WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW IS RIGHT HERE - Focus Group 3/5/2006Follow

The discussion began with a round-robin introduction and telling what we felt the best and worst aspects of Galaxies are.

Then the real discussion began.

The moderator brought out three pamphlets. One, which I believe was entitled Paths To Power, outlined the implementation of a Dark Side/Light Side path a la KOTOR, for every profession. It also went into detail about re-doing missions as either side and seeing the different view on things, different abilities for each, etc. The group was very much interested.

The second was entitled "The Galactic Civil War" and I'm sure you can imagine what it outlined: bringing the GCW back to prominence. It discussed controlling Star Destroyers and Blockade Runners, but also seemed to deadlock players as either Imperial or Rebel.

The third outline basically discussed morphing Galaxies into Battlefront II, complete with having iconic characters not only immediately available during your mission, but for you to be able to -- yes, you're actually reading this -- play as movie characters. The group was not pleased.

Then he told us that these were possibilities for expansion packs, not publish updates.

The final question/topic was whether we'd choose any one of the pamphlet outlines to add to the game, or if we'd prefer for them to work on bringing things back that were taken out. As soon as he was done talking, the group said "Rollback" almost as one. The moderator seemed like he saw that coming, because he'd probably heard the term a dozen times already from the other groups.

So there you have it. They're either going to continue the trend of "Expansion Packs aren't necessary (nudge nudge wink wink)", or, if they go by what the focus group asked, we will see a rollback of some degree.

The number one issue brought to the moderator when he asked about the biggest negatives in Galaxies was the lack of diversity in professions and the overwhelming letdown that was the NGE for people like musicians, creature handlers, smugglers, etc. He was finishing sentences for us because he had obviously heard quite a bit about it in the previous groups.

THAT'S ALL FOLKS

---end---

Thank you for the reply. :)

I cant believe they would try and make it into a BF2. Thats just out the *** unbelievable. BF2 is already out there! wtf...

The Paths of Power would have been great in the PreCU era. Would have been nice to have our actions actually leading us to the light or dark side.

Same with the GCW. That should have been on the forefront of the games main issues.

I can only hope that some of the people leading the focus groups listened and will push for a rollback.

I tried to find this on the official forums but couldn't. Did you post it there? I can't because of my "political assylum". Those guys would LOVE this news!

I hate to be presumptuous, but does anyone else detect the very slight aroma of victory in the air?

SOE, I WILL start loving you again if a rollback goes through....all past discretions will be forgiven.

If we get a rollback, or even PreCU servers... I would be so happy. I could start playing the game I bought and loved again, I could play with my friends again, my guild, all the people from tempest that I got to know, liked and hated.

Right now I still talk to almost every one that I did in SWG on a daily bases . But most of use play different games or on different servers. They all say the same thing, we will only come back for PreCU, nothing else is worth what these two companies have put the players threw.

The PreCU game really did mean a lot to the player base. I know this will sound bad, but I actually out letters and 8+ page reports to LA and LEC about all that this game has gone threw and how badly it has been handled, and countless forum post.



Edited, Sun Mar 5 22:26:04 2006 by IDRISCKY

Did anyone mention that so many people would like a pre cu SWG instead of the NGE?
Or did SOE have them silently removed from the grp if such non Star Warsy and iconic questions came up....?

I know what you mean... :-D

well, from what i've heard its not SOE's falut. LA is pushing all this crap into the game. Reguardles im still not going to buy any Sony Product for a long long time

It was strongly urged the game to move to Pre CU. 5 of 6 of us voiced we did not like NGE, the other was a new player to NGE so they didn't know about the game before and had no opinion on the matter.

No one was removed from the group, we were allowed to talk good or bad about anything we wanted. This group was brought together by an outside agency, they had no connections to LA or SOE, all they did was act as a mediator basically. They took down our opinions from us in its entirety to send to LA/SOE as feedback basically. We were allowed to speak our mind and I at least felt heard there, weither or not LA/SOE reads the notes and listens to them is another story.

I still have my share of skepticism about the reliability of any info coming from non-official sources about the behind-the-scenes stuff going on with SWG, but still it's nice to dream.

Like so many others, I too want my game back!

That said, whenever I see the word, "rollback," I instinctively start to clarify what I really want, because simply rolling the game back to either Pre-CU or Pre-NGE would lose a few good things that were implemented in the course of giving us the mess that is the post-CU/post-NGE game, while bringing back some of the problems of the original game.

The good things in the current game are few, but significant: the best is the introduction of quest-based XP. And the Combat Upgrade did manage to address the two most glaring problems with the original game: the situation with the Mind pool being all-important; and the whole balance issue arising from defense-stacker templates. I don't think the approach the CU took to character attributes was the best option, though. I was expecting to see the devs implement a system they floated briefly for our discussion: Paired Health-Action-Mind pools, with one trio being targeted for attacks, and the other consumed by our actions.

That said, we lost an enormous amount of game value when the CU went live, especially with the dumbing-down of armor types and resistances. And it was a particularly boneheaded move to add level-based damage multipliers to the combat-modifier system. That one move pretty much wiped out ALL the gameplay value from the entire galaxy! Where prior to the CU the entire galaxy was my playground, I found myself instead in a universe where everything was either purple-conn instant death or else a pointless one-shot/one-XP-point kill, all depending on my character's level.

So, bottom line is, I would be strongly in favor of a rollback to Pre-CU, but with tweaks.

But now, this opens up another can of worms: What about Jedi? Would you keep them in their pre-CU uber state? Bring back the Hidden Village? Or wipe out the months' or even years' worth of work invested by players who ground out their Jedi before the NGE went live?

My opinion is that post-CU Jedi are a sick joke, a pale and watery mockery of the Jedi of the Star Wars universe. But I wouldn't want to flood the game with them, either. My answer would be to create a "Shadow War" for the Jedi and Dark Jedi, to be fought out on a group of as-yet-uncreated planets, or maybe regions of existing planets beyond what is shown on the existing maps. On these planets or in these areas, the ranking system would flare into full bloom away from the general player pool. And out of that Shadow War, a small number of Jedi and Dark Jedi leaders would emerge, perhaps for terms of a few weeks' duration in order to give others the opportunity after a time. These leaders, anointed by their successes in the Shadow War, would be the only Jedi the game would allow to participate in the main Galactic Civil War. And if they die in the GCW, their term ends immediately and the next character in the line of succession would be promoted.

YEAH ROLLLLLLBACK! I like the sound of that! Lets do it! I would give up Jedi and my 100 million credits for that!

Although I think they screwed up majorly with the NGE, going back to a pre-CU would not be very constructive. What they need to do is move forward and slowly implement the stuff that DID work, before NGE. Unfortunately, I believe that above all, it would require going back to the skill based system. That alone would be an extremely difficult thing to do.

People need to get over this idea that the Devs are going to "rollback" to some specified date on the servers. The game was fun back then, sure, but was still far from perfect. Instead, try to think forward to how they can make this game for the better. Improving the GCW is what this game needs, not a rollback to a system where people grouped and killed animals all day. how is that Star Wars?

I really hope they do not rollback, but choose instead to move forward in a way that truly delivers the virtual Star Wars galaxy we expected to see when we logged in that first time.

Edited, Mon Mar 6 14:40:30 2006 by RUSKULL

Official forums are going crazy!

Keep up the noise!

Come on SOE - rrrrrroll it back! (You know you want to...)