Star Wars Galaxies

Looking back on Five Years. . .

I was just thinking. These are my thoughts on the successes, failures and unfulfilled possibilities of SWG. Please feel free to make your own comments. This is not a “I hate SOE” or a I want a “classic server” (I still do) thread. It is just me trying to be honest with what I think worked and did not with SWG.

First --- The NGE, biggest disaster by far. It crippled the game. Now, just because the NGE was a disaster, does not mean I think no good things have been added or modified in the game since then.

The Great:

32 professions to mix and match however you wanted were truly awesome.

Improvements?

I do think, with hindsight--- a simple diminishing returns formula could have really stopped a lot of the “balance” arguments. I mean honestly even if you were a TKA and fencer, I doubt you could get that much better at dodging J

Crafting

This is still one of the best things I have seen in a game. Player based craftables being superior to MOST loot was awesome.

Improvements?

As much as I loved the old system, I think post NGE armor was far superior to pre-cu in its ability to have more variety. I never liked seeing everyone in composite. That was a nice feature that I wish would have been added to the Pre-CU crafting. The same goes for weapons, I got tired of seeing the same giant rifle everyone was carrying. The skins should never have been so important in determining attributes IMHO.

JTL

Space and ground game in Star Wars! Tie fighters! X-wings! The corvette! Star Destroyers!

Improvements?

I wish more content had been added to space. I wish that lots of the older quests in the game had combined space and the ground game more. I wish they would have created capitol ships that players could interact in.

Jedi

Well it is Star Wars, and I must admit, it was very cool when I saw my first jedi in game.

Improvements?

Well to start--- they should have had a tested system BEFORE launch. Also, they should have stuck to their guns with perma-death. I have some more, but think it would be better placed in GCW.

GCW

Rebels versus the Empire --- this had SO much potential. Dead Eye was an OK start, but things like the Imperial Crackdown should have had TEETH. Also, the pre-cu system of overt was and still is in, in my opinion far superior to what is in game now. Although at least in the current version, people can wear storm trooper armor and not be at a disadvantage as they were Pre-CU.

Jedi--- (this is probably a minority opinion) --- I think there should have been a hard cap of something like 30 jedi per server. With Perma-Death and 10 slots each for imperial, rebel and neutral to keep giving new players the opportunity to achieve their jedi.LS TEF should have been active based off GCW. Rebel jedi would be TEFED to all imperials and vice versa. Neutrals would have been TEFED to anyone not grouped with them.

Although I was never keen on an alpha class, I think if it was to exist in a game, it should be hard to obtain and hard to maintain. Risk v. Reward.

Finally

I think the game should not have been released as it was. Whatever your take, (mismanagement , deadline pressure, whatever) SWG was not ready to go live when it was released. I say this led to the NGE. Now I know that most thinking is that WOW led to the NGE but hear me out.

IF SWG had been released without the bugs and with Jump to Lightspeed included, I think you would have seen the game hit the million boxes sold number much sooner. I really feel a sand box pre-cu that allowed you to be part of the star wars universe – minus all the bugs would not have been eclipsed by WOW.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts. I will be sad when SWG fades--- mainly because I have many fond memories of friends in the game. And the environment in the game was beautiful, shortly after the game first came out, a friend and I went to every POI on every planet. It was amazing. Sadly there was never a reason to go back to most of those POIs… maybe I will revisit them once more…

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Originally posted by HastorHadron

 
Looking back on Five Years. . .
 

 
Improvements?
I do think, with hindsight--- a simple diminishing returns formula could have really stopped a lot of the “balance” arguments. I mean honestly even if you were a TKA and fencer, I doubt you could get that much better at dodging J
 

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Yeah but that is kind of my point, if they had added diminishing returns, I think you could have had really cool combinations with less stacking... take out a lot of the stacking and take out a lot of the complaints people had.

Originally posted by HastorHadron

Yeah but that is kind of my point, if they had added diminishing returns, I think you could have had really cool combinations with less stacking... take out a lot of the stacking and take out a lot of the complaints people had.

 

Here's the thing though remove the stacking , the result would have been Jedi owned everyone .I made my temp mostly to combat tkm/cm's and Rifle/cm's though , Never lost a duel to one once i had my gear and build done. I also did fairly well against groups or solo jedi.

Yeah, i have to agree with you about the jedi thing. But I really think that would have been ok if jedi had actually been limited in numbers and feared perma-death.

The biggest mistake I ever made in the game was dumping Master Bounty Hunter. And that was back when you had to master Scout to do it. If I could do it over again, I'd try Master BH with as much Carbine and pistols as I could get.

Or maybe I'd just take four boxes of investigation with either Master Swordsman or Pikeman.