Honest question: is BioWare ashamed of this game?

[MSchuyler]

Bioware is not ashamed of its game; it's ashamed of its players. They did not realize their players had no lives of their own. That surprised them, as well it should have, though they certainly messed up in their market research efforts, so in that sense they blew it.

 

In an interview the head guy said they did not realize how fast players would burn through content. They figured it would take the average player three or four months to level to 50. But their statistics showed that the average player was playing 40 hours a week, and many players were at 80 or even 120 hours a week. In other words, players have no life. They are completely addicted and will forsake all other activities (school, sleeping, eating) for the sake of the game. I've seen this happen with a friend of mine. He's always tired and does poorly in school. Why? Because he stays up until 4:00 am playing the game.

 

Inevitably, after leveling in a few days players turned on Bioware and demanded "more content," content that had taken years to put together. They've been playing catch-up every since. Makeb is another example. They had no sooner released it when many players had finished it, allegedly in a few minutes, according to some. It was hastily put together with no story line as an attempt at appeasement and, of course, failed (IMO). Makeb is definitely too little. Too late doesn't even apply. But even if they suddenly added 50 more levels and a dozen more planets, there would be many people who would blow through that in a week or two and the cycle would simply start anew. Bioware can't win.

 

The bottom line is that there is no way Bioware can meet players' expectations. It simply cannot happen because there is not enough money or time to do it, especially with investors wanting some attention paid to ROI. So what will happen is another company will spend years putting together a game, release it to great expectations, and the same crowd which flooded SW:TOR will rush to the next merry-go-round, burn through that, then start complaining about lack of content, poor customer support, etc. just like they do here.

 

Perhaps some of the players will actually be forced to grow up and get actual jobs, but there will always be new ones to replace them. And that's the direction Bioware needs to follow. They need to realize that their players are temporary, that they will cycle through, and that the average lifetime of a player is measured in months, not years. That means they really need to IGNORE the seasoned players and their constant complaints and insatiable desires and concentrate on developing newer players. It looks to me like F2P is a part of that strategy. In other words, it's not about you; it's about your younger siblings.

 

I suspect Bioware had a vision that they were creating a game that players could enjoy for a lifetime and has only belatedly learned they have created a game the average player can enjoy for a year, and that's stretching it. But it's a learning experience for everyone, and once they figure that out, they need to move to the newer strategy.

[Arkerus]

Honest question: is the OP ashamed of making such a troll-tactic post? Edited June 15, 2013 by Arkerus

[Fastdoze]

It's not an honest question, it's a silly question. You know the answer. You're just being an attention hound.

 

its sad when others are so quick to jump to the wrong conclusions and make judgements like that. Oh well, it happens a lot on here, its hard to know someones true intentions sitting behind a screen on a forum.

[CosmicKat]

Bioware is not ashamed of its game; it's ashamed of its players. They did not realize their players had no lives of their own. That surprised them, as well it should have, though they certainly messed up in their market research efforts, so in that sense they blew it.

 

In an interview the head guy said they did not realize how fast players would burn through content. They figured it would take the average player three or four months to level to 50. But their statistics showed that the average player was playing 40 hours a week, and many players were at 80 or even 120 hours a week. In other words, players have no life. They are completely addicted and will forsake all other activities (school, sleeping, eating) for the sake of the game. I've seen this happen with a friend of mine. He's always tired and does poorly in school. Why? Because he stays up until 4:00 am playing the game.

 

Inevitably, after leveling in a few days players turned on Bioware and demanded "more content," content that had taken years to put together. They've been playing catch-up every since. Makeb is another example. They had no sooner released it when many players had finished it, allegedly in a few minutes, according to some. It was hastily put together with no story line as an attempt at appeasement and, of course, failed (IMO). Makeb is definitely too little. Too late doesn't even apply. But even if they suddenly added 50 more levels and a dozen more planets, there would be many people who would blow through that in a week or two and the cycle would simply start anew. Bioware can't win.

 

The bottom line is that there is no way Bioware can meet players' expectations. It simply cannot happen because there is not enough money or time to do it, especially with investors wanting some attention paid to ROI. So what will happen is another company will spend years putting together a game, release it to great expectations, and the same crowd which flooded SW:TOR will rush to the next merry-go-round, burn through that, then start complaining about lack of content, poor customer support, etc. just like they do here.

 

Perhaps some of the players will actually be forced to grow up and get actual jobs, but there will always be new ones to replace them. And that's the direction Bioware needs to follow. They need to realize that their players are temporary, that they will cycle through, and that the average lifetime of a player is measured in months, not years. That means they really need to IGNORE the seasoned players and their constant complaints and insatiable desires and concentrate on developing newer players. It looks to me like F2P is a part of that strategy. In other words, it's not about you; it's about your younger siblings.

 

I suspect Bioware had a vision that they were creating a game that players could enjoy for a lifetime and has only belatedly learned they have created a game the average player can enjoy for a year, and that's stretching it. But it's a learning experience for everyone, and once they figure that out, they need to move to the newer strategy.

 

Yeah sure. It's totally the fault of the players.

 

I mean, for Bioware to know any of this, they would have had to undertake some massive research on a scale not seen since the Apollo program. They certainly would have had to...

 

1) Log onto any MMO ever made.

 

There is no polite way to put it. Anyone who is surprised that gamers, and MMO gamers in particular, spend a lot of their free time playing games... is an idiot. Anyone who works in the industry and is surprised by that is incompetent.

[ShadessaWayland]

when a mmorpg gets old the companie dont care much anymore about this game ore lets say not much

only thing they do is milk players as much as poseble

 

when they lose to many players they wake up and try a event ore a big update to get players back again

when that works they crawl back in there cave again

 

and this keep going til the game is truly death

Edited June 15, 2013 by ShadessaWayland

[WarGame]

When you consider the amount of pre launch advertising there was (in addition to launch game sales) combined with the fact the game was free to play within a year I'd say they probably somewhat are yes.

[LordArtemis]

I just think that it would be pretty odd if a dev staff was not proud of their work.

 

I also think some devs should not be proud at all. They in fact should be ashamed of themselves. Especially when they cling to old MMO stances, direct the game design toward the wrong group of players instead of the games target audience (hardcore players instead of casuals) and then are surprised when those players burn through content, refuse to make changes to give the game wider appeal even though the game is going down in flames....

 

And then you have the new staff. I think they have quite a bit to be proud of. They may have saved this game from the abyss.

 

The opinion of the former devs that I have is just that...my opinion. I've always been pretty clear about my disappointment with how they handled things though I always wished the game success.

[AshlaBoga]

Yeah sure. It's totally the fault of the players.

 

I mean, for Bioware to know any of this, they would have had to undertake some massive research on a scale not seen since the Apollo program. They certainly would have had to...

 

1) Log onto any MMO ever made.

 

Well obviously BW logged onto Hello Kitty and Farmville and thus figured they had enough content.

 

Nah JK.

 

The real issue is that BW believed that the vast majority of players would complete Act 3 8 times. Basically they thought people would play all the different storylines.

 

Even a good player generally takes 2 weeks for Prologue-A3.

 

So even a hardcore would take 4 months to clear all the relevant content.

 

The problem was that most people only did 1-2 Act 3s and then there was little endgame. There was EV and Bonethrasher. That didn't take very long for casuals let alone hardcores.

 

If they planned on people doing each of the 8 storylines then they should have made it mandatory. Maybe a requirement that you couldn't do Operations unless you completed all 4 Act 3s for that Faction. That's the only way they could have come close to their 3 month plan.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

Yeah sure. It's totally the fault of the players.

 

I mean, for Bioware to know any of this, they would have had to undertake some massive research on a scale not seen since the Apollo program. They certainly would have had to...

 

1) Log onto any MMO ever made.

 

There is no polite way to put it. Anyone who is surprised that gamers, and MMO gamers in particular, spend a lot of their free time playing games... is an idiot. Anyone who works in the industry and is surprised by that is incompetent.

 

Yup. Poor Bioware had no idea how big of losers we all actually are!

 

[WSRB]

I tried to resist, but I gotta toss my two cents in.

 

SWTOR's lack of presence at E3 has nothing to do with whether or not the development team is proud or ashamed of their work. There's always a ton of big announcements at E3 and unless an existing MMORPG has a huge expansion to announce, then its best not to waste resources trying to promote your game at E3 because anything less than huge will go largely unnoticed due to being eclipsed by some other huge announcement.

 

As for what the development team may or may not have to be embarrassed about, you have to keep in mind that if nothing else the last three years of MMORPG launches have shown us theme park MMOs, as we players have grown used to them, are virtually unsustainable without a "WoW at it's peak" level of revenue: meaning that basically every MMORPG that has launched in the last three years did so with massive failure almost pre-built into the product due to the very design of theme park MMOs (ie. the unsustainable need for continuous brand new content every few weeks). Even the once mighty WoW has seen massive losses in the number of active accounts as a result of it's decision to focus less on continued theme park construction and more on the introduction of more easily maintainable sandbox elements because it was no longer generating the income necessary to maintain the level of content output that it had in the past.

 

I'm not defending the development team's lack of preparedness for the massive numbers of players that arrived at max level without anything to do (implicit in their own admission of being inexperienced and unprepared is that it never occurred to anyone in management to hire any of the hundreds of game producers out there with years of MMO development experience), but the truth is that anything less than RoTHC sized content additions every six weeks (ie. an amount even Blizzard can no longer sustain) was going to be seen as unsatisfactory.

 

Should they be embarrassed by their lack of foresight? Yeah, probably.

 

Should they be embarrassed of the product itself? Absolutely not: it's never been a perfect game, but it's always been a good one.

Edited June 16, 2013 by WSRB

[jedimasterjac]

I assume this is because EA didn't show this game at E3? It's the same reason WoW isn't really showed off at E3. MMOs that have already launched are not a big focus.

 

EA had a lot of new games to talk about, and that took front-and-center. While I think that EA Fire sports games or whatever are over done and don't need promotion at E3, EA enjoys promoting each year the new "Advanced" technology and programming in their sports games.

[Captain_Vae]

It's not an honest question, it's a silly question. You know the answer. You're just being an attention hound.

 

It IS an honest question.

 

I was thinking the same thing.

 

Why are you so butthurt over this? You are almost as bad as the WoWfanbois.

 

I was at the airport and while waiting for my flight there was an ad for a MMO that thought they could go toe-to-toe with the game in Azeroth. That game is now F2P.

 

I haven't seen anything on this game in print, tv, internet, etc since the initial launch.

 

So that IS a legit question.

[Soluss]

Didn't really read the thread, more or less just the title. Ill put my 2 cents in. Bioware shouldn't be ashamed IMO. I believe they put out a quality product, atleast initially. On the other hand, I think it could have been far better. I think they are hampered by EAs decisions.

 

I think if anyone should be ashamed, it should be management. I believe the game is and has always been managed poorly. They are slow to make decisions. The decisions they make are usually wrong <--- imo of course. The engine, which is crucial, was a bad choice imo. I believe its part of the reason that updates are not only slow but buggy. The knee jerk reaction to open up so many servers was a poor choice. The length of time to rectify by having mergers and closing servers was bad. Not having transfers at that point and instead forced movement from specific to specific servers was a bad choice imo. All of this could be due to technical limitations of course but again, that goes back to poor engine choice.

 

I have no idea what goes on inside Bioware. All I can do is speculate from the info that is there. But they shouldn't be ashamed. Management should.

[Ixion]

I would be if I was them.