McAvinue
-
Posts
188 -
Joined
Content Type
Forums
Blogs
Events
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Posts posted by McAvinue
-
-
Facts showing what exactly ?
No accurate population numbers are given , they are pure guesses from the server status . Yet we know that Bioware have increased server capacity since release to reduce queues . This means that what once was heavy , may now only show as standard .
Also , it is no longer the holiday period , people are back at work / school , so don't play as much , so of course , any graph will show a drop in simultaneous online numbers , as is the case in virtually all mmo's i've played since UO days .
They in no way represent subscription numbers which are the only figure that counts - so no , you can't really use that data in any meaningful wway .
My quess is you'll pass it off as a non-issue and continue thinking everything is okay. If so, make sure you re-read the first link again about SUB-PAR subscription numbers.
-
Sad to say, OP, we will never all come together in a game again after vanilla WoW. At least not for another 10-20 years. Unless everyone likes the idea of Diablo III. But that's not really a MMORPG, more or a less just an MMOG. It's all depending on future devs stepping up and wanting to innovate rather than rehash and cash in. Blizzard pretty much set the standard in MMORPGs way too high, and if you remember for the first 3-4 years or so, no one even TRIED to compete with them. Also, it doesn't take 3-6 months after release to establish a good foundation for a MMORPG. If you don't have the groundwork down in the first month, you've failed. The question then becomes earnings vs investment. If it was profitable or not. If it was, then you can expect the company to turn out more trash. If it wasn't, they give up..hopefully.
It'd be nice if we could play the next ultimate big MMO that's amazingly fun and well coded, but game companies apparently aren't interested in quality of product anymore. You only find that in newly formed indy game development teams who're making single player games entirely by themselves from scratch, or just surprise releases from older companies like Ubisoft and Eidos. Eidos did a pretty sweet job of submersing me in Deux Ex: Human Revolution. And I can't argue with the amount of detail and research Ubisoft put into creating those environments in the Assassin's Creed games from 2 and up. Those guys will usually release a game you didn't pay a second thought during the unveiling, and then you play it and you're like "Holy ****, this is amazing."
Bioware had their time as that new kid on the block. Hell, they were even on a streak for awhile. Everyone remembers being amazed. Then what happens? Corporate greed, quarter earnings, and dominant parent companies buy you out, and dictate you're going to release garbage for a quick buck in their pockets, and quality of product becomes a dead philosophy, and the dev team sells out and goes with it. That Bioware no longer exists. You think ME3 is probably going to be amazing and stuff too, right? I bet that game will take most people 8 hours to finish. Granted, it'll probably have some epic scenes, but it'll be a joke in terms of content. Just another quick payday. Can't blame them though. Same thing happened with Crysis 2 with EA behind it compared to Crysis 1.
I get the impression now when companies implement the development of games in the "idea phase" and start laying down the code, they don't even pay attention to the standard of quality of its predecessors. I believe they look at a game like WoW's earnings, and say:
"Damn, that could be us. Even if it does bad, if we get like 1-3 months of subscriptions from this many people who bought the game, we'd make bank and it will have been worth it. Whatever happens after that, oh well."
Or they see a groundbreaking game that shocked everyone with its cutting edge graphics and gameplay, and say:
"We're going to publish your sequel. You ARE making a sequel, right? Okay, get ready to make it fast and worse than the first one, so we can get that cheddar."
It's disgusting, disappointing, and manipulative. They need to take a page out of the new Devs behind Final Fantasy XIV's book. A whole new team of people and a new project director came in to overhaul the game when it seemed dead, and started putting out some amazing ideas, and implementing them bit by bit in rapid succession. After the next two major patches, they'll be what the game was always intended to be. Hell for months they even cut subscription fees entirely because they said it didn't deserve a fee in its current state, plus there was that massive tragedy in Japan. They constantly keep their playerbase updated with screens, ideas, vids, and ETAs too. The only problem is that it took Square a year to make this drastic change, and now they may never recover the subscribers they lost. I might give it a whirl, might not, but the point is, it takes class to admit when you screwed up, and then work your *** off to fix it immediately. It's especially classy when you weren't the one who broke the game, but take on the task of fixing it anyway because you're passionate about it. That's what every game developer should be like. They're a dying breed though in reality, at least in this genre of games.
