someone refresh my memory...what WAS the original method of becoming Jedi...I know about the hologrind...but I know there was something before that. The whole 'lol its organic' system that was so touted and etc
someone refresh my memory...what WAS the original method of becoming Jedi...I know about the hologrind...but I know there was something before that. The whole 'lol its organic' system that was so touted and etc
I think the technical terms for the organic system are "a lie" and "bullshit."
Original Rufus on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Speaking of Same-iness, the composite armor pissed me off to no end.
It really looked as though each planet had an occupying force whose armor of choice was composite. Everyone looked utterly identical.
I really wished there could have been some degree of cosmetic customization with the armor, beyond the simple color-swapping.
Early on I went "Man, fuck armor" and just went around plain-clothed. Which worked for me considering that comp armor tended to really rape your action bar (as well as Mind, I think).
Which also worked out when the jawa ion rifle became the weapon of choice because of it was one of the few ranged weapons that did stun damage, which did ridiculous damage against people wearing composite.
Granted, the fact that the JIR did stun damage in the first place was fucking retarded considering you've only ever seen it used against Droids.
Speaking of Same-iness, the composite armor pissed me off to no end.
It really looked as though each planet had an occupying force whose armor of choice was composite. Everyone looked utterly identical.
I really wished there could have been some degree of cosmetic customization with the armor, beyond the simple color-swapping.
Early on I went "Man, fuck armor" and just went around plain-clothed. Which worked for me considering that comp armor tended to really rape your action bar (as well as Mind, I think).
Which also worked out when the jawa ion rifle became the weapon of choice because of it was one of the few ranged weapons that did stun damage, which did ridiculous damage against people wearing composite.
Granted, the fact that the JIR did stun damage in the first place was fucking retarded considering you've only ever seen it used against Droids.
I really did dislike the encumberance effects. It often felt as though armor held very little purpose at all.
I mean, if my mind is heavily encumbered, and I'm getting spammed with mind-pool draining attacks, suddenly that expensive armor seems slightly less practical.
OMG, the memories... That game was good and I lasted awhile and was in several PAs, the only MMO I actually got into. But of course the mistakes came, the first one I remember being the implementation of Jedi. I actually defended the devs, but now I know I was just a stupid fanboy. It could have been so much better, especially the GCW. I finally quit when the veteran rewards came around and I made 6 mil, even with the money I couldnt find anything to do.
OMG, the memories... That game was good and I lasted awhile and was in several PAs, the only MMO I actually got into. But of course the mistakes came, the first one I remember being the implementation of Jedi. I actually defended the devs, but now I know I was just a stupid fanboy. It could have been so much better, especially the GCW. I finally quit when the veteran rewards came around and I made 6 mil, even with the money I couldnt find anything to do.
The Galactic Civil War was another huge missed opportunity. Being able to lead massive raids against the opposing faction, and in fact earn control of a planet doing so, was a great idea that was abandoned much too fast.
For a while now I have been writing about SWG for my game design portfolio, all the cock-ups make it rich material.
Some key points off the top of my head (I need to finish and host that essay sometime soon)
You need to be a very advanced character before you meet people like Vader.
Most weapons are factory produced, so rather than have players build them in their sheds, they are simply bought from NPC vendors, but can be modified illegally. Advanced engineers can make new, customised weapons, but these are hand-crafted rareties that cannot be produced quickly.
Imperial service- it simply doesnt make sence that a new Imperial Pilot can go off with his state-issued TIE as he pleases. Imperal players should be Imperial Agents with enough leway to do this sort of thing, and also have the right to customise their craft.
No creature handlers- balancing aside it doesnt really work for the setting
Less is more- Corellia should just be a sprawling Coronet, I'm not interested in the wildlife. For that, I might go to Tatooine. On Corellia I want Cantinas full of smugglers and space jocks.
The Space section almost worked, I wouldnt change much.
Rather than player towns, Rebels and criminals can make movable camps
Imperials and people who can hid their Rebel leanings can live in customisable appartments in cities, and also purchase store fronts. Rebel cells can hide behind apparently legitimate businesses
The language system was a bit pointless. Make them harder/slower to learn, not everyone should understand wookies right away, and if I want to talk secretly in Rodian, I shouldn't expect to be overheard.
Armour for appropriate classes only. A rebel in full armour can expect to be shot by Stormtroopers if seen strolling in Bestine, and a swift smuggler would probably find it impractical
*Sigh* and that's just off the top of my head. I can talk on this for ages. Good for my portfolio, bad for my spirits.
Every single issue in the game took a back seat to Jedi. The community ingame died, and the awesome atmosphere and player run society died becasue everyone was too busy hologrinding for Jedi. Cantinas went from a social gathering point with people who liked being entertainers, to a desolate land where you bank tipped AFK entertainers who were dancing, many of which just to be a Jedi. the rest where dancing so that their alt Jedi could get gear.
Jedi ruined PvP. Jedi ruined PvE. Jedi ruined other classes as those classed couldnt get their needed attention because the devs were too busy trying to balance Jedi.
The game came out in 2003. In october 2003 Smugglers said they'd get a revamp 'soon'
They still havent gotten a revamp.
Rangers kept asking for more usefulness, other than just harvesting better. They wanted better traps, or better exploration ability, or more useful camps. They never got it. They asked for a stealth ability that only worked when prone, but the devs said invisibility is impossible. Shortly afterward jedi got invisibilty.
