Amazing potential - Don't Lose it SWTOR

[Waypoc]

Someone.... who doesn't blame SOE for following orders? I think I man-love you. Your my new best e-friend. This man here knows the truth. When Publishers and Developers alike learn that WoW was a fluke in terms of it's success originally that was then capitalized by Blizzard and stop trying to outdo WoW with WoW, we'll get a good MMO. There are so many things Bioware could have done with TOR, but silly old Lucas Arts undoubtedly got in the way telling them they had to outdo WoW with worse then WoW quality game play.

 

And lets never forget Nancy McIntyre.

 

Here is my favorit bits of wisdom from her as it related to why the NGE had to be:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/arts/10star.html

 

"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."

 

Ms. MacIntyre said Galaxies had lost "significantly more" than the 3 to 5 percent of players who typically leave any online game every month. She said she expected the game to return to its previous subscriber levels in six months, a process she hoped would be accelerated by the introduction of a new television infomercial hawking Galaxies later this month.

 

"We knew we were taking a significant risk with our existing player base, but we felt so strongly that we needed to make these changes for the sake of the game's long-term future that we all held hands, LucasArts and Sony, and went forward," Ms. MacIntyre said."

 

SWTOR learn from the mistakes of the past and make your game better not worse.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Waypoc

[Waypoc]

moves way too fast.

[Chaffery]

How I see things, from patch to patch, they already lost it. So far all patches made game worse and brought in additional bugs.

Sad, so better they will get their crap together and fix this bug mayhem.

[knightblaster]

Yes, but it won't be made into another SWG.

[Theknightpt]

Seriously? Guys I'm playing SWTOR on a Qosmio F60-14Q, with a GT 330M, and I have some serious fps issues. And you know what? I don't care! First because I can't stop playing SWTOR, seriously, it is the most well crafted MMO in terms of gameplay and environment that I've played for a long time, and I get all tangled up with it, the immersion is HUGE, the quests are fabolous and everything is very very well thought out. So yes, it is the most promising MMO I have ever played, it has already delivered a great deal of enjoyment to me, and from this point on it can only improve.

 

Give time to time, and everything will be polished in no time.

 

I know that EA Tech Team is listening to us, and they will be working on all the problems that there are at the moment, but for all they have done until now... Congratulations, you have done an epic game.

[Evertal]

How I see things, from patch to patch, they already lost it. So far all patches made game worse and brought in additional bugs.

Sad, so better they will get their crap together and fix this bug mayhem.

 

I think BW is still trying to "put out fires" and once thats done they will start focusing on the quality of the game. Patch 1.1 is a good example where the no-sleepers where raging the forums about lack of end-game content so BW made sure the patch showed promise in that apartment instead of focusing on correcting bugs or optimizing the game.

 

The game is still very young but it is extremly promising so at least I am gonna continue enjoy it while BW works on getting quality fixed.

[JSykes]

Seriously? Guys I'm playing SWTOR on a Qosmio F60-14Q, with a GT 330M, and I have some serious fps issues. And you know what? I don't care! First because I can't stop playing SWTOR, seriously, it is the most well crafted MMO in terms of gameplay and environment that I've played for a long time, and I get all tangled up with it, the immersion is HUGE, the quests are fabolous and everything is very very well thought out. So yes, it is the most promising MMO I have ever played, it has already delivered a great deal of enjoyment to me, and from this point on it can only improve.

 

Give time to time, and everything will be polished in no time.

 

I know that EA Tech Team is listening to us, and they will be working on all the problems that there are at the moment, but for all they have done until now... Congratulations, you have done an epic game.

 

I'm glad you think that, you're more then welcome to your opinion, but I don't get how you can say it's the best crafted MMO when it does everything worse then existing MMOs, aside from Cut Scenes, which aren't even a big deal, and annoy a large percentage of the player base at 50 when half the time you run a hardmode it's listening to some guy go on and on about stuff you don't care about. The quests... are standard, nothing special to see, kill, gather, rinse and repeat, with voice, so many options, and they take none of them. And as far as give it time, no thank you. If the product isn't ready when it's released, I'm not going to pay $15 a month for 3-12 months to wait for it to be ready, I'll just quit and move on like a very large chunk of the community already has and is planning on doing.

[Chaffery]

I think BW is still trying to "put out fires" and once thats done they will start focusing on the quality of the game. Patch 1.1 is a good example where the no-sleepers where raging the forums about lack of end-game content so BW made sure the patch showed promise in that apartment instead of focusing on correcting bugs or optimizing the game.

 

The game is still very young but it is extremly promising so at least I am gonna continue enjoy it while BW works on getting quality fixed.

My point is very simple, this game shouldn't be released. Would you like to know what Swtor reminds me?

A Windows 95 after release. Not even comparing with Win 98 because it would be insulting Win 98.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Chaffery

[Lordlok]

"We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."

 

^This

 

Is where SOE went off the reservation.

