I don't recall where I read this, but I read something about Team Raven is not going to heed any requests for JA, or any future updates. Can someone verify if this is true or false?

It's true; it was in a letter from one of them someone posted.

Keep in mind this is due to *legal reasons, not them ignoring players.

Star Wars/JK is part of Lucas Inc. and they simply can not legally go and start changing things without George and company giving the thumbs up first.

And the process of getting permission to alter content from a licensed property is not as simple as calling them and asking “hey can we make pink sabers and add some new guns?”

I wouldn't either, it's all about narrowing down what you want to do. If you are taking info from several different sources, it might take quite a while before you get anything done.

Ok but this extends to gameplay issues as well? I dont see how Lucas can have any say on if the lightsaber kills in 2 hits or 25...

As I recall, GL is in Australia right now, starting to film Episode III. He'll be pretty busy, I guess.

Originally posted by JaledDur
Ok but this extends to gameplay issues as well? I dont see how Lucas can have any say on if the lightsaber kills in 2 hits or 25...

It's a licensed property.

LucasArts may give Raven some creative freedom or game play freedom in certain aspects but everything from the size of the font in mp chat to the color of the sparks when two guys clash sabers is subject to approval from LA before it makes it out the door.

Originally posted by shock ~ unnamed
It's a licensed property.

LucasArts my give Raven some creative freedom or game play freedom in certain aspects but everything from the size of the font in mp chat to the color of the sparks when two guys clash sabers is subject to approval from LA before it makes it out the door.

I can imagine LA being very strict about many things, but the fontsize is something Raven will handle I think :) But things as lightsaber colors, species, levels and everything that has to do with the movies will be watched over by LA... Can't blame 'em :)

I'd rather them not listen to players.

It sounds like great news to me. It will mean people will have to learn to live with the game and with how Raven and LA set the damage, force powers, etc... To be honest I thought it was a joke having a patch come out every, what was it, every month just about. Its great news no more minority groups getting there way coz they have loud voices that can travel. In my opinion patchs are for fixing serious bugs and glitches in the game not for fixing it so people who dont want learn how to use the game can win easy against others. Anyway thats the end of my rant, for now anyway :yoda:

I'm actually of mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, I think this will drastically cut down on the effect that whining has on the game. On the other hand, I wonder just how much of that there will be this time around, or at least, what KIND of whining there'd be.

The RPGers, I would imagine, will be headed towards Galaxies (which comes out this month, I believe -- but don't quote me on that), which means that that element, at least, will be gone.

Actually, I would imagine that Raven has not been quite as blind and deaf to fan suggestions as that statement might sound. And there really ARE legitimate legal reasons why they may be doing that. On the one hand is the whole licensed property thing (by the way, shock, you sound like someone who has a background in IP. Are you? Just curious). But on the other, there's a whole other can of worms that gets opened when companies start taking submissions from the public. It's pretty standard practice for, say, movie studios to mail back, unopened, any script that is submitted to them by someone other than an agent they know. This is usually to avoid some fan jumping up and down and saying, "Hey!!! That was MY idea and they STOLE it from me!!" (never mind the fact that the original copyright owner cannot actually steal from a person writing an unlicensed, infringing derivative work...) In the end, it's just easier to say "Piss off" to the public, and only deal with your own ideas. That doesn't mean that Raven wouldn't actually pay attention to what the community is saying, just that spamming them with e-mail will, as a policy, not be very effective.

We know that Raven still monitors this board in some way. Mike Gummelt has posted here often enough to show us that. I don't think they're going to completely ignore their user base, but by the same toke, putting out a message like this is a great way to prevent constant e-mail bombardments saying things like "OH MY GOD!! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!! In the Star Wars RPG Official Guide to Made-Up Weapons That Never Appeared In Any Other Book But The One in Your Hand, it CLEARLY states that the Dolarian DN-5B Dingleberry Launcher only launches SPORE PODS, and NOT magnetically charged ion friction emissions!! YOU GUYS ARE TEH SUXOR!!!" :)

I'd prefer Raven to not listen to the public when designing their games. These guys get the big $$$ doing what they do, because they're good at it. Some 14 year old who thinks they're the expert at Jedi Knight shouldnt tell them how to make a game.

After the game has been released is when they'll take notice of what people think, to kill bugs and whatnot. But i hope people wont whine when features are taken out, or fixed..so much of that has happened with JK2. If the game designers (who probably have multiple uni degrees and years of experience) want to take out something, or change how it works, they always know best.
Dont have a cry if an exploit (which is the only reason you get kills in the game) is taken out, cos im not gunna care one little bit.
But hopefully the game will be well balanced when it ships, and we'll have no problems :)

"OH MY GOD!! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!! In the Star Wars RPG Official Guide to Made-Up Weapons That Never Appeared In Any Other Book But The One in Your Hand, it CLEARLY states that the Dolarian DN-5B Dingleberry Launcher only launches SPORE PODS, and NOT magnetically charged ion friction emissions!! YOU GUYS ARE TEH SUXOR!!!"

Maybe it's better this way. Amen. ; )

If I was George Lucas I could care less what the game was like. I would just want to make sure the community liked the game. If the community liked the game then I would be making money.

Originally posted by SD_ReBoRN__
If I was George Lucas I could care less what the game was like. I would just want to make sure the community liked the game. If the community liked the game then I would be making money.

And I guess that's what he does :) It's not that the community dislikes JO; on the contrary :) A lot of people still play JO everyday, but the hardcore gamers notice the glitches. I dunno if that's a bad or a good thing :confused:

Even non-hardcore gamers notice the glitches, and arguably, the non-hardcore gamers complaining was what Raven listened to. I think of myself as falling somewhere in between hardcore and non-hardcore, and I'll admit that I complained after 1.02 (I wanted there to be actual blocking, though not necessarily to the level of 1.04). I think, though, that the real problem was that there was no consensus within the community for what was good, because people were playing radically different game modes. So, one group complains about things like "Guns are too powerful in FFA!!" Raven says, "Ok, they want weaker guns, they got it." But, this ends up hurting the CTF folks who need those powerful guns to take out flag carriers. Another group says "Give us more blocking!! Fights end too quickly." Raven says, "More blocking? Can do!" But, this screws up both FFA and CTF because now fights take FOREVER and require people to spam special moves like the backstab. There's just no way to win in that situation. You please one group and piss off another.

That's why I've been suggesting a different approach. One where you make changes for the particular game mode, but changes that don't apply to everywhere else. So, for example, you can nerf guns in FFA, but leave 'em strong in CTF. You can add higher blocking in Duel mode, but leave it out of FFA. You can make lightning REALLY powerful for CTF, but leave it weaker for FFA and Duel. Otherwise, we'll end up with the same kind of patch fiasco that happened last time.