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Role Playing (Games) Media Movies Star Wars Prequels

Star Wars Galaxies Users Restless Over Rebalancing 114

Posted by simoniker from the indigestion-for-jabba dept.
Zonk writes "Last Thursday 'Thunderheart', the Community Manager on PC MMO Star Wars Galaxies' forums, dropped a bomb: the long awaited patch rebalancing combat within the game has been pushed off until after the Jump to Lightspeed expansion [which just announced 13 of its 15 spaceships] launches. Given that the JtL expansion is not due until this fall, this puts the combat rebalance somewhere around the beginning of next year. The playerbase has... not taken this well. The original thread on the official forums was locked at 64 pages - it was then picked up again in a thread already surpassing 50 pages. The players are rightly outraged, and the reaction has prompted a response from the Sony Online chain of command. It will be interesting to see how this turns out." Update: 07/21 15:52 GMT by S : There's an interview with producer Haden Blackman over at Game Informer which discusses the issue in more detail.
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Star Wars Galaxies Users Restless Over Rebalancing More

Star Wars Galaxies Users Restless Over Rebalancing

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  • Is Vader the Community Manager? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tarison ( 600538 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @02:56AM (#9757491)
    I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it any further.
    • For a different deal, then go play Galactic Conquest http://www.galactic-conquest.net/ [galactic-conquest.net]

      Its free (if you have a copy of BF1942) and Vader isn't in it.

      And its got nothing to do with SOE

      And Lucasarts know about it (and even offer it for download from their website).

      Its not an MMORPG but then neither is SWG by all accounts.

      I'm sorry to sounds like an advert but GC is fun and I really don't think that MMORPGs are anywhere near mature enough to successfully recreate something like the star wars universe.

      IMH
  • Speaking as a Starwars fan who loved Jedi Knight II to death, I haven't been too happy about the last run of games (not counting the space sims, since don't play 'em I can't comment). What I've heard about Galaxies hasn't encouraged me. So I'm wondering, just how much does it affect play balance. I mean, one the one hand I can see you being mad if the Rebels are constantly getting their asses kicked by the Empire (or vice versa), on the other, if you're playing a dancer, then you kinda gotta expect getting

    • Re:How bad is it? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SmutMonkey ( 791144 )
      I believe (although I don't PVP, so I could be wrong) that the problem is with the profession combination Rifleman and Combat Medic. With these two professions it's possible for a player to cause their opponent to become dizzy (if you do pretty much anything while dizzy you fall over) using a Rifleman technique (IIRC) then they inflict damage over time using the combat medic skills. And if you cause them damage, they can just heal themselves. If anyone wants to correct me then please do, I'm just a crafter
      • Combat Medics are a huge problem, but it goes a lot deeper than that. Combat Medics are a problem because, while every other combat class has 75% chopped off their damage in PvP, CMs do not. They also inflict this unmitigated damage to an unhealable pool using area attacks. They can essentially end a battle before it starts.

        The combat balance is essentially a gigantic nerf to all combat. In SWG, combat has become (aside from the CMs) all about spamming special attacks and who gets knocked down first.

  • this is really rotten (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tokaok ( 623635 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @03:18AM (#9757584)
    The number one reason SWG fans are pissed is that SOE is charging them 15$ a month telling them that it is going into the maintaining of servers and creation of new free content. but instead SOE has taken that money to develop and expansion that they will then charge full price to their current base.
    • I belive the balances will still be aplied to non expansion users, but not untill the expansion is released. But I will go to war with you that expansions to MMRPG's are completly unacceptable. How this idea was ever deemed apropriate is beyond me.

    • SWG, SOE, RPG combat and JtL (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LondonLawyer ( 609870 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @04:27AM (#9757817) Journal
      My take on SWG is that SOE have more or less accepted that JtL will be kill or cure and so want to concentrate on that before they do anything else.

      Seems like they failed to pull off the MMORPG cleanly and had to push it out the door to get some sort of return on their costs. Having spent a year trying to get that playable, it's getting to the stage where the Star Wars brand is no longer a sufficient selling point in the absence of good gameplay.

