Interesting plans and good news on Smuggling Missions BUT
!!! I believe it when I see it in game and WORKING. !!!
I have read too many such announcements .. and most of them where hot air. There are 24 pages of dev posts on Smuggling from the last 2.5 years, most of them broken promisses.
Originally posted by freebirdpat This is so sad, it kind of makes you wish they put this type of effort out for the Pre-CU game.
They did! Player cities, mounts, vehicles, jedi village, droid revamp, warren, mand aemor, dwb, JtL, etc... They weren't all good changes, but they worked plenty hard.
Nice of them to publish the alpha development cycle for their New Game.
SWG - The first MMO to vanish without pulling the plug...and the first game to have a subscription so you can play it as it matures from alpha to beta to final release.
Originally posted by Squidi Originally posted by freebirdpat This is so sad, it kind of makes you wish they put this type of effort out for the Pre-CU game.
They did! Player cities, mounts, vehicles, jedi village, droid revamp, warren, mand aemor, dwb, JtL, etc... They weren't all good changes, but they worked plenty hard.
Yes, you are correct. But there were many things that were broken that should have been fixed. Take ballot boxes for example, totally useless, after a server reset the votes were sent to /dev/null/.
The Jedi Village was added because it was an ad hoc fix to stop the hologrind. It was decent I will admit, but I kind of also did not like a part of it, probably because the questing system they had was not meant for taking a quest that lasted longer than the time you spent online.
Player cities were slated for the release, but they released early. The same could be said of mounts and vehicles, there was a need for them. The Droid revamp was because their original thoughts on droids did not work. The Droid revamp was also kind of bad because it did not fix the one underlying issue, that the user interface with droids was pretty non-existant. I should have be able to use a button for that specific droid that would do the task I asked it to. Like if I had a droid that harvests meat. Sadly i had to set up a macro or two and had to run around saying "Retrieve" "Harvest". Droids could have been slightly improved in the User Interface area.
Warren, DWB, Mand Armor were all things that had to come in, you have to add content to the game as the game goes on. Most of the content was all high end though. Rarely if ever did they add any low end content.
JtL was an expanision. And part of the problem was it players wanted different ways to play it. Some wanted PvP others wanted PvE. I think EVE does what the players actually wanted with JtL, an immersive enviroment where you could actually spend all, if not most of your time.
Yes, they worked hard at producing new things, but I don't think they worked hard enough on fixing the bugs, and the profession problems that they did have.
BLAH! its so rediculous... I played about 2 years and its not like before it was. It really suxs now, alot of noobs around... So I played for 15 days (trial) and I saw how is it after NGE and its too bad I advice everyone to stop playing mmorpg games and have a social real life
Yeah um, there are a lot of negative people here. Some of you folks are just nay saying because it's SOE and SWG. Can't you see the potential here? I mean, isn't that what SWG has always been about? The potential? I mean come on, lets face it, when the game came out, it was new and exciting for some, but it had so much potential. Every time they published some change and broke something else, you knew if they could just fix a few more things it had such potential.
Now honestly, eventually you get tired of the carrot and face the fact that it's always going to be sitting on the edge of being fun, but never really get to the full potential. Knowing that, why bother?
I've come away from the SWG experience feeling that SOE is a very small potatoes operation.
IIRC, Smedly has said that SOE has 700 employees and up to 70 developers were working on SWG at one time.
I used to work for a small software development company that sold data management software to a small industry... and we had over 1000 employees. About 20% of those employees were developers. Our customer base was around 30,000.
I believe SWG's playerbase was quoted as 100,000 at its height. Now?
With the resources available to the parent company, there are times I've thought SOE never took SWG seriously.
Originally posted by freebirdpat Player cities were slated for the release, but they released early. The same could be said of mounts and vehicles, there was a need for them. The Droid revamp was because their original thoughts on droids did not work. The Droid revamp was also kind of bad because it did not fix the one underlying issue, that the user interface with droids was pretty non-existant. I should have be able to use a button for that specific droid that would do the task I asked it to. Like if I had a droid that harvests meat. Sadly i had to set up a macro or two and had to run around saying "Retrieve" "Harvest". Droids could have been slightly improved in the User Interface area.
That's not how droids worked in Star Wars though. In the movies, you see them talk to the droids and speak commands to them.
