Honest opinion- do you think the game is in trouble?

[mattgyver]

Yeah there really is no excuse for endgame being an afterthought or not built out. It's common sense that if you are going to compete with built out games, you are going to have to be built out yourself. If you are defending the proto-MMO status and waiting, then cool. Many people have unsubbed and may come back later when the game is built out. It's a good idea to vote with your feet on this matter.

 

The stay behinds will be able to say, "I stayed" and may get some rare goodies. They will also play in the lean times until(if) some of the others come back.

 

So it really comes down to what you feel is worth your sub. I will try this game again when Makeb comes out, until then I'm using that money for something else.

[Inzuher]

ippollite really has a lot of good points. If there was a "like" button on this forum i would use it on his post Edited June 21, 2012 by Inzuher

[Dubbya]

Players are grouped in, they will be in each others faces and there will be mass pvp and it will breath life into a game that should be well on its way out and lacking in ideas for at least another year. Make no mistake, they screwed up with cataclysm but only because they were targetting new players and not their current playerbase, and though theyve lost a lot of players for good (me for instance), panda will work once people actually get out into the world and cant hide in their capital cities anymore (assuming of course they cant). The talent system is also phenomenally good and reminds us all that star wars, in its desire to copy the things that made wow successful forgot to look to the future a bit and thus destined it for medicority by mistaking nostalgia for genuine desire.

 

It feels like the game wants everything to go back to 2006 when we all apparently loved sitting in our capital cities spamming for groups, running endlessly all over the (game) world to deliver dumb ancillary (time wasting) quests and forcing us into grinding earh elementals (world questing) in the badlands for XP and money because there just isnt enough interesting things to do in the main (class) quests to keep us occupied.

 

But space missions. Companion missions (mass effect style loyalty missions). Class missions. Puzzle quests. World PVP zones. They all have a chance of breathing life into this game. 5 years of awesome raid boss mechanics which it can literally just copy direct from wow and stick it in space, means they can spend much more time on the story. On the HOW part of the game over the WHAT (we get) part.

 

The problem is that sharded servers, continual instancing, dungeon crawling (through the same models over and over and over again - dragon age 2! yay!), and a sheer lack of planets and questing to make up the gaps or follow a different path, serves to kill world engagement as well as destroy the desire to replay the game. Pre burning crusade wow was the same. If you were horde, the idea of being tangoed (durator--->barrens--->stonetalon--->thousand needles - a lot of orange with serious level gaps), replaying the game was miserable. But then again you could just go somewhere else and have a crack at the undead zone chain instead. No such luck in this game.

 

Its probably time for SWtoR to do a wow patch 2.3 and XP buff if im honest. Not so we can all get to 50 easier, but so that we dont have to do every quest on every alt just to keep our class story moving. Maybe then we can skip certain planets with some of our characters and spend a great deal of our replay time on those quests we havent seen or done already. At least that would go some way to helping encourage players to replay the game a bit without feeling they were repeating 70-80% (generous) of the game.

 

I dunno, 1.3 is nice and all. But its not enough. 1.4 needs to be following it fast on its heels. The whole speed of the game needs to be rethought. It just feels grindy.

 

And i know... all mmos at their core are grindy.

 

I understand all mmos WERE grindy, i understand the mechanic to keep you subbing is the next obtainable shiny thing, but this argument is mistaken. It correlates the overriding mechanism of playing a game (to complete an objective) with the style of the game. Under thsi criteria pretty much every game does that, not just mmos. But we arent talking about removing the motivation for completing something. We're instead just talking about the means to achieving the goal. You know... the "gamePLAY" part. The bit that helps create differnet GENRES in gaming.

 

The HOW you get to the next shiny thing.

 

Nothing compels this to be a grind. Well, nothing except a complete failure of imagination. Its time this game looked at its competitors NOW in the year 2012 and brought in some of those ideas instead of basing its gamePLAY on an 8 year old model that players are kinda bored with.

