Reflections from a returning player after 15 years of Bioware game experience

[Morkatog]

Recently I've returned to the old republic after having taken a break after clearing karagga's palace on nightmare difficulty. I've played every Bioware game created for PC except for Jade Empire and many, many games from other designers in the last 18 years. I've played both casually and hardcore and as such consider myself in a position where I can form a well informed opinion about what I'm playing compared to what's out on the market.

 

I could spend a long time writing about the epic games Bioware has made in the past, and for SWTOR about how fantastic the leveling experience was when SWTOR came out, but let's focus on the trend of the last few years. Why the last few years? I believe Bioware made some fantastic games, but ever since 2011 I've seen a decline in the quality of games being made by Bioware.

 

- Mass Effect 3: even with DLC the ending was disappointing. I can make no more of it, the entire franchise was fantastic, right up to the end. A story that goes around on the internet is that the story writing team wasn't involved in writing the end. Whatever the reason for ME's end, there's no logic for such a sharp decline in quality that we're used to when we look at Bioware's track record the previous 13 years.

- Dragon Age 2: when I first read that a choice was made to keep the scenes more sober and with less detail in them I was disappointed and feared for exactly what happened; a non memorable story, poorly designed scenarios.

- SWTOR then; I really enjoyed the leveling experience. It was fantastic, a welcome new standard in the MMORPG genre and fulfilling what we hoped it would be (writing from an Empire perspective). Unfortunately though the end game material couldn't keep people pulled in for too long for reasons that are all too well known by the community. The strongest appeal of the game in my opinion is that it's still Star Wars, one way or the other. Either way, after the initial release of the game it felt to me that effort in continuous improvement of the game and creating new content has dropped sharply.

 

I can't help but wonder why. I can't imagine that anyone of the persons working at Bioware since the beginning is satisfied with the way things are going or that you'd want to put any less effort into the designing of your games. The quality of the games however have declined in the last few years and I can't help but wonder if it's all the pushing from EA that's causing it (considering how hard they made some other releases suck, most recently buggy Battlefield 4) and how much that has to do with the retiring of all the original founders of Bioware.

 

My suggestion: let US help. Many people who play this game have a passion for it. Give us a planet designer / editor, give us a flashpoint / op / battleground editor, give us a standard of models that you use so we as a community can develop content (which of course would need approval before being accepted).

 

To stick more closely to my original intend of the post though, here's some suggestions of things that I find faulty after I returned to the game:

- Ops and flashpoints can be cleared too easily and gearing from it goes too easily as well. Scale up the difficulty and decreae the drop chances. This will keep PvE players working for a longer time and give you more time to design new content.

- Bring out more new Flashpoints and Operations. There's simply not enough of them (especially the amount of flashpoints at 55 compared to the amount of Operations). I'm not talking about the recycled ones either. They need to be brand new like the Zerga ones.

- Click boxes of both players and monsters need to be enlarged. Too often do I find that I want to click something but you have to precisely click on his/her figure. Let me illustrate this with a clear example: if a target is [ ] big I want to be able to click at an [ ] are to be able to target him/her.

- Split arenas from the regular battlegrounds and create 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 brackets for them.

- PvP matchmaking doesn't work as intended. Simple example: 3 healers and a tank vs 3 dps and a healer in the 4vs4 arenas is a pure joke.

- PvP is extremely tough on people who just jump into it. Give people an ability to buy green or blue items for their level with corresponding stats so they don't get instagibbed and feel like they have a fighting chance.

- daily quests and commendations are useless because hardmode flashpoints are easy enough that you can do it without needing the gear.

- skill usage in a dodgy fps situation: how often knockback doesn't work when either my PC lags or my fps flickers for a split second is just ridiculous (yes, I'll be upgrading soon, but still..)

- stability / fps still needs to be taken a look at. I've played games where movement feels a lot more fuent. I'm not sure what I'd suggest to fix this, but I'd recommend taking a look at the competition out there. Unfriendly controls are a major game killer.

- Dual spec: it's still not part of the game even though we've asked for it since day 1.

- Cartel market: I heard complaints about it, but personally I think this feature is fine as it is. If you're a subscriber you get enough cartel points to get what you need, anything else is purely cosmetic/vanity items. Since that's where the complaints of players are focussed I'd like to remind them that this is optional and you don't have to spend money on it.

starfighter: (seperate as it's new and has enough issues on its own)

- the tutorial doesn't prepare you for the real thing

- controls: although understandable why you went for this option I find them to be completely user unfriendly. Try experimenting with seperated mouse targeting / movement.

- allow us to stop moving.

- allow us to change colors of the HUD elements.