      By delaying their combat rebalance, SOE admittedly piss off subscribers but many of those were pretty pissed off already and have still stuck with SWG. Why? Basically they hope things will improve. If SOE push out the combat rebalance now and it's no good, they will disappoint again. If they wait, those subscribers are likely to hang on long enough to see what the improvements are like. They squeeze a few more months' worth of subs out of people and buy themselves time.

      I expect JtL to be indifferent to good and the combat rebalance to be indifferent to poor. I expect JtL will *far* overshadow the RPG combat rebalance. I don't think combat is a priority for SOE in the RPG and from the pre-launch forums I don't think it ever was. They'd rather have a more peaceful, manageable MMORPG world - essentially backstory to JtL. This way moisture farmers pay their subs to live quietly and those who want excitement will have to look for it in JtL.
    • *nods*
      I'm massively unsurprised, as I've seen them do exactly the same thing before.
      Planetside was due to have your fee paying for free content, fixes, and upgrades, but instead 95% of the effort appeared to be dumped into the (mediocre) Core Combat expansion, a for-fee upgrade.

      No, not bitter, not bitter atall... :-/
    • Which is really funny, since this is exactly what they've been doing with Everquest for 5 years, and what they're currently doing with FFXI as well. You'd think people would learn.

  • Self balancing? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 )
    I guess people might be strictly 'imperial' or 'rebel' but how about this.

    Which ever side sucks, give them a 60-40 / 70-30 majority. This can be done ala counterstrike balancing, initiated by all those people on the forums.

    Just put a flag up saying save the *insert side that sucks* and people will rally.

    Generally, two sides with equal numbers, one side who is better will always win. Unbalance the numbers to reflect the skills involved, and the games are more interesting.

    In the star wars universe, there
    • The balance issues have nothing to do with faction. The imbalances apply to the core combat systems.
    • You can't just "swap teams" in this sort of game like you can an FPS like CS. This is persistent universe that saves it's state over time, unlike an FPS, where each "round" of the game is self-contained. The balance that people are talking about has nothing to do with numbers of players. It's all about certain abilities and combinations of abilities being grossly more powerful than nearly everything else. This kind of balance is tough to achieve. The various Blizzard games (Diablo 1/2, Starcraft, etc) had t

    • Not that kind of balance (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @10:58AM (#9760215) Journal
      It is the fighting in game balance. The Imp vs Reb "story" is done by wich percentage of each group completes the quest. So if you got 2 imps and 1 complets it vs 1 million rebs with 499.000 completing the quest the imps win.

      The pvp combat and to a lesser extent the pve combat is unbalanced. PvP is most notable with many classes just not able to take part as their is always some uber-kiddie with every exploit and the one power macro who just can't be stopped.

      But the more serious problem is that the game just isn't fun. Whatever made half-life so much greater the quake makes SWG so much less then and this is really nasty, any game out there.

      I have played it for a few months and I slowly come to the realisation that there are no unbalances bugs or lack of content. The entire game from beginning to end is just wrong. It seems like every decission they took they took the one that was the least fun. I think that if you really sat down with the game, noted every irritant and then build a game with those you would have the perfect MMORPG. There is something there but sony is unable to bring it out, they tried for two years and honestly it is only getting worse.

      Of course those who still play it will defend it, they are like smokers who say they like smoking, SWG has one thing, like EQ it is addicting, the addicition is you searching for the little bit of fun that Sony has missed. You think that just around the next skill box, the next job there is gonna be fun. There isn't.

      Perhaps MMORPG's themselves are flawed.

      • Interesting: I liked what you said:

        Of course those who still play it will defend it, they are like smokers who say they like smoking

        I was starting to think I was the only one who saw through their 'I like to smoke' attitude. Well they probably do get a better feeling, but enjoyment? more like a tolerable incovenience that quashes a craving and gives you something to do with you hands.

        I never really played this type of game, sounds complicated. :-)

  • The State of the Game (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wheaty18 ( 465429 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @03:42AM (#9757692)
    I grabbed the Fileplanet 14 day free trial and it was enough to convince me to purchase the game (only $29.99 these days). I'm about halfway through my 30 day free trial and the game is running a bit thin content-wise, although I have 'powered' my way through a lot of it. I would like to give the GCW/PvP a try, but as it currently stands, it pretty much consists of jedi/guild gank squads. Funny, I thought Lucas et al. were anal about continuity in the Star Wars universe... guess not! You've got fully declared (overt) Rebel Jedi walking the streets of Imperial controlled towns such as Theed and Bestine, showing off their sabers and force powers, with no opposition at all. This game is supposed to take place between Ep 4 and 5, btw.

