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Hey guys, just wanted to share one of five exclusive interviews from SOEs Fan Faire. This one of course is about Star Wars Galaxies. If you like the interview please make sure to digg the article as well.

Remember, if you guys have any questions about SWG or any SOE games please reply to the article in my original post or feel free to bring it up in our forums and we will do our best top get them addressed(by speaking to SOE directly).

Thanks!

This system and the willingness of the devs to try things like it has me excited to be back! Hopefully it is smooth when it comes out.

Has anyone asked them about these issues...

- Animations
- New UI
- slowing down the running speed and pace of combat so the animations look normal instead of on fast forward.
- getting rid of that dumb space to jump on default.
- the old targeting system as defaut instead of the manual aim NGE one that everyone hates.
- 3rd axis so you don't feel stuck to the ground.

These are the main issues that keep me away from the game.

Yet I keep asking and never get a reply.

Originally posted by John.A.Zoid

Has anyone asked them about these issues...

- Animations
- New UI
- slowing down the running speed and pace of combat so the animations look normal instead of on fast forward.
- getting rid of that dumb space to jump on default.
- the old targeting system as defaut instead of the manual aim NGE one that everyone hates.
- 3rd axis so you don't feel stuck to the ground.

These are the main issues that keep me away from the game.

Yet I keep asking and never get a reply.

There was some work done on animations, I prefer to "Disable Animation Priority" in options though.  There are player made client mods out there that have animation changed in them, but remember that client modifications are not supported.  If you get a crash, remove them first.

By "New UI" I assume you mean the graphics of the user interface windows?  Again you can mod these if you want to.  The Devs would like to create things like additional toolbars etc but it looks like it would require a total UI re-write which isn't on the cards right now, but maybe one day.

You can uncheck the "Character Runs as Default" option to slow your character down, a lot of players are accustom to the pace of movement now however, some even use movement speed increase buffs to make it even faster.

I put together this thread in improving the keymap and targetting system: Game Play Concept: New 'Star Wars Galaxies Veteran' Standard Keymap

The Devs did once try to update SWGs collision system to accomodate functional jumping etc, but the system came back from QA with so many bugs that the project was shelved indefinately.  Maybe one day it can be revisited, but this would be a huge change effecting almost all aspects of game play.

Yeh a 3rd axis would be amazing because then you could have dungeons like WoW has with all the different levels and being able to take shortcuts and not being able to wlak through objects etc etc.  Right now the dungeons in the game feel so poor cause it all feels like one level, like 2D and they reuse all the assets in the game. I'd love for them to suddenly be able to do something new.

The thing what I really loved about old SWG is how well it animated and you just don't get that anymore. I really loved the acceleration on the run and how it would animate slowing down. I really loved the combat animations too and they fit the pace of the game but now the combat is so fast they all look really wonky. I know they say they improve them but they still look really bad. It would just be better if they slowed the game down to what it was before and add the old targeting system and give the UI a new look to reflect the changes.

I have to say, that article upset me more than anything.  That sounds like absolutely awesome, Koster-esque content that was conceived of and developed 6 years too late.  I would have taken something like this over RoTW AND ToOW combined.  What a shame they've have finally decided to start listening after all the damage they refuse to undo.

The game allready had player made quests.

Originally posted by Kylrathin

I have to say, that article upset me more than anything.  That sounds like absolutely awesome, Koster-esque content that was conceived of and developed 6 years too late.  I would have taken something like this over RoTW AND ToOW combined.  What a shame they've have finally decided to start listening after all the damage they refuse to undo.

It's an interesting move, in a time where MMORPG developers in most games are trying to make their game more accessible to casual players and going for basic, easy to understand content over systems that players can use creatively, it seems that the SWG Dev team are aware of the unique place that SWG occupies in the MMORPG market place and trying to capitalise on that.