Originally posted by Obraik Originally posted by freebirdpat Player cities were slated for the release, but they released early. The same could be said of mounts and vehicles, there was a need for them. The Droid revamp was because their original thoughts on droids did not work. The Droid revamp was also kind of bad because it did not fix the one underlying issue, that the user interface with droids was pretty non-existant. I should have be able to use a button for that specific droid that would do the task I asked it to. Like if I had a droid that harvests meat. Sadly i had to set up a macro or two and had to run around saying "Retrieve" "Harvest". Droids could have been slightly improved in the User Interface area. That's not how droids worked in Star Wars though. In the movies, you see them talk to the droids and speak commands to them.
See I don't care how Droids worked in SW. The key thing is the user interface with droids was crappy. They were not simple to use. I don't care whether my character said this or that to get the droid to follow or come or whatever. The key is I shouldn't have had to setup a bunch of macros to do that. It should have been an intuitive interface, a player who never played the game before should not have had to read up on how to operate a droid. It should have been second nature to the other things in the game. And with my harvest droid it really didn't give me much of an advantage except I got more meat, it didn't seem to be much faster. And I personally would have had a better time with my harvest droid if it provided a bonus even when I did not use it, but used my own harvest skill and the droid just added a bonus.
In a game its good to stay true to the lore, especially one with so much history. But there definitely needs to be a point where you design a system such as the pet system(which droids and actual pets were classified under), and decide to make it more userfriendly. And you did not have to speak commands outloud to them but you could use the /tellpet command, and even I found that to be sort of goofy. The same could be said for creature handlers, from what I could tell when they used their creatures to attack it was awkward them shouting A, all the time or attack!. It felt unnatural, and looked unnatural.
The droids felt like robots to, if you told one to attack they did not respond. Yes master, TK-312 will destroy your target. or "Oh noes weesa gunna die!" or anything like that although I thought it would be cool for them to do so.
I guess I didn't like the pet system at all with SWG, it just had a lackluster way of interacting with your pets. Like most things in SWG it needed more love.
1. $OE won't test the changes and they will go in buggy. Call me a pessimist all you want but simply look back at the last couple years for reasons why I say this.
2. Nothing they say today has to hold true tomorrow. See the awesome job they did on the timing of the expansion and the NGE. This is not a company that is forthcoming with its customers.
3. $OE knows that SWG is damaged beyond repair when it comes to reputation. They have done countless upgrades to the game and launched who knows how many advertising campaigns. The problem that has and will continue to plague this company is that they don't back that advertising up with a solid, quality product.
Everyone knows this game is a failure .... in regards to its (lack of) success as a Star Wars franchise product. It's simply a matter of appeasing the die-hard suckers at this point.
Comments
Interesting plans and good news on Smuggling Missions BUT
!!! I believe it when I see it in game and WORKING. !!!
I have read too many such announcements .. and most of them where hot air. There are 24 pages of dev posts on Smuggling from the last 2.5 years, most of them broken promisses.
Have fun
Erillion
Nice of them to publish the alpha development cycle for their New Game.
SWG - The first MMO to vanish without pulling the plug...and the first game to have a subscription so you can play it as it matures from alpha to beta to final release.
Yes, you are correct. But there were many things that were broken that should have been fixed. Take ballot boxes for example, totally useless, after a server reset the votes were sent to /dev/null/.
The Jedi Village was added because it was an ad hoc fix to stop the hologrind. It was decent I will admit, but I kind of also did not like a part of it, probably because the questing system they had was not meant for taking a quest that lasted longer than the time you spent online.
Player cities were slated for the release, but they released early. The same could be said of mounts and vehicles, there was a need for them. The Droid revamp was because their original thoughts on droids did not work. The Droid revamp was also kind of bad because it did not fix the one underlying issue, that the user interface with droids was pretty non-existant. I should have be able to use a button for that specific droid that would do the task I asked it to. Like if I had a droid that harvests meat. Sadly i had to set up a macro or two and had to run around saying "Retrieve" "Harvest". Droids could have been slightly improved in the User Interface area.
Warren, DWB, Mand Armor were all things that had to come in, you have to add content to the game as the game goes on. Most of the content was all high end though. Rarely if ever did they add any low end content.
