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kaibigan34
Member Posts: 1,508
Ok having reupped and played for several weeks its time for my next review of SWG. I did one before but now its time for a full complete no hold bar review.
First some fanboys will tell you that the game is great with a huge population, no bugs, and stable. Haters will tell you all the servers are dead, buggy as shit, and the servers drop constantly. Both are lies. Its about somewhere in the middle. There are 3 populated servers. Chilly, Bria, and Bloodfin. I have been told Farstar and Ahazi are starting to pick up as well. However none of these servers are near what they were Pre-CU in population. As for bugs, alot of the original bugs are still there. However living with them for so long you can get used to them. Even some of the new bugs. Lastly the servers are fairly stable. Not as stable as some but more then a few. They restart every other day and there are lag spikes from time to time even when out in the middle of nowhere. But its not as bad as it was right after the NGE hit.
Some will tell you the game is MMO for dummies and not complex. As Obraik can attest too I can say the whole crafting of SEAs is quite complex and very difficult. And if beastmaster is even half as difficult as I hear it is then that will also be very complex.
Other things of note. I still hate that damnable ui. That thing is horrid. I will never ever get used to it. But on a good note they fixed the over the shoulder cam thing. You can adjust it back to center view. So now I am not puking everytime I ride off on a speeder bike.
The mobs are way to easy to kill. Hopefully the next patch will address this.
But I got my ranger back. Well sort of. I can skin again and drop camps. So its similiar. With commando mines and such and it adds to it. Would love if they added back tracking. Maybe with pets or droids.
So has the game improved? Yes. Is it fun? For me it is. Is it fun like Pre-CU? Nope its a different kind of fun. Do I still think the NGE was wrong? A huge resounding YES!!! and always will. They should have consulted the player base. Had they done that and listened I seriously doubt SWG would have had the problems it has now.
In past few months the developer team has done alot. And if they stay on this current track I can see this game might reach its former glory. However I say that with trepidation. I have seen SOE do an about face one too many times to trust them. And while I play I still have this fear in the back of mind that one day I will be reading an announcement they are changing the game again. I doubt this mistrust will ever go away. That ship has sailed and SOE has made sure of that.
But is it worth it? For me yes. I have been spending my days hunting again like I used too, exploring, and decorating. JTL needs work but hopefully soon it will get that.
And thanks to Obraik for welcoming me to his guild when I transferred. A great guy full of useful tips. And also thanks to his guild. I can be a handful. I tend to blurt out whatever is in my mind onto the chat channel and talk to the NPC mobs. They seem to think its funny as hell. We will see in a few weeks. I am sure one day Obraik will be saying "I would pay real money if he would shut up for just 5 minutes."
Kai
First some fanboys will tell you that the game is great with a huge population, no bugs, and stable. Haters will tell you all the servers are dead, buggy as shit, and the servers drop constantly. Both are lies. Its about somewhere in the middle. There are 3 populated servers. Chilly, Bria, and Bloodfin. I have been told Farstar and Ahazi are starting to pick up as well. However none of these servers are near what they were Pre-CU in population. As for bugs, alot of the original bugs are still there. However living with them for so long you can get used to them. Even some of the new bugs. Lastly the servers are fairly stable. Not as stable as some but more then a few. They restart every other day and there are lag spikes from time to time even when out in the middle of nowhere. But its not as bad as it was right after the NGE hit.
Some will tell you the game is MMO for dummies and not complex. As Obraik can attest too I can say the whole crafting of SEAs is quite complex and very difficult. And if beastmaster is even half as difficult as I hear it is then that will also be very complex.
Other things of note. I still hate that damnable ui. That thing is horrid. I will never ever get used to it. But on a good note they fixed the over the shoulder cam thing. You can adjust it back to center view. So now I am not puking everytime I ride off on a speeder bike.
The mobs are way to easy to kill. Hopefully the next patch will address this.
But I got my ranger back. Well sort of. I can skin again and drop camps. So its similiar. With commando mines and such and it adds to it. Would love if they added back tracking. Maybe with pets or droids.
So has the game improved? Yes. Is it fun? For me it is. Is it fun like Pre-CU? Nope its a different kind of fun. Do I still think the NGE was wrong? A huge resounding YES!!! and always will. They should have consulted the player base. Had they done that and listened I seriously doubt SWG would have had the problems it has now.
In past few months the developer team has done alot. And if they stay on this current track I can see this game might reach its former glory. However I say that with trepidation. I have seen SOE do an about face one too many times to trust them. And while I play I still have this fear in the back of mind that one day I will be reading an announcement they are changing the game again. I doubt this mistrust will ever go away. That ship has sailed and SOE has made sure of that.
