Everyone wants to be a Jedi

But that’s a problem. If everyone is a Jedi it just won’t be cool anymore - and just think about what will happen to the eBay prices.

SOE / Lucas Arts' way round this is the biggest buzz here at the SWG Fan Fest right now.

The solution is stunningly simple – limit the number of high level Jedi. The system, called Force Ranking, will have a pyramid structure with a fixed number of places. Players holding top positions are expected to be the hard core of the hard core - miss a few days of play you will most likely loose your position. Light Side Jedi are expected to vote for positions, Dark Side fight for them. The dev’s commented that the Light Side politics could get really ugly.

The extra-game economic outcome of this looks like it will become effectively impossibly to sell the most valuable characters. Top Jedi will be far from anonymous and highly skilled in technical and social side of the game, what’s more players without the skill or dedication just won’t be able to play at the highest level.

Update: I asked a dev panel about whether the new system was an anti-eBay idea – they did not exactly answer this but seemed to appreciate the effect that it could have. An interesting point that one brought up was the way that it sits outside the general paradigm of a persistent world i.e. in worlds you generally progress. The down side of simple progression is that it creates virtual-artefacts that are tradable, the highly dynamic system means that the value of a character drops massively if it traded. The issue is whether people will accept the level of continual dedication that playing at the highest level will require – we will see.

Comments

[Cory Ondrejka]

1.

Not to be cynical -- OK, to be indredibly cynical -- but votes may be cheaper than full characters :-)! Does Sony have plans to make the voting transparent or will back-room deals, cabals, votings blocks, &c rule the "light side" Jedi?

How amusing that the "dark side" Jedi may have by far the friendlier of the two progression schemes!

[Ren]

2.

Cory>How amusing that the "dark side" Jedi may have by far the friendlier of the two progression schemes!

In a sense politics is always dirtier than war.

[Ren]

3.

Cory
>but votes may be cheaper than full characters :-)! Does Sony have plans to make the voting transparent or will back-room deals, cabals, votings blocks, &c rule the "light side" Jedi?

I think the way round this is the voting population is pretty much a peer group i.e. other uber-Jedi. Moreover this is on a cross-shard basis – so there is going to be a lot of guild politics in this too. I could be wrong but I think at this level of game play people are going to be caring way more about status that money. Also the system seems to be very dynamic - you get killed in PvP then you will suddenly loose your right to have a seat on the council.

Generally I think that if someone tried to pay other power-gamers so that they ranked higher than them it would mean that that player could pretty much quit the server if not the game, certainly the degree to which they might by hunted down by other PvPers would make the game pretty unplayable – but its interesting to see what the result will be.

[Luca Girardo]

4.

I was not able to find many details about the new Jedi system (like here and here.

So there are 11 council ranks for the Light side and for the Dark side per shard plus rank 0 with no limitation number.
Lets assume 10 (or 20) per rank we have 200 (400) players involved in the jedi system per shard (without taking in consideration the players at rank 0). It seems to be a large number but with an increasing number of jedies, it is reasonable to assume with the time more and more jedies will be unlocked.

One thing it is not clear to me is how the voting system works for the Light Side. Who will be able to vote?

It is interesting to see what mechanisms will be in place to avoid the misuse of the system (both the duel and the voting one) as large guilds could try to block the access to some levels in the ranks.

[magicback]

5.

Anyone remember playing the Druid Class (and I think the Monk class too) in the old AD&D? I'm getting flashbacks that I'm sure the devs had during the development of this system.

This system is a great way to keep the fans playing as it incorporate the ladder system of online FPS gaming and the competitive levelling of MMORPGs. Combined with Perma-death, this gameplay will please the hardest of hardcore PvP-ers.

IMO, players now have a meaningful MMORPG endgame. A Hero's Journey is now more heroic and the perma-death of a high-ranked Jedi may have server-wide effects.

Good for Raph and SWGs!

Economically, I think this action will increase the value of Force Sensitive and Level 0 Jedi characters.

I wish I had the time to level up a Jedi :)

Frank

[Luca Girardo]

6.

There are also some distant similarities with the "Faction System" in Ultima Online. One of the critical features is the rate of the decaying points that allows a player to keep the achieved rank. A too high decaying rate would mean short term rank changes and becoming quickly a disappointing experience. A slow decaying rate would make rank changes slower and again being a disappointing experience. What is the ideal decaying rate? 7 Days for a rank? 14 days? I suppose the problem can be extended to other game mechanisms where a decaying rate has to be defined.
One thing that I find intriguing is that the Jedi system is based on PvP system. But parallel to the PvP system (Dark vs. light) there is also the internal rank subsystem and while the Dark side ranking system uses a similar based again in PvP (duel), the Light side uses the election system. It could be interesting to see what sides the player will prefer, if a mixture between PvP and political subsystems to be more successful then a pure PvP system.

[Raph Koster]

7.

I had nothing to do with it, this is all the Live team at work. :)

[Tobold]

8.

But the main question remains unanswered: How do you become a level 0 Jedi? The current system, in which you have to master and then forget many different jobs, ranks highly in the "most stupid MMORPG ideas of all times", and is supposedly going to be replaced.

But I doubt you will be able to select "Jedi" at initial character selection in the future. There will still need to be some sort of process how to open up a force sensitive slot.

I think a lot of people would like to "be" a Jedi, but would be content with Jedi level 0, not striving to become head of the Jedi council.

[magicback]

9.

Raph,

Good for the Live Time, SWG and you too :)

Tobold,

My understanding is that getting the force sensitive character slot allow you to level up a separate Jedi character while keeping your main character intact. This means doing what you did with your first character over again. But then you won't lose your professions in you first character.

Of course you can loss your professions and skils with the first character as you describe it and quickly fill the slots up with force powers.

Players who qualify to be a Jedi, but don't want lose their professions, will probably just level up a Jedi as a secondary character.

In this way, there is a system that allows for a greater Jedi population, but lower visibility as befit the era. The only Jedi that show up in game will be the hardcore jedi. It's a nice and elegant design.

Frank

[Alan Stern]

10.

I'm still fuzzy on the details. What are the benefits of having your char in the upper echelons? More force powers? Better ones? Stronger ones? Is this a limit on the total number of Jedi chars or a limit on the higher-level ones?

[Luca Girardo]

11.

Following what is on the official site:Ranked Jedi on each side will posses incredible multipliers to their Force and lightsaber abilities. Should a Jedi lose rank they will also lose these skill multipliers. An example of Rank multipliers would have something similar; Force Healing will heal more and cost less Force for ranked Light Jedi, whereas Force Lightning will deal more damage and cost less Force for ranked Dark Jedi

There is a limit on the higher-level ones:
...There are 11 council ranks for the Light side and for the Dark side. Each rank will have a limited number of players that may earn these titles. In addition, there will be an unlimited amount of non-ranked or zero-level Force Ranked Jedi. This enables those players for PvP and the right to work their way up the Force Ranking ladder.

[Alan Stern]

12.

Thanks a lot Luca!

After reading through those two I now wish I had enough time to go back to SWG and work on a force-sensitive (FS) char.

Two additional factual observations from the Jedi Archives: Looks like Jedi perma-death will be gone once the system goes live. The replacement will be a jedi-exp penalty on death. Also, instead of or in addition to (sounds like instead of to me) the mastering-professions method of opening a FS slot, players will be able to quest for the FS slot. BUT, what really bothers me is the line that says something like "the new questing system will take longer." Longer than mastering a mess (3 I think?) of professions? That scares me. That also reinforces my choice to drop SWG, despite my desire to wield a lightsaber.

[Ren]

13.

Frank>My understanding is that getting the force sensitive character slot allow you to level up a separate Jedi character while keeping your main character intact.

Not too much was said about this at the Fan Fest, other than there will be a set of quests that will take you along the path of the Jedi.

The team sounded very excited about these and suggested that they were going somewhere that no other MMO has gone before. What I take from this is that they feel they have some how broken the ‘all quests are Fed-Ex’ paradigm. The so called hologrind was such a pain that almost anything else will be welcome, but from the other things I saw e.g. the new Jedi system generally, the space expansion (‘Jump to Light Speed’ – one word here ‘amazing!’); I have a feeling they really might have done something interesting.

Though with WoW breathing down their neck I guess commercially they need to pull a few stops out to prevent people running to the new shiny thing.

[Staarkhand]

14.

I predict few of the top tier dark Jedi will be operated by a single player. This is always very discouraging to dedicated solo players who can't compete on their own as well as more casual players without powerhouse guild support.

Light side politics will be very interesting, with various guilds emerging to support their representatives. This will lead to interesting power struggles on various levels in and out of game.

It will be interesting to see how players' preference for the light vs. dark ranking systems will affect numbers and participation in the Galactic Civil War. (My understanding is dark Jedi will automatically be overt Imperials, and light Jedi's rebels.) For example, PvPers may be drawn to the Dark side increasing their numbers but dilluting their % of players doing GCW quests, leading to more victories by the Rebs, assuming a system similar to the current is used.

I agree that this will cause a renewed interest in Jedi accounts, as would any change/improvements of this magnitude, but we'll have to see how easy the new quest system is to the average player vs. the current hologrind - that is, will the increased supply outweigh the increased demand, especially after the initial transient. My hunch is yes.

[Ren]

15.

Luca > It could be interesting to see what sides the player will prefer, if a mixture between PvP and political subsystems to be more successful then a pure PvP system.

It will be interesting to see what _type_ make it to highest levels. It might draw uber-socilises on one side and uber-PvPers on the other (though all Jedi is heavily PvP).

But then there is question of the RP angle. I’m not heavily into RP, but I play an Imperial character and so would go Dark Jedi – there is no way I would join the Reb side (they are criminals after all (actually I have another character that was going Reb but now I’m in an Imperial guild on my main shard, I just can’t bring myself to do it)).

I wonder what degree of immersion in the over all story arc the high-Jedi have, will they simply be power gamers that are just interested in the numbers or will they have committed fully to the story arc.

Is there a hybrid power-RP'er type that this might unearth?

[Tobold]

16.

>> Players who qualify to be a Jedi, but don't want lose their professions, will probably just level up a Jedi as a secondary character.

Frank,

I was referring to the current way to achieve the FS slot, which requires you to master several professions in a given order. As you do not have the points to master all of these professions at the same time, you need to master one, unlearn it, master the next, and so on.

Not only is it very unsatisfying to have to unlearn your recently mastered profession just to be able to master the next one, you are also forced to master some professions that you don't like at all. Imagine somebody who likes shooting stuff being forced to master Image Designer.

[Dan Scheltema]

17.

It's not three professions for force-sensitive unlocking, it's four, and one of
those you find by.... using the force (guessing). The other three you can identify using holocrons. I hear stories of people mastering 15 professions.

Or that's my understanding of it. I haven't yet completed my first holo profession, though I have a lot of triple master characters.

[magicback]

18.

Tobold,

I see what you are talking about. The old system is being replaced with a quest system, which appears to be longer than the old system (goodness!).

So, once this system goes live, it's will be an established grind instead of random guessing.

Ren,

The PvP gameplay is probably based on RvR at the core: Dark vs Light, Imperials vs Rebels, while trying to avoid bounty hunters.

The second level is PvP within each realm for rank. Darks will duel it out and Light will be more democratic and vote for rank. I can imagine situations where there is a deadlock in the voting and light-sided Jedi resorts to dueling it out as an easy method to solve disputes.

Other than the force multipler, I wonder whether higher-ranked Jedi will have other bonuses other than being able to get deeper into the enclave and perhaps better Jedi robes.

Frank

[magicback]

19.

FYI,

An article on ATiTD on Stratics that gives insight on how the social PvP dynamic of the light side may work. It's also a good interview with Andrew Tipper, the main developer, about the second telling of ATiTD.

And crossing over to the tread that was about the clinical view of game addicition which evolved in to thoughts about the Hero's Quest, the article also gives insights about the design approach with an end game, an atonement stage.

http://www.stratics.com/content/interviews/atitd/interviews/june2004.php

So, perhaps we, humans, need emotional tension and closure: PvP and End Game, respectively as such devices.

Frank

[Luca Girardo]

20.

From the ATiTD interview with Andrew Tepper:
..For serious (exploit) bugs, or server crashes, my personal cell phone number is available: 1-412-973-7914. More than 50,000 people have that cell phone number, and surprisingly, I've gotten a grand total of 8 inappropriate calls in the 1+ year that Tale 1 has been running. ..

I would have expected a higher rate of inappropriate calls. It raises questions about the role of developers within MMOGs and how they are seen by players. In other threads it has been reported that players are ready to put their life in danger for playing a MMOG (scaring addiction), how does that influence the player-developer interaction? What is the best and successful interaction mode?

[Bart]

21.

I'm commenting in the blind here since I don't play the game...

What happens when a high level Jedi gets killed in PvP? Does he lose rank? How long does it take to re-build your Jedi character back to the rank you once held?

The reason I ask is due to the out-flux of people from UO once stat loss was implemented. Maxed out characters who either PK'd, or simply killed other, aggravating players, ended up leaving the game in herds once they realized some of their harder-to-obtain-stats had went down 10 points. I guess I'm envisioning the same possibility here: a jedi dies, and is so distraught he/she decides to quit the game and give up the account. Then again, if the acct. is still Jedi, I assume most people would stick with it since there are only X% of Jedi's on each server, correct?

Feeling out of the SWG loop...

[ren]

22.

Bart > What happens when a high level Jedi gets killed in PvP? Does he lose rank? How long does it take to re-build your Jedi character back to the rank you once held?

Not sure on exactly the points system that they are using, but if you get killed in PvP then its not a good thing, also if you don't log, it's not a good thing. They are getting people to play on the sort of ongoing beta (Test Center) so that they can flex the points and ratios and stuff.

I mean what is a reasonable time for somone at that level not to log on - 1day, 1week?

ren

[Tobold]

23.

Luca> I would have expected a higher rate of inappropriate calls. It raises questions about the role of developers within MMOGs and how they are seen by players. In other threads it has been reported that players are ready to put their life in danger for playing a MMOG (scaring addiction), how does that influence the player-developer interaction? What is the best and successful interaction mode?

I would guess that it is a lot easier to post a thread on a message board insulting a developer as a moron, than picking up a phone and telling him. Face to face the player-developer interaction would even be more polite.

It is a pity that the anonymity of the internet brings out the worst forms of communication. This is very obvious when the same game is available in otherwise identical form both in a face-to-face and in an internet version, like Magic the Gathering. The face-to-face version of Magic is a thousand times more polite than MtGO.

I am sure that developers on an EQ Fan Fair are treated with a lot more respect than they were on the old whineplay EQ message boards. Obviously that form of communication has other disadvantages, in cost and effort, but it probably can't be beat in matters of mutual respect and politeness.

[ren]

24.

Luca wrote:
>>More than 50,000 people have that cell phone number, and surprisingly,
>>I've gotten a grand total of 8 inappropriate calls in the 1+ year that Tale 1 has been running. ..
>I would have expected a higher rate of inappropriate calls.

Mmm, three points.

First, from my experience of ATITD (I’ve been playing on and off for about a year) the player base is a very particular group, the initial ‘wot no killing’ means that many who try the game don’t get past the free trial. The people who do stay are pretty much there to build a better Egypt.

Second, Teppy in his guise as Pharaoh (not forgetting Josh / Nekhmet) is a pretty active player in the and out of the game. He hosts events, just kinda turns up randomly, monitors the boards, runs IRC sessions – so if you want to abuse him its pretty easy to do so.

Third, not sure about the 50k figure, well the number has not been posted on TN so most of the known world have it now . A better comparison might be to look at player base, ATITD has (I think) about 2k active players – if we compare this with a biggie with say 500k players, then taking the same ‘crank call : player’ ratio, we would get a rate of 2k crank calls a year.

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25.

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[cetirizine-hcl]

26.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

[Don]

27.

Games are supposed to be fun my friends, but I believe that with such a strict new way of governing Jedi people are going to become a little over obsessed and withdrawn.

[Don]

28.

Games are supposed to be fun my friends, but I believe that with such a strict new way of governing Jedi people are going to become a little over obsessed and withdrawn.

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29.

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