    I started my character June 29, and as of right now I've mastered a combat profession (TKA) and have around 2 million credits in the bank. Due to the combat inbalance, you can pull in around 500k-1mil credits every three hours doing "solo group" missions (that is to say, a bunch of people max out a group in order to gain access to ~35k reward destroy missions and go solo the missions for the full payout). I don't know anyone (aside from guilds) that currently group for the actual purpose of cooperative gameplay.

    I played the beta, and for the buggy POS that it was, at LEAST there was some sense of community. People would form hunting parties and such on the high level planets. Now it's all about getting buffed by a master doctor for 3 hours and soloing (whether for credits or xp). The whole routine is wearing a bit thin, and I'm not sure I'll renew until JTL and/or they fix the combat balance problem.
    • Now it's all about getting buffed by a master doctor for 3 hours and soloing (whether for credits or xp)

      This is exactly the reason why I have yet to play a mmorpg. As with any rpg its great for awhile players actually know what the "R" in in rpg stands for and really play there characters.

      Then it turns into munchkin land, all role playing is thrown out the window, everybody is god like because there is this or that exploit where you level up or become super strong if two hours. And then the game is all a

      • Try the everquest free 30 day download trial going on now... there is still plenty of roleplay if you want it.
    • They're retooling the path to become a Jedi as well, from the grind to a quest driven path. I'm sure people will be even MORE open to pursuing the path of Jedi once that goes through.

      They basically bowed to player pressure and threw continuity out w/ the bath water.

      There's a state of the game on the SWG site where a dev states it is to make the game more fun. Personally I'm not interested in playing a Star Wars MMORPG full of Jedi. That's why they make the Jedi Knight series.

      There shouldn't be a Jedi sys

  • Delays and a lack of professionalism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @03:48AM (#9757705)
    I don't play Galaxies, although I do play another MMORPG (FFXI) and take an interest in the genre. As such, my rant here isn't going to be specifically about Galaxies, so feel free to stop reading and/or mod me off-topic now.

    This is the perfect example of how so many developers shoot themselves in the foot and harm both their own chances of success and the reputation of the industry. This is particularly true of the PC gaming industry, which has seen its credibility battered by behaviour like this over the last few years. I'm talking about this habit that developers have of whipping up interest in a product, claiming it's going to be here "very soon" and then not delivering.

    The most spectacular example of this recently has been Half-Life 2. I forget when exactly Valve went public with what they'd been doing on Half-Life 2... I think it was some time around March 2003. When they unveiled it, there was a predictable and deserved *thud* sound as jaws hit the floor. More impressively still, at a time when Doom 3 was still stuck in the mystic lands of "when it's done", Valve announced that Half-Life 2 would be appearing in September that year... just a few months away. I remember speaking to some friends about this at the time; the consensus was that Valve had just compltely undermined ID, that ID were going to be a laughing stock and that Doom 3 wouldn't be looking so special by the time of its release, as Valve would have comprehensively stolen their thunder.

    Of course, we all know how the story developed. The September 30th release date for HL2 came and went, with no release in sight. Sure, Valve got unlucky (or stupid, depending on how you see it) over the source-code leak, but from what I've heard (I've not seen the leaked source-code, nor do I particularly want to), the game wasn't even close to being ready for release last September. Indeed, there's a growing feeling that the revised release date of *this* September is now looking unlikely. The result? Valve lost a lot of credibility. Their main rivals, ID, gained a lot of ground back, because people felt that while "when it's done" release dates are a bad idea, ID had at least been consistent about it and, of course, it's now gone gold. Much of Half-Life 2's thunder was stolen by Far Cry, which delivered much of what HL2 promised, with far less hype. The overall loser? The PC gaming industry in general, which has further cemented its reputation with its customers as unprofessional, unfocussed and unable to deliver.

