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Been on the phone for 3 hours...Interesting....(LONG)
Ransom73
Member Posts: 227
So, I just got off the phone after about a 3 hour conversation that pretty much blew my mind. It didn't blow my mind because it was so incredulous, but because it was so obvious that it had never really occured to me before as being 'what happened'.
What is about to follow you may or may not believe, but *I* believe it as the gosphel truth. And after you read it, something is going to click just as it did with me:
As everyone knows, internal documentation and programming began on the Combat Balance in about the middle of the year 2004. In August 2004, select players (mostly corrospondents) were invited to Austin for a small gathering to review the hotly anticipated Combat Balance documentation. It didn't take long for these docs to reach outside sources. They were never officially posted anywhere 'public', but nonetheless they made their rounds to peoples hands. The reaction from the review of these changes is well documented: Everyone that read them loved them.
Feeling that they'd finally succeeded in getting it right, SOE began the task of putting these documents into code.
Things got quiet, because development continued. An internal version was created; it was rough, but it essentially did what the documents said they were to do. Keep in mind, JTL is hotly in development at this time and many questions surrounded it. Chief among them was: How would a mechanic that is twitch based actually work in an MMO for technology available at that time to the average player, as well as inherent issues with twitch gaming in an MMO environment?
Now, everyone knows that the lead dev on JTL was Jeff Freeman.
For the most part, JTL was a rousing success. Given the tech limitations, it performed about as well as can be expected. Freeman already had a reputation for his talent as a dev, and this essentially sent his star even further on the rise. JTL proved that twitch gaming in an x y z axis mechanic WOULD work in current *average* hardware that was available to the consumer. Essentially, if JTL would work on your computer, then twitch MMO would work as well was the belief.
During this time, KOTOR received wide critical and commercial success. Star Wars Battlefront was also a commercial success. In a nutshell, they made money.
Meanwhile, development of the Combat Balance code continued and made headway. As everyone knows, LA approves/approved EVERYTHING. Everything from big ticket content pushes to bug/hot fixes. The Combat Balance was shown to Lucas Arts in about December 2004 / January 2005. Keep in mind that JTL was pushed ahead of the Combat Balance (released about late October 2004).
Anyway, Lucas Arts gave it the big thumbs down. They said quite simply "Bring us KOTOR / Battlefront Online. Those should be your inspiration.". As you may or may not know, during the lifetime of an MMO after release, devs are always working on 1000s of ideas that may or may not make it into the game. Some of it is creation on whim or a fancy and the general thought is "wouldn't it be cool if we did this..". They go do it, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. More often than not it doesn't.
Because of the technological success of JTL, LA seemed to believe that twitch gaming (a la Battlefront) COULD work.
SOE's morale was crushed. They'd just spent loads of money, time, and effort into the Combat Balance, only to see it shot down. Nevertheless, SOE was in dire straits. They had to come up with something and they had to come up with something fast.
Well, that something turned out to be one of the 1000s of previously mentioned side/pet projects being worked on by Jeff Freeman: twitch combat in an MMO. Lucas Arts saw it, loved it, said go with it.
Shortly thereafter, Gordon Walton (SOETyrant) left the team before the end of his contract. One of the rumored reasons (it's never been confirmed) was that the following plan didn't sit well with him:
1) Deny everything. Say everything is fine "The Combat Balance is coming" is the mantra.
2) Promises or hints at profession revamps, questions about what players would like to see and such were intentionally used as carrots to keep interest up, and to hopefully keep players playing on the belief that it was going to happen THIS month (/nudge, /nudge, /wink, /wink).
3) What can we do NOW to the game while the NGE is development to give the impression that the now renamed Combat Upgrade is what it intended to appear to be (a renamed Combat Balance) rather than what it truly is: The beginning of the New Game Experience. What changes can we quickly and effectively make to give the impression that we've spent two years on this? (Remember, it was never publicly acknowledged that the original combat balance docs were completely scrapped, it was never publicly acknowledged why Gordon Walton left, and it was erroneously reported that Callyndral left the team to be with family (he left because he didn't agree ethically with what was happening - the same as Gordon Walton)).
This part of our memory was a little bit hazy, but if we remembered correctly, they made the movement change (the jerky stop start faster run speed) just before the CU. Diane "Tiggs" Migliaccio made the comment on the forums that this new faster movement was for upcoming combat changes that would make the game faster paced. People hated it, but SOE never changed it back.
In retrospect, what did the CU actually do?
1) It instituted timers on specials.
2) It removed the combat queue.
3) It changed armor resistances.
4) It removed 90 percent of the weapon certifications.
5) It removed class / weapon specific action restrictions.
6) Changed the buff mechanic from crafted to 'magic'
7) A few other things that I can't remember due to the number of beers I have drank during the phone call and writing this post.
The Combat Upgrade served two purposes. First, it was to prepare the game for the upcoming NGE (that followed 5 months later). Second, it was a money grab to stall the flood of cancellations as well as to bring back in old money from subscribers who had quit.
It's never been confirmed (and likely never will be) how much advance notice Tiggs or TH had. It could be assumed that Tiggs knew something was going on due to her aforementioned post about the player movement mechanics change, but what she said could have been just what the devs told her and that was that. I'm willing to lean towards that scenario; that she didn't know much, if anything.
The CU was never intended to be what it was advertised to be - it was the beginning of the NGE as the players know it be released in November of 2005.
Now, you're probably at this point thinking about "Well, what about the Trials of Obi Wan?". I'm glad you asked, because I'm going to clarify that. Development of TOOW had been in for quite some time, and an enourmous amount of money had been spent on it - too much that it couldn't NOT be released. Further, it was apart of the contract with LA that x expansions released by x time. Even further it should be noted that the NGE was developed by a very small (in terms of the whole SOE/SWG team - which was HUGE) skunkworks team. It was very hush hush at the time.
The reaction to the CU was overwhelmingly negative - and with good reason. It was imcomplete. It was 'design document level / first pass incomplete', because the first alpha state of the CU was actually the release of the NGE. The NGE wasn't coded between the release of the CU to Test Center/Live to the time it was announced. It was, believe it or not, too big. It changed too much. SOE went back to their plan mentioned above and basically gave out carrots to players (promised profession revamps, etc). "Keep them interested, keep them posting, keep them paying".
At this time, the game was hemorhaging subscriptions. Players were leaving in absolute droves. Unofficial ACTUAL SWG subscriptions totalled about 125K players, with SOE getting about 45K hits from the Station Pass. The number of active players in after the CU was aoubt 170K players, and dropping like a rock.
By this time, you should be having a /doh moment just as I did after we got off the phone and I had time to digest it all.
When you look back on it, the writing was certainly on the wall with regards to the CU and its relationship to the NGE. It doesn't even require that much abstract thought.
It's nearly 5 am locally, I've had about 14 beers from the time the convo started to this point in my post and I'm beginning to fall asleep. Anyway, I'll revist this post over the next few days and answer any questions you might have based on anything that isn't clear in the above.
Comments
I was one of the CURB alpha testers. The alpha testers who never got to test, who only saw the CURB documents, and posted on the CURB forum.
This timeline and description tracks pretty much with what I recall and what I was feeling. In retrospect, it makes great sense, because the CU introduced the level system and made it so you had to master two combat professions to get level 80, which is very much a precursor to an outright class system for character abilities.
One thing that the CU did with a vengeance was make SWG less of a virtual reality and more of a game...which tracks with LA's attitude toward it. LA never got what was appealing about SWG...it was too much of a paradigm shift for their small marketdroid brains to grasp.
