So I finally got around to seeing the Star Wars: Galaxies ‘Combat Upgrade’ for myself. This was mostly by accident, mind you – I only reinstalled because I wanted to catch up with an old online friend who is quite a SWG fan, and also because, with the Station Pass, I’m not actually paying for it, as such.
It’s hard to describe my feelings about it really. Regret, disappointment, loss…words like that. So much has changed it’s hard to blame any one thing, but the overall impression I have is as if the game had been lobotomised, for it’s ‘own good’. Where once there was a quirky, if somewhat anarchic and unpredictable experience that quite often made no sense, but managed to be interesting and fun to be around in small doses, now sits a slack-lipped, drab experience that presents nothing unexpected, and merely drools a bit and stares into space for days at a time.
Clearly, in the technical sense, the game has been ‘fixed’, but at what cost?
The main culprit seems to be the new, painfully shoe-horned in, level system for combat. Previously, most enemies were best evaluated on a per case basis, taking in vulnerabilities, strengths and weaknesses, with the colour coding difficulty being more of an abstract ‘ballpark’ estimate, and there were only twelve character ‘levels’ anyway. It was mostly about knowing your enemy, and equipment and abilities.
Now, each and every mob in the game seems to derive from one stock level extrapolation for hit points, attacks, etc, and their levels correspond exactly to a numerical chart ranging from 1 to 100, and woe betide any player attacking anything more than one level above their own. Creatures less than 2-3 levels below your own yield no experience, and even if somehow you do manage to kill something above your dedicated 2-3 level band, your experience reward is capped anyway. Very much the grand tradition of Everquest – go where you are supposed to be!
Sooo…150 ‘A Tame Womp Rat’s, then 150 ‘A Slightly Less Tame Womp Rat’s, then 150 ‘An Irrated Womp Rat’s….sound familiar?
My current character is Level 8, and I have no idea why, or how to actively pursue level 9, as the old multiple experience pools system and skill boxes are still in place. This effectively makes it nearly impossible to see your own progress under the new system, since there is no ‘Combat Level XP’ as such, and this leaves a lot of frustrating guesswork. My character has Polearms 4, Two Handed Swords 2, but is really Level 8? Presumably if I just go out and beat on white-conned mobs repeatedly, that numbery stuff will sort itself out?
Also, for some reason that I’d like to think was deeper than ‘slowing players down’, I am now also required to get to level 4 in both Two Handed Swords and Polearms before I can start on Novice Pikeman (and be allowed armour). Previously you only needed Polearms IV. Why do I have to learn a totally different weapon, which I’ll never then use again? It makes no sense! It’s not just me though…everyone seemed to have gained an extra, useless, training requirement to make progress. Feh.
Fair enough, combat is now ‘teh suck’…it’s a shame, but I’ll just avoid it altogether. To be fair, I never really put a lot into the fighting side of SWG the first time around, but this hamfisted reordering of combat has knock-on effect to almost all the other aspects of the game. More later – good old rant building up here…