In your educated opinion, what's the fate of this game?

[LordArtemis]

Or at least, none of us are objective enough to have a particularly valuable opinion. Even where there is a reasonably informed opinion, it is distinctly biased in favour of a pre-disposed point of view "Game is dying" or "game is doing ok".

 

The only "educated opinion" that should matter is your own; play the game, see what you personally like and dislike, and decide if you want to see the future or not. For me, the game is still the finest example of an MMO to date, and the forthcoming F2P model intrigues me, rather than persuades me that the game is "dying". I've seen the hybrid model applied well (LOTRO), and less well (EQ), and while I doubt it will ever "make or break" the game for me, it will influence how much time I spend here, or elsewhere.

 

See this folks. This is a truly unbiased opinion about the game and the community. This is how you support a game you love.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I think it largely depends on how well the F2P model is implemented. If paying a subscription leaves the game experience the same as it is now (ie unrestricted access to all features and updates) with the cash shop only for non-game breaking convenience or vanity items (or for F2P people the ability to pay cash to remove the restrictions placed on F2P accounts) then it should survive. If on the other hand subscription players have to pay real cash, just like F2P people, to unlock new FP, Ops, WZ, races, other features we previously got as part of the subscription fee and/or with a cash shop that offers exclusive game breaking P2W items then it will likely die.

 

IMO it all depends on whether the F2P model is done well or not.

[Kalfear]

The answer to your question is all of them. If just the 10 fanboys, from this forum, were the only ones left playing... they would still be sitting here saying there is nothing wrong with the game and its all the communities fault.

 

Bingo

 

Case in point, SWG

 

Anyone that even looked at the game through out its life span knows it was very simular (in subscription lose percentages) to TOR. Yet we now see posts from the 10 fanbois about it never falling under 300,000 subscribers, being one of the top MMORPGs of its time (it wasnt other then opening month), and yada yada yada.

 

Fanbois will ignore whats right in front of their face.

 

And TOR will be no different, and is no different.

 

Heck I still play TOR and even enjoy my time most days. But Im not blind to all the short comings and feel refusing to admit those short comings is doing the game, the genre, and the subscribers a disservice.

 

But the fanbois will never admit any of that.

[Hessen]

The problem is, there isn't one or two main things wrong with the game. When you look at any of the suggestion or feedback threads, the responses are hugely varied.

 

Which basically means the whole game is subpar, there isn't one player section which is happy.

 

PvE players want more story, more planets, more flashpoints and more operations

PvP players want proper open world PvP, more warzones and improvements to the bracketing and queuing

RP players want to sit in seats, have more emotes, changes to the chat system

 

The only real things that people want across the groups is better character customisation and a completely different space battle game.

[Andryah]

The problem is, there isn't one or two main things wrong with the game. When you look at any of the suggestion or feedback threads, the responses are hugely varied.

 

Which basically means the whole game is subpar, there isn't one player section which is happy.

 

IMO, all this means is that with more then a half a million subscribers, you are going to get a lot of different personal opinons about what they want to see different in the game. Even more so in the early months when it was more then a million active subs.

 

Honestly, I've seeen the same thing in every MMO I have ever played, and I've played a lot of them over the years. Which is why I take a more detatched and critical view of all the free range criticisms in the forum. Even MMOs with only 100K subs (old school numbers, not the modern era of kiddie kandy MMOs) that were regarded as both popular and successful, the variety of complaints from the playerbase were broad and numerous.

 

Bioware has excellent metrics ability (they call it telemetry) on the game. They capture inputs from players in a lot of different ways from a lot of different channels. They are in a position to prioritize their attention based on their analytics. And forum feedback really is only a small part of the total feedback channel. I really don't get why people do not understand this.

Edited August 26, 2012 by Andryah

[Kalfear]

Im sorry but any "old school" mmorpg'er DOESNT use the term metrics, thats a WOW and after thingy. Never heard a respected long time gamer give metrics any form of credibility!

