You know folks, the more I poke around the Bioware forums of late, in addition to throwing the odd piece on my personal blog, the more I realise how completely at odds I am with some people re: the concept of playing Jedi in its upcoming Star Wars The Old Republic MMORPG.
Jedi, people tell me, should be freely available to play. “It’s the Old Republic!” they cry, “There were Jedi everywhere!” Weirdly, however, when I try and challenge people to tell me how rare they think Jedi births were in the Old Republic (for example, 1 in 1000? Maybe less? Maybe more?), the snappy answers and cries of, “You’re a retard!” seem to disappear in a puff of smoke, as do the critics. Where did they go?
Because, yes, while it’s true that citizens of the Old Republic might see a Jedi Padawan, Knight or Master from time to time, and they were a (mostly) revered element of society, it actually wouldn’t have been all that often. I mean, just think about it: if being born a Jedi is a 1/1000 chance (although I know people who’d suggest 1/10,000), that means if you were walking down the street, you could, theoretically, pass thousands of people – and none would be Jedi.
Now think of a game like Star Wars Galaxies where Jedi run rampant, even though there aren’t supposed to be ANY, save for Obi-Wan, Luke and Vader. It looks stupid, right? Well, an Old Republic game will look almost as stupid with Jedi running around, too. The fact there were more Jedi in the Old Republic is not a license to flood it with Jedi. There’s some subtlety here that people don’t seem to get.
Logically, it makes sense to me and I would prefer if Jedi were kept to an NPC class in the game; perhaps as the people who hand out certain kinds of missions, or something. At any rate, I’d like the Jedi to be exactly as they were in the Old Republic – a slightly mysterious bunch of warrior monks who could do things that the Average Joe – like you and I – couldn’t dream of doing. We don’t need more.
“But where’s the fun in that? I want to be a Jedi and if I’m paying my $15, I’d better damn well be able to be one!” people retort, rehashing the ancient demand of many a games development forum; that if you’re paying for the game, it should be tailored to exactly what you want, no matter how unrealistic it becomes. Stuff the IP… the individual is more important than the story. Bzzzt, wrong.
Single-player RPGs are all about the individual, absolutely. But we’re not talking about such a beast. A good MMORPG should allow you to do fun stuff, of course, but not suggest that you are somehow unique… “the chosen one”… or any other nonsense. Age of Conan falls down hugely in that department, suggesting that we’re all, apparantly, the chosen one. It’s just silly in an RP context.
So how do we approach the Jedi issue, given that there are people, like myself, who would be quite happy if Jedi weren’t a playable class in the game, as well as people at the complete other end of the spectrum who think this new MMO is basically a chance for thousands of Jedi to run around each server, waving their lightsabers and chasing phat lewt in raids of 48 Jedi apiece, night and day?
You could suggest that players can only be Force sensitive, but not full Jedi… but I think that would be cruel. To give someone 1/4 of a Jedi’s powers, but not allow him/her to go all the way, would be worse than having no Force powers at all, to my mind.
You could suggest that Jedi are playable, but would be very, very hard to unlock. Nice, but this just takes us back to the Star Wars Galaxies developers forum, back in the day. “Ohhh, but we’ll make Jedi VERY HARD to become,” the devs soothed in our ear. “No, that’s bollocks,” we’d reply, “Because, ultimately, unless you make it a random occurence, it will be a game mechanic that players will work out and proceed to grind on, until they reach their goal. This is the nature of gamers, and it staggers us that you don’t acknowledge that! And even if you DID make it a random occurence, people would just keep re-rolling characters until they got a Force sensitive one, anyway, so that’s not an option, either.” And the response?
People like Raph Koster gave more airy-fairy offers for us to “trust” that the devs would get it right in the game. Enter the game and, no, they hadn’t got it right… people did EXACTLY what we had said they would do (ie: work out how to unlock a Jedi and then grind on it).
You could suggest a Master/Padawan system, where Jedi Masters could train one Padawan at a time… but where would the Masters come from in the first place? And would this simply result in eBay auctions along the lines of, “Bid now for me to train you in the ways of the Force…”? No thanks, that would be pretty awful to see. Because happen, it would, as that little green chap would say.
Or, hey, you could always suggest the old Permadeath chestnut. You know the one. It would sure keep the Jedi levels down… but would absolutely scares the pants off most gamers, so probably isn’t a great solution, even though it’s maybe the solution that would work best.
