Setting Standards

Comments

• Erillion Member EpicPosts: 10,297

  November 2005

  
  

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  Originally posted by Gravez
  
   Because I know I will have a large  portion of them (IMO 90% of those who say they will quit/are quiting never actually do) still paying me every month for doing exactly what I have been doing to them for years? If this was any other industry would this be the case? Why is it viewed as acceptable in MMOs? Is it the players fault for continually paying for and accepting lower standards and business practices/ethics or the game companies for releasing faulty products? Why the sudden uproar from SWG players now when they have been paying for a beta quality product (or less in the NGE's case I have played the free trail) for 2.5 years? So who is really to blame?
  
  

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  My theory ... even with all the bugs SWG and its community was enjoyable ... as a giant virtual chatroom if you want. In contrast to the CU the NGE has taken away this aspect of the game, in favor of a combat centered twitch click game. The Entertainer and Crafter class is an insignificant, ignored, unnecessary remnant of the old system.

  What SWG lost with the NGE is a large part of its community ... people that are NOT coming back anytime soon, not because the NGE is buggy but because they dont trust SOE anymore. CU changed the game mechanics and people adapted, NGE changed the GAME (and people do not want to play (and pay for) a different game, one they have not chosen themselves). Without the community/the friends in game that made SWG special, there is little reason to come back anytime soon.

  People like me stay in game for a little while longer, but at the moment there is NOT much fun in gaming due to MASSIVE amount of bugs and glitches (the red dot spawn invasion of Mustafar anyone ? 1 fps diashows .. a speciality of SOE).

  I reduced my amount of posting on SWG recently because I am not much in game at the moment - so I am not the right person to comment about NGE in detail. I am hoping that some hotfixes will iron out the WORST of the errors. One month waiting with little results ... thats SOE for you.

  Have fun

  Erillion
  
• Wepps Member Posts: 1,322

  November 2005

  Thanks for saying so, but the idea to remove Bounty Hunter from having a choice to join GCW engagements was all about immersion.

  The Bounty Hunter is in it for the money, nothing more. This is the nature of the profession.

  Now, this didn't mean we couldn't go and get a Player Bounty or a system bounty on GCW participants. THIS was the reason I was promoting the removal, so that Bounty Hunters could achieve the level of game play that I envisioned.

  Every one of the points you mentioned are true, but it all boils down to one fact:

  The SWG team has violated the trust of the customers on several occasions now. They cannot be trusted to provide a stable platform for the game, where quality control rules. Since quality and trust drive the industry, SWG will never be the success that we all hoped it would be.

  Given that, the Gale of November is only a SYMPTOM of the real problems here. Getting into the details only proves the cause, lack of quality control, no reason to trust the company we are investing in.

  As a customer of an MMO, whether people realize it or not, we are investors. We promise to pay...per month to take part. However, the question remains...take part in WHAT? The game has again been reduced to a beta test, and it will be years before SOE irons out the flaws they just created.

  SOE has also labored under the illusion that to be successful with their products, they must now copy what's best from World of Warcraft in their opinion. But WoW isn't successful because of their game mechanics. WoW is a souped-up old-school MMO, nothing more. It's the company reputation that has made it sucessful.

  The NGE is a result of this attempt to WoW-zer the SWG platform into something that the players who were there didn't care about. But SOE seems unwilling to address the cause of the symptoms. TRUST and QUALITY are the two driving factors in the industry, and neither is provided.

  BECAUSE they possess a Star Wars license, I think this proves the point nicely. With that, they should have equal success to WoW. They aren't even close and never will be unless a major change is made in the company itself.

  

  __________________________

  "For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
• scaramoosh Member Posts: 3,424

  November 2005

  People arn't coming back to SWG because:

  • They liked PRE CU, thats why they played the game!
  • The NGE is buggy and just doesn't work with the game that was made
  • SOE lie
  • WOW is better then the NGE  (the game SWG is trying to be)

   

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  Don't click here...no2
• Wepps Member Posts: 1,322

  November 2005

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  Originally posted by scaramoosh
  People arn't coming back to SWG because:
  They liked PRE CU, thats why they played the game! The NGE is buggy and just doesn't work with the game that was madeSOE lieWOW is better then the NGE  (the game SWG is trying to be)
   

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  Everything you listed is about Quality and Trust.

  Starting to get the bigger picture?

  Everybody leaving can be attributed to these two overall characteristics of the game COMPANY. What's wrong with the game is symptoms of these failures.
  

  

  __________________________

  "For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
• haxxjoo Member Posts: 924

  November 2005

  
  

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  Originally posted by Gravez

  Who is really to blame here, SOE/LA or the players/longtime subscribers to some degree?

  SOE and only SOE as they produce the game. You can blame God, Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny as well. I heard they where the hand picked testers.  You use some degree to allow responsibility to pass hands.  It is SOE's game.  They make it, they pay the licensing fee to Lucas Arts and they code and impliment the game.  Any profits they make go to there shareholders.  The burden is on them.  Can I ask you a question? What is the relavence of this question? Does it change the state of the game?  Does it fix the issues? Isn't this the same issue SOE is having? They pose a question as to what players want and when the feedback isn't what they want to hear they just ask again, rephrase it or ignore the response.  It is the heart of the issue. I personally believe SOE doesn't listen whether its to players or LA.

