SWG: CU Part II

Grand_Izer

A "New Game Enhancement" was announced last night for Star Wars Galaxies.

Greetings Star Wars Galaxies Players, Fans, and Other Denizens of the Galaxy:

My name is Julio Torres and I am the Producer on Star Wars Galaxies for LucasArts. We wanted you, the great members of the Galaxies community, to be the first to hear some exciting news about the current and future plans for Star Wars Galaxies!

Over the past year we have been working hard to respond to feedback we have gotten from players, fans, focus groups, and other research. This feedback has ultimately centered on one key area: the game does not feel like a heroic Star Wars experience. Currently, the early game has a steep learning curve and there is no clearly defined path of advancement or adventure. Many of our fans who bought the game did not see enough Star Wars style action early-on and ultimately left our world. It is our goal to change this and improve the experience for all players.

We are introducing a series of game enhancements to Star Wars Galaxies this month that include both significant enhancements to the live game as well as a completely redesigned experience for new players. The primary areas of focus include combat and profession and character development. The combat depicted in the Star Wars films, fiction, and canon that we have all come to know and love is fast-paced, action-packed, and visually intense. In order to stay true to the Star Wars fiction as well as to make the combat system more engaging, we have shifted the turn-based paradigm towards a much more engaging fast-action combat system where you control every move! After receiving feedback from members of the community, conducting extensive focus tests, and evaluating the combat systems of other games in the genre, we are confident this new fast-action combat truly delivers what players, fans, and gamers have come to expect from a Star Wars experience.

As mentioned earlier, combat is not the only area where we decided to focus our improvement efforts. We have also improved and brought more clarity to the profession and character development system.

Changing a live game is never easy. We realize that players do not like to have their experience altered. These enhancements will take some getting used to and for that reason we lined-up some incentives for the current players to enjoy as our thanks for your loyalty to our game.

We value our community and want you to stay with us. Our goal is to continuously improve the Star Wars experience, the one we all know and love from the films and fiction; action-packed, story-driven, Star Wars fun. With these features and enhancements we are setting the stage for incredible things to come for Galaxies with more announcements happening in the coming months.

I'd like to thank you all for your continued support of Star Wars Galaxies and for making it one of the premier gaming experiences online today.


May The Force Be With You,

Julio Torres, Producer - LucasArts

• Official forums announcement
• Developer FAQ
• f13.net third party preview

The general gist of the New Game Enhancement (NGE) will be the conversion of the current turn-based combat into a more twitch based system and a drastic downsizing of the existing professions. Many of the existing classes will either be merged into a new 'iconic' class or dropped altogether.

The existing skillpoint system will be dropped and character classes will be locked for the lifetime of the character (ala other mmorpgs).

This lightning bolt came straight out of the blue - no warning at all. The NGE will supposedly hit the test center this friday and will go live in two weeks.

I've only started playing swg in June and wasn't around for the original CU. But the drastic downsizing of the professions to going to hurt a lot of my guildmates I'll have to reserve my judgement until i've had a chance to test this but the absolute secrecy of this overhaul and the recent fiasco with last week's expansion aren't promising.

jaggeh

the important question here is if they will be giving players re-specs....

i may (very tenous may) renew my subscription if it meant the game was going twitch and they did it decently enough.

but honestly right now im really enjoying EVE and sony have put enough poison in my blood to kill a small village.

Memnoch

jaggeh wrote:

sony have put enough poison in my blood to kill a small village.

I agree, DEATH TO SOE, don't do it man, don't let those **** trick you back into their endless carrots. It will only end in tears!

entropi

jaggeh wrote:

i may (very tenous may) renew my subscription if it meant the game was going twitch and they did it decently enough.

I hope you also knew that if you're account is more than 6 months inactive i believe they delete it to clear up space in the database...

I could have gone back anytime i wanted but afaik, my account is gone and i'm playing DAoC anyway

Oh yes, SOE are the bringers of evil to SWG...

