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Best and worst content in SWG, what's your experience?
ArcAngel3
Member Posts: 2,931
For me, the best content was some of the earliest. I loved the Death Watch Bunker. I felt that was really well done. I also enjoyed the geonosian caves and the corvette missions. The maps were cool, and complex. They were challenging, they had excellent rewards, and they were very exciting. Even getting the quests was made enjoyable, as was picking up your reward.
For me, the worst was the legacy quest line. Wow. Talk about rushed out the door, boring, repetitive, bugged and all around nasty.
I'd like to hear what other people think about SWG content from its beginning to the present.
Comments
Best things for me revolved around collection and crafting. Loot drops meant far more to me because if I felt it would look cool in my house someplace, I could spend hours shuffling things around for it. The game had the most amazing drive behind it in finding *anything* and making it a trophy. I had a virtual museum going on basically.
I also really like just searching for resources... back when quality mattered. Finding some super stash and planting harvesters meant I could talk to an armor/wep guy for a trade. I made out very well in that game when crafting was still in it's peak.
I also had a little fun in dungeons, but they really had no point to them beyond wandering around and killing things for drops, and while I said I loved the collection aspect; some things like jetpack parts sucked. Heh, I remember our guild leader ending up with all that stuff in the end too. I hate being a patsy.
I had a lot of fun with JtL, but it sucked that nobody else was doing it, and I have a real hard time finding people to help me do the end missions vs the biggins.
As for the worst content; the class changes.
I believe the game could have survived all the stupid decisions (resource ql), as well as the revisions (ability changes, new FPS combat) - but they moment they changed the class structure and made the leveling structure ever-obvious is when it all fell apart imo. They could have done everything else they wanted, including ability changes, *without* forcing people to be one of 9 classes and everything would have been borderline -ok. Evidently, people *did* want to be moisture-farmers, as it was only a part-time deal thanks to being any mix of class ranges. I really wish that the hammer fell on the person that made the original suggestion for that (looking at someone from Lucasarts me thinks).
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
It really was fun trying to get resources of the highest quality for our crafters ^_^. Our guild was extremely interdependent that way. We all played in ways that would help those of other professions.
I think that's why the skill/profession system was so important. It was a big part of us generating our own fun. I remember having to get dragon scales for someone for something. I also remember killing Krayts for pearls for a guildies light-sabre. I also remember needing to get high quality resources from other animals that spawned in lairs.
Good stuff.
For me the best thing about the game was the community. This was my first MMO and found the community very friendly and helpful. I love being part of good guild, we did events once a week. And loved helping out my guild mates when then needed it.
I would have to agree that the legacy quest stuff was the worst thing. Along with maybe the trading card game.
Bogie
Corellian Run
Jedi Sentinel
SWG never really had any good content and everything they put in now just reuses the same old crap.
Meh, pre-NGE combat mostly sucked. It was an FFA zerg rush mostly. No tactics whatsoever. None needed in fact.
To me, it was more about the game systems and the way that the game set itself up to be a social experience.
The greatest MMO that could ever be created for me personally would be something like the best of EQ1 (no fast travel - strict death penealty - no "arrows" pointing to quest givers or objectives) paired up with the social aspects of SWG (entertainers - the ability to use an NPC to get items like mini-games for player-held events).
Now THAT would be a game.
I remember Jaba's palace fondly, but the best things about SWG had to do with the housing and economy. The randomized mineral / resource spawns, harvesting extractors, factories, and the joy of having homes decorated to your liking.
I had 4 Medium homes and 3 Factories on other people's lots, plus 10 Heavy Resource extractors of various types which I used to create a tailoring empire on Starsider. (Pre-NGE) Upkeep costs, vendors, advertising which allowed your shops to show up on the map, and a market which really was affected by the quality of your resources made this game special.
Hopefully one of the groups trying to bring back Vanilla SWG brings it back for those who want to play, but I think the time for SWG has come and gone. I'd play another game with those types of features in a heartbeat!
One of the first places I traveled to was Yavin IV to the Great Pyramid thing. THAT was the sight that hooked me.
As Varny said...it was never so much about the "content" for me either, it was the people I met and the places I could go...I wasn't just a "game"...it was an adventure every day.
The worst content has to be: NGE, TCG, zombies, Chronicles, fairy wings, bat wings, pink flying Ewok familiar with a purple heart and Battle Fields, Restuss, Buffs, Heroic Jewelry, Jedi...not necessarily in that order.
And yet with all that said if you had not been banned by Drak (who is a fool no doubt) you would still be on Flurry having fun.
Most likely, yes. It isn't until you move on to other games that you realize just how **edit**ed up SWG truly is - and going to other games was something I tended NOT to do. It wasn't one thing or even several things that are wrong with SWG, it's a slew of MANY things, some tiny, some huge.