But is it worth it? For me yes. I have been spending my days hunting again like I used too, exploring, and decorating. JTL needs work but hopefully soon it will get that.
And thanks to Obraik for welcoming me to his guild when I transferred. A great guy full of useful tips. And also thanks to his guild. I can be a handful. I tend to blurt out whatever is in my mind onto the chat channel and talk to the NPC mobs. They seem to think its funny as hell. We will see in a few weeks. I am sure one day Obraik will be saying "I would pay real money if he would shut up for just 5 minutes."
Kai
Comments
Each of the original planets has a total land area of 12 square kilometers. So in total, counting the original planets, there are 120 square kilometers. By comparison, The Elder Scrolls Oblivion is approximentally 25.7 kilometers (Blame the backwards US Measurement System for the decimal). Not to mention space, which is at least 10 cubic kilometers and the two expansion planets which are probably another few square kilometers. The game world is huge.
Even when the game had 300,000+ subscribers, a lot of cities were abandoned or virtually empty. The problem wasn't really bad until player cities came out and further spread out the population.
Previously, there were a few cities that had a significant population for one or more reasons.
For example :
Coronet was a very popular city Pre-CU. Before JTL, the only way to travel to other planets was through space ports. And Corellia is the virtual crossroads of the galaxy with more connections to other planets than any other. So a lot of times, when you were travelling to another planet, you passed through Corellia. Enterprising doctors would set up buff lines, as buffs were powerful and a virtual neccesscity for high level combat, so you had throngs of people that would hang around waiting for buffs. As a result, traders found that Coronet was a good place to hang around and advertise.
Now that doctor buffs (medics) are not as potent and now that we have JTL and instant travel with ships, Coronet is no longer a relevant city.
Theed was popular as well. Originally, the shuttles and spaceports were on a timer of 5 and 10 minutes respectively so when a shuttle or spaceship left, you had to wait. For a long time, Theed's spaceport was bugged and allowed one to travel using the ticket collector even if the spaceship wasn't present.
Anchorhead and Bestine were popular because they were a rebel and imperial city respectively and both were in close proximity to each other. People would frequently camp mission terminals waiting to attack those returning from faction missions. With the introduction of the Special Forces System, people doing NPC missions can no longer be ganked unless they choose to go into SF mode making the area irrelevant.
Dantooine MO was popular because of Bols. Easy missions to grind XP on because Bols don't BAF and aren't aggro. NGE's easy-mode combat has made MO irrelevant because you can kill anything now pretty much.
Nowadays, there is no compelling reason for everyone to hang out at one city. People tend to be spread out all over the place, and given the vast size of the game, it can give the illusion that there are less people playing than there really are. The fact that the /who command only returns a maximum of 32 players and has a limited range doesn't help. The closest thing to a major city is Mos Eisley and it's only populated because it's the starting area. And it is quite populated. But it's a big city unlike the Dantooine MO, so even if it had the same amount of players as the Dantooine MO, it would appear less crowded.
The problem is player cities. Way too many are allowed to be built. I know on Bloodfin, it's ridiculous; you have entire planets that are nothing but urban sprawl, you leave one PC and you've entered another. The number of allowed player cities needs to be cut to 1/3rd of what it is now. I was against SOE allowed so many PCs when they first introduced the system and I'm against it now. Having so many PCs spreads the population too thin.
The planet size has absolutely nothing to do with how the population is concieved. That's a pretty weak excuse to say the least.
The truth is, the servers are very low plain and simple. There aren't that many players and most servers are empty. This isn't just me saying it, people who have returned to this game will usually come here and post the exact same thing. I was in Galaxies a few months back having re-opened my account and there was no one there.
Ok, one or two servers might have people but even those servers are nothing like it used to be regradless of what it's current fanbase say. A few hundred players and I'm being overly generous in mentioning "hundreds" does not a full server make.
This game should be on X-box or PS being the way it is. Having people pay to play it is nothing short of a disgrace on soe's part.
That was not a bug, it was a Space Port (no waiting ever). The Star Port had the timer.
Good post, by the way.
EDIT: Except for that player cities stuff.I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
Some people....
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
Populations and SOE are tough topic. I agree that populations are lower then a few years ago, I really don't think its to the scale the vets make it out to be. There are to many servers but that was a problem before NGE also.
One thing none of the ex-player ever acknowledge or take into consideration when talking about the pops is this: Things don't work the way they use to 2 year ago.
