Can Someone Explain To my Why SWG Was so Great and what good things STO could glean

[JacobFlowers]

More specifically, I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system. I never played the game. So I'm curious, why was it so good? How was it so complex? What made it special in comparison to other MMOs. I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system.

I have not been too impressed with any crafting system save for EVE's (and even then, I didnt get into the upper ranks of it, and didn't really involve myself in it much), but then my MMO resume is slightly limited.

So I'd like to hear what made SWG special and what concepts might be appropriate to incorporate/expand upon/improve in/ adapt to STO.

Looking forward!:)

P.S. I just ate a pomelo for lunch. Took me an HOUR to peel the thing. But still, quite tasty.

[andrewprofit]

More specifically, I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system. I never played the game. So I'm curious, why was it so good? How was it so complex? What made it special in comparison to other MMOs. I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system.

I have not been too impressed with any crafting system save for EVE's (and even then, I didnt get into the upper ranks of it, and didn't really involve myself in it much), but then my MMO resume is slightly limited.

So I'd like to hear what made SWG special and what concepts might be appropriate to incorporate/expand upon/improve in/ adapt to STO.

Looking forward!:)

P.S. I just ate a pomelo for lunch. Took me an HOUR to peel the thing. But still, quite tasty.

SWG crafting system is a very ambitious undertaking it really is 50% of the game.

[kramer03]

One wonders if the SWG crafting system was too complex? I started that game as a crafter, but was very intimidated by the complex nature of it. I felt like i had to keep track of too much, and there never was a good tutorial for it, so I changed my char to a Bounty Hunter. Im ok with a system being complex, but there has to be a proper guide for crafting. I Felt like the game made me guess too much, and i didnt like wasting "credits" to "Wing it" all the time. :cool:

[Hardac]

I understood EVE's crafting system far quicker than I did SWG's. I thought it was too complex and yeah there seemed to be a sever lack of info on how one went about it. I gave up on it and focused on space combat for the most part.

[Fawke]

SWG crafting system is very good because the logic behind crafting isn't as simple as A+B=C everytime.

Items in SWG require specific resource types. Some require generic resource type but as you get into the more complex items they require specific resources. So you may craft the barrel for a gun using any kind of Steel but to craft the gun using the barrel you need Duralloy Steel.

Each resource used is gathered from a server spawn. Server spawns lasted from 3 days to 15 days or so. When a resource spawned, depending on the resource, it has specific numeric values associated with it's overall quality.

Example: Duralloy Steel, Overall Quality 999, Maleability 631, Conductivity 500, Unit Toughness 985, Shock Resistance 992

The above example would be a great spawn. The normal spawns however were not that great.

Ultimately...because the high quality resources needed to craft the BEST or CAP items spawned so infrequently, the actual process behind making items could be costly. In addition, you can only pull so much of some resource because you are limited to the number of harvestors you may use per character. Since you can only get a limited amount then you can only make so many items using the particular resource... Once you run out you have to wait for another spawn or buy a supply from another player.

The shear number of unique resource types and diversity of resources required by recipes makes the SWG crafting system very good.

The last VERY important feature of SWG crafting that makes it awesome is the SKILL required to craft items.

If you were a weaponsmith and you wanted to craft a top notch gun you would need to create specific armor pieces that increased your Weapons Expermintation and Weapons assembly skills. You would need an Armorsmith to craft the armor items and an armorsmith the make the attachments that have the +weapon experimentation/assembly skills.

The higher you get your Weapons experimintation the more Experimentation attempts you get when you craft an item. The assembly factors into the chance to craft items with a socket. Sockets in SWG are used to put in attachments. ATtachments have statistics on them thereby making the item better.

Anyway... The experimentation session comes after you craft an item. If you used the best resources possible you could only get to 29% of max 100% after successfully crafting an item. The remaining 71% had to be gotten using experimentation points. Each time you experiment you get different results. The best resutls would be to have an Amazing Success everytime you experiment. The worst would be to have a critical failure.

Now you are probably thinking that you could easily hit 100% if you get your skill up high enough, right? Well, SWG has a limit on the max points you can get so everyone has a max. Items can have multiple experimentation lines like Max Damage and Min Damage. That would be two lines... If you had crafted each line initially to 29% then you would have to split your experimentation attempts between the two lines.

I did forget to mention that many items require other items from different crafters so to create some pieces you needed to acquire parts from 4 different craftsmen to make 1 item. SWG has Droid Engineers, Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, Domestic traders(Tailors and misc stuff), and Structure engineers.

Is this clear enough?

If Star Trek incorporates a similiar system, I will be extremely happy. The system is slightly complex to implement because to allow for a player driven economy, one that adds another level of immersion to the game, each trader type would need to have recipies that require items from other traders. So, all the recipes would need to be well thought out. In addition, the resources that spawn would need to have attributes based similiarly on the need for the best of certain items.

[kramer03]

Wow, not bad. Maybe in STO, they can place rare minerials and hard to find resources into the neutral zone. This would help meld crafters and combat players into the same game experience. If players dont wanna risk their ships in PvP combat then this would also help player trade.

[fractaleye]

Thanks Fawke. Very interesting stuff imo. I play Eve, so I could see a lot of the similarities to Eve's science and industry aspects. SWG sounds way more in depth/varied than Eve's, even though Eve's is pretty deep and thought out imo. SWG's way sounds kinda cool to me.

I'm not sure if I'd like it to be that detailed in ST:O, but that's me personally. Not looking for 'Scotty tweaks the engine to go faster.' mind you, just not as in depth as you've described SWG. Closer to SWG ofc. :)

I can't wait to see what they've got in store; I hope it's at least on par with Eve's if not SWG.

[Tilarium]

Honestly, I never really crafted in SWG, not until recently. What made that game great was the way it was set up. No levels, no professions, there were skill sets and you could pick and choice what skills you wanted to learn. It allowed the players to make totally unique characters. Once they did the NGE, they ruined the game by turning it's core into the same core that nearly every MMO uses. Professions, levels, every character of this profession and of this level have the same abilities.... it was a sad day for me when that happened.

Good advice STO can glean from this.... don't change the basics of the game after 3-4 years.... and if you do, don't do it with NO NOTICE! Arg, that sucked just as bad as the changes..... LOL

PS: I can't wait for that new SW MMO to come out... galaxies will be dead within 2 years if they don't get their act togather.

[kramer03]

PS: I can't wait for that new SW MMO to come out... galaxies will be dead within 2 years if they don't get their act togather.

Dont sure, I dont think the new SW MMORPG has player cities or flyable space craft, just looks like a pretty WOW clone. I really hope STO has craftable space stations and Gold pressed Latinum to steal! Maybe even player created colonies on planets! Would be great to build one and have to defend it in the neutral zone...

[kiithwarrior]

Galaxies is pretty much dead anyway. No where near what it used to be in terms of population.

I haven't played any other MMO's, just SWG. The reason being, that nothing compared to it in diversity of skills and professions. You could mix and match, I was a creature handler / Bounty Hunter for a while. Then dropped that and became a fencer / creature handler, harvested creatures for an armoursmith for a while.

I did try to be a weaponsmith, but it was so time consuming. There was so much to learn about harvesting and what resources to use. It was complex but good and I had big respect for the ppl that did all that.

Fun times tbh. Then they ruined it first with the CU ( which i kinda got used to ) and then the NGE ( quit as soon as this hit ).

[Azurian]

I really liked SWG's crafting system, it was really intricate. And it really fits nicely with STO in the same way, in enhancing our systems and our equipment.

It's not like we never seen Starfleet Engineers tinkering with something. ;)

[kramer03]

Miles O'Brian all the way!

[JacobFlowers]

I really liked SWG's crafting system, it was really intricate. And it really fits nicely with STO in the same way, in enhancing our systems and our equipment.

It's not like we never seen Starfleet Engineers tinkering with something. ;)

Goodpoint. Starfleet on one hand however always aimed to standardize enhancements. One engineer does something on one ship, and next week you get a report sent fleet wide for ships to make the same/similar enhancements. Their aim was to keep the Fleet in tip top shape.

One thing that so far I like (even though we know almost nothing about it) is that STO will have varied gameplay for Feds and Klingons.

I would imagine, that system enhancements for individual ships would fly well for the Klingons, since any one klingon having an advantage is to their game against common foes or in 'house' fighting (hehe).

There's a lot of potential here.

And thanks Fawke, that was really in depth. Goodness, I really could not grasp it entirely.

Perhaps we could have Federation Scientists and Engineers that worked on ehancements that worked for the entire faction or fleet? I'm not sure if that sort of crating would be cool or lame. The klingons on the other hand could ...well... we know how they feel about scientists. hmm.

I don't want to slip this in here, but i will anyway... perhaps a.... okay yea... nevermind, not going to mention it :p

[Kaybok]

I played SWG for about 2 years before NGE and some of the other updates that ruined the game, imo. I was a crafter, a Master Weaponsmith to be exact. The SWG resource and crafting system was very well designed and very interesting to learn. Because some people thought it was too complicated you could make a lot of money crafting items because lots of folks did not want to spend the time learning the system, harvesting good quality resources, then grinding your skill level up to create nice items. It was a true career in any sense and it was basically an in-game job. I enjoyed it too much because I actually injured my hands while grind crafting items! (Hands never fully recovered.) Not to mention, you had to constantly travel to different planets to check the quality of current resource spawns, then move your harvesters to a new locale (if other players didnt take the good spots 1st!). It got to the point where it was really too much of a job and not an enjoyable game so I quit being a crafter.

So in my opinion, yes SWG's crafting system is like no other and very realistic. However, I would not want to do that again in any game. It's not overly complicated once you understand what to do, but it was too realistic in terms of the work involved. If STO can take pieces of the SWG crafting system and use it that would be cool... just don't make it feel like "gawd I gotta log on to check resources on several planets and then I gotta craft 5000 of these widgets so I can unlock a schematic and then I gotta..." Please... No sweat shop long grinding jobs please... make it fun for casual players and for hardcore players like me who have MMO Grind Repetitive Injury! (It's no fun wanting to grind and you can't coz your hands fricken hurt bad... wish I could take 5 cc's of Anaprovaline to cure it! :P)

[J.L.Picard]

if the crafting system on STO is as good (i hope better) as the Champions one ill be happy.

[deilin]

Eesh. I just dropped SWG, and here's why:

1) Slow meaniinglewss leveling
In SWG you follow a a story which is quite meaningless and more running errands then questing. When done, I was only level 62 (of 90) and like "That's it?" You can't even PvP legitimately until lvl 70, and even then you're screwed over.

2)Horrible, meaningless PvP (The Galactic Civil War):
This is something I hope STO can make worth the while. The main problem was, there was no point to it. Just some meaningless loot that cost a bunch of credits if you can afford them.

There was a 4 day "battle" for a facility, and for what, a rally banner to temporarily raise some stats within a small radius (which you have to stay in)What did it consist of? commandos and officers that are AFK 'macro'ing mines to make invisible spies visible and everyone mobs them. What did the Empire lose not owning this facility, absolutely nothing, cept maybe soem NPC forces in a city that don't do much. In all, when the bannners were finally available, the rush of rebels end up crashing the server for 3 hours.