I definitely think that the departure of SOE Tyrant was less than amicable, I always thought that the way it happened and SOE's reluctance to be forthcoming about it was a sure sign that this man (Gordon Walton) left because he couldn't stomach what was being done, especially after hearing some of the things that correspondants told me in private about him...how impressed they were with his bearing, his drive, and his attitude.
It's interesting how negatively people reacted to "snappy movement", the opinions I heard both in game and on the fora was that it sucked.
It's one of the things vets complain about in the NGE to this day.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
this is all back story and it doesnt give us back our game.
Actually i really could careless who did what when and how. The main point is as a long time customer i disliked most of the changes. I let my voice be heard but in a nice polite manner. It did nothing to stop all the changes SWG went through from beta to launch. It would have made more sense to leave several chosen servers alone with the old code and moved on with the new to TEST player reactions. We all know how all this turned out.....Bad for SWG and SOE/LA..
I dont care about the truths half truths and down right lies. I also dont care who was responsible for breaking the game 90% of us loved and called ours. What i do care about is the fact they know the NGE sucks and is crap just like 90% of the players who stopped playing. All i care about is how SOE and LA will fix the riff and the loss of trust in their names. I wont be a SOE player on any upcoming games based on their lack of caring about the majority of its paying customers.
This problem with the vets vs NGErs would be resolved with one simple thing. A classic server with all bugs fixed and left the freak alone with only content added. See which server has the most populations and nuke the one who doesnt appeal to the MAJORITY. The facts behind how it happend doesnt matter at all to me. What matters to me is why they wont fix it back were more poeple would come back and enjoy galaxies again.
Why wouldnt they want my money and many others who refuse to play garbage? It makes no sense why they continue to faulter and mess up SWG is beyond logic or sense. There has been to much why they cant do this and that to matter anymore. The only way SOE and LA can revive SWG and be seen in a good light would be to give us back the game they took away. We never asked for all those changes forced upon us. We asked for content bugs fixes and professions that worked .
Ive just given up on SWG and ill wait for a Game that actually offers player choices. Now a days games like WoW will start to become boring and players will seek out games that offer more options. One game soon will have all the right things and SWG will be another history lesson in what not to do to your player base. Good or Bad SWG is long dead and gone and in need of just being redeveloped into a new game. To many changes from the original game for me to care about it anymore. When it does offer the options and gameplay it once had i mat care once again. Until then it was the best and worst 3 years of gaming ive ever had..
None of the rest of it surprises me. I've been saying for years that SOE lied purposely to keep us paying by pretending to be working on things they already knew were never going to happen (like the Ranger revamp, announced months after their own internal design for NGE would have called for the elimination of that plus all the other scout classes).
So what is it, exactly, that so rocked your world about this conversation you had? Anyone who could read and count should already have known most of this for months.
C
What's funny is that I was in favor of getting a COMBAT UPGRADE to begin with. I thought the turn-based combat was slow and redundant and needed a spicing.
Twitch-based combat is a GREAT idea for an online game. You take the parts of an MMO that are great and combine them with a FPS to get the best of both worlds... Very innovative thinking by LA and SOE, really.
HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM...
The CU SUCKED. It brought in levels, took away armor, took away varied energy attacks, took away a LOT MORE than it brought in. Most of all it took away the need for doctors and weapons/armor crafting in a big way. Essentially, the CU began the death of the SWG economy. It helped grouping initially because of an error that was later "corrected" and then everyone was doing the beloved Jedi grind on top of all this. So we began to group much less, and we lost diversity in our armor, and buffs radically changed for the worse.
As I look at my keyboard here, I see well over 75 keys. Why in the world wasn't it possible to keep the varied attacks? Why was it necessary to institute a "combat leveling system"? Why couldn't we keep all of our armor?
The IDEA for the CU wasn't bad. Players use their personal "skill" to combat each other and NPCs. The combat is faster and more realistic. The implementation (like most everything else in SWG) was aweful. As usual, they took away too much only to give back too little. The things they took away are what MADE SWG what it was, the things they gave us took the game to where it is today (laughing stock of the gaming world).
CU + Hologrind + Julio Torres - Ralph Koster +Envy of WoW = Death of SWG.
Remeber the forums the old saying
IBL
cause if you didnt agree with SOE they'd lock it in 30-45 seconds flat
most of the time you could barley ,,just barley get in a
QFT IBL lol
before a mod would lock it..
then we upgraded to a IBD + screen shot
so we could post on 3rd party forums cause SONY started to outright delete entire threads
But yeha we were there , we remeber.. its good someone posts all this for the people that werent there and dont understand why to this day we vets are still here and still mad..
Miataka (+many sub variation of that)
~WoW (Kael'Thas, USA)
MiaTaka
~ RF On-line (Fire Server)
-Mia- takahashi
~SWG (Europe-chimaera)
Miataki Valeinca
~EQ 2 (everfrost)
MiaTaka Soyinka
~Second Life
I always said that LA was behind the NGE disaster.
You don't have to be an industry insider to guess that?
You just need a roughly knowledge on how companies work, in particularly franchise contracts.
When someone in SoE said that they wanted to make the game more "Starwarsy", they obviously refer to LA.
Only Lucas Arts knows what "Starwarsy" means since they created the film trylogy, not SoE.
So only LA knows if the game is "starwarsy" enough, because they set the standards as the franchise owners.
SoE understood their error, and admitted it many times, they know their businees and they know how to suck it up when they got it wrong, unfortunately with SWG they could not repair the damage done.
They lost 60% of their subscribtion base and still they won't revert the code to pre-CU (which is possible), or even make a couple of classic servers.
C'mon they did it for EQ why not doing it for SWG?
The reason they cannot do it is because EQ was their property, while Star Wars is not theirs and LA won't let them decide what to do with it.
Also SoE CANNOT tell everyone that is LA fault, that's if they want to keep credibility in the game industry and they want to keep the Star wars franchise.
But you should be able to understand the truth by yourself and give a bit more grief to LA rather than SoE, they are the decision makers.
Yes, the CU did seem all wrong. It messed up things that weren't broken and changed very few things that could have actually improved combat at that time. However, when the NGE came out it was obvious the CU was merely a precursor to it. I know of several people who were looking forward to the changes until the details were released. Suddenly things got bad.
so...
Now, I am not saying that FPS + RPG cannot be done, but what I am saying is that the above elements are going to make it tough to do. It is going to be something you need some really talented and insightful people working on to get it to work right. And do you for one second think that SOE had the people capable of doing this? They had already fired or caused the departure of all their best people -- the smart talented folks saw what was happening and jumped ship. So, they were left with idiots like Helios, and I do not think for one second that the delicate balancing act needed for a good RPG/FPS hybrid could be accomplished by these people.
So it might be a great idea for a good development house to implement from scratch. For SOE's clearly incompetent team to try to implement this on top of a very deep, already established, existing game, was doomed from the very beginning.
C
While I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, I don't subscribe to the whole lucas arts being the master minds. They might make it very difficult to make a game and get approval for certain aspects such a lore and content, it isn't like SOE can't do anything. SOE dreamed up the twich, they have a history of "revamping" their classes, combat systems and craft systems in their other titles. SOE is just as much to blame and more likely to shoulder the lions share.
I remember chatting to someone at LucasArts around April time, just after CU hit and if I can remember, other plans were in production as I remember quizzing them if it was Galaxies 2. I was told that I would have to wait and see, but the changes would be huge.
Due to NDA at that time, I couldnt' report anything back to the community. Then NGE came along after Trials Of Obi Wan. Anything to do with Star Wars games and changes etc MUST go through LucasArts, no matter what it is. Some stuff even goes to George Lucas himself. Lucas Legal are always on the ball for things like this but do I believe the OP? Maybe to some extent
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Where'd all the bioware kotor mmo rumors or bioware swg buyout rumors go?
