Massive Changes upcoming to SWG

[Starman]

I just wondered what everyone thinks about the massive upcoming changes to SWG, I for one think they could do the game a world of good and am much more interested in the game now. But as with all changes to MMO's we will have to see how it pan out.

Have no idea what I am talking about? See here, and here.

Comments?

 

[Aada]

No creature handler? wtf ? most interesting class in the game imo ;/ seems they are catering for all the BH wannabes.

Tried SWG twice won't go back for a 3rd time.

 

[Tallen]

I just wondered what everyone thinks about the massive upcoming changes to SWG, I for one think they could do the game a world of good and am much more interested in the game now. But as with all changes to MMO's we will have to see how it pan out.

Have no idea what I am talking about? See here, and here.

Comments?

So, they have finally removed the professions they have ignored since the game was released rather than fixing the problems and bugs. This is not a huge change, it's a huge cop-out.

SOE have no idea how to run an online game, everything they touch turns to mush and SWG is the crown jewel in their fuck-up collection. This is a well documented fact.

Sorry, but this is stinks of the Combat Upgrade, which turned a fubar game into a slightly different, more bugged fubar game.

Not impressed in the slightest, if anything im incredibly underwhelmed.

 

[rynnor]

Ooo - sounds like they really nerfed jedi back to a normal pc - now thats gonna hurt! I can hear the screams from here! Its a crap game - these changes will make it into a different yet still crap game as well as destroying what diversity did exist in the game.

 

[Adari]

i think it rawks

 

[cHodAX]

It sounds like a total re-write which is no bad thing. The amount of work required to put SWG right after 3 years of bad patching is huge. Better to start again by slimming down the classes, totally change the combat system and add content which is what they have done.

 

[djpringle]

It goes live in 5 days and is bugged to hell, even after months of development.

 

[Tallen]

No creature handler? wtf ? most interesting class in the game imo ;/ seems they are catering for all the BH wannabes.

Tried SWG twice won't go back for a 3rd time.

Creature handler gone along with a lot of other professions that SOE has been promising to fix for a long time. Those players are left with nothing except useless items, some with warehouses full of useless junk.

Those Jedi who grinded for months to gain their second char slot? Gone, now everyone gets 2 char slots per server for free.

Reduced diversity, only 9 classes now, so they have removed everything that made SWG appealing as regards customisable characters and expect a 90% Jedi population as Jedi is now a basic class.

Combat changes are quite decent i have to admit and may work in their favour if they ever get the GCW sorted out.

Why do this? Simple, money. MMORPG's have a much larger player base now than a few years ago and they can afford to lose 1,000 current players to gain 50,000 new ones. SWG was dying a slow death, the potential for the title had never been exploited. By simplifying things they follow the WoW recipe, catering to the more general gaming market rather than roleplayers. MMORPG really is mainstream gaming nowadays.

1000, maybe 2000 will quit and QQ on forums, but the truth is SOE probably does not care about any of these players, and why should they? they are easily replacable.

Personally i think treating long-standing players like this is terrible, however unless you clear-out the wound, it'll never heal properly (throw te baby out with the bathwater, whatever analogy you wish) and im guessing for these players, SOE prolly see it as a mercy culling to preserve the future of the game.

 

[Aada]

Well the only class that ever intrested me in that game was the Creature Handler (i'm currently beta testing Dark and Light and also a tamer on that too).

That class was pretty darn fun when the game came out with rancors etc but overall the game sucked big time.. i quit.


Year later i came back.. the game had improved alot and i played it for a month or so.. left for other games.

My advice is wait for the Dark and Light prelude this month its fucking awsome

 

[Awarkle]

actually i suspect that more than 1000 people will quit. You noticed how they put up the "refund trials of obi wan kenobi" on the main page i wonder how many people emailed them or complained to local governments.

Tbh i dont care about the nge although i understand that it effects A LOT OF PEOPLE. i mean i was quite enjoying my creature handler lvl 22. and then found out it was getting shafted totally so just went off and mastered imperial pilot instead, ill wait to see what happens with NGE before i start another character although the chances are im going to go trader and get my starship equiped.

But your right they are going to be looking at a 90% jedi population across all servers because starwars everyone wants to be a jedi so thats what they are going to get.

What is bad is that the forums are just flames i mean not one person has said "im looking forward to this" nearly everyone has said "the games bugged" this doesnt work that doesnt work.


WHy they couldnt just release Starwars galaxies for Consoles and slowly phase out the old servers till everyone is playing the console version is beyond me.

Its just some muppet higher up the chain which has said "DO THIS I DEMAIN IT" and not listened to the customer service reps go "sir the players are not happy".

anywho lets see what happens ive got my popcorn ready.

