Content Locusts

[Gleneagle]

Isn't it deliciously funny and ironic ?

 

You accuse me of exactly what these people I described did - crying and fussing for not having everything they want, ruining the game for everyone because they want it all and don't care about how other may enjoy different things, not wanting to adapt themselves to a different style of playing if they want to taste another part of the game (no, the game must cater to THEIR play) and the like.

 

Basically, you just confirmed that this kind of behaviour is bad, but you completely missed who was actually acting like it. Kinda like blowing up the head of someone you tried to defend, because you didn't realizes he was the one carrying the bomb and you set if off

 

And you don't even seems to be aware of it.

 

Quite the irony.

[Kubernetic]

The "content locusts" meme is an interesting, and seemingly accurate label.

 

But I'm not seeing the "lightning leveling speed" that keeps being discussed. Frankly, it seems like there are a small portion of the gamers that don't really understand what they were doing, what the real restraints on content development are, and how to play such a game.

 

From my perspective, the game just launched just over a month ago. Anyone that spammed the space bar and rushed to the level cap as quickly as they could, only to then turn around and complain that they were out of content, really aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.

 

I've been playing quite a lot, probably more than someone SHOULD play the game due to my ability to work a little bit and play a lot, and I've still just got 2 characters past level 20. One is sitting at 31 while I play my Jedi Sentinel, who is now just barely 24. Then I've got a Bounty Hunter and Imperial Agent in their teens, and probably won't go back to those until I finish the Chapter 1 story for my Sentinel.

 

I'm not just standing around doing nothing. I'm playing the game, running through almost all of the missions, watching the cutscenes, and even with my Sentinel since a lot of the missions are the same, space-barring my way through the side quests as I've seen the content before and just want to get to the action.

 

I'm still not leveling at light speed.

 

But this isn't new stuff. I used to work at Electronics Boutique back in the day of the 32-bit console boom with Playstation and Sega and then the 64-bit consoles being released, and there were plenty of people who came in one day, bought a game for $60 dollars, and I'd see them come in the VERY NEXT DAY and they will have already beaten the game. I'd ask them how long it took and they'd say "8 hours" or something like that, and I'd just shake my head and wonder if it wasn't a waste of the money.

 

I have to put on my thinking/designer cap for a moment here. The developer crew HAD to understand that players would get to the end level of the released content in fairly short order. And I cannot imagine that they just felt that people would run the same 2 or 3 missions over and over again, or play the same warzones over and over again and believe it was a whole lot of fun that deserved $15 a month.

 

I have to assume at this point that they understand that there is a need for some sandbox and more open-ended elements to the ending areas of the game, but that there simply wasn't enough time and resources to get these things done by launch time.

 

So, I think the better solution is a MMORPG with a riveting story line, or even one up it and go with EIGHT riveting story lines, and then start adding in the sandbox elements as you go, especially once the initial sale launches and you see your initial subs and the percentage of players who get to endgame that quickly.

 

Remember, they have stats and numbers that we can only speculate about. They have the actual figures. They know what percentage of players they have at endgame, and they know what they need to do.

 

Now we just need to give them some time to do it. And if you don't feel like waiting around, then unsub and go do something else for a while and come back. But calling it a failure just because people blew past all of the content in some mad quest to be #1 ASAP is ridiculous.

 

And no content developers can ever develop such story elements that quickly to compensate for those locusts.

 

They never have been. And they never will be.

[Akkalevil]

Quite the irony.

Too bad it's lost on you :-/

[ptwonline]

I think the author really nailed the state of the MMO genre in that article. Of course, the author does have a bias: she used to play sandbox style games (notice the Asheron's Call reference early on) and that's the sort of game that got her hooked on MMOs.

 

Despite that, I think she did hit the nail on the head. In fact "locusts" is the same term that I use in describing these very same sorts of players, and for the same reasons. I think we all know what the author is talking about, and the effect it has on games.

 

People like being able to improve their characters. The way to do this used to be primarily leveling and getting more health, do more damage, get higher skills, improved abilities, better gear. We still have that...but for only a short time. Then it all comes to a screeching halt and suddenly virtually all progression is repeated content to grind out gear. I really wish it wasn't that way, and I don't think it has to be. Unfortunately, WoW has changed the landscape too much...for now.

