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Astromechs, Friday Features & Other Stuff (2003-2005)
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I really loved the first time I got into my ship. Very "Star Warsy" moment for me, the first "Star Warsy" moment would be the very first time I logged into the game, and I heard all these weird alien voices around me - wookies, rodians, etc. and once I was taught all the languages, the noises vanished. Possibly the first time I felt some of the immersion was gone.
I'm probably in the minority when I think that Jedi should have never been included in the game, given the time frame we were supposed to be in. But then the time-line got perverted with prequel era stuff, which I guess you could argue were collectors items/relics by this time in the Star Wars time-line. It started feeling like I was more in the prequel era than in the original trilogy.
Anyone remember during the Cries of Alderaan story on Ahazi, the Imperials were winning - but then the devs make a server wide announcement that the rebels were behind, promptly kicking the rebels into gear and having them win. That caused one huge uproar at the time, since it seemed the devs always catered to the rebs.
I don't know if you're in the minority as well, but I totally agree with you on all of this.
I don't know if you're in the minority as well, but I totally agree with you on all of this.
Kind of agree with the Jedi aspect; although the Force should have always played a role in the game, but completely disagree with the "prequel material" argument.
Most of the material in the Empire period is prequal material -- the Millenium falcon, the droids, Chewbacca, Yoda, Uncle Owen, Obi-wan, and so on -- they are all part of the prequel era, they are just about twenty years older.
The fact is, the Empire represents a civilization in decline, and the Old Republic a better time, the last gasp of a golden age. Mostly only a few military things have advanced, and the lack of freedom has slowed much down.
George Lucas intentionally wanted to create a "used universe" where most of the older things are better thannewer things. Therefore it is no problem to incorporate Old Republic technology and items that are better than their modern counterparts.
We currently live in a universe where many people own cars, trucks, guns, and other items that are over twenty years old, and that is in a free society where consumer technology is improving at an exponential rate. In unfree societies, like Cuba for instance, people still drive cars from the fifties.
The Imperial decline fits more in line with that point of view, and as such it makes sense. Such things are standard in dystopic sci-fi/fantasy, which star wars certainly is a part of. Young person grows up in a dark, declining society, finds some item from a former Golden Age (daddy's Lightsaber?) that is superior to what is more modern.
The Jedi thing doesn't work however, because we KNOW they should be rare in the time period.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I agree that Jedi shouldn't have been included in the game. Take that right off the table and a large factor that lead to the downfall of the game, hologrinding, wouldn't have been there. The alternative would have been perhaps a round robin of sorts. .2% of accounts, at any given time, have a Jedi slot active. You can create a Jedi and skill him up but if you die, you lose it and it goes on to another account. This would have made players keep their Jedi hidden because it would be unlikely they'd get a slot again and created a strong incentive for players to hunt them down and kill them because, who knows, if you kill a Jedi you just may get the chance to create one.
I do remember the big uproar caused by the devs telling people who were winning. It was silly for them to say who was winning, especially when it was by those slim margins and when players had been clammoring that they favored the rebs before they announced who was winning. Way to go and solidify people's opinions.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
Great post Vortex!
Nice with all the old stuff. A great memory lane. Yeah I sometimes miss it. But I play SWG on and off these days too.
I have a main who is a weaponsmith(yeah I know ..it have been really hard times for us since the NGE) and a entertainer alt. These are the things that draws me to this game. To have the choice to play as a non-combatant (I dont count my Ent as one) and still have a fun time. Right after the NGE was a terrible time for us with a more social approach to the game, but slowly it has gotten better. But in no way comparable to the social activity during the Pre-NGE era.
SWG is like a poison, I quit and try other games but I cant find a substitute for SWG. Sure I have the bitterness after losing almost all my clients and friends after the NGE too, but still I cant stop feeling that the potential are there. Its really hard to motivate myself to pay money to a company that ruined so much for so many people including me... but its like a drug.
The day another game is on the market with the crafting and social approach of SWG I will jump the ship. Sadly it doesnt seem to be any within any decent time into the future.
I have had a ½ year break now from SWG, but Im using the trial right now. I read something about a revamp to how WS builds weapons, guess I will give it a shot when it goes live. GU5 the update is called. Maybe another disappointment like the last "Trader revamp".
Thanks again Vortex, a pretty impressive collection of the old SWG there.
