5. Higher end content - There's a lack of really interesting high-end content in the game. A lot of the vets have maxed out and we need to make sure there's still enough to do.
I think everyone will agree that more content is needed but when are we going to get any which we don't have to pay for in the form of an expansion. I has been a very long time since we got any 'free' content in the form of the Corvette, Geonosian Cave and even the DWB. Will we ever see any conent which doesnt require an expansion again or are we all going to be more or less force to buy expansion packs for something diffrent to do.
It's not as simple as "you should have just fixed the things we were complaining about". That doesn't address the very real fact that what we had was a hardcore game that wasn't going to attract the mass audience that the Star Wars IP brings to the table.
this in fact is very true, but just because your hardcore doesnt mean you can attract the masses. ffxi does it very well. and you know why, cause they actually take the time to put in quality systems into the game instead of half arsed systems. just look at the bounty hunter system smed. your devs are adding a bounty hunter system that is totally exploitable. why do i feel its exploitable, because as soon as a person gets killed there will be a ton of bh's bounty checking whoever killed that person and kiling him quick cause they only have ten minutes. thats not very enjoyable fo those who are in the middle of pvp. oh and dont let me forget the fact that your introducing a bounty hunter system based on the gcw pvp system that you havent even fixed yet. now smed im not trying to get in you train of thought, but dont you think that if you goiung top make a bh system based off of the gcw, then the gcw should be fixed first so that people can enjoy pvp and be ok about bh's coming to kill them immediatly while in battle. i mean you guys just arent making sense with that.
the same thing with crafting and the same thing with gaining xp. you guys are fixing things in the wrong order and thats why were are pissed now.
Allow me to respectfully disagree with your point here - Star Wars as an IP is every bit as capable of delivering a WoW level audience. The reason it isn't is the game needs to be that good. No, not the SAME game.. but it needs to be that good and polished. Everyone thinks we are trying to make SWG like WoW or EQ2. That's completely not the case. Yes, we're going to a more rigid class based system and are doing more linear content.. but that's where the similarities end IMO. In theory we still have an incredibly deep and rich system based MMO that can deliver some world class gameplay once we live up to your expectations.
Smed
Smed
How can that possibly be achieved with a shallow profession system (the shallowest of any MMO, including WoW) and a combat system that puts strategy on the back seat behind specials and heals that fail and is so fast that the person who gets the first shot in wins 90% of the time?
Combat is the most boring and uninteresting that it has ever been in this game, BECAUSE of how fast it is!
No, I didn't like the 25 minute heal wars fights of the CU game either, but what you have done is gone and made a combat system that is just as bad, for the opposite reasons because you went to the other extreme!
The profession system is going to get a whole lot deeper as fast as we can.
Let me address your point head on. - SWG never attracted the size audience that the Star Wars license delivered in the first place. One of those reasons was combat wasn't exciting enough. We have done enough research on the people who quit or people that didn't purchase the game to know this is a hard, brutal cold fact. Could we have gone a different direction with the combat? Yes. Could we in the future change this direction? Yes. Do I think we will? No. Why? Because I don't believe that this will be an issue if we solve the other half of the equation - making the professions feel different... and making the content really exciting. If we asked you all to rank Combat vs. the loss of professions, I'm betting the loss of professions will "win" every time... I don't think the new combat style is the main thing that people are bothered by. It's the broad strokes changes to the rest of the game. What we've done is to get the game to a much more basic level that we can build on. I submit to you that if we achieve our other goals, this style of combat won't be an issue. The fact is the data we have suggest that for the people that DO sign up for the game they like the combat. For the people that don't, combat isn't the main issue we're losing them.
Smed
Just a small point here. Games like WoW, are advertised everywhere, I see it in the newspapers, in magazines, on the net. When I first started playing SWG, it wasn't from an ad, it was from another game. Not even an MMO game. That leaves me to believe that you were asking your community to be your advertisers for free instead of actually getting out there and letting the world know you existed. If you had placed some of that extra funding into advertising SWG instead of constantly changing it, you might have had a larger player base, instead of what you have now...which is a lack of trust from your community, and even from the potential new players. You've created a galaxy that is filled with bitter people, and guess who your new players meet and talk to when they first log in? By failing your community, your failing your game, no matter how great it becomes. If we're going to save SWG, you really need to start by at least compromising with your customers. If you just worry about making the game the way YOU want it, then only the ones like YOU will play it. There really does need to be something for everyone. YOU may not want to be Uncle Owen, but maybe someone else does.
