What's Killing SWTOR?

[TormentAU]

Downtime again during Aus peak times.

[vrgadin]

Lack of real open world pvp. Set up small capable bases on every planet and give comms and a server buff for taking and holding it...dosent take a genius to think up a good system, took me 30 seconds

[PandaBeard]

Drop the subscription price by 5 bucks a month and i think you will see a lot more players join. Subcription based games are a major con to most casual gamers, but if its cheaper it might soften the blow to the casual gamers wallet. Make the subscription price 5 bucks and ill seriously blow you bioware.

 

On a in game level, let me change my characters from server to server and maybe think about consolidating servers, they're are way too many dead or near-dead servers.

[cptnchicken]

atm i would say .. stupid double maintenance weeks . ... specially since we pay 15$ a month . seem ridiculous like that but 2 days a week . x 5 weeks a month = 10 days that u cant actually play .....so 15$ for 20 days .. dont think that game really worth that much to throw money by the window

[Zandilar]

Unrelenting negativity of the community and unreasonable expectations.

 

Very few MMOs do as well as WoW. Latest news is that World of Warcraft subscriptions have stabilised at 10.2 Million. People are saying WoW is dying, but that is simply not the case. The closest in terms of subscription numbers appears to be, from my quick 5 minute foray into research for the latest figure I could find, Aion with 4 million. So looking to WoW and comparing SWTOR is very unfair.

 

SWTOR is among a small number of MMOs to get past 1M subscriptions (it's somewhere around 1.5M subscribers after an initial spike, which all MMOs see after their release). The vast majority of MMOs around are sub 1 million subscribers. So all in all SWTOR is doing pretty well.

 

What will kill SWTOR is the unrelenting negativity of the community. I wonder why I even come to the forums any more, it's so depressing. It would definitely put off a potential new subscriber who comes here to see what the game is like. Fortunately, most people don't bother with the forums... probably because they are so negative.

[miglor]

Whats going to kill SWTOR this Tues is D3.

[Animaniacal]

No summoning stones or an equivalent for heroics. Most of the time I just can't be bothered with heroics because I usually see people wanting to do it when I'm already out of that area and I don't feel like going back.

 

Cutscenes in flashpoints. "Waiting for other players" Oh god, please skip. Skip please? SKIP!!!!

 

Lack of armor design diversity. Why bother working towards that new piece of gear when it is only marginally better than orange gear and it looks exactly the same?

 

Lack of mount diversity. Also speed. 10% increase? Really??

 

Massive cool down on fleet pass. Why???

 

More quests to do with the war. Make it feel like a war.

[Malstrades]

After reading this this massive thread, I've decided I would throw in my two cents. All opinions herein are my own, and while they could possibly be shared by the community abroad, I speak strictly from my own point of view. It is my hope while writing this and offering these opinions, that they will not be disregarded as slanderous jargon or whining and these expressions will reach the proper authority to be taken into account.

 

(Caution: Wall of text inevitable.)

 

First, a little about me to exclude (or apply) myself to any particular demographic that Bioware places its customers into. I am a full time student, one year removed from six years of active duty service in the military. During my time in the mlitary, I had three deployments to Afghanistan. I am now a full time employee, student, father of three, and husband. This may seem irrelevant to forum-goers, but I'm nearly positive that I apply to a particular demographic Bioware uses to target consumers. (Sorry if it bored forum-goers)

 

I have been playing MMO's since Ultima Online, which I firmly use as the measuring stick for any product I decide to invest my time in. I think, due to the popularity of World of Warcraft, that many of the concepts founded by Ultima Online during its prime have been forgotten or manipulated by the current product line of MMO's that we get. Other games that I have played since then include: Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Star Wars Galaxies, Guild Wars, and a plethora of privately run Ultima Online clients. I have also participated in many table-top gaming experiences like D&D, Modern D20, and the custom made Naruto D20. All that being said, the only other relevant piece of information about me is: I'm a manga artist/graphic novelist. (I'll come back to this later)

 

So, what IS killing SWTOR?

 

1.) I think it's been said many, MANY times. Server population. This is a classic case of biting off more than one can chew in SWTOR's case. First of all, for the amount of bugs, glitches, and just poor programming... The amount of social interaction you attempted to fulfill with this many servers set everything else up for failure. This is number one, because quite frankly, unless you fix this everything else is null and void. The primary reason people choose MMO's is to commune with one another. If we wanted to play a solo game, well, there are plenty pf products in any local game store that can fulfill that purpose. This is supposed to be a MASSIVE Multiplayer Online game. Do not make the mistake of underestimating the word massive in that acronym. Gamers like myself play MMO's to be involved with other people in an activity we enjoy. It's single most fundamental aspect of making these sort of games work.

