Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
SW:TOR - Some lessons learned.
Thubub
Member UncommonPosts: 62
So what can be learned from the massive failure of SW:TOR.
1. Nobody wants a WoW clone. But they do want the features developed for WoW that make the game what it is.
Grouping up for group content is a key. It is easy to get into group content in the first month of a games life with no grouping mechanism. But after that first month grouping becomes much harder. WoW solved this with LFG/LFR. It allows you to be anywhere in the game doing anything else. You don't have to stand around the capital hub, spamming chat for hours in a frustrating attempt to play group content. Players want to play the game. If you make them log on and wait around hoping for a shot at character progression, they will leave and go play something else where they aren't being treated like sheep.
Addons also make up an important part of WoW's success. Think of all the different tools that developers have made for WoW, UI skins, auction house statistics, and dps meters to name a few. The level of customization allowed by all these addons has a big impact on the game in every aspect. You will be hard pressed to find anyone in the game that uses no addons. If you are making a new MMO, you will have to cater to the level of customization that WoW players are getting (even though they are getting it from outside developers). If you don't, then your just not being competative.
You need a compelling end game. Sure, when WoW started out it didn't have a lot of end game content. That was seven years ago. When you release a new MMO now, it better have an endgame that is fleshed out, interesting, and designed in a way that makes it a "must do". Also, the shelf life of end game content is now much shorter than it used to be so you need a plan at launch on what will come next. If I was starting a new MMO today, I would have two endgame expansions sitting on the shelf ready to test and release within the first 90 days just in case they chew through my content faster than expected.
2. PvP. If you suck at designing PvP then just don't do it.
If you are going to do it, then you need to be prepared for the onslaught of "your PvP sucks and here's why" posts on your forums. PvP is the most difficult thing in MMOs to do well. If you are going to give it a shot, then you need to have invested a lot of time in other MMOs that have rich PvP traditions and figure out what works and what doesn't. Throwing together a weak, half-assed attempt at PvP is actually worse than having no PvP at all. Your world PvP needs to be compelling, interesting, fun, and it needs a steady stream of players engaging in the fight. Dark Age of Camelot is the gold standard of world PvP. But you can look at other games and take slices of what worked and what didn't.
Balance is the key in PvP. It is a mind numbing, ever changing, never satisfying, perpetual struggle for developers to balance classes for PvP and have them work in a PvE environment. It must consider classes AND factions. Only the multi-faction model works at the world level of PvP. If you don't have at least three factions, then eventually the most popular/populous faction will win. Multi-faction doesn't have to be restricted to in-game factions, it could also be formed through using guilds as factions. You will never balance a two faction world PvP without some third interviening group.
PvP can be considered endgame. But it needs variety and progression to keep players coming back. If you are doing battlegrounds and arenas, then you need to give players a choice on which they can que for. Also, you need enough variety in your battleground maps and objectives so that players don't feel like they are hamsters running on the spinning wheel. Class balance, or the lack of it will be felt most keenly in the arena/battleground environment. If you are going to use the mirror class approach, then you need to make the classes actual mirrors. Even the most minor differences in classes can compel players to overwhelmingly choose one faction over another. Having an overpowered class with no true mirror on one faction will always tip the scales in that faction's favor.
3. Depth.
This is really tough to define and figure out, but a player knows it when they see it. Depth encompasses the entire game and what it offers as possibilities. Customization, variety, crafting, and player housing are just a few of the things that come to mind. The games that hold a player's interest are the ones that payed close attention to the details and offer the greatest variety of progression for a character. In SW:TOR, the voice acting was an amazing addition, but it didn't add as much depth as developers had hoped. The crafting system was unique, but ended up giving almost no return for a player that really spent time working on it (save for some early bugged systems). Having your own ship was nice, but every ship was the same. Depth extends the shelf-life of your game.
Being able to create a character that is unique to you, that isn't a carbon copy of the player next to you is the key to depth. Insuring that all of the side activities have some end purpose, that give unique advantages or cosmetic abilities, and that customization extends to the entire character world is huge. SW:TOR for all the money spent was really a very shallow game.
I don't envy anyone putting together a new MMO. There is a community of MMO gamers that expect any title they play to become the world. That's a tough order to fill. WoW is the ultimate yardstick of success in our world. It is the curse for any developer to be compared to WoW. It's like starting a company from scratch to make new search engine. No matter what you make or how amazing it is, it will be compared to google. So for all you future developers out there, if you are going to spend 100 million dollars on an MMO, it better be as good or better than WoW. That's a very tall order, but it's the only way you will get a return on your investment.