So what do we do, folks? The fact that people exist at opposite ends of the spectrum means that Bioware should seriously think about how it will approach Jedi in the game, because whichever way it goes, it’s going to piss some sections of the community off in a major way.
And one last thing… before you comment… please note that the game isn’t confirmed as KotOR Online… it could just as easily be called The Old Republic or Star Wars Legends (which are both recent names Lucasarts has licensed), so replies to me along the lines of, “The game has Knights in the title, ergo we will be playing Jedi Knights…” is a shaky argument at best. Try and avoid it. Kthxbye!
I’m tired of people complaining about having jedi in a starwars mmo. Half the reason i want to play starwars games is to use a lightsaber and force powers. To setup a game without jedi would be like shooting yourself in the foot. Thats what pissed a lot of people off about galaxies. You weren’t supposed to start as a jedi and then they gave ground and said it would be very hard to unlock them. Next thing you know they just said screw it and let people have jedi as a starting class. I think thats where they went wrong. Jedi should be something that any class can unlock. Have it be a very difficult thing to accomplish but make it where a single person can take any character from a base class to jedi. Kinda like the Death Knight in wow. You think there should be a ton of death knights running all over their game?
As for leaving jedi completely out of the game. They’ll ruin it if they do that and just make a SWG clone. I say let Sony remake Galaxies where you can’t be a jedi and let bioware make the game right where jedi is an unlockable class that you have to play the game for many many hours to unlock.
I agree that Jedi should be rare.
I’m not a fan of giving players a lot of say over design. If Star Wars film fans had been able to decide where Lucas went with the story, Obi-Wan would not have died, Hans and Leia would have immediately jumped in the sack together, and Luke would have used the Force to toss around spaceships like they were paper airplanes. Fans only think they know what they want.
The core of any Star Wars game is the setting, so to break the setting in any major way (like everyone playing Jedi) would be foolish. Every player being treated like the chosen one is foolish.
Players should be central characters in single-player adventure games. Players should not be centers of the universe in MMOs.
How many times has Onyxia died? How many times has a person been the savior of a town, group, tribe, person? How many different saviors or champions are there in a game. Thousands upon Thousands.
How many bankers are there in the games though…
How many barbers, bakers, stay at home moms, teachers, etc. are playable in games? Not many to none.
Why is that? Cause it’s what we do in real life, and games are ment to be a vehicle to take you to a different world. As such, people want to be adventurers, and do the things they cannot do in real life.
If your concern is for realistic representation of the Star Wars Universe, then you are going to have to suspend realism for it to be a MMORPG. People will die, and will be resurrected. The big bosses will be killed hundreds, thousands of times by that many different people. The same lame princess or whatever will be saved by more than just one person.
As such, you can justify it to yourself by realizing, while there may be 5,000 Jedi on your server, they represent a small population of the billions of sentient being in the Star Wars universe, and the people are playing the adventurers, the people who write and read stories about. In the grand scheme of things, even if all players are Jedi, there are always more people (NPC’s) to help, save, and slaughter.
It’s a game after all…
People play star wars games to be Jedis. Its just that simple. No amount of fanboy Jedi number theorizing will end that.
Kotoro will be full of Jedis, or force users, or whatever. It’s just good business sense, whether it fits into some luke leia old new republic of rebels continuity or not.
To those saying people are playing SW games to be Jedis : that is false. There exist some people who want to play something else. Republic Commando was not about being a Jedi and it was cool. Battlefront 1 had no playable Jedi and I enjoyed it more than BF2.
There are many single player games where you can be a Jedi (KOTOR, the Jedi Knight series, the upcoming Force Unleashed).
I agree with Stéfan that the first SW: Battlefront was more fun than the sequel, and largely because it didn’t have controllable Jedi. The fact that SW:B and Republic Commando sold millions of copies proves that there’s a large market for people interested in Star Wars games which don’t allow players to be Jedi.
Trackback.
I realized while writing that article that Jedi don’t have to be an either/or proposition. It’s possible for many players to be Jedi without all of them having powers just like Luke and Vader. Let me know what you think.
There is another solution for the Jedi – KOTOR problem, make all the playable classes Jedi – it would follow in the timeframe of StarWars and give the players what they want as well. The diversity would have to be in the type of Jedi you play.
I find it mildly bonkers that after getting the licence they want to place the game as far away from the core cannon as possible. Sort of like buying the WWII licence and then setting it in the middle ages.
At games Workshop they are constantly getting people asking for the 40K licence so they can set a game way in the past in a part of the lore that even GW has barley scratched at.
Perhaps another way of asking the question would be.. Jedi are only an issue if you set the game apart from the core time line, as there are no Jedi in the core time line. By core time line I mean Hope, Empire, Return films and none of the secondary material, I am quite sure by now they have run rough shot over it and added a billion Jedi all over the place through the cunning use of shoddy paper backs and terrible comics.
It seems to me like when a class is dominant (especially in PVP) that players are drawn to it. Maybe there could be some kind of mechanic that would reduce a Jedi’s power based on overpopulation. Maybe if there’s too high a jedi population in the game it should be as if too many people are drawing on the force, and their powers are weakened. Then some people would be annoyed that they don’t have it as good as some other class and the would stop playing their jedi character… which then makes the rest of the jedi stronger for getting closer to the ratio the developers want them at.
Is World War II a licensable IP? If so, my path to riches is bombing a few cities and licensing World War III.
Heheheh…
You had some excellent points in your blog but IF the MMO (that has still yet to be officially confirmed) is based on the KOTOR universe, then Jedi HAVE to be playable. It’s kinda the whole point. Unless I can play as a Jedi and fall to the dark side, I wont be playing. The KOTOR games are quite unique in this sense and it really does add a lot of depth and story to the game. I know there are stumbling blocks in the Jedi vs non argument but I still think it would lose out on a lot of fans if Jedi were not implemented.
I for one don’t ever plan to play a Jedi i don’t care how cool they are, iv always loved the great design that star wars games have put into ships, droids and armor. i think the best answer for this Jedi problem would be to make them very hard to obtain and most importantly putting a lot of time and polish on the other classes, I mean you have to make them truly formidable if your going to win over any of the uber Jedi fans. In fact if they made a class besides Jedi unlockable it would peak some interest in them.
Here’s an idea about keeping Jedi rare… You want a realistic Jedi system, then make it like the actual (fictional?) Jedi Order. Recruit force sensitive’s; either players will recruit other players or bioware, Lucas, ea representatives will recruit AND train.
Ex. No Jedi at first. The 20d system will randomly select (and it must be randomly) players based on achievement stats. By achievement stats, I am suggesting that Bioware does what it did best in KOTOR, record achievements, responses, and actions on a light/dark side meter. When stats fall within desired ranges then the player is listed in a behind the scenes, 20d raffle of sorts. Another stat that could come into play could be a visibility stat. Actions done in public or private. Low visibility stats are good for Sith in Jedi controlled servers (for Jedi in Sith controlled servers) and vice versa.
Amount of “Jedi Seeds” will be based on the server population (maybe five invites to the Order, maybe 500). These server will be seeded with Jedi Adams and Eves who will train from npc “council members” and when they reach the status Jedi Knight they must take a Padawan… a non jedi player! This master/Padawan relation is vital for the progression of both. When reaching Jedi Master, the player can have multiple Padawans at a time. This also brings back the Master part of Jedi Master.
The Sith would work the same way but with their own structure. There are always two. A Sith must have a master unless that Sith kills his master and becomes the master. Masters must have pupils. Once a Sith Master always a Sith Master, and will always have the ability to have a pupil, but only one at a time. To become a Sith Master though, you must defeat your master in battle in a special pvp.
This way, it is random and invite only. Recruiting, just like for a raid party in a way, will be demanded… neither master, knight, Padawan, jedi or sith can continue in growth with out each other. Single play and group play will be required. Sense of community even. And the jedi will have their corner of the game just as everyone else will have there corner and all will come together in the middle. Sith helping the scum and villainy … jedi helping the republic.
Crowd control and crowd pleaser all in one. I just hope Bioware has an ace up it’s sleeve when it comes to leveling and grinding. One cool idea… Make level cap and leveling speed different for all combination of players. Lets say that a Sullistan Smuggler caps at level 50 and the estimated level maxing time is three months, but a Sentient Droid Smuggler would cap at 50 and take four months, since a droid has to be “super human” to a point it should take longer. Caps and maxing would be based on racial stats and profession stats. Jedi and Sith must take the longest since they will have the highest level cap and be able to take on enemies at a higher level ratio than other players.
Take the Droid Smuggler for example, Level 50 after four months. Sith/Jedi reach Padawan (Level 20) in three months, Knight (lv40) in another three, and Master (lv70) in anther four. The evening out happens in some game mechanics. The Droid can attack a character 10 levels above it’s self and possibly win (so will big class professions like Bounty Hunter or Special Forces). The Jedi will be able to do this with a creature 20 levels above it’s own. Smugglers and Medics can attack up by five levels.
Fair? …don’t know, but it is realistic. Maxed out smuggler one on one with a maxed out Jedi/Sith? Please! A Bounty Hunter though? Possibly. A few Bounty Hunters versus a Jedi… Jedi in trouble. The game mechanics could work in this way… When a player fights something/someone at a higher level, the players stats raise levels for the duration of the fight, only as far as their race/profession combo allows. Certain stats raise for a tough match and lower for an easy match, but only so far. Han Solo can take on IG-88 or Boba Fett, but at long shot odds. A Jedi is no match in space against Han Solo! And shouldn’t a jedi half way through their grind (lv30) be able to fight toe to toe with a maxed out smuggler (lv50)?
I know I wouldn’t want to play an MMO where everybody were Jedi; that would defeat the whole concept of them being special and rare. I think a good workaround however would be if each player was forced to play through to some particular end-game content, which would then unlock the ability to create one (yes, ONE) Jedi character on that realm/shard. If they create and subsequently delete a Jedi, they could create another one to take its place, but they could only have the single Jedi, and again only after leveling a regular character up and completing a somewhat involved end-game quest chain.
That way you’d have the best of both worlds – the people who want to play Jedi could do so, but we wouldn’t have them clogging the game.
Hi Scott, the only problem with such a proposal is that casual gamers would hit the roof and say that they were being discriminated against as it might take them 6-12 months to get anywhere near that end game content while, meanwhile, power gamers might be running Jedi around and being obnoxious within the first couple of weeks of the live game.
Perhaps the most practical solution is to concede that there will be excesive numbers of Jedi BUT throw the non-jedi crowd a bone by putting some canonically realistic restrictions on what a jedi could do…
The Jedi were basically a military organization, they didnt loiter about in cantinas comparing the size of their l33t lightsabers and talking trash about pwning, they didnt own houses or shops, they didnt just pick up and go on adventures whenever it fancied them… nope, they sat in bland chambers and meditated until called into action and were sent places they had no control over by a superior.
Perhaps there should be limits or restrictions to where/when/why a Jedi can go somewhere, how long they can stay and what they can do while they are there that will minimize the contamination of the rest of the world’s integrity while at the same time giving the Jedi plenty of PvP action and a unique sense of identity?
Nirc might actually be on to something here. Have a FEW randomly selected players become jedi/ sith and then take on an apprentice where they see fit. Then both sides would be happy. Not too many jedi and jedi would still be available. But then comes this problem. What about al the gamer communities? If one becomes a jedi, then he would automatically take someone he knew as his apprentice, correct? Thus ending in extreme numbers of jedi, just like SWG.
So on one hand, a agree. But on another I would have to say people are going to figure out ways around any system implemented, unless the no jedi system is the implemented system
You people are missing the point. Starwars is a rather boring and redundant, cookie cutter sci-fi when you take The Force out of it. Sure there are people who are gonna want to play something other than a Jedi/Sith in ANY starwars game. The problem with them (yes ALL of those who don’t want to play Force users fall into this) is that they don’t want the rest of us to play characters who ARE THE POINT OF STARWARS!!! No fekin duh there can’t be a universe full of “chosen ones”. Who the fekin hell would WANT to be a fekin Skywalker in the first fekin place? A whiny blonde nihilist hanging out with his sister and a imperial traitor (yes Han Solo was an Imperial Officer people) and the traitors yowling walking carpet (ok that might be off-sides. Chewbacca is the fekin MAN!) No thank you! A dark-side trained Twi-lek with plans to dominate an entire academy of dark-siders (not Sith mind you) is what I would have in mind. You wanna know why SWG flopped in its first incarnation? They wanted to give the central characters of the Starwars universe to only a small elite core group. FAIL!!!! You can’t take the force struggle out of Starwars. The Imperial/Rebel conflict was based on WHAT? Thats right…the FEKIN FORCE!!! Jedi and Sith are at the heart of the story. SWG is dead. If it would have lanuched originaly in the form it sits in now I doubt that it would be in as sad a shape.
In the end if you want a Starwars based MMO it will require a few things.
1. Force users as a starting class.
2. A setting in the old republic (a 1:10,000 ratio would equal BILLIONS of force users in even a TINY galaxy)
3. A PvE centric game with a tightly controlled, purposeful, PvP, maybe even RvR as in WAR.
Anything else will have a flash launch and then DIE just as SWG did.
Solution: make Jedi require immense skill to play. The average player will try to play a Jedi, and be completely ineffective and over-matched, and quit. Only a few players with mad skills will dare to play a Jedi, and they will be rightfully worshiped. Using the Jedi powers should be very difficult. Parrying a blaster should require lightning reflexes and perfect control. Moving objects should require delicate balance, and moving yourself perfect timing. In fact, perhaps there is no leveling for Jedis. They simply have powers that are stronger the better they are used, but extremely difficult to use well.
I don’t even play computer games, and that sounds incredibly stupid to me. Where do you get your Jedi birth rate statistics from? Old Republic Census Bureau?
Personally, I think people like you take the fun out of Star Wars for the rest of us. Star Wars is FICTION. Heroic fiction, in particular, is first person for several reasons. 1) The hero is (or should be) the most interesting character in the story. 2) Reading heroic fiction is commonly an escape from boring daily life. Nobody wants books or roles casting them in mundane sub-hero roles. 3) People associate the Star Wars brand with Jedi and light sabers. “Star Wars” in the title of a game implies, in plain English, that the buyer WILL be wielding a light saber at some point. Failure of the game to provide said light saber will, and should, result in public hangings.
So seriously, if your escape from daily life is doing Jedi head counts in an imaginary universe, then enjoy yourself. The other 99.999% of us will get our jollies playing Jedi.
Like it has been said, there are a few VERY successful and Very entertaining games that did not let you control Jedi. I like the idea of making the Jedi difficult to control. The realism is something that only real SW fans will appreciate. I figure if you can’t appreciate good role play, don’t play RPG’s.
Well, I would submit that SWG was the most fun for the majority of players pre-hologrind and pre-jedi. Period. The whole thing just become dork shit after every character had grinded their way (and irrepairably cheapened in the process) through every possible profession to ‘unlock’ their potential
bad design, period
the SW universe is recognizable and palatable for a lot of people, and it doesnt require everyone to have an extendable electric phallus to be enjoyed. there are infinite arenas for wannabe jedi jerkoffs to live out their fantasies… its not ALWAYS a neccesity to unconditionally cater to the lowest common denomenator is it?
That’s pretty much how I’ve said it from the start, Lee. It’s good to see people out there feel the same way. Cheers.
ok so star wars what is it a place for isk farmers to grind gold to sell back to the players or is it an rpg.
the fact that every one in swg can be a jedi now is a little dissapointing, when i came to join swg it was more about becomeing force sensative but that was just a couple of weeks before i brought the game.
but to my shock when i installed and down loaded it i could be a jedi from level 1 which was kinda retarded as it meant i was a lvl one uber class that was as pathetic as the next class at level 1 .
haveing the jedi class is imporant to the industry as no matter which way we look at it the star wars story is foccused around the jedi, although their is other classes like scoundrel wookie and so on dont forget storm troopers i mean their is going to be some role players out their that wouldnt mind serving the empororer for a while.
what im trying to say is make the jedi class avaialble and sure find away to make so that it pus people off like alot less xp from grinding so grinding is out of the qeustion it would stop all those elitest players from being the uber class and they will go for the more subtle like commando or medic or dancer or entertainer.
also i think enforceing role play iinto the game too would detere alot of people wanting to be a jedi as it has to be hard as hell to roll play something like that.
of all the mmorpg’s ive played not one single game has ever had a true role play aspect to it, all i see is random out of charecter chat in local chat, bad langauge insults to other players muppets doing retard things, people useing exploits to get ahead and so on.
if the game was pure rpg then you would address most of the issues of jedi running round in the servers and their wont be so many.
it would be awesome to role play genral in the rebel force about to assault a heavily armed imperial base.
also with the jedi their has to be the opposite the sith not dark jedi or stupid things like that just jedi and the sith, if its going to be themed then theme it and role play it.
rpg = role play game get the role play aspect and you will fix the thousand jedi problem, also obviousl make the jedi close to impossible to unlock again also every class should be able to become one.
another idea would be to make force sencetive key for the game where if your lucky enough you will have a force sensative charecter from the off so its kinda like a winning lottery ticket you can add these keygens 1/1000 odds of being force sensative sure a few people will be disheartend but it will make the game play much better and the role play will rock.
the secret is stop the elitest players and gold farmers enforce role play and no one will give two shits about being a jedi, meaning jedi can be a starter class and it wont get flooded.
oh one last statement their is another post in their that states that players should be chosen for the force sensative class based on a lottery. thats a little unfair but its in the right direction. use kotor rules where a players good or bad deeds depicts which type of force user he/she may become this means if they are hell bent to be a jedi then they must must must be good guys for their duration of play , and same for the sith be bad and you can only unlock sith meaning people that screw around and act like jerks and want to be jedi cannot be jedi and will not play as sith and their fore choose an alternative class, or maybe even stop playing yay we dont like jerks any way especially ones that dont role play, so yea maybe a good deeds counter is the way forward and when the time comes to unlock your precious force sensative you will be given a choice if you are a bad boy in game and make bad decisions or do selfish acts then you will only have the option to join the dark side of the force and if your a good boy and play well and help others and are extremely nice to people and do unselfish acts then you can train as a jedi. also this system must carry on while you play allowing he jedi/sith to shift in diffrent directions, meaning that jerks that want to go round breaking rules and pking everyone will be trapped as a sith for ever even though they want to be a jedi knight, if they want to be a jedi then they better play good or loose it also their could be special areas where if people broke from the jedi code or break its clas rules that jedi councel can take away their force powers i.e. dm power think about it, it would make the game play far more suitable for role players and it would eliminate your average joe that wants to screw around and make other peoples play time not worth playing.
add a good bad system and that system determines wether you can be jedi or sith i love the thought that some one that been a tosser telling you hes going to be a jedi night then the only option he has is sith and then watch him stop playing would be awesome and good for the server.
To become a jedi, one should have to have to be tuned in many different talents. After completing many different proffessions, there should be at least two different ways to become a jedi. One dark path and one light path. Maybe even more that four or five different ways, or as many different ways as there are cultures. After unlocking the force, there should be apprentice classes and trials and quests to slowly progress through the ranks.(there should be different ways to progress through the force lvls.
Say doctors should be tuned into being healing jedis. commandos and other militia peeps choosing to be jedis should have to have at least one peaceful profession… say artisian, (since anakin did build droids).
Just like the old man in early SWG, there should be more than one class of jedi, along with the light and dark side. maybe even a smuggler class jedi. The jedi classes could add a high end to crafting. Making weapons, vehicles, and medicines crafted by jedi’s just a bit better than normal crafted items. ….
There also should be jedi progression, .. say you progressed through artisian and then jedi, the jedi crafted items would be harder to make,….. maybe many quests per item…. the jedi crafted items would be the more rare and articulate items, like the holograms in SWG…
The jedi tailors could make high end rugs.
The jedi droid eng. could make the holograms…
once a character has progressed through the normal proffession grind, and the jedi proffession grind, the dark jedi should pair up and fufill the Sith lord/ sith apprentice ,,, the light jedi should start questing and roleplaying to become part of the jedi council…….
I havent researched the sith lord/ sith apprentice side of the force………But, once one was a sith lord,…. he could ask his apprentice to hunt the light jedi….. sort of like Darth Maul stalked Quagon… or however you spell that…….
But , once a jedi applies to the jedi council, there could be many quests. one sort of quest should be multiplayer multiclass quests. High end jedi, should lead the commando and others against the empire, to earn leadership points..
In theory, there could be many different classes of jedi, so they dont run around with the same powers, this might make it more fun since most of the jedi would have different proffessions.
In this theory, there would be a normal profession progression. In this one would chose melee, range, healing , crafting. After completeing, one would chose. say the second lvl to profession. Doctors, Smugglers, Pilots, Squad Leaders, and BH…….