They took an awesome idea. They said, 'screw other MMOs. This game is gonna be like living in the SW universe.' and it was. It wasnt about getting to L60, or doing endgame raids. It was about making a name for yourself as a great weaponsmith, or a great crafter, or dancer. I'll tell you to this day, Thompson's mall in South coronet was the greatest on Naritus. Troll's weapons shop was the place to go if you needed a gun now. If you needed a custom weapon, go talk to Dy-nod. The Crimson Order and The Imperial Guard set the pace for the Imperial guilds.
Eventually, none of that mattered. The game became become a jedi ASAP. Even after the Combat Upgrade, it was still a game of becoming Jedi. After the NGE, the game just became dumb. They took out everything that made the game unique. Sure you could be a weaponsmith, but you may also be a rifleman. At one point my character was a master of melee skills. Pikeman, Teras Kasi, and a bit of fencer. Later he was a rifle using bounty hunter. My bounty hunter was also a capable dancer, for humiliating the corpses of those truly jerkish Jedi.
The most fun I had in that game was in Beta. I never left Tattooine. Daily we'd get a group of ruffians from the Starport, and head out. We'd trek through the deserts, killing Squill, Dewbacks, Rontos, and occasionaly Sand People. If we were lucky, we'd find a Krayt. If we were luckier, we'd survive.
The other days were spent fighting with Anchorage, a nearby Rebel supporting town. Me and a few other Teras Kasi Artists would rush in, pass any Overts walking in town, and head straight to the cantina. The 3 of us would rush in with custom bone armor, designed not for great protection, but for low encumbrance. The best of us had a Vibro Knuckler, which helped shred through enemy armor. We'd clear out the tavern, and hide inside. We knew if we went outside, we'd lose to the first rifleman we saw. But inside... Inside we were kings.
like i said in my first big post, jedi ruined the game because
1. people stopped playing to grind professions
2. the profession grind ruined the economy as materials and quantities increased 10 fold
3. AFK finally came into its on where people didn't want to play but left their toon afk grinding skills
4. once the jedi came nobody could play them because of perma death
GoldAgainstTheSoul on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
In the early months this was the only MMO that really reminded me of Ultima Online (the old pre-trammel version) in a long ass time. It just had that feeling. It felt like UO in space, only problem was that you couldn't just fight anyone whenever you felt like it, but everything else was pretty good. It did have a lot of potential.
Then the game went to shit. I should mail SOE a bomb.
If you want Jedi that are faithful to the movies, you need a game set an era which allows it. IE, before or after the Empire.
Personally, I'd love to see an MMOG centered around the Clone Wars.
I'm not talking about hundreds of Jedi running around, I'm talking about basically one guy playing Obi-Wan per server and him training three or four Jedi total. It's not totally canon, but it's the right order of magnitude.
I mean, the holocron grind was retarded, but at least it acted as a barrier keeping the rabble from the class.
Wrong kind of barrier, wrong people being let in, unfortunately. The second advantage to dev-picked Jedi is that in order to be a jedi you have to be a nice guy and RP well, which gives every "zomg jedi lol" person an incentive to at least try and sort themselves out a bit. Yes, there would be endless whining, but... fuck'em. Just point them to the canon and say "hey, Obi-Wan can only train one Padawan at a time. What, you think you're as good as Luke Skywalker?"
not really the hologrind just encouraged the worst kind of players. hardcore gamers who were more worried about status or power than adding to the community or actually playing.
most of the original jedi quit pretty soon after unlocking
If you want Jedi that are faithful to the movies, you need a game set an era which allows it. IE, before or after the Empire.
Personally, I'd love to see an MMOG centered around the Clone Wars.
I'm not talking about hundreds of Jedi running around, I'm talking about basically one guy playing Obi-Wan per server and him training three or four Jedi total. It's not totally canon, but it's the right order of magnitude.
I mean, the holocron grind was retarded, but at least it acted as a barrier keeping the rabble from the class.
Wrong kind of barrier, wrong people being let in, unfortunately. The second advantage to dev-picked Jedi is that in order to be a jedi you have to be a nice guy and RP well, which gives every "zomg jedi lol" person an incentive to at least try and sort themselves out a bit. Yes, there would be endless whining, but... fuck'em. Just point them to the canon and say "hey, Obi-Wan can only train one Padawan at a time. What, you think you're as good as Luke Skywalker?"
Seriously. I will admit, I played the beta and the first year of retail soley to become a jedi. That is what makes Star Wars what it is to me.
But what REALLY appealed to me was how it was supposed to be random and organic.
B freakin S man.
Personally, I'd like a post ROTJ mmo. Like, at best a year or two after the battle of Endor. The empire didn't just up and disappear after that battle, they were still quite strong. It was really more of a turning point for the Alliance.
With that said, I could envision allowing people to select Force Sensitive characters. However, permadeat would HAVE to be implemented. You die? tough, you're lvl 1 again.
and I would have loved for there to be some kind of actual dark side/light sight thing in the game. Maybe if you became evil enough (through mission choices, ect) you could try and join the ranks of the empire. Who knows.
Heir on
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
edited January 2007
I'm not even going to get started because I will just become sad. An MMOG in the Star Wars universe could, in the right hands, dominate completely.
But I will sum up my feelings on SWG with a statement I made to some friends before it was even released - "It's too ambitious."
I'm not even going to get started because I will just become sad. An MMOG in the Star Wars universe could, in the right hands, dominate completely.