They even had started battlegrounds, which again, had no consequences for losing, so no real point to really fight. And, if you weren't a dark jedi, a medic, or commando, or spy, you weren't really wanted.

3) Dull space battle
You would think Star Wars would have good space battle, but even it was drab. Not to mention, wasn't available until a later release. The "boss battle" in space was a Corellian Corvette which I could destroy by myself with an A-wing. SAme witht he start destroyer.

I eventually got acess to all the "gunships", and still used a snub figher. Saw many good pilots become bad pilots because they got too used to heavy armor/shielding, and multiplayers gunning.

4) eh, lets go neutral.
I was so bored with GCW, I went neutral. Only thing I couldn't do was go into GCW sensitive zones on land, and could kill most anything in space as I pleased with no love loss and no reprocutions.

5) Spawn camping/Macros
SWG allowed macro scripting so you could actually write a prigram, and your character will target an enemy and atatck it and even use skills here and there. You would go around and see lvl 90s that are afk killing intire spawns with one skill. Not only that, the spawn were quest sensitive. Unless you get the death blw before the skill activates, you don't get any credit.

6) /fix (gcw, trader, ect)
players always wanted more battle, tweaked professions and such, which some were needed, and the devs gave, but the devs never fixed one issue:

/fix metagame

There was battle if that's all you wanted, or you could become a cook,, or an entertainer. There were may ways to earn alot of credits, if that's all you wanted, but there was never a real storyline, and lately, just one "festival" after another.

"oh, it's after New Hope and Before return of the jedi"

**Edit: When I kill an enemy vessel, will it feel like I killed a being, or just some data.**


NOW. That all being said, from what I've read so far, some things above aren't issues, or just aren't discussed yet. At least, STO seems to have a good start to a story going.

[Eclipse1987]

I played swg very briefly (about two months) and i found the crafting system WAY to complex, it was poorly explained and honestlt after two weeks it felt like a job and i wasnt having fun so i quit crafting.

imho sto should stay FAR away from a swg craft system ie; a game within a game.

that said personally ideally I'd like something between c.o. and eve; fun and challenging but not overwhelming.

[Tilarium]

And no card game that gives you a .1% chance of getting game items....

[Redshirt_40067]

I started SWG a month after launch. I had tried crafting in my first MMO - EQ1 - and found it lacking and boring, with far too much work for a minute amount of advancement. SWG's crafting system was far more complex, robust, and even on a critical failure you got experience points. I dove in headfirst even going o far as to buy a second account just to have both a combat and crafting character. At the time, unless you unlocked Jedi, which literally only like five people in the game had done, you only were allowed a single character per server.

I eventually moved to a new server with a high Oceanic population based on my work schedule. I became a doctor/carbineer on one account and a master architect (later shipwright) on the other. I was very involved in my PA and widely known on the server because I was regularly buffing at the starports or running my buffhouse while AFK.

Unfortunately, with the CU and later the NGE, crafting for the most part has been marginalized. It's only within the last year that most crafting professions have become viable again, but with all the negatives listed by many people before me in this thread, I simply can't throw any more money at SOE. I too would like to see a crafting system here that is robust and complex, not simply A+B=C.

[Yaggaz]

More specifically, I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system. I never played the game. So I'm curious, why was it so good? How was it so complex? What made it special in comparison to other MMOs. I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system.

I have not been too impressed with any crafting system save for EVE's (and even then, I didnt get into the upper ranks of it, and didn't really involve myself in it much), but then my MMO resume is slightly limited.

So I'd like to hear what made SWG special and what concepts might be appropriate to incorporate/expand upon/improve in/ adapt to STO.

Looking forward!:)

P.S. I just ate a pomelo for lunch. Took me an HOUR to peel the thing. But still, quite tasty.

Great? I thought it was overrated myself. And that was pre-NGE

Still, complex crafting systems are always a plus in any MMO.

[planetwide]

It sounds like SWG has changed a bit since I played but I remember I really liked being able to go out and get materials with my character and also have automated harvesters. That I really liked.

[Starchild]

I can't add anything to the SWG crafting posts but I enjoyed it a lot. It was fun to go out and prospect for new resources and the crafting system was complicated but you could easily find macros that got rid of the tedium.

The problem I had with SWG was it went through a period of hyper inflation. When I started, advanced players would get group quests and then solo them to collect a huge reward. This got reflected in the prices for everything such that newbies, like me, couldn't afford anything.

There wasn't any good way to sell the loot I got. There was a junk dealer who would by a few things for a pittance but most things had to be sold to players. Yet there was no good AH.

There was was central auction house but it was limited to a very low price you could sell things for. I couldn't sell anything good for a realistic price. This was intentional because of player vendors.

People ran their own vendor shops. This made looking for something a pain and it limited competition, you'd have to travel from one shop to another, and ones on other planets to compare prices. There was not much downward pressure on prices except for high demand items that multiple shops on the same planet sold.

Hated to quit that game. Some parts of it really grabbed me but I felt like I wasn't advancing.

[Morgomir]

I dont think STO should take anything from SWGs crafting system, its complexity takes up alot of your focus that you may rather want to spend questing. LOTRO's crafting system would be better for this game, its alot more basic and fun.

[The.Grand.Nagus]

Theres really no "simple" way to describe it, but I'll try to do it briefly. At launch, every item used by players was crafted. Each item had its own specific resources that it used, and these resources had to be individually collected/mined. Furthermore, each planet and animal had different types of resources, so one specific item might require "nabooian hide", which could only be collected from an animal on Naboo.

Furthermore, at launch every item decayed with use. So the more you used your armor, its condition and effectivness decreased. You would have to repair your item(done by crafters) to fix it, but eventualy its overall condition would reach 0 and you would have to buy a new one. Same worked for weapons. SWG definitely had the most in depth crafting system ever devised, theres no question about it. The question was whether it was "fun" in a game.

[Sorbek]

Will be enjoying the old combat and crafting system again soon as the Non SoE project gets done :)

I can't wait to Melee stack my way to killing Jedi and then become one myself again.

[Thibor]

Fawke explained it quite well, if not long. In a nutshell:
Resources/materials varied in quality with absolute best quality not always readily available
Experimentation and crafting skill (and some luck with system random) resulted in varying quality of products.

So unlike a game like WoW where a Brilliant Saronite Hauberk is a Brilliant Saronite Hauberk regardless of who makes it, what crafting skill they have or what mats were used ... two chest pieces in SWG made with the same materials by the same crafter can yield varying results.

They also had the ability to color the armor which is something a LOT of people want who play games like WoW where a particular look is forced upon you for the items you wear.

The downside to the SWG crafting system?
You learn to macro or you get carpal tunnel.

[Galv]

I only bothered with the space ship part of SWG. From what i remember crafted ship parts were pretty useless execpt for the odd well made engine and POB (multiplayer ships) ship parts. The best stuff was looted from space and reversed engineered, looting those parts was a tedious chore but you had to if you wanted to compete in space PVP.

Added: Actually the POB ship parts were useless too. So it was only crafted engines that were any good, if the crafter really put a lot of effort in. But if you looted for long enough in space you could still get better engines, they were just a lot more time/life consuming to find.

[JoJimGregory]

I played SWG at launch for 6 to 8 months, and found their crafting system to be one of the more interesting and immersive systems I've seen in any MMO. Really geeky (in a good way) with actual physical placement of various designs of harvester units on the planets that you had to micromanage with refueling and resource pickup trips. Assembly/crafting stations, again of various graphical designs, that you would erect inside your personal residence to put together your resources into crates of works-in-progress and/or finished goods. NPC merchants that you personally "owned" that you stocked with your wares and that other players could visit within the player-made cities and residences to purchase your goods.

All in all it was very immersive.

STO could do something similar, and yet would not need to get nearly so complex as the SWG system. In STO, perhaps we could scan (science aspect of exploration with tricorder) for resources on persistent and Genesis worlds, and place actual graphical "harvesters" where resources are found that could work 24/7 from which we could occasionally gather those resources for assembly (engineering aspect with industrial kit/skills) and/or transfer for trade (diplomacy/merchant aspect via auction kit/skills).

[osena]

well the only thing i ever made in SWG were my Lightsabers and it was vary drawn out process i recall mineing in space to get the best stuff and needing food and drink just get more expermentions points

My last lightsaber i ever made (i guit the game damn nge) was the Jinsu razor and it was one of the best 1400dps
am not sure if new ones can get like that but i was one of the frist on euro infinity to have a jinsu razor

[andeolus]

I had very high hopes for SWG, but I was completely and utterly let down. One thing I hated was the time period. You set it between the first and second movie? Was that really a great idea? How can you have meaningful PvP when you know EXACTLY how it all ends. Not only that, there's only supposed to be a handful of Jedi. It's pretty clear in all source material. I remember posting on the beta testers forum that Jedi should either be completely left out or let everyone make one. Eventually the opted for the latter, but at that point, they had pretty much completely changed the game and a lot of people already bailed.

I love that STO is set in the future, in a story that's not already established anywhere else. It has a trailblazing quality about it that I really like.

[deilin]

Actually, you don't even have to "look" for resources anymore.

SWGcraft.org listed all the resources by planet, server, type.

Honestly, Shipwrite was probably the only real profitable trader professiont. for some, you had to use factories, or face the dreded luck monster for each nitty sub component (Droid engineer, Weapons, Armor, chef) for quiality, what also got nasty, was some resources for the higher end products appeared at most once a year, andsomethimes not high enough quality to make it worth harvesting.

And on a side note, they have started cracking down on AFK buffing. That was one uproar fromt he players I didn't mind hearing. When you don't have to be at the computer to advance in the game, something is deffinately wrong, It's as bad as all the "OXPG.com offeres 100 mil credits for the low price of $49.99. Fast delivery." which, in most MMOs is against the End Users agreement, and illegal. One one MMO I know actually sanctioned one offsite "gold" seller. and all they sold was a code you redeem for the gold. Or, in some games now, theres an "in game" store that you can buy them from. SWG actually started monitoring chat through filters for certain text. If they thought you were selling gold, you got your IP banned. A lot of games are at that point.

[deilin]

I had very high hopes for SWG, but I was completely and utterly let down. One thing I hated was the time period. You set it between the first and second movie? Was that really a great idea? How can you have meaningful PvP when you know EXACTLY how it all ends. Not only that, there's only supposed to be a handful of Jedi. It's pretty clear in all source material. I remember posting on the beta testers forum that Jedi should either be completely left out or let everyone make one. Eventually the opted for the latter, but at that point, they had pretty much completely changed the game and a lot of people already bailed. .

Actually, they made Hoth, and rumor has it, they are woking on either the astroid field or bespin.

As for the PvP, it was pointless anyway. there wasn't ever a winner to any battle. and the only time there was was arena style. I would like to see consequence to losing PvP. and I'm not talking about repair costs and item condition.

If the federation "liberates" a planet/starbase/outpost, have a real benefit for the federation and a penalty on the planet for the other side, vice versa if the federation loses a planet/outpost/starbase.

[Chastian]

I really miss that game sometimes. I was a Master Doctor, dropped my own hospital and all. I had millions of credits from buffing people in front of spaceports. Ah memories.

[onesoul1982]

I really miss that game sometimes. I was a Master Doctor, dropped my own hospital and all. I had millions of credits from buffing people in front of spaceports. Ah memories.

