Open - Other - SWG of old... | Star Wars Galaxies Restoration

Open Other SWG of old...

This idea/suggestion is Open. You can respond to ask questions or discuss the idea and either vote it up or down if you believe it should or should not be implemented, respectively. Popular suggestions and ideas will be considered by the development team to become reality in-game.
Joined
Jan 31, 2022
Messages
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Location
United States
Proposal
Make game BEFORE combat upgrade!
Justification
We would love to go to the days of old with tons of different professions, for a more immersive experience. No new player should be a Jedi right off the bat. Let them work hard and grind hard for it.
Motivation
The combat upgrade killed SWG for many of us.
ABOUT says "Return to the greatest era of Star Wars Galaxies, the Combat Upgrade"

Lot of us who played SWG from the very beginning feel the Combat Upgrade killed the game. It sure killed my professions! And then anyone could be a Jedi from the get go? All of us who worked and grinded hard to become Jedi's were slapped in the face! Many of us moved on to other MMO's and SWG died... the only thing worth doing was space combat.

I will check it out... maybe I 'll get convinced this is a good idea... or maybe not.

Check six!
 
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ABOUT says "Return to the greatest era of Star Wars Galaxies, the Combat Upgrade"

Lot of us who played SWG from the very beginning feel the Combat Upgrade killed the game. It sure killed my professions! And then anyone could be a Jedi from the get go? All of us who worked and grinded hard to become Jedi's were slapped in the face! Many of us moved on to other MMO's and SWG died... the only thing worth doing was space combat.

I will check it out... maybe I 'll get convinced this is a good idea... or maybe not.

Check six!
People have disputed their favourite era of SWG since the CU and NGE were live, and this dispute will likely go on for many more years to come.
Now we have available open source code for SWG means that players again can relive pre CU and NGE again and again as there are multiple servers catering for people who preferred these servers.

I believe you are confusing CU with the NGE which allowed Jedi as a starter profession. Jedi is not available from the get go here. It has an unknown custom unlock which will test players and make only those willing to put the effort in worthy of it profession.

Restoration 3 is a project that has been in the making for years. Although not true to CU code, the dev team have worked extremely hard bringing the CU era back to life for players who preferred the Combat Upgrade era, like myself.

Restoration 3 will not change from bein a CU server. If you do not like the CU era and gameplay, there are plenty of other private servers who cater for pre CU or NGE servers, but I recommend you give R3 a go.
I find the reason most people dislike the CU and even NGE is because it was new and the large majority of people didn’t give it a chance.
 
I can understand your confusion, it has been a long time since the Original game was live. Maybe I can help clear up a few things.
  1. The base game dates back to around June 2003 in the US, and a few months later for various countries around the world.
  2. The game had many "upgrades" called "publishes." These started as early as August 2003 with Publish #1 which added the Nightsisters Cave. Followed by ugrades/publishes that included updates to pets, The Warren, Mounts, Cites, Vehicles, Imperial Crackdown, Droids... and so on.
  3. The major updates started around Publish 9 in June 2004 which included "secrets of the force" followed by the jedi trials (aug 04), Jump to Lightspeed (Oct. 04), Loot Revamp (Jan 05), Veteran Rewards (feb 05), and GCW changes in (march 05).

Now after all these game improvements came an update called the "combat upgrade" on April 27, 2005.

From that Combat Upgrade there were 3 major changes:
  1. Health, Action, Mind (HAM) was adjusted so that players could now only take damage to Health pool, and Action and Mind were used to perform abilities.
  2. Most profession abilities are no longer weapon specific. Now, different special abilities can be used with different weapons. (A big change from prior to Publish 15).
  3. Armor was reworked across the system to add diversity, choices, and visual improvements. Including a new crafting system:
armorimg.jpg


Here is a quote from that Combat upgrade that describes the changes to the professions:
With the core combat changes finalized, we only had one last critical issue to resolve. Since we had decided to emphasize the specific role of each profession in combat we needed to narrow down what those roles were going to be. We needed to give each core combat profession a specific role strength with as little overlap as possible.

The biggest problem that we saw with the existing profession design was that there was too much overlap across professions which lead to a lack of any unique strength or role definition. One of the core philosophical issues that lead to this problem was that professions are not the same as classes. In a class-based system, each class must be complete and self-supportive in its own right. Since Star Wars Galaxies uses a skill-based system we are able to concentrate more on the specific strengths that each profession skill set provides without worrying if it was complete. Characters are able to learn multiple complete professions (profession stacking) or lots of abilities from among several different professions to create their own ideal template (we will discuss the changing prerequisites in a different document). This philosophy shift allowed us to concentrate on what exactly the true strength of a profession should be and make all of its abilities support that strength. We also looked at how each profession is currently played so that where possible, we could stay true to the nature of that profession.

We decided to visualize the role definitions in a diagram to more easily figure out where everyone fit. Most professions fell into place quickly and easily while a few were harder to place. Eventually we had to make some hard decisions about what the future of certain professions would end up being. Because we needed each profession to have a unique strength with as little overlap as possible we ended up having to give some professions new role abilities and others needed to shift quite a bit from what they were in the past.

While we know that there are a lot of changes in the plan, we feel the final decisions will ultimately lead to a stronger and more cohesive game. Below you will see the final balance diagram. In it you can see the relative balance of each profession and their roles. The diagram does not define any of the specific abilities or how those roles are going to be carried out but you can see how they interrelate. All future decisions about each combat profession will be guided by this balance diagram.

CombatDiag.gif


Along with these adjustments the following tweaks were added:
  • Profession balances (more professions have greater value in combat, some become less meta)
  • Skill modifiers (Skill box choices now have more "exciting" and "challenging" choices.
  • Massive improvements to NPC and Creature AI.
  • Weapons with Dots have been removed, Dots only from abilities now.
  • Players still able to mix and match skills for "profession stacking" to create powerful combinations of professions.

There were a host of other changes, but in short the Combat Upgrade was widely accepted as a good thing and the vast majority of players welcomed it. It was the "little things" that were big wins for the Upgrade (for example they added full color icons which replaced the old icons).

The "upset" crowd was a handful of players who had to change play styles that were dominating PvP / PvE. These were mostly players who had server best DoT weapons which could kill players Mind Pools in a matter of seconds in PvP (something you could not defend against).

--------------------------------------------------

Now let's talk what New Game Enhancements (NGE) (Publish 25) -

While most people call NGE the "Combat Upgrade" it should be noted that the CU (as I described above) was a rather "mild" adjustment to balancing while keeping most of the core combat systems the same. NGE however was a complete rework of the game.

Among its more controversial changes:
  1. Jedi could now be selected and played from the very start of a creating a character by selecting "Jedi/Force sensitive" starting profession.
  2. There will no-longer be mixing of professions on a character.
  3. All professions will have a self heal.
  4. Complete rework of most systems in the game, including toolbars, UI's,
  5. Removal of most harsh penalties in the game (for example, little to no death penalty).
  6. Removal of decay of every kind (all armor and weapons now permanent).

This was the "death" of the game for many players because it removed a few things that were very important to them:
  1. Difficult, but rewarding unlocking and leveling up a Jedi.
  2. Crafting empires were no longer needed (demand for server best weapons/armor went away because the best items in the game were now drops from NPCs, and they no longer broke while being used).
  3. Players could no longer mix professions (example a TKA + Medic for a melee tank/healer).

----------------------------


So in short, Combat Upgrade (CU SWG) was a very good time for SWG (what I often call it's "Golden Years.") While New Game Enhancements (NGE SWG) was a dramatic change to the game that caused many players to stop playing.

So next time you hear someone say something about "Everyone became a Jedi" or "They made the game for casual players" or "They were trying to copy World of Warcraft" know that they are talking about NGE not CU SWG.
 
Hi!

