Originally posted by GeezerGameris frame of reference since he is looking for a reason to take offence.
How many pages has this gone on and you haven't even used 1 single direct quote I made? I've made no such statements and made no such claims. You are continuing to lie about what I said and it needs to stop. And you also need to stop referring to your personal subjectivity as "fact". They aren't
I believe Dihoru is contending that your usage of the term 'Lowest common denominator' can be construed as implying that those games aimed at that group are 'dumbasses' as per a definition found in the Urban Dictionary.
Biggest demographic=/=lowest common denominator. Get that computed already.
That's pretty much what the phrase "lowest common denominator" means...
It usually ends up that way because aiming for the biggest demographic means that you have to make your product accessible to the least sophisticated members of that demographic. Many people can enjoy something aimed below their sophistication level but it doesn't really work in reverse.
Originally posted by GeezerGameris frame of reference since he is looking for a reason to take offence.
How many pages has this gone on and you haven't even used 1 single direct quote I made? I've made no such statements and made no such claims. You are continuing to lie about what I said and it needs to stop. And you also need to stop referring to your personal subjectivity as "fact". They aren't
I believe Dihoru is contending that your usage of the term 'Lowest common denominator' can be construed as implying that those games aimed at that group are 'dumbasses' as per a definition found in the Urban Dictionary.
If it's not what you meant then this has transgressed quite longer than necessary.
We are using the Urban Dictionary as the basis of our context????????
Holy EFFIN Shit!!!!!!
OK, well, I'm done now.
I'm not, just showing that some may try to use it as support for an argument. Like it or not, it's out there. A whole other debate can be brought up as to its validity. I am not inclined to do so.
I admit that I have mixed feelings about SWG. I loved the ideas in it but I found the game both absolutely awful and wonderful at the same time. I left it several times out of sheer, screaming frustration, but something kept drawing me back. It should have been the perfect virtual game world, but it fell far short. Oddly, despite that, it was one of the best MMORPGs I have ever played (pre-CU).
The majority of my combat was with the game engine and especially the server. The community was overall fantastic and that is mostly what made the game for me. It was also the systems in place, though again there were many stupid design decisions such as the ridiculous buffs, the fact that some templates were so ridiculously powerful in combat that there was no need to experiment or choose anything else, or the fact that you could macro a lot of your skill acquisition or that the best way to do PvE was in a "solo group".
I wish that a dev today would get a clue and look at SWG as a source of inspiration. Systems could be taken from SWG and improved upon. I don't think it is that hard, in fact it would probably cost less and take less time to develope than your typical overly architectured themepark game. The flaws could be corrected and voilà: a potentially kickass game.
You want to play the BEST mmo ever? Scenery with such a living prowess it sometimes can be breath stealing. Physics that are so dynamic you can spend hours on end testing them. Bikes, cars, tanks planes and more! Want weapons? You name it it is there. Some are just hard as hell to obtain. Crafting so diverse your imagination is the mere limit! You can even build your own house! Fully dynamic daily's you never know what will happen. All this and its free! just stand up! Turn around. And open your front door!
Nah that MMO sucks. I heard that it is only hardcore: once you die you don't respawn and plus it is full loot PvP.
I wish that a dev today would get a clue and look at SWG as a source of inspiration. Systems could be taken from SWG and improved upon. I don't think it is that hard, in fact it would probably cost less and take less time to develope than your typical overly architectured themepark game. The flaws could be corrected and voilà: a potentially kickass game.
I wish that a dev today would get a clue and look at SWG as a source of inspiration. Systems could be taken from SWG and improved upon. I don't think it is that hard, in fact it would probably cost less and take less time to develope than your typical overly architectured themepark game. The flaws could be corrected and voilà: a potentially kickass game.
It's to bad they had to change one thing that ruins it all. They have all these great features they promise that give it the SWG feel then go and force pvp on you if you want to be part of player cities.
I don't mind nostalgia. There is nothing wrong with remembering good times. However what I can't stand is the constant revisionist history that goes on in the guise of nostalgia.
