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Dear BioWare, I really want to love your game...
Deewe
Member UncommonPosts: 1,980
As many other's I've been digging through these (TOR) forums for too long, yet I was experienced enough to know better than eat your (BioWare) buzz words like heroic crafting, massive PvP and epic space battle with closed eyes.
For the reality check, in modern MMO standards you, delivered a FUN single player/co-op game, still a just fair MMO with uneven polishing, quite a few annoying bugs, hindered by a lacking UI and some, not so great, design decisions.
Some would say we, players, have been spoiled by others MMO. Fact is competition is here and they won't play fair. Would we expect customers to switch back to CRT TV when they can have huge 3D flat panels... for the same price?
We are here 6 years after you started developing this game, sitting on the opposite side of the fence. And, as a long time MMO and SW fan, I don't want us to part away with a bitter taste in our mouth.
Before anything else:
COMMUNICATION
[edit]Well to be honest here, I'll try to rework the wording on the communication part.
After re-reading it I admit it feels like a bit rough. English not being my native language it's sometimes difficult to give the proper mood to the text. So please take this section with a grain of salt. You have been warned [/edit]
1) Please stop the PR bull*.2) Please tune down the speech tone
Players aren't dumb and mindless sheep. When you praise your game for being so awesome, innovative and so on you are just making all of you @BioWare/LA/EA look like fools. It's fine to sell your game, but please be honest towards your present and future customers, well at least if you are trying to build a long term relationship.
And keep in mind we are all parts of more or less large social network.3) Improve the communication
Might sound a harsh, still too often some of your people speech felt like spoken down to the masses from a pedestal.
Would you have delivered a truly impressive MMO, you could vent yourselves on how great is your game design. For now the burden of proof is in your camp. People will accept much more easily your youthfulness errors if you are more candid. Pardon me if I'm wrong but it's the feeling you are giving, at least to me.
Step into the pit more frequently, answer to more hot topics, give feedback to the players. Never ever hide behind the see no evil mindset. Too often players will get more frustrated by a lack of answer than a NO can't/won't do.
If you don't know better take Trion World as reference, whether you like or not their game, they have one of the best communication/marketing team MMO wide, especially considering their lower budget. BTW do not look further, you have a great and talented person among your troops, Emmanuel Lusinchi, is the kind of communication medium you need atm*.
Then let's Digg into a few mechanics:
UI
1) Don't half deliver your next core UI improvements.2) UI skins
Moving and scaling features is far from enough. You need target of target, mouse over healing, bubble chats, weapon preview, character doll/closet zoom and more... in the next patch. For example we saw that we'll be able to more the minimap frame, still its actual layout won't look nice at the top of the screen if you don't flip it or clean it ; and players want to scale framesindividually.3) Addons
Might be a long time before you deliver UI API, so let players toy with XML files and customize the whole look of the UI. Allow them to make the game UI fit their liking.
From former interviews you clearly know you needed them at launch. Question is when?
We players, use the game UI like 100% of the time during our live sessions. Hope you have a dedicated big budget for UI enhancements.
PVP
1) We need to be able to choose to what battlefront we queue.2) We need more open world PvP and even more be able to PvP from level 1 on any planets especially on PvP servers.
BTW Huttball isn't a BattleFront, it's a fun Football game but glowbat sticks are hindering feeling epic waving lightsabers around.3) Buying PvP gear is a way too complex and not even a fun process.
Only one open world PvP =/= world PvP.
Check DAO and if not Tarren mill and the Barrens in WoW at launch.
In Wow we were like 1 horde against 2 to 4 alliance player. It had huge players population imbalance and still it was the most fun open world PvP ever.
PvP is for now your most broken mechanism.
Please don't butcher your game making same faction vs same faction warzones. Aren't we supposed to be united against the other faction? Better make incentives to have players roll on the Republic faction.
You are falling in the same trap as the HuttBall that was supposed to help faction imbalance. It didn't and it hit the epicness quite a lot. Please don't do the same mistake twice.
PVE
After fixing the broken instances improve them so we have less boss kiting and more of the epic battles you mentioned during the game development.
1) Add brains to the dumb mobs2) Implement a convenient LFG/LFD system.