GU5 forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m
forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m
Unlockable profession titles
(Construction)
(Buildings)
(Installations)
(Home Designer)
(Deflectors)
(Technique)
(Personal Armor)
(Layers)
(Business)
(Engineering)
(Domestic Arts)
(Survey)
(Clone Engineering)
(Tissue Engineering)
(DNA Sampling)
(Engineering)
(Light Lightning Cannon)
(BH Pistol)
(BH Carbine)
(Investigation)
(2-Hand Sword)
(Polearm)
(1-Hand Sword)
(Unarmed)
(Special Abilities)
(Counter Insurgency)
(Marksmanship)
(Assault)
(Desserts)
(Cooking)
(Mixology)
(Entrees)
(Ranged Healing Speed)
(Combat Healing Support)
(Ranged Healing Distance)
(Combat Medicine Crafting)
(Field Tactics)
(Heavy Weapons Support)
(Flamethrower)
(Acid Rifle)
(Empathy)
(Taming)
(Training)
(Management)
(Wound Healing)
(Knowledge)
(Fatigue Healing)
(Technique)
(Wound Treatment Speed)
(Medicine Crafting)
(Wound Treatment)
(Medicine Knowledge)
(Production)
(Blueprints)
(Refinement)
(Construction)
(Dancing)
(Musicianship)
(Entertainment Healing)
(Image Design)
(Finesse)
(Technique)
(Stances & Grips)
(Footwork
(Hair Styling)
(Facial Customization)
(Body Customization)
(Markings Customization)
(Carbineer)
(Pistol)
(Rifle)
(Ranged Weapons Support)
(Diagnostics)
(First Aid)
(Pharmacy)
(Organic Chemistry)
(Efficiency)
(Hiring)
(Management)
(Advertising)
(Knowledge)
(Fatigue Healing)
(Wound Healing)
(Technique)
(Support Ability)
(Defensive)
(Stances)
(Offensive)
(Special Abilities)
(Stances & Grips)
(Tactics)
(Marksmanship)
(Frontiering)
(Bioscience)
(Trapping)
(Wayfaring)
(Counter-Sniping)
(Concealment)
(Sniping Accuracy)
(Special Abilities)
(Exploration)
(Hunting)
(Survival)
(Trapping)
(Spices Fence)
(Underworld)
(Dirty Fighting)
(Slicing Slicer)
(Leadership)
(Mobility)
(Strategy)
(Tactics)
(Technique)
(Offensive)
(Defensive)
(Finesse)
(Casual Wear)
(Formal Wear)
(Tailoring)
(Field Wear)
(Meditative Techniques)
(Power Techniques)
(Balance Conditioning)
(Precision Striking)
(Weapons Crafting)
(Munitions Crafting)
(Firearms Crafting)
(Melee Weapon Crafting)
Ok Vortex, where can i play this game......
Hauken Stormchaser
I want pre-CU back
Station.com : We got your game
Yeah?, Well i want it back!!!
The unlockable profession titles went through a revision or two before the NGE put the kibosh on professions, instead straightjacketing everyone into 9 "iconic" classes which turned everyone into clones. Which was in a strange way appropriate, because two of the classes were literally represented by clones (BH and Commando) and two classes were represented by the same character (Leia as officer and spy).
My favorite titles included Pack Master, Rogue, Breeder, Gunslinger, and Iron Chef. All of which at least one of my Ahazi toons held.
I might note that amongst the titles that can be held in the current game, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can be a "Jedi Master" if they hit level 90 as a Jedi.
This is another example of SOE devaluing titles, as my understanding that this title was to be restricted to elder Jedi, who through the FRS, managed to earn that title. Now any NGE kiddie can sport it if they've hit level 90.
Thank goodness these snotnosed brats cannot go "blue glowie".
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Someone said it before but I will say it again...to the MMORPG.COM mods... please sticky this thread.
And people wonder why we vets are still upset over what was taken from the game.
Maybe reading this, they will see how much was in there and now, how much isn't.
Thank you Vortex.
Ah, the job titles.
My favorite was Commando's "Heavy Infantry" title. Put on my Stormtrooper Armor, on comes the Hvy Inf. title.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I always had hoped they would add weapons like the concussion rifle, and rail detenator to the commando profession. Maybe other classes could use them too, but those weapons just screamed commando - and had been established in other games. Instead we got an acid rifle and the flame thrower. Now I liked the flame thrower, but the acid rifle was just useless. I am not saying they should've removed those two weapons, but give more variety to the weapons we could use.