When SWG came out I was playing DAoC. Two or three people from my guild left to play SWG. Within a week they were back claiming that SWG was buggy to the point of being unplayable and that PvP was pointless due to debilitating lag. One guy stuck it out and gave us constant reports right up until he quit because of the complete overhaul Sony did on the game. Basically everything now cited as "right" with the game was "wrong" back then. Each of his reports started with something like, "Well, they just missed on "XYZ" feature. If they'd only have done "ABC" it would have been great."
Now I'm going to go away from SWG because I didn't experience it personally. I did experience the glory days of DAoC and it's funny how the things everyone bitched and moaned about have now become the things that were great about "ye olde timey games." I suspect that what goes for DAoC goes for SWG as well.
1) Forced Grouping - Everyone today raves about forced grouping. However back in the day I heard nothing but rants about how it took half an hour of gaming time just to find a group to get started. How many remember putting your name on a list to get into a group camping a specific leveling area? Finlaiths anyone?
2) Down time/Teleport Padding to the different frontiers - Today everyone waxes poetic about down times in the game such as medding up health/mana and sitting on the teleporting pad for 10 minutes waiting for the mages to come down and beam you to the other frontiers. Oh what a wonderful time to talk to your realm mates and make merry. Horseapples. Those times were universal smoke/bathroom breaks and the ones that got back first did nothing but complain about having to wait. And how about waiting an extra ten minutes for those that went AFK and forgot to put on their teleporting necklaces and had to wait for the next port? Twenty minutes of game time sitting on your virtual arse waiting for something to happen so something else could happen and then maybe you could play the game. Oooooo fun! No wonder people actually roleplayed back then. You had to do something to kill the time while waiting for an opportunity to actually play the game.
3) In depth crafting systems - Well back in my day it took 237 days /played to make junior appretice crafter and we had to walk uphill both ways to the forge carrying huge piles of crafting materials and we were damn glad to get them. We were all a huge happy group of people sitting around the forge singing songs and swapping tales of adventure. Now-a-days these spoiled kids make master crafter in 30 minutes and they do it via a pet while they continue to quest! Folks, crafting back in the day was an absolute bitch. It took as long to level your crafting as it did to level your character. There were frequent dead spots in the leveling where you had to go out and farm up the cash to move up to the next level. All I ever heard was people complaining about how much they hated sitting there pushing one button and watching a green bar move across the screen, only to do it again and again and again. The only laughter I heard was maniacal hysteria when someone went through a marathon crafting session of several hours only to find out they still weren't high enough level to make ANYTHING that anyone wanted to buy. Remember having to find a leather crafter with high enough skills to make the leather linings you needed to make any kind of metal armor? And if you didn't want to wait around you could roll an alt and spend a thousand hours leveling leather crafting up to the sufficient level! How about having to level up woodworking so you could make handles for the swords you were trying to smith up? Oh, what fun! If you want crafting that realistic, get a job in a factory in real life.
4) Meaningful PvP - I have to be honest; I'm not sure what the hell this means. I think people mean that there was an element of risk to PvP and/or a system of risks and rewards for winning and losing in PvP. So then I look at a game like chess. Chess has been around for centuries and for those centuries (with the exception of war or gladitorial combat) chess has been the very definition of mano y mano contests. Its PvP in it's purest form. However there is no inherent risk or rewards system for winning and losing. You don't get to raid the other guy's wallet simply because you beat him at chess. You don't get to take his dog home because you check-mated him. You might lose some money if you bet, but you don't have to bet to play. Yet people have played chess avidly for centuries without any semblence of risk/reward.