Then one should have many quests, say like the old man… And get the force and jedi abilities.,,,,, Say Jedi doctors, Jedi droid eng. …….After these progressions, ….. Chose the class of Jedi … say, sith or jedi council. Siths should be able to apply to the council as an unknown spy. Then progress through the Jedi padawan/ then jedi knight, and recieve jedi master rank. When one recieves the rank jedi master, he has the last set of trials to be accepted as a jedi master of the jedi council.
Then the number and complexity of quests could be unlimited. Say, protect senators… lead battalions…… or any of the duties of a jedi in the movies or books…..
To end this ….. TAke all the books written about Star Wars and encorporate these complexities in the next Star Wars mmorg. It could take many years to progress through the story….maybe more than that.
PS….. Sorry, but i had to say/repeat this…..
Along with the number of professions, say artisian, medicine, tailors,… there should be different ways to become a jedi, each original to the profession. Each jedi with different powers………..This, I think, will make Star Wars complex enough to keep everyone happy.
PPS…. This is only the jedi class………. there are other classes, but I’m tired of typing…….
I Played SWG back in the day when you EARNED your jedi. I had EARNED my Jedi in Pre Combat upgrade. My charactor was a Site that wasnt seen often. If you were seen with your saber out you recieved a bounty on you.
JEDI ARE RARE!!!!!
After the New Gaming Enhancement hit. Jedi were a Common site and people playing the game for 2 days could become a jedi and they weren’t as facinating as they used to be. I Retired my Jedi and Played a bounty hunter. Killing every Jedi I could get my hands on. DARK or Light.. b/c 1/2 of them didn’t deserve it… Now am I saying None of you deserve it? Of Course not. but what I am saying is make it be EARNED or it will turn into the Crap System that SWG has turned into.
I am a fan of the random occurance. To stem the re-rolls of characters, let there be a mission to find out whether you are force sensitive or not and not allow that mission to be taken until certain things have occured including the passage of time (say a month real time). Most will be attached there toons and won’t re-roll. Some will, but they will have to wait another month to find out. You would have to limit the amount of alts too of course and have a one force sensitive toon per server or account limit. If you did do this it may be ok to then make them an elite class of sorts for that more realistic feel of the Jedi powers. Ahhh Elite classes…there is a whole new set of problems.
I remember when SWG was just getting started….and i hate to admit but i was one of the people bitching that it was too hard to be jedi…. but after playing the game for a while i realised that it would have been worth it to wait and become one… the problem w/ SWG was that Sony listened to the people too much wich in term ruined the game… u will never make everyone happy… i think that being a Jedi should be really hard but not imposibly hard… but you have to put a lot of emphesis on the other profesions as well…. i would give anything to play the original SWG again… and if they make a clone of the original build i will be all over it.
It’s real simple. Once you’ve obtained max level with a regular character you have the option to toggle Jedi. It rerolls your class back to lvl 1 with permadeath enabled. You keep any progressive stats that you might have incurred, you might even retain certain core skills of the previous class. Either way you have to choice to play a jedi, it’s up to you if you’re willing to gamble all that work and time for it however.
That would be sweet. We live in a carebear society, however, absolutely full to the brim with crybabies. It’d never fly.
I would like the idea of 3 maybe 5 stages of leveling to make a truly unique character like a real RPG game,
STAGE ONE:
start with 5 basic choices,
STAGE TWO: one of these options
1) divide your skills into a 2nd base class
2) Advance your base class
3)Save all points for next stage – this leads to receiving 1/2 XP, and only 3/4 DMG until next stage is reached
STAGE THREE:
Force senstive very basic of jedi \ sith skill set
with similar choices to stage two as well as a another
option of choices to expand your base class
demolisions
blaster rifles
blaster pistols
swords two or one handed
light blades (lightsabers BUT DAGGERS) OH NO
etc…
STAGE Four:
you can either decide to advance your unit into the direction of subclasses where users will be given the options of padawans of either sith or jedi, bounty hunter, android…so on
STAGE FIVE:
full jedi users can chose to advance to a jedi master who can only advance 1 super skill, where as people who have decide other classes may advance two skill and therefore become far more usefull in raids and such…
and if this is a living breathing galaxy post the bountys on jedis and sith, death system will including looting user items or destruction of….i believe the key is balance between units, a jedi who walks over a mine is still just a dude walking over a mine….but a player who has put in the extra effort and time to not spend any points in the beginning should be rewarded by having a more powerful end character than others
skill points given for level is split between each stage option, those who decided to save those points are given 70% of the points he could have earned to spend on the next stages skill set….
