BioWare Willing to do ''Anything and Everything'' to Keep SW:TOR Afloat

[Nekosan]

I don't get this argument. It's not like you paid 300 million to get it developed. And the money they spent on it doesn't have any negative affect on you.

If someone told you they had a 300 million dollar house you would expect the lights and the water to work for more than 15 minutes wouldn't you? It's 2012, AAA titles need to work when they launch, sure SWTOR was pretty bug free at launch but there's just nothing in the game, it's like a polished undeveloped concept.

[X66WeeD666X]

I don't get this argument. It's not like you paid 300 million to get it developed. And the money they spent on it doesn't have any negative affect on you.

If someone told you they had a 300 million dollar house you would expect the lights and the water to work for more than 15 minutes wouldn't you? It's 2012, AAA titles need to work when they launch, sure SWTOR was pretty bug free at launch but there's just nothing in the game, it's like a polished undeveloped concept.

Best analogy yet.

[Arhain]

Has ANY MMO launched with all those features at once? Hell no, they were added slowly over time. Whether that be customisable UI, player housing, open world PVP areas etc. Most MMOs are battling to have stable servers on release, let alone the boat load of comfort features that players beg for.

When you're making a game that has the same basic structure as WoW you'd think you'd include the things that WoW has learnt over the history.

SWTOR has a lot of amazing advances over WoW in the RPG aspect but also has a lot of the flaws that vanilla released with and fixed over the coming years.

Missing things like a combat log, threat meters, UI customisation, macros etc on release is just baffling.

[Nekosan]

When you're making a game that has the same basic structure as WoW you'd think you'd include the things that WoW has learnt over the history.

Sure you would, that only makes it worse that they didn't have a fully structured end game progression planned.

SWTOR has a lot of amazing advances over WoW in the RPG aspect but also has a lot of the flaws that vanilla released with and fixed over the coming years.

SWTOR has ZERO RPG improvements over WoW, the lack of real hubs (as well as other things) makes roleplaying garbage and the game itself has less variety than a playthrough of WoW does, every character you level does EXACTLY the same quests where atleast in wow you can change continent/zones and get some new stuff. I don't call more voice acting and cutscenes at the expense of gameplay depth an "improvement".

It's not so much that there are flaws in the RPG system that need to be repaired as that it's totally bland garbage with no possibility of changing anything at all.

Missing things like a combat log, threat meters, UI customisation, macros etc on release is just baffling.

The UI customization should have been in for convenience but tbh I think a decent MMO can do without the rest of those, I know I very much enjoyed my time in SWTOR groups/ops just because there wasn't the relentless pressure to be top of a dps meter like there was on my hunter back in WoW, it made groups friendlier and the game less of a chore.

The main thing that baffles me about the release is that they forgot the main point of an MMO, it's like they never asked themselves "what's going to keep people playing?". I'll give you the hot tip, a gear-hook is the core of pretty much every successful MMO ever made and their "you can just mod anything to to have whatever stats" idea with the orange gear just totally removed that, their entire mod system for items is what ruined the hook.

[Marius]

I liked their mod system.

I don't think gear hooks are needed to keep people playing. I've been playing Age of Conan for four years now and I don't go for gear.

Social things keep people playing, and SWTOR didn't really do that very well with all the instancing.

[Syncourt]

The main thing that baffles me about the release is that they forgot the main point of an MMO, it's like they never asked themselves "what's going to keep people playing?". I'll give you the hot tip, a gear-hook is the core of pretty much every successful MMO ever made and their "you can just mod anything to to have whatever stats" idea with the orange gear just totally removed that, their entire mod system for items is what ruined the hook.

I 100% disagree. Gear hooks are the no.1 thing that turns me away from most MMO's.

Ultima and Guild Wars being my favorites to date had no gear hooks and both of those were pretty damn successful.

It may be the main attraction to WoW players though. But IMO something is terribly wrong in a game if the only way to keep people playing is to tack on another level of power for them to achieve.

Star Wars is a great step in the right direction for an actual RPG experience prurely due to dialog options. It's roleplay at its core being you can choose to speak as if you were playing a certain role of character.

[TRB]

UO is also one of my favorite MMOs but to say there are no gear hooks is a bit misleading.
there is plenty of stuff to obtain in UO which either costs a lot of time or money or both.

It is true that you don't need that stuff to be competitive in PvP [or didn't when I played] but there is still loads of status gear.
Having full ranger sets, bone sets and various other rares was definitely something people wanted.

[Syncourt]

UO is also one of my favorite MMOs but to say there are no gear hooks is a bit misleading.
there is plenty of stuff to obtain in UO which either costs a lot of time or money or both.

It is true that you don't need that stuff to be competitive in PvP [or didn't when I played] but there is still loads of status gear.
Having full ranger sets, bone sets and various other rares was definitely something people wanted.

Looking from an official shard perspective

But they weren't the only popular ones.

[Bronze_D]

alternatively, they are looking at it the wrong way...

they NEEDED gear hook because the rest of the gameplay that can retain player interest was THAT bad.

Of course there are rare and interesting item that will always interest ppl, there's a certain element of 'collector' that can pull ppl's interest after all.

If gear hook actually comprises a major section of the game element that was needed to keep player interest on it...

well then frankly the game can't be that good.

[Kzach]

If only they could make it not suck.

[zigarot]

I must be mentally handicapped, because I love SW:TOR.

And the PVP, especially as a Vanguard.

I guess it's the Star Wars.

[Yazour]

Agreed that a new interface for their lfg systems is needed...
However
Their current lfg system would work fine, if people USED it...
/who 20-25
/who 50 etc
doesnt matter where they are if they are lfg they will show up.
problem is it seems noone lists because they dont know HOW to use it.

This is spot on.
This is very similar to the state of affairs in the first 5 years of WoW.

I think players are being totally unrealistic expecting a new game to launch with 7 years of post development already implemented. I wish people could go back and play Vanilla wow and remember how tedious it was.

Things we take for granted these days:
LFG systems
Flight-points
Gear links in chat
Gear preview windows

Now I have started making lists I think I should continue.

Things that SW has but WoW doesn't:
Quest Dialogue.
Quests that actually make sense.
Characters.
A crafting system where you don't vendor 95% of your products.
Crew Skill missions.
Enough Tanks.
Threat management.

And then there is the great face-palm WoW has planned:
Pandas
Pokemon
and the simplification of Talents.

[TRB]

I must be mentally handicapped, because I love SW:TOR.

Oh well. at least now you know

[Nekosan]

Agreed that a new interface for their lfg systems is needed...
However
Their current lfg system would work fine, if people USED it...
/who 20-25
/who 50 etc
doesnt matter where they are if they are lfg they will show up.
problem is it seems noone lists because they dont know HOW to use it.

This is spot on.
This is very similar to the state of affairs in the first 5 years of WoW.

I think players are being totally unrealistic expecting a new game to launch with 7 years of post development already implemented. I wish people could go back and play Vanilla wow and remember how tedious it was.

Things we take for granted these days:
LFG systems
Flight-points
Gear links in chat
Gear preview windows

It is 2012, those are MANDATORY FEATURES of an MMO, players will not use a LFG system that's worse than the one EQ2 launched with a decade ago, it's BARELY functional.

Turning their launch LFG feature into one that's usable would involve very little work, all they need to do is add a drop down box containing instance names, click your instance and the filter shows everyone looking for that instance. The launch LFG feature in a bare bones system that's piggybacked off a limited, primitive /who function that's worse than any made during the last decade... it's a virtual cut and paste from EQ2 at launch.

Now I have started making lists I think I should continue.

Things that SW has but WoW doesn't:
Quest Dialogue.
Quests that actually make sense.
Characters.
A crafting system where you don't vendor 95% of your products.
Crew Skill missions.
Enough Tanks.
Threat management.

Ok, let's go over those one by one:

Quest Dialogue: Voice acting is nice but it shouldn't come at the expense of other features or of gameplay over all, voice acting is fluff that should be tacked on as a shiny, it does not keep people playing, this isn't a single player game.

Quests that actually make sense: Within the context of their individual games most quests make about the same amount of sense, it's still just a lot of "click this item then kill 20 spiders for their venom sacks", the only difference in SWTOR is that the story follows a main path more but has less development in side questlines.

