Regarding the controversy involving crossplay between PC & Switch/PS4 Players


Hi there, my name is Illudia - I'm a longtime player of Jedi Academy who runs the JK3Warriors discord community. We're a group of players that aims to promote casual & competitive multiplayer in Jedi Academy with a backyard feel to it. Nothing that's polished, not quite professional in presentation but something that I wanted to do for fun. Lately, my decision to livestream crossplatform gameplay between Switch/PS4 servers with a PC has gotten some viral attention and has definitely brought up a lot of interesting conversations in the process. But some of those conversations come with some misconceptions that need to be addressed.

First and foremost, I have to address that earlier today, there have been some rogue PC players that have taken advantage of exploits that are ages old. These exploits have allowed them to change the server settings such as hostname, client limits, or allowable weapons and force powers. Some have even managed to take down some of the servers which is ruining the console experience for others. I'd like to mention that neither the majority of the community nor myself do NOT condone this kind of behavior nor am I affiliated with any of these players. These actions are shameful and only serve to tear us apart as a community instead of unite.

Let's get back to addressing my livestream and some of the concerns - Starting with my intention. I wanted to leave plugins to my twitch channel & my discord channel in an effort to help grow the Jedi Academy community for players that want to explore this video game. I hoped that should the console releases be successful that one day we may eventually get an updated sequel to this unique video game. I did, admittedly, play with an advantage, since the display of skill could encourage people to learn from us and hopefully develop a refreshed competitive scene. However, I felt that with a refreshed community of players, lies the potential for console players to learn new tricks and I've asked my community to allow these players to grow organically without telling people that the "PC" is the only way to go in terms of playing this game.

Now to address the second concern from my livestream which was did I cheat? Absolutely not, everything seen in my livestream is the standard for PC gameplay. All the features that I have, which were purposefully excluded from the console release such as TeamOverlay, Callvote, and Chat are all functions of the vanilla client. Poking/wiggling is harder to do on console, but it is a technique and not a cheat. There are some settings of the EternalJK client that I use, that does have some QOL improvements, some of which are not possible on the vanilla client although I do not utilize any of those settings. As for the claim which I was able to view a loadout of another player, I don't understand what Max means here as this isn't counterstrike. I'm not sure what other evidence he provided and I cannot address any other concerns. Other PC players are able to cheat using unlocked cvars or third party tools but I'm not sure to what degree of a competitive advantage that actually offers.

Moving onto the third concern which is, does it offer me a competitive advantage? Without a doubt, having a keyboard and mouse offers me a competitive advantage in terms of precision. With it, I can position my lightsaber better to strike additional hitboxes and access force powers easier as the keybinds for their use are not consolidated like you see on the console versions. I'm not a very good FPS player, often times getting riddled with bullets so I never play with weapons. Since weapons and force powers are enabled on console servers, which are generally disabled on the majority of the active PC servers I didn't expect the skill curve to remain significant. With force powers and items, it felt a lot like enabling items in Smash Bros where the game feels like a more casual experience. It is difficult to replicate all these techniques using the switch controllers though keep in mind that I'm approaching it with the same mindset and approach to fighting like I do in the PC version. The actual advantages lie in the QOL differences between keyboard and controller as well as the response time between keypresses.

There is some mixed feedback from the public and the media revolving around whether or not crossplay should be allowed here. As evidenced by my ability to connect to Switch/PS4 servers, crossplay between Switch & PS4 is 100% possible. However, it seems intentional by Aspyr that they wanted to keep crossplay from happening considering that consoles get matchmaked into their own console-specific servers. If you're wondering how I was able to connect to the server, it was because I was able to grab the IP address on the "awaiting gamestate" screen. This all adds into a greater overall debate about the bridge between console and PC players and whether or not the two should be allowed to mingle. We've seen crossplay work successfully with games like Fortnite or FFXIV so why shouldn't it work with JKA? Our community over on the PC side of things is already small, and it's imperative that we work to bring these communities together instead of breaking them apart. We have seen some positive increases thanks to the new Star Wars movie and the upcoming console releases of Jedi Academy.

I am guilty of taking advantage of my PC setup on console servers. But as a longtime JKA player, I'm overjoyed to see a brand new audience join the game in nearly all of it's glory. Playing with these new players have been extremely fun and brought back some life to our community. I hope Aspyr will be able to support voluntarily connecting to the PS4/Switch/PC servers while maintaining a matchmaking function for easy access. I would like to be able to keep sharing my experiences with other players and I believe that as gamers, there truly is more that connects us than divides us.

Thanks,
Illudia Fox

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