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What would SWTOR have to do in order to make a come back?
Zeppelin5083
Member Posts: 410
Yesterday, I made a thread asking about the advertisement for SWTOR in pre-release. I found out that I had missed a massive ad blitz which made me feel foolish and in the end, it doesn't matter how much you spend on advertising as long as the game you put out there is good enough to attract and keep people through word of mouth.
Now, I want to know what SWTOR could do to attract you to the game and possible keep you playing. Assume they got an anonymous donation of millions and millions to sink into working on the game.
Here's my list:
1. IMMEDIATELY fix the bugs that cause the game to quit. Several flashpoints cause disconnects when a cutscene shows your ship going to hyperspeed. These have been in the game for weeks and no maintenance has fixed it (maybe the one going right now will). These bugs should not be in the game for so long, especially when you keep adding new items to the cartel market.
2. Lessen the restriction for F2P. Raise the money cap or eliminate it, give them at least 4 quick bars rather than 2. Allow them to wield artifact level items. If you want to make up for the loss of artifact wield revenue, give them less endgame commendations for HM FPs and Dailies, and add a commendation unlock which gives them as much as a subscriber. SWTOR's F2P, while technically free, is the most limited one I've seen. Relaxing the restrictions could attract more possible subscribers and even F2Pers that occassionally purchase on the cartel market.
3. Fix the bug which happens when you kill mobs and they are left standing where you killed them. It's odd to see a guy frozen in a standing position after you kill him. Happens ALL the time.
4. Add more implications which make choosing light/dark side more interesting. Example: If you make a jedi, and get to Dark Side II, your personal story changes and you are approached by a Sith, and you get the option of joining the Empire and becoming a fallen Jedi. A light side sith could be approached by a Jedi, etc. This could put a chink in the guild system, unless you play as an undercover agent for one side.
5. Add more animations. When I first saw Master Strike as the Jedi Knight move and Ravage as the Sith Warrior move, I thought they looked very cool. After the billionth time, it's meh. I think you could add new animations for master strike and ravage and either put them in the cartel market, or allow subbers to choose which they want when they create a character, or both. It would be a nice change and add more revenue. I would definitely at least look at new master strike animations if they added some.
5. Add more races. Ortolan, Jawa, Wookie, Voss, there's loads that they could choose. Pick a couple and make them available in the next major update. I would recommend at least on RP servers to allow only known force sensitive species to be available as Jedi/Sith on RP servers. You could add 3 races, say Vos, Wookie, and Mon Calamari (no idea how they would work the language barrier on wookie) and allow Voss to be Jedi/Sith and Wookie to be Smuggler/Mercenary and Mon Calamari to be Trooper/Agent. I don't know a lot about the lore so these 3 may not work at all in these roles but you catch my drift.
6. Add more dailies, or add several new daily areas and make all dailies a 2 day cooldown, which would mean I would be doing dailies from the areas right now every other day, with the new dailies in between. At least it's a bit of a change.
I haven't done enough PvP to comment on what they should (if anything) change yet.
These are all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure more will come to me later.
Comments
Just wanted to warn you before it happens:
This thread has been attempted several times, and always gets locked.
1. class balance
2. vanity items all BoE
I hope to have an honest discussion as to what changes could be made in order to bring in more people. I'm sure there will be some out there who disagree with what I have to say and I openly welcome a debate about it. I'm by no means the biggest expert on the game so I understand some of my opinions here may not work.
I'm sure there will be one troll or two but so long as they go unfed we should be ok...
.
First of all swtor must follow the secret world model.
They must make the game buy to play.
Whats the reason for people to subscribe when there are no people to pvp or pve and believe me free to play players are not going to pay to unlock something for a week but they are willing to pay for cool cosmetic stuff.
People when they pay for something want to remain at their hands.Thats the most clever thing a company can do.
In my opinion secret world has done one of the best transitions andd it's currently the best game when it comes to value for money.
Restricting players from playing the game by giving them a hard time as well,can have as a result to make subscribers run away.
I resubed for a month 3months ago but there pvp queues were taking to long to pvp that i didnt bother to continue pay for this game.It simply does not worth it.
Well in that case, here's a simple mechanic that I think would greatly help the game, both gameplaywise and on the PR front:
Give cartel coins a random (albeit small) chance to drop as loot form mobs. All mobs.
This would give the impression that FTP could be done by grinding, a nice little carrot to everyone playing, give grinding more meaning (you could win actual $$), and most of it would be instantly spent on vanity irems.
Furthermore, it would probably be good to take this idea to the next level and eventually make cartel coins convertable into purchasing subscriptions and DLC (such as Makeb). Something along the lines of LOTRO or EVE's plex system. The drop rate for cartel coins would be low enough that it wouldn't really affect the bottom line, but go a long way towards good will and increase gameplay; which makes group-finder and warzones pop more often, etc.
The second suggestion is a bit ambitious, but the first would be very simple to do.
My biggest gripe is the graphics engine, which was never up to snuff. Not to be confused with the artwork, which is good. Getting in congested areas with more then a dozen - 1.5 dozen other players causes the engine to sputter and choke. This makes large scale RP difficult, and prevents open world PVP for many people who have tried the game.