 

Uh, I am in the Panda Beta and there will be no mass pvp. WoW is not making a world that makes pvp mandatory. Panda's talents are better, but they are also gutting classes like the rogue who requires skills to be effective and they no longer will be in Panda. Also, you are right people will be forced out of the capital city, but leaving the city to FLY to your objective = no world pvp and the world pvp that will be in Panda will not have significant impacts.

 

Mmo's ARE grindy not were, that is the whole point of the mmo. If that grind is enjoyable is what needs to be determined. Your xp buff comment makes me believe you are a spacebar warrior and do not actually listen to any of the quests. It also makes me think you do not read the lore completion objectives that you acquire. There are different paths... How you respond, whether it is light side or dark side effects certain choices you have in the conversation. I honestly think you will never be happy with any mmo and maybe the genre isnt for you. I think you want to log in have no levels, achievements, restrictions and be able to select which quests and story lines you want to follow and go.

 

Every single game from FPS to mmo to single players is a grind. You start and grind (could be level, money, faction, levels, end boss, whatever) so you can acquire that items or group of items or achievements. Once that goal is achieved, you start over.

[Photoshop]

Sub numbers tell the real story, but they wont release the numbers to us.

[Goretzu]

Please tell me you are joking. WoW is famous for stunlock from 0-100 even with a trinket or the world of 1-shot. I played WAR for like 1 week and found it dead is that game still even going?

 

Clearly in your 1 week playing you didn't play much PvP.

[glowien]

No, its living its best times. I am having fun like hell thanks to crowded population.

[metalgearyoda]

They have reduced CC a lot in PVP in WoW. For example a rogue's sap will last up to 60+ secs on a mob, ( depending on if the skill is glyphed. ) but cannot exceed 8 secs on a player.

 

That's been true since TBC. And in vanilla it was 10 seconds.

 

I... I am really upset that you think that's remotely new.

[metalgearyoda]

 

 

TBF I've not played WoW since a bit before WOTLK, so things may be different now, but things certainly weren't as bad SWTOR has been.

 

It's not just the CC itself though, it's also that the Resolve system doesn't really do what it's supposed to do - it's not fit for purpose.

 

Now compare that to WAR where the CC is different ("stun until death" should never exist in MMORPG PvP), less available and uses an immunities system that isn't as "fancy" as Resolve, but actually does what it is supposed to do.

 

If you know how and when to trinket you can abuse the heck out of the resolve system. Its a very strong anti CC system.

 

I played wow from launch till around this time last year. I had 10 85s and a few 80s on my old server.

 

I arena'd on all 10. Constantly. Averaged about 500 games a week.

 

CC in WoW, at least during the start of cata, was out of control. During woltk it wasn't so bad because there were more escape / closers. Psn cleanse totem, BoS, ect.

 

Theres a reason why LMP and LMD destroyed so hard. Between the tremor totem nerf and the lock buff, with mages new clear dots on sheeped target glyph, it was just very very strong. Personally I felt that LMD was stronger just because of how easily it could lock down double melee cleave teams (which were somewhat popular at the time).

 

Chain CC is how you play wow.

 

You can only get 2 stuns/incapacitates off in swtor before they are capped, unless they screwed up and trinketed early.

 

Swtors system is better when it comes to CC because it has a global DR where as wow has about 5 different DRs allowing you to be juggled.

Edited June 21, 2012 by metalgearyoda

[Holden_Dissent]

Sub numbers tell the real story, but they wont release the numbers to us.

 

Sub numbers shouldn't dictate the awesomeness of a game. Not everyone likes the same things. I thought Shadowbane was awesome and only like 2000 people played that game.

 

Also, they release the numbers every quarter. Stay tuned.

[ippollite]

Every single game is a grind.

