Bioware ruining and tunneling class stories

[Arkerus]

^^^This.....and I have a feeling EA/BW is going to "poop a brick" whenever the "New next gen open world SW RPG " is released on consoles. Only THEN will they realize how many ppl play this game with a "single player" mindset...

 

I've always thought this game should have been a console/pc single player game with online multiplayer elements & Dlc instead of the cartel market. I guarantee they'd have made back their initial $200m investment within a month. But nooooooooo......EVERYBODY wants the WOW success which is NOT realistic thinking.

 

Another classic. An armchair developer, manager and company investor just declared that his version of Kotor would have been a multi million dollar success story.

 

ugh.

[jstankaroslo]

Laziness does not exist in business world . And BW/EA are definately business companies, not charity. If you are lazy, you are out of business very soon.

You clearly dont have any idea about business when main point you mentioning is annual income. It means nothing really without mentioning staff costs, interest payments for loans, server costs and maintenance, marketing, franchise cost etc.etc.etc. And when you deduct all expenses, shareholders/owners want their share of the cake. In the end, you end up with 10-20% of income you mentioned and which you can reinvest in new content.

Also, ToR was most expensive game in the history costing over 200mil $. And game almost sunk at the begining. BW wont do same mistake and invest too much in content which does not attract enough customers. As you said, they have enough money, but its market is too small to take that risk.

If they clearly said they wont do more class stories, they must have good reason for that. No businessman in their right mind would miss oportunity to make profit and in this case, market is too small and costs too high.

Personally, I love class stories, but also understand why there wont be any.

 

Hello, I was hoping that someone picks up this thread of discussion.

I'm not saying I'm some kind of undiscovered game developing expert, I'd really pleased if you or anyone else would pick things from my estimates and expand them the right way.

First -what I really want to say is: we shouldn't believe, or take for granted the statement: class stories are too expensive. Sure they are more expensive some puny pvp changes or a new Czerka lab, but "too expensive" is a subjective statement. We should stop and consider: what is too expensive for BW/EA.

We can only estimate the things like cost of new expansion, annual income of SWTOR, the annual cost of running SWTOR (as Ghostius rightly pointed out) and the success rate the EA establishes on their projests. I mean the companies I worked with had a way of doing new projects: the profitability should have been arond 2.5 of the costs, which means every 100 dollars they spend on the project need to generate 250 dollars of income. But it is subjective company multiplier that can be changed in times of crisis or hardships.

Remember this is just a guess, but if the game had a steady, safe future ahead every new idea should meet the 2.5 recquirement to be implemented. But if the game is at risk of being shut down unless some long term projects are implemented every manager would suspend the 2.5 term just to do what is neccesary to survive. I belive that SWTOR need some brave leadership to be a long term game (and investment) and what I see now is a short term patchworking. They claim the game has a healthy profit, but yet they do only low cost things, avoiding more costly but maybe necessary class expansions.

 

And I understand that there are alternatives for the EA. They can make a new game for example. But I care for SWTOR and would like them to try to save this title, I'm not aiming at buying their stocks. EA can be profitable killing SWTOR, but we would not like that, would we?

And the lazyness -it is not the most relevant to the thread, but it is a common mistake that people believe the bussiness is so very efficient and no bussinesman would miss oportunities. In real world you can witness a lot of lazynes, some forgotten or not efficiently controlled branches, people who are employed but have nothing to do etc. There are a lot of inefficient parts of large companies -the larger the organisation the bigger chance something like this takes place. Some really simple but persisting and annoying bugs in this game seem to indicate that this is the case.

Please expand this aspect of the thread if you feel I'm wrong, want to chceck some numbers etc. I really wish to know what you think and find out: is it impossible to make a living and expanding story based MMORG or just the way they do it is not the best?

[Ghostius]

Hello, I was hoping that someone picks up this thread of discussion.

I'm not saying I'm some kind of undiscovered game developing expert, I'd really pleased if you or anyone else would pick things from my estimates and expand them the right way.

First -what I really want to say is: we shouldn't believe, or take for granted the statement: class stories are too expensive. Sure they are more expensive some puny pvp changes or a new Czerka lab, but "too expensive" is a subjective statement. We should stop and consider: what is too expensive for BW/EA.

We can only estimate the things like cost of new expansion, annual income of SWTOR, the annual cost of running SWTOR (as Ghostius rightly pointed out) and the success rate the EA establishes on their projests. I mean the companies I worked with had a way of doing new projects: the profitability should have been arond 2.5 of the costs, which means every 100 dollars they spend on the project need to generate 250 dollars of income. But it is subjective company multiplier that can be changed in times of crisis or hardships.

Remember this is just a guess, but if the game had a steady, safe future ahead every new idea should meet the 2.5 recquirement to be implemented. But if the game is at risk of being shut down unless some long term projects are implemented every manager would suspend the 2.5 term just to do what is neccesary to survive. I belive that SWTOR need some brave leadership to be a long term game (and investment) and what I see now is a short term patchworking. They claim the game has a healthy profit, but yet they do only low cost things, avoiding more costly but maybe necessary class expansions.

 

And I understand that there are alternatives for the EA. They can make a new game for example. But I care for SWTOR and would like them to try to save this title, I'm not aiming at buying their stocks. EA can be profitable killing SWTOR, but we would not like that, would we?

And the lazyness -it is not the most relevant to the thread, but it is a common mistake that people believe the bussiness is so very efficient and no bussinesman would miss oportunities. In real world you can witness a lot of lazynes, some forgotten or not efficiently controlled branches, people who are employed but have nothing to do etc. There are a lot of inefficient parts of large companies -the larger the organisation the bigger chance something like this takes place. Some really simple but persisting and annoying bugs in this game seem to indicate that this is the case.

Please expand this aspect of the thread if you feel I'm wrong, want to chceck some numbers etc. I really wish to know what you think and find out: is it impossible to make a living and expanding story based MMORG or just the way they do it is not the best?

 

What can I say - In real life, Im businessman just like they are. And I want best for my company. Just like their owners want for theirs.

And if they say that class stories are too expensive, I take that for granted. Why? Again, no businessman would miss a chance to make a profit. I do that in my business, they do it in theirs.

 

About lazy and inefficient companies - sure there are companies like that, but they dont last long. Or they are just public or goverment companies with lot of birocrats sitting there. In private enterprise companies, lazy companies are an exception, in my experience ofc. If they were lazy in BW/EA, they wouldnt make in such short time to go from sinking ship to stable sub based game.

 

Ask yourself - if there is sooo many requests for class stories, why wouldnt BW make them and make profit, win-win, right? If really there is so many requests, my company would definately do them.

My opinion is there are really not so much requests like people want them to be. Here on forums we see maybe 50 people with class story requests. Ok, let it be 100. Ok, 2000 or 10000. Sadly, this is not nearly enough.

Second issue with class story - longetivity. My company wouldnt do any class story if it takes few hours to finish it and months to produce. Story driven player will unsub when finished and my company sinks down because we invested a lot and got only 15$ from each player.

This is all simplified ofc, but you get the picture.

[Ghostius]

take story from tor and what you get? Your typical, repetitive and extremely boring mmo, without any features that place it over the other. it doesnt have best graphics, best pvp and best end game. TOR is average without story m8. TOR is 4th mmo ive decided to sub after the trial, and only 2nd ive resubed (the other being eve). Kill the story and you will basically kill the game-if you do not realise that vast amounts of subbers aren't here for pvp or op grind fest but for story and rp'ing, you are clueless.

 

Hm, where did I say I want to kill the story? I love story just as much as you do. Vast amounts of subbers are all here for different reasons, some for story, some for pvp, some for rp, some for all of it and some for some of it.

All I said people want ToR to be something it is not and keep insisting on it on the wrong place.