SWG Retrospective- Part 5: The Good
Last time we looked at some of the flaws of SWG. Now we’re going to look at what it right and what made it a wonderful game. Some of these things didn’t survive until the end, but many of them managed to endure and even improve.
Skill System
One of the best things about SWG at the start was the complete freedom a player had to create the character they wanted. If you wanted to be a merchant that could wield a sword or a smuggler that was also a Teras Kasi Master, you could. It lacked diversity in the space area but other than that everything was open. It was possible to gimp yourself but who cares?
This system also allowed for infinite replayability. Without the holocron incentive, Maarkean was at various times a musician, a a pistoleer, a bounty hunter, a teras kasi, a rifleman, a squad leader and a smuggler. I toyed with trying out creature handler or one of the melee professions (swordsman or pikeman) and probably would have at some point. Chavabegga was full time crafter but even he switched around. Originally Weaponsmith and Droid Engineer he dabbled in Architect, Tailor, Chef before becoming full time Shipwright.
Crafting
Since we’re on the topic, let’s looking at crafting. The diversity of the skills and the ability to intermix was wonderful. Placing harvestors and tracking down the perfect resource was a great game play element. I absolutely detest the way it’s done in most other games. Gathering at nodes as you run around killing stuff sucks. Crafters in SWG (originally) had to track down resources and they either needed to mix in some combat skills or bring along a friend, but once the node was found, the harvestors did the work. Same for factories. Some of the monotony was removed.
Now, crafting had it’s problems. Being able to produce thousands of identical items was a blessing and a curse. It was hard for a newbie to compete with the people with stockpiles of thousands of perfect resources. Low level gear was worthless after a few months.
Crafting both declined and improved over the years. The removal of decay was a major blow. Having items decay was essential to the balance in the system. You could get a perfect gun but it wouldn’t last forever, so you’d continue to be a participant in the economy. Crafters wouldn’t sit on millions of resources because people would constantly be buying new stuff, giving newbies some opening. Rare elements to help get a customized gun (Krayt tissue) were something to strive for but didn’t make you “uber” forever because it would decay.
The ability to make any gun with any stats was a nice feature added later. Now, you could say it was kind of silly but those changes made to weaponsmith really added a lot variability to a dead system. The enhancements made to the droid engineer were phenomenal and made droids actually useful.
Housing
Ah, player housing. The one element that continued to improve throughout the lifetime of the game and the one element not even remotely reproduced in any other game (that I’ve played, though I hear EQ2 has a pretty good system). Placing your home(s) anywhere in the galaxy you wanted was a game in itself (when there were spots available and not already filled with dead homes). There were lots of beautiful places in the galaxy to set up a city or home.
The real beauty of the system was other players able to visit your home and your ability to decorate it. I had endless fun setting up homes, guild halls and shops. Over my time with SWG I made several different shops, several versions of rebel HQ’s, a courthouse, a Jedi Temple, a hospital, cantina etc. I also saw so many other places that put me to shame. The fact that this ability was extended to your spaceships was another wonderful thing. My YT-1300, Y-8 and gunboat were at various times freighters, carriers, mobile command ships and smuggling vessels.
Decorating was in poor shape at the beginning. Things could only turn right or left and could only be placed on the ground. That made decorating tricky but lots of people got around it with the clever use of stairs. But this was improved several times. New commands were added, like the ability to copy something location to make it easier to replicate.
What you could use to decorate and what you could decorate also improved. There were always lots of interesting items in the game but more were added with age. The amount of different buildings started out with a decent amount and stagnated for several years. But in the end there were tons of different building types, including a shipyard you could have actual starships in. Sadly, most of the coolest ones were only obtainable as loot cards, which were expensive and random.
Space
No other game has done space as well as SWG. EVE and STO have very nice space systems but in both cases, you are just a ship. In SWG, it was always clear you were a character flying a ship. The ability to move around several of the ships was a unique feature. STO’s trying it but currently every interior is identical and its a separate instance. You can’t walk around your ship WHILE your ship is in space. You can’t look out the window and see other ships flying around. The tech involved in this was amazing.
Flying around and killing TIE’s was always fun. I kept subscribed for awhile just because there is no other comparable space game combat game these days. Upgrading your ship through loot and by shipwrights was a fun game element.
There were lots of missed opportunities with space (capital ships, space stations, blockades, etc) but none of these things would have been so desirable if the core element wasn’t so fantastic.
Community
All internet communities have their fair share of asshats. SWG was no exception. Bloodfin was crawling with them (White Lightning, I’m looking at you). But in the early years, the community was a thing of beauty. You could go into a cantina and engage in conversation with people. The forums weren’t completely toxic ala WOW. I really enjoyed the Smuggler boards back in the day (Beer and Pie for everyone!). There was a true RP element to much of the game without anyone actively RPing. As much of a pain as apprentice xp was, people were always willing to help train you.
I’ve rambled on for another 1000+ words and I’ve been talking about a dead game that I haven’t played in two years, for several days now. But SWG was my first MMO, my favorite MMO and a part of my life for 5+yrs. I made some great friends there, many of whom I am still in contact with.
Here’s hoping SWTOR is half the game SWG was and I hope to see all the old Rogues there.
The Complete Series
5 Comments
TamTam · July 1, 2011 at 9:19 am
Housing is probably the best and most unique element of SWG. True, EQ2 had a nice housing system, and it would have been nice to incorporate something similar into SWG. EQ2 had apartments you could rent (there was a lot of talk from the SWG community about having apartments in random buildings in the NPC cities). It was nice and didn’t clutter the landscape. Decorating was great as well, simply drag an item into the house and it was smart enough to raise it onto a table or ledge. However, only specific items could be added as decoration. SWG, on the other hand, would let you drop just about anything you had. This led to some of the most amazing decorations I have ever seen. The creativity players showed with this was just amazing. I would always strive to be a great decorator, and then walk into a house and be put to shame by the decor.
Space was the second greatest feature that survived revamps. The shooter style made it about skill and not stats. The only real problems were pve combat got really boring after awhile. Mining asteroids could make you go insane, and once you figured out how to solo a corvette or the ISD, there was pretty much no challenge left. Later on they added higher tier NPCs, but those too were easy to take out once you went up against them a few times.
Space pvp was pretty poor, though. You’ll hear arguments on every aspect, but it was basically “missile lock, dead”. Advocates of space pvp would share some golden wisdom and say such nonsense as, “well you should learn to chaff”. Honestly, the best space pvp that I ever participated in was when we tested components and gimped our ships in RS. That was when the space game actually felt like being a star wars space game to me.
Maarkean · July 1, 2011 at 10:21 am
Ah, yes, the space matches. Those were great. Limiting weapons to mark 3 with no overloads kept it from being an insta-kill situation and made the gunships have some actual power and survivability.
To bad space combat has died from the SW gaming environment. SWG was the last space simulator game. X-wing Alliance was 1999 and that’s the last independent one I can think of.
Sigfa · July 5, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Man i really do miss fencer and swordsman. I ruled with that class. Fencer 4/4/4/4, Sword 4/4/4/4 Medic 4/0/0/0. The fact you needed someone who knew it to train you 2 was sweet.
Sienn'lyn · July 10, 2011 at 5:09 pm
I think part of the problem with space and pvp is a remnant from JTL beta. Like many other parts of SWG, JTL was rushed through beta far too quickly, and the lead developers really didn’t seem to know that much about Star Wars or even care.
Space flight in Star Wars has always seem more like World War II era flight, yet during beta they tweaked too much with the flight engine, essentially creating some kind of bastardized version of newtonian flight physic where ships would “slide” and almost fly backwards. As I recall it, that tweaking went on until the very last day of the JTL beta, and the flight engine suffered because of it. The result wasn’t really Star Wars based flight, but something else. People used to call the dogfights jousting for good reason.
Still, it was the best part of SWG, save for the lack of actual content and the insanely small zones.
Maarkean · July 12, 2011 at 9:03 am
I remember those changes. I thought it would have been cool for more realistic physics. Being able to continue on a path and turn around and fire behind you, sliding to the side, all would be cool maneuvers and would have been interesting to try and master.
But it wouldn’t have been very “Star Warsy”. This is another example of not making up their minds. SWG really ended up being a bastardization of the two.
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