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Vet Trial review
admriker4
Member Posts: 1,070
Well another vet trial has come. This time I decided to give it a go. Not because I plan on staying but mostly because I have a friend that needs some credits and resources (she just started playing).
First thing I noticed was the horrible inflation. Its impossible for a new player like my friend to get started in the game now. New players cant make money because there arent any other new players to buy their personal harvesters, generic crafting tools and small stacks of resources. To compete with established crafters requires either 1 year of waiting for decent resources to spawn or buying them. However unless you have 100 million credits you wont be able to afford anything.
I tried explaining to my friend that even if she had 200 million it wouldnt be enough to compete with the other crafters. She needs the clothing attachments for the extra experiment points plus the resources. And in the end, I doubt she would ever make back that 200 million she would need to just get going.
So crafting is pretty much out for new players. She turned to combat to eventually pvp and raid...
Right off the bat she notices that to compete she will need to buy these pokemon style trading card packs. They have items that can be added to improve gear, I think she said one was a weapon upgrade. Also there are are items that let you instantly travel to 3 locations and other gear that actually is more than just fluff items.
Finally, the population is pretty low. We both are on Chilastria server and this is supposed to be #2 behind Bria for population. Did everyone transfer off to Bria ? I went over to Bria and didnt see hardly anyone. The most people I saw in one area, mos eisely cantina was 12ish and 4 were afk dancers.
The house packup feature didnt seem to thin out the millions of homes from what I saw. My house was packed up as was my alts. I went to where my houses used to be, outside anchorhead and theed thinking no way those lucrative spots will still be there. They were along with a few other prime spots. I'd say I noticed maybe 10% less homes around those areas. Considering 90% of the community has quit I expected to see a lot less houses up. Maybe its because vets like me come back to redrop their houses dunno.
entire planets are now utterly pointless and barren. Talus, Corellia, Lok, Dantooine, Endor, and Yavin could be removed from the game and I dont think anyone would notice.
rubberbanding still exists. Twice while taking my friend around dathomir she got killed because we snapped back into a pack of rancors / nightsisters.
My friend learned from the early quests why her lower lvl crafting items didnt sell. All the gear she could possibly need was easily obtained with the quests she was doing. No real need for crafters grinding levels anyway.
The only part of the game I enjoyed was putting my house back up and dropping a few vendors down. Nothing is selling but hopefully some vet with a real account will buy one of the vet reward hologram items I have for 50 million credits lol. Honestly though whats the point in having the money, the game is pathetically dead.
It was really a sad site to see SWG like this. Populations even with server transfers are at an all-time low. Game mechanics still have issues. And its extremely unfriendly to new players.
Comments
Honestly what were you expecting from a dead game.
Your friend is 5/6 years too late.
i got back in the game just 2 see whats up and realized i had items on me and vet rewards worth many many many millions still not enough to get me back in the game. so sad:( time travel machine anyone?
I don't think Chilastra got much in the way of Transfers, but servers like Gorath and Radiant got even less and are now crying for the FCTS. Starsider definitely received the largest share of the transfers, catapulting it to the #1 spot population wise. Flurry and Bloodfin seem to be hanging in there, but I think Bria is starting to show definite signs of active server death. None of the servers compare to what was pre-NGE, and after the free vet trials end and with school starting, the low populations will be acutely felt once again. .
Did your friend start out as a Trader? That is a lot harder to do than starting a combat character, but you can make money.
Which Trader profession did she pick? Rather than wait for resources you can head to Mustafar and hand sample some good ones that will tide you over until something nice spawns, be sure to pick up the resource refinement expertise too. You say later that seh was unable to make sales, what was she trying to sell? Certain items can be good when levelling, but Trader doesn't really have a set level progression. It is pretty much like playing SWG on "Advanced" mode.
In combat, you dont need any TCG cards. There are no weapon upgrades, the buffs that are available are all weaker than buffs that are available in game. The 3 location ITV is just an improved version of currently
This chart give you a rough estimation as to where Chilastra sits in terms of relative population:
Players will tend to place a house in a player city, or places with high traffic, rather then areas that no longer see much action, like Ancorhead.
There is content all over those planets that you suggested be removed, you can find out more in this guide: Guide: SWG Guides and Walkthroughs
Rubberbanding is usually limited to crossing sub-server boundaries or a known issue with Dire Snare in PvP these days, do you have the in game network monitor turned on? Did you notice and problems with packet loss from your ISP?
Sorry that you din't enjoy the free trial as a lot of other veterans did. Maybe next time?
In a non-scientific sampling method, of the 14 other "returning" vet I ran into during the free trial, not ONE decided to resub.
Virtually every one of those guys/gals and I will include myself, as well, agreed with one or more of the points brought up by the OP. Dead servers, borked economy, a game system neither friendly to new players nor returning vets. Shades of what made the game great, but only the hollow shell remains.
As best, a few of these people liked some of "new content" that had been added at one time or another, but the general feeling is that it came no where close to making up for all the things that have been removed/dumbed down/jacked up. And the TCG scam received universally negative reviews/opinions.
Maybe you saw some "happy veterans" but I surely didn't. And no one I talked to did, either.
They have never tried to balance the economy, they actually made the credit sink less of a impact, the cost of changing proffesions will decrease with time now. They need more credit sinks, bases used to suck money out now no one I know buys them. I went back for a month, I had some fun, but you can see that they can cut more servers. Thier are still half empty to dead servers. Why isnt SOE cutting these and trying to make a healthy server population to work from?
You see other mmos trying to at least grow thier populations, they really still do things half assed and never go far enough to fix things. If they ever want to see this game grow they need to whipe the credits, everyone keeps 500k the rest go. Make food and armor and weapons needed again, how? Bring back decay, and boost food buffs. Bring back the need for entertainers, they where a easy 25% of the population, crafters another 25%, they killed half thier subs with making non-combat a non-factor.
And finally I see that some agree that leveling really, really sucks in SWG. Group leveling was fun and fast, grinding out a lame story line isnt fun at all.
The time for even attempting anything like this is running out, thier is a time limit, why would anyone try SWG after SWTOR comes out?
In a non-scientific sampling method, of the 14 other "returning" vet I ran into during the free trial, not ONE decided to resub.
Virtually every one of those guys/gals and I will include myself, as well, agreed with one or more of the points brought up by the OP. Dead servers, borked economy, a game system neither friendly to new players nor returning vets. Shades of what made the game great, but only the hollow shell remains.
As best, a few of these people liked some of "new content" that had been added at one time or another, but the general feeling is that it came no where close to making up for all the things that have been removed/dumbed down/jacked up. And the TCG scam received universally negative reviews/opinions.
Maybe you saw some "happy veterans" but I surely didn't. And no one I talked to did, either.
I only ran into 3 returning vets and they all agreed the game sucks now. Badgersmacker is just desparate for us vets to stay and save that dying game.
Those vets were there for the same reason I was...re-drop their house and remember why they left that pathetic excuse for a game.
pre-cu wouldnt bring me back, much less this merged mess of nge / cu / pre-cu bugfest I saw. SOE took our subscription money for at least 6 months and developed the NGE in secret. Essentially they stole our money and used it to make an entirely new game they knew we would hate.
Give me my 6 months of misappropriated subscription money back, roll back to pre-cu, fire smedley and that LA jerk who laughed at us vets on tv, and MAYBE I would come back.
Ironic isnt it that SOE constantly sends us free trials to try and get us back. Arent we the very same players they told to go jump into a lake when we said please dont do this nge ?