I can understand the "accesibility" argument, BUT, the NGE has driven away at least HALF the subscribers we had prior to it's announcement. Several servers are wasting electricity and doing little else. Friends lists are empty...
With all due respect, this "solid" foundation you speak of is made of quicksand if you ask me...
EITHER of the previous systems could have been made more accesible, if effort had beem made to ADD beginner content (such as the legacy) to teach it to them. The systems weren't all that complex.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
funny... I didnt even think pre cu was difficult or hard to understand on day 1, and this was my first MMO or even RPG....
Guess you guys just think we are all silly little kids who need things spelled out for us.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
Complexity + easier to get into + more directed = Less reading, Less knowledge, Lower Age group playing
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
That's the question of the century, "HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN THIS BALANCE WITHOUT LACKING IN ONE AREA?" We are watching you and we are watching Sigil of all companies to see how you accomplish this. WoW is not even in this category because they cater to a different player base IMHO (kids). This game has a lot of 30+ people who like complex game mechanics. bring it on lets see what you guys can offer.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
Sir,
Several hundred thousand cancelled subscriptions disagree with you.
Catering to those with short attention spans will only result in short term interest in the game.
I'm sorry, but the NGE alienated your ideal customer: intelligent, mature gamers with disposable income.
Best of luck.
Guess we are not the target anymore....
Yeah, judging by your name there obviously they are targeting you eh?
Kudos and the name is a spawn of the NGE crazyness....get banned and you will see.
Interesting factoid, I couldn't even post THIS without someone linking to it and taking about SWG. Honestly, this blog's days are numbered...
By Jeff, at 2:26 AM
Time to cut the devs some slack I think. You can still be mean to Smed though.
I feel no sympathy for him. He wrote it. Sometimes its best to communicate with the people that play rather then vent on a blog that will obiviously be misconstrued...if you want to call it that.
He has a blog.
It's not anonymous.
He talks about games, video games, roleplaying games, and philosophies which he knows are vitally linked to a significant portion of his consumer base's displeasure.
And somehow he thinks it's not going to be brought up by us?
That is, again, the exact lack of forward thinking that brought us to the NGE at release.
My thoughts in a nutshell. Very well said
______________________________________________________ The Ti'lya Brothers: Ailar (Entertainer/Chimaera, DG Trader/Bria), Klofi (Smuggler/Chimaera) -- Cancelled, "You have a right to be upset. Anyone who is attached to any profession that doesn't get a lot of new content has a right to be upset." -- HanseSOE ______________________________________________________ Raph Koster on: "SWG: What went wrong?"
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
and rather than build down to those players the whole system needed to be decapatated and rebuilt from the ground up? i dont understand that logic. especially when there are customers to keep happy. i understand that a company cant expain every decision in full to the customers but there are people here who would have liked to know honestly what went on. and maybe as a surprise to the company we can understand when changes need to be made if we are given all the facts.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
funny... I didnt even think pre cu was difficult or hard to understand on day 1, and this was my first MMO or even RPG....
Guess you guys just think we are all silly little kids who need things spelled out for us.
I think you are taking it too personal. Obviously there is a hard-core audience of gamers out there for MMO's, but for subscription numbers and balance reasons they have to cater to a more wide range of audience. Like it or not that's the way it is now.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
Let me translate for you
Jeff personally enjoys (ed) a rich complex game environment, but this is Star Wars and making money is the key with the franchise now, if you don't make a lot of money with a game title star wars LA getas the idea that something is wrong and needs to appeal to the googles of fans who buy FPS battlefront II.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
funny... I didnt even think pre cu was difficult or hard to understand on day 1, and this was my first MMO or even RPG....
Guess you guys just think we are all silly little kids who need things spelled out for us.
It was my first MMORPG also, i managed and loved it from day 1.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
At the same time it can't be dumbed down to the point that it has no appeal to anyone, which is what we have right now.
Without depth and complexity there is nothing to keep people here. In 90 days you've lost half the subscribers. You know as well as most anyone else that there is not going to be a large influx of people buying this game. It has been out for 3 years. You failed to generate the new subscriptions at Christmas as you had envisioned.
Why did you fail, well for the same 3 reasons that all previous versions of the game have failed to meet the expectations of your managers.
1. The NGE was released incomplete. It is taking an inordinate amount of time to fix it despite claims that programming the NGE would enable you and your team to fix issues and add content more quickly.
2. The game still has a serious lack of content. Less content has been added to SWG since its inception than to any other MMO in history in the same time frame. Without content you will not be able to retain what you have, nor will you be able to attract new players. The loss of diversification has meant the loss of player made content as well, which for most of this games history helped disguise the fact that it had no content.
3. SOE and LucasArts have continually practiced Poor Customer Relations. Keeping your players in the dark and then rolling out unfinished and incomplete programming is not the way to make happy customers. Releasing updates and revamps that negate over 2 years of play by most of your player base also doesn't make happy customers. Unhappy customers take their argument to friends and family such that every unhappy customer costs you ten potential customers. It is always cheaper to retain the customers you have than to attract new customers.
"There is no emotion, there is peace; There is no ignorance, there is knowledge; There is no passion, there is serenity; there is no choas, there is order;There is no death, there is the Force" from the Jedi code.
DDO is managing to create a game on arcane rules and it is not the problem at all.....
_________________
And go look at DDO boards...there is about as much complaining there has there is here and that game isn't even out yet.
Go look at the boards for any MMO for that matter. Always lots of complaining, that's just the nature of the beast. The vast majority of the complaints about DDO are related to it's clunky and non-user friendly UI anyhow.
JFreeman wrote: I don't speak about SWG on my blog. I may speak about game design in general, or high level design concept sorts of things that aren't appropriate for discussion here. But to speak about SWG specifically: well I'd do that on these forums.
Certainly when I was a younger man, I was willing to devote a great deal of time to mastering arcane rules just to be able to play a game. But those days are long gone. SWG needed to be a lot more accessible. It also needed to be a lot more maintainable.
SWG needs depth and complexity too, but it can't be the thing that greets new players at the door. That complexity needs to be built on a solid foundation; and the game itself needed to be easier to get into and more directed.
I agree 100% with this! Keep up the good work!
JFreeman's alt. account LOL
Hardly. Just someone who can think ahead a few steps... and not someone who just likes to bash all the time.
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