- You can win without landing a single kill as a team. Some skill is required to pull it off, but it eliminates the idea of PvP space based gameplay.

- the first cap of a sattelite often is decisive for the entire match because it can be tough to kill people if they just fly around corners / through the satellite building and thus makes recapturing the satellite too hard.

- one shotting people is too large a factor. This shouldn't be a sniping / missile contest but a dogfight contest.

- you have a chance to miss / evade primary weapons, but it's already way harder to properly target people if you both know what you're doing compared to how hard it is to get a missile lock. If you aim properly with your primary weapon you should always have a 100% hit chance unless some defensive cooldown is up.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Morkatog

[Zorvan]

..... Edited January 28, 2015 by Zorvan

[Tsillah]

No way. ME3 was a much better game than ME2. The ending was not disappointing to me at all. In fact I find that most arguments of people that I've read boil down to not getting the ending. I played all 3 ME games through and through and the third is actually my favourite.

 

DA2 I agree with, was not as good as it could or should have been, but part 3 is coming out next year and can't be comparatively judged yet in my view. At the same time DA2 was a game that was focused to much around the console and I think that's a mistake they won't repeat, especially looking at how DA3 is shaping up as we speak.

 

SWTOR, to me, is a great game. But take note, it's an MMO and not a single player game so it can't be thrown in the same comparison and as it stands, this is BW's first attempt at an MMO as far as I know. Still, I completely disagree with your assessment that gearing up is too easy. Perhaps for you it is but for most people in the game it's not and you should know by now that catering to that percentage of hardcore gamers will always be limited because you are the most cost ineffective group to cater to. You blow through content too quickly and have finished hard modes and more when 80% or more of the population is still leveling. No company is that mad to try to keep up with that. I have 18 characters. I am glad that I don't have to take such a long time to gear up one character. And believe me I haven't even touched TFB NiM or DF/DP HM beyond a first boss.

 

You made a really long wall of text and because you played games for 15 years you suddenly think that your opinions are a correct judgment of what's happening. Well, I have different opinions as you can see, so what does that mean?

 

It means you are a different type of player and the only thing you could claim therefore is not that the quality has gone down but that you don't enjoy BW games as before. My expectation is that DA3 will be better than DA2. Time will tell of course but from what I've seen it should.

 

Of course I do recognise that the transition to EA did create some quality loss. DA2 was an example but also ME2, though improved from a gameplay point of view, definitely had a very thin story line (gather your companions and go to the end boss fight), I honestly think ME3 was a much better game than ME2 and my favourite of the trilogy in the end.

[theonetruebleed]

Not just from EAware, but from gaming altogether.

 

When it's over, it's over. You put on your sunglasses and you go home. BW had a great run, the good people who decided to leave the industry must have felt like they had no more mountains to climb, and who can blame them. Sadly for everyone else, they took their wealth of creativity and experience with them.

Edited December 23, 2013 by theonetruebleed

[Zorvan]

..... Edited January 28, 2015 by Zorvan

[QuiDonJorn]

So many opinions, so many opinions. What are we to do?

[Callaron]

No way. ME3 was a much better game than ME2. The ending was not disappointing to me at all. In fact I find that most arguments of people that I've read boil down to not getting the ending. I played all 3 ME games through and through and the third is actually my favourite.

 

There are many things I love about ME3, but the ending sadly isn't one of them.

I think for a large part of the fanbase they missed the ball when they decided to make the "happy ending" Shepard's arm rising from the rubble on the Citadel - I'm sure it was meant to feel all heroic and stuff, but... eh, different tastes - different people.

Maybe it was meant as a lead-in to the sequel - since that's how Hollywood often uses that kind of scene too.

At least the devs have acknowledged that they misjudged their playerbase; "We underestimated just how attached people would get to their character and his/her crewmates!" to paraphrase it, along with saying they learned from it.

[Sniper-Agent]

I'm inclined to agree with you, OP.

 

I think a lot of it has to do with the general direction games are heading. Over the past few years we've seen a huge push for profits. I'm not saying that developers and publishers don't deserve to make money, it just seems that the quality of games has taken a back step to monetising every aspect of gaming. We see constant recycling of ideas and game design with the mentality of "Well it made money last year so let's just do the same thing again".

Even with the release of current generation systems (XBone & PS4) we saw developers trying to charge upwards of $150 for high end cars in Gran Turismo and Forza.

 

How many people remember when EA stood for Electronic Artists. That meant something. A group of people so passionate and dedicated to the industry they worked in that they saw what they where doing as art. Now we're left with Electronic Arts, a powerhouse of stripped down studios who's job it is to maximise profit and meet neigh impossible deadlines regardless of the fact that the quality of a game may suffer.