By the by when did it become mandatory that someone get "rewarded" or "punished" for participating in PvP? Yea brother, we must slay that vile person who dared to roll the other faction and pilfer his meager purse and then hold up our bloody prize and scream our cyber victory to the gods! A MANLY type of PvP for MANLY MEN such as we! Piffle. I think people who believe this are in their 30s and still want a lollipop from the barber when they get their hair cut because they held still like a good boy while the barber cut their hair. If you want to PvP, don't wait for a reason. Just go out and do it. Kill for the sheer joy of it and play pool with your victim's eyeballs like a good virtual serial killer. When they ask you why you killed them don't say things like "LMAO" or "L2P Newbist!". Say something creative like, "well, my new armor was too tight in the crotch and its chaffing and that puts me in a really FOUL mood and when I'm in a foul mood I kill everyone in range. Now, hush up while I write my name on the ground in your blood!" Or how about finding a line of people and just killing the last person in line while shouting, "THOSE WHO ARE TARDY DO NOT GET FRUIT CUP!" The truth is if you do this you'll get to be a kind of cult anti-hero of the kind people will remember meeting. Thus not only did you make a good memory for you, but a good memory for them as well.
The point of this wall of text plus the bonus rant at the end is that "fun" is up to you. Anything can be "fun" if you go in with the idea of making your own fun. It doesn't matter if the game was made in 2014 or 414. If you wait for the game to make your fun you're going to be disappointed. Your fun is your responsibility and if the game isn't fun, then make it fun or quit and try something else.
Edits : Punctuation. Thanks Weird Al.
Wow, this is the best comment about this subject I've read anywhere. Very nicely put!!!!!!!
What was wrong with SWG? Ambition. And time. They needed another 2 years of dev time to get everything working as they envisioned it.
Even for today, the amount of things to do in that game is amazing. And it takes people with ambition and vision to try to do that in games.
And the mistakes made after launch, just put paid to games that need vision to make. No money people are willing to risk their cash on vision. They demand proven systems that they can see, that make returns on their cash.
So the Dev's that put forward the same old tried and true games are given the cash to go ahead. Unfortunately, the dev's that try to push the envelope and offer change are mostly ones that can not pull them off. So we continue to get more of the same.
Way of business..go with what makes you a return, not what will push the boundaries.
Biggest demographic=/=lowest common denominator. Get that computed already.
That's pretty much what the phrase "lowest common denominator" means...
It usually ends up that way because aiming for the biggest demographic means that you have to make your product accessible to the least sophisticated members of that demographic. Many people can enjoy something aimed below their sophistication level but it doesn't really work in reverse.
MMORPGs don't have a terribly high level of sophistication to begin with. For all the talk on these forums, there isn't a huge gap in sophistication between players of Eve and players of WoW. The gap is in preference.
**
It's the difference in focusing on "least" over "common". It's also the difference in focusing on "least" as having a qualitative meaning instead of a quantitative meaning.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
While I didn't play this title, from what I've read isn't there an equally long list of negatives that could be associated with this title, including many bugs, multiple missteps in delivery and direction, and a host of other issues?
While it did many things well and different from today's games, it also did enough wrong to see it become one of the few MMORPG's where the plug was pulled.
Don't get me wrong, I like the designs of the earlier games, probably why EVE remains my favorite to this day, but we're in a minority, most players today don't like those designs and they show it by voting with their wallets and buying just about every new title that is released in numbers far exceeding anything reached by SWG or other early title.
It had bugs, yes. But even with the flaws, it was the single best gaming experience I've ever had. SWG nailed it. At least until they dismantled it and replaced it with an ugly clone.
I can't wait to play my Creature Handler again. Best pet system ever.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
While I didn't play this title, from what I've read isn't there an equally long list of negatives that could be associated with this title, including many bugs, multiple missteps in delivery and direction, and a host of other issues?
While it did many things well and different from today's games, it also did enough wrong to see it become one of the few MMORPG's where the plug was pulled.
Don't get me wrong, I like the designs of the earlier games, probably why EVE remains my favorite to this day, but we're in a minority, most players today don't like those designs and they show it by voting with their wallets and buying just about every new title that is released in numbers far exceeding anything reached by SWG or other early title.
It had bugs, yes. But even with the flaws, it was the single best gaming experience I've ever had. SWG nailed it. At least until they dismantled it and replaced it with an ugly clone.
I can't wait to play my Creature Handler again. Best pet system ever.
I was a master CH and right before the NGE hit I started to work on Bio Engineer. I wanted to grow my own pets then the NGE hit no more CH no more BE.