 

As for the 100k. Yeah thats BS.

 

Even back in UO (which was way before your time A) 100k was a failure for a AAA MMORPG. Heck the first MMORPG ever made (NeverWinter Nights on AOL circa 1991 - 97 did more then that number)

 

All your doing is spinning and spinning yet again.

 

EQ- more then 100k

AC- more then 100k

SWG - originally more but fell under quickly but is also veiwed as a huge failure by all but the fanbois.

DAoC - more then 100k

FFXI - more then 100k

 

Honestly the only games I can think of that hit 100k went F2P to try and salvage some profits as they couldnt survive as a subscription based game!

 

And those games before WOW when the genre player pool was MUCH SMALLER then it draws from currently today!

 

Just telling truths and correcting the spin into logical and realistic terms!

[matapat]

Bioware has excellent metrics ability (they call it telemetry) on the game. They capture inputs from players in a lot of different ways from a lot of different channels. They are in a position to prioritize their attention based on their analytics. And forum feedback really is only a small part of the total feedback channel. I really don't get why people do not understand this.

 

Oh people understand it, they just don't believe it, because this game's entire existence has been a litany of lies and overpromised and underdelivered content.

 

Ohlen's infamous quote of content coming out monthly, since game launch we've had two content updates and one quality of life update, and one can even make the argument 1.1 shouldn't even count as a content patch at all since it came out one month after the game was released, contained the second half of an Op already in the game, and was blatantly obviously supposed to be launch material that had to be held back a month for testing because of the forced early launch to cash in on the Christmas rush.

 

They promised huge 100 v 100 battles, in truth the engine is so poorly optimized it can barely handle 8 vs 8. World PvP was a laggy mess and Ilum was killed after a few months and we've yet to heard back word on it's reimplemintation. PvP has become a cycling gear grind of 4 maps with a borked excuse for a bracket system, and newbies are actively discouraged from participating in endgame PvP because they get rolled left and right by augmented WH groups.

 

Story and choices matter, but once the ability to kill your companions off in beta was removed it essentially ceased to matter. Not only that but with the mass layoffs it's questionable whether Bioware would even bother with the overhead of bringing back the 16 different voice actors for the characters plus the countless companion and NPC ones and not just switch to a TSW-style system in the future where the NPCs will just monologue at you and your only responses will be canned stock pre-recorded lines (like the Rakhghoul event) or not have any dialogue or conversation wheel at all (like the Chevin event).

 

Bioware's balancing analytics are nonsense, the same analytics they used to make 2 of the 3 healing classes noticably weaker in PvP and make tank specs do pathetic tickling damage where they were pretty balanced before 1.3 (with the excption of Shadows/Assasins) , meanwhile Sent/Mara and PT/Vanguard have been rolling everyone in PvP for the past 9 months while only 1 of the 3 ranged classes Gunslinger/Sniper is any good.

 

Bioware's been talking a good game since launch, but as most of us have rather quickly learned, words are wind. They promise us regular 6 week updates this fall when the game goes F2P? Yeah, we'll believe it when we see it.

[Hessen]

IMO, all this means is that with more then a half a million subscribers, you are going to get a lot of different personal opinons about what they want to see different in the game. Even more so in the early months when it was more then a million active subs.

 

Honestly, I've seeen the same thing in every MMO I have ever played, and I've played a lot of them over the years. Which is why I take a more detatched and critical view of all the free range criticisms in the forum. Even MMOs with only 100K subs (old school numbers, not the modern era of kiddie kandy MMOs) that were regarded as both popular and successful, the variety of complaints from the playerbase were broad and numerous.

 

Bioware has excellent metrics ability (they call it telemetry) on the game. They capture inputs from players in a lot of different ways from a lot of different channels. They are in a position to prioritize their attention based on their analytics. And forum feedback really is only a small part of the total feedback channel. I really don't get why people do not understand this.

