If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
So you think SWG has more potentional than swtor? lol. If swtor cant get 11 million subs, how in the hell would SWG?
I didnt say that it had more potential. One of the big reasons SWG is being shut down is so TOR doesnt split the SW fans. Once LA realizes that TOR isnt the money maker they think it is they will allow SWG to keep going because by that point it will have no effect on TORs mediocre numbers.
You still dont make sense, or you're trolling. SWG was never a symbol of success. If swtor fails Lucas arts will just make games like force unleashed from here on out, not revive a buggy, outdated failure of a game that is SWG.
SWG is a game that requires very little development and has a steady 50-75k subscriber base. Whats 50k-75k x 14.99 a month? with virtually no dev cost and very little server maint fees? Its steady money in the bank.
Why wouldnt they re-open the game once its proven that TOR wont be affected? Do you really think LA is going to sink millions in a Force unleashed type mmo after both SWG and TOR prove that a starwars game will not be as popular as WoW? no way!
They shut it down that is why. Do you really think that the vast majority of people would say, no big deal I lost 8 years worth of gaming because they shut it down and resub? Short of a pre-cu server opening up that would get maybe 10-20k people playing, the light in the tunnel is getting brighter.
Atmospheric flight... can't believe they didnt do this much much sooner.. dogfighting over theed.. its almost like SOE is saying to Bioware .. if you can't do at least this much... then what good are you.. in all honesty.. Bioware needs SOE to shut down SWG.. because no matter how bad SWG may have been.. it has functionality that just is not present in SW;TOR... if SWG were to remain ongoing, there would be unhealthy comparisons.. no doubt there will be anyway. SOE may be sunsetting SWG with a bang.. but it does so in a way that totally embarasses Bioware... just awesome
i am sooooo glad i resubbed in time.. if this is a sign of things to come over the next couple of months.. i might just change my opinion of SOE forever
Atmospheric flight... can't believe they didnt do this much much sooner.. dogfighting over theed.. its almost like SOE is saying to Bioware .. if you can't do at least this much... then what good are you.. in all honesty.. Bioware needs SOE to shut down SWG.. because no matter how bad SWG may have been.. it has functionality that just is not present in SW;TOR... if SWG were to remain ongoing, there would be unhealthy comparisons.. no doubt there will be anyway. SOE may be sunsetting SWG with a bang.. but it does so in a way that totally embarasses Bioware... just awesome
i am sooooo glad i resubbed in time.. if this is a sign of things to come over the next couple of months.. i might just change my opinion of SOE forever
It's a shame the rather important mmo 'functions' like decent pve and pvp are not present in SWG really isn't it. Sadly for SOE the majority of gamers care more about the core mechanics of mmos.
OMG dog fighting over Theed! Well in a way it is handy for them that the system is being released with only a couple of months left. Because any longer and people would no doubt get rapidly bored of it and then what are they left with, the same old lame pve and lolworthy pvp systems.
It amazes me that after all this time, after SOE's track record with the game and with the fact that it's gotten so bad it's getting canned, that people still can't see through their shit.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
It should be pretty obvious why they are going to add atmospheric flight. It really has nothing to do with SWG... they are testing a mechanic.
Which you will most likely see this implementation in Planetside 2. (in other words they took the basic system of the "in production" PS2 and wanted to test it.. as opposed to it was written for SWG a few months before shut down).
Sony has a habit of having new features show up in existing MMO's that are actually part of in production games.
This is exactly what I was thinking too. This is not unheard of and it is actually a good idea. I see lots of stuff in EQ2 that I believe is being tested for EQ Next.
Wow, that is a really cool feature. I might even have subscribed for the last couple of months just to experience it. The flight was always my favorite part of the game, being able to hop into my old cruiser, yacht, or xwing or whatever to just cruise around over my favorite planet or get into a dogfight would have been so cool. What a shame, too late now.
You know, this is almost as insulting as the NGE was. Why wouldn't they have released this feature sooner, in hopes of bolstering the game a little? I certainly would have resubbed to try it.