 

Too many players consume the content more like it is room service to be delivered to them instead of going out and finding new places to eat. And just like room service the menu tends to be limited and repetitive. Room service is popular and convenient though, and so many people like it. But long term it's a far less satisfying experience. Hopefully more game developers will see the value in putting the journey back as the main course, and not just make it the appetizer in the meal.

Edited February 3, 2012 by ptwonline

[stem]

It was a good article.

 

It's funny because themepark MMOs are such a hand-held ride now a days, you don’t have to vary even a little from the quest line to simply roll right to end game.

 

The XP rewarded is so perfectly calculated to keep you moving from one quest to the next, I wouldn’t be surprise to know they took into account the anticipated mob xp from running directly from one green node to the other.

 

I think EQ was the last time I set up mob farming runs with my guild members to gain levels.

 

“Hey guys…. Want to run over to ‘x’ area and kill some giants?”

 

It was pure character created content that I recall better than I do any random ‘get quest ‘A’ and run to ‘B’ to collect ‘C’’.

 

Honestly, MMOs now a days are more like being a passenger in a car, where you use to drive them.

[Gleneagle]

Too bad it's lost on you :-/

 

Know thyself.

[krameriffic]

It was a good article.

 

It's funny because themepark MMOs are such a hand-held ride now a days, you don’t have to vary even a little from the quest line to simply roll right to end game.

 

The XP rewarded is so perfectly calculated to keep you moving from one quest to the next, I wouldn’t be surprise to know they took into account the anticipated mob xp from running directly from one green node to the other.

 

I think EQ was the last time I set up mob farming runs with my guild members to gain levels.

 

“Hey guys…. Want to run over to ‘x’ area and kill some giants?”

 

It was pure character created content that I recall better than I do any random ‘get quest ‘A’ and run to ‘B’ to collect ‘C’’.

 

Honestly, MMOs now a days are more like being a passenger in a car, where you use to drive them.

 

You realize that only psychotic people actually like to grind mobs, right? The majority (and when I say majority here, I mean it in 80 foot tall concrete letters) don't enjoy boring repetitive ****. The future of MMOs is not to regress back to that anachronistic structure, but to create a world where every quest is diverse and interesting. It's not easy, perhaps it's impossible, but that's what they have to do.

 

WoW has some FAR more interesting quests than SWTOR in terms of what the player actually does (*** opposed to what voice acting and cutscenes the player watches). Quests where you operate a vehicle or enter weird phases to control and interact with major lore characters. Quests like the ones in Redridge where it plays like a ****** stealth game for a while as you plant bombs and sabotage an enemy base. Quests like the one in Stonetalon Mountains where you drop a nuclear bomb on a druid tree.

 

There are so many examples of how WoW does the leveling experience better than SWTOR, and certainly much better than any other MMO out there. Problem is that it's hard to come up with lots of unique and interesting gameplay mechanics to fill out the big boots of an MMO game. It's even harder to appropriately program them into such a limited framework as an MMO. But that doesn't mean it can't be done.

[stem]

You realize that only psychotic people actually like to grind mobs, right? The majority (and when I say majority here, I mean it in 80 foot tall concrete letters) don't enjoy boring repetitive ****. The future of MMOs is not to regress back to that anachronistic structure, but to create a world where every quest is diverse and interesting. It's not easy, perhaps it's impossible, but that's what they have to do.

 

/snip

 

It’s the difference between reading a book and writing one.

 

Where you see ‘boring repetitive ****’, I see my own quest, requiring a group of players to take out a group of giants far tougher than us while killing off any enemy players we come across.

 

Your quest will be the same every time. Mine would change every time.

 

It comes down to personal preference.

 

You want to play the story created for you and I’d rather create the story. It’s this same lack of creativity in MMOs that has groups of 50s standing around gripping for something to do.

 

“Where’s my gear GRIND!”

[Suttree]

it took me over 3 weeks to hit 50 and I didn't listen to any quests besides the class ones. I a m gonn roll a new character and listen to every quest and i cant wait. then when i have two 50's ill make a third and there will be a massive amount of content and all of the babies will have moved on to cry about something else ;D

 

Wow, a whopping three weeks. Waaaaaaay too fast, in other words. It should take several months in a challenging game. And there will only be a massive amount of content you've already seen because even if you do listen to every quest you will still level too fast. Anyone who is already 50 who thinks that listening to all the quests with an alt will eat up enough time for the devs to implement a "ton" of content is kidding themselves. Then what will whiners like you do?

 

The article is right on. This game is too fast-leveling and too easy. They should implement an xp on/off switch for those of us that don't like content to be a blur and so we don't end up skipping entire zones and missing out on half the quests.

[Andryah]

The article is right on. This game is too fast-leveling and too easy. They should implement an xp on/off switch for those of us that don't like content to be a blur and so we don't end up skipping entire zones and missing out on half the quests.

The article is objective and correct about content locusts.

 

The article is subjective and biased about game leveling being too fast. It assumes that everyone is a content locust. Everyone is not. ~10-20% of the player base are locusts.

When designing any system (and an MMO is very much a system) you decide on a center point in the system and design around the center point. Bioware picked a centerpoint of ~200 hours of play time per character to go from level 1 to 50. Not remarkably different then any other MMO really if you go back and look at them.

 

The average player (note this is the guy in the center of the bell curve distribtion of all players) likely plays about 15 hours a week, plus or minus a few hours.

 

The average player probably also plays 2 or 3 characters to some level (ususally to a mid level, with one character getting preference of play and which caps level first) and will dabble in crafting and other side segments of the game.

 

In rough terms this means that the center point of player leveling experience (which is generally under-represented in gaming forums by the way) is ~ 3-4 months of calendar time to reach level cap. Then they begin playing capped end game content (for anywhere from a few months to perhaps years if content updates are frequent).

 

Sure some people will level faster and others will level slower, but the majority will fall on the centerline of the bell curve +/- 20%.

 

A game company producing an MMO property for a wide audience must plan and implement around a center point. You do not design for the corner cases (such as content locusts, and spacebar stomping rodents), because if you do, you are following a business model doomed to failure.

[VenthiosLestaran]

The "content locusts" meme is an interesting, and seemingly accurate label.

 

But I'm not seeing the "lightning leveling speed" that keeps being discussed. Frankly, it seems like there are a small portion of the gamers that don't really understand what they were doing, what the real restraints on content development are, and how to play such a game.

 

From my perspective, the game just launched just over a month ago. Anyone that spammed the space bar and rushed to the level cap as quickly as they could, only to then turn around and complain that they were out of content, really aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.

 

I've been playing quite a lot, probably more than someone SHOULD play the game due to my ability to work a little bit and play a lot, and I've still just got 2 characters past level 20. One is sitting at 31 while I play my Jedi Sentinel, who is now just barely 24. Then I've got a Bounty Hunter and Imperial Agent in their teens, and probably won't go back to those until I finish the Chapter 1 story for my Sentinel.

 

I'm not just standing around doing nothing. I'm playing the game, running through almost all of the missions, watching the cutscenes, and even with my Sentinel since a lot of the missions are the same, space-barring my way through the side quests as I've seen the content before and just want to get to the action.

 

I'm still not leveling at light speed.

 

But this isn't new stuff. I used to work at Electronics Boutique back in the day of the 32-bit console boom with Playstation and Sega and then the 64-bit consoles being released, and there were plenty of people who came in one day, bought a game for $60 dollars, and I'd see them come in the VERY NEXT DAY and they will have already beaten the game. I'd ask them how long it took and they'd say "8 hours" or something like that, and I'd just shake my head and wonder if it wasn't a waste of the money.

 

I have to put on my thinking/designer cap for a moment here. The developer crew HAD to understand that players would get to the end level of the released content in fairly short order. And I cannot imagine that they just felt that people would run the same 2 or 3 missions over and over again, or play the same warzones over and over again and believe it was a whole lot of fun that deserved $15 a month.

 

I have to assume at this point that they understand that there is a need for some sandbox and more open-ended elements to the ending areas of the game, but that there simply wasn't enough time and resources to get these things done by launch time.

 

So, I think the better solution is a MMORPG with a riveting story line, or even one up it and go with EIGHT riveting story lines, and then start adding in the sandbox elements as you go, especially once the initial sale launches and you see your initial subs and the percentage of players who get to endgame that quickly.

 

Remember, they have stats and numbers that we can only speculate about. They have the actual figures. They know what percentage of players they have at endgame, and they know what they need to do.

 

Now we just need to give them some time to do it. And if you don't feel like waiting around, then unsub and go do something else for a while and come back. But calling it a failure just because people blew past all of the content in some mad quest to be #1 ASAP is ridiculous.

 

And no content developers can ever develop such story elements that quickly to compensate for those locusts.

 

They never have been. And they never will be.

 

 

I'm level 50 on my main, level 30 on my BH, level 30 on my Trooper. The leveling in this game is Insanely fast. It took me 1 month to hit 50 on my Sith Warrior, only because I couldn't muster the desire to log in for a week at 49 with half my xp bar full and fully rested all the way to 51 by the way.

 

I am Not a Locust. It took me 8 months to hit Cap in WoW, took me much longer in EQ1. These games have been progressively speeding up, more and more. It's really not good, like the article said. The only way to break this mold is to A: Slow down, or B: Stop making the End game - the game.

 

SWTOR is in a Really odd spot. The game is focused primarily on 1-49 and the story. A story they payed a Lot of money to make for 8 classes. Yet you can hit 50 in less than a month just by playing a few hours every day or so NOT space-baring, doing all the bonus quests, not skipping ANY flashpoints, doing space missions every day. I know, I did it. So did my wife. A friend of ours played a bit more hard core, hit 50 in 2 weeks, didn't space bar a thing.

 

This game doesn't really suffer too much from "Locusts" as it does "Expensive voiced content is so expensive that we can only make so much of it for this part of the game and release it slowly After this point in content patches and expansions". This however, has forced them to apply the 1-50 curve based on what limited story content they were able to create. That's a tough spot to be stuck in. Leveling: It's just too quick. Way too quick. Some of you may not hit cap in a month or even 2, playing 1-3 hours a day mixing it up between Alts. That's great, but not everybody Plays that way. For the cost of the game, it should have had the start of level 50 ready. Make an alt - is not a solution.

 

People say: There's 7 more classes, have at it. I personally don't find but two of those classes story compelling, and in my time left before my sub runs out, I'll probably play them through. We'll see.

 

Time to change the industry standard guys - Good opportunity but, missed the mark in this 1st go.

[Akkalevil]

Know thyself.

Guess one-liners are the end of your wits. Considering you're not even able to read and argument properly, it's not really surprising.

 

Still, this is just useless and cluttering the thread, so I'll let it drop.

[TheRealBrave]

How dare people who paid $60 dollars or more for the game, and then $15 or more dollars for their subscription per month+ wanting more content! What jerks! You will do your easy Operations and farm Ilum and like it!

[VenthiosLestaran]

How dare people who paid $60 dollars or more for the game, and then $15 or more dollars for their subscription per month+ wanting more content! What jerks! You will do your easy Operations and farm Ilum and like it!

 

If you're republic you can only do the 1st half of your last statement realistically.

[nalixor]

Yeah, the author of that article is an arrogant idiot. So if someone doesn't want to play the game the way YOU want to play the game, they're ruining it? GG.

[silkforcalde]

I agree completely. The content devouring locusts should never be pandered to. They represent a very small minority of customers and the game would be stronger if they didn't play it.

[Harower]

predictably, the doom and gloom merchants have come out

 

So they predicted that people would be making predictions.

 

 

But who predicted that they would predict that they would be making predictions.

 

 

I predict that they will make an article about predicting people that predict others will be making predictions.

 

 

It will be fairly successful and someone will quote it.

[Arraegath]

I think what creates the mood for a game is honestly the leveling progress.

 

The reason a lot of modern games (like WoW, and SWToR) lack an aspect of a community, is because they blow through the content, and then spend all their time with a select group of guildmates, and thats about it.

 

If leveling took 3-4 times as long, and there were basically dungeons that had to be done in groups per each world etc, it would give much more nostalgia etc. My one complaint about this game, is that you blow through content way too quickly while leveling. You never spend enough time on a planet to truly get a feel for it.

 

One cool thing would be to make the leveling process take significantly more time, WITHOUT turning into a complete grind. But one interesting aspect of this would be introducing essentially lower level raids, that would produce gear which would in effect be relatively competitive towards the next stage of the leveling progression.

 

Such as (we will use the sith in this example) lets say Korriban. There would be a level 10 mini raid in the zone, that would yield gear which would last you until you did the level 20 mini raids on another planet.

 

But a big key in appreciating all the planets, and design, is being able to spend time in them. Sure we can just do it of our own accord just to look around, but most people won't unless they have to. You will always run into an issue with this though, if leveling takes too long, people will cry.

 

Where I think Bioware made a mistake is that they shortened the leveling process, and weren't prepared with end game content well enough for these "locusts". The leveling process should take quite a bit more time in my opinion. It would remedy a lot of the social aspect deficiencies the game might seemingly have.

[jizazi]

Defeat argument in 1-step. Monthly fee. Check-mate! Edited February 4, 2012 by jizazi

[VenthiosLestaran]

Defeat argument in 1-step. Monthly fee. Check-mate!

 

...Nope?

[Dronp]

The article makes some good points. I think in this game the problem is that there's too big of a leveling gap between those who want to enjoy the content and those who skip it all. If you skip everything you can easily get to 50 in 3 days /played. I will admit I'm one of the ones who rushed to 50 as quickly as possible. I don't complain that there's not enough content. My reasoning for rushing is that I gain enjoyment from being amongst the best. I can always enjoy the story on an alt later, but I don't enjoy being level 30 and watching every cutscene while my guildmates are 50 getting battlemaster gear.

 

Back in the day you could enjoy the leveling process because you knew only the SUPER hardcore were at max level quickly and you could never keep up with them anyway. But nowadays leveling is so fast that if your taking your time you'll quickly fall behind the majority of the playerbase. Then you end up at 50 getting stomped by players with full epics. Now that I have a geared 50 battlemaster I can go back and enjoy the story on my alt without worrying about falling too far behind. That's my reasoning anyway.

[ShaftyMcShaft]

Crap, I must have missed the disclaimer after the opening "words in space" story crawl that said "Hey play slow because the game ends when you hit level 50." Shoulda paid attention to that.

[KippTabor]

That opinion piece pretty much sums up how I feel about the current state of MMOs.

 

In the end, does it matter whose fault it is? The devs, the hard-cores, the casuals? Maybe it's a bit of all-of-the-above? The reality is that it is happening, and unless we collectively start demanding something different, we will only have ourselves to blame.

[Faytte]

Crap, I must have missed the disclaimer after the opening "words in space" story crawl that said "Hey play slow because the game ends when you hit level 50." Shoulda paid attention to that.

 

There you go.

 

"Hey heres an mmo..but please dont level too fast, because while its an MMO, which are defined by their end game content, we only spent 5 years and 200 M making a 1-49 leveling experience. Just saying...take your time"

 

People made similar arguments in Warhammer, defending a product with a poor end game, telling people the game would succeed if people gave it time. The game sold a ton its opening month and was heralded by critiques as a WoW killer.

 

Now its F2P.

[VenthiosLestaran]

There you go.

 

"Hey heres an mmo..but please dont level too fast, because while its an MMO, which are defined by their end game content, we only spent 5 years and 200 M making a 1-49 leveling experience. Just saying...take your time"

 

People made similar arguments in Warhammer, defending a product with a poor end game, telling people the game would succeed if people gave it time. The game sold a ton its opening month and was heralded by critiques as a WoW killer.

 

Now its F2P.

 

But it's so ugly when you say it like that. Can't you say it, you know. Nicer? Like "Just roll an alt! There's 7 more stories!"

 

That..makes it sound a little..more..acceptable maybe?