    The Galaxies fiasco doesn't sound as though it's on quite the same scale. At least the game is out in this case, although it's hardly had the best of press during its first year. However, with a MMORPG, customer trust is an absolutely vital issue. With a standalone game, it helps but it's not vital, as you can generally persuade the punters to "take a chance" on an unknown title, if it looks tempting enough. But the MMORPG model requires both getting customers and keeping them; if you lose their trust, your business is going to decline pretty quickly.
    • I have no mod points, so I'll say this: I completely agree.
    • You could have saved a lot of typing by just saying six words:

      Team Fortress Two
      Dreamcast Half Lift

      While I don't doubt HL2'll ship, AFAI am concerned they lost all cred IRT ship dates after that.

    • Re:Delays and a lack of professionalism (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @05:33AM (#9757978) Journal

      >I remember speaking to some friends about this at the time; the consensus was that Valve had just compltely undermined ID, that ID were going to be a laughing stock and that Doom 3 wouldn't be looking so special by the time of its release.

      You need to get some wiser friends

      Those of us not wet behind the ears know that you judge a project *when it ships*, not at the E3 demo. We're still waiting to play Valve's TF2 [sierra.com] - Voted "Best Action Game" & "Best Mutliplayer Game" 1999 !

      > the mystic lands of "when it's done"

      A week on Monday. Where's HL2 ?

      All this has *nothing* to do with the Expansion Pack MMORPG issues.

      I was a long time EQ subscriber and DAOC subscriber. I've seen expansion pack after expansion pack come along. It's $40 for hours and hours of content (if it's any good :)

      I've had more expensive drinks!

    • you blame this on developers. Honestly, the blame should fall on the publisher or upper management. The developers are already overworked and underpaid. The publisher look at the best time to publish games/updates/addons and when they'll get the best return for their money... then they TELL the developer it has to be done by then. The developers try as they may, and usually end up losing the war (Ultima IX is a perfect example of a publisher (EA) pushing out a game before its finished).

      What I think ne

  • The solution...STRIKE!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oldManSquad ( 598326 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @04:53AM (#9757878)
    The easiest and most effective course of action would be for everyone to go on a one month strike.

    Everyone(or a favourable majority) needs to band together and cancel their accounts for a period of one month. Then if the actions on SOE's part are still not satisfactory after this period, extend it to two months and so on.

    If SOE counters by threatining the future of the game, then so what; it's just a game. Move on. The players need to be in control, after all it is your money.

    If you simply roll-over and wait, nothing will change. Remember your sub is your vote, not some online petition or forum whine. Use it.

    • There's little point to striking. Nothing can change. SOE has a game with issues that need to be fixed, an expansion pack they "need" to get out, and they are in the middle of an update to fix a specific profession. From their perspective, they can't interrupt the current update cycle and leave the Jedi (the profession in question) hanging, especially since they feel that the ability to play a Jedi is such a draw. They won't push back the release date of JtL, since they feel that the space combat will b
    • Interesting approach (more a boycott than a strike really). I wonder though who will really be prepared to do it if it means that when (if) they come back, they will have to start from scratch.

      I agree that SOE seems to be somewhat contemptous of their subscribers and particularly of views expressed in the forums. I suspect the forums are kept on mainly as a means to allow players to let off steam rather than anything else. Are they still closed to outsiders? That always seemed a particularly cynical

      • I disagree that petitions aren't worth a shot. Particularly if they are backed up by arguments and a proposal for action. Maybe the best approach is a pair of petitions: one for people who are pissed off and threatening to leave, one for those pissed off but staying.

        The forums (at least the ones I check. Sony has subdivided the forum community into so many different topics it would take a full day for someone to read them all, let alone actually play the game) are full of suggestions to either 'boycott

    • Or just cancel your accounts when you realize WoW in phase 3 beta is ten times better than SWG after a year live...

      That is what I did.....

    • Well, you can browse the forums and see that alot of people are taking you up on that. The afternoon that TH made the announcement, someone started counting "I'm quitting, who wants my stuff" posts and stopped after 1000. Supposedly over 500 have left from my server (Radiant) alone.
    • Hmmm I play a Bounty HUnter on Bloodfin (Osib) About a month or so ago,they release all these Jedi 'upgrades'. Things that finally put us over the edge. They made them unkillable. The whole idea from the devs, is that the BH's are supposed to kill the jedi. We were upset that everything that we put into the BH, was for nothing. All of our 'special attacks' were cut down to nothing, if they stuck at all. The whole idea that the more specials you use, the more ya hurt yoursef. They also cut the time to swi
  • Okay...

