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Summing up why I left SWG
Aetheus
Member Posts: 13
Hey everyone,
I wrote an article last month about how SWG is still a disappointment. I know many veterans here have never gone back to the game and hold onto your anger (and rightfully so, they destroyed our game!), but I decided to give it a really fair chance and played it for an entire month to see how different it has become.
Guess what?
It was horrible. If you're interested, I'd love to open a discussion about what I saw during my return to the game. Even just a place to complain about all that they changed! 
Also, a few paintings I bought before the NGE for a couple thousand credits now go for 15+ million. :P
Please check out my journalistic work here. Thanks
Comments
If you only played for a month and only reached like level 40, I think your experiment was failed in implementation.
If you are not willing to let go of the past, your attempt was already tainted.
As a player that started in Fall 2004 and has been playing ever since, even through the CU and now NGE, I still have a great time in game.
Just a matter of perspective and you cannot learn much about SWG in only a month. Even as a returning vet. The game has changed allot and allot has been added for both mid range and high end levels.
This is not so say that I agree with the CU or NGE, only that I have adapted.
IMHO.
any game that takes more than a month to enjoy is a waste of money.
Are you seriously suggesting someone really needs to play more than 30 days to understand if they don't like a game or there are to many bugs that negatively affect the play experience?
It isn't like they said the end game sucks and criticized max level game play. A game needs to be fun and polished from start to end.
Elaborate.
May I remind you that you're posting in the "Veteran Refuge" so consult the guidelines if you're attacking me for giving a form of entertainment I enjoy a second chance, yet still emerging frustrated with what is left.
Please check out my journalistic work here. Thanks
In response to other posters, I have to agree that you need to get the most out of a game within a month. In fact, if the game can't catch you in that period I simply don't think it is worth your time (everyone is different of course).
I apologise if I did not make it clear but I mention during the article that I remembered my old account details (which has a level 80 on it), I then level'd this up to 90 and worked my way through some of the content - I still did not enjoy it.
Also I did let go of the past when I gave it a go, I was giving the game a completely fresh start and just looking at it from a comparative point of view. As I went further into the game it became difficult to not look at the past there were so many things that disappointed me that I had to compare to its previous rendition.
Please check out my journalistic work here. Thanks
For me the problem with the game is that they've taken away that real world feeling and put all these cash shop things in it. Also there's instant travel about everywhere and the player economy means nothing anymore. The profession system has gone which was one of my fave things about the old game and theres this crap talent tree system only it is worse than WoWs. All the content being added feels copied and pasted like they're reusing the same assets over and over again. The combat is just really bad and most the time it doesn't even make sense, like it was rushed and they just gave a bunch of abilities to each class without thinking about it. The animations are still horrible because of the faster speed and the AI is still borked after the NGE. The UI is still horrible and the collision system which was to make the NGE better isn't in the game.
It is just crap and still broken, they coulda fixed the old SEG by now and been really popular like EVE is if they just stuck with it.
Good for you!!! Thank you for your post too. It's nice to see "fresh faces" posting about their experiences.
30 days is more than enough time to "hook" a player. If a game can't do it in that amount of time, why would you want to pay for day 31-60? Hell...a game SHOULD hook you on day 1.
SWGs problem (one of MANY) is their starter quest line is WORTHLESS and boring as f'k! By the time you hit 40, you want to quit or kill yourself. Naboo's portion of the Legacy quests is a MAJOR game breaker IMO. I'm willing to bet that most created and forgotten toons log out with Naboo's Legacy quest line active...it's THAT bad.
But hey...it does reflect everything else in game...long ass boring grinds for EVERYTHING!
I'll second this. Whoever wrote the legacy quest line on naboo needs to be slapped.
Now, I usually get flames for this but....I actually LIKED the quests on Mustafar. I thought MOST of them were well written and interesting.
LOL...I was expecting to read "...needs to be fired", but with the puny staff they have now for this game, chances are that happened long ago
And I agree. Mustyfart was interesting, fun AND it had some fantastic repeatable quests. It's that GOD awful drive for 30 min to here, kill 50 of these and return quests that are so horrifically bad. There ARE alternatives and almost every MMO out is more creative than that shit. It's like they were written by retards.
I'd like to add my experiences for SWG if i may, they span from sometime in 2005 just after the CU that i hear about through to february 2009, i'll keep things brief and to the point.