I miss being a Bounty Hunter. I was so busy grinding to get the stupid Jedi open that I never got to fully explore being a BH. Instead I had to go on to other miserable classes I hated (like Smuggler *gag*).
Thanks for the giant kick to the nutsack SOE! *makes rude gesture*.
Inspite of this, I would rejoin if they made a "classic" server....because I'm an idiot....:(
Found this one...don't know if it qualify for this post.
----------------------------
By
Trayson_Antilles, former Test Center Correspondent04-13-2005
-
Star Wars Galaxies. The very name strikes a wide range of feelings out of people in the MMORPG community. Proponents of the game laud its extremely deep social system and on its own right it has successfully incorporated both combat and non-combat aspects of gaming into a cohesive mesh. However, many over the years have blasted its too complicated combat system and the basic overpowered nature of the player created aspects of it. Since Winter of 2003 the Developers of the game have talked about a Combat Revamp designed to deal with these imbalances. Now, over eighteen months since the first mention of a change to combat, we're seeing what the developers have been working on behind the scenes.
The Problems
Combat in SWG has always been a bit complicated. To start you have not one character aspect to keep track of, but three. This system, known as HAM (Health, Action, Mind) was proposed to give a more strategic element to combat instead of just focusing on a single part of your opponent. Character actions beyond the default attack would use up a part of the HAM, and which part was dependent on the weapons and skills you used. Which weapons you could use was dependent on the profession your character decided to take, and how far along in the skill trees that you were.
For the first few months of the game, this system worked like it should have. People didn't go into the nether regions of the advanced planets alone, instead taking several people with them, all of various professions in a bid to level their characters and discover what was out there. As time went on, and the players got smarter and figured out both the combat system and the crafting system, things changed.
The root of the problem is an imbalance in the crafting system. Players being players, they sought out only the best in crafting resources, meticulously building up massive amounts of anything that met certain criteria. Once they had accomplished this, they went to work. Suddenly armor with massive resists and weapons with second-to-none stats began appearing on the market. This in and of itself isn't too bad, except for the third part of that equation, Doctor Buffs. Doctors who had been working for months to build up their stock were now capable of giving a player stats that they could only have dreamed of. Flaws in the HAM system allowed for players to effectively use their best specials with little to no downside, creating a standard for which all players gravitated towards. Groups were no longer necessary but for a very small amount of content. Combat in the game was effectively broken.
Talk of a Solution
In Winter of 2003, the developers came forth with plans to revise combat. It would happen in three phases, the first of which was to retool creatures. This part of the plan was carried out, and the result was mildly well received with the exception of the Creature Handling community. The retool put the profession out of balance with the rest of the combat professions. CHs were told to wait for the rest of the revamp to come forth. The problem? It never came.
Who knows exactly what went on behind closed doors at the SOE office? Priorities were shifted, that is for certain, and the rumored change to combat got shuffled off to the side. CHs were left in the dark and the game continued to fall further into imbalance. More and more players were dissecting the system and finding out that some professions had huge advantages over others. Stacking became a common past time for Flavor of the Month players, and even when that was fixed, imbalances still remained. Jedi became a priority for the devs due to the negative impact that hologrinding was having on the game and the combat revamp was pushed further and further back. Would it ever come?
Correspondent Summit
In late August of 2004 SOE announced that they would be having a summit in Austin of all the Correspondents to unveil to them the design documents for the Combat Revamp. The idea was that this was something we would see as a community shortly afterwards. The summit happened, and every correspondent who attended came back with high feelings and words of praise for the future of the game. "This is what we've been waiting for," they said.
Weeks passed, and while the Correspondents remained optimistic, the community grew restless. Why weren't the documents being released? Well, the initial reason was that they developers wanted to focus on the upcoming expansion, Jump to Lightspeed. Having a dual focus, they said, would dilute the impact of both products. And so we waited some more. The Correspondents picked 5 people each that they felt would be good contributors to the testing of the Combat Upgrade and they were admitted to special forums so that they could view the documents and make comments as necessary.
JTL was released, and everyone figured that more information about the Combat Upgrade would surface very soon. More time passed. Nothing was heard except reassurances that the developers were committed to getting the product finished and that it would be released, "When it's done." A couple of CU documents were released, but the information wasn't enough. It was incomplete, even though it looked promising. A CU Beta page was posted and signups were had with the developers assuring people that once Alpha was over with, they would have a closed beta, and then an open beta, much like a standard expansion pack release.
