Well, I'd sure play a game based on the SWG pre-CU/NGE - just because everybody talks so good about those times.
But the present day SWG does need the SW part (answering to your topic question) - if it wasn't SW, I'd have quit by the 3rd day of the trial (I'm already 4 months now! )
How do you make quests non-linear? I would like to hear your suggestions, because I honestly don't know how you make quests non-linear. Yeah, what they could do is give you an option on what quest to take, or what objectives to do (like a moral choice), but other than that I don't see how they can make non-linear quests. Hrm. You just pointed out why there shouldn't be instances in SWG - the loot aspect of it. Unless the loot is worth something to the artisan to craft it with, it's going to decrease the role of artisans in any particular given game.
Question: How to make quests non-linear?
Answer: Multi-branches.
What do I mean? A simple example...
(Using SWG as the game, and if there are a quest that is multi-branches, it would be like this), you're a BH, and you just taken a mission (or a pure quest, speaking to an informant/employer) to hunt down a thug that did wrong against a certain someone. As you investigate, and hunting down your target, you start to get a bit more information to the quest, and it gives questions and doubts to the validity of the mission. So you found your target, and there should be a selection of action that you can take here:
1.) attack the target
2.) speak to the target
Then even after speaking you can either
1.) attack
2.) leave
And if you choose the former (attack), you get into the combat sequence, and when the person has 10% or less health, you can't continue attack for a while and the person start to speak to you about his side of the story... Then you have the choice of:
1.) siding with him (which changes the goal of the quests)
2.) kill him and receive the original reward promised
3.) leave him be (which cancels the quests, and others can take up the quests....)
There are ways to make it more detail, and I haven't spent enough time to think about the all possibilities yet, but yes, quests can be non-linear through multi-branches.
The only one I remember that was from the RotW there is an arena with spiders and after 3 round a wookie to kill, and after you defeat him until like 20% -ish health, he told you if you don't kill him then ... (I forgot all the detail of it, but I remember that if you choose not to kill him, you get to do quests from the opposite tribe of wookies or something like that... it's being 2 + years since I touch SWG and I don't remember every detail now...)
So if such system are expanded upon, then quests will not be linear like now, and with given the ability to take different path, you get different results and affect the game world little by little, then it would accompany the sandbox system and enhance players' abilities to forge the game-world. (Such system can even be expanded to include player mission into the mechanics.)
The only one I remember that was from the RotW there is an arena with spiders and after 3 round a wookie to kill, and after you defeat him until like 20% -ish health, he told you if you don't kill him then ... (I forgot all the detail of it, but I remember that if you choose not to kill him, you get to do quests from the opposite tribe of wookies or something like that... it's being 2 + years since I touch SWG and I don't remember every detail now...)
There was one mission I remember. It wasn't branching like your talking about but you had a few choices of what to say to this criminal contact and if you messed it up he'd realise you weren't the real contact and wouldn't give you the next bit of information. Part of Cry of Alderaan 3 maybe. Still it showed that conversation options with branchs were possible in the game engine.
(I hope this thread doesn't get closed because I happen to mention the emu team) I was wondering why we like Star Wars Galaxies so much. Thinking back on it, everything Star Wars Galaxies was, wasn't really directly tied into Star Wars at all. Sure, there were Imperials and Rebels in the initial release in the game, but these two forces could be replaced by anything. They are variables like x and y. Good and evil, dictatorship over democracy. Same thing with the planets - they're simply variables within the controlled context of George Lucas and the Expanded Universe. Take a look at the basic professions: scout, entertainer, medic, artisan, brawler, and marksman. Do any of these exist only in the Star Wars universe? No. None of them are can be copywrited. Sure, other than human, the other playable species in the game are copywritten, but anyone can design new races. It doesn't take a genius to do this. You have to remember that in the initial release of the game, they didn't even create the content for Jedi. Then I kept thinking about MMORPGs. I do have this 'ultimate idea' for a MMORPG that is basically real life sped up 1000 times faster (think The Sims + Civilization), but I know realistically this would never happen in my lifetime. So I've been thinking what kind of MMORPG I would like. And a lot of the things I want in a MMORPG are basically pre-CU SWG, with some slight variations. And then I kept thinking about the emulator teams out there trying to make their best version of pre-CU. Because this is Star Wars, they cannot anything to make any money out of this. And then I kept thinking about how many people are bitching about SoE, including me. Let's just face the facts: THEY WILL NEVER RE-MAKE PRE-CU SWG. THERE IS NO USE AT YELLING AT A FIRE. So how we get the old Star Wars Galaxies back? We make a game just like it - with sci-fi elements, a practical sandbox style, and add new features that Star Wars couldn't have. We have the ability to make it better than it was. We can name our own universe, an original one that doesn't need to follow any supposed-storyline. And I think this would be for the better. So if you guys are so serious about wanting to have the same gameplay as pre-CU, make it happen. Get developers that used to make SWG, get the emu developers, make a campaign for a new company, and try to make a profit off doing it. Everything F2P sucks ass anyways - I wouldn't mind paying for a game and a monthly subscription to an original pre-CU gameplay-style with more sandbox-y features (possibly added later). So, what do you guys think? I think it's the only real viable option to obtaining what we want.
Not a terribly bad idea at all here. About getting the original crew back together... well Koster is kinda busy with his own company. The project leads are all over at bioware for the most part. Hayden Blackman is over there working on Force Unleashed with LA. A bunch of the junior devs are people tht started moving up the food chain as the game started to die off more or less... folks like Rubenfield and Freeman. But those junior devs that started to move up are the folks that made the NGE pretty much, aren't they? Don't think anyone would want them working on a Galaxies sans the Star Wars part. Seeing as how, unless I am mistaken, none of them really believed in the sandbox concept to begin with.
The real thing is, though, Star Wars Galaxies allowed us to go to all the places (well mostly still should have had Coruscant and Hoth as planets a while ago) that were central to the story of Star Wars. The game, at launch, gave us the opportunity to play our story in the greater scheme of the SW universe which is what made it so appealing. A knock-off, I don't think, would really be something that would grab folks.
I'm not sure that pre-CU would have worked without Star Wars. It was the common "glue" that held everybody together, playing roles and creating scenarios. It's what made pre-CU such a great roleplaying platform, and why so many people pre-CU (even so-called'non-roleplayers') acted properly and maintained the suspension of disbelief. Everyone 'knew' what to do, because everybody knew Star Wars.
Without Star Wars, SWG pre-CU would simply be EVE: a lot of metagaming, ePeen, and contrived roleplaying gimmicks. Or else it would be AO: a game with no real context anyone cared about.
So in short, I say that a pre-CU type game wouldn't work nearly as well without the IP, because the IP is what made the sandbox hold together as well as it did.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Pre-CU without Star Wars? Hmmm..... I'm not sure that pre-CU would have worked without Star Wars. It was the common "glue" that held everybody together, playing roles and creating scenarios. It's what made pre-CU such a great roleplaying platform, and why so many people pre-CU (even so-called'non-roleplayers') acted properly and maintained the suspension of disbelief. Everyone 'knew' what to do, because everybody knew Star Wars. Without Star Wars, SWG pre-CU would simply be EVE: a lot of metagaming, ePeen, and contrived roleplaying gimmicks. Or else it would be AO: a game with no real context anyone cared about. So in short, I say that a pre-CU type game wouldn't work nearly as well without the IP, because the IP is what made the sandbox hold together as well as it did.
The pre-CU system would be great for an MMORPG with any IP, if it was completed, which the SWG pre-CU never was. The game was intended to have content, quests, storylines, player made content (the Storyteller system was a concept intended to be in the game at launch). The pre-CU as it was wouldn't survive as a game without a major IP attached. The pre-CU as it was intended to be would make an excellent MMORPG, no matter what IP it was based on.
That was the major failing of the original development team, after the game was launched, they switched gears to focus on things that weren't broken, at the expense of all the content that was supposed to be a part of the game. According to Raph Koster, the main reason given for cancellations was a 'lack of content' or 'nothing to do' (the same thing). How stupid do you have to be to interpret that as 'they don't like the core game systems'?
How sad is it that they finally got around to adding content AFTER the core game was revamped into the unfun buggy mess it currently is? Had they added content to the original version of the game, even the cookie cutter instance crap and mind numbing collection crap the current developers are on autopilot adding, the original version of the game would likely have grown, subscription wise, as opposed to fucking with the game mechanics which caused the game to stagnate, and the eventual revamps that made the game worse with each one, which resulted in the dismal number of players the game now has, and the horribly unfun mess the game has become.
SWG went from a game with a decent core, one that had potential, into currently being the worst MMO on the market.
Actually, I discovered Star Wars because of Star Wars Galaxies. Don't kid yourself - there is a lot of people, like me, who joined because it sounded like a cool game. Before Star Wars Galaxies I never saw the movies, was never interested in the other video games, etc. Now I've read SW books, own the movies, and play other video games (Jedi Academy, anyone?). However, as much as I love Star Wars, I won't go back to the disaster that is the NGE.
I remember the holocrons being released as a Christmas present. Which was funny, because when I recieved them I had no idea what they were. So I used one of them and it said, "Fencer" and i was like, "WTF?" So I asked one of my friends and I was like, "Oh fuck, I just used something I don't want that's worth a lot of credits." Luckily I didn't use my second one and sold it in a Naboo cantina for over a million credits. =D
Koster has his own company? I did not know this ... does it happen to be a company developing MMORPGs?
And Forcan, wouldn't it make more sense instead of speaking to the target, and then deciding to leave him or attack him to 10% health and have the three options of siding with him, killing him, or leaving him be, instead speaking to him or attacking him, in which if you speak to him you get the three routes of killing him, siding with him, or leaving him be? Because if you are almost done killing him already, it wouldn't really make sense to side with him. What I could see is attack him until he's incap'ed (remember that in the game?) and then making him pay you more than the bounty or he dies, in which it would be like taking a neutral position and leaving him for the most cash up-front. You could try to make him bribe you to not to kill him before you attack him, but then he has the opportunity to attack you then if he thinks he can win the fight.
Actually, I discovered Star Wars because of Star Wars Galaxies. Don't kid yourself - there is a lot of people, like me, who joined because it sounded like a cool game. Before Star Wars Galaxies I never saw the movies, was never interested in the other video games, etc. Now I've read SW books, own the movies, and play other video games (Jedi Academy, anyone?). However, as much as I love Star Wars, I won't go back to the disaster that is the NGE.
I remember the holocrons being released as a Christmas present. Which was funny, because when I recieved them I had no idea what they were. So I used one of them and it said, "Fencer" and i was like, "WTF?" So I asked one of my friends and I was like, "Oh fuck, I just used something I don't want that's worth a lot of credits." Luckily I didn't use my second one and sold it in a Naboo cantina for over a million credits. =D
Koster has his own company? I did not know this ... does it happen to be a company developing MMORPGs?
And Forcan, wouldn't it make more sense instead of speaking to the target, and then deciding to leave him or attack him to 10% health and have the three options of siding with him, killing him, or leaving him be, instead speaking to him or attacking him, in which if you speak to him you get the three routes of killing him, siding with him, or leaving him be? Because if you are almost done killing him already, it wouldn't really make sense to side with him. What I could see is attack him until he's incap'ed (remember that in the game?) and then making him pay you more than the bounty or he dies, in which it would be like taking a neutral position and leaving him for the most cash up-front. You could try to make him bribe you to not to kill him before you attack him, but then he has the opportunity to attack you then if he thinks he can win the fight.
Just my two cents.
Again, what you mentioned is one possibility, and what I'm going for is the basis of multi-branches quest system, which means your decision shape the path of the quest and the effect of such quests (reward, reputation, etc...)
I used SWG to show possibility in the system.
