Layoffs at Bioware What does this mean for content

[Soullessone]

well i for one am not going to stay with this game any longer, layoffs are an early sign that the game is failing to be honest. i stayed subbed up until the 20th, but no longer going to wait for them to fix stuff. Stephen Reid was an okay guy, but i have to agree he was the community manager, he should have at least POSTED here. Edited May 23, 2012 by Soullessone

[Escarrabutxaques]

You still got the information correct? It came from his twitter account right?

 

Bam. Killed 2 birds with 1 stone.

 

Doesn't matter if it shows up on the Dev Tracker. The information still got out by Stephen himself.

 

Actually it does matter. If I am looking for an update or official response, I won't check twitter (hell, I don't even have twitter account) or search forums for reposts. There is a dev tracker so people assume that all the official posts or updates on whatever subject are actually tracked by it.

[JeramieCrowe]

i'll bet you my remaining days that the new defacto lead won't be spending 90% of his/her time on twitter, and actually on the forums.

 

Now you're going to make up percentages?

 

Look, I get your point. You don't like missing the little largely unimportant details that SR tweeted. I get that. And if you think the new manager won't tweet little unimportant details, too, unimportant enough to not make it here to this site, you're in for disappointment.

Edited May 23, 2012 by JeramieCrowe

[Celwinn]

Actually it does matter. If I am looking for an update or official response, I won't check twitter (hell, I don't even have twitter account) or search forums for reposts. There is a dev tracker so people assume that all the official posts or updates on whatever subject are actually tracked by it.

 

But the information still came from Stephen Reid himself, so in fact, he did his job well.

 

Alot of the time (Pre Launch), people would post it, then either Stephen (or a collegue of Reid) would comment on the thread.

[oredith]

I am prepared for the remaining staff to have just a smidgeon of fear about screwing up that badly or contributing to the cavalcade of annoying bugs being introduced to the live servers by brazenly skiping a proper testing cycle.

first off, i would bet every last cent in my bank account, that everyone in the office was already afraid to be the head that sticks out higher than the rest, after the 1.2 screwup. they didn't have to wait for the blade to actually drop yesterday to know this.

 

when you work in a large company, the "temperature" of the health of a project is pretty easy to feel out.

 

however, this brings up the most awesome movie of our time: Office Space.

Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

[Rosickyownsbale]

Seriously people shouldnt be happy that people lost their jobs. That is never a nice thing to happen.

 

Obviously this is bad news for those who love the game. But what did you expect? The 1.3m number is now VERY outdated and it was only a month ago. Since then most the tracking sites are showing that even high pop servers are crashing in population.

 

The problem with this game isnt server populations. That will speed up the decline no doubt. The main problem is the design mechanics that MOST people havent found fun. If you like it then good for you. There is no right or wrong answer as its all opinions. But this game is seen as very poor by the majority of people. We all bought it due to a great (and misleading) marketing campaign and have now all quit.

 

This game will be f2p soon I suspect. Thats not a bad thing for those who love the game. it will probably boost the game 10x and it will be a very very successful f2p game for years to come. Just one that (as the pvp is insanely gear based) you will need to spend alot of money on to be competitive in pvp and some pve

[oredith]

Now you're going to make up percentages?

 

Look, I get your point. You don't like missing the little largely unimportant details that SR tweeted. I get that. And if you think the new manager won't tweet little unimportant details, too, unimportant enough to not make it here to this site, you're in for disappointment.

it's not that i don't want to sit there and sift through his tweets. you and I both know from the frequency of our posts, that we work in front of a computer, and COULD keep up with it if i wanted to.

 

the main thing is trackability. I can click on the dev tracker, and get a concise list of information that is OFFICIALLY from bioware, and I can track it back to the date i last read it.

[Manigma]

Seriously people shouldnt be happy that people lost their jobs. That is never a nice thing to happen.

 

Obviously this is bad news for those who love the game. But what did you expect? The 1.3m number is now VERY outdated and it was only a month ago. Since then most the tracking sites are showing that even high pop servers are crashing in population.

 

The problem with this game isnt server populations. That will speed up the decline no doubt. The main problem is the design mechanics that MOST people havent found fun. If you like it then good for you. There is no right or wrong answer as its all opinions. But this game is seen as very poor by the majority of people. We all bought it due to a great (and misleading) marketing campaign and have now all quit.

 

This game will be f2p soon I suspect. Thats not a bad thing for those who love the game. it will probably boost the game 10x and it will be a very very successful f2p game for years to come. Just one that (as the pvp is insanely gear based) you will need to spend alot of money on to be competitive in pvp and some pve

Not to mention Active Subs is very misleading since it's just anyone with game time on their account or even free trial players - Note: they gave most players 30 days free game time, so ofc the active subs will look much better than people actively logging in and playing for reasonable amounts of time.

[JeramieCrowe]

it's not that i don't want to sit there and sift through his tweets. you and I both know from the frequency of our posts, that we work in front of a computer, and COULD keep up with it if i wanted to.

 

the main thing is trackability. I can click on the dev tracker, and get a concise list of information that is OFFICIALLY from bioware, and I can track it back to the date i last read it.

 

By the way, it's not just SR that's done this. @SWTOR does it, too.

[Crawelc]

@SWTOR is a joke twitter site right? That cant really be what Bioware pays someone to do all day. "Thank You for praising our game" "Soon" tweeted 50 times on the first page.

[riskybeaver]

Seriously people shouldnt be happy that people lost their jobs. That is never a nice thing to happen.

 

 

I agree, Its not nice to see the people who have worked so hard to bring this game to us get fired, its especially hard to watch James Ohlen in the videos... He looks like a man on the edge, the only problem is, they've spent all this time building a game that is soooo Niche and linear It cannot survive as a Pay to play MMO imo.

If they had kept SWG going alongside this I would still be subbed, because if I wanted some SPRPG I could alt tab to ToR and look at the visuals, but if I wanted PVP, Immersion and Multiplayer fun I'd go to SWG.

 

I fear that if this fails, we will never see another Adult themed Star Wars game ever again, why would Lucas put money into this crap again?

[EcrirTwyLar]

Really? Guess we'll see with the new CRM Manager, eh?

 

What makes you think there will be another CRM? Maybe the position was eliminated.

[Nikei]

Seriously people shouldnt be happy that people lost their jobs. That is never a nice thing to happen.

 

I disagree. When people screw up badly, there needs to be consequences. Somebody wrecked the sound file allocation table, and as a result not a single player I've spoken too has had consistently proper sound since the Rakghoul event. In my perfect world not only did the go-ho coder who thought he could do that on the fly get canned for destroying the game's sense of immersion for over a month now, but the line of managers above him who signed off on implementing that code without testing got shown the door too. It was a grossly stupid thing to unleash on an already fragile environment, and when you cost a company multiple times your anual salary in the space of weeks, yeah... buh-bye.

 

There is absolutely some room for "restructuring" that would give us a stronger game and better prospects.

[PoeticRex]

Free 2 play is on the way!!

[TUXs]

Seriously people shouldnt be happy that people lost their jobs. That is never a nice thing to happen.

I don't think that's quite the case...I think people are more pleased that there will be some fresh faces in positions that needed change. Most of us wouldn't care if they were all moved to a new project or hired on by some other company...it's that this game needs a new direction...the path and pace we're currently on, is one of failure. I don't think anyone (normal) truly wishes for them to be unemployed.

[Escarrabutxaques]

But the information still came from Stephen Reid himself, so in fact, he did his job well.

 

Alot of the time (Pre Launch), people would post it, then either Stephen (or a collegue of Reid) would comment on the thread.

 

What information are you talking about? Just checked his twitter (first time ever in my life) and yeah, there are a lot of information/updates I wasn't aware of. You know, when customers have doubts or questions, they won't use the twitter to communicate with developers or customer service. So no, using twitter instead of official forums for communication with customers is a huge fail.

[Kthx]

Not to mention Active Subs is very misleading since it's just anyone with game time on their account or even free trial players.

 

The estimate of active subscribers is given as part of EA's earnings call and is meant as a measure of revenue potential. If you paid but are not using your game time, that is not really relevant in this context. As far as the inclusion of free trial players, I'm not sure if you mean the 30-days that come with the game (should be included, as this is not really "free") or 7-day/wekeend free trials (should not be included). If you have evidence that the latter are included, please provide it.

 

Note: they gave most players 30 days free game time, so ofc the active subs will look much better than people actively logging in and playing for reasonable amounts of time

 

We don't actually know how many players received 30-days: I would be very surprised if it exceeeds the majority of the players. But yes, this does inflate the numbers after April 25, when the free 30-days were credted. However, the net effect of this is to shift the counts by 30 days. That's all.

 

EA's definition of active subscriber is the de facto industry standard. The definition may favor the industry, but complaining about it is a pretty weak argument. If you pay for a cell phone subscription, but don't use your phone, you still count as an active subscriber. I don't see how this is any different.

