I’m going to take a step back from our regular Friday features to write a bit about our development philosophy. “What’s the purpose? Why are you making the decisions you’re making? What are you focusing on?” Those are questions we’ve been hearing regularly, and I’m going to try to give you a look into the mindset we’re using. So, without further ado, the general philosophy we’re working with.

Freedom is everything. The sandbox was SWG’s greatest strength. Unlike the vast majority of MMOs, players could always leave a mark on the game – quite literally. Player-crafted goods reigned supreme; player cities dominated the landscape; player interaction drove PvP.

The original team did wonderful things to make the game open. It’s something we don’t want to lose.

The profession revamp is designed to make the game even more flexible than it used to be! A problem in SWG was that professions that “did” things were pigeonholed into doing it a certain way. My go-to example is always smuggler: to be a smuggler, you had to specialize in pistols. (Unless you were a triple threat, with TKA/smuggler/pistoleer.)

Wanted to use carbines instead? Well, prepare to have a large number of points tied up in things you can’t use, from the pistols line in marksman to all those pistols-only combat specials.

Worse, at end-game PvE levels there were only a handful of professions (or even templates!) that worked. Fighting Krayts, for example, virtually had to have the heavy armor piercing T-21 or Power Hammer. Professions like pistoleer, carbineer, TKA, and fencer were out in the cold at the end-game level.

So we’re doing our best to open things up further, make the game more open than it already is. We want people to pick a profession because it’s fun to play, not because it’s the only way to complete content.

Structure is necessary. SWG failed to impose rules it needed to keep the game going on a long-term basis. The worst offender was the housing system – the devs failed to anticipate what would happen. Namely, players built rings of houses at the edge of the no-build zone around starports. The more time went on, the worse it got.

PvP withered away as it became clear players had nothing to gain, but things to lose by engaging in PvP. A small, dedicated crowd (both ground and space) kept at it, but it was never what it could have been. Alternatively, it never reached the heights we saw during the Anchorhead/Bestine wars.

The idea, then, is to impose some structure where there wasn’t any before. Not because players are playing the game “wrong”, but to keep the game healthy and to channel energies into activities that are fun for multiple people.

Eliminate the grind. Those of us who played from the beginning are now twelve years older than when we started. Many of us have kids that weren’t born when we first played Star Wars Galaxies. We have jobs, spouses, family, commitments that we previously lacked.

We’re not eliminating the grind entirely – players still have to level professions (even if it’s much quicker than the old days), acquire resources, and so forth. But the days of spending weeks camping a boss spawn or trying to get that last perfectly-tuned pearl are not the the defining characteristics of the Empire in Flames project.

Provide fun. This probably shouldn’t be the fourth entry on this list, because that’s hardly fair to the importance we put on it. The game should be fun. Leveling skills should be fun. Crafting should be fun. (Well, for those who like it – I’ve personally never played a game where I enjoyed crafting. That’s my personal preference, though.) Running through a dungeon should be fun. Engaging in PvP should be fun. Building a city should be fun. Decorating should be fun.

Even when we had content under the various SWG implementations, fun was often substituted for grinding. Kill collections became monotonous, item collections had a “rare” item that sapped the enjoyment from looting pieces.

We want players to have fun, not swear at that stupid item that just won’t drop.

Give players something new. Seems like an odd statement, but it’s true. It’s why we’re working to allow players to own buildings that were previously only for NPCs, or build entirely new professions, or implement new planets entirely.

We’re a server built by players who loved the game in all its forms, and we all had things we wished the SOE dev team would have done. Now it’s our turn to prove that those things could have been great.

Use what worked. There are SWG emulator teams that are committed entirely to a certain era of the game – pre-CU, CU, or NGE. The problem is that, arguably, none of those systems worked well. Pre-CU was an unbalanceable mess; CU depending heavily on creature/player levels that undercut the freedom of the skillpoint system; and the NGE removed the freedom of character building.

We played through SWG from the very beginning, and we understand that somethings worked very well, but many things didn’t. We refuse to pigeonhole ourselves into thinking just one way; instead, we’re going to take the elements that worked well and make them work together.

Are the changes going to please everyone? No – but there’s not a version of SWG /anywhere/ that /everyone/ likes. Period.

So now, when you’re questioning a decision we’ve made or a method of implementation, take a look at this and you can likely see how it fits in with our philosophy. Will we make everything perfect? I doubt it. But we’ll do our best to build a server that’s still fun to play, twelve years after Star Wars Galaxies first released.

“A good soldier always knows how to use whatever equipment is at hand: computers, droids, vehicles, communications gear, and – of course – weapons. Knowing what a weapon is capable of – and more importantly, what it isn’t capable of – can save your life in a tough situation.” ―Colonel Marck Linth, Alliance SpecForces

Commandos are the epitome of the soldier. Their lives are committed to the art of combat. When a starship in drydock needs to be destroyed, an enemy factory needs to be shut down, or a new opposing headquarters needs to be blown sky-high, the commandos get the call.

Commandos were important but not overly powerful in early Star Wars Galaxies; post NGE, they were one of the few surviving classes and specialized in heavy weapons.

In Empire in Flames, the commandos are the soldiers on the frontlines of the war.

Commandos specialize in explosions and blast damage.

Grenades are simple weapons, quick to use and available from any good weaponsmith. They are great for tossing AoE damage into a tight battle, often hitting multiple opponents with one explosion.

Rocket launchers, on the other hand, are slow and not very accurate, but critically important for taking down enemy vehicles. A volley of rocketfire is the best answer to enemy walkers attempting to massacre friendly forces.

Commandos aren’t limited to explosions, though – they bring plenty of other heavy weapons to the table. Flamethrowers, acid rifles, and disruptors all play a role for a commando – the right heavy firepower at the right time. When it comes to dealing damage or just intimidating an enemy with a big wall of fire, the commando is a go-to soldier.

Commandos bring a variety of skills to the table. Most will bring at least a little medic for field emergencies, while adding some melee skills – typically either unarmed or a one-handed vibroblade for quick combat. Some prefer adding additional long-range combat to the fray, like adding a sniper rifle.

“You sound like a businessman, a responsible leader.”
“It’s the price you pay for being successful.”
-Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, The Empire Strikes Back

Merchants often know nothing of combat. They don’t wield a lightsaber or point a blaster, grip the yoke of a starfighter or stand on the bridge of a warship. Nonetheless, they are some of the most powerful people in the galaxy.

On the live Star Wars Galaxies servers, merchants were critically important. SWG has always had a player-driven economy, and the merchants are the ones who keep that part of the game humming along.

Empire in Flames ensures the merchants will have plenty to do.

The economy is the game of merchants, and it’s not a game for the poor. Successful merchants are some of the wealthiest players in the game. And success can only happen one way: delivering quality goods to eager buyers in the right place at the right time.

It is important to differentiate “merchant” from “crafter.”

Merchants run shops, hire vendors, advertise goods, and concentrate heavily on selling goods.

Crafters create goods. Crafters may very well become merchants as well, choosing to sell their own goods, handling their own marketing and hiring practices.

However, a merchant may not be a crafter at all. Some merchants may specialize in selling top-quality resources at high credit per unit prices; some may flood the market with low-quality but cheap resources. Still others may specialize in hard-to-find or downright rare items. And the biggest, most powerful merchants may acquire exclusive contracts with the very best crafters, becoming the proverbial one-stop shop for the best goods in the galaxy.

Remember: disputes over trade routes brought down the Republic.