Comments
1. A server side LFD tool and a company willing to merge servers and smart enough to design their game so server can be merged would be a good start. No need to have endless transfers like Rift. Transfers should be a rare thing imo, but server mergers should be done to make sure people dont need to transfer because of dead servers.
2. A PvE game is never going to meet every pvpers dreams. The extent to which SWTOR failed at pvp will definitely be it's legacy for a lot of people though. Even wow has plenty of rampant complaints about pvp and complaints about pvp unbalancing pve. It should be obvious to anyone that a balance is nearly impossible. They should have made pvp a side game from the start and focused on more and better pve. Their raids were horrible and boring. The bugs were the only thing that made any of it challenging. The dungeons were pointless and entirely too unforgiving. They were easy except when one your ranged DPS takes a double lightsaber throw to the face bringing him to 10% health and then your healer gets a purple thing under him immediately after that creating nearly impossible situations in otherwise faceroll encounters. Just horrible design really. Reminded me of the Gnomergon train bug.
3. SWTOR had no depth because story is NOT the 3rd pillar. Unless you want to sell a lot of boxes, and go F2P in 6 months. Millions of dollars on voice acting .. when the characters eyes and many other textures break every other cutscene, and the main character says the same thing every 3-4 levels is just moronic. The engine is pretty horrible to begin with, but I don't think there is an engine out there that can do facial animations to really do this kind of game justice. Leave it to 1P games and revisit it in 5-10 years.
4. Hero Engine. An AAA game doesn't buy a game engine that is only 20% developed and fill in the blanks. Would have been far better off developing their own engine.
5. EA is the Gordon Gecko of gaming.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I liked your post OP there are a few things I would add that may or may not be about ToR but they apply for all MMOs
Think twice about using a popular IP that you will never have full control over.
1. Have a plan for what direction you would like to see the game take in the next year or two. Do not change the basic fundamantals of your game so that you can cash in on whatever may be hot at that time.
2. Do not just listen to the people who play your game 50+ hours a week. In fact those are the people I would listen to the least. They burn through content way to fast and are never happy.
3. Treat your game like it is a business, not you or your staffs personal playground. No one is happy when your people give other players an advantage.
4. Launch your games smaller and more complete. We don't need promises of all these glorious things you will have at launch just to find that 90% of them are not there or do not work. Add things as you go. Make sure the content that you add is functioning and polished.
5. Do not lie to your customers. Do not treat us like we are just cash cows to be milked until we are dry.
I've always been of the mind that in an MMO, gameplay always trumps story. Always. BWEA got it backwards and ended up with an experience that for most, was only enjoyable for a short period of time, just like any good book or film. Once the story had been explored, the weak gameplay couldn't sustain ongoing interest on a large scale.
Everything else that's happened stemmed from that singular error. Bioware brought a single-player mentality to an MMO and ended up with single-player game with a subscription. I believe this is also the reason why they simply copied so many of WoW's elements into their own game. The gameplay wasn't important enough to them to design their own, unique system so they imported someone else's.
I will add:
Don't treat your customers like they're morons. Seriously, these clowns acted as if we were so stupid that we couldn't see behind all their shallow, production-values driven gameplay to the shabby, limited game behind the lightsabers and aninmated voice-acting.
Don't lie to your customers. Do NOT tell them there is 200-hours of 'class story' when, in fact, it's 50-hours and 80% of it are generic 'kill rats' side quests. Do NOT tell them there is no drop in server population when it is clear and obvious there IS a drop in server population.
Don't troll your customers. They trolled us an acted as if our high-end gaming-computers were the problem, calling them crap computers. Sorry, we're smart enough to know the difference between a crappy engine and a crappy computer and we know it was their crappy engine at fault. You just can't tell a bunch of people who play scores of high-end, system challenging games without a problem that your MMO isn't the issue when it is the ONLY GAME WITH THE ISSUE.
Problem is, it wasn't a 'good book.' NK Jemison writes good books. Roger Zelazny wrote good books. Alistar Reynolds writes good books. Harlan Ellison writes good books. Phillip K. Dick wrote good books. CJ Cherryh writes good books. Greg Bear writes good books.
Those are all authors who have been nominated or won at least one Nebula or Hugo or other science-fiction/fantasy writers award for their excellent writing. Some have won mulitiple, and for good reason -- they write fantastic books!!!