I quit the game after the NGE and after 6 years of not finding any MMO that worked for me I went back. Two weeks in to playing I was having a great time thinking wow 6 years later I found a home again and it's SWG.
Well it was short lived the announcement came the game was closing down in 6 months how ironic is that. :P
While I didn't play this title, from what I've read isn't there an equally long list of negatives that could be associated with this title, including many bugs, multiple missteps in delivery and direction, and a host of other issues?
While it did many things well and different from today's games, it also did enough wrong to see it become one of the few MMORPG's where the plug was pulled.
Don't get me wrong, I like the designs of the earlier games, probably why EVE remains my favorite to this day, but we're in a minority, most players today don't like those designs and they show it by voting with their wallets and buying just about every new title that is released in numbers far exceeding anything reached by SWG or other early title.
It had bugs, yes. But even with the flaws, it was the single best gaming experience I've ever had. SWG nailed it. At least until they dismantled it and replaced it with an ugly clone.
I can't wait to play my Creature Handler again. Best pet system ever.
I was a master CH and right before the NGE hit I started to work on Bio Engineer. I wanted to grow my own pets then the NGE hit no more CH no more BE.
I quit the game after the NGE and after 6 years of not finding any MMO that worked for me I went back. Two weeks in to playing I was having a great time thinking wow 6 years later I found a home again and it's SWG.
Well it was short lived the announcement came the game was closing down in 6 months how ironic is that. :P
I feel your pain. I tried NGE for a couple weeks but it wasn't the same. Some kind of Star Wows clone with glowbat fights everywhere.
Oh well, the wait is almost over. Can't wait to get my Gurrecks back.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
-facepalm- yes because living in the present you would see games that have most of the features you, and others, liked in SWG. Instead you stomp your feet and demand what exactly? A AAA SWG remake? Not going to happen, AA is barely AA and Repopulation is around A standards and this isn't down to anyone being at fault but what is and isn't popular for the biggest piece of the market to ensure returns and profitability over the long haul. Most people want to have fun in whichever way they find appealing, for you that may mean immersion for another it may mean a skinner box, whatever it may be.
Live in the present because sandboxes much more feature rich or at least less restrictive than SWG exist right now.
Who says folks like myself are demanding anything? That's where my frustration comes from in this topic, all I asked was people focus a bit more on the point here. Features...
As I said before I play modern games, I enjoy TOR, AOC, planning on getting FFXIV soonish, as well as eso at some point. You read a post and apply all the hate filled anti-themepark rants to it. That's how it seems anyway. As you're applying those typical posters to me, I don't feel as they do.
My most anticipated games are Pathfinder as well as The Repop, we still have a ways to go until those are out though. And with their origins it's questionable how much they may suffer from it, I don't look at any single game as my future home until I play it. So just because I'm not here hyping those titles up it doesn't mean I don't know about them...
My main problem with the Sandbox options that are out there ( which you call as feature rich) is I don't agree they are. Especially considering most are fantasy based and mostly PVP oriented, that's not my mainstay, I prefer Sci-fi and options for non combat playstyles. None have the diverse community that SWG had , as far as play styles, the only thing that sounds remotely close is Star Citizen, which god knows when that will be ready. Or how good it will be.
As for the OP too many seem to be focusing on his headline, rather than the body of his post. Granted interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.
What made SWG's community aspects so strong IMO was the diverse environment created through features that brought many types of gamers together, both combatant and non. What games offer that? None that I know of really.
