these people disagree with them so they choose to ignore them. Pointing to some ass who says the NGE SUXXXORS AND YOUR ALL GAY only further illustrates how idiotic you are If the devs see that as representative of the community as you seem to state then they are idiots. The 100 or so idiots don't represent anyone and saying that is the reason for ignoring the community is total bs. Its because the correspondants wouldn't go along with it. Representing the 70% pre-cu who according to there own polling disliked the cu. Therefore, the community is not to at all even be asked. Well f*ck that. Stop blaming the community. We know what is wrong. They don't like our responses.
Comments
A good stance. Please stay away from unsubstantiated rumors from rabid fans - things like the reasons certain actions were taken. Unless you can substantiate such things from an official source, you need to treat these rumors with all the respect and dignity they deserve - none at all.
The real story here is the SWG playerbase, which has got to be the biggest whiners in the history of MMORPG playerbases. SOE gives out Jump to Lightspeed for free - the kind of good will gesture that you'd think would earn them at least some leeway (and not the first one either), but people complain! Additional character slots? People complain. Refund for Obi-Wan? Complain. If you want a fascinating story, it begins somewhere in the past when the community was allowed to grow in this direction and fester unheeded. How was this grotesque monstrosity allowed to become so self absorbed and demanding?
Oh, and remember this quote:
"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to management than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones." (Nicolo Machiavelli)
Only thing for me the complete disregard for the community. The community wasnt ready for another complete game revamp so soon off the tail of the CU. And this shows a blatant additude towards the community in the game. Since you haev been reviewing games I am sure even you know that people dont like huge changes. And two huge changes ina year has done and will do irrepairable damage to the community.
Also some players, like myself are suffering from severe motion sickness while playing the NGE and we have yet to hear anything from the developers. Not even acknowledgement. Maybe you can fit something about that in there.
Kai
Hmm... I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. Since I didn't actually write it for you, I'm not going to bother simplifying it on your behalf. However, I am going to refrain from calling you an idiot. That would be rude.
Good idea... but please, look for facts on why they are doing it !! Don't listen to only the whiners...
SWG never had 350k subscription... It must be because of something. Something was wrong from the begining.
I perfer a big revamp then the death of a game i enjoy...
eqnext.wikia.com
Hmm... I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. Since I didn't actually write it for you, I'm not going to bother simplifying it on your behalf. However, I am going to refrain from calling you an idiot. That would be rude.
"The real story is the SWG playerbase" - This was from your post, and it had nothing to do with the OP since 'The real story is overhauling a game's mechanics after it has been released for a significant period of time'... You simply reduced your post to being an attack on the SWG playerbase rather than addressing what Lep is trying to get done here... I said you made an idiot of yourself, not that you are truly an idiot, but your post was indeed idiot-worthy...
If anyone watched the apprentice lately part of what they do in marketing an item is focus groups
Though soe used a focus group many of us are still wondering if it is ex players and or from themselves playing wow or at gaming conventions and folks ignoring there booth.
If there is a pie and it is steady then most businesses would be pleased they had a piece of the pie.
What could have worked is , add a dungeon here and there use existing code, tweak fix balance, what was already working.
In stead they used cu in april one change to game code then once again nge to advance it again
if that time and energy would have been spent totally bug fixing, working on what was there, stop taking away from classes and stop revving things "up" but allowed all access to content we would not be in this position
They made an alpha class they worked continually on two professions, made promises they never kept, and in the end , didn't appreciate what they had always looking for a bigger piece of pie
While it is true a big part of there current player base may not adjust to one profession only or the combat and inability to change keymap, not allowing a portion of the current players to play, they are banking on the other customers they might draw in.
They are forgetting one thing, there own history, publicity , and with the big changes, nada you work for can mean anything in 6 months especially if they just change it again.
While some change tweaking fixing is expected, to take that which is worked for twice in a year period goes completely away, that is something that may be harder to come back from.
