Unless Smed comes back and posts that he acknowledges our response, I will chalk this up to more PR rhetoric, probably given out as a result of the forum changeover taking longer than necessary. This little post by Management is probably good for distracting the average forum poster for 6 to 12 hours. "Anyways".
Message Edited by HeirForceOne on 02-09-200702:54 PM
_1ranger wrote: Please, listen to the players and not your focus groups. You have an existing base of players that are more than willing to tell you what direction they want the game to take.
I would have to agree with this. Last time you guys listened to focus groups you lost 50% of your subscribers. You may not admit this but I know this to be true on my server at least.
Anyways there are a few things that need to be done and this is how I would prioritize it:
PVP
1. Added content for both PvP and PvE. There are two separate types of players that play this game, PvE lovers and PvP lovers. Try to keep them both happy because in reality they feed on each other or at least they used to. I am a PvP lover so I will throw out some PvP ideas.
A. The best type of PvP in my opinion is player base PvP followed by Static Base PvP and then Restuss PvP bringing up the rear. There needs to be something done to make player base pvp viable again, I think you can do this through your GCW system by not only rewarding those who destroy bases but also rewarding those that defend them. Also they should make player bases once again help determine planetary control and they should make the fact that a planet controlled by the opposite faction is a detriment to ones safety if you choose to travel overt.
B. Remove Combatant player bases from the game. They are stupid and useless. Instead of having combatant bases simply allow only SF bases to be placed and allow those SF bases to have defensive installations such as turrets and mines. All PvE bases have become are a way for people to base club in the safety of being combatant.
C. Some professions such as Commando, Medics, Jedi and Officers seem to be the biggest factors in PvP battles. I am a commando and I know that basically the team with the most Commandos and Medics wins, mostly because a lot of the times I am fighting next to a bunch of BH's. Certain profs need to be looked at again so their viability in pvp can be increased. The first one that comes to my mind is Smuggler. If you pvp a lot you will notice there aren't many of them around and there is a reason, they are pretty terrible in pvp. I think another pass on some of the expertise systems by ADDING to them and not NERFING would help balance some of the game systems.
D. Bring back larger player groups. 20 man groups were awesome, 8 man groups are just too small and make things harder to coordinate.
E. Bring back the TEF. If some guy that is Combatant decides to attack my Stormtrooper friends infront of me I should be able to kill him. That would be more Star Warsy and iconic if you ask me.
PVE
2. I am not much into PvE but I can tell that this part of the game is lacking in content. There needs to be a new expansion for sure.
A. The game needs to be made more difficult. Everything in game right now is pretty easy to complete. Bring back some of the challenge. The DWB should not be able to be done by 2 Jedi and a Commando.
B. Add better loot to the game, loot that can be used in both pve and pvp.
C. Create a more socially immersive story line and have more server events.
These are just some ideas that I will probably add to as time goes on.
Well said! READ this one Smed!
No, no no, no no! No TEFs. Go mob each other and gank people like yourselves, leave us PvE players alone.
I can tell. And no, no, no, no, no! Leave PvE alone!
So what your saying is the npcs are nothing more than hostages taken by SOE? - Katore
I like the flair of abcmole more - ELAzalin, my best friend ever.
2. I am not much into PvE but I can tell that this part of the game is lacking in content. There needs to be a new expansion for sure.
A. The game needs to be made more difficult. Everything in game right now is pretty easy to complete. Bring back some of the challenge. The DWB should not be able to be done by 2 Jedi and a Commando.
B. Add better loot to the game, loot that can be used in both pve and pvp.
C. Create a more socially immersive story line and have more server events.
ALL of that I 100% totally agree with
(QFE would be too much of a cliché)
E'lrin DarkCloud | Echo Rebel Movement | Espionage Expert I enjoy doing boring repetitive tasks so I can, "I WIN" against those that are unwilling to do boring repetitive tasks. I don't know about the rest of you people, but I pay my money so I can do boring repetitive tasks just so I can, "I WIN" against other players to polish my e-ego so that my FOTM+GCW Officer proves that I somehow contain innate abilities of uberness IRL.
How about in the mean time Mr. Smedley you give the players some of the tools to create their own content. Beef up the event perks. Give us some way to spawn our own mobs (with restrictions to prevent griefing. There are many tools used by the GM's and Pex that would do wonders to creating our own content.
Last weekend we had our first ever Influencers Summit. It was a lot of fun, and I have to say I learned quite a bit. We deliberately brought people in that were some of our biggest criitics. We wanted to hear directly from them and understand the issues they had.
