ivanhedgehog Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 Bioware is missing out on a big cash cow, mounts that can carry passengers. That would be a hot item in a cartel pack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadDutchman Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 It would also be hard to implement Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivanhedgehog Posted March 27, 2016 Author Share Posted March 27, 2016 (edited) It would also be hard to implement you are speaking from an in depth knowledge of software engineering or just talking out of your ***? Edited March 27, 2016 by ivanhedgehog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andryah Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 (edited) you are speaking from an in depth knowledge of software engineering or just talking out of your ***? Nice ad hominem you have going there. Common sense dictates that anything that fundamentally changes the mobility dynamics of multiple unrelated characters in an MMO moving in unison = more then just writing a little code, slapping it into the existing code, and releasing it to the world. So yeah, it is very likely much harder then you are willing to admit. By the way, before you also ad hominem me.. I'm not against multi-rider mounts. I am simply pointing out that most people with common sense can recognize that such an addition would not be trivial, particularly for Bioware who habitually releases silly bugs into the wild... which IMO is a testament to the massive and chaotic code base the current team inherited from the original game development team 4 years ago. The code base they have to work with probably looks similar to the mythical Gordian Knot. All that said, I do disagree with you that this idea represents some cash cow for the studio. This is something that would likely be used predominately by guilds and premades. It has little or no value to random coagulations of characters in game. And in the context of cartel packs.. they are already huge cash cows and Bioware has demonstrated that they know how to put shinies in the packs that will keep them turbo-charged as cash cows. All you have to do is put one thing in a pack that is super rare and desired by the average player in game (regardless of their guild or premade or PuG interests and affiliations). In other words, group content does not = more cash cowing in the packs. Edited March 27, 2016 by Andryah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ryniloym Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 FFXIV has it. Of course they make you jump through hoops to get it. "pay for a wedding" "get five friends to sub" and so on and so forth. and their mounts fly. in specific zones. after you collect current spots while parkouring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivanhedgehog Posted March 27, 2016 Author Share Posted March 27, 2016 Nice ad hominem you have going there. Common sense dictates that anything that fundamentally changes the mobility dynamics of multiple unrelated characters in an MMO moving in unison = more then just writing a little code, slapping it into the existing code, and releasing it to the world. So yeah, it is very likely much harder then you are willing to admit. By the way, before you also ad hominem me.. I'm not against multi-rider mounts. I am simply pointing out that most people with common sense can recognize that such an addition would not be trivial, particularly for Bioware who habitually releases silly bugs into the wild... which IMO is a testament to the massive and chaotic code base the current team inherited from the original game development team 4 years ago. The code base they have to work with probably looks similar to the mythical Gordian Knot. All that said, I do disagree with you that this idea represents some cash cow for the studio. This is something that would likely be used predominately by guilds and premades. It has little or no value to random coagulations of characters in game. And in the context of cartel packs.. they are already huge cash cows and Bioware has demonstrated that they know how to put shinies in the packs that will keep them turbo-charged as cash cows. All you have to do is put one thing in a pack that is super rare and desired by the average player in game (regardless of their guild or premade or PuG interests and affiliations). In other words, group content does not = more cash cowing in the packs. You and I have absolutely zero knowledge as to how hard it would be to program this. zero. neither of us have seen their code base. allowing players to play together does have a value to the devs, otherwise why would they have advertised level sync as a way for friends to play together. The person I was replying to made a wild assed guess as to if it would be hard. I am making no claims either way, but feel it would be financially worth their while to look into it. It would be used by the same people that level sync was supposed to help, and they spent quite a bit to make that happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andryah Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 (edited) It would be used by the same people that level sync was supposed to help, and they spent quite a bit to make that happen. 1) things like Level Sync have much broader application to the player base. It radically altered the player bases access and interest in the various planets which was a huge improvement in the game IMO. I get that some people don't like it, but overall I think it has raised the appeal of spending time on the various planets. 2) Except for leveling a new character (which is most efficiently done solo these days) Most people insta-port to most content these days. So in reality, things like level sync and all the heroics that it is largely centered around..... degrades the value of multi-rider mounts. People insta-port more then ride mounts or taxis, as of 4.0. Again, I'm not against the idea of the mounts, but I do not share your view of how much extra cash flow they would generate VS the investment of effort and time required to implement them and release them without serious bugs. In other words, even without ability to view their code, I've worked on enough complex software efforts over the years to know that a major change =/= simple easy low hanging fruit for the studio to monetize. Edited March 27, 2016 by Andryah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nothing_Shines Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 (edited) Companions were supposed to ride with us in the double seater mounts like the taxis at some point during dev and BW could never get it to work right, so they dropped it. Might be too big a pain with the Jerry-rigged engine. Edited March 27, 2016 by Nothing_Shines Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadDutchman Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 you are speaking from an in depth knowledge of software engineering or just talking out of your ***? lol, the one thing I find more amusing than armchair developers are the forum warriors who think every technical statement made on these forums are made by an armchair developer. For the record, yes I am speaking from a knowledge of software engineering, it is my profession, but in this case more from common sense. Think