Let's get one thing straight - it is not going "completely" away. There are changes, and some things will lose their value, but the majority of SWG is still there as it has always been. These changes seem way more significant than they are. You are losing a LOT less than if you were to start over in World of Warcraft or some other different game. You are taking a knee jerk reaction to what you assume will happen, and it has neither happened yet, nor will it be as terrible as you are expecting. Just calm down. Take a month break or something. Just relax, breathe and stuff.
I guess we will just accept the fact that this thread is irreversibly hijacked... My beef with your statement is that you automatically think that SWG's population will be revitalized... Given the argument you just picked with Zoey, at least he is offerring facts here, and the main fact is this: He doesn't like the NGE.
Where are your facts? Revitalizing SWG's playerbase? They are experiencing cancellations like never before, yet you come into this thread automatically hailing the NGE a success? Where is your proof that this will revitalize SWG's playerbase? Do you know the history behind SWG's buggy upgrades and publishes? I don't think the NGE itself will kill off SWG, but rather the sloppy launch that will ensue with game breaking bugs and mass discontent amongst the already dwindling SWG population, this will kill it off.. Please notice, I say things like 'I think' and other speculative adjectives and verbs, however, I am pretty good with predictions though...
That, and I have two friends with disabilities who can no longer play it. They've been devoted to this game since launch, created tons of player content, brought people to the game.. pillars of the community.
So instead of making this SWG2.. they drive loyal fans away.
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
Ok, that is the funniest thing I have ever read discussing SWG. Anyone who actually believes that statement is either an employee, or has no sensory apparatus whatsoever.
No offense.
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
There's 2 ways of making major changes mid-stream. SWG has done both more than once.
One method is an expansion, such as adding space flight/combat in JTL and instances w/Kashyyyk (or however many Y's it has). While not perfect, I don't think anyone really still expects perfection from SWG, these were accepted, even welcomed by the players. It should be noted that where a publisher wants to make changes such an expansion doesn't HAVE to be sold seperately. Indeed, if people are paying a subscription, they should get additional content for this money. The first game to do so in a significant way will be very attractive to new players and earn loyalty from those it already has. Particularly now that Guild Wars has every subscription payer wondering why they aren't getting more bang for paying more bucks.
The second method is the complete overhaul as with the CU and NGE. This is MMO suicide as illustrated by the SWG subscription death-spiral that began in the spring, has been slowed by newer short-term customers after Episode III, but has begun accelerating again recently. The strangest thing is that SOE knew better and had already demonstrated the way around it. In short, if you want to start over, then start over. Announce this to your community, ask them what they want in the new system and incorporate some of those ideas. When the new system is ready launch it as a NEW GAME. Continue to run the old game with reduced support and limited/no new content. Many will stay with the old one, most will move to the new one and many additional players and/or those that already left will join to the new one. End result the total number of subscribers in the old and new game combined will be much higher than the old game had prior and most/all of your development costs will be covered by initial sales of the new game. This is what SOE did right with Everquest/Everquest 2. This is what should have happened with SWG if it needed a complete overhaul rather than bug fixes (it didn't but that's another matter).
Doing a complete overhaul on a live game instead of making a new game is probably the worst thing a subscription dependent game that's already techonlogically out of date can do from a customer relations standpoint. SWG got a bit of an exception to this at the time of the CU do to the movie and yet it still experienced a net loss of subscribers. It's decline has further been slowed by being the only Star Wars game. There's lots of fantasy MMOs and they couldn't tie a similar change to ride the coattails of a movie. With out the mitigating factors mentioned above for SWG a complete overhaul of a live game may or may not make some of your customers happy. It will make many angry/disappointed/feel betrayed. They are already playing the game they want to play. For most MMOs if they wanted to play a different game they would have left and done so as there are lots to choose from. This is not affected by whether the changes are actually better or worse, it's about customer relations much more than it is about the game. New players play new games, not rehashed old ones. The biggest draw for new players to an old game is that their friends are already playing it. So an overhaul not only reduces the number of players and thus the number of recruiters. When those leaving feel sold-out, they go from being recruiters to actively discouraging others from playing that game or even doing business with any other part of the company, particularly an organization as diverse as Sony.