But I will sum up my feelings on SWG with a statement I made to some friends before it was even released - "It's too ambitious."
And damned if it wasn't.
I don't even think it was too ambitious, I just think poor decisions were made with respect to almost every opportunity this game had.
If there was one capacity in which the whole thing seemed a little too starry-eyed, it might have been the enormous number of professions. I mean realistically, how were we supposed to see balance and appropriate content to serve that much diversity? The breadth of professions also watered down the player base a little, as finding one particular player of one particular profession could be a pretty big challenge.
Basically I think everyone can agree that Jedi ruined SWG. Their implementation into the game was completely botched, and there was no reason whatsoever to even have them in the game. The only reason Jedi came around was because of the fucking incessant whining of the throng who obviously didn't give two shits about what this game was about or what the setting was. The worst part was that SOE gave in to the unreasonable demands asked of them rather than telling those people to go shut their fucking cry holes.
I wanted to so badly to play this game when I had first heard of it. Being a Jedi was the last thing on my mind, and all I really wanted to do was hook up with the Empire, get some of that awesome Stormtrooper armor, and battle the Rebel scum across the galaxy. But sadly that didn't happen. Before I ever had an opportunity to play SWG, the Jedi were brought in so that they might ruin everything and completely destroy what could have been an amazing MMO.
I think the lesson learned from SWG's failure is that you can not meet the demands of your playerbase all the time, especially when they come about during a spazzed out temper tantrum. When the people playing your game feel you should make huge, enormous, changes to your game, then sooner or later you have to tell them to shut the fuck up and quit whining.
so really it was just a delay. because if there is a path...powergamers will find a way to grind through it quickly, just a matter of time.
And yeah, I have no problem with Jedi being uber, but permadeath should be a requirement. That's the problem with MMOs though..they try to cater to everyone, so enough people whine about it...they'll take it away.
Vargas PrimeKing of NothingJust a ShowRegistered Userregular
edited January 2007
I can't believe this game is sustaining 3 pages worth of posts.
I lasted 3 months, I think. Long enough to achieve Commando with one character, and TK Master with another, then decide that I'd killed all the Baz Nitch nests I'd ever care to kill, and quit.
I was a Doc and actually hung out in the Med facilities in Coronet, most of the time. I actually enjoyed it, I think that's why I rolled a Priest when WoW came out.
I was a Doc and actually hung out in the Med facilities in Coronet, most of the time. I actually enjoyed it, I think that's why I rolled a Priest when WoW came out.
Yep, same. I was a Master Doctor/ Master Rifleman. When we were still allowed to have some sort of pet (I had some beetle), I could solo anything with ease. I'd buff myself, buff my pet, and be on my way. Those were the good ol' days...
..we'd have weekly hunting parties on Dantooine, and eventually Dathomir as we increased in skill. When it would rain hard, we'd open up a few camp sites and relax by the campfire, telling stories of past adventures, and comparing the quality of meats, hides, and random loot we got from those pesky nightsisters.
Man, Roleplaying on that game was amazing. Even when I started to Hologrind (25 professions, ugh), I made the most of it by RP'ing it. Our guild even had an RP section where you could post stories. I had an ongoing journal about the rebellion trying to help me unlock the secrets to the Force.
My first MMO. It had a ton of problems, but man if I didn't love it.
Our guild in that game had a nice player city before player cities even went into the game. We had zoning and very careful lot placement, etc. The town looked great, and our bar/hospital (large house, before the real bars and hospitals went in game) was a great place to socialize.
That was all I really did. Socialize, and occasionally take out a contract to supply someone in the guild with a ton of hides for some crafting endeavor.
The crafting and sales mechanic was really really nice.
I think the REAL player cities hurt the game. It spread out the playerbase too much with all the additional spaceports. Vehicles hurt the game even more. Travel was too easy so there were no places that were really out of the way. Since nothing was out of the way, the concept of close and convenient also died. Player meeting places died even more.
Then the broker/auction house thing in the cities expanded and killed the storefronts. Since people could look up all they needed on teh city broker and buy it from there, the storefronts didn't serve any purpose. The last bit of FUN and personality died in the crafting game.
The combat was always shit. All attempts to fix the combat made it worse. The slow death of the AWESOME crafting was followed by killing what TINY enjoyment anyone could have possibly gotten from the combat. The space combat was pretty well done really, but it came FAR too late and didn't integrate into the game enough. The game was already too wounded. The space exp went from fun advancement to hideous grind at about the third tier as well.
The game over it's lifetime did so much right. Some GREAT ideas there that were all killed over time. Item decay was really the key to the economy. Not sure if that is still in the game or not. I stopped playing shortly after the space expansion. I had already lost interest, but wanted to play around with the ships a little before retiring the game.
I think the real lessons to be learned here from my point of view are that:
Item decay is a HEALTHY thing for a game.
Don't add something in that the players can already do for themselves. The well done player cities were BETTER before the devs added in player cities. The player hospitals and bars were BETTER before the devs made specialized buildings for them. The player storefronts were BETTER before the devs made the store tents. The economy and storefronts were BETTER before the devs automated all of it with the darn broker bot thing.
Maybe the real problem was that they should have never cut so many features out of the game prior to initial launch. Adding all those features in throughout a 2 year period meant they all went in without being integrated into the way the community operated.
I actually didn't think Jedi were all that bad, at least prior to patch 9 and while they were still fairly rare? They wern't always in everyones way, and hearing a lightsaber ignite was a real "OH SHI-" moment.