At one point I spent an hour or so talking with a group of the Star Wars Galaxies players that had come. It was a very interesting and enlightening discussion, and I wanted to thank all of them for their candor.
I wanted to make sure I close the loop on that discussion because I walked away with some new priorities.
Here are my thoughts:
1) Content is the single biggest thing people playing SWG want. - this surprised me. From our perspective we had thought revising the systems in the game (i.e. expertise revamps) was a bigger deal. While they did say this was important, I was susprised they ranked this higher than working on PVP.
2) This lead to a discussion about involving the community in the decision making process. They pointed out that we do a lousy job at this, and they're right. As such, you can expect a poll in the near future to help us prioritize things for the next 6-12 months.
3) Guild Management tools in SWG aren't up to snuff - I went ballistic when I heard you can only manage your guild through the terminal. We need to fix this.
4) Server consolidation - we need to fasttrack this - it's a very hard problem, and the team has had other priorities.
5) We need to explain ourselves and the thinking behind changes a lot better
6) Once we got past the "please bring back the pre-NGE servers" (no, we're never going to do that) the discussion really got down to brass tacks. Many people ask me why I don't post a lot here, and the simple answer is that it's hard to follow a thread when many of the posts end up being "bring back pre-NGE servers" and other issues we've moved past. Please don't misunderstand me on this - I get why some people want this. It's just that it isn't possible and at some point if we're going to move the game forward new ideas are at the top of the list of things we should be discussing. That's my view anyways.
Smed
Mr. Smedley
As someone with a business degree and running my own company, I have to be honest here - I'll keep it
very simple. Your management of this game is horrid. You seem to have no idea
what your customers want, or maybe your just not willing to give it to them.
This sort of problem in management only has one outcome, fewer customers.
....I was susprised they ranked this higher than working on PVP....
....Server consolidation - we need to fasttrack this - it's a very hard problem, and the team has had other priorities....
I am going to go on the premise that you do not have much knowledge on the workings and systems of the game; the fact that you had no idea that the Guild Management system is a horrible mess certainly suggests this. Please take time to understand exactly what you're getting into if you try and "fasttrack" server consolidations.
Server merges/consolidations will most likely kill off the subscriptions of most people currently playing on servers that would be removed in a merge.
It has been my experience--reading many, many threads begging for server merges--that those who see no problem with server mergers are primarily PvP players. Their goals and reasons for playing could succeed on any server with any group of like-minded people. While there are definitely communities among these players, there is generally little that ties them to the larger server community. For them it would be no huge deal to move to another server if the PvP situation was "better" there. They play more for the game mechanics than the community mechanics.
It is the players who do not see PvP as their end-game content that have major issues with the concept of a server merge. These are the players who have built successful guilds and/or cities, who engage in role-playing, who run businesses--basically those who utilize the world-building aspects of the game. In this area, each server is unique. It's not about templates or PvP rankings--it's about community. The staying power of the game is not about the systems, but instead it is about the world they "live" in.
I've made a "second home" in SWG, with my guild mates, in the city of Kor Spera. For me and many who live there now, it's more than "just a game". It's a lasting accomplishment that I'm very proud of personally, both in-game and out. The journey my characters have taken to get where they are now is much more than boxes on a skill wheel.
Stripping them of those accomplishments, of those testaments to the journey, would destroy them. For me, those characters are more than just bits of pixelated information stored in a database. You can't just strip away the world attached to them, copy and paste over skills and numbers, and expect them to be the same as they were before. Take that away, and you have literally thrown out over three years worth of dedication and effort.
In my own experience, most players fall into the latter category. Take away their homes and their character's lives and the worlds they have created--they wouldn't have anything left to play for. For myself, take away my city and you may as well shut the game down completely for all I'd care because I'd be done.
PLEASE.... do not pull the team off anything to work on a server consolidation system. Not only will this be working against the desires of most of your long-term players, it's an effort in futility when it comes to trying to solve the problem of lower server populations. A merge will not solve the population problem, it will only eliminate the number of servers you are maintaining; most will not bother starting over and you will still have low populations.
The easiest, simplest and most logical way to start dealing with the problem is to offer low- or no-cost server transfers from low population servers to higher population servers. That technology is already in place. I would also recommend doing the long-needed structure purge to clean up inactive buildings and cities so that newer players can actually play the game without being held back by those no longer playing.