 

I'm sure the devs look more at the activity of players logging in when making game development decisions, rather than the active number of subscribers. It's the financial people who care about the latter.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Kthx

[JeramieCrowe]

What makes you think there will be another CRM? Maybe the position was eliminated.

 

May have been, but I've been curious enough to have been keeping up with this page for a while, and BW's usually pretty quick about removing jobs that are no longer available.

 

In fact, click on "QA Website Tester". That's what happens when it's not available, and that's a recent change for that position. Now click on "CRM Manager". Still available.

[tumpai]

The problem starts at the top with the arrogance of certain people (James Olen and Damian Schubert) just to call out a couple, on how to run this game. Their 'we'll do what ever we want and we know whats best and will do it on our time' attitude is one of the reasons people are leaving.

 

Its almost like the things that are important and need to be in the game quickly are not a top priority and all we get from them are ''soon'', and they come off like they are not worried about it.

 

Seriously?

[JeramieCrowe]

What information are you talking about? Just checked his twitter (first time ever in my life) and yeah, there are a lot of information/updates I wasn't aware of. You know, when customers have doubts or questions, they won't use the twitter to communicate with developers or customer service. So no, using twitter instead of official forums for communication with customers is a huge fail.

 

Now go to @TESO. Guess what? It's the future of MMO communication.

[EcrirTwyLar]

Free 2 play is on the way!!

 

Unfortunately this is probably true. Why? Because few MMO developers have shown that they are capable of original thought. Thus game companies are now jumping on the F2P band wagon when things aren't going well. What we really need is someone in charge that actually understands our community and what it's going to take to fix this game. And it may not necessarily be what the squeaky wheels on the forums are crying for.

 

What this game needs is to create a sense of ownership in this game. Make people feel like they've really created a spot for themselves in SWTOR. Currently this game doesn't have that. People like to compare everything to WoW. But really WoW is a bad example because players come and go all the time in that game. The only reason why WoW stays so successful is because their competition is so bad and people keep returning.

[leftwich]

Sad to see this. I've long thought that SWTOR is a fantastic game thats been executed poorly. I always hoped that they'd be given enough time to iron out the kinks. Almost every MMO made by a major developer has had to endure a period where the game continues to find itself following launch

 

Crew skills being non-competitive, failure to launch ranked pvp, buggy patches and extremely imbalanced servers (and no LFG tools cross server or otherwise) has killed this game for a lot of people even though they enjoy the core game and story itself.

 

I worry about the future of the MMO genre, it seems that in order to produce a game on the kind of scale that could compete with a WoW or even a Rift, you need to sink an absurd quantity of monetary investment and time into it. Since only large public gaming companies can afford the investment we end up with a situation where developers aren't willing to step too far outside the box, be honest about the game they are developing, or have a chance to improve through iteration because they have deliver a winning product or have it labled a failure.

 

Truth be told; neither WoW nor everquest were as polished as swtor at release or had content half as well designed or entertaining. However, both of these games had a long period of time to improve before competition from other games put their playerbase populations at risk. In EQ's case, the game was completely half-baked until mid-way through the second expansion pack and it wasn't really until the 3rd that it fell into own.

 

WoW was similar, it found its footing during its second expansion pack but Blizzard iterated its content much faster.

 

In either case, the year immediately following launch was brutal from a service and quality perspective. In fact, by those standard SWTOR is practically a shining example of how an MMO should launch. That said, I worry that the weight of its initial investment cost (whether financed or simply from the perspective of ROI) and that it might hamstring the game's future development. I mean what if it stabilizes at 600K subs? are they going to stop adding new content? shut the game down? If it were a privately owned company pushing a game that constituted the bulk of their existing capital investment; sure. A public company thats expecting a certain level of ROI and a low tolerance for risk? Not so much.

 

I'd use EVE as a good example, great game published by a great company that makes the occasional GIGANTIC blunder (boot.ini, monacle-gate, etc) yet because of willingness (most of the time) to be honest with their playerbase about problems with the game and listen to feedback in a fashion that actually makes it seems like they are listening to players (something swtor does pretty well, WOW does it horribly) they've always recovered and in many cases grown stronger following a period of major difficulties. In the realm of large publicly traded companies there doesn't seem to be any room for "sticking with it", it seems that the moment the playerbase goes down a bit they fire half of the development team and go into turtle mode producing the minumum amount of content possible to slow subscriber bleed. Even though it seems like SWTOR has great devs that listen to the players (or at least did until these layoffs), they may never get the chance to iterate this game to its full potential.