    "RPG based on Star Wars" == "News For Nerds"

    Sure, I'm cool with that.

    But surely news on a ""RPG based on comic books" is equally nerd-worthy.

    And yes, there have been a couple of /. stories about City of Heroes-- but there are a ton of SWG stories on here, and nobody mentions exciting COH news [cityofheroes.com].

    Are comics truely more mainstream and less nerdy than Star Wars these days... or is it SWG that is more nerdy and less mainstream than SWG? I don't get it.
    • I think that Star Wars is more mainstream nerd, iyswim.

      Roger
    • I think all the talk about SWG is partly because it is Star Wars and partly because it is turning out to be such a disaster. Disaster stories are a lot more interresting then everything going smoothly stories about City of Heroes and Final Fanstasy XI.
    • Mmmmm I like CoH and all but I find the SWG more news worthy when placed in context with SOE's notorious customer service. EQ delayed (or at least talked of a delay. I don't play it so I only read a quick article) an expansion based on the demands of their current customers and I think the players hope SWG are hoping they'll do the same here. THat's big news for a publically traded company.

      THe bugs in Galaxies are significant enough to warrent a recall on Sony's part. If SWG was a TV or DVD player, 60 Minu

  • Laws of SOE (Score:4, Funny)

    by inkless1 ( 1269 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @08:01AM (#9758686) Homepage
    #1) It's our game, you just play here
    #2) Technical support is the responsibility of the user
    #3) Forums may be used to discuss the game at large, unless posts include serious issues with the game or make SOE look bad
    #4) The game you purchased out of the box may need to be patched, and then patched some more, and then there will be a requisite gameplay change, and then a mandatory expansion, and then another gameplay tweak, and probably all that over again. Thank you for beta testing with SOE, your monthly fee will be deducted from your credit card.
    #5) Game stability, server performance and non-crash level bugs (like spawning as a wall) are second priority to releasing new material which will cost you more money.
    • I forgot:

      #6) If you have any problems with the Laws, see #1
    • #5) Game stability, server performance and non-crash level bugs (like spawning as a wall) are second priority to releasing new material which will cost you more money.

      The whole expansion thing never made sense to me. Arn't you supposed to be paying $10-$15 a month for new content? Why should anyone have to buy an expansion for new content?

  • Bah. (Score:1)

    by Drakin ( 415182 )
    I hate these sort of stories. They focus on the thread where all the loudmouths are spouting off, demanding that they be catered to.

    -read- Thunderheart's message.

    Yes, the Rebalance has been a long time coming. But I'd rather that it take longer in coming than rush it up and have it bug prone.

    Come on, any one out there... how many publishes has SOE made for Galaxies that they didn't have to do a fix to solve a problem within a week... for a problem that was noticed on Test centre?

    One can hope that they'r
    • The problem is that the Dev team is not doing their job in a wayt that serves the end users right now. They have limited resources and they have chosen to spend them on other, possibly less critical, systems at this time. The amount of programming and art resources that have gone into the Jedi profession, and are going into the Dancer/Musician professsions is a misuse of valuable resources. At this point it is difficult to imagine them getting this right.

  • Wow, they keep screwing the pooch. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @08:43AM (#9759009) Journal
    the long awaited patch rebalancing combat within the game has been pushed off until after the Jump to Lightspeed expansion [which just announced 13 of its 15 spaceships] launches.

    The combat rebalance is probably the most important patch they could do. Even more important than the Jedi revamp they did a month or two ago because combat effects everyone Sure the old Jedi system led to crappy hologrinding, but there were plenty of people who weren't caught up in the hologrind who just wanted to play. What good is it for the Jedi now anyway when a good fencer template can still beat most of them? Combat has been borked from day one, and kostner never cared because he is so anti-PvP. Now they are going to rush out a FPS add on before fixing the game for their playerbase? They are going to tank the jump to lightspeed too. They might have attracted FPS players, if they didn't make space combat only optional. That is right folks, it's going to be like playing quake with spaceships, but you have to ASK people first if you can shoot them. DOESN'T that sounds like FUN!!!!

    I really wanted SWG to be fun, I played the first few months and quit, I started playing again last april, and quit again because the Jedi Revamp looked like a clusterfuck. I was right. It just keeps getting worse. How could an idea that seemed so good (a SWG MMORPG) turn out so wrong? They've turned Star Wars into the Sims in space. Bleh.
    • The expansion is not an FPS game. What was said is that it will be more FPS like.
      The way it works is similar to the current combat system, however instead of turning and firing at something behind you, you can only fire when the target is in front of you. This does force a more FPS type system since you need to continually manuver, skills of your character determine hit/miss.
      The total FPS stuff was just a rumor started in 2001 that started to build up alot of power.
      If you read the current stuff, unless t
      • For the record, I played JtL at LucasArt's latest press event; for all intents and purposes, any combat in space is space-sim style. You don't do anything RPG like, you simply pilot your ship and try to shoot things down. While there's nothing wrong with this (indeed, I like space sims), there's no way to properly comparecombat in JtL to SWG, they're simply not the same. For all intents and purposes, JtL is a space-sim built for SWG, it's not meant to be a new RPG combat area or anything like that.
  • Star Wars was seen as the license that couldn't fail to bring in 1 million players, and they are probably down to the low 200k or even high 100+K players now. After a year of playing, becoming leader of a major guild, going to the Fanfest to meet with the Devs, I can safely say that SWG is apparently a hugely understaffed, poorly managed MMORPG. The response time from the Devs for serious gameplay issues is astounding and there are numerous bugs that date from launch that are still making life crappy fo
    • Here's a question.. how come nobody's put out or thought about a Star TREK mmorpg yet? You could set it during the dominion wars or something, and have vast fleets of starships battling it out, or ground wars with phasers and photon grenades. I guess it's kind of out of the question with the star trek video game license in limbo and the entire franchise a little wobbly at the moment (although Brent Spiner's return may get me to watch a few episodes of Enterprise this fall).
    • He seemed totally agog that players might not do exactly as the Devs intended them to do.

      And this is precisely why I will never again play a SOE game. This attitude is too prevalent. The EQ developers are only starting to snap out of it over the last year or so, which is why so much good has happened to EQ lately...

      Still, I'll stick with either CoH, which is beer-and-pretzely enough with gamer-and-comic-mark devs, and AC, which has in its past completely lost control of its game for days at a time bec

  • Looks like SOE or someone deleted that board post as well. Interesting tactic.....
  • ...who still play SWG. I quit in disgust about 6 months into it, when I noted that the game had, by and large, not really changed at all since it started. The clincher for me at the time was the latest "monthly" patch, which had been pushed back for the third straight month in a row. It became pretty clear at that point that SOE had no intention of ever making SWG any better.

    Combat was seriously hosed since day 1 of that game -- that's the other part of why I quit. It's quite vindicating to see that not on
  • http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=GCW&message.id=226060 [sony.com] http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=GCW&message.id=225900 [sony.com] Posts on the forums about how screwed over the devs have become. The only people happy with this game are the ones who play it one hour a day max and don't have a clue whats going on.
  • ...to the problems behind the curtain. ...to the problems behind the curtain. Look at me! Look at me! I'm exciting new content!

    This maneuver by SOE is simply providing a distraction to all of the core issues that are plaguing SWG. Subscribers have every right to be enraged, because it is obvious at this point that the dev team is slow to produce quality, bug-free content. Why would the JTL expansion be any different (in terms of quality) than SWG in its initial phases? After all, JTL is going to be a

  • Combat shmombat (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xTown ( 94562 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @09:38AM (#9759490)
    I've been playing SWG for a while now. I play an entertainer, and it's been fun from the first day. It continues to be fun. No, I'm not rich. No, I'm not powerful. But I do have fun. And my character has a wide enough range of talents that if it ever does get boring, I can do something else and it will still be fun.

    Here's an idea: instead of seeing how many mobs you can beat up, or how many Rebels you can kill, why not do something different with your playing time? Go to a cantina and actually interact with the entertainers rather than wiping off your battle fatigue and mind wounds in silence and then stalking away. Go to an image designer and change your look rather than sit in stony silence for ten minutes while your stats migrate. Go collect badges. There's a ton of stuff to do and see. Combat is not the be-all and end-all.