 

So, people have opinions. Forums are pointless. And Bioware know what they're doing?

[Vandicus]

So, people have opinions. Forums are pointless. And Bioware know what they're doing?

 

Yes, people have opinions, and generally speaking, they stink.

 

Forums serve as a venue for players to communicate, and usually are a poor source of game feedback. In some cases, such as deciding what race to make, there is little other choice but the forums to get an idea of "what the players want".

 

Bioware imo has given too much attention to the people on the forums in regards to actually answering demands. For example meaningful choice was largely removed from the game because people in beta were shocked/horrified at having killed a companion or quest giver. Bad move on Bioware's part from my PoV, but Bioware obviously felt that it was a good idea to listen to the testers and remove many of the meaningful choices they had. In the end I think games are better if the developers build what they envisioned. Much like art, things become fairly mediocre if the designer tries to appeal to everyone. I've played several other games in entirely different genres that were ruined because changes suggested by the forums were actually implemented. Bioware has guys working for them capable of making brilliant content, the question is merely whether they'll be allowed to.

[Soluss]

IMO, all this means is that with more then a half a million subscribers, you are going to get a lot of different personal opinons about what they want to see different in the game. Even more so in the early months when it was more then a million active subs.

 

Honestly, I've seeen the same thing in every MMO I have ever played, and I've played a lot of them over the years. Which is why I take a more detatched and critical view of all the free range criticisms in the forum. Even MMOs with only 100K subs (old school numbers, not the modern era of kiddie kandy MMOs) that were regarded as both popular and successful, the variety of complaints from the playerbase were broad and numerous.

 

Bioware has excellent metrics ability (they call it telemetry) on the game. They capture inputs from players in a lot of different ways from a lot of different channels. They are in a position to prioritize their attention based on their analytics. And forum feedback really is only a small part of the total feedback channel. I really don't get why people do not understand this.

 

Dont get what? That their metric system is bogus? They kept 500k players out of 2.4 million box sales. We have been hearing about their metric system since beta. It has been wrong time and time again.

[Bobbyrab]

It'll hum-hum along for a few years like all the other MMOs. I highly doubt it'll be shut down in a year or two like the doomsayers suggest. EA will give F2P a chance to make some revenue.

 

That said, that's all SWTOR will do. That's all any MMO will ever do, from SWTOR to LOTRO to STO to DCUO to TSW to GW2. Why? Because, at their most fundamental level, these games are all clones of the same formula. WoW perfected it.

 

There is now a kind of MMO "herd" that moves across the land to every new MMO release. The current Promised Land is GW2, but what will happen to it is the same thing that has happened to all the rest: the herd will move in, zerg the content, and move on to greener pastures, aka the next big release.

 

Developers and publishers will continue to delude themselves that they can make a revolutionary game model. I listened to SWTOR's developers wax eloquent about how revolutionary stories would be. I listened to TSW's developers make their pitch. I listened to GW2's developers promise the Second Coming. Players delude themselves into thinking that the next MMO won't be like the others; things will be different.

 

This One Will Change Everything.

 

But nothing changes. They're all the same. GW2 is WoW with a new skin and hidden grind. SWTOR is WoW with a new skin and stories. WoW is EQ simplified. Each new iteration simply adds some new bells and whistles. Players move in and, accustomed to elements that 4+ year old games have, complain that a two day old game doesn't run perfectly, contain zero bugs and doesn't have enough content to support their insane gaming binges of 40+ hours a week. They complain when they encounter launch issues as hundreds of thousands of their other herd comrades all clog the servers the very second the game is available.

 

Once the dust has cleared and the devs have gotten the issues handled, launch is in the rear view mirror and they can work on future content, the zerg herd has already moved on.

 

The fate of this game will be the fate of all the rest until the formula is fundamentally altered.

[Vandicus]

This One Will Change Everything.

 

But nothing changes. They're all the same. GW2 is WoW with a new skin and hidden grind. SWTOR is WoW with a new skin and stories. WoW is EQ simplified. Each new iteration simply adds some new bells and whistles. Players move in and, accustomed to elements that 4+ year old games have, complain that a two day old game doesn't run perfectly, contain zero bugs and doesn't have enough content to support their insane gaming binges of 40+ hours a week. They complain when they encounter launch issues as hundreds of thousands of their other herd comrades all clog the servers the very second the game is available.

 

 

Actually for me that one thing DID change everything in the case of SWTOR. Story in MMOs has always been a huge deal for me. I personally loved Warcraft III and Frozen Throne, and would probably have played WoW for a few years if Blizzard actually had a semi competent writing staff. What they did to all the major and minor characters made me sad . I was hoping for years for a Warcraft 4 to continue the story properly but its quite clear now that will never happen. Ugh just talking about this makes me remember how corny SC2's story and cinematics were. Seriously someone needs to give Blizzard the phone number of a few decent novelists.

 

 

*EDIT

 

Hopefully SWTOR increases the standard for story in MMOs to come.

Edited August 26, 2012 by Vandicus

[aeterno]

Hopefully SWTOR increases the standard for story in MMOs to come.

 

Would love it but I doubt it. Not after the boxofice showing it produced. It's imo doubtfull any company will again commit so many resources to a cinematic story experience in an mmo. Blizzard perhaps with titan but if they thought a year ago "this is now a must have with TOR raising the bar and all" you just know today they're thinking "yea well, maybe not".

[Helistin]

It'll hum-hum along for a few years like all the other MMOs. I highly doubt it'll be shut down in a year or two like the doomsayers suggest. EA will give F2P a chance to make some revenue.

 

 

All that depends how much money f2p will make and how juicy cut Lucas takes from cake. I'm guessing it's not peanuts so i think there pull the plug option that far in reality.

[FeelFlow]

Would love it but I doubt it. Not after the boxofice showing it produced. It's imo doubtfull any company will again commit so many resources to a cinematic story experience in an mmo. Blizzard perhaps with titan but if they thought a year ago "this is now a must have with TOR raising the bar and all" you just know today they're thinking "yea well, maybe not".

 

I don't think that we'll get another cinematic MMO until game engines can 'automate' the generation of cut scenes and that we get good enough AI voices i.e. like Siri on the iPhone (but much much better than that!)

[CorellianWannabe]

 

Hopefully SWTOR increases the standard for story in MMOs to come.

 

You mean Farmer Bob's voice acting asking you to kill 10 bandits? Or the 5 missions per planet that actually relate to your class story and won't be repeated on every other character of a different class?

[Bobbyrab]

You mean Farmer Bob's voice acting asking you to kill 10 bandits? Or the 5 missions per planet that actually relate to your class story and won't be repeated on every other character of a different class?

 

This was a huge problem for me. I finished the Smuggler story and went to do Jedi Knight...I absolutely fell in love with the JK story, ten times more than the Smuggler story...but I just couldn't go through all those trash quests again. I daily'ed the space missions and did bonus series to keep my XP up but I didn't want to PvP, or do the heroics or FPs again...so I stopped, at lvl 35.

[CorellianWannabe]

This was a huge problem for me. I finished the Smuggler story and went to do Jedi Knight...I absolutely fell in love with the JK story, ten times more than the Smuggler story...but I just couldn't go through all those trash quests again. I daily'ed the space missions and did bonus series to keep my XP up but I didn't want to PvP, or do the heroics or FPs again...so I stopped, at lvl 35.

 

I did the same thing-I have no desire to grind Hoth again to get the few crumbs of story buried in the pile of side missions.

[LordArtemis]

The problem is, there isn't one or two main things wrong with the game. When you look at any of the suggestion or feedback threads, the responses are hugely varied.

 

Which basically means the whole game is subpar, there isn't one player section which is happy.

 

PvE players want more story, more planets, more flashpoints and more operations

PvP players want proper open world PvP, more warzones and improvements to the bracketing and queuing

RP players want to sit in seats, have more emotes, changes to the chat system

 

The only real things that people want across the groups is better character customisation and a completely different space battle game.

 

In all of the polls and complaint threads that I have seen, where players can just list what they don't like, two choices always seem to come out on top for the last 9 months, and even before in beta.

 

1) More customization, personalization, appearance options and repeatable content

2) Better space combat

 

When you constantly have the very same complaints over and over and over again, it's hard to understand why it's been ignored over the past 8 months while the game bled subs.

[LordArtemis]

I would add one more sidenote to Bioware, not that they will listen...

 

Stop designing new armor. The colors are odd. The designs are mostly...well...odd. Stop it.

Allow all armor to be sliced into orange armor. Cut the cost of removing mods across the board, ESPECIALLY early in the game and at end game. Add the ability to color change ALL pieces of armor, not just color match your toon.

 

More odd looking armor is not going to help. It hasn't helped so far, why would it help now? Your entire decision to go with a progressive armor system was a massive mistake.

Edited August 27, 2012 by LordArtemis

[Soluss]

In all of the polls and complaint threads that I have seen, where players can just list what they don't like, two choices always seem to come out on top for the last 9 months, and even before in beta.

 

1) More customization, personalization, appearance options and repeatable content

2) Better space combat

 

When you constantly have the very same complaints over and over and over again, it's hard to understand why it's been ignored over the past 8 months while the game bled subs.

 

But but but the metrics told them that the mini space game is one of the most popular things they have.

[ChickenWangs]

I have never really been into computer games and I have never played an MMO in my life, but I'm really loving this game. True, it has its flaws, but I can overlook most of them. I will be honest, though. I'm pretty concerned about the future of SWTOR. I've heard it's losing subscriptions at an alarming rate, and I don't see how this Free to Play option could be anything but an ominous sign of the future to come.

 

I don't stay caught up with news, so I was hoping someone could fill me in. What does the future of this game look like?

Are the developers optimistic? Pessimistic? Indifferent?

Could SWTOR bounce back, or has it had too many blows in its short existence?

 

I'm looking at this game like a relationship. If the game has a future, I will stick around. If the game is doomed, I would rather bail sooner than later, before I become even more attached.

MMOs don't die, plain and simple.

[Soluss]

MMOs don't die, plain and simple.

 

Tabula Rasa, Earth and Beyond, MxO and a few others say Hi

[vandana_]

But but but the metrics told them that the mini space game is one of the most popular things they have.

 

Yeah, and that 40% of unsubscribing people did so because "they are not into subscription business". Was there a question about whether or not the game was worthy of the subscription fee in the exit polls again?

 

With their way of interpretation of reality I'm sure that we will soon hear that adding 10 more rail shooter missions is "expanding space content".

Edited August 27, 2012 by vandana_

[Hessen]

I can't believe how many people think there's hope and anything other than EA putting SWTOR in to maintenance mode to be supported by a skeletal staff whilst they make a bit of money from IP fans and those who like buying sensible looking costumes from the store at £5 a pop because the game armours are so hideous.

 

• Space combat won't ever change
  
• You will never hear new stuff from the class voice actors again
  
• Any significant new content will not be free to subscribers
  
• Any significant new content will not be newly recorded stuff but voiced on the cheap, with your character providing soundbites and stock answers from what is already recorded
  
• PvP will stay as it is, eventually they'll open up somewhere like Ilum again, but it won't make any difference
  

 

They'll do small changes, like a hide hood toggle, drop the prices a bit of mod extraction, add some more mission terminal style dailies, maybe even single player pazaak, which will be in amongst more useless legacy perks, another human looking playable race, and more ugly armour sets.

Edited August 27, 2012 by Hessen