Christmas arrived with no sign of the Combat Upgrade. Information from the developers was scarce, if nonexistent. They focused on changing a lot of the annoyances in the game, and as a result SWG was better than it had been since release. All they really needed was for the CU to hit and everything would be great. So players kept hoping and wondering.
Combat Upgrade Unleashed
In late March of 2005 everything happened at once. The CU documents hit in their entirety, and many were optimistic as a whole. However, not everything was all peaches and cream. A few noted that when comparing previously released information, that this bore little in common with those documents. The biggest change in general was that all damage would now go simply to the Health Bar on a person's HAM. The HAM would remain though, with Action and Mind being used for combat specials. They also added character levels based upon your combat template, they dismissed the Combat Queue in its entirety and added in a 'spell-like' system of warmups and cooldowns on specials.
Shortly after the documents were released, SOE brought the Test Server down and added the Combat Upgrade to it. The product was officially in Open Beta. What? What happened to Closed Beta? No one knows. All anyone knew was that the CU was upon us, and that it was being released to the public on May 5th, the same day the next expansion pack, Rage of the Wookiees, was to hit stores. Huh? What happened to "When it's done"? No one knows the answer to that question either. Once can speculate though that this sudden change in attitude had a lot to do with the departure of Austin Studio Manager Gordon Walton and the disappearance of Producer Gary Gattis from the Official SWG forums.
So what's it like?
Initial reports were divided. It seems that while the combat in and of itself was simpler and easier to manage, a lot of veterans immediately blasted the system for its faults. The changing of the hotkey icons for various specials from their two dimensional, clean cut origins to gaudy multicolored pieces of art had many in a rage. The general consensus is that these don't belong in this game, and it further lent weight to many a person's proclamation that the SWG dev team was trying to imitate its brethren, EQ2 and WoW. Further animosity was delivered on the subject of special effects. Always before had the specials looked like they belonged in the Star Wars universe. Now they look like two-bit copies from generic fantasy MMOs.
Some people advised that we give it time for bugs and other issues to be worked out. "It's not that bad," they said. This journalist is willing to agree that in a Beta, nothing works right for the first couple of weeks. However, players being players, many had the system pegged as a disaster even after giving it time.
The first of the problems is the Combat Level. Always before had combat levels been figured out in the background and weren't immediately apparent when a person attempted combat other than the relative Con levels of the creatures. SWG had a unique system that based your own level on that of the weapon you were holding. If you were a Master Swordsman, and were holding a Curved Two Handed Sword, then the creatures you faced would give you a certain risk factor based upon that. Then if you decided to switch to a Pikeman weapon while having zero of the Brawler level Pikeman boxes, that creature would suddenly jump up in difficulty. Apparently, that little mechanic, something that really separated SWG from the crowd of competitors, has been done away with in favor of a straight character level. So you better level up all your skills at the same time, or you might find yourself unable to advance the way you want. This could change over the course of Beta, but one has to wonder why they ditched the old system in the first place.
Shunning the Non-Combatants
Another unfortunate side effect of the new system is that weapons and armor are hard coded to certification levels. Whereas before a person could wield a cool looking weapon without actually having the skills to use it, the new CU has made it so that unless you have the basic certification, you can't even equip it. This has the non-combatant community set to grumbling, especially the Dancers. Many Dancers place pride in their outfit, and have come up with interesting combinations to give their routines a person touch. Some took to using weapons as props. Now they are unable to do so unless they work their way up the combat professions.
The character levels themselves are exhibiting a detrimental effect on the Artisan community. The basic element is that the higher your combat level, the less damage creatures do. So if you're level 1, then a level 1 creature would do a reasonable amount of damage, but a level 5 creature would pretty much outright kill you. When you yourself hit level 5, that creature would now do a reasonable amount of damage and so on and so forth. What this means is that as an Artisan with no combat levels, you are essentially relegated to staying in town unless you want to die. Something as simple as clearing a lair of kreetles will now be impossible to a pure Artisan. I won't even go into trying to set up harvesters on planets such as Lok. Let's just say you better have friends. Lots of them.
What Works, Then?
The relegation of damage to a single aspect of your character is one that has long been something this game needed. While the initial tactical reasons for the HAM system were solid, in practice they didn't pan out. The Mind stat in particular was the single greatest weakness, as draining that could kill off any attempts of a person to live out a battle. And while the special effects and new icons are gaudy and inappropriate to the Star Wars setting, the core mechanics of the combat system DO work and work well. The reworking of specials was also needed and a more clear-cut way of distributing armor was as well.
Conclusion
The CU contains lots of features that were needed in this game a long time ago. However, it is sad to see that it took so long for these things to make it to the player base and it is an even further travesty that they aren't going to wait 'Until it's done' to release it to the Live servers. The hard deadline of May 5th looms ever closer and despite the experience of the dev team, one has to wonder if they'll hit their mark. Only a small portion of the player base is experiencing the CU and as stated before, the reaction is divided. There are many things that need to be addressed and addressed quickly if this is to go over well with the community. In the end, all we as players can do is raise our voice and try to make the devs understand what we want. Because like it or not, this isn't really the Combat Upgrade. It's SWG version 1.5.
WOW good stuff here.
I really want my MCH back still has the pets never used from deletion of the class till now.
Wow this is a really fantastic and accurate rendering of what happened regarding the combat upgrade. You can see what people were told, and how they were initially involved in the process. Then you can almost spot the day that WoW envy took over. Staff changed, plans changed, collaboration ended, and players started getting what some business manager decided they should like, instead of what the game really needed. And as for the hard deadline, no they didn't make it. The bugs and issues at the beginning of the CU led to a loss of about 1/4 of my friend list. All but about 3 of those were then wiped out by the NGE.
Once again though, thanks for the trip down memory lane. So much potential, and so many adventures shared in a less than perfect, but very enjoyable world.
Great text Redrum, nice found. Trayson_Antilles great editorial refresh my memories of these events, forgot some of the turmoil surrounding the CU. Interesting read. Ty again.
The Second Day Vet
raphkoster.com:
Star Wars Galaxies Design Process
Well, as expected, the majority of the posters (who answered the thread, anyway) were among the hardcore. That's what I figured we'd see; since being on this board in the first place is a self-selection mechanism--it's the hardcore who tend to hang out on game boards anyway!
You know, everyone wants different things out of a game, especially a massively multiplayer game. At least in a single-player game, there's a prescribed narrative, usually--there's a way to win. There's a goal you try to reach, and specific, easy-to-spot milestones along the way. We strive to put some of these things in MMOs as well, but there's something about saying "here's an online world" that makes people not only crave the open-ended ness, but also try to impose their particular playstyle upon it. Players feel very let down if the game doesn't support THEIR mode of play. We've seen that already here in some of the threads, with some people saying, "I won't play unless there's PvP" or "I won't play unless I can run a shop" or "I won't play unless it has action-style combat."
This isn't a list of expectations that would normally be applied to a standalone game. It gets applied to massively multiplayer because people's expectations of virtual worlds are higher than their expectations for single-player games--or even higher than their expectations for real life, on occasion!
But there's also a powerful counterargument to be made--that without encompassing a wide range of playstyles, a virtual world can't be successful. People need to mingle with people who do different things from them, argues this theory, because otherwise they won't be happy in the long run.
Probably the best articulation of this theory specific to online gaming is Dr. Richard Bartle's division of players into four types. Richard wrote a paper called "Players Who Suit Muds" using his accumulated insight as someone who has run and developed muds since 1978 (Richard is generally credited as the co-author of the original mud, which means the original massively multiplayer virtual world, albeit text-based).
The basic premise of his paper is that there are some people who are there because of the world, and some people who are there because of the other people. Based on this division, some of you are here because it's Star Wars; and some of you are here because it's an MMO. As a second variable, some of you are the kinds of people who enjoy taking action and making significant choices and knowing that you have an impact; and some of you are the sorts of people who value interaction, and like fiddling with things, building, exploring, tweaking, and trying new stuff out.
Based on this, he ended up with four types:
ACT on the WORLD: Achievers, who are out to beat the game. They tend to be powergamers, they want to master the mechanics that the designers have set up for them.
ACT on the PEOPLE: Killers, who are out to establish dominance. Not necessarily PvPers, in my reading, but rather people who like to be in charge, like to have control--leaders and lawyers as much as playerkillers.
INTERACT with the WORLD: Explorers, who want to master every detail, not for character advancement, but "for the sake of science." These are also people who enjoy crafting and creating.
INTERACT with the PEOPLE: Socializers, who are there primarily because their friends are. People who build social structures, who spend most of their time chatting or roleplaying.
Bartle suggests that every successful online world has a balanced proportion of each of these core personality types (and it's interesting comparing these to the Kiersey temperament test btw).