If you ask me, the worst thing about the whole situation was Jedi was the immense hostility created by many who liked Jedi being rather... vocal about it. Extreme cases I've heard of include having been harrassed for being in the same guild as a Jedi, being asked to assist a BH in killing a Jedi from his own guild, so on so forth. It really split the community in half. I quickly got tired of the endless fighting between Pro-Jedi and Anti-Jedi people, and that wound up getting on my nerves far more than the Jedi ever did.
After pub-9 though, things started to slide downhill, and it definately wasn't because of the Jedi, but rather because of SOE's increasing inability to do smart things, although after the CU hit, things seemed to turn around for awhile... I didn't like quite a few things about the CU, but it was managable.
Then the NGE came, with like a weeks worth of prior notice, and, well.... to me? That's when the game died. The near total removal of melee, Jedi being a starting profession, the incredibly crappy attempt at psudo-FPS combat, and the fact they made grinding FAR slower than before because now it's quest based.
Except the quests take you up to about level 40 out of 90, wanna go past that? Get an expansion pack, or go grind. After this, the community largely fell apart, and that was probably the single best thing it had going for it.
The devs actually stated they were willing to lose most of their own playerbase in favor of getting a new, larger one, didn't they?
I actually didn't think Jedi were all that bad, at least prior to patch 9 and while they were still fairly rare? They wern't always in everyones way, and hearing a lightsaber ignite was a real "OH SHI-" moment.
Probably just a few days after the non-holo jedi implementation, they were a growing infestation.
Star Wars Exploits is what we called the game. There were so many it's hard to tell where to start.
Biggest one that ruined that game for me:
When you took a shuttle off the planet, there was a button labeled "Back" on the loading screen. Someone figured out that when it cancelled the load, there was some way to bank transfer all of your money to another character and using the back button would somehow roll back your character, making it ridiculously easy to dupe credits. Of course there was always a new credit dupe discovered like every month.
Some old classics were always shooting people from your house but setting the house to locked so that there was no way they could fight back. Who could forget doctors using poison DOTs with no line of sight requirement. You could sit in a building and kill players through walls.
The parts of the game that worked were extremely fun. Then SOE found out players were having fun and promptly put a stop to that.
My favorite bug/exploit was about a month or two after launch I think. In Endor, there were extremely slow kitties that would get you alot of money and experience be blowing up their lair.
A fun bug was when player missions wouldn't clear on a planet after they aborted it. Endor had a 200 meter thick ring of monsters that circled the town/base.
Neva on
SC2 Beta: Neva.ling
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited January 2007
Speaking of classic SWG, does anyone have any news on that one thing those one guys were working on that lets us play that one game before you know who messed it all up?
I'm not sure if such talk is against the rules or not so I'll play it safe.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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Bloods EndBlade of TyshallePunch dimensionRegistered Userregular
edited January 2007
Despite this sucking I still really want to see a MMORPG set during the KOTOR era. More specifically around the era and involving the battles of Ruusan and the last war between Jedi and Sith. Hell give it to Bioware and make it KOTOR 3.
Speaking of classic SWG, does anyone have any news on that one thing those one guys were working on that lets us play that one game before you know who messed it all up?
I'm not sure if such talk is against the rules or not so I'll play it safe.
It's still a work in progress but it's getting there.
SWG really turned out like the PS3 if you think about it.
When it was announced everyone saw the potential for greatness. And sure the first stuff people saw seemed kind of iffy but we all thought "Hey its star wars and they got time till launch.. maybe it will get better".
Yet it just went down the drain instead of getting better.
SWG really turned out like the PS3 if you think about it.
When it was announced everyone saw the potential for greatness. And sure the first stuff people saw seemed kind of iffy but we all thought "Hey its star wars and they got time till launch.. maybe it will get better".
Yet it just went down the drain instead of getting better.
Sony ruiners of everything?
That kinda works for 95% of console launches and MMORPGs.
Neva on
SC2 Beta: Neva.ling
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
I always love galaxy threads, the last one we had I had a very great post showing the history of the game from the stand point of Gabe and Tycho, along with bits and commentary from me, along with an analysis of some of the successes and failures of the game.
Fuck I lost that post, took forever to make... If I have time I'll do it again though.
Long story short: Game had potential, and was launched about 6 months too early, then they continued to fuck it up after that. There are some... fans of the game... who are hoping to restore some of the good old times, before the dark times before the Hologrind.
Alexan Drite on
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
If they did make a SWG mmo again they should stick with the classic trilogy. I have no interest in the clone wars.
Why? It was tried and failed horribly at keeping things in the right 'time'. A few years after the classic trilogy would have been near perfect for how things were in the game. If they made it feel like the classic trilogy I would be all over that, especially if it meant no Jedi.
I always thought that if they were really hell-bent on implementing Jedi, they ought to have had a randomized system in which one account per every thousand produced a character with force sensitivity. You could either leave it dormant, fearing Imperial intervention, or you could try to see just how much of a Jedi you can become in an Imperial dominated Galaxy.
Basically what I'm saying is that it should have been a unique novelty, not a major construct of the game.
What they should have done was make it so that Jedi are, like they originally claimed, a 1/100 or 1/1000 thing. Give them the possibility of perma-death as well.
