PvP pre CU was basically a deck of cards, whichever side got the King would win the battle, there were things that needed to be addressed pre CU that devs never came around to fixing but instead shoved the CU and NGE upon us.
There was doctor buffs that were too strong, composite armor that had 90% resist to everything and 40% to stun, other things among that. But in most pvp battles I've been in, it was a matter of how many of us had high damage weapons (ackley powerhammer, gorax bone batons, yellow cube sonic blaster and DXR6, etc) but overall pvp was lots of fun for me, I used to log on in the morning and go to Dathomir and run into a small group of overt flagged players and go at it and pick up the banana phone to call reinforcements and the fight would go on for hours (instead of minutes in the NGE). The best part of pvp was that it happened everywhere around SWG instead of focused on Restuss and we didn't have to contact the other faction to organize a time to pvp.
In the first few months (June-November 2003), pvp was mostly based between Anchorhead and Bestine, no doctor buffs existed, no enhanced weapons existed, most of us wore bone armor and some weapons didn't even exist (like the T21) but I was one of the first master bounty hunters on Lowca and managed to get a crafted scatter pistol which 1 shotted most players.
Look on Youtube and search for videos like "lost battle of Lok" or "hellaz pvp", well basically anything that comes from Lowca. Most of the videos contains Jedi, around winter-spring 2004 pvp was at its best and around winter 2004-2005 the Jedi population had taken control of pvp and that's when it started going downhill and I migrated to just hunting Jedi with BH (like I used to after they were first unlocked in Nov/Dec 2003.
Raiding player cities (ones with player faction bases) was about the most fun I've had, we pulled an all nighter once trying to take down bases but the players of that town were there to defend it and it went back and forth all night. When the devs added those static faction bases (Naboo, Crellia, Talus) it actually hurt the use of player faction bases.
I never really enjoyed pvp in the NGE, the CU was actually pretty fun but far too short lived to really remember much.
One thing I remember about Lowca pvp as a non-combat build was building landmines and putting them all over our player built town and base. Was fun to watch the other side come charging into town and go boom, move another step and go boom again.
Originally posted by precuorbust An example of Pre-CU... You could never ONCE set foot into combat, yet be as valueble if not more so than an alpha class Jedi...By being a Doctor who set himself up to provide optimum combat buffs by buying or making the best, etc.Or by being the weaponsmith who made the best Krayt fitted weapons on the server.Or by being the best armorsmith, who made the 90% stun comp armor...Or by being an available entertainer, and giving those mind buffs...God I miss that.
Wow this sounds a lot like AoW.
Original SWG was 10X the game AoW could ever be on its best day. Especially the crafting.
An example of Pre-CU... You could never ONCE set foot into combat, yet be as valueble if not more so than an alpha class Jedi...
By being a Doctor who set himself up to provide optimum combat buffs by buying or making the best, etc.
Or by being the weaponsmith who made the best Krayt fitted weapons on the server.
Or by being the best armorsmith, who made the 90% stun comp armor...
Or by being an available entertainer, and giving those mind buffs...
God I miss that.
Wow this sounds a lot like AoW.
Original SWG was 10X the game AoW could ever be on its best day. Especially the crafting.
One of the early major faults in the Pre-CU days was, in hindsight, Doctor Buffs. It led to a lack of diversity, IMO. Sounds crazy, but here's why it did.
Buffing health wasn't the bad thing. But what it did was buff the secondary stats, like Action and more importantly, it's recovery. Action, if you remember was 1 of 2 building blocks for everything your character did in combat (the other was Mind points).
Normally, donning armor, using weapons, performing abilities, all eat at the Action and Mind points pool. Essentially more powerful actions / attacks ate huge chunks from Action & Mind pool. This was important, because in general, the more comprehensive in protection the armor was in resists, the more heavy handed weapons, all ate up great huge gobs of Action & Mind. In high resist armor's case, it slowed down the recovery of Action & Mind very noticeably if you were not buffed.
With the 90% Stun Composite, you could not even equip the full set if you were unbuffed. And even if you did, the Action & Mind recovery was terribly low.
This was supposed to be the balance of the original system. Power, protection, etc. came at a steep cost: It limited how many actions you could do in a given time because all that power balanced out with high costs.
