All Posts by salvaje

Rules 2, 3, 6, and possibly 7.

We know it's going to close someday.  Considering the evidence that the subs are lower than ever (such as the pathetic forum response to that profession poll, and my own survey of Bloodfin last night) why not now?

Originally posted by m240gulf

I don't think they are hoping, well maybe they are, for people who try the trial to resub, I think it's more of a way to start telling their investors or current player base that they are growing fast with the new publish.  In $OE's mind they think people will say wow, SWG will have 300k subs again in no time and start calling back their friends who quit. 

Not going to happen, but like you said, it's a final act of desperation; they've gone hail marry on this one

The irony is that if all 300K came back and actually played the servers would explode in flames because they can't possibly handle 1/4th of that due to the flaws in the combat system design :)

No, that actually is very unhealthy.

Simply put, any effort made to lure the vets back at this point is wasted effort.  The vets have left and stayed away this long, they aren't going to come back. 

The only thing that would bring anyone back would be classic servers.  They won't do this.  Therefore, they have no chance of luring any vets back. 

They'd be better off focusing on their diminishing pool of mind numbed fanbois.  Indeed, fanbois, the fact that SOE keeps trying to lure us back with free trials, is an insult to you.  SOE still regards the players they don't have more highly than the players they DO have, because they are larger than you in number.  VASTLY larger. 

They just don't regard the players they want back highly enough to actually do anything (classic) that might make us want to come back.

Quadrupling their subs overnight (from trials) might make them PR spin, but it won't make them any money at all unless anyone actually pays and stays. 

Chances of that?  Very little.  I messed with the NJE for a while last night, and there is nothing in the NGE now that wasn't there when I quit for good a little less than a year ago to make me reverse that decision.  The vast majority of those who even bother to log in will likely come to the same conclusion I have.

In fact, a lot of what I saw was worse.  For one thing, for 9PM, which is east coast prime time, Bloodfin (which is one of the top 2 "heaviest" servers (I use that term mockingly) was desolate.  It was listed as Medium on the screen, with only Bria also being Medium.

Collection scavenger hunt grinds don't strike me as fun, but if I stayed I'd be forced to do them in order to compete since they reward (as usual) uber no trade loot.  The foozle instances don't interest me at all, especially since they are linear and scripted to the point that they have only a single solution.  So read a guide and press the "IWin" button.  Then you have to do it over and over and over and over so as to get that, you guessed it, loot drop.

Sorry, that's not the "greatest Star Wars story ever told, my own" that I signed up for. 

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

Isn't it common knowledge that LucasArts made the NGE and forced it onto the team at SOE?

Wasn't it like a month before the New Game Enhancements that the SWG team at SOE released the huge update to Squad Leaders that they were very proud of?

Then LucasArts gave out Order 66 to the old SWG?

Either way, fuck this game... it was trash when it launched and trash now.

The NGE was totally of SOE's invention, Freeman and Cao's, specifically.   LEC did not force it  upon them, though they did agree to let them do it.

Which makes them just as guilty and as incompetent as SOE was.

I checked my accounts.  All of them.  Every one of them now has a vet trial.  I've not been able to verify this, but I was told that this trial is for 40 days.  I tried to find out for myself but couldn't.

This has to be a total act of final desperation.  40 days, btw, puts this out to the end of the 2nd quarter of 2008.  Given what I'm hearing about the current paid sub number, could this be the last, FINAL, desperate push to get people to come back, or else close it down?

Could be.  I was very unimpressed by their future plans from the recent summit.  They basically gave out vague outlines of 2 publishes, and one foozle instance.  No talk at all about addressing the fundamental core problems with the NGE, nor in addressing the principal reasons why the vets don't like the NGE.

So, lots will be experiencing the NJE.  I tried it myself last night, and it was everything I expected it to be (and less).  Add to this the insult that the elder robe not only has been equaled, but SURPASSED by a new scavenger hunt grind robe (which is ugly as sin) I don't think that this was a very good publish to try to tempt veterans back with.

They never have done this widespread or long a free trial before.  Something is up.

But from my perspective, this is great.  I am all in favor of Blix's terror getting as much exposure to actual players as possible, because I am convinced that it will put off more people from the NGE and SOE.  So, this is a good thing!  They've had over 2 years to fix this mess and have crap little to show for it.

Originally posted by fozzie22

Originally posted by salvaje

That's less than 20 days before the NGE announcement.

Unless they started and developed the whole NGE within those 20 days, this is absolute open and shut case evidence of fraud on the part of SOE and LEC.

 

Given the state of the NGE when it went live 20 days sounds about right dev time :)

Yeah, but even that pre-alpha crap took way longer than 20 days :)

Thinking back to how the NGE was out of the gate...  man...  It truly was horrible, even compared to the still bad state of it today.  Lots of weapons didn't work, most abilities wouldn't fire, my Jedi went from alpha class to alpha CHUMP because he had NO ARMOR OR DEFENSES...