To balance things out, you could give them one or two replenishable lives. When those lives run out, they get perma-deathed. You get one life per week. However, in order to not lose another life you must log on a certain amount of time each week and or day as well. If you kept the whole bounty system thing this would make for an interesting gameplay mechanic. On one hand, a person could log in in the middle of Tatooine's desert and stay away from civilization so that they don't risk discovery (And as such, avoid the risk of facing the wrath of the empire, ala how they were claiming Vader would come down on your ass if you started showing off as a Jedi.), or, they could work towards training their character, which would be a risk considering that the most efficient methods to gain EXP in old-school SWG involved going into population centers and mingling with the local populace. Ultimately, the best Jedi would end up being those who were either well connected, or knew the lay of the land, and who was most likely to populate which towns. Add into that the old idea that master level jedi who got PDed became Blue Glowies who could be seen by/advise up and coming Jedi/Force Sensitives and you'd have a winning class.
What ended up happening in reality though was that SOE catered to the whining idiots on the Jedi forums, dropping any and all variations of the permadeath idea and buffing the crap out of the Jedi up until where it could take on entire groups of Bounty Hunters. Without the permadeath feature in place, the ratio of jedi to normal players went from 1/100, to 1/75/ to something like 1/10. On high population servers like Bria they were a plague.
Also, I still say that the best days were back during release. Despite being unbalanced, most of the overpowered classes were hilariously fun to fight against. I mean hell, the first couple times I saw some CH assault Anchorage with the three ancient Rancors he spent a month hunting down and taming/feeding so that they grew to eight times their normal size I couldn't help but chuckle. It was hilariously unbalanced, and everything in Anchorage died horribly, but it didn't change the fact it was fun. The PVP wars between Anchorage and Bestine were epic too. The areas between them were a no-mans land of snipers, player patrols, raiding parties, and lone PVPers back before SOE inexplicably decided to remove all incentives for rebels to go to Anchorage.
Speaking of classic SWG, does anyone have any news on that one thing those one guys were working on that lets us play that one game before you know who messed it all up?
I'm not sure if such talk is against the rules or not so I'll play it safe.
Last update was January 19th. Combat was working, so were vendors and skill trainers. CORE3 is what they're working on now, which is alot of JTL stuff. I've actually set up some of the stuff with the thing and tested some of the public stuff. Very very good stuff.
Speaking of classic SWG, does anyone have any news on that one thing those one guys were working on that lets us play that one game before you know who messed it all up?
I'm not sure if such talk is against the rules or not so I'll play it safe.
Last update was January 19th. Combat was working, so were vendors and skill trainers. CORE3 is what they're working on now, which is alot of JTL stuff. I've actually set up some of the stuff with the thing and tested some of the public stuff. Very very good stuff.
Whoa what?
More information on all of this please. If it must be pm'ed, do so.
Original Rufus on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Speaking of classic SWG, does anyone have any news on that one thing those one guys were working on that lets us play that one game before you know who messed it all up?
I'm not sure if such talk is against the rules or not so I'll play it safe.
Last update was January 19th. Combat was working, so were vendors and skill trainers. CORE3 is what they're working on now, which is alot of JTL stuff. I've actually set up some of the stuff with the thing and tested some of the public stuff. Very very good stuff.
Whoa what?
More information on all of this please. If it must be pm'ed, do so.
If this is a safe subject to discuss, I've got a fair bit of info about it...
While it has the "e" word in its name, I'm pretty sure the project was deemed legal. SOE and LA know about it, and have even contacted the devs in the past (about what for, they wouldn't say) and the project has not been shut down. Given that admist the current SWG community, the project has an INCREDIBLY high profile... I think if they were going to do something, they'd have done it already.
Another thing backing them is that the project devs refuse to allow the project to be used to make money, and have stated they will turn over any server running it and attempting to make a profit off of it/charging to play over to SOE and LA, so I'm pretty sure they actually have a deal going. The project servers don't charge money, SOE won't smite them. (Partly because they can't unless money is being made.)
I will go ahead and mention that this is NOT certain, as part of whatever conversation the project devs had with SOE and LA included them being requested to not share any details of it with anybody, so... I don't think anybody knows what's going on for sure.
EDIT: To clarify, while the project name has the dreaded E-word in the title, it's not an emulator in the sense of dealing with ROM's/piracy.
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I think the technical terms for the organic system are "a lie" and "bullshit."
Which also worked out when the jawa ion rifle became the weapon of choice because of it was one of the few ranged weapons that did stun damage, which did ridiculous damage against people wearing composite.
Granted, the fact that the JIR did stun damage in the first place was fucking retarded considering you've only ever seen it used against Droids.
I really did dislike the encumberance effects. It often felt as though armor held very little purpose at all.
I mean, if my mind is heavily encumbered, and I'm getting spammed with mind-pool draining attacks, suddenly that expensive armor seems slightly less practical.
The Galactic Civil War was another huge missed opportunity. Being able to lead massive raids against the opposing faction, and in fact earn control of a planet doing so, was a great idea that was abandoned much too fast.
Some key points off the top of my head (I need to finish and host that essay sometime soon)
You need to be a very advanced character before you meet people like Vader.
Most weapons are factory produced, so rather than have players build them in their sheds, they are simply bought from NPC vendors, but can be modified illegally. Advanced engineers can make new, customised weapons, but these are hand-crafted rareties that cannot be produced quickly.
Imperial service- it simply doesnt make sence that a new Imperial Pilot can go off with his state-issued TIE as he pleases. Imperal players should be Imperial Agents with enough leway to do this sort of thing, and also have the right to customise their craft.
