SWG is by no means the ultimate Jedi experience... that's what I'm hoping the Force Unleashed will be... speaking of which, anyone know anything about character progression in it?
I think the KOTOR games are the ultimate jedi experience (so far)
Force Unleashed character progression? there probably isn't any. Im guessing it is just console raped,dumbed down game for kiddies. I've seen some video where the darth vaders "apprentice" pulls stardestroyer to ground so it crashed LOL. Why is he still apprentice? Even the emperor can't pull that kind of crap of his sleeves and he is suppose to be the most powerfull sith around ??
I think they would have been much better off with no jedi. The fact is, once they allowed jedi in, it was inevitable people would rebel against perma-death. I agree with others here who think some small force sensitive perk should have been the most a player could attain.
I think they would have been much better off with no jedi. The fact is, once they allowed jedi in, it was inevitable people would rebel against perma-death. I agree with others here who think some small force sensitive perk should have been the most a player could attain.
Koster was faced with an insoluable problem: to be true to the lore, Jedi need to be very powerful. Also to be true to the lore, there shouldn't be any Jedi about at all between the Battles of Yavin and Hoth. The game is an MMO that really can't accomodate a very powerful playable class of characters.
Lucas Arts, though, thinks (and this is not totally unreasonable) that Jedi = sales.
So what to do? The timeframe of the game is locked in ferrocrete. Jedi don't belong in this time frame. But you want to sell units. You want to use every concept you can grasp to make the game a financial success.
This really is a gordian knot that has no easy answers. You have two diametrically opposed groups of players who are both screaming in your ears, and there's no easy way out. Permadeath was thought to be the solution, but it didn't please one very vocal group. Or the marketing drones.
The real solution is to set the game in a different time frame, but the catch of course is that the selected time frame gives you the opportunity to play up the GCW at its height. To do it right, you need to deprive yourself of playable Jedi.
It's Kobiashi Maru time, folks. The No-Win scenario.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
In my opinion, including jedi as a playable "class" was one of the worst decisions they made.
It was not in align of the whole star wars story, and in addition, the holo grinding initiated a whole chain of changes which caused the game to become unbalanced and gamers to become frustrated.
Well, I find myself both somewhat in agreement and somewhat in disagreement with a few points made in this thread, so here goes:
1) I disagree with the whole "immersion factor" people like to bring up so frequently regarding Jedi. Much as I hate to bring up Ep1 for quoting canon, both Anakin and Luke were both found by fortune and coincidence on an outlier system, making the "there were no Jedi in this timeframe" arguement more like speculation. It would be possible, if not altogether likely, that there were potential scores of force sensitive persons throughout the galaxy that had been missed -or were born after- the initial purging, and it's just as likely after getting rid of the established Jedi order the Emperor would've gone onto other things, like exerting control over the galaxy, rather than try to have every man, woman, and child tested from that point on. After all, quite a few of the novels -whether you take those to be canon or not- based in the post ep6 timeframe have introduced new Jedi.
2) Jedi is a drawing point of the whole Star Wars mythos; it's what makes Star Wars truly unique from the rest of the sci-fi genre. Since none of us can rewrite history and see how well (or badly) SWG would've done w/o Jedi ever introduced so it's all pointless speculation.
3) However, once they added (or included) the plethora of force sensitive NPCs -what? pretty much the entire NE section of Dant, most of Dath, plus the random DJMs, DJKs, DJAs and others running around- it would've been hard to justify all of them w/o including Jedi as playable one way or another.... at least imo.
My simple fixes- 4 years after the fact....
1) A change should've been made to the whole visibility/PBS - as in, the PBS should've been introduced in it's current form, with the focus on pvp bounties and an option to allow a person to also flag Jedi in the same manner, rather than making it BH/Jedi wars like it ended up being pre-NGE. In addition, guild, group and same faction NPCs should've never given vis, allowing jedi to group with trusted friends rather than making it a forced solo experience or constant gankfest.