 

MMOs arent definied by their grind but by the numbers on non NPCs running around. Theres nothing in the world to stop an mmo being made thats multiplayer Myth for example. MMOs are massive (often open) universes with massive opportunities for quest designers in modeling how we achieve our grin... i mean, er, *quest* goals. We dont have to just grind through 1000 mobs a la diablo. We might get to play a quest that plays like real total war where we take control of an entire army and lay siege to a fortress, or one that runs like the original prince of persia. Hell, there could even be a donkey kong part of the game sans where we have to climb a series of ladders and jump gaps of death whilst avoiding barrels hurtling us to our doom... Or even a 3d version of pacman where we have to collect a bunch of stuff in a maze like environment while being chased by 4 headless chickens... or a thief quest where we have to break into some stronghold at night with a distraction shot, a water shot and a blackjack and time our sneak through to avoid detection (and which sends us right back to the start when we screw up. Hell, there could even be a grind mission like goldeney where we have to break into something, and have our idiot companion spend 40 minutes typing in a password whilst we try and keep them alive from all the people trying to kill her and all we have is a lousy tranq gun... or honestly whatever. Maybe a monkey island adventure quest chain.

 

Theres like a BAZILLION games out there to draw from. All quests need not be kill 50 mobs, click three blue things, fight an elite, come back... just like all quest rewards dont necessarily need to be loot. Some can even be more information to build up your pen and paper (outside game) solution to an even bigger puzzle, or even just advancing a key story line.

 

You keep giving me a compelling reason to log in and ill log in. You dont and i wont. The grind ends the minute i lose interest. So maybe its best if instead of a meta definition of grind that encompasses all games at all time in history and somewhat devalues the term, we stick with the much narrower (and more useful) version i made in the original text.

 

The game feels grindy. Not Gaming as a whole feels grindy, or MMOs feel grindy, but this game, in direct comparison to other games (including other MMOs) that dont feel grindy, feels grindy. That grindy feeling can be summarised i guess as mindless noticeable repetition in action. Basically the hamster wheel feels very noticeable in this game right now. And what makes an mmo intersting isnt that there isnt a hamster wheel, but that the cover remain on for as long as possible. It took me almost a year and a half before i quit wow for the first time (grinding AV for the warlord PVP set just before the release of the BC). It took an actual and deliberate grind in that game (not a sneaky one like this game does), but a genuine upfront "this is going to waste your life to achieve!" grind to make the covers come off on that game. Here... not so long. Taris in fact.

 

The class quests are great distraction, and if there was more of them, i promise you, i could fight 50 mobs to click three blue things from 1 to 50 no problem without feeling bored (since the rewards are awesome - im a good button pushing monkey), but having to so the same thing for quests that result in some random NPC saying thanks for that, you saved our bacon mister! (to never be heard of again - well, outside a mail 20 minutes later), just feels so... grindy, i guess.

 

As far as im concerned, im in a tacit understanding with my game of the month to suspend my disbelief and pretend i havent seen x type quest in 100 other games before it. Im also willing to suspend my disbelief that programmers can simply create an infinity of gaming styles and modes all using one engine. I bring to the game my willingness to accept its artificial restrictions and let it say things i maybe wouldnt say in cutscenes because its not pen and paper D + D here. But in return i want to feel a little shaken out of my preconceptions and have an experience in game that every now and again has me thinking "that, was. Awesome!!!". At the moment im treading water. Im hoping its going to improve. But one thing i know with certainty, if it doesnt, theres no way in hell im doing it again. And that means end game or bust, which means raid or die, which means gear inflation to infinity, grandfathering and likely unavoidable grinding in the hope that it might lead to you doing something new somewhere.

[Muskaan]

In a month or so from now, we will have the Q2 (Fiscal Q1 for EA) quarterly results from EA. EA should release some subscription info at that time. It will be interesting to see where SWTOR stands with regards to subs at the end of this quarter.

[Rouge]

In a month or so from now, we will have the Q2 (Fiscal Q1 for EA) quarterly results from EA. EA should release some subscription info at that time. It will be interesting to see where SWTOR stands with regards to subs at the end of this quarter.

 

More like devastating...

[Goretzu]

If you know how and when to trinket you can abuse the heck out of the resolve system. Its a very strong anti CC system.

 

I played wow from launch till around this time last year. I had 10 85s and a few 80s on my old server.

 

I arena'd on all 10. Constantly. Averaged about 500 games a week.

 

CC in WoW, at least during the start of cata, was out of control. During woltk it wasn't so bad because there were more escape / closers. Psn cleanse totem, BoS, ect.

 

Theres a reason why LMP and LMD destroyed so hard. Between the tremor totem nerf and the lock buff, with mages new clear dots on sheeped target glyph, it was just very very strong. Personally I felt that LMD was stronger just because of how easily it could lock down double melee cleave teams (which were somewhat popular at the time).

 

Chain CC is how you play wow.

 

You can only get 2 stuns/incapacitates off in swtor before they are capped, unless they screwed up and trinketed early.

 

Swtors system is better when it comes to CC because it has a global DR where as wow has about 5 different DRs allowing you to be juggled.

 

 

That's why WAR changed there system very early on (and even the early system wasn't that bad).

 

The central crux of MMORPG PvP should always be that you cannot be stunned to death, and when you play games like that it becomes obvious how much better it is.

 

SWTOR could do this, without concequence as they already have abilities that work on some mobs, not on others and not on PCs.

 

If they did that and scrapped the Resolve system and replaced it with a decent immunity system things would be much better (if they added CD they'd be better still, but that is highly unlikely).

[Mogsey]

Joking apart, yes i do.

 

I have tried many times to "Get into" this mmo. I have played alot of mmo's over the last 6-7 years and this one seems to be one of the worst for me.

 

I hate to say this as i wanted to like this game alot but.................yep its in trouble.

[VJade]

yes.

 

I'm out of here

[LilSaihah]

I'm pretty well engaged with TOR, however, the MMO market is in a lull at the moment. MOP and GW2 are most likely going to slam into this game like a truck, and Bioware really needs to solidify to be able to take that hit.

[Aricus]

To the original OP. SWTOR going free to play doesn't really mean anything, I honestly think most MMOs are just heading to the F2P model. There's even an article of WoW possibility heading to F2P sometime after MoP is released.

 

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/08/31/tom-chilton-suggests-mists-of-pandaria-wildly-overhyped/

[Holden_Dissent]

Wow hasn't justified having a monthly sub since TBC IMO.

 

That's why I quit playing after getting into Wotlk beta. Came back for one month after Cataclysm was released. Seriously can't believe people still pay full price for that game.

[Morgalica]

Im not meaning to come across as ultra defensive dont get me wrong, but this game stands up on a very strong bioware made story rpgmmo, rpg being the main part. As it stands it has enough content to compete in 2012, does it have enough content to be world number one is the difference and the difference i think people are mistaking for what has to be a competative game.

 

Does it have things it could do with, obviously, does it have things it could have done with on release, of course. But is this a fun and enjoyable game and the answer to that is very much yes. They delivered everying on launch they said they would, the only thing they have slipped on really is illum not working as intended of which as much blame for that falls on the community as bioware and ranked pvp going from 1.2 to 1.3 and thats only because it was broken, after illum none of us wanted something in the game that didnt work especialy todo with pvp.

 

we have seen whats coming, and we have seen how good they are at live events. They are putting content into the game fast and are obviously listening to the playerbase as group finder is coming and the ui changes came into effect.

 

They have a vision of where the game is going, it might not line up totaly with what i want, or you want or others want but what they have shown us looks like a good direction.

 

This right here is epic win for a post. +1 and /agreed

[JustTed]

To the original OP. SWTOR going free to play doesn't really mean anything, I honestly think most MMOs are just heading to the F2P model. There's even an article of WoW possibility heading to F2P sometime after MoP is released.

 

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/08/31/tom-chilton-suggests-mists-of-pandaria-wildly-overhyped/

 

For some reason kids think "F2P = fail," which simply isn't true. Good luck trying to talk them out of that though.

[YanksfanJP]

It's very hard to ignore the various harbingers of doom that have popped up over the months. Since my own rp server (Lord Kalypho) has turned into a ghost fleet, i abandoned my IA and went to a better populated server. This is within 6 months of playing. Something I never thought that I would have been doing in the first year.

 

I have defended swtor tooth and nail since day one, but even i had a bit of "oh dear...maybe I have been wrong" as I was re-rolling another character last night.

 

So being honest, are any of the die hard defenders of the game starting to feel the same way?

 

 

I think the game still needs a lot of work in a lot of areas, but they seem to at least be on the right track.

 

I think they originally had trouble balancing 1) What they want the game to be & 2) What the players want the game to be, & 3) How to make anything happen in the time frame before EA made them release the game too early.

 

Now that they've had some time to put into it and figure out where expectations meet reality, I'd expect the game to be just fine.

 

That's not to say they didn't completely blow a golden opportunity to have a game with 3-4 million subs +, but you can't fix the past, only work to make the future better.

[YanksfanJP]

I'm pretty well engaged with TOR, however, the MMO market is in a lull at the moment. MOP and GW2 are most likely going to slam into this game like a truck, and Bioware really needs to solidify to be able to take that hit.

 

I don't actually worry a whole lot about MoP. The beta has been completely boring and wholly uninteresting, and I think a lot of people will be turned off by it. Sure, there'll be a hit at launch when everyone wants to see it, but I don't expect it to hold people's interest for long. After Wrath being a faceroll-fest and Cataclysm being a series of failures in succession, MoP will likely be the last straw for many.

[juleanden]

For some reason kids think "F2P = fail," which simply isn't true. Good luck trying to talk them out of that though.

 

nae just when it comes too mmorps the F2P model just dont seem very good. for many other genres of games i think F2P is the future, i just dont see it work in a mmorpg.

[Aisor]

To be honest, yes I think this game is in trouble, its to similar to Wow and anyone already tired of WoW (like me) will fell this game is terribly familiar.

I have followed it since October 2008, had Very high hopes, but something simply dosent click, so I will leave the game, and maybe return in 6 months to see if somewhat different.

Even the space portin that could set this game appart from the competition, is poorly made, a shame really, as the game shows that a lot of talented people worked on it, the general result simply didn't work, and I feel bad about it, because I would really loved this game to be like WoW was some years ago.

[Dyvid]

Don't forget GW2, a game alot of people are raving about, is F2P.

 

As for SWTOR in trouble. I think BW made the classic mistake of biting off more than they could chew. MMO's are a mass thing and bring updates are equally massive. I have seen very few that can launch new content on a monthly bias. The key issue is content vs monthly payment. For older games, like WoW, its easier for them because they have so much content already people don't run out of stuff to do. New games have problems because don't expect people do speed rush through everything and hit a road block @ end game.

 

BW needs to make some key changes to keep on track. First they need to understand a chunk of the community is from SWG. I'm not saying change it into SWG2 but I am saying make a few team to create aspects of the game that don't revolve around pvp, leveling, or end game. Get 5 guys and make a Swoop / Pod Racing mini game, another team make a pazaak mini game, another to make crew skills more engaging.

 

Next is they need to revamp end game content to more than just what WoW does. That is one game that should not be the pinnacle of end game. You need more than just raids and rerun FP to keep it fresh. How about some heroic that take from 15 to 30 mins to finish and reward pts for end game gear? How about some instance boss fights? How about some dynamic events? I would encourage BW to look at FFXI and see what kinda of content they have. Whether you love it or hate it, you can't deny it was packed full of things to do. While I may have sat around Jueno waiting for a party, I was never bored @ endgame.

Edited June 22, 2012 by Dyvid