No creature handlers- balancing aside it doesnt really work for the setting
Less is more- Corellia should just be a sprawling Coronet, I'm not interested in the wildlife. For that, I might go to Tatooine. On Corellia I want Cantinas full of smugglers and space jocks.
The Space section almost worked, I wouldnt change much.
Rather than player towns, Rebels and criminals can make movable camps
Imperials and people who can hid their Rebel leanings can live in customisable appartments in cities, and also purchase store fronts. Rebel cells can hide behind apparently legitimate businesses
The language system was a bit pointless. Make them harder/slower to learn, not everyone should understand wookies right away, and if I want to talk secretly in Rodian, I shouldn't expect to be overheard.
Armour for appropriate classes only. A rebel in full armour can expect to be shot by Stormtroopers if seen strolling in Bestine, and a swift smuggler would probably find it impractical
*Sigh* and that's just off the top of my head. I can talk on this for ages. Good for my portfolio, bad for my spirits.
Every single issue in the game took a back seat to Jedi. The community ingame died, and the awesome atmosphere and player run society died becasue everyone was too busy hologrinding for Jedi. Cantinas went from a social gathering point with people who liked being entertainers, to a desolate land where you bank tipped AFK entertainers who were dancing, many of which just to be a Jedi. the rest where dancing so that their alt Jedi could get gear.
Jedi ruined PvP. Jedi ruined PvE. Jedi ruined other classes as those classed couldnt get their needed attention because the devs were too busy trying to balance Jedi.
The game came out in 2003. In october 2003 Smugglers said they'd get a revamp 'soon'
They still havent gotten a revamp.
Rangers kept asking for more usefulness, other than just harvesting better. They wanted better traps, or better exploration ability, or more useful camps. They never got it. They asked for a stealth ability that only worked when prone, but the devs said invisibility is impossible. Shortly afterward jedi got invisibilty.
They took an awesome idea. They said, 'screw other MMOs. This game is gonna be like living in the SW universe.' and it was. It wasnt about getting to L60, or doing endgame raids. It was about making a name for yourself as a great weaponsmith, or a great crafter, or dancer. I'll tell you to this day, Thompson's mall in South coronet was the greatest on Naritus. Troll's weapons shop was the place to go if you needed a gun now. If you needed a custom weapon, go talk to Dy-nod. The Crimson Order and The Imperial Guard set the pace for the Imperial guilds.
Eventually, none of that mattered. The game became become a jedi ASAP. Even after the Combat Upgrade, it was still a game of becoming Jedi. After the NGE, the game just became dumb. They took out everything that made the game unique. Sure you could be a weaponsmith, but you may also be a rifleman. At one point my character was a master of melee skills. Pikeman, Teras Kasi, and a bit of fencer. Later he was a rifle using bounty hunter. My bounty hunter was also a capable dancer, for humiliating the corpses of those truly jerkish Jedi.
The most fun I had in that game was in Beta. I never left Tattooine. Daily we'd get a group of ruffians from the Starport, and head out. We'd trek through the deserts, killing Squill, Dewbacks, Rontos, and occasionaly Sand People. If we were lucky, we'd find a Krayt. If we were luckier, we'd survive.
The other days were spent fighting with Anchorage, a nearby Rebel supporting town. Me and a few other Teras Kasi Artists would rush in, pass any Overts walking in town, and head straight to the cantina. The 3 of us would rush in with custom bone armor, designed not for great protection, but for low encumbrance. The best of us had a Vibro Knuckler, which helped shred through enemy armor. We'd clear out the tavern, and hide inside. We knew if we went outside, we'd lose to the first rifleman we saw. But inside... Inside we were kings.
And the next day they'd retaliate.
But no more.
1. people stopped playing to grind professions
2. the profession grind ruined the economy as materials and quantities increased 10 fold
3. AFK finally came into its on where people didn't want to play but left their toon afk grinding skills
4. once the jedi came nobody could play them because of perma death
In the early months this was the only MMO that really reminded me of Ultima Online (the old pre-trammel version) in a long ass time. It just had that feeling. It felt like UO in space, only problem was that you couldn't just fight anyone whenever you felt like it, but everything else was pretty good. It did have a lot of potential.
Then the game went to shit. I should mail SOE a bomb.
I'm not talking about hundreds of Jedi running around, I'm talking about basically one guy playing Obi-Wan per server and him training three or four Jedi total. It's not totally canon, but it's the right order of magnitude.
Wrong kind of barrier, wrong people being let in, unfortunately. The second advantage to dev-picked Jedi is that in order to be a jedi you have to be a nice guy and RP well, which gives every "zomg jedi lol" person an incentive to at least try and sort themselves out a bit. Yes, there would be endless whining, but... fuck'em. Just point them to the canon and say "hey, Obi-Wan can only train one Padawan at a time. What, you think you're as good as Luke Skywalker?"
most of the original jedi quit pretty soon after unlocking
Seriously. I will admit, I played the beta and the first year of retail soley to become a jedi. That is what makes Star Wars what it is to me.
But what REALLY appealed to me was how it was supposed to be random and organic.
B freakin S man.
Personally, I'd like a post ROTJ mmo. Like, at best a year or two after the battle of Endor. The empire didn't just up and disappear after that battle, they were still quite strong. It was really more of a turning point for the Alliance.