OTOH, I've read (once and done) most of the BioWare writer's books. They're uniformly NOT GOOD BOOKs. Some are out-right jokes (Naomi Novick who is, essentially re-writing Horation Hornblower, only with dragons, comes to mind), but none are 'good.' And they will never get even a nomination. They're just pulp shelf-fillers.
1. Don't be arrogant. It makes you look like an a**** if you fail. It generates hate. It makes it hard for people to feel for you and help you, to identify with you and what you are doing.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
This works for players just as much as for developers... =P
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
OP..nobody wants a WOW clone? i really doubt that. The first lesson you should learn is not to generalise and try to speak on others behalf.
Being a WoW clone is not the problem. The problem is wanting to beat WoW. This is where AoC, WAR and SWTOR failed.
Aion, RIFT, Tera, they are doing ok in their own league.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Part in read is completely wrong. As a developer should listen to everyone who isn't a complete douchebag. But as a developer you should be competent enough to extract out the useful information from the bad.
You don't listen to your users and have them design the software product for you. That is always a bad idea no matter how good the users are 50 hours or 50 million hours it doesn't matter.
But you always always always listen to your users. Even when they are saying stupid and contradictory things it often means something. Its like little kids just because they are crying doen't mean they are hurt or even that anything is wrong. It often means they just need a nap. But its doesn't mean nothing. You don't start ignoring your kids because what they say and do is not immediately obvious or even following what they say.
story driven mmorpg
voice acting
cut scenes
.... are waste of time & bad content for an MMORPG
TOR as clean wow clone should to be better than game made by bioware
Number 2 is the most important point in my opinion.
Power Gamers are not whom you should hang your game on. You want to cheris and nurture and apease the Casual Gamers that are going to be in your MMO for years at a time...not just for a month when a new patch or expansion hits.
A good example of that stems from my experiences in SW:G.....When Jedi was added and the Hologrind started in 2003...the Power gamers zoomed through and started their forum campaigns against any and all other Professions that had a chance against them in PvP and screamed for Nerfs on every little thing...while the Casual players watched as the Developers bent over backwards to 'fix' professions that were not actually broken and then by the way ignored issues with professions that had broken or missing content.
MMO History: 2528 days in SW:G
If you're trying to make something with lasting appeal - MMOs should be designed from the endgame backwards.... been saying it for almost a decade.
Throw out every bit of 'levelling content' and then ask yourself... is the endgame something I'd pay $15/mo to play for months and months... if the answer is NO - you're game isn't going to have much lasting appeal.
Shouldent all these lessons have been learnt years ago? I dont really understand how modern day developers expect to make profits and a successful game if they keep copycating old mechanics. And doing zero Inovation..
Its been 8 years now since WoW released and for the past 6 years the comunity have been asking for Innovation and gotten clones. If we are lucky this is the LAST nail in the coffin that will put a stop to CLONEs once and for all...
I find this only partially true. In the past 6-7 years there have been quite a number of innovative or evolved/changed features and games that did things differently, but what I see is that a number of MMO gamers complaining about innovation chose to ignore all those.
It seems to me that some only want a specific sort of innovation and ignore all other innovative features and changes that fall outside that narrow range, including the games that fell outside their (narrow?) scope.
That is why SWG did well against all the horrible changes, and is the reason why SWTOR is failing so hard now, plus the fact it is quicker to get to max level in SWTOR, than in any other MMO like WOW or LOTRO, there is not much side attractions to divert you from levelling up.
SWG is the only MMO that I know that has plenty of worthwhile end game content. I reckon once I have maxed chars in LOTRO, STO, and all other MMOs, I will quit them too. SWG was the only game worth playing after maxing out characters.
Crafting was still viable at end game, even in the NGE, although was more so pre-CU. Even to the last day was trying to find the best quality resource, and hoping it would spawn.
BE/CH and even BM gave you plenty to do trying to get /create your own pets. BM was slow and painful levelling up until they added pets XP at Mission Terminals, and then was load of fun.
You could create your own player city and run it. This ended up getting harder for some as servers were getting lighter and the one main server was getting too full to make this possible, but the free CTS in April/May 2012 fixed that - made it more possible.
The chronicles system allowed you to create quests for other peole. It was tough / slow going, and I never maxed it out, and was still working on it when SWG closed, but if I did I would have created quests for free / low price for other people to do, providing awesome rewards.