Just because I want to see something again doesn't mean I'm living in the past, I'm looking to the future.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by Dauzqul It's pretty sad that there hasn't been a game since 2003 that has even come close to resembling the living / breathing virtual world of Star Wars Galaxies.1) Extremely Deep Crafting / Harvesting / Mining / Surveying System.2) Extremely Large Worlds3) Extremely detailed and lengthy profession system.4) Endless apparel and customizations.5) True World Housing / Player Cities.6) Completely unique expansion experience, e.g., Jump to Lightspeed.7) Rich with Social Features and Classes. I've met people who've played for years and have never fired a blaster.8) Countless "Raid Size" monsters that just roam the planet.9) Ability to place virtually anything you find in your home.10) True Player-Driven Economy / Ability to start player-malls, shops, etc.lol. Seriously. No post-2003 MMO has come close to even offering an inkling of the above. I suppose ArcheAge has been the best attempt, but even that game is limited by countless "theme park" sanctions, e.g., seemingly huge world, yet much of it will be out-leveled and pointless to use outside of constant trade-walks.What we've gotten since 2003 has been nothing more than a virtual "turn-the-page" story book. I want more living / breathing virtual worlds...
1) Imbalanced classes which led to
2) Min/Maxing and ideal class builds which cut down any real diversity
3) mind numbingly easy PVE once the buff train got rolling
4) the wholly broken jedi system
5) weapons which didn't so much act as sidegrades from one another (say the carbine = more DPS at short range while a rifle = long range but say half the DPS) but as direct upgrades to one another which led to samey item builds
6) borked economy once the first wave settled in making new crafters have to work insanely much by comparison to become competitive
7) Profession system was diverse but as far as depth goes... WoW had the same level of depth but not the same level of ease, Archeage has much more diversity with the same relative depth;
8) Bugs up the exhaust pipe
Nostalgia is a bitch to deal with dude but you should really not praise SWG in any other way than for its truly unique crafting as everything else it did has been done since and much better in quite a few cases.
Yeah SWG was really not that great of a game. I was recently watching watchmojo.com and for their top ten MMOs of all time SWG didn't even rate an honorable mention. It had a few things it did right but for the most part it was bad.
beside all the good and the bad things i encountered in SWG (usually great ideas which weren't implemented that pertfectly because of restrictions of the game engine, not enough resources provided by SOE or players looking for holes in the system to exploit them) there were some ideas which i still wonder why no other game has used them now.
like using a civil war theme for faction play and pvp = no locked zones in the game world, players could stay neutral if they dont like pvp or join a faction as temporary mercenary (NGE stuff in city invasions), players could change sides (with disadvantages of course like waiting time and need to grind faction points)
or a bounty hunting system for pvp'ers = as mentioned above no locked zones (so no save places for bounty targets - the rerason its hardly possible in games like SWTOR where pvp'ers mostly meet in in warzones and most of the other time they stay in the lobby zones)- i found the NGE bounty hunting system best (when you were killed in faction PVP you could place a bounty on your killers head - so the better you are in PVP the higher gets the bounty on your head)
SWG had some stuff you will never find in any other game like multiperson spaceships, where you can walk inside the ship even during battles and start repairing the damaged ship from the inside while your friends are in the turrets and pilot seat and fight the enemy
beside all the bugs and shortcomings i came along in all those years it still had me logging in day after day because the atmosphere (living world) and the community
No, it isn't just nostalgia. I keep going back to old games and emulators and staying with them because they are objectively better experiences.
No, it's purely subjective. You define the criteria you like and you pick games that meet that criteria. That's subjective. The overwhelming majority of people don't use that criteria, if they did, games like SWG wouldn't have failed in the first place because everyone would have been playing them pre-CU.
2003 is just when internet became a common household item so the mass internet gaming wave had not yet begun.
Wow was the beneficiary of a massive onslaught of brand new gamer's.
The trend even to this day is that new gamer's or gamer's in general don't look for old games they are always watching the "new kid" on the block.
SOE saw the player base start to grow and wanted some of it so they thought by making change they could get a lot more players.It backfired because not only did they not get many new players they outraged a high % of their core player base.
IMO there was nothing SOE could do because gaming at that point was starting to look better and SWG looked awful,the graphics were too outdated.
There is nothing to scoff at anyhow,a VERY high % of modern games are not holding onto their player base,that is why they need lame gimmicks like f2p to encourage players to even try their game.So SWG fans should not feel too slighted since nobody else is doing any better all the games lose a very high % of their starting player base.The difference is SOME try to improve the game to keep players and others don't simply close the doors as fast as SOE does.