With that said, I could envision allowing people to select Force Sensitive characters. However, permadeat would HAVE to be implemented. You die? tough, you're lvl 1 again.
and I would have loved for there to be some kind of actual dark side/light sight thing in the game. Maybe if you became evil enough (through mission choices, ect) you could try and join the ranks of the empire. Who knows.
But I will sum up my feelings on SWG with a statement I made to some friends before it was even released - "It's too ambitious."
And damned if it wasn't.
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I don't even think it was too ambitious, I just think poor decisions were made with respect to almost every opportunity this game had.
If there was one capacity in which the whole thing seemed a little too starry-eyed, it might have been the enormous number of professions. I mean realistically, how were we supposed to see balance and appropriate content to serve that much diversity? The breadth of professions also watered down the player base a little, as finding one particular player of one particular profession could be a pretty big challenge.
I mean, finding doctors? Good fucking luck.
it still isn't.
I wanted to so badly to play this game when I had first heard of it. Being a Jedi was the last thing on my mind, and all I really wanted to do was hook up with the Empire, get some of that awesome Stormtrooper armor, and battle the Rebel scum across the galaxy. But sadly that didn't happen. Before I ever had an opportunity to play SWG, the Jedi were brought in so that they might ruin everything and completely destroy what could have been an amazing MMO.
I think the lesson learned from SWG's failure is that you can not meet the demands of your playerbase all the time, especially when they come about during a spazzed out temper tantrum. When the people playing your game feel you should make huge, enormous, changes to your game, then sooner or later you have to tell them to shut the fuck up and quit whining.
so really it was just a delay. because if there is a path...powergamers will find a way to grind through it quickly, just a matter of time.
And yeah, I have no problem with Jedi being uber, but permadeath should be a requirement. That's the problem with MMOs though..they try to cater to everyone, so enough people whine about it...they'll take it away.
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I lasted 3 months, I think. Long enough to achieve Commando with one character, and TK Master with another, then decide that I'd killed all the Baz Nitch nests I'd ever care to kill, and quit.
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it was actually a decent system at first.......until all the holes showed up.
I was a Doc and actually hung out in the Med facilities in Coronet, most of the time. I actually enjoyed it, I think that's why I rolled a Priest when WoW came out.
Yep, same. I was a Master Doctor/ Master Rifleman. When we were still allowed to have some sort of pet (I had some beetle), I could solo anything with ease. I'd buff myself, buff my pet, and be on my way. Those were the good ol' days...
..we'd have weekly hunting parties on Dantooine, and eventually Dathomir as we increased in skill. When it would rain hard, we'd open up a few camp sites and relax by the campfire, telling stories of past adventures, and comparing the quality of meats, hides, and random loot we got from those pesky nightsisters.
Man, Roleplaying on that game was amazing. Even when I started to Hologrind (25 professions, ugh), I made the most of it by RP'ing it. Our guild even had an RP section where you could post stories. I had an ongoing journal about the rebellion trying to help me unlock the secrets to the Force.
My first MMO. It had a ton of problems, but man if I didn't love it.
That was all I really did. Socialize, and occasionally take out a contract to supply someone in the guild with a ton of hides for some crafting endeavor.
The crafting and sales mechanic was really really nice.
I think the REAL player cities hurt the game. It spread out the playerbase too much with all the additional spaceports. Vehicles hurt the game even more. Travel was too easy so there were no places that were really out of the way. Since nothing was out of the way, the concept of close and convenient also died. Player meeting places died even more.
Then the broker/auction house thing in the cities expanded and killed the storefronts. Since people could look up all they needed on teh city broker and buy it from there, the storefronts didn't serve any purpose. The last bit of FUN and personality died in the crafting game.
The combat was always shit. All attempts to fix the combat made it worse. The slow death of the AWESOME crafting was followed by killing what TINY enjoyment anyone could have possibly gotten from the combat. The space combat was pretty well done really, but it came FAR too late and didn't integrate into the game enough. The game was already too wounded. The space exp went from fun advancement to hideous grind at about the third tier as well.
The game over it's lifetime did so much right. Some GREAT ideas there that were all killed over time. Item decay was really the key to the economy. Not sure if that is still in the game or not. I stopped playing shortly after the space expansion. I had already lost interest, but wanted to play around with the ships a little before retiring the game.
I think the real lessons to be learned here from my point of view are that:
Item decay is a HEALTHY thing for a game.
Don't add something in that the players can already do for themselves. The well done player cities were BETTER before the devs added in player cities. The player hospitals and bars were BETTER before the devs made specialized buildings for them. The player storefronts were BETTER before the devs made the store tents. The economy and storefronts were BETTER before the devs automated all of it with the darn broker bot thing.
Maybe the real problem was that they should have never cut so many features out of the game prior to initial launch. Adding all those features in throughout a 2 year period meant they all went in without being integrated into the way the community operated.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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If you ask me, the worst thing about the whole situation was Jedi was the immense hostility created by many who liked Jedi being rather... vocal about it. Extreme cases I've heard of include having been harrassed for being in the same guild as a Jedi, being asked to assist a BH in killing a Jedi from his own guild, so on so forth. It really split the community in half. I quickly got tired of the endless fighting between Pro-Jedi and Anti-Jedi people, and that wound up getting on my nerves far more than the Jedi ever did.
After pub-9 though, things started to slide downhill, and it definately wasn't because of the Jedi, but rather because of SOE's increasing inability to do smart things, although after the CU hit, things seemed to turn around for awhile... I didn't like quite a few things about the CU, but it was managable.
