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[poll] Which top feature to get yourself interested in the game again
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Take the glow off the lightsabres and call them swords to make the game less Star Wars-y. Leave the high end gear as it is, the design team has done a great job of removing any essence of Star Wars there. Decrease the phasing limit down to one, market it as a single player non-Star Wars game, then there is room for a proper Star Wars MMO.
Outside of space features, Rift is putting up the heat with their new housing creation, which actually consists of an entire realm, created by a user, not just a house.
Otherland is trying for something similar as well, but details are a bit sketchy. It's a sci-fi game though.
Sadly, SWTOR is falling off the charts in innovation. Not as a SW game should, but it is, what it is. SWTOR can't compete with new ideas, unfortunately. Boo Lucas.
ref to housing trailers / game desc:
RIFT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrnL285MDFs
OTHERLAND:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSr15jlfOMk
(MyLand world creator @ 3:34)
ps. : I include those links just to substantiate my comments, not for endorsement. Games might suck in the end.
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.
Sometimes silence speaks volumes.
Bioware did attempt better communication from roughly January to April. They listened to their player base and added a custumizable UI and a groupfinder function. They also attempted to set up a ranled war zone system. They were on the verge of releasing a lot of new content for bored level 50's...
But, in the spring EA stepped in and decided to clean house and attempt a Freemium restructuring to sweep the dwindiling subscription numbers under the carpet. (Which was in my opinion, directly affecting EA's stock price.)
SWTOR's course is set and there will be no deviation or alteration of the course it has set upon since the Spring.
Bioware will continue to mete out stockpiled content till the FTP relaunch and reassess the situation in December after the initial wave of FTP players has decided whether or not they will reinfuse the game with revenue from cash shop purchases. (And how the FTP relaunch affects subscription numbers.)
Until then you can hope for communication all you want (see the Aussies asking about APAC server merges) but you won't get any real answers because Bioware's hands are tied to EA's dictates.
EA will be the undoing of could have been a great game, no doubt.
Can you clarify the portion in VIOLET though? I was under impression that EA stepped in, in 2011, to crap up this game, for marketting and bugetary reasons.
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.
EA pretty much left Bioware to its own devices in developing this game. TO EA's credit, they silently admidted thay have a horrible track record with how they handle studios they buy out.
Bioware was given a huge budget and allowed (based on and in hopes of preserving Bioware's sterling reputation) to develope SWTOR as they saw fit. THe only thing that EA did in 2011 was give a firm reease date of x-mas 2011. EA was tired of years and years of development, time for ROI. EA wasn't daft either, SWTOR had a nice lull in which to launch in X-mas of 2011, no GW2 or MoP among others to worry about. So yes, after years of development, EA did say enough is enough and parts of the game were unfinished at release. (IE Legacy)
The game released, and to initial good sales. Many people didn't like the game and unsubbed en masse. Bioware was attempting to counter the mass exodus with quality of life improvments and upping the amount of content released with their large development staff. In the spring EA stepped in, changed many of the head developers, layed off (rumored 200+ staff) and decided to change the game to a Freemium structured game. And now we are here.
I'm not providing links. Google is FTP too.
Sorry but they never tried doing better communication. They added custom UI and group finder because the game, contrary to all other AAA MMO, lacked it.
They ditched the Q&A:
Quote: Originally Posted by JovethGonzalez:
The public changes started last Friday. We heard your feedback about the weekly Q&A so we decided to morph into a more dynamic model. Developers will now be responding more frequently to questions on the forums (which you can follow on Dev Tracker).
BTW people told them the Q&A sucked not because of the form but of the content.
Even now the moderators are screening the devs:
Quote: Originally Posted by AllisonBerryman
I asked Jesse Sky (Lead Flashpoints and Operations Designer) what might be going on here. He mentioned that this may be an artifact of how tab targeting prioritizes enemies, and that it might be helpful to change your keybinding to "target nearest enemy." Let us know if this helps!
