Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Bioware just made the same ol' mistake.
Kitane
Member Posts: 39
Yup, same ol' same ol’. They let their egos get in the way of listening to the people that first came to play the game and left early on. They listened to those stroking those egos, instead of listening to people that just wanted a better game.
The big issues came like a snowball effect for too many players.
They failed to quickly address the issue of how difficult it was for people to find groups for below 50 Flashpoints on most servers. Instead they puffed themselves up, and with no real gaming cred among their development team except for a failed PvP centric game their lead worked on, started spewing their "beliefs" about "community" in mmos.
Meanwhile in the first weeks thousands and thousands and thousands were just giving up and leaving because they were so sick of having to stand around, sometimes for hours, in Fleet spamming for groups. They wanted to see what was arguably the most fun content, but were having to just sit in front of their screens waiting ... and spamming... and waiting... and spamming.. and waiting..... and spam... well you get the picture.
They failed to quickly address the huge issue of players in Flashpoints and Heroics rolling need for equipment that their character couldn't use, but their companions could. Yes people got the intent of why they allowed it, but that didn't do anything to negate the frustration people felt when, after spending sometimes hours to get in a group to do a particular Flashpoint run and get some gear upgrades to go out questing again, they saw what they needed drop, but get taken for someone’s companion.
They failed to quickly address the Global Trade issues, and just how user unfriendly the kiosks were. Players hit the two issues above, and so said to themselves "well I'll just buy lesser quality gear then". Surprise surprise, either what they wanted wasn't there, or if it was, it was priced too high for them because most of the professions weren't profitable enough for them to make enough currency to buy the good stuff. Add to this the kiosks were a pain in the arse to use.
These things combined just drove too many people away, and are still driving people away.
What did they decide to try and fix first? PvP issues, and adding more end game content that too many weren't sticking around to ever see.
Don't get me wrong, I like to PvP. I also like end game raiding. The thing is though, the issues with those elements could have waited. The bulk of players could have put up with having to wait for PvP fixes and new endgame content if leveling, getting in Flashpoints, and working on professions and making money, was palatable. With the issues above it just isn't though.
I really wanted to love SWTOR. There were hundreds of thousands of us that wanted to love SWTOR. Unfortunately this development team just cockblocked too many people, as it were.
RPers have consistently twisted what RPG means. In doing that, and consistently being the most vocal minority on pretty much every gaming related site, they are slowly killing the genre.
Comments
ARE YOU SERIOUS?????????????????
Not that they had to listen to beta testers at all or anything, but I can honestly say none of my criticisms from beta were ever addressed. *shrug*
But hey, what were they to do, change 90% of their design?
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
I was excited for what this game might have been as well. It simply isn't for me, but I think there are a lot of good things about this game.
What I think is hard to swallow for a lot of people is the seemingly contradictory approach BW has taken to this game. It seems to be inherently flawed when considering it's ability to be widely successful to a broad range of players. They clearly want this game to have appeal to the end game players for both raiding and pvp. However, the main selling point for this game is their voice-acting and story-driven game play. These things are conflicting concepts to me. Sustainable end game requires rich content and new content in terms of the gameplay itself. For raiding, this comes in the form of more complex encounters, more interesting dungeons, etc. For PvP, it comes in the form of ranking, stat tracking, tournaments, warzones, world pvp, etc.
Then I think of voice-acting and story-telling. Both of these things take time, and neither overlap in any way with sophisticated raid encounters. Similarly, these components are, at best, auxiliary to the pvp experience. So you have a selling point that dictates a slower play, longer development for new content, and things that don't really apply to the pvp experience. It seems like it's pointing in one direction and running in the other.
Beyond that, you have this huge game update with 1.2. I can empathize fully with those at BW who surely had to scrap many, many features for launch. People bash the game for not incorporating QOL features expected of MMOs today. While this is certainly an error on the part of the developer, I think they may have been pressured to launch something by christmas time. 1.2 brings the game some of these much needed features. This is a great thing in my mind. But again, I can't help but notice inconsistencies in the walk and talk of the developer. They claim to have heard the community crying out for more end game content. But when you look at this patch, the meat of it (hell, the NAME of it) focuses on the legacy system. This system is basically a roleplaying functionality with some features for the leveling experience. I can't think of something further from the target of end game content. They did add a FP and operation, and that should definitely be acknowledged here. Nevertheless, this patch needed to deliver a lot for their end game community, and it fell short in a lot of ways.
