Frezik
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Posted - 2005.11.25 22:56:00 -
[1]
Played SWG about a year ago. It was my first MMORPG.
I used to play XvT years ago, and dreamed of a MMO version where you can fight it out in a persistant universe, claim areas of space, etc. When I heard about JTL, I thought it might turn out something like my old dream. Sure, they wouldn't do it exactly like I thought it would be like, but something close. So I signed up months before JTL was actually out, intending to build up a character and learn the current game before JTL hit.
The first sign of trouble I noticed in JTL's development was in the pre-beta JTL forums, surrounding the TIE Defender. People who have played "TIE Fighter" know that the TIE Defender, though looking rather strange, was faster and more manuverable than an A-Wing and had more weapons and shields than an X-Wing. In a word, uber.
But on the forums, you saw stuff like this (exact timeframe is just a guess):
T-16 weeks to release: "Wouldn't it be cool if the Imps got a TIE Defender"
T-10 weeks to release: "Wow, I can't wait to fly a Defender and gimp some Rebs"
T-8 weeks: "How come the Imps get the Defender? Us Rebs don't get anything that powerful!" (Note--Devs had not given the official list of ships yet, and never said anything about the Defender)
T-7 weeks, after offical list released: "Where's my Defender? I was promised a Defender!"
So you went from having a community that thought the Defender might be cool to fly, to thinking it would be definately in the game (but without a single dev statement saying it would be) with Rebs being ready to cancel their accounts because it would "definately" be in the game, to having the actual ship list and Imps being ready to cancel their accounts because they were "promised" a (let's face it) totally unbalanced ship.
So that covers community idiocy. How about dev idiocy?
I got into the JTL beta rather late (about the time they were just accepting anyone who submitted an application). One of the things JTL did was have your ships upgradable. The n00b ship you got when you first started couldn't be upgraded, but that was fine since it only took an hour or so of quests before you could fly one that could.
So I started doing my quests and got up high enough that I could get a real ship. And that's where I noticed the dev's first mistake: the way you fit things to the ship was not rich enough to promote a veriety of ships. It was as if powergrid were the only limiting factor for ship setups in Eve (throwing out slots and CPU), which would mean you could throw 80 nanofibers+MWD on a tempest and have it go faster than a 'cepter while still having BS-level dps and tank. The result would be that the ships with the highest powergird in each faction were the only ships worth flying. This was much the same situation that JTL was facing, at least during beta.
I went through a few more quests. One had me taking out a YT-1300 (the Millenium Falcon is a YT-1300, but a highly upgraded one) with an escort. The AI was stone-dumb. Dumber than it was way back in "X-Wing" (a 15-year-old game). The escort would not attack you until you attacked them, and then only by the ship you attacked. The rest would just fly on. The one you attacked would turn a bit, then fly straight while you 0wned it. Once this part of the turkey shoot was done, you had to take down the YT-1300.
The regular YT-1300 only had one turrent on top of the ship (the Falcon was upgraded to have one on each side). In the ship you could fly this early on in the overall training, you would be easily taken out by that one turrent. But no problem--just fly on the other side! It's not like the AI was actually smart enough to, say, flip over, or turn, or even shoot at you while you were taking care of its escorts.
Granted, this was beta, but it was late beta. It just shouldn't have had such horrible AI, and the ship fitting would have needed a total redesign to work effectively.
*click* Cancel Account *click*
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