SWG killers are gone!

[SaibotLiu]

They had that, AFAIK BEFORE SWG. Also FYI Smedley ADMITTED that it was his fault (will provide links if necessary). He said at the time it happened it was his brilliant idea and then later in interviews, when they announced the closure of the SWG servers, admitted not only that he screwed up but that he would NEVER do it again.

 

Utterly inaccurate. Smedley did pump up the change when it was going in, what else was he supposed to do? "Hey ya'll, I didn't really want to do this because it completely sucks, but here you go anyways, even though like I said, it sucks."

 

He had a professional responsibility, not to mention his job, to worry about so throwing Lucas Arts under the bus makes both impossible.

 

He did later admit it was a mistake, took his share of responsibility for it, but that does nothing to change the fact that it's already been established that it was Lucas Arts decision. Disagree all you like, most anyone familiar with the proceedings knows this.

 

Sony as a company has done ridiculous things to EQ2, but nothing on the scale that was the NGE. It's not even comparable.

[Ghisallo]

AMEN BROTHER!!!

 

Personally, I wish they could turn him loose on the streets at a predetermined time so that all of us who played the original SWG and absolutely loved it could pelt him with flaming bags of dog doo. I have never seen a bigger SCREW YOU to the players than the Combat Upgrade and the NGE. When 99.9% of your forum population is telling you that the CU is a terrible mistake, yet you go through with it anyway, then repeat that same nonsense with the "New Game Enhancements," I can't think of a clearer way to tell your players that you don't care in the least what they think.

 

Well he learned his lesson, a little, in EQ2. After that EQ2 started a tanking "upgrade". In order to balance the tanks it basically made all tanks identical except for particle effects. After tank revamp step one was implemented...it was shown step 2 would result in players being able to tank with basically a single macro button. Players raged... Smedley canceled it, likely remembering the CU/NGE debacle...Aeralik got a bug up his butt due to it being his pet project for almost 2 years and left for Trion.

 

Problem was step one was already implemented so tank balance was arguably worse than it was BEFORE the process had started.

 

Smedley is a complete knee jerk reactionary manager...in short simply a train wreck waiting to happen.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Ghisallo

[Draqsko]

The problem is sandbox MMOs, as much as people keep calling for them, tend to fall flat on their face. They have worked in Asia with certain titles but those have been PvP centric and when the reach the US they end up being very niche.

 

People tend to forget that their idea of fun is not the next guys idea of fun. Its hard enough keeping all those little cats herded in a theme park game and the sandbox setting makes that even harder to do.

 

I just don't get it. How many times is a sandbox game going to have to fail before people realize it is one of those cool plans that simply doesn't survive contact with the enemy, in this case the enemy being players.

 

This one might do well in the US... but I imagine the system requirements are going to be hefty, but hey, we got a year or so to upgrade...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Desert

 

 

The game includes a number of features to assist with immersion and the sandbox aspect. These include:

A parkour system, similar to that seen in Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed, allowing players to climb, explore and interact with buildings and obstacles.[12]

A dynamic, worldwide weather system which will include large scale events such as typhoons and will influence gameplay.[13] Localized weather will include events such as temporary fog which players may exploit to launch surprise attacks on rival guild structures.[14] Seasonal weather changes or travelling to areas with different climates will require the player to adjust their equipment, for example using warmer clothing in cold weather which also impacts on a player's statistics.[15]

A dynamic day/night cycle with a gradual progression of lighting effects. During the night some NPCs will become unavailable as they return home while the number and type of monsters that a player may encounter will increase. Different game content will be available depending upon whether it is night or day.[16][17]

Player housing will be instanced and will vary from tents through to more substantial houses and buildings. Players will be able to furnish and equip their housing and may hire NPCs to set up as traders from the building.[18][19]

An active combat system requiring precise manual aiming, dodging & comboing, unlike the tab-targeting system seen in older MMORPGs.