[Seronic_]

I'm glad you think that, you're more then welcome to your opinion, but I don't get how you can say it's the best crafted MMO when it does everything worse then existing MMOs, aside from Cut Scenes, which aren't even a big deal, and annoy a large percentage of the player base at 50 when half the time you run a hardmode it's listening to some guy go on and on about stuff you don't care about. The quests... are standard, nothing special to see, kill, gather, rinse and repeat, with voice, so many options, and they take none of them. And as far as give it time, no thank you. If the product isn't ready when it's released, I'm not going to pay $15 a month for 3-12 months to wait for it to be ready, I'll just quit and move on like a very large chunk of the community already has and is planning on doing.

 

That kind of attitude, the "instant gratification" that technology has created, is why the MMO market is in a downward spiral. People want things the second they demand it without giving realistic time measures for something to be done. No MMORPG has ever launched perfect. World of Warcraft was down for days at a time while they fixed their bugs. SWTOR has its bugs, but it has easily been the smoothest launch of any MMORPG up to this date. World of Warcraft is still fixing bugs they've had in the game for years.

 

The game has only been out a month and they've already released a content patch, bug fixes, and are planning for more expansive features down the road.

 

Now, to your questing argument; while the quests aren't anything different than kill x or disable y, they are progressive. Some quests have a bonus series that sends you deeper into the area that the main quest lies. They also progress strongly on each planet, pushing the story plot of the land forward. I don't know any other MMO that does this. I actually have fun leveling instead of mindlessly grinding and quest-hub circuiting around as is popular in World of Warcraft.

[Evertal]

My point is very simple, this game shouldn't be released. Would you like to know what Swtor reminds me?

A Windows 95 after release. Not even comparing with Win 98 because it would be insulting Win 98.

 

I'll bet that even if BW (or any other game company) spent 10 more years polishing the game before release there would still be bugs, exploits or gamebreaking elements after release. An MMO is never finnished so the skill is to release it in a good enough state that players will stick around. In my opinion BW did and actually did it far better then most other MMO:s out there.

[Theknightpt]

That kind of attitude, the "instant gratification" that technology has created, is why the MMO market is in a downward spiral. People want things the second they demand it without giving realistic time measures for something to be done. No MMORPG has ever launched perfect. World of Warcraft was down for days at a time while they fixed their bugs. SWTOR has its bugs, but it has easily been the smoothest launch of any MMORPG up to this date. World of Warcraft is still fixing bugs they've had in the game for years.

 

The game has only been out a month and they've already released a content patch, bug fixes, and are planning for more expansive features down the road.

 

Now, to your questing argument; while the quests aren't anything different than kill x or disable y, they are progressive. Some quests have a bonus series that sends you deeper into the area that the main quest lies. They also progress strongly on each planet, pushing the story plot of the land forward. I don't know any other MMO that does this. I actually have fun leveling instead of mindlessly grinding and quest-hub circuiting around as is popular in World of Warcraft.

 

What you said is Gold my friend... I do think that most people are actually playing and have this feeling, than the population that goes on the forum.

 

This game is actually fun to play, which is something that I was having an hard time to get from other MMOs, it's like the only reason I was playing them was to get the best loot, here I want to play it for all it has to give to me.

 

And seriously, if you don't like the dialog and how the whole endgame is designed, then perhaps the problem is that this is really not the game for you... But that does not mean that this is a bad game.

[siza]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=216855

[JSykes]

That kind of attitude, the "instant gratification" that technology has created, is why the MMO market is in a downward spiral. People want things the second they demand it without giving realistic time measures for something to be done. No MMORPG has ever launched perfect. World of Warcraft was down for days at a time while they fixed their bugs. SWTOR has its bugs, but it has easily been the smoothest launch of any MMORPG up to this date. World of Warcraft is still fixing bugs they've had in the game for years.

 

The game has only been out a month and they've already released a content patch, bug fixes, and are planning for more expansive features down the road.

 

Now, to your questing argument; while the quests aren't anything different than kill x or disable y, they are progressive. Some quests have a bonus series that sends you deeper into the area that the main quest lies. They also progress strongly on each planet, pushing the story plot of the land forward. I don't know any other MMO that does this. I actually have fun leveling instead of mindlessly grinding and quest-hub circuiting around as is popular in World of Warcraft.

Granted, you are right that there are bonus series, but all they are is camouflaged kill quests, your objective it to retrieve 10 sticky slimes from slime dudes, odds are, your bonus quest will be kill, destroy, kill boss, I don't see that as progression in the genre, it's just a kill quest that is labelled as bonus, but in reality it's essentially mandatory, as you must do them to keep on the leveling curve. Go ahead, skip every bonus quest, you'll see how far you get behind as you keep skipping them.

 

 

As far as instant gratification, how can you even say that. Do you think I'm entitled for wanting a game released in 2011 to have the game play, features and quality of a game released in 2011, not 2004? I don't understand that, it's like I go out car shopping, am I entitledif I go to test drive a Chevrolet Volt and decide unless they add in X, Y and Z features I'll just buy a Honda Accord because it already has those features. Are you, as the salesmen going to say "Well, when the Accord was released in the 70s, it too had a lot of problems, it's really not fair to compare the Accord of Today to the Chevrolet Volt, because it just released, you have to give them time!". No, it's perfectly acceptable, and realistic to compare 2 products, and insinuating that comparing them both as they stand currently makes me feel entitled to "instant gratification" is just wrong and shows the level of your thought process. I'll reiterate, it's perfectly fine and acceptable to compare WoW to TOR, they are both MMOs, that *** for tat are identical, with TOR being of lesser quality, regardless of the reasons. I don't care if you say WoW had issues at launch, it had 7 years to get this far, WoW never came up with any unique ideas, etc, etc. I really don't care, those are just excuses, and very poor reasons to defend TORs horrible quality. As a MMO launched to compete with World of Warcraft especially, you'd think that it would be of the same quality, if not greater quality as they had years of watching WoW implement ideas, and cultivate feedback based on those ideas.

 

Yes, the game has only been out a month and it has a content patch already, congrats, but it was just content that was cut from release because they wanted to push it out the door and make money, go read the interviews if you don't believe me and read between the lines, same with the Legacy system. It's all a game to make money, and unfortunately, TOR isn't winning the game, and the server populations make that very, very clear. At launch, a weekend meant half the servers were listed as full, with very few below heavy, and hundreds of people in the lower level zones. Now, very few even hit Very Heavy, and only 2 hit Full on a regular basis. And I can predict what you'll say, the Holidays are over, people went back to their normal schedules, etc, etc. Fact is, 7-8pm on a Friday and Saturday night, a server should be loaded with people, not barely break 100 on the Imperial fleet on a server with a 3:1 Empire to Republic ratio.

[Theknightpt]

Oh the haters going to hate... Seriously, If the population lowers, servers would be merged. If not, worst case scenarios most bugs gets ironed out, people resub, and every server gets good life again.... with the extremely high amount of servers there are, i am not impressed that most of them are not heavy... people are highly spreaded between them.

[Waypoc]

How I see things, from patch to patch, they already lost it. So far all patches made game worse and brought in additional bugs.

Sad, so better they will get their crap together and fix this bug mayhem.

 

They almost need to come out with an Expansion that is better than the first with some or all of the below included:

 

• Planets with no specific level range. Just a very mysterious Star Wars planet where you can run into mobs that are level 1 or level 50. All levels are there, low and high. Be Careful
  
• No yellow brick road quests where you literally follow a road and questline like a robot to the next quest line or area. It works in other games because they are much more open
  
• When you open a map, have it be the entire world, not just some tiny segment. I know you can click the whole world map and see the whole world but it still seems so small and segmented like I'm running from one ride or warehouse to another
  
• No walls
  
• No exhaustion from running into the desert
  
• More mystery. More mystical mysterious Gameplay. You know, like Star Wars
  
• More immersion
  
• More in-depth crafting
  
• Player Housing on a planet that's non-instanced. No there would not be a blight if they just added rent with limits on how much you could pre-pay
  
• Chat Bubbles
  
• Scalable UI
  
• Movable UI
  
• Pet Mounts
  
• Vehicle Mounts that actually work and feel right. In TOR they just don't feel right. The vehicles in TOR feel and drive like a hula skirt that you're wearing. It feels very fake
  
• Community
  
• More People - Stop the Sharding/Instancing
  
• Pets that are not Companions
  
• Less Gated Gameplay
  
• True Open Worlds
  
• More in-depth Meaningful Harvesting
  
• Remove the mountain Walls, regular walls. Stop making me run 5 miles in one direction to get to an objective that is just on the other side of another wall
  
• Broker that works
  
• Guild Halls - Non-Instanced
  
• No Mobs on every single node and every single path. It's ridiculous
  
• No Combat Delay
  
• Better Textures
  
• Food with Stats crafted by Players
  
• Moddable Orange Armor that has a base stat so that it is actually worth something more than appearance
  
• Open World PvP on ALL Planets after L20 with actual rewards so that everyone isn't always in WZ's on PvP Servers.
  

[TheHeadCapper]

What you said is Gold my friend... I do think that most people are actually playing and have this feeling, than the population that goes on the forum.

 

This game is actually fun to play, which is something that I was having an hard time to get from other MMOs, it's like the only reason I was playing them was to get the best loot, here I want to play it for all it has to give to me.

 

And seriously, if you don't like the dialog and how the whole endgame is designed, then perhaps the problem is that this is really not the game for you... But that does not mean that this is a bad game.

 

That is what this game does different than other MMO's. It's actually fun to play!

[Pyrolight]

That is what this game does different than other MMO's. It's actually fun to play!

 

I disagree.

[TheHeadCapper]

I disagree.

 

Of course people like different things. I don't like or haven't subbed to any other MMO out there in quite a while. They are all very boring to me. SWTOR i will be subbed to for a long long time.

Edited January 23, 2012 by TheHeadCapper