I started to digress a little, but I guess my whole point is that they seem to be focusing on making this more of a story-driven RPG to be played online with friends. Robust features for creating alts and experiencing different class stories, but a thin and impotent approach to raiding and pvp content at the level cap. I am not saying that this game is a failure, I just think it's confused.
I've said this before and i'll say it again:
The 4-man party size is stupid and contributed to most of the issues brought up here. When you only have 2 dps per tank, you're going to have issues finding groups.
I spent the last 6 days of my subscription not playing the game. My wife and I had our final straw as we waited and waited and waited to enter the next flash, but we weren't the right class needed so no one answered. It was annoying. I dont remember roles in the Star Wars movie. Don't even remember them in the KOTR games. you think they would have figured out how to make a better game.
This was hilarious.
Seriously Bioware?
LFG Tool destroys communities?... and what about instancing the hell out of an MMO, basically making it a single player rpg with co-op.
Or adding companions in a MMO....
Yeah, clearly a game where community building matters.... lol
It seems like Bioware was just lazy and they started repeating the same BS some fanboy said in their forums.
"Esport with tournaments is for hardcore pvp'rs that want to be competitive. Openworld PVP with ganking and griefing is for casuals that just wants their pvp mixed with pve from time to time."
otacu
It's people like this that make mmo's fail, you want everything to be 100% WoW, well WoW wasn't built in a day. It took WoW 5 years and TONs of bitching from the playerbase for them to do ANY of that. I remember in BC when you couldn't even put heroics. I remember in vanilla, BC, WOTLK, and cata when lower level dungeons were a thing of the past and NO ONE RAN THEM so finding a group was impossible. How do you suggest a game developer MAKES people play the lower level instances? If you wanna run them then find a guild a get some friends in there to burn your thru it otherwise GL finding one. Oh and the needing on loot in heroics thing isn't that big a deal, if you don't want it to happen then don't run with them.
What an utterly craptastic post. You totally missed the main point that SWTOR did not work - that is the same old mmo game reskinned for star wars. People are sick to death of playing the same game, call it wow, tor, aion, it is all the same.
No originality, qyest, level, shit point and click combat, no death penalty, pointless concequenceless gameplay.
Thank God for PlanetSide 2, Eve and the Indi developers that are trying to drag this tired genre out of the mindless grip of Wow and it myriad of reskinned clone. Go fetch x of y my ass!
I don't play SWTOR, but everything you described I have witnessed in almost every MMO I have played in the past 13 years. None of that really has anything to do with the developers, but the playerbase.
^^ Quoted for truth.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
I see this point made a lot in debates about TOR and it's lack of some features common in today's MMOs. I'd like to address your point with some thoughts.
First of all, you're absolutely correct to point out that a game like WoW was crappier at launch than most people remember in their tainted nostalgia. If vanilla WoW launched today, it would be one of the worst MMOs on the market. I think most reasonable people would agree, too. I also want to point out that I'm not in any way suggesting that TOR should try to be like WoW. Frankly, I think most new MMOs today are failing because they're trying to beat WoW at being WoW and not seperating themselves enough. A cover band is never better than the original artist.
Now to the points with which I disagree. People do still run lower level dungeons in WoW today. I know this because I literally just capped my rogue this weekend. I leveled from lvl 1, and I ran instances with almost instant queues up through BC dungeons. It slowed a little in WotLK, but not much. So this demonstrates that people do, in fact, run lower dungeons in a game like WoW. More interesting, is that WoW is so old that I wouldn't be surprised if the older dungeons died by now. TOR is so new that I would expect the lower level content to still be fairly populated. The reverse is true, though.
You point out that it's ridiculous (and you're right) to expect developers to make players participate in lower level content. What isnt' ridiculous, is the idea that players follow the path of least resistance in games. Those paths are set forth by development decisions. While developers can't force players to play a certain way, they absolutely should design a game that makes players want to play a certain way. WoWs LFG tool and cross-server functionality make it such that people who want to run dungeons can run dungeons. This is a very important point to consider in this discussion. Blizzard didn't try to force people to run lower level dungeons. They asked themselves, "what barriers result from our design that prevents people who want to run dungeons actuall run dungeons?" They realized that the thin populations across the lower level zones made it unlikely that a balanced group of 5 would connect at the same time in the same zone. They implemented a design tool that took down that barrier.