When i first started the game i was hooked within 30 minutes of play (never mind 30 days), i spent on average 10-14 hours a day on it sleeping in between sessions. The gameplay was good, the way they handled skills was brilliant and the crafting system was the most profound joy of complexity which i'd like to see in a lot of other MMOs but sadly don't. I also enjoyed the way they handled the jedi system, yes it was long and took a lot of work due to phase chases and such but it kept the jedi population down and to be honest not everyone wanted to be one at that time, people just aimed for it to say they'd done it, it was a goal, an accomplishment and more notably, something to do that didn't end within minutes to a week.
Then comes the NGE, i stayed where most left, i was annoyed because i was 1 phase change away from gaining jedi status but these things happen. I respec'd to officer and then went through all the other professions before finally settling on jedi for my main. i then made a new character and started the grind to becomming a Bounty hunter, i wasn't too bad at the profession as i attained my first level 90 elder jedi mark (successful) when i was only level 82, an accomplishment i'm proud of to this day as i don't like using underhanded tactics (ambushing from a cloner and the like). i then bought a second account and made a shipwright (a crafting profession i enjoyed before the NGE) i soon found out that it was pretty much the only viable crafter still in the game as SOE or whoever made the dumb decision, had made loot items being the best instead of crafted as it once was. BANG! there went the player run economy.
To this day the only changes i'm annoyed with so much that i no longer play are the crafting professions are almost worthless, jedi's are starter classes instead of working hard for the role, the loot driven economy and finaly WTF is with the zombie troopers they did for halloween? players used to be the ones that sorted out the events, fair enough live events are good but come on now, this was a very bad idea.
anyways thats just my experiences and the reason i decided to let my first MMO die and rot on my gameshelf.
Antaran, like you I was one phase away. I am glad that you still enjoyed it enough to stay on but at the time being a Jedi is what I was aiming for, so for it to just relaunch overnight and then to see a skill system based on World of Warcraft I couldn't be bothered.
Ironically, I actually moved to play World of Warcraft after that point - but then again, WoW was exactly what it was and did not make drastic game play changes.
I always say that I would have still liked SWG if they trickled the updates in, made changes to see how the reaction was, but they just threw it at us and I felt overwhelmed. They could have reeled it in with good marketing though rather than game changes, they have the most powerful IP in the world.
Ironically again, many players are bored of some mainstream combat styles and want something different, if the old system still existed perhaps SWG could have picked up some numbers for being unique.
Please check out my journalistic work here. Thanks
i can imagine how you feel then m8 regarding that last phase change. i must admit i could have been jedi sooner but chose to take my time and go through the other skills to try them out before i dedicated myself. WoW never appealed to me after i tried the Trial but to each their own and fair does. Personally i wasted my money on Vanguard for a week before moving to Lord of the Rings and City of Heroes/Villians. the one thing i really missed was the pre NGE skill system and crafting from SWG. If those 2 systems were untouched and loot drops not changed then i'd still be playing to this day. When it comes to the combat system i have to admit that i tried a semi different style out when i spent 3 months in Age of Conan, not totally new or unique really as it was just like chaining attack moves together in order to initiate an attack, still a simple push button like the others though but i do admit to it being different.
To finish off i have been toying with the idea of going back to SWG one day but i'm really unsure as i always end up leaving for an extended period of time.
That is exactly what happened to me. Stupidly, I stayed for the NGE, for one month, then I left. I campaigned tirelessly on the SWG forums to bring CH back. I come back when Beastmaster was implemented, and they made the Bio-Engineer portion of that tree TOO complicated, and they made the creature handling portion of beastmaster exactly like WoW. What made me angry was that wild creatures were no longer tameable. Newer players would have to spend a ton of money buying a rancor skin off a vet (IF the vet wanted to part with it) instead of being given a FAIR chance (like I was given) to own one.
Oh, and nevermind the fact that instead of growing on its own, you have to spend almost as much time grinding your pet to level 90 from scratch as you did grinding yourself to level 90. Seriously, who wants to do this?
Disgusted, I left again. Came back again later on a free 15 day trial offer. Said hi to some old friends. Never really got into the game, though. Even the auto targeting system and the game collections didn't help. I spent more time playing the stupid card game than doing anything. Crafting system was still worthless. The game was like WoW, people queuing up for dungeon runs to get this or that for better stats.
