All Posts by Dundee

Originally posted by ShiloFields
Thanks for responding.

The issue isn't necessarily reliance on quests, but rather JTL's basic design of the professions being Rebel Pilot, Imperial Pilot, and Neutral Pilot.Once that dynamic was set up the conflict with the Star Wars cannon was bound to happen.  If you had made Pilot a single profession or (or multiple professions) and then used various quests and non-faction specific ships to advance that would have been fine.  Once people reached master pilot, (or sooner if they felt lucky) they could go get their faction specific ship, and risk the penaties. The factional quests, and risk of PvP attack, could have been for after you are leveled up.

You can't set up your systems to be in conflict with the basic principle of the cannon, even if that means the alternative is unfun to some or even most people.

If you fail to abide by this principle, you don't even have a Star Wars game, even if its generically fun.  Prior to SOE shooting itself in foot with CU and in the head with NGE, the fundamental conflict with the cannon is the real reason the game was never a mega sucess.  You either screw over the cannon and get the NGE or some different heresy or you are faithful to it and you turn off the casual players and even people accustomed to more conventional MMOs.

Originally posted by Obee
Hardly addressing any concerns raise by the players about the current publish is a very good indication that Smed's "We need to communicate better" post was nothing more than BS.

This publish was delayed several times

Originally posted by lorechaser
I'm very much curious about the average poster in this thread.  I know I'm not the usual demographic for an MMO - I'm 32, have a couple kids, with another on the way.  I've been in professional jobs for 11 or so years, and have been a manager for several of those.

So I believe Freeman when he says that he didn't like it, but he did it.

I even buy the original post to some degree - maybe Cao likes it, maybe he doesn't.  But his position supports it, so he has to do the best he can with what he has, and try to make people like it.  And no, he's not going to quit his job over it.  He may be actively pursuing *new* jobs, and will take one in a heartbeat, but in the real world, you don't just quit for your principles unless you can truly afford to.

Freeman said what his vision of the NGE was - some small changes, some updates, some new systems.  Obviously, his vision didn't go in.

He was given what his vision would now be, and he worked it.  Again, I sympathize.  The fact that he's in here, taking all the shit he's taking from people who are bitter (and make no mistake - I am bitter.  I think the decisions made were short-sighted, misinformed, and sometimes out right hubris, and they killed the glory of SWG), and just telling us what he can.  That's hard.  Dude has no reason to do that, except that he really means it.  He's not a corporate shill, he's not even an employee at this point.  He's just a guy telling us what he can.

Originally posted by iskareot

In fact after seeing it again , Jeff I hope you take that back.

I mean come on.... thats almost a insult to about fifty thousand people that posted "Whats wrong" with the game...

Originally posted by iskareot

No Jeff it's been over a fucking year or more of people telling the team what is wrong....

Not calling you out on  this but come on, how many times should we post whats wrong... how many people do we need to explain this to?   There is countless lists, countless information and with some insight of mere logging in to play, one can see whats wrong.

At what point do people stop saying "no" to what people want and start considering what they "do" want.

Camps... yeah camps....lol Give back ranger and now you have a need for the camps...

It's just so sad to see people accept things instead of expecting them anymore.

Originally posted by ShiloFields
P.S.  I do hold you responsible, well least partially, for the way the ships were handled in JTL (i.e. rebel players in X-wings were not attackable by imperial players in Tie fighters and vice versu)  since you were the lead person and I brought this issue up to you in beta and you defended the design in a hotly debated thread about that and players in faction flight uniforms not being overt.  But I could see how a creative director making everyone else toe the line on staying true to the movies could have shown you the error of your ways, which is why I say partially.

Originally posted by Genwa
Jeff surely knows why SOE can't bring PreCU servers.

 He also surely knows if there is anything big coming to SWG...

But he doesn't want to tell us, so nothing is wrong here.

 Everyone, who enjoyed PreCU, still hates him along with SOE.

Originally posted by Aikes

You don't expect an honest reply do you?

Originally posted by AfroPuff
Name a human endeavour that doesn't involve creativity. Movies and television series are scheduled all the time.

 I agree that the software title should be 'finished' before the decision to ship is made, but that's not a valid execuse for ACME software studio expecting an unlimited amount of time and monkeys.

Originally posted by Newsound
I just wanted to say thank you Mr. Freeman for taking your time to post here. Your posts have in some areas cleared things up quite a bit, though in others may have clouded a little.  I just hope that nobody has to go through all the crap no matter what side of the fence you were on that came with the NGE ever again. I think all involved have learned alot.

I do have a question though... although I do not know if you can answer it.

I have seen in a few of your posts that you  refer to a Creative Director or lack there of. Now I have a few thoughts on this.

Was Raph  made an exec. to move him from the project? In order to move the game in a different direction?

To me it dose not make a whole lot of sense to promote such a key position without having anyone in mind to replace them. My guess that that is your point. If so I would have to agree.

So my question is as far as you know SWG still dose not have it's own CD? In one of your posts you stated:

Cao has been the Studio Creative Director the whole time he's been there, dual-wielding as SWG's CD 'cause it needed one.

Originally posted by wolfmann

Well, first let me say this:

Freeman, you may or may not have had a big hand in the NGE, but the damage of the NGE and the loss of the ONLY game on the market that actually offered me something more than a themepark "diablo/koreangrind/dungeonromp/Whack-A-Mole" type of play has made me weary.

If such a game ever arrives again, I just can't risk having you or any of the other SOE devs that in their mind thought that  "this part of the NGE is fun!!". I would not buy that game if any of those people were even within a gastanks distance of the developement.

As for LEC and SWG? When SWG was released, guess what games were advertised on Star Wars websites, Star Wars magazines, Star Wars comics and Star Wars books? Not SWG.  It was barely advertised..And yet it became quickly one of the top MMORPG's until WoW launched with a massive Add campaign(wich also featured adds in Star Wars magazines..).

By the time they started advertising SWG, it was too late, the game had been CU'ed and later NGE'ed, and too many pissed off customers were around.

Originally posted by Shayde
Not squashing bugs and a complete lack of content was the reason SWG declined.

Now who was responsible for both? Oh, that's right.. $OE!

Originally posted by War_Dancer
Yes, realisticly I can. Alot of those droping numbers were from other SoE fuck ups, things like the xp nerf or the root changes kept pissing more players off for no good reason. Adding to the game instead of constantly re-working the games basic systems or undermining it's strengths (adding more and more loot to the detrement of the crafting economy) would have been a better move. Then throw in the fact that SWG, as alot of us have found out since the NGE, was a very unique game that players would have come back to because there is little else on the market that has all the PreCUs features or even the CUs features.

and all that is even before going into the way they did the NGE.

Originally posted by Obee
You're using the term "lie" when the term "misrinterpretation" would be more valid.  I don't think claiming your post expressed enthusiasm for the new combat system would be either a "lie" or a "misenterpretation".  You calimed as late as yesterday that you think the psuedo FPS combat system was more 'fun' than the old 'tab and spam' system.

You're using terms that indicate a growing hostility, which is bad if you're intention is to mend some fences.

Originally posted by HudsonD
Let's put it simply Mr Freeman, and use a nice iconic and starwarsy analogy.
As far as we're concerned, it's like you were a crewman on the deathstar when it blew up Alderaan. You might have disagreed with the move, you might have opposed it as much as possible, you might have left (or get fired) right after, but you were still on the thing when it blew up a lovely peaceful planet. That might not make you as guilty as Tarkin, or the guy that pushed the button... But you're not exactly clean either and no one here is going to forget that fact.

Originally posted by Max_Torps
I really get the impressions that the MMO industry has NO project management skill base or that they only play lip service to it - this is a fairly reasonable conclusion given the number of failed projects and disappointed customer base.

Originally posted by kairaene
Okay, Mr. Freeman.  You've been quite sporting about answering the questions you can and acknowledging the questions you cant answer for whatever reasons there might be.  I appreciate your position.  It was your job.  So many people here act like they have never had a job where some idiot boss shows up and demands something you know is ignorant but hey...he's the boss.  So, get at it right?  I understand that totally. 

So, I wont quibble about the blame and who said what and why.  Just had some general questions. 

PreCU in its last known state before the CU was getting decent but many of the things that were broken at launch remained broken then and to this day still are.  I was just wondering why the game was never really brought into a state of solid gameplay?   Bugs/specials rarely fixed.   I'm just going to make an assumption that most of the "powers that be" would rather spend money on coding expansions and new features to drag in new players rather than fixing current gamecode?

Just always felt like SWG-PreCU was a game that never really got finished.  Was it really too much for the dev team to handle?  Was the base code too hard to work with?  So often it seemed like something like a special firing would break something oddly unrelated.  I could either attribute this to a bad framework for the gamecode or inept programmers breaking things accidently or carelessly as they piddle about in the game code. 

I speak of this from a very minimal understanding of coding and what is involved so maybe my interpretation of events is a bit skewed.  Just curious.  

Thanks :)

Originally posted by PyscoJuggalo
LA had to sign off on a complete change to a game with their IP, right?

Smed had to sign off on a complete change to one of the titles in his company, right?

Ward and Smed are the only two people who I know deserve blame for the NGE.  BUT- do they deserve all the blame, is my question.