SWG was great..until SOE took over.

Then there wasnt anything to do..i was an entertainer...now my horn plays no more =(

[tyranastrasz]

Dont sure, I dont think the new SW MMORPG has player cities or flyable space craft, just looks like a pretty WOW clone. I really hope STO has craftable space stations and Gold pressed Latinum to steal! Maybe even player created colonies on planets! Would be great to build one and have to defend it in the neutral zone...

I'm sorry, but SWG's player cities suck. I got so sick of seeing the desert planet of Tatooine completely covered in cities that were obviously player-built because THEY WERE ALWAYS EMPTY.

[cyan29xx]

Searching for good resources was one of the funnest, and most rewarding things i have ever done in a MMORPG.

I really hope they put something like that into STO.

[deilin]

I'm sorry, but SWG's player cities suck. I got so sick of seeing the desert planet of Tatooine completely covered in cities that were obviously player-built because THEY WERE ALWAYS EMPTY.

You should have seen it during demolition days.

Over half the land was reclaimed, level 5 cities were reduced to 3 or lower. It was beautiful. Now player cities have a hard time getting past level 3, and with the hard economic times,many are still losing people, especually citties were a lot of the citizens were the same person using multiple accounts.

I have to admit, I put up a fight to make player cities more then storage and factories. Even suggesting bringing the GCW back to player cities. My only responce was someone saying "Never gonna happen" People are even asking for appartments in the main cities because player cities were dead. So theyd live in the city, and have a house out of the city for storage.

AS for the TCG, I found the TCG more fun then the actual SWG game. Mostly, I went in game for the TCG, or to play Mahjong. After I got my 6 month luxury yaught, the only time I was on the ground was when I logged in. I decorated my yaught for "living" space and a game room/bar.

[tyranastrasz]

You should have seen it during demolition days.

Over half the land was reclaimed, level 5 cities were reduced to 3 or lower. It was beautiful. Now player cities have a hard time getting past level 3, and with the hard economic times,many are still losing people, especually citties were a lot of the citizens were the same person using multiple accounts.

I have to admit, I put up a fight to make player cities more then storage and factories. Even suggesting bringing the GCW back to player cities. My only responce was someone saying "Never gonna happen" People are even asking for appartments in the main cities because player cities were dead. So theyd live in the city, and have a house out of the city for storage.

The concept might have been good if they'd managed to provide some incentive for people to actually spend time there, yeah, but I just hated how cluttered they made the game world feel. I mean, on the other worlds it wasn't so bad but like I said, Tatooine is supposed to be a desert planet. Why is there a city every five feet? :p

[coldheartzero]

Eesh. I just dropped SWG, and here's why:

1) Slow meaniinglewss leveling
In SWG you follow a a story which is quite meaningless and more running errands then questing. When done, I was only level 62 (of 90) and like "That's it?" You can't even PvP legitimately until lvl 70, and even then you're screwed over.

2)Horrible, meaningless PvP (The Galactic Civil War):
This is something I hope STO can make worth the while. The main problem was, there was no point to it. Just some meaningless loot that cost a bunch of credits if you can afford them.

There was a 4 day "battle" for a facility, and for what, a rally banner to temporarily raise some stats within a small radius (which you have to stay in)What did it consist of? commandos and officers that are AFK 'macro'ing mines to make invisible spies visible and everyone mobs them. What did the Empire lose not owning this facility, absolutely nothing, cept maybe soem NPC forces in a city that don't do much. In all, when the bannners were finally available, the rush of rebels end up crashing the server for 3 hours.

They even had started battlegrounds, which again, had no consequences for losing, so no real point to really fight. And, if you weren't a dark jedi, a medic, or commando, or spy, you weren't really wanted.

3) Dull space battle
You would think Star Wars would have good space battle, but even it was drab. Not to mention, wasn't available until a later release. The "boss battle" in space was a Corellian Corvette which I could destroy by myself with an A-wing. SAme witht he start destroyer.

I eventually got acess to all the "gunships", and still used a snub figher. Saw many good pilots become bad pilots because they got too used to heavy armor/shielding, and multiplayers gunning.

4) eh, lets go neutral.
I was so bored with GCW, I went neutral. Only thing I couldn't do was go into GCW sensitive zones on land, and could kill most anything in space as I pleased with no love loss and no reprocutions.

5) Spawn camping/Macros
SWG allowed macro scripting so you could actually write a prigram, and your character will target an enemy and atatck it and even use skills here and there. You would go around and see lvl 90s that are afk killing intire spawns with one skill. Not only that, the spawn were quest sensitive. Unless you get the death blw before the skill activates, you don't get any credit.

6) /fix (gcw, trader, ect)
players always wanted more battle, tweaked professions and such, which some were needed, and the devs gave, but the devs never fixed one issue:

/fix metagame

There was battle if that's all you wanted, or you could become a cook,, or an entertainer. There were may ways to earn alot of credits, if that's all you wanted, but there was never a real storyline, and lately, just one "festival" after another.

"oh, it's after New Hope and Before return of the jedi"

**Edit: When I kill an enemy vessel, will it feel like I killed a being, or just some data.**


NOW. That all being said, from what I've read so far, some things above aren't issues, or just aren't discussed yet. At least, STO seems to have a good start to a story going.


Playing after the NGE is one thing, but you've no idea what it was like before the castration and it's obvious by your post.

Crafting in SWG was awesome but I didn't have the patience for it. However I had a very rewarding career of exploring and sending back locations of the best ore locations and skinning tons of critters with my droids. I miss those days lol SWG was a great game before it was castrated.

I also like the way Earth and Beyonds crafting worked. Get a drop from a MoB, if you're skill was up to par, analyze it, reproduce it, and hopefully it came out better than before. It was more indepth than that but it's a good summary.

[Krakkken]

More specifically, I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system. I never played the game. So I'm curious, why was it so good? How was it so complex? What made it special in comparison to other MMOs. I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system.

I have not been too impressed with any crafting system save for EVE's (and even then, I didnt get into the upper ranks of it, and didn't really involve myself in it much), but then my MMO resume is slightly limited.

So I'd like to hear what made SWG special and what concepts might be appropriate to incorporate/expand upon/improve in/ adapt to STO.

Looking forward!:)

P.S. I just ate a pomelo for lunch. Took me an HOUR to peel the thing. But still, quite tasty.

Actualy it was what it "had", not what it has. And what it had was 32 proffesion trees anyone could be part of and a crafting system surpassed by none. It was the quality of what you used, not the quantity. The proffesion system realy made you feel like you were an true individual and the use of the skill trees kept the grind actualy interesting because you didnt have to dread each decision, you looked forward to getting other outside skills. Your build was the secret to the game, not your loot hording.

[Krakkken]

SWG was great..until ....Lucas Arts.... took over.

Then there wasnt anything to do..i was an entertainer...now my horn plays no more =(


Fixed....The CU or combat update was soe's version of the fix then that mega twit Julio Torres came in and absolutly sealed that games fate with the NGE. Torres worked directly for lucas arts. He was actualy the producer for KOTOR, a solo game. He should have never been allowed to touch SWG. Alot of SWG players are seeing the same things he did with swg already implimented into sw tor by the lucas arts producers in this game. There is a good reason that the lucas arts guys who are pulling the strings are not public faces here. We see them periodicly but rarely hear them. They want the horrible job that torres did die into oblivion. We are dreading it horribly. You are going to see so much linear game play its going to make you sick. So much hand holding and "story" that you will forget its a mmo.

[jblancato]

This is devolving into the normal SWG NGE sour grape stompfest. Let's get back onto the original topic or I'm locking this guy down. Thanks :)

[Vlherg]

Fawke gave a very good account of SWG crafting. A few other things about it I liked were...

It was about the design, not the actual crafting. You could factory produce components and finished items so after you spent an age working out the exact best combination of resources to use and got the best possible combine of those resources you would make a schematic for what you were making and factory produce it (up to 1000 units) The tedium of crafting by hand was limited to the grind to master and the occasional custom order.

Which leads to,

You might build a suit of custom armour, you could maximise protection which meant higher encumberance or make a low encumberance suit with reduced protection. Maybe someone wanted a gun with more accuracy instead of higher damage or medical stims with a lower skill requirement so that lower level players could use them and so on. It wasn't the case that all laser rifles were the same as every other laser rifle.

Most of the loot was components or enhancers instead of guns or armour e.g Krayt tissues or Gorax shards to enhance weapon damage, Nightsister shards to reduce armour encumberance and so on. This meant that crafting had a point instead of everyone running around with looted weapons.

[wrussandrews]

Fawke gave a very good account of SWG crafting. A few other things about it I liked were...

It was about the design, not the actual crafting. You could factory produce components and finished items so after you spent an age working out the exact best combination of resources to use and got the best possible combine of those resources you would make a schematic for what you were making and factory produce it (up to 1000 units) The tedium of crafting by hand was limited to the grind to master and the occasional custom order.

Which leads to,

You might build a suit of custom armour, you could maximise protection which meant higher encumberance or make a low encumberance suit with reduced protection. Maybe someone wanted a gun with more accuracy instead of higher damage or medical stims with a lower skill requirement so that lower level players could use them and so on. It wasn't the case that all laser rifles were the same as every other laser rifle.

Most of the loot was components or enhancers instead of guns or armour e.g Krayt tissues or Gorax shards to enhance weapon damage, Nightsister shards to reduce armour encumberance and so on. This meant that crafting had a point instead of everyone running around with looted weapons.

When they did they trader upgrade this changed. Not sure when the last time you played.

The tissues and such went out the window. Junk loot could be made to create stats for clothing and armor (drop it on sockets). Weapons could be enchanced as well.

[Galv]

Yea, from armour point of view crafting was well worth it, i can't remember any looted armour that was as good as crafted. Shipwright was pointless other than ship deeds,repair kits and reversing, but then once you got to master pilot you didn't have to worry about repair kits or ship deeds, i'd just jump to deep space and hyper out for a full repair, i never had to replace a ship once. From what i can remember the only credits i made from my shipwright were from paint and texture kits.

Really can't wait to hear more about STO crafting, should be interesting. I'm imagining it's maybe more tinkering with current Starfleet tech than actual crafting.

[Vlherg]

When they did they trader upgrade this changed. Not sure when the last time you played.

The tissues and such went out the window. Junk loot could be made to create stats for clothing and armor (drop it on sockets). Weapons could be enchanced as well.

I played a long time ago. i was referring to the "Golden Age" of SWG :)

[jagerbolt]

I remember wanting to run my own shop, it just seemed like such a fun idea. Then I realized how much time and grinding it took and lost interest. But it was def a crafters dream for those who had the dedication and patience. Something similar in STO (minus the grinding and amount of time needed) would be fantastic!

[Profedius]

I have tried all the crafting in all the MMOs I have played and found them to be a bit on the monotonous side and a great deal of them seemed to be thrown in as an after thought. I pretty much don’t craft anymore though I do look at each system in each new MMO so to me it is very low on my list of things I am concerned about in Star Trek Online.

One thing about crafting is I hope it is not something we will feel compelled to do in order to be competitive in PvE or PvP. I also hope we do not have to buy from other players in order to play the game in a meaningful way.

[FerrariF40LM]

SWG crafting system is very good because the logic behind crafting isn't as simple as A+B=C everytime.

Items in SWG require specific resource types. Some require generic resource type but as you get into the more complex items they require specific resources. So you may craft the barrel for a gun using any kind of Steel but to craft the gun using the barrel you need Duralloy Steel.

Each resource used is gathered from a server spawn. Server spawns lasted from 3 days to 15 days or so. When a resource spawned, depending on the resource, it has specific numeric values associated with it's overall quality.

Example: Duralloy Steel, Overall Quality 999, Maleability 631, Conductivity 500, Unit Toughness 985, Shock Resistance 992

The above example would be a great spawn. The normal spawns however were not that great.

Ultimately...because the high quality resources needed to craft the BEST or CAP items spawned so infrequently, the actual process behind making items could be costly. In addition, you can only pull so much of some resource because you are limited to the number of harvestors you may use per character. Since you can only get a limited amount then you can only make so many items using the particular resource... Once you run out you have to wait for another spawn or buy a supply from another player.

The shear number of unique resource types and diversity of resources required by recipes makes the SWG crafting system very good.

The last VERY important feature of SWG crafting that makes it awesome is the SKILL required to craft items.

If you were a weaponsmith and you wanted to craft a top notch gun you would need to create specific armor pieces that increased your Weapons Expermintation and Weapons assembly skills. You would need an Armorsmith to craft the armor items and an armorsmith the make the attachments that have the +weapon experimentation/assembly skills.

The higher you get your Weapons experimintation the more Experimentation attempts you get when you craft an item. The assembly factors into the chance to craft items with a socket. Sockets in SWG are used to put in attachments. ATtachments have statistics on them thereby making the item better.

Anyway... The experimentation session comes after you craft an item. If you used the best resources possible you could only get to 29% of max 100% after successfully crafting an item. The remaining 71% had to be gotten using experimentation points. Each time you experiment you get different results. The best resutls would be to have an Amazing Success everytime you experiment. The worst would be to have a critical failure.

Now you are probably thinking that you could easily hit 100% if you get your skill up high enough, right? Well, SWG has a limit on the max points you can get so everyone has a max. Items can have multiple experimentation lines like Max Damage and Min Damage. That would be two lines... If you had crafted each line initially to 29% then you would have to split your experimentation attempts between the two lines.

I did forget to mention that many items require other items from different crafters so to create some pieces you needed to acquire parts from 4 different craftsmen to make 1 item. SWG has Droid Engineers, Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, Domestic traders(Tailors and misc stuff), and Structure engineers.

Is this clear enough?

If Star Trek incorporates a similiar system, I will be extremely happy. The system is slightly complex to implement because to allow for a player driven economy, one that adds another level of immersion to the game, each trader type would need to have recipies that require items from other traders. So, all the recipes would need to be well thought out. In addition, the resources that spawn would need to have attributes based similiarly on the need for the best of certain items.

THIS

/10 char

[mobiusptc]

i cannot add more to fawks post, it describes the crafting to well.

as for the rest of the game as to why i like swg so much it was the sandbox gameplay.
you could be literly anything from 32 proffsion and pick and choose what to be from those. i knew a dancer that was aslo a master unarmed person that did very well in combat. you were able to roleplay exaclty who you wanted to be and coudl change it with no penalty at any time(thought you had to level those new slots) it made the game very immersive and personal, there were no really 2 people alike because there was teh oppertunity of literly thousands of different tempaltes. when you add the character creation options and the abilty of an image disigner to change it ingame it truly made it fun.
unlike in most other game i have played once you pick out your look, and pick your proffesion you are stuck with em unless you reroll, not the case in swg where you could go from bounty hunter to starship designer to creature handler all while keeping your avatar and make him change weight, add scars or change hair.

i do hope that while i doubt STO will take eveyrhting, that some aspect of swg do make it in.

[mprhead5]

I played SWG from launch untill the CU off and on. It was a good game and the crafting element was astounding! I had a master crafting friend that had a whole town. he had storage facilities, factorys, and a main hall in his mansion adorned will the most wonderus wares from around the galaxy. you walked into his home and saw weapons more powerfull than you could dream of and exotic armor suits a plenty. Thats what made that game so special. the ability to acheave greatness beyond simply finding a schematic and buying the resources on the auction house. You actualy had to go out into the galaxy and collect the rares materials around, build relationships with other master crafters. it was a difficult task but it rewarded hard work for the few willing to take on the challange.

What i would like to see in sto is rare material spawns on distant and dangerus planets. planets might have a finite supply of a resource. ( similar to the spawns in SWG ) This would be great for explorers whom could scout and explore for rare resources.

player/fleet owned stations could act as manifacturing facilitys. you could leave a satalite at a planet or in a nebula to collect resources.


a great crafting system is all about adding a whole new level of the game for serious gamers that the average player dosn't need to get too far into if they don't want but provides much riches and a few % faster heat dissapation rates for the shields of those that make the effort.

[bmbell71]

I too quit right after the CU.

The game at launch was the most ambitious for an MMO ever. In it's complexity perhaps Anarchy Online and EVE Online are the only two that match it.

SWG was a complete sandbox game. You could literally do whatever you want. The game was totally open ended, with limitless path/ability combinations with the skill based system.

It was more than an MMO, it's what I call a Star Wars simulation game. The crafting was extremely deep, and you could literally make it the entire game if you wanted. The best weapons and armor were made from crafting, which meant the "dungeon" raiding was done so purely for fun. However I will say the dungeon raids were my least favorite part of the game, and felt rather forced.

I hope that STO takes the sandbox approach, rather than a defined leveling path that everyone follows. I think it makes for a better gaming experience for all.

[Awarkle]

the one thing i prefer from crafting systems ive played is when you get a loot drop you dont or cant use you should be able to salvage it down into certain components.

which is why i liked the shipcraft system where you had a level 10 item so you could slot 10 level 10 weapons into a device and basicaly sacrifice the other 10 units to make 1 unit with the best stat from all the other items.

That way you really had to make sure the items you were selling were actually junk and didnt have a single incredible stat and a load of rubbish stats.

and as it was linked to random drop items with only a few quested drops items could be quite powerful and yet still unique.

the other aspect i liked was the material quality some materiels were better than others for certain items, like you had conductivity on certain items great for blasters but the alloy was weak and so was rubbish for armour.

however the key issue is MAKE stuff you craft last at least a few levels, most crafting systems i have used basicall meant the item you made was made obsolete 2 levels after crafting it, also provide a means to level up WHILE crafting. So if you dont want to go out and pwn / grind mobs all day you can sit on your starship researching and leveing up in a non combatant way.

ALso provide means for people to buy and search for items make the auction house or whatever you implement as good as you can, dont leave out anything because searching through pages and pages of junk items to find that jem isnt fun. Should be able to search on the name/cost/stats/quality/level etc etc.

EDIT : the only thing i was going to add was decide from day 1 player run economy OR drop rate economy if one is better than the other then 1 will be prefered. IE provide drops but dont make them so overpowered that crafted goods are pointless. OR make it so the dropped items are so rubbish you have to beg crafters to make you equipment. ALso no repetative press a single button a million times to level up aka daoc :P

AS for other elements of SWG i do agree the player run cities were an eye sore, especially on slower machines you basically had to find a clear run through the city and pray you arived at the other side without your machine crashing.

The only other thing i think swg did well was jump to lightspeed but that was a bit predictable :)

[Keldaria]

SWG truely had an amazing crafting system and it warms my heart to see a post relitively united in the voice that SWG's crafting system was great and the idea that you'd like to see it, or atleast the best parts of it added into STO.

I found the crafting system amazing and absolutly immersive. it was virtually the cornerstone the game was built apon. any PVP based guild needed to have a good collection of resource gatherers and crafters to provide them with the "edge". never before and probibly never agian will we see a game where everyone is so interdependent apon one another, And purhaps thats the biggest reason for the downfall of SWG. Because once you tear out a section of content for one group and cause them to leave the rest tend topple shortly after like domino's.

I personally was the head medical crafter for my guild. I provided all of our high quality buffpacks to our guild doctors and healing meds aswell. I worked closely with our guild chef to devise top quality food and drink that stacked to the maximum effect and time with streching the filling meter to full (100). I also hunted resources with my other 2 accounts, and dabbled in architecture and threw it designed house interiors that were truely an attaction in and of itself, which always managed to bring the customers back to my shop because as i'm sure most people can attest to the best decorated merchant houses you always remember.

Yes the mass spralling cities on tattoine sucked, Personally I think it was caused by the time setting. because every wanna-be fanboy had the live on the desert planet and be a rebal just like their idol Luke Skywalker. it got old and stale. As an imperial I can say that I prided myself and being part of one of the few imperial guilds that still participated in PVP on a regular basis even tho we frequently were outnumbered 4 to 1 on my server. My only fear is that STO will do the same with Federation Vs Klingon with feds outnumbering the Klingon in simmaluar numbers... the only thing that makes me think STO won't be as bad is that, is that I know nearly 90%+ of klingons will be PVP participants where Feds will probibly only enjoy 50%ish at most

[deilin]

The SWG crafting system was great, except for the fact it was as dreg as my day job. Afetr 8 hours of making sandwiches and cutting meat for a lot of ungreatful, and complaining endlessly (or outright half paying attention, if at all, because they're on the cell phone), to spending an hour traveling to planets to check my harvestors, then re-place any harvestors, and then see what resources I have to use, what I need, what I need to buy still, buy it, go back home to my station and maybe get some usefuyl items from it, and less then a % of exp for a days work, then to try and sell it against the same thing, but made better by higher crafters (and for 100x what you're trying to sell yours for) and still not selling it after 30 days.

Pretty muchm I had a trader (mainly shipwrite/structures) that I would change to domestics to make clothes and make only what I need because any look I got was better then anything I could make or on the market. Pretty much, crafting was more for appearance then actual product.

By the end of my stay, Traders were more usefull to try and sell your junk loot through your NPC merchants then the actual crafting.

I just hope, like with any other player game economy, the hardcore players jack up prices so high thet more casual players can't afford quality. Or, worse, thing you make gert bought and re-sold at higher price. Sword of the New World was so bad, 1 mil was like a penny. you're lucky to find anything for 12 mil.

[Rota]

Afetr 8 hours of making sandwiches ... to spending an hour traveling to planets to check my harvester

Well in STO we are all "captains" with crews. yes we have the few BO's that follow us around, but there's a shipfull of "filler" crew too. If STO has harvesting, then the retrieval of resources should be automatic with the assumption that one of your "crew" will be shuttling the resources to your ship or fleet HQ.

The fact that we all have crewmembers under our command will be a convenient excuse for STO get rid of cumbersome upkeep tasks in crafting or any other aspect of the game.

[deilin]

Yes the mass spralling cities on tattoine sucked, Personally I think it was caused by the time setting. because every wanna-be fanboy had the live on the desert planet and be a rebal just like their idol Luke Skywalker. it got old and stale. As an imperial I can say that I prided myself and being part of one of the few imperial guilds that still participated in PVP on a regular basis even tho we frequently were outnumbered 4 to 1 on my server. My only fear is that STO will do the same with Federation Vs Klingon with feds outnumbering the Klingon in simmaluar numbers... the only thing that makes me think STO won't be as bad is that, is that I know nearly 90%+ of klingons will be PVP participants where Feds will probibly only enjoy 50%ish at most

My participation in PvP will be based on how STO works it. The best PvP I've experienced was Dark Ages of Camelot. As for the %s you quoteed, I suspect you're right. What feds that PvP a lot will stay on the PvP lines.

I just hope PvP isn't the only political factor in control. Hopefully resupply missions and such behind the lines could also have some sway as well. You will get those that wont PvP on either side, and will get fristrated and quit if they're constantly being harrased by PvPers(/PKers) and/or feel like what they're doing means nothing (how I felt in SWG). I did fighter support for Vettes, Instances, and house decorating (would go, make furniture, and decorate houses while the owner did something else) and still felt like I wasn't accomplishing anything. Also ran a cantina that sold bespin ports and did buff for tips, but only had customers for the ports since all the other Ents mobbed Mos Eisley. when they added hoth, mos eisley was so packed with ents and players needing buffs, the server I was on kept crashing for 3 days.

[Zepath]

Eesh. I just dropped SWG, and here's why:

... edited ...


I will say what I've said about SW;G while I playing it, and ever since I left it;

"SW:G was the greatest game that never was."

I could write my on essay on why that game turned out as it did. The bottom line is;

The game is a prime example of why Marketing and Finance should stay the hell out of game design, and let he Creative Director and Executive Producers do their jobs.

Its a prime example of why Developers today don't give the IP licensee the rights they gave Lucas Arts.

And its a prime example of how badly things will go wrong if you spend too much time listening to the QQ of the players in the forums.

That said, and more to the point of the topic, there are three games out there that stand alone when it comes to crafting systems: Eve, Horizons, and SW;G.

You can decide for yourself which is the best ... but no MMO out there before or since, has even come close to those three (IMO). EQ II tired, but failed when you could die from crafting.

I am watching Fallen Earth tho ... while its graphics aren't cutting edge (I really don't care about graphics, I care about game-play) its crafting system is striving to compete with those three.

And for everyone out there that doesn't like crafting systems ... I will play a game based on its crafting system alone .... and I'm not alone there.

For me, crafting is every bit as important as combat is for others. I can, as I did in SW;G, play a game just for its crafting and never fight unless I have to while farming.

[Voorhees]

well both the NGE and Pre NGE has good and bad points and this is normal for any changes of any game. NGE was a new code and it took awhile for the devs to tune it in good. I played that game since launch. I seen many changes of it good and bad. I can tell you this tho. SWG is the only mmo that kept me hooked for more then 6 months. I really hope STO changes that for me.

SWG i have to say has the best crafting system and player housing system then any other game to date.

I have played many many many mmos just about everyone of them i at least tried or played.

I hope STO will be the total replacement for me over SWG.

Keep up the good work DEVS.

You build it they will come!!!

[Loekii]

SWG is a good Sandbox and Crafting MMO, but it was a horrible Star Wars MMO.

SWG should have been the 'WoW'. It should have been a major success. Slam dunk IP.

However, the game took a mainstream IP, and wittled it down to a niche game - "Koster Wars" (Raph Koster's idea of a great MMORPG, very loosly wrapped in a Star Wars skin). It was a popular game with a few players that liked the crafting and sandbox element, but it was DOA for the Star Wars gamer.

Now, given that SWG was not a phenominal success, given its crafting system, its sandbox play, and its mega-hit IP, tells me that SWG was basically a failure for a main stream MMO. It is a niche game, meaning that mainstream MMORPGers are not looking for a 'sandbox' game, or a big 'crafting' game. Mainstream is looking more at things like WoW, and I suspect TOR.

[coldheartzero]

SWG is a good Sandbox and Crafting MMO, but it was a horrible Star Wars MMO.

SWG should have been the 'WoW'. It should have been a major success. Slam dunk IP.

However, the game took a mainstream IP, and wittled it down to a niche game - "Koster Wars" (Raph Koster's idea of a great MMORPG, very loosly wrapped in a Star Wars skin). It was a popular game with a few players that liked the crafting and sandbox element, but it was DOA for the Star Wars gamer.

Now, given that SWG was not a phenominal success, given its crafting system, its sandbox play, and its mega-hit IP, tells me that SWG was basically a failure for a main stream MMO. It is a niche game, meaning that mainstream MMORPGers are not looking for a 'sandbox' game, or a big 'crafting' game. Mainstream is looking more at things like WoW, and I suspect TOR.




I could go into the many reasons why you're wrong

Just like pvp'rs that can't understand why pve'rs don't want to pvp. Just like non-rp'rs can't understand why people like to RP.

Some folks do not understand that there is more to things than just hack and slash and epix.

This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Cryptic Studios Forum Usage Guidelines (http://forums.startrekonline.com/announcement.php?f=24&a=2). Thank you, Dionaea

[Loekii]

I could go into the many reasons why you're wrong

Just like pvp'rs that can't understand why pve'rs don't want to pvp. Just like non-rp'rs can't understand why people like to RP.

Some folks do not understand that there is more to things than just hack and slash and epix.

This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Cryptic Studios Forum Usage Guidelines. Thank you, Dionaea.

Again, its a good game, but only good for those that like that type of play. Just because you may think it is the best type of game play, does not mean its the best kind of game play for others.

Your opinion is fine, but please take your 'you wont get it', 'your wrong' and 'Closed minded' junk elsewhere.

The numbers and sales do not lie.

The game did not appeal to as many players as it should have. The general gamer did not like the mechanics of the game, despite the phenomenal success of the IP (aka the chased away subscribers with its mechanics, because those mechanics are not appealing to the general gamer). Its not about about being 'closed' minded, but rather about just not finding it interesting.

[Liberty]

I played SWG too and loved the game up until the time they did the combat upgrade and also when they deleted BioEngineer and Creature Handler class. Annoying that I was maxed out in both. Oh, sure when they came out with the wannabe WoW clone they offered me a free level up in a class of my choice but lets say I just wasn't too happy about the Devs deleting my character for their new ahem improvements and then looking at my stuffed pets. Rare pets I had to travel to other planetary systems and spend hours and hours of searching for that rare spawn. Pets that I carefully crafted after many hours of stalking a Rancor to stick it with a needle for a DNA sample and then run like hell for my Swoop bike. I died alot. Heh. But that was the fun of it. I wasn't playing the game to level or to be the biggest baddest PWNYOU player around. I liked making pets for people to ride. I gave them for free and made more than a few friends that way. It was one of the few games crafters had a purpose. Oh, and my pets were nasty too so I could fight if I had to.

Anyways, with all the new changes they pretty much got rid of the need for crafters and dancers and well.... roleplay. I came back to a game where the cities where ghost towns. Cities that were once bustling with crafters, droid makers, arms dealers, and creature handlers. Cities that once had Cantina's filled with dancers and musicians that catered to the warriors trying to burn off battle fatigue and gain buffs for their next mission. It worked for gameplay and it worked for roleplay.

Sadly. SOE got greedy. Yeah, I know. No surprise there. They saw how much money WoW was making and the number of suscribers and tried to clone it. Now if they had come out with a totally new MMO this might not have been so bad but unfortunately they used the player base as the sacrificial lamb for their money god. Rule 1 about a MMO should be do not T off your player base on a mass scale. Deleting player base characters, changing the entire MMO ruleset, and selling expansions that are soon to be worthless, are a good way of doing this. Ya don't get more golden eggs by strangling the goose that laid them.

[Loekii]

Anyways, with all the new changes they pretty much got rid of the need for crafters and dancers and well.... roleplay. I came back to a game where the cities where ghost towns. Cities that were once bustling with crafters, droid makers, arms dealers, and creature handlers. Cities that once had Cantina's filled with dancers and musicians that catered to the warriors trying to burn off battle fatigue and gain buffs for their next mission. It worked for gameplay and it worked for roleplay.

Sadly. SOE got greedy. Yeah, I know. No surprise there. They saw how much money WoW was making and the number of subscribers and tried to clone it. Now if they had come out with a totally new MMO this might not have been so bad but unfortunately they used the player base as the sacrificial lamb for their money god. Rule 1 about a MMO should be do not T off your player base on a mass scale. Deleting player base characters, changing the entire MMO ruleset, and selling expansions that are soon to be worthless, are a good way of doing this. Ya don't get more golden eggs by strangling the goose that laid them.

I followed SWG from Development (was actually one of the first 100 testers invited into closed beta). However, it just was not the game for me (not a sandbox player, nor a crafter dependent player, and their butchering of the IP was just bad, imo.).

However, that said, I do agree that they should have just stuck with their niche customer base, rather than trying to change the game to go after a larger group of new players at the expense of their existing playerbase.

Imo, TOR, has learned from the mistakes of SWG, and will probably be closer to the next 'wow' (not in millions of subscribers, but as in the 2nd place MMORPG after WoW).

[Liberty]

Heh. I think all MMOs learned from SOEs mistake with SWG. SOEs future in MMOs will forever be tainted. Even if they came out with the most beawesome MMO in existence. No one would fully trust them. I know I personally won't touch a MMO made by them. It might start off great but after a year they will likely destroy it. Cryptic from what I've seen has good player and game support so I don't expect them to bail on STO after a year. If anything I have high expectations for added content and content that might not make it in by launch.

[coldheartzero]

Again, its a good game, but only good for those that like that type of play. Just because you may think it is the best type of game play, does not mean its the best kind of game play for others.

Your opinion is fine, but please take your 'you wont get it', 'your wrong' and 'Closed minded' junk elsewhere.

The numbers and sales do not lie.

The game did not appeal to as many players as it should have. The general gamer did not like the mechanics of the game, despite the phenomenal success of the IP (aka the chased away subscribers with its mechanics, because those mechanics are not appealing to the general gamer). Its not about about being 'closed' minded, but rather about just not finding it interesting.



Your post was very close minded and everything I said was 100% correct. As for it being edited, none of it was edited so it's quite apparent that it didn't break the rules that the mod said it did.



OH, and If I can be reported for THAT, I'm nominating myself the new forum police.

[JonnyStorm]

makes no sense for there to be a very complicated crafting system on ST..after all most everything is done with a replicator system..you tell the comp what you want and it is made from raw molecules and produced on the spot..case closed..this is Star Trek after all..so if crafting is not done this way then no transporters or warp either..
Anything else would come under the hobby realm, like Data's painting, I would think..and after all the is no need for armour in this world..its not based on a midieval time frame..so it would be usless and goofy here I think..and you wouldn't need it with personal shields..and also robots build the ships for the most part..as far as I can tell..and I'm a Trekker...and proud

[Elta_and_Zletha]

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I read the title.

Seriously, someone thought that Star Wars Galaxies was great!?!?

LAFF!!! XD
The game remindes me of one of those KFC Failure Bowl (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Edgbj5bGpC4/Suea1ibYRcI/AAAAAAAAAP0/IEIlpLHlzZ0/s320/DSC_0001.JPG) =P

[Rev1021]

crafting was very complex and time comsuming. Some peoplle loved the detail others like myself found it a waste. I played for 3 months from launch. Everyone was crafting so if you weren't playing the game 24 hours a day you couldn't develop your skills fast enough. The AH had so many items that you where better off just farming money. But there where few quests to do so you just ran around killing stuff.
And something esle. There was spawn campers everywhere. Harvisters covered the land. There where so many AFK farmers it was sick.
None of that felt like star wars to me so I quit. KOTOR one and two where far more enjoyable than SWG.

[Capt.Sisko]

SWG crafting system is very good because the logic behind crafting isn't as simple as A+B=C everytime.

Items in SWG require specific resource types. Some require generic resource type but as you get into the more complex items they require specific resources. So you may craft the barrel for a gun using any kind of Steel but to craft the gun using the barrel you need Duralloy Steel.

Each resource used is gathered from a server spawn. Server spawns lasted from 3 days to 15 days or so. When a resource spawned, depending on the resource, it has specific numeric values associated with it's overall quality.

Example: Duralloy Steel, Overall Quality 999, Maleability 631, Conductivity 500, Unit Toughness 985, Shock Resistance 992

The above example would be a great spawn. The normal spawns however were not that great.

Ultimately...because the high quality resources needed to craft the BEST or CAP items spawned so infrequently, the actual process behind making items could be costly. In addition, you can only pull so much of some resource because you are limited to the number of harvestors you may use per character. Since you can only get a limited amount then you can only make so many items using the particular resource... Once you run out you have to wait for another spawn or buy a supply from another player.

The shear number of unique resource types and diversity of resources required by recipes makes the SWG crafting system very good.

The last VERY important feature of SWG crafting that makes it awesome is the SKILL required to craft items.

If you were a weaponsmith and you wanted to craft a top notch gun you would need to create specific armor pieces that increased your Weapons Expermintation and Weapons assembly skills. You would need an Armorsmith to craft the armor items and an armorsmith the make the attachments that have the +weapon experimentation/assembly skills.

The higher you get your Weapons experimintation the more Experimentation attempts you get when you craft an item. The assembly factors into the chance to craft items with a socket. Sockets in SWG are used to put in attachments. ATtachments have statistics on them thereby making the item better.

Anyway... The experimentation session comes after you craft an item. If you used the best resources possible you could only get to 29% of max 100% after successfully crafting an item. The remaining 71% had to be gotten using experimentation points. Each time you experiment you get different results. The best resutls would be to have an Amazing Success everytime you experiment. The worst would be to have a critical failure.

Now you are probably thinking that you could easily hit 100% if you get your skill up high enough, right? Well, SWG has a limit on the max points you can get so everyone has a max. Items can have multiple experimentation lines like Max Damage and Min Damage. That would be two lines... If you had crafted each line initially to 29% then you would have to split your experimentation attempts between the two lines.

I did forget to mention that many items require other items from different crafters so to create some pieces you needed to acquire parts from 4 different craftsmen to make 1 item. SWG has Droid Engineers, Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, Domestic traders(Tailors and misc stuff), and Structure engineers.

Is this clear enough?

If Star Trek incorporates a similiar system, I will be extremely happy. The system is slightly complex to implement because to allow for a player driven economy, one that adds another level of immersion to the game, each trader type would need to have recipies that require items from other traders. So, all the recipes would need to be well thought out. In addition, the resources that spawn would need to have attributes based similiarly on the need for the best of certain items.



wait..what?

[G28112006]

Galaxies is pretty much dead anyway. No where near what it used to be in terms of population.

I haven't played any other MMO's, just SWG. The reason being, that nothing compared to it in diversity of skills and professions. You could mix and match, I was a creature handler / Bounty Hunter for a while. Then dropped that and became a fencer / creature handler, harvested creatures for an armoursmith for a while.

I did try to be a weaponsmith, but it was so time consuming. There was so much to learn about harvesting and what resources to use. It was complex but good and I had big respect for the ppl that did all that.

Fun times tbh. Then they ruined it first with the CU ( which i kinda got used to ) and then the NGE ( quit as soon as this hit ).

I was a weapons smith/ armor smith in swg for quite some time, and i think it was by far the hardest most expensive and most rewarding of all the swg crafts to learn and put together. The complexities of making good armour was extencive but weapons were in a leage of there own , especially after the update which allowed for weapons to become more specific to the requirements needed by the person who's weapon you were making, the combinations were extencive and you had to know what you were doing in order to make the best . The resources for both were very expencive to buy so inevitably a good crafter would need to buy the best machinery to extract the resources, to make the parts in crates (which is a must do) and then you would also need the buffs which would give you that extra edge in the final product.
The complexities of my particular crafter were indeed vast and expensive, but the satifaction of being recognised as one of the best crafters of that type was rewarded by being in constant demand for your work, surfice it to say i was overrun with orders for weapons and armor to the point that i had to search out others with skills as good as mine so that i could designate the work just to keep up. Let it not be said that SWG's crafting system lacked depth if nothing else abbout the game appealed , SWG crafting system is one of the best in any mmo out there, many would fall by the wayside because they found it difficult, and it is by no means easy to understand unless you put in the time and effort , but once done it is the most saticefying of all the proffessions in the game , and yes you need deep pockets as far as credits go to get started and to stay in the business, but it will eventually pay for itself .

[Inquizitor]

Thanks Fawke. Very interesting stuff imo. I play Eve, so I could see a lot of the similarities to Eve's science and industry aspects. SWG sounds way more in depth/varied than Eve's, even though Eve's is pretty deep and thought out imo. SWG's way sounds kinda cool to me.

I'm not sure if I'd like it to be that detailed in ST:O, but that's me personally. Not looking for 'Scotty tweaks the engine to go faster.' mind you, just not as in depth as you've described SWG. Closer to SWG ofc. :)

I can't wait to see what they've got in store; I hope it's at least on par with Eve's if not SWG.

In order to turn EVE's crafting system into SWG's you would have to do the following

Create quality levels for the materials. You don't just get Tritanium. you get Tritanium that has 4 stats on it. Durability, Strength, Overall quality, purity.

In this way a set of Tritanium might be really good for producing armor boosters but not so great at producing Megalasers.

Ass qualities like this to EVERY component. From the Raw materials all teh way up to the Tech 2 components.


Then a player would choose to build, lets say, a Kestral. He wouldn't be able to just dump a bunch of resources into a hopper and poop out a Kestral. He would first have to build the KEstal Components. LEts say an Engine is one such component.

In order to build the Engine you would assign materials to the differnt parts of the Engine. LEts say an Engine has a housing, and igniter, and exhaust. Each part has different material and quality requirments to be the best piece it could be. Once you preform the crafting you get a base Quality level of the part depending on the materials you used.. You then devoted experimentation points to improve the quality of one or more of this parts statistics.

Ok so you make all these parts. Occasionally you would even have to make parts to make the parts. But once you have all the main parts created and gathered you assign them all to the construction of the Kestral much as you assigned the Ore to the construction o the parts. You then craft the KEstral in the same manner. The end result would be Kestrals that would have unique stats to you. MAybe you produce Kestrals that are faster than the stock ones. Maybe it is more manuverable or has a lower signature. For a crafter it gives his product more worth and adds a competitive edge. You ahve to actually work to make your products desirable.

Now there are two additional things that would still need to be done to recreate the SWG experience in EVE.

First. When you do the experimentation for the part, ship, anything. You would have the option of creating a blueprint based off of your sucess. IF you do so you are granted a REcipie that, when used to create the KEstral from the earlier example, will ALWAYS be the quality level of your fully experimented piece. This lets you Brand name the thing. However you MUST use the exact same materials in order to do this.

Now the catch. MAterials did not remain static. You might find a belt wiht really good Pyrite and mine the heck out of it. a week later all the stats changed. You might go back and the Pyrite would not only be of low quality but more importantly it could no longer be used in any of your current blueprints.

This means that A) You have to find a new source of quality Pyrite. That is surveying which in EVE would become a HUGE industry. Problably more so than SWG. and you would have to recreate all of your blueprints.

You could also specialise a little easier in SWG. Lets say you make a really awesome Frigate Engine. YOu could just choose to mass produce these to create a huge stock before the materials changed and then sell high quality engines to the Friagte engineers.



Quite honestly. after going through all of that. The entire system would work EXTREMELY WELL in EVE. Primaraly because there is actual loss in EVE. There would be constant demand for high quality ships and modules that would be difficult to consistantly supply.

EDIT: I dabbled in a litle of all the crafts but only got deeply involved with Chef and Starship construction.

EDIT EDIT: I don't think this system would work as well in STO based on what we know of the game so far. There is no loss therefore no real ongoing market for stuff.

[JacobFlowers]

wait..what?

Revisiting some of my old QQ, whine, doomsday threads now are we Sisko?

[Masked_Patriot]

More specifically, I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system. I never played the game. So I'm curious, why was it so good? How was it so complex? What made it special in comparison to other MMOs. I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system.

I have not been too impressed with any crafting system save for EVE's (and even then, I didnt get into the upper ranks of it, and didn't really involve myself in it much), but then my MMO resume is slightly limited.

So I'd like to hear what made SWG special and what concepts might be appropriate to incorporate/expand upon/improve in/ adapt to STO.

Looking forward!:)

P.S. I just ate a pomelo for lunch. Took me an HOUR to peel the thing. But still, quite tasty.

Words can not describe how great SWG was prior to the CU/NGE fiasco. If you never got to experience the greatness that was SWG... you are hopeless. :p It should be the MMO that all other MMO's are compared to and must live up to. Screw WoW.

[Stormfury]

One wonders if the SWG crafting system was too complex? I started that game as a crafter, but was very intimidated by the complex nature of it. I felt like i had to keep track of too much, and there never was a good tutorial for it, so I changed my char to a Bounty Hunter. Im ok with a system being complex, but there has to be a proper guide for crafting. I Felt like the game made me guess too much, and i didnt like wasting "credits" to "Wing it" all the time. :cool:

It was also very much a job. You had to go to your resource harvesters and constantly put energy into them. This made it feel like a second job IMO. Sure it might be a nice idea in principal, but I escape work via games and having to work that hard... well you get the picture.

It also littered the landscape with harvesters, so running across a supposed remote area only to find 50 people had placed harvesters in the area... well that takes something away from the game IMO.

[jeandeaux]

I played SWG for about 2 years before NGE and some of the other updates that ruined the game, imo. I was a crafter, a Master Weaponsmith to be exact. The SWG resource and crafting system was very well designed and very interesting to learn. Because some people thought it was too complicated you could make a lot of money crafting items because lots of folks did not want to spend the time learning the system, harvesting good quality resources, then grinding your skill level up to create nice items. It was a true career in any sense and it was basically an in-game job. I enjoyed it too much because I actually injured my hands while grind crafting items! (Hands never fully recovered.) Not to mention, you had to constantly travel to different planets to check the quality of current resource spawns, then move your harvesters to a new locale (if other players didnt take the good spots 1st!). It got to the point where it was really too much of a job and not an enjoyable game so I quit being a crafter.

So in my opinion, yes SWG's crafting system is like no other and very realistic. However, I would not want to do that again in any game. It's not overly complicated once you understand what to do, but it was too realistic in terms of the work involved. If STO can take pieces of the SWG crafting system and use it that would be cool... just don't make it feel like "gawd I gotta log on to check resources on several planets and then I gotta craft 5000 of these widgets so I can unlock a schematic and then I gotta..." Please... No sweat shop long grinding jobs please... make it fun for casual players and for hardcore players like me who have MMO Grind Repetitive Injury! (It's no fun wanting to grind and you can't coz your hands fricken hurt bad... wish I could take 5 cc's of Anaprovaline to cure it! :P)

I completely agree, I did enjoy the complex level of the game but if you were a crafter, that is pretty much ALL you do. You really couldn't participate in story line events either beause as a crafter you didn't really have any skills to offer in combat so it was a cold day in some hot place before you could actually get invited to a group. I do enjoy crafting and REALLY like their material quality/spawn system, but do not want to spend sooooo much time at crafting every single component of an item before I could build 1 usable item.

[Hegario]

I completely agree, I did enjoy the complex level of the game but if you were a crafter, that is pretty much ALL you do. You really couldn't participate in story line events either beause as a crafter you didn't really have any skills to offer in combat so it was a cold day in some hot place before you could actually get invited to a group. I do enjoy crafting and REALLY like their material quality/spawn system, but do not want to spend sooooo much time at crafting every single component of an item before I could build 1 usable item.

Not really true. The combat levels that broke ground combat for crafters were added in the CU but Pre-CU it was different. The skillpoints meant you could easily have combat skills like Teräs Käsi Master or Swordsman and still be a crafter.

I personally thought this was excellent.

[ChicksDigHarleys]

SWG was ALWAYS a failure, and yes I was there day one with my collector's edition with the in game sunglasses lol. Numbers don't lie.

Just because some of you liked a fail game doesn't mean you're a bad person...it's OK. :p

[Masked_Patriot]

SWG was ALWAYS a failure, and yes I was there day one with my collector's edition with the in game sunglasses lol. Numbers don't lie.

Just because some of you liked a fail game doesn't mean you're a bad person...it's OK. :p

Well I most certainly disagree with you. It was a great game... had more innovation in the first 30 minutes of that game than most have in years of development. It's only downfall was poor management otherwise it would be the MMO everyone talks about and not WoW.

[ChicksDigHarleys]

Well I most certainly disagree with you. It was a great game... had more innovation in the first 30 minutes of that game than most have in years of development. It's only downfall was poor management otherwise it would be the MMO everyone talks about and not WoW.

The poor management was an ingredient of why it was fail. You can't separate it.

It did have one of the funniest moments I've had in a MMO when I /slapped a Stormy in a cantina and he one-shot incapped/DB me. It had the best crafting system in any MMO I've played, but other than that, it was meh.

[Oldfather]

I followed SWG from Development (was actually one of the first 100 testers invited into closed beta). However, it just was not the game for me (not a sandbox player, nor a crafter dependent player, and their butchering of the IP was just bad, imo.).

However, that said, I do agree that they should have just stuck with their niche customer base, rather than trying to change the game to go after a larger group of new players at the expense of their existing playerbase.

Imo, TOR, has learned from the mistakes of SWG, and will probably be closer to the next 'wow' (not in millions of subscribers, but as in the 2nd place MMORPG after WoW).


I also was with SWG since very early Beta. I make no claim on how many were in my group, but based on my access to the beta forum, it was in the first week of closed Beta.

I had tremendous fun during Beta despite the problems like your corpse being too far underground to reach and such.

They had a very healthy subscriber base for the Genre at the time (pre CU and NGE) and from the conversations I had with fellow players and my guild mates it was because of the wide variety of choice in both crafting and combat.

I was a Teras Kasi / Ranger - I did try much of the crafting also but I settled on being a meat-hide-bone supplier to the crafters since it fit my schedule and tastes best. I had many good friends that gained much satisfaction from their crafting pursuits.

I truly hope STO recognizes the benefit of choice and does not constrain choices all in the name of progressing through a story - If we are just to progress through a story then why have a MMO?

I have been waiting for a Star Trek MMO for a longtime - a Star Trek MMO to me, needs to be more than a MMOFPS.
It needs to be a MMORPG ; at least to the degree you can immerse yourself in the game world and be someone living in the game universe at least while you are online. For many folks a crafting system, player economy, and if not individual houses some type of communal gathering places for socialization in addition to a strong combat and skill system are all equally vital.

Then crafting in SWG gave a richness to the game universe and player experience that I hope STO takes a good look at and not duplicate the mechanics but the richness, diversity, and incorporation in the metaverse that SWG had.

Rather than many Producers of goods the STO “Crafters” may turn out to be traders, explorers, miners, or merchants, but a viable non combat element is needed for a complete Star Trek experience

[Sheridant]

The game had quite a few bugs. I played pre cu and left about 3 months after nge. There were holes in the maps where one could fall through and exploit The graphics engine needed some love. Cannon became more of a guideline than a rule. The dumbing down of the game was also not a plus. I am sure there were others but I have not thought about it in years.

With that said I really enjoyed the game despite its flaws. I liked that I could create a custom character that conforms to my play style. I liked that if I wanted to explore other builds I could. Having 32 professions to pick from was a blast. The ability to pick what I wanted from those 32skill trees was the best. I liked the sandbox approach. I also liked that to get to the alpha class I needed to master all of the others. Later that was dumbed down and eventually eliminated. I liked the community. It was friendly and supportive. I could ask any question regarding the game without getting the lame remarks. I also liked the size of the game. It was frigin huge. I also like the crafting system. It was complex. I had a few guildies that only did crafting. They were not in to storyline play or combat. They loved the intellectual exercise that crafting provided. Crafting was a different type of challenge for a different type of gamer. I also liked the story line game play. It was a blast. The game was immersive when I wanted to go in the deep end. When I was not in the mood I could go do something else like fishing, drop some harvesters, socialize in the cantina or charge around space for a bit. There were lots of options. There was always something to do other than grind. But even that was fun pre nge. Grouping on dant was excellent. It was more of a social event than a xp grind.

That game had its flaws but it did do a lot right. There was something for everyone if they cared to look. This is what I think STO could learn from SWG.
-Crafting system was complex
-There was something for everyone
-Social aspect of game was as important as getting xp
-You could create a character that conformed with your specific play style.
-You were not locked in to a story line if you did not want to be
-The economy was player driven
-The game was huge
-Ships allowed for cooperative play
I am sure there is more. As I mentioned earlier I have not thought about this in years.

[WinterPark1701]

Simple lesson from SWG, if your game is good maybe not great but good don't "reboot" it into a whole new crappy game.

[wileytheman]

The SWG crafting system is second to none. So much that it could be faulted for being overly-complex for the general player, and that is the reason there will never be a crafting system like it. But for those who love the challenge, and are willing to spend the time to establish themselves, it is quite rewarding. I am quite proud of the fact that I was able to excel in this aspect of the game.

[Zimjin]

SWG had plenty of flaws but the crafting game wasn't one of them.

Two things I didn't like about the crafting system, though:

1) No resource competition. If the best resource had extractors all over it, there was nothing you could do about it.

2) Resources "moved around", meaning there was no real sense in competing for a resource, even if you could. You'd just wait for it to move.


Had SWG allowed for some real, meaningful PvP over resources, it could have been a much better game. Instead, the resource game was more like "first some, first served".

[total.package]

I played SWG for about 2 years before NGE and some of the other updates that ruined the game, imo. I was a crafter, a Master Weaponsmith to be exact. The SWG resource and crafting system was very well designed and very interesting to learn. Because some people thought it was too complicated you could make a lot of money crafting items because lots of folks did not want to spend the time learning the system, harvesting good quality resources, then grinding your skill level up to create nice items. It was a true career in any sense and it was basically an in-game job. I enjoyed it too much because I actually injured my hands while grind crafting items! (Hands never fully recovered.) Not to mention, you had to constantly travel to different planets to check the quality of current resource spawns, then move your harvesters to a new locale (if other players didnt take the good spots 1st!). It got to the point where it was really too much of a job and not an enjoyable game so I quit being a crafter.

So in my opinion, yes SWG's crafting system is like no other and very realistic. However, I would not want to do that again in any game. It's not overly complicated once you understand what to do, but it was too realistic in terms of the work involved. If STO can take pieces of the SWG crafting system and use it that would be cool... just don't make it feel like "gawd I gotta log on to check resources on several planets and then I gotta craft 5000 of these widgets so I can unlock a schematic and then I gotta..." Please... No sweat shop long grinding jobs please... make it fun for casual players and for hardcore players like me who have MMO Grind Repetitive Injury! (It's no fun wanting to grind and you can't coz your hands fricken hurt bad... wish I could take 5 cc's of Anaprovaline to cure it! :P)

I sort of agree. Messing with harvesters and farming loot-based materials all the time got to be a chore. You just had to move them so often and were always scouting for better spots for them or generally just grinding.

However, the depth of the system was great. I especially like how it wasn't that complex a system to make goods, but it really rewarded people who put in the time to find the best materials. If you collected the best materials and experimented well, you could make a really good item. All goods were also unique to some degree. Not every heavy blaster from every different crafter was the same.

The other thing I really loved about the system early on was you could put your own tag on the items. You had some ability to name the items and put in html style color codes to put your own maker's mark on things. Of course they removed that feature, because it was cool.

[evil1337]

I was playing SWG from launch and made a few characters. One of which was a Crafter. I enjoyed the ability to place harvestors and not have to worry about riding around in circles hunting for 6 hours for the mats to make just a few items. The Harvestors were such an ingenius idea. It made crafting so much easier.

I also liked the idea of player private housing. where one couls set up shop and advertise ones crafting skills. Then people would fly to your home planet just to see your items for sale. You could just make a simple poor quality item and place it for sale on the server wide auction system and name it " Evil's Weapon Shop". In teh description you would place your coord's and people would come see what you had.

I stopped playing SWG after they ruined it by changing the format of how one became a Jedi. It was way too simple.

Another mmorpg that had an interesting crafting system was " Earth & Beyond ". One of the very first MMOs that offered a space theme. Players had ships and everything took place in outter space. You could mine asteroids for minerals and go to a space station to craft your items. Though it was not as intense as SWG. It was still unique and interesting.

[Masked_Patriot]

The SWG crafting system is second to none. So much that it could be faulted for being overly-complex for the general player, and that is the reason there will never be a crafting system like it.

I disagree. The general casual player could easily just craft out a bunch of crap and sell it off to make a little bit of money. But if you wanted to make some serious cash (in the millions) you had to make REALLY good items. It took a bit of planning and experience in the system to make quality which is usually the truth of real world inventions/manufacturing. Most games however make it so you craft the same items over and over with no variations. SWG had it so your top item could have been a lot better than Joe's top item. Not only that but the showrooms! Nothing beats walking into someones house and being able to pick the clothing or armor that I wanted because they literally could display HUNDREDS of items.

Aside from the best crafting system the emote system us RP'ers was the best I've ever seen. So many emotion options (that showed on your characters face and body) and the ability to turn your head to what you're looking at. Made for a lot of great "often overlooked" additions.

Of course then you had the skill tree system which in my opinion was the best any game has ever had. The ability to pick and choose what you wanted you're character to be was absolutely ENDLESS. It wasn't so free that you had the most unstoppable player in PvE or PvP... but you had freedom enough to virtually be whatever you wanted. A Rifle Trooper with hand to hand combat skills and small amounts of medical skills... a Rebel Doctor with the ability to also infect your enemy... the smuggler who not only transported drugs but could also craft up arms and smuggle them too.

It was endless and that's why SWG will forever go down as one the best MMO's of online gaming (at its peak mind you). I still blame the Jedi for what happened... it was the Jedi who destroyed the Death Star... it was the Jedi who killed the Emperor... it was the Jedi who killed the game. If they had stuck to their initial guns and made Jedi unreachable (or at least REALLY HARD)... then we would still be playing it today with a new graphic/sound upgrade and an endless amount of expansions.

[Mystyrys]

I played SWG in beta and still play nearly every day. 6+ years. My main is a tailor. Making credits is too easy. I have more than I can spend. I have thousands of items on display in my shops and houses. I have thousands of clothes for sale on my vendors. I respec'd my entertainer to Commando and I'm working on leveling her up. Our guild has organized guild activities every weekend and on impulse throughout the week. Even guild voice chat is active pretty much 24/7. There's so much to do all the time I sometimes feel overwhelmed -- and I'm a casual player.

SWG is still fun even after 6 years. It suits my playstyle. So what some hate about it, is what others love about it.

[brisin]

i played swg for 6 years, on ahazi

man i miss the old days 100 vs 100 battles :(
i miss my jedi

[Azeron]

I played SWG from the Beta 6+ years too but i hope that STO will give us a better game experience with much more posibilities and content.

[gronkdamage]

i played swg for 6 years, on ahazi

man i miss the old days 100 vs 100 battles :(
i miss my jedi

SWG screwed up when the allowed players to become Jedi. It's that simple.

The NGE was good; but the problem was they practically rebuilt the game - so there were tons of bugs - bad transitions from area to area, etc, etc... And space combat just wasn't all that fun.

If you're a star trek fan: stop worrying about what SWG did. Start worrying what TOR is going to do to STO.

[VainEldritch]

To answer the OP question: crafting.

For the others, SWG bombed because of panic - panic from LA/SOE that WoW had millions of subs and not SWG, since intuitively it should be the other way around. SWG was a solid gold, diamond-encrusted i.p. There never was and probably never will be again another i.p. with so much MMORPG potential. They thought they'd dropped the ball and they paniced, and re-wrote the game from the ground up (combat and characters) in a few weeks. The rest is history.

Lesson, Spock? Covet not they neighbours subscription base, for their fun is not your customers fun.

One thing is for sure, the ghost of that disaster will follow SOE and the developers to the end of their days.

[coldflow]

SWG was a poor game overall but the crafting system is the best of any MMO ever.

It's sad to say that we will never see a crafting system thats as good as SWGs system ever again.:(

WoW, like it or not, is the standard bearer for the genre now. It shows that interesting crafting isn't necessary for a MMO. Following companies will see this and be happy to just throw a WoW style, light, simple and boring crafting system into the game, if they add any at all.

Crafting doesn't pull in the crowds so it won't get much development hours spent on it. Its very niche.

High value crafting also devalues raiding for loot unless you add recipies to loot drops. Casual gamers don't like the extra crafting step between them and their loot so crafting suffers. They prefer instant gratification and hate having to socialise with crafters to get an item built.

Resource gathering is a great way to draw people into high level zones once they are max level. Otherwise they sit in the capitals till instance time with no reason to leave. In WoW you sit in the capital till you get a group, in SWG you would be out gathering and surveying. Thing is, some people see this as a chore and are happy afking in the capital because crafting isn't as instantly rewarding as running a dungeon.

Crafting is a good way of fostering community and player interdependence. This has gone out of fashion among MMO developers. Now there is the solo everything approach to design. Things have moved from servers being the community to guilds being the community. You don't need to interact face to face with anyone outside of even a small guild to get things done.

Bad crafting won't kill your game. Bad combat will. SWG is the perfect example of this.

Maybe someday a games company will do crafting right again, but with development costs rising and pressure on to have WoW like sales it won't come out of a big title or studio.
It will take something like a niche MMO from out of nowhere gaining ground (like EVE online) to happen.

[Piotrek]

To answer the OP question: crafting.

For the others, SWG bombed because of panic - panic from LA/SOE that WoW had millions of subs and not SWG, since intuitively it should be the other way around. SWG was a solid gold, diamond-encrusted i.p. There never was and probably never will be again another i.p. with so much MMORPG potential. They thought they'd dropped the ball and they paniced, and re-wrote the game from the ground up (combat and characters) in a few weeks. The rest is history.

Lesson, Spock? Covet not they neighbours subscription base, for their fun is not your customers fun.

One thing is for sure, the ghost of that disaster will follow SOE and the developers to the end of their days.

Best crafting system i have seen in any game EVER, so i have to agree.

Their biggest problem shunning their player base in hopes of getting a larger new player base.

[PumpkinMan]

And it was skilled based at first. After a few years of EQ1 skilled based game play was so nice and the fact that you could dabble in a little of everything was sweet. You could team with anyone.Wasn't much of a crafter,but harvesting and selling resources was fun. Being a bounty hunter with a huge pet alien cat that kept the mark busy while i sniped him from a hill was heaven. Then SOE killed it........dead.:mad:

[kaustic13]

SWG was great..until SOE took over.

Then there wasnt anything to do..i was an entertainer...now my horn plays no more =(

For the record, SoE did not take over. They always have been the primary developer.

[kaustic13]

This is devolving into the normal SWG NGE sour grape stompfest. Let's get back onto the original topic or I'm locking this guy down. Thanks :)

In the spirit of this request I offer what I consider the best thing Cryptic can learn from the lifespan of SWG.

I acknowledge that NGE really ruined the system. It took something great and made it less favorable. Two of the biggest losses from pre to post NGE was the ability for avatars of a variety of levels to group together and the loss of the tree system. Cryptic has the grouping issue covered. So, moving on...

The number one aspect of SWG that I feel is the actual core of why it persists even in its current NGE state is quality of life. Most of what SWG is now is a very rich and detailed quality of life system. Most of the responses here focus on the activity of crafting and not the function of crafting.

The first part of the function is of course players making stuff for other players. It is the player controlled economy. I think Cryptic understands the importance of this and we have indication that they are addressing it.

The second part of the function of crafting is the social interaction that results from crafting and the quality of life it inserts. The best example of this is the tailor aspect of crafting. SWG is probably the only game where in a player can have a personal tailor. Sure, other games have tailors but other games do not have social tailoring.

What I mean by this is you can have the person you go to and get your fantasy game armor. That is true. However, other games do not have tailors that make cloths you can WARE. My wife is a tailor in SWG. In fact, she is probably one of the best tailors in the history of that game. She does not sell “stat” clothing. She sells fashion clothing. Not only does she do that she offers the services of an ACTUAL tailor.

She will spend time with a client helping them choose clothes and colors based on what that person wants to do IN those clothes. Think about what Garak did as a tailor, how he offered services beyond just cloths rack sales. It is a personal touch. It is quality of life.

The same goes with the entertainer profession in SWG. That’s what I do there. I am an entertainer. Not only that, I play a male entertainer, a musician, in fact. I am one of the most successful entertainers on Starsider. I have regular customers that seek me out rather than just go to Mos Eisley and pick a random entertainer. Like my wife I offer more than just buffs. I am a good conversationalist and am actually entertaining beyond just the mechanical buffing.

I am not saying that STO should have entertainers. I am saying that crafting and entertaining are MASSIVE contributors to the quality of life in SWG along with player cities (which are problematic as some have mentioned), and all of the little things you can get in the game. Someone here said that crafting is about 50% of SWG. I have to say that is wrong. Its 50% quality of life. SWG is set up to provide pleasure in just being in the world, just hanging out in a cantina, talking to other players in constructed social interactive situations like that which can be found in talking to tailors, weapon sellers, shipwrights, entertainer ect.

Right now, STO seems to be all about the combat. We know they are addressing the diplomacy and the exploration aspects. But, what about the tailors, the traders, the bar tenders, the colonists, the “regular people” who are heroic in what they do though it may be “mundane”?

There have been many many people requesting paths that are not that of starship captain orientation. They want to be able to do something other than having to fight or to fight in ways not related to either the Feds or Klingons. They want to be traders piloting goods from one place to another. They want to be like Rom, Quark, Mud, Soong. They want to watch the fight and not necessarily be in the fight.

In other threads people who do not understand this desire have decried this longing as people wanting to be supporting cast and framing this as a negative desire. Having been supporting cast to SWG I will say that this want is not a bad thing. It is an important aspect almost every MMORPG just does not get.

In SWG I am a person dedicated to making play time enjoyable beyond just combat. Yes, my systemic role is largely that of aiding in effectiveness of combat mechanically. However, my support role is literally that of making people smile through a class of interactivity that is hard-coded into the system. People have a mechanical reason to come to me but they come to me for more than that. They come to me for the smiles and joy of interaction, for the quality of life I provide.

It would be a HUGE mistake to not put something like what I am discussing in the STO system. STO has a chance to be one of the biggest MMORPGS in the history of the genre. If STO only focuses on combat in the state it will at launch it will never achieve that potential. Cryptic needs to develop STO into being a destination, not a location.

STO has a 43 year franchise lifespan to live up to containing a rich variety of characters and professions beyond just that of military ship captains. Star Trek has the largest fan base of any IP out there, even beyond that of Star Wars. My 62 yo mother is interested in what STO is becoming because she has been a passive fan of the franchise since the first airing of the first episode in the 60s. She does not even consider Star Trek to be science fiction. For her it is a drama. She is not into video games but she is into Star Trek. If there was something other than combat for her to do in STO my mother would probably at least try the game.

Some people are going to say “you can do that as a role player”. This is not true. There needs to be an alternative to being a ship caption even for effective role-play. That kind of attitude is insultingly dismissive, disrespectful and denigrating.

In the end I say, STO can learn from SWG that there is more to MMORPGs than fighting and basic crafting. STO can learn that people want to live an alternate life in a MMORPG, a life full of constructive social interaction through career paths designed to be partially social. As said before STO can be a destination, not a location. This is the most important thing SWG has to offer and should be offered by STO. If STO is developed into a destination I seriously believe that STO can see sub numbers above that of Linage and perhaps approaching the Western population numbers of WoW (around 5 million). This is good for money but it is also good, if not better, for the community.

[Lo-Sata]

More specifically, I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system. I never played the game. So I'm curious, why was it so good? How was it so complex? What made it special in comparison to other MMOs. I keep hearing about SWG's crafting system.

I have not been too impressed with any crafting system save for EVE's (and even then, I didnt get into the upper ranks of it, and didn't really involve myself in it much), but then my MMO resume is slightly limited.

So I'd like to hear what made SWG special and what concepts might be appropriate to incorporate/expand upon/improve in/ adapt to STO.

Looking forward!:)

P.S. I just ate a pomelo for lunch. Took me an HOUR to peel the thing. But still, quite tasty.

Firstly, I loved SWG. I even loved some parts of the NGE(New Game Enhancements). I wasn't into crafting that much, though. But it definitely was a HUGE part of the game. Armor, weapons, items, food/drink, all had to be crafted. It was fairly was thought out. Excellent question, JF.