They need to have some with great common sense come in and redirect the entire development teams goals.
Fix all errors that are reported first!
fix the graphical problems with sith pure bloods not being able to wear gear and have it show on them. same with twileks and others.
Get PVP seperated from the PVE community get them a server with arena and rated whatever leave it optional for PVE players
Take all the planets you have remove the exhaustion zones add camp kits that give bonuses add fishing
Add day and night cycles
make cantinas give a buff for you if you sit in them 10m
add a social class that can buff or entertain
reduce the cost of legacy perks fast.
make it so the ship can be decorated.
get a real space game added with space PVP
let smugglers smuggle for empire or republic
let bounty hunters hunt players repub or emp
create a neutral class based based on darkside lightside for each faction.
make crafting gear/items equal with endgame gear.rtemove the gem vendors kills artifice crafters.
add a barber shop of some type, and this should be first...allow players to change advanced class damit!!!
add more alien looking races!. as it stand's everyone is a human with some facial feature that attempts to make them look alien.
get same sex romances in. how would you like it they made the romances all for gay people and never hetro ones. now flip it and you know how gay people feel about it.
Take the planets of the linear themepark rail and allow true exploration.
make guilds worth it allow guilds to create guild quest for their members.add guild captial ships.
remove all boundry that sperate republic and empire. allow all planets to be visted by both factions even if your gonna get killed doing so.
stop making me drive a taxi and I still have to pay a fee to use it.
stop instacing everything. make class storys have more emotion when the time comes. right now they're like amway guys all polite and never show emotions. i wanna see kira cry when I kill 30 people for darkside points.
allow comanions to be corrppted bt the darkside or saved by the light.
and for the love of all that is wookie!!! please allow both faction to have acces to each otheres gear instead of this shit were it look one way if you send it to empire then it did republic. thats just some bullshit there!
typos are intended.
I'm thinking they are looking at a list just like yours, and saying, "Fuck it. That's a whole new game."
I totally agree with you, but they don't seem to be able to go fast enough to get out of their own way.
19:51 Ed: The amount of effort that BioWare expended in the 1-49 experience, which almost everyone would say it was tons of fun. The problem is they spent so much time there, that they didn't spend enough time in endgame. There was not enough endgame content. Because they spent so much time from 1-49, this is probably why they were pushed out the door before they were ready because so much money was going into the vertical game. BioWare might have thought optimistically that the 4th pillar story was sufficient to hold people in the long term. There is not enough stuff at endgame as I would need to stay here indefinitely; this is the feedback I got.
I have a problem with this statement. One character to level cap was fun, not incredible, but worth the initial box fee. Playing alts however...this "effort" he claims they put so much into....where is it? Look at a game like WoW at it's launch and how much it had content wise from level 1-60. I literally played one race through to cap and hadn't seen 50% of the leveling content in the game. I didn't see most if not all of it until my 3rd to 4th character on that leveling journey. This was due to variety in zones, quests and leveling paths. SWTOR doesn't even have 2 leveling paths for one faction. It has 1. That's it. It's horrible.
These guys spent far too much time on cutscene after cutscene, trying to drive home the story aspect, not realizing they had TOO much story. One story per class is fine and awesome. Doing a cutscene for every single sidequest in the game....not so smart. They could have easily just made the class quests and planet quests fully voiced over cutscene quests and spent the rest of their time on MMO game mechanics and made the game ten times more fun, immersive and addictive. It lacks all 3.
I agree. I felt the same way about the replayability. Or rather lack of it. Again, it makes me wonder where the heck all the money and manpower went to. I guess at some time there will be a big reckoning, and I guess some people REALLY mismanaged the company. Remember how after the Vanguard disaster we heard how Brad McQuaid actually was mostly away or on drugs? I really at this point would not be surprised if we hear hilarious stories about SWTOR development too. Can't explain this otherwise.
