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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Sony & LucasArts Muck Up The Force 58

Posted by Zonk from the when-mainstream-press-gets-involved-you-know-you-screwed-up dept.
dakotamangus writes "Players of the massively multiplayer online game Star Wars Galaxies are feeling a bit like the films' besieged rebel army these days. To them, LucasArts is the evil Empire, raining down terror in their alternate universe. Says Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts: 'There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves.'" These latest mainstream press articles are just the latest examples of the profound backlash the NGE has wrought among the SWG player community.
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Sony & LucasArts Muck Up The Force More

Sony & LucasArts Muck Up The Force

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  • For those of you who had jedi's and now their basically useless, you'll find this amusing (as well as anyone else for that matter)

    Here [ragingage.com], skip through the first minute and forty five seconds if you get fed up reading the text... Pretty funny stuff.
    • And, for those of you who haven't played, here's an idea of how bad the Jedi now are. This is from a video my friend made and showed me (I'd link you, but it's on his OSU page and I don't know where that is. If he tells me later, I'll put it here.)

      Anyway, the basic gist of the video is this: He is playing a medic. He is fighting two Jedi. Because of an error with the medic's area healing, he couldn't heal without also healing the Jedi. He completely owned both of them without ever worrying about his h

      • Oh, that was the point of the video? It wasn't completely obvious for someone who's never played the game. They made Jedi's worthless now that everybody can be one. Hmm, my irony meter is exploding. Doesn't this sound like it should be an archetype by now?

        a) Small group discovers valuable secret knowledge/abilities.
        b) Knowledge gives small group seemingly magical powers.
        c) Group's reputation grows.
        d) Group decides to distribute knowledge to everyone, for selfish or selfless reasons.
        e) Not everyone is up

  • I felt a great disturbance in the force. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:16PM (#14260067)
    As though millions of nerds posted in terror, and then suddenly modded.

  • They have a demo at 3dgamers (Score:4, Informative)

    by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:19PM (#14260088)
    And I downloaded it and tried it out. It's supposed to be a 10 day demo, and I couldn't even get through the first without uninstalling it. The game is seriously buggy, it crashed numerous times, it stuck me in missions I had already done with seemingly no way out and wouldn't let me progress at all. On top of that it kept flipping me out of a game I was evaluating to purchase and on to the desktop and poppping up ads to do just that.

    Here's a hint SOE: If someone downloads a demo of your product they are already thinking of buying it. Don't preclude people from using a demo to evaluate your product by harassing them to buy it. A better advertisement would be to polish the product you have.

  • Wrong, Wrong, Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:31PM (#14260151)
    Whoa, these comments from the Director are pretty revealing. First of all, it's an RPG, or was supposed to be. By definition, a lot of that *should* be exploring and learning new abilities. Second, this is (was) the only SW game where you had the _option_ to be Uncle Owen if you wanted. Some of the best times in game were actually the domestic stuff, running a shop with my Wookiee wife.
    And thirdly, "Kill, get treasure, repeat..." I don't think there's much that can be said about that comment except that this woman is stuck in the earliest days of MMORPG theory. In fact, this kind of grind is why most people LEAVE the games.

    Man, if you ask me, putting this woman in charge was one seriously bad decision. Maybe she's hot.

  • if you're unhappy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pizza_milkshake ( 580452 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:36PM (#14260171)
    cancel your subscription. that'll get your point across.

    • Re:if you're unhappy... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @07:24PM (#14260393) Journal
      From my own past experience with declining MMOGs, it won't really get the point accross. Developers very often dig into a vision of their game and not even the enjoyment of their users will dislodge them. I watched one game go from tens of thousands of players - not enough to make the developers rich, but enough to pay for itself and give the dev team some "night job" income - down to barely a hundred now because of the increasing amount of tedium and clicking being added to the game, and for stupid reasons or no reasons at all.

      Me, and thousands of others quitting didn't put a dent in their resolve to make a game that can be used to test the effective lifespan of any mouse on the market, but it did do good: I am no longer annoyed by the game, I know longer have to deal with the developers ass-backwards approach to problem solving, and I have an extra $12 a month to spend on other things. I'm happy.