No 2 way communication. Check the PTS forums for 1.2, 1.3. 1,4. People despite the 1.2 gear it's still in and even used to advertize the game. ...down to 1.4 Nerfing commando when everyone agrees on it needed a buff in PvP, Changing Sage when nobody asked for it nor felt it was needed and finally lenghthening stuns in PvP
Finally check this out: A Message from the Community Manager
The thread has been unstickied because it made JovethGonzalez looks like a fool
Quote: Originally Posted by aristein
I am going to be blunt. You sound like a politician. You use a lot of words to say very little and commit to nothing specific that you can be held to. Communication is good, hot air is not
Sorry you feel that way. I'm hoping our actions will speak louder than words and win you over eventually.
To Dewe: I didn't mean to imply that their communication was either very effective or heart felt, but they tried a bit, or at least paid it lip service.
They did have that Guild Summit and what not.
After the lay-offs they did decimate their public relations staff and their communication has become consistently worse, as you have pointed out. SOON™ and what have you.
/agree
I think SWTOR is a great game but I got burnt out after grinding to 50. Anyway the feature I'd like to see here, and in all MMOs, is the feature Guild Wars 2 has which is everyone can self heal, tank, dps, etc. With this feature anyone would be able to play the class they like without having to worry about playing whats needed. Of course they would have to redesign the whole game but its just a pipe dream.
Played: EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, WAR, WoW, LoTRO, CoX, CO, GW2, FFXIV: ARR, AoC, Rift, TSW, SWTOR, TERA, BnS, ESO
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
Don't think so.
IMHO they tried to do some damage control, versus really wanting to improve communication.
Now about the guild summit, it was lame as it split the community in two the puggers and the guildies.
BTW I agree on the fact they indeed hit hard their mods staff and it's sad because most of them did a great job, regarding how few the producer allowed them to say. They are good people if you ask.
< nevermind, misread >
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.
Not sure how much better their communication can be. People on that site ask questions bioware has repeatedly said they will not answer. Worse of all, you can look at 90% of the stupid questions on the forum and find the answers in other posts. The only way gamers feel they get enough info is if the developers call them on the phone while they are taking a bath twirling the phone chord in their hands talking about resolve until the wee hours of the night.
Then people ask for specific dates on content under developement which bioware repeatedly says no(a good thing in my opinion, since theres an over abundance of X developer LIED to us threads because of content getting pushed back lol).
Than the last group of forum questions are usually along the lines of "why does x feature suck", which is the equivelant of asking a mom "why's your baby so damn ugly". I mean seriously, even though I can't stand the game, I'm sure the developers are proud of their work so asking a question intentionally attempting to crap on their vision probably won't get answered lol.
Stephen Reid got a ton of criticism for not posting too much on the forums, yet the guy had his twitter on constant update mode, of which forum members would repost, but thats not good enough, the developer must tell every individual personally or it doesn't count.
While I can agree that bioware has been inconsistent in communication at the best of times, that community there pretty much destroy's any possibility of trying.
I think biowares biggest mistake was with the guild summits, and all the interviews they did at their fansites(darthhater, and what not) and instead should have only released information on their site. Screw facebook, screw twitter, screw summits, screw fansites, and instead just focus on one location for info.
I swear, the forumites are horrible with google. They remind me of feeding cows, if you move the hay 10 feet to the left, the damn cows will stand where their food used to be until you move it back. Yeah, pretty much sure that sums up the swtor.com site perfectly.
(I was going to say alfalfa instead of hay, but I didn't want readers to have to google it)
A lot of their initial bad communication concerns were directly related to pretending the Alpha Hero Engine was in a launch ready state. The , "It's not us, it's your rigs." Garnered a lot of ill will. The subsequent silence on the dropping server populatons prior to the initial merge didn't help matters. Their descion to withhold content till FTP is sort of a dagger to many.