@jeremyjodes: I SO agree with your list of needed changes. You see, myself and many others said these things for the last 2-3 years now. To no avail. They always answered to this critique, that these details were not essentially to their "hero vision". And see how that worked out. I still think none of the Gamebreaker TV guys really understood that many of these basics are so lacking, the fundamentals are just bad. Like no day-night cycle, or no swimming/diving. Sure, these are not essential. But they add tons of "magic" to the feeling of a world. It is the sum of these small lacking things which just will bring the game down. And yes, it would be another game, and a huge effort. Bioware is simply blind to this truth and will stick to their vision to the bitter end.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
They need to have some with great common sense come in and redirect the entire development teams goals.
Fix all errors that are reported first!
fix the graphical problems with sith pure bloods not being able to wear gear and have it show on them. same with twileks and others.
Get PVP seperated from the PVE community get them a server with arena and rated whatever leave it optional for PVE players
Take all the planets you have remove the exhaustion zones add camp kits that give bonuses add fishing
Add day and night cycles
make cantinas give a buff for you if you sit in them 10m
add a social class that can buff or entertain
reduce the cost of legacy perks fast.
make it so the ship can be decorated.
get a real space game added with space PVP
let smugglers smuggle for empire or republic
let bounty hunters hunt players repub or emp
create a neutral class based based on darkside lightside for each faction.
make crafting gear/items equal with endgame gear.rtemove the gem vendors kills artifice crafters.
add a barber shop of some type, and this should be first...allow players to change advanced class damit!!!
add more alien looking races!. as it stand's everyone is a human with some facial feature that attempts to make them look alien.
get same sex romances in. how would you like it they made the romances all for gay people and never hetro ones. now flip it and you know how gay people feel about it.
Take the planets of the linear themepark rail and allow true exploration.
make guilds worth it allow guilds to create guild quest for their members.add guild captial ships.
remove all boundry that sperate republic and empire. allow all planets to be visted by both factions even if your gonna get killed doing so.
stop making me drive a taxi and I still have to pay a fee to use it.
stop instacing everything. make class storys have more emotion when the time comes. right now they're like amway guys all polite and never show emotions. i wanna see kira cry when I kill 30 people for darkside points.
allow comanions to be corrppted bt the darkside or saved by the light.
and for the love of all that is wookie!!! please allow both faction to have acces to each otheres gear instead of this shit were it look one way if you send it to empire then it did republic. thats just some bullshit there!
typos are intended.
Most of that will never happen. I recall people asking for that a year before release during beta testing. They rarely ever replied to things like that and when they did they didnt actually talk about the points being brought up. Bioware reminded me of Funcom a LOT...the single worst company when it comes to listening to their testers and addressing concerns directly.
I really miss the days of companies doing closed betas and working directly with the testers as if they were humans, with a valid opinion.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Ed Park was on the money, literally, talking about breaking the aquisition barrier.
Trion did it right; they started discounting the box almost immediately after launch, and now it pretty much just costs a month; IMO it helped keep away the massive tailspin many MMO's have about 3 months out.
BW needs to discount their box, like, yesterday. Bring down the barrier of entry. And in the meantime, work on the "stuff to do at max level" list. Not all MMO companies are fortunate enough to know the weaknesses of their games. This one couldn't be more clear.
In all fairness, this wasn't supposed to happen. I mean this is BW. This is Star Wars. Much as I can agree from a historical perspective and from playing the game I can also see why they haven't handled it properly. At all. Because they never really created or discussed a viable prospectus or contingency plan for this scenario. It is fairly obvious from their actions or better yet lack of.
I mean these guys were expecting millions on a long term retention basis. Frankly, I did too until I got to play their game. You can take it however you want but after playing it I knew it was not going to be anywhere near as successful as they were banking on.
They could have let their egos draw that false conclusion. But the reality is, most games, no matter how good, only hold an individual for so long on their own.
Eve might be an exception. I suspect it's because of the nature of its progression system. You only progress so fast, but there are so many avenues of progression that open up new and interesting(IMO) things, that you might be compelled to stick around for a while. I think that might be why I always return to it, at least for a while.