Don't make PvE content harder with more HP and resists but tactics, ambushes, traps, betrayals. Don't have them look at me while I'm kiting their colleagues a few meters from them. You see me you do something... else than standing still!3) Help grouping by facilitating travel to meet group members
Allow us to select all the quest we want to group for, not one but many, all of them if even.
Allow players to browse trough LFG/M and check the matching quests, allow filtering and sorting.
Let players parse quest links in chat with something like [level] [quest name] [planet]
CLASSES
1) Dual speccing.2) AC respec.
It won't hinder the game and will promote grinding more gear. Rift has 5 specs per characters and it's not doing that bad, is it? And it'll help mitigate the lack of healers.3) (edited) More interesting and viable class builds
After the 4th alt it's getting really annoying to hear the same shared VO again and again, not to hear the same class V.O. again and space dialog skipping needs to be spammed to skip to the dialog choices.
Allowing us to (legacy?) AC respec will help players, stay subscribed longuer.
A revamp of the talent system, could add a much desired class diversity among and between factions.
STORY
1) Make dialog choices text displayed fit the spoken lines.2) Revamp many of the Sith choice
Too often I'm puzzled by my character's lines. It makes it so I'm watching a movie not playing a character I have the control upon.
Why is it almost always about greed? It does not fit any iconic classes but Smuggler and BH.
And letting people live could be much more evil than killing them if you ask.
WORLD
The world feels too much static. It lacks little things like
1) Scripted, clickable NPC & Mobs
2) Critters
3) Feeling of passing time brought by day/night cycles and changing weather
4) 3D exploration with force jump, jet packs, grappling hooks, swimming.
5) World events
CRAFTING
1) Make all crafting profession more than time and money sinks
2) Let players craft consumables like ammunition and personal shields
3) Allow players to craft fluffy stuff like social gear
4) Separate crafting mats, recipe from main inventory bags
5) Have gear repaired by players or players made items
CHARACTER'S CUSTOMIZATION
1) Body2) Gear
Better and more face choices
Add another "in-between" body choice
Separate make-up from eye brow sliders and so on
Tattoos dyes
In game Image Designer/Barber, even for Companions (sic!)
Either allow all gear to be transmutable in orange gear or add appearance tabs
Add gear dyes
Bring back gear textures matching option (on top of gear dyes)
Hide/show gear slots for boots, gloves, chest, belt and especially the not so epic shoulder flaps!
All in all give back the option to customize the character's look in the players hands.
SPACE
1) Add multiplayer game play
2) Add 3D roaming and exploration
3) Let players choose and customize they space ship
4) Smuggling missions & piracy!
FLUFF
1) Mini games Like Pazaak/Sabbac - Pod/Swoop racing
2) Planetary Housing / housing & space ship furnishing
3) Sitting on, more, chairs!
4) Hoods on/off
4) Macros for Role play.
SOCIALIZATION
1) Remove the need to go to mail boxes and GTN it's just a plaster.
2) Add incentives to go to a selected and small number or social hubs like:
multiplayer mini games, ex card games, or watching player PvP arenas, coordinating NPC space/ground battles against the other faction, participating in crafting epic items/monuments/space ships.
As a MMO player I'm used to pay to beta test a game. Still with games like WoW then LotRo and lately Rift, this is becoming a feature of the past. Feature I don't miss at all.
For now I see TOR as a not so bad game that can be improved IF the focus and the game direction is right. I will keep supporting the game with my monthly fees for some time but as mentioned above BioWare/EA/LA still have the burden of the proof.
First improve the communication then show us you learnt from your mistakes.
Finally I look forward playing an enhanced TOR game with why not more fluff, more socializers and a great space sim!
Comments
Got lazy after a while.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
Well said.
When the food is cold, there are a number of approaches of how to respond to the customer.
There is just shrugging at the customer, blaming the kitchen and then walking off.
There is also appologising for the delay, and comping the cold plate.
BW is closer to the first example, imo.
I would actually put BW in the second one honestly.
http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php
read GZ post and tell me that its not like argueing with spoild brats.
