Star Citizen is Recreating a Legendary MMO + The Polaris Release! (Ft. Morphologis)

[@bendu_70]

Chris Roberts and Raph Koster both worked at Origin systems. Freelancer Online was a sci-fi MMO that had a design document made but was cancelled by Origin. Koster went to SOE and created SWG right after and he used many ideas from the work he did on Freelancer Online. Many of Chris' ideas for Star Citizen come directly from his work Freelancer Online too. Raph talks about this in his book, Postmortems: Selected Essays Volume One.

[@alexparris7769]

Holy shit. Never realized that. Makes total sense why SC has always looked to be my spiritual successor to SWG.

[@SpaceTomatoToo]

Thanks so much, I'll see if I can find that excerpt, that's really interesting information!

[@MannyCalaveras]

Raph Koster is the grandaddy of MMORPG sandbox design

[@CarlotheNord]

I had been hoping SC would take over the SWG torch, since I was too young to play it. But now I'm seeing they're really pushing towards it. I'm happy.

[@blackfirebird93]

well that good cause old K looks to be making a woke-fairy game.

[@DicehunterSC]

As a Star Wars Galaxies OG, I really miss that game.

[@leopardgecko4226]

Same. I'll play the emulators from time to time but damn I miss that game as well. My first MMO :)

[@MooneShadow]

Bria and Starsider player here. I am really hoping they can catch that lightning in a bottle like SWG did.

[@DicehunterSC]

@@leopardgecko4226 The EMU's are ok but the live game had a lot that the EMU's don't have as a lot of the code is simply gone :(

[@DicehunterSC]

@@MooneShadow I was on Starsider, Imperial in , We held base busting most weekends on Lok near our guild town.

[@MooneShadow]

@@DicehunterSC I was a Bounty Hunter of the same name. MooneShadow. Yeah that server was pretty immersive. I used to go to LOK as well for base busting. So we played on the same circles.

[@CitizenScott]

Wait. Is Morph wearing a 30k shirt? lol

[@SpaceTomatoToo]

From his own collection I believe!

[@Eneeki]

The best part of starwar's galaxy was how interconnected everything was. The fighters needed the crafters and entertainers for equipment and buffs, you could put up bounties, or group up to hunt a Jedi. I had an armor smith and even getting the best materials could be a complicated process including finding the best players in other crafting professions to get sub components, then going to a cantina and getting tones of crafting buffs from an entertainer player, and then crafting the armor after having eight friends help me fight my way to the forges at the bottom of the Mandolorian bunker full of really angry Mando's while under fire the entire time! Such a fun game, even crafting could be an adventure.

[@gorrett]

that sounds incredible. gathering a gang of players to hunt down another notorious status player for the reward of their gear like imagine getting the jedis lightsaber and selling it or its components on a black market or something, i never knew galaxies was like that that’s amazing

[@Eneeki]

@@gorrett It was really hard to take down a Jedi. it took skill and coordination. It took over a year to become , you had to earn it and, luck really played a part as well. They were extremely powerful, it would take a group of 6 to 12 end game bounty hunters to take down 1 Jedi. If I remember correctly, once you became a Jedi, your 3rd death after was permanent.

[@rodrigogodoi4250]

Oh man! Awesome memories of Star Wars Galaxies! Been there online on day one. Still remember receiving the physical game box filled with the compact disks. Such a shame how the game developed over time and how it ended, could have lived way longer. Huge wasted potential in the game industry. A game ahead of its time.

[@IrisCorven]

@@rodrigogodoi4250 Honestly, they could have stopped doing major dev after JTL, and just focused on adding in new items/structures/vehicles from that point on? And the game would have run itself, for years. Smedley got the bug up his ass to chase WoW, though, and the rest was history.

[@BDscenes]

SC is the dream, a mash up of SWG, EVE Online, and Earth & Beyond... Backer since 2013

[@SpaceTomatoToo]

It is pulling a lot of great from different places.

[@Ssecave]

1.0 is a huge deal because it feels like we have an actual game in sight. For now, we have some components but nothing is connected. Really hope they pick up the pace.

[@blackfirebird93]

As a SWGalaxies player myself and 2012 SC backer.. SUPER EXCITED for Star Citizen going this route.. (pre-9 jedi, avid resource gather+Personalized Vendors+PVP.. absolutely loved it)

[@blackfirebird93]

To correct Morph a little on the "PVP areas" SWG did have that.. but as well as an all over TEF temporary enemy flag system.. Nametag flashed till flagged, then when in "out of combat" could exit after 5/10min. Unless Jedi council members or doing Rebel/imperial missions/areas. Player built buildings also allowed LOCKED doors to not allow enemy inside base buildings (but if you left your vehicle spawned outside they could attack it). Bounty hunters were able to send droids through locked doors to attack and insta push you out them sometimes unless you had a detector placed. -Also had special Jedi stealth invis abilities in a combat update to spy on bases. -Had enemy turret destruction of faction point costs from base wars(even if couldn't blow them up fully), those points from PVP bought defenses+personal items. -Heavy grind and puzzle to unlock Jedi for your character, then had to hide lightsaber from human NPCs+players or be put on a Bounty list. -Random bounty hunter attacks (random red enemy). -DABBLE into profession "trees" for custom Skill bar abilities. -Random dragons/world bosses to find+quality resource loot for crafters. ..some built bases next to spawn locations causing wars. -Also had instance dungeons, and caves to fight down to find boss loot. -Doctors buffed health stats drastically to be able to use heavy armor for 3.5hrs, cantina entertainers healed wounds by viewing+also gave buffs. -Reputation and high faction point player bases gained fast travel+special base structures. -And the biggest feature was economy. Bought items from terminal and had to travel to retrieve from player customized vendor shops. And personally knowing the crafters who's name was on item gave even better gear (special order/retrieve quality loot for them to build it)..... Sandbox fun. ...(WoW was great too, but SWG was its own special) The NGE update killed it by dumbing it all down drastically, giving Jedi instant (and same combat difficulty level/took away their force health bar!) and gave to all who wanted it ..and with weird glitchy FPS targeting change that didn't keep those interested newbies anyway. Was all fresh new ability class "sheets" from 32 custom dabble into skill "trees". uniqueness pretty much went away.

[@veric13]

@@blackfirebird93 I loved having my weaponsmith who would custom make my gun and then I would also check his kiosk to see if he had a high stat attachment that improved my stats. Loved moving the miners around to get the best minerals for selling to the crafters. It was crazy how much elite crafters made.

[@mojoferocious]

I played SWG from launch and still log in to a couple of the emulators every once in a while. I got in to Star Citizen to try to replace SWG. It wasn’t until CitCon when they announced variable quality resources which alter the quality of crafted items, that I really started to believe this might be a real spiritual successor to SWG. The crafting stations, base building, depleting resources, variable crafting results are all huge aspects of making the universe feel lived in. Star Citizen needs this interconnection between combat and non-combat professions. I hope they take more systems from SWG like medical and entertainer professions. I would love to see medical professionals that need to heal to unlock blueprints and research in order to make medicine. Maybe even have doctors at medical facilities to sell buffs. They should straight up rip off the cloning debuff system. Have players need to go to the bar and interact with an entertainer to remove the debuff. The key thing is churn. Weapons need to break down and stop working. Medical buffs need to be consumables. Resources need to be dear and deplete regularly. This kind of dynamic player driven economy/ecosystem is how you make a game people will play for decades more.

[@Farrister]

Living that test test test hello hello life :D

[@FeathersMcClaw]

o7 Farrister

[@GeneCavalcante]

07 Farrister,best ship reviews ❤

[@MooneShadow]

Morph is on point with why SWG died. NGE was the last nail in the coffin.

[@davidcasey-b8c]

I would love NGE to nail me

[@northern_pointer]

It would have if you played pre-NGE SWG.

[@Duncan275]

Physicalized cargo IS core to what SC has always been. I dont understand how people dont realize how much this is wanted. And this is the one chance to deliver a game like that. And how is morph talking about change being a necessity just AFTER saying Star wars should have stayed the course for their niche audience. 🤦‍♂️

[@Arms2]

Hell yeah, Morph on right after the Polaris gets unveiled? This is perfect

[@ChristopherM.8]

The original SWG experience is the best MMO experience I have ever had, coming from someone that played WoW, EQ1, SWG, PS1&2, EVE online, SW:ToR, City of Heroes, DC Universe Online, and Guildwars. It absolutely nailed the balance of immersive actions and agency within a thoroughly fleshed out universe. It wasn't until SWG that I realized what gaming *could* be, and nothing has been able to hold a candle to what it did right to this day. I pray CIG can get this one right and listen to their fans while continuing to dream big.

[@SpaceTomatoToo]

That'd be amazing if SC can come even close to that experience.

[@tellahane151]

One of the biggest advantages to player cities in SWG was some of the special buildings. if your city got to place down specific municipal cities based on the population. So your city would upgrade from level 1 to 5, anything above 45 or 55 citizens etc(it changes over time) would allow the mayor to put down those buildings. Such as medical centers to heal/buff doctor buffs at, a cantina for entertainers to heal battle fatigue and provide entertainer buffs, cloning centers you could respawn from, a shuttle building so you can fast travel to and from it. We also had faction bases so we could turn cities into imperial or rebel strongholds that would invite pvp as well, and how you designed the city to defend your bases made pvp more dynamic and entertaining too. I played SWG from beta to end, ran my guild through there, and some of my guild mates are with me making a org here in SC and we definitely see SWG's influence into the design of star citizen, its a lot closer then people realize it to be. SWG was the staple game of my life and I compare every mmo I ever played to it, so seeing SC as a spiritual successor is a very real statement. The single best event we had in swg was a multi-part event. There was a battle of over a city on the planet rori, called restuss. It was multi-faceted and appealed to all professions. There were several requirements for rebels and imperials to build up resources. So for example, the imperial side, you had to have X number of pvp kills, you had to have crafters craft X number of grenades and other components, weapons, blasters etc to turn in. Certain X number of npcs had to be killed, there were resources you had to go mine in space, one of those resources was in pvp space. The first person to complete all the phases either imperial or rebel gave that faction an added bonus at the big fight. Once both sides were done a huge battle with ATAT's and rebel tanks and everything else would ensue at restuss for a massive fight, and when it was done the city was permanently destroyed for the rest of the mmo's existence, but the outcome of who won affected the world permanently on that server. There were unique badges based on who did what at that event you could never earn ever again. So your story was permanent part of the servers lore essentially. People really didn't realize how way ahead of the time SWG actually was. Yeah there was crap loads of bugs and imbalances and things too a lot of people forget to remember but it was one of the few mmo's I've played where what you did was remembered by the entire server if you worked really hard. Like being the first guild to craft mandalorian armor which required groups of people hours upon hours in a raid like dungeon just to get one piece made. The more I see SWG in SC the more excited I get!

[@Anachroschism]

There were a few reasons, beyond city bonuses. The City I ran was also near a popular POI, so we had many live and visit, as it was the closest shuttle to that area, and that would encourage crafters to sell their goods there, as well as the services you already described.

[@CitizenScott]

Personally I like SC being SC. Not other games. Especially failed games.

[@matthewatkins5138]

@@CitizenScott I never played SWG but it didnt outright fail in the modern game sense, the servers got pulled because the objectively worse swtor was announced. Everything I read indicates that SWG wasn't in a good place by the end, but in the wake of all of the wow chaser mmos, its not unique to be an mmo dead by the late 00s or early 10s.

[@CitizenScott]

@@matthewatkins5138 Cool. Still.

[@IrisCorven]

@@Anachroschism Not to mention that sweet, sweet shuttleport tax.

[@s1lentw1nter]

The interior is lacking in my opinion, it feels rushed in certain areas. The Med Bay is bland and looks more like a morgue. Compare it to the much cheaper C8R, Nursa, and Carrack for how CIG can do excellent medical areas. The number 3 torpedo magazine / loader tube runs directly through the main elevator shaft.

[@CitizenScott]

Yeah they ran up against time I think. Why the captain's quarters are still locked.

[@Shawnsrumi]

Do you think there’s any chance of modularity within the Polaris maybe the ability to swap the two tier 2 base beds with a tier 3

[@s1lentw1nter]

@@Shawnsrumi short answer for the modularity is no, But never say never as CIG changes things from time to time. Question: why would you want to change 2 x T2 beds for 1 x T3 bed?

[@Shawnsrumi]

@ far…also I’m interested in seeing what modders can do when they get a hold of modding tools

[@AUserName-fv8zj]

I think one thing that SC has done to players is completely skew their expectations. Like $200 for a ship is seen as nothing. A Polaris is ‘poorly designed’… despite its design being hundreds of leagues ahead of any in game assets ever made. It doesn’t surprise me people can walk around that ship and criticize it, but it blows my mind that people walk around that ship and call it ‘rushed’, ‘lacking’ or poorly designed. If you legitimately feel that your expectations for in game assets is severely warped.

[@Ryggs]

When I started playing SWG, every item in the game except your starting clothes and a pistol, was crafted by players and player cities made every server unique. I already feel like SC is SWG 2.0 but the direction they seem to be taking the game makes it seem even more so! One of the most interesting, features in SWG, and one that I haven't seen any other game do, is contextual emotes. As you typed in chat, keywords would trigger emotes that made all the player avatars seem much more alive.

[@Paisa231]

My understanding is that buying ships with dollar, only gives you a level 1 stock hull blueprint. If you want to make it better you need to do the crafting, and get the equipment to make a ship. That be a base or buying a Pioneer. And then do whatever to get a tier 2 of the ship you bought. So you still do the game loop, but misses a large part of it. About equipment, I think this will be its own path in making the best ship possible. And these blueprints will be behinds missions, guild reputation or steal or buy it from other players. Depends how complex CIG will make this.

[@lostmic]

Not a lot of people know this but Chris Roberts was a founder of Digital Avil who created the Star Wars Galaxy. So he absolutely had an hand in the development of Star Wars Galaxy. So in my opinion, this is why Star Citizen feels like the successor of Star Wars Galaxy. We actually have an OG from one of the best space games ever created, here making Star Citizen thus this is why I think a lot of people like me see the Magic in this game because it has a lot of the concept and ideas of it.

[@kyelsavage6296]

Happy to see CIG taking aspects of SWG's crafting into account for SC. I've played many online games but have a special place in my heart for my SWG days.

[@BDscenes]

SWG is one of my favourite MMOs of all time! I liked it so much, I had 2 accounts! Stoked that SC is taking a straw from SWGs crafting system, in terms of resource quality, determining the stats of the crafted item. The people who actually cared about crafting, using the highest quality materials, were the ones you sought to buy from. SWG was far ahead of it's time, and would probably still be running, if it were not for the NGE and CU that killed it... Disappointing that they felt the need to kill their player-base/game, by making jedi a starting profession(I grinded all the professions to become a jedi, and it was special to have the old man greet you after, to start your padawan training), in the hopes of attracting new players...

[@Mr1FTW]

Played SWG from day one - and really hope that the "harvesting/crafting"-loops will influence SC in those aspect. SWG-reflection - If I remember correctly, to become a "mayor" and create a org city (00:37:00) , you needed to grind (hard) and become top level in both "Diplomat" and one other professions skill-tree (cannot remember witch) to be able to have those options (ruling out top combat levels). In my org I focused on top level "Doctor" and "Combat medic" - which gave me top of the line recepies for stims and healing-injectors. Something that made be very dependent in being skilled in bargening and harvesting top notch resources that in turn (with experimentation = loads of losses of resourses) made me create stims with the best result/values on our server from time to time. But then there was also a code of honor (among thieves?) between players that made griefing and ruining someones gameplay for fun something to be frowned upon by the community. Maybe because not any kid/teen could afford (or was given) the PC required to play the game?

[@JizzyNinja]

One thing morph didn’t mention about SWG was the Galactic Civil War and how it integrated into PvE and PvP. You could declare for a faction, which would mark you for PVP in cities - if your faction held the city, you had NPCs and such to back you up. Different guilds would raid cities to change the faction to theirs for strategic reasons. Declaring for a faction would also allow you access to NPCs and things like ATSTs, so there was a reason outside of the entire player crafting system. It seems like CIG is looking at this as well with access to blueprints based on affiliation. Just sharing a neuron that was trigged in this convo - good stuff :)

[@sheetpostmodernist398]

I think one of the biggest issues I've seen in recent development is that CIG can't seem to get a handle on how to adapt a game to be compatible with a gamepad, without completely destroying the mouse interactions. The interface changes have made certain parts of the game absolutely miserable to use a mouse for, and it feels really bad that they just don't even seem aware of how broken it feels to play with a mouse now. Yes, the circle selection menu is _terrible._

[@Angelo_Nicolson]

Always happy to see you two together.

[@giorgioisgaming5814]

i am in large org (we have over 100 Polaris) and we are doing large fleetbattles against other big orgs and use it as our fleet flagship supported by fighters and hammerheads (fully crewed) - these ships are ment to be flown by larger groups of people not individuals

[@justalex4214]

Realistically you will never deploy more than a few of them at a time tho, because no pc in the world can or will ever be able to render a fleet battle with 100s of ships in one place in real time, even if the servers could handle it.

[@TalosEscanor]

Haha good one ! Keep dreaming.

[@senn4237]

This post actually displays the whole problem with multicrew. This one org has over 100 Polaris', that is 6 to 14 crew each. Like another poster said, you could never deploy more than a few of them. So all those other people who bough Polaris', I hope you will be happy manning a turret in someone else's ship and barely using your $850 dollar ship. This is 100% why NPC crew is absolutely critical to this game succeeding.

[@nolinohesi3395]

Thats why i will never own big ships. Ill man em. And ill stick with my zeus. I dont wanna be responsible for big crews.​@senn4237

[@soliitudegaming7275]

​@justalex4214 that's not true though. Duplicate assets are not very demanding. You can already spawn hundreds of 890 jumps with zero issues.

[@Buggie1971]

14:00 The "mirrors" in the Polaris are actually screens with cameras. I don't mind, and you could fake a mirror effect easily if you want to create an actual mirror.

[@Anachroschism]

I ran one of the biggest SWG guilds on the server (hard cap of 500, with monthly clearing of inactive), and we had a few people that were part of the focus testers prior to NGE. There was one that absolutely hated the existing game, and kept telling everyone how it's all about to change. I figured these were the sort of players LA were after, to see what they could 'improve' as they move to try and copy WoW. After release of NGE (the WoW clone), my guild dropped to around 10 people, the city became a ghost town. It took me a long time to rebuild it all, but the game was never the same. On top of that, the community wasn't the same. We never really had people hanging around cities and shuttles like they used to, random PVP wasn't the same anymore, and it was a lot harder to make friends, because you no longer needed anyone other people in the same way we once did. To me SC has become the closest thing to SWG2 that I feel we'll see, and much of the content coming, will increase those similarities. This is one of my main interests of SC. Not just that it's similar to SWG, but that it's not a typical WoW clone (SWToR, etc); it is going for that more old-school style gameplay, with modern mechanics and visuals; a risk no other company is going to take.

[@TorstenGalle]

Thank you for this conversation. You have raised many very important points and highlighted possible scenarios. Keep up your content, very objective and well thought out.

[@Ludiks]

Since most of people who played SWG at release and after are now +30 or so, sometimes I was feeling I was ones of the few remembering that SWG was (still) one of the best MMO (Fighting for first place with Anarchy Online) with the best crafting system and since years and years I keep saying that. Now I see finally somebody is doing similar I am glad some others can see SC is inspiring from it.

[@leonpalmer2841]

AO and SWG vet here too. Never found anything that captured me the same way until (the promise of) SC.

[@MrSmith123123]

Stars Reach is the gamd Raph Koster is working on now. (Dev of SWG)

[@gembrey11]

SWG had the best crafting and resource system ever.

[@RedlinesGaming]

In SWG i had the best doctors buffs on Gorath server back in the day i had massive long long long long QUE's just to get the Buffs off me was insane i made my own doc stims also it was all Based on Qty of the materals of the resouces

[@jojorulez11]

On the topic of buying vs earning ships. What they could do, is lock different tiers of ship customization behind different tiers of crafted ships. This way you can immediatly see the difference between people who swiped a credit card, and people who put in the effort to upgrade the ship to T5, on top of having the better ship stat wise.

[@TedManAte]

I don't often find myself agreeing with takes on.... anything. My primary trait is devil's advocate - even against my own views. As a day one SWG player, SC backer, and casual MMO gamer dad, Morphs take on all this was spot on. I appreciated all of his perspective here. This was a particularly interesting talk for me, thanks for putting it together.

[@faristhehonest]

you guys have the exact same background, wall and the keyboard on the table. I have figured it out, Morph is using Tomato's background since he flickers when he moves.

