What's Next for SWG Restoration

Hello there, Restoration!

I’m extremely pleased to reintroduce myself today as the new Lead Developer, and bring you up to speed on the exciting changes happening now and in the future.

Development Team

First, in case you missed it, I've recently completed the transition into the Lead Developer role as Aconite just posted yesterday. I've been a primary contributor to the project for over a year and a half now, and have already been at the helm for the past few major updates to the game, helping drive the project forward with some updates I'm really proud of. I really believe that this server represents the best of what Star Wars Galaxies can be, and I'm humbled to be a part of maintaining that vision. Our team continues to grow, and I am extremely grateful for all of the help and dedication that our staff continues to provide. I am proud of how far we've come and excited about how much more we can do.

Halo, one of the founders of Restoration, has also recently returned to the project in a more active role as well. He's currently hard at work on some big combat updates that we're working on together (I'll share more on that below). We are very grateful for the years of effort that went into building the prior iterations of this server and showing how much passion the community can have for this shared vision of a CU inspired server. You can expect to see more of him around.

Aconite will continue to be a part of the project in an advisory role and helping with operations and technical consulting, but he's largely retiring to civilian life. I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but truly this server would not exist without all the effort he put into it. He brings years of wisdom drawn from being a core part of the development of so many projects out there, and I don't know if I'll ever match his level of deep expertise on this massive and complex project. Once again I would like to thank him for building the foundation that I'm merely stepping into as we step forward to our next chapter…

Project Vision

The Restoration of Star Wars Galaxies is something that the entire team has a shared passion for. As the team grows and changes, and priorities need to shift to adapt to the needs of players, I want to share the big picture vision for the server and my own personal tenets for how I plan to go about making changes in the future.

My favorite way of describing the server is "If SOE had never done the NGE, and instead kept building on the CU". Or, even shorter, "Post-CU". On our team, we have people that played in all eras of the game, and so we have love for many different fun features that existed throughout the lifetime of the live game. Our hope is to combine the best of each of them into one game, and improve and expand the things we find the most fun. Through it all though, it is extremely important to preserve the things that make SWG great at all costs:

- Living in the Star Wars universe

- Best in class Social and Crafting systems

- Player driven economy

- Endless customization

- Profession identity, diversity, and differentiation

Through my time on the development team so far, I've started writing down some core tenets that I try to hold myself to. These are ultimately my own personal values and beliefs for what will help us build the best and most successful version of this game that we can. I am sharing them today because I want you to publicly hold me to these values:

1. Players are here for SWG: As fun as it would be to warp this game into something new, the most important promise we are making to players is that this will continue to be recognizably Star Wars Galaxies at its heart.
2. Fun > Balance > Lore/Flavor > Nostalgia: When it comes to deciding whether or not to preserve a gameplay feature that people might be nostalgic for, or rebuild it into something more fun or balanced, we are going to go the Fun route (as long as we still stay true to #1!)
3. Don’t make players play the way they don’t want to play: The most impressive thing about Star Wars Galaxies is how big of a tent it is for so many different types of people with varying playstyles. From PvE to PvP, from Roleplay to Crafting, we need to make sure that people can play the way they want, not force them into unfun situations (even though it's usually easier that way).
4. Give players tools, not rules:  This is a sandbox game, and players will always come up with new and often horrifying ways to play that you never saw coming. Whenever possible, it is best to put tools in the hands of players to make it the game they want (and avoid the parts they don't want), rather than try and strictly enforce rules for how we think it should be played.

Roadmap updates

Today we posted an update to the Project Roadmap on the site. This reflects our plans for the remainder of 2024 and beyond, as we get ever closer to completing the "Restoration" phase. There has been a lot of progress this year on that front.

