Please do not rush it

There's an article on IGN delving on some interesting points even if it's obviously siding SOE. These are my highlights:

The official line on these changes is that both SOE and LucasArts think that the new Galaxies is how the original game should have been released. Sony Online producer Dallas Dickinson was in town to show the game off and told us that they'd gotten tons of feedback from all kinds of sources "telling us essentially that Star Wars Galaxies did not deliver on the Star Wars fantasy. It didn't make you feel like you were part of the Star Wars universe."

Well, this is a rather common point of view and it's sort of predictable that those points would have been recovered to justify this huge change. Ubiq writes about a compact with the players, while I wrote about the communicative pact. The main difference here is that from Ubiq's point of view the developers are breaking the compact because they are fundamentally changing the original concept of the game with another one. While what I wrote is that the "communicative pact" between the devs and players was already broken as the game came out and provided a type of game with mechanics *already* too alienated and abstracted from the established archetypes and cultural values and myths of Star Wars.

From this point of view this last "turn over" could be considered as a way to actually restore that pact that was broken long ago. Hence deserving the risk.

"The existing game is in a bad place and it has been. We try to give it as much attention as we can, but we're allowing entire systems and professions to atrophy and that's just going to continue going down in that direction

This is outright. The comment doesn't try to justify the previous work and instead digs it without remorse. I agree in particular with the concept of atrophy that can be easily extended to many other situations and mmorpgs. Atrophy and stagnation are two widespread flaws that are already deep-rooted in the mind set of the developers. While this is mostly rhetoric once again used to justify the sweeping changes, the intention to dare and not just let the game follow its course is precious.

Yeah, it's a big problem with the game when developers don't know where you'll be or if you'll be having fun 30 minutes into your gaming experience. "That was a huge turn off to people that tried the game and quit or people that got told not to play the game. The only people left were hardcore MMO players that understood the genre and were willing to accept its failings."

In one word: accessibility. This says that one of the fundamental flaws of the original system was in its lack of accessibility. I totally agree. So why and how the new one is suppposed to be better?

An over the shoulder 3rd person view like you've seen in Resident Evil 4 on the consoles that at first glance acts like any skill based action game. It means instant understanding of how the system works, which to SOE and Lucas mean more people likely to stay and pay… er, play.

See the pattern?

To begin with this can be interesting and better than a straight shooter in First Person, if the controls and the interface are well adapted and polished. The over the shoulder 3rd person view appeals me and could be an optimal blend between the "twitch" gameplay and group-oriented action.

But what is actually important is again the focus on the accessibility. I've already commented that decision to go "twitch" isn't a guarantee of a better system. A whole lot will depend on the implementation and polish of all parts (it's really not trivial, we go from the graphic engine to the controls, UI and gameplay interactions), but it's true that "twitch" will bring the game one step closer to its goal and will help to solve the problems explained in the paragraph above: the accessibility.

Complex and abstract games aren't easy to understand and relate to. I wrote a whole lot about this. While the "type" of game isn't determinant for its quality, the decision to go twitch will basically force the designers to integrate and develop a type of gameplay that is more direct and natural. Which is what truly matters, whether twitch or not. In the past I ranted strongly against the trend in SWG to add classic rpg elements like class roles, sparkling "spell" effects and other immersion-breaking features that just clashed with this genre. The twitch combat, while nowhere mandatory to translate the Star Wars univers in a good game, is already a guarantee that the gameplay will be more understandable, more easy to parse and to get, more appropriate for this game.

What I wrote above about the "communicative pact" still applies here. It will be probably easier for the players to adapt themselves to these new radical changes than how it was for new players understand and accept the first combat system (grammar fails me here, but the sense should be clear).

We don't need to just invent mathematically ideal formal systems, but we need formal systems that are also appropriate for the simulation we want to render. The myths and expectations are stronger and have an higher priority than the abstraction and perfection of a formal system. The idea of a "twitch" combat will remove the weight of the previous HUD-heavy gameplay that used a very high level of abstraction that was nowhere direct and intuitive (I wrote something similar while "reviewing" what we know about Vanguard). What is sure is that, if the implementation is good, the players will surely reward this choice.

Apparently it was difficult creating special content for 34 different classes, which I'm guessing anyone can see is a ridiculous balancing and content creation task that never should have come about in the first place. "We looked at the professions and said we have 34 widely disparate professions in the game. None of which get all of the attention that a profession deserves in a game this type and many of which don't resonate to the Star Wars universe. I mean, what is a pikeman and why is it something in the game?" So with that thought in mind, they've folded all of the 34 professions down into nine professions including Jedi, bounty hunters, spies, officers, smugglers, commandos, entertainers, traders, and medics. "We ended up with these nine very iconic character types.

The necessity of a reasoned consolidation is obvious here and it's another of those comments that are nowhere new. On the other side I remember Raph being sad because he wasn't able to fit even more roles into the game, like the "mechanic" and even the "writer".

As everyone else I'm perplex about using Jedis as a starting class. If anything I would have unblocked it just for those players subscribed for more than two years. It could have been a "cheap" but effective way to reward those players that had to suffer all these painful transitions. But then I would also have tried something different to try to retain their "rarity". Maybe one day I'll collect my ideas and write down how I would have implemented them.

The idea to use iconic character types is both good and bad. Good because it provides an answer to the question above: "what is a pikeman and why is it something in the game?" Using iconic types will help to understand and relate to the game in a more direct way but it's also important that the gameplay is fleshed out so that each class will "feel" and play differently. Then it's bad because it could easily bring to dull stereotypes. The same could be said about the will to make the player feel like an hero. I don't think that's a direct necessity. Star Wars is more subtle than how it appears and its strength isn't that superficial like a simple hero's journey. I think people here underestimate the efficacy of this setting.

And finally a note about the two professions getting discarded, rangers and creature handlers:

The only other profession we didn't absorb into one of these iconic templates is the creature handler and only 1% of our players play that character type.

So, while it seems that elements of the rangers will be absorbed by the other nine archetypes, the creature handler profession will be dropped just because of a lack of popularity. And you cannot blame the devs for this choice.

In general I approve this new plan more than how I did with the previous Combat Upgrade. Changes are always good even if I would have appreciated more the will to build on top of what was there already instead of directly tear down big parts of the game. I don't see this process as easy. As I said this need some serious work not only on the design, but also on the controls, the client and the interface. Adapting the whole PvE content to the new system and so that it is fun to play will be another huge and hard accomplishment that could easily fail.

But at least I think they are finally moving in the right direction. Let's hope that the initial result will be acceptable and that the game can finally settle down and start to evolve on more solid premises.

Please do not rush it. It's too important to go wrong.