JtL was an expanision. And part of the problem was it players wanted different ways to play it. Some wanted PvP others wanted PvE. I think EVE does what the players actually wanted with JtL, an immersive enviroment where you could actually spend all, if not most of your time.
Yes, they worked hard at producing new things, but I don't think they worked hard enough on fixing the bugs, and the profession problems that they did have.
BLAH! its so rediculous... I played about 2 years and its not like before it was. It really suxs now, alot of noobs around... So I played for 15 days (trial) and I saw how is it after NGE and its too bad
I advice everyone to stop playing mmorpg games and have a social real life 
Yeah um, there are a lot of negative people here. Some of you folks are just nay saying because it's SOE and SWG. Can't you see the potential here? I mean, isn't that what SWG has always been about? The potential? I mean come on, lets face it, when the game came out, it was new and exciting for some, but it had so much potential. Every time they published some change and broke something else, you knew if they could just fix a few more things it had such potential.
Now honestly, eventually you get tired of the carrot and face the fact that it's always going to be sitting on the edge of being fun, but never really get to the full potential. Knowing that, why bother?
I'm apocalance, and I'm a SOE hater.
so...
I've come away from the SWG experience feeling that SOE is a very small potatoes operation.
IIRC, Smedly has said that SOE has 700 employees and up to 70 developers were working on SWG at one time.
I used to work for a small software development company that sold data management software to a small industry... and we had over 1000 employees. About 20% of those employees were developers. Our customer base was around 30,000.
I believe SWG's playerbase was quoted as 100,000 at its height. Now?
With the resources available to the parent company, there are times I've thought SOE never took SWG seriously.
These guys are rediculous. Who plans to stay on to Publish 34 at this rate? Honestly, who wants to be a Spy right now?
"Yeah, we'll work on you guys in 2 years!"
See I don't care how Droids worked in SW. The key thing is the user interface with droids was crappy. They were not simple to use. I don't care whether my character said this or that to get the droid to follow or come or whatever. The key is I shouldn't have had to setup a bunch of macros to do that. It should have been an intuitive interface, a player who never played the game before should not have had to read up on how to operate a droid. It should have been second nature to the other things in the game. And with my harvest droid it really didn't give me much of an advantage except I got more meat, it didn't seem to be much faster. And I personally would have had a better time with my harvest droid if it provided a bonus even when I did not use it, but used my own harvest skill and the droid just added a bonus.
In a game its good to stay true to the lore, especially one with so much history. But there definitely needs to be a point where you design a system such as the pet system(which droids and actual pets were classified under), and decide to make it more userfriendly. And you did not have to speak commands outloud to them but you could use the /tellpet command, and even I found that to be sort of goofy. The same could be said for creature handlers, from what I could tell when they used their creatures to attack it was awkward them shouting A, all the time or attack!. It felt unnatural, and looked unnatural.
The droids felt like robots to, if you told one to attack they did not respond. Yes master, TK-312 will destroy your target. or "Oh noes weesa gunna die!" or anything like that although I thought it would be cool for them to do so.
I guess I didn't like the pet system at all with SWG, it just had a lackluster way of interacting with your pets. Like most things in SWG it needed more love.
First...I'll beleive it when I see it.
Second...It will take SOE 2 years to pull that off. By that time, who gives a flip!
Third...If SOE doesn't get more subs, I'm sure their develpment team will shrink. If their development team shrinks, tak on an additional two years.
Fourth...I admire the effort as of late but as the saying goes..."Too Little Too Late".
Thats all, just four points
Ch3cksix
None of these changes will matter because:
1. $OE won't test the changes and they will go in buggy. Call me a pessimist all you want but simply look back at the last couple years for reasons why I say this.
2. Nothing they say today has to hold true tomorrow. See the awesome job they did on the timing of the expansion and the NGE. This is not a company that is forthcoming with its customers.
3. $OE knows that SWG is damaged beyond repair when it comes to reputation. They have done countless upgrades to the game and launched who knows how many advertising campaigns. The problem that has and will continue to plague this company is that they don't back that advertising up with a solid, quality product.
Everyone knows this game is a failure .... in regards to its (lack of) success as a Star Wars franchise product. It's simply a matter of appeasing the die-hard suckers at this point.
The question is, is LucasArts going to learn the right lessons from this?
A successful SWG MMORPG is possible...