As a quick recap, If you haven't checked out any of our recent updates, here are a few recent highlights of things that 2024 brought:

• Unlock the Village and learn the ways of the Force, while staying hidden from Bounty Hunters… or worse.
• Play through entirely new content in the Marauder's Theme Park and Celestial Discoveries
• Challenge yourself on Krayt Dragon difficulty mode on the revamps of Champion of Mustafar and Heroic Encounters
• Become a proud member of the Idiot's Array, where only the most elite Pilots can play.
• Fight for control of the Galaxy, or at least the most PvP kills, in our overhauled Galactic Civil War planetary control game.

The linked roadmap above includes some new major updates that I would like to share more about here:

Heroic Jewelry and Combat Evolution

With the addition of the final Heroic instances, we are entering the next chapter of combat and bringing a new sweeping set of changes to existing professions. These will include potential advanced profession requirements, ability changes, moving things around, etc. Anything is on the table. Halo and myself will be working on these updates to come out alongside Jewelry and make combat more exciting for ALL professions. Yes, even Ranger.

The goals for this update are as follows:

• Ensuring that every profession has an important place in combat, and forging a strong and unique playstyle identity into each one with new and inspired mechanics and abilities.
• Reducing the impact of food and items in combat, lowering the barrier to entry and helping each profession's identity shine more.
• Preserving the slower pace of combat to ensure that strategy and communication are the key factors in determining a victor.
• Redesigning game warping abilities like Center of Being to ensure that Melee has more variety and paths to viability.
• Balancing the skill trees to ensure that every tree has something interesting to dabble into or master.
• Introduce brand new capabilities into the game with the dozens of new Heroic Jewelry sets, which will allow new players to play the professions largely the way they remember them, and then expand into this new era through the endgame content.

Restuss

We're finally bringing back this iconic PvP warzone, and with the special twist: new, Restuss-specific abilities that are designed around massive group battles that the area is best known for. These "ultimate" abilities will be tied to specific professions and playstyles, and only usable within Restuss itself, allowing it to become its own open world game mode. Commendations will be granted for PvP kills on top of the quests in the area, and used to fuel these abilities alongside all new rewards. 

We're still designing these new abilities, but we intend them to be abilities that are charged up throughout combat, and built specifically to favor the side with fewer numbers, which will ensure that open world PvP isn't always just decided by sheer numbers. We'll share more about this soon.

Jedi Knight

Jedi is always going to be a class that can't make everyone happy, but we're going to be taking steps to help it fit better into the game and fit into more playstyles. The Force Ranking System is still a ways off, but we are shifting the first part of this system forward to introduce a higher-risk, higher-reward mode of gameplay.

Jedi Knight, which will have a different name in-game, will include access to 5th Generation Lightsabers, and more Force bar to help you stay in the fight longer. It will also introduce higher stakes: A longer ghost timer, Breaching charges for all bounties, and the ability for any player to attack you after issuing a Report, if you're visible. This will also open up opportunities to make sure that visibility consequences are also appropriate for those players that wish to remain at Padawan.

We will be making these changes extremely carefully. We want to make sure that everyone can feel a sense of progression and viability in this game, not just Jedi Knights or Masters. We will have more to share about our plans for the FRS, and additional ranking systems for non-Jedi, at a later date.

Identity Crisis

Finally, for my own sanity, I need to come clean about something. On the live game, I went by Zedd. I was a pretty prominent PvPer, and pseudo Smuggler Senator, that got to play with some of the best players and guilds the game had near the last several years of the NGE. I jumped across servers taking me from Bria, to Chilastra, Flurry, and Starsider. Look me up on YouTube, I killed Xaos Kun once. 

I came to Restoration under the name Zeddco, and after playing with some real life friends for a few months decided to join the team, which slowly but surely that just took over my life. I end up finding it more fun to develop the game than play almost any game, really. But I'm also planning on hopping on more often to get to play alongside you all.

I'll still go by ornj here, so all this really means for most of you is that I'm switching back to my original Discord account, but I am also hoping to finally be able to tell my old friends from other servers to come give us a try! If you knew me on live, please come say hi.

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The Force Will Be With You, Always
ornj/Zedd

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