At that point, the focus should be on making the game live up to its potential. Fix the Guild Management, improve Player Cities, add (PvE) content that can be repeated, make leveling less of a chore and something more enjoyable, give back the sandbox-feel to the game so that players can find personal ownership in the game again. Listen hard to your community and the community leaders on what can be done to improve the game and do everything you can to use those ideas. Make the game what it can be--as opposed to trying to be like everyone else--and I think your population issues will go away.
I am very impressed by your thoughtfulness.
Server merges...completely forced ones...are bad ideas, IMO, because making a city and maintaining a city represents some of the biggest accomplishments in the game...you may like them because you think they will save you money...but they wont, they wiull cost you more subscriptions. And that kind of thinking, money first, led to the terrible decision making that brought us the NGE and all but killed the game then.
I would encourage a more thoughtful solution...first, DEAD PLAYER HOUSING CLEANUP. If the account is inactive for 6 months, the house gets packed, period.
Second, I would say FREE server transfers. Yes FREE. Think of it as penance for killing the server populations with the NGE, Smed.
Dyvim Storm - Eclipse PrePatch9 4444 Guardian Force Master
_1ranger wrote: Please, listen to the players and not your focus groups. You have an existing base of players that are more than willing to tell you what direction they want the game to take.
I would have to agree with this. Last time you guys listened to focus groups you lost 50% of your subscribers. You may not admit this but I know this to be true on my server at least.
Anyways there are a few things that need to be done and this is how I would prioritize it:
PVP
1. Added content for both PvP and PvE. There are two separate types of players that play this game, PvE lovers and PvP lovers. Try to keep them both happy because in reality they feed on each other or at least they used to. I am a PvP lover so I will throw out some PvP ideas.
A. The best type of PvP in my opinion is player base PvP followed by Static Base PvP and then Restuss PvP bringing up the rear. There needs to be something done to make player base pvp viable again, I think you can do this through your GCW system by not only rewarding those who destroy bases but also rewarding those that defend them. Also they should make player bases once again help determine planetary control and they should make the fact that a planet controlled by the opposite faction is a detriment to ones safety if you choose to travel overt.
B. Remove Combatant player bases from the game. They are stupid and useless. Instead of having combatant bases simply allow only SF bases to be placed and allow those SF bases to have defensive installations such as turrets and mines. All PvE bases have become are a way for people to base club in the safety of being combatant.
C. Some professions such as Commando, Medics, Jedi and Officers seem to be the biggest factors in PvP battles. I am a commando and I know that basically the team with the most Commandos and Medics wins, mostly because a lot of the times I am fighting next to a bunch of BH's. Certain profs need to be looked at again so their viability in pvp can be increased. The first one that comes to my mind is Smuggler. If you pvp a lot you will notice there aren't many of them around and there is a reason, they are pretty terrible in pvp. I think another pass on some of the expertise systems by ADDING to them and not NERFING would help balance some of the game systems.
D. Bring back larger player groups. 20 man groups were awesome, 8 man groups are just too small and make things harder to coordinate.
E. Bring back the TEF. If some guy that is Combatant decides to attack my Stormtrooper friends infront of me I should be able to kill him. That would be more Star Warsy and iconic if you ask me.
PVE
2. I am not much into PvE but I can tell that this part of the game is lacking in content. There needs to be a new expansion for sure.
A. The game needs to be made more difficult. Everything in game right now is pretty easy to complete. Bring back some of the challenge. The DWB should not be able to be done by 2 Jedi and a Commando.
B. Add better loot to the game, loot that can be used in both pve and pvp.
C. Create a more socially immersive story line and have more server events.
These are just some ideas that I will probably add to as time goes on.
This is some of the worst ideas going I hope this is not being taken seriously.
I PvP 24-7 and don't do anything else for the last 3 years and even I think most of these ideas are bad.
Forcing PvP doesn't INCREASE fun.
Improved PvE content which MIGHT lead people to PvP is a good idea but NOT if it's forced
server merges arent only needed they are necessary, not for my server, but many servers are complete and utter ghost towns, i think the should just shut down light servers and offer them free transfers
It is shocking that you have NO clue what the players of this game wanted!
But this is more of the same from you... we screwed up, we're gonna communicate more, blah, blah, blah....
What is this a once a year post from you??
Bowoci ~ Elder Enemy of the Republic ~ Peele Notoo ~ Medic ~ Ymina ~ Master Shipwright - +2 Engine/Chassis/Weapon Exp ~ Notoo Shipyards - New Justice, Lok - West of the Shuttle -I support crafting in SWG!
They still can't get belts to fit right after trying again.. do you really think they can pull of a server merge without wrecking this game more ?