Although R.I.P bantha army

 

[Turamber]

Seriously, who would want to play a MMOG whose developers have shown such a lack of concern for the players? I think we can all agree that what sets MMOG's apart from other games is (1) the community and (2) the character development.

Having two major rewrites of the game in, what, 12 months - removing professions, completely changing the economy, turning a composite game of many flavours into a combat only game kills both the community and an individuals character development.

If they can do this twice in 12 months they can do it again and again. I predict this game will be dead and cancelled before 2006 is done.

Stupid thing is there was a good game in SWG trying to get out -- but their prediliction to the BH/Jedi game and doing little or nothing to make the GCV workable stopped the game from reaching its potential. Now its being dumbed down for the Q4 players amongst us.

 

[Tallen]

Stupid thing is there was a good game in SWG trying to get out -- but their prediliction to the BH/Jedi game and doing little or nothing to make the GCV workable stopped the game from reaching its potential. Now its being dumbed down for the Q4 players amongst us.

This is very much at the core of the problem. The origional SWG selling pitch was that you could live the Star Wars experience, for many players this meant playing a role in a believeable Star Wars environment.

Then came Jedi which was a brilliant idea initially, allowing the possiblity to be a Jedi, but not telling anyone how to do it. Initially the very first Jedi were a wonder and a really exciting thing in the game was to witness a Jedi or even see a Jedi. Then they told everyone how to do it, people wrote FAQ's and instantly the game became overran with Jedi-only-wannabee's who whined and whinged more than any group of players in gaming history until becoming a Jedi was so simple anyone could do it.

From this point the whole concept of a Star Wars experience was crushed as 100 jedi running around Tatooine blatantly flaunting their profession and ganking anything that they could isn't most peoples idea of a Star Wars environment.

This was the point of no-return.

 

[Ilienwyn]

Holy crap, what have thy done?!

 

[Nightchill]

Nice to see a lack of knee-jerking here

Old timers are, understandably, pissed off that their grind has largely resulted in, well, not much. With the game drastically changing and being "dumbed down" (their words).

From SoEs point of view; they have a dying game. They either start the mudflating procedure (hi WoW) and add endless high level content to keep the current players, or they sweep the board clean and make it into a fast paced action/mmorpg that new players can get to grips with.

They went for the latter and I think that took some guts. I played SWG for a long while and, curiously, downloaded the 10 day trial to see just how "bad" they'd made it with NGE. It's not that bad. It's fun. It's VERY fast (compared to ole swg where you could alt+tab to irc and chat during fights) and hey, you can be a Jedi from the word go. May not fit into the timeline but SoE lost that grip on their world a long time ago.

Give it a month until the old guard have stopped complaining (or left) and after a new/massive add campaign and it'll effectively be a new game. Let's hope they launch a large advertising campaign to coincide. It may even persuade me back

 

[Penguin]

If I'm right they're closing SWG in japan next year?

You've gotta look at the whole thing here. Lets face it. When most people see SWG they most probably want to be a jedi - I know i did. I was infact put off when i found out about the long boring grind (Had already had enough of this from DAOC).

I guess the grind was there to prevent everyone from becoming a jedi, eventually however lets face it - There were far too many jedi. In most PVP battles a majority were jedi and it just wasn't that fun imo. It was cool at the beginning when you saw a jedi once every now and then and it's "Oooh.. look a jedi... oooh a lightsabre.." but then jedi just became too common, and they were too powerful for the number of them that existed.

Naturally the only course to reduce the number of jedi is to weaken them, and make them the average proffession.

Imo SWG is a fantastic game, theres just so much you can do. The customer supports not bad when they're actually talking. (Once there was a period of downtime for 2-3 days and the only message was "NO ETA AT THIS TIME" over and over..)

I like the new classes, but i don't like the new combat system. The first combat system was shit, the CU was fantastic imo made combat alot more exciting.. effects etc. Now you have to repeatidly click the target? It's annoying if they're moving alot and you're trying to run around.

However, veteran players now have Space for free (Including me) And i love space to bits so i'll just ignore the chaos down on the ground and destroy stuff in space.

There has been a large increase in the ammount of jedi, now that it's easy everyone wants to give it a go - It's only natural! But people will realize it's not all that great when it's just as powerful as the next proffession.

One BIG mistake i think SOE have made is removing the ability of BH to hunt Jedi! WTF is that about! That made the game alive! You could actually hunt other players for cash. I was a bounty hunter at the time, the NGE has also made it impossible for me to wear my current set of armour. Faster XPing and more story-based classes are nice, but the new combat system is TOO fast paced. I hate the new targeting system and they didn't even bother to add the old keymap as a pre-made keymap ingame.