With Doctor Buffs, you could don the heaviest armors, Composite Armor, which counted as "Heavy" compared to the other lighter stuff, and as a consequence, took less damage if it wasn't armor piercing. With the buffs, you could get custom weapons that were built for high damage, accuracy (for the optimal ranges), but at high Action & Mind costs. The buffs allowed players to spam with the heaviest, most powerful gear.
Crafters of course had to cater to the narrower demands. No longer was any armor valid outside Composite Armor, which offered the heaviest, best, most encompassing resists. Composite was essential for PVP and to a lesser extent, PVE. Ubese was light and great, but only against physical attacks like critters and such. But against anything with energy weapons? Ubese was a death sentence.
With the narrower demands, it killed off all other types of armor. No more usage of Padded Armor. No more usage of Bone Armor. No more usage of weapons that did not fit a specific parameter, i.e. Armor Piercing. Fighting even in regular clothes was completely out of the question because everyone was using Composite Armor. Where before, fighting in clothes would be a decent idea because you'd have a completely unburdened Action & Mind pool with untouched recovery rates. The lighter armors, to include Faction Armor, would have been valid for use. They had resists for certain dangers, weaknesses to others, and would have been naturally less impacting on the Action & Mind pools / recovery rate.
But with Doctor Buffs allowing the heaviest gear and unrestricted spamming with such gear and weapons, it killed diversity for the remainder of the old days.
Someone was telling me this when I was early on in my playing time in SWG's Pre-CU days. I thought my friend was smoking some good stuff and didn't believe him. But after seeing everything, knowing how the system worked, etc., he was quite correct.
All those cool little pieces of equipment you found? If it wasn't something like Composite, Laser Carbines, T-21's, or the other established few, bonafide pieces of gear... it wasn't valid for play.
This unbalance is what allowed players to solo areas & NPCs that were not supposed to be soloable.
I loved Pre-CU SWG to no end. It still is, after all these years, the one MMORPG that provided me the most fun, enjoyable title with respect to its learning curve. But the Doctor Buffs killed a huge portion of the game.
"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)
An example of Pre-CU... You could never ONCE set foot into combat, yet be as valueble if not more so than an alpha class Jedi...
By being a Doctor who set himself up to provide optimum combat buffs by buying or making the best, etc.
Or by being the weaponsmith who made the best Krayt fitted weapons on the server.
Or by being the best armorsmith, who made the 90% stun comp armor...
Or by being an available entertainer, and giving those mind buffs...
God I miss that.
Wow this sounds a lot like AoW.
Original SWG was 10X the game AoW could ever be on its best day. Especially the crafting.
One of the early major faults in the Pre-CU days was, in hindsight, Doctor Buffs.
I totally agree (only glimpsed through your reasoning, but I know what are you getting at because I had a similar view)
Doctor buffing was out of control and set an artificial standard for gears. It is kinda like a preview of what will happen to sports if there were no anti-doping agencies.
SWG pre-cu and UO are basically the holy duo of mmo's at this point, no other games have received such praise and exaltation as these two. Unfortunately for me I did not play either at the time they where at their peek so I can speak little about them.
My question is simple, what was the pvp system of old SWG, was it FFA, was there loot, could it happen any where, could you share some stories, was it even a pvp centric game?
Thanks in advance.
who praised it? not enough people to make it viable as a bussiness it seems or it would still be here.
"You have some serious mental issues you may need to seek some help for. There are others who post things, but do not post them in the way you do. Out of every person who posts crazy shit in this forum, you have some of the craziest and scariest" -FarReach
SWG pre-cu and UO are basically the holy duo of mmo's at this point, no other games have received such praise and exaltation as these two. Unfortunately for me I did not play either at the time they where at their peek so I can speak little about them.
My question is simple, what was the pvp system of old SWG, was it FFA, was there loot, could it happen any where, could you share some stories, was it even a pvp centric game?
Thanks in advance.
who praised it? not enough people to make it viable as a bussiness it seems or it would still be here.
400+K players praised it. That was a perfectly viable sub #, but SOE/LA wanted WoW #s. They didnt think it was "Star Warsy" or "Iconic" enough. So they kept dicking with it and made it worse.
The reason why it isnt here is because SOE/LA made it less viable.
Bringer of Eternal Darkness and Despair, but also a Nutritious way to start your Morning.
Stupid Nancy McIntyre said "SWG was not STAR WARZY ENOUGH" so they killed SWG and made it a WOW clone.