2) Jedi should've never been a part of the GCW. They almost had to be an alpha class, but it made no sense to make them one then place them at the frontlines of pvp -both GCW and BH, as it constantly forced them to attempt to institute some lame attempt at balancing an alpha class with the regular classes. Jedi v Jedi, Imp v Reb with visibility inside major cities sending out a NPC death squad, as well as a system message to all overt members of the opposite faction -and flagging the offending Jedi overt for the duration- should've taken care of most of the issues with staport dueling. Locking the /duel command for Jedi outside the enclaves or force sensitive POIs should've taken care of the rest.
3) Permadeath should've been kept around, though I would've liked a small change to the system. Make 5 deaths mean permadeath, but allow it to decay by 1 death a month for active accounts, allowing people the option to simply forego logging in their Jedi for a little while if they wanted to keep it safe. Permadeath as it was was a bad mechanic in a game that had as many issues as SWG did at launch anyways, this would've kept the complaints about LD-deaths to a minimum, and would've given reasons for people to keep their Jedi out of game for periods of time to avoid losing them.
The main reasons for these changes is it would've kept Jedi from being the main focal point of the pvp "pwnzor" crowd and made it more friendly to those who simply wanted to be a Jedi, whether for just RP or whatever other reason, without punishing them unduly. It might just have allowed the devs to put more time into updates and content that didn't revolve around trying to balance Jedi w/ BHs (and maybe I'm bitter, but that's exactly how I remember a lot of pre-CU updates going).
Probably some flaws with the above idea, but it's a general paraphrasing of a post I made in the Jedi forums a loooooong time ago that got flamed mercilessly by the pvp fanatics, and I never really got around to fleshing it out much more than this. Other than the above, I would've been fine if SWG had remained Jedi free.....
In the long run I feel this much, just Jedi being Alpha alone was the main fault with the whole system....
See we can talk about this untill we are blue in the face, the fault wasn't that Jedi was in the game BUT that Jedi was Alpha. Granted that is my view on it, and I do believe the game would have been better off without Jedi being around at all.... Still you just cannot have a game that is set up where you are not playing the "Big Hero" but then have a system in place that allows you to do that.
Not only that but some of you touched up on it very well, if Jedi wasn't put in there would have been screaming and yelling. When it was in and Alpha there was well... Screaming and yelling....
And not to insult the MMO Player Base, however Jedi shows one of the big underlining faults with MMO Players and even Dev's as a whole. The Players want as much power as they can get and little risk in having that power, and on the other side the Dev's never find a gray area or put their foot down and say "no".
Really having an Alpha Class in the game alone was Pandora's Box opened. We saw what happened to the game thanks to it... Truth be told I believe part of the NGE push was to get Alpha Jedi out of the game. Again that is just my view on it.
I think that first off people needed to realize that this was a game that anyone with $30 and a connection could play. If they wanted to role play in a tightly controlled setting, they should have stuck with pen and paper to be honest. The second bit is to realize that all Jedi are not uber. Sure the ones we saw in the movies were powerful but one needs to keep in mind any of those characters could have (and did) cut through whole groups of regular Jedi. Also you need to keep in mind was that without Jedi, Star Wars is just a really crappy and improbable scifi setting. And lastly one should consider that their $10 a month is the same as everyone else's. If you get special treatment over others, they'll just take their $10 and leave you alone on an empty server to be at one with your uberness.
tl;dr what he said:
Originally posted by MikeMB
See we can talk about this untill we are blue in the face, the fault wasn't that Jedi was in the game BUT that Jedi was Alpha.
Alpha jedi with perma death was the best idea,with holo grind,some people had to do all 24 proffs to become jedi.Soo there would only be afew jedi around .
One thing about Star Wars that people don't get it that it isn't Science Fiction, it's fantasy with a Science Fiction skin.
