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Inauro
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 Oct 2005
Posts: 9
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| SWG: New Game Enhancements FAQ @ Official Site |
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With the controversial New Game Enhancements (NGE) now in-game, the official Star Wars Galaxies site has been updated with an 'all you ever wanted to know about the NGE but were too busy grinding your teeth to find out' FAQ. Or something like that.<blockquote><em>NEW GAME ENHANCEMENTS AND FEATURES
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<br>I. Introducing 9 New Iconic Professions - Live the Saga!
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<br>Each profession is based on several of the most popular Star Wars characters, giving players the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of their favorite Star Wars heroes... or villains. Developing a character in the chosen profession is still based on story-driven adventuring, questing, and acquiring new skills.</em></blockquote><a href="http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/en_US/players/content.vm?id=66858" target="_blank">More...</a> |
Thu Nov 17, 2005 9:31 pm |
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Test
Head Merchant
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 67
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I resubscribed today for the hell of it (14.95 is less than a round of drinks so why not). I must say that I have never experienced a less playable game since I tried Neocron. First I was forced to respec my CL80 Bounty Hunter.. no problem there, always wanted to try Jedi, so that's what I picked. Half the combat commands don't work, several actions (like healing) don't work in combat when they should, stimpacks are near useless.. and so much more. Not to mention that Jedi can neither wear armor nor get any inate armor (like the old brawler skill used to give) so they get chewed up fast. While I didn't bother trying to find a lightsabre yet, I found that I could use any old weapon melee or ranged with about the same affect.
So there I was a rifle using Jedi, because melee is almost impossible because all the ranged NPC's will kite you around, and you don't do damage with melee while moving. On top of that, any action that does any real damage takes almost all your action points, and action regen is extemely slow.
Should I go on? Sure I will.. the interface has been changed, and you can't re-map most default keys. Including the ever annoying mouse mode, which can only be changed by hitting the alt key. Yuck.
In conclusion, don't even touch this for another couple weeks if your thinking about returning. Me, I'd like to have my 14.95 back because I feel it would have been better spent on a round of drinks ;P |
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Thu Nov 17, 2005 9:39 pm |
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Inauro
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 Oct 2005
Posts: 9
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Thanks for the heads-up, Test. It is rather disheartening to hear that yet another round of "improvements" have failed to pull SWG out of the quagmire that SOE seem to have made of it. Call me a cynic if you will, but i can't help but feel that SOE have somehow managed to squander one of the greatest licenses to print money ever seen in MMORPGs.
It'd be good to hear more about the NGE from other SWG players. Has your experience been the same as Tests, or do you find the NGE to be the saving of the game?
Inauro |
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Thu Nov 17, 2005 10:04 pm |
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Test
Head Merchant
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 67
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Jedi seem to be the most broken right now (I went back and read some of the message board there.. lotta hate there right now.. heh).
I'm gonna try respecing back to a ranged class tomorrow, since I hear that the game is playable as a ranged class.
One other point I didn't mention, with the new point,click attack, its really easy to lose your target when theres multiple NPC's and they bunch up.
I gotta wonder what the big rush was for this patch, its so broken yet I can't find the justification for rushing this (like a new game coming to market or something). I know purpose behind the NGE though, subscriber numbers were shrinking so low that the NGE has become 'the last best hope' for SWG.
They better fix the bugs fast or its over... |
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Fri Nov 18, 2005 1:16 am |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
quote:
Originally posted by Inauro
It'd be good to hear more about the NGE from other SWG players. Has your experience been the same as Tests, or do you find the NGE to be the saving of the game?
Inauro
I agree with Test. The game is an unplayable mess at the moment. I'm a day 1 player and never left the game for any prolonged periods of time but considering to hit 'cancel' now if SOE doesn't fix the game fast.
Aside from being treated like crap (NGE announced one day after being charged for the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion and the new Starter Kit is going to include an item that sure would be nice to have for each and every player of the game, not just "n00bs"), the problems really lie in the game and design of the new combat system itself.
The new player experience isn't that bad, actually. I played that on Test Center and it was quite a lot of fun tbh but the new beginning of the game has been designed with the NGE in mind while the old content has obviously not so this is where the game becomes plain unfun.
Let's see...
- Character movement speed has been quadrupled but unfortunately lag has as well. It's very anti-immersive to run around and to constantly have stuff pop up in your face out of nowhere because the game can't keep up with loading.
- The new UI and special action system is a joke. Every action is tied to the right mouse button now. Unless you (re)bind changing your posture to a hotkey via editing the keymap, you will have to drag the e.g. 'sit' icon to your toolbar, activate the 'sit' command via pressing the corresponding hotkey and then right-click to perform the "special" action of sitting down. Stupid... as you can see, something as simple as sitting can be quite a hassle. You can, of course, type "/sit" into your chat window as well but what was wrong with just hitting a hotkey like we did in the old system?