Pre-CU PVP? I enjoyed it, but like other poster said, it was unbalanced because of Buff and Composite gear.
Most PVP would end up in Forum rage, "OMMMMMMG> this dumb butt in his FOTM build and his buff bot and his 90% composite gear think he's so cool because he killed me and I"m a Musician!!!Q"
SWG pre-cu and UO are basically the holy duo of mmo's at this point, no other games have received such praise and exaltation as these two. Unfortunately for me I did not play either at the time they where at their peek so I can speak little about them.
My question is simple, what was the pvp system of old SWG, was it FFA, was there loot, could it happen any where, could you share some stories, was it even a pvp centric game?
Thanks in advance.
who praised it? not enough people to make it viable as a bussiness it seems or it would still be here.
400+K players praised it. That was a perfectly viable sub #, but SOE/LA wanted WoW #s. They didnt think it was "Star Warsy" or "Iconic" enough. So they kept dicking with it and made it worse.
The reason why it isnt here is because SOE/LA made it less viable.
Where do you get that 400k number? Lets be honest the CU and the NGE were just band aids to try and stop the game from bleeding subs. "Star Warsy" and "Iconic" were just ways to say "WoW is kicking our ass and we keep losing tons of players." I'm pretty sure at that point in time SOE was king of the hill for MMORPGs. Smed had to do something. Im sure LA was wondering how their cash cow IP was getting destroyed by WoW and put pressure on SOE. Smed screwed up but in his defense I'm pretty sure LA didn't want excuses and this was probably the best thing he could do to shut them up. Sadly it failed miserably.
Originally posted by Warmaker Originally posted by Burntvet Originally posted by bcbully Originally posted by precuorbust An example of Pre-CU... You could never ONCE set foot into combat, yet be as valueble if not more so than an alpha class Jedi...By being a Doctor who set himself up to provide optimum combat buffs by buying or making the best, etc.Or by being the weaponsmith who made the best Krayt fitted weapons on the server.Or by being the best armorsmith, who made the 90% stun comp armor...Or by being an available entertainer, and giving those mind buffs...God I miss that.
Wow this sounds a lot like AoW.
Original SWG was 10X the game AoW could ever be on its best day. Especially the crafting.
One of the early major faults in the Pre-CU days was, in hindsight, Doctor Buffs.
I totally agree (only glimpsed through your reasoning, but I know what are you getting at because I had a similar view)
Doctor buffing was out of control and set an artificial standard for gears. It is kinda like a preview of what will happen to sports if there were no anti-doping agencies.
A lot of the /snipped stuff were symptoms of the same problem: SOE's inability to run a game over the long term. Doc buffs, and comp armor, and all the rest were not a huge problem, UNTIL the really high number value resources rolled around and that did not happen for a year or so on all servers. SOE simply did not test things out, using equipment approaching the max values, because they didn't think about it or that those values would be hit. 3k doc buffs were de-stablizing to overall game play, so was 90% comp and 500 per tick mind poison from CMs. Had they capped the max values of that stuff at some reasonable levels, or seen the need to do so, it would have prevented a whole lot of other problems. Instead SOE did one thing after another with no thought to what the overall and long-term gameplay consequences would be. Too bad SOE has no foresight, at all.
A lot of the /snipped stuff were symptoms of the same problem: SOE's inability to run a game over the long term. Doc buffs, and comp armor, and all the rest were not a huge problem, UNTIL the really high number value resources rolled around and that did not happen for a year or so on all servers. SOE simply did not test things out, using equipment approaching the max values, because they didn't think about it or that those values would be hit. 3k doc buffs were de-stablizing to overall game play, so was 90% comp and 500 per tick mind poison from CMs. Had they capped the max values of that stuff at some reasonable levels, or seen the need to do so, it would have prevented a whole lot of other problems. Instead SOE did one thing after another with no thought to what the overall and long-term gameplay consequences would be. Too bad SOE has no foresight, at all.
To be fair I don't thik the resource system was pre-generated values - they are dynamic, unlike in most other games.
That why you see so many of those exceptional values are here 1 day and people will swoop to by those resources and gears and they will be gone the next.
It is quite difficult to test things in environment such as that.
If the resource system was like WoW where quality is static and availability doesn't fluctuate I would agree with you.
