delanstarrunner wrote:
Do away with the particle effects and Jedi. They are ugly and create a tremendous amount of lag! Oh, they are niether Star-Warsy nor Iconic.
fixed and I'm an elder, player Jedi were the single worst idea in mmorpg history
~Centaur PraetorLan
1Thessalonlans4:16-18 Support the rp communlty of Brla by replaclng all your i's wlth L's
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
Smed,
Not sure if you'll see this... but I want to thank you once again for taking your time to talk to us at the summit.
To everyone else:
This is some of the stuff that we spoke to Smed and the other SOE guys about that I wasn't sure if I could mention their reaction to. We made sure that your voices were heard. Some of you that are posting in this thread are more worried about flaming Smed than actually reading what he wrote. Please go back and re-read it.
"BZ helps ALL Rebels!" Melvar Anquist, Guildmaster BLINDZEBRA Hunters Guild [http://swg.blindzebra.com] "Who is the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi Please drop all auction winnings off to any vendor at the BZ Crafter's House /waypoint 3185 -555 Xebec's Demise, Corellia.
grab a large cup of coffee and read the senators reports, all of them.That will give you a decent feel for the community and SWG problems without having to wade through all the BS on the forums.
Icierveiro
Captain of Irodonian Jewel and Moon-Curser
Owner/Operator of PackRats Import/Export Inc.
Iciev
Information Specialist, Rebel Pilot, and Field Agent of PackRats
pydlo wrote:
what people need to understand is Smed is at the top of the company he doesn't know all the details of the games or problems within them. He most likely relies on the people below him to accurately report this information to him. Sounds like he's been getting fed bad info and actually took a face to face with players to enlighten him.
*cough*Helios*cough*
Denkiri Largo II Kayja Tahiri II Kur'i Draconis Jedi Elder [] Master Officer [] Rebel Medic --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------My fellow Americans, I have not been entirely truthful with you. I did gagoogidy that girl. I gashmoygadied her gaflavity with my googus. And I am sorry. -Glen Quagmire
delanstarrunner wrote: Do away
with the particle effects! They are ugly and create a tremendous
amount of lag! Oh, they are niether Star-Warsy nor Iconic.
Combat is too fast now to have animations
i only wish combat was 1/2 as fast as it is now my old brain cant cope with it
A roadmap for the next year would be a nice step, Smed.
Is there an expansion coming? What new content is coming? What are the art department and content folks working on now??? What iis in the pipeline. Development takes time, as you well know, so WHAT IS COMING? Anything???
Or just smoke and mirrors designed to keep people hoping an paying as long as possible so you can milk as mush money from the diehard fans as possible with the least investment in the game....
Dyvim Storm - Eclipse PrePatch9 4444 Guardian Force Master
Nice to see you back in here Smed. Also realize the opinions expressed by the people who were invited may not represent a large portion of the playerbase.
It is important to note that new content can be defined several ways. Although new areas to explore and quests for both ground and space are important, but I also think more professions and/or expanded general expertise abilities would be considered content as well. The 3 proposed ideas that were discussed late last year were intresting and I know many of us are waiting to hear more about the future possibilites. I resubbed just to post about the possibilty of creature handling returning in some form.
Lastly, the fact the you were suprised that PvP issues were not the main concern of the playerbase worries me a bit. It seems that what you want from SWG and what the playerbase wants are 180 degrees from each other. I was hoping that the results of the PvP polls posted a few months ago would make it clear that PvP is not the main reason most people play, and this has been the case since 03. From what I gather, the hardcore PvPers make up a very small protion of the playerbase, and the majority of us are much more concerned with the PvE aspects of the game and only causually PvP, if at all.
Then can we expect "more" communications form the team, what about some info on the expansion that is planned.
Why does it have to be an expansion? I'd settle for some more high end stuff to do in the current setting - DWB was created in 2004, as were the Vette instances. I would rather have more like this (but erm, more challenging plese) than being led by the nose round some new planet.
It doesnt but since LA made a statement about an addition to SWG this year I would like to know what is planned.
Deex Master Doctor since Oct 2003 (retired 15 Nov 2005)
Kogi Master Weaponsmith (Holding out hope) /Merchant
Thanks for posting, I look forward to more content since you recognize now that it is an issue. Server consolidation will be interesting, but I agree that it is needed. GL, and the game is headed in the right direction since there is no possibility of a pre-nge environment.
Looking forward to better days,
A Day One Vet, and a subscriber for a long time to come as long as the game progresses.
Zaniah Zavijava - ELevi <-NDC-> Loyal to the Cause
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.Yeah, Content is probally the #1 or #2 on most people lists....
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. And to what extent will the poll(s) serve? Cause the Polls in that past either were somewhat useless or nothing ever seem to come from them....
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."Duh, which way did he go George, Which way did he go?"....
4) Server consolidation - we need to fasttrack this - it's a very hard problem, and the team has had other priorities.If you are able to figure out how to get around Naming problems, City Locations and a few other things...
5) We need to explain ourselves "Duh, Which way did he go George, which way did he go?" and the thinking behind changes a lot better uh.... wait... you guys/gals actually "THINK" about the changes...
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
My Response in Yellow....
b Lord Vincent Takaab Blackbird (Altyrell) ~MEOW~. b Master & Controller of Dimensional Portals & Gates (Demonic/Holy - Holy Demonic/Demonic Holy) b Wants to become a Galactic Senator
We need content in a bad way. Specifically we need high-level repeatable content (ie; instances, missions, etc).
PvE has always been the focus of SWG. Yes having a touch more focus on PvP was nice but get back to PvE thats SWG's core audience, hands down.
Server consolidation... horrible idea and not worth the time to even think about it. Nobody really wants this and ultimately it will result in even more lost subs. Just let it go.
Would you like to know what you could do 'Right now' to make some fast quick changes to hold players over till we get new content? Then read below!
Bump up the difficulty of NPC's so they are challenging once again. At present EVERYTHING is solo-able and this is extremely lame. In particular key nasties should require full groups to kill, things like Krayts for example. Players like working together but at present we have no reason to, we are punished with reduced XP and nothing in the game requires more then 1 player to kill.
Make Dath, Yavin and Endor scarey challenging places again. Boost the native Critters/NPCs up a bit and have some swank loot drop from em like the good ol days.
Give us a reason to explore and travel in the awesome game worlds we have, at present we have zero reason to go anywhere but starports on adventure planets. When the MOB specific loot tables were removed in favor of the universal lame loot tables we have now and creature handler was removed we suddenly had no reason to explore/hunt/adventure out on the planets. Please fix this.