Is Bioware blameless in this? no not at all. But the amount of impatents over this game is stagering.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
I disagree with the negative stereotyping of customers as 'spoiled brats', as well as the impatence being 'staggering'.
It is easy to paint other posters as 'children', and then respond to them as such. It is much more difficult to see them as peers, and respond to them with respect.
I see peoples' complaints as justified. I see people complain all the time about things all the time, be it cold food, poor service, botched work, late delivery, poor quality, etc.
Most of the time, the owner of the business, comes out and works to address the issue to the customers satifaction. However on forum boards, apparently this is an unreasonable expectation.
I do think GZ is proably the better of the Devs, in his responses - mainly because he tends to not 'hype' or try to 'influence' in his answers. He is more like Joe Friday - just the facts.
The others, however, are like Used Car Salesmen, trying to see your grandmother the car she already owns.
Thanks for the feedack
So in other words,start building the whole game from scratch again because that's what they need to do. They can start by killing the pathetic Hero Engine for a start.
They really talked a good one and some of their comments over the last two years have now be proven to be pathetic.
Heres one "every mmo up to this point has been a waste of time" yeah okay lmfao.
To little to late imo,mmo gamers are not like normal single RPG gamers who just buy the game and that's it.If you are going to charge an over bloated monthly sub you better make sure that the game warrants it,swtor does not.
By the time the things you are asking for get done many people will have moved on,to many other mmo coming out and released that offer better for less.
They screwed up,in this mmo world you only get one chance.
after reading your wall text i can see they really need to rebuild the game from the scratch . almost all in the game its bad , well at least the VA, was innovative and fun, game engine was much worse than lots of F2P games out there.
This one did make me laugh. This guy, in attempt to discredit the OP throws out a crazy argument by seeing only one solution - text line doesn't match voiceover --- then re-record voiceover. What a TERRIBLE idea. {mod edit}
Yeah I don't agree with the details of everythign the OP said, but I woudl give him an A for expressing it well and have at core great ideas and fixes.
1. Yes lets have Bioware spend millions more redubbing everything
Think you missed the point. The idea is to tweak the text displayed for the conversation choices in a way they fit what your character is actually going to say. There's no impact on Voice Over at all
Someone please make a good MMO.
You will never have a perfect balance. Hardware? Teamspeak vs written text? Guilds vs random? Connection? Player abilities?
Don´t give up diversity for balance.
seriously we NEED diversity in this game its really for me the main thing it's lacking is diversity in classes. Only way I can see them fixing this in the games current state without redoing the class system is simply redoing the talent system. Add more options more abilities in the actual trees and allow more customization of the classes.. it does make it harder to balance ala Rift but at least makes the classes not remain so stale after playing the same one for week after week. Right now there's so few options you basically are stuck with everyone running the same builds also there are so few actual abilities you get from talents it takes out so much for the talent trees and just makes them so stale... revamping the talent trees would be a HUGE benefit for this game.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
This was very well wrtten and true.
EA/BW made a big mistake in how they marketed this game. MMO's are marketed best when they are spoken about in a realistic fashion. For example the whole "every MMO that has come before this will be a waste of time" thing.
If they would have come out and said "We are taking the Star Wars Universe that everyone loves and the traditional MMO style that has been successful for the last 10 years and combining them to bring you the next gen installment of the star wars universe." I think that would have gone over alot better than saying every MMO before was a waste and then copying just about everything from those MMO's.
Like it or not WoW is the Standard MMO's are held to.
So if you say there is gonna be a feature in your game... like world PvP for example... and that feature is not on the same level as the "Standard" than you had better tell us before hand and not let us find out on our own.
"Certain" other companies who have adopted this approch have, so far, shown better success in the public eye. By being specific in telling us beforehand how the game is the same and how the game is different from the current industry "standard".
"Don't mistake a fun game for a good game... Checkers is fun to play but its not exactly the highest point of gaming design... and definatly not worth $60 plus $15 a month"
Funny thing is I was toying with the classes in my head and I came down to the exact same thing as both of you.
Never give up on diversity
Improve the talent system
Not only it's easier for BioWare than a total revamp and the to follow disaster, but it's better for players too. IMHO a win win situation.