Originally posted by bunnyhopper Originally posted by Phry Atmospheric flight... can't believe they didnt do this much much sooner.. dogfighting over theed.. its almost like SOE is saying to Bioware .. if you can't do at least this much... then what good are you.. in all honesty.. Bioware needs SOE to shut down SWG.. because no matter how bad SWG may have been.. it has functionality that just is not present in SW;TOR... if SWG were to remain ongoing, there would be unhealthy comparisons.. no doubt there will be anyway. SOE may be sunsetting SWG with a bang.. but it does so in a way that totally embarasses Bioware... just awesome i am sooooo glad i resubbed in time.. if this is a sign of things to come over the next couple of months.. i might just change my opinion of SOE forever
It's a shame the rather important mmo 'functions' like decent pve and pvp are not present in SWG really isn't it. Sadly for SOE the majority of gamers care more about the core mechanics of mmos.
OMG dog fighting over Theed! Well in a way it is handy for them that the system is being released with only a couple of months left. Because any longer and people would no doubt get rapidly bored of it and then what are they left with, the same old lame pve and lolworthy pvp systems.
It amazes me that after all this time, after SOE's track record with the game and with the fact that it's gotten so bad it's getting canned, that people still can't see through their shit. PVP back then was so much fun (June-Sept 2003 with the anchorhead-Bestine wars, spring 2004 before publish 9 with city invasions, base busting and just random battles on any planet then again in the combat upgrade usually outside Dant MO with random level 100 Jedi NPCs spawning).
PVP was soooooooo terrible in the NGE and even now, battlegrounds helped things for a while but it didn't last very long as it turned into an exploit shoebox and died down pretty quick.
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
So you think SWG has more potentional than swtor? lol. If swtor cant get 11 million subs, how in the hell would SWG?
I didnt say that it had more potential. One of the big reasons SWG is being shut down is so TOR doesnt split the SW fans. Once LA realizes that TOR isnt the money maker they think it is they will allow SWG to keep going because by that point it will have no effect on TORs mediocre numbers.
Interesting split in the playerbase, 5 people paying for SWG and several million likely to pay for TOR. i'm no fan of TOR but nothing so far has pointed to it getting 'mediocre' numbers.
SWG has been clinging on for a while now, TOR may have heralded the end but the root cause of SWG's death has little to do with the new mmo.
I would say that TOR was the whole cause, as if TOR was not in production, LA would have put more attention to SWG, and fixed it up. but instead they just ignored it and focussd on TOR.
It needed more that 'fixing up' it needed a complete rework from the ground up and some kind of focus on it's identity and who it was trying to appeal to. Scapegoating TOR and LA is a nice get out and all but the fact of the matter is the game was not good enough and has not been for years.
One or two fixes would easily have made the game successful. Repealing NGE and CU would do it in a hearbeat, if you could keep the rest of the updates. Besides, it's already been a themepark and a sandbox. What else would you make it? And there's no need to start from the ground up if it's going to be one of those two.
Ask yourself who exactly is the game meant to appeal to?
Uh, pretty much all gamers that don't fall into a super niche like full loot PvP.
Does it have the combat mechanics in place to appeal to the pvp crowd? The simple answer is no, it has a shocking pvp system and the game is generally not in the least focused on pvp. So that is that rather large demographic out of the window.
Yes. PvP is so good in SWG, it even survived the CU and NGE fairly unscathed.
Does it have the high quality pve and quality high level encounters needed to appeal to the ardent pve'r/raiders out there? No, it has heroics lulz. Other titles on the market offer far, far superior pvp. So again that is that massive demographic out of the window.
I'll give this one to you, but honestly, the niche for hardcore raiders isn't as large as everyone thinks. We just hear about them more often cause what they do is pretty epic.
Which leaves what exactly? Twitch spacers, crafters, sandbox fanatics and the Star Wars fans. So let's look at them shall we..
I'd add in "Average MMO gamer", since post-NGE its just another class-based game that anyone can learn to play farily easily. I'd also take off "Sandbox fanatics", as most of them seem to think sandboxes must include full loot pvp and massive death penalties - although maybe that's just the more vocal part of the sandbox community.
