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Star Wars Galaxies – The “Force” Is Not With It

Do you have the itch to enter George Lucas’s “Galaxy” and immerse yourself in blazing battles against killer droids or engage real-life enemy players in an epic fight of good against evil?  Do you yearn to scream through the universe in your Jedi Star Fighter and plug bogeys with your twin-turbo Ion Blasters?  Or perhaps you’re looking forward to exploring the secrets of Kashyyyk or travel from planet to planet meeting the beloved characters of Star Wars?  Well, you’re in for some disappointment.  Not at first, but within three to six months of playing, guaranteed.  In fact, why would a veteran player of Star Wars, like myself, leave Star Wars!?

As many game reviews have already pointed out, Star Wars Galaxies, a recent and disappointing genre of a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), continues to fail in the delivery of content, flexibility, consistency, customer support, and customer satisfaction usually experienced by Star Wars fans.  We simply have come to expect high quality from George Lucas; and he delivers.  For example, Mr. Lucas is so keen on quality that he is well known for doing a take over and over until his actors make the scene “more intense.” 

But when it comes to handing the torch over to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), the “Total Experience” is less than satisfying.  True, the bug ridden expansion pack, Rage of the Wookies, was a step in the right direction in terms of multiple instanced dungeons, quests that can be accomplished solo, and Lucas-quality content.  However, before strapping yourself into an X-wing fighter, you need to know what disappointing core issues you will face when playing Star Wars Galaxies, and why so many have a “love/hate” relationship with SOE.  Most importantly, why have so many recently hit the “cancel account” button despite new content? 

“If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”

Going back to the early days, when Star Wars first hit the streets, players embraced a new “combat” system which promised a fresh way to group with your friends and do battle against the evils of the Galaxy.  It was different than any other MMORPG, and, at first, seemed to be a success.  Sony introduced new exciting weapons, quests, and loot every few months.  In fact, new exciting lootable items and other various elements beefed up the game.  Yet, as the months went by, the developers at Sony Online Entertainment (called Dev’s) received increasingly numerous complaints of how unbalanced and disorganized the game was.  Hot fixes, as they are called, were regularly implemented.  However, the game got worse.  Literally thousands of suggestions were published on the Star Wars forums, but never taken seriously.  Instead, SOE concentrated on making relatively minor changes and tweaks in an attempt to quell the ever increasing complaints.  Still, when SOE would fix or change one particular area, two others would “break” or create huge exploitable holes that players, of course, took advantage of.  Exploitation prompted more hot fixes to fix the hot fixes.

Nevertheless, Sony continued implementing “Hot Fixes” (minor changes in the game) and “Publishes” (major changes) that mostly consisted of what players call NERF’s.  The term NERF was coined in the MMORPG game Everquest (also a Sony managed game) and means: The act of reducing the effectiveness of a game element, done by the programmers of the game, e.g. making certain spells less powerful, making a particular weapon slower, making a particular class more prone to spell fizzles, etc.” 

To handle the unbalanced elements of the game, Sony Online Entertainment chose to “Nerf” or reduce the effectiveness of practically everything in the game.  For example, a Commando, formerly considered to be a very strong player and, at one time, one of the favorite characters to play, wielded a Flame Thrower.  Now, by any standards, a Flame Thrower is impossible to dodge and can do devastating damage.  Not in Star Wars Galaxies after a NERF publish.  SOE reduced the weapon to nothing more that a pea shooter by programming in the ability to dodge the weapon’s stream of devastating, thousand-degree fire and by reducing the damage the weapon could do.  Tera Kasi characters (Melee, or unarmed combat experts) were now able to “dodge” or even “block” this attack.  Commando’s quickly faded into the background as “Nerf’ed” weak characters.  And the examples go on and on.  Publish after publish SOE attempted to “balance” the game by reducing the effectiveness of weapons, Jedi powers, armor resistances, professions, you name it.  The adverse effects, however, were felt by SOE’s own customers.  How?

The technique of fixing a game problem by NERF’ing simply exposed SOE’s lack of forethought in developing the Star Wars Galaxies game.  In addition, it demonstrated how SOE was handling their mistakes, that is, to leave the infrastructure in place and code out around the game’s broken foundation instead of creating something new that worked.  To this day, the major flaws in the game can be attributed to a lack of ingenuity among the development team.

Also, this technique forced their customers to change their character’s profession to one that still had some semblance of strength or effectiveness. 

During the periods following the changes, players quickly found the weaknesses created by the changes, both in the game and in other players professions, and exploited them, taking advantage of the unbalanced or “broken” parts that were supposed to be balanced or fixed by the Publish in the first place. 

An example of this was following one Publish period in which a Master Combat Medic, considered to be average to above average in character combat strength, could take out any player, including a high level Jedi Knight, in about 30 seconds with a “super charged” spider venom mind poison or disease, all without ever exchanging blows in combat.  Players would simply become a Master Rifleman/Combat Medic and then, literally stalk other lower level players at battlefields or theme parks and the like, dropping poisons or diseases on them and stand there as they watched the other players mind pool drop to zero.  In addition, this “ganking” was further facilitated by another unique system called a Temporary Enemy Flag (explained below).  Therefore, a player could simply throw a disease or poison on the TEF’ed player, run away and wait about thirty seconds, then shoot them dead (called a death blow).  Piece of cake!  The other player never had a chance.  Oh, the other player could become a Doctor and heal the disease or poison.  But even I tried this approach without consistent success due to the healing timer.  Anotherwords, SOE purposely set the healing timing slower than the damage done by the disease or poison.  Unbalanced?  Severely.  But this broken unbalanced combat scenario went on for months.

As mentioned earlier, another issue manifested itself due to the Temporary Enemy Flag.  The TEF was a unique system where a player received a TEF if they attacked a player or NPC of an opposing faction.  This system, too, was implemented with the intent of encouraging players to engage in more player versus player combat.  Why?  Because of numerous complaints that the game was boring and had very few opportunities for exciting player versus player combat.  However, harassment complaints poured in because of the lack of choice.  Players felt forced into player versus player (PVP) combat whether they wanted to or not.  After months and months, the TEF system was finally scraped.

Still, complaints of unbalanced game play continued to pile up and a huge percentage of the account cancellations were attributed to “unbalanced game play.”

The Combat Upgrade

Recently, the infamous “Combat Upgrade” (or CURB) was implemented.

Essentially the CU consisted of further reducing the effectiveness of various professions, rendering some practically useless.  Doctors, for example no longer crafted their enhancement packs, dancers no longer gave mind enhancements, poisons and diseases were reduced to very slow acting “damage over time” attacks, and etc.  True, the CU improved upon visual graphics in the user interface, and fixed some bugs. 

Interestingly, though, the CU also implemented the grand-daddy of all NERF’s by replacing the unique Star Wars combat system with the tried-and-true combat system of Everquest.  Players were astounded that SOE would even think of doing such a thing, let alone call it an “upgrade.”  Nevertheless, the CU, yet again, attempted to balance all professions with the intent of making them equal in combat, and to a small degree achieved this.  However, during the months after the CU went live, thousands of Jedi, for example, lost millions of Jedi experience points due to Bounty Hunter death squads (called gank squads) in which the Jedi is simply overwhelmed by up to five other players.  To add insult to injury, a Jedi could even be killed, and thus loose as much as 430,000 experience points, by his OWN FACTION!  Anotherwords, a Rebel Bounty Hunter could hunt and kill a Rebel Jedi.  As of this writing, it is still programmed this way. 

Isn’t this supposed to be a Galactic Civil War where factions band together and fight the tyranny of their enemies?  Yet, SOE has the game programmed in such a way that players can turn traitor on each other and kill within their own ranks.  Unbalanced?  Perhaps.  But, is SOE again attempting to compensate for the lack of “player versus player” combat opportunities by increasing the available “targets” for Bounty Hunters?  Absolutely.  And, just as SOE expected, hundreds of players changed their professions to Bounty Hunter to take advantage of more PVP opportunities.  However, didn’t that take the choice to PVP away from those who play the Jedi profession?  It sure did.

SOE has stated that the Jedi profession is supposed to be hard, and I’m not going to go into all the opinions surrounding this issue.  However, isn’t there other ways to make playing a Jedi hard without undermining the very game element you have implemented in the first place, namely, the Galactic civil war where players of identical faction are helping each other?  In addition, how can you maintain customer satisfaction by keeping PVP a choice for some players but not all players?  This illustrates just one of the inconsistencies in SOE’s Star Wars game.  Star Wars Galaxies continues to be reduced to a conglomeration of paradoxes and inconsistencies.  “Hot fixes” and “publishes” only amount to band aids on gaping holes in the fabric of the game.  So?  These issues, and the numerous others not mentioned, monetarily affect you directly.

Time Equals Money

Remember how a player is forced to re-level his character to a new stronger profession because of the NERF’s?  Re-leveling takes time which you paid for in your monthly account fee.  Well, that’s alright with SOE because it keeps players playing longer re-leveling their characters.  However there are other ramifications that also hit you square in the pocket book.

You see, if you “choose” to re-level your character to a new profession, all the weapons, armor, foods, drinks, and other items you purchased in the game for your old character become useless.  Anotherwords, NERF’ing equals money out of your pocket.  Consider: you pay Sony to play Star Wars.  When a “Hot Fix” is implemented, you are directly affected by either losing an item (and quite often many items) you spent time acquiring, or purchasing.  Or perhaps the effectiveness of the item is reduced to “worthless.”  Worthless items are usually destroyed because they become unusable.  So, basically all the time you spent playing Star Wars to acquire or craft that NERF’ed item, which you paid SOE for, is gone.  And, you are not compensated monetarily by SOE for that measure of lost time, and thus lost account fee, in any way.

True, you can try to sell the item but then you need a Merchant character to do this.  That means another account and another monthly fee to Sony.

Multiple Characters

So blatant is this particular game characteristic that I conducted a personal survey of 200 players across 10 servers and discovered that 8.25 out of 10 players have a second (or more) account(s).  Why?  Because in order to be self sufficient in Star Wars Galaxies, and keep ahead of the NERF’s, a player must maintain at least three characters; a crafter, a support character, and a combat character.  Common combinations are a Master Rifleman/Doctor, a Chef/Armorsmith (or Weaponsmith), and either a Swordsman/Pikeman or Jedi (or other strong combat combination).  Oh, some play with just one character.  But try to become a Jedi and watch how your playing time becomes an endless cycle of searching for other players support characters to provide you with needed services.  Nevertheless, this characteristic is, in fact, intended due, in part, to the absence of a large player base.  Because of the small player base, SOE keeps the available player skill points low enough to prevent one character from mastering more than two skills…and there are over two dozen (basic and elite) professions.  This has the “intended” effect of forcing players to pick up additional accounts.

In addition, as was discussed earlier, it takes playing time to level a character and become strong enough to adequately PVP or kill a high-level animal in a reasonable amount of time.  In fact, it will take approximately three to six months to master one elite profession if you play a couple nights a week.  Also, with so many major changes occurring, by the time you do finish a profession, it may not be what it was six months prior, or the weapons may be so weak you can’t use them anymore, or your armor has been reduced to plastic wrap.  So you start all over and re-level in a different profession.  Players commonly refer to the best “combat” professions as the Flavor of the Month (FOTM) and this factors heavily into which professions are played the most.  Frankly, the stronger the profession, the more people that play it.  Well, again, that’s alright with Sony, because you continue to play and chase the illusive “completion” of a FOTM profession. 

Players frequently refer to the above described leveling process as “grinding” because of the insane amounts of experience points a player needs to advance in his or her chosen profession.  This is necessary because of the power gamers that spend 8-15 hours a day (or more) playing SWG.  Grinding, on the other hand, requires killing the same high-point animal, or NPC mob (non-player character) over and over again.  Boring?  Absolutely.  And an incredible time sink.  Unfortunately Sony has substituted “grinding” for game content and quality.  True, you could do other things in game such as quests and killing other types of animals.  But that takes LONGER.

There is another factor to weigh.  In order to buy that super rifle or set of armor, you need cash in the form of credits.  To do this takes, yes you guessed it, more time.  You must complete missions or harvest resources to earn “credits” (the cash of the game) in order to “buy” the equipment you need.  You need a house, a weapon, armor, food, drinks, tips for enhancement or healing, and other items.

Food and Drinks

Regarding eatables, you will be introduced to another paradox in Star Wars; food and drink enhancements.  The game is programmed in such a way that it almost always requires food and drink enhancements in order to finish certain quests or engage in player versus player combat.  Granted, food and drink does help to create and support the Star Wars economy.  However, it too hits you square in the pocket book.  How?

The quality of food and drinks are based on the quality of resources harvested.  The quality of the resources shift every couple weeks and are not really high quality except about once every six months.  Some resources don’t see a high quality shift for up to a year.  What this equates to is a never ending cycle of trying to find the highest quality, or strongest, food and drinks you can get your hands on.  However, two weeks from then, a player may have a stronger drink enhancement and be able to beat you in player versus player combat. 

On the other side of the coin, the quests and non-player character “bad guys” have static combat capabilities and strengths.  If there was a long run of bad resources, you simply won’t have strong enough foods, drinks, or armor to do the quest or dungeon.  The only other alternative is to wait until you can do the quest or dungeon with a group of other players who are, by the way, competing with you for the high-end loot.  Therefore, you WAIT and keep your account active even longer.

Replacing NERF’ed Items

Because of NERF’s, a player usually replaces old or removed items.  This essentially takes away playing time, which takes away money you spent on the game.  One perfect example of this is a quest to obtain a mind enhancement crystal in the Force Sensitive quests.  The quest was fairly difficult and took time (and monthly account money) to accomplish.  After the Combat Upgrade, the crystal was rendered completely useless (having no enhancements).  Nothing was given as a replacement and, of course, no refunds on the time spent on that particular quest were offered.  Instead, Sony decided to compensate players with game items and turned on “double XP” a few times.  Essentially, Sony was keeping people playing by giving double experience points to those who needed to replace the lost experience points due to SOE’s combat upgrade!  Is there something wrong here?  Yes.  It’s a classic case of taking one step forward and two backwards.  It simply is not fun to “regrind” your chosen profession, AGAIN.

But, you can see what I’m trying to describe.  The game is purposely programmed to make EVERYTHING take insanely long to accomplish.  Sure, it’s only $12.95 to $14.95 a month.  But, it will take you months, and in some cases years, to begin having real fun as seen in Play Station versions of the same game.

Leveling Jedi Knight

An example of the time sink and loss of playing time (and thus real life money) I am describing is the process of becoming a Jedi Knight and subsequent playing of the profession.

A Jedi Knight character requires a long, long process to achieve.  To put this into perspective, as a power gamer it took me about a year and a half from start to finish.  A casual player who plays a couple nights a week will take at least two to three years to finish using current “acceptable” grinding techniques.  Granted, there are a few ways to speed the process up, such as grouping.  But even that technique was recently NERF’ed by SOE.  Now, the group SPLITS the experience gained with each kill, effectively making it take longer to gain Jedi experience.

In the meantime, Jedi of any level can be attacked by Bounty Hunters.  Currently, Bounty Hunters are strong enough to go toe-to-toe with full-template Jedi Knights and beat them a good deal of the time.  However, human nature as it is, it is much easier to just hunt and kill lower level Jedi.  This part of the game again affects you, and your pocketbook, directly.

You see, when you are working hard to level your Jedi, say killing Huurtons (looks like a dog but with scaly skin like a lizard), along comes a Bounty Hunter who has taken a mission to kill you.  As a low level Padawan, you simply are no match for a Master Bounty Hunter.  You are forded into a PVP encounter with him whether you want to or not.  The consequences are that you loose the very experience points you have been spending time, and thus real life money, to acquire.  And the amount you loose is insanely high.  In fact, if you group and hunt animals, the members in your group can not help you in your “Star Wars epic battle of good over evil.”  Incredibly they have to stand by and watch you get slaughtered.  As you clone, you realize the amount of Jedi experience you lost is equal to about three hours of grinding (or gaining Jedi experience).  Sound fun?  No? 

If you have read this far, you see that it is just another means with which Sony is able to force more playing time on you.  Again, you are getting hit right in the pocket book.  Again, the time, and thus money you spent on playing/leveling your Jedi is gone.  You see, all of this is set up so that other players have a plentiful supply of obligatory PVP players.  You have literally become another players’ game content and actually pay hard-earned real life money for it.  In fact, that is why every technique for gaining Jedi experience is exploited to the full.  And players are constantly looking for ways to gain Jedi experience at faster rates due to the incredibly high experience loss in Bounty Hunter encounters.

Nevertheless, bugs in the game also contribute to Jedi experience loss.  To illustrate this point allow me to tell you a personal experience.  One day last year I was browsing the Bazaar in a Star Port.  I needed to attend to real life for about an hour and logged off.  When I logged back on an hour later, I was cloning from an apparent death suffered by a Bounty Hunter.  You see, in the game there has been a well documented bug that SOE has never fixed.  When you log out a Bounty Hunter can attack you while your character stays in the game for those brief few moments.  SOE designed it this way to prevent players from using the logoff technique to avoid combat or a Bounty Hunter death.  However, in my case all I could see was Jedi experience loss but nothing in my combat log to indicate I had been attacked.  Therefore I sent in a customer service ticket asking for the experience to be reimbursed.  I was told I was killed by “so and so” character at a certain time.  So, I contacted the player and politely asked how he got me.  I found out that the player was also a Jedi and had no idea what I was talking about.  We met and discussed my experience.  So, I sent in another customer service ticket but was told that the combat logs are all SOE can go by.  I sent in yet another ticket and explained that their log was in error, that the alleged player that killed me was a Jedi, and could never have killed me for 430,000 Jedi points.  Incredibly the CSR told me there was nothing they could do.  Customer service rating: 1 for poor to non-existent.

But you personally have to decide if you’re willing to buy into the Star Wars Galaxies careless attitude towards its players.  In addition, if you have ever played a Jedi on Playstation, you will be sorely disappointed in Sony’s version of a Jedi.

So disorganized and ill-conceived is Sony’s foundation for the game that Jedi cannot even force jump.  Even if they did, how would they implement such an ability and keep the game balanced?  You guessed it…more NERF’s including those applied to Jedi.

To Play or Not to Play, That is the Question

It was suggested by one player that Sony reorganize the game into multiple ultra-elite professions that parallel Jedi Knight.  This would be accomplished by developing profession skills that actually allow players to make their characters stronger…as strong as a Jedi Knight but with different damage capabilities, and used in context of the Galactic Civil War (GCW).  Admittedly, as the movies tell us, a Jedi is not a soldier, but a peace keeper (or Sith) and has a uniquely different, and indirect, role in the GCW.  Other professions, on the other hand, have direct roles in the GCW and could take on skills such as tank operator, AT-AT commander, or other high-level soldier skills.  Then watch how the battles form!  Players will be equally interested in leveling a combat character that can dish out just as much damage from the turret of a tank as a Jedi could with his light saber.  Oh, we will all still want to level a Jedi.  But it will be more realistic to have just as much fun with a Master Elite Commando who can take out five players on the battlefield with his Imperial AT-AT.

However, here is the catch.  Sony Online Entertainment has shown a propensity towards expansion packs and shoring up the already fractured infrastructure of Star Wars Galaxies.  To make such fundamental changes to the game would take Sony’s time, and Sony’s money.  And that ‘s something that simply will never happen.  At this point, only if Mr. Lucas himself finally steps in and pulls the plug will drastic changes occur.

So, “to play or not to play…that is the question.”  I finally hit the “cancel” button because I realized Star Wars Galaxies really is not going to get better, not in a cynical way, but because the foundation for SWG was ill-conceived and rushed to market.  Personally I wouldn’t recommend Star Wars Galaxies for these and numerous other paradoxes found in the game. 

But most importantly, I refuse to pay Sony any more money to fix the numerous bugs or wait while they try different solutions to the balancing problems.  I refuse to play a game that forces players to LOSE experience they paid real life money to earn.  I refuse to play a game that never monetarily compensates you for items lost to NERF’s.  I refuse to recommend a game that has simply been outdistanced by Lucas Arts in terms of content, flexibility, consistency, customer support, and customer satisfaction.  Instead, I’m going to play…Lego Star Wars!  At least I won’t lose money playing it.

Review By: swgfreek 2 1/2 year veteran

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