Left again, this time for awhile.
Came back a long time later, again to say hi to friends. Very little had changed. I finished my grind to Ace Pilot, which had been hanging unfinished since pre-NGE, but once that was done, everyone got bored and no one wanted to do anything in space anymore.
Came back for the last time back in December. My guild mates were a little aghast at this point that I kept coming and going, but really, I think the only reason I return is just for nostalgic purposes. I'd ride around the plains of Corellia to see if I could find a great plains stalker. Or around Dathomir to see wild rancors. Or just ride around the landscapes to see if ther are actual people around, or to see if anything has changed.
I was encouraged, time and again, to work on my collections as something to do for a character of 90 who wasn't that interested in the WoW like gear grind that now goes on in that game. Collections, eh? Well, I got that silly rattletrap pickup, but that was actually something useful. The rest of the collections... I'm sorry, but trying to kill 10,000 stormtroopers just to gain 50 more slots in my house isn't my idea of a good time. Or trying to kill 15 billion ships just for a title.
SWG has really become shallow and hollow compared to its former self, and it's because of soooooooooo many more reasons other than just the combat change.
The in game economy still doesn't exist, even though they've shut down and merged servers now. Tailors still might make money. Even Architects really don't anymore. They finally gave players the ability to own and operate droidekas, and guess what? As practical combat pets, they suck! Buffbots still exist, albeit in the cantinas. As a medic, you can buff people automatically. But buffs really don't mean that much in such a cheesy, clunky combat system which puts speed before quality.
Lastly... I tried starting a new character in one of my 'returns' to the game. To see if maybe I was missing something that the newer people in the game weren't. The grind is very long, and very boring.
I honestly don't see the appeal. But I wonder even more why people continue to stay. On Starsider, there are supposedly many guilds there dedicated to JTL, now THAT I can understand. JTL is still unchanged from the old days. But this is still just an isolated group of people.
So, in short, I left, came back for a month, left, came back, etc.
I need to stop doing this. It's like returning to a dysfunctional relationship with a partner you know is just going to keep hurting you.
Old School SWG - "I paid you 1,000,000 credits not for you to slice my Krayt weapon for me... I paid you 1,000,000 credits to give it BACK to me."
I have to agree with this guy.
I went back into the game, on a medium populated server. I didnt see many people but the game was laggy and mobs where not where I saw them on screen some NPCs still bugged. It has to be the server that is laggin since there is nothing wrong with my connection and I got 100mbit connection. I would think that they would have fixed the game in 5 year or more guess I was wrong.
Kinda feel like the game once you been around awhile gets old. Even with the new content theres not much worth doing as nothing really sells all that good anymore so nothing is really worth killing. Most the new content lately has been revisits to older stuff trying to beef it up just to leave it still kinda bland. Nyms really didnt change as much as just got alittle more added and some collections tossed in. The dead zone doesnt have anyone running it anymore whatsoever. Barely will you ever see anyone else in fighting off the zombies. Groups are getting harder to toss together and lacking the fun they use to. Crafters for the most part are completely bored and some are useless other then a few items or tapes they make. The community seems to gripe and complain more then try to work out problems and come up with new ideas. Hell i logged on the forums and you cant get threw a page without someone starting flame wars whether the OP deserved it or not. GCW is great if ppl show up. Otherwise you stand around in a city with your thumb in your. --- well you know for an hour. The system for it seems kinda off to be trueful. Gotta go SF to kill the general but up until that moment you can stay combatant. So you got ppl complainin about both sides of that issue. Theres so many that hack wall spoit and do under handed tactics in pvp that if you tried to send tickets youd be up for hours trying to write down all the names. Even with that the same ppl cheating do it day after day and never seem to get banned anymore for anything.
Most the high level stuff is pretty bland and boring as if youve played for any long period of time youve killed all thats out there enough to be either a mass murderer or animal buitcherer.
All and all the game has really been falling further and further down and with the community un willing to try to do anything to help out anyone its only getting worst. Theres still limited runs of fun but hardly enough to make me paying my subs worth it. Had serveral accounts at one time now i can barely talk myself into keeping my main account on for more then one or two monthes without serveral month breaks from the game.