Hypothetically it might be possible to, over a period of a couple years, do a complete overhaul of the surface of the game. Updating audio/video, replacing single instances causing line-ups with multiple instances, removing/fixing map errors, etc. Just combine the methods above. Expand the scope of the game and at the same time remove one of the old areas so there's still the same amount of gameplay, or replace a zone with one that works on the new system. For the actuall game mechanics, such as combat, only tweak them, never change them wholesale. A major change to a core aspect of the game will have the same effect, though perhaps on a smaller scale, as an instantaneous complete overhaul a la method 2 above.
As for the cancellations, you have no evidence to say that these will be permanent. Lots of people left during the CU and then came back - many even accepting and sometimes, *gasp*, enjoying the CU. The fact of the matter is that people HATE change, and in the face of change, they'll react wildly and selfishly. Given some time to cool down, they will likely find that the changes weren't that severe or, heaven forbid, it's just a game.
I've been with SWG since the beginning. I was there trying to input my credit card information on launch just like so many other people, and I got into Coronet only to have it crash 15 minutes later. I've been there and I dare say that my awareness of such things far eclipses your own. However, the difference is, I don't take bugs personally. It's not like they intend to let bugs get through. SWG is a complex program (and you obviously don't understand how complex) and bugs happen even to the best of programmers, myself included. It seems to me that the reaction to the bugs far outweighs the actual affect the bugs have. A little patience and understanding is all it takes. But whatever you do, don't think that because YOU can't do the mining ship quest THIS VERY SECOND that SOE has somehow personally insulted you. Well, I THINK that the majority of the bugs we'll be seeing are going to affect the higher levels of the game. The newbie area has a few major bugs last I checked, but for all I know, they could be fixed. Thus new players to the game will have a pretty smooth ride compared to the vets who will be spending years complaining about how their pistol now requires CL88. Then, a few months down the line, after bug fixes and patches adding back in Commando heavy weapons and stuff, the vets will start trickling back in. Then when the GCW expansion gets announced in January, they'll start coming back in droves. They'll still maintain that they hate the NGE, because it is very hard for them to admit that they are playing something they made a big spectacle out of not wanting to, but they'll play it and perhaps even enjoy it.This is how is works: People fear change. Whatever the change. Big changes. Little changes. People don't like them. The SWG fanbase has been subjected to significant changes more frequently than any other MMORPG, and they have learned to hold a grudge forever. People still talk about how much the CU sucked and it will be gone tomorrow. Is there any reason at all to still be carrying around that particular chip on your shoulder? There are legitimate reasons to not like the NGE, but then you don't have to play, and there's never a reason to go all whiney in a forum over it.
The people who spend the most time complaining loudly about the NGE are simply looking for attention. They feel personally assaulted and they want that pain to be made public. Very few of them have valid complaints that stand up to any scrutiny.
Which is not a "fact" so much as an "opinion". Now, if you're going to chide me as being an idiot, you're going to have to display far more intelligence in your future statements than you currently are - don't want you looking like a hypocrite.
I'm guessing you just read the threads that obviously support your opinions, huh? I've been around to multiple message boards out there, several not even distinctly SWG related, and they've all had several people stating that they came back to check the changes or are eagerly awaiting the demo version to try them out. Since the NGE has not gone live yet, it is impossible to suggest one way or another what will happen, but I've seen more people than you can count with your hands and toes saying that if the NGE lives up to the description, they distinctly will come back. These are not active subscribes, in many cases haven't been for a year and some just never played SWG at all. These people aren't having their cheese moved and they don't come to the game already liking the status quo.Look bro, you have contradicted yourself multiple times already, and your attempt at being clever isn't achieving it's desire results... You stated, for a fact that the NGE will revitalize SWG playerbase, you state this again with the above first quote, than back off a tad two quotes down... Well, which is it? You can't be on both sides of the argument, when the conflicting sides are your own... Jesus...
/rollseyes
Have you come here to register your opinion on the matter, or are you just in general contrary to everybody else?
Who cares what he said, or what you say for that matter.
My opinion is the only one that's right here, get used to it.
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"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
In theory, this is the way to go. Be bold enough to make huge changes to the game mechanics and structure when you have reached a point where a whole new game is in order.
