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Quarterly Producer Letter for Q2 2024 ×

State of the game #4?

Hezip

By Hezip
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Hezip

Hezip

Posted
Posted

Bioware,can we have the current state of the game? Its been about 6 months since your last ''State of the game''.

 

I'm sure many players,especially subscribers would like to know what they will deal with in the future of SWTOR and how many of us players are still around :)

 

Personally,I don't ask for much apart from:

 

-No. of current subs

-No. of Current Players

-What content can we expect in early 2014?

 

Sub count is important to everyone as it actually anwsers a lot of our questions.

 

Content in early 2014 is a big one to me, to break it down:

-A guild focused update? There is lots of improvement needed,let's not lie,this has been asked for since launch

-Approx. date on when Dread operations hit Nightmare mode, I'm mostly curious cause i want to know when i can craft 75/78 rated gear.

 

That is all I can think of for now, thanks for reading :cool:

 

~Hezip

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Darth-Malice

Darth-Malice

Posted
Posted (edited)
The state of the game is free too play. With high priority on making more money through gambling packs and the cartel market. What developers who haven't been laid off have no creative control and admitted at the last cantina event they use the Agile Development system. Meaning they have no long term goals, only week by week things they nitpick at. They won't give you or the player base a timeline of anything because of two reasons. One they are short staffed and if they miss a deadline the community will uproar and call the developers liars (Which many have already done) and two other games could see the timeline and base there content and releases around it. Radio Silence is all we can expect and half arsed replies from the community team commenting about things they have no control or knowledge about but they will "Pass it on". Edited by Darth-Malice
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psandak

psandak

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I want to know what SWTOR 3.0 will be, hopefully something epic.

 

I would not get your hopes up.

 

We will not see WoW-like expansions that are two years in the making with a year of "content patches" and a year of nothing in between. Why? Because the playerbase no longer has the patience.

 

What we will see is more of the RotHC and GSF: small expansions with a planet or two, or some new aspect of the game to dip into. In between will be a handful of a combination of new daily areas, FPs, Operations, and PvP maps; a lot of CM stuff; and some QoL improvements.

 

I am not saying this is bad. In fact just the opposite. With smaller expansions come shorter turn around times. This means that just when the majority of players are done with the current content, new content is released.

 

On the other hand, one of the flaws in the "epic expansion" cycle is that year of anticipation. The announcement is made that expansion X is coming out, but in between that announcement and the official release date, not much else happens. Bugs are fixed, maybe a QoL feature is added but there is no more content.

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Infernixx

Infernixx

Posted
Posted
I would not get your hopes up.

 

We will not see WoW-like expansions that are two years in the making with a year of "content patches" and a year of nothing in between. Why? Because the playerbase no longer has the patience.

 

What we will see is more of the RotHC and GSF: small expansions with a planet or two, or some new aspect of the game to dip into. In between will be a handful of a combination of new daily areas, FPs, Operations, and PvP maps; a lot of CM stuff; and some QoL improvements.

 

I am not saying this is bad. In fact just the opposite. With smaller expansions come shorter turn around times. This means that just when the majority of players are done with the current content, new content is released.

 

On the other hand, one of the flaws in the "epic expansion" cycle is that year of anticipation. The announcement is made that expansion X is coming out, but in between that announcement and the official release date, not much else happens. Bugs are fixed, maybe a QoL feature is added but there is no more content.

 

It should be noted that the GS expansion is 'not' what you describe.

 

Galactic Starfighter has been steadily worked upon for the last year while other teams were hard at work on other projects that resulted in the 2.0 content.

 

My point is that there's no singular 'design' team churning out content conveyor-belt style. There's a number of teams, all working on different things simultaneously, and I would be shocked if one of those teams wasn't working on a RoTHC style 'five more levels' style expansion for release sometime in late 2014.

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Blackholeskipper

Blackholeskipper

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Posted (edited)
My point is that there's no singular 'design' team churning out content conveyor-belt style. There's a number of teams, all working on different things simultaneously, and I would be shocked if one of those teams wasn't working on a RoTHC style 'five more levels' style expansion for release sometime in late 2014.

 

Yea but you have to admit late 2014 is a LONG wait. That means you have to wait longer than a year for 5 levels worth of content. I'd go crazy if I was subscribing and waiting the whole time. And that's well into "next-gen" if you look at the console side of things.

 

I know, the MMO crowd is different but still, it couldn't hurt to add some content at a time when games are making huge leaps forward. Why not do something like EVE and have an expansion every 6 months? Doesn't have to be huge but still something big enough that covers a variety of things. I bet a lot of people would be a lot less impatient that way and complain much less. (For example GSF launching with speech bubbles and the ability to sit, or a new expansion like makeb with guild ships, player housing etc. More things packed in together to please different crowds... not just 2014 - player housing! 2015 - guild ships!).

 

And don't worry, I only subscribe from time to time, don't flame me with "then why are you subbed if you can't wait!" etc. Too many crusading white knights running around here. *phew*

Edited by Blackholeskipper
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Infernixx

Infernixx

Posted
Posted
Yea but you have to admit late 2014 is a LONG wait. That means you have to wait longer than a year for 5 levels worth of content. I'd go crazy if I was subscribing and waiting the whole time. And that's well into "next-gen" if you look at the console side of things.

 

I know, the MMO crowd is different but still, it couldn't hurt to add some content at a time when games are making huge leaps forward. Why not do something like EVE and have an expansion every 6 months? Doesn't have to be huge but still something big enough that covers a variety of things. I bet a lot of people would be a lot less impatient that way and complain much less. (For example GSF launching with speech bubbles and the ability to sit, or a new expansion like makeb with guild ships, player housing etc. More things packed in together to please different crowds... not just 2014 - player housing! 2015 - guild ships!).

 

And don't worry, I only subscribe from time to time, don't flame me with "then why are you subbed if you can't wait!" etc. Too many crusading white knights running around here. *phew*

 

If you look back, you'll see that it's been a mix of 'short term' and 'long term' content added. New raids and Makeb, then a small content patch of fixes and class tweaks, then content patch full of new daily areas and new FPs and raids. Then a big patch of GS content. And we're having more content added in Feb when GS opens to the F2P crowd.

 

So, I wouldn't fret much. We'll get new stuff on a steady basis. The last year has been a solid model of this content-release pattern.

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Blackholeskipper

Blackholeskipper

Posted
Posted (edited)
If you look back, you'll see that it's been a mix of 'short term' and 'long term' content added. New raids and Makeb, then a small content patch of fixes and class tweaks, then content patch full of new daily areas and new FPs and raids. Then a big patch of GS content. And we're having more content added in Feb when GS opens to the F2P crowd.

 

So, I wouldn't fret much. We'll get new stuff on a steady basis. The last year has been a solid model of this content-release pattern.

 

Yea I know but the thing with tiny patch releases like this is that they get buried in patch notes. With mini-expansions they're much more visible and maybe they have the resources to do more since they're not just patching stuff. (I dunno how they request their budget but yea).

 

I mean, as a F2P player/occasional sub, all I'm aware of is that they added Oricon and GSF since Makeb. And cartel packs. And I know they added lots of other stuff but I really don't know what (though the game does seem more polished).

 

With EVE Online they have a page advertising all the additions every 6 months (like this http://www.eveonline.com/rubicon/?utm_source=eveonline.com&utm_medium=Banner&utm_term=Rubicon+is+Live&utm_content=Rubicon+is+Live&utm_campaign=Rubicon+is+Live). <-- this kind of stuff, every 6 months!

 

They also have a section outlining their future vision about what this expansion is about and what's to come. I think this really helps pull in players and let them know the game is constantly being updated, which gives them confidence/incentive to subscribe.

Edited by Blackholeskipper
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Darth_Wicked

Darth_Wicked

Posted
Posted
All i would wish for is the announcement of a sizeable expansion.

 

At this point i dont see how the game can go on without one.

 

I believe one will be announced sooner or later but I doubt it will be released before next year's summer; More like Q4 2014 perhaps. Not sure I'll wait that long to be honest.

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tekhiun

tekhiun

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Posted
I believe one will be announced sooner or later but I doubt it will be released before next year's summer; More like Q4 2014 perhaps. Not sure I'll wait that long to be honest.

 

With wildstar and TESO coming out soon , I am not sure many will. Many of my guildmates have stopped playing altogether and I all see on our guild website are posts about these 2 games. They will need both to fail massively for people to return to swtor, which seems very unlikely.

 

I also know many pvpers that left the game and vouched never to return, many are playing gw2 or rift now and ofc there is FF which is also taking away players.

 

Granted this is only what I have seen on my circle of friends and acquaintances in the game. But if they want to permantly get those players back the new stuff has to be really amazing. The GS made many people come back too but some only played a few days and never reappeared..

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Marb

Marb

Posted
Posted

From the feedback they got from the Makeb expansion, I hope they decide to go with a hybrid of class story / world story with open world "sandpark" elements.

 

Think chapter 4 but with significant class specific alterations set up in a large free-roam region of a new planet.

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GalacticKegger

GalacticKegger

Posted
Posted (edited)
All i would wish for is the announcement of a sizeable expansion.

 

At this point i dont see how the game can go on without one.

We get expansions. But instead of paying an additional $40 every 24 months for a large expansion (Pandaville wasn't much larger than RotHC), subscribers here pay $10 twice every 24 months for 4 smaller expansions that comprise roughly the same amount of content. Similar quantity over time, just half the price and it gets released incrementally. Edited by GalacticKegger
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