One of the things that upsets me the most about this game, is the dev team and project director's refusal to acknowledge massive problems with the game. They just deny it entirely, even in articles to Eurogamer and other news outlets, or they don't respond at all. "Oh yeah 95% of our playerbase runs this game perfectly fine with no problems whatsoever." Uh-huh. It's like the warden who lets his guards beat the crap out of all his prisoners, and then when an inspector comes, he gets everything in ship shape just for the occasion. Soon as the guy leaves, back to the torment.
The other thing is the MMORPG community as a whole as of the last 7 years has degraded in character by a metric **** ton. Used to be you could play a game, and actually sit around talking to people, go explore and do stuff, make friends, get stuff done together, and enjoy it for what it was. Mutual interests would breed mutual benefit. That's probably why Ragnarok Online was the MMORPG I had the most fun in, back in the pre WoW, pre L2 era. Now everything's ego based. Senseless pride at that, since most of the time it's some casual, or dude who plays all day that thinks he's god's gift to man, then you see his numbers (which this game doesn't allow) and you realize he's utter trash at playing the game. Then you wonder, why the hell does he think so much of himself? Who knows. One can't hope to understand stupidity, only to avoid it. Now there's casuals arguing with hardcore gamers. Many settle for mediocrity, others refuse to accept it. We'll never agree on anything, nor enjoy the game together.
The end always justifies the means though. When a game bombs, there's no arguements there. But rest assured, even the hardcore people who pointed out all the flaws still feel a little sad inside when their predictions come true. It's not that we wanted it to crumble, we just saw it happening way before the casuals. Afterall, we want something awesome to play. That being said, this game's already bombed.
A tear to my eye Sir.
-
Now with that said, my suggestion to everyone that is unhappy, please ask yourself when was the last MMO that you played at launch were you happy with. Also how many MMO''s at launch have you stuck with.
Rift. I was very happy with Rift's launch. And do you know what, it had basic features like chat bubbles, hi-res textures, PVP brackets, no ability delay issues, customizable UI, etc. Also no I did not leave Rift because I hate it. I left it for this game, because I thought it was going to blow it out of the water. Instead I'm on board the sinking ship.
-
Dear BioWare,
Buy one copy of Rift. Look at their UI.
Do exactly that.
Thank you,
tehmoose
+1
I mentioned this in the Beta forums back in then. What is funny is I was told to be quite because those functions would be in release, by the same people today arguing that they will eventually-someday patch them in.
-
Blah blah blah, if you were to go anywhere in the real world, say out in front of walmart and started bad mouthing them, they would have some goon earning 6 dollars an hour show you off the property. The forums here are no different, except perhaps for the fact I cannot bash you with a brick for annoying me. Theres constructive criticism and then there is what children tend to do...
Oh I didn't know that. I guess that is why there is no Occupy Wall-street movement anymore correct?
-
I just cannot understand how a large title such as this one was released without such basic features as chat bubbles. I know that there are more feature this title lacks, but that is not the discussion, and to make matters worse, we are only 7 days away from the monthly re-sub. How much time are we willing to give to the developers to fix these issues? When will you say enough is enough?
-
+1 and remove the cut scene when we enter our ship. Why do I fly into space every time I want to speak to one of my companions?
+1 For this statement. It truly is a pain to walk all the way there to talk to my companions, then to turn around and continue questing.
-
The success of the LAUNCH is determined by the sales figures. TORs launch is far and away the largest of any MMO right out of the gate. Why are we even arguing about that? It's a matter of public record. Whether Rift is a better game at launch is a different story.
I don't know why we are arguing about that. I told you why I responded to the OP. I could careless with TOR had more sales, I care whether it functions.
-
I will agree that Rift had a pretty good engine from the get-go. I think they traded off good content to make it happen though. A company only has so many resources to invest into a game before release. Trion put a lot of those resources into the game engine and UI and developing a unique and innovative class system. Unfortunately, the content suffered as a result and they had an incredibly small and lackluster game world.
I can agree with this statement, and you know what? I think the community at large that is filing the majority of complaints against the game, would rather have had that instead. It's already been established that end-game content is hardly there to begin with. While you might not agree with my statement, its what I would have preferred.