[@Pappy_1775]

Star Wars Galaxies (my favorite game until Star Citizen) I think was the first game to have spaceship interiors. The YT1300 (otherwise known as the Millennium Falcon) and a very familiar-looking "Space Yacht" had full interiors that you could decorate with furniture and stuff. The crafting and base-build systems slated for Star Citizen are an almost exact copy of SWG's systems. I can see in the future a copy of the Merchant system of SWG also where business people/merchants will be able to create salesperson NPCs and vending machines (sales terminals) to both buy and sell products from players with player-bases and certain ships (Privateer and BMM) being sales locations. Of course, the entire skill tree system of SWG was entirely different than other MMOs in that players didn't have "levels", they just progressed along those trees to become the best crafters in the game. It is more like the reputation system of SC if not entirely based on it. The most prolific MMOs consist of casual adults who participate in PvE. All MMOs with major populations have found a way to separate PvP from PvE. Basically, the reason for its SWG downfall was the devs "Dumb-Downed" the game and wanted to bring in the big money-making demographic of the pre-adult players. This is one of the best reasons for a steep learning curve of a game, As soon as you start drawing in "kids", the casual adults leave. Kids (or maybe I should the the immature) don't want to learn how to play a game, they just want to kill stuff and because famous for it. When SWGs changed from a steep learning curve skill-based system to a theme-park, level base system (pretty much like all MMOs at the time) the adults that just wanted to live in an alternate reality, have a job, and live a life in a game, left it for other games that did the theme-park, leveling system, kill everything games that did it much better (WoW, GW2, FFXIV, etc.).

[@ocic1474]

There's a reason why all of us old salty SWG vets still remember the name of our server, the player cities we frequented the most, the professions we had and hell some of the players we ran into. Many fond memories from that game. The community pre-cu was like no other I've seen since. You should check it out on an emulator if you ever get a chance Tomato. Ocic Socau Chilastra Colossus/ Fort Ootinni Resident Master swords/Rifleman O7

[@Cohors1316]

Big ships need to be ownable by an org itself, and anyone who is on the manifest that logged off on the ship should make it spawn it back in on login. Requiring a single owner to log in before anyone else really kills multi crew.

[@Scr33d]

Good morgning, excellent to see this drop during a bleak monday morning in Sweden. Now i have something to listen to at work.

[@M4cex]

Off to a strong start. Censoring the positive Morph

[@KildalSC]

I was a Star wars fan at the time (Phantom menace episode 1 on PS1 was my jam), but I didn't even know about Star War Galaxies before all the talks about it after this Citizen Con. Maybe it was marketed more in the US than EU. Love the quality for everything concept for crafting though. Looking forward to having any sort of progression in Star Citizen. Not really having any reason to play since Overdrive. Never cared about new ships or even new systems like Pyro, just give me that juicy progression.

[@pirateradio8420]

I have an account with a lot of ships, the largest of which is the Polaris because I want to support the project. But I also have another account with only a starter ship. This is because I want to have the challenge of working from a starter ship up to whatever other ships I want by earning them in the game. I often play with my single ship account for a challenge, and often find I enjoy it more.

[@rickskynight98]

Also it wasn't just the chassis for ships or weapons that you could make out of certain good metals that people wanted, I had cases upon cases of wine I made which gave OP buffs that no one could ever figure out the combination of how it was made... Oh and the genetic engineering! You could catch animals out in the world, get blood samples and make an ultra OP version of that animal as a pet and a mount!

[@jasoncatano3634]

Raph Koster has a new game in early alpha called Stars Reach. Very cartoony graphics, but has a lot of SWG mechanics and ideas. Governed player planets/cities/towns, unique resource-finding loop (on steroids compared to SWG), et cetera.

[@aiur1645]

the thought about needing to grind out rep for blueprints and upgrades for me was somethink i quite liked, that way i can acess certain gameloops with the ships i bought but have a motvation to play and upgrade them further, maybe geting special variants like we saw in squadron sounds exiting so you still can show off your effort

[@aevacado]

Not knowing much about SW Galaxies, was really awesome hearing the planned similarities! Test test test ❤

[@stevenh9474]

I think it would be very cool that after 1.0, CIG starts adding MK2 versions of most ships (especially the old ones like Freelancer, Vanguard, etc.) that cannot be bought with cash but must be earned in game. They are basically the same ship, but different look and maybe a little better functionality. Keep the ability for people to buy the original with cash, but new model versions are in-game only. Then maybe start making new ships from manufacturers that don't have a ship in that role, but a ship already exists there. Example being a Crusader ship that is basically a Freelancer, but you can only get it in game since it is not offering anything new but is basically a reskin of the Freelancer by Crusader. I'm not saying I expect any of this at all, but would be cool I think.

[@TimOnTheNet]

I'm just glad to finally hear someone pronounce it correctly. Pol-AIR-us. Thank you Morph

[@fabienneeigling7477]

Just as a side note in that one comment from Morph: Operation Flashpoint had aim down sights in 2001.

[@Corwin74]

Oh man, that was an awesome game!!

[@jeremiahbond2810]

This was a fantastic talk.

[@LoRad5309]

I was a droid maker and Mayor of my town in Star Wars Galaxies. What killed the game for me was seeing so many Jedis running around. Becoming a Jedi was super hard and ultra rate, then it became more easily obtainable. Also, so many of the dancers for buffs in the major towns were just bots...so more and more bots replaced players in the game. I played for about 9 months then I was done...

[@senn4237]

"Less people will be obsessed with flying their own ships" - I hard disagree. Manning a turret will get old almost immediately. The Pilot and Engineer will be the only fun positions. Realistically you will have many three positions on a large ship that have worthwhile gameplay, the rest is going to need AI blades or NPC crew.