As for making sense, it all depends on the story-telling. Are you the ruthless BH type that just want to get the job done for money? Are you the type of BH that wanted justice to be done? The type of the character is based on your decision and play-style, and combine with multi-branches you get a quest system that works well with sandbox systems (and that was the whole point here... Quests do not have to be linear...)
So, to get back on to the original topic (can there be a game with Pre-CU systems without Star Wars?)...
Yes, since systems have really no focus on themes or IP, but it all depends on the developers to make it work (the improvement of different systems and design for the dynamic world of a sandbox game. Also to create a believable world full of stories to be found and made).
Comments
Well, I'd sure play a game based on the SWG pre-CU/NGE - just because everybody talks so good about those times.
But the present day SWG does need the SW part (answering to your topic question) - if it wasn't SW, I'd have quit by the 3rd day of the trial (I'm already 4 months now!
)
Question: How to make quests non-linear?
Answer: Multi-branches.
What do I mean? A simple example...
(Using SWG as the game, and if there are a quest that is multi-branches, it would be like this), you're a BH, and you just taken a mission (or a pure quest, speaking to an informant/employer) to hunt down a thug that did wrong against a certain someone. As you investigate, and hunting down your target, you start to get a bit more information to the quest, and it gives questions and doubts to the validity of the mission. So you found your target, and there should be a selection of action that you can take here:
1.) attack the target
2.) speak to the target
Then even after speaking you can either
1.) attack
2.) leave
And if you choose the former (attack), you get into the combat sequence, and when the person has 10% or less health, you can't continue attack for a while and the person start to speak to you about his side of the story... Then you have the choice of:
1.) siding with him (which changes the goal of the quests)
2.) kill him and receive the original reward promised
3.) leave him be (which cancels the quests, and others can take up the quests....)
There are ways to make it more detail, and I haven't spent enough time to think about the all possibilities yet, but yes, quests can be non-linear through multi-branches.
The only one I remember that was from the RotW there is an arena with spiders and after 3 round a wookie to kill, and after you defeat him until like 20% -ish health, he told you if you don't kill him then ... (I forgot all the detail of it, but I remember that if you choose not to kill him, you get to do quests from the opposite tribe of wookies or something like that... it's being 2 + years since I touch SWG and I don't remember every detail now...)
So if such system are expanded upon, then quests will not be linear like now, and with given the ability to take different path, you get different results and affect the game world little by little, then it would accompany the sandbox system and enhance players' abilities to forge the game-world. (Such system can even be expanded to include player mission into the mechanics.)
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
There was one mission I remember. It wasn't branching like your talking about but you had a few choices of what to say to this criminal contact and if you messed it up he'd realise you weren't the real contact and wouldn't give you the next bit of information. Part of Cry of Alderaan 3 maybe. Still it showed that conversation options with branchs were possible in the game engine.
Not a terribly bad idea at all here. About getting the original crew back together... well Koster is kinda busy with his own company. The project leads are all over at bioware for the most part. Hayden Blackman is over there working on Force Unleashed with LA. A bunch of the junior devs are people tht started moving up the food chain as the game started to die off more or less... folks like Rubenfield and Freeman. But those junior devs that started to move up are the folks that made the NGE pretty much, aren't they? Don't think anyone would want them working on a Galaxies sans the Star Wars part. Seeing as how, unless I am mistaken, none of them really believed in the sandbox concept to begin with.
The real thing is, though, Star Wars Galaxies allowed us to go to all the places (well mostly still should have had Coruscant and Hoth as planets a while ago) that were central to the story of Star Wars. The game, at launch, gave us the opportunity to play our story in the greater scheme of the SW universe which is what made it so appealing. A knock-off, I don't think, would really be something that would grab folks.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Pre-CU without Star Wars? Hmmm.....
I'm not sure that pre-CU would have worked without Star Wars. It was the common "glue" that held everybody together, playing roles and creating scenarios. It's what made pre-CU such a great roleplaying platform, and why so many people pre-CU (even so-called'non-roleplayers') acted properly and maintained the suspension of disbelief. Everyone 'knew' what to do, because everybody knew Star Wars.