Apologies! YES, I got confused BIG TIME! Glad you set me (and the other few confused ones) straight.
Guess all that chemical and herbal exploration in the late 70's (college years) took its toll on my brain!

Appreciate all the hard work you guys are doing.
 
Wow I just found this and I can't wait to get back in and play.I played from day 1 til the day they shut the servers down,but SWG was on its way to a slow agonizing death,beginning on the day NGE came out.CU was the sweet spot though and I'm hoping to experience that again.
 
No.

The "upset crowd" were not just the tiny mob dominating PVE/PVP with looted ADKed Mindfire weapons. A whole lot of other people, who had never felt any need to build high-combat templates, get terminally screwed.

CU made several fundamental changes. The biggest was making SWG a level-based system. Don't bother me with the old bilge about "there were always levels, they were just hidden". CU levels were a whole different mechanic, which were enforced with artificial damage multipliers based on level difference. They were so incompatible with the existing game that they completely broke Battle Fatigue, forcing its removal. Which in turn robbed the entertainment professions of at least a third of their function as healers. Take a look back at Kodan's SWG ProfCalc - Combat Upgrade Edition from July 2005. Entertainer had a full column of Entertainment Healing needed for Novice Musician and Dancer. The devs tried hard to minimize changes from Pre-CU, but levels just broke too much.

Another bad effect of levels on the game was Combat Level. They insisted on making a division between combat-oriented and non-combat skills. Some of those distinctions were pretty artificial: Medic and Doctor are healing professions, but they defined them as combat. Scout is really only partially combat. Kodan's ProfCalc spelled out which skill boxes got CL Multipliers, so you can (mostly, there are variations) map out a template to see the CL it gets. The utter lack of CL multipliers for crafting and entertainment profession skills left everyone who wasn't a full-time combatant catastrophically vulnerable. Within a month of CU going Live, I was advocating for a "Levels are levels" approach, making ALL skills CL. NGE eventually did just that, but it was way too late by then.
 
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I experienced Pre CU and Cu, but not the NGE. I will say, while my brother hated CU, I only minded it because that was when they added vehicles,a nd it largely killed pets off... On this server I've yet to see a pet either now that I think about it.. Dancers/Musicians also took a huge hit if I recall. My other complaint with the upgrade was it changed HOW a lot of xp/leveling was done. A lot of items that used to be very valuable because they were part of doing so became worthless and I lost my income source lol. However, I enjoyed the space addition so much I felt it was a net positive. Regarding the character design changes. It didnt really seem THAT significant to me. Yes it made things a bit less customizable but it was and still is far more customizable than most MMO's where you pick a class and are chained to it.

I think if these issues are carefully addressed, post CU is fine, possibly ideal.
 
If the CU had left out the Combat Level business and put in everything else, there would have been some grumbling in certain quarters and that would have been the end of it. I didn't agree with all the changes (I didn't think the profession-locking of specific armor types was warranted, or turning "a good low level weapon" into an oxymoron), but on the whole it would have worked well. (The devs took some otherwise-decent ideas and pushed them so hard and so far that things broke.) But CL was the fatal flaw.
 
I experienced Pre CU and Cu, but not the NGE. I will say, while my brother hated CU, I only minded it because that was when they added vehicles,a nd it largely killed pets off... On this server I've yet to see a pet either now that I think about it.. Dancers/Musicians also took a huge hit if I recall. My other complaint with the upgrade was it changed HOW a lot of xp/leveling was done. A lot of items that used to be very valuable because they were part of doing so became worthless and I lost my income source lol. However, I enjoyed the space addition so much I felt it was a net positive. Regarding the character design changes. It didnt really seem THAT significant to me. Yes it made things a bit less customizable but it was and still is far more customizable than most MMO's where you pick a class and are chained to it.

I think if these issues are carefully addressed, post CU is fine, possibly ideal.

What was the point in necroing this off topic and not relevant Playervoice?

I like reminiscing on the history of the game as much as the next guy. But this takes away from the point of the player voice system since there's not really a suggestion in this post.