Quality of life improvements

[CrimsonMerc]

As awesome as Pre-CU SWG was (and still is thanks to this awesome development team) I think there should be some quality of life improvements. The following improvements are suggestions on how to improve the game while keeping in the feeling of Pre-CU SWG.

1. Ability to grab more missions: SWG in itself is already a huge grind, but having to only grab two missions at a time makes it that much worse. Other SWG emu servers have remedied this by giving the ability to get several missions right off the bat... while I like the idea, I think this should be earned. At a novice combat starting profession you have the ability to get only one mission, however, after unlocking every IV ranking you get to unlock an additional mission. For example, if you have only unlocked Unarmed IV, you will have access to 2 missions. If You have Master Brawler, you have the ability to grab 7 missions in total. With elite combat professions, it follows the same concept for a total of 7 missions when master bringing the grand total to 14 missions. I know that this seems like a lot, but it will add to the overall game play.

2. Make vehicles faster: All vehicles should be a bit faster and reduce the cost of repairing your vehicle.

If you have any comments or suggestions, post them.

[Novro]

I agree with some of these partially, except 14 missions is over the top, maybe make it if you unlock two master boxes you are then able to take three/four missions after all this is the server that doesn't hand things out on a silver platter, I think two is reasonable as is though. Making vehicles faster I would go one step further and say add the NGE vehicles like the ones contained in the MTG files as rare loot and maybe event and quest rewards as well as, for example adding the pod racers as one use schematic rewards for the race tracks. The cost to repair is fine as is, the game doesn't have anywhere near enough credit sinks so players can easily accrue millions of credits if they want to without needing to spend much at all.

The main issue is that Awakening desperately needs more devs, Xiphos seems to have been taking a break for the past year, Incognito I haven't seen in a while, but he has never really been heavily involved in public relations type stuff and Dirge is always tirelessly working on bug fixes and new content for us as has been witnessed with his relist button and other patches in 2018. So I don't know if there are any other devs apart from Dirge that are able to kindly volunteer their time for us on the staff team at the moment which means that they have to prioritise wants over needs.

[CrimsonMerc]

Yeah I agree with you, I think every master combat profession box should unlocked additional missions- perhaps 2 for a starting profession and 4 for an elite profession?

I do not know what the current state of Awakening is as I have been gone for about a year. About a month ago I recently got back into SWG and I was playing a lot on the Infinity server... they have a lot of ideas that I really like, but the reality is that the Infinity server is dead. The server population seems to be dwindling at this point, even after the Aftermath merger.

[Cynar]

Awakening has always struggled due to the lack of devs. Our devs that have worked on the project past and present have gone above and beyond to make improvements. Hats off to all of them. It’s hard to sustain a full staff when they have to make a living and support their families. A dev job here is a hobby or labor of love of the game.

The games age, game engine limitations, and lack of qualified volunteers makes this very difficult to keep going. It’s a lot of what players don’t understand. It’s why we’ve seen private server after private server close over the last 5 years. As of right now Basilisk, Awakening and Reckoning are the longest running and most stable servers. Oh and swg legends if you buy into that NGE garbage. I imagine a year or two from now that story won’t change much as far as servers go.

It would greatly help if some of these fly by night servers would quit popping up to distract players. Shiny new widgets that entertain for 3 or 4 months just to close doesn’t help keep the base stabilize. New content is also desperate needed. I’m not talking about chunking a few planets, armor, houses, or time periods out there either. The game hasn’t evolved since 2003 and that’s it’s true Achilles heel.

All mmo’s add shiny new shit, but they also have to evolve on many levels. Content, stories, real interesting, crowd-grabbing changes have to happen. Otherwise all you are doing is throwing a dress on a pig and calling it something better.

[CrimsonMerc]

Couldn't have said it better myself- perhaps one day Reckoning and Awakening can join forces, merge ideas and servers. Until then I just pray we can survive.

[Cynar]

Awakening and Reckoning are two great teams no doubt. There are slight differences in philosophies as far as game challenges go. I think that merging would do more harm to both like we’ve seen with other servers like Afternath and Infinity. They merged with that exact same thought in mind and it’s decimated their player base. It had nothing to do with development skills, regular staff perhaps, but the players just didn’t buy in and went somewhere else. If a server is going to die it’s best just to either close it down or let it die a graceful death.

[CrimsonMerc]

Well I see a pretty active player base here on Awakening and Infinity (which I play on from time to time) has a very active player base. I would even go as far to say that it has the most active player base out of all of the pre-cu servers.

Regardless, I know what the goal of Awakening is- to be a pre-cu server, but I just think little things like quality of life improvements can go a long way. I don't want permanent double XP or free stuff, just simple things. In 2018, SWG Emu have reached a new popularity not seen in a long time and I just hope that popularity continues.

[Ambrus]

I would like to have the ability to pack and unpack houses and vendors NGE style. That could be so useful when you needed to move and your house had over 300 items in it.

[CrimsonMerc]

I would like to have the ability to pack and unpack houses and vendors NGE style. That could be so useful when you needed to move and your house had over 300 items in it.

I really like this idea- I think the little things would really help

[CrimsonMerc]

So let's get these on a list:

-Ability to take more missions (my vote is for at the bare minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6)

-Ability to pack \ unpack houses and vendors (similar to how it was in NGE)

-Music and Dance buffs that last for 3 and half hours

-Faster vehicles and reduced vehicle repair cost

-More mission variety / higher paying missions


Does anyone have anything to add? Any comments?

[Dirge]

I would like to have the ability to pack and unpack houses and vendors NGE style. That could be so useful when you needed to move and your house had over 300 items in it.

This is a discussion that deserves it's own thread. But before you create that thread, you should log into the test server and help us identify any issues that may exist with housing pack-up feature that was applied over the weekend.

[mykewlname]

I still vote for pet formations to be fixed if possible, they just look so dumb standing on top of each other

[Ambrus]

This is a discussion that deserves it's own thread. But before you create that thread, you should log into the test server and help us identify any issues that may exist with housing pack-up feature that was applied over the weekend.

I will check it out as soon as I can!

[CrimsonMerc]

Going to respond to this thread- is there anyway we can get the ability to take more missions?

[Novro]

It would be a rather simple change but I doubt it is one they would want to make, you can already get four missions if you put an alt on follow and use them to get two as well.

[Cynar]

Awakening wasn’t designed to be fast or easy What you call quality of life, the next person might call trying to achieve actions faster than what were intended. Like accruing large amounts of credits or loot. All items are considered of course, however they are gauged by level of importance.

If the development staff decided to pursue an action you will be notified with patch notes for test center. They generally aren’t presented in the suggestions thread. I would recommend being active on discord and participating in testing when made available. Don’t expect requests to spring to life a couple of months after suggesting it.

Hundreds of suggestions have been made on 4 years, I don’t want to say there’s a line, however there are a lot of items which have been on a list for quite awhile. limited voluntary development time has to be weighed carefully.

As always thank you for your suggestions, they have been noted.

[Cyclone]

As Cynar said, Awakening isn't designed to be quick or easy and of course the term quality of life is a matter of opinion.

We do take note and contemplate all suggestions but won't necessarily reply to all of them with a definitive go ahead. This is because the some of the time even if the code does get made, during our testing we may decide to scrap the idea. If a certain idea does get to the point where it is almost certain it will be taken to live someone on staff will usually notify the player base that we have a new mechanic or change that needs testing for stability and opinions.

Even if we do have an idea get past the initial yes it will be coded talk, it enters a long list of ideas that is forever changing based on a number of factors such as what the player base seems to be requesting the most, how long it will take our core developer (and only active developer apart from Incognito who mainly helps with getting major SWGEmu patches working with our custom code) and lead admin, Dirge to make and how much of a visible outcome will be produced compared to the amount of effort required to make the idea a reality.

We thank you for your suggestions as always and you never know, it may one day find its way into a patch... This post is meant to be informative, to let you, the players know the general process that suggestions have to go through before they become a reality more than it is a response to your specific suggestions, CrimsonMerc.