Players will be able to engage in mounted combat.[20][21] Mounts are acquired by taming in the wild and players are able to breed special mounts by mating certain types.[22] Mounts require feeding and care, cannot be stored in the inventory, and may be killed.[23]

Extremely detailed customization of the character's body.[24]

 

 

 

The weather and lighting is insane.. rain splashes off your weapons in combat, forms puddles on the ground, changes textures so things get wet, and it's got one of the best looking sky boxes I've seen. There's a trade system, where you buy goods off NPCs in cities and sell them to NPCs in other cities like a commodity broker so you could make money without even having to fight things.

 

I know I'll be checking out the release in Asia later this year to see if I want to play it when it's released in the US in 2016.

[Ghisallo]

Utterly inaccurate. Smedley did pump up the change when it was going in, what else was he supposed to do? "Hey ya'll, I didn't really want to do this because it completely sucks, but here you go anyways, even though like I said, it sucks."

 

He had a professional responsibility, not to mention his job, to worry about so throwing Lucas Arts under the bus makes both impossible.

 

He did later admit it was a mistake, took his share of responsibility for it, but that does nothing to change the fact that it's already been established that it was Lucas Arts decision. Disagree all you like, most anyone familiar with the proceedings knows this.

 

Sony as a company has done ridiculous things to EQ2, but nothing on the scale that was the NGE. It's not even comparable.

 

Sorry but I know for a fact, as at the time I had personal friends working for SOE, that Smedley approved all of these changes...heck he spearheaded them. Let me explain. Yes Smedley did not say do the CU and then NGE in terms of the details. Neither did. LA said "we need you guys to change something... you are losing subs anx that is costing us all money.". Smedley then says (much fewer words than he used) "we need to simplify the game based on the QQ on the forums so figure it out."

 

Then devs come up with something, LA says "looks good" they then put it in front of him and then he gives it either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Here is what he said himself actually...

 

Many of you ask "Why did you have to make such a sweeping change rather than just fixing the things that were wrong?" - well, to put it bluntly - everyone had different ideas of what we needed to fix. Trying to balance 34 professions, and add compelling content to make everyone happy proved to be a very large challenge. Many design decisions made early on in the game's creation were boxing the team in to the point that we were never going to be able to really make this game rise to the level it needs to as both a great experience AND as a business. We have consistently kept the SWG team as one of the largest teams within SOE (around 70 people). Even with a team that size getting new content done along with maintaining the live game, along with developing new systems for SWG just proved to be tougher than it should have been. We've got a lot of experience doing MMO's, and SWG has always proven to be the game that was the toughest for us to make changes to. So, along with our partners at LucasArts we did a very lengthy look at just what the fundamental issues with SWG were. We spoke to many of you, read the forums and conducted numerous focus group tests with both existing players, people who have played MMO's before (but not SWG) and people that haven't ever tried MMO's before.

 

The consistent feedback we recieved through this research showed us where the problems were. Here are the top 3 issues:

 

1) Difficult to get into - too complicated. People didn't understand what all the professions were, and the interface was just plain hard.

2) Combat wasn't exciting enough

3) Game wasn't "Star Warsy" enough. The professions issue also showed itself here.

 

This pretty much supports what my friends told me as well... They just had, shall we say, more colorful thoughts and opinions on the issue.

 

Then you take all of his apologies later.... THEN the fact that he has done this to basically every AAA title he ever got his hands on. Now if it was only SWG that had this happen (and my friends didn't contradict it) I would say "okay it could go either way...not worth arguing"... However if you look at the " totality of the circumstances" that show us this is just how Smedley always operates...we see that he indeed was the "shot caller."

 

I also never said the degree of NGE is matched in EQ2. EQ2 is just there to show that he calls the shots. You can even see it with EQNext.

 

Smedley quite literally told the devs to start from scratch with just about everything but their custom graphics engine 3 times now. This was triggered each time the next "WoW killer game" launched. It was basically "oh look that game looks set to kick ***...copy it.". Landmark was actually an " oh crap maneuver". EQNext is no where near done and he needed to produce SOMETHING so he and his people came up with Landmark. The idea being that they can get people to play, and pay for with Station Cash, a game that is quite literally an Alpha for EQNext.

 

So even now he hasn't learned. From day one he has been a reactionary obsessed with what everyone else is doing rather than just saying "let's make a good game."