Call me selfish but i miss Pre-cu dearly. Do you think it's reasonable to say if by X amount of time the NGE doesnt meet it's "goals" we could go Pre-cu?
What i really like to know smed, is how do u feel about having people pay for beta. I mean really u know the game as it is right now is borked, and u are promising all these changes and fixes yet Soe is taking monthly subs for a game that is knowhere finished.
holding left click and hovering the mouse is not skill. its childs play. there is no aiming, these hitbox's are HUGE. hitting a head is like hittin a toe. the aggrovatin part of this combat is... ITS FEKING POINTLESS. and with it being so damn fast, buff's, foods and all that pretime is completely wasted for a 30 second fight.
even when i win, theres no satisfaction.
all ppl are asking for is to take away the frustration you FORCED on us.
a target lock means that all those.... lovely (cough) effects you've added no longer are as frustrating (seriously, lava and doc smoke = one huge hover over what you cant see party)
and an auto attack means we dont have to hold down left click.
the skill you speak of would still be there: action managment and when to special. if ppl want to use that FPS skill stuff, they play an FPS where aiming truly matters (meaning where you hit the target determins the damage delt)
and by no means are you to take the above stateing that i would like swg to become more fps like. we have sw fps games. the JK and BF series fill that fps need perfectly. you guys need to do the RPG stuff, since we call this a mmoRPG.
turn based combat is what RPG's usualy are about. even the NGE is turn based, or why have action and special cooldowns?
/sigh
.......NBoFa DeezN....... guild first; faction second; truth third ..............Upia..............
I'm only trying to be blunt in saying "this is our direction". I do still think engaging in the community and being a part of the change for the better is a good thing too.. obviously my message isn't "accept the NGE or quit.. we don't care". We absolutely care. Do you think it's fun for our devs to read these boards? Don't you think they want to make this game the best that they can? We all take pride in what we do. I would like nothing more than to be reading stories about how amazing the NGE is and how we've turned the game around. I expect to read those stories someday. Until we're there though, it's nothing but hard work and long hours with everybody examining every decision we make with a microscope. Fair enough.
Smed
Just a few days ago i posted an earnest plea for some recognition of the fact that a major bug existed. When trying to pick up items in a house there is a goofy error message and you must move the targeting reticle then place it back on the stack before you can pick up another item. I needlessly consumes time that i could be having fun with. In that post i clearly stated i would allow some time to pass and see if the bug got fixed. Or at least some response (yes it is a bug) (no that's the way we want it). Those days have passed.
This morning before i read this thread i terminated 4 accounts, and had decided not to renew the other two. Now i see that you are actually reading the forums and i wonder if i have made the correct decision.
If i don't reactivate my accounts i will truely miss the game but if i do will i be forced to suffer this insufferable bug and for how long.
Lets talk about what's going to get fixed? We can go over and over who did what but who is doing what right now matters more!! What are you fixing can you give a list ?? All i hear right now is a fight about the past.
I dont post to much as you can see lol. I can make a list a mile long with things that need to be fixed. BY the way i hate the grind.
ok. Here are my top 5. Keep in mind, this doesn't mean this is the order things are being done.. just my personal ones and what I see being big issues with the community.
1. Crafting - I know crafters are pissed.. we're working on a system that I hope will be a good balance between the crafting centric system we had before and the loot drop system we have now. The truth is this needs to be balanced.
2. New quests for the mid-levels - there's not enough of them now. The team is cranking on it.
3. PvP - Not nearly enough of it - I don't like what we've done to faction bases. Personally I think this is a big part of what this game needs to be about. Then again, I'm personally a PvPer so that's a big deal to me.
4. Entertainers - I realize a lot of people don't like the idea of entertainers being in combat. To a lot of people this IS why they went into entertaining in the first place. I like where we're going with it and want to make sure it's balanced properly.