I've been playing the veteran trial and the game is no easier to understand for newer players than it ever was. Theres a useless tutorial that still teaches you nothing about the ground game. I mean if you wanted to make Pre CU eaiser for newer players then why didn't they just make a really good tutorial that shows you the ropes? Instead they did the whole CU and NGE thing which helped nothing but took aload of unique and fun features and replaces them with sub par wow like ones. Tbh the class system is no easier than the pre cu system because it has expertise which tbh offers less choice and is more complex. I could look at that old skill box system and see what I wanted to be and just click on the boxes that would branch up there. With the expertise it isn't that clear because it just gives you aload of buffs for your character which obviously you want them all but it's hard to pick what ones as a newer player that doesn't understand balance. The old skillbox system I just went "yes I want to be a Bounty Hunter, I'll go up this branch which leads to the Novice Bounty Hunter.

All the game needed was a better tutorial to help ease players into the game. Instead they ruined it for veterans and new players still don't care because it has bad animations, a bad UI, bad combat, the tutorial still doesn't help and they've taken things out that might have attracted new players. I have a friend whose first mmorpg was WoW and he loved it until last year when he got bored. He went looking for an mmorpg but he didn't want one that played like WoW cause he was bored of that. So games like WAR turned him off because he got the feeling of been there done that. He tried SWG and I didn't even know he was trying it until I spoke to him a couple months later about games. He said he tried SWG and it was crap and didn't even make it past the first part of the tutorial with Han Solo. The reasons were because the combat sucked, the UI was ghey, the jumping was a joke and so were the animations. You know the game felt really cheap and just crap.

What he ended up going for was EVE Online and he's stuck with that sicne last year and he loves it because of th emarket and the skill system which are all in depth and he loves the level of customization you have. This is just a normal guy who first played WoW because he loved Warcraft 3 and then went on to play EVE. SWG woulda been much more popular with the old skill box system and all that. All SOE needed to do was focus on fixing bugs, giving professions like Smuggler a role and fixing Comp Armour and Doc buffs.

Instead they ruined everything for a skill class system with cheesey pictures and a horrible skill wheel thing. The whole loot system is a mess and the quest system is a mess too. You have to do quests to have fun leveling up now and new players always tend to quit when they have to buy RotW expansion.

It's just a cheap ugly mess of a game and it's such a shame because it coulda been more. Imagine how much better Pre CU woulda been after 5 years of patches comapred to the NGE. Imagine if we had all the extra content like we do today in Pre CU because that was the main complaint from people that there wasn't anything to do.

I just hope I can jump into a worm hole one day and enter a Universe where SWG Pre CU still exists lol.

They say they wanna make things easy for casual players and yet it took me ages to work out how to get into Battlegrounds because it's a frigging command! I mean look at WoW it's built nicely into the interface or you actually run to the battlegrounds. However SOE doesn't care about persistence anymore so that'll never happen. Beast Master shoulda been made into a class because I tried to go that way via the expertise and it gave me a headache so what chance do new players have.

The game just still has so many broken systems in it because it's the CU and Pre CU and the NGE all in one pile and after all this time it's stil a buggy mess where most things don't make sense and the devs are trying to fix the shit they broke and calling it new content.

I`m a huge SW fan but I never dared coming close to the game, not even trial.

Originally posted by John.A.Zoid

They say they wanna make things easy for casual players and yet it took me ages to work out how to get into Battlegrounds because it's a frigging command! I mean look at WoW it's built nicely into the interface or you actually run to the battlegrounds. However SOE doesn't care about persistence anymore so that'll never happen. Beast Master shoulda been made into a class because I tried to go that way via the expertise and it gave me a headache so what chance do new players have.

The game just still has so many broken systems in it because it's the CU and Pre CU and the NGE all in one pile and after all this time it's stil a buggy mess where most things don't make sense and the devs are trying to fix the shit they broke and calling it new content.

There is a command key you can drag and drop in your Hotbar.  I just find it easier to type /bat.

Beast Master is very difficult to enter as a beginner for the reasons that CH was cut originally.  The power to control more than 1 MOB over an enemy proved to unbalancing in combat (thats from a Dev I talked to).  The down side of BM is that its too costly for a casual pet owner to enter.  This was weighted for a dedicated Power Pet owners inmind and doesn't allow everyone free access.  This is part of the barrier to prevent Pokemon wars again.

The past dev teams have made it part of thier priority to gut old broken code and replace it with new code where possible.  The true culprate to trouble is the 6 year old engine which is too massive to re-write or adapt to new features.  This is why true 3D movement and other hard wired functions have not been tackeled.  Its bigger than the teams budget.