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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Guild Summit Impressions
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Last week, our boots were on the ground at the first Star Wars: The Old Republic Guild Summit. We've got thoughts to share about the summit itself and the overall tone of the event in this exclusive report. Keep reading and then leave us your thoughts in the comments!
Going into the Guild Summit I wasn't really sure what to expect. I've been to a lot of gaming conventions before, including Blizzcon, so I guess I expected something similar... kind of. Quite simply, I thought it basically was going to be Bioware sharing with us, the guildmasters, why we need to stay in the game with our guilds.
Read more of Pokket's Star Wars: The Old Republic.
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Comments
What happened to their design philosophy of targeting primarily Bioware gamers first, casual MMO fans second and hardcore MMO gamers last? What's the first thing they do? Go after guilds and their feedback, yet guilds by their very definition are much more hardcore oriented than your typical Bioware / casual gamer. They did the same thing in beta, caving in to the hardcore rants about the game being too easy as each patch progressively made the game harder. We casual Bioware gamers were ignored as we complained that the game was losing it's appeal for us as they continued to hammer content into a more hardcore form over and over.
I find myself longing for Guild Wars 2 as I lose faith in Bioware's vision for the future of this game. At least Anet has the balls to remain casual oriented despite voiciferous whining from the hardcore crowds.
It has lost its appeal, along with a lot of guildies.. as they left.
Let's hope that GW2 we be the saving grace that the hype says it will, after so many years playing MMOs I'm starting to feel that I'm burnt out & the end of the line is near.
LMAO, let me get this straight you are complaining SWTOR is too hard? What part exactly? After the 100's of posts complaining it's a single player game with a chat window, I seriously want to know what you find hard?
Pokket, It's an unfortunate reality these days that people are more concerned with themselves than the population as a whole, not just in MMOs but the world in general. Though, it is nice that some good ideas were shared and Bioware seemed receptive to them.
I agree that the questions should have been filtered/previewed and that the best ones (or at least the ones that applied to the most people) should have been the ones asked.
Having a good guild to hang with does indeed increase the time a person spends in game. I was in an amazing guild for City of Heroes and we played together way past when the content wore out (almost 2 years before moving our separate ways). Therefore, I was quite disappointed that the "guild" section of the guild summit was the section that got the least time spent on it.
This is exactly how I feel too.
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu, Art of War
Guilds are not all hardcore. The reason they did a guild summit is so they could get feedback from various spheres of the gaming community. There were representatives from hardcore raiding and pvp guilds, but also lots of casual players and roleplayers. They are also adding a "story mode" to raids to allow casual players to experience the raid content without the extra difficulty, as well as all the legacy stuff, for those who mainly focus on leveling new characters.
GW2 is a PvP oriented game, it won't cater to casual players. They will always push their PvP content over whatever PvE they put in the game.
If anything, SWTOR is solely pvp oriented, or tries to be. Whereas GW2 has both pvp and pve content.
That is something SWTOR sorely lacks in. SWTOR has no RP features, and really poor pve content while their pvp/raid content is their main focus, it lacks big time.
"a ton of new content"?
1.2 has a lot of new content, but not close to a ton of it. If you raid or pvp, you are getting help in 1.2, other than that not so much.
Really did not understand the point of a guild leader summit so early in the games life cycle.
I wish those that like this game continued fun, but I do not think the patch is going to bring a lot of players back.
I think what would bring players (me) back is:
Transfers
Server Merges
One of the BIG things that makes SWTOR a bit boring is the community. Where the heck is everyone? I am on one of the top three highest populated servers and it feels dead.
I don't know about other players but I want to see a lot of other people in-game when I am playing. I want to feel that massive community on my server. Usually there are about 5-10 players in each of the lower zones. (Yes, it's leveling zones) But still.. this is a new MMO. One would think that even in the leveling zones the population would be around 50-100.
Some people will come in and say the game is too new for merges. Might that be true but I will say better to man up and realize it has to happen and do it. Then hold off until you're no longer in the "new" stage.
As for content, I personally can't speak for PvE or PvP at 50 as I have yet to hit level 50. I have two at 47. Hitting level 50 is a whole different boat for me. I could of done it within the first two weeks after release but didn't.
Don't get me wrong. I really like SWTOR, really I do. I enjoy the game play and the art style. But I play MMO's to play with other people and I want SWTOR to do well. I like many people have been waiting for this game since it was first annouced. For it to come to the point where no one wants to log in because it's boring.. it just heartbreaking to a fan.
SWTOR's main problem was not addressed at this summit. This is that the game design and game world isolate players rather than encourage the building of community. This is because Bioware has gone overboard to cater to two groups of gamers whose style is antithetical to building community.
1. Solers and Casuals
While a game should be accessible to all and casual-friendly, Bioware has gone too far down this road. There is little to no reason to group or even speak to other people in the game. And the content is easily polished off with such little effort that you don't need anyone's help. The exceptions would be some heroics, but you can outlevel and do these later if you wish with companions. Again, I am not saying that solo and casual play should not be accomodated. But it should not be accomodated to this extreme.
