All Posts by Dundee

Originally posted by Nasedoo

check this out and see what you think of this red guy has to say about SWG.... they didn't make NGE happen!!! LOL LMAO!

ChrisCao

 The types of tumultuous changes brought about by the NGE, of which Thomas and Kai were not a part, will not happen again. 

Originally posted by FikusOfAhazi

Why does the EMU team seem to have LA's blessing?

guilt?

 Because there is no money being made? Couldnt SOE get around it the same way. NO profit....

Originally posted by Obee
The folks labeled "SWG Community Team" (yeah, they're the forum mods, but they need to be distinguished from the swgmod00x sockpuppets) are the ones who seem to be the most hostile, probably because they interact more than the devs do.

 The only two developers (Chris Cao and Helios) who were generally hostile towards any part of the community have been promoted off of the SWG project.  Chris Cao got promoted to Creative Director of the entire Austin studio shortly after his post that you did not comment on in you blog,

and Helios is now Lead Designer 3 or 4 for the DC Comics game (having a large turnover of devs due to management interference doesn't bode well for that game).

Originally posted by J.Burton

Hi Jeff

  Thanks for answering these questions.  i have just one for ya. we have all heard who didnt have anything to do with the NGE. but want i would like to know is who was the orginal person who pitched the idea? who was the guy that said we are going to do this.  that is the persons name i want to know. if you cant tell me that then maybe you can say was it someone at SOE or LA. thanks for your time. Jack Burton. Nashville, TN.

Originally posted by severius
So, Jeff.... who was it that pulled Torres and Smedley into the office and said "wow this is cool, wow this is fun".  Who was it that said "I was the one that had to sit there and convince everyone else that we could do it, we should do it, this is too cool we have to do it."

You say here "These changes didn't happen because I just up and decided one day to change everything. Changes weren't made because a designer suddenly wants to play a new game." However, last year someone was saying that that is exactly what happened.  Along with the other lies that were being thrown around by people at SOE and LA we were led to believe that there was a small group of you on your own that started running with this bs idea and then went around fighting tooth and nail to make it happen.  And then through your abilities at persuasion you got them to buy into the bs that the NGE was a fun replacement for what had been there and been going for years beforehand, and before wow, was considered, albeit buggy and incomplete, one of the better mmo's on the market.

Originally posted by Obee
The Starter Kit listings were worded exactly the same as they were after it was announced (ie., they listed the whole "9 Iconic Professions" as one of the features).  They already knew they were removing Rangers and Creature Handlers (among others) yet they continued working (or at least giving the appearance of it) on the Ranger revamp until well after they claimed the Starter Kit was not a real product.  Either they continued to work on things they knew were going to be removed, or they were purposely lying to their cutomers that they were doing so to hide the fact that the NGE was on its way.

The game had its own 'personality',

 but WoW had more customers so they decided that personality was less of a concern than trying to draw people away from WoW with a poorly implemented knock off.  John Smedley said that both the CU and the NGE were the result of looking to attract customers from WoW.

Many developers make that mistake, even though all existing evidence points towards PvP appealing to a small percentage of MMO players.

John Smedley posted that the NGE was a business decision.

Na... Haven't you heard? A designer talked him into it! 

 He believed the NGE would retain most of the, at the time, current players and attract the WoW crowd.  It was a very poor business decision considering both of those things failed to happen.  It wasn't a lack of creative direction that caused the NGE, it was the failure of the game to attract a large enough audience.

 Well, that and the fact that WoW changed the parameters of how success is quantified.  Mr. Smedley admitted that WoW played a big part in the NGE, or at least its success did.

That last point is the reason I no longer subscribe (nor will I until it is corrected to my satisfaction) to any SOE products, even though EQ2 is the only MMO that has held my attention for more than a month since I left SWG.  The NGE, while a slap in face, wouldn't have prevented me from playing other SOE products I found fun.  The persistant blaming of the customers, open hostility, and unprofessionalism by the SWG 'community team' will.

Originally posted by Obee

By mismanagement, I mean that a lot of development time was wasted working on fixing things that weren't broken and things that the folks in charge knew were not going to make it into the game.

 The profession revamps being worked on prior to the NGE is a good example of mismanagement.  Once the decision to implement the NGE was made, all development should have focused on it.  It wasn't until around a month before the NGE went live that the developers stopped discussing the Ranger revamp (along with the other profession revamp that was supposed to happen at the same time).  The info about the NGE was leaked and denied about two months before that (along with the Starter Kit showing up and disappearing from online retail sites).

 The entire CURB development time was wasted because someone (I'm assuming it was a management decision) decided to implement the more WoW like CU, even though what was known to the playerbase about the CURB was responded to very positively.

More recently, an entire year worth of development time has been spent working on PvP related things when only around a fifth of the current playerbase has any desire to engage in it.  That would fall more into creative direction, but the fact that most of the current playerbase wanted more PvE content came as a surprise to the president of the company (along with what he posted around this time last year) indicates that the folks in charge of the company wanted that to be the direction of the game.

I do think what was implemented as the NGE was an extremely poor business decision.