You should not do this however until your existing game is largely bug free and all parts of gameplay operate well together.
You should make decisions in part based on what players have requested.
You should let players know well in advance that you are going to make huge changes to the game.
You should not make this type of change twice within a six month period, wait till you can do what you really want to do with the game.
Keep lines of communication open with players.
SWG has done an excellent job with the NGE design but their handling of releasing information about the NGE and their refusal to respond to player questions and concerns has been cold, pitiless, monstrous.
Kayleigh
There was a link posted to the blog of the SWG developer that is coordinating the NGE. If you read the feedback, there is a post about halfway down from another MMORPG developer that I thought was pretty insightful. To paraphrase:
Making such a huge change to a game with a large existing user base is extremely risky. The idea seems to be to attract newer players who are into more casual games (for example WoW). This is huge gamble.
Making such sweeping changes is guranteed to tick off some proportion of your current users. They like the game the way it is, or they wouldn't be paying. They may or may not like whatever new game you intend to create.
It's also going to be hard to attract custumers that are currenty in to other games to yours. They are already playing something they like, and so in many cases have no desire for something else. It will be quite hard to convince them in large numbers to stop playing something they already enjoy and try out your game.
A more succinct way of saying this: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Think of it like ripping a band-aid off all at once.
I don't think they should've announced this the day after Obi-Wan went live, but I'm absolutely positive they handled the rest of this correctly. I was pissed when it was first announced, but two days later, I was playing it on test and my opinion changed drastically - which was possible because I was still in denial/shock and had not yet set my opinion in stone.
Not only that but any progress I would've done since the announcement would've been heavily colored by it. We just stopped playing SWG because we weren't sure how it would affect us. If it had been months, we would've cancelled. As it is, our wait and see attitude worked fine for two weeks as we played it extensively on test. With it going live tomorrow, we are ready for it... eager even.
They've gone to extreme effort to make the transition as smooth as possible. The introduction of space meant that JtL was required, but rather than force old accounts to upgrade (and they could've), they took the loss and gave it out for free. People were complaining that restarting a character was impossible and that anti-decay kits were worthless, so they turned them into profession restart kits. They give you TEN respecs up front - not one. They have announced two character slots per server. And finally, they are offering a refund for ToOW for those who feel ripped off.
Now, there are a dozen different conspiracy theories on each one, but together, they show a company that is really going out of its way to make this transition an upgrade for most folks. Nobody loses anything - you can still be a jedi with two slots in space - and everybody gets something for nothing. There's a lot of resentment here where there shouldn't be, but conspiracy or not, it's no secret that SOE is giving people things they want, even when they will undoubtedly lose money over it (refunds, lost sales, cancelled second accounts).
There is no way, NO WAY, to make changes even remotely significant to a live game without a backlash, especially when they are as significant as the NGE. I mean, there are people who haven't played SWG in six months jumping into conversations about how much it sucks. You just can't ever anticipate or appease such hard feelings, deserved or not. But SOE has done everything they could and should to make this transition as fast and painless as possible. I don't think having open lines of communication to the players is a good idea right now, but when the righteous indignation and screams of torment calm down, they can reopen those lines for true constructive criticism to take place. Right now, get it out there and get the worst part over with so the rebuilding can begin. Just like ripping off a band-aid.
In this situation, the players are their own worst enemies.
My point of view is that of a subscriber who played about 6 months,left after change no 1 (the game didn't go into the direction i would have liked-more content-"raid dungeons"-better worked out "galactic civil war"-....instead they messed around with the old,existing stuff-it was like playing the "old swg" with new rules)-
i always hovered around to see if something changes,then came nge.i went to the swg forum and what do i see?hundreds of people talking about "fraud",taking away professions,..and also a few people saying that it is so much fun.??????????
"the concept of making large changes to an existing game after launch" - in the way it has been done here there has to stand "STAR WARS" in huge letters on top of that all to intercept all the negative aspects.(maybe even that name has suffered a little bit)
the purpose of that all?i think with great mmorpg-titles standing in row to be released they have given up the (mature)pc-audience(maybe a good decision?).