It falls to BW to identify issues that players are pionting out, and trying to characterize the elements of their game design that prevents players from playing the way they want. If they can't achieve this, they clearly fail at the one goal of any game developer. The LFG tool is only one example.
I never understood the point that people make when they say it took WoW 5 years to build these tools. That's an obvious point that doesn't need to be expressed. But it doesn't make sense to say that it should take BW the same amount of time. I mean, look outside the gaming industry. What company has tried to create a competing product and been successful by ignoring all innovative progress made by the competition and starting from scratch? BW could have easily copied the tools already in place today. The game launched with the same features as a game from 7 years ago. How can you expect players to accept this? If a new smartphone released tomorrow to compete with the first iphone, how well do you think it would do?
Sorry the problem is the Holy Trinity.
I have said it time and time again, SWTOR was a game begging to be made with the removal of the Holy Trinity in mind.
To late to fix that now, the only soution is to create a dungeon finder ASAP.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
They need to Nerf the design team's arrogance if they haven't already done so.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I don't mean to imply that your experience in playing MMOs is invalid. However, I have to disagree with your post. I know two game developers personally, and they both uphold a generally accept truth in the game industry. That is the fact (stressing the word fact) that players only play the game that was designed. You can't play a game in any way other than the way that's designed (barring hacks, obviously). Any developer worth his/her salt will acknowledge that fact. This holds true in any behavioral network, too. These facts are the basis for economies and regulatory commissions in the world as well. I don't think you could find a scenario where someone is behaving outside of the designed constraints without blatantly circumventing rules, regulations, etc.
Exactly.
I love the people that complain about the lack of group mechanics and yet don't join guilds. If you guys really care that much about grouping and being able to play with your "type" of player, why aren't you in a guild?
It's like people that complain about there being no open PVP. Head over to Tattoine right now and visit Outlaws Den. Before this Rakgoul thing very few people were using it. Now that there is an objective directing you there more players are going and having fun. The quesiton I have is, why do players need an objective or reward to participate in PVP? What happened to PVP just for fun? Long as I have a designated place that I know is a PVP area, I'm happy to pop in and mix it up with the other side.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I counter your view with my own
The few who REALLY WANT TO open world PVP will go out there and try a bit but get disappointed when there aren't enough other people of the opposing faction there at that time to do it. It is a population reciprocity thing.
What is a solution? Make a more direct goal near or overlapping it so that other who did not REALLY WANT TO open world pvp will be exposed to it and see if it tickles a pickle or two?
That organically grows that segment.
Now that person who REALLY WANTS TO is joined by people who happened upon it and now having been exposed may or may not join the REALLY WANT TO group and push for it.
It is simple.
Someone please make a good MMO.
Isn't it funny how guilds have gone from being a group of friends playing a game together, to just tools that one is supposed to join so as to be assured of having a ready group at hand. In other words, just people to use. No wonder most guilds these days quickly crumble under the weight of bickering and bad feelings.
Never mind that the "just get in a guild" solution simply doesn't work anyway. You need to join a massive guild, with players at all level ranges, and be extremely lucky to have enough people that are at your level range and play the same times you do. The "just join a guild" stupidity is just an easy pseudo solution thrown out there by people that either are in a long standing guild already, and so didn't face the issues most players faced, or people that simply don't have a clue, and like to repeat inane catch phrases they read somewhere else.
RPers have consistently twisted what RPG means. In doing that, and consistently being the most vocal minority on pretty much every gaming related site, they are slowly killing the genre.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
They've completely ruined the leveling experience for me. Why flawed, i saw a lot of potential and had high hopes for this game during its many betas. For one, it was a fun and enjoyable experience and not a terrible credit sink it has become now. The cost for things like training, traveling, removing mods etc. needs to be either severly reduced or completely removed altogether. I am now forced to go farm mobs because i can't even afford to train my characters anymore just by questing alone. I'd be able to ignore that if the loot system wasn't complete and utter crap. The drop rate is just simply terrible. Especially for Elite and higher level mobs. The economy in general is poorly balanced and inflated as hell.
