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Smed speaks again
Makane
Member Posts: 232
Smed wrote:
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
So...pre-cu isn't possible eh? Hmm...We need to ask ourselves why he believes pre-cu isn't possible.
Original Link
So...pre-cu isn't possible eh? Hmm...We need to ask ourselves why he believes pre-cu isn't possible.
Original Link
Comments
SMED Said:
Once we got past the "please bring back the pre-NGE servers" (no, we're never going to do that)
so as with all things SWG that means PRE CU server are going online next month… right?
Tin Foil hats dont work.. its all a conspiracy
Remember when they had community meetings before, nothing has changed same bs, same line on everything.
even down to pretending to listen when they are blatently not, all it is is lip service nothing more and i hope people do not fall for this old bs.
no pre cu or cu servers then, obviously they are not listening so dont give them your subscription cya smedly you can bull all you like im imunne to your lies!
Are you telling me he is in charge and he didn´t know THIS???
If someone would have told him that from the start they wouldn´t be in this NGE-mess (yes i know there are people out there that like it, but i´m not one of them).
please tell me he is joking, please!
What surprises me is that he was surprised by the fact that players want content. So their purpose for releasing the Mustafar expansion was not to provide players with new content but to screw over pet handlers ie, revamping profession? I find much of what this guy writes, or says in interviews, very disingenuous.
I have never known any players to have serious gripes about the guild terminal thing. I used it, sure it can be a pain but with travel as fast as it is now, whats the big deal? The huge ghost towns and inability to administer ones city because homes still counted as residents, combined with unused harvester, "hoping that they would come back..." was the final nail for me. Travelling trough Dat was like running an obstical course.
Losing ones abiltiy to play the game the way they had started playing the game, and were enjoying just fine, only to have it changed yet again, does nothing to instill player confidence.
Though by stating he would look into server consolidations to me is the closest thing to an admission that numbers truely are as low as most players, both present and past, have been stating for a long while now.
Anyhow.
Who knows where SWG will end up in the next six months.
Me I am hoping they lose the license and it goes to the Bioware/Pandemic partnership. (NO nothing has ever been hinted that they would be taking the license, they just have not said what the theme of their MMORPG will be, but a player can dream)
I would play a space MMORPG based on Knights of the Old Republic.
I'm way past getting riled up when ever John speaks, but this did get a chuckle out of me:
" "please bring back the pre-NGE servers" (no, we're never going to do that) . . . 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" "
heh heh. Blockhead.
SWG Team Mtg.
Do you actually play the game or have your ever played the game?
Can you please set aside one weekend and please do so?
Just those two things. I think if that were done then a LOT of problems could be cleared up because he then and only then can see first hand all the problems wrong with the game. I don't think it would require much more then that. I really question if he and others that are heads of some of these mmorpgs ever actually play the games they are in charge of. The same goes for many developers as well.
Hello? McFly? Hello? Anybody home?
Geez.
Hasn't everyone been saying that there's a lack of content and that they should stop doing the revamps and crap.
LOL
No, see they have to release an expansion for the NGE, THEN a couple weeks later they will change everything back to Pre-CU
Thalos Vipav
Star Wars Galaxies: R.I.P.
Maybe if somone at SOE would get over thier fear of reading posts that don't shower them with praise, Smed wouldn't have to keep posting about how much they need to improve communication with their players. He made similar posts after the CU and the NGE ('We're going to listen to you more'). It didn't happen then and it won't happen now.
He has said many time that he doesn't like to discuss SWG because the conversations always come down to people wanting the pre-NGE game back. He used that as an excuse why he doesn't read the official forums. Over a year later, and he still is hiding from his customers because he doesn't want to give them what they are still asking for.
His first point is what has been wrong with the development of SWG since it was released. They focused on tweaking game mechanics instead of adding content, even though that was what most of the play kept asking for. They spent the last year tweaking the game and trying to balance it for PvP, just because that was the type of gameplay the devs enjoy. They are then surprised that PvP wasn't important to a majority of their customers, even after they had a poll that said only around a fifth of the players PvP.
There is no way they can fix the game if they continue to ignore solutions they don't like. Making the same "I know we haven't done a good job so far" post ever year doesn't help if they don't act on it. Under the current management at SOE, I don't see them acting on it.
I find it funny that in one part he says they need to listen more to what the players want..Then he states once we get past the PreNGE post ect..Well isnt that what the MAJORITY WANTS??? He has to be the worst manager ever no one can be that Dumb..And why wont he give an explaination to why they cant bring back prenge? Or PreNGE servers for that matter..He is either real blind or real dumb or both to not see most players want a preNGE game..
And since the NGE isnt successfull why in hell keep adding to that mess?I try to understand it but it still makes no sense to me whatsoever..80% of the population has left Due to the changes made to SWG..so you have 20% left who are crying more than the 80% for more content..SOE removed content when they Made the NGE with only 9 professions.Part of my content was being able to change and test templates to fit my gameplay.This is the same drival and bullshit he has posted since the CU.Things wont change for the better(look at the past and Ye shall see) It will remain a dumbed down WoW wanna be that plays like crap.
Smed ,
remember No matter how much you polish a turd its still a turd...Just give US some pre9 servers back away from it leave the game alone and youll see how fast they fill up..then you wont need a stupid server merger..cause the game would be populated and thriving again..but by the time you wake up and realize what you can do to fix your bad rep by giving our game back it will be too late im afraid..Nothing short of Classic servers will save your game now..Why cant you people get that!!! you failed made a bad choice now fix it please! or you can just enjoy your 10k players while you can, lord knows 300k plus of us dont matter..
I got a faint memory of that he said "that a small vocal minority of players wouldn´t like it and whine but that it would matter".
Would be nice to make sure i remeber it right
We want new content OMG you have got to be fricking kidding me.
The guild terminal is clunky OMG who the F cares! Thats like getting upset about chipping the paint on your boat as it sinks.
Just plain clueless
You mean players want the game to grow??? No way!!!!
Another reason why this idiot shouldn't be head of anything. He doesn't even pay attention to his product, let alone what is going on in it.
Here you go, always good for a laugh or a cry
Hello Everyone,
Obviously the NGE has stirred up a lot of strong feelings among the SWG playerbase. There is no denying these changes have upset some of our players. While I can certainly understand and respect these feelings, I assure you we approached them with a longer term strategy in mind and with the best of intentions. That strategy is to lay the foundation for a longer term vision of the game that will keep people playing for the long haul. Yes, many of our long time players are upset... and we do understand why. We're not sitting in our offices thinking of ways to upset our paying customers.. we're trying to bring Star Wars Galaxies to a broader audience to make sure that it's viable for the long haul.
Why?
Many of you ask "Why did you have to make such a sweeping change rather than just fixing the things that were wrong?" - well, to put it bluntly - everyone had different ideas of what we needed to fix. Trying to balance 34 professions, and add compelling content to make everyone happy proved to be a very large challenge. Many design decisions made early on in the game's creation were boxing the team in to the point that we were never going to be able to really make this game rise to the level it needs to as both a great experience AND as a business. We have consistently kept the SWG team as one of the largest teams within SOE (around 70 people). Even with a team that size getting new content done along with maintaining the live game, along with developing new systems for SWG just proved to be tougher than it should have been. We've got a lot of experience doing MMO's, and SWG has always proven to be the game that was the toughest for us to make changes to. So, along with our partners at LucasArts we did a very lengthy look at just what the fundamental issues with SWG were. We spoke to many of you, read the forums and conducted numerous focus group tests with both existing players, people who have played MMO's before (but not SWG) and people that haven't ever tried MMO's before.
The consistent feedback we recieved through this research showed us where the problems were. Here are the top 3 issues:
1) Difficult to get into - too complicated. People didn't understand what all the professions were, and the interface was just plain hard.
2) Combat wasn't exciting enough
3) Game wasn't "Star Warsy" enough. The professions issue also showed itself here.
In order to make the changes neccessary we examined just what we would have to change, and quickly came to the realization that reducing the number of professions was the single most important thing we had to do. Many of the professions overlapped and when we looked at what would make a really fun Star Wars style game, we came up with the profession list that's in the game now. Equally important to making SWG a viable game in the long term was addressing the fact that combat just wasn't fun enough. I recognize that some of you will disagree here - and I hope you can recognize this is a very subjective thing.. but the research we did was extremely clear on this point - the old combat system wasn't up to snuff. We tried different things and landed on the "fast action" style of combat that's in the game now.
We couldn't make changes of this magnitude without changing some things that people loved - creature handlers for example are among the most upset. This was an example of something that was near and dear to people (including myself btw). It's one of the coolest parts of the game. It's one that's only gone in the short term - we'll be bringing it back in a different form in the near future once we work through the consequences of how we can make this core system work within the new framework. It won't be a profession in and of itself, but something people can do as part of the existing professions.