-
It wasn't. This was, objectively, the most successful launch in mmo history.
Whether it will be a success long term remains to be seen.
I highly think your being objective. The original OP was about how we are spoiled from WoW's engine which had 7 years to work on. Rift's engine from release had a better UI, combat log, macros, and such forth. I think it is you whom are nonobjective sir.
-
The problem is that we have all been completely spoiled by another game engine that has had 7 years and over 100 million dollars every month in subscriptions at its peak to become finely tuned and polished.
Before we got so spoiled, the current condition of SW:ToR was more than acceptable for a newly released MMO. Back when WoW and EQ2 were first released, this was standard. We expected it. In either of those games, there were plenty of bugs, and when they released a new patch to fix 3 things, they usually broke 5 other things. Did we care back then? Nope. Sure it was annoying, but there wasn't anything out there that didn't have the same thing going on, so we just accepted it and had fun playing.
Now, we have become used to a nearly flawless game engine that is the product of years of work and a ridiculous amount of money. I'm simply referring to the game engine, not your opinion of the game content or design. I know we all like to hate on WoW. If we didn't, that's where we would still be. But lets face it, it IS the standard when it comes to MMO's, and it makes any new MMO look bad in comparison simply because no other newly released MMO could possibly launch with all the features and polish that the game engine has. That takes time and money.
Any MMO could reach that level of polish and stability. It's just up to the player base to stick with it and fund it. I think SW:ToR is a great game for just being released, and I think it has great potential to become even better... but only if we give it the time and the money to allow it to do so.
If that is true why was Rift's launch so much better than this ones? Or that they came out with patches to fix the games problems faster? Try comparing TOR to games that came out this year alone, and your analysis fails.
-
The debate is: Should players be able to freely reset to 0 faction when they get bored of one side or the other. The OP wants to skip the slow grind from whichever side 5 to the other side 5. I propose if there's a shortcut, they are stuck going to the other side forever, no backsies. You can't triple stamp a double stamp, Lloyd!
Ah, see I misunderstood what OP wanted. I thought he was talking about a storyline quest or event that would be equivalent to the Revan/Bastila confrontation in regards to DS/LS points. An instant reset would be unfair.
-
I don't know why the debate about a sudden change in LS/DS points is unwelcome. In KOTOR Revan can decide to save Bastila or not, this essentially would move a fully DS player to just above neutral. Since everyone on these forums knows this is a STORY MMO, why not the option for such a thing?
-
Any confirmed bans for this? Because, you know, that's how Bioware rolls; instead of hotfixing the issue.
-
Someone needs to educate Bioware on how not to make their customers feel degraded by their robotic customer support.
You know, it might be slightly off topic, but I hate getting an email in-game telling me about an "offense" I committed on the forums board. Really?
-
Looking at this section of the 1.0.2 Patch Notes,
Miscellaneous Bug Fixes
Taxi rides are no longer occasionally interrupted, causing the player to be dropped from the taxi.
Using the /dismiss command now correctly dismisses a vanity pet.
Corrected some issues that could cause players to become stuck on the loading screen when logging into a character.
Players can now use emotes while riding a vehicle.
Fixed a bug that prevented some text-only mail messages from being received.
Graphics preferences in settings files are now consistent with actual settings in use.
Being in Do Not Disturb mode no longer prevents characters from being logged out for being away.
Corrected an issue that caused poor performance on some machines in indoor areas with shadows enabled.
Fixed an issue that could prevent players from being logged out for inactivity.
I would assume the bold underlined sentence means I can finally use the High Textures in game.
Or not. Which seems to be the case still...
You were able to log into the game to see this first hand? I ask simply I did take what that line said as to mean that high textures were now implemented.
-
Your only chance for a refund based on "false advertising" is via a lawsuit.
See you at lau-... Erm, I mean see you in court!
Isn't there a line in the TOS that states that you cannot sue Bioware if you accept the terms and conditions in it?
-
Since false advertisement obviously happened when purchasing this game.
Would I be able to get a refund on my digital purchase?
I am sure as with anything in life, if you went to buy lunch and only got half of what you ordered with no dressing or topping choices you would want your money back.