about it for a second rather than swing that forum sword. Companions are an entirely different system than the PCs are. This is why we'll never (or likely never anyway) get the Outfit Designer for companions, as stated by the devs. Now, if they can't get Outfit Designer to work, more than barebones companion emotes and the like working, why would you think multi crew speeders could be done easily? Keep in mind, just because they may look stationary while riding, they most certainly are not. Every movement, turn, bank etc will require animations and yet another thing for the game to track the position of. All that for a very small cosmetic improvement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fleurdelis Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 It would also be hard to implement No it isn't. WOW has multi person mounts and chairs you can actually sit on. Star Wars Galaxies had multiplayer mounts and all the furniture you could ever want to sit on. Both of those games were developed over 10 years ago yet this game doesn't have either function. It obviously isn't that hard, I would say its more of being lazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadDutchman Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 No it isn't. WOW has multi person mounts and chairs you can actually sit on. Star Wars Galaxies had multiplayer mounts and all the furniture you could ever want to sit on. Both of those games were developed over 10 years ago yet this game doesn't have either function. It obviously isn't that hard, I would say its more of being lazy. and WOW and SWG used the same engine and systems that SWTOR uses right? Had BW designed it from the start to work that way, yes it would be easy. But they didn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsillah Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 You and I have absolutely zero knowledge as to how hard it would be to program this. zero. neither of us have seen their code base. allowing players to play together does have a value to the devs, otherwise why would they have advertised level sync as a way for friends to play together. The person I was replying to made a wild assed guess as to if it would be hard. I am making no claims either way, but feel it would be financially worth their while to look into it. It would be used by the same people that level sync was supposed to help, and they spent quite a bit to make that happen. The reality is this. A mount in any shape or form as it is now is a matter of swapping skins. Adding special flourish effects adds something more than just a skin, because there is now an added triggered effect. That is by definition more complex. To create a skin that allows another player to travel with you...well, you don't have to be an experienced coder to understand that that is a lot more complex than what is on offer now. And before you give me the same treatment, think about this. The idea has been brought up various times before in the past. It's not like you came up with a new idea here. If they hadn't thought of it themselves, they certainly have been aware of it for some time now. And here's the thing. If it was an easy thing to pogram that they could get lots of cash out of, surely they would've done it by now because it would've been an easy win for them and in the end they want to make money or are you saying we can't know that either? And besides, it is YOUR assumption that lots of people want this and are willing to spend a lot on it. That is also something you do not know. So don't harp on him, when you base your thread entirely on an assumption. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_mike Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 And before you give me the same treatment, think about this. The idea has been brought up various times before in the past. It's not like you came up with a new idea here. If they hadn't thought of it themselves, they certainly have been aware of it for some time now. And here's the thing. If it was an easy thing to pogram that they could get lots of cash out of, surely they would've done it by now because it would've been an easy win for them and in the end they want to make money or are you saying we can't know that either? Linkie: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aswtor.com%2Fcommunity%2F+multiple+person+mounts&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 We really need forum moderators here. Dupe threads make it so much harder to find things when we're trying to help folks with their questions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 Companions were supposed to ride with us in the double seater mounts like the taxis at some point during dev and BW could never get it to work right, so they dropped it. Might be too big a pain with the Jerry-rigged engine. The biggest issue was the non-human sized companions specifically M1-4X, but the larger bipedal companions like Broodmark, Bowdaar and Qyzen did not work so either; they did not fit into the space designated as "companion seat." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunafox Posted March 27, 2016 Share Posted March 27, 2016 I think it would be a nice idea, and would love to have one. If they were able to have mounts that carry passengers in omg...I'm going to say it...in SWG...which is an old game, I'm not sure why they can't manage to do the same thing here, but alas, I'm no programmer, so maybe there are huge differences in the coding, I don't know. But I love the idea. Either a vehicle that carries our preferred companion, or an actual passenger/friend...but I also understand why the person who said it was hard to implement said that, because that's usually the response to our suggests, or 'it's on the wall of crazy.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richiesilva Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 If Forsaken World could do it so can SWTOR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newyankalt Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 You and I have absolutely zero knowledge as to how hard it would be to program this. zero. neither of us have seen their code base. allowing players to play together does have a value to the devs, otherwise why would they have advertised level sync as a way for friends to play together. The person I was replying to made a wild assed guess as to if it would be hard. I am making no claims either way, but feel it would be financially worth their while to look into it. It would be used by the same people that level sync was supposed to help, and they spent quite a bit to make that happen. We're better off without it, if they could even get past the difficulty off implementing it than I guarantee it would be a rushed buggy mess that nobody will be happy about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadDutchman Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 If Forsaken World could do it so can SWTOR. This is entirely the wrong idea to have. There are NO similarities between SWTOR and pretty much any other game. Even other games using the Hero Engine are not really comparable, since BW has so thoroughly hacked apart their version of Hero it's its own beast. There are many, many different ways of creating all the different internal systems that make up this game. They have their advantages and disadvantages, there is no one size fits all method. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osryri Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 Nice ad hominem you have going there. Common sense dictates that anything that fundamentally changes the mobility dynamics of multiple unrelated characters in an MMO moving in unison = more then just writing a little code, slapping it into the existing code, and releasing it to the world. So yeah, it is very likely much harder then you are willing to admit. By the way, before you also ad hominem me.. I'm not against multi-rider mounts. I am simply pointing out that most people with common sense can recognize that such an addition would not be trivial, particularly for Bioware who habitually releases silly bugs into the wild... which IMO is a testament to the massive and chaotic code base the current team inherited from the original game development team 4 years ago. The code base they have to work with probably looks similar to the mythical Gordian Knot. All that said, I do disagree with you that this idea represents some cash cow for the studio. This is something that would likely be used predominately by guilds and premades. It has little or no value to random coagulations of characters in game. And in the context of cartel packs.. they are already huge cash cows and Bioware has demonstrated that they know how to put shinies in the packs that will keep them turbo-charged as cash cows. All you have to do is put one thing in a pack that is super rare and desired by the average player in game (regardless of their guild or premade or PuG interests and affiliations). In other words, group content does not = more cash cowing in the packs. SWG did this years ago. Can't be too hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrazyCT Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 How about just using "/follow" and not spending time/money on coding this pointless addition? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fleurdelis Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 and WOW and SWG used the same engine and systems that SWTOR uses right? Had BW designed it from the start to work that way, yes it would be easy. But they didn't. You make my point. SWG and WOW both use a very old engine yet they could do it. Don't even say they would have had to implement it in the beginning cause SWG came out with an expansion in its final years that gave starships that we could actually fly. Not in the original design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andryah Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 (edited) You make my point. SWG and WOW both use a very old engine yet they could do it. Don't even say they would have had to implement it in the beginning cause SWG came out with an expansion in its final years that gave starships that we could actually fly. Not in the original design. If you cannot tell, from even casual observation..... that the method, mechanics, and approach is radically different for SWG, WoW, SWTOR, and most other MMOs... then frankly this is a waste of conversation. Making any attempt at comparing "engines" between games is pointless. Even two games using the same core engine could find it difficult or impossible to implement in one game what exists in another. Most people don't even understand what it means when they use the term to be honest. While I have no direct visibility on the code base that is SWTOR, I can in fact tell from casual day to day interaction with the game that the methods and systems used to present SWTOR to us every day are VASTLY different then earlier MMOs from last decade (and yes, I have played most of them). Even SWTOR is vastly different then it was at launch. Certainly they could do this in some manner. The question though is the commercial viability of doing it. As in.... how much effort and time, and what else has to be dropped in order to do it... because every change to the game costs something and resource trade-offs are a fact of life for MMOs, even WoW. The low post and view count on this very thread argues against the OP's contention. And contrary to the claim in the OP... there does not appear to be any objective indication that this is something most players want and would be willing to spend large amounts in the cartel market to get it. IF it was easy and simple to do (as you have mandated above), given it comes up every so often in the forum, it likely would have made it onto their QoL releases in patching by now. Clearly... it's not. And frankly there are many more important things for them to be putting their resources on besides this. Edited March 28, 2016 by Andryah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airehn Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 WoW had vendor and passenger mounts years before this game was even released. For whatever reason, BW is dragging their feet on this issue. It should have been available from launch. Especially since they were working on having our companion ride next to us on certain taxis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knorlac Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 Certainly they could do this in some manner. The question though is the commercial viability of doing it. As in.... how much effort and time, and what else has to be dropped in order to do it... because every change to the game costs something and resource trade-offs are a fact of life for MMOs, even WoW. The low post and view count on this very thread argues against the OP's contention. And contrary to the claim in the OP... there does not appear to be any objective indication that this is something most players want and would be willing to spend large amounts in the cartel market to get it. IF it was easy and simple to do (as you have mandated above), given it comes up every so often in the forum, it likely would have made it onto their QoL releases in patching by now. Clearly... it's not. And frankly there are many more important things for them to be putting their resources on besides this. I completely agree with this assessment. It's common sense that implementing this wouldn't be a trivial task. If it truly was, they would've done it by now. I also see no indication that it would indeed represent a huge revenue potential. Why would they invest time and money in this, when putting out a rare item like the unstable saber, which requires little to no additional coding works just as well and probably even better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JennyFlynn Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 I've been 'spoiled' having 2 and 3 person mounts in games such as WoW so naturally I'd enjoy seeing it in SWTOR too especially since some vehicle models do seem to offer a passenger seat, visually anyhows, but not having one isn't the end of the world. It's one of those "it would be fun but I don't need it to play the game" things. In terms of coding I don't think it would be a huge stretch if BW was genuinely interested in adding that feature but I'd actually rather just see them focus their attention and work force on existing bugs than fuss over new things like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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