 

2.) Level 50, end game PVE content. this can branch into many aspects, but for the purposes of this post I'll concentrate on flashpoints and operations. These have to get fixed. These bugs that have been looming around with the flashpoints and operations involved have to fixed. This is a no brainer, but as a game designer it comes down to one thing: Putting out a product that you can be proud of. Your consumers are investing time and money into your product, and that should make you feel good as a gamer designer. When your consumer tells you something is wrong with the product you have promised to put out, you do not simply give them dry acknowledgment. You address the situation that has been brought before you, and provide an ETA of when this portion of your product will be repaired to function as intended. The other part of this one, is the rewards for these flashpoints and operations. It also goes without saying, the more difficult something is, the better the rewards should be for completing it. Admittedly, their have been some steps in a positive direction in this regard, that being said I personally feel that this game should be leaps and bounds ahead of what we are currently experiencing as consumers.

 

3.) Player versus Player. The game, upon release, and with the Bioware brand placed on it was introduced as a more PVE oriented experience. All things being fair here, us as consumers generally accept this as truth. The catch here, is that regardless of what your game is mainly focused towards, player versus player concepts extends the horizons of your product ten fold. This is a demographic that does not require a whole lot of attention once you get it right, as PVPers in general are content with hacking and slashing one another until their little hearts are content. The problem in SWTOR right now can be broken down into two categories. First, PVP rewards/gear systems. Second, open world PVP.

 

3a (PVP): The first of the two is an easy fix. First things first, let's go back to what I said about PVE being the basic rule of the game right now. Remember that? It's indisputable at this point. So, rather than spend the energy denying this, just embrace it. Their is something to be proud of when you release a product that entails an extensive PVE experience. That being said, it is long past time for the "expertise" stat to be removed from the game. Prior to this stat being put into the game, and being given some much relevance in PVP, the initial thought on your PVP goals was positive. Since the introduction of this "PVP stat", consumers have become so enraged by it you are losing subscribers by the day. I don't claim to be a software or programming expert, but what I can say with confidence is: Not a whole lot of PVPers enjoy this stat, so just remove it. Their is nothing wrong with being able to admit that something did not work, and go into a different direction. This system in general railroads your consumers onto a path that is inexcapable and painful, to say the least. Each of them have to wear the same generic looking sets of armor (which I'll get into more later), and even with the "Recruit" set, they have little prayer to be able to participate in an extensive PVP experience.

 

The pickle in this situation is, how do you remove this stat without angering the people whom have already grinded for War Hero or Battlemaster gear? It's quite simple, actually. Rework the stats to provide minor adjustments to basic stat boosts that the classes that wear them still have a small edge in PVP. The other thing that can be done additionally, is to redo the art of the Battlemaster and War Hero gear. It's surprising how much goes into actually looking unique on this game more-so of how powerful you are on the battlefield. Lastly, remember that this is a PVE game, so it's all well and good to ensure that your more rare PVE sets of armor can be slightly more powerful edge wise than the PVP gear. This allows the avid PVPer to experience even more of your product if he or she wishes to gain an even further edge against his or her rivals on the battlefield. I do not believe those whom pride themselves on PVP content would be threatened by an avid PVE player in slightly better gear.

 

3b (PVP): Open World PVP is probably universally the most difficult task to get right in MMO's. Dark Age of Camelot did it right. To some extent, games like Warhammer made it fun. The master of these titles in open world PVP goes all the way back to our two-dimensional friend and cornerstone of all MMO gaming... Ultima Online. The key, in my opinion, with open world PVP is to give the consumers something to achieve out in the open terrain. This, to a small extent, can be accomplished with a daily mission (loosely). When I say "daily mission", I don't mean go out into the open world grounds and defeat X amount of enemies. You CAN make your dailies much more creative than that. It could be done through a similar system like that of the way Offensive and Defensive war zone commendations are earned. The point is, open world PVP must be fixed to atleast be somewhat objective oriented while still be challenging. The other aspect is, you have to make it true open world PVP. Sure, you can start on one planet like Ilum (which also needs fixing), but you have to either get a stronger engine to support it or make a population limit. Over time you can release other planets that are for the strict use of open world PVP to alleviate the pressure on Ilum. I will post in another thread on another forum with my idea's about open world PVP in SWTOR which is a unique concept with some shared concepts.

