im not sure what Fragmented meant.. but they were right about a lot of the stuff on SWG. and they have other links that go with it if you read those articles, some of them are just as good.
-9 iconic professions = NGE
-Remainder of the crafting and entertainer professions = preNGE
-Mustafar, Kashyyyk = match NGE
-Every other planet = preNGE in design and function
-Many, many items are remnants of old systems. I keep looting slicing components in space. Slicing doesn't exist anymore.
-You go from the ground game into space. Are you going from one exciting part of the game to another, or one broken, boring, and lacking part of the game to a more polished, well made (but still lacking in content and conflict...one capital ship? Please.) part of the game? You're doing the second. It doesn't flow, it's not a transition, it's a leap to a system that showcases how bad the other system is.
-You do the new player tutorial. You get led by the nose, mission after mission. You get to blow up ships with frickin' Han Solo. Then you finish the tutorial, land in Mos Eisley, and a few missions later you are left standing there with nothing to do but grind to level. A vet tells you to go to Kashyyyk 30 levels too early and you get stranded and start spamming for a ride.
-You make a smuggler. He can't smuggle. He's not really a smuggler.
-You make a Jedi, he's powerful. You get owned by a medic. That shouldn't be an unlikely thing to happen in this system, but you can't say it isn't fragmented from what Star Wars is in every other game, and movie.
-An x-wing is the most advanced snubfighter in the galaxy at this time. It is a huge upgrade over the z-95. It has higher firepower, speed, and manueverability. Guess what? Buy a heavy z-95 and have sex with that 600ypr.
-The "JSF" ship is obsolete. Even Vader says that it is left in the dust by the advanced tie. Hardly.
-X-wings should only have 2 gun mounts. It has 3.
-Old battlegrounds that don't work just lying around here and there.
-You watch the bh movie before you choose the class and it shows you chasing a bounty into space and attacking his yt-1300. Not only can you not do that, but if you could, no one running from a bh alone would use a pob that they can't even use the droid commands for when flying it.
-You buy SWG thinking of how powerful Jedi must be and how noble, secretive, and mysterious it will be to be one. Then you get into the game and see Jedi talking leet speak and challenging random people to duels. You see them all wearing titles and robes and holding sabers, advertising that they are a Jedi. To me, that is as fragmented as it gets.
See how it is fragmented? I was taking it further than the article by showing how systems are fragmented within themselves, and how everything is fragmented with true cannon, the movies. But the article's main point was that each part of the game is fragmented with the other. One part of the game is different than another, they don't all fit together like in games that haven't gone through so much change. "An incomplete or isolated portion; a bit"
What the article means is that the game doesn't match itself. Their example was the difference in new planets to old planets. You don't have "adventure" planets because they want the old ones to be for housing. You have adventure planets because they stopped designing the game with the same "roleplay your content" strategy they had at launch. Now they are using the "we give you things to do, quests to complete" strategy that WoW and EQ use. It is fragmented.
I listed a bunch, but there are many more examples of things I consider fragmented. I think that I use the term much more broadly than the article, though. I use it to refer to anything that doesn't fit with the rest of the game, anything that shouldn't be there anymore, anything that doesn't match the movies or description you are sold. And I even think some things are illegal, like the false advertising they do. It doesn't stop once you buy the game, either.
BTW, the frustrated tone in this post is not directed at you, but at SOE and LA. I will say again that they are on the right track. They are and that is great, but they were also on it during the CU. Then they lost sight of what they were doing, of what was needed, and did a gut job. That is why I have no trust or respect for the people who are in charge of the direction of this game. I can't trust them, nor should I. One lie and underhanded tactic is enough, but I had to start counting them with my toes.