 

Perhaps, but you have to realize that it's no longer the 90's. When WoW launched it had improved upon the mistakes of EQ/DAoC/AO...when SWTOR launched it made the same mistakes that let the games in the 90's get steamrolled. You can't release a subpar product and use zero of the current technology and expect your game to succeed.

 

The engine SWTOR runs on is total garbage, lets be real here. It's been optimized by mentally handicapped, and programmed by window-lickers. I have a "decent" machine, and I can't push SWTOR over 38 fps, while other games with better engines run smoothly at over 100 fps with EVERYTHING turned up to the max. Games like MW3 BF3, Tera, GW2, and Tiger Woods PGA Golf...lol.

 

Everytime Blizzard released a patch they broke the servers, but everytime bioware releases a patch they break the game and it takes them a week to fix it. I'm very glad there was no downtime yesterday, meant that there was no patch, and no additional glaring issues. Lets face it, bioware has never been a company that supports their games after launch. I point to 1.4 Witch Hunt for DAO, and DA II as a whole. Never played ME games, they port terrible to PC. DA III is a no buy for me, bioware is finished.

 

EQ still has more subscribers than SWTOR...and that's pretty freaking sad.

 

Less people working on a project means a longer period of time between content patches, goodbye ranked WZ's...hello hellokitty Island Adventure. Perhaps the ranked WZ's will go the way of the wow dance studio...oh...wait...

 

All the people who were glad that there was no rep grind...Legacy Levels are a rep grid with yourself...*headdesk*

 

PvP is wasted space in SWTOR, and pretty much any MMO that has inconsequential PvP. No matter how many Pubs I kill I gain nothing but gear, and they lose nothing. Waste of time.

 

On that note, PvE is exactly the same...but it's worse than wow because in wow the reset times are every tuesday at 6am PST...in SWTOR they're every 3 days. Kill the boss it stays dead for you, forever.

 

Resilience fundamentally changed game/concept development in WoW...Expertise is exactly the same.

 

The list goes on...and these aren't just gripes and complaints either. These concepts/bugs/idea's have been the cause of any and every amount of frustration for mmo players for a long, long time. Bioware claimed to have listened to the players, they aimed to fix these issues, make SWTOR revolutionary...instead they blew their entire budget on voice actors, which like quest text I never cared about. I stopped listening to the acting after the first dialogue.

 

If anyone is interested in a sandbox game, where everything has a consequence, where pvp is actually exciting and the only thing to do, go here:

http://www.eveonline.com/

 

Oh...and expansion packs in eve are free and the devs actually care about their game and work tirelessly to improve it every patch...which doesn't break something else every time. Check it out.

[cschwartzy]

What the hell do people want? Things take time. People today are so flipping needy. If you have NOTHING to do in this game and are BORED then you play way to much. I never have enough time to do all that I want to do when I log on. Some of you need to stop playing 6-12 hours a day.

 

This reminds me of a thread not even 2 months after the game was released. The thread called "Nothing to do at 50". The guy had 3 50's and one was a Battlemaster. Seriously? 2 months in the game......

[leftwich]

Unfortunately this is probably true. Why? Because few MMO developers have shown that they are capable of original thought. Thus game companies are now jumping on the F2P band wagon when things aren't going well. What we really need is someone in charge that actually understands our community and what it's going to take to fix this game. And it may not necessarily be what the squeaky wheels on the forums are crying for.

 

What this game needs is to create a sense of ownership in this game. Make people feel like they've really created a spot for themselves in SWTOR. Currently this game doesn't have that. People like to compare everything to WoW. But really WoW is a bad example because players come and go all the time in that game. The only reason why WoW stays so successful is because their competition is so bad and people keep returning.

 

 

BIOWARE NEEDS GHOSTCRAWLER...!

 

Oh...he still owes me a freakin' pony...>.>...

[Kubernetic]

If anyone is interested in a sandbox game, where everything has a consequence, where pvp is actually exciting and the only thing to do, go here:

<URL Removed>

 

Oh...and expansion packs are free and the devs actually care about their game and work tirelessly to improve it every patch...which doesn't break something else every time. Check it out.

 

I don't really care about the rest of what you said, and I'm not above mentioning other games when exploring what happened with this one, but to blatantly advertise for another game on this game's forum, including posting hyperlinks to it as you did, is just a weaselish and pathetic act on your part.

 

If you're the common type of player in that other game, I want no part of it, but thanks anyway.