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Battlefront was a cool game and it was an FPS, not the psuedo FPS we received from SOE. SOE delivered a poorly coded and implemented FPS style shooter and not anything remotely like the game play we saw in Battlefront. No line of sight. You could shoot through objects, houses, buildings - whole hills! Hits were determined by a random roll of the dice in the hit/no hit scripting they used in the NGE combat. To figure this out all you had to do was move when an NPC or PC shot at you to see this because their shots followed you like a homing missle. No kind of balistics physics whatsoever. I still cannot believe LA would approve of such a BS combat system as what was delivered in the NGE - because it was nothing like Battlefront.
Now, I am not saying that FPS + RPG cannot be done, but what I am saying is that the above elements are going to make it tough to do. It is going to be something you need some really talented and insightful people working on to get it to work right. And do you for one second think that SOE had the people capable of doing this? They had already fired or caused the departure of all their best people -- the smart talented folks saw what was happening and jumped ship. So, they were left with idiots like Helios, and I do not think for one second that the delicate balancing act needed for a good RPG/FPS hybrid could be accomplished by these people.
So it might be a great idea for a good development house to implement from scratch. For SOE's clearly incompetent team to try to implement this on top of a very deep, already established, existing game, was doomed from the very beginning.
C
No matter how wonderful a team they'd had, the key is they did it to an existing game. As was said back when it all went down, "dance with the one you brought." Ever watch young children play a board game or ever play a board game with young children and they are the one teaching you how to play the game? Suddenly rules change mid-game or the rule that applies to everyone else doesn't apply to the child who is dictating the rules (explaining the game). This is basically what happened with SWG, the rules of the game changed mid-game. People who were use to playing a certain type of game a certain way and were enjoying the game were suddenly given a new set of rules. Had LA/SOE titled the changes SWG2, it would have been a little different. They could have even shut down SWG saying they did not want to support two games. They could have even stuck new boxes out on the shelves of stores and either insisted everyone purchase new game or allowed those who had SWG to switch over for free simply shifting their monthly fee. New game would mean starting over. There would have been no need to offer "elder" stuff. Any time someone complained about what was lost, they could have simply said "that was a different game, it no longer exist" and people would have understood it because of the SWG2 label whether they liked it or not. Instead, they brought out a different game under the same label and tried to clear out and change the old playing pieces (and for those that don't think it is a different game, I tried to play the current game on my new computer using the original disks and all I kept getting was "error"...it didn't know WHAT to do with what I was giving it to "update"). Imagine playing Monopoly for years and suddenly someone comes to you and says that game is being changed so they take your old board and slap new properties over some of the old properties, cut off some of the properties, take away some pieces, give you some new pieces, switch out some of the cards, give you a new set of rules, and, because you've been playing the game for so long, they give you an extra piece that says "elder" and give you an exception to one of the rules. Or better yet, they tell you that because people seem to like card games better than board games, Monopoly is now a card game then they take away your version of Monopoly and hand you a deck of cards with pictures of some of the things that were in Monopoly. Sure some people will say "great! I always liked card games better" but a lot of people will say "if I wanted to play a card game, I would have bought a card game."
What a self serving story we have here my fellow forum members. I need not comment on the source in this situation it should be damn obvious to all members of this forum. I will say this that the JTL expansion was not the critical success it is being painted to be. The reason that its technical merit was even considered when the idea of the NGE was spawned had far less to do with the fact that is some major software break through, and more to do with the fact that it was available. Not trying to be a jerk here, but if I had a twitch based engine sitting on the shelf, and I needed a twitch based engine I would be inclined to reuse what I already had. Why not it saves money.
Send me a forum mail if you like I will get your handle into the underground forum if you like. Raph is already a member and you will probabally find a more interested audience. Personally I am still not sure I liked the pet nameing system. I was one of the few proud who could never get their damned pets to name. Cool idea though.