Perhaps commuication will improve following the FTP launch. Although I try to remain impartial, my inate skepticism based on their track record doesn't make me very hopeful.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
I get that, but then again, alot of the issues, where fixable on rig side. Of course I realize people expect a certain ease of use, which bioware screwed up(judging the 3 page fixes, players posted to boost fps), and I'm not going to judge people for not knowing how to tweek settings on their side(I've ruined many a computer trying to figure out how to make toast with it), but bioware was lacking the expertise in the field to deal with those issues. In fact, some of their pc games had similiar issues.
Silence on dropping server populations. Again, thats like talking about a sensitive issue. They had to have been upset about dwindling numbers, embarrassed or hell scared for their jobs.
Yeah the content thing, I would imagine isn't flying over to well(makeb?), than again I can see how they might want to push that out at f2p so as people will pay(since freemium only gets you what was in the game at 1.2), but if I was paying a sub, I would be pissed having to wait.
The way I see it, it's easy to communicate with your fans when everything is good, but say gw2 lost 2/3rds of their subs next month, they probably wouldn't talk about it as often as they do now. Hell they have released several posts and communications about botting, but fans still scream they are ignoring the problem?. Biowares been getting heat since day one. Scratch that, before launch. Hell, I'm pretty sure as william0532, I've started or posted straight hate on that site when they revealed space as a rail.
Are you still playing?
haha yeah I should have put that on the list..
It seems you are really into playing SWTOR ;-))
One thing I really want to see in TOR is "more immersion": Day/Night cycles, more random things happening, being able to fucling sit on chairs. A bit more freedom when moving about. Critters. At the moment, many of the (friendly) NPCs are not even targettable, increasing the hit my willing suspension of disbelief is taking (because it increases the feel of the worlds being artificial).
A second thing would be the engine. We're now almost a year into the launch, and there are still bugs like the taxis in Nar Shaddah flickering constantly, the jumping still feels off, and all in all the engine just makes me ask: "Who in all nine hells made them use it?!"
Yes, more space flight and many other things would of course be nice, too. But TOR is lacking on a fundamental level (it's still fun, I just re-subscribed to experience the BH story - but after that, I'll unsubscribe again), and adding on top would not be the first thing I'd do.
True, all of this would be great
I just started playing two or three months ago, and I'm just about done with it now (5 classes with completed storylines, and rapidly running out of motivation). Raiding and PvP have never been of interest to me, so my main issue isn't unique to this game: the end game has nothing for me. Given that the game was marketed as a story-driven experience, the only thing that would get me back would be monthly updates of the class stories; the class stories were what brought me in, and the complete lack of updates for them is why I'll be leaving. Staying in SWTOR after finishing the class stories is like staying in your theater seat after seeing a movie. Once you've seen the show, there's no reason to stay.
Even if they add 10 levels and another chapter or two to the class stories in an expansion pack (which is apparently what they're doing), however, I probably still won't return. Frankly, they just can't keep up with the player consumption rate of content, which is probably why the game has such high turnover. That, and the fact that class stories make up such a small percentage of the quests you do that burnout is almost inevitable. People start to get sick of seeing the same planets, doing the same world quests over and over and over. There's only one track per faction, which really reduces the enjoyment of the game's primary selling point: alting.
I think everyone involved would've been better off if they'd just made the game the world's first singleplayer online roleplaying game, no co-op at all. Make it KOTOR with a subscription, have a single branching storyline and update that each month. Essentially, achieve the same thing selling KOTOR 3, 4, 5 and 6 would if you made them as console titles, but without the 1 or 2 year wait between releases. Just make it a steady stream of content that lets you follow an ever-expanding, branching storyline. Screw class balance, screw guild systems, focus entirely on that fourth pillar that was heralded in every single press briefing. As it is, we got 2% "Saving/Destroying the galaxy" storylines and 98% "Kill 10 Rattataki" quests.