2. Content Locusts and End Gamers
Bioware is also catering to the people who rush through content in 1/10th of the time it takes the usual gamer. These are the people who are level 50 in one week because they play twelve hours a day and space bar through storylines. They are very vocal and the world to them consists only of the rush to end game. Once they get there they begin to complain they are bored and have nothing to do. Meanwhile, the rest of the game world they rushed through sits empty and lifeless. Rather than put more life into the game world and encourage people to stay in it longer, Bioware accepts the notion that salvation only comes from feeding more new content into the endless hunger of the end-gamers. So instead of making the game itself a tool for people to create their own fun, Bioware acts as nurse-maid to the end-gamers, who passively wait for their next entertainment fix to be brought to them on a silver platter.
I think personally, that one of the biggest letdowns is the fact that there's no need to do flashpoints at all, until endgame. Then all your doing is running hard modes to get geared up for raids. Pvp by far got broke with the Ilum bug. When tons of people got battlemaster, and there was no rollback. Now before the last patch that implemented the "pvp metals". I joined a level 50 match and got whoped by battlemasters for a little valor. Now I join and get beat by them for hopefully a little more valor. Make fps appeal to people. If all people can get is some story and another peice of orange armor, it's not worth it imo. I really like playing swtor, but it's even starting to get on my nerves.
Nice write up, Pokket.
ANet has said over and over again, that they are putting much more of an emphasis on the PvE this time around. They are not putting the major focus on PvP and you are misinformed if you think otherwise. This is going to be the ultimate casual persistant MMO on the market. The only thing lacking from the first game was the persistant world and it had a much greater focus on PvP.
"For example, the leader who seemed upset that Bioware was encouraging people to reroll alts with the Legacy system. I guess this didn't really seem like an issue to me. As a guild leader, I definitely want my guildmates to reroll if they are bored or want to try something new and I trust them to uphold PvP and Raid schedules. My guild has developed that sort of bond and, in fact, a lot of us have rerolled alts together to level casually when we aren't playing our mains.
With respect I think you missed the point of what that individual was driving at, he was mostly upset with creating alts of the opposing faction, feeling that this would essentially reduce the online activity in his guild, without an in-game way to communicate between guilds (if a sister guild was formed for alts on the other faction) and anyone who has been in a guild knows the ramifications of fewer players being online in guild, regardless of where they are they aren't there, in guild, visibly online. So without using external means of communication, which not everyone uses or would even want to, the system kind of favouring a solution to faction imbalances by encouraging more cross-faction alt-character gaming isn't a bad idea persay, but does need to think through the implications much more thoroughly.
"Not to mention Bioware gets a plethora of new ideas... free of charge."
I really have to wonder why a game with such a large budget, team, and amount of time to create a game would NEED new ideas. I'm glad the fans who went had a good time, and I'm glad to see that Bioware seems to be taking the problems with this game seriously. BUT every time I see somehing from these guys I can't help but be left with the cold feeling that something is very rotten in their chain of command. Meaning either some of their "experts" aren't up to the task or some of their management aren't letting their experts do thier jobs.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
^^This, more than anything.
I love the individual and small-group personal, tailored feel of this game. I will never join a guild and I do not give a rip about guild functionality and "new" (woo-hoo!) endgame operations and other mindless, "busy work" gear grinds.
Bioware needs to focus on what they do best -- single-player and small group content and story-rich content. I am enjoying playing SWTOR, but the endgame- and guild-oriented players (lots of overlap there) aren't going to be sticking around long in this game, no matter what Bioware does, and Bioware needs to focus instead on improving and expanding on the content for "regular/casual players".
SWTOR is never going to have lasting appeal for "endgamers", imo, and should target players who "enjoy the journey" and are not charging hellbent for leather for the max-level, endgame content. This is a game that works best for "sippers", rather than "chuggers".
Bioware, that's your niche. Let WoW, etc., focus on the mega, massive wash-rinse-repeat endgame raid crap.
This is a worthwhile article because of the 'factual content'.
However, I don't agree with the 'interpretation of the data'.
SWTOR = WoW + Star Wars
So if you've had enough of the WoW style (I know I have), future developments have nothing for you - it's more of the same.
Therefore, if you are a seasoned gamer, like me, I think the future is still Eve Online + DUST, if you are into Sci Fi MMORPGs.
That, in a nutshell, is all there is to be said.
Even though I unsubbed in February, I continued to follow hoping, as a Star Wars fanboy, that they would make improvements over the course of the year to get my business back. Unfortunately, that is not the case, basically the "Guild summit" is a joke... It's a way to keep some attetntion on failed game ideas and trick people into staying on long after they should.
Believe me when I say " This is not the game your looking for!" It still lacks many elements EVERY OTHER GAME HAS. It might as well be browser based... And the MMO feel is missing as many server and zones are low pop. Believe me, if it wern't for the chat window I wouldn't know other people were even there and half the time and I played alts on about 4 servers... I didn't bother with guilds because of this and the fact that the Voice overs are so important for "immersion" why would I teamspeak. It would be annoying as I'd either end up spacebarring or muting guildies to enjoy what Bioware provided.
1. Serve merge
2. transfers.
3. actual space combat
4. weather effects
5. just some of the things still missing.
Although it did take them 5 months to get to the UI disaster so who knows what to expect. My advice quit listeneing to paid for by Bioware opinions from "gamer columnists" who tow EA's chains and wisen up. Personally, I'll wait till a Star Wars property that's worth playing is on the market, I wouldn't hold my breath though... Hello Eve Online!
If you enjoy the game, please, by all means continue to do so. After all, Biowares shoddy devs need to eat too.