I'm hiding in space

 

[Thadius]

If I'm right they're closing SWG in japan next year?

You've gotta look at the whole thing here. Lets face it. When most people see SWG they most probably want to be a jedi - I know i did. I was infact put off when i found out about the long boring grind (Had already had enough of this from DAOC).

I guess the grind was there to prevent everyone from becoming a jedi, eventually however lets face it - There were far too many jedi. In most PVP battles a majority were jedi and it just wasn't that fun imo. It was cool at the beginning when you saw a jedi once every now and then and it's "Oooh.. look a jedi... oooh a lightsabre.." but then jedi just became too common, and they were too powerful for the number of them that existed.

Naturally the only course to reduce the number of jedi is to weaken them, and make them the average proffession.

Imo SWG is a fantastic game, theres just so much you can do. The customer supports not bad when they're actually talking. (Once there was a period of downtime for 2-3 days and the only message was "NO ETA AT THIS TIME" over and over..)

I like the new classes, but i don't like the new combat system. The first combat system was shit, the CU was fantastic imo made combat alot more exciting.. effects etc. Now you have to repeatidly click the target? It's annoying if they're moving alot and you're trying to run around.

However, veteran players now have Space for free (Including me) And i love space to bits so i'll just ignore the chaos down on the ground and destroy stuff in space.

There has been a large increase in the ammount of jedi, now that it's easy everyone wants to give it a go - It's only natural! But people will realize it's not all that great when it's just as powerful as the next proffession.

One BIG mistake i think SOE have made is removing the ability of BH to hunt Jedi! WTF is that about! That made the game alive! You could actually hunt other players for cash. I was a bounty hunter at the time, the NGE has also made it impossible for me to wear my current set of armour. Faster XPing and more story-based classes are nice, but the new combat system is TOO fast paced. I hate the new targeting system and they didn't even bother to add the old keymap as a pre-made keymap ingame.

I'm hiding in space

Your joking right?

Was gonna come back to SWG and be a bounty hunter, just to pk jedis

Guess not...

 

[Nightchill]

Some rumours recently started that they're shutting up shop for good (not just Japan) in Q1 next year and selling the (original) code to a third party.

 

[motestw]

SOE

realy did it this time I play some mmorpgs and God it's a invasion from SWG

in Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Shadowbane, EvE Online.

It's a large quantite influx of former SwG to EvE Online now.

I played SwG I must say SOE going too loose more then 10 000 subscribers

Changes done in SWG is soo radical too just piss of some hard core Jedi players "if you look into those who played dancers and Crafters SOE just stabb them.

Most insane peps who played soe until now will in a way leave + remember SOE as not trust worthy.

 

[Penguin]

I still maintain that it's definately one of the best mmorpgs out there - There is so much to do. It's just really frustrating when they mess with a game that doesn't need messing with.

Unfortionately SOE make alot of fuckups where they could include excellent features.

Removing Player Bounty Hunting was a joke. I think the reason they removed it was because Jedis didn't like losing XP all the time - Easy soltuion - Reduce XP loss.

Combat is pure shite now imo - You have to select the attack then click the target - Pretty tricky when the charicters running all over the place. (Mentioned this earlier but oh well)

Their online "chat to support staff" is actually quite good. Player housing is fantastic too imo. Vehicles, space, both good features.

The idea of the changes was to bring many more people into the game.. so far i've not seen that happen. If they do pass the game onto another company atleast we can hope they'll make it even better.

 

[motestw]

Penguin

"The Best mmorpg out there" thats not SWG

however player owned structures and crafting and own vechicles was
fun back in time.

and god for *** how they manage too **** with soo god economics
they have I never going too understand but after reading SOE managers comment from a interview

he stated

- Players dont know them self what they want, Customers are clueless.

well I wasnt that impressed after reading that statment.

I played SWG like some things in the game but I headed back too EvE Online
where I feel welcome by the corp who own the game and Dev. the game.

+ the playerbase are great

 

[Aada]

I still maintain that it's definately one of the best mmorpgs out there - There is so much to do. It's just really frustrating when they mess with a game that doesn't need messing with.

Unfortionately SOE make alot of fuckups where they could include excellent features.

Removing Player Bounty Hunting was a joke. I think the reason they removed it was because Jedis didn't like losing XP all the time - Easy soltuion - Reduce XP loss.

Combat is pure shite now imo - You have to select the attack then click the target - Pretty tricky when the charicters running all over the place. (Mentioned this earlier but oh well)

Their online "chat to support staff" is actually quite good. Player housing is fantastic too imo. Vehicles, space, both good features.