 

I think Boware is a prime example of this. Once a studio who could turn anything they touched into gold, now all we see rushed, lacklustre games often with disappointing endings to what once where amazing Bioware written stories. Day one DLC has become almost mandatory if you want to see how things should have ended.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Sniper-Agent
Spelling fails

[branmakmuffin]

So many opinions, so many opinions. What are we to do?

I dunno. Are any of these people Certified Gaming Legends?

[Zorvan]

..... Edited January 28, 2015 by Zorvan

[LeonBraun]

OP you need to play Starfighter a little more... Almost all of what you posted there is either a non issue, or incorrect.

[Rafaman]

Here is my nickle on this. I will try and be brief but...

 

I'm an old timer. Without getting too nostalgic and strolling down memory lane, I'll simply say that I think I've seen it all from Zork to GTA5. And IMO... we are our own worst enemy. In the old days, story and creativity had to be king. Graphics weren't much to look at and neither were in game mechanics. So, devs had to make due and they did. Games like Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle come to mind. They were somewhat interactive story boards and nothing more. They were fantastic entertainment. But our expectations were low.

 

However, around that same time, Doom said hello world and knocked PC gaming on it's butt. It was a fantastic time. We actually had a game that approximated an environment with real physics and an immersion never seen before due to that environment. Note, the story wasn't great but everything else about that game was so ground breaking that it broke the mold. And lest we forget that it introduced network gaming, PvP and Co-Op, to the masses in that environment. Again... so beyond anything else available it dominated gaming and set the course. It was an "oh ****!" moment for gamers and we began to realize that devs could do the impossible. Our expectations grew and grew and the elite dev-houses met every hurdle.

 

Today, our expectations for a game continue to be limitless, but even the elite devs can't meet those expectations very often. The amount of code, financial resources, and time for development do not line up with what we demand. Often, hard decisions have to be made by devs on what they can and will deliver. And inevitably some of us are disappointed.

 

TL;DR: BW has failed to meet our expectations. They set the bar so high that failure was inevitable. The gaming world has changed on the dev side and gone are the days where they try and raise the bar. Now they are just hoping to survive.

[LeonBraun]

^ Nah, what you really need is a few people with an ouch of creativity or visionary nature in them, and not just business model followers trying to make a quick buck.

[AndasKastor]

Count me in the group that liked the ME3 ending. A brief caveat... I didn't play right at release and I understand they patched a different ending (or options) in so I may not have played the original.

 

I also think that expectations are a bit high for games (MMOs at least) coming out nowadays. People want to live in the world, but they don't want to pay for the world. The subscription rates on MMOs have not increased in 15 years and I routinely see people posting (not necessarily on this forum, but others) that games nowadays are not worth 50 cents a day for full access. I'd be curious if anyone can come up with another good or service that hasn't increased in 15 years

[Rafaman]

^ Nah, what you really need is a few people with an ouch of creativity or visionary nature in them, and not just business model followers trying to make a quick buck.

 

Heh. If it were only that easy. Visionaries need a good team, the team needs good management, and that management needs the support of a good publisher. Notice I said support and not a Tyrant. It is a tough mix to get especially when there is a shortage of all three.

 

The industry learned some hard lessons from Daikatana and Duke Nukem II. These are games that were led by the visionaries. These are games whose creative process was valued above all else. As a result they were vaporware. The industry learned that letting rock star devs have their way with a game with little or unstable management is disastrous. It learned that allowing innovation to run a muck and pushing for perfection also meant a continuous push of launch dates and commitments to gamers not to mention the business. Even though those games were finally released they were catastrophic failures in every way. Most notably, that innovation and creativity that delayed the games in the first place was non-existent. That, IMO, was the end of the era of celebrity devs and independent dev houses that ran their entire business including self publishing.

 

The point is with regard to BW, is that for a long time BW had a good mix. But as gamers expectations changed and became less attainable, the business needs began to outweigh the priority of releasing new and ground breaking games.

[Aries_cz]

Well as for the lack of innovation, it is really hard to come up with some revolutionary system after 20+ years. I mean, cars are basically still the same, 4 wheels, engine and a steering wheel, yet we do not see that many people saying that there is a terrible lack of innovation there.

RPGs have changed very little in the way they are played, but that has been the case since Dungeons and Dragons, the only thing changing was the setting and some minor tweaks in what is allowed.

Strategy games have also changed very little since Dune. Build a base, mine resources, make units, crush enemy.

Action shooters have changed even less, they just started adding RPG elements to them.

And i could go on and on.