People did quit SWG, but did not stay gone long, as no other MMO fullfilled you as much as SWG did. SWG had it all.
If it went F2P, it would have become an amazing success. More people would have played it, and then tapped into its potential, which a monthly fee and first impression of bugs kept people away. Once people delve deep into what SWG has to offer, they fall in love with it.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Yes there has been some Innovation. But not in the right place.. Take AOC for example its combat was FUN and innovating. but Zoning the hole game and a bunch of other stuff was a step backwards.
The Innovation I'm talking about is doing something drastic.. Like making an RTS mmo. All the mechanics ingame works like an RTS.. you go around building your own village training your troops, but in a presistant world with no loading screens. Or making a space game were you sign up on a ship as its crew and the leadership on that ship decide were it goes.. you are along for the RIDE...
I'm talking about things that have not been done before. If I was in charge of an MMO development I would Look at WoW and say we are not going to have a single thing that this game has.. NOT ONE. No Raids, No levels, No classes etc etc... Then try and build a new game. Something fresh something that we havent seen before.
For example. You could use the Privateer press miniture wargame as a base. You have a warlock/Warcaster that is your Main charecter.. He then has a retinue of warriors and warbeast/warjacks that he controls.. and it plays like an RTS. The players goal is to Train his beast, reserch his Warjacks and take over ressources hubs so he can make better weapons for his warriors. You set it in the IRON Kingdoms.. the Faction you join you fight for. You can team up with other Warlocks/warcasters of your faction and go to war against other players. You fight for land and ressources and have a home base that you improve. build new stuff at you have to go out and capture new Warbeasts and train them or hire skilled mechanics to build you bigger Warjacks... If you have played Heroes of might and magic you know what type of upgrades I'm talking about..
This would give all players something to work for on thier own.. then they could go out and do PvE stuff.. Teaming up to get a new beast typ for thier army.. Or finding a long lost blue print for making a Warjack. You have your own litte like Heroes of might and magic castle to improve and get more cool stuff at. For PvP you go out and fight others of a diffrent faction
It would not play as WoW it would not play as any other MMO it would be diffrent...
Would not be hard to throw in a Political system that works and do Campaign stories that players can take part in. But bottom line is DO SOMETHING DIFFRENT PLEASE, because Tank and spank has run its course...
See, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. STO actually has one of the most intricate, elaborate quest creation system that can be found in MMO's. Yet this is the kind of ignoring that I see some MMO gamers do all the time: talking about how oh so awesome some pre-WoW MMO was when everything was good, while at the same time completely ignoring innovative or special features that other MMO's had, just bc it happened in MMO's they dislike or have no interest in.
Also, SWG might have some great features, yet still kept bleeding subs with the arrival of WoW (and in a lesser way EQ2) until it dipped below 200k even before any NGE took place.
Does that mean that I think that some features that SWG had are unimportant? Nope, I think they can enrich MMO gameplay. However, they aren't the only features that MMO gamers have been able to enjoy, nor was SWG MMO paradise and heaven to the vast majority of MMO gamers.
I can see how for some MMO gamers SWG might have been the only MMORPG they were able to enjoy at level cap, but don't make the mistake that this was the case for the majority of MMO gamers, because that'd be untrue.
@Zlayer77: it's easy to come up with revolutionary innovations when a field is young. It gets harder and harder when that field has been entered en masse. That's why the amount of innovations was widely more varied and distinctive from eachother in the beginning days of the internet hype than a decade later. Doesn't mean innovation isn't happening at all anymore, but less feverish and abundant than in those early internet starter years. Same for example with genre literature: it's easier to write a refreshingly original time travel story in the '40s and '50s when the scifi genre is blossoming than decades later when all variants have been thought up and tried out.
I think that we see quite a number of innovative or different features in a number of MMO's we see arrive, even if that may not be radical or drastic enough to some. Among them even MMORTS games and new MMOFPS - which btw aren't innovative as well, since Planetside already did it in 2003; but still, nice.
Another thing devlopes keep missing is DO THE ENDGAME FIRST..
If you are hell bent on not stepping outside the BOX and doing something NEVER seen before, at least have the decency to make the endgame FIRST..
90% of development should be focused on making Endgame things.. These can range from time consuming things that you do over a set period, to instant gratification action based gameplay..
10% of development should be focused on getting to endgame, because that is about the time the players spend doing it...