      • From my own past experience with declining MMOGs, it won't really get the point accross. Developers very often dig into a vision of their game and not even the enjoyment of their users will dislodge them. I watched one game go from tens of thousands of players - not enough to make the developers rich, but enough to pay for itself and give the dev team some "night job" income - down to barely a hundred now because of the increasing amount of tedium and clicking being added to the game, and for stupid reason

    • It seems that a lot of folks are. From TFA:

      Ms. MacIntyre [SWG Senior Director] said Galaxies had lost "significantly more" than the 3 to 5 percent of players who typically leave any online game every month. She said she expected the game to return to its previous subscriber levels in six months, a process she hoped would be accelerated by the introduction of a new television infomercial hawking Galaxies later this month.

      Most guesses placed SWG at around 200,000 subs prior to the NGE, and LucasArts has admit

      • You sound right. I left the game last year. They kept making all the promises.. but that was the carrot. The stcik was that they would never listen to what anyone else was thinking about. If they had a stuck to the original idea of the timeline. Kept out all the Jedi, and made it more like what they had thought of. Things one of the users was saying is why not put all the bounty/smuggler classes on Tatooeine. Have them start out near Mos-EIsly, and JAbbas Palace. Wasnt the cantina there supposed to be th
  • How many people enjoy the new changes? Anything specific that you think is best?
  • The company is just plain meddlesome in all matters regarding the Star Wars license. LucasArts also torpedoed [decipher.com] Decipher's Star Wars CCG [decipher.com], and for somewhat similar reasons. The SWCCG was too different from what was out there, and presumably didn't have the flash-bang action experience they wanted. While I won't claim that it was without fault, the game was killed before its time (even though it was after I stopped playing).

    To veer slightly offtopic, they appear to be doing well with their LotR game and have
    • Idem for WotC's Star Wars Roleplaying Game, which has been belly-up for about 18 months now (or, "suspended indefinately", as it is referred to on WotC's Forums [wizards.com]), all to the benefit of the "less hassle for continuity checking", "gotta catch'em all" miniatures game. Despite all this, I still find myself looking forward to seeing what Lucas'll cook up for his upcoming SW TV series, though. It'll better be really good, for their sake ... the fans might not be as - forgiving - as they once were ...
    • I don't play it but from what I heard, it sucked much anus. There are a lot of games recently that are a flash in the pan. People play them long enough for the next anime oriented game to come out and then drop it. But, back to the Megaman. No one bought it at the local gaming store. They sent it back unopened, same for G.I. Joe .

      MtG stiles rules the local scene and A Game of Thrones is not bad (need to read at least the first book to get into it though).

      Starship Troopes miniature game is rocking for me rig
  • "kill, get treasure, repeat."

    Oh, how original, how deep. Just the thought of thing that makes you feel like your in an "alternate universe".

  • Kill, get treasure, repeat.

    Yes, that's exactly what I want in a game, how'd you guess?

    Seriously, people who are into the quick hack-n-slash aren't going to quit playing WoW and start Galaxies, the people who are still playing Galaxies are probably doing so because of everything other MMOs don't offer, like the complex crafting system or player-created content.

    Making your game a thoughtless treadmill won't help, at this point.

  • This isn't rocket science... (Score:4, Funny)

    by benjamindees ( 441808 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @06:59PM (#14260274) Homepage
    Step One: pick demographic

    a) Fat nerds without lives or money looking for an escape
    OR
    b) Hyperactive, attention deficit teenagers who like destroying things

    Step Two: create videogame

    a) Cheap, unstructured role-playing game that runs on office computers
    OR
    b) Expensive shoot-em-up requiring $300 video card

    Step Three: advertise to said demographic

    a) Slashdot, Wired, etc.
    OR
    b) CNet, ZDnet, etc.

    Step Four: profit!!!

    I'll leave it as an exercise to see how Sony/LucasArts fscked this up completely.
    • SWG started out as sort of a mix:

      Demographic: Fat Nerds with no lives who have money to waste and are looking for an escape destroying things
      Videogame: Expensive unstructured role-playing game requiring a $300 video card
      Advertise: mainstream TV channels and everywhere game/computer related on the 'net

  • Bit off more than they could chew (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkmayo ( 251580 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @07:23PM (#14260391)
    When SWG started alot of people I knew who played it, (including myself) wanted to be just be that Uncle Owen character. I played an entertainer/musician myself with a bit of smuggler as well.A sexy Twi'lek in catina playing a song and dealing spice and slicing weapons in the backroom. I didnt want to be Han Solo, or a cutout of him. But thats where the game is heading now.