 

Simply put, a lot of things that we can imagine have been done already, with varying degree of business success (which is important, as money makes the world go around). I can only imagine that the next step in gaming evolution will come with some radical development on the field of AI or something like that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now to what OP said, as I got little carried away in my rant

ME3 was good game, if we decide to overlook endings other than Destroy, which were strange, to put it simply. However, 10 minutes should not invalidate the remaining 40+ hours of the series.

DA2 was, for me, much more memorable than DAO. It felt much more like a personal story than just "village idiot saves the kingdom" of DAO. Plus, the DLCs were much better and I think they show how the developers wanted to make the game, if it was not pushed out of the door too quickly (which it was). Fortunately, it looks like folks at EA learned and gave BioWare plenty of time (not to mention their awesome Frostbite engine) to create DA: Inquisition, which looks fabulous.

SWTOR Editors: Sadly, this would require a huge team to just check and fix whatever the community creates, not to mention testing it for various hidden glitches that players might leave for themselves to find (aka "stand here to get phat loot" zone). I just do not see that as financially viable. More content would be great, but people simply need to understand how much time it takes to actually program and build something. It is not like devs can click "Make Content" button and be done with it.

[BrianDavion]

the OP lost any crediability with me when he suggested this game would be improved by lengthening the gearing up treadmill.

[Yuppy]

Well as for the lack of innovation, it is really hard to come up with some revolutionary system after 20+ years. I mean, cars are basically still the same, 4 wheels, engine and a steering wheel, yet we do not see that many people saying that there is a terrible lack of innovation there.

RPGs have changed very little in the way they are played, but that has been the case since Dungeons and Dragons, the only thing changing was the setting and some minor tweaks in what is allowed.

Strategy games have also changed very little since Dune. Build a base, mine resources, make units, crush enemy.

Action shooters have changed even less, they just started adding RPG elements to them.

And i could go on and on.

 

Simply put, a lot of things that we can imagine have been done already, with varying degree of business success (which is important, as money makes the world go around). I can only imagine that the next step in gaming evolution will come with some radical development on the field of AI or something.

 

Simply put! And here it is. Simply put the only thing that has changed is "us" the consumer! Our greed for the hurrying up to get a game out to the hurry up and update it after its been out for 10 mins. People that play mmo's nowadays are a whole lot different than the mud's generation, hell its alot different even from when AC and EQ smacked us all in the face after the success of Ultima.

 

Patience of playing a game to be the best or obtain the best is gone and as my sig suggests we have no one else to blame, because the devs that were brilliant back then is a newer generation of brilliant now, but we give them very little time to expand a world or do this or that cause our demand to add more dungeons or races is so now, now, now!

 

The devs we all seek are out there. Its just they have to eat too right? I really believe there are still gamers making games for gamers, it just dont happen in somebodys house anymore. Its happening in big moneys living room, and big money is over the shoulder saying hurry you filthy maggots, the consumer is winning, must make new stuff faster!

Edited December 23, 2013 by Yuppy

[Sztoid]

- allow us to stop moving.

 

Have you tried pressing X?

[Callaron]

the OP lost any crediability with me when he suggested this game would be improved by lengthening the gearing up treadmill.

 

You should've seen that coming when the title involved bragging about 15 years of experience.

[Costello]

I was agreeing up until

 

- Ops and flashpoints can be cleared too easily and gearing from it goes too easily as well. Scale up the difficulty and decreae the drop chances. This will keep PvE players working for a longer time and give you more time to design new content.

 

You think making them harder with less reward will make them more fun? They are already horribly repeative and thats just doing them for the weekly or the gear drop as it is where you can get through a hard mode with a good chance of not winning anything. To then make it so you have a harder time with less chance of getting something. Thats just going to make them even more pointless where the risk and time and effort isn't worth the reward and you may as well stop playing the moment you get to end game.

[Tsillah]

There are many things I love about ME3, but the ending sadly isn't one of them.

I think for a large part of the fanbase they missed the ball when they decided to make the "happy ending" Shepard's arm rising from the rubble on the Citadel - I'm sure it was meant to feel all heroic and stuff, but... eh, different tastes - different people.

Maybe it was meant as a lead-in to the sequel - since that's how Hollywood often uses that kind of scene too.

At least the devs have acknowledged that they misjudged their playerbase; "We underestimated just how attached people would get to their character and his/her crewmates!" to paraphrase it, along with saying they learned from it.

 

The OP claims that the general quality of BW has been going down as time progresses. Some hate the ending of ME3 and others like it. That will always happen just like with movies. But to say the game is of less quality because he didn't like the ending is just not a real argument to prove his point. The reason he uses is, is simple. He buys into the negative media hype around. I did too initially (stupid I know) but when I gave the game a chance I actually really like the game. He played it and he didn't like it but he feels his point is valid because others didn't like it.