It's actually pretty depressing, this game. I was looking forward to it. But as I leveled the game got worse and worse and more buggy. The player story arc was ok, but that's the only redeeming quality about the game. Pretty depressing. Guess I'll wait till they add the stuff people want. I'm not giving up yet, but I'm not gonna pay while I wait for them to add these things.
when/where did they say crafting was
"heroic"
Yup the game shall get better in the next +/-6 months.
-6 months? Like if they went Back to the Future to fix the timeline and make SWTOR a better game?
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
K I Lol'd.
Let's take a few guesses:
Basic UI should be smoothed out, at least a bit, pretty soon. Addons for much more later
Combat delay shall be fixed/tweaked in a 3 months delay,
Character customization will get some luvin through let's say orange items and maybe gear dyes if we are lucky.
Many of the annoying bugs features that are easily tweakable will be fixed.
Ok, PvP might still sucks for quite a long time, as it needs hours of work. Especiall open world PvP.
Space sim isn't going to blow our minds before at least 6 months.
And PvE will stay as THE guy decribes it so well
One of the problems of other MMOs combat is that you often have scenarios where you have multiple heroes beating on a single enemy. That just isn't very Heroic" - James Ohlen, Studio Creative, Director and Lead Designer, Bioware."
And in 6 months they can add things they kept from the launch like the already done companions. Personnaly I expect to see them unlocked with the legacy system. We'll see...
Really good list here, seems as if everyone wants the same thing.
It does sound like a reasonable estimate.
However, given BW's propensity to be inflexible, I would not get my hopes up too much, as most of those things, are things they they previous seemed to suggest were not needed -- until they noticed customers started to demand it. So it would not surprise me to see BW dragging their feet, or putting out the minimum effort for it.
Basically, I have not seen BW demonstrate the willingness to break from 'their view', and to adapt to what customers may want. I am not talking about radical changes to the game, but rather about not putting in basic things like a customizable UI, more diversity, and better focus on the 'non-story' aspects of their game. In Development it was all 'story, story, story', yet in release we see 'we are addressing non-story deficiencies'.
I disagree, After watching the whole "Things to come" Video I am pretty happy with the development because they seem to be focusing on more non-story based things like Customizable UI and gameplay elements. I also think its a little unfair to judge their flexablility this early in the games lifespan.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
The game's lifespan? You mean the 5 years of dev? The year + of beta? or are you only counting the month of "live"? I hope they will get better then they were in beta but 1.1.1 doesn't really bode confendnce.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
With execption of the huge Ilum bug that was fixed within a day, I see little reason not to think that in a few months that this game will be a pretty penny.
If by say 1.5 they still havn't worked the major bugs out to a reasonable extent (FPS, Ablitliy delay) then I think you might be on to something.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
You're comparing two completely different business structures, I worked as an assistant chef for many years in a very popular establishment, that line of work is nothing like running a business that has thousands of customers having problems on an hourly basis.
"Food is cold" is not a normal every day occurance (unless of course your service sucks), thats' why a chef or owner will comp a meal, your supposed to be in and out in a certain time frame, "fast" is key to keeping that wheel turning. We needed them out as much as they needed to be out (turn-over is the name of the game).
An MMO is a completely different beast, your food is expected to have bugs in it, your meal is bound to have some delays here and there. It can take months instead of minutes to make an entree.
Your host isn't there to say hi, or have a nice day, they're there to communicate information and nothing else. Which even the devs who are hard at work, take lots of their time trying to explain the why of things. That's about all you can expect from these companies.
And believe me if you don't think restaurant owners or chefs will get nasty with their customers, you've got no idea what the reality of it is, it's one of the more stressful jobs you can have, things can get very ugly. Especially when the customer wants to tell a chef how to do their job, or has a negative opinion about a taste.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The way people are voiceing the same concerns, I feel this game may go the way of Tabla Rasa if they don't change it... and soon. I'm no hater or troll, but a lot the concerns others have over this game I mirror. I respect the fact that others enjoy it, but the way folks beat up each other over differing views almost makes me hate the game enough to stay away for good. If others feel the same, this can't be healthy for the longevity of the game.