Twitch spacers would be attracted to the game, but two things occur, up until recently space was the one aspect SOE hadn't totally fucked up because it was the one aspect they left alone. Which doesn't exactly scream competent developer at you now does it. Secondly just what percentage of the mmo playerbase puts twitch space as their central play style and raison d' etre, not a very large one i'd wager.
This is also true. And I'm not even a twitch player to begin with. I thought JTL was a bust as an expansion.
Crafters. Yep the crafting in SWG is fantastic, but then the economy is broken and is impossible to fix because there are no mechanics in place to drive the economy (player looting, territory control, decay etc etc). This means that it is primed to appeal to people only interested in crafting who don't give a toss about the economical side of the game. A small minority of players one would hesitate to suggest.
I disagree, but I couldn't cite facts. I know I was always buying armor, weapons, furniture and pretty much anything you could sell. I was fully capable of making the same stuff (and sometimes did) on other toons, but I was usually either not as good, lacking time, or lazy. The point is, I was always buying top of the line items, yet I had a steady income from PvE aspects (Hunting for rare loot, not heroics) and could craft as a last resort. I had plenty of incentive to participate in a player economy.
Sandbox. Well it's not is it really, it's a lame bastardization of a sandbox which has tried to become a themepark with little to no success. Sandbox fans looking for open skill systems, dynamic, world shaping territory controls and significant world pvp mechanics are not going to be enthralled by the game are they. People can dump houses everywhere and um, well yeah actually that's about as good as it gets. Lots of empty ghost towns lagging up the system.
True post-NGE. It was still a sandbox before that, although a terrible one after the CU. Pre-CU was amazing though.
Fans of the IP. Not getting into the fact that the GCW aspect of the IP means pretty much fuck all in the game coupled with the fact that you have pink ewoks, fairy wings and hot pants all over the place. Relying on the IP alone was always going to put the game in jeopardy as soon as another mmo with the same IP came out.
Don't know anyone that had a major problem with the first half of the statement. I completely agree on the 2nd half though.
The sad fact is the game is not good enough and does not appeal to any particular player (or at least not a large enough niche demographic of players) and that has been the case for a long time now. To fix that requires essentially making it a completely different game, which doesn't speak volumes for the thing really.
I'd argue that replacing Smedley with a monkey would have fixed a lot of the problems, but in the end SWG had a solid core of players that would have sustained a small dev team, and once fixes started coming in the playerbase would grow. Now, it's never going to be a multi-million sub game, like LA is hoping TOR will be, but it would be a respectable mid-level MMO.
Sounds like someone, for the most part, either hates or misunderstands what was always a good game. It may have been slowly dying due to Smedley's incompetence, but all games he oversees do that. In the end, the fact is that LA didn't want to renew the license (I believe partially, but not all, because of TOR) and SOE didn't care enough about SWG to attempt to change LA's mind.
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
"We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR."
I myself believe this to be true, no matter what LA says. it fits their "Modus operandi" all to well.
SWG coming back to life as a F2P after SW:TOR crashes and burns? Not so sure about that part...
Atmospheric Flight Now... as SWG spins down.... Those who are still in SWG enjoy it, or yes, enjoy it. Your faithfulness has been rewarded.
One or two fixes would easily have made the game successful. Repealing NGE and CU would do it in a hearbeat, if you could keep the rest of the updates. Besides, it's already been a themepark and a sandbox. What else would you make it? And there's no need to start from the ground up if it's going to be one of those two.
"Repealing" the NGE and CU is not a minor fix given all the extra code that has been shovelled on top of the system. The game has had no focus for years which has lead to it being neither a sandbox nor a themepark of any great merit. If you think they could make one or two minor fixes to turn it into either of them with any prominence then I simple cannot agree with that sentiment. Chucking out everything the NGE and the CU brought with them IS pretty much starting from the ground up anyway.
Uh, pretty much all gamers that don't fall into a super niche like full loot PvP.
Uh, really? So it will appeal to the focused pve/raid crowd?.... Nope.
Will it appeal to the hardcore or e-sport pvp crowd?.... Nope.
