Reactions to the Combat Upgrade
2005/05/04
Over the nearly two years since SWG launched, it's become more and more obvious that the developers see it as being first and foremost a combat game. There's crafting and entertaining and healing and a player economy, but those things only exist to support combat players. So the enhancements they've received have been trivial compared to the "content" (Geonosian caves, Corellian Corvette, Deathwatch Bunker, Hero of Tatooine Quest, etc., etc.).
So over the months, SWG has become less and less interesting. I mastered Artisan and Merchant quickly, but gained Scout, Marksman Pistol, and Creature Handler skills very slowly because I choose not to grind for XP. Consequently I don't have as wide experience of SWG as other players.
Still, I've explored all the planets, attended a wedding, survived a couple of schematic quests, flown in space, mined a lot of resources, crafted a lot of things, sold some things, shot some things, and met some nice people. So, in the spirit of the day, I thought I'd offer my own limited experiences with the Combat Upgrade and some conclusions based on those experiences.
Take these reactions for what they're worth: just personal observations.
Patch File Loading
Painful, painful, painful. I absolutely would still be trying (and failing) to load the CU patch files if not for TSR-Chad (thanks!) and his links to the files on the patch server, and for a fast connection at work that I was able to use. There is no way SOE cares about dialup users when they create patch files that are 100MB in size. (Apparently the money of people with dialup modems is somehow less valuable than that of broadband users.)
Creature Handler Profession
The maximum level of the fambaa pet that I worked for months to learn to tame has been reduced, but other (smaller) creatures weren't reduced. Other creature levels seem to have been reduced as well, such as the kliknik defender that's now just level 22.
I'm no longer able to call some of the pets in my datapad. In particular I can't call the level 38 huurton howler I tamed. One possible reason is that I wear a "muscle shirt" with an attachment for +12 Taming Wild Creatures and +12 Taming Vicious Creatures. Although my current Creature Taming level is 34, I was able to tame huurton howlers using this shirt. Now I can't even call this creature out of my datapad -- I get a "You can not tame this creature at your current level" type message. (Verified in Creature Handler FAQ V5.)
250,000 XP are required for a tier 3 CH skill, while a tier 4 requires 350,000 XP. I took on a Gungan Outcast last night with a shaupaut hunter and a half-grown fambaa -- after my fambaa was more than half-dead, I earned 634 CH XP. (Apparently I should be happy it wasn't just 1 XP.) At that rate, given that I have 10 skill boxes of the 18 in CH, I would do better to use the tame-and-release method (except for the massive lethality of every planet in SWG now unless you're a Master of some elite combat profession). And at the rate of 1100 XP per creatures, that's 228 creatures I'll have to tame for the next tier 3 skill -- call it roughly 1800 creatures I'll have to tame-and-release to master CH. If I could tame 50 creatures a night (a wildly overoptimistic estimate), it would take me over a month if I played SWG every night and did nothing but tame babies. If I tried to do anything else, my average number of tamings would drop to something closer to 10 per night... which amounts to half a year to master one profession.
And for what?
As Vertexon reported the devs saying in their response to some questions: "unfortunately with the balance system it is no longer practical to have multiple pets of varying levels in use at one time." So unless you've ground enough CH skills to have tamed some uberpet, there's no point in maintaining a menagerie. (Using the "right" pet for a particular job? Umm... no. Combat level �ber alles!)
"Dabbling" in CH -- in other words, learning CH skills because it's fun and useful to have a wide range of abilities -- now seems even less worthwhile than it was before the CU. As others have noted, there's no point to learning just a few CH skills; creature handling is only fun and useful once you've mastered the entire profession.
I guess I'm done with CH.
Pistoleer Profession
The Novice Pistoleer skill now requires the entire Marksman Pistols tier and the entire Marksman Ranged tier. I was closing in on Novice Pistoleer... and poof! now I'm not.
On a positive note: the range at which aggressive mobs detect you seems to have been decreased. I had to get within nearly 25m of the Gungan Outcast before he noticed me -- this is considerably less than his pre-CU aggro range.
Weapon damage has been massively decreased. Pre-CU I could do 1000 with a good Overcharge or Kip-Up shot with my Republic Blaster, now all I've got that I can use is a CDEF that I made myself (with my best resources) for 62 damage (and the Overcharge and Kip-Up abilities have been removed). The Gungan Outcast had about 3000 health -- at 62 damage per shot, I'd have to have landed nearly 50 shots to nail him, but of course I'd have been incapped long before then. (Having a half-grown fambaa pet tanking was the only thing that saved me.)
A full tier of Marksman Pistol skills and 1 Ranged skill gives me a combat level of 31... and unless I can survive long enough to find someone who is willing to sell a Geonosian Sonic Blaster or Tangle Pistol (and doesn't want more than 1Mcr for it), or I'm willing to settle for a lesser pistol than I can now wield, all I can do is a measly 62 damage? I understand that the CU was supposed to make combat more interesting for the hardcore combat player, but was no thought whatsoever given to allowing the non-hardcore to survive long enough to achieve the higher levels?
General
The HAM box now shows the player's numeric combat level and some icon. Apparently I have a choice of icons (Marksman, Artisan, Medic, and "Utility"). What's "utility"? Is the icon currently selected visible to other players as some kind of "here's what I can contribute to a group" indicator?
So the HAM box now has combat level info, and perhaps a grouping interest icon... is there any purpose in these beyond combat? If my combat level is considered so important that it must always be displayed, what am I supposed to think about my value as a crafter?
I agree with the posters who don't like the new icons. My eyesight is lousy, so with all the color and detail the new icons are too "busy" for me to recognize without putting my face about half an inch away from the monitor... which detracts somewhat from the entertainment experience.
I also agree with the posters who've observed that combat is now more about watching the timer on your combat icons than watching the fight. In other words, post-CU combat is now about playing the interface. How can we engage in tactical or stealth decision-making if we're so focused on the user interface that we run into trees? Having the combat queue was demonstrably superior to this approach.
Conclusion
A sneaky suspicion came to me as I was being mauled by a low-level NPC: perhaps the Combat Upgrade deliberately implemented things that players clearly don't like (hard-to-read icons, combat queue elimination, insta-kill for non-combat players) because making ground combat less fun will push players back into space... where they can be persuaded to fork over more cash for the "Rage of the Wookiees" expansion.
Just a theory, of course.
Ultimately, I think this is probably the last straw for me. I was active on SOE's official pre-launch forum for nearly a year before SWG actually shipped -- I've been a constructive supporter of this game (and have the posts to prove it) for nearly three years of my life. But between the years of "let them eat cake" disregard for the interests of non-combat players, the unending series of bugs due to failing to properly test changes (and to act responsibly on test results before publishing), and what seems to be a single-minded "we'll give you what we want and you'll keep paying for it" attitude, it's enough. Why should I keep playing SWG, or for that matter anything that SOE might make? Frankly, if the attitude of SOE is any example, I'm not sure I'm even interested in investing more of my time in any multiplayer online game ever again -- that's how unhappy I've become with the direction that SWG's producers have taken it since it launched.
It's sad that one set of developers can destroy the joy of an entire entertainment form. SWG should have captured the fun of the original source of their license -- the Star Wars milieu. It should have made every Star Wars fanatic frantic to buy a computer and go online. Instead, it squandered the one-of-a-kind license (and SWG's very good initial design) by catering to flavor-of-the-month, kill-it-before-it-dies console gamers. SOE insists on trying to satisfy the wrong market segment, and refuses to even consider the possibility that it might be mistaken in continuing to court this group. Instead of being the game that brought the millions of Star Wars fans online, SWG became just another fighting game.
What a disappointment.
So, like OrionSeven, I'll probably become what SOE considers the perfect player: someone who doesn't play SWG any more because it's not fun, but who continues to fork over $15/month in the hope that some SWG producer will, some day, actually "get it." Hope keeps me here; hope that someone at SOE will have the courage to take the necessary actions to turn SWG back into what it started off as and should have remained: a rich game world dedicated to the proposition than all fans of Star Wars deserve content they can enjoy, and that creating such features would result in a better game for everyone.