 

But even though the ending of a story will have a big influence on your perception of the whole, I do no think it makes it that the game is of low quality. If the whole story was poorly written, the voice acting crap, the mechanics clunky etc. Then he would have a point...but that isn't the case.

 

DA2 he does have a point with because there were a number of elements that we can point to that made the game less of an experience. Graphically the game was built with copy/paste to the point where it was noticeable. Also the travel system which only allowed you to teleport to confined areas made the game feel more boxed in. The story line was still pretty good so it wasn't all bad and the fact that you played a completely different protagonist also didn't help matters. In any case there are some clear points that can be made on that game, but the 3rd installment has to come still next year.

 

The OP wants to prove a trend. For DA we only have 2 points to compare and you need at least a 3rd to even start talking about a trend.

 

My point is this: he cannot prove this trend he's talking about because either we don't have enough marking points to see a trend or he simply didn't like the end of another and decides it's a decline.

 

SWTOR has the best story telling any MMO ever had. He brushes over that way too quickly and again he personally feels endgame is too easy, but I think the current situation is just right, simply because I know how many people haven't beaten HMs yet and are still poorly geared and I think that catering to the ever hungry hardcore players is not a measure of quality but misusing resources because they simply will never be happy. They burn through content, and if they beat endgame it's too easy and boring and if it's too hard for them even it's ridiculous for them and shouldn't be that hard. There isn't much middle ground there if you really think about it. Hardcore players think something is easy when they can beat it. But that's a load of bull. If a majority of players can beat it within a matter of weeks then it's too easy, but I think we all know that hardcore players are not a majority and shouldn't see themselves as the typical SWTOR player, because this game is not made just for them, especially because they are a minority. If they find NiMs easy, well then they are good players in that sense, but really it's not worth adding content at the speed they want it because no company can afford that. Maybe Blizzard, but then nobody has an income as they do and as I never played it I can't comment on the content in WoW.

 

But BW's strongest point has always been story telling and even though DA2 and ME2 were weaker in comparison, ME3 was stronger again and DA3 we will see next year.

[Callaron]

The OP wants to prove a trend. For DA we only have 2 points to compare and you need at least a 3rd to even start talking about a trend.

 

My point is this: he cannot prove this trend he's talking about because either we don't have enough marking points to see a trend or he simply didn't like the end of another and decides it's a decline.

 

Oh yeah, I figured that was the case - and I agree on DA2, it fell short of expectations in a lot of ways... heck I've seen devs comment on it over on the Bioware forums.

It was to be expected that it would turn out to be a rather sloppy game though, considering how quickly it followed after DA: Awakening.

ME3 was a masterpiece in many ways, I loved how it tied so many things together, such an ungodly amount of NPCs and plot choices for the devs to weave into the story - and they did a very good job at it.

Gameplay wise and graphically it also did a good job, and the Citadel and Leviathan were probably Bioware's most polished DLCs ever - and I even enjoyed the MP part of the game, so that leaves just the ending to keep it from getting a perfect score from me.

Hardly a failure as a game.

 

When it comes to the storytelling part SWTOR only has one competitor for me, and that's The Secret World - which I think does an awesome job with its conversations, cutscenes and the all-around atmosphere.

But... it has no dialogues whatsoever, and no companions - both things I got so hooked on from Bioware's games that those will always have an advantage over others for me.

Defiance does a pretty good job at storytelling in an MMO too, but I'm just not into shooters - so it tends to take a backseat to the other two.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Callaron

[Uber_the_Goober]

Recently I've returned to the old republic after having taken a break after clearing karagga's palace on nightmare difficulty.

 

<way too much crap snipped out to save the hamsters>

 

If you aim properly with your primary weapon you should always have a 100% hit chance unless some defensive cooldown is up.

 

Seriously, I do not care ONE BIT about anything you said, and for one reason alone. You lack CONCISION. Look it up. Work on it.

 

Concision, brevity, wit. These are your tools. Learn to wield them.

[TUXs]

Recently I've returned to the old republic after having taken a break after clearing karagga's palace on nightmare difficulty.

 

- Ops and flashpoints can be cleared too easily and gearing from it goes too easily as well. Scale up the difficulty and decreae the drop chances. This will keep PvE players working for a longer time and give you more time to design new content.

 

Uh...Karagga's is level 50 content - even on Nightmare mode, it's a cake walk for almost every player.

 

Lemme suggest you try a HM Scum or either of the 2 Oricon Ops...basing your conclusion on the easiest Operation from the OLD design team, is silly.