Will the future bring desired changes? Raph Koster?

[Aikes_Itso]

Blizzard and LAE are both well versed in creating throw-away games, meaning, games that you buy, you play, you complete, you move on from. The MMO market has been corrupted to such a point by WoW that everyone wants to use that as a base or template, but it too is in essence a throw away game that requires never-ending expansions to keep people playing.

 

Gamers like myself are tired of that recipe. I can only speak for myself, and what I as a gamer would like to see is the mechanisms in place that inspire player-created content.

 

I don't want to continue to play games that are throw-away style games. I want something I can play for years to come. The only way that can happen is if players create their own content on a large scale. Currently, there are no personal homes which can be decorated or viewed openly by other players. There are no personal vendors which would allow players to become real traders and crafters in this game. There are no player-created cities. You are fixed into this loop of play which requires you to follow one of a few paths of story line and then you grind to gear up and then.... well... you do it with a different character or wait to see if there is more content added.

 

I still enjoy playing many throw away games.... Mass Effect is an example. So is Pac Man. To me, these are simply not anything I would consider a true MMO or MMORPG even though, yes, you can play them with multiple people online if you choose. A true MMO or MMORPG in my humble opinion requires a community of people who will craft and evolve more than characters; they will evolve and grow as a community over time. That can only happen if the mechanisms are there to do so.

 

The most MMO experience this game has at this time for me actually has nothing at all to do with this game, and that would be the experience i get in Ventrilo speaking with other players about their personal lives and situations.

 

Will I quit playing? Not right now. I hope that in time there will be more functionality put into this game. If this becomes another game that tries to keep people playing by marketing one expansion after another as a diversion then at that point I will most likely leave this game behind.

 

Yes, I was spoiled by games of yester-year. I know that gaming can be so so so much more. I have seen it, experienced it, and now I am not willing to settle for some digital glowing sword just because I am a Star Wars fan. I expect more from this venture and I expect more for my money and I most certainly expect more for my time.

 

I don't know about you, but my time is valuable. I love to PvP, I love to spend time with fellow gamers, I hate being rooked into accepting a throw-away mass player game as if it were a real MMO or MMORPG when it is more like a modern version of Street Fighter.

 

I do enjoy the story lines. I enjoy them because they break up the monotony of grinding up characters. At the end of the day, I want to play a game in which the player has a lot more control over how his environment develops and evolves. In tis game, everything is fixed so once you have seen it a few times, you know what will happen, you know where people will and won’t be, and there is absolutely nothing fun about doing it again.

 

I think someone may want to consider consulting someone like Raph Koster to improve this situation. Of course, he may not have the right ideas either, but he had some good ones in the past in relation to creating and building true gaming communities.

 

Do I think that this was done with intent to screw the community? No. I do believe the product is a very good product, but it is missing a huge component of what a community needs and it almost seems as if there is absolutely no plans to create the mechanisms for a self-evolving community of player created content.

 

Without player created content, how can a game be anything other than a throw away game? People will just move onto the next throw away game.

 

I don't intend this to be an attack on anyone or anything. This is just one adult player's opinion formed from years of observation accross many games and situations.

[DieAlteHexe]

Raph? Mr. "Social Experiment" Koster?

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Lokai]

sooooo you think TOR should be a sandbox game even though sandbox games are all massive failures for the most part with very few exceptions.... people dont want sandbox end of story is why WoW and TOR have done so well and why even DCUO excells believe it or not people prefer themepark and those are what sells and do well in mmo market.

[MGriffith]

Raph? Mr. "Social Experiment" Koster?

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

Well, that part of SW:G worked exactly as intended. You may not have liked it but it certainly worked well. It resulted in SW:G being one of the most socially cohesive games created to date.

 

I will give you that only a relatively small portion of all players will enjoy a sandbox style game where you have to find your own meaning. But saying that it is a massive failure .. no .. there are plenty of sandbox games out there that do reasonably well. On the 50.000 scale, not on the millions scale though. The fact that 'can we implement this feature from SW:G' crops up so frequently is testament to the fact that despite all its flaws that game had its fair share of devoted players.

Simllarly, the success of the Bethesda games shows that there is a playerbase for open ended sandbox games. It is just so much smaller than the theme park player base that no developer or publisher is going to risk the investment needed for an A title on them. Which leaves us with indie games and word of mouth.

 

To the OP, I suggest taking a look at City of Heroes. It is less of a theme park than most, has more content than you can handle at any level, does not have much in the way of an end game and it is the only game I know of where players can create quests and story lines for other players to play through. It even has player houses with a very robust and elaborate system of designing and decorating/equipping.

[Kalfear]

*shakes head*

 

You know it never stops amazing me how SWG players (not all of them but most that post here. I meet one in beta that loved sWG but admitted it was a failure commercially) refuse to admit it crashed and burned and IS NOT what the majority of players out there want from a MMO.