How about the avid sandbox crowd? Given it has zero in the way of decay mechanics, no skill progression, no territory/resource control that's going to be a 'nope' as well for the main.
The game has tried to be the jack of all trades and it hasn't worked, keep in mind I am talking of it's current inception.
Yes. PvP is so good in SWG, it even survived the CU and NGE fairly unscathed.
I'll take that as a joke right? Restuss and the baddlefields of SWG does not appeal to the great majority of pvpers. Nor does the sheer ludicrous amount of buffs and time spent hanging around, the fact the server tech cannot handle mass combat, nor the combat coding meaning borked mechanic is layered upon borked mechanic.
I'll give this one to you, but honestly, the niche for hardcore raiders isn't as large as everyone thinks. We just hear about them more often cause what they do is pretty epic.
It's not just niche/hardcore raiders, it's the general expectation of pve in an mmo.
I'd add in "Average MMO gamer", since post-NGE its just another class-based game that anyone can learn to play farily easily. I'd also take off "Sandbox fanatics", as most of them seem to think sandboxes must include full loot pvp and massive death penalties - although maybe that's just the more vocal part of the sandbox community.
If it is only there to appeal to the average gamer, then it needs to have better basic mechanics in terms of pve and pvp.
This is also true. And I'm not even a twitch player to begin with. I thought JTL was a bust as an expansion.
I disagree, but I couldn't cite facts. I know I was always buying armor, weapons, furniture and pretty much anything you could sell. I was fully capable of making the same stuff (and sometimes did) on other toons, but I was usually either not as good, lacking time, or lazy. The point is, I was always buying top of the line items, yet I had a steady income from PvE aspects (Hunting for rare loot, not heroics) and could craft as a last resort. I had plenty of incentive to participate in a player economy.
Without decay/loot or some other driving event, supply and demand only works as long as new types of items are coming into the system, or new players are coming into the system. The economy on many servers stagnated, you only need to take a look at EVE to see how it should be done in a sandbox with meaningful player economy pretensions.
True post-NGE. It was still a sandbox before that, although a terrible one after the CU. Pre-CU was amazing though.
Don't know anyone that had a major problem with the first half of the statement. I completely agree on the 2nd half though.
Alot of the games players felt that the GCW had become a running joke and constantly asked for it to be worked on.
I'd argue that replacing Smedley with a monkey would have fixed a lot of the problems, but in the end SWG had a solid core of players that would have sustained a small dev team, and once fixes started coming in the playerbase would grow. Now, it's never going to be a multi-million sub game, like LA is hoping TOR will be, but it would be a respectable mid-level MMO.
Sorry but I just don't see any evidence over the last few years to support that claim.
Sounds like someone, for the most part, either hates or misunderstands what was always a good game. It may have been slowly dying due to Smedley's incompetence, but all games he oversees do that. In the end, the fact is that LA didn't want to renew the license (I believe partially, but not all, because of TOR) and SOE didn't care enough about SWG to attempt to change LA's mind.
I don't hate the game (I simply think it is has been very poor for quite a long time now), nor do I misunderstand it. I simply feel that it has had no direction and is not good enough, nor has it been for years. The subscription figures attest to as much.
As for the part about Smed being useless and both LA and SWG not wanting to continue, I agree.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Okay, I hope I can make sense explaining this atmospheric flight.
To everyone who asks "Why couldn't they have done this earlier?"
You'll be mad at SoE probably but here we go. "SoE" never made this decision as a business. It isn't smedley saying "see what you can do about atmospheric flight". It was one of the SoE developers who worked on atmospheric flight in his own free time. The developer is Hjal
If Hjal didn't work on this in his free time, we wouldn't have seen this. I don't know why he did that. Perhaps he really loved his job or perhaps he wants to build up a fanbase to start up his own mmo company? Who knows. In any case, SoE didn't do much and swg wouldn't have had it if they didn't employ Hjal.
To people who say they couldn't do this when swg had a large playerbase..
This is true to some extend but not completely. If for exmaple you currently try to do space pvp in the atmosphere of Tatooine, Naboo or for example Restuss on... Starsider, Flurry, Chilastra or Farstar then you will experience a lot of lag and you will probably be unable to do that BUT you will not have that problem on Endor, Yavin IV and Dathomir since they are no build planets. On these planets, new zones don't have to be loaded in so its pretty much lag free, especially when you disable the fog.
However, flying over a highly populated area without making sharp turns and so is simple and very fast. It doesn't lag much and you can see your ship as your new itv, it just doesn't need camps or shuttleports to travel to. You control it yourself.
To me, they could (and should) have done this in stead of gpp, itv, cloud cars, at-at heads, camps, shuttleports, city / guild waypoints as it is much more starwarsy and could have kept a large playerbase however they ignored the possibility and went ahead with all this.
To people (not sure if they are here) who ask about Air - Ground and Ground - Air combat.
This would have been difficult because of a few things:
1) The ships we fly are relatively large in size. If you look at the size of your r2 droid in the air and then look at the same droid on the ground, you'll notice that it is about 1 1/2 to twice the size in your ship then on the ground
2) Balance. Ship guns (and missiles) have a range of 500 mtrs where a ground weapon has just 64 mtr range. You could hang above a certain object (The restuss medcenter is the most favourite target of all pilots) and pound on it to kill your foes without them hitting you.
3) Lag. As I said, lag is a lot higher in populated areas, zones (and houses and buildings) need to be loaded in and cause a lot of rubberbanding when making sharp turns which are necessary in space pvp. If you want to bomb targets on the ground, you are also vulnerable to other ships
If you look at the size of your r2 droid in the air and then look at the same droid on the ground, you'll notice that it is about 5 times larger in your ship then on the ground
Interesting. I always assumed it was the same size because scale in SWG has always been fairly accurate. This surprises me.
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
Even with Atmo AND especially if it were f2p, I would not go back to SWG. The game went from "fixable" before CU to horrid after NGE. Add f2p and you have a turkey in an item shop.
So you can not fire from your ship down at targets on the ground?
What a pointless addition. This game really had a terribly poor engine that just could not cope with the FPS nature of what a good SW game should be.
Well, not really pointless. It is a nice addition for space pvp-ers to have something they didn't have yet. You can fly over Yavin and keep in mind that you can crash into the ground or find cover among trees and use a bit of line of sight when you go over a mountain.
It's also a nice extra way to travel. They just shouldn't have done all those fasttravel options. Swg without itv's, gpp's, at-at heads, cloud cars, city & guild waypoints but with atmospheric flight? Yep, that would have been much better.
Originally posted by TUX426
Originally posted by Nasja
If you look at the size of your r2 droid in the air and then look at the same droid on the ground, you'll notice that it is about 5 times larger in your ship then on the ground
Interesting. I always assumed it was the same size because scale in SWG has always been fairly accurate. This surprises me.
And it doesn't surprise me at all Tux. I one's saw a heavy loadlifter in space (bug?, about the size of a barc) and compared to my x-wing... well, the loadlifter could fit in my cockpit.
I think this is because of the engine. If the ships were smaller, they would be very hard to hit if they are npc's and next to impossible to hit in pvp.
And it doesn't surprise me at all Tux. I one's saw a heavy loadlifter in space (bug?, about the size of a barc) and compared to my x-wing... well, the loadlifter could fit in my cockpit. I think this is because of the engine. If the ships were smaller, they would be very hard to hit if they are npc's and next to impossible to hit in pvp.
So...how large do the ships look overhead from a ground player? Do they seem like GIANT X-wings or is it mostly unnoticed?
Well, I have to say it isn't as large as I first made it out to be, mostly because hitting a player from a ship is very hard, this due to weaponspread but after taking a few screenshots, we can say the size of an x-wing is about the size of a small house
And yeah, there is this thread . Okay, my mistake, not 5 times but 1 1/2 - 2 times the size or so.
Thank you again Nas. That's actually not too bad. I'm just thrilled they aren't too tiny or overly massive.
Yeah true me too. I kinda hope that eventually LucasArts (screw Soe lol) will eventually decide to host a sw mmo in the gcw era with whatever company they have in mind or do things in house.. get this feature in from the start which it deserves to be. Grab a lot of data from the current game and make it more sandbox then swg-nge is. Oh well, wishful thinking...
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
Keep on wishing there bud, ain't never gonna happen in this lifetime.
It's kind of pathetic that a small segment of SWG wants to blame Bioware for the closing of this game. Bioware and TOR have nothing to do with SWG shutting down. SWG has been on life support since 2006. I haven't seen a box in stores for years and most who left will NEVER come back after the way they were treated by SOE. The closing down was inevitable. SOE has no one to blame but themselves.
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
Keep on wishing there bud, ain't never gonna happen in this lifetime.
It's kind of pathetic that a small segment of SWG wants to blame Bioware for the closing of this game. Bioware and TOR have nothing to do with SWG shutting down. SWG has been on life support since 2006. I haven't seen a box in stores for years and most who left will NEVER come back after the way they were treated by SOE. The closing down was inevitable. SOE has no one to blame but themselves.
Another option could have been to make SWG a F2P game...instead of shuting it down.
But you see the common denominator between both SWG and SW:TOR is Lucas Arts Marketing/Finance People.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
This change in stance about free flight reminds me of the days when EQ and CoH were in their prime and the developers had this obstinate, almost adversarial stance with their customers about certain changes that were either desired or not wanted by the player base. It would seem this merely perpetuates my view on developers having major chips on their shoulders in regards to their games and that they rely on us for income, but really don't respect our points of view about their games, their style of content and what constitutes as fun mechanics versus mechanics that perpetuate the revenue stream.
This change in stance about free flight reminds me of the days when EQ and CoH were in their prime and the developers had this obstinate, almost adversarial stance with their customers about certain changes that were either desired or not wanted by the player base. It would seem this merely perpetuates my view on developers having major chips on their shoulders in regards to their games and that they rely on us for income, but really don't respect our points of view about their games, their style of content and what constitutes as fun mechanics versus mechanics that perpetuate the revenue stream.
Agreed which is why we would should make our own games. UT 3 UDK TOOLS
Originally posted by ActionMMORPG If this is legit, it goes along with my theory that Smed's comments about "shutting down SWG was SOE's idea" don't quite hold water. Why put money into development of a game that's shutting down. It just doesn't add up.
My first impression is that this is a gesture to the player base saying something along the lines of "sorry everyone, we have to shut it down, so since it doesnt matter anymore, here's something fun to fool around with til the end" sort of thing
It might only be "mostly' dead.... But on the other hand would anyone go back if they rebooted pre-soe? (I wouldn't I have to be honest since I left before soe because of the grind involved to be a jedi only to come back to soe and be a jedi. Now I think I couild appreciate the game more if we could roll back time).
Comments
They shut it down that is why. Do you really think that the vast majority of people would say, no big deal I lost 8 years worth of gaming because they shut it down and resub? Short of a pre-cu server opening up that would get maybe 10-20k people playing, the light in the tunnel is getting brighter.
Atmospheric flight... can't believe they didnt do this much much sooner.. dogfighting over theed.. its almost like SOE is saying to Bioware .. if you can't do at least this much... then what good are you.. in all honesty.. Bioware needs SOE to shut down SWG.. because no matter how bad SWG may have been.. it has functionality that just is not present in SW;TOR... if SWG were to remain ongoing, there would be unhealthy comparisons.. no doubt there will be anyway. SOE may be sunsetting SWG with a bang.. but it does so in a way that totally embarasses Bioware... just awesome
i am sooooo glad i resubbed in time.. if this is a sign of things to come over the next couple of months.. i might just change my opinion of SOE forever
It's a shame the rather important mmo 'functions' like decent pve and pvp are not present in SWG really isn't it. Sadly for SOE the majority of gamers care more about the core mechanics of mmos.
OMG dog fighting over Theed! Well in a way it is handy for them that the system is being released with only a couple of months left. Because any longer and people would no doubt get rapidly bored of it and then what are they left with, the same old lame pve and lolworthy pvp systems.
It amazes me that after all this time, after SOE's track record with the game and with the fact that it's gotten so bad it's getting canned, that people still can't see through their shit.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
This is exactly what I was thinking too. This is not unheard of and it is actually a good idea. I see lots of stuff in EQ2 that I believe is being tested for EQ Next.
Wow, that is a really cool feature. I might even have subscribed for the last couple of months just to experience it. The flight was always my favorite part of the game, being able to hop into my old cruiser, yacht, or xwing or whatever to just cruise around over my favorite planet or get into a dogfight would have been so cool. What a shame, too late now.
You know, this is almost as insulting as the NGE was. Why wouldn't they have released this feature sooner, in hopes of bolstering the game a little? I certainly would have resubbed to try it.
OMG dog fighting over Theed! Well in a way it is handy for them that the system is being released with only a couple of months left. Because any longer and people would no doubt get rapidly bored of it and then what are they left with, the same old lame pve and lolworthy pvp systems.
It amazes me that after all this time, after SOE's track record with the game and with the fact that it's gotten so bad it's getting canned, that people still can't see through their shit.
PVP back then was so much fun (June-Sept 2003 with the anchorhead-Bestine wars, spring 2004 before publish 9 with city invasions, base busting and just random battles on any planet then again in the combat upgrade usually outside Dant MO with random level 100 Jedi NPCs spawning).
PVP was soooooooo terrible in the NGE and even now, battlegrounds helped things for a while but it didn't last very long as it turned into an exploit shoebox and died down pretty quick.
Sounds like someone, for the most part, either hates or misunderstands what was always a good game. It may have been slowly dying due to Smedley's incompetence, but all games he oversees do that. In the end, the fact is that LA didn't want to renew the license (I believe partially, but not all, because of TOR) and SOE didn't care enough about SWG to attempt to change LA's mind.
"We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR."
I myself believe this to be true, no matter what LA says. it fits their "Modus operandi" all to well.
SWG coming back to life as a F2P after SW:TOR crashes and burns? Not so sure about that part...
Atmospheric Flight Now... as SWG spins down.... Those who are still in SWG enjoy it, or yes, enjoy it. Your faithfulness has been rewarded.
I don't hate the game (I simply think it is has been very poor for quite a long time now), nor do I misunderstand it. I simply feel that it has had no direction and is not good enough, nor has it been for years. The subscription figures attest to as much.
As for the part about Smed being useless and both LA and SWG not wanting to continue, I agree.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Okay, I hope I can make sense explaining this atmospheric flight.
To everyone who asks "Why couldn't they have done this earlier?"
You'll be mad at SoE probably but here we go. "SoE" never made this decision as a business. It isn't smedley saying "see what you can do about atmospheric flight". It was one of the SoE developers who worked on atmospheric flight in his own free time. The developer is Hjal
If Hjal didn't work on this in his free time, we wouldn't have seen this. I don't know why he did that. Perhaps he really loved his job or perhaps he wants to build up a fanbase to start up his own mmo company? Who knows. In any case, SoE didn't do much and swg wouldn't have had it if they didn't employ Hjal.
To people who say they couldn't do this when swg had a large playerbase..
This is true to some extend but not completely. If for exmaple you currently try to do space pvp in the atmosphere of Tatooine, Naboo or for example Restuss on... Starsider, Flurry, Chilastra or Farstar then you will experience a lot of lag and you will probably be unable to do that BUT you will not have that problem on Endor, Yavin IV and Dathomir since they are no build planets. On these planets, new zones don't have to be loaded in so its pretty much lag free, especially when you disable the fog.
However, flying over a highly populated area without making sharp turns and so is simple and very fast. It doesn't lag much and you can see your ship as your new itv, it just doesn't need camps or shuttleports to travel to. You control it yourself.
To me, they could (and should) have done this in stead of gpp, itv, cloud cars, at-at heads, camps, shuttleports, city / guild waypoints as it is much more starwarsy and could have kept a large playerbase however they ignored the possibility and went ahead with all this.
To people (not sure if they are here) who ask about Air - Ground and Ground - Air combat.
