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Role Playing (Games)

SWG Players - Comment on the Combat Upgrade 184

Posted by Zonk from the voices-from-the-discontent dept.
Since last week my inbox and submissions bin has been overflowing with complaints and rants about the Combat Upgrade put into Star Wars Galaxies last week. Players are speaking out all over the internet, and the media is responding. If you've had first hand interactions with the combat upgrade (either positive or negative) please leave a comment below describing your experiences with the changes, and pass on word of this thread to all the players you can. Think of this as a call for interview questions, because I'm going to formulate queries as best I can and see what sort of information I can get from the folks that I know at Sony Online. Here's your chance to be heard, folks. Use it well.
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SWG Players - Comment on the Combat Upgrade More

SWG Players - Comment on the Combat Upgrade

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  • It's just beta-testing. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by schild ( 713993 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @01:30PM (#12393073) Homepage Journal
    I'm far too lazy to actually post examples - So here's 3 pages on why. [f13.net] I will say that I'm surprised there's enough people who care that your mailbox is being "flooded" with complaints or anything at all.
    • There are a TUN of bugs and problems right now. It definately was not tested enough, and I spent weeks myself testing the crap out of it. I know the ins and outs of the new system. Most the poeple I find who 'hate' the system, do so because they either: 1: Don't really know how the new system works yet and are confused. 2: So used to the old system that, they are pissed they cant solo a nest of rancors without ever taking damage, or the fight even being engaging. 3: Uber d00ds who's 5mil 400 mind poison

  • SWG Upgrade Broken Again (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KeithGap ( 808218 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @01:31PM (#12393078) Homepage
    I'm a rifleman in the game and while I have been subscribed to SWG since one of the later betas, I really haven't played since shortly after the release of Jump To Lightspeed. (I've been playing "World of Warcraft".)

    I was excited to hear about the combat upgrade to SWG, because I thought it might finally make the game playable to me. Since the devs have made some of the changes in the last few months that I have been asking for since beta (PvE galactic civil war for one) I thought this change might make me want to play the game and maybe even buy the latest expansion.

    Lo and behold, none of my Rifleman special moves appears to work. I was killed by a green (easy) creature my first time out. I went to the boards and discovered a bunch of posts about how, once again, as they have in the past, SOE is beta testing their "improvements" to the game in live.

    I've decided I don't need to play this game anymore, and I'll be deleting it from my hard drive, finally. Goodbye SWG Beta. I've been paying for you for far too long.

    • Re:SWG Upgrade Broken Again (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Xaielao ( 880294 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @04:38PM (#12394006)
      KiethGap your post is another of those who don't understand how the new combat system works. "none of my Rifleman special moves appears to work" Because professions have all new ones that are balanced and give each profession a 'role' to play. Trust me I was playing a Rifleman/Commando on test and the Improved Sniper Shot with a rocket launcher was freekin awesome fun. You can use skills between professions now :) It adds a lot of flavor and variety and lets you set up different combo's and stuff :) "I was killed by a green (easy) creature my first time out." Did you convert your armor? Were you wearing armor? Did you use any of the new specials? Did plan your attack? Unlike before combat isn't 'blam blam your dead' It takes time, lasts longer, takes planning. Even a green can give you a challenge if you aren't careful. Once you figure things out.. greens are cake. See this is what I'm talking about. Most the complaints are from people who just don't understand or know how to take advantage of the new system. You left the game obviously. Once things get smoothed over, bugs fixed, you may miss out on one of the best combat systems in the genre.
      • Are you on drugs? Or working for SOE?

        "I was playing a Rifleman/Commando on test and the Improved Sniper Shot with a rocket launcher was freekin (sic) awesome fun."

        What kind of sniper uses a rocket launcher? It completely blows the whole concept of 'sniper' out of the water.

        "Most the complaints are from people who just don't understand or know how to take advantage of the new system."

        That's the chief complaint of everyone I've ran across: They didn't need a new system. Everyone I've talked to liked how th

        • Oh come on. EVERYONE was gung ho when the devs first released the CU documents. It listed a complete change on how the games combat system would work, from HAM to specials to how armor worked.. everything. Now that it's here everyones like 'the old system was better!' Are you people blind? Did you actually even play the old system? Oh and on the rocketlauncher thing, in case you are unaware (and by the sounds of it you've hardly tried the game post CU and don't know this) you can use specials cross-profes

          • Re:SWG Upgrade Broken Again (Score:4, Interesting)

            by frayedends ( 880561 ) on Sunday May 01, 2005 @09:39PM (#12403621)
            No, not everyone was "gung-ho". The initial reports were greeted with anticipation and skepticism, but by and whole people wanted to test them. The inital review of the docs didn't prepare even the most hardened veteran for what came next: The EQ-ification of SWG. Instead of a combat upgrade, we received a GAME REMAKE. Big difference. If they had left it to just the combat changes, without the level system, cooldown timers, stupid cartoon icons, magical particle effects, ruined sounds, broken con system, and destroyed professions, then we might have had something worthwhile. But no, after ditching the CU they _had_ been working on in sandbox testing with the sandbox testers, someone at SOE made some decision that the only way to do it was to change the game into Everquest 2 using Star Wars graphics. We have been screaming for a combat upgrade, and no one - none of the sandbox testers, and none of the profession correspondants - asked for, or even suggested 3/4 of the crap we got in this pathetic pile. I know, because i was a sandbox tester, and this isn't anything close to what we were working on. Not only that, the player correspondants were all against these changes once we actually saw what was done. Opposition was high, so high the armorsmith correspondant was FIRED over his objection to that SOE told everyone they were doing. They had the audacity to code the EP3 Wookiee expansion in the new system, effectively forcing this crap live. The objection of a LARGE portion of the players is this: Immersion is ruined, and if we wanted to play Everquest, we would be playing Everquest. But we're not, so don't screw with the game itself. Sure there are people that like it, you could release the worst thing in the world and somebody will stand up and say it's great. But by and large, those who call themselves supporters are only taking into account what CU fixes, without acknowleging what it destroys. Sure, it's nice to go out without buffs, it's nice to take the defense stacking out, and it's nice to remove DOT weapons....but is it worth what you got in the long run? All that was achieved by the CU could have been implemented in the old system, without destroying what was a very original and exciting system that differed from the run of the mill MMORPG's out there. Now it's Everquest with f*cking ewoks. My suggestion for prospective players: Don't waste your money - cause there isn't much left anymore. Not to mention the empty servers. www.swgpetition.com has almost 13,500 sigs now, and if you figure 2 accts per person, that's close to 27,000 subscriptions. I know a ton of people still playing because they bought 1yr or 6mos renewals a few months ago, and now they're stuck with it and SOE will not give refunds. Instead they delete all forum posts in opposition, ban players who protest in-game, and outright lie to players at events with developers, like the recent breakfast meeting that was held.