Without Star Wars, SWG pre-CU would simply be EVE: a lot of metagaming, ePeen, and contrived roleplaying gimmicks. Or else it would be AO: a game with no real context anyone cared about.
So in short, I say that a pre-CU type game wouldn't work nearly as well without the IP, because the IP is what made the sandbox hold together as well as it did.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
The pre-CU system would be great for an MMORPG with any IP, if it was completed, which the SWG pre-CU never was. The game was intended to have content, quests, storylines, player made content (the Storyteller system was a concept intended to be in the game at launch). The pre-CU as it was wouldn't survive as a game without a major IP attached. The pre-CU as it was intended to be would make an excellent MMORPG, no matter what IP it was based on.
That was the major failing of the original development team, after the game was launched, they switched gears to focus on things that weren't broken, at the expense of all the content that was supposed to be a part of the game. According to Raph Koster, the main reason given for cancellations was a 'lack of content' or 'nothing to do' (the same thing). How stupid do you have to be to interpret that as 'they don't like the core game systems'?
How sad is it that they finally got around to adding content AFTER the core game was revamped into the unfun buggy mess it currently is? Had they added content to the original version of the game, even the cookie cutter instance crap and mind numbing collection crap the current developers are on autopilot adding, the original version of the game would likely have grown, subscription wise, as opposed to fucking with the game mechanics which caused the game to stagnate, and the eventual revamps that made the game worse with each one, which resulted in the dismal number of players the game now has, and the horribly unfun mess the game has become.
SWG went from a game with a decent core, one that had potential, into currently being the worst MMO on the market.
Actually, I discovered Star Wars because of Star Wars Galaxies. Don't kid yourself - there is a lot of people, like me, who joined because it sounded like a cool game. Before Star Wars Galaxies I never saw the movies, was never interested in the other video games, etc. Now I've read SW books, own the movies, and play other video games (Jedi Academy, anyone?). However, as much as I love Star Wars, I won't go back to the disaster that is the NGE.
I remember the holocrons being released as a Christmas present. Which was funny, because when I recieved them I had no idea what they were. So I used one of them and it said, "Fencer" and i was like, "WTF?" So I asked one of my friends and I was like, "Oh fuck, I just used something I don't want that's worth a lot of credits." Luckily I didn't use my second one and sold it in a Naboo cantina for over a million credits. =D
Koster has his own company? I did not know this ... does it happen to be a company developing MMORPGs?
And Forcan, wouldn't it make more sense instead of speaking to the target, and then deciding to leave him or attack him to 10% health and have the three options of siding with him, killing him, or leaving him be, instead speaking to him or attacking him, in which if you speak to him you get the three routes of killing him, siding with him, or leaving him be? Because if you are almost done killing him already, it wouldn't really make sense to side with him. What I could see is attack him until he's incap'ed (remember that in the game?) and then making him pay you more than the bounty or he dies, in which it would be like taking a neutral position and leaving him for the most cash up-front. You could try to make him bribe you to not to kill him before you attack him, but then he has the opportunity to attack you then if he thinks he can win the fight.
Just my two cents.
Again, what you mentioned is one possibility, and what I'm going for is the basis of multi-branches quest system, which means your decision shape the path of the quest and the effect of such quests (reward, reputation, etc...)
I used SWG to show possibility in the system.
As for making sense, it all depends on the story-telling. Are you the ruthless BH type that just want to get the job done for money? Are you the type of BH that wanted justice to be done? The type of the character is based on your decision and play-style, and combine with multi-branches you get a quest system that works well with sandbox systems (and that was the whole point here... Quests do not have to be linear...)
So, to get back on to the original topic (can there be a game with Pre-CU systems without Star Wars?)...
Yes, since systems have really no focus on themes or IP, but it all depends on the developers to make it work (the improvement of different systems and design for the dynamic world of a sandbox game. Also to create a believable world full of stories to be found and made).
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)