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Reviews vs reality check and the F2P future
Deewe
Member UncommonPosts: 1,980
@launch it started with Michel Bitton official review, to which I replied lenghily here and here. Followed by An humble take on SWTOR road to keep subscribers
Looking back, seems I wasn't that far away from the reality check but maybe for the fact I totally missed how deep the producer(s) and a few leads could be wrong in the upcoming changes and focus of their efforts.
Out of the 23 entries mentionned in my suggestions, the following points have been adressed in 6 months:
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Now comes a new Sheriff in Town: Matthew Bromberg (interview).
Guess i'ts time to take a new look at this 
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1) Let's be realistic here, making V.O. content costs a lot of money, takes time and is (mostly) fun only the first time you run through it.
=> Unless they get their desired 3 millions player don't expect lots of V.O content for sure.
2) The 6 weeks content might look very thin compared to what others MMO are able to do, especialy regarding they need to develop new content, add features already existing in other games and well fix the broken stuff. All that with a reduced and certainly demotivated staff.
3) There won't be world PvP in TOR at all. The gee invasion will occur on a specific planet, so a bigger instance. And they'll keep focusing on delivering new WZ.
4) They are already wasting time and subscribers $$$ on new on rails space mission with a team dedicated to it.
5) No hints at all for socialization incentives nor focus.
Meanwhile, GW2 hit pretty hard. The mighty panda is closing in and Rift is about to deliver a quite impressive xpack. Wildstar looks really fun too and Planetside 2 might certainly appeal players fond of FPS and Sci-Fi. Even LotRo with mounted combat and horses customization looks more appealing than TOR.
Might be very rough upcoming months for TOR.
Comments
Quite simple- Payola and Plugola are alive and well in the gaming industry.
To believe the "Reviews" you would have to also believe that there has been NOT 1 AAA game in the last 5 years to be average or below average- Every AAA MMO has been averaging a 7.5- 8.5/10. It woyuld SEEM we have a "golden age" of great games.
"Reviews" in this day and age are paid advertisments. The Payment is either DIRECT or indirect but its paid nevertheless. And this extends to even "News" agencies (the pinnacle of a democracy is a free press so our choices are INFORMED) and is a result of GREED.
SWTOR flopped for many reasons and will not recover. But in this disposible society these "reviews" made certain that initial box sales were very high.
EDIT: Re reading this post from the other day I would like to add- I do not "Blame" MMORPG.COM or any other "reviewers" from entering into this "you scratch my back and I will scratch yours" agreement- Its a culture which extends from the TOP DOWN.
NPR ran stories about Orange Juice as NEWS STORIES (later turned out to be paid ads) as have Faux news, CNN, MSNBC etc... When our "watch dogs" (the Press) become Lap Dogs to the highest bidder- This "culture" trickles down into Game/Music/Movie reviews as well.
Its corruption bleeding downword.
I'd say TOR can still recover, but I'm not sure the new management got it right.
Especially wasting time with the space shooter, not focusing efforrs on world PvP and well not expanding into the sandboxes features. The last ones being what makes players stay instead of burning content and leaving.
SWTOR has some content and qualities few other MMOs can provide.
They've got *eight* full-blown personal stories with quality voiceover content and cinematics. Granted, the writing isn't as good as some single player games, but it's still enough to offer a solid leveling experience for people who enjoy story-focused RPGs.
They've got some cool dungeons with story content and multiplayer dialogue.
They've got the Star Wars worlds, which frankly they botched up quite a bit, but I guess they can always bring in new ones, conceived and implemented better.
Thing is, the standard MMO tropes they use are outright bland. Standard MMO features won't save this game. LFG won't save this game. Raids won't save this game. PVP battlegrounds won't save this game.
SWTOR will live and die by its non-WOW-ish features. Like story, character, the Star Wars universe. If they're going to expand on their game, they should focus on things the current champions of the genre doesn't provide.
A full-blown space game could be part of that. Yeah, it might prove to be quite the work, but at least it's something special. It's better than trying to out-WOW WOW itself.