And LotRO, my mainstay, is still on the road to Mordor. That, and lots of max level activities keeps me there. It will be interesting to see what happens to subs if/when Mordor comes and goes.
I guess that's what I think separates(for me) games that I stick with, and games that I enjoy playing(WoW, TOR, CoX, etc) but will inevitably end up cancelling for months if not years at a time. That point of feeling like "The best is behind me".
They could have let their egos draw that false conclusion. But the reality is, most games, no matter how good, only hold an individual for so long on their own.
I disagree. To an extent. While I certainly don't think you can keep players around forever I do think it is possible for a game to have considerable long term growth potential and a good retention rate.
It isn't going to happen with the design they have in this game. You have to have a game design that promotes community, innovation, alt creation, repeating material/areas, etc. Things that are going to make a person "want" to stay involved and subbed to the game. I don't know if any other mmo will be able to have the sub numbers WoW does. However, I do think it is feasible for a game that is managed properly, consistantly updated, and doesn't simply follow the standard gameplay status quo to maintain a couple million people and garner the same level of respect (or hatred) that WoW does.
Not going to happen when you follow the route SWTOR and many other games do though.
Honestly though, even if they would have managed things better they wouldn't have lost as many players. There are those that loved the game but left due to being frustrated at being unable to group, lack of community, and frankly on some servers literally a lack of players. They did a pisspoor job in this department. Maybe after 1.3 they'll be able to get some of these folks back.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
It's gonna crash unless they radically depart from their design. Post Traumatic NGE Syndrome will give them pause, but it's the only hope. This game practically taunts you with its boringness and simplicity at 50.
You feel like somebody has trapped you in a Chuck E. Cheese and told you to collect tickets so you can get an ugly costume.
Listened to almost the whole thing and all of them are just afraid to say "The game sucked and it is going to die a horrible death" because that would rock the boat way too much but they all dance around that subject as much as possible. You know quality > quantity and the best way to get rid of the trash is to be honest and just say it.
Listened to almost the whole thing and all of them are just afraid to say "The game sucked and it is going to die a horrible death" because that would rock the boat way too much but they all dance around that subject as much as possible. You know quality > quantity and the best way to get rid of the trash is to be honest and just say it.
Seeing as they're willing to do these shows based solely on the game, I hardly believe that they think the game sucks.
Sex has a crappy endgame, too, but I don't think it sucks.
Sex has a crappy endgame, too, but I don't think it sucks.
huh? Sex has the best endgame ever...
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Sex has a crappy endgame, too, but I don't think it sucks.
Say what?
The endgame is what makes it all worth it. Oh nvm, saw your response
Why would you lay in it? Or not use the bathroom to clean yourself up?
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Sex has a crappy endgame, too, but I don't think it sucks.
Say what?
The endgame is what makes it all worth it. Oh nvm, saw your response
Yeah I thought that argument was limp myself
Lol
+1
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
They need to have some with great common sense come in and redirect the entire development teams goals.
Fix all errors that are reported first!
fix the graphical problems with sith pure bloods not being able to wear gear and have it show on them. same with twileks and others.
Get PVP seperated from the PVE community get them a server with arena and rated whatever leave it optional for PVE players
Take all the planets you have remove the exhaustion zones add camp kits that give bonuses add fishing
Add day and night cycles
make cantinas give a buff for you if you sit in them 10m
add a social class that can buff or entertain
reduce the cost of legacy perks fast.
make it so the ship can be decorated.
get a real space game added with space PVP
let smugglers smuggle for empire or republic
let bounty hunters hunt players repub or emp
create a neutral class based based on darkside lightside for each faction.
make crafting gear/items equal with endgame gear.rtemove the gem vendors kills artifice crafters.
add a barber shop of some type, and this should be first...allow players to change advanced class damit!!!
add more alien looking races!. as it stand's everyone is a human with some facial feature that attempts to make them look alien.
get same sex romances in. how would you like it they made the romances all for gay people and never hetro ones. now flip it and you know how gay people feel about it.