Everyone is a mix of these traits, of course. But games can most definitely cater more strongly towards one or another. For example, many say that EverQuest is primarily an Achiever's game, and that Ultima Online attracts more Killers. There are "Bartle's quotient tests" out there which hundreds of players of these games have taken that demonstrate that this is actually true (though the percentages according to the results differ by fairly little).
What sort of gamer are you? For what it's worth, according to the tests, I am very high in Explorer quotient--most developers who have taken the test tend to score high on that, probably indicating that it's a trait that leads them to eventually try to make the games they like playing.
MMO Design and Satisfying a Varied Player-Base (posted December 13, 2000)
Good morning everyone... sorry for not posting yesterday, but as you may have seen on the news, we've had a spot of bad weather here in Texas (and probably also where many of you live). At the moment my house is without power...
Since in the last couple of notes I talked a bit about the audience we expect to get, and what sorts of different gameplay people in that audience want, I thought that today I could maybe talk a little bit about how we go about designing an MMO, and how we try to satisfy that range of people.
To start with, I happen to believe that the four play styles I mentioned should all be catered to. We play massively multiplayer games in large part because of the other people. And if the game's population consists entirely of other people just like us, well, it's not going to be a very interesting world. Other people like us won't challenge us in any way, won't expose us to new ideas, won't surprise us with actions that we ourselves wouldn't have taken. And that would make a massively multiplayer environment a lot poorer, because we rely on the other players to provide unpredictability and interest.
Yes, there's plenty of room for niche products that cater to one play style or another. But if you want to try to convey a universe (especially one as deep and rich as Star Wars) you have to have all sorts of people. On top of that, all sorts of people love Star Wars, and they're all going to try the game. I'd hate to disappoint everyone except one particular play style.
So how do we go about trying to ensure that the game offers enough for each of the types? Well, it all comes down to the design, like so many other things. Our first step was to create what we call a vision document. This started out by identifying some things about who we thought we were making the game for. Right off the bat, we established what sort of audience we thought we were looking at, and that led to establishing a whole bunch of other things. As we came to each statement, we put it into the vision doc.
For example, knowing that we were looking at a broader audience than MMOs had likely seen before meant that we couldn't demand as much time per play session or as much time per week as other MMOs did. As a result, a bunch of design choices went right out the window: we knew that we couldn't have game design elements that involved spending tons of time online. No macroing, no camping, no lengthy corpse recoveries, no long waits for public transportation.
This also led inescapably to the logic that a player who had less time to spend per week couldn't be put at a severe disadvantage. Now, obviously, someone who has more time to spend on the game is going to accomplish more. But we CAN do things so that people don't feel left behind. So into the vision doc went a statement like, "players who play a lot and players who don't have as much time to spend should still be able to play together fruitfully."
We also had more concrete stuff in there. There are things we have to put in to attract people to the game, like great visuals. There's things we need to have in order to make money, like having enough depth in the game so that players continue to subscribe for months. We ended up with six pages of these one-liners. Some samples:
Tomorrow I'll talk about how we translated that into game features. Stay tuned…
Hello everyone. I'm suffering from a nasty cold that made me miss a chunk of a day of work, but I still made it here to the boards to post my promised next installment of how we tackled the design.
I mentioned yesterday that we had built around six pages of "vision statements" that reflected what we felt the game had to accomplish, and I posted some examples. Now, I left something out there: the context in which these visions had to be reached. The key element there, of course, is the fact that this game was set in the Star Wars universe. And that requires some vision elements of its own!
I basically took the design team back to high school English class one day, and had everyone sit around and think about "What is Star Wars about? Thematically, and emotionally?" Everyone by now knows the whole deal with Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey, so we breezed by that bit. One big reason for breezing by it is that the Hero's Journey is not very compatible with a massively multiplayer mindset. Not everyone can be the predestined hero that will save the world (or galaxy, in this case).
After discarding the Hero's Journey, we ended up with a short list of key thematic elements that we thought every Star Wars fan would have picked up on either consciously or unconsciously. We knew that if we failed to represent these things in the game, then players would (correctly) feel that the game wasn't truly Star Wars. Just as you can't imagine The Sims without consumerism, just as you can't imagine Ultimas without ethical dilemmas, you can't imagine Star Wars without these things. These, then, were the things that the game mechanics had to be ABOUT.
This meant that we had to strive to reduce tedium and repetition from the game mechanics wherever possible. We had to strive for as dynamic an environment as possible, while still faithfully reproducing the SW settings players would be familiar with. The game had to be filled with discovery and surprise.
This meant that not only did we have to have this in the game, but that we had to allow players to feel like they had a meaningful impact on the struggle. Through their choices, they had to be able to make a difference. At the same time, people needed to be able to opt out.
We don't tend to think of this one often, even though it's a clear backdrop to everything (expressed as warfare in the Classic trilogy, but more directly seen as political maneuvering in Episode I). There are plenty of people who are fighting in the Civil War not because of the Force, but because of more mundane political reasons. Again, we had to allow players to feel like they had a meaningful impact on political struggles in the game through their choices.
This one is more driven by the needs of an MMO design than by the specifics of the Star Wars setting, but even in SW we repeatedly see the theme that people need each other. In an MMO this becomes even more critical, and we knew that this had to be one of the main thrusts of the game mechanics. Interestingly, this isn't something that MMOs thus far have done a very good job of rewarding with in-game mechanics. Sure, games have required you to group, and that sort of thing, but the game mechanics haven't explicitly rewarded all the people who make the game world a more livable place in other ways: the ones who are good roleplayers, the ones who provide entertainment, the ones who are in support roles or peaceful roles or economic roles. We knew that we had to make our game mechanics reflect this.
With these items, we had what the game was going to be
about
. And with that, it was easy to see what sorts of features we would need to have in the game, right? I think I'll be mean, stop now, and leave it as an exercise for the reader.
Whoo, this is gonna be a long one, I can tell.
I saw this topic & posting when it first appeared on the Lum the Mad message boards, but it's been reposted here at [link lost, unfortunately].
It's full of excellent questions, many of which I can't answer in detail because we're not ready to talk about how we intend to do certain things yet. In what follows, I've simply taken the principal issues raised and explained roughly what our approach is to solving them:
Balance
Yes, balance is hard. One thing we are taking as an approach is to be very very obsessive-compulsive about it. Here's some of the specific methods that we try to use:
Step one, use your math. I am a big fan of systems that balance mathematically, because they make good starting points for REAL balance. Just one example is the magic box: if you have twelve stats and fourteen attacks, and you want each attak to vary per stat, or vice versa, you make a grid, and ensure that every stat comes out at a total of zero modifiers across all fourteen attacks, and that every attack comes out at zero total modifiers across every stat. This then serves as a starting point of theoretical equivalence between every stat vs every attack, across all players. Now you can tweak from this solid base to account for much fudgier factors like "how expensive is attack 12 versus attack 9" and "how hard is it to get a weapon that does attack 3" and "how useful is stat 11 in other, non-combat settings anyway?"
There are other mathematical approaches to getting things balanced, and we try to use all of them that we can. You will notice later on just how much we will tend to use the number 3 in our game system, and that's because it lets us set up nice rock-paper-scissors relationships to ensure that in any given set of figures, everything has at least one vulnerability...
Step two, use inheritance. A lot. This means that as you create your database of items, you don't create each item in a vacuum. You base every item on a pre-existing item. That first item is ideally a generic "level 1 blaster" "level 2 blaster" etc. That way, if you determine that all vibroblades are weak, you can modify just the base vibroblade and get consistent results everywhere in the database, you can adjust all critters of a given level of difficulty, etc etc.
Step three, log everything. And I mean, everything. Track who kills what and how with how many people where. Track who spent what to buy what where how often. Etc etc. And analyze the results!
Step four, rely on self-balancing mechanisms. This is the default anyway. When an MMO starts to go out of balance, you see players pick up compensatory mechanisms. For example, when currencies in an MMO deflate, players start to shift to barter, and eventually designate a new item as an alternate currency. You can make use of players a lot with this. It's particularly applicable to economic issues, and I'll explain how when I get down to the econ answer.
Making the game enjoyable for casul gamers/those with less time
We've actually talked a fair amount on this one already. Our principal approaches are these:
Dynamic content
Yes, it's good, yes, we're doing it as much as possible, and a lot more than you've seen in other MMOs to date. A lot of it will be player-driven dynamic content.
Advancement
Multiple paths of advancement, and what's more, paths of advancement that use different advancement engines, are a key factor in several of the things I described above. Again, this is why we don't use XP-XP is not well suited to advancement in the context of roleplay-based, economically-based, exploration-based, politics-based, or any other non-killing-based advancement ladders.