I think the dynamic resource and experimentation aspect of SWG pre-cu was that reason why SWG was loved by crafters in the first place.
Originally posted by BurntvetA lot of the /snipped stuff were symptoms of the same problem: SOE's inability to run a game over the long term. Doc buffs, and comp armor, and all the rest were not a huge problem, UNTIL the really high number value resources rolled around and that did not happen for a year or so on all servers. SOE simply did not test things out, using equipment approaching the max values, because they didn't think about it or that those values would be hit. 3k doc buffs were de-stablizing to overall game play, so was 90% comp and 500 per tick mind poison from CMs. Had they capped the max values of that stuff at some reasonable levels, or seen the need to do so, it would have prevented a whole lot of other problems. Instead SOE did one thing after another with no thought to what the overall and long-term gameplay consequences would be. Too bad SOE has no foresight, at all.
To be fair I don't thik the resource system was pre-generated values - they are dynamic, unlike in most other games.
That why you see so many of those exceptional values are here 1 day and people will swoop to by those resources and gears and they will be gone the next.
It is quite difficult to test things in environment such as that.
If the resource system was like WoW where quality is static and availability doesn't fluctuate I would agree with you.
I think the dynamic resource and experimentation aspect of SWG pre-cu was that reason why SWG was loved by crafters in the first place.
I do not disagree. My complaint is that SOE never tested the finished items with the capped or near capped values to see what the effects were. Not so much of the "how" or when those values came into play. That was a failure of testing. Had SOE had testers run around with 90% comp, 3k doc buffs, and high end CM mind poison, they would have seen how it skewed things like PvP, high end PvE, and group dynamics. (Especially on the CM mind poison thing... it was stupidly OP for a combat medic to be able to take out large PvP groups because of unblockable/unhealable mind poison AOEs.) But they didn't, and moreover did not care enough to think on how to fix things in a smart way.
I do not disagree. My complaint is that SOE never tested the finished items with the capped or near capped values to see what the effects were. Not so much of the "how" or when those values came into play. That was a failure of testing. Had SOE had testers run around with 90% comp, 3k doc buffs, and high end CM mind poison, they would have seen how it skewed things like PvP, high end PvE, and group dynamics. (Especially on the CM mind poison thing... it was stupidly OP for a combat medic to be able to take out large PvP groups because of unblockable/unhealable mind poison AOEs.) But they didn't, and moreover did not care enough to think on how to fix things in a smart way.
I think you are right in that they didn't foresaw that at all.
And I suspect that by CU they were already planning NGE behind the players backs - and are no longer concerned with those details.
The entire system rewrite has to be under development for a while - there was no way that it was ready as sudden as the announcement otherwise.
I played SWG from launch. I think PreCU PVP set itself apart from other games because it could happen anywhere at anytime and battles sometimes lasted days. I will give you an example.
The Battle Of Daeric
My Imperial character was bugged. I would pop overt for no reason. One Friday afternoon I was travelling from Coronet to Daeric. Before I took the ship there I was not overt. But when I landed at Daeric I was overt. A few rebel overt players jumped me. When I rezzed at the cloner I was still overt. That was part of the bug. Even death wouldnt clear my status. So the rebel players, who knew me and my issues, ran to the cloner and incap killed me. This means they would shoot me incapped then wait for me to stand up again before doing it all over again. They wouldnt death blow me. 3rd incap I finally died. This time I rezzed at the cloner in the imp outpost.
When I stepped out of the cloner a few imperial players saw me and asked what happened. I was full of wounds. I told them I got jumped in Daeric. The imp players also knew about my bug and were decidedly upset. So they put the call out and hundreds of imp players started showing up at the imp outpost. And all of us ran down to Daeric. No mounts or vehicles at that time.
When we hit Daeric we killed all overt rebels and they in turn called for their own back up. The battle began. It was Friday afternoon. We fought pushing back and forth through Daeric. The rebels took it back then we, in turn, took it from them. This went on for hours. Finally I got tired and decided it was time for sleep.
The next afternoon, after work, I logged in and low and behold there was another battle raging in Daeric. Or so I thought. After talking to a few imp players I found out it was the same battle. Just the players had changed. I jumped in again and after several hours logged out.
On Sunday it was still going on. It freaked me out. This was the first time I saw a PVP battle that lasted days. The people fighting didnt even know why they were fighting, they just were. Finally on Sunday evening the battle subsided. An agreement was reached. No imp player would be overt in Daeric save one, me. I was the only one allowed to be overt because of my bug.