5. Higher end content - There's a lack of really interesting high-end content in the game. A lot of the vets have maxed out and we need to make sure there's still enough to do.
Smed
That is a great post. The question is will anyone be talking to us about what is being worked on for crafters before it is set in stone and if so when will that be? We need information.
I just want to make sure that you realize that right now I and many other crafters see no reason why we should keep paying for this game until publish 32. Tell us where we are headed.
I know the armor restrictions being dropped will help armorsmiths (thought it can be argued that the loot drops will cancel out any bennefit there) but what about the other crafting professions? Is there any information that you can give us about what is going to keep us here?
Here is the state of crafting as I see it. Most of this will be DE centered because it is my main profession.
Right now crafters feel very unloved. We have been combined into professions that some of us have no interest in playing (eg. DE combined with a limited version of WS). We have no substantial source of repeat business, and repair tools alone will not solve that problem.
Several of the modules that were introduced to DE with the "droid invasion" no longer have a purpose, some of them haven't worked right from the beginning.
All crafting professions have bugs that have been around since launch! Almost 33 months now. http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=tradereng&message.id=6802#M6802
I know the devs want to avoid the passionate discussions but they need to remember that they caused the passion by nerfing and ignoring us for so long. The only way to begin to have rational disussions is to start giving us information. Include at least some trader love for each sub-profession in each publish until our revamp. Give us new usefull schematics.
When you do add new schematics to the game please add them in a way that crafters can get without paying for them. That means not loot drop schematics and not cube combos unless crafters have a way of aquiring the glowing items without combat and without buying them from combatants. A little bit of loot drop and cube combos are fine but don't make them all that way.
We would love it if we could do non combat quests that have either a permanent schematic as a reward or a repeatable quest with limited use schematics. By non combat quests we are not talking about just delivery missions or the crafting missions from the terminals either. That can be incorporated in some way but we want an immersive Star Wars experience too. There have been several good ideas of ways that crafter quests could be implimented and if you started a thread asking for ideas I know you would get more than you could ever use.
And please stop blaming the traders for our current situation, TH said that the traders were only focussing on high end items (which many have disagreed with) and instead of talking with the crafters to come up with a solution you have started cutting us out of the game with loot .
Please help us.
Please do not overlook this.
________________________________________ Yoto Romad 12 Point Master of the Obvious Are you on the list?
Any chance you could put in a "good" word for me, in the Galatic Senate Program?
Message Edited by Altyrell on 03-24-200609:57 AM
Secret Poject? Where do people come up with this stuff. ALL developers on SWG are focused on the publish plan you saw. We were in the preliminary planning/design stages of a design for an expansion pack a few months back. When we saw how much work the live game needed and the reaction from both the community and the focus groups we dropped those plans. We can worry about that later.
Smed
Thank you to those who has reply saying that the whole thing with the "Secret Project" was from Swede... hopefully Smed will comment on the fact that Light has SHINED on the "Secret Project" subject...
(oh & Pres. Smed.... what about 2 - 6... any comments???)
Well Pres. Smed... any comment about #1 - 6... ok, maybe just 1 - 4... and maybe 5....
wow... still no response since the Light has shine on the fact that it came from Swede when he said that him, and several others were being reassigned to work on a "Project" that he couldn't talk about....
d Lord Vincent Takaab Blackbird (Altyrell) ~MEOW~.
Sadersam wrote: What i really like to know smed, is how do u feel about having people pay for beta. I mean really u know the game as it is right now is borked, and u are promising all these changes and fixes yet Soe is taking monthly subs for a game that is knowhere finished.
Virzo wrote: smed I dont understand, with an outcry like this, how do you not see we are upset. Im sorry, but I payed alot of money for the old game, and it changes. Yes you are losing subs, stop lying, We watch the servers slowly lose people. And the new people after level 30 get bored and leave. You dont have a game, its a hang out beta test.
maybe you would be so kind as to point out what I've lied about?
Why isn't NGE still in a BETA? All these fixes, add-ons, and "enhancements" are not something you should not do live when the live product is borked to begin with. The game is not even playable in its current condition. What was the big rush to push this system within 2 weeks of announcement?