Wertz

jaggeh wrote:

the important question here is if they will be giving players re-specs....

i may (very tenous may) renew my subscription if it meant the game was going twitch and they did it decently enough.

but honestly right now im really enjoying EVE and sony have put enough poison in my blood to kill a small village.

I like many were burned by SOE's lies and sh*tty code....but;

Hello all. As most of you know, I have been in Austin the last day and a half. We have been testing out new changes to Star Wars Galaxies. While most people will be afraid and uneasy about the changes, I want to let you know about what is going on, and how things are going.

First, let me start by saying that combat has become more fun and is a better change for the game. No longer will it be all about mashing specials and the best weapon. This is a new system and is not a rehash of the old or current system. With that im mind, please keep an open mind.

Now coming will be a drastic change in skills. There will be 9 classes as follows:

Smuggler, Bounty Hunter, Commando, Medic, Force Sensitive, Officer (think SL), Tradesman, Entertainer, Spy. Poli and Pilot will remain unchanged.

Most experience can no be either quest based or grinding. With skills will come abilities as well as rewards. Crafters will have 4 sub crafters. I will not get into the large scale of the changes. As there are others that are also having things to say about it.

Basic points, entertainers and crafters will no longer draw agro unless they pick a fight. There are drastic changes to the way that specials work. I will be writing up basic 0.1 guides when I get back home tonight. Those will be in more detail.

As for TC itself, please hear me before you go nuts on this.

TC will be put in stasis for a week or two to start out. These are drastic changes that need to be worked and tested from level 1. After that, TC will be brought up to test mid to high level as well as /respec. The detalis on this will be each person gets 10 respecs on which the 10th will be permanant. You cannot change your skills anymore, what you start is, is what you are. No surrendering and re-grinding.

AND ALSO THERE WILL BE NO BLUE FROGS SO DON'T EVEN THINK OF ASKING!!!!!!!!!!!

I know TC does not want another mothball. I did all I could, but the fact remains that we need low newbie testing. I did manage to get you all notice. Please use it to the fullest.

I will leave the rest of the details to other people who were here as well.

Haven't got a link for the quote but it was posted on my old guild's forum by the combat medic correspondent who has some inside info as it were (which has since been posted on the official SWG forums)

No respec is kinda odd....I mean 10 respecs then you're stuck with it...hmm. Like some of the other changes, but as to whther they can implement them and have them workable will remain to be seen....it will take a LOT of convincing to get me back....the CU didn't, JtL didn't....I said at the time that a complete change to the skill system and combat system would be the only thing that might do it...Twitch play? How would that even work? Like space combat I 'spose (which I've never played).

I'll keep an open mind on this....I'd like to see it work cos I did actually like the game, until it got fuxx0red with nerfs.

BTW to whoever said about character deletion after 6 months...a pure myth put about by sSOE to try and scare veteran players into resubscribing....I quit almost 14 months back and am reliably informed that my shop, house, storage and factories are all alive and well and showing me as the owner when examined

So SWG 3.0 A new hope?

Venom

Im kinda stuck with two views over this whole NGE lark. SWG needed something dramatic done to it as its lack of content was always one of its biggest problems not to mention the many issues almost every class had.

I know alot of players are upset over certain class's being gotten rid of but to be honest these class's really had to go. The CH prof was a joke and really had no place in SWG and all the references to that one fat gimp in Jabba's palace does not work when compaired to how SWG almost turned into Pokamon online. Melee class's also never fit into SWG and seemed just to be in there to lure die hard fantasy mmorpg players to the game so these to Im glad to see going. I do however feel bad for players od the above class's who bought the last expansion for certain items like the CH +10 to taming necklace that is no pointless so SOE do deserve all the ****e there getting over this fiasco as its bad business dealings at best and very much fraud at worst.

From what Iv read of the new SWG v2.0 the game seems to be alot more fun. Its not twitch based at all but rather more streamlined in reguards to how combat works. The NPCs for the started missions all have full voice acting akin to EQ2 and there does appear to be alot of missions. Ill probley give it ago in a month or two to check it out as I always felt SWG could of been an amazing game but the devs just dropped the ball every chance they got. Seeing as how this new version of SWG is in ways like a beta for the PS3 launch of said game for the console (hence the easy to use combat system) maybe its the best thing to ever happen to the game! There is going to be a 10 day free trial so at least we get to try the game out for free for a while

Venom

Wertz wrote:

BTW to whoever said about character deletion after 6 months...a pure myth put about by sSOE to try and scare veteran players into resubscribing....I quit almost 14 months back and am reliably informed that my shop, house, storage and factories are all alive and well and showing me as the owner when examined

Agreed. The whole characters being deleted by SOE after 6 months was just a lie the DEVs used to stop everyone quitting when the first CU was rolled out. After a years absence all my characters where still there last time I subscribed for JTL.

Grand_Izer

Well, i finally managed to sneak onto one of the test centers last night. After logging into Mos Eisley, it came as no surprise to see well over 80% of players wearing padawan robes

The combat is something akin to the ancient Rebel Assault game. You manually track your target with the cursor pointer and hold down the mouse button to shoot. Progression through your chosen profession's skilltree is linear now with skills/abilities automatically granted as you level up. It's no longer possible to mix and match classes - each professions template will be exactly the same.

The addition of voice acting and fmvs to the tutorial were a nice touch although it remains to be seen if SOE/LA will finish delivering the episodic content they've promised. Unfortunately, i did'nt have time to embark on the story-driven profession quests which are available in levels 10-30.

On a sidenote, all pre-existing characters will be forced into respecing after logging into the NGE. After that, 10 respecs will be made available (enough to try out the 9 professions before finalizing).

The much vaunted character purge never happened. Many of the planets have deserted cities full of condemned houses and there's a huge number of burning harvesters blighting the landscape - it's quite telling in someways.

muffen

Well, a few weeks ago I reactived my SWG account and moved my character to chimaera. I've been playing WoW for a while, but now when I have almost all epics on two characters, can complete Molten Core in less than 6 hours with my guild and have no reason to enter any of the normal instances ever again (and dont get me started on the PvP grind, I cannot believe they really made PvP into a grind), I just got completely bored of WoW.

First off, I hadn't played SWG since pre-cu, but my character was still there (well over 6 months inactive, probably closer to 10 - 11 months). When I logged in I got all my vet rewards which cashed in quite a few mill to get me started again (only sold 2 of them), and it didnt take more than a week to get the 13mill I have now + all the armor, weapons, food and spaceships I wanted. I have a few friends playing on chimaera still so they gave me a hand at the start too...

I had almost forgotten how good SWG was, its a great game, a lot thanks to the community. Comparing WoW to SWG is like comparing a kindergarden with a university.

I'm happy I reactived my account just now, since the respec's etc from NGE will be great. If I read the info correctly, all active accounts when NGE hits will get the respec's.

Regarding getting stuck in proffessions, well, how often do you really swap them? I'm on my second template since start, and the only reason I swapped now was the CU. I tested a few, found one I liked and stuck with it. With 10 respecs, and im probably only going to try the combat professions, I think I can still swap for quite some time if I feel like it, and thats good enough for me.

I got on test for a little while to see the changes, and I like NGE. It really is fast moving and the combat is fun. I like the idea of having to be in groups and I like the way it looks, apart from the kiddie stuff (pictures of starwars movie people, whats that all about??).

It does feel a little "dumbed down", but I'm gonna give it a fair chance.

If anyone has an inactive SWG account I'd say reactivate it for NGE to get the respec's and try it out. There are obviously quite a few things that are stupid with NGE, but all said and done I think its a good change.