Support
This is a problem the industry as a whole is still wrestling with. We intend to keep improving, and to do the best we can. We are investing a significant amount of time in creating good support tools and backend infrastructure so that we can help you more and more effectively.
Lack of high level design and content
This is actually a double-edged sword. The way I like to think of it is this:
Our entire game system is built around the premise that every different profession can serve as an elder game for someone who has maxed out whatever they started out in. (Hmm, am I revealing too much about how it can work? Probably…) I am a huge believer in elder games, and what's more, I believe they should change the HOW of how you play the game-sort of like how advancing through the military means you have to learn completely new skill sets, not just "be a better private."
Repetition
This is a tough one. Some people like it. In fact, a lot of people like it. What we can do is provide diverse enough activities, and enough change in the world, that you can always find something different to do. But it IS natural to run out, eventually, and there's nothing much we can do about that.
Game economy
The biggest thing here is that we intend the economy to be player-driven as much as possible. This is because the single biggest factor screwing up in-game economies in these games is us, the developers. We put in hard-coded value numbers, we write unsophisticated shopkeeper AI, we try our hand at macroeconomics in spawning & whatnot, etc etc, and as a result we create subsidies and taxes and hidden costs and all sorts of problems. To quote Zach Simpson's excellent paper on "The In-Game Economics of Ultima Online" (you can find it on the web), "it's not a virtual economy. It's a real economy with virtual objects." We are mucking things up when we try to "simulate" it, when the best thing to do is get out of the way as much as possible-we're not economists and we're not expert at writing econ sims. For that matter, economists aren't either.
Whew. That's the top issues, I think. Hopefully it's enough for you all to chew on and speculate with!
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The Second Day Vet
Moved from the first post (felt kind of wrong to start the thread with this blog) /Vortex500
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J.Freeman Blog
Formerly available at http://mythical.blogspot.com/2005/11/shenanigans.html
SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.
Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.
So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now – how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.
Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."
A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3…2…1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.
In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.
That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.
This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.
But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.
Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.
So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.
Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.
Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!
As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.
Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.
So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.
So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"
It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."
There's no way we can do that.
There's no way we should do that.
Man that's fun.
The Man will never let us get away with doing that.
We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it.
Oh man that is fun.
When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".
My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.
And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.
It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.
First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.
And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.
The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.
There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.
Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.
Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.
For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.
Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.
So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair.
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The Second Day Vet
This Image was kind of cool. I sure miss those little boxes.
But I don't think it is the original graphical user interface, wasn't there a button to surrender skills too somewhere there?
Click it for full size.
The Second Day Vet
Found one more...
The Second Day Vet
Yet one more. Quite funny build. Almost like my Moisture farmer back in pre-cu days...
Bah... I think I will let this thread go now
But it sure was fun digging up some memories from the past. Take care all pre-cu lovers.
May the schwartz be with you!
The Second Day Vet
To start with... Im sorry for the necro. But this Thread.... is just so... great!
Took me two hours of reading,laughing,remembering,crying and mourning to get through this one. Amazing post Vortex500, thank you for taking your time to post this gigantic piece of collected facts about the original SWG. A great walk down the memory lane.
/deepbow vortex500
Sticky?
Now Playing: LotRO:MoM Waiting for: Earthrise, The Warhammer 40k mmo
Collecting dust on my shelf: Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Lineage II, SWG, EQ2, D&D Online, Vanguard:SoH, Tabula Rasa, PoTBS, AoC, WAR
I know it is bad forum ethics to bring old post like this back to life, and Im truly sorry, but I had to post here.
Thank you all!
Im Vortex500 who made this post, I would like to say thank you to all the viewers. Can't believe so many watched it, 28590 views. Im sorry all pictures are gone from the post. It was full of old pics from the FF and the other guides I posted. This post is now but a wreck of its former self. But there are still some neat info from the old game in here.
I deleted my original Vortex500 account here on MMORPG.COM, shortly after this post and I quit playing MMOs for over two years. With TOR and the WH40K Online game far away on the horizon I have come back again, Im keeping a eye on Earthrise too.
I will always remember my friends and the great community(both in beta and then later in the pre-nge) and the time I had in SWG. It was a new amazing feeling I got from being ingame, living in a thriving world just being one of thousand other citizens of the galaxy. A feeling I since then never felt again in any game.
Thank you for watching this post and take care all.
SWG: Astromechs & Friday Features and Guides from SWG O-forums (2003-2005) (Read last post first for clarity)