 

4.) The Economy. This is another concept that Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot had to a science. What they accomplished, is quite simple. The most powerful items in the game, could ONLY be made by crafters. Currently, everything in this game can be acquired without the need of a crafter, so your economy suffers, your crafters have no identity, and your GTN suffers. Crafting in SWTOR though is somewhat unique in experience because it does not require you to commit extensive amounts of time on resource gathering. This system is good to some extent, but ultimately you have to find a way to empower crafters in this game if you wish to repair the economy. Augmenting and Reverse Engineering is not enough.

 

Concluding this, I realize that Bioware and its employees respect game designing as art and go to extensive measures to ensure they do not manipulate or change the idea of that artwork. I too am an artist, and in the next 72 hours I'm going to present some custom costume designs on these forums that I believe Jedi Knights SHOULD look like in higher tier gear. Not this Atlantis-esque version, and Gym Suit w/ Boom Box on the back presentation we have now. While I support your theory that game-designing is an art, at the same time you are attempting to sell that art. You are expected to veer your art towards your audience in order to make money off of it. All artists do this, and do not thing for a second that any artist in the history of our time did not get paid for their work. You have consumers, get back to the old Bioware before EA took your by the reignes where your bosses sat in front of TV/Computer screens all over the world and not behind a desk staring idly at charts then screaming at you because all of their magnificent and brilliant plans aren't working.

 

Regards,

 

Ill

 

spot on, +1mil internetz for you + /signed

[JediNg]

Guild snobbery.

[Banicks]

Lack of end game content.

 

Lack of alternative levelling planets/zones (it gets old doing the same quests to level)

 

PvP inbalance, the 1.2 nerfs effectively ruined healing in pvp and turned it into a massive 'whoever is more geared and does better dps wins'

 

Minor glitches/broken items (eg. rakata chest is still not displaying as red properly) that when totalled turn into a massive problem and causes a negative thought pattern in ones head. These minor issues should be easily fixed.

 

Patch outages (prime time euro and oceanic) and CEO indicates that staggered time zones arent even on the cards? I would almost trade in my latency for staggered. Almost.

 

Patches causing more game breakages than fixing them.

 

Emergency patches, aussies know to expect their Friday nights to be dedicated to another patch outage following each patch Tuesday.

 

This alone shows that BW are not taking this seriously, theyre leaving the community in the dark. So communication is a big thing they need to brush up on.

 

Ticket system - always referred to devs, never spoken to by a GM with alternatives.

 

The whole game still feels like it is in Beta.

[NinjaApacHe]

What's killing SWTOR? Simple: Electronic arts: worst company of the year 2011.

[Kophar]

Whats going to kill SWTOR this Tues is D3.

 

 

OMG a single/multiplayer game is going to kill an MMO /hide.

Lol... sigh.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Kophar

[xQuicksilverx]

I feel too isolated playing this game. Getting anywhere other than where I already am seems like such a chore. If a guildie needs help and Im not on the planet he's on.. hes not getting any help from me. I feel bad.. but really.. by the time I got all the way out their he could probably level up a few times and solo it.

 

This is the best solo player game ive ever played. But Ive finished the campaign and im going to go play an MMO now.

[Kaisernick]

population problems

still in vanilla stage so little to do at 50

community or lack of and many a bunch of whiners

 

the first two i can wait for but the last is what anoyes me the most.

[Goretzu]

I feel too isolated playing this game. Getting anywhere other than where I already am seems like such a chore. If a guildie needs help and Im not on the planet he's on.. hes not getting any help from me. I feel bad.. but really.. by the time I got all the way out their he could probably level up a few times and solo it.

 

This is the best solo player game ive ever played. But Ive finished the campaign and im going to go play an MMO now.

 

This has been mentioned a few times.

 

I'm betting a lot of people are regretting NOT moving the fleet pass of the security key vendor now.

[kevlarto]

I think general mmo burn out of the current gaming model, lets look at all mmo's out there, pretty much the same with a couple of exceptions..

You might have a different starting area for your class, but once your dumped out in to the world all mmo's are the same at that point you might have quests specific to your class, but you do the samething over and over on all the classes you play, in the world.

One huge problem allot people see every new game as some next gen, game with new and inovative play, but I don't think we are going to see any company take a chance and stray to far from what was and still is for the most part a huge money maker based around the wow model, strip away all the twists that these mmo's add and at the core they are all pretty much eq still today.

 

I looked at gw2 I see one nice twist added to the game, but everything else has been done in some form or another in other games,I seen things from the Rift,lotro,wow, once players get into it they will pick up on these things once again nothing really new here.

 

I don't think it is TOR, it's self that is the problem, yes the game does have issues, but the whole genre as we know it has issues and is getting old and tired, I hope some company somewhere can throw a new ball into the game.