      • Re:SWG Upgrade Broken Again (Score:4, Interesting)

        by KeithGap ( 808218 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @08:37PM (#12395428) Homepage
        Hmmm...well, here's the thing. I did actually try to do the "knee shot" ability to slow the creature I was fighting down. I saw the critter get +snared+, but it didn't slow down at all. I later checked the rifleman board, where it was advised that there was a bug where higher level critters weren't being slowed down any by the root abilities.

        I also tried the sniper shot ability, which made a nice little yellow thermometer on my screen and did nothing. No shot. No damage. Nothing. Reading further on the rifleman boards, I discovered that there was a bug where this ability was only intermittently working.

        I even gave them a second chance. Logged in today and tried again. The sniper shot never worked. The knee shot ability had no effect on the greens I was fighting. These abilities are bugged, and they just shouldn't be. Not on live. You can have these kinds of problems on test, but not on live.

        I did try to play on test when the CU patch went live there. The seven or eight times I tried to play there, I was CTD'd. Never once could I stay in the game longer than about 5 minutes. I don't have this problem in live.

        Pretty much every time they put in something I thought was going to kewl, it was broken. They rushed it in to keep me hanging around to wait to see if it was kewl when it fixed months down the road. Not weeks, mind you. Months. As in $14.95 per.

        I'm not playing that game anymore. No more paid beta testing. I know MMOs are complex beasts, but even EQ and UO were better than SWG in terms of bugs.

        All that said, I have to say I thought SWG was going to turn things around with the JTL expansion, I really did. I enjoyed that. And it kept me in the game for months, actually playing. But at that point I was ignoring the ground game. And the space game just wasn't quite enough for me.

        Funny, you mention how combat is going to become slower after the CU. See, I hate that idea, too. This is Star Wars, and Star Wars really isn't about long, drawn out battles. (Well, except maybe the lightsaber fights...) I guess it just seems to me that Star Wars wasn't meant to be an MMO.

    • Yes . . . I can feel your anger . . . embrace it, and join me, join the Dark Side!
  • I played the CU on the test server when it first came out, and I can't believe they put it on live so quickly! What were they thinking?

  • My thoughts... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by lasmith05 ( 578697 )
    When I played SWG, I got it just for jump to lightspeed. I wanted to be a pilot. But in the end I was disappointed by the gameplay I was hoping it would be similar to the x-wing/tie fighter games. The xp system was boring too, grinding away blowing up pirates. After blowing up 25 identical pirate ships in a row the game got old really fast. Content or different missions to keep it interesting was definetly needed. I can't believe I have to pay monthly on top of what the game and expansion cost just for the
  • Their are issues that have issues for the CU. Every profession is broken is some way or form. Some items that were once coveted are now useless. Creatures became generic with different healths and skins. It was just a severe dumbing down of a system.

    Esentially the players are unhappy that they now cannot use items they were once able to and all Customer service can do is shrug. Promises made to professions like Doctor were broken. Specifically since crafting was removed from DOC and moved to BE, the

  • As a noob, it's okay. As a vet... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xTown ( 94562 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @01:51PM (#12393169)
    First of all, let's get this out of the way: I think it sucks, and I cancelled my account today.

    Okay.

    After playing with the CU for a couple of days, I decided to hop onto another server and start a new character to see what the n00b experience would be like. I was surprised: for a new player, the CU is actually better than the old system was, or at least is its rough equivalent. With the addition of some Medic skills, the basic melee classes played just fine: as long as I could drop healing on myself, the combat itself went smoothly. I earned good amounts of experience and was able to progress.

    On my veteran characters, the experience is entirely different. Like someone else here, I had a Master Rifleman. I was completely unable to kill anything at my own level--and since killing things at or near your own level is the only way to earn more than about 1 xp that was a problem. I also had a Teras Kasi Master, and while I was able to successfully defeat single mobs of the appropriate level, if I drew aggro from more than one creature, I was dead. In addition, the specials in Teras Kasi--an Elite-level profession--do LESS damage than the specials from the Brawler class--a Basic-level profession. This is unacceptable.

    The game has slowed down, a lot. It now takes a HUGE amount of time to kill anything, on the order of several minutes. It would seem that to get anywhere, grouping is required, and some of us don't want to HAVE to find seven other players to gain experience. Medic skills--preferrably as much Doctor as you can manage--are essential to staying alive.

    Jedi characters are screwed beyond belief. If you're progressing through the Jedi skills as a Master in any non-Jedi combat role, you're hosed: you will not be able to kill anything with your lightsaber. The aforementioned TKM is also a Jedi, and I can get in about a dozen hits before I run out of Force because I have exactly two skill boxes in Jedi, but I draw missions that are "appropriate" for my TKM level.

    On the SWG forums, there's a lot of counter-bitching that people like me are leaving because we're no longer "uber." I'd just like to say that I never was uber (gah, I hate that word). I never had the best armor, or the best weapons, or the most money. What I did have was fun.

    • Re:As a noob, it's okay. As a vet... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xTown ( 94562 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @01:57PM (#12393200)
      One other thing. I've seen theories that say that this was rushed out because the new expansion pack is coming out soon and they're expecting an influx of new players when Episode 3 hits theaters. They didn't want to have new players ltearn the "old" combat system only to have it replaced two weeks later with the "new" combat system.

      I have experienced nothing that would give the lie to that theory.
  • Awesome.

    Ive been an swg player for almost a year, all i can say is the combat upgrade brought back the joy i first felt when playing this game all that time ago.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Astroturf...

      seriously, you seem to be the only one with something nice to say about this 'upgrade.' Is astroturfing for SWG your main job?
  • I have been playing SOE games since 1998 and have canceled my EQ, EQ2 and SWG accounts. I don't feel like paying to be an Alpha/Beta tester. This new "upgrade" is just a rushed system thrown on the customers to meet a marketing deadline before a movie hits the screens. I really am speechless with what is going on at Sony. The worst part is they won't even communicate with the players or acknowledge anything we say or ask.
  • Sonys new Spokesperson [imagedump.com]

    How the new combat system plays [imagedump.com]

    Just another picture of random protest [imagedump.com]

    Sony claims that these protests disrupt server activity, but people run Player Events which draw ~200 people into one town and sony doesn't say a word, Hell, if they find out about it they send people to HELP, but when 100 people show up in a place that is DESIGNED to be a high capacity area like theed or CNet to complain about sony completly ignoring and in places silencing the player base, they start Suspen

    • It's Sony's game, if they don't want protests in the world, they're more than free to take it on-line. I have no sympathy. This time, supposedly they just sent in droids to fight them.