On my server we had several notable PVP battles that lasted over a day. We even named them. The Battle of Daeric, The Theed Run, War of the Krayts (A 2 day battle that raged in the krayt graveyard), and the longest battle the Bestine Invasion. I think it lasted something like 2 months of on and off battles over a harvester near Bestine.
You will not find PVP like that in any game now. I know because I looked. Havent found anything that comes close. You could play SWG and never once enter PVP. As battles raged around you, you could be crafting, hunting, or just exploring. It was quite amazing.
Comments
PvP pre CU was basically a deck of cards, whichever side got the King would win the battle, there were things that needed to be addressed pre CU that devs never came around to fixing but instead shoved the CU and NGE upon us.
There was doctor buffs that were too strong, composite armor that had 90% resist to everything and 40% to stun, other things among that. But in most pvp battles I've been in, it was a matter of how many of us had high damage weapons (ackley powerhammer, gorax bone batons, yellow cube sonic blaster and DXR6, etc) but overall pvp was lots of fun for me, I used to log on in the morning and go to Dathomir and run into a small group of overt flagged players and go at it and pick up the banana phone to call reinforcements and the fight would go on for hours (instead of minutes in the NGE). The best part of pvp was that it happened everywhere around SWG instead of focused on Restuss and we didn't have to contact the other faction to organize a time to pvp.
In the first few months (June-November 2003), pvp was mostly based between Anchorhead and Bestine, no doctor buffs existed, no enhanced weapons existed, most of us wore bone armor and some weapons didn't even exist (like the T21) but I was one of the first master bounty hunters on Lowca and managed to get a crafted scatter pistol which 1 shotted most players.
Look on Youtube and search for videos like "lost battle of Lok" or "hellaz pvp", well basically anything that comes from Lowca. Most of the videos contains Jedi, around winter-spring 2004 pvp was at its best and around winter 2004-2005 the Jedi population had taken control of pvp and that's when it started going downhill and I migrated to just hunting Jedi with BH (like I used to after they were first unlocked in Nov/Dec 2003.
Raiding player cities (ones with player faction bases) was about the most fun I've had, we pulled an all nighter once trying to take down bases but the players of that town were there to defend it and it went back and forth all night. When the devs added those static faction bases (Naboo, Crellia, Talus) it actually hurt the use of player faction bases.
I never really enjoyed pvp in the NGE, the CU was actually pretty fun but far too short lived to really remember much.
Wow this sounds a lot like AoW.
Wow this sounds a lot like AoW.
Original SWG was 10X the game AoW could ever be on its best day. Especially the crafting.One of the early major faults in the Pre-CU days was, in hindsight, Doctor Buffs. It led to a lack of diversity, IMO. Sounds crazy, but here's why it did.
Buffing health wasn't the bad thing. But what it did was buff the secondary stats, like Action and more importantly, it's recovery. Action, if you remember was 1 of 2 building blocks for everything your character did in combat (the other was Mind points).
Normally, donning armor, using weapons, performing abilities, all eat at the Action and Mind points pool. Essentially more powerful actions / attacks ate huge chunks from Action & Mind pool. This was important, because in general, the more comprehensive in protection the armor was in resists, the more heavy handed weapons, all ate up great huge gobs of Action & Mind. In high resist armor's case, it slowed down the recovery of Action & Mind very noticeably if you were not buffed.
With the 90% Stun Composite, you could not even equip the full set if you were unbuffed. And even if you did, the Action & Mind recovery was terribly low.
This was supposed to be the balance of the original system. Power, protection, etc. came at a steep cost: It limited how many actions you could do in a given time because all that power balanced out with high costs.
With Doctor Buffs, you could don the heaviest armors, Composite Armor, which counted as "Heavy" compared to the other lighter stuff, and as a consequence, took less damage if it wasn't armor piercing. With the buffs, you could get custom weapons that were built for high damage, accuracy (for the optimal ranges), but at high Action & Mind costs. The buffs allowed players to spam with the heaviest, most powerful gear.
Crafters of course had to cater to the narrower demands. No longer was any armor valid outside Composite Armor, which offered the heaviest, best, most encompassing resists. Composite was essential for PVP and to a lesser extent, PVE. Ubese was light and great, but only against physical attacks like critters and such. But against anything with energy weapons? Ubese was a death sentence.