The idea of the changes was to bring many more people into the game.. so far i've not seen that happen. If they do pass the game onto another company atleast we can hope they'll make it even better.

lol no chance not on this earth is this anywhere near a good MMORPG and your one of these players still paying for this shit? your the reason why SOE keeps this game going because you still feed em the money every month.

 

[Penguin]

Gee am i not entitled to my own oppinion here?! If you ACTUALLY READ what i said, i said that i think it's ONE OF the best MMORPGS out there.

Aada, you can fuck right off, i like the game, others obviously do too otherwise they wouldn't pay for it either. Just because you don't like it, the game should shrink away and die, right? Clueless.

Also, if you're interested, i only returned for 1 month to check out the game again, not that i care what you think about how i spend MY money.

 

[Penguin]

Motestw - I've not looked at Eve properly but from what i have seen it does look quite cool, However, i also hear alot that you need to spend alot of time training (Or XPing or whatever it is) to reach a level where you can compete with other players? So it's not the game for me

Agreed, SOE aren't all that great - The one thing i like about them is their online support chat. They do tend to give away Double XP a bit too much as compensation and it screws with the game a fair bit.

 

[Abel]

However, i also hear alot that you need to spend alot of time training (Or XPing or whatever it is) to reach a level where you can compete with other players?

I heared exactly the opposite from EVE players. You gain skills/xp/whatever based on real time subscribed (not xping in-game), so grinding will only get you money and no extra skills. Also, supposedly, even a newbie player can be of value in the greater scheme of things. Which all frankly sounds quite attractive for someone like me with a job !

 

[Tallen]

I still maintain that it's definately one of the best mmorpgs out there - There is so much to do. It's just really frustrating when they mess with a game that doesn't need messing with.

What game are you playing? I ripped through the entire content of the game without even trying in about 2 months, then started on Jedi because there was nothing left to do.

Also SWG has since release been fundimentally flawed, bugged to the heavens and never, EVER balanced in any way, shape or form. SOE had no idea what they were doing until recently, then when they made their minds up, it was to turn the game into mmo KOTOR.

I understand why they have gone this route (in many ways i agree with the decision), but the game is a textbook example from release of what NOT to do with a mmorpg.

SWG should have been the biggest online game of all time, the potential was mindblowing. Now it looks like it may end up as dog food.

 

[Tallen]

I heared exactly the opposite from EVE players. You gain skills/xp/whatever based on real time subscribed (not xping in-game), so grinding will only get you money and no extra skills. Also, supposedly, even a newbie player can be of value in the greater scheme of things. Which all frankly sounds quite attractive for someone like me with a job !

EvE is a great game for the casual gamer, the game is designed to reward players based on the length of time they have played, but even a new player can make a significant contribution to a mega-corp.

Try the free 14 day trial, i guarantee you'll love it. The graphics are awesome, the community superb and the game very easy going.

With 19k players on one persistent, seamless server, why not give it a go

 

[Penguin]

What game are you playing? I ripped through the entire content of the game without even trying in about 2 months, then started on Jedi because there was nothing left to do.

Also SWG has since release been fundimentally flawed, bugged to the heavens and never, EVER balanced in any way, shape or form. SOE had no idea what they were doing until recently, then when they made their minds up, it was to turn the game into mmo KOTOR.

I understand why they have gone this route (in many ways i agree with the decision), but the game is a textbook example from release of what NOT to do with a mmorpg.

SWG should have been the biggest online game of all time, the potential was mindblowing. Now it looks like it may end up as dog food.

As i said, i was a very casual player, and yes i was wrong about EVE but then as i said, it was only from what i had gathered from bits and bobs around the internet.

 

[Thadius]

Anything else changed on swg?

 

[Fafnir]

I like most of the changes, saw i had an old install on my comp decided to see if i could log in and i could, checked my sub, and it had started up with 15 day trial.

The new combat system is better than the old, you do more now. And i like the quests, the newbie zone is nice to get to know the game, not like it was before you where thrown into the fray from T -1 min...

And found out i had loads of veteran rewards to pick out, sold a few for a total of 37.000.000 good way to start a new char. Logged in my old one that was 4-1-1-1 Ranger used respec and got combatlevel 61, and when i respecced trader i got lvl90...

And if you got a really old char with some decent equipment and just want to start a new one, you can always sell your old equipment, some of the really old stuff is really worth some decent hard cash.. T21 rifle i had sold for 10.000.000, and got 2 more thats even better, from the old krayt dragon tissue days.

 

[Thadius]

Might have a look around later