You can call BSG, or Trek, or B5, or Stargate SF with fantasy elements, but SW is the other way around. Especially before Lucas screwed up everything with the midichlorian crap, which attempted an SFish explanation of something that was mysticism (the Force). Honestly, it was better to keep it that way and not try to explain the Force in any sort of materialistic way.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Well, I find myself both somewhat in agreement and somewhat in disagreement with a few points made in this thread, so here goes: 1) I disagree with the whole "immersion factor" people like to bring up so frequently regarding Jedi. Much as I hate to bring up Ep1 for quoting canon, both Anakin and Luke were both found by fortune and coincidence on an outlier system, making the "there were no Jedi in this timeframe" arguement more like speculation. It would be possible, if not altogether likely, that there were potential scores of force sensitive persons throughout the galaxy that had been missed -or were born after- the initial purging, and it's just as likely after getting rid of the established Jedi order the Emperor would've gone onto other things, like exerting control over the galaxy, rather than try to have every man, woman, and child tested from that point on. After all, quite a few of the novels -whether you take those to be canon or not- based in the post ep6 timeframe have introduced new Jedi. 2) Jedi is a drawing point of the whole Star Wars mythos; it's what makes Star Wars truly unique from the rest of the sci-fi genre. Since none of us can rewrite history and see how well (or badly) SWG would've done w/o Jedi ever introduced so it's all pointless speculation.
Exsecly and thats why thay sould have never been a playable class, ofcourse a few jedi can be around, but as live events and as npc caracters in misions, that way it would have been far more realistic, whitout taking jedi out of star wars.
But unfourtantly the cry babys won and the devs gave more and more devolpment time intro Jedi until it became to much and the whole galaxie had more Jedi running around then regular folks, i think it was a bad idea to put in Jedi even whit perma death, why? Cuz people have whined so much that devs were almost forced to remove it anyhow and then make jedi more and more accsesable to other players.
If there was no Jedi as playable then people would have never whined, sure few people would have said "Would it not be cool to be able to play a jedi yourself!!!!" or "Why arent Jedi a playable proffesion?"
But at least we would have an army of Sw fans to back that up.
Playing:World of Warcraft. Played:Lord of the Rings Online, Starwars Galaxies. Tried:Starwars the Old Republic, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, Vanguard, Age of Conan, Aion.
Every last response on this thread reflects a gamer's perspective. The problem is, the perspective of gamers is insignificant compared to the power of Mammon. Jedi were in this game as the central point of the marketing strategy, to hell with what constitutes good gaming. You're dealing with the Ferengi slime of Lucas Arts here...who see you all as children to be condescended to and with pockets that need to be picked. The magic name "Star Wars" isn't as much magic without "Jedi" to sell the bantha poodoo in a box. The original Jedi plan, with perma death (three deaths and you start all over from scratch) would have kept the population down. Of course, it would have also frustrated the hell out of the asshat "Pwnzor the n00b with saber" and "duel me!" crowds...the groups that Lucas Arts thought constituted the entire player base. Serious RPers LOVED permadeath because it reinforced roleplay...that of the Force sensitive in hiding from an opressive Empire that would hunt them at every turn. At least they had game mechanisms that had a seriously ANH/ESB feel to them.
I thought the original "mechanics" once you were a Jedi were spot on (maybe not how you became one). There was perma-death, and there was always the "saber tef." Use your powers in public, and chances are you wouldn't make it out of there alive. That combined with the bounty hunting system would've kept the majority of people not deserving Jedi from rollin a Jedi.
It would've kept the feeling of awe as well. When you first saw a Jedi, back when there were 10 or less on the server, it was something. It was also a big thing when our guild leader became a Jedi Knight. He was one of the few (he also never ebayed his account, making it even more rare!) and having him in the fight almost always turned the tide of the battle. (Indeed, the guild was mainly crafters until he was a Jedi, caused us to head out there and engage in some fun pvp.)
This is why (while not neccessarily the right forum) I place the root of the game's problems with Jedi at publish 9. Switching to the village uber-grind, and also earlier permadeath was removed, there was no longer any drawback to being a Jedi. A small XP loss sure, but it could be made up, and you hunted smart.
SWG is by no means the ultimate Jedi experience... that's what I'm hoping the Force Unleashed will be... speaking of which, anyone know anything about character progression in it?