This is how the FPS combat in SWG should have been.
Battlefront II Combat
This is what we got instead.
NGE Combat <<<< Beta Footage
FPS can be used for ranged combat in an MMORPG and it should be used instead of the lock on target BS we see in games like SWG and Tabula Rasa and other so called FPS MMORPG's. Planetside is a MMORPG/FPS and it was a great game that never got the chance to be more then it could have been because SOE stopped supprting it and the pops dropped like a rock. If SOE had listened to what some Planetside players were asking for like real urban combat, randomly generated continent/planet maps and such, Planetside would be going strong today. Planetside is still one of my all time favorite games I ever played on the internet and I really wish a game company would take the basic premise that is Planetside and make us a new Planetside only better!
LOL! Here is another example of that great NGE Combat!
NGE Combat SWG - No LOS - never miss shooting. OMG it was so exciting! ::dies laughing::
Another rambling post citing "unconfirmed rumors" and sources without names, blah blah blah. Unless SOE itself, or all these "friend of a friend of my uncle" type people cited by everyone and there brother but never named, come out openly and confirm/deny, noone knows a damn thing about what went on inside the corporation. They only know what happened from an outsider's point of view, and add their personal opinions in as "fact".
Sure, some of it tracks, but most of it is speculative hogwash.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
That's all fine and dandy about the past and all. We've all speculated in similar ways. I want to know about right now. WTF is going on right now? Ask you're contact that question. That is the only news anyone here cares about.
If, as SOE has sort of characterized, they made the CU expecting it to be a hit, and then after it flopped magnificently (but within a few days of launching, which is where it becomes hard to believe) they started work on the NGE... if they never were sure the NGE would even come out, or when... if they only told a few devs, just in case it ended up not working, to avoid getting people's hopes up... if, as a result, devs were honestly working on and making posts about things like rangers and CH without truly knowing what was going to happen... if, as I say, all those things we have been told were actually true, then SOE was merely incompetent.
If, on the other hand, the timeline is more like what the OP says, more like what most of us have suspected -- that the CU was never really intended to be anything at all other than a stop-gap... that they always knew they were never going to keep the profs they were talking about "revamping... that most of what they did and said on the forums from Feb or so until the Nov NGE announcement was all smoke and mirrors meant purposely to deceive us and trick us into paying them more money when they knew that we would stop doing so if only we knew what was going on... if, as I say, all those things we suspect, are in fact true, then SOE is not merely incompetent, but duplicitous and highly unethical.
The exact timeline of events is necessary to know, before we can know whether they were purposely being unethical, or merely bumbling and incompetent. Most of us on this vet forum suspect the former (unethical)... but so far there is no real hard proof of it because we don't know for sure what the exact timeline was. If the OP is correct, then this lends strength to the "evil empire" theory.
C
Insider??
Get back on the phone and ask the guy if we have any chance of seeing a classic server.
You aren't giving us any REAL news here. I appreciate it for the sake of People who don't know.
It helps them to understand, but come on, 3 hours and you didn't ask the most important question to us vets?
Must have been the beers clouding your mind. WAKE UP!!
Hornswaggle. This big clandestine agenda to institure the NGE without the public knowing. Like it's the Kennedy assasination or something. Anyone who read the boards new even before JTL launched that 'sweeping changes' were imminent. All you needed to get clued in as to what was coming was the GCW 'upgrade' that went live in jan 05.
The only reason there is controversy around the launch of the NGE is because is just plain sucked. And they knew it sucked. But they launched it anyway with a bunch of other swg crap to cash in on the media attention generated by EP3. The mass exodus from the game is a response to the poor gameplay that swg now offered. Sure the betrayal of trust and unethical business practices had something to do with it, and will prevent alot of people from purchasing sony products in the future, but it was the NGE itself that caused the 'greatest game ever' to implode.