One last thing I'd like to discuss in this explanation is the business end of things. Many of you question the logic of the decision to do this NGE.. stating that many of the existing players will quit because we're changing the game so much. From our standpoint we have to look at the game for the long haul. EverQuest is will be 7 years old on March 16th. We HAVE to think that long-term. With the game the way it was we knew we would never be able to attract enough people to really keep SWG viable as a business. It certainly would have kept some portion of our existing playerbase for a good long time, and we would have put out new expansions and new content as well as fixing bugs.. but it wouldn't have appealed to the really large Star Wars fanbase out there.. and frankly over time the existing userbase would have churned out as happens in any game like this. We just didn't have the game we needed to have if we're going to really grow this userbase. It might surprise you to know that after the first combat upgrade, we actually added new subs. We took a step in the right direction, but it just wasn't enough. So what we're doing here is obviously risky.. we're betting that we can make this game a whole lot more fun to our existing userbase AND make it appealing enough so that we can grow that userbase in a major way. Right now I think it's fair to say we have work to do on both ends. I hope you understand that we absolutely value each and every player. You pay the bills around here, and that's not something we are forgetting. None of us like seeing people cancel..If you think this change is about "acceptable losses for a bigger goal", that's simply not the case.. nor is it how we view things. We have a clear plan to make this game a whole lot more fun, for everyone.. and that's the gamble we're making.. that we can pull this off and get you, our players to help us make this the Star Wars game we all want.
And that brings me to the really important part of this post - the path forward.
The Path forward
The real purpose of this post is to ask for your help. In this thread, could you please list the top issues you see needing to be addressed in the short term. Any big problems from your perspective - what's really keeping the NGE from being a postive thing from your perspective. We will be watching this thread carefully and taking notes, and posting an ordered list of stuff we'll take care of (and we'll try to say how quickly we can do it as well). Please keep this thread on point. We have to move forward - asking us to pull the NGE out isn't going to be productive. If you really want to help, here's your chance.
From our perspective, we're focused on the following:
1) Fixing actual bugs
2) Adding new skills to differentiate the professions much better, and particularly the advancement path (i.e. making cool new skills the higher you rise through a particular profession).
3) Working on making crafting a much more important part of the NGE.
4) Cool new content - particularly focusing on the Galactic Civil War
As for the future expansions.. we have a lot of ideas (wouldn't it be cool for a guild to have a Star Destroyer?)... but for now we want to focus on what YOU want us to focus on. So please add a lot of constructive thoughts to this thread and let us respond by taking care of as many issues as we can.
A few loose ends -
I would like to specifcally address a few consistent things people have been emailing me - No, we aren't making these changes in order to bring SWG to consoles. This is simply untrue. Noone is working on an Xbox 360 or PS3 version of SWG (Or PS2, Xbox or PSP), nor is one on the drawing board. Would that be cool someday? Sure... but it's not on our radar at all.
Unfortunately we also can't put up a pre-NGE (or PRE-CU) version of SWG. That would require us to support 2 separate versions of the codebase and we're just not able to do that. We couldn't simply put up a version like this unsupported.. what if someone found a really bad exploit?
Thanks for taking the time to read this.. and please join in giving as many constructive ideas as you can (preferably in a list form ordered most important to least important).
John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment
Original link http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=swggpdiscussion&message.id=442698#M442698
For fun comparisons here's the CU
Hello Everyone,
We realize that the recent Combat Upgrade has caused quite a stir. Yes, we've seen the petition. Yes, we're reading your emails very carefully.. in fact I've responded to many of you personally. From our perspective the Combat Upgrade was a crucial thing for us to do for the long term health of the game. In order to make the experience in SWG more diverse and to breathe new life into this game we felt it was important for us to entirely overhaul the current system and to make sure that it's balanced properly. Are we finished? Not by a longshot... by doing this what we've effectively done is to provide a new baseline to add a lot of new content into the game in a very short time, and to make sure that the professions really mean something in the game. We recognize there are problems that have arisen from this, and what I'd like to ask your help in doing is to target these problems so that we can knock them down very quickly. As you've seen in the last few days, the team is working tirelessly towards fixing any problems that have arisen.. and with your help we're confident we can get the rest of them taken care of as well.
Please understand that we love this game too.. our goal wasn't to upset the existing userbase.. but we do recognize that changing a game does inherently mean some people aren't going to like that change. What we're trying to do is to insure that we can accomplish a lot of what you've all been asking us to do (things like Galactic Civil War) in really cool and meaningul ways.. and frankly speaking, we just couldn't do that with the old combat system in place.
What would really help us is to give us ideas on how we can improve the new system and cool things you would like to see us do in the near term. We aren't going back to the old system, but with your help I'm confident in a few weeks you're going to feel this was the right call. Obviously you are our customers, and you pay the bills around here... we're trying to make changes that are going to make your experience better in the long run. Please bear with us while we make that effort, and give us a little time to respond and address your concerns.
Thanks a lot,
John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment
jsmedley@soe.sony.com
Original link http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=generalgame&message.id=85#M85
Thanks for posting them
First off. im not going to believe anything this fag says. till it happens in game... when they put it in..
he works for SOE and wants your money .. and is not to be trusted!!
Nasedoo: You said traders would get a revamp under my supervision.
Darth Lord Blixtev: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that's how it was back in the day when I played! and he's just hearing about it now?
SoE is so sickening