What half of the game is missing to warrant a refund?
-
I was completely unaware that this game was in need of resuscitation. My entire guild and everybody I've talked to absolutely loves the game.
Analogy:
I was completely unaware that the economy was in need of resuscitation. My entire family and everybody I've talked to absolutely have no problem financially.
Just because you don't perceive a problem, does not mean one does not exist.
-
First of all, it is not your place to investigate this. If it was not you doing it then just keep your mouth shut and go back to playing. Thinking you have a say in this matter is presumptious and ridiculous. Stop it. Good thing I am almost done with work and will soon be leaving the forums. Hurray!
This has to be the rudest, spiteful, and derogatory thing I've read on these post yet. I'm just warning you, because I've reported you about your behavior towards another forum member. Think about that in the future.
-
I am so sad about all this rudeness and impatience in SW:TOR!
After I accept a /1 LFG spam to tank a flashpoint, I, like most social people, like to reserve 10-15 minutes before the first pull to learn more about everyone in the group and see how they are doing.
I simply do not feel comfortable tanking unless I know everyone's name, A/S/L and their basic likes and dislikes. I also like to share my troubles with them and see if anyone else is having troubles too. My dog has serious behavioral problems and my mom's health is getting a lot worse, and these things weigh on my mind a lot.
The weird thing is... I feel like I'm being very friendly, but people are always cruel to me and impatient. They're all like GO GO GO *** ARE YOU DOING TANK and they quit the group!
I thought the whole point of PUGging flashpoints and heroic quests was to make deep, lasting friendships and maybe even find a wife. But I guess everyone is so used to WoW and LFD that they don't want to socialize with a bunch of random people during a flashpoint anymore.
I wish I could go back to the past I remember when everyone was sociable and courteous and cared about each other's feelings before LFD ruined the community.
OP, I wished I had teamed up with you! I tried to have a lovely conversation before a Hammer Station battle about this dilemma I'm having with my kids, and no one would listen.
Sad days this is indeed.
-
bioware is an above average company cause it created (85+ score ONLY)
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/baldurs-gate
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/neverwinter-nights
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-origins
http://www.metacritic.com/search/all/Mass+Effect+2/results
that's
7 AAA games in the studios history
and critics do not give 85+ scores to buggy as hell games.
Bugs are normal cause of the nature of computer gaming (virtually limitless compinations of HW) combined with massive amount of coding. Always something just "goes unnoticed"
you must understand that 100% bug free games never existed
You've apparently never play a Bethesda game before then, right?
Also, I like you you omitted Dragon Age 2, and the actual SWTOR link, because the player reviews of those two are in the pits. Nice selective thinking there.
-
He acknowledged several of them here:
While I'm not fond of reddit being the chosen venue for communication between BioWare and customers, he does acknowledge several of the issues here.
As for the space combat issue (which I didn't see when I first read this thread), there is a fix in the upcoming patch that will remedy the issue of crashing out when a space station is destroyed.
> Bioware answering basic questions to reddit instead of to the subscribers that are making threads in their own forums.
> MFW I realize they didn't actually answer anything besides 'Get back with us later."
Stay classy!
-
Hey OP, I found the perfect thread for you. You'll feel right at home.
Why people who enjoy the game are leaving
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by McAvinue
Oh my sides. I just knew you would give some excuse to pass this up. Let me give you another highlighted version.
Shares of Electronic Arts Inc. fell nearly 3% to $17.75 on Thursday morning after an analyst with Brean Murray Carret & Co. cut his price target on the stock to $22 from $28, citing concerns about the recently released online multi-player game "Star Wars: The Old Republic." In a note to clients, analyst Todd Mitchell wrote that "creeping concerns" about the performance of "Star Wars" -- which was released in late December -- is causing him to trim his earnings estimates for the 2013 fiscal year. "Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations, and casual observation of early play is causing us to rethink our churn assumptions," Mitchell wrote.
Also if you know how to read in context, you would see that the casual observation statement means that he doesn't have to look very hard to see that there is a problem, not that he only glanced at it. He would not cut his earning estimates on that.
If after the pervious linked statistical numbers about server activity, and the markets notice of the games performance you still think we are all concerned about nothing, well then Sir, I seriously feel bad for you.