Then the NGE came, with like a weeks worth of prior notice, and, well.... to me? That's when the game died. The near total removal of melee, Jedi being a starting profession, the incredibly crappy attempt at psudo-FPS combat, and the fact they made grinding FAR slower than before because now it's quest based.
Except the quests take you up to about level 40 out of 90, wanna go past that? Get an expansion pack, or go grind. After this, the community largely fell apart, and that was probably the single best thing it had going for it.
The devs actually stated they were willing to lose most of their own playerbase in favor of getting a new, larger one, didn't they?
Probably just a few days after the non-holo jedi implementation, they were a growing infestation.
Biggest one that ruined that game for me:
When you took a shuttle off the planet, there was a button labeled "Back" on the loading screen. Someone figured out that when it cancelled the load, there was some way to bank transfer all of your money to another character and using the back button would somehow roll back your character, making it ridiculously easy to dupe credits. Of course there was always a new credit dupe discovered like every month.
Some old classics were always shooting people from your house but setting the house to locked so that there was no way they could fight back. Who could forget doctors using poison DOTs with no line of sight requirement. You could sit in a building and kill players through walls.
The parts of the game that worked were extremely fun. Then SOE found out players were having fun and promptly put a stop to that.
A fun bug was when player missions wouldn't clear on a planet after they aborted it. Endor had a 200 meter thick ring of monsters that circled the town/base.
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
I'm not sure if such talk is against the rules or not so I'll play it safe.
It's still a work in progress but it's getting there.
When it was announced everyone saw the potential for greatness. And sure the first stuff people saw seemed kind of iffy but we all thought "Hey its star wars and they got time till launch.. maybe it will get better".
Yet it just went down the drain instead of getting better.
Sony ruiners of everything?
I never asked for this!
That kinda works for 95% of console launches and MMORPGs.
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
Fuck I lost that post, took forever to make... If I have time I'll do it again though.
Long story short: Game had potential, and was launched about 6 months too early, then they continued to fuck it up after that. There are some... fans of the game... who are hoping to restore some of the good old times, before the dark times before the Hologrind.
What they should have done was make it so that Jedi are, like they originally claimed, a 1/100 or 1/1000 thing. Give them the possibility of perma-death as well.
To balance things out, you could give them one or two replenishable lives. When those lives run out, they get perma-deathed. You get one life per week. However, in order to not lose another life you must log on a certain amount of time each week and or day as well. If you kept the whole bounty system thing this would make for an interesting gameplay mechanic. On one hand, a person could log in in the middle of Tatooine's desert and stay away from civilization so that they don't risk discovery (And as such, avoid the risk of facing the wrath of the empire, ala how they were claiming Vader would come down on your ass if you started showing off as a Jedi.), or, they could work towards training their character, which would be a risk considering that the most efficient methods to gain EXP in old-school SWG involved going into population centers and mingling with the local populace. Ultimately, the best Jedi would end up being those who were either well connected, or knew the lay of the land, and who was most likely to populate which towns. Add into that the old idea that master level jedi who got PDed became Blue Glowies who could be seen by/advise up and coming Jedi/Force Sensitives and you'd have a winning class.
What ended up happening in reality though was that SOE catered to the whining idiots on the Jedi forums, dropping any and all variations of the permadeath idea and buffing the crap out of the Jedi up until where it could take on entire groups of Bounty Hunters. Without the permadeath feature in place, the ratio of jedi to normal players went from 1/100, to 1/75/ to something like 1/10. On high population servers like Bria they were a plague.
Also, I still say that the best days were back during release. Despite being unbalanced, most of the overpowered classes were hilariously fun to fight against. I mean hell, the first couple times I saw some CH assault Anchorage with the three ancient Rancors he spent a month hunting down and taming/feeding so that they grew to eight times their normal size I couldn't help but chuckle. It was hilariously unbalanced, and everything in Anchorage died horribly, but it didn't change the fact it was fun. The PVP wars between Anchorage and Bestine were epic too. The areas between them were a no-mans land of snipers, player patrols, raiding parties, and lone PVPers back before SOE inexplicably decided to remove all incentives for rebels to go to Anchorage.
Last update was January 19th. Combat was working, so were vendors and skill trainers. CORE3 is what they're working on now, which is alot of JTL stuff. I've actually set up some of the stuff with the thing and tested some of the public stuff. Very very good stuff.
Whoa what?
More information on all of this please. If it must be pm'ed, do so.
While it has the "e" word in its name, I'm pretty sure the project was deemed legal. SOE and LA know about it, and have even contacted the devs in the past (about what for, they wouldn't say) and the project has not been shut down. Given that admist the current SWG community, the project has an INCREDIBLY high profile... I think if they were going to do something, they'd have done it already.
Another thing backing them is that the project devs refuse to allow the project to be used to make money, and have stated they will turn over any server running it and attempting to make a profit off of it/charging to play over to SOE and LA, so I'm pretty sure they actually have a deal going. The project servers don't charge money, SOE won't smite them. (Partly because they can't unless money is being made.)
I will go ahead and mention that this is NOT certain, as part of whatever conversation the project devs had with SOE and LA included them being requested to not share any details of it with anybody, so... I don't think anybody knows what's going on for sure.
EDIT: To clarify, while the project name has the dreaded E-word in the title, it's not an emulator in the sense of dealing with ROM's/piracy.
found some info.
forum link is dead and most of the video links are dead too.
though this one works:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8064270108091389421
ah i think this is the home forum:
http://www.swgemu.com/