Things that will make people think "Star Wars!" could be part of that. Like swoop races, Pazaak, etc.
Better exploration could be part of that.
In short, they have to go the Star Wars route, and not your-standard-MMO route.
Tnis game had a chance to be unique from top to toe, but agonizingly missed that chance. Bioware can re-prioritize and save the game or watch it die, in my opinion.
They could bring in God to mange this game and as long as he tries to bill this as an MMORPG, and develop it as such...God will fail to keep subscribers.
Yes, I basically just said that SWTOR is such a bad MMO that not even God could save it. Stop pretending this is an MMORPG and start treating it as an SPRG with multiplayer fuctions, go real F2P and forget this freemium/paytrap crap and put some focus into a shop with decent micro-transactions...make THAT your monitary focus and they MAY...MAY do as well as some of the real F2P games.
Well said-
If this had been KOTOR 3 and marketed as a single player game with online multiplayer (no sub/cash shop) this could have been a good game.
The "game" itself isnt BAD for what it is. For an MMORPG its terrible. A railed story game with l;ittle to do "off the beaten path" does not make a good MMO.
Shame about the dropping of open world pvp, that might have been the one thing that brought me back when it goes f2p.
I expect they will either drop more playable alien races as well, or they'll be available in the cash shop.
I agree with what's been said. It was always a half-decent single player rpg, but never a successful mmorpg worth a monthly sub.
There was only a few things I wanted in this game and they didn't really deliver on any of them. I was such a fanboi leading up to this game, and I was completely let down by 1 month in.
Here's what I wanted and didn't get:
1. Badass Jedi combat.
2. Swoop Racing, ideally competitive against other players.
3. Pazaak
This post on the official forums is exactly what I wanted. If they ever deliver these, I will maybe come back to the game
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=512849
http://f.cl.ly/items/3n15423i0G2i111y3c2b/computer.gif
bioware lost touch with the people that make them successful, the players.
listen, star wars galaxies wasn't great by any means. However, let's take the total subscribers over years and years of coming and going from swg. Let's take the SOE number which were 1mil units sold and subscribers which were 20k. Lets say roughly 200k star wars mmo players. This isn't factual and you all know i am being generous here.
200k players, is a huge base to accomodate. Unfortunately, that huge star wars galaxies base, those players that quit nge, and those that stuck through it, were largely ignored. Bioware refused to acknowledge adding ANY features from swg to swtor. They openly admitted that they would never add any feature.
Right there, you have shunned 200k star wars fans. Right there, you have put a sour , poor P.R move in your game.
let's move forward to development and beta. Any of you in the beta that played through it remember the bugs, the performance and total lack of end game. Bioware was dedicated to taking their "great" story telling and applying it to a mmo. The community, in a very valiant attempt tried to tell bioware that the strength of the game shouldn't be the leveling, it should be what happens when you are done leveling.
Imagine if there was say hardly any voice overs, cut scenese , and much smaller zones while leveling. When you get to max level you choose your path, you get the rest of your companions, you get a space ship. Not entirely to this extreme, but bioware focused on teh journey leaving absolutely nothing at the end.
again, the community was aware of this, it was reported to the devs.
You see, the star wars community is different than the warcraft community. If people want warcraft they play world of warcraft. People that want star wars want a galaxy at war. They want a game where being social can be a career. They want a game where you are a "bounty hunter". Creating "you" is what's important to most star wars fans. Bioware never grasped what star wars IS, they dont graps what star wars needs to be.
The game is star wars. There is very little war between the stars. I am referring to space combat. It's a single player mini game, with no social interaction. No galaxy domination, no ship progression. It's an insult to anyone who truly appreciates star wars.
I am a very old gamer. I remember playing the original final fantasies on NES. I remember my first p.c game being quake and moving on to my first mmorpg which was EQ. I remember games being developed by passionate gamers who developed worlds that sucked you in.
Bioware made a huge mistake ignoring the people that ultimately make them successful, the players, the customers, and the fans of star wars. We didn't want this turd, but we gave it a chance, now we have all returned to greener pastures. They can make it f2p, they can add more flashpoints, they can tinker with pvp, but ultimately the game was developed with a very SELFISH mindset and it cost them millions in stocks, investors, and ultimately reputation.
"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."
-Henry Ford
Good post.
However I'm not sure they were selfish. I mean the leads and main execs. I'd say some had a too big ego that prevented them to actually listen to the player base. And the management (BioWare one, not EA) did really bad too.
I remember very well even before the beta, all the great posts from people like Fodigg, DeaconX and well BioWare simply ignored all the constructive input and even dared say so on the beta forums.
As a player, I'm sad, really sad.
As a human I'm mad at the execs who failed so hard and managed to have all these people get fired.
Few people i know disliked the leveling and progression part of the game...that seemed to be top notch.
While i can aprpeciate a random forum-goes givng a 35 point "needs to be fixed" list i can shorten that list to two points that would have resulted in the game keeping more people longer.
Fix ilum for the pvpers, fix the pve endgame and make it entertaining.
Untill they get a themepark ride for the pvpers and a themepark ride for the pve'ers thats working entertaining and has replay value...this game will remain just a good short trip to (whatever level cap was/is) possibly a reroll with increased no storyline spacebaring, and a quick realization that its time to move on.
Yeah the overhype at launch really set the game back with the expectations it had.
Also...did they ever put the high end graphic settings in the game, i remember it being "meduim" on both medium and high settings...along with the inability to custom set the graphics (which i think led to ilum being such a fail)
TLDR? Only problems was that endgame pvp was a laggy zerg standoff and pve was a snooze fest at endgame. Fix those and the game is pretty solid by themepark standards.
On msg boards I could easily get a consensus right now saying swtor's pvp doesn't have enough cc, space missions are awesome, everyone should start at level 50 with max gear and VO can be the most important part of an MMO.
Many bad calls in this game that I've heard about have been "because beta tester's said so".
You couldn't get a consensus of players on many boards saying "sandbox features are worthwhile" or "down with the trinity" because most don't know what you mean and/or can't imagine such games. Letting a majority of players determine/drive a feature list is a bad idea.
There is a difference between designing a game by committee (i.e. the forums) and listening to feedback in beta, especially early betas where the numbers were smaller.
Erickson's ego is what led to such design blunders as the lack of creativity for PC's, lack of specie options (come on it's an SW game, that's a no brainer) and the Legacy system being the convoluted disgusting mess that it is. Erickson believed that he knew how players wanted their stories told, what they could related to and what they couldn't and despite great deals of constructive and well thought out feedback in opposition to his ideas he stuck with his "vision". I've seen what "vision" does to games, Vanguard is a good example. Erickson was clearly wrong, the state of SWTOR less than a year since launch is proof of that.
We certainly don't browse the same forums, because I've been on TOR forums since day 1 and I saw (and still seeing) the exact opposite.
This. I even said after first month, it could've been game of the year, as KotOR 3.
I'm glad I can go back and finish the rest of the storylines (as a decent single rpg, without the monthly rip-off) and then leave. Maybe play it through again a few years later (I like to blow off the dust of KotOR 1-2 once in a while, after them a bit of SW:ToR will be a nice addition)
I know a few people who still plays ToR as an mmo, but for me it just didn't worked as one... when I saw their f2p matrix, limited flashpoints, no operations, etc. I just said, who cares... until the story content is full access.
This is kind of true but also doesn't really address the nature of SWTOR's epic failure status. The players cant get together about what to complain about because there is simply too much to complain about. It's a mountainous task that divides the opinions into multiple spectrums. Add in the zealots and the occasional uninvested/uninformed poster and you get mush.
If the game was better there would have been less emphasis on what was said and what wasn't by beta testers, etc. The original model would have had an integrity that could withstand a certain amount of paradigm rebellion without the devs saying anything. This game sucks ass though, so its a frenzy of opinions.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011