5 Concerns with SOE_SWG's "Combat Upgrade" (Score 1)

Many other people are going to comment correctly on the imbalances to the new game, but I want to ask a few more general questions that highlight my concerns over SOE's corporate responsibility to its customers. Or at least puts the focus on the Austin dev team and the SOE SWG business unit in this deployment:

1) Lack of Quality of Online Service:

Firstly, SOE_SWG does not seem to have a corporate policy on deploying well tested software. The fact it can repeatedly over 2 years release patches and now this upgrade that not only have many defects, but also have obvious and fundamental imbalances in its design, is very concerning. The SOE_SWG business unit does not seem to appreciate they are providing a pre-paid online subscription service. That kind of business requires close to 24x7 availability, adequate ommunication of schedule, and content that is supposed to match the published rules and advertised features. Players who are dealing with this poor release have already paid to do so -- there is no compensation for downtime or for extra time required with their accounts from imbalances. A few weeks into the EQ2 launch this Oct. when a substantial outage occurred, John Smedley updated that community and provided 1 week free game time. Since SWG's launch, Smedley has never once communicated directly to the SWG community (probably because of the equivocal ownership by LucasArts) and there has been no communication from anyone at SOE_SWG on when they will resolve the current series of game breaking problems. Players are left with the feeling that SOE_SWG is more interested in launching its paid expansion next week than worrying about the current quality of service. That essentially SOE_SWG will resolve current defects and allow for a prolongued analysis and series of patches to maybe correct imbalances at SOE's convenience. This is very odd to me, that a business based on pre-paid subscriptions would not make an effort to ensure its customers were well informed and reasonably confident so they would continue to renew. If the game is unplayable now (as I feel it is for me), why would I renew? What confidence and incentive do I have that things will get better?

My general point is that AOL, MSN, Earthlink, NCSoft, Mythic, Blizzard... any other provider I'm experienced with that sells access and online content has never allowed for any upgrade I know of without good availability or compensation (of some kind), good documentation of the changes and schedule, good turnaround in correcting reported defects by their members and imbalances. This is singularly the opposite experience many players currently feel with SOE_SWG.

2) Lack of Customer Support Materials:

The second area that really concerns me is the lack of any HELP File or clear supporting documentation. There are no descriptions with accompanying visual explanation of any of the new combat features or changes in the game content. No flash tutorials, no image overview, just text descriptions that discuss what is intended to be implemented. Only today (April 30) was listed in the forums the links for several pages that only textually outline how some of the new combat occurs. But there is still no comprehensive list and descriptions for what any of the new craftable items do (like medical enhancers). The in-game HELP only contains one poorly worded and formatted paragraph that ignores several key features and has no mention of any of the new content.

When I called SOE support asking for a HELP overview, the CSR referred me to the forums to check players posts. To me this is ridiculous and unrealistic, since those boards are now filled with angry protests and complaints. After another expensive call to California from the East Coast, I was told again to review other players descriptions in the forums. I don't think it's reasonable for players to spend their personal time combing through rants to find someone's opinion of how the game now works -- players don't operate the service: SOE_SWG should have provided clearly the definitive rules and methods that would help its customers to use their service. The last time I called I was also recommended to "try Test Center". This summarises the current state of the SOE_SWG service: in order to learn the features and methods of the new game, players are being counselled to spend more personal time figuring it out for themselves on a testbed. I wonder if new players are getting this message as well with their purchase.

SOE_SWG is describing this as a "new" game and yet there is no single prepared document for existing players to rely on. I wonder if one has to buy the new release in a store to get a booklet. I think it's a pretty reasonable expectation that some effort would have been made to ensure that players knew where the support material would be on all the changes, and that this documentation was actually checked to be adequate before launch and updated as needed.

3) Lack of Balanced Progression:

The other area that is very disappointing to me and that most players are now upset about is the lack of fairness in the new game. The bottom line is that SOE_SWG not only made everything harder, they made it harder and kept the same constraints as the previous game. The number and type of classes have not changed, and the requirements to level in them have not as well; but the difficulty to earn any experience is without exaggertating now an order of magnitude more challenging. For me this is just a crass time sink and a brutal throttle to player advancement. Where before one could solo reasonably fast (and this is the kind of thing players had requested to change), each creature now takes 2-3+mins at the same challenge level (i.e. "white con"). Several professions have been stopped cold, with Doctors now required to engage in combat to earn XP, and Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths losing the backbone of their class with experimentation bonuses from high-end resources.

But Jedi players are in the most appalling position, where the game is wrongly deciding ("con") they are at a higher level with their Force skills if they have an alternative profession (which most do for survival, but which they can't use to earn Jedi XP). The result is that they can not earn any XP, since the creatures that they can actually solo are well below what the game interprets as their combined profession level. In other words, the game is conning creatures as white which are in fact purple for Jedi, and the mobs they can solo are being shown as grey and provide no benefit. (Jedi also are required to solo as a game constraint because if they are seen by other players or NPCs they become active for PvP and incur massive XP loss on death.) Many Jedi trying creatures that con to their level have been killed and subsequently lost XP (working game constraint). Since Jedi skills requirements are in the millions many of them like me are seeing this as game breaking. Particularly when the constraint that all combat XP for Jedi is 1/5 of normal XP (another unchanged constraint).

The bottom line here is that there are multiple things to balance with this "upgrade", which in fact itself was supposed to provide a balancing of combat in the first place. Players have been angered by SOE_SWG removing some significant play features from professions and introducing new constraints, while all they wanted was the removal of outlier equipment and craftable items, and the basic balancing of specials between combat professions. Combat is now worse than ever in SWG. One feels we've taken two-steps back and now must wait another year for another game "balancing" program. If anything it's an example of how scope creep can ruin a release.

4) Lack of Community Support:

Another area that has been dragging on SWG is an ongoing lack of confidence in the Austin development team. Last Summer the expected Combat Upgrade was announced to be delayed in favor of the "Jump-to-Lightspeed" paid expansion. Players were upset, and with a sustained outreach to the gaming media they had SOE_SWG commit to have the Combat Upgrade as their next most important priority. With JTL launching in Oct. the Combat Upgrade was finally deployed last week (April 25+) across hosts. Quite a delay with maybe four weeks of Beta testing made available. Currently, the "Rage of the Wookies" paid expansion scheduled for May 5 is in Beta, which only started maybe two weeks ago. The point here is that players did not have a strong opportunity to test (for example, no public Jedi testing was done), or see implemented many of the changes they requested, or received any kind of substantial feedback on many of the defects they reported. Forum posts with lists of defects were recently deleted, and a general discussion forum on the Combat Upgrade was prematurely closed (and then reopened after protests) to finally be closed again today. One player Correspondent was fired after protesting several changes, and three more have resigned. All in all, players are left with very poor communication on the present service and little insight into the future. Except that another paid-for expansion is coming.

5) Lack of Franchise Awareness:

The last thing most players have complained about, and I agree with this a little, is the general lack of creativity and effort by SOE_SWG with the Star Wars narrative. If one compares SWG to KOTOR and other games, there is a poor recognition of the Star Wars brand in a lot of the quests and background content. I can't speak to this too much, that the game is not "Star Warsy" enough, but there is an incredible difference in the lack of quests and overall narratives between the format of EQ2 or WoW with SWG. In those games quests and tasks form a major role in a player's advancement. In SWG, they are minimal.

Summary:

In summary, I think there are some substantial problems with SOE_SWG as a whole that this release of the "SWG Combat Upgrade" is highlighting, and many of them are really organizational. That's why I focus on corporate responsibility or professionalism by SOE as a whole to its membership. There sometimes seems to be a lack of maturity or experience with the Austin Dev team. For instance, with their communications and marketing relations staff they frequently raise players expectations unnecessarily or likewise communicate poorly leading to misunderstandings. One really hopes they will get organized fast, get some injection of professionalism, and communicate to their members how they will resolve current issues. Unfortunately, they first have to admit there are in fact problems with the Combat Upgrade and getting SOE_SWG to "yes" has always proven to take several Quarters and a paid-for expansion to happen.