IMO the problem is SOE not the games,SOE has a VERY bad image among the gaming community.
Don't tell me that you are one of those people still trying to claim that SWG wasn't declining pre CU/NGE.
Not to mention that the whole "WoW was right place, right time" as the only reason for its success instead of its game design is a total croc of sh*t. There were multiple AAA MMOs released in the same time frame as WoW. WoW had something those games did not, both crazy amounts of depth AND never before seen MMORPG accessibility.
SWG was one of the first MMOs I ever got into, and I am almost 100% certain that I am one of the very very very few (if any) people who post on these forums who obtained jedi prior to NGE, and I have to say, I have had way more "pure fun" playing SWTOR than I ever did in SWG.
SWG was objectively the best MMORPG for people who want to play house, and are too embarrassed to go to Kids 'R Us and buy a real doll house.
Seriously, you should just get over your fears of being judged and try it. The tactile experience just blows anything MMOs have out of the water!
Yeh, MMOs are no longer gearing towards those who want to play house. The key audience is those who want combat.
And nothing but.....
It reminds back when arcades started to be taken over by street fighter games. I remember walking in to a arcade and 99% of the games where fighting games with ms pacman being the other 1%.
SWG was objectively the best MMORPG for people who want to play house, and are too embarrassed to go to Kids 'R Us and buy a real doll house.
Seriously, you should just get over your fears of being judged and try it. The tactile experience just blows anything MMOs have out of the water!
Prime example of folks that don't get it. Instead of trying to even understand at all, they just throw ridicule around. Not that I'm actually replying to the poster, as by this example, there's no mature discussion to be had with them
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
SWG was one of the first MMOs I ever got into, and I am almost 100% certain that I am one of the very very very few (if any) people who post on these forums who obtained jedi prior to NGE, and I have to say, I have had way more "pure fun" playing SWTOR than I ever did in SWG.
I never went jedi because my fencer/doc//pistoleer armed with a mind fire gaderfi owned Jedi. If jedi could not dizzy kd do you, or get past your dodge, they couldn't do much but go into preservation mode. I always loved it when they called hax because their "I win profession" wasn't working as they thought it would. Why grind for something when I could already beat it?
Anyway TOR is a good game, but I don't have as much fun as I did in SWG.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
SWG was objectively the best MMORPG for people who want to play house, and are too embarrassed to go to Kids 'R Us and buy a real doll house.
Seriously, you should just get over your fears of being judged and try it. The tactile experience just blows anything MMOs have out of the water!
Yeh, MMOs are no longer gearing towards those who want to play house. The key audience is those who want combat.
And nothing but.....
Three words have never said so much. These new generation gamers have infiltrated the MMORPG genre and turned it into just another version of an FPS game. They don't want to quest. They don't want to craft. They don't want to RP. They don't want to PvE. They don't want to play house (build), etc etc.
All they want to do is weeEEEEE .... PeeVeePee!
Way to ruin the MMORPG genre!
Developers share the blame for allowing it to happen.
Comments
We are using the Urban Dictionary as the basis of our context. Need anything bmore be said about this? (no)
That's pretty much what the phrase "lowest common denominator" means...
It usually ends up that way because aiming for the biggest demographic means that you have to make your product accessible to the least sophisticated members of that demographic. Many people can enjoy something aimed below their sophistication level but it doesn't really work in reverse.
I'm not, just showing that some may try to use it as support for an argument. Like it or not, it's out there. A whole other debate can be brought up as to its validity. I am not inclined to do so.
I admit that I have mixed feelings about SWG. I loved the ideas in it but I found the game both absolutely awful and wonderful at the same time. I left it several times out of sheer, screaming frustration, but something kept drawing me back. It should have been the perfect virtual game world, but it fell far short. Oddly, despite that, it was one of the best MMORPGs I have ever played (pre-CU).