2 good points to overthink i have read in other posts(sry,don't remember the genuine posters
)
.) the expansion holds content which is obsolete with the new game changes-only playable for 2 weeks or so....smells like "team-war"
.)making this huge changes and not making "classic"servers or a swg2 - a quarrel over the license?
i also think this all goes a bit deeper than the obvious ......(or swg really was nearly dead) and the question if this whole thing may bubble over to the "consoleros" ("has been disappointing on the pc and now they want to sell it to us"-and it's old)-maybe it comes free in a bundle with ps3?maybe SOE tricks to use one license for 2 platforms?
All MMOs can expect to see some minor changes and tweaking to core game mechanics. It's a good thing that needs to be done to preserve the integrity of a game. However, major changes to a live game are enerally not desirable and when they are on the scale and frequency of changes that have been made to the SWG MMO, they are not only undesirable, they approach the realm of the bait and switch.
"Play may vary" is generally taken to mean "we're going to be balancing things and fixing bugs" not "you're going to have to learn an entirely new game next week". They've drasticly changed the core game mechanics twice in a single year, and every new publish has noticably changed the way the game is played. This kind of instability in "the rules" is something one might expect in a drunken game of poker, not an online game one must pay a monthly service charge to play.
Sony Online Entertainment has a VERY poor track record for keeping the faith with its customers. It does not give any real consideration to bug control, makes no effort to gather factual and accurate feedback from its players and testers, and has a very nasty tendency to think it knows better than its customers what they actually want. They simply don't listen. It seems very much as if rather than attempting to boost their sales by providing a reliable, stable and engaging game, they do it through offering new product (still buggy and poorly supported as the old) in the form of frequent expansions. When this tactic failed, rather than doing what they should have (fixing and balancing), they replaced the core game with a different one, then raked in whatever profit they could from returning and new accounts. This is a very poor tactic, since any gains are offset by massive losses and the new and returning players end up leaving once they realize the "shiny new" game is just as bugridden and poorly supported as the old.
If you're going to make massive changes to an existing game, advance warning and a great deal of open communication needs to come well in advance. Ninja-swapping a new game into the title of a years old live MMO immediately following the sale of a new expansion is just crazy bad business. Consistantly lying to your playerbase is also crazy bad business. Not actively taking advantage of information from free live beta testers is terminally stupid. SOE is guilty of ALL of these things and shows no signs of ever mending their amazingly witless management of the SWG game title. Honestly, their behavior this last year really makes it seem as if they were actively attempting to alienate and drive off their entire customer base.
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Kote lo'shebs'ul narit
Two more thoughts:
Why was the Combat Upgrade done separately from the NGE? Is this because
it was a huge coding part of the change they needed to push out first and have time to tweak
before they released the NGE? Player response aside, why do this part separately?
If it was necessary to remove entire classes that had been in place since launch, why not spread the
abilities out between the new classes rather than dump them summarily altogether?
As for knowing better than their players, by golly, if that wasn't true, we'd be playing the worst game ever made. Have you seen some of the suggestions that have been made recently? Either wildly unpractical or just plain stupid. With a few hundred thousand voices shouting all at the same time, not only can't they make everyone happy, they can't even hear the constructive comments over the noise.
Your Honor, I move to have this baseless speculation removed from the record. Man, it's hard to have a decent conversation about SWG without people just making up stuff.