Sadly, BioWare's too arrogant to listen to any constructive criticism. Those year long closed beta tests they held are a perfect example of that. They seem to be under the impression that nerfing various aspects of the game and adding to the grind is going to improve this game's fun factor and longevity. Guess what? It hasn't and it never will. Grouping is also a big pain in the ass while leveling. I don't even bother going to the Fleet for the Flashpoints anymore. It's futile unless you are a level 50. How the hell do you not implement a basic LFG tool when it was requested numerous times during your beta tests? The game, in general, lacks a lot of basic MMO features. They've completely neglected the early leveling and overall PvE experience in favor of catering to the PvP folk and farmers.
Then there's the whole population issue that they continue to ignore even though people have been requesting server merges or character transfers for months now because they are sick and tired of rerolling on more populated servers. People have quit the game just for this reason alone. It's just another fine example of how dismissive and arrogant BioWare is.
Exactly, I know I was tired of playing WoW years ago, and quit. I have been disappointed so many times over the years of the poorly done WoW clones that have came out. I loved WoW while I played it, but as mmo's get, it grew old and repetative. I'm looking for something completely different than the WoW clone. Hopefully, GW2 will be that, it seems a little bit like my favorite mmo of all time DAOC. We shall see.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
This. The game just was not well designed from the very beginning; changing the foundation of such a massive project even halfway through is night impossible.
If bioware wants to stay in the stone age and cling to retro-systems of chat-channel groups; so be it. If they wanted to improve their system, they could make a same-server queueing function which allows players to choose what FP's or Heroics they are interested in, a party leader can view all the available players LFG for that FP/HM, and send them invites. Players can leave their comments to describe their role since they feel 'community' blah.
I play 'hardcore' MMO's. I even play some that are based on time. But waiting around for one reason is fun, waiting for a party is not. If we have to be immersed into our character, why not add a hunger/thirst system if we're going to count the waiting game /sarcasm.
Played - M59, EQOA, EQ, EQ2, PS, SWG[Favorite], DAoC, UO, RS, MXO, CoH/CoV, TR, FFXI, FoM, WoW, Eve, Rift, SWTOR, TSW.
Playing - PS2, AoW, GW2
No see thats the problem. That was Bioware's huge mistake, but they arent the first developer to do it.
You cant make a successful WoW clone, very much due to the reason you stated. On one hand you have WoW which has the better part of a decade worth of polish, and then you have a game like Swtor.
If I open up a burger joint in town, and Im competing with another very established burger joint while Im still trying to get my act together, its going to fail. The other burger place already knows what they are doing. Im still trying to figure it out and I cant afford too. If my burgers arent better than theirs, and very noticeably so, Im dead in the water, and of course thats not going to happen. Now if I had opened up the only pizza place in town on the other hand, Im in the money.
Variety is the spice of life. You have to be different, and you have to be good. Then you'll be fine. You can NOT make a WoW clone and have great success. If you are lucky you will get by modestly, if not, you will fall right into the gutter. Had Swtor been a breath of fresh air, and been different or even drastically so from WoW, they'd have had far greater success.
When Bioware made some kind of comment regarding its too dangerous to deviate from WoW while they were developing Swtor, I knew right then and there it was going to suffer. Thats the opposite of a good philosophy.
On a side note I like console gaming as much as PC. Almost every title I own is drastically different from one another. Red Dead Redemption is nothing like Oblivion, and neither are anything like Batman Arkham City for example. I buy games to get a variety of fun play experiences. The problem with the mmorpg genre, is for the most part, they are failing to grasp the concept that the rest of the successful gaming industry fully understands.
I have never enjoyed PVP "for fun", in fact the only reason I will ever PVP is to fight for cause.
Be it defense of "my " territory, control of valuable resources, or to just power up my character, I only PVP if the rewards appeal to me. (and revenge is a cool motivator as well). Better have some risk vs reward and punish people for dying rather than surviving.
As much as you don't understand me, I can't for the life of me understand your motivations in gaming, different strokes for different folks as they say.
As as for joining guilds, I joined one right away and I got to run like maybe one or two groups runs with them. Due to the level based story content, we were never in sync and rarely did we even match up for flashpoints or what not.
Most of them rushed to 50 far faster than I could and other than listening to their raid encounters in Vent, I could not participate.
To really be successful, a game designed like SWTOR must have easy group finding tools based around Pugging and a DF is the perfect answer to the problem.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon