When I leaped back into Star Wars Galaxies via the SWG Legends rogue server mid-2018, I didn’t really truly think I’d stay all that long, since the earlier, more classic SWG Emu hadn’t held my attention consistently. But I was wrong. Legends has since become my MMO home as its original version once was, and I am playing just as much as I was back before it was shut down all those years ago. In fact, I’m pretty much playing the same types of characters too: The vast majority of my game time is spent as a pure crafter and trader, most of all on my Chef. (Fun fact: I am not a great cook in real life.) It might sound odd to folks who grew up as murderhobos in MMOs, but I seldom pull my Smuggler out to fight unless I need to hunt creature lairs for resources (after all, SWG’s combat isn’t really the best, and if I just wanted combat, I’d play something else!).
What SWG does offer that makes an emu worth playing over most of the other more legit options out on the market is a substantial emphasis on crafting and economy gameplay, the late-game version of which is surely opaque to anyone who’s never done it or even dipped a toe in the game. Since so many people have asked about this and so few people seem to be covering it from this angle, I thought it’d be fun to dig in with a video to demo how it all works, from harvesters and factories to experimentation and surveying to vendors and even SWG Aide and my own personal spreadsheet.
A few caveats: I’m literally doing a walkthrough of econ gameplay here; it’s not exciting or flashy. It is a super-long video. This is a video with piles of spreadsheets, tools, math, and talking. No mobs were harmed in the making of this video, although I did get a migraine trying to mask out all of the PID! This one is for the folks who really want the details and might want to come back to specific segments later. Feel free to skip around – or skip it entirely if it’s just not for you, no hard feelings. But even if you never play SWG, it might be worth it to see how in-depth MMORPG crafting can go – and why crafters are expecting so much out of the next generation of sandboxes.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
03:11 SWG Aide and the resource system
11:31 Spreadsheets in space
14:58 Shop tour, mail, and inventory
18:49 Houses and factory downloads
22:29 Player vendors
26:15 The bazaar
31:37 Buffs, crafting, and experimentation
43:14 Factory uploads
48:02 Survey droids and submitting resources
60:09 Surveying and harvesting
69:27 Multicrafting, specialization, and newbies
75:49 Outtro
Happy to answer any questions anyone has, though once the comments are archived, you’ll have to send us an email!
The MMORPG genre might be “working as intended,” but it can be so much more. Join Massively Overpowered Editor-in-Chief Bree Royce in her Working As Intended column for editorials about and meanderings through MMO design, ancient history, and wishful thinking. Armchair not included.
I sadly never played SWG back in the day, and only started checking out a (pre-CU) rogue server two days ago. (And spent a lot of time with it, since we are currently not supposed to got out unless absolutely necessary anyway).
But I did previously play a few games that were more or less inspired by UO and SWG’s crafting, and I read Raph Kosters’ books and am very excited for his new company and game – and therefore I always wanted to check out SWG’s crafting in person.
To me that part of having regular customers, having supply chains, people relying on each other, and working together in an interconnected economy network is whats really important and makes sandbox MMO’s feel special – while the actual mechanical details, as long as they support that, seem secondary.
Being just a small fry that sells some shirts on some backwater planet seems a lot more exciting and rewarding to me than supposedly being the chosen one, the big hero who saves the entire universe from absolute evil and destruction – as long as there are just a few other players who genuinely need those shirts and are happy that someone sells them. It’s a small impact, but a real impact on real people and I’ll take that over that fake huge galaxy-saving “impact” any day.
SWG does achieve this goal (regular customers, supply chains, relying on each other, interconnected network, feeling special, real impact, etc.) with flying colors. A certain complexity is of course necessary to achieve this, but at the same time parts of its mechanical details do feel rather unnecessarily obtuse, making the life of a crafter somewhat a pain, and necessitating the help of tools like SWGAide and custom Excel sheets and requiring hours of playtime each single day to just check in on your harvesters.
So my big question to you (or anyone who understands those mechanical details on a much deeper level as I do) – would be if those same goals (as mentioned above) could not be achieved in a slightly less time-consuming fashion?
For example, watching the video I do get the impression that those randomly occurring and depleting resources cause a lot of difficulty.
Knowing which resource is available at which place with which stats, and then trying to get and stockpile as much of it as you can – does that really help with that goal of player interdependency? The fact that people use five characters (possibly even multiple accounts) to drop as many harvesters as they can – is that “better” than lets say, a system what would encourage people to secure a steady flow of “just enough” resources?
In the post-mortems, this random resource system is described as a method of planned obsolescence, making sure that schematics/blue prints eventually expire.
But I think the same effect could be achieved in other ways, like for example by making schematics single-use (factory uses it up) – and then making the factory loose durability over time through wear and tear, and eventually break. There surely are many other ways to do this as well – which don’t require players to painstakingly keep track of thousands of randomly changing resources.
That’s just one single example that occurred to me while watching the (great) video. I’m pretty sure you are aware of many more and even better such examples, where things could be made a bit less tedious and time-consuming for the player (and thus being more welcoming for a larger audience), without sacrificing that goal mentioned above, or loosing any other wanted benefits.
Ideas?
I don’t really disagree with you on the topic of there being too many resources in the game. I kinda wish Legends would remove the 2X resource gain modifier – but I also suspect there would be riots. The modifier is there in part to create that abundance, to encourage people who have a lot to sell off chunks to new players, but also to discourage people from cheating (and it is cheating here) with multiple accounts. The stockpiling isn’t the biggest problem, though; it’s time. It doesn’t matter if I have 8M fruit; factory time (and personal time) is still the much bigger limiting reagent. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gathered a ton of resources only to have something better spawn two weeks later. All the earlier stuff gets passed along to newcomers who missed out – in trade. That’s how I got started myself!
But I do think the resource system is there to reward people who are playing the crafting (or rangering) game rather than a different part of the game. It is meant to be complex and time-consuming, just as complex and time-consuming as mastering piloting or running tparks, rather than something you can just swap to and make everything you need in a day. I don’t see a good way around it, and I kinda don’t want to. The resource system is what stops everyone from doing enough of everything to make everyone else unnecessary, then get bored a week later and quit. It’s not that kind of game.
And like I was saying in the video, there are plenty of things to do in the game if you don’t have that much time to spend, even crafts. Architects, tailors, droid engineers, even some armorsmiths, they’ll all be able to make a lot of stuff with grind resources (I did that for years and years on my alt server, never tracked a single resource there, just casually harvested what spawned near my house and made gobs of cash). Heck, even people who sell resources and make nothing do well in this game, and you can show up tomorrow and make tips selling ent buffs on a day-old toon. :) I think the wide range of supported playstyles is what makes SWG so amazing. I wouldn’t want to see the resource endgame crushed just to flatten the more challenging crafts.
Oh no, please don’t misunderstand me – that is not what I’m saying at all…
I’ve played some indie sandbox MMO, that had even more complex crafting in some ways. Fixed resources that don’t reroll – but a large number of them and with 50 different quality-levels each. And the recipe-chain from raw material to finished product was very long with many intermediate components and entire professions dedicated to making those.
That system had some huge problems – and it too was based on available personal play-time being the main limiting factor. But in that game you spent most of your play-time trying to get higher quality materials (whacking those ores manually with your pickaxe) – as opposed to spending time checking in on harvesters and factories and checking all the planets for what materials are currently available there.
Not saying that this was better – it wasn’t – but it was VERY different in terms of where your time went, and still achieved that same important feeling of doing something that actually matters to some other players. Imho it too had that *magic* that makes sandboxes with player-driven economies so great. So there are vastly different ways to achieve that.
I always thought – that SWG with it’s factories that run while you can be offline, and only have to be tended to every now and then – has a system in place that can very well limit the output of a single player, by requiring large amounts of production time – but not actual play time. An actual solution that allows players to be moderately successful crafters, even if they can’t invest tons and tons of free time.
After watching your video I somehow feel like some of those time-savings are then (unnecessarily) lost again to pure inconvenience.
Great video Bree :)
I’ve recently had to pull back from SWG Legends and I hate that I had to do that. I feel like I cut off my arm because I can’t log in and restock my store – but between pursuing an MBA, working full-time, and other commitments, I just couldn’t justify the time commitment that was needed.
I think that’s something that people don’t realize – in games with decent crafting, crafting is a time commitment. I would spend an hour every day checking for new resources and moving harvesters around, and then 3-6 hours a week (that’s one or two full play sessions) restocking things for my store generally. I actually ran into a problem in Legends where I couldn’t keep up with consumer demand. There are (sadly) very few people crafting seriously in Legends and so the ones that do are constantly mobbed because they develop a good reputation.
I really wish more MMOs would give real thought to enabling crafting as a pillar of their game world. There have been so few MMOs that have treated it as anything more than a fluff side game. Maybe I was spoiled by SWG, Vanguard, EVE, and some other titles – but I’m at the point now where if an MMO doesn’t at least have the potential for deep, engaging, and meaningful crafting, I won’t even try it.
Thank you Bree, i watched the whole video, and you are right, complex old games are hard to explain in few minutes.
The unbundlung of MMOs meant there are games made for crafting but do not provide the whole MMO world and systems, many current MMOs today have simplistic crafting system where you gather or buy mats then press a button to craft, there is no thinking in the process, some of them add a game which makes it a little better.
The other thing the video reminds me of is the role-playing, if there is an MMO with deep crafting system then this is the role i will play, i would not mind combat because i enjoy doing that from time to time, but i’ll spend my time crafting and making a name for myself so people buy my wares.
Socializing is talking with people and making deals with them, selling them stuff and buying from them, maybe join an alliance or a guild of crafters and merchants, non of that is group content but it is socializing.
Ah the memories. I’d forgotten about that Free Resource Crate thing for looking up stats on stuff. I remember it was really a royal PITA to use but so worth it to not have to go find things, esp. for the creature resources. Back in the day I was a regular contributor to SWG Craft website for my server and usually checked the resources every day as part of my normal routine. I don’t remember SWG Aide doing as much back then, but maybe I just didn’t use it’s full functionality since I had my own spreadsheets to do a lot of that stuff by the time it came out.
Thanks for the video! And you should totally do one about how you go about farming creature stuff next time there’s something good up that you’re going to be farming anyway. :)
This is wild! This game has a crazy amount of depth in its crafting. I never understood the draw of doing crafting, but Villagers and Heroes has changed my mind. It doesn’t even hold a candle to this. The restriction on what professions you can hold at one time always frustrated me. I like being able to change my “hobbies” for my main character I am playing just to get a change of scenery. Btw I watched the whole video in 2 sittings (45 minute sittings).
Thankyou for the video!
Great info there, and a great version of SWG. Thanks for your effort. Looking forward to any more SWG videos you do.
I’ve recently come back to SWG after being very disgruntled with the poor offerings of current AAA games. There is simply nothing like the SWG experience. Such good memories.
As a side note, any chance of sharing what UI mod you are using… and maybe some blank versions of your spreadsheets? :)
Thanks again for your content!
Heya Grax! People have collected all the mods in this big ol’ thread (I think you have to be logged into the forum to see it). The one I use is called PreCU UI Addon Pack Mod, but it’s the one embedded inside the ModSourceUI pack, which actually recently got an update that I need to check out! But yeah this is one I just won’t play without. The NGE UI is so fugly. :D
For my spreadsheet, I’ll have to think about how to wipe it and make it useful for more than just me, without taking credit – because the original wasn’t made by me either, so I’d kinda feel bad distributing it publicly without permission. I will say I did a quick search this morning and it looks like a lot of the old tools are still kicking around online, on SWGcraft too!
Awesome, thankyou very much! :)
Good stuff, Bree. Thank you! I have a domestics and structures trader currently. Mostly I use them for playing dress-up and decorating, but have been slowly collecting higher-grade resources for food/drink creation. The guides couldn’t have come at a better time!
I used to contribute a lot to this site on current resources post NGE as I was a a master architect and that requires a lot of resources and lots of surveying.
http://www.swgcraft.co.uk/dev/current_resources.php?server=138&planet=0
It seems to be still going with the emu servers listed as well.
Yep! Aide pulls from the few sites like that one still going, and it’s got its own site too!
Did someone say spreadsheets and math?!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
*runs away*
Even though I dont play SWG nor is a games economy / crafting anywhere close to my preferred way to play an mmo I am still going to give this a watch.
I find taking the time to see things from another persons perspective gives me a more balanced view on any subject not just games and mmos. So while non of this will ever be something I will ever do it will at least offer me some insight on those folk that do which is never a bad thing.
Thank you Bree for taking the time to put this together.