This would have been difficult because of a few things:
1) The ships we fly are relatively large in size. If you look at the size of your r2 droid in the air and then look at the same droid on the ground, you'll notice that it is about 1 1/2 to twice the size in your ship then on the ground
2) Balance. Ship guns (and missiles) have a range of 500 mtrs where a ground weapon has just 64 mtr range. You could hang above a certain object (The restuss medcenter is the most favourite target of all pilots) and pound on it to kill your foes without them hitting you.
3) Lag. As I said, lag is a lot higher in populated areas, zones (and houses and buildings) need to be loaded in and cause a lot of rubberbanding when making sharp turns which are necessary in space pvp. If you want to bomb targets on the ground, you are also vulnerable to other ships
So you can not fire from your ship down at targets on the ground?
What a pointless addition. This game really had a terribly poor engine that just could not cope with the FPS nature of what a good SW game should be.
You gotta love that this could be added as the game closes. If this doesn't highlight the entire debacle SOE had with this game, nothing will.
Interesting. I always assumed it was the same size because scale in SWG has always been fairly accurate. This surprises me.
Even with Atmo AND especially if it were f2p, I would not go back to SWG. The game went from "fixable" before CU to horrid after NGE. Add f2p and you have a turkey in an item shop.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Well, not really pointless. It is a nice addition for space pvp-ers to have something they didn't have yet. You can fly over Yavin and keep in mind that you can crash into the ground or find cover among trees and use a bit of line of sight when you go over a mountain.
It's also a nice extra way to travel. They just shouldn't have done all those fasttravel options. Swg without itv's, gpp's, at-at heads, cloud cars, city & guild waypoints but with atmospheric flight? Yep, that would have been much better.
And it doesn't surprise me at all Tux. I one's saw a heavy loadlifter in space (bug?, about the size of a barc) and compared to my x-wing... well, the loadlifter could fit in my cockpit.
I think this is because of the engine. If the ships were smaller, they would be very hard to hit if they are npc's and next to impossible to hit in pvp.
Well, I have to say it isn't as large as I first made it out to be, mostly because hitting a player from a ship is very hard, this due to weaponspread but after taking a few screenshots, we can say the size of an x-wing is about the size of a small house
And yeah, there is this thread . Okay, my mistake, not 5 times but 1 1/2 - 2 times the size or so.
Thank you again Nas. That's actually not too bad. I'm just thrilled they aren't too tiny or overly massive.
Yeah true me too. I kinda hope that eventually LucasArts (screw Soe lol) will eventually decide to host a sw mmo in the gcw era with whatever company they have in mind or do things in house.. get this feature in from the start which it deserves to be. Grab a lot of data from the current game and make it more sandbox then swg-nge is. Oh well, wishful thinking...
It's kind of pathetic that a small segment of SWG wants to blame Bioware for the closing of this game. Bioware and TOR have nothing to do with SWG shutting down. SWG has been on life support since 2006. I haven't seen a box in stores for years and most who left will NEVER come back after the way they were treated by SOE. The closing down was inevitable. SOE has no one to blame but themselves.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Another option could have been to make SWG a F2P game...instead of shuting it down.
But you see the common denominator between both SWG and SW:TOR is Lucas Arts Marketing/Finance People.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
This change in stance about free flight reminds me of the days when EQ and CoH were in their prime and the developers had this obstinate, almost adversarial stance with their customers about certain changes that were either desired or not wanted by the player base. It would seem this merely perpetuates my view on developers having major chips on their shoulders in regards to their games and that they rely on us for income, but really don't respect our points of view about their games, their style of content and what constitutes as fun mechanics versus mechanics that perpetuate the revenue stream.
Agreed which is why we would should make our own games. UT 3 UDK TOOLS
My first impression is that this is a gesture to the player base saying something along the lines of "sorry everyone, we have to shut it down, so since it doesnt matter anymore, here's something fun to fool around with til the end" sort of thing
It might only be "mostly' dead.... But on the other hand would anyone go back if they rebooted pre-soe? (I wouldn't I have to be honest since I left before soe because of the grind involved to be a jedi only to come back to soe and be a jedi. Now I think I couild appreciate the game more if we could roll back time).