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robiwan
Moderator
1035 Posts |
 Posted - 21/12/2007 : 08:57:41
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Hi Folks,
Well, we are coming up to the end of another year on Star Wars Galaxies and I think it was a pretty good one. If you have not seen it yet, be sure to check out Sunrunner Signal's year in review they did for SWG. It was the main part of Star War's presentation at Sony Online's annual "Town Hall" meeting where we review the status of all of our live products and those in development. It got a fantastic response from the crowd (we were the only team that used a fan produced segment). I know we still have a long way to go with this product and with this community, but it was great to see how much we had really done on the game this year.
With today's publish to the Test Center's this will be the last update for 2007. As most folks know, I had set the goal to get Chapter 8 live before Christmas. I think we are in pretty good shape now in terms of bugs, but there is more balance and polish to be done before we release this to the live servers. It is our intention to release updates only when we feel they are ready and not allow dates to make us release unfinished work so we will not be releasing to the live servers until after we return from the holidays. I do encourage everyone who can to go over to the TC's and try the new content. Its very cool and I hope it will increase the amount of interest in the space game.
Game companies typically shut down between Christmas and New Years, and a lot of folks take extra vacation as well, so there will be very few red names about for the next couple of weeks. We will have moderator coverage on the boards and such as well as Customer Support and GM's during the holidays of course.
I want to end by saying that it has been, for me personally, a very rewarding experience to lead the Star Wars team this year. I had not worked a live game since my Kesmai days and though there have been moments where I might have wanted to have been elsewhere (actually someplace far, far away), all in all it has been fun. I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and look forward to working with you next year to make Star Wars an even better experience.
DeadMeat
Lorin W. Jameson, Star Wars Galaxies Producer, SOE
Odkaz: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=560099
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I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.
(Omnius Evermind)
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Feyd'Rautha Saresh (Medic, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera), Robe Saresh (Force Sensitive, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera)
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robiwan
Moderator
1035 Posts |
Posted - 21/12/2007 : 08:58:12
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Otazky a odpovede:
Q: DM, is there an expansion planned for 2008? Have you guys thought about it? Or will you continue doing chapters?
Also, I know you can't really tell us what you have planned for 08, I doubt you even have finalized those plans yet. But my question is, what do YOU want to add to SWG in 2008?
A: We currently do not have an expansion planned for 2008. The chapter system has been working pretty well. I think we have delivered more than an expansion worth of content this year. I really want to focus on content next year. We tightened up a lot of systems this year and added a number of interesting new ones. I like to use those existing systems to deliver more content faster.
Q: DM is there any planning besides the new Buddy system to increase server populations in 08'?
There are some servers that could use a boost in peeps. And one more question will there be next year also some more Bug Bash Patches in the works to current bugs in the game that have existed for some time? (example Mustafar Instance whereas a group goes into the instance and half of them crash to desktop, and the ITVs bugging at times?) be great to see old bugs finally squashed the next upcoming year!!!! Have fun over the holidays and hope none of you drink to much on New Years!!!!SMILEY
A: Increasing server populations is only possible with increased subscriptions. Its hard to substantially increase subscribers on a 4 year old title (there is a lot of competition out there these days) but we will continue to focus our marketing to try and reach as many potential players as possible. Part of the plan for 2008 is to aggressively address outstanding issues, but on a much more frequent basis then the Bug Bash last year. And yippee! We will be pushing the fix for the Carbine animation to test this afternoon.
Q: Deadmeat is it possible to get a "comma" or something when we view credits in the game.
A: Heheh...What?
OK...Credits in game. I thought you were talking about development credits. Yeah, we will do that.
Q: Hi Mr. Meat, thanks again for stopping by and chatting with us. Your note sounded a little melancholy, I am trying hard not to read anything into that SMILEY
So here's my question: Is there an expansion anywhere in SWG's future? I understand and support your goal of getting rid of the bugs (HUGE progress this year! 2 Thumbs Up!) and getting SWG on an even keel, but once that is accomplished, do you see the possibility of an expansion? Or should I just resign myself to smaller (but welcome) rollouts with each new chapter?
A: Heheh. Sorry if I sounded melancholy...Game development can have its moments and we have been pushing to get things in good shape before the holiday break and today has been tough (we had a network failure across SOE that killed the build at one point and set us back by hours). Actually things are good, and if they continue this way who knows what can happen. Anything I would say on an expansion would be guessing at this point (not a good thing for a Producer to do).
Q: Without a shadow of a doubt the current dev team have implemented a great deal of content to SWG, from a personal level the majority of this has impacted my gaming experience in a positive way and for that I would like to thank you all.
My biggest criticism however is your approach in dealing with the GCW and the state in which it's currently in and if I could urge you to take a look at this and attempt to rectify issues including base clubbing and lack of a meaningful planetary control system within the new year I would be eternally greatful. As a long standing player of SWG I would also like to see some assurances in regards to the game I've invested in over the past 4 years, some of which might include some kind of basic road map for 2008. (it doesn't have to be detailed).