Take the planets of the linear themepark rail and allow true exploration.
make guilds worth it allow guilds to create guild quest for their members.add guild captial ships.
remove all boundry that sperate republic and empire. allow all planets to be visted by both factions even if your gonna get killed doing so.
stop making me drive a taxi and I still have to pay a fee to use it.
stop instacing everything. make class storys have more emotion when the time comes. right now they're like amway guys all polite and never show emotions. i wanna see kira cry when I kill 30 people for darkside points.
allow comanions to be corrppted bt the darkside or saved by the light.
and for the love of all that is wookie!!! please allow both faction to have acces to each otheres gear instead of this shit were it look one way if you send it to empire then it did republic. thats just some bullshit there!
typos are intended.
They were actually in the process of doing that, there was a team working on it! Then they "restructered" the team and their goals, due to a change of priorities the todo list now looks like this:
Ultimately I think the game is just not going to work long term. Its hard to say this but as a hardcore Star Wars and Sci-fi fan, I don't think I would play SWtOR even if it was free. A large circle of my friends are in the same age bracket and love Star Wars, most have tried and left after 4 weeks. Some are hanging for GW2, some went back to EVE and even a few are going to Vanguard, for all its failings it still has extensive housing and crafting etc.
SWtOR should go FTP immediately and merge servers. They may keep a lot of players still and they can just sell endless amounts of uniforms and good looking gear. With GW2 coming out with no sub, its going to be another nail in the coffin...
For the record, I enjoyed SWtOR for about 4 weeks. I don't hate it but it does kill me how much money was thrown at a huge IP and there is little or no inspiration or imagination put into the game. I knew there was something wrong when I started playing Facebook games more than SWtOR and I still had 2 months sub.
Comments
I'm thinking they are looking at a list just like yours, and saying, "Fuck it. That's a whole new game."
I totally agree with you, but they don't seem to be able to go fast enough to get out of their own way.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I agree. I felt the same way about the replayability. Or rather lack of it. Again, it makes me wonder where the heck all the money and manpower went to. I guess at some time there will be a big reckoning, and I guess some people REALLY mismanaged the company. Remember how after the Vanguard disaster we heard how Brad McQuaid actually was mostly away or on drugs? I really at this point would not be surprised if we hear hilarious stories about SWTOR development too. Can't explain this otherwise.
@jeremyjodes: I SO agree with your list of needed changes. You see, myself and many others said these things for the last 2-3 years now. To no avail. They always answered to this critique, that these details were not essentially to their "hero vision". And see how that worked out. I still think none of the Gamebreaker TV guys really understood that many of these basics are so lacking, the fundamentals are just bad. Like no day-night cycle, or no swimming/diving. Sure, these are not essential. But they add tons of "magic" to the feeling of a world. It is the sum of these small lacking things which just will bring the game down. And yes, it would be another game, and a huge effort. Bioware is simply blind to this truth and will stick to their vision to the bitter end.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Most of that will never happen. I recall people asking for that a year before release during beta testing. They rarely ever replied to things like that and when they did they didnt actually talk about the points being brought up. Bioware reminded me of Funcom a LOT...the single worst company when it comes to listening to their testers and addressing concerns directly.
I really miss the days of companies doing closed betas and working directly with the testers as if they were humans, with a valid opinion.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
They could have let their egos draw that false conclusion. But the reality is, most games, no matter how good, only hold an individual for so long on their own.
Eve might be an exception. I suspect it's because of the nature of its progression system. You only progress so fast, but there are so many avenues of progression that open up new and interesting(IMO) things, that you might be compelled to stick around for a while. I think that might be why I always return to it, at least for a while.
And LotRO, my mainstay, is still on the road to Mordor. That, and lots of max level activities keeps me there. It will be interesting to see what happens to subs if/when Mordor comes and goes.
I guess that's what I think separates(for me) games that I stick with, and games that I enjoy playing(WoW, TOR, CoX, etc) but will inevitably end up cancelling for months if not years at a time. That point of feeling like "The best is behind me".