 I also think the way it was inflicted on the customers (announced a few days after releasing an expansion and only giving two weeks notice) was a major breach of trust.

 The whole situation has damaged SOE's reputation and their reaction to the hostility from the customers is to be openly hostile and unprofessional back.

Originally posted by iskareot

As for Helios... well, he is not freelancing.  He is under contract from what I understand and there was some differences on the SWG staff.   However, if people find out he is working on the DC project and he is one of the master minds behind the biggest MMO blunder EVER then I tend to think less people will trust that product as well.

Originally posted by Genwa

I think you misunderstand. A push to acquire and retain new players was needed. Call it "The plan".

It's a good thing to do, this plan.

Plan A is to give all existing players herpes.

Plan B does not.

If the implementation is A, then even though the plan is a good thing to do, the implementation is bad. Should have been plan B.

And NGE could retain new players?

Google can. :)

Originally posted by Shari
Hi there, I was a vet of swg and I know they have changed crafting again now in chapter 5, does this mean they can craft the best items in game now? thnx for replys

Originally posted by Obee I disagree, The idea to radically redesign everything WAS the problem.  The game was mismanaged and many problems were ignored, or at the very least put at so low a priority as to never get fixed, while development was focused on making 1 on 1 PvP 'balanced'.  The solution to that wasn't a revamp, it was to listen to what the community wanted, which from the begining was more directed content, and work on that.  Unfortunatly for all involved, the folks in charge decided the path to victory was revamps and making Jedi more accessible.  Prior to the NGE, the game was fixable and had many things you can't find in other games on the market.  Now the game is another in a long line of WoW knockoffs with a crappy pseudo FPS combat system.  Had it not been a Star Wars game, I don't think the game would still be around after the NGE.

It was mismanagement more than inconsistant creative direction.  It is still the case to this day.  I agree WoW is fun, but for people who want to play a WoW type game, why play a bug ridden, empty, unfun version of WoW, when you have the option of playing WoW?  Everything that made SWG's gameplay different than every other game on the market was removed. 

Originally posted by severius

Had you done those things mentioned, along with addressing the bugs that were promised to be addressed during the Combat Revamp (which never occured), added in a rudimentary physics system etc SWG could still be a viable platform today.

 Instead, I believe it was Smedley that said it, you all decided that the people that had been there from the start and made SWG a successful mmo (for its time) were no longer who you all wanted in the game.

Originally posted by plong

I know. You're right. The first post that I made here was to apologize for that post. Not to apologize for liking clicky combat more than CU, but for posting about any part of the NGE so gleefully, without thinking how that was just salting your wounds. People who didn't even care about the combat changes, creature handlers rather more upset their game was gone for example, were pissed to read that post, rightfully so. That was terribly insensitive.

As for the design itself: Lord Pall was the lead designer then, doing what game designers are supposed to do: design a game system within given parameters. That is, we're tasked with things, like "redesign combat". And given some direction, like "make it so these people will like it". Or sometimes, "those people."

I don't care that  you posted that Jeff, I care that you had that opinion as a game developer.  Anyone in business knows you got to give the customer what they want.  Ford doesn't offer only 4 shades of blue as the color for the mustang because it is Bill Ford's favorite color.

  The whole concept of the NGE should have been a second game, and you as a developer should know that on a base level.  I don't play counter strike because I don't like FPS, yet if the developers of that game released a patch that made it into The Sims, they should expect to lose all their current customers.  The fact that they don't is what I mean by "you should have known better".

Originally posted by Genwa
It wasn't good idea, it was far from being good.

People, like you caused, it. Sorry, but you can't give excuses. As an MMO developer, you do know these are more than game for your customers. You were part of  "How to make customers more mad" team. You did well.

Same again, people like you "still" can say NGE was good idea bla bla. We, as customers, paid your money. It wasn't for you to make what you like to play, it was for ourselves.

You, any devs, ALL SOE know NGE was a big mistake. We can't expect them to come here and say "Yes, we sucked". Instead of saying that, they only say "Delivering was wrong". Can you tell me that; Would SWG be still online if you told people that NGE was coming in 3 months? I don't think so...

Originally posted by Obee

Originally posted by Dundee
The combat system we shipped with did have some issues.  I thought them more related to ancillary systems interacting poorly with the main combat system (healing, buffs, weapons, armor... dots, maybe). My preference was to fix those issues rather than revamping the whole thing, but that wasn't my decision to make. I went right to working on JtL, then right to RotW aftter that, so I wasn't even in the loop on what decisions were being made, let alone why.

The point of Dvol's post was that the CURB, which was ditched for the CU, was supposed to address the players' complaints of the combat system.  The developers working on it communicated pretty well with the players on the forums, up until the CU was announced.  The CU brought a bunch of changes that nobody asked for, nor wanted.  Sadly, it didn't decimate the subscription base like the NGE did, or we likely wouldn't have had the NGE.  The CU, while a radicle change, against the community's wants, didn't make the game unrecognisable, which the NGE did.

We'll never know if the CURB might have done what the CU and NGE was intended to do.  It would have been a major change, with the consent and input of the community.  Unfortunatly, certian WoW