hope bio-ware gets to our ideas
patty_o_mally@hotmail.com
I’m guessing you either didn’t watch any of the video’s or can’t pay attention. In ToR the timeline they set it at enables ppl to play as jedi. Why? Because its before vadar. So why wouldn’t they be training jedi? Watch the cinematic trailer? How the Sith say they’ve been training for 300 year? Well that right there should tell you Sith and Jedi will be in this game. I played Galaxies. I hardly ever saw ANY jedi.
And I’m guessing you didn’t realise this piece was written in the middle of LAST YEAR.
So, good on ya.
i think they should be in the game it is the time they are supposed to be in and just make it just like any other class were you haveto work your way up the ladder not only should here be jedi there should be sith and for the comment on leting sony do another star wars game that is a laugh sony sucks at mmos swg was a good game till the decided to srew it up and change one class when one group of people cry then change another when another set of people cried
ok i am not all about the jedi and i wont play this game unless i can have what i want that sounds sad but i dont care and the only thing i want is to be able to play a ewok thats right i just want to be a ewok i felt robbed when they did not have that in galghies and for that did not play it and i wont play this if they dont have ewoks as for the jedi they should have some of that allowed for the played however bioware finds a way to balance it is there choice but it should be a playing elment to the game just like ewoks should be
I don’t have any desire to be a Jedi, I started SWG from the get go. I was very happy being a creature handler/rifleman and later a medic/rifleman.
I was Mayor of a town and had more fun playing that game than any other, never wanting to be a Jedi.
I’m more the Han Solo type.
When SOE added the combat upgrade I quit, I still have the emails to the Devs from 2005.
I HATE SOE for what they did.
I refuse to do business with Sony in any way.
I enjoyed building bases and houses and having ships, I had a real feel to it.
Now I play EVE, this fall they will have Dust 514 FPS planet side warfare.
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 7:05 PM
To: Jungjohann, Aaron
Subject: smoky ticket #3134411
it is nearing the 9th and no word from you on my
account. i’ve been complaining for a year about the
pet issue, there is no way anyone in dev will give to
craps about this issue facing me. the fact i can’t use
my rifle and my pets won’t listen half the time
matters not to them. even if i’m a creature
handler/rifleman and this renders me almost
unplayable. no worries just keep paying and they’ll
get around to it maybe next year, but if you don’t
keep paying they never will. look, this is crap and
you know it. i do not deserve to have to sit here and
not play this game.i have sent in 1000’s of /bug
reports concerning both the combat system and the pet
issue. a year later nothing has been done. look all i
want is to play the game, my frustration level is off
the charts, all i ever get from soe is empty promises
or excuses. just fix the game for me. i’d do it from
here if i could but i can’t. just fix the game it is
unplayible for me. fix the game for me. i can’t play
it fix the game!!!!!!
SOE customer support email I saved to remind me to NEVER do business with them again
Some of you said jedi class should be rare. Accessable from other classes, trained over time from a smuggler, or something, but here is the problem: a jedi training begins in very young ages, when almost nothing clouded the subject’s mind. In a story-based game they simply cannot kick the SW universe in the ass. If you want a unique jedi class, here is my idea: if someone wants to be a jedi, they can start a Jedi Initiate, and do the entire Jedi training (months of extra play), and they can go to out to the universe in the first only time when they reach the Padawan rank. And at some point they will become Jedi Knights, get specialisations, ect…
Some of you said jedi class should be rare. Accessable from other classes, trained over time from a smuggler, or something, but here is the problem: a jedi training begins in very young ages, when almost nothing has clouded the subject’s mind. In a story-based game they simply cannot kick the SW universe in the ass. If you want a unique jedi class, here is my idea: if someone wants to be a jedi, they can start a Jedi Initiate, and do the entire Jedi training (months of extra play), and they can go out to the universe in the first time only when they reach the Padawan rank. And at some point they will become Jedi Knights, get specialisations, ect…
I’m gone to tell my little brother, that he should also visit this webpage on regular basis to take updated from latest gossip.