You use to have to go to cantanas and heal in the old days, you had to go to those hospitals to get wounds healed in the old days. You had no choice. Shuttle waits were horribly long (10 minutes, wasn't it?) and the only travel between planets was from the starport using something similar to the shuttle wait before JTL. It was a game about sitting around and waiting. Most of the active "adventuring" population hung out in one single spot, Dant doing endless Bol runs. (and I can't even imagine playing this game in the days before ground vehicles...) This game only maintained 300k subs for a very short time and was losing them in less then a year of launch.
Thats all changed. Ent's can entertain anywhere now. You don't have that old "HAM" bar to worry about. Docs don't need the hospitals anymore. People QUEST for XP and don't sit on the same world grinding the same animals. The quest take you to more planets and more POI then the old version did. Shuttles come every few minutes (2 vs 10) everyone has a starship so no waiting there and in the field some players like myself, have instant travel ships. Zero waiting. The main difference is you can stay in the field pretty much indefinatly. In the 2 weeks I've been playing, aside from buying some stylish new cloths
and some ship parts, I don't really need to go to any pop centers for anything aside from a buff in the cantina or shop.
Its a different game and the ex-players don't understand that. Pops on some planets cities are non-existant but for good reason....theres no need to hang out on them anymore and travel is a non-issue. On top of it, pre-CU (just before) I don't recall anyone ever hanging out on cornet on my server. It was just as empty then as it is now. In fact I think I see more people there now because the Legecy quest drag you through it. Threed is pretty empty but why do you need to hang out in front of threed anyway? Why does it make the ex-player "feel good" to see a bunch of characters standing around acting like knotheads and doing nothing anyway?
This game in its current form is NOT going to apeal to the old vet who liked all that nuicess garbage. Having a bunch of people all stuck in the cities because game mechanics forced you to isn't exactly a good way to go about that anyway. On the bartles scale it shifted from the "S" (social) type player, who liked playing "Star Wars Galaxies the Chat Room" to "A" (achiever) type player who want to play a game.
Its to bad that cities are nothing more then shuttle port / starport terminals but thats something the devs can fix later on with new content.
The truth for me is pre-NGE, I didn't go to the cities to "hang out" either anyway, I did the same thing I do now, I go to the PA city or I'm in space or doing quest. The same thing I was doing back then except now I don't have to kill Bols from beginning to end.
I'm glad I'm not forced to hang out in cities because some goofy dev thinks it would be fun for me to have to go to 2 different spots to heal (hospital and cantina) then wait 10 minutes for a ship so I can get back to were I was.
And before you use the select galaxy screen, let me. It's useless because there is no way to assign a tangible value releative to the status display and because it's relative to the capacity of the server hardware. There is no way to define in any sort of tangible terms what "Medium" means and how it compares to "Heavy" or "Light".
Server load is relative to the server hardware. It is logical to assume that the server hardware has been upgraded at least once during the lifespan of SWG and after an upgrade, the capacity that the servers support is increased. Which means that, whereas with the old server hardware, 1500 might have caused a heavy load, 1500 now only cause a medium load. So there really is no point in using the server load to determine population.
I'm not going to bash SWG for what it is now....but before we get into that, quick history lesson...
I played from one week after launch, up until two weeks post NGE. Yes, I chose to spend my time unlocking the jedi character, and advancing through thatroute in the game.
However...
The biggest aspect of fun for me in SWG, above all else, was the roleplay. Hands down, that is one of the best universes in which to really feel like you're becoming your character.
Fast forward to now, and it seems like every month or so, I hear that SWG is bringing something back that the NGE did away with. This got me to thinking on the subject, and in my own opinion, I believe I've figured out what's going on.
The NGE, in it's entirety, was merely a smoke screen.
I truly believe, that the whole point of the NGE, was to make Jedi a class that was available from the start. How else do you explain them bringing back all these things that were already there before?
Remember...all of their "focus testing" said that the NGE as it was when launched, was "StarWarsy" and "iconic", well....whats more "iconic" than Jedi? When you think about Star Wars in general, thats usually what comes to mind. They just wanted to pander to those players who didn't have the time or motivation to put in the work to attain an "alpha" character. And in my personal opinion, there never should have been an "alpha" class to begin with..Yes I know others have probably stated this elsewhere, and most likely more eloquently than I have, but I just wanted to throw that out there.
Yes I miss it, yes I enjoyed it, but I've certainly moved on. I went back about two months ago to try out some of the changes, and I just couldn't get into it. It's not so much the game itself that I miss, it was the community. And the server I was on, which was Wanderhome, seemed pretty bare for the most part, so I just couldn't get motivated to stay.