Heavy load screens are rediculous. SWTOR seems to want to load an entire map upon planet entry, even places you didn't want to go. Or so it seems .. whatever the case 3-5 minutes per load isn't very good compared to other games, who load only what it initially needed, then load the rest silently in the background while you play.
The engine is so bad that is cannot support chatbubbles (dev statement paraphrased from a month or so ago) without additional performance drops.
Customer service was always pretty bad. But this can be tied to the number of broken features and bugs, which clog ticket queues.
I agree with the OP (Zeppelin5083) about the F2P restrictions. Money caps are not appealing, and neither is limits on wearing purple quality gear. An MMORPG is centered around the accumulation of character worth and items / stuff. Taking away those possibilities for growth makes the game feel both less MMO'y and less RPG'y.
Actually just remove all the restrictions, make SWTOR truly F2P, and sell DLC. IMO thats the way to go - EA devs would start to feel the pressure when content *isn't* being released fast enough. A winning situation for players.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
Introduce the planet: Sandboxus IV
-On this planet there are 25 new ships you can buy, to include star fighters.
-There are also new weapons like rifle and carbine for Bounty Hunter.
-Furniture exists on this new world, and can be placed in your ship.
-You can sit down in chairs on the new planet.
-The factions are actually at war on the new planet.
-NPCs really dont sell you much on the new world, everything is made by players or looted.
-To reduce the number of vehicles, multi-person vehicles exist on the new world.
-There are player made quests on the new planet. No voice over, sorry.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
That's pretty funny.
If Bioware's spring Makeb marketing survey is to be believed, they do have a 2 seater speeder backlogged in the pipeline.
This but it will never happen SWTOR will remain stuck in 2004.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
It seems too good for Makeb though, my money is a 1% drop from the high-end 3 dollar gambling box... if it got coded.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
introduce new servers with different rule sets
-- if one of the new rule sets proves to be popular, support it more
using Everquest (preWOW) as an example
EQ had 4 different server types
- regular
- pvp
- Firiona Vie server (could only roll 1 character, all loot was tradeable)
- Legendary server (players had to pay $20/mo but had frequent GM events)
i dont think SWTOR should use these examples
but specific server rules are a good opportunity to tinker w existing game
EQ2 fan sites
depressing. not enough horsepower to move its own weight.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
On the 2-person vehicles again, the artwork is there in taxi's, although personal vehicles got that clunky hunk of metal shielding next to the driver added, presumably when SWTOR released before schedule and stuff had to be cleaned up fast..
It seems as though 2 person vehicles were originally intended.
Some taxi's, for instance:
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
@OP
1. bugs a barely a reason for players, to quiet a game, except its out of hand, thats not the case on SWTOR, bugfixing just needs some time but it happens for sure.
3. totally unimportand, cosmetical anoying but just a tidbit
4, 5, 5 and 6. cancel everything starting with "add more" because it can only add, to what there is already so it would add problems on problems.
2. The F2P they did is not worth to play when you already have a higher character. They would need to make the game 100% free to play with additional cosmetical enhancements to pay for with real money.
No, the game has turned out as POS due to the joint venture of alpha game maker tools and greedy crowdmilkers that contracted a army of engineers that had to follow such a concept.
SWTOR was made to get your money.
To make me playing a game, at least give me a feeling that you - the creating company - care on your game.
Bioware removed all 2 person landspeeders (but 1 rare OPs drop) in 1.1.5 in March, about the time when the survey went out which included the 2 person speeder as a bonus for buying the Makeb expansion.
Plans within plans.
People on this sit like to lable games as "WoW clones" to descredit them...but in reality the game really needs to be a wow clone, IE...copy all the functionality...Things like duel spec...dungon finder, guild levels (something even WAR launched with years ago), PVP Arenas, a damn "/roll" command, should have all been in the game at launch. Half implemented "WoW clones" are not WoW clones, and certainly do not show proof of "themeparks failing".
Thats like company A releasing a car with 4 doors, and 4 weels, everybody buys the car. Then 10 other companies release cars with missing doors and weels, which obviously dont sell as well, and ppl using that as "proof" that poeple dont want cars anymore.....no, it means people dont want cars with missing features..
I know some of the things I mention have been added in the past year, but its too little too late.
1. stop fisting f2p users with a trident
2. increase mobility. switching between planets is a pain
Even though I think they're doing decent so far with the ftp they have.I believe they need to tweak a few thing's in the ftp realm of thing's such as removing the credit cap.
From what I understand EQ2 and Vanguard had their gold cap's removed recently,pretty sure AoC had a few changes also.It seem's other game's are adjusting and making more available for free.Swtor could stand to do the same.More happy peep's playing the game mean's more potential sales at the Cartel shop!
What the game is won't change.Once you accept the game as being a sprpg with some mp built in,it's easier to play the game imo.Atleast for me it was.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
Sounds and awful lot like SWG pre NGE...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Because THAT game wasnt bleeding subs right?
Yep. Got worse with the NGE and CU...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...