I disagree, and the first CU is the perfect example of why. When planning significant changes, intention will change as it gets closer to complete. If you tell people ahead of time what you are PLANNING to do, they will mistake it as a PROMISE and resent it forever, even when good plans need to be laid to rest for outstanding technical impossibilities. By golly, it was promised to them and thus must haves it! I'd say that unless your playerbase is mature enough to handle loose plans (which SWG's players most certainly are not), announcing anything too soon is a huge mistake. Only when it is feature complete and all but ready to roll out the door can you say "this is what is DEFINITELY going to happen". Trust me, I've been a programmer for fifteen years and worked in the game idustry - which I left because of the stress. I won't say the SWG couldn't do it better, but they are being crucified over the smallest things. I've said I don't agree with announcing the NGE post Obi-Wan, but it looks like it was just a matter of bad timing than any sort of malicious effort on their part. They weren't allowed to announce it sooner because it was based off the release of the new Starter Kit, which itself was decided based on holiday marketing decisions. Release it mid November to get the Christmas crowd. Outside of the Obi-Wan thing, what lies are you specifically talking about? And remember, a failure to live up to intended plans is a natural and unavoidable side effect of development. I don't think you understand how long it takes to make changes to something as complex as SWG. Just the communication alone lengthens the process considerably. You tell the community reps, who then organize the information and pass it onto the QA department. They'll try to substantiate the issues, breaking them down into the simplest repeatable steps. Then they'll open a ticket to the dev team, which will be sorted according to severity. The dev team will make these changes to their internal test machines, then pass that back to the QA team - who will then try to break it. If they do, they open another ticket and the cycle repeats. If they don't, then it will be appended to the publish schedule which already has probably the next three months worth of bug fixes already queued up. Then it is put on test center for two weeks, wehere people mark a bunch of other bugs that won't be fixed for months, before finally being pushed out to live, ready or not. If the change is something that requires LucasArts's approval, such as introducing a new outfit or a design change of any insignificance, it will go through a very lengthy process of back and forths until it is finally okayed to go in the game. I heard one of the artists say that no matter what you make, it will take a minimum of 40 days to complete because of this process.My point is that they are taking information from testers, but it could be literally months before such info becomes useful and hits live. I'm sure they could speed this up, and indeed, they've been skipping steps with the NGE on test (sometimes for the worst), but the development process is so spreado ut among so many different teams that just the time it takes for a statement from a public tester to reach a dev's ears is significant.
If such baseless accusals are the norm from their customer base, can you blame them for not wanting to hang around you? You seem to think that you should be able to be the biggest jerk in the world and they should still treat you like royalty. I have no problem with them mistreating you, even if most of it is just made up in some sort of sick victim complex, because you are obviously so self absorbed and spoiled that nothing short of annointing your toes with oil would EVER be acceptable respect in your eyes. You want to know what real player abuse is? Go play some of those games where they sell your credit information, or charge you for pre-orders even when the game hasn't shipped, or otherwise really do screw you over rather than merely subject you to the horrible reality of change.Wow. I don't even know how to respond to that. It is like watching the abused spouse go back to their husband after he gets out of jail.
What exactly are they giving us that we want?
To be pigeonholed into one class for life? Sure, they claim we can have alts soon.. but they also claimed there's be a ranger update soon too.
JTL for free? That's only because they designed the tutorial to make it necessary... and they include it to the new players in the starter pack. So yeah, it is the kindness of their hearts.
The real issue is the fact that they shoved this down our throats even before they FIXED ALL THE BUGS FROM THE CU. They claim the nge was in development for over a year, so WHY EVEN PUSH THE CU? Why screw up the game only to re-screw it up in 6 months?
Why sell an expansion that features tameable pets and rewards for a class thet WON'T EXIST in 15 days? They sold that expansion on BAD FAITH. They offered refunds because they were open to lawsuits.
Going out of its way my left cheek. They are despirately bailing the sinking ship.
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
Shade thank you for your response because i was about to really yell at the the fish
Let me make one thing perfectly clear it is not about the changes it is about the fact that i as a handicap player cannot manage nge! I could have accepted the level based game one proffesion but my disablity is to the point i cannot manage aim target or play even a partialy twiced based game
Yes i am mad i am mad about the inablity to work on or adjust key map i am mad i have found no work around on test center to be albe to continue to play a game i love and for that reason the fact i can't is why i am tead.
While i reconize those with disablites are few in the gaming maket i want to remind you and fellow gamers who do they they think they play with during the day?
So for all your great pondering over what is to come, this change will be long remembered by the community and just add a bunch of other folks that have hard feelings toward soe and will be remembered in future products they bring out.
For the record it is not the teens and console based crowd that had dispoable income for there gaming products consoles games, but the older folks that could do it . When they by pass us and ignore our needs as a whole they lose a vauable customer base that would be customers , for the record not a he
and i guess not in the demographic target for there new customers either