With the narrower demands, it killed off all other types of armor. No more usage of Padded Armor. No more usage of Bone Armor. No more usage of weapons that did not fit a specific parameter, i.e. Armor Piercing. Fighting even in regular clothes was completely out of the question because everyone was using Composite Armor. Where before, fighting in clothes would be a decent idea because you'd have a completely unburdened Action & Mind pool with untouched recovery rates. The lighter armors, to include Faction Armor, would have been valid for use. They had resists for certain dangers, weaknesses to others, and would have been naturally less impacting on the Action & Mind pools / recovery rate.
But with Doctor Buffs allowing the heaviest gear and unrestricted spamming with such gear and weapons, it killed diversity for the remainder of the old days.
Someone was telling me this when I was early on in my playing time in SWG's Pre-CU days. I thought my friend was smoking some good stuff and didn't believe him. But after seeing everything, knowing how the system worked, etc., he was quite correct.
All those cool little pieces of equipment you found? If it wasn't something like Composite, Laser Carbines, T-21's, or the other established few, bonafide pieces of gear... it wasn't valid for play.
This unbalance is what allowed players to solo areas & NPCs that were not supposed to be soloable.
I loved Pre-CU SWG to no end. It still is, after all these years, the one MMORPG that provided me the most fun, enjoyable title with respect to its learning curve. But the Doctor Buffs killed a huge portion of the game.
"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 totally agree (only glimpsed through your reasoning, but I know what are you getting at because I had a similar view)
Doctor buffing was out of control and set an artificial standard for gears. It is kinda like a preview of what will happen to sports if there were no anti-doping agencies.
who praised it? not enough people to make it viable as a bussiness it seems or it would still be here.
"You have some serious mental issues you may need to seek some help for. There are others who post things, but do not post them in the way you do. Out of every person who posts crazy shit in this forum, you have some of the craziest and scariest" -FarReach
400+K players praised it. That was a perfectly viable sub #, but SOE/LA wanted WoW #s. They didnt think it was "Star Warsy" or "Iconic" enough. So they kept dicking with it and made it worse.
The reason why it isnt here is because SOE/LA made it less viable.
Bringer of Eternal Darkness and Despair, but also a Nutritious way to start your Morning.
Games Played: Too Many
SWG existed until Lucasarts wanted a new MMO in swtor.
UO is STILL around.
Stupid Nancy McIntyre said "SWG was not STAR WARZY ENOUGH" so they killed SWG and made it a WOW clone.
Pre-CU PVP? I enjoyed it, but like other poster said, it was unbalanced because of Buff and Composite gear.
Most PVP would end up in Forum rage, "OMMMMMMG> this dumb butt in his FOTM build and his buff bot and his 90% composite gear think he's so cool because he killed me and I"m a Musician!!!Q"
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-macintyre/0/b6/533
Where do you get that 400k number? Lets be honest the CU and the NGE were just band aids to try and stop the game from bleeding subs. "Star Warsy" and "Iconic" were just ways to say "WoW is kicking our ass and we keep losing tons of players." I'm pretty sure at that point in time SOE was king of the hill for MMORPGs. Smed had to do something. Im sure LA was wondering how their cash cow IP was getting destroyed by WoW and put pressure on SOE. Smed screwed up but in his defense I'm pretty sure LA didn't want excuses and this was probably the best thing he could do to shut them up. Sadly it failed miserably.
Wow this sounds a lot like AoW.
Original SWG was 10X the game AoW could ever be on its best day. Especially the crafting.One of the early major faults in the Pre-CU days was, in hindsight, Doctor Buffs.
I totally agree (only glimpsed through your reasoning, but I know what are you getting at because I had a similar view)
Doctor buffing was out of control and set an artificial standard for gears. It is kinda like a preview of what will happen to sports if there were no anti-doping agencies.
A lot of the /snipped stuff were symptoms of the same problem: SOE's inability to run a game over the long term. Doc buffs, and comp armor, and all the rest were not a huge problem, UNTIL the really high number value resources rolled around and that did not happen for a year or so on all servers. SOE simply did not test things out, using equipment approaching the max values, because they didn't think about it or that those values would be hit. 3k doc buffs were de-stablizing to overall game play, so was 90% comp and 500 per tick mind poison from CMs. Had they capped the max values of that stuff at some reasonable levels, or seen the need to do so, it would have prevented a whole lot of other problems. Instead SOE did one thing after another with no thought to what the overall and long-term gameplay consequences would be. Too bad SOE has no foresight, at all.To be fair I don't thik the resource system was pre-generated values - they are dynamic, unlike in most other games.