I think the KOTOR games are the ultimate jedi experience (so far)
Force Unleashed character progression? there probably isn't any. Im guessing it is just console raped,dumbed down game for kiddies. I've seen some video where the darth vaders "apprentice" pulls stardestroyer to ground so it crashed LOL. Why is he still apprentice? Even the emperor can't pull that kind of crap of his sleeves and he is suppose to be the most powerfull sith around ??
Actually....
Still as Anakin Skywalker he did something VERY similar. Palpatine was so powerful he could create massive storms just by a force of will that could devestate entire planets.
So in the Star Wars universe, when it came to the strongest of Jedis, these things were not inconceivable. It would wreck and exhaust them in the middle of such a feat, but it was done.
It's pretty lame to see every other player playing a Jedi. I think they should have kept Jedi an alpha class... made them playable from the start... but with a time limit for each month... say a player could only play their Jedi character 24 hours a month. You might see a lot of Jedi running around at the beginning of each month but with this system you would generally see less Jedi.
I think this is how they should have handled Jedi... how do you think they should have handled them?
doesn't work.
Players start whining that they pay 24/7 and want to play THEIR chars 24/7 if they like.
Alpha classes don't work in PVP. PVE perhaps, but not PVP.
You think "hey, I'm gonna go for jedi and I pwn everyone".
Guess what? Everyone thought of that and is wielding a glowrod.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Comments
I think the KOTOR games are the ultimate jedi experience (so far)
Force Unleashed character progression? there probably isn't any. Im guessing it is just console raped,dumbed down game for kiddies. I've seen some video where the darth vaders "apprentice" pulls stardestroyer to ground so it crashed LOL. Why is he still apprentice? Even the emperor can't pull that kind of crap of his sleeves and he is suppose to be the most powerfull sith around ??
Preferred option - no player Jedi at all, period.
Secondary preference - Jedi alpha class but permadeath.
I think they would have been much better off with no jedi. The fact is, once they allowed jedi in, it was inevitable people would rebel against perma-death. I agree with others here who think some small force sensitive perk should have been the most a player could attain.
Lucas Arts, though, thinks (and this is not totally unreasonable) that Jedi = sales.
So what to do? The timeframe of the game is locked in ferrocrete. Jedi don't belong in this time frame. But you want to sell units. You want to use every concept you can grasp to make the game a financial success.
This really is a gordian knot that has no easy answers. You have two diametrically opposed groups of players who are both screaming in your ears, and there's no easy way out. Permadeath was thought to be the solution, but it didn't please one very vocal group. Or the marketing drones.
The real solution is to set the game in a different time frame, but the catch of course is that the selected time frame gives you the opportunity to play up the GCW at its height. To do it right, you need to deprive yourself of playable Jedi.
It's Kobiashi Maru time, folks. The No-Win scenario.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Siobabble, you bring up excellent points!
I agree that the situation was untenable from the beginning with the different player bases and marketing forces out there.
It really is a shame, and I think you are right on all counts.
In hindsight, It probably would have been for the best just to set it in a different time frame.
In my opinion, including jedi as a playable "class" was one of the worst decisions they made.
It was not in align of the whole star wars story, and in addition, the holo grinding initiated a whole chain of changes which caused the game to become unbalanced and gamers to become frustrated.
Well, I find myself both somewhat in agreement and somewhat in disagreement with a few points made in this thread, so here goes:
1) I disagree with the whole "immersion factor" people like to bring up so frequently regarding Jedi. Much as I hate to bring up Ep1 for quoting canon, both Anakin and Luke were both found by fortune and coincidence on an outlier system, making the "there were no Jedi in this timeframe" arguement more like speculation. It would be possible, if not altogether likely, that there were potential scores of force sensitive persons throughout the galaxy that had been missed -or were born after- the initial purging, and it's just as likely after getting rid of the established Jedi order the Emperor would've gone onto other things, like exerting control over the galaxy, rather than try to have every man, woman, and child tested from that point on. After all, quite a few of the novels -whether you take those to be canon or not- based in the post ep6 timeframe have introduced new Jedi.