The majority of my combat was with the game engine and especially the server. The community was overall fantastic and that is mostly what made the game for me. It was also the systems in place, though again there were many stupid design decisions such as the ridiculous buffs, the fact that some templates were so ridiculously powerful in combat that there was no need to experiment or choose anything else, or the fact that you could macro a lot of your skill acquisition or that the best way to do PvE was in a "solo group".
I wish that a dev today would get a clue and look at SWG as a source of inspiration. Systems could be taken from SWG and improved upon. I don't think it is that hard, in fact it would probably cost less and take less time to develope than your typical overly architectured themepark game. The flaws could be corrected and voilà: a potentially kickass game.
I mean, why the heck not??
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
https://www.therepopulation.com/
There you go
It's to bad they had to change one thing that ruins it all. They have all these great features they promise that give it the SWG feel then go and force pvp on you if you want to be part of player cities.
Wow, this is the best comment about this subject I've read anywhere. Very nicely put!!!!!!!
What was wrong with SWG? Ambition. And time. They needed another 2 years of dev time to get everything working as they envisioned it.
Even for today, the amount of things to do in that game is amazing. And it takes people with ambition and vision to try to do that in games.
And the mistakes made after launch, just put paid to games that need vision to make. No money people are willing to risk their cash on vision. They demand proven systems that they can see, that make returns on their cash.
So the Dev's that put forward the same old tried and true games are given the cash to go ahead. Unfortunately, the dev's that try to push the envelope and offer change are mostly ones that can not pull them off. So we continue to get more of the same.
Way of business..go with what makes you a return, not what will push the boundaries.
MMORPGs don't have a terribly high level of sophistication to begin with. For all the talk on these forums, there isn't a huge gap in sophistication between players of Eve and players of WoW. The gap is in preference.
**
It's the difference in focusing on "least" over "common". It's also the difference in focusing on "least" as having a qualitative meaning instead of a quantitative meaning.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It had bugs, yes. But even with the flaws, it was the single best gaming experience I've ever had. SWG nailed it. At least until they dismantled it and replaced it with an ugly clone.
I can't wait to play my Creature Handler again. Best pet system ever.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
I was a master CH and right before the NGE hit I started to work on Bio Engineer. I wanted to grow my own pets then the NGE hit no more CH no more BE.
I quit the game after the NGE and after 6 years of not finding any MMO that worked for me I went back. Two weeks in to playing I was having a great time thinking wow 6 years later I found a home again and it's SWG.
Well it was short lived the announcement came the game was closing down in 6 months how ironic is that. :P
I feel your pain. I tried NGE for a couple weeks but it wasn't the same. Some kind of Star Wows clone with glowbat fights everywhere.
Oh well, the wait is almost over. Can't wait to get my Gurrecks back.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Who says folks like myself are demanding anything? That's where my frustration comes from in this topic, all I asked was people focus a bit more on the point here. Features...
As I said before I play modern games, I enjoy TOR, AOC, planning on getting FFXIV soonish, as well as eso at some point. You read a post and apply all the hate filled anti-themepark rants to it. That's how it seems anyway. As you're applying those typical posters to me, I don't feel as they do.
My most anticipated games are Pathfinder as well as The Repop, we still have a ways to go until those are out though. And with their origins it's questionable how much they may suffer from it, I don't look at any single game as my future home until I play it. So just because I'm not here hyping those titles up it doesn't mean I don't know about them...
My main problem with the Sandbox options that are out there ( which you call as feature rich) is I don't agree they are. Especially considering most are fantasy based and mostly PVP oriented, that's not my mainstay, I prefer Sci-fi and options for non combat playstyles. None have the diverse community that SWG had , as far as play styles, the only thing that sounds remotely close is Star Citizen, which god knows when that will be ready. Or how good it will be.
As for the OP too many seem to be focusing on his headline, rather than the body of his post. Granted interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.
What made SWG's community aspects so strong IMO was the diverse environment created through features that brought many types of gamers together, both combatant and non. What games offer that? None that I know of really.