As a good friend pointed out.. how many cities will be lost because people might be at work or out of town when this happens ?
After the CU and NGE do you really want to re-enact the Oklahoma land rush with this bonanza of hostility that you all ( SOE/LA ) have managed to create so successfully.
Ohhh if history repeats itself its gonna be ugly lol.
there are not enough players on any of the servers to make them fun! and a bunch of old structures and what not are cluttering everything, i wouldnt mind it so much if they where current players structures.
Forced server consolidation would do more harm than good, if they fix the game and add lots of new content we might get the numbers back.
please elaborate on how " forced server consolidation would do more harm than good " and i think your wrong about the " new content = new players " thing, while it is true to some extent, its simply not going to be enough to populate servers to where they need to be.
Last weekend we had our first ever Influencers Summit. It was a lot of fun, and I have to say I learned quite a bit. We deliberately brought people in that were some of our biggest criitics. We wanted to hear directly from them and understand the issues they had.
At one point I spent an hour or so talking with a group of the Star Wars Galaxies players that had come. It was a very interesting and enlightening discussion, and I wanted to thank all of them for their candor.
I wanted to make sure I close the loop on that discussion because I walked away with some new priorities.
Here are my thoughts:
1) Content is the single biggest thing people playing SWG want. - this surprised me. From our perspective we had thought revising the systems in the game (i.e. expertise revamps) was a bigger deal. While they did say this was important, I was susprised they ranked this higher than working on PVP. No surprise there!
2) This lead to a discussion about involving the community in the decision making process. They pointed out that we do a lousy job at this, and they're right. As such, you can expect a poll in the near future to help us prioritize things for the next 6-12 months. Yes we are right, and the poll would be a small step in the right direction.
3) Guild Management tools in SWG aren't up to snuff - I went ballistic when I heard you can only manage your guild through the terminal. We need to fix this.
4) Server consolidation - we need to fasttrack this - it's a very hard problem, and the team has had other priorities. Too many subscriptions would be lost if that happens.
5) We need to explain ourselves and the thinking behind changes a lot better
6) Once we got past the "please bring back the pre-NGE servers" (no, we're never going to do that) the discussion really got down to brass tacks. Many people ask me why I don't post a lot here, and the simple answer is that it's hard to follow a thread when many of the posts end up being "bring back pre-NGE servers" and other issues we've moved past. Please don't misunderstand me on this - I get why some people want this. It's just that it isn't possible and at some point if we're going to move the game forward new ideas are at the top of the list of things we should be discussing. That's my view anyways. Yes new ideas are goodhowever some of the best ideas are old ones. The devs started a few topics about gardening, beast master, & operation : Red Herrin all of which received great feedback yet SOE has yet to act on it.
Smed
John clearly you are a great guy but you need to spend more time in this forum as does Julio Tores otherwise you will not know what the community wants or needs. There are not as many bring back pre-cu threads as there used to be so that is no longer a valid excuse for ignoreing the community.
How about you Blixtex and a couple of others take a few dyas and play this game. You dont need focus groups. The focus groups are in game 24/7. It wouldnt take you long to figure out what this game needs. It's apparent to all of us that nothing works the way you think it does. Get in there and figure it out. This game has become the single biggest waste of potential in the entertainment industry.
They still can't get belts to fit right after trying again.. do you really think they can pull of a server merge without wrecking this game more ?
As a good friend pointed out.. how many cities will be lost because people might be at work or out of town when this happens ?
After the CU and NGE do you really want to re-enact the Oklahoma land rush with this bonanza of hostility that you all ( SOE/LA ) have managed to create so successfully.
Ohhh if history repeats itself its gonna be ugly lol.
now that you say it that way, it sounds even more exciting lol !
everyone logging in an rushing to lay a city hall woooo hooo cant wait
there are not enough players on any of the servers to make them fun! and a bunch of old structures and what not are cluttering everything, i wouldnt mind it so much if they where current players structures.
Forced server consolidation would do more harm than good, if they fix the game and add lots of new content we might get the numbers back.
please elaborate on how " forced server consolidation would do more harm than good " and i think your wrong about the " new content = new players " thing, while it is true to some extent, its simply not going to be enough to populate servers to where they need to be.
How about this, I would stop playing if I was forced to switch servers. I have too much stuff and would lose all of it. No thanks.
So what your saying is the npcs are nothing more than hostages taken by SOE? - Katore
I like the flair of abcmole more - ELAzalin, my best friend ever.