2) Jedi is a drawing point of the whole Star Wars mythos; it's what makes Star Wars truly unique from the rest of the sci-fi genre. Since none of us can rewrite history and see how well (or badly) SWG would've done w/o Jedi ever introduced so it's all pointless speculation.
3) However, once they added (or included) the plethora of force sensitive NPCs -what? pretty much the entire NE section of Dant, most of Dath, plus the random DJMs, DJKs, DJAs and others running around- it would've been hard to justify all of them w/o including Jedi as playable one way or another.... at least imo.
My simple fixes- 4 years after the fact....
1) A change should've been made to the whole visibility/PBS - as in, the PBS should've been introduced in it's current form, with the focus on pvp bounties and an option to allow a person to also flag Jedi in the same manner, rather than making it BH/Jedi wars like it ended up being pre-NGE. In addition, guild, group and same faction NPCs should've never given vis, allowing jedi to group with trusted friends rather than making it a forced solo experience or constant gankfest.
2) Jedi should've never been a part of the GCW. They almost had to be an alpha class, but it made no sense to make them one then place them at the frontlines of pvp -both GCW and BH, as it constantly forced them to attempt to institute some lame attempt at balancing an alpha class with the regular classes. Jedi v Jedi, Imp v Reb with visibility inside major cities sending out a NPC death squad, as well as a system message to all overt members of the opposite faction -and flagging the offending Jedi overt for the duration- should've taken care of most of the issues with staport dueling. Locking the /duel command for Jedi outside the enclaves or force sensitive POIs should've taken care of the rest.
3) Permadeath should've been kept around, though I would've liked a small change to the system. Make 5 deaths mean permadeath, but allow it to decay by 1 death a month for active accounts, allowing people the option to simply forego logging in their Jedi for a little while if they wanted to keep it safe. Permadeath as it was was a bad mechanic in a game that had as many issues as SWG did at launch anyways, this would've kept the complaints about LD-deaths to a minimum, and would've given reasons for people to keep their Jedi out of game for periods of time to avoid losing them.
The main reasons for these changes is it would've kept Jedi from being the main focal point of the pvp "pwnzor" crowd and made it more friendly to those who simply wanted to be a Jedi, whether for just RP or whatever other reason, without punishing them unduly. It might just have allowed the devs to put more time into updates and content that didn't revolve around trying to balance Jedi w/ BHs (and maybe I'm bitter, but that's exactly how I remember a lot of pre-CU updates going).
Probably some flaws with the above idea, but it's a general paraphrasing of a post I made in the Jedi forums a loooooong time ago that got flamed mercilessly by the pvp fanatics, and I never really got around to fleshing it out much more than this. Other than the above, I would've been fine if SWG had remained Jedi free.....
In the long run I feel this much, just Jedi being Alpha alone was the main fault with the whole system....
See we can talk about this untill we are blue in the face, the fault wasn't that Jedi was in the game BUT that Jedi was Alpha. Granted that is my view on it, and I do believe the game would have been better off without Jedi being around at all.... Still you just cannot have a game that is set up where you are not playing the "Big Hero" but then have a system in place that allows you to do that.
Not only that but some of you touched up on it very well, if Jedi wasn't put in there would have been screaming and yelling. When it was in and Alpha there was well... Screaming and yelling....
And not to insult the MMO Player Base, however Jedi shows one of the big underlining faults with MMO Players and even Dev's as a whole. The Players want as much power as they can get and little risk in having that power, and on the other side the Dev's never find a gray area or put their foot down and say "no".
Really having an Alpha Class in the game alone was Pandora's Box opened. We saw what happened to the game thanks to it... Truth be told I believe part of the NGE push was to get Alpha Jedi out of the game. Again that is just my view on it.
I think that first off people needed to realize that this was a game that anyone with $30 and a connection could play. If they wanted to role play in a tightly controlled setting, they should have stuck with pen and paper to be honest. The second bit is to realize that all Jedi are not uber. Sure the ones we saw in the movies were powerful but one needs to keep in mind any of those characters could have (and did) cut through whole groups of regular Jedi. Also you need to keep in mind was that without Jedi, Star Wars is just a really crappy and improbable scifi setting. And lastly one should consider that their $10 a month is the same as everyone else's. If you get special treatment over others, they'll just take their $10 and leave you alone on an empty server to be at one with your uberness.
tl;dr what he said:
http://mmo-hell.blogspot.com/
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/rejad
alpha jedi was swg's biggest selling point
i think u mikemb are just upset cuz you couldn't get jedi like the rest of us. not our fault.
Alpha jedi with perma death was the best idea,with holo grind,some people had to do all 24 proffs to become jedi.Soo there would only be afew jedi around .
Jedi shouldve stayed a locked class and along with permadeath if hunted down by Vader, enuf said..
One thing about Star Wars that people don't get it that it isn't Science Fiction, it's fantasy with a Science Fiction skin.
You can call BSG, or Trek, or B5, or Stargate SF with fantasy elements, but SW is the other way around. Especially before Lucas screwed up everything with the midichlorian crap, which attempted an SFish explanation of something that was mysticism (the Force). Honestly, it was better to keep it that way and not try to explain the Force in any sort of materialistic way.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Exsecly and thats why thay sould have never been a playable class, ofcourse a few jedi can be around, but as live events and as npc caracters in misions, that way it would have been far more realistic, whitout taking jedi out of star wars.
But unfourtantly the cry babys won and the devs gave more and more devolpment time intro Jedi until it became to much and the whole galaxie had more Jedi running around then regular folks, i think it was a bad idea to put in Jedi even whit perma death, why? Cuz people have whined so much that devs were almost forced to remove it anyhow and then make jedi more and more accsesable to other players.
If there was no Jedi as playable then people would have never whined, sure few people would have said "Would it not be cool to be able to play a jedi yourself!!!!" or "Why arent Jedi a playable proffesion?"
But at least we would have an army of Sw fans to back that up.
Playing: World of Warcraft.
Played: Lord of the Rings Online, Starwars Galaxies.
Tried: Starwars the Old Republic, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, Vanguard, Age of Conan, Aion.
I thought the original "mechanics" once you were a Jedi were spot on (maybe not how you became one). There was perma-death, and there was always the "saber tef." Use your powers in public, and chances are you wouldn't make it out of there alive. That combined with the bounty hunting system would've kept the majority of people not deserving Jedi from rollin a Jedi.
It would've kept the feeling of awe as well. When you first saw a Jedi, back when there were 10 or less on the server, it was something. It was also a big thing when our guild leader became a Jedi Knight. He was one of the few (he also never ebayed his account, making it even more rare!) and having him in the fight almost always turned the tide of the battle. (Indeed, the guild was mainly crafters until he was a Jedi, caused us to head out there and engage in some fun pvp.)
This is why (while not neccessarily the right forum) I place the root of the game's problems with Jedi at publish 9. Switching to the village uber-grind, and also earlier permadeath was removed, there was no longer any drawback to being a Jedi. A small XP loss sure, but it could be made up, and you hunted smart.
I think the KOTOR games are the ultimate jedi experience (so far)
Force Unleashed character progression? there probably isn't any. Im guessing it is just console raped,dumbed down game for kiddies. I've seen some video where the darth vaders "apprentice" pulls stardestroyer to ground so it crashed LOL. Why is he still apprentice? Even the emperor can't pull that kind of crap of his sleeves and he is suppose to be the most powerfull sith around ??
Actually....
Still as Anakin Skywalker he did something VERY similar. Palpatine was so powerful he could create massive storms just by a force of will that could devestate entire planets.
So in the Star Wars universe, when it came to the strongest of Jedis, these things were not inconceivable. It would wreck and exhaust them in the middle of such a feat, but it was done.
doesn't work.
Players start whining that they pay 24/7 and want to play THEIR chars 24/7 if they like.
Alpha classes don't work in PVP. PVE perhaps, but not PVP.
You think "hey, I'm gonna go for jedi and I pwn everyone".
Guess what? Everyone thought of that and is wielding a glowrod.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"