- Targeting is equally tedious. You acquire a target when you mouse over the target. You don't have to click it and you can't lock on a target. Mobs in SWG like to form packs when they are attacking you. It's basically impossible to focus on one mob in combat, especially as a melee player. As if that weren't bad enough, you have people, NPCs, objects etc getting in your line of sight frequently so you will lose your target all the time. Seriously, combat is pretty much unplayable (for melee classes) at the moment.
- XP nerf... you can't level in any reasonable amount of time unless you own the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion. Secondly, grouping has become obsolete for grinding/leveling since XP is divided between all group members. The larger the group, the less XP. Umm... thought this was a MP game?
- Conversion issues... now this is nuts and I wouldn't even know where to begin. Tons of items have become completely useless with the NGE, other items seem to serve a purpose and they do have converted stats but no one really knows what effect the items really have (the developers don't seem to have a clue either as one of them said in a Stratics chat this week that they don't want combat to be depending on numbers... hmm... well then why have stats at all?... could they make sense, please?)... let's just say it's one big mess.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend SWG at the moment. The developers have made it obvious that the transgression from old SWG to NGE is a process and not the matter of a single publish. One of them mentioned that it might take up to six months for the full conversion process to finish (six months in SOE land = at least two years in real world time).
Seriously, the game was in better shape when it first launched in June 2003 (bug/stability-wise). It's a total mess at the moment, a half-baked mix of old SWG, CU (combat upgrade from May 2005) and NGE... it's a real shame what has become of this game *sigh*. |
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Fri Nov 18, 2005 11:23 am |
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Test
Head Merchant
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 67
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Some more tips after playing some more and a couple patches (which fixed a bunch of stuff)
1. Ranged classes > Melee classes. Forget about melee for now, including Jedi, they just aren't fun at the moment (and if they leave the targeting system the same, I can't see how melee will ever be fun).
2. If you don't plan on buying the expansion, don't bother with the game. You won't be able to advance past CL80 before dying of boredom, and there's absolutely no good loot (and crafters are pretty much extinct).
3. To reinterate point one, avoid Jedi for now, melee is very bad, and crystal prices are so high its stupid (because there's so many new jedi's). Plus Jedi get no armor at the moment, meaning you die in a couple or three hits from mobs 10 levels lower than you.
I'm going to dump 30 bucks on the expansion. I'll report back later on what I think.
Edit: btw does anyone else think that SOE are some of the most arrogant sob's in the industry? Just to read some of those interviews that have come out post NGE (and we saw the same thing from the CU too). |
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Sat Nov 19, 2005 5:05 pm |
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methusala
Tempered Warlord
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 281
Location: Odinwald |
I can't believe what I'm reading here.You guys justifiably accuse $ony for this crap of an un-playable game and in the same breath say you are pouring more of your money into it.This is one of the reasons they either never fix it,change the complete game,are slow to fix anything,don't care what you think and treat you all as morons.$ony realized a long time ago that alot of their customer base whine and moan a great deal but will continue paying to play.As far as I'm concerned you deserve what you get when you walk into a garbage heap and on top of it pay the rats to keep it that way.I could go on and on but I think 'nuff said. |
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Wed Nov 23, 2005 8:47 am |
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Test
Head Merchant
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 67
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Don't be offended methusala, whenever I resubscribe I make sure I immediately cancel my account again  While I don't really like what the game has become, I was an early beta tester and also played quite a bit when it first came out, since then I've dabbled for a month or two here and there. So I always kinda feel drawn back to it when they make major changes, to give'em a try.
If they were concerned about veteran subscribers, they would have never pushed this patch on the game with so little testing. They don't care, if everyone packs up and leaves, that's pretty obvious by now.
I did pick up the expansion, and like I said in a previous post, if your gonna continue to play, you really need it (if you have a CL80 character). Although I read they are nerfing quest experience today, which in some ways is probably a good thing since most people with lots of time on there hands made it to CL90 (max now) from CL80 in a couple days.
The new planet looks nice from a distance, lots of lava flows and lava bursts into the air. Lava does extreme damage, you can only take about 3-4 damage pulses from it before your dead. This might be video driver thing, but I've found the lava is actually made up of tons of red rectangles once you get up close. Looks pretty bad on Nvidia card with latest drivers.
They nerfed the hell out of the death penalty. Death is now simply a trip back to the cloner, with no other penalties. In fact its the best way to travel from where you completed a quest, back to the mining facility. I know they want to make SWG a console game, but its pretty silly.
The quests on Mustafar are the same types from Revenge of the Wookies, but they give exp, which a lot of is needed to advance from 80-90.
Item decay of every kind is gone. All armor and weapons are permanent now, and most crafted weapons/armor are alike (gone are loot made weapons/armor with better stats) so as you can guess weaponsmithing/armorsmithing is quickly dying.
In conclusion, your average gamer will eat up the content on the new planet in a couple weeks.. much less for the hard-core, and maybe a couple more weeks for the casual game. At that point, with crafting gone now, there isn't a heck of a lot left to do. Pvp is still pretty meaningless. |
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Wed Nov 23, 2005 2:22 pm |
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