    The options that SWG gave you were amazing, the customization the various types of classes and skills you could make the housing, crafting and everything all really detailed, not too mention the customization of the look of your avatar. best I have seen(rivals COH/COV imo) but implimentation was BUGGY AS HELL.

    Database corruption, rampant duping, broken quests terrible imbalances and aof alot of empty space. Once people min/maxed the best templates PVP went to hell(not that it was that great to begin with)

    I think SOE orginally wanted to create a living breathing Star Wars Universe that you played in but it turned out to be more than they could handle so to "fix" the game they are dumbing it down (tho I like the combat changes having it a bit more twitch is a good idea tho once again.. BUGGY atm) slicing off a bunch of classes and who knows what else to make it SWG lite and hope that they get more people to come and play.

    I just think they should kill the game and go with SWG 2 .. perhaps do it right this time.
    • I agree, SOE definitely bit off a lot more than they could chew. And now, in the face of the runaway success of WoW, they are trying to reinvent the game to appeal to the same WoW crowd. By foregoing a genuine SWG 2, I think they are trying to have it both ways, attract a whole new demographic while holding on to some fraction of the old timers. But I have little doubt that they are gambling on bringing in a whole new crowd, so criticisms from the old guard are likely falling on deaf ears.

      I played SWG for a

    • I used to feel like Lando Calrissian (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kherr ( 602366 ) <kevin&puppethead,com> on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @08:29PM (#14260707) Homepage
      Before the NGE I felt like Lando Calrissian. I've been a droid engineer since I started playing, and I have created a comfortable enterprise as a crafter and merchant. Through all of that I maintained some amount of combat skills so I could go on occasional fighting jaunts to keep things fresh. As a combatant I could also participate in the Galactic Civil War (GCW).

      Ironically, the NGE class of trader is supposedly based on the iconic representation of Lando but it has made me less like him. I have been stripped of all combat capabilities and can no longer participate in the GCW. As a trader I can only make and sell things, never going on any quests like everyone else. Over 90% of the content is no longer available to me to participate in. The player economy has been destroyed by the elimination of item decay and the addition of loot drops of stuff that used to be purchased from crafters. Only fighters can play SWG now, with traders propping up an increasingly pointless player economy. My trader is a ghost in the world.

    • Part of the failure is the players fault, not sony.

      Sony gaves us a sandbox, a bugged sandbox but still a sandbox. NOT a game on rails. SWG is closer to such games as The Sims or MS FlightSimulator then any single person game. Even Never Winter Nights wich relies so much on the user for content cannot compare. NWN after all still is a very story driven game even it is the users that write the stories.

      Even sandbox games like the Tycoon games do not compare as they usually give you a clear start and end date

      • It's not your fault that they provided stupid things like doctor buffs. (Doctor buffs are what drove me away, before the boost to food and drink was in). In SWG a character that is buffed with doctor buffs is something like 5x as effective, as in they can kill 5 creatures at once that they could only have killed one of before. That is a game design DISASTER. There were queues of people lined up in the streets of major cities waiting for the doctor at the end to buff them. It's not the players fault, it's

  • Oooh yeah, totally busted (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TychoCelchuuu ( 835690 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @08:19PM (#14260665) Journal
    Hell yeah, they broke it. Let me preface this by saying I enjoyed the previous iteration of Star Wars: Galaxies and I enjoy the current iteration (less). Both, I think, had lots of qualities that people either ignored, did not appreciate, or just didn't like the way I did. I think SOE/Lucasarts did a fine job making the game, and a fine job on this new update. What they did NOT do a fine job on, though, was the whole idea of the update. Sure, you can make a game like the one they had: hilariously intricate in some parts, and inevitably unbalanced. Or, you can make a fast paced MMO-lite, like we've got now, where shooting people and hitting them with lightsabers is the objective. That's fun; it's like Star Wars. What you can't do, though, is switch between them. Nobody bought SW:G and played it for years because they wanted it to be like this new patch, and nobody's going to buy it because they like the gameplay in this new patch. SOE took a game that wasn't wildy popular, and turned it into something that's going to alienate everyone who has ever liked it and fail to attract anyone new.