    And if absolutely none of that sounds fun, then why are you bothering? I mean, it's your LEISURE time. You shouldn't spend your own time on something that makes you so angry that you're not enjoying it anymore.
    • Erm, 95% of all entertainers are AFK macroing. Second, social interaction isn't for everyone. Third, I've done EVERY FRIGGING THING THERE IS TODO IN THIS GAME IN A FEW MONTHS. THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO DO.
      • The AFK macrotainers are partly due to the hologrind, but partly due to the chicken-and-egg problem of nobody wanting to interact, preferring rather to churlishly demand buffs and treat entertainers like doormats. If you make an effort to find someone who is ATK, you will find us. We are out there.

        I understand that some people are unable or unwilling to talk; I hate it myself, which is why I force myself to do it in-game.

        If you feel there's nothing left to do, then I hope you're not still playing. And don
        • I did quit once, and came back cause the Revamp was supposed to come in July but itgot pushed till September. I decided to stick around but now my account runs out August 17th, 2004 and I haven't played it in a week, nor do I plan to play it again for at least 8-10 months.
        • Just my 2p:

          I've not played the game, but it seems to me that if it is possible for macros to perform the tasks that are required in game, they can't be that complex to do. So you're left with a virtual chat room with some additional clicking to do while you think of something to say.

  • All the links are down (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not from /.in either. Many major threads covering this issue are now "deleted". *COUGH* COVERUP! *COUGH*
  • Yeah, us on the forums are pretty fucking pissed. It was a long time coming. Now it's an even longer tie coming. Many are thinking of quitting until the rebalance. Screw JTL.
  • Looks like SOE is taking this browbeating a little hard: anything /. linked to is gone. I always wonder why people bother to vent all over "official" forums when this seems to be the end result. It takes 5 seconds to issue a delete on a thread and silence any criticism. In the name of "good customer relations" (i.e., those who might stumble into the quagmire from the outside).
  • In all fairness to the Lucasarts/SOE folks, the community relations folks there (specifically Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl) do a really good job of keeping the troll-pits (the forums) under control and happy.

    As is always the case with a MMOG, the forums folks only represents maybe 5% of the playerbase. The folks who are having fun with the game are just out there playing.

    At the same time, combat is horribly imbalanced. PvP is a joke and from all the commentary I've seen they're losing players pretty quick.
  • I went to the link about "the reaction has prompted a response from the Sony Online chain of command." and it has been deleted. Did anyone get a copy of this, or do you think it would have been cached?
  • SOE needs to fire the numpty devs, cause it's well documented around the industry they are the lowest of class and talent. Buahahhahaha BAN ME AGAIN numnuts! LOL
  • SOE have deleted the thread that is referenced in the slashdot OP!? ("response from the Sony Online chain of command"). In it a bunch of people compiled a listing of what was said when by the devs...... It was starting to turn nasty.... Overall The one thing that was said is that all devs have been re-assigned to the expansion pack. That means your monthly $15 dollars IS paying for the development of an expansion pack....(minus the cost of hardware etc.) The expansion pack has an anticipated go live dat
    • For some reason the URL has changed in the OP, since this morning? I used it earlier and it worked great.. now when I click on it I get this URL. http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=Developers&message.id=41090 You need more Query Args for it to work. http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=Developers&message.id=41410&view=by_date_a scending
  • I played CoH - loved the game, but got bored. Decided to go back to SWG to see if it was fixed, and found bug after bug.

    Then I heard this news, and de-installed. A lot of what we're talking about here are what I call "spreadsheet fixes"; things that are entirely evident when you lay the skills out in rows and columns and just eyeball them. More deeply, though, there's a real problem with class balance (and I won't give examples so I don't touch off a frenzy). In some cases, classes have no useful role;
  • For the first time in recent memory I'm at a point where I might reasonably consider having the time to play an MMORPG. And here they are announcing that fundamental issues with the game are a lower priority than the next paid expansion pack. Problem is that, as a new potential customer, I'd MUCH rather buy one product that works well than buy TWO products that both have flaws (as I'm to understand new releases usually do). (Complete ignorance talking here - does one at least get extra "free" play time w