      Go on their forums if you want to speak out, DON'T SCREW WITH THE REST OF OUR EXPERIENCES!
  • This CU is a perfect example of greed on the part of Sony and Lucas Arts, nothing more, nothing less. There is a great post on the SWG forums that summed this up perfectly, http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=cudiscussiontemp&message.id=25971 [sony.com]

    In the end it is only a game. I'm disappointed because of the friends I will no longer be playing with, but I'll also find a better way to spend my 60 bucks a month on something that is fun.

  • sad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theworldsucks ( 812951 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @03:05PM (#12393535)
    to those who say it brought back enjoyment to the game:

    a. how did removing the many melee animations and replacing them with generic one punch or one kick animations bring any enjoyment?

    b. to those who say groups are important again: they were always important, you just didn't know how to make friends before.

    c. How is turning hundreds of medications that took me months upon months and hours upon hours to gather and make into useless nothings make the game better? How is wasting all my hard work making YOU happy??

    d. How is a new found joy in your gaming experience when they tunred mine and alot of people's very expensive weapons into fly swatters?

    e. how is it joy when they took my bio-engineer pets which took me months to accumulate and perfect into soemthing that forced me to delete them?

    Bottom line is, anyone who likes this game, obviously played it very little before CU. They see CU as a different experience and new game. But to people who actually play the game, the CU destroyed their characters and hard work in many many ways.

    The CU was promised to be a fast paced arcade type action with a more Star Warsy feel. They failed, it is a terribly slow paced game with a fantasy feel now, adding all those gawdy particle effects and implementing a root and nuke system of combat from EQ.

    They also made a huge mistake with the icons, love them or hate them you still now have to stare at them, and not what you are fighting so you can always know when to use the next special.

    Star Wars galaxies went from unique to hidesouly boring and common with the CU.

    They try to mimmick WOW and EQ, but they do it all wrong, Star Wars wasn't meant to be a lvl game, and it shows! Because if you are a master in one skill, novice in another, you will have a supremely boring and tedious task to raise the novice skill to master. Trying to fight level 65 mobs with a novice skill just is not cutting it.

    I can go on and on here, I haven't even scratched the surface, suffice to say I canceled my accoutn which was started on day one in 2003. SOE are the single worse mmorpg company to exsist, and that is saying alot cause I really hate OSI. Not only for the CU, but for their treatment of players. They are straight up liars. They are censors. They are unreasonable. They are cracked out of their gourds.

    I am hoping I witnes the first cancelation of a popular MMORPG. I really want to see it fail, to send a message that there is a line Game companies can cross. Sure they can abuse us all they want, they can nerf us all they want, but if you are going to change the game into one that is completely different, make sure it is good!

    My favorite quote by them is "Stay positive through the chaos" lol! Translation = Ignore the outcry and hope it all turns out ok!

    Another one " There are only 50 outspoken people who hate the CU" LOL LIARS.

    Another" " Don't force your dislike of the game on soemone who is just trying to express their opinion and who like it. You just dislike change." (paraphrase). LOL, chnage rocks, WHEN IT IS GOOD. Also, I'd like to note, that only people with positive opinions are allowed to express them, those with negative are banned no matte rhow gracious they are about it. So SOE are hypocrits as well.

    Thats it for now.

    • They try to mimmick WOW and EQ

      The didnt' TRY to mimmick EQ2, the simply imported the code from EQ2! SWG now has all the same NASTY game mechanics of EQ2. What sucks is that for a year now they have been telling us that the CU will fix many of our issues, but in the end they did a rush port of the code from one of thier other games. For something this big, there are simply too many bugs. For as long as they were "working" on this, it shouldn't have been such a rush job.

      Since things are balance on the l

      • banzai51 said:
        "Since things are balance on the lower level one has to wonder if they did it to push out the experienced players."

        If that's true, it's backfiring - I've only been playing SWG for a few months, and I've canceled because of this "combat upgrade"... and I hear I'm not the only new player quiting.
      • As a player of EQ2 since beta (and still enjoying myself), can you elaborate on the "Nasty" mechanics that EQ2 supposedly possesses?
  • The general dumbing-down of the game imposed by the C.U. makes you think they must want a greater appeal to console gamers. They basically destroyed the crafting, medical & entertainment professions, added cartoony EQ-ish special effects to combat, and removed the last hope that the once-promising potential of this game system will ever be realized. A huge number of the original, adult players had already left this project months ago, but the last holdouts who had hoped for a professional management t
  • I have tested the CU since it hit Beta and have been following the CU since publish 7. There are a number of unexpected problems with the implementation of the CU as it stands in Live (and how it developed in beta) that do not track with the available information given over the year since it was announced. The way the current implementation of the CU is made up has several glaring variances from the previously released info - in that there was one central item that I have identified has caused the majority
  • The game as is has been ruined to the point of unplayable. All melee professions have been crippled to below normal newbie levels, things like Damage Over Time attacks that were supposed to be removed are now stronger, etc, etc.

    And let's not get into the new interface that looks like a game my 5 year old would play and completely ruins the immersion into the Star Wars environment that used to be a huge draw for this game.

    It is also obvious that this 'upgrade' was a major rip-off from EverquestII. Heck
  • Like many others, I feel that the Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) universe has a great deal of unrealized promise. Instead of fixing what's wrong, they just made it wronger.

    One of the underlying precepts of the Star Wars universe is balance. I am penalized for seeking the same by creating a character that is a dancer/janitor with two slots for Jedi proficiencies. Not only can't I block or heal attacks against mental, but I am unable to pilot a ship -- despite the fact that Luke (a guy that tinkers with robots

  • I have tried the CU upgrade and can tell you first hand this has destroyed the game. It is no longer SWG but EQ2 in sheeps clothing. You can no longer hunt solo, armor that you paid good money for is now junk and many things such as skill tapes which cost a fortune are no longer any good. Contary to what is being reported as Tiggs statement at the breakfast it is not true that only about 50 people are upset over the CU. If she did indeed say this then I will call her an outright liar! People are leaving
    • How is it like EQ2?
      EQ2 you can solo all you want for decent exp and items.
      EQ2 armor is worthwhile and can be found on mobs or purchased.
      EQ2 is filled with content and things to do both solo and in group.
      EQ2 is fun.