If you break down a 12 month cycle the player spends about 1-3 months leveling up and the rest at Endgame. So the focuses of content and things to do should be centerd around were the player will spend most of his time 9-10 months at endgame in the above example....
Alts are not a solution to build endgame around.. If the player starts rolling Alts to keep himself entertained you have done something wrong period...
Alts are for people with way to much time on thier hands, and the avrage player should never feel the need to roll an alt to have fun in your game..
You miss people who like to try more classes than just 1 available class. In a class based MMO, you're forced to roll an alt if you want to give other classes and playstyles that interest you a try. I think that the average player likes to try out and even keep more than only 1 class and playstyle.
Same applies to faction.
You know what I personaly think is that the younger generation lacks creativity. And to many suites have joined the industry so that those that have innovating ideas never get a chans to test them out.
I have said for years that games can have simple grafics, and basic game mechanics and still be very fun to play. All the mobile games out thes days and Facebook games proves this. You dont have to have super grafics or complicated game mechanics to make a game fun to play.
You have to have a good idea, and have lots of fun things for the player to do to keep him coming back for more. I personaly belive that an RTS style MMO with lots of Sim City like features could be a real hit.
The second most imoprtant thing is to get Girls to play your game. Because Boys will always go were there are girls..
If you have a nightclub full of hot girls you will make alot of money.. if its just 5 dudes sitting around you wont make shit.
So the 3 step part of making Loads of cash of an MMO is:
1. Make something diffrent
2. Focus on endgame
3. Get Girls to want to play your game
= Success!!
I'm only talking about how to make money now, because lets face it that is what these developers want MONEY... So sticking to this holy trinity above that will be thier best way of getting it...
I'm not missing it what I said was You should not feel the need to do it to keep playing the game.
If you want to try out diffrent classes that is your Option. Nobody is forcing you to do this. You do not need to do it you chose to do it that is a big diffrence you know...
You should be thinking in your mind: hmm would it not be fun to try this class out or see what this faction is about...
You should not be thinking: OMG I'm so horribly bored, maybe rolling another class will make this game more fun..
Do you understand what I'm getting at...
And about the time statement. It goes with content. You should not roll a new toon to get more content. Only roll it if you have the time to invest in another project, or just want to cheak it out for fun etc...
My Game setup would be
1. Its an RTS
2. You control a Warlord/Archwizzard etc
3. You have a castle/town that works like a sim city project. You get ressources, build new buildings, you recruit more troops.
4. The pve aspect spins around you getting more warriors/beasts/ressources to fuel your war efforts. This takes time and effort. By doing reserch/raiding dungeons to capture a Dragon to fight for you. Going through ruins to find lost Blue prints to manafacture new weapons and engines of WAR..
5. The PvP aspect is fighting and defending your Ressources and your lands from hostile players who want to take it away from you..
You can do both Pve and PVP in a group with other players.. form guilds etc...
The Game is all END GAME.... And it works around the principle that more you play the more OPTIONS you get.. These Options might not be uppgrades/power ups, but gives you the ablity to use MORE things and tactics. You become more versatile but not Overpowerd... It has to be made this way because if you get POWER UPS you soon crush everything below you. Giving you more Options is a better way to keep the game balanced.. Putting a hardcap on your War Posse is a must.. When you go out and PvP you can only use a set number of diffrent troop/monster/warmachine options. But if you have played for a long time your Options on what to bring are much more then for a player who has just started out...
You can also Tier it so at Tier 1 you have a small force and at Tier 4 you can bring a huge force ( Tier 4 would be the highest and you would have had to play the game for a while to be able to fight these types of PvP battles...)
It would be a diffrent game then annything that is on the market today. And we need change because games will keep tanking if they keep going in the Direction they are taking today. That is just a FACT, that is backed up by years of Failed atempts in the genre...
That is true that other games have certain aspects of SWG as well, but SWG had it all. I have yet to try out STOs system, so could keep me playing. However there is not one other game or MMO that has all the features that SWG had. The chronicles system in SWG alone would not have been enough to keep me playing SWG.
LOTRO is the next best thing for player housing. The instanced areas kind of act as cities, and you can decorate the insides and outside (the garden area) of the house, but it does take a lot more effort to pay the upkeep on it, or did do, although houses are still locked and scrabbling to get more money to unlock them, or dismiss them and repurchase them.
There is nothing is SWTOR though, at end game, other than the levlling up of another character.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
So much fail for 2nd largest MMO on western market...?
SWTOR is fine. From business perspective, it was probably too expensive to make tho.