That why you see so many of those exceptional values are here 1 day and people will swoop to by those resources and gears and they will be gone the next.
It is quite difficult to test things in environment such as that.
If the resource system was like WoW where quality is static and availability doesn't fluctuate I would agree with you.
I think the dynamic resource and experimentation aspect of SWG pre-cu was that reason why SWG was loved by crafters in the first place.
To be fair I don't thik the resource system was pre-generated values - they are dynamic, unlike in most other games.
That why you see so many of those exceptional values are here 1 day and people will swoop to by those resources and gears and they will be gone the next.
It is quite difficult to test things in environment such as that.
If the resource system was like WoW where quality is static and availability doesn't fluctuate I would agree with you.
I think the dynamic resource and experimentation aspect of SWG pre-cu was that reason why SWG was loved by crafters in the first place.
I do not disagree. My complaint is that SOE never tested the finished items with the capped or near capped values to see what the effects were. Not so much of the "how" or when those values came into play. That was a failure of testing. Had SOE had testers run around with 90% comp, 3k doc buffs, and high end CM mind poison, they would have seen how it skewed things like PvP, high end PvE, and group dynamics. (Especially on the CM mind poison thing... it was stupidly OP for a combat medic to be able to take out large PvP groups because of unblockable/unhealable mind poison AOEs.) But they didn't, and moreover did not care enough to think on how to fix things in a smart way.I think you are right in that they didn't foresaw that at all.
And I suspect that by CU they were already planning NGE behind the players backs - and are no longer concerned with those details.
The entire system rewrite has to be under development for a while - there was no way that it was ready as sudden as the announcement otherwise.
I played SWG from launch. I think PreCU PVP set itself apart from other games because it could happen anywhere at anytime and battles sometimes lasted days. I will give you an example.
The Battle Of Daeric
My Imperial character was bugged. I would pop overt for no reason. One Friday afternoon I was travelling from Coronet to Daeric. Before I took the ship there I was not overt. But when I landed at Daeric I was overt. A few rebel overt players jumped me. When I rezzed at the cloner I was still overt. That was part of the bug. Even death wouldnt clear my status. So the rebel players, who knew me and my issues, ran to the cloner and incap killed me. This means they would shoot me incapped then wait for me to stand up again before doing it all over again. They wouldnt death blow me. 3rd incap I finally died. This time I rezzed at the cloner in the imp outpost.
When I stepped out of the cloner a few imperial players saw me and asked what happened. I was full of wounds. I told them I got jumped in Daeric. The imp players also knew about my bug and were decidedly upset. So they put the call out and hundreds of imp players started showing up at the imp outpost. And all of us ran down to Daeric. No mounts or vehicles at that time.
When we hit Daeric we killed all overt rebels and they in turn called for their own back up. The battle began. It was Friday afternoon. We fought pushing back and forth through Daeric. The rebels took it back then we, in turn, took it from them. This went on for hours. Finally I got tired and decided it was time for sleep.
The next afternoon, after work, I logged in and low and behold there was another battle raging in Daeric. Or so I thought. After talking to a few imp players I found out it was the same battle. Just the players had changed. I jumped in again and after several hours logged out.
On Sunday it was still going on. It freaked me out. This was the first time I saw a PVP battle that lasted days. The people fighting didnt even know why they were fighting, they just were. Finally on Sunday evening the battle subsided. An agreement was reached. No imp player would be overt in Daeric save one, me. I was the only one allowed to be overt because of my bug.
On my server we had several notable PVP battles that lasted over a day. We even named them. The Battle of Daeric, The Theed Run, War of the Krayts (A 2 day battle that raged in the krayt graveyard), and the longest battle the Bestine Invasion. I think it lasted something like 2 months of on and off battles over a harvester near Bestine.
You will not find PVP like that in any game now. I know because I looked. Havent found anything that comes close. You could play SWG and never once enter PVP. As battles raged around you, you could be crafting, hunting, or just exploring. It was quite amazing.