And really, I wasn't there because I loved SWG...I was there because of the people. The players I was lucky enough to play with were unbelievable and they were the biggest reason I logged in and enjoyed the game every night...not SoE's newest "content". The PEOPLE were what made SWG so special, from August 2004 when I joined, through CU and continuing into NGE, the players were ALWAYS what made the game so unique.
Most likely, yes. It isn't until you move on to other games that you realize just how **edit**ed up SWG truly is - and going to other games was something I tended NOT to do. It wasn't one thing or even several things that are wrong with SWG, it's a slew of MANY things, some tiny, some huge.
And really, I wasn't there because I loved SWG...I was there because of the people. The players I was lucky enough to play with were unbelievable and they were the biggest reason I logged in and enjoyed the game every night...not SoE's newest "content". The PEOPLE were what made SWG so special, from August 2004 when I joined, through CU and continuing into NGE, the players were ALWAYS what made the game so unique.
QFE. Once you stop playing SWG, that's when you realize all the glaring flaws of the game.
Some was pretty good, I liked the village phases, whats messed up is they took it out and I never finished alot of the village stuff. The skill tree was nice, teaching other players skills and launguages. The grouping was the best in any mmo, but again they got rid of that. Almost everything good about the games gone. Crafting used to be good, but ehhh they messed that up with the TCG. And thier used to be decay, probably the end of SWG was when they took that out, it ruined the game econonomy now anything worth buying costs millions of credits, when we all know it would be lower if crafters got repeat customers.
And ya they certainly are using things from other games and not really creating anything new. I got a itch to go back for a month but ehh I keep thinking what is thier to do anymore? Mastered and did everything in game, thiers still pvp but again SOE ruined that with buffs. You know thiers some guys runnin around with 5 rows of buffs now? Might try out the new GCW revamp but thats not gonna be out for a while.
Going to try to respond to a bunch of comments all in one post.
@ Tux: I have to say the community was really the best part of the game for me too. The skill system really helped knit that all together too. Lots of opportunity and incentive to help people out. I also realized just how screwed up SWG was when I started playing other MMOs. I played WoW and CoH/CoV specifically. SWG was its own worst enemy when WoW came out, not WoW. One game worked and in comparison the other one was so broken and incomplete it was hard to believe. Still, until getting kicked in the nads repeatedly by SOE, I stayed in Galaxies for the people.
@Bullseye: I also enjoyed some of the village content, despite the controversy over the massive jedi revamp. I simply enjoyed some of the quests in there. I especially enjoyed defending the village from Sith attackers. It was just fun. It really was plain rotten when they simply deleted the whole works, regardless of how long people had been working on those quest lines.
Someone also mentioned Jabba's Palace. I loved just going in there lol, and some of the quests were enjoyable as well. Nym's place was pretty cool too now that I think of it, and the quests were decent.
@Gutboy: You and I have disagreed in the past, but that's all good, I have no disrespect for you. What I'd like to say in response to your comment is that the way players are treated by SOE, imo, is a big part of why the game struggled so much. Tbh, I worked hard at rebuilding the game after CU and NGE. The kicker for me was when I honestly answered Smed's request for helpful feedback on the game. The utterly uprofessional responses I received from SOE led me to quit the game. Some of the responses were unhelpful, others were outright insulting. Most of the feedback seemed to be ignored anyways, since SOE had set its course come hell or high water.
General comment: My experience was that community and content went hand in hand. Taking a group through the corvette missions for sweet schematics and a lot of fun comes to mind. We'd also take people for badges, help them get their village quests done, help them get all the best resources. I also remember friends taking me on quests just so that I could get the loot reward at the end because it suited my chosen profession of TKM. Knuckles of Katarn (tips hat to Alyiah) and Necrosis Nightblade (tips hat to Ivey, Jess and Jan) come to mind. Great fun, good loot, excellent people ^_^.
No matter what anyone thinks of the content or the game overall, if you ask me this game had two very important aspects that should be a model to other games.
Entertainers and crafting. And the "party" NPC where you could rent jukeboxes and minigames for your own player events.
It sounds so simple, but it added so much.
Back then, servers became communities because of these mechanics. Both factiions knew each other in depth, and players certainly had player reputations.
The crafting system was the finest ever devised. Use an instrument to detect a resource. Deploy collectors to get the resource. Use a combination of these to make things, and even have factories to mass output your wares once mastered. You could also have your own "shop" with NPC vendors. It was brilliant. One of the most brilliant gaming systems that I've ever seen in ANY game, mmo or not.
Was there stupid crap like the endless duels in Theed? Yes.
But entertainers meant there was a reason to gather in cantines. It was a very social game and the RP was awesome and flowed freely most of the time, the very thing in today's Massive Multiplayer Online ROLE PLAYING Games that is practically non-existent.
If someone would just take those two things and plop a decent combat model on it, then you'd have an effing game. I don't care whether it was sci-fi, high fantasy, post apocolypse or steam punk. It would be an AWESOME game.