  • Fundamental Design Issues (Score:3, Insightful)

    by servognome ( 738846 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @02:22PM (#9762611)
    I think this shows that fundamentally Star Wars Galaxies design is flawed. If a year of bug fixes doesn't make the game more fun, the bugs weren't the main problem. Just look at the core design decisions that have messed up how the game can be played.
    1. Setting - Galactic Civil war during the middle of the OT.
    This basically means that you have to limit Jedi, can't have any quests, mob kills, or loot that have far reaching consequences because it would interefere with the continuity. The devs just painted themselves into a corner where the power of the players had to be artificially kept low
    Contrast this with the popular KOTOR which the devs had pretty much free reign. Want hundreds of Jedi running around? sure. Want a homicidal assassin droid? okay. Want to kill the dark lord of the sith? It's Cool.
    2. Economy - Pure player driven
    Players are by their nature greedy, People want new, useful, shiney things, just look at the successful camp-n-loot gameplay of EQ. Well the pure player economy means that adventurers have to focus on cash missions rather than exploration. What incentive do you have to explore if you don't get a reward, and infact you are penalized, since those who are just running baz nitch money missions are driving up prices. Finally the devs understood and included more useful loot drops. I think they are slowly getting to balancing loot-vs-player.
    3. Character Development - pure skill based
    Major balancing headaches. A pure class driven structure makes balancing so much easier, since you can have very specific roles. We are still looking at balancing issues a year later in SWG. It used to be the uber creature handlers walking around with 3 rancors within a day. Then it was the pistoleers able to waste people with ultra fast guns, then there were 1 shot kill rifle men, and then there have always been the pvp medics. What makes it so hard is there are so many combinations, and you can't make 1 combination significantly worse/better than another.
    4. Size of the Universe - HUGE
    I remember the devs bragged that the universe would be several times the size of EQ and RoK expansion together. Of course, they forgot to mention it would have half the content. They basically decreased the density of "interesting" stuff. So instead of 5 minutes between an interesting dungeon, or camp like in EQ, it was a 20 minute boring run where you would see nothing. Vehicles have definately helped, since you get the sense of size along with being able to get from point A to point B quickly. But all the content still feels diffuse.
    5. Combat - Typcial RPG Style
    It just breaks down the "feel" of Star Wars. I don't remember a Stormtrooper running up 2 feet from Luke and both of them standing there for a few minutes taking shots at each other (including several hits). In the movies they had long gun battles, it was just because people were dodging, running around, taking cover not because they had huge amount of hitpoints. I had hoped SWG would have created an innovative way capturing the feel of battling with blasters, but they didn't.
    Like I said, to me the game design is inherently flawed. I think that is why they are focusing on the JtL expansion. Because it will be their way of breaking away from the contraints of their original decisions. If it works out I think we will see a focus on the space aspects of SWG, probably to the detriment of the land based RPG game that is being played now.
  • Skimming over those threads reveals an incredible amount of outrage in the player community. Even taking into account the sound and fury, this appears to be much more of a problem than the linked GameInformer interview indicates.

    In addition, Blackman's repetition of something like the following:

    First I'd apologize that we were misleading at all, if that was the case, or if he was misled and had expectations

    is really problematic. One of the posters in the second SOE thread took the trouble to compile

  • a players story.... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i picked the game up a few weeks after launch, and played for about three months. the game was decent, but the buginess and all around lack of content brought me to cancel. i reactivated in december, and played for another two months. player cities and vehicles had just gone live, and jedi were starting to pop up here and there. but there still wasnt much to do in the game, and things were terribly unbalanced. i got bored with it, and cancelled again.

    fast forward 5 months, to the end of june. at the
  • Can't fault SOE for trying to stem the bleeding. As I posted previously here I think, SOE's subscription numbers for SWG have been steadily dwindling. If they had any good numbers to report, they would. They went free-trial VERY quickly for such a large and auspicious undertaking. My guess is: SOE is in the red ink on SWG, and is trying to find a way to black ink.

    They can't fight the street-knowledge that the game is pretty boring, that the game fell FAR short of the hype surrounding it, and that they hav
  • First off, I'm one of those "evil" players that wants JTL in more than anything, and prefer that over the Combat Revamp. What's Star Wars if you're just landlocked and fighting critters and cavemen-looking Mokks?

    However, I do feel for the veteran players (pretty new myself)--the combat revamp was thrown around back in the latter half of 2003, with Thunderheart promising that they were prioritizing work on it. Hence the recent 1000+ exodus.

    Honestly, I'm not sure the combat rebalance would ever happen (at

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