Characters:The fake personality you're loving is just an illusion created by the voice acting, it's nice but I know personally that I still don't give the slightest **** about any SWTOR NPC, less so infact than i did about WoW NPC's because in SWTOR it's dramatically more obvious that you're just endlessly solving other peoples ****, at least in WoW i felt like a hero... in this game i feel like a garbage man.

A crafting system where you don't vendor 95% of your products: You don't vendor your products, the result is the same though, the crafting is brainless and doesn't even take time away from your adventuring, everyone can craft with no drama and that means that the overwhelming majority of items are 100% worthless.

The lack of worth is compounded by the fact that you can buy pretty much anything you need while leveling from the planetary badge vendors, the items are only slightly worse than the crafted blue versions and in a leveling context it isn't enough to matter, once you hit 50 your craftable mods are INSTANTLY redundant because you can do 30 minutes of dailies and just buy better versions of everything that you can't craft.

Crew Skill missions:IMO, while crew skill missions are a time saver, they're one of the big fails of the crafting system, if everyone can master a craft with zero effort what's the point?

Enough Tanks:WoW has always had enough tanks, there were problems finding them before the LFG function was enhanced but overall it's easier to find a tank in Warcraft than in SWTOR, the fact that almost every class can just click a button and change their spec to their alt-tank spec only enhances that. Really I don't know why you made this point, it's totally backwards.

Threat management:What? The threat management in SWTOR (unless they changed it in the last 2 weeks) is just like it was in vanilla WoW, no target of target until months into the game? really?

And then there is the great face-palm WoW has planned:
Pandas
Pokemon
and the simplification of Talents.

Those are all beneficial things which were asked for by the community, everyone has ALWAYS wanted to be able to fight pets, always wanted pandas and the talent trees have gone through multiple re-do's to try and reduce chaff and increase functionality. The panda race specifically are probably the most asked for addition to the game since it has launched, they're the most popular race in the Warcraft universe.

Basically your entire post you're just grasping at straws, SWTOR offers virtually no significant gameplay improvements over any decade old MMO and in some cases it takes a step backwards, if you started a car company tomorrow and manufactured a mainstream vehicle with the dated features of a 70's Corolla you wouldn't get very far would you? They took 300 million dollars and instead of making us a 2012 fighter jet we got a spitfire with some flashing lights, that's why people are disappointed.

The main thing that baffles me about the release is that they forgot the main point of an MMO, it's like they never asked themselves "what's going to keep people playing?". I'll give you the hot tip, a gear-hook is the core of pretty much every successful MMO ever made and their "you can just mod anything to to have whatever stats" idea with the orange gear just totally removed that, their entire mod system for items is what ruined the hook.

I 100% disagree. Gear hooks are the no.1 thing that turns me away from most MMO's.

Ultima and Guild Wars being my favorites to date had no gear hooks and both of those were pretty damn successful.

It may be the main attraction to WoW players though. But IMO something is terribly wrong in a game if the only way to keep people playing is to tack on another level of power for them to achieve.

Star Wars is a great step in the right direction for an actual RPG experience prurely due to dialog options. It's roleplay at its core being you can choose to speak as if you were playing a certain role of character.

The problem is that the only alternative to a gear hook based system is one where there's a never ending supply of new content, developer generated content just can't keep up with the demand unless you make the end of every storyline a stupidly hard raid boss, that makes the non raiders cry and in the end is no different to the gear hook, you're still just grinding a boss for 10 seconds of story advancement rather than gear + advancement.

Story advancement only goes so far without character enhancement, that has to come in the form of gear upgrades, skill upgrades or something which makes people feel special, you can only go so far with a limited amount of story and until someone comes up with a program to dynamically generate content as it's required then loot tables are the only way.

There's only so much socializing you can do while doing the same content over and over before you want to slit your wrists, the problem with swtor and its dialogue options is that at the end of the day, they don't change anything. Now that anyone can use any coloured sabre even the good/evil doesn't really mean anything.

[Yazour]

And then there is the great face-palm WoW has planned:
Pandas
Pokemon
and the simplification of Talents.

Those are all beneficial things

And you just lost me.