 

I played SWG on 3 different occations, I read the released financials that show cased the 70% cancellation rate in first 30 days of playing, how that rate rose to 80% with in a 90 day period of playing. I suspect if they had done a 6 month detail it would have been over 90% cancellation rate.

 

These people can say Koster did this and that, NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY IT besides you and a literal few thousand others. Few thousand posters might look like a big % on a message forum but in the grand scheme of things you nothing but a few thousand people.

 

TOR does not need to go sandbox

Its honestly to late to put in what TOR needs, the most important period of a MMORPG has come and gone and EA will never get that period or cust base back now.

 

But all it would have taken is, well you know what, Im not going to say it. Its been posted in beta and retail and before beta a million times over the elements they needed to make this game a monster success (and non of them are sand box concepts btw).

 

Lack of Sand is not what hurts TOR.

[Rzacron]

Great Post OP, its basically my exact opinion.

 

I'll stay, but I will seldom play, unless I can have more control and investment in my Character.

[FourTwent]

ppl complain about the number of bugs in the FPs and OPs in the game already. Allowing the users to create content will increase the number of bugs in the game.

[Damon_Mott]

...Lack of Sand is not what hurts TOR.

 

I disagree. An implement of sandbox gaming is exactly what this game needs as players are achieving level 50 too early and consuming all the content before is made. BW/EA shoudl give the community what they promised from inception, a sanbox/themepark hybrid.

 

With sandbox elements, players can keep themselves busy until the next expansion. Besides, its not like adding more to the game will hurt it; adding more will make it better. That said, there are a huge number of sandbox enthusiasts that would make implementing sandbox elements worth while and profitable in terms of new subscriptions, like the 500,000+ gamers playing EvE Online looking for a new sandbox to play in these days.

 

Let's not discount the 5,389,895 people who bought Minecraft, 7,291 of which bought the game in the last 24 hours: http://www.minecraft.net/stats. 5,389,895 players... that is more than SWTOR's total number of subs now. Imagine SWTOR with just 1/3rd of thsi player base added to our servers.

 

For those of you who think sandbox wont add subs, quit your marketing jobs.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Damon_Mott

[Lethality]

sooooo you think TOR should be a sandbox game even though sandbox games are all massive failures for the most part with very few exceptions.... people dont want sandbox end of story is why WoW and TOR have done so well and why even DCUO excells believe it or not people prefer themepark and those are what sells and do well in mmo market.

 

The future of these games is absolutely sandbox.

[Urael]

You know it never stops amazing me how SWG players (not all of them but most that post here. I meet one in beta that loved sWG but admitted it was a failure commercially) refuse to admit it crashed and burned and IS NOT what the majority of players out there want from a MMO.

 

Acctually PRIOR to the CU SWG WAS what the MAJORITY of the players that played AT THE TIME wanted.

 

$0E screwed over their player base. MOST of the Orginial player base left when the CU was implemented. MOST of that player base were sand box players.

 

Most that played pre-cu loved the game bugs and all.

 

SWG was nolonger SWG after the CU.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Urael

[GalacticKegger]

Not in our lifetime OP ... neither the fuzzy logic technology nor the infrastructure to support it exists to make a completely pervasive and purely player driven MMO. Expecting life's freedoms in a video game (expecially an MMO) is unrealistic. Players would control other players' stories, survival of the fittest would reign and character deaths would have to be permanent or it all goes open loop the first day. Edited March 29, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[TUXs]

I will argue that Mr. Koster is most certainly NOT why SWG failed. SOE was. In fact, I'd suggest that most (not all) of Koster's ideas were the only reason the game survived as long as it did.

[amantheil]

 

I don't know about you, but my time is valuable. I love to PvP, I love to spend time with fellow gamers, I hate being rooked into accepting a throw-away mass player game as if it were a real MMO or MMORPG when it is more like a modern version of Street Fighter.

 

Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it's not a MMORPG. SWTOR (and WoW) both have millions of people playing online. They're multiplayer games. They're RP Games. Therefore, they're MMORPGS.

 

Without player created content, how can a game be anything other than a throw away game? People will just move onto the next throw away game.

 

Everquest II was released in 1994 and people still play it. WoW is 10 years old and millions of people playing it, without player created content.

 

No offense, but you seem to be assuming that most people who play these games like and dislike the same things you do.

Edited March 29, 2012 by amantheil

[Kaphik]

Go play Second Life. It's still running and still making money, and you can create all the content you want.

[ThiborF]

Acctually PRIOR to the CU SWG WAS what the MAJORITY of the players that played AT THE TIME wanted.

 

$0E screwed over their player base. MOST of the Orginial player base left when the CU was implemented. MOST of that player base were sand box players.

 

Most that played pre-cu loved the game bugs and all.

 

SWG was nolonger SWG after the CU.

 

So there's your post stating it's what the majority of people wanted AND a post above yours saying that 70% of those buying the game left in the first 30 days (which would have been way before CU.)

 

Like so much else posted on the internet ... who to believe, who to believe.

[Calsidian]

Never forget the overriding objective for EA/Bioware is to make money. They will follow whichever model has proven to be the most successful, and so this is the game we have.

 

Bioware has to devote their development time and resources to churning out more and more themepark content in order to appease the masses. They've locked themselves into this course.

[Marlaine]

Koster is a visionary who's way ahead of the ball-game. Only issue with his work is that he focuses too much on player-generated content, and too little on developer-created content. There must be a middle ground.

 

The hybrid model really is the future of this genre. Essentially, take the sandbox features of SWG and the combat of wow and you've got a winner. Devs these days just keep forgetting to put the SWG aspect in, thus the reason for so many wow clone failures (which is a list swtor will end up on if they don't get out of the raid or die rutt).

[Cerion]

"Raph who?"

 

I imagine 90% of MMO players have no idea who Raph Koster is. And where is he today? Designing social games, aka Facebook games.

 

SWG is dead people. Give it up already. It's effing dead. It's so sad to see people cling to this game like it was their dearest mother who had passed away.

 

If you were an SWG Vet who deluded themselves into believing that this game would be like SWG, then you have no one to blame but yourself.

[Marlaine]

SWG is dead people. Give it up already. It's effing dead. It's so sad to see people cling to this game like it was their dearest mother who had passed away.

 

No one disputes that SWG is dead.

 

None the less there were excellent concepts in that game that should be used in other mmos. It wasn't the social and crafting features that killed SWG, it was complete mismanagement of the game through multiple unnecessary re-designs thus exacerbating the true failure of the game which was a lack of good pve and pvp content. Oh, and can't forget the hologrind shortly after release, which made an awesome social game into a selfish holocron grind free-for-all, destroying multiple guilds in the process.

 

I'll never forget the psycho woman who had deed rights to our guild hall which she dismantled (destroying multiple player vendors) when guildies didn't immediately give her more lots so she could set down harvestors to get metal for her weaponsmith holocron grind.

 

God, the mismanagement still annoys me to this very day. The largest, most immersive mmo to date, destroyed by pure incompetence.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Marlaine

[DarthAcerbus]

 

To the OP, I suggest taking a look at City of Heroes. It is less of a theme park than most, has more content than you can handle at any level, does not have much in the way of an end game and it is the only game I know of where players can create quests and story lines for other players to play through. It even has player houses with a very robust and elaborate system of designing and decorating/equipping.

 

It actually started adding a whole crapload of endgame (including a whole new leveling system for max-levels) right before it went Free-To-Play-But-Pay-If-You-Actually-Want-Content. It still continues to add quite a bit, actually.

 

Yeah, I loved CoH back in pre-Freemium days.

[Bluerodian]

*shakes head*

 

You know it never stops amazing me how SWG players (not all of them but most that post here. I meet one in beta that loved sWG but admitted it was a failure commercially) refuse to admit it crashed and burned and IS NOT what the majority of players out there want from a MMO.

 

 

Well that's the thing. I don't give a tinker's damn what the majority of MMO players out there think (Besides the fact that I find the lion's share of them to be wastes of perfectly good meat).

 

The only one who's opinions about a game matter to me is me. You didn't like SWG? More power to you. The entire United States hated it? Ok and? That's supposed to matter how?

 

Point is, People play what they enjoy playing regardless of what others think of it. Take something away, though, and you end up with a group of people prone to bitterness, spite, and anger who are very unlikely to let anything go.

 

You want to play your game in peace? Sure, I'll leave you to that soon as I can go play my game in peace, too. No, the EMU doesn't cut it.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Bluerodian

[Bordak]

EQ2 has what you want minus the player cities.

[Andryah]

Not in our lifetime OP ... neither the fuzzy logic technology nor the infrastructure to support it exists to make a completely pervasive and purely player driven MMO. Expecting life's freedoms in a video game (expecially an MMO) is unrealistic. Players would control other players' stories, survival of the fittest would reign and character deaths would have to be permanent or it all goes open loop the first day.

 

Indeed.

 

OP, have you seen the threads in this forum? Now put that on steroids and turn it loose on a PPD-MMO and you will have complete and total chaos. It would be like a virtual version of the Dark Ages within weeks.

[Jett-Rinn]

/sigh....

 

Yet another i want my sandbox back from a disgruntled SWG fan.

 

The emulator works fine and is perfectly legit.

 

Also Koster is working where he is now because he can't buy a job with a AAA devloper.

[Andryah]

Well that's the thing. I don't give a tinker's damn what the majority of MMO players out there think (Besides the fact that I find the lion's share of them to be wastes of perfectly good meat).

 

The only one who's opinions about a game matter to me is me.

 

Make your own MMO then, and pray you can find a handful of other players that would care enough about you to log and in be your minions.