SWTOR: Can you be different? Will you stand on your own feet?

[Mephismo]

The first problem, is that, as a customer community, we can only talk to the chef. Sadly, our opinion, and the chef’s opinion, doesn’t matter. It’s the store owner that has the bucks, the deeds to the store, and owns the land.

 

The store owner sees tons of cake stores making money, sees the Pound Cake Emporium, largest cake distributor in the city, making the most money, and, therefore, s/he’s going to make poundcakes. The store owner doesn’t care that his cakes are the same, and possibly inferior to the Pound Cake Emporium. If s/he makes profit, that’s all he wants. Money > all. Good luck convincing the store owner to try dainty European French style pies, when a big old generic blob of pound cake has proven that it’s the main seller.

 

Some owners will. But, as a rule, most owners will not care about pie vs cake. They will care about the money they make. So, if you want pie, actually, your best bet is at a Mom and Pop’s small little store, and that’s where you’ll find that succulent home made pie. But, going to a big new chain that has it’s eye on the cash made by Pound Cake Emporium, you’re going to get the same old cake, with, maybe, a different icing.

 

Speaking personally = I’m here for the icing.

 

Many posts say “Except for the Voice Acting and the Story, the rest is…”

 

For me, there is no “the rest”.

-Loading Screens? I come from EQ and CoH. Tons of load screens there. 10 minutes of my life going from one PLANET to another without an instant teleporter… oh shucks.

-2004 Graphics and dead world? Again. I come from CoH. That’s perfectly good enough. 2004 was “only” 8 years ago (yeah, showing my age). I roll my eyes at the comments about water reflection, and shadows, and omg… my character isn’t a stick figure, I’m happy.

-No endgame? Don’t care. I won’t group, let alone raid. I’m happy grinding for that 1.5 mil speeder or that 1 mil key waiting for new content. CoH only has 1 Signature Arc a month, and an expansion with 2-4 arcs every 4-6 months. An Arc takes an hour at best. Once you hit cap, story content slows. Grind for purples till you get more story is nothing new to me.

-No real character customization? Sure. That one hurts, esp. coming from a robust character creator like CoH. But, TOR has VO (which is a big deal for me) AND the Star Wars IP, so it balances out, at least for me.

-UI features? I don’t even know what a macro, combat logs, parser is (ok, fine, I do, just making a point), because, since I don’t PvP, or raid I don’t need to know if a power is X% better than the other. If I die against an encounter, I level / gear up / try a new strategy, and try again. Maximum level and gear and I still die? I do something else. Not being able to move a button, link 25 abilities to a single keypress, and min-max the experience… is so, so, so, not important… TO ME. (Stressing that one to not be lynched)

 

Are those problems? Absolutely.

Are those problems FOR ME? Absolutely not. So, back to the metaphor…I just want my icing (VO and Story), more of it, and whether it’s pie or cake, couldn’t care less.

 

Now, if the chef can make pie, as well as make more icing, fine. I’m not that selfish. Fine. Go ahead. However, I haven’t found a shop in town with icing as good as here, and if that means pie lovers don’t get what they want if I’m to get more icing, I won’t feel bad, especially considering the store owner wrote in big letters “Great Icing Here” on the front door sign.

 

(Yeah, s/he also wrote “Good Pie”, and that’s between the pie lovers and the owner. But I won’t ask for pie “to be nice”. I still want more icing. Sorry.)

 

But, at the end of the say, the customers (us) can talk to the chef (devs) as much as we want, the store owner (Bioware) and the chain owner (EA) just want profits. And, if you consider how the same thing happens in movies (same formulae / special effects / blockbuster stuff), TV shows, music, and so on, good luck reversing the trend. If you're going to a big company, nothing matters more than the mighty dollar. I’ve accepted that. If you want a nice pie with a new taste / recipe, go to a small mom & pop store. That’s your best bet. Because, common things being common, big stores will cater to the common denominator…

 

The pound cake eaters…

 

Sorry… but so far… that’s how the business world runs.

 

I liked this post a lot:)

[Tic-]

And yet, all most can do is cite even more outdated features and concepts (those from UO, EQ, DAoC, etc) that the game should be more like and use more.

 

WoW evolved past those outdated premises in 2004 and set a standard that you, apparently, do not like. Let's be serious for a moment and realize that you are considering SW:TOR as "Outdated" yet want to go back to even more outdated systems. Doesn't seem logical to me.

 

I would take those outdated features and concepts with a 2012 twist, over another copy and paste job.

 

Not asking for much really, just tired of the same old AAA rehash. You could even add "story" to it if you like.

[Jeeyoker]

I agree that fun stuff is better than the gear grind.

 

That said, I'm curious as to what your precise suggestions would be for that.

 

fix ilum.

 

nuff said

[Chromiie]

 

 

The above analogy should demostrate the difference.-Z

 

 

I don't eat cake or pie and don't really care for them.

[Umbral]

And yet, all most can do is cite even more outdated features and concepts (those from UO, EQ, DAoC, etc) that the game should be more like and use more.

 

WoW evolved past those outdated premises in 2004 and set a standard that you, apparently, do not like. Let's be serious for a moment and realize that you are considering SW:TOR as "Outdated" yet want to go back to even more outdated systems. Doesn't seem logical to me.

I was actually coming from the position that SWTOR left out many modern features that mmo gamers desire, including myself, and is essentially a 8 to 10 year old game. I've been playing mmos for 12+ years now. I'm just not stuck in the past, and I remember that players wanted the modern features that came about, and appreciate them. Edited February 14, 2012 by Umbral

[WhoTookMyName]

This MMO Genre has been the least progressive genre in all of gaming.

 

I would even say that it has regressed.

 

Nothing new is ever done.

 

How the hell did a Genre that started with games like Ultima Online end up like it is today?

 

Games have less features, tools, options, graphics and the one thing that kills me most...The one thing that makes this genre completely unique and different has been removed...

 

Community. Look, it's not about RP. It's about bringing a character to life in a persistant online world and becomming a part of that world and even having an impact on it.

 

This whole concept seems to have been forgotten. This is what made teh genre so amazing, so magical and it had been stripped down to the world is nothing more than an Online Lobby for us to run around in waiting to group and be sent into an "Instance".

 

You can blame the developer's, the games, whatever but the entire genre has been ruined.

 

Play Station home is more of a damn MMO than any MMO on the market today! And that's just sad!!!

[MegaBubble]

You're barking up the wrong tree if you're expecting "pie" from companies like EA/Bioware. Here's why.

 

"Pie" just doesn't yield the same profits as cake. When you have a global, mass market company, you have a lot of overhead to cover for. Lots of investors to keep happy. You start pitching "pie" and they'll start telling you how cake is twice as profitable, and there's really no denying that, its a fact. That's what your post fails to address: profit. The ability to "be different and stand on your own feet" pales in comparison to profit for companies this large - they don't get to be global by thinking small.

 

Enter the little mom and pop bakery, that isn't global. Sure cake is more profitable, but tht other massive company out there already has the "cake" market cornered, and has the resouerces and manpower to produce it twice as fast and twice as polished. But mom and pops bakery is small. The smaller piece of the pie (pun intended) represented by pie would actually be a great move for them, and would net them bigger profits than trying to compete with the big boys with their super cake-making machine, simply because the underserved pie-loving population is so starved for pie they'll gladly get it wherever they can.

 

TOR's mainstream, and is going to make mainstream choices. That isn't to say that they won't innovate, or that they'll copy everything mindlesly from other games. But if you're expecting a company this large to deviate from the formula and start making pie, think again.

 

That said - I still enjoy TOR for what it is, I like my cake as much as the next guy. I've got my eye on the indy game makers and the "lesser knowns" for my pie fix, though.

[Englefield]

There's a problem though OP, the customers of this pie shop like cake. They only came because it was a new shop and they wanted to taste pie, but they realy want cake. They will scream and wail until the pie shop makes cake because they really like the cake in that other shop that they used to frequent.

 

The pie shop owner will think short term, follow his wallet ... and start making cake. Before you know it all the cake eaters will complain that it's just the same as all the other cake shops and leave.

 

The pie eaters will still be left with no pies.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Englefield

[Matte_Black]

I think the OP nicely summed-up my feelings. I feel like BioWare made a different sort of MMO that many have been waiting for. I think it's success is going to dependent on us pie-eaters because they basically don't make a good enough cake to compete with the cakeshops. I am fine with catering to the MMO establishment as long as it does not swing the focus of the game away from waht it was doing so well. If they start screwing up the pies trying to make their cake, they'll be left with very few loyal customers.

[Cerion]

I was going to bring this up, but since it is already stated ... I think the original numbers are a bit skewed.

 

33% may say they want pie, but really, only 10% do. The other 23% of the pie lovers are those that want both cake and pie. This leaves 67% happy with their cake.

 

However ... if there are 3000 people in town and 3 bakeries selling cake, each bakery will have 1000 customers each.

Then one bakery starts selling pie. All of the pie lovers will go there and half of the cake and pie people will start eating there as well. (or all of the cake and pie people coming half of the time). With the OP's numbers, that means 1500 people will flock to the bakery with the new pie menu.. With mine, 450 will eat at the pie shop. I also feel that my numbers are rather generous.

 

Let's go historical.

Ultima Online gave MUDDS a a visual face and introduced the concept of Massively multiplayer instead of the normal multiplayer games before it. In MUDDS you often knew every single person on your server. In UO you were lost in a crowd and needed to find a few friends for safety reasons alone. Lone players were nothing but targets for ganking.

 

UO was followed by EverQuest (where you never quested ... ) where community was the cement that held the game together. Not by design, it just sort of happened. Traveling was a quest in itself, downtime was universal and trade areas sprang up organically. Those who played EQ will tell you that it’s time was done with the Planes of Power expansion and the teleport hub. Even the bazaar where you could go into vendor mode but still had to be online was a community eroding feature. But the subscriber numbers climbed. At it's peak EQ had 1,000,000 active subscribers. This was an unprecedented amount. Other companies tried to get a piece of the pie without much luck. It quickly became apparent that an EQ clone was just a clone and would never see 1/10 of the player base as the original. EQ was king.

 

Until World of Warcraft.

Real working quests by the thousands with rewards worth having made a big impact. It also brought flight points, PvP objectives, guild tools, raids (do you know how long we raided in EQ where you could only have 6 in a group with only the one group doing the most damage got any reward and then only a fraction of the exp the target was worth? But I digress). Wow brought in all the things we think a modern MMORPG should have. And 10 million players.

 

WoW started selling cake. And there were 9 cake lovers for every person eating pie. This leads me to think there may only be 10% total for those that like pie AND those that like both pie and cake.

 

[edited to fix copious spelin miztaks and tpyos]

 

I think there is one flaw or caveat with this analysis. Of those 10 million who started eating the WoW cake, a large percentage of them didn't know whether they liked cake or pie to begin with. They were new to the delicious desserts world, haha. But WoW offered Cake first, good cake. And being the first to offer good cake, this is all the people know.

 

Perhaps if they'd been offered good Pie, or a damn good Danish, these people would be hooked on that, and developers...I mean bakers...would be opening up shops to attract them.

 

Point being...I think if a developer offered a solid, completely funded and supported alternative to WoW, it might succeed in drawing away those who are tired of cake.

 

Look at Minecraft. That's not even Pie...it's a brand new dessert nobody's really ever tasted before, but once they do they really enjoy it. 4 Million copies sold...double that of SWTOR.

[Calsidian]

It just struck me that the path the MMO genre has taken over the years is startlingly just like how society evolved in Brave New World. Anyone else see this? Edited February 14, 2012 by Calsidian

[knightblaster]

The first problem, is that, as a customer community, we can only talk to the chef. Sadly, our opinion, and the chef’s opinion, doesn’t matter. It’s the store owner that has the bucks, the deeds to the store, and owns the land.

 

The store owner sees tons of cake stores making money, sees the Pound Cake Emporium, largest cake distributor in the city, making the most money, and, therefore, s/he’s going to make poundcakes. The store owner doesn’t care that his cakes are the same, and possibly inferior to the Pound Cake Emporium. If s/he makes profit, that’s all he wants. Money > all. Good luck convincing the store owner to try dainty European French style pies, when a big old generic blob of pound cake has proven that it’s the main seller.

 

Some owners will. But, as a rule, most owners will not care about pie vs cake. They will care about the money they make. So, if you want pie, actually, your best bet is at a Mom and Pop’s small little store, and that’s where you’ll find that succulent home made pie. But, going to a big new chain that has it’s eye on the cash made by Pound Cake Emporium, you’re going to get the same old cake, with, maybe, a different icing.

 

Speaking personally = I’m here for the icing.

 

Many posts say “Except for the Voice Acting and the Story, the rest is…”

 

For me, there is no “the rest”.

-Loading Screens? I come from EQ and CoH. Tons of load screens there. 10 minutes of my life going from one PLANET to another without an instant teleporter… oh shucks.

-2004 Graphics and dead world? Again. I come from CoH. That’s perfectly good enough. 2004 was “only” 8 years ago (yeah, showing my age). I roll my eyes at the comments about water reflection, and shadows, and omg… my character isn’t a stick figure, I’m happy.

-No endgame? Don’t care. I won’t group, let alone raid. I’m happy grinding for that 1.5 mil speeder or that 1 mil key waiting for new content. CoH only has 1 Signature Arc a month, and an expansion with 2-4 arcs every 4-6 months. An Arc takes an hour at best. Once you hit cap, story content slows. Grind for purples till you get more story is nothing new to me.

-No real character customization? Sure. That one hurts, esp. coming from a robust character creator like CoH. But, TOR has VO (which is a big deal for me) AND the Star Wars IP, so it balances out, at least for me.

-UI features? I don’t even know what a macro, combat logs, parser is (ok, fine, I do, just making a point), because, since I don’t PvP, or raid I don’t need to know if a power is X% better than the other. If I die against an encounter, I level / gear up / try a new strategy, and try again. Maximum level and gear and I still die? I do something else. Not being able to move a button, link 25 abilities to a single keypress, and min-max the experience… is so, so, so, not important… TO ME. (Stressing that one to not be lynched)

 

Are those problems? Absolutely.

Are those problems FOR ME? Absolutely not. So, back to the metaphor…I just want my icing (VO and Story), more of it, and whether it’s pie or cake, couldn’t care less.

 

Now, if the chef can make pie, as well as make more icing, fine. I’m not that selfish. Fine. Go ahead. However, I haven’t found a shop in town with icing as good as here, and if that means pie lovers don’t get what they want if I’m to get more icing, I won’t feel bad, especially considering the store owner wrote in big letters “Great Icing Here” on the front door sign.

 

(Yeah, s/he also wrote “Good Pie”, and that’s between the pie lovers and the owner. But I won’t ask for pie “to be nice”. I still want more icing. Sorry.)

 

But, at the end of the say, the customers (us) can talk to the chef (devs) as much as we want, the store owner (Bioware) and the chain owner (EA) just want profits. And, if you consider how the same thing happens in movies (same formulae / special effects / blockbuster stuff), TV shows, music, and so on, good luck reversing the trend. If you're going to a big company, nothing matters more than the mighty dollar. I’ve accepted that. If you want a nice pie with a new taste / recipe, go to a small mom & pop store. That’s your best bet. Because, common things being common, big stores will cater to the common denominator…

 

The pound cake eaters…

 

Sorry… but so far… that’s how the business world runs.

 

This explains pretty much exactly who the core customer target of this game was and is.

[DalrisThane]

Deleted. No point. Everyone is TLDR these days. +See Sig. Edited March 31, 2013 by DalrisThane

[WhoTookMyName]

I was going to bring this up, but since it is already stated ... I think the original numbers are a bit skewed.

 

33% may say they want pie, but really, only 10% do. The other 23% of the pie lovers are those that want both cake and pie. This leaves 67% happy with their cake.

 

However ... if there are 3000 people in town and 3 bakeries selling cake, each bakery will have 1000 customers each.

Then one bakery starts selling pie. All of the pie lovers will go there and half of the cake and pie people will start eating there as well. (or all of the cake and pie people coming half of the time). With the OP's numbers, that means 1500 people will flock to the bakery with the new pie menu.. With mine, 450 will eat at the pie shop. I also feel that my numbers are rather generous.

 

Let's go historical.

Ultima Online gave MUDDS a a visual face and introduced the concept of Massively multiplayer instead of the normal multiplayer games before it. In MUDDS you often knew every single person on your server. In UO you were lost in a crowd and needed to find a few friends for safety reasons alone. Lone players were nothing but targets for ganking.

 

UO was followed by EverQuest (where you never quested ... ) where community was the cement that held the game together. Not by design, it just sort of happened. Traveling was a quest in itself, downtime was universal and trade areas sprang up organically. Those who played EQ will tell you that it’s time was done with the Planes of Power expansion and the teleport hub. Even the bazaar where you could go into vendor mode but still had to be online was a community eroding feature. But the subscriber numbers climbed. At it's peak EQ had 1,000,000 active subscribers. This was an unprecedented amount. Other companies tried to get a piece of the pie without much luck. It quickly became apparent that an EQ clone was just a clone and would never see 1/10 of the player base as the original. EQ was king.

 

Until World of Warcraft.

Real working quests by the thousands with rewards worth having made a big impact. It also brought flight points, PvP objectives, guild tools, raids (do you know how long we raided in EQ where you could only have 6 in a group with only the one group doing the most damage got any reward and then only a fraction of the exp the target was worth? But I digress). Wow brought in all the things we think a modern MMORPG should have. And 10 million players.

 

WoW started selling cake. And there were 9 cake lovers for every person eating pie. This leads me to think there may only be 10% total for those that like pie AND those that like both pie and cake.

 

[edited to fix copious spelin miztaks and tpyos]

 

You missed one, SWG. Which was extremely commercially successful...until it tried to copy WoW.

[Paxmendacium]

Sounds like pie eaters are also more likely to complain about small problems...

[knightblaster]

Thank you. And I will admit, it’s a pretty good feeling to finally be the target market.

 

I'm in that target as well, and will be around for a while. Good to see like-minded people.

[sheisty]

I agree with the above posters, but to get back on topic, I would like to see the space game expanded into something more than a shooter on rails. If anything will make this game stand out more is expanding the space game to be truly star wars. Im picturing something along the lines of a EvE lite or tie fighter.

[Cerion]

You missed one, SWG. Which was extremely commercially successful...until it tried to copy WoW.

 

That's debatable...especially since WoW showed that the market had ten times the potential that the then-current MMOs were reaching.

[Umbral]

You missed one, SWG. Which was extremely commercially successful...until it tried to copy WoW.

You are joking right? maybe you should look up what the people that designed the game have to say about how "successful" SWG was before they started making the changes. You'll see that it was anything but successful.

[Zlashie]

Personally I do not have any knoledge with SWG so cant comment

[Heretiq]

The thing is that "community"-oriented MMOs are a thing of the past. MMOs today are mass market games, and, as such, are primarily about the gaming experience of most players, which is shortish gaming sessions based on limited play time. This is the majority of the market -- much bigger than the "community" oriented players who are more old school. What happened was that the MMO market became much bigger, became mainstream, and basically swamped the old school MMO players in size, and so the games began to be designed to cater to the larger market. That's not going to change, really.

 

This pretty much sums it up.