    Nice job.

    • SWG in theory allowed you a lot of freedom. For instance in armour choice. Many an rpg simply gives you constant upgrades and you have the choice of getting killed or wearing the best armour.

      In SWG the heaviest armour carried the penalty of restricting your recovery. Simply put in clothes you would take more damage but heal faster, in armour you could get to the point were you no longer healed.

      Now they had 1 bug and one design flaw that ruined this choice. The bug was that computer controlled enemies only

      • Now they had 1 bug and one design flaw that ruined this choice. The bug was that computer controlled enemies only targetted some of your armour outfit. So you simply wore only part of an armour set getting the high resists but not the high penalty.

        I didn't play this game, but that doesn't sound like a bug. Certain pieces of armor have always been more valuable than others. That's life. Ever see those training films where a guy is fending off a vicious dog with only a leather glove and gauntlet? Have you

        • I didn't play this game, but that doesn't sound like a bug. Certain pieces of armor have always been more valuable than others. That's life. Ever see those training films where a guy is fending off a vicious dog with only a leather glove and gauntlet? Have you ever studied, say, a Roman legionnaire's armor?

          it was a bug.

          a full suit of composite armor in SWG consisted of many pieces. the bug in the game was that, due to shoddy ai coding, a player only needed to wear a chestpiece and boots(for example, I

  • can someone tell me wtf NGE stands for?

  • It's easy to make stories about heroes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy AT stogners DOT org> on Wednesday December 14, 2005 @09:39PM (#14261066) Homepage
    We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer.

    Unfortunately, for every Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars universe, there's a hundred Han Solos and a billion Uncle Owens. If the only compelling content you can create is for Han Solos, you'd better have some very good AI to fill the Uncle Owen roles. If the only compelling content you can create is for Luke Skywalkers, then congratulations, you're writing a single player game. The only reason to put a thousand Luke Skywalker players in the same universe is because a few of them can be tricked into giving you monthly fees that way.

    This isn't a Star Wars specific problem, of course. Heroic epics are epic because they involve unique heroes performing universe-changing actions. When your weeks of character development finally make you able to reach and slay the uber-dragon, that dragon had better stay dead. When an NPC congratulates you on your successful quest one minute and hands the same quest to someone else the next, it becomes obvious that you're not interacting with a story, you're playing a pretty modern version of pinball.

    Of course there's no easy way to fix that - it's easier to write scripted content and hand out copies to every player than to write code that makes it natural for players to create their own content. I'd like to see MMORPG worlds evolve like SimCity/Civilization/Masters Of Orion/etc. games - frontier settlements would be founded by groups of players not created by designers, and enemies would actually threaten to destroy those settlements not just sit in dungeons waiting to be killed.
    • > When an NPC congratulates you on your successful quest one minute
      > and hands the same quest to someone else the next, it becomes obvious that
      > you're not interacting with a story, you're playing a pretty modern version of pinball.

      Well stated, sir; that's an apt metaphor.
    • The MMO's I know are "fixed" allowing for the development of quickest way to level up paths.

      SWG had the Narf hunt, a mission with good payout, relativaly harmless enemy in a safe enviroment close to the hub of player activity coronet. (Has any SWG server ever developed another hub then coronet?)

      What sony should have done the moment they realised (they did keep these statistics) that the majority of kills were narfs to make these critters less atractive to kill. Within the game the code already existed to

  • What I really don't understand is why SOE/Lucasarts didn't just make this update a sequel. SWG is far too long in the tooth for a major update to bring in new players - those of us who never picked up the game because it takes five minutes to kill a wamp rat with a blaster pistol have already played newer, better games and are probably not too inclined to start playing a game in which the designers only made changes based on player feedback over two years after release!
  • And once again Sony proves that they are only able to alienate their customers.

    How many feet do they have left?
    Aim at foot... fire...
  • "Players of the massively multiplayer online game Star Wars Galaxies are feeling a bit like the films' besieged rebel army these days. To them, LucasArts is the evil Empire, raining down terror in their alternate universe."

    No, the rebels weren't supporting the evil empire with monthly fees. The players aren't the rebels, they are the imperial peons upon which the empire is built. If they really wanted to harm the empire, they'd stop paying those fees and find some other MMORPG.

    With all the rabid talk of "

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