Just because I want to see something again doesn't mean I'm living in the past, I'm looking to the future.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
1) Imbalanced classes which led to
2) Min/Maxing and ideal class builds which cut down any real diversity
3) mind numbingly easy PVE once the buff train got rolling
4) the wholly broken jedi system
5) weapons which didn't so much act as sidegrades from one another (say the carbine = more DPS at short range while a rifle = long range but say half the DPS) but as direct upgrades to one another which led to samey item builds
6) borked economy once the first wave settled in making new crafters have to work insanely much by comparison to become competitive
7) Profession system was diverse but as far as depth goes... WoW had the same level of depth but not the same level of ease, Archeage has much more diversity with the same relative depth;
8) Bugs up the exhaust pipe
Nostalgia is a bitch to deal with dude but you should really not praise SWG in any other way than for its truly unique crafting as everything else it did has been done since and much better in quite a few cases.
Yeah SWG was really not that great of a game. I was recently watching watchmojo.com and for their top ten MMOs of all time SWG didn't even rate an honorable mention. It had a few things it did right but for the most part it was bad.Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
beside all the good and the bad things i encountered in SWG (usually great ideas which weren't implemented that pertfectly because of restrictions of the game engine, not enough resources provided by SOE or players looking for holes in the system to exploit them) there were some ideas which i still wonder why no other game has used them now.
like using a civil war theme for faction play and pvp = no locked zones in the game world, players could stay neutral if they dont like pvp or join a faction as temporary mercenary (NGE stuff in city invasions), players could change sides (with disadvantages of course like waiting time and need to grind faction points)
or a bounty hunting system for pvp'ers = as mentioned above no locked zones (so no save places for bounty targets - the rerason its hardly possible in games like SWTOR where pvp'ers mostly meet in in warzones and most of the other time they stay in the lobby zones)- i found the NGE bounty hunting system best (when you were killed in faction PVP you could place a bounty on your killers head - so the better you are in PVP the higher gets the bounty on your head)
SWG had some stuff you will never find in any other game like multiperson spaceships, where you can walk inside the ship even during battles and start repairing the damaged ship from the inside while your friends are in the turrets and pilot seat and fight the enemy
beside all the bugs and shortcomings i came along in all those years it still had me logging in day after day because the atmosphere (living world) and the community
Don't tell me that you are one of those people still trying to claim that SWG wasn't declining pre CU/NGE.
Not to mention that the whole "WoW was right place, right time" as the only reason for its success instead of its game design is a total croc of sh*t. There were multiple AAA MMOs released in the same time frame as WoW. WoW had something those games did not, both crazy amounts of depth AND never before seen MMORPG accessibility.
SWG was one of the first MMOs I ever got into, and I am almost 100% certain that I am one of the very very very few (if any) people who post on these forums who obtained jedi prior to NGE, and I have to say, I have had way more "pure fun" playing SWTOR than I ever did in SWG.
Yeh, MMOs are no longer gearing towards those who want to play house. The key audience is those who want combat.
And nothing but.....
It reminds back when arcades started to be taken over by street fighter games. I remember walking in to a arcade and 99% of the games where fighting games with ms pacman being the other 1%.
Prime example of folks that don't get it. Instead of trying to even understand at all, they just throw ridicule around. Not that I'm actually replying to the poster, as by this example, there's no mature discussion to be had with them
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I never went jedi because my fencer/doc//pistoleer armed with a mind fire gaderfi owned Jedi. If jedi could not dizzy kd do you, or get past your dodge, they couldn't do much but go into preservation mode. I always loved it when they called hax because their "I win profession" wasn't working as they thought it would. Why grind for something when I could already beat it?
Anyway TOR is a good game, but I don't have as much fun as I did in SWG.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Three words have never said so much. These new generation gamers have infiltrated the MMORPG genre and turned it into just another version of an FPS game. They don't want to quest. They don't want to craft. They don't want to RP. They don't want to PvE. They don't want to play house (build), etc etc.
All they want to do is weeEEEEE .... PeeVeePee!
Way to ruin the MMORPG genre!
Developers share the blame for allowing it to happen.
/greed
That is exactly why i don't play the SIMS. I don't want to play house. I have a wife. There is enough of that in real life.