Edited May 10, 2012 by kevlarto

[-Dench]

OMG a single/multiplayer game is going to kill an MMO /hide.

Lol... sigh.

 

Half of my guild is buying it. The Diablo series has a very large following.

[Sanxxx]

OMG a single/multiplayer game is going to kill an MMO /hide.

Lol... sigh.

 

I'm pretty sure SWTOR won't kill D3

[MbaxterBeau]

Nothing. I see all these new MMO's coming out. I watched the vids for Secret World tonight (horrid) and I remembered how awesome this game is.

 

Yes there are bugs and issues with the game but it's the best game I've played so far.

 

Try other games OP and maybe you will find one you enjoy more. There's nothing wrong with that.

 

Best wishes and hugs!

 

[Mrs_Murder]

The severe lack of content. Simple.

The Secret World first beta weekend begins tomorrow. This mmo has no levels and no classes, which is a huge step in the right direction. Another game in the makings is Pathfinder Online by Goblinworks. This will be the ultimate RP game, and it will be very similar to UO.

 

BW made the same mistake as Zenimax media did; making a themepark WoW clone and thinking they will cash in on it. The people who want to play a WoW-like game will, drumroll..... play WoW. The rest will look for a new version of UO, yet they keep feeding us WoW-clones.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Mrs_Murder

[Mrs_Murder]

I watched the vids for Secret World tonight (horrid)

 

Horrid in what way? How it has no levels and no classes? Or the voice acting? It couldn't be the graphics, since you like SWTOR. Nor content, since you like SWTOR.

 

Edit. OH I see, your account was created in April. That explains it. Give it a couple months, and you will stop thinking it's awesome. All the quitters also thought this game was awesome; then we leveled to 50, did some PvP and cleared all the PvE on nightmare mode and realised how shallow this game is.

Enjoy it while it lasts!

Edited May 10, 2012 by Mrs_Murder

[Voblat]

I genuinely think its lack of people.

 

I got in on the early launch thing for pre orders, and with the queues and whatnot, ended up on one of the extra servers they put up as the rush came, ludo kresh.

 

It was alright at first, plenty of people around on the starter planets , probably like me, ended up there as the server with shortest queues, as I went on my way to 50, I saw less and less people on the later planets.

 

I think what happened is it was basically sight seeing, people started there just to look at the game, and moved to servers with friends/guildies as the mass rush of launch died down.

 

After I got to 50 on my first character, a sith marauder, I wasnt really sure what to do next, so O started a couple of new characters to see the other stories.

 

Now, I have a couple of others at the late 30's , neither has ever been in any group at all, most of the time there are maybe 3 people on the planets I'm on, at weekends perhaps 10.

 

Now, I'm just enjoying the stories anyway, but its quite clear to me if you are subbing to do the higher end content and get the shiny gear, you wont stick the game long on Ludo Kresh, and I dont think that server is alone .

 

Thats the games biggest problem, over a million subs is great, they are far too spread out though, and it never feels like a busy mmo.

[-Dench]

I genuinely think its lack of people..

 

The lack of people IS the problem for me. I stuck it out in SWG, I can handle a lack of people for the most part, but my server even has SWG beat in terms of low activity.

 

Want to PVP? Time to wait! Want to run PVE ops? Have fun finding enough people!

 

My PVP queues are so long now that at times i just alt tab out, and hope I come back before the queue pops. It's not a time sink, its an issue related to the lack of players on my server.

 

If i had more people to interact with, then I'd be much happier.

 

Sure, we all know transfers are coming, but they are much to far away, and I don't know if I'll be around by then. I hope I am, but every day I get pushed more and more away from this title.

Edited May 10, 2012 by -Dench

[MbaxterBeau]

Horrid as in it looks terrible. You seem very angry in your post and not sure why. If I dislike a game like I did playing wow I just try something new. Yes I'm a new player but I have played other games and I am enjoying this game.

 

I played the GW2 beta so I plan on playing it as well as TOR. Both have great graphics imo.

[fitzgibbonmd]

but the whole genre as we know it has issues and is getting old and tired, I hope some company somewhere can throw a new ball into the game.

 

how about it BW?

 

think I see myself being here for the next 6 months max and no more unless something fixes the linear boredom factor, crappy dailies, buggy patches, lack of things to do at 50 (fleet + limited FPs+ops - that's all folks)

 

Love this universe but see this as a wasted opportunity - so much potential but nobody will step out of the WOW-clone box significantly - sad really.....

Edited May 10, 2012 by fitzgibbonmd