[@sanctred]

I agree, I honestly think being the engineer at the engineer panel might be kind of fun but being the dude running around changing fuses and putting out fires doesn’t sound fun to me. Can you imagine being the guy on a bengal and your job is changing fuses 34-56 waiting for someone to maybe call out your number so you can do something…. Fun.. Also have you ever tried to run around a large ship in combat? The gforce knocks you down constantly. The whole system seems like it needs a ton of work to be viable and NPCs and Blades HAVE TO be part of the solution in my opinion.

[@IrvNation]

I never got the chance to place SWG but after hearing how it used to be with player owned cites and having mayors and giving permissions to them, etc, It makes me really hope that SC has something similar to that. I don't feel like that would be too difficult to program into the current vision.

[@IXxJordan]

15:00 - That is what facilitates the need to only in-game bought ships, not every ship just available to pledge. Super expensive and high rep to get, if its true about Bengal being crafted by Orgs but not pledged it could be one that will fit the rarity narrative. They just need more of these, even Elite Dangerous has this concept with the Federal Corvette and the Imperial ships

[@goldmember7852]

Great Podcast cheers to both of you! Wish you dug a bit deeper on the SWG vs WoW topic in relation to Star Citizen regarding: niche vs mainstream content, gold selling (think Morph had more in mind on that topic), PvP,... As I believe a lot of devs are just now (20years later) realising copying WoW is not always the route to take Thank you, great show!

[@georgesliker5087]

In galaxies we exchanged the base lvl ship with shipwrights to upgrade the hull in Hit points and resistances for better ship chassis

[@ktharsis426]

StarWars Galaxies downfall... Lucas Arts saw the money WoW was making and forced Sony to change their game to almost copy WoW... The NGE was a surprise launch that was not told to the community until it was launched and it happened right after they launched an expansion. They went from 32 professions you could mix and match and change whenever you wanted to locked in professions chosen when you create your character. It was too much of a change.

[@wraith511802003]

SWG WOOHOO that was an amazing MMO.

[@GeneCavalcante]

I agree with Morph that a lot of people wants to be the captain. I hope we, the players, change our mindset and see that is fun to be in a crew

[@ericweeks8386]

How do you make sitting at a terminal or wandering around a ship for hours at a time between action fun though? Most people would call it "work" or a "job".

[@kevintunaley5079]

I like both. had no trouble finding crew for the reclaimer when salvage was going strong.

[@GeneCavalcante]

@@ericweeks8386 agreed. I had fun on the reclaimer with a crew of 3. I think everything depends on the gameplay you and your friends are up to. For example, I have an Starlancer and my idea is to use it for cargo, of course, but also for exploration of bunkers and derelict locations. My idea is to have 3 people with me and each one with a "job". One of my friends is eager to play the Engineering gameplay on the ship. The other is more of a combat player, so he will be maning turrets and menaging fps weapons and ammo. Having a combat medic onboard would be nice too.

[@zawadlttv]

IF THEY MAKE REFINING be doable by dumping full ore pods in the freight elevator, the polaris can be a mobile mining base with empty pods😂

[@TheMandalore6]

I played SWG for years. My brother and my Mom also played. She kept playing until they shut down the servers and was a big part of the community in that game.

[@rickskynight98]

Star Wars Galaxies gave me the gaming experience I always wanted, and now Star Citizen is brining that feeling back! It may not be the star wars, but it was awesome.. It was also the first mmo game where I could be a turret gunner on someone else's ship and that just hasnt been replicated until now. Also the crafting system.. SC seems to be copying it and I'm totally stoked for that!

[@jsolo15]

I played SWG from day one on Starsider and to this day original SWG was the best game I ever played. I was the fifth Jedi on the server. When unlocked Jedi it was probably the best feeling ever!

[@Eagle6Airsoft]

It’s worth pointing out the dev team from swg went on to produce the game planetside 2. In hindsight, people used to complain including me about the grind in SwG but looking back it was actually the draw. People like hard games. They are hard to master. Crafting importantly used quality of materials combined with experimentation that risked you making it worse and rare materials to have a chance of going higher than the base already high quality materials could Achieve. Depending in the quality of the outcome was a bit like how Nvidia price the quality of gpu chips that come Out of a batch. The high quality guns for combat would get a lot of money when you sold them.

[@hitmanstallion2697]

SWG is by far the best MMO I have ever played. I joined the game during middle school sometime around 2006 I purchased the "Complete edition" that came with the Box. The game was already on the CU and NGE. Honestly I didn't have a problem with the game, it was great and tons of fun but lacked advertising and word of mouth and old players detracted from new players joining the game and buying it from constantly bad-mouthing it online when it was a great game. I spent hours leveling up and progressing to become a Jedi/Sith (I didn't start off as that I had to complete numerous quests and fetch quests and so much time to actually hold a lightsaber it was honestly annoying) and had an alternate character, a Trader. Had a nice Lil medium house out in Tattooine that was decorated out the wazoo for visiting players who wanted to purchase my wares and I'd advertise with NPCs in the nearby towns. Eventually, creature breeders/handlers got added, and that was a new form of crafting and taming that was tons of fun.

[@Pandamaniac]

I genuinely hope that they only sell a curated list of ships post 1.0 for people to get started, but other than that ships are earned in-game.

[@fueler5479]

I wanted to play SWG, but as a young Australian i didn't have a credit card and WoW sold game time packs localy while SWG didn't have game cards availabe here until after NGE.

[@mrmattdoesstuff]

Polaris Expedition Package when? 👀

[@Ryecrash617]

I loved SWG in it's prime and Star Citizen is the closest I've been able to play since. I know I'll never replace the ITEC on the Tarquinas server, but maybe we'll get kinda close.

[@astromonkey2]

This is so fun because ive been a "White Knight" for SC but now I get to crap on Galaxies. Granted this was early days Star Wars Galaxies as I was a beta tester for it (still have my beta disks). I really think the comparisons are being viewed through rose tinted glasses (not just for graphics but for game play too). The crafting was awesome as you could create an item, say a pistol, and make something with the best ingredients you could get and it would be fun for you and your friends but if you really wanted a good pistol you were seeking out the weapon crafters that had access to Krayt Dragon bits (i don't remember what the part was called) to put into the pistol to make it "meta" before I had ever heard anyone use that word in that way. I, myself, made less-than-legal substances and doing well with it until food got a buff (without the de-buffs) and my business dried up over night. Also this was a long time ago in the history of Star Wars as an IP. Sure now a days we've had characters like the Mandalorian and shows like Rogue One and Andor that gave us non-Jedi characters that were interesting but when this came out we were 2/3 of the way through the prequels and this game was set in a time period that had no Jedi, I think since there has been a few retconned in there but at the very least it was during a near extinction event for Jedi. It never made sense to me. Like why the fuck would you want to play a star wars game without Jedi. Hell I favored the Han Solo type but still wanted to at least group up with Jedi or whatever. So they added the Jedi but to become one you had to RNG your way through the professions to "unlock" it. So you had to MASTER being a chef - Nope, MASTER being a dancer - Nope, MASTER being a bounty hunter - Nope, etc etc. I think the closest WoW thing would be to have to max level alts until you unlock some badass fairly OP class. I think the profession-to-Jedi system was a response to the fanbase complaining about the lack of Jedi in a star wars game but the developer had no idea how to put them in with out being godlike among non Jedi players. I think the lesson from all of this is that CIG can learn some things from SW: Galaxies but not that much more than they can learn from any other game that has similar gameplay. Also lets keep in mind that this was Sony running Galaxies and if they felt like there was an environment where they could sell us ships and whatnot (2003) they ABSOLUTELY would.

[@IrisCorven]

@@astromonkey2 I don't see how anything you said is a negative, in regards to the parts SC is lifting. The Hologrind was meant to be hard. It was meant to limit the jedi to the few folks who were dedicated enough to do what you said. It took months of grinding, and most gave up before they got it. Hell, that was the whole point - deter people from wanting a Jedi by making it a pain in the ass. And why play a Star Wars game without Jedi? Because the universe was great. Because there were bit players, and a living universe that existed and went on without Jedi. An interesting melting pot of ideas, and professions, and races. A thing Disney proven with the success of stuff like Andor and Mandalorian, over the sequels. I mean hell, by that reasoning, why play Star Citizen if you're only interested in the dogfighting/mining/trading?... The only thing applicable to SC is the crafting/resource/economy system. And that's what SWG got right. And that's not said through "rose-tinted glasses", as you say - I *still* play OG SWG on an emulator, and the only thing holding it back from being as good as it was is the player count. Too many people either don't know about it, or don't want to deal with the hassle of setting up the client. The game itself is still solid, progression feels rewarding, and the feeling interactivity and socialization, and reliance on the other players, creating a true community? Still unparalleled.

[@TiltedTortle]

Terras Shmar'Bin, Bothan Master Ranger of Mos Benzin north of Mos Entha on the Tarquinas Server. Odo, Vlad, Dathi, Naomi... I hope you are well and i think of you often! o7

[@dannyfranklin9983]

This is a reason why I'm excited for the merchantman. It won't be a normal ship.

[@aniceguyinablackhat]

The main issue with the new inventory system for me is having to move a ton of items to my home station because I have to go to the station to buy crates that are big enough to hold all my items then fly them back to the planet and manually load each individual fucking item into the crates and then go through the same shit for unloading because the move all function doesn't work for loading crates.

[@TorstenGalle]

Hello. I think a lot of people now own these big ships like an 890, Polaris, Idris, etc. and it will be difficult to staff them with a full crew if everyone wants to fly their own ship. I'm curious about the effectiveness of Blades and NPC characters. Let's see how they'll sort it out.

[@yesthehandymancan]

Depends if the game takes off with a bigger following. I think generally people with pledge ships will be more valuable the others in orgs

[@georgesliker5087]

Wow great pod cast

[@MrGraphite]

Nothing makes me more nostalgic as talking about SWG.

[@TomHuitema-dp1zb]

They should make a mission where you have to stop enemies from entering an area for 30 to 40 minutes with increasing difficulty.

[@paranoidepiphany]

One reason (of several) for the NGE being brought into SWG was that SOE felt the dev team had to spend too much time endlessly balancing and rebalancing the combat professions for PvP. Anyone who remembers the Swordsman/Doctor meta knows what I mean.

[@marty2129]

Damn, I 'd love me some Star Wars MMO built on Star Citizen base. Set in the old Star Wars Expanded Universe/Star Wars Legends, of course...

[@Legion_Victrix]

Morph should horizontaly flip his background and then it would look even more as if it was the same room behind, just mirrored

[@dmitrit.4862]

I guess making a review of the Bengal will be quite a hussle. For those who didn't know, that ship's interior is roughly three to four times the size of a Battlefield 4 map.

[@santobell]

If the Devs/Execs at SOE had left it alone it would likely still be running today. Such a good game, sadly missed!

[@adrianbarreto4225]

CIG Should use a landed Polaris Interior as the map site for a ground FPS match in arena commander

[@WishIknewwhatthiswas]

With regard to crew: When the gameplay is more diversified for the non-pilots there will be plenty of people who don't want to be pilots. I play a lot of DCS and I prefer to be a RIO / WSO / NFO if the opportunity is there since I can always fly on my own.

[@TheRealNimble]

I am hoping that in the grand scale of things most people are spending less than $100 on the game and the influx of new players as we close on 1.0 will mean lots of people who only have small ships or people who want to crew. For me the Polaris was a purchase for my friend group who can spend $45-$80 on a game, but aren’t going buy expensive joysticks and accessories to get the best pilot experience and are all happy to have a big ship we can crew together. My friends who don’t fly should have plenty to do in the ship and on the ground and my friends who do want to fly can park their fighters right in the hangar and we can have a blast together.

[@TheRealNimble]

I think the feeling of everyone has a Polaris is from our own group aka people who are heavily invested into the game are the only people around right now. Most everyone I know who isn’t invested has seen how broken it was a long time ago and aren’t really going to touch the game until it’s actually fun. My Hopium is 4.0 is the start of regular or more casual gamers to return.

[@LimeCrushSoda]

Aim down sights was in medal of honour first! Those games were awesome!

[@dekulruno]

Jurassic Park: Trespasser had it in 1998, it was a pretty niche game but they put in a ton of guns, Medal of Honor was 1999 Goldeneye 007 in 1997 had a kind of hybrid aim mode where you got a slight zoom and a crosshairs but it didn’t actually look down the sights

[@dosaltizmo3421]

1:19:59 am i the only one imagining something beyond capital class like a "nation class" that the bengal and other future ships like it would be in

[@redrumcoke2363]

01:11:33 The more that game professions interconnect and impact/rely upon each other, the more the gameplay itself will actually sell the game and the less the bottom lie will depend 100% on ship sales. People will engage for longer, and a burgeoning player economy will help to sustain the game. Morph and Tomato nail it here. Let's hope CIG does, as well.

[@j.d.4697]

Ironically there was not enough testing.

[@JaleTechAndGaming]

Monetization is my biggest question. How are they going to keep the 100Million+ a year they need to keep going without mass layoffs? There really needs to be in-game only content once the game launches to shoot for. When you have a big disposable income, it's easier to swipe than spend time. "Do I want to spend 60hrs to grind for it, or do I want to spend 5hrs worth of money to get it?"

[@BalokLives]

"They updated the quality of the Bengal". Did anyone see that they removed the directional thruster animation on the Hornet in the S42 video? I've been commenting about this, but nobody has responded. It's really too bad because I think that was an important attribute of Star Citizen and S42.

[@augustwest9727]

The exact cause of the Death of SWG (I lived it): it was the introduction of the NGE (New Game Enhancement). Before, about 2 months before the NGE (New Game Enhancements) there was an in-game patch called the Combat Upgrade, completely overhauled the ground based combat with the exception they kept it turned based. With the NGE, it was only a few months after the CU; it was also COMPLETELY unannounced. The problems with the NGE was 1. Completely unannounced 2. Changed ground based combat to twitch based combat 3. Changed the professions in game from 32 to 6. 4. Made Jedi completely unlocked and just playable (imagine grinding for 2 years to unlock the jedi slot just to have it unlocked for everyone a month later. The community went into an absolute RAGE for almost a year, demanding they change it back. SOE never did, that is what actually killed SWG, its when i quit the game. I will never forgive Sony for the death of this game! Its also why ive never owned a PlayStation!

[@rhetor4mentor13]

I love Morph's T-shirt!

[@robertchandler2063]

15:09 kind of disappointed you didn’t know the camera works to reflect you in the bathroom

[@dchippie]

For me SWG was the best game for me . I loved the crafting and selling my stuff

[@Sparky_007]

Gold Sellers: The best way to at least curb this is to make various rewards and items tied (soulbound) to the player where the player cannot directly buy the item, but must quest(do missions) and earn Reputation to be able to acquire the item. High-end exotic/rare blueprints, for example, should only be acquirable by means of playing the game. Sure, $$ and buying credits with real-world money may help you along the journey to get the item. But ultimately you need to earn the item in game and have it be tied to your player (not re-sellable). If they allow ANYTHING to be bought by credits, and those ITEMS give very clear and distinct advantages to dominate in the game, then you've successfully started to kill your game. If they follow anywhere close to the path of the GAMIGO game model, then it's the beg of the end. They need to ensure they don't screw their game over.

[@Metro636]

SWG was the golden age of MMOs for me. So much fun. What I hope Star citizen takes from SWG most is the strong support for social interactions, both on the ORG and individual character levels, and the crafting and resource gathering aspects of the game. Based on what was discussed as CitCon this year looks like the devs responsible for base building, resource gathering, and crafting are taking some cues from SWG.

[@skankhunt9078]

I want be crewman of Polaris provided the stipend is good. Also i would need room and board provided of course and also permanent access to my personal rifle. I dont want the armory to be locked.. Yes then it would be excellent

[@gamingduology4757]

One big about that time is gaming was the lack of internet content. Every game these days will be date mined or have a KZbin make a how to make the best item. Idk how they can make a game where a crafter is the best on a server .