Anyhow, that's my two credits, just thought I'd rant a bit..
"$OE - We Put The "FU" in Fun."
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USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST
It was inevitable what happened to Jedi. There was really nothing challenging to becomining a Jedi, you just needed to spend time grinding XP to get to it. With Jedi being an alpha class, this was starting to be a problem as more and more people unlocked their Jedi slot. Anyone that wanted to be decent at PvP needed to be part of the alpha class to keep up.
As for bringing stuff back, I always wondered if the NGE was just their way of stripping everything down to the bare essentials and then revamping and returning features one by one so they were in a more functional and on the backend, more managable form.
Riiiiiiight
These must have been a figment of my imagination.
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
Well miss ya man!
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
That is not true though. The Event NPC's have always been there. They are actually ADDING more to the options of the NPC with the ability to create your own missions, events, etc. New tools, items, NPC's, special effects will be available as well. This will, if anything, significantly enhance the RP for those that enjoy that aspect of the game.
Here are the details for the Storyteller.
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
That is not true though. The Event NPC's have always been there. They are actually ADDING more to the options of the NPC with the ability to create your own missions, events, etc. New tools, items, NPC's, special effects will be available as well. This will, if anything, significantly enhance the RP for those that enjoy that aspect of the game.
Here are the details for the Storyteller.
I joined SWG just before the CU hit. There were no "story teller NPCs" working that I know of.
If you want to roleplay...just roleplay.....you need special permission to do it? You can do it any mmoRPG.
Riiiiiiight
These must have been a figment of my imagination.
I took these yesterday at 1400 my time (2pm GMT+1) on Farstar. well off our peak time. I was going to use them to reply to some other pre-NGE expert but I took the kids to fest instead. I had no problems getting buffs at 0800 this morning as the cantina was still pretty full. I'm not even gonna bother posting anything from peak. Vets won't believe no matter what so who cares.
Looks about the same to me from the "good old days" /shrug...
People standing around doing nothing doesn't impress me though and I usually don't do headcounts everywhere I go in every game I play. SWG is pretty typical IMHO. More then some, less then others.
By the way, like my stylish red jacket lol?..... got it a fraction of what I paid back before NGE. All my cloths for that matter (I'm a smuggler, cloths matter). People before NGE must have been price gauging cause they thought they was special......
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
Hmmm.......I don't remember ANYONE ever mentioning or using them when I played.
/shrug
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
That is not true though. The Event NPC's have always been there. They are actually ADDING more to the options of the NPC with the ability to create your own missions, events, etc. New tools, items, NPC's, special effects will be available as well. This will, if anything, significantly enhance the RP for those that enjoy that aspect of the game.
Here are the details for the Storyteller.
I think you misunderstood what I meant.
I said what I enjoyed was the roleplay, I didn't need any special npc's to tell me stories, my friends and I roleplayed out our own lives and situations. We utilized the merchants that sold stuff like the jukeboxes, the downed ships, things like that.
I didn't mean to imply that it did away with roleplay, the sad truth is, when the NGE dropped down on us, the majority of my friends, as well as roughly 90% of my guild quit...these are the same people I had played with for over 2 years, some I played with pre SWG in Ultima Online, and some I tried new games with, such as EQ2 when it launched..
So, without my circle of friends, whats the point in staying in a dumbed down version of what I used to enjoy?
"$OE - We Put The "FU" in Fun."
That is not true though. The Event NPC's have always been there. They are actually ADDING more to the options of the NPC with the ability to create your own missions, events, etc. New tools, items, NPC's, special effects will be available as well. This will, if anything, significantly enhance the RP for those that enjoy that aspect of the game.
Here are the details for the Storyteller.
I think you misunderstood what I meant.
I said what I enjoyed was the roleplay, I didn't need any special npc's to tell me stories, my friends and I roleplayed out our own lives and situations. We utilized the merchants that sold stuff like the jukeboxes, the downed ships, things like that.
I didn't mean to imply that it did away with roleplay, the sad truth is, when the NGE dropped down on us, the majority of my friends, as well as roughly 90% of my guild quit...these are the same people I had played with for over 2 years, some I played with pre SWG in Ultima Online, and some I tried new games with, such as EQ2 when it launched..
So, without my circle of friends, whats the point in staying in a dumbed down version of what I used to enjoy?
Ah I see thanks for the clarification.
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
Folks will read into the screenshots anyway it fits into their preconcieved notion of the game. Mine was posted to counter the "2 folks on <server>" BS. Are populations as large as 2003? Nope, and I believe folks here wouldn't disagree with that.
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"