Truly, truly horrid.  No way in hell that was an acceptable "enhancement" to an existing 2.5 year old live game even if you accept that they had the right to make such massive changes.  The NGE was pre-pre alpha at the most.
 

That's less than 20 days before the NGE announcement.

Unless they started and developed the whole NGE within those 20 days, this is absolute open and shut case evidence of fraud on the part of SOE and LEC.

Originally posted by Obee

 

Originally posted by RelCenturica

Telling why its broken isn't enough... its their darn obligation to fix it!

And I really think this topic belongs in General Discussion than the Vet Refuge.

 

Toilet Boy has already posted on the OBoard that fixing the existing pre-'heroic' system instances would take as much time, if not more, than building brand new ones.  He said that the developers would rather add new 'content' than waste entire publishes fixing them.  Yes, he came right out and said that he didn't want to bother trying to fix things he knows are broken when he could just cut and paste another instanced encounter much quicker and easier.  He isn't going to get promoted to the DCU project by fixing bugs after all...

 

He's going to get promoted to the DCMMO project only if there isn't anyone else ahead of him left to take the job.

If he were competent he wouldn't be a veteran Dev working on the NGE, he'd be on one of their new games.  SWG is a graveyard for Devs.

As far as I can tell ALL my accounts are active now.

Logged in my Elder Jedi on Bloodfin.

Pitiful.

Originally posted by AfroPuff

Yes, collision detection was a stated requisite, and clearly needed from direct observation. Naturally, they launched without it. Remember when the NGE was launched and the mobs used to stack up right on top of each other?  Useless.

Imagine playing Call of Duty 4 where the enemy has no collision limitations, can shoot at you through everything, and you ducking behind cover, dropping to the ground, or even running away does nothing at all whatsoever to dodge their attacks, while at the same time, terrain actually blocks YOUR attacks.

That is the FPS that is the NGE.

1. Go on a galactic scavenger hunt for junk.  Yeah, this was in the movies.

2. Go run the same scripted (single solution) "heroic" foozle encounters every night hoping for uber loot.

3. Try to find another living non AFK person on 20 of the 25 servers.

Given the VERY ugly current paid sub number I was just informed about...  Think lower than you think...  Way lower...  You can see why they do this.

I have no doubt they will be offering a vet trial to all of the...  just to pick a number out of the air, 249,600 people who were subs on 11/14/05 who aren't now so as to try to pump that up.

EVE+Ambulation=Pre-CU on steroids.

Originally posted by AfroPuff

I'm positively stunned to hear the dev team say that heroic space encounters would likely require specific chassis or specific loadouts, and that they view this as a problem? I mean, isn't that the effing point? 

 

Is it really true that the thought of specialization pisses off the current pilot community? I mean,if I'm a Y wing bomber pilot, WTF do I want an A wing jock to be able to do my job?

 

The existing heroics are scripted.  To complete them you are forced to do so in exactly the same way the Devs did.  They actively nerf or prevent any other solution method.

What he is saying is that they won't do space heroics because the space system, still being Pre-CU in nature, doesn't allow them to constrain it into one single possible solution, because this would be impossible.

For some reason they think that any problem that has more than one way to solve isn't fun.

Yeah, a great example of why "Fail" is the mantra of the NGE.

What is laughable is that collision detection and jumping were REQUIRED for the original Freeman NGE concept to even WORK!

So right then and there they completely lack ANY ability to make a working FPS like game with the existing engine.

So why is that not only still an option, but is still the DEFAULT set up?

Toilet Boy is getting testy after being called out on the new "turd" dropped today:

Blixtev

Developer

Joined: Jul 28, 2004
Messages: 925
Online
Traga wrote:

../agree

What is totally awesome is I can see Un_NerfJedi and Traga are the same person!  This is often why we have trouble with feedback from the forums.  If you have an opinion, you only need to state it once.

Have you found other clothes that match to make up a good looking outfit Thearin?

Revealing something like that is a complete violation of SOE policy.

Such as it is.

Blix is getting run over in that thread.  Literally.

The NJE melt is in full force.  Let's see if they have any subs left by morning.

Stuff like this totally reveals why Blix is an absolutely HORRID choice for lead dev, and why he will NEVER hold this position EVER again once the NGE closes...........

I could see UDP as being  viable, and yes it will reduce lag because UDP packets are smaller than TCP, IF you plan the stream right...

Such as a hard one second cap on actions, like pre NGE...

The NGE allows 4-5 attacks a second, thus violating that.

This is fundamentally why the NGE combat system is fatally flawed.

The balance on that is that MMORPG only has something to SELL to the advertisers so long as we are here.

We are the product that they sell to advertisers.

So if they completely dump on us and show themselves totally in the pockets of advertisers, they ultimately lose their product.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=654789&#7136664

Elder robe now eclipsed by new scavenger hunt robe.

Meltdown imminent.