SWG and related initialisms
2010-03-06
SWGEmu got some press recently, essentially because SOE still hasn't crushed it. (I can't find the article, but it was pretty old news, given that SOE not having crushed SWGEmu has been the [somewhat un-]natural state of affairs since SWGEmu started.)
Besides interesting thoughts about the legal status of private servers and emulators, it got me thinking about how Star Wars Galaxies had been.
Like a lot of other people, I'm sentimental about SWG. A huge sandbox game in the Star Wars universe, with attention to aspects of gameplay that have been absent from the mainstream since (such as it is): an experience quite like that simply hasn't been available since.
Thing is, the SWGEmu guys, and hence a lot of the others who are reminiscing or wishing they could go back, are all big fans of pre-CU SWG. And I don't get that, for one simple reason:
The pre-CU game just wasn't as good, by comparison.
I saw this at the time, and everything I've learned about games since has just reinforced it.
To clarify, I'm talking about the Combat Upgrade, launched April 27th 2005. This post will say little about the New Game Experience update of November 2005, because it fundamentally changed the game into something that personally I wasn't really interested in playing.
Now, I understand why a lot of people didn't like the change when the CU was launched. People don't like change; that's fine. When you've put a lot of time into an MMO and the developers change things that affect you, you feel like you've lost something (it seems like I mentioned endowment effects at least once a week on this blog). When it's changed enough that you need to learn new things, you have a choice between relearning the current game or finding another; it makes sense that some people would prefer the latter.
It's also the case that when you rebalance anything, some people will find that their favourite things aren't as good any more. Some of them will leave, others will stay and complain; it takes some nerve for a developer to make changes despite that, but often it's worth it for the good of the game. Many will stay, try some new things, and although they won't necessarily won't realise it and certainly won't tell you in these terms, they'll appreciate playing a balanced game.
I don't blame anyone who left SWG because of the CU. I think they made a mistake doing so, but never mind.
So why do I think the combat upgrade was good? Ultimately the balancing before that was pretty bad. The game wasn't bad, but that was largely because some bits need much less balancing: combat was broken, and as a knock-on effect so were big chunks of the economy, the skill system and various other things.
The main issue was that it was riddled with degenerate solutions. The breadth of meaningful choice for combat characters was small, because so many of the options were strictly sub-optimal; only a small subset of a vast array of craftable items were really worthwhile for the same reason.
Combat characters all looked the same (but for a recolour) because there was a clear 'best' suit of armour. Two of the three hit-point pools received massive boosts from the unexpectedly powerful doctor buffs, so combat characters flocked to the two professions that could target the third pool. Certain self-healing abilities were incredibly valuable but available only in one quarter of one profession, leaving people to take that but leave the rest.
Any given combat character was very likely to be Master Brawler and Master Swordsman, with Novice Medic, the first column of Teras Kasi and whatever else he can be bothered with. He'd be wearing composite armour and wielding that one-piece Geonosian sword with the handle behind the blade. If not that, he'd be a Rifleman, although off the top of my head I can't remember a good build for one of those.
Besides the strictly dominated strategies reducing player choice, it had other issues. The doctor buffs were so good they were effectively required, and since they were expensive and lasted 3 or more hours they seriously hurt the extent to which the game could be played casually. Randomised missions woefully underestimated player power, so players would form groups to trick mission terminals into giving harder missions, all the while avoiding one another lest they interfere with each other's rewards. Combat was easily macro'd, encouraging afk training (plus the variety in optimal ability rotations was small enough that I got bored and macro'd it even at the keyboard).
After the Combat Upgrade many of these issues were fixed.
Counter-arguments vary: Some people associated the newly visible combat level with the game being turned into a 'class and level' system, but the profession system didn't change and if you look carefully there had clearly always been a level system internally, just now it was transparent (and crucially, less broken). (Ironically, seven months later SWG was turned into a class-and-level game. The main reason I stopped playing.) Others bemoaned the fact that they could no longer kill krayt dragons on their own; that's an understandable complaint but I maintain that it was for the best.
There are various things I could say about the value of fixing a broken game, and the risks a developer might have to take in doing so. I think I'll leave them for another day. The story hints at useful things to learn about the tension between players and developers, but I'm not qualified to teach them.
I just think it's a shame that the SWGEmu guys have focussed on the Pre-CU game. You've got to love a game to run a community effort like that and in a way it's good that they're doing it, but at risk of sounding a little pretentious in my love of games above my love of any particular game, I can't help but think that a CU emulator would have been more worthwhile than the pre-CU one.
But it's likely that's a moot point. Although both games had good points (and I'm arguing that one had many more) neither is generally good by today's standards; the emulator appeals only to those looking for that very specific experience and know it, which mostly means former players. There aren't enough pre-NGE nuts to sustain a decent game, any more than there are legions of pre-CU players looking to go back.
Besides interesting thoughts about the legal status of private servers and emulators, it got me thinking about how Star Wars Galaxies had been.
Like a lot of other people, I'm sentimental about SWG. A huge sandbox game in the Star Wars universe, with attention to aspects of gameplay that have been absent from the mainstream since (such as it is): an experience quite like that simply hasn't been available since.
Thing is, the SWGEmu guys, and hence a lot of the others who are reminiscing or wishing they could go back, are all big fans of pre-CU SWG. And I don't get that, for one simple reason:
The pre-CU game just wasn't as good, by comparison.
I saw this at the time, and everything I've learned about games since has just reinforced it.
To clarify, I'm talking about the Combat Upgrade, launched April 27th 2005. This post will say little about the New Game Experience update of November 2005, because it fundamentally changed the game into something that personally I wasn't really interested in playing.
Now, I understand why a lot of people didn't like the change when the CU was launched. People don't like change; that's fine. When you've put a lot of time into an MMO and the developers change things that affect you, you feel like you've lost something (it seems like I mentioned endowment effects at least once a week on this blog). When it's changed enough that you need to learn new things, you have a choice between relearning the current game or finding another; it makes sense that some people would prefer the latter.
It's also the case that when you rebalance anything, some people will find that their favourite things aren't as good any more. Some of them will leave, others will stay and complain; it takes some nerve for a developer to make changes despite that, but often it's worth it for the good of the game. Many will stay, try some new things, and although they won't necessarily won't realise it and certainly won't tell you in these terms, they'll appreciate playing a balanced game.
I don't blame anyone who left SWG because of the CU. I think they made a mistake doing so, but never mind.
So why do I think the combat upgrade was good? Ultimately the balancing before that was pretty bad. The game wasn't bad, but that was largely because some bits need much less balancing: combat was broken, and as a knock-on effect so were big chunks of the economy, the skill system and various other things.
The main issue was that it was riddled with degenerate solutions. The breadth of meaningful choice for combat characters was small, because so many of the options were strictly sub-optimal; only a small subset of a vast array of craftable items were really worthwhile for the same reason.
Combat characters all looked the same (but for a recolour) because there was a clear 'best' suit of armour. Two of the three hit-point pools received massive boosts from the unexpectedly powerful doctor buffs, so combat characters flocked to the two professions that could target the third pool. Certain self-healing abilities were incredibly valuable but available only in one quarter of one profession, leaving people to take that but leave the rest.
Any given combat character was very likely to be Master Brawler and Master Swordsman, with Novice Medic, the first column of Teras Kasi and whatever else he can be bothered with. He'd be wearing composite armour and wielding that one-piece Geonosian sword with the handle behind the blade. If not that, he'd be a Rifleman, although off the top of my head I can't remember a good build for one of those.
Besides the strictly dominated strategies reducing player choice, it had other issues. The doctor buffs were so good they were effectively required, and since they were expensive and lasted 3 or more hours they seriously hurt the extent to which the game could be played casually. Randomised missions woefully underestimated player power, so players would form groups to trick mission terminals into giving harder missions, all the while avoiding one another lest they interfere with each other's rewards. Combat was easily macro'd, encouraging afk training (plus the variety in optimal ability rotations was small enough that I got bored and macro'd it even at the keyboard).
After the Combat Upgrade many of these issues were fixed.
- Health was cut back to one pool, so there was no dilemma (or lack thereof) of which one to hit, and no issues with specials that spent your health.
- Profession abilities were better balanced, and with better synergy between professions all kinds of interesting hybrid builds became viable.
- Players were given visible combat levels derived from the skills they had chosen in combat professions, providing a mostly meaningful measure of how powerful they actually were; NPCs were balanced to combat levels so that you could no longer solo almost anything in the game.
- Different professions unlocked different weapons with a more sensible progression, encouraging careful choice of skills and weapons.
- Not only did different professions unlock different classes of armour, good for different things, but each class of armour was available in a number of purely cosmetic variations.
Counter-arguments vary: Some people associated the newly visible combat level with the game being turned into a 'class and level' system, but the profession system didn't change and if you look carefully there had clearly always been a level system internally, just now it was transparent (and crucially, less broken). (Ironically, seven months later SWG was turned into a class-and-level game. The main reason I stopped playing.) Others bemoaned the fact that they could no longer kill krayt dragons on their own; that's an understandable complaint but I maintain that it was for the best.
There are various things I could say about the value of fixing a broken game, and the risks a developer might have to take in doing so. I think I'll leave them for another day. The story hints at useful things to learn about the tension between players and developers, but I'm not qualified to teach them.
I just think it's a shame that the SWGEmu guys have focussed on the Pre-CU game. You've got to love a game to run a community effort like that and in a way it's good that they're doing it, but at risk of sounding a little pretentious in my love of games above my love of any particular game, I can't help but think that a CU emulator would have been more worthwhile than the pre-CU one.
But it's likely that's a moot point. Although both games had good points (and I'm arguing that one had many more) neither is generally good by today's standards; the emulator appeals only to those looking for that very specific experience and know it, which mostly means former players. There aren't enough pre-NGE nuts to sustain a decent game, any more than there are legions of pre-CU players looking to go back.
Comments