I disagree. To an extent. While I certainly don't think you can keep players around forever I do think it is possible for a game to have considerable long term growth potential and a good retention rate.
It isn't going to happen with the design they have in this game. You have to have a game design that promotes community, innovation, alt creation, repeating material/areas, etc. Things that are going to make a person "want" to stay involved and subbed to the game. I don't know if any other mmo will be able to have the sub numbers WoW does. However, I do think it is feasible for a game that is managed properly, consistantly updated, and doesn't simply follow the standard gameplay status quo to maintain a couple million people and garner the same level of respect (or hatred) that WoW does.
Not going to happen when you follow the route SWTOR and many other games do though.
Honestly though, even if they would have managed things better they wouldn't have lost as many players. There are those that loved the game but left due to being frustrated at being unable to group, lack of community, and frankly on some servers literally a lack of players. They did a pisspoor job in this department. Maybe after 1.3 they'll be able to get some of these folks back.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
It's gonna crash unless they radically depart from their design. Post Traumatic NGE Syndrome will give them pause, but it's the only hope. This game practically taunts you with its boringness and simplicity at 50.
You feel like somebody has trapped you in a Chuck E. Cheese and told you to collect tickets so you can get an ugly costume.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Listened to almost the whole thing and all of them are just afraid to say "The game sucked and it is going to die a horrible death" because that would rock the boat way too much but they all dance around that subject as much as possible. You know quality > quantity and the best way to get rid of the trash is to be honest and just say it.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
Seeing as they're willing to do these shows based solely on the game, I hardly believe that they think the game sucks.
Sex has a crappy endgame, too, but I don't think it sucks.
huh? Sex has the best endgame ever...
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
All slimy, laying in the wet spot?
To each their own...
Say what?
The endgame is what makes it all worth it. Oh nvm, saw your response
Why would you lay in it? Or not use the bathroom to clean yourself up?
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Yeah I thought that argument was limp myself
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Lol
+1
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
There was a part where the dev said set bonuses for Columi do not work at all, and they have no plans on fixing it. Wow...
Looking at the comments below, I saw this. Not sure how accurate they are but I would tend to believe them...
from the official forums:
Date Population Loss (by that they mean concurrent user numbers)
5/11/2012 95,859
5/16/2012 85,995 / 9,864
5/18/2012 83,194 / 2,801
5/21/2012 76,255 / 6,939
5/23/2012 73,693 / 2,562
5/25/2012 72,203 / 1,490
5/28/2012 66,574 / 5,629
5/30/2012 66,323 / 251
6/01/2012 65,772 / 551
we're nosediving
I'll save you the suspense.
There has been a mass exodus since 1.2 released. Game is now below 200k subs.
SWTOR is the largest, fastest and most expensive MMO failure in history - all because of its arrogant, incompetent and dishonest lead developers.
There's not much more to the story than that.
They were actually in the process of doing that, there was a team working on it! Then they "restructered" the team and their goals, due to a change of priorities the todo list now looks like this:
1. Merge servers, invent fancy name for it.
2. Goto 1.
Ultimately I think the game is just not going to work long term. Its hard to say this but as a hardcore Star Wars and Sci-fi fan, I don't think I would play SWtOR even if it was free. A large circle of my friends are in the same age bracket and love Star Wars, most have tried and left after 4 weeks. Some are hanging for GW2, some went back to EVE and even a few are going to Vanguard, for all its failings it still has extensive housing and crafting etc.
SWtOR should go FTP immediately and merge servers. They may keep a lot of players still and they can just sell endless amounts of uniforms and good looking gear. With GW2 coming out with no sub, its going to be another nail in the coffin...
For the record, I enjoyed SWtOR for about 4 weeks. I don't hate it but it does kill me how much money was thrown at a huge IP and there is little or no inspiration or imagination put into the game. I knew there was something wrong when I started playing Facebook games more than SWtOR and I still had 2 months sub.