We're all aware of a new lucas arts MMO and it worries us greatly, a lot of us have asked for things to be added into SWG that I just feel you do not have the resources to implement. Capital Ships, Combat Vehicles and Atmospheric Flight might be the key to saving the game... its unfortunate their importance is overlooked.
Anyways, Merry Christmas one and all hope you all have a great holiday!
A: The biggest problems with the GCW right now is collusion between players. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to try and get around that. I do plan on doing an update to the GCW and PvP next year.
Q: FROM: October 3rd Producer's Note:
There will be an opportunity for folks to get a new ITV in game. This will be linked to some of the new content coming up.
Haven't seen anything on this yet, can you give us a little glimmer of hope/hint?
A: We do have it almost finished...If it is not part of C8 it will come out soon after. It will be available as a reward for a collection.
Q: Although the whole idea behind ITV's is a sound one, wouldn't it make more sense to allow us to call in and land our POB's. With the housing purge there is enough space in the wilderness now to land these sizable ships and allow them to be accessable much like player housing, this would be much more imersive and allow people to live from their ships which is a dream of many.
A: Sorry...We currently do not have tech that would allow that.
Q: With the change to allow Storage Increase rewards on POB's, can we expect to see them allowed for Cantians, Theaters, Medical Centers and Merchant Tents as well?
A: The issue with applying rewards to these structures is that they can go 'poof', taking your reward with it. That is why the storage increase rewards were not allowed. We may look at figuring a way to protect your reward from destruction in these situations but it has honestly not been a priority yet.
Q: And are there more storage collections in chapter 8? Or something similar to the jedi crystal once the collection clears, and you can do the collection again?
A: We anticipate more storage collections, but I do not have specifics on the when. We wanted to see the effect in game and on performance with the first ones.
Q: Just hoping there is going to be some UI overhauling done to make it lock in place, and more friendly to use. It is far too awkward still.
Animations are also high on my list of fixes I would like to see.
On a Station Pass so I can still post etc, despite not playing.
DM... you guys have done a lot of good this year, honestly. Still not enough to warrant my play time, but keep going that direction you are, and others may come back as well.
A: UI and animations are high on my list as well for 2008...We have already made some progress (thanks to the new engineers) and I expect that to continue.
Q: Any chance for adding skins to the beast master mutation system ? There are a lot of creatures in game that we are unable to harvest DNA from and are not in the mutations system.
Also a big thanks for the carbine fix and making sure the new content is tested properly before going to live!!
A: We will continue to add more beasts as we can.
Q: Are Orgins still in the work, and/or coming soon.. or was this idea pushed aside for the time being?
A: I'll be honest, it just does not make sense in the near term. It just feels like something that adds complexity without really adding anything to game play or immersion. At this point I am not really pushing for it and I think there are more productive and fun things we could be doing.
Q: Wow back up a minute...
How can these 'poof'? They're player owned structures, they're not tied to the existence of a city. The buildings that are tied to the city and would be lost if the city went are the Clone Center, Garage and Shuttleport.
What I'm talking about here are structures placed by a player on their own lots. The Merchant Tent isn't even tied to cities really.
A: They still fall under the civic structure class, which has some differences than houses. There are situations where things can happen there outside of the owning player's control.
Q: M
Any chance you can reconsider the requirement to receive the new gunships?
The current system would be the same as adding some new ground content, but then before letting anyone access it forcing them to do the entire legacy quest (if they had done it before they'd have to do it from scratch). Which as a lvl 90 is an easy boring quest which takes a long time and is very little fun.
Moving the schem from the "all tiers" to just "tier 5" will allow players the challenge, but keep it to just the one "fun" collection rather than forcing them through the "long tedious boring no challenge less fun" collections.
Thanks, and Happy Christmas
RD
A: The new ships were added as high end content (similar to heroics and such). There is a lot of content for folks who have not played much of the space game yet. We will not be changing this I'm afraid.
Q: Are there any plans to increase the maximum number of characters per account and server.
I think many people would like to try out different professions without deleting there main characters. And as you have all your friends on your server, you dont't want to switch the server either, to test and play other characters.
That would surely increase the replayability.
And by the way, great work this year!! Thumbs up to you and your dev team!
P.S. overhauling the UI should be a top priority, the current UI is definetely to much outdated and clumsy.
A: I know folks would like this, but because our game was build the way it was: with housing, unique crafted items, etc. Each character, regardless of whether it is logged in or not, adds a load to the game. This can be thought of as a cost per-customer, as opposed to simply a load on the server. We have a respec NPC in the game to allow folks to try different professions without a huge new grind. We do not plan on changing the number of slots, or the availability of repec's at this time.
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I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.
(Omnius Evermind)
---------------------------
Feyd'Rautha Saresh (Medic, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera), Robe Saresh (Force Sensitive, Rebel Alliance, Europe-Chimaera)
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Producer Note (20.12.2007): Chapter 8
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