Imo the absolute worst content ever coded into SWG is the legacy quest. It was rushed, repetitive, boring and broken. Now, it's probably just rushed, repetitive and boring. Remember, they did the entire NGE in 2-3 months. That's an entire game revamp, in that short amount of time. No wonder it sucked lol. Then they rushed out the legacy garbage so that people who unwittingly purchased the starter kit would have something--anything--to do in the newly "enhanced" game. What a fiasco. I found it more boring than paperwork, and more frustrating too. Heh, and I was paying for this.
I also liked the Mustafar quests--the ones that worked--especially when we could run them on the game they were built for. They were not coded with the NGE in mind, and were a ton of fun for all of us to play on pre-order. The NGE completely buggered up the dynamics of all that new content and rendered most of the quest rewards useless since they were made for specific professions that were simply erased.
Worst customer service I've seen in my life, in any industry, period.
The recurring theme I'm seeing is that people find the game too grindy today. It's been so long I don't even remember, did a skill based system really make that much of a difference? It's that or the design is really that archaic today. As that's what we always did in galaxies, everything was a huge grind. I really don't know how I did it back then, I guess it was just the thrill of playing a SW game online with lots of people. Sure my character felt like my character, at least more so than with modern games.
I just wonder if I've been looking back on pre-cu through rose tinted galsses. Would I play such a game today? I really don't know.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
To me it seems that they've just changed the nature of the grind, not the grind itself. We used to work on character development. At least there was a thrill when you unlocked that next skill box, and you got a new ability, animation and combat bonuses for your efforts. You'd also get new titles and weapons available to you as you progressed, so the grind at least had some meaningful rewards. Incidentally, this is why deleting the entire skill system was such a kick in the groin. It was the sum total of every player's accomplishments in-game--all wiped out in one patch. Astounding.
Now, the grind is still there, but it seems to consist of repeatedly killing hundreds of the same type of NPC to obtain some kind of collection prize. That's a grind any way you look at it, but the rewards seem greatly diminished.
Also, re. the rose-coloured glasses. My eyes went rosey as soon as I found myself in the Mos Eisley Cantina, but that's what the game was supposed to do--immerse me in the Star Wars universe. In that, it succeeded. The massive, ill-planned revamps unfortunately shattered this immersion: not a good plan for an MMO. Also, I'm beta testing a game that is based on the same principles as Star Wars in its original incarnation. I'm finding the skill system in this game just as rewarding as the one I enjoyed in SWG, before it was removed.
Who are you trying to kid. Good gamers still know that the new SWG is just as easy to level at. You can grind mobs 40 and 50 levels higher than yourself just like the days of old If you know the right ones . Game is junk now, you could get past the bugs and other complaints because the game was different from run of the mill mmos back then. Now its just a broken WoW with a Star Wars skin in my opinion.
I really tried to like this game myself when I went back. I tried to make myself think this game isn't so bad ...
LOL they didn't touch the Naboo legacy? I remember rolling the 3rd character (pre-9 unlocked account) and pulling hair at the naboo section, what retarded crap that was and I decided to join a grind group (on Kash at the time) until level 80 then went to do Musty then went back to Naboo for the Cobalt (sp?) quests.
If you have friends doing the pet grind on Dath, skip Naboo and do that.
When I joined the game in Jul 03, I went on a guild hunt on day 1, I joined a PvP battle on day 2. And could make meaningful contributions right away, while working on skills.
Now? Ha....
They need to open a classic server or can the whole thing....
After i read what you said, i had to think about DarkFall. Sorry for off-topic!
EvE doors
See the best doors on EvE-on!
Sorry but if that is what you expect from MMO game makers then you are one of the reasons STO is what it is.
Just because some one played the game three years ago does not by default mean they can write the definitive commentary regarding the state of the game now.
SWG still has more to offer than 90% of the POS MMOs on the market today. Not to mention is it not a theme park POS.
Did the OP do any of the heroics? How about even attempting to do the PreQuests for heroics? How about the HOTH Heroic?
Did he get a full 5pc heroic set of jewelery? Did he try all the combat profs? Did he try all the crafting professions?
I totally fail to see how 30days in any real MMO could be enough to judge it. Maybe STO since you can complete that game in three weeks.
And what if he was a crafter? Or a pilot? Or an Entertainer?
5 worthless Heroics that can be completed in under 90min and a laggy Hoth simply don't = fun. 30-days is ample time.
If SWG were as great of a game as you claim it to be, more people would be playing it - nuff said.
I left because of the lies. Oh, the lies.