  • The game was not ready for release to begin with.

  • Can any longtime player name one single patch/hotfix/publish that did not in turn create more problems than it was intended to fix?

  I thought mounts, player cities and vehicles was pretty descent patches at the time. Some minor bugs on those. The village patch wasn't shabby for my character.  Jedi got hammered with bugs.

  • How long did it take to fix those problems?

  Not that long when they are motivated they can churn out code.

  • How many bugs are still existant from launch? And how many more are continually introduced?

  The NGE is a horrid set of code built ontop of an unstable platform.  It was doomed to have massive debugging, which if you recall I stated here that the time frame on the test servers was not going to be sufficient.  There are always bugs in live games.  It is sometimes a cost vs. necessity issue on certain bugs.  No code is ever perfect.

  • Professions were/are completely unbalanced since launch/CU/NGE.

  I would argue that is suppose to be true to a certain extent.  I didn't expect a Commando to fire a rocket launcher at my swordsman/tka/doc hit me, watch the thing explode all around my standing still body and me take quite literallly zero damage.  This was a pre-cu test.  Post CU I found to not be completely off the charts unbalanced and enjoyed the ranged professions promotion to prominence.  Someone is usually a winner and a loser.  Most of the balance issues post and pre cu where complaints from noob pvpers who don't understand how that system works and why so many developers avoid adding the component to there games.  Define balance.  PvE balance? PvP balance? Melee vs Ranged Balance? Crafter vs. Loot balance?  Sometimes my friend you stack the deck slightly infavor of what you hope to achive.  The NGE decided to stack it against Jedi.

  • Customer service is the worst I have ever experienced in any game.

  Self explainatory.  Your opinion. I agree.  They dont care about feedback or issues you might have.

  • The game never really felt like you were playing what a Star Wars game should be in my opinion.

  I found that to be true based on the content of the missions.  Not the combat engine, skills, players.  There simply was never any Galactic Civil War.  I don't see the NGE having addressed that issue yet.  Which I do believe everyone said was what this game needed most.

  • Community Relations team is completely clueless, cannot say anything, lies or doesn't communicate at all. (It all went downhill when they hired Thunderheart IMO)

  Thunderheart compares disgruntled subscribers to llama's.  He is clueless. No kidding.  If I told my customers I think they are acting like llama's (BIG SHEEP) I would be out on the streets and we'd have to appologize and my father owns the place I work.

  • Expansions are released on top of a broken/beta game 3 times and introduce more bugs.

  Expansions with SOE will always come first as they generate revenue and any publically held company looks only at adding revenue.  Profits are secondary.

  • They ignore feedback/bug reports/suggestions/top 5 issues from their Test Server/Correspondents (which people volunteer for). Where is the QA?

  QA probably caught 99% of what is in live.  A decision had to be made to meet a deadline. I know most of the bugs they push out are always caught in testing.  They are just to chicken shit to say we have to hit our deadline we will fix it as soon as we are allowed to.

  • Non-existant GCW.

  I agree I mentioned above.

  • Jedi (alpha class) take priorty over all others in the game with regards to fixes/Dev attention.

  I found this not be not entirely a true statement.  Early on a lot of focus was paid to melee in general.  A lot of early nerfs targeted BH and Commandos.  Jedi where not even ingame till much latter on.  Then they had to try and make it work.  Which it never did.  Which is way this game is totally broken now.  Why? Jedi don't belong as a playable class in any mmo especially one as deep as this one.  They cannot be done right.  Just ask any table top GM. Heck even WEG and WotC so state in there published sw rpgs.

  • Non-existant end game (unless you count jedi which was all anyone had left to do. It is really Star Warsy having Jedi everywhere in the time period the game is set in.)

  I found things to do end-game wise as a BH, swordsman, rifleman, pre-cu.  Post CU all that mattered was Jedi as they ruined alot of other endgames.

  • Basically no content added since launch (not including expansions which you have to pay for)

  Player cities, mounts, vehicles.  Fairly large. Recently though all money has been funneled to expansions yes.

  I could probably list alot more but I feel this is enough.

  Would anyone like to tell me any of these points I have brought up are wrong.

  Yet people continued and will still continue to pay for faulty SOE and other game company's products. If I was in charge of SOE/LA why wouldn't I completely revamp the game to attract a new playerbase and disregard my current players? Because I know I will have a large  portion of them (IMO 90% of those who say they will quit/are quiting never actually do) still paying me every month for doing exactly what I have been doing to them for years? If this was any other industry would this be the case? Why is it viewed as acceptable in MMOs? Is it the players fault for continually paying for and accepting lower standards and business practices/ethics or the game companies for releasing faulty products? Why the sudden uproar from SWG players now when they have been paying for a beta quality product (or less in the NGE's case I have played the free trail) for 2.5 years? So who is really to blame?
  

  P.S. Wepps I always appreciated the work you did as BH correspondent and your ideas. (except for the remove BH from the non-existant GCW)

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• Wepps Member Posts: 1,322

  November 2005

  The basic flaw in their thinking with the NGE, is that they are forced to sacrifice content for immersion.

  

  __________________________

  "For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo