I was reading an italian forum about the latest changes in SWG, mostly because it’s a type of community usually less conditioned, and I found a considerable number of “I quit!” posts. I consider these more important and I say that they are less conditioned because it’s unlikely that someone working on the game reads their opinions. There’s nothing to demonstrate, noone to convince. Still, the tone of the comments is the same I can find on the usual boards. Most of them are definitely pissed off, almost enraged. I tend to believe this because they really write only to confrontate with each other and vent their honest disappointment. So I tried to delve a bit deeper on the reasons, trying to put a line between the emotive reactions and the actual valid points.

Now this doesn’t pretend to be a deep analysis of this phenomenon. It’s just a vaporous glance to some of the reactions just out of the curiosity. It would require too much time to do this better. In general what I notice, more than the critiques to the gameplay or the changes to the classes, is the rage against SOE. The players are really pissed off, they feel cheated. This comes before everything else, even before the game itself, and it depends on a number of reasons, some of which I already commented. This radical change is happening all at the sudden and way too quickly. The previous Combat Upgrade was already traumatic but it was carried along, the players were part of its progress, they saw it coming, they saw it pushed back to after the release of JtL. So, good or not (and I’m between those who didn’t like it at all), the players were aware and part of what was happening. They had time to “digest” it. Now the situation is completely different and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was an experiment also about the community. Like a social test to see how the masses react to the most traumatic thing possible. Instead of endless announces and delays, long test periods and rebalances, everything is pushed out without notice and without giving the players enough time to even understand what is going on. But maybe I’m seeing too much into this and the reasons are not so elaborate as I think…

Jeff Freeman hints that the team is under hard crunch. I’m sure noone would feel surprised but, well, *I am*. Why the hell you would have the need to rush out something huge and so absolutely fundamental like this new transition? It doesn’t make ANY SENSE. This is probably the most delicate moment ever for the game at the exclusion of launch. And they are rushing out, they are on a hard crunch and they announced the whole thing when it was already all decided and with just a two-weeks notice. No communication, no significant explanations. Just a fact: “All your base are belong to us”.

I could go on forever wondering about the reasons behind all this inconceivable absurdity but, again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the real one would be really simple and linear:

This year, the release of Episode III has fueled significant growth for the title and indeed it’s the release of the final Star Wars that has prompted the timing on these changes. “It’s great to have a movie like Episode III that gets people excited. We tried to time these changes with the release of the DVD,” says Smedley. “There will also be a big marketing push that follows as well.

Have you noticed this? Have you noticed how extemporary is it? Without the usual months of preorders? I think that what is going on could be only the result of a marketing manoeuvre. From various posts on the boards we know that the “proof of concept” about the new twitch combat has been worked since forever. Basically since the players themselves started to claim a merge between Planetside and SWG after the obvious failure in the practice of the concepts of the HAM system. But then from Jeff we know that the steering point that concluded into the announce of the NGE goes back to just “a few” months ago. Maybe I’m too naive but I believe that the whole “the changes were deliberately released after the cash-cow of the new expansion had been milked” (this one “fished” from a comment) may not be so deliberate and preplanned. Maybe it’s all the consequence of a number of coincidences and different teams working on different parts of the game as autonomous units (which is already a glaring issue). Maybe the devs tried to push for the idea for a long time, working on two or more fronts. The live game, the Combat Upgrade, the new expansion all while the proof of concept of the twitch crazy idea was being developed. And then they all did a huge effort trying to “pitch” this idea to the “Managment” and this took more and more time. Till the point where the Mangment saw this “Planetary Alignment” between the problematic status of the game (and its not so stellar performance), the crazy idea that the devs were trying to pitch and the release of the DVD version of the very last episode of the series. The game, at this point, was probably in stagnation and without many other hopes since no new movies are expected to give another external sale-boost. The release of the DVD was probably seen as a last occasion to readily pick up or just leave behind. I’m sure that it’s at this point that the managment went “Hoooooooooph” and finally said, “What the hell. Let’s just do it.”

Something I’ve learnt is that the reality is the result of awful compromises. But or you accept them, or you do nothing. This is one. As I commented elsewhere what matters from now onward is solely the quality of the changes. And this remains a risk because the quality doesn’t come with guarantees. It is never safe. This while the whole discussion was derailed through various fancy transitions to “whether change or not”. Which is a moot point. Empty, redundant. These are the discussions that risk to trigger polemics that do not go anywhere.

I’ve already derailed enough but my point was to isolate the very first problem perceived by the players, the fact that they feel cheated, and figure out the reasons. Because I’m still naive and I always think that there are always some justifications, somewhere. And so I try to convince myself that all that is going on isn’t driven by an evil mind but just the result of a bunch of coincidences and compromises that, while do not fit with our ideals, are still necessary for the reality. And someone, at some point, has to choose. And I don’t think that choosing with some courage is to blame. *Even* if the result won’t be satisfying.

The players feel cheated and I totally understand and justify them. SOE recently launched an expansion that not only will be half broken and unbalanced as the NGE will be pushed live in just a few days, but that was also marketed to hand out rewards like the special necklace and the exclusive pets for the Creature Handler that are being removed just a few weeks after they were introduced (and bought). SOE deliberately (in this case) decided to not say anything about what would have happened just a few days later. The same for all those players that were able to endure the grind to become a Jedi and unblock the second character slot. The same slot will be now open for every player and in the same way everyone will be able to start as Jedi. The JtL expansion is now free. Some classes were grounded, others were stripped out of their identity and others were simply erased. The combat mechnics changed genre.

OF COURSE the players feel pissed off. No surprise here. They got ganked.

But again this is part of the risk that SOE decided to take. I wrote down some of the reasons why I think these compromises have been so particularly awful and what is left is simply a daring choice. What matters is now about how the game will move from this point. The current designers have inherited an overambitious mmorpg and the “fathers’ guilt”. Some things were broken, some others not. Choices have been made and the designers decided to accompany the conversion of the combat with a replan and consolidation of the classes that could trigger an endless discussion alone. It’s not really easy to discern some decent patterns to organize all that is going on to figure out the actual real, unbiased status of the game and potential development from now on. One thing is sure, though, the current players are sick to play a game still in beta that keeps shapeshifting. And from now on you can be sure enough that they will remain unreasonable and won’t provide unbiased and reliable feedback on the status of the game.

This is why I tried to start digging (only very superficially) to find some patterns. I think I’ve already covered how the players feel, the reasons why they feel so and the whole problem about the communication, timing and execution of these changes. So what about the actual game on its own? This is a short, uncomplete and superficial list:

• Many players are worried about the increasing dependence of the game on ping and framerate which could become an insurmountable barrier, in particular in a game that wasn’t planned accordingly.
• Quickbar combat+First Person Shooter style = clunky and lame. Very lame. The controls are felt problematic and using many types of attacks and effects through hotkeys is appropriate for an RPG style of combat instead of a FPS. The current mix is frustrating and alienating many players.
• Inconsistences in the combat mechanics, too much abstraction. Ex. In the tutorial the players is instructed to hide behind some boxes while the laser beams of the stormtroopers go right through them. Lack of appropriate AI and mechanics.
• Doubts about the scaling possibilities of the FPS combat at the higher levels (both PvP and PvE). FPS combat + levels = problematic. (Tess has a comment about Diablo, though. Which was also referenced by SOE more than the FPS combat)
• The combat is faster but still not wrapped up around the new style and polished. All the characters and NPCs move awkwardly, the animations are mostly broken or not consistent and targeting becomes frustrating under these conditions. Forcing the players to just fire approximately with the autoattack for the best result.
• The freedom and flexibility in how the profession system worked, while maybe mostly only apparent (due to standarized templates and such), was a major feature of the game that is going to be completely discarded.
• Complete lack of customization within the same class.
• Crafters roles at risk due to the complete removal of item decay and customization/personalization.
• Direct unbalance between the classes: it is expected that most players will now become jedis to fill a world of jedis. Which kills both an healthy diversification (the “world” aspect as the unique trait of this game) and the entire perceived setting.
• Heavy bias in the classes and general outlook toward the rebels. No distinction between typologies of classes (again “rebels vs imperials”). Even the tutorial is rebel-biased. If Smed is expecting to make PvP viable in this game and focus again on the Galactic Civil War, this seems a glaring overlook that will seriously undermine the future of the game and its possibilities.
• Many problems still in the perception of the classes. Some of them have been stripped of their identity and main role (instead of consolidating and adding versatility). Ex. Bounty Hunters not being able to hunt players anymore, Jedis losing some key features, Smugglers not smuggling (slicing and production of spices being cut), Officiers not being able to lead groups (removal of “rally point”) and more.
• Inconsistence and excessive simplification (and abstraction) of the level-based system. Ex. Using a pistol will “level” even your skill with a sword.
• The specific, independent quests for each class are shaping the game as a single player, minimizing the strong social aspect that was both a strength and weakness of this game.
• The quest rewards that the new characters acquire along the way and that seem to have an important role, aren’t accessible to respecced ones.
• The UI is really ugly and looks more like a gross proof of concept that something finalized. (apologies to the artist/designer but I’m being honest. Some players have referenced Pit Fighter)

These are some of the points I’ve isolated even if I’m sure I missed many more. Each of these would require a deeper analysis on its own which would go beyond the scope of what I’m doing here. This was an attempt to narrow what isn’t working and what is probably more problematic but still urgent to solve. If SOE decided to go radical they definitely cannot stop now and must remain committed to go through each of those points and provide effective solutions. If they stop here they’ll just produce another half-assed system that will need another major redesign in less than a year. It already happened and noone needs more of these predictable fuckups. And the consequent negative admission that “change is bad”.

To conclude I just wonder what would have happened if SOE already ebayzed all its games as it will eventually happen. Maybe you remember someone menacing the “creative corner”. Some players speak already of fraud. What could have happened if the players had actually directly paid for those characters, skills and items that are now being scrapped or emptied of their main value? I believe this question is threatening enough without further comments…

P.S.
A direct fix I would suggest:
I don’t care if this breaks the current balance. This MUST be in and the rest of the game tweaked accordingly. If a player is engaged in melee he shouldn’t be able to use his ranged weapon. The very first thing the opponent would do is to block the weapon. Receiving laser bolts in your eyes for two minutes straight isn’t conceivable. So give every character defensive melee skills and knockback attacks, but ranged combat should remain ranged. The melee combat should be fleshed out as an independent system with its own “twitch” type of gameplay (give a look that what Bethesda is trying to do with Oblivion for decent twitch-y melee combat). Or removed entirely.

And for the comedy value give a look to this thread (and notice the date). This one also.

This is one standard comment on FoH’s boards. Nothing too deep and elaborate but there’s some truth in it.

Dyscord:
Sounds like what I was afraid of. They implemented a interface and combat set like a FPS. The problem is this FPS is Wolfenstein 3D instead of Half-Life 2. Actually, I’m sorry, Wolfenstein had an enemy AI at least and it didn’t take 5 minutes to kill a nazi soldier. The SWG world isn’t made for this psedo FPS combat. Even the most uncreative FPS have shit everywhere to hide behind, etc. SWG is barren, really barren. Hell, the engine sucks so much shit you couldn’t display that much junk anyway. Its a good start of a good system jammed into the worst possible game.

It’s a god damn shame. It sounds like they have the beginings of something interesting. But thats just it. THE BEGINING. Not THE WE’RE PATCHING IT LIVE THE 15TH! If they were to work from this base and leave it in development for another year and a half to make a new game, maybe they’d actually have made something fun.

I don’t even think adding chaingun wielding robotic Hitler would help.

It brings up some of my scepticism about the implementation. To not even consider the basic, fundamental problems like the netcode and the engine and all the mechanics that would need to be completely rewritten (PvE AI? Environments? PvP?).

It’s like being a child and trying to push a square form piece into the triangle-shaped hole.

I wouldn’t be surprised if in a week SOE discards the project as a bad (or too good) dream.

(Some more harsh feedback and summary here. Again about the -lack- of jumping, inappropriate NPC AI, ugly UI, animations and much more.)

There’s an article on IGN delving on some interesting points even if it’s obviously siding SOE. These are my highlights:

The official line on these changes is that both SOE and LucasArts think that the new Galaxies is how the original game should have been released. Sony Online producer Dallas Dickinson was in town to show the game off and told us that they’d gotten tons of feedback from all kinds of sources “telling us essentially that Star Wars Galaxies did not deliver on the Star Wars fantasy. It didn’t make you feel like you were part of the Star Wars universe.”

Well, this is a rather common point of view and it’s sort of predictable that those points would have been recovered to justify this huge change. Ubiq writes about a compact with the players, while I wrote about the communicative pact. The main difference here is that from Ubiq’s point of view the developers are breaking the compact because they are fundamentally changing the original concept of the game with another one. While what I wrote is that the “communicative pact” between the devs and players was already broken as the game came out and provided a type of game with mechanics *already* too alienated and abstracted from the established archetypes and cultural values and myths of Star Wars.

From this point of view this last “turn over” could be considered as a way to actually restore that pact that was broken long ago. Hence deserving the risk.

“The existing game is in a bad place and it has been. We try to give it as much attention as we can, but we’re allowing entire systems and professions to atrophy and that’s just going to continue going down in that direction

This is outright. The comment doesn’t try to justify the previous work and instead digs it without remorse. I agree in particular with the concept of atrophy that can be easily extended to many other situations and mmorpgs. Atrophy and stagnation are two widespread flaws that are already deep-rooted in the mind set of the developers. While this is mostly rhetoric once again used to justify the sweeping changes, the intention to dare and not just let the game follow its course is precious.

Yeah, it’s a big problem with the game when developers don’t know where you’ll be or if you’ll be having fun 30 minutes into your gaming experience. “That was a huge turn off to people that tried the game and quit or people that got told not to play the game. The only people left were hardcore MMO players that understood the genre and were willing to accept its failings.”

In one word: accessibility. This says that one of the fundamental flaws of the original system was in its lack of accessibility. I totally agree. So why and how the new one is suppposed to be better?

An over the shoulder 3rd person view like you’ve seen in Resident Evil 4 on the consoles that at first glance acts like any skill based action game. It means instant understanding of how the system works, which to SOE and Lucas mean more people likely to stay and pay… er, play.

See the pattern?

To begin with this can be interesting and better than a straight shooter in First Person, if the controls and the interface are well adapted and polished. The over the shoulder 3rd person view appeals me and could be an optimal blend between the “twitch” gameplay and group-oriented action.

But what is actually important is again the focus on the accessibility. I’ve already commented that decision to go “twitch” isn’t a guarantee of a better system. A whole lot will depend on the implementation and polish of all parts (it’s really not trivial, we go from the graphic engine to the controls, UI and gameplay interactions), but it’s true that “twitch” will bring the game one step closer to its goal and will help to solve the problems explained in the paragraph above: the accessibility.

Complex and abstract games aren’t easy to understand and relate to. I wrote a whole lot about this. While the “type” of game isn’t determinant for its quality, the decision to go twitch will basically force the designers to integrate and develop a type of gameplay that is more direct and natural. Which is what truly matters, whether twitch or not. In the past I ranted strongly against the trend in SWG to add classic rpg elements like class roles, sparkling “spell” effects and other immersion-breaking features that just clashed with this genre. The twitch combat, while nowhere mandatory to translate the Star Wars univers in a good game, is already a guarantee that the gameplay will be more understandable, more easy to parse and to get, more appropriate for this game.

What I wrote above about the “communicative pact” still applies here. It will be probably easier for the players to adapt themselves to these new radical changes than how it was for new players understand and accept the first combat system (grammar fails me here, but the sense should be clear).

We don’t need to just invent mathematically ideal formal systems, but we need formal systems that are also appropriate for the simulation we want to render. The myths and expectations are stronger and have an higher priority than the abstraction and perfection of a formal system. The idea of a “twitch” combat will remove the weight of the previous HUD-heavy gameplay that used a very high level of abstraction that was nowhere direct and intuitive (I wrote something similar while “reviewing” what we know about Vanguard). What is sure is that, if the implementation is good, the players will surely reward this choice.

Apparently it was difficult creating special content for 34 different classes, which I’m guessing anyone can see is a ridiculous balancing and content creation task that never should have come about in the first place. “We looked at the professions and said we have 34 widely disparate professions in the game. None of which get all of the attention that a profession deserves in a game this type and many of which don’t resonate to the Star Wars universe. I mean, what is a pikeman and why is it something in the game?” So with that thought in mind, they’ve folded all of the 34 professions down into nine professions including Jedi, bounty hunters, spies, officers, smugglers, commandos, entertainers, traders, and medics. “We ended up with these nine very iconic character types.

The necessity of a reasoned consolidation is obvious here and it’s another of those comments that are nowhere new. On the other side I remember Raph being sad because he wasn’t able to fit even more roles into the game, like the “mechanic” and even the “writer”.

As everyone else I’m perplex about using Jedis as a starting class. If anything I would have unblocked it just for those players subscribed for more than two years. It could have been a “cheap” but effective way to reward those players that had to suffer all these painful transitions. But then I would also have tried something different to try to retain their “rarity”. Maybe one day I’ll collect my ideas and write down how I would have implemented them.

The idea to use iconic character types is both good and bad. Good because it provides an answer to the question above: “what is a pikeman and why is it something in the game?” Using iconic types will help to understand and relate to the game in a more direct way but it’s also important that the gameplay is fleshed out so that each class will “feel” and play differently. Then it’s bad because it could easily bring to dull stereotypes. The same could be said about the will to make the player feel like an hero. I don’t think that’s a direct necessity. Star Wars is more subtle than how it appears and its strength isn’t that superficial like a simple hero’s journey. I think people here underestimate the efficacy of this setting.

And finally a note about the two professions getting discarded, rangers and creature handlers:

The only other profession we didn’t absorb into one of these iconic templates is the creature handler and only 1% of our players play that character type.

So, while it seems that elements of the rangers will be absorbed by the other nine archetypes, the creature handler profession will be dropped just because of a lack of popularity. And you cannot blame the devs for this choice.

In general I approve this new plan more than how I did with the previous Combat Upgrade. Changes are always good even if I would have appreciated more the will to build on top of what was there already instead of directly tear down big parts of the game. I don’t see this process as easy. As I said this need some serious work not only on the design, but also on the controls, the client and the interface. Adapting the whole PvE content to the new system and so that it is fun to play will be another huge and hard accomplishment that could easily fail.

But at least I think they are finally moving in the right direction. Let’s hope that the initial result will be acceptable and that the game can finally settle down and start to evolve on more solid premises.

Please do not rush it. It’s too important to go wrong.