  • this CU was unwanted by the majority of players. (Score:5, Informative)

    by tuzzyfoad ( 685628 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @03:17PM (#12393611)
    The idea of an upgrade to combat was something everyone wanted. Some tweaks to armor, chnges to buffing, some class changes to balance things out were all we were looking for. What's being forced on us is in no way, shape or form an "Upgrade".

    The day testing began on the Test Servers(there was no closed alpha test. "Alpha" consisted of a handful of people being emailed some excel sheets), SOE placed a Poll on the forums asking for people to rate the CU. It was reset everyday, and sometimes after a patch was applied to the Test servers. Every single poll resulted in 65%-85% of the voters choosing the lowest possible rating. Everyday. Without Fail.

    SOE's public stance was that the majority of players loved the CU and couldn't wait for it. Recently, at C3, the Community Relations Director for SWG stated that only 50 vocal people were against the CU.

    We already knew these public statements by SOE were lies, which became painfully apparant the day the CU went live and the community responded.

    While the CU was still on the Test servers(TCs), those players who were actually testing posted detailed, comprehensive discussions to both the Test Center Forum and the In Testing - Dev forum. A large percentage of the bug reports were ignored. Many which detailed the reasons why SOE's attempt at importing a Level-based combat system into SWG's Skill-based character system was flawed were deleted without comment. Since going live, this Level-based system, has shown it's inherent flaw in SWG, and all further posts by players experiencing it for the first time get deleted from the SWG forums as well.

    A day before the CU went live(a week earlier than it was supposed to, with all bugs intact), every single "official" bug thread on the In Testing - Dev forum was deleted. None of the bugs had been fixed, and the players/testers were basically told to do it all over again. However, posting any bugs which were originally posted in the deleted threads(and never fixed) resulted in more deletions, and some bans.

    To be honest, it appears that SOE has no desire to hear about bugs, expecially those which show the basic design flaws in the CU, and no desire to fix said bugs.

    Besides the Bugs, and broken Combat system, there are a number of other reason why players are so upset and cancelling.

    The UI has been changed dramatically. It now resembles a Fantasy MMO more than anything else. Colorful hotbar Icons have replaced the funtional, datapad-like buttons. They don't resemble the actions they're supposed to represent, many of themlook like they were exported straight out of a fantasy game(horses for 'mounting' vehicles, archery arrows to represent range attacks, etc..). When asked if the players would have the option of using the old icons instead of the new ones at a recent Dev chat, we were told "no" without any reason why.

    The other graphical changes further create the Fantasy-based atmosphere which has no place in a Sci-Fi game, particularily a Star Wars game. "Magical" particle effects now go off for every possible action in the game. Every basic punch shows a dazzling effect. Mounting and dismounting from a speederbike displays an effect. Medics(clerics?) wave a hand and a cloud of sparkly magical dust surrounds everyone for a PBAoE Heal. None of this was ever asked for by the players. Especially when the accompanying special effects result in FPS loss on a grand scale.

    All Crafting professions and Entertainer professions have been decimated by the CU. There's no reason for anyone to master an Entertainer class as the lowest Novice can now give the same single buff as anyone of higher rank. RPing these entertainment classes is no longer as "fun" as it was prior to the CU since a change was put in to make the largest available group consist of 8 players(from 20). This means it's no longer possible to create a full band of musicians with accompanying dancers. What Nerfing the Entertainers had to do with "Upgrading" Combat, I'll never know.
    • This very much sounds like the Dev's were screwing around trying to develop some fantasy game. Got told to upgrade SWG on limited time/money, and rather than working, took what they had and threw it in.

      Now they're in the crapper, so are frantically trying to play clean-up to hide it from the upper management.
  • Makes FFXI look like a cake walk According to the new levels Im level 26 I was killed by a level 1 creature give me a break

    I was a Master BountyHunter/Master carbineer after the upgrade they had to reinstall the the enitire game over again with an old back up copy and I lost 100,000's of exp by losing a ton of skills because they didn't back up the servers the night before the upgrade I believe it was over a week old.

    They offered to give back to the chimera (spelling) server folks their skill boxes but n
  • It's a horrible upgrade.. yes.. I agree with that with every bit of my being. However one of the worst things they have done so far is not respond to the community that is demanding results. Most responses from the community leaders have been vague and misdirectional. Some community leaders have even resulted in telling people to "stop it" in regards to posting negatively about the CU. Could this be because they are looking for new blood and don't want to scare potential customers away? Their horribly
  • I've been playing SWG for over a year and am a fairly hardcore player. My main character is a Master Droid Engineer, Master Shipwright and Pistoleer. My primary role is a crafter but I've been fairly decent in combat with pistols and have gone with groups through the Death Watch Bunker (one of the toughest theme parks) a few times. I've also been in 2-4 person hunting parties that have taken out Krayt Dragons. I'm a decent fighter but by no means elite.

    The CU (Combat Upgrade) is one of many major upgrades
    • A comment about the tactical awareness aspect of the CU as you describe it. In the CU you select the weapon that has the higest damage per second you own, auto attacking with the highest damage special attack you have, and constanly watch your toolbar icons to determine when you can hit the button next time. There is no tactics to this. It just replaced spamming one attack in the old system with button mashing in the new one.
    • How long have you been working for SOE?
      You are talking about this game has been through major revamps when commandos and other professions were balanced? HA HA! You call that a revamp? What is going on now is a new game! Ok, so lets agree on that then. You call bh, commando and creature handlers nerfed and revamped in the post. Mmmm hmmm I call what is going on now a NEW game then, and 3 years into live I might add.
      So the different mindset in playing is the problem? What are you even talking about, disas
  • Here is a quote from Developer Blairs Blog, it was posted on the 16th of April 2005. Finally, it is worth repeating that even when Combat Upgrade goes "live" it is not finished - we will continue to refine and polish the experience for some months to come. So, please take comfort in the fact that we are listening and working hard to bring you a game that meets or exceeds your expectations - and we value your insights, passion for the game and your continued patronage. I am worried by this trend of game co
  • I have been playing for about 9 months. I started playing SWG because I liked the lack of the cookie cutter feel that many other games have implemented. if you are such and such, you can only do blank, blank and blank. SWG was different. You could mix and match to perfect a character that you liked. I got a character that I liked up to Master Pistoleer about two days before the CU went in. My experiences since then have all been negative. I can no longer hunt with my Master Pistoleer who was on
  • It's the most horrendous thing they've ever done to the game. A Jedi who's deemed "combat level 78" cannot take out something deemed "combat level 40" without close to dying. BEFORE this "upgrade" the same creature could be taken down in 2 hits. I'm extremely disappointed, I only hope they can clean up after this enough to keep the game playable.
  • Many of us that protest and dislike so many of the changes brought forth by the CU have been actively voicing our oppinions on the Test center since the CU started open testing. Of course we're written off as whiners, the simple fact of the matter is everyone felt the game needed improvements, and to be honest, the Galactic civil war changes, the loot changes, the spawn increases, all of those had me excited about where the game was going. Then I tried the CURB on the test center, WOW! 2 steps forward 5 s
  • I tried to be constructive in my criticism on the boards and to take a deeper look at WHY the CURB was not working for myself. I got some postive feedback from other players with it so I assume there are others who feel like I do. I agree. There can be little doubt amongst gamers that several varieties of player exist. Every player is unique, certainly, but it can be demonstrated with relative ease that the majority of players fit in somewhere within a matrix that is, for ease, broken down into a four axi
  • Title says it all..

    Got banned from the SWG forums for one single post directing people here to read the article.

    Anyway, players are fighting back by posting reviews to sites such as EBgames and Amazon

    http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/editorial/reviews/revie ws.asp?pf_id=220541&intDeptTab=2 [ebgames.com]

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/ B000067FDY/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/104-7186807-6655907?_e ncoding=UTF8&s=toys [amazon.com]
  • I'm not sure what else can be said. We tried being constructive and giving feedback about what we liked/disliked during beta. (actually, I'd call that phase alpha... beta is in live now). They just ignored it all or gave replies like "only a small number of folks dislike the changes" and "that is not in the scope of the CU".

    Anyway, here's a short list of what kills me:
    Dumbed down, slow, poorly animated combat.
    Sound effects replaced with terrible alternatives (if Ben Burtt were to hear what they put in for
    • Thanks for posting that. I'm the author, and it saves me from having to cut & paste. I've spoken to a lot of "sandbox" testers both on and off the forums and ingame, and they all confirm as well as they can (cognizant of their still in-force NDA's) that the level system was never as blatant as it is in the current implementation. They thought "level" was merely the shorthand used to describe "ability/toughness" - as it was designed to mean in the game.

      In short, the CU was obviously rushed out the d

  • I think I am one of the few players that REALY hates the CU that is REALY trying hard to like it. It has nothing to do (for me) with the fact that it is a new game, but in ways it does. If I wanted a new game, I think I would have gone out and bought a new game. If I wanted EQ, EQ2 or WoW I would have gone out and bought one of these games and I would be playing them instead of a sad attempt at a buggy, incomplete clone of one of them. The CU was NOT ready for launch. Things as simple as misplaced animati
  • I've been playing on and off since two days after launch and let me say that the game was a mess then. But now...I don't know what to say but SOE really screwed up big time. When I first tested the CU on test servers, I was dissapointed that I was going to have to level from 0 just to test it out, so I just waited until it went live. Well, I logged in yesterday for all of 10 minutes. That's how annoyed I was. I am a pistoleer and they completely changed our weapon certifications and moves - all of two or th

  • The Europe-Chimaera server is dying. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by darylp ( 41915 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @05:08PM (#12394211)
    Apologies for replying to the first FP, (I'll post this as a regular reply as well, for double the downmods! Feel free to mark this as Redundant, but at least you've read it! :) )

    Although this is probably too introspectively geeky for the regular Slashdot community, I feel it best to explain what's been going on with the Europe-Chimaera server. (One of the most populated servers.) As SWG is very much a social game, I have found myself as both head of a guild and mayor of a Player City. This is a copy of a mail I sent to both my guildmates and citizens:

    ---
    Greetings all!

    Apologies for the impersonality of this mail, I'm sending it to both my guild and the citizens of Moonlight Valley. Need to cover a lot of people.

    In short, Europe-Chimaera has fallen apart. The Combat Upgrade failed on our server, specifically the item conversion. So the entire server has been rolled back to an earlier backup and the conversion run again. And again. Rather than taking a backup of the database before running the conversion in the first place, they've instead rolled back to a substantially earlier version. From almost two weeks ago!

    That's two weeks of gameplay lost, because some idiot didn't bother making a backup of the latest data. Even _I'M_ not that stupid, and I'm hardly the person to be speaking about data integrity. I don't believe there's been a disaster of this magnitude in the history of modern MMORPGs. (I'd like to be proven wrong here)

    This has also occurred, to a lesser extent, on the Bloodfin server, although it's disheartening to learn that they were rolled back to a more recent backup than ourselves.

    The upshot of this unprofessional behaviour is that all the pre-CU preparation we've done has been for naught. Resources; Money; XP; even new characters have been removed. For a game which eschews enjoyable content in favour of mindless grinding, this has been an unmitigated disaster. Current conservative estimates from this server alone put the number of accounts cancelled at over 400 - a substantial percentage of the population. This includes quite a few 'big names' as well, not just the whiners of the month. And it may include me as well...

    Naturally, there have been posts on the SWG Forums related to this absolute shambles. And yes, a few from myself pointing out the shoddy way in which the customers (i.e. the company's main source of income) have been treated. Unsurprisingly enough, we've had postings deleted left right and centre. And several forum bannings, _myself included_. The overall attitude from me and many other recently banned folk is that it's a deplorable way to run a business, but that we're still sticking around. So it seems nearsighted to start antagonising the few members of the community who wish to remain.

    Despite all the good wishes spewed forth at the start of the year by various interchangeable figureheads in the SoE hierarchy, this is a return to a draconian 'Us vs. Them' policy. Failing to realise that the community can only thrive with co-operation from both developer and consumer, these mass bannings only serve to drive another nail into the coffin.

    So I'm left in the unenviable position of considering whether or not I should carry on feeding money into the SoE propaganda machine. Don't get me wrong, I love this game, and have hopefully garnered a reputation as being a reasonably well-balanced fair speaking member of the community. However, these have been trying circumstances for all of us. Undue pressure has been placed on all of us, with very little feedback or response from the developers. Steam has needed to be blown off by both sides. To have a Customer Service Representative treat the community's rightful indignation as a joke is a dangerous precedent.

    Compensation has been offered, which is an insulting 4 x XP earned for a week. This is lip service at best, and an insult to the people who are still in the game. Given the current issues with earning exp
  • First off, let me say - I've been playing SWG since close to launch (SantosL of the Gorath Server). Second - this game has been a wasteland for some time now. I look at my friends list of several hundred players that I met, hunted with, PvP'd with, etc., and see maybe 10 active names still. I do agree that the Combat Revamp was rushed. I think they have come along very well with it since it was initially put onto the Test Servers, and in a few weeks will be great. The only major major issue still out t
  • There is a very good petition already started with alot of people. It just needs more influences to assist with getting SOE's attention http://www.swgpetition.com/ [swgpetition.com]
  • I was playing SWG very actively during last 25 days. bought the game on 2nd of April SWG+JTL for about 55 GBP. It was a blast I developed my character from noob to Teras Kasi Master/Master Brawler/Some Doc on the way there I've tried a few more professions such as dancer, musician, marksman, carbiner. All these professions were fun to play. What is more important there was a vibrant community in game. I've got a lot of help from vets. They helped a lot just because I was new to the game. And it was not just
  • Combat is SLOW, boring (press one button over and over again), whole professions are now worthless (doctors), and it is NOT AT ALL Star Wars like!

    The old AI has been ripped out and replaced with a "level system". Basically, everything higher level than you gets a damage multiplier based on the difference. And we are capped at level 80, while there are MANY monsters in game that aren't.

    Not to mention my server (Bloodfin) got rolled back a week, causing lots of us to lose skills we frantically did before t
  • One guy who protested this CU mostrocity in game, was moved to space by SOE as punishment and his character spent there more than 24 hours, maybe he is still there. Note that it was a paying cutomer.

    see scrinshot:
    http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=setandget& tp=243526&poll_id=0&category_id=19&warned=y [imagedump.com]

    and forum post (unless deleted by now)
    http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=cudiscussiontemp&message.id=15958 [sony.com]

    http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/mess [sony.com]
    • There were reports on the Europe-Chimaera board that innocent bystanders who were just in the vicinity were getting forcibly relocated too.

      I'd post a link to the thread, but it's been deleted.

      Little men with big erasers.
  • I have been playing Star Wars Galaxies since the beginning of December 2003, and I enjoyed my time in that game enough that I wound up with 5 accounts. I have just cancelled these accounts, one of them a (baby) jedi. There are so many things wrong with the Combat Upgrade, on so many levels, it's incredible that they pushed it through. The CU was released prematurely. SOE admitted in a letter to the community that it would go live with MAJOR bugs still in it, which would take months to iron out. Allready we
  • First, my background: I was a SWG subscriber from launch, after having joined at the beginning of beta 3, until the Jedi revamp, which went live in June 04. After mastering all 32 original professions to unlock my Jedi in May 04, I found the Jedi revamp completely intolerable, and I canceled my account on the day the revamp went live. I then renewed my subscription to try JtL in October 04 and have maintained it since, although this week, post-CU, was the first time I'd engaged in any sort of non-space acti
    • This is the biggest crap of interleaved revisionism I've seen so far. All weapons are now capped, there is no achievement to craft the finest ever again. I don't understand how any sane player of the system can say that the Character Level system does anything but utterly ruin the game. THEY HAD TO REMOVE WEAPON CERTIFICATIONS FROM THE GAME TO MAKE THEIR CL SYSTEM ALLOW PEOPLE TO GRIND A SECOND COMBAT PROFESSION! It was that poorly thought out and implemented. Now Smedley has jammed this down our throa
      • Interleaved revisionism? How exactly do you consider my post, which discussed in detail my actual experiences with the new system, among other things, to be devoid of substance? Disagree if you like, and I realize you are incapable of civility, but your disagreement doesn't render all other opinions invalid; neither does it erase others' words from existence. A reference to revisionism here is absurd; certainly not all disagreement is revisionism. Those words would at least stand as an impressive display of

  • Lucas Arts show concern (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here is a post I came across just mere hours before it's deletion and the poster silenced,
    (Deleted link http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=Bloodfin&message.id=462297 [sony.com])

    I realize that by posting this I am going to get banned, and that this post will be deleted, just as it happened to Fury and his post earlier today. So, all I ask is that people take the initiative on this information... and screen shot and and pass it on to the next person that is willing to take a ban for the goo
  • Others have posted much of what is wrong with the new version, there's lots more wrong with it but I'm not going to beat a dead horse. To be fair there were some improvements, just not nearly as many or as significant as what got broken. What got broken was the entire game. Some though may still like the sound of the new system and consider buying it. They shouldn't. Star Wars Galaxies is no longer an MMORPG, now it's just an ORPG. Numbers were already down significantly because it's been out a few ye
  • Please outsource this game in hands of a competent company which knows how to run a MMPRPG.
  • SOE also "upgraded" the forum software on CU day. The forums have been bugged and stuff like everyone appearing to be in your guild and on your server, etc.

    They just crashed.

    Couple that with the fact that Bloodfin and Chimaera servers got hit with rollbacks because they DIDNT BOTHER TO DO A BACKUP before database conversion, and you know what one huge problem is at SOE...

    THEY DONT HAVE COMPETENT IT PEOPLE!
  • Since SOE has forced us to beta test their new game. I think it is not that bad and we all should send them invoices for services rendered as beta testers. My rate is 50$/hour. Thank you.
  • This is something some people I was chatting with the other day told me... Gets nuked from the forums every time it's posted.

    When you cancel because of the Combat Downgrade, call your credit card company and ask that the charge for your last month be reversed.

    It will cost Sony $35 for each person who does it.
  • If a player's just starting out, its good. If you're a vet, you're pretty much starting over as a n00b anyways. What I'd really like to know, is why SOE refuses to listen to the player base. There have been countless posts on the official forums from players voicing their issues with the system, there is a petittion at http://www.swgpetittion.com/ [swgpetittion.com] with over 12000 signutures asking why this was pushed. I for one have tried it, let me share my experiences. My main is a Master Doc/Master Teras Kasi, I'll
  • No im not going there yet. I still have a few of the 656 friends that was on my friends list left in the game. As i stated in my email to SOE, i will be the last one of them to hit the cancel button, but hit it I will when they are all gone. Ive played this game since August, 2003. While it has always been buggy as heck, after this week it is gone. Its not the game that we all came to know and love in one form or the other. Musicians/Dancers cant be watched. Doctors cant heal/buff like before, and im
  • This is awful. When SOE says fast comat it is the complete opposite, it's slower than a snail. The CU icons look as though they hired a 3 year old on crack to draw them. Getting XP is horrific and not enjoyable, I had more fun throwing rocks at a pole. The NPC's kill everyone and getting the XP sux since if you are a vet like me and can hardly find anything at your level and end up fighitng something weaker r stronger than you, you will most likly get 0 xp. The person who made this CU should be fired an

  • SOE (Score:1)

    by tmrz ( 800374 )
    me and my wife had 6 accounts played for a year and beta tested the game. The changes where never asked for, the dumbing down of the game is horable, all my accounts and not only canceled but deleted.

    server: Bloodfin
    http://www.nexusguild.org/ [nexusguild.org]
  • Here is a post from the SWG forums. It says what more than 75% of the player base feels perfectly.

    Dear SOE, We, your customers, have been trying to contact you. Evidently you've been too busy, or important, or arrogant, to take time to listen to us. If you had taken the time to listen to our concerns you would have heard that we were extremely concerned about the Combat Update. Those concerns began long before testing began, but when you rolled the thing out without adequately completing the testin

  • ORIGINALLY POSTED BY "AschMhaRhee" ON APRIL 5th (note that the font in game has actually been changed so they at least fixed one thing she asked for)

    I would like to preface this post with some of my real life professional credits so that you don't think that i'm approaching this from a smack talking 15 year old script kiddie perspective. I have been and in many cases still am a:

    -Senior Graphic Designer

    -Brand/Continuity Designer/Director

    -UI Designer

    -Information Architect

    -Senior Game Tester/Game Team

  • WHY SOE's Combat Upgrade is the way it is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RayGunGoth ( 880371 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @11:19PM (#12396202)
    This post from SOE's forums was originally posted by "Handsnake".

    I believe it gives excellent insight into not just what is broken in the new version of Galaxies, but also why:

    I think that this should be here, as it bears on the subject of this forum.
    Please take the time to read all of the points as well as the conclusions. Keep responses civil, please.

    I have tested the CU since it hit Beta and have been following the CU since publish 7.
    There are a number of unexpected problems with the implementation of the CU as it stands in Live (and how it developed in beta) that do not track with the available information given over the year since it was announced.

    The way the current implementation of the CU is made up has several glaring variances from the previously released info - in that there was one central item that I have identified has caused the majority of the imbalances and problems encountered with the CU.

    Putting a 'level' system on top of a skill based system.

    This was not in the original CU documentation released on 03/31/05, and data from public statements of sources inside the CU 'sandbox' scheme (without violating NDA) have confirmed that it was never discussed with them to the degree it was implemented.

    Herein I will list the worst issues reported about the CU and show that they are all tied directly to the 'level system' implementation that was added to the functional design of the CU.

    1. Crafter Death - Crafters are 1 shotted by every aggro mob on every starter planet. The fragility of crafter characters at 'combat level' 1 is extreme. Surveying alone is impossible since spawns will appear under vehicles in motion and mobs will kill crafters in less than 2 seconds.
    The ability to at least run away has been removed - this makes crafters unable to function at a basic level.

    The 'level' system has a damage multiplier. You will see this in further points. This damage multiplier makes anything higher level than you equivalent to instant death. Five levels above you will always kill you. Again, this point will be repeated.
    Since crafters will not have any combat rating unless they become a hybrid and drop pure crafting, they will always take max damage.

    Furthermore, every animal will use the damage multiplier against a base value. There is no such thing, therefore, as a 'safe' enemy for crafters.

    This is the result of the 'level' system.
    Before, each mob had different resists and damage ranges. They had a "threat" level, which was based on how high their offensive and defensive values were. Under the old system, that was the basis of the /con result.
    This threat level has NO relationship to the current 'combat level' system, no matter what the devs claim in the HOC chat.
    The threat level was an EVALUATION of an existing mob.

    A 'combat level' is a MODIFICATION of a base value mob "angry bag" put into whatever 'skin' is appropriate, i.e, a level 34 dune lizard is the same as a level 34 peko peko.

    The new COMBAT LEVEL defines the offensive and defensive values - not the other way around.
    This is an important distinction, and is critical to understanding the conclusion about the combat level system and why it was added to the CU at such a late date.

    2. XP gains and lack of same: A significant number of people are finding odd results from attacking mobs slightly below their level and higher - as in getting little to no XP. The response of the devs is to have people focus on just fighting even leveled mobs.

    The real question is: Why was the XP variance put in the CU in the first place?
    XP gains or rates of gains was NEVER addressed as a concern in the Combat Upgrade. It did not affect combat in any way, shape, or form in PVP, nor were there "problems" about the flavor of combat that were caused by XP being gained by anything you defeated.

    It was never an issue at all.

    However, in 'level' based systems, the paradigm is that LEVEL DETERMINES

  • As a veteran player (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Darlock ( 7305 ) on Sunday May 01, 2005 @12:04AM (#12396388)
    I've been playing on the Tempest server for 2 years. I've had 2 accounts that whole time and I have unbelievably loved the game.

    Sure, it had it's flaws and bugs but it's appeal was that it was unique. The combat, skill trees and crafting were different than anything out there.

    Things need to be balanced though. Nobody denies that. What SOE has done is not balance. It is a complete replacement of the current system and it screws long time customers over. I would say that abotu 75% of everything I own in game is now garbage. That is alot of wasted time.

    I don't know what happened at SOE that could get the CU to be changed like this but I think that some head of the company came along and said "WoW is the most popular MMO out there. Make our game like it NOW"

    Anyone who has played WoW knows that it is not the combat that makes WoW fun. It is the Content and Polish of the game. 2 things that SWG lacked (and even more so now)

    If you check out http://www.swgpetition.com/ [swgpetition.com] you will see that 12 thousand people have signed it. Factoring in trolls and people with more than 1 account, I would guess that 15 thousand people have cancelled. That's alot of monthly income for a company.

    It is just idiotic that SOE has treated their customers this way. We've been telling them for 2 years about what is wrong with the game and they have decided to just go in the other direction.

    SOE even had an "alpha team" of players and correspondents that were setup to help them figure out what the biggest problems were and how to fix them. Basically a bunch of brainstorming between the Devs and Users. 2 months ago they shut that all down and went with the current CU. It was a major slap in the face to the correspondants that were trying to help. The Devs ask for all this input and then severed all ties. Most of the correspondants quit after that. And when I say most, I mean 90%.

    I won't get into the CU too much but it is a completely new system. You get to "respec" your character and your items were automatically converted. The respec is full of bugs and takes a good pre-CU character and turns them into a gimp. Uber legendary items have been converted into garbage that a novice craftsman can make better versions of. I have never been big on loot and items but I know of ALOT of people that spent millions on items that are not worthless.

    What else? Combat is now boring as hell. And bugs... oh, so many bugs.

    Here is an analogy of what has happened. Say you bought a tire from a company. It's just a tire and does the job. You let the company know what can be better about the tire; you spend hours with them in meetings and on the phone explaining that maybe the tred needs to change a bit. 2 months later the tire company send you a square tire. What are you supposed to do with a square tire?

    SOE, this is not how you treat customers. Idiots.

  • Get a better game (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Falconoffury ( 880395 )
    I suggest packing up and moving on to a company that cares more about the game than the money. I recommend Turbine. They are making D&D online, and Middle Earth Online. They have an Asheron's Call 2 expansion pack coming out on May 4. If you want to read about it, here's the homepage. http://ac2.turbinegames.com/ [turbinegames.com] It also is having upgrades to some major game systems, but player testers have generally shown approval for the changes.
  • It's basically a completely new game. SOE made a huge mistake, unless their intentions are to cancel their contract with LucasArts. Gameplay is slow and boring, and you have to stare at the toolbar the entire time. My guild has made jokes that the CU should be called "SWG: Toolbar" where the most exciting action happens in your toolbar. And now everyone is running around in padded armor and bone armor instead of composite armor. SWG is truly becoming "an empire divided" with the majority of the "empire
  • I tested the combat upgrade throughout its testing and found it to be very unbalanced and boring. Sony Online Entertainment continued to ignore 80% of us who were tell them this. Their Director of Customer Relations was quoted as saying that the people who were complaining were those who had exceptional weapons or wanted to solo Kray Dragons. On none of my 3 characters did I have exceptional weapons and only hunted dragons a couple of times and only in a group.
    Starwars Galaxies was unique init combat sy
  • The most important thing in this game is our posessions, our virtual property. Posessions are so important, that they even get sold on ebay for hundreds of dollars. However, much of our property after the upgrade is no worthless. Our exceptional weapons have basically been averaged and turned into junk all in the name of balance. Our armor is no different than anyone elses, Armorsmiths cannot even customize their armor like they did, their experimentation was dumbed down (don't ask me why they did that). I
  • I have just witnessed deleting of another thread in CU forums. I read first page, when clicked on the link to the second it said that the thread is deleted.

    What the thread was about?

    People from different servers were just counting how many people are online in the most popular places on different servers. Shall I add that it was kind of deserted everywhere. With like 5% or less of usuall population for the place/time comparing to original SWG.

    I have not seen anything which was against the 'comunity guide
  • What is the main reason 85% of the players bought this game? Because you can live Star Wars, not another Norrath. The game was great, ive been playing for more then a year on 2 different accounts now, but as of tomorrow, im cancelling both. Ive stood by SOEs decisions in the past, but this time its a no-show! The CURB is the worst thing that ever happened to it, combat is broken, level system is in place (dwarf nunas are even lvl 10!) armor certifications? I can run around here in plate armor if I want with
  • It saddens me that SOE has done this to everyone who has spent so much time playing and perfecting their style in a most unique environment. Did the game have issues? Yes it did some professions were highly powered, some were not. With the installation of the CU this was supposed to give everyone an even footing and make the game more enjoyable. Did CU do this, was it a vast improvement to the old system? I must give a definitive HELL NO.

    Let me explain a bit

    SOE promised that we would have a combat syste

  • For those who don't like it, I fully understand. Whenever a game does a drastic shift like this, especially to a new system full of bugs, this is not only expected but perfectly reasonable.

    But, I like it. I don't agree with, what appears to be the majority here. I had numerous problems with the SWG experience before the CU and, aside from lower populations now, I actually like the game quite well now.

    Firstly, I just had wwwwaaayyyy too many problems with the old system. I couldn't stand the fact that
  • Well lets see. Bazaar vendors aren't working. I can't wear armor I have paid for. My CH character can't tame pets anymore. The pets I have already are reduced to uselessness. The quest I have been working on can longer be completed. All but 2 other players from my guild have quit. All memebers of my guild were long time vets. The GUI bounces around whenever channel in. Most learned skills, scematics, ect... for my character that I have had for 15 months now are gone. I can't heal my character duri
  • First of all it's more of a downgrade than an upgrade. No-one asked for this. Stars Wars Galaxies went from being a FUN game to something that is quite frustrating and not fun at all. As a Jedi Padwan, something that took me six months to achieve if I go to a mission terminal and select a mission that is two levels below me it will take me 20 minutes to kill a creature spawned on that mission. ( let alone complete the mission by killing everything there. ) For that 20 minutes effort I get 367 xp. At th
  • I played SWG for about 5 months last year. It had its good and bad points. I thought the atmosphere was amazing, and the game was more open-ended than anything since UO (especially in the way a non-combat guy could be as viable in-game as a combat guy). The bad points - the game was buggy, each patch seemed to take one step forward and one step back, prebuilt cities were empty, buffs killed team play, the HAM system was unbalanced, etc., were all fixable. A lot of people were counting on the Combat Upgrade
  • Need an example of how poorly this was planned. The end game profession is Jedi. Under this new CU it will take a normal player 7.5 years to reach it. Here is the link to the Jedi Forum post with the math.

    http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=jedi&message.id=857257 [sony.com]

    Tired of being told to be patient and that they will fix it. SOE gets paid to be patient and fix things. They can run 5 test servers and HAD an alpha testing team at one point. Instead, the kill alpha, offer a lip se
  • The CU is really bad but does have some good things. Here's what i think:

    Pros:
    - Better balance of defenses in profs.
    - New weapons.
    - Programming moves in combat (only one move that is repeated, nice touch, but prefer combat queue)

    Sorry but that's all i like.

    Cons:

    - Armor is still the same. Yeah they are tied to profs now but that is pretty lame. They should've just added some customization options in the crafting process to make it more unique, in terms of effectivenes, resist types and in design. Pre-CU
  • I've played a number of level-based MMORPGs, was never really happy with any of them. It's the skill-based games I like, like UO and SWG. However, with this recent SWG combat upgrade, they've changed the game at a fundamental level from skill-based to level-based, with a token veneer of skill choices. The game now feels like EQ2 with different skins. Quite simply, if I had wanted to play a game like EQ/EQ2, I would not have switched from those games to SWG.

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