So who is the game for anyway?

Yes, I'm talking about SWG again (sorry). I'll qualify my opening comment later, but first I thought I'd share this gem of a post I found yesterday while surfing the angry forum (the official SWG forum that is):

DarthMarak wrote:
I really don't mean this as a flame, and am not trying to incite anything but....I honestly think that removing traders and crafting, effectively from the game is the best decision they ever made. I said back in early beta that basing a star wars game around crafting was absolutely retarded and would never work, and it didn't. Crafting has no place in SWG, never has never will. The game should have been about action and cinematic combat and high adventure, not crafting garbage over and over.Adventuring should be the number one way of advancement in a star wars game and to motivate adventurers you need loot, not crafting crap.Seriously if there's one thing i applaud the devs for, it's making crafting useless.

Crafting was the number one reason i cancelled my account the first time and it's effective removal is the main reason i reactivated it. I want loot to reward my hunting not some garbage i have to give to some other player to maybe make me something.

and suddenly everything starts to make sense, _this_ would appear to be the exact player that SOE/LA are trying to appeal to (either that or a member of this legendary 'focus group' they keep referring to). Assuming I'm right I have the following points to make about this.

1. Why isn't this player playing Battlefront already [actually he probably is], and why does he (and all those like him) want [essentially] another game exactly like Battlefront? More to the point why are you happy to give it to him? Battlefront = no monthly fee, SWG = monthly fee - won't take the kiddies long to work that one out!

In other words why does an existing game [SWG] have to be (for want of a better phrase) sacrificed to make a clone of something thats already out there (lets be fair, other than the persistant part the gameplay [for this guy] is just the same)?

2. This guy says he quit because of crafting! Actually what he meant to say was that he quit because his hard work rewarded him [most of the time] with something he couldn't use until he went and found another player (a crafter) to make it into something he could use (and pay the crafter for his services).

So either this guy begrudges crafters because they 'make money for doing nothing' or he really isnt interested in playing with other real people (beyond being able to defeat them and prove how much more 'skilled' and 'uber' he is).

Interestingly the Rage of the Wookies (ROTW) expansion included [or should that be 'introduced'] ready to use loot - have to ask why didn't this player return at that point?

3. Is the level of intollerance displayed by this guy acceptable and something a developer wants to encourage (i.e. attract more of)? We have here a guy that isn't interested in player interaction (beyond blowing peoples brains out) places no value on playstyles other than his own and is prepared to quit over the slightest thing (i.e. this game has crafters!). Hardly an indication this guy will 'play nice with others' or is going to be a loyal customer! Again everything this player wants is provided by the Battlefront series of games.

4. So who is the game for anyway? Returning to my opening statement, who was/is SWG aimed at anyway? On release it had the unique benefit of appealing to multiple playstyles. No particular playstyle was [initially] favoured (granted there were balance issues) and non-combat professions had just as much game play as anyone else. Since ROTW we have seen a decline in the non-combat aspects of the game and I genuinely believe this to be because that element of the community is numerically smaller in number and this doesn't account for as much of the incoming SWG generates as the combat community - thus SOE will keep the combat community happy at the expense of the non-combat community in order to appease, and therefore retain, a larger % of the playerbase (and possibly attract more of the same). I can't really argue with the business logic in this, but business logic fails to take certain factors into account (like how much bad press pissed off people can generate!)

The NGE represents (up to this point) the ultimate example of the above (and to steal a line from Episode 3 'a failure to listen [to the existing players]'). Crafters are, basically, no longer required. Combat classes will recieve 'level up' rewards for their use in addition to the looted items they find, no items will decay (removing any repair or replacement sales) and I wonder how long it will be before we see NPC vendors for things such as bounty hunter droids (which existed when the game was originally release and were removed [finally] after much complaining by the Droid Engineer community).

SOE of course will be able to justify the introduction of NPC vendors after the complaints from the combat community about not being able to obtain x/y/z reach critical mass. The reason for the lack of supply will of course be the fact that the crafting community has been decimated by the NGE because the new Trader class does not offer anything close to as much gameplay (read: content) now as a combat class does (mainly because it can't be combined with a combat class anymore) but anyone who points this out will get lost in a sea of annoyed combat players.

Crafters will therefore either quit SWG (since combat holds less to zero appeal for them) or will have respec'd to a combat class simply to get more gameplay (value for money). It remains to be seen how long any remaining crafters stick at it given that they probably no longer have the combination of crafting skill they used to have, and that their sales will diminish due to the lack of no decay.

What will be interesting is how many crafters are playing to stick it out until the second character slot goes live (I'll save my thoughts on this for another time) so that they can start a combat character. Since I'm on station access (and therefore technically can't quit SWG) I expect that's what I'll do if I bother to play SWG again.

For those of you who think I'm reading too much into all of this I offer the following two extracts from SOE staff. The first is from the recent Dev Chat:

[17:13] *Mankind00* Will crafted goods come back to the stage where they compare to loot & rewards in the future of the game? At the moment, it seems they are no where near this.
[17:15] Long term, crafting items will be comparable to some loot items. They will also represent a more convenient method of obtaining specific items for adventuring.

The second was the reply to the question (paraphrased) 'Why has no one from SOE posted on the Trader forums [during testing and since release] regarding our questions/problems':

It's not [that we] refuse to respond, rather it's we have no answers yet. When we have answers, we will post them.
Thanks.
Brenlo BixiebopperDirector,
Global Community Relations - SOE

Ok, let me check if I have this right..... You made a decision to change the gameplay for 100% of crafters several months ago, this thing was in internal testing for how long? (actually it would not surprise me if you didn't test the NGE [from a crafters perspective] at all!) You stuck it on the Test Server, created a Trader Test forum and had players reporting issues at least a week before it went live....... but you don't have any answers to the Traders questions!!!!!!!

Actually let me rephrase that for you because I understand it perfectly. You guys know _exactly_ whats going on and whats planned but you know the players will react badly and the last thing you want to do right now is give the community another thing to be unhappy about (althought that Starter Pack item was a nice surprise!) so the PR guys have told you to keep your mouths shut - sound about right?



Lets go full circle then shall we? Who is the game for SOE? Is it for the players that originally purchased it and stuck with it through the ups and downs and have remained loyal to SWG & SOE? Or is it for the players who possibly played it on release, didn't give it much of a chance, didn't come back after the CU (or maybe left because of it) and as such probably has a much larger chance of up and leaving again the minute they find something they still don't like (and lets make no mistake here, only the new character experience has changes, and word is after level 30 the new 'Star Warsyness' vanishes because the new quests run out) or you screw them over as you have done to existing players previously.

Or are you simply prepared to alienate the existing players (because even if they like the NGE, the quality of this release alone is something everyone should be unhappy about) in a gamble that you can attract a greater number of players that have never even tried SWG? Honestly where on earth do you think these players are going to come from?......