Changes to Gearing through Galactic Command

[Tsillah]

I think that first the question needs to be answered with proper argumentation WHY the gearing progress has to be slowed down to begin with. I am not convinced this has been answered satisfactorily.

 

Then assuming there is a defendable reason for that, the question becomes by how much. I see people posting things here that can still be considered rather unforgiving as if they need to be happy with a bare minimum. It's kinda like making minimum wage your highest goal.

 

Personally I feel that the slowing down should be governed by availabilty relative to the difficulty of the content. It takes no genius to figure out that if you go by adding gear or set bonus armourings to operations that EV and KP Veteran Mode have a challenge level that shouldn't be rewarded as much as DF or RAV Veteran Mode and then there is Mastery Mode for some of the ops. I would much prefer that the reward is based on the actual difficulty of an ops boss. I am sure that beating Mastery Mode bosses but also Revan or Master and Blaster might reward 242 gear whereas other HM bosses would give 236 or 230 gear as per the difficulty. In essence 242 gear doesn't have to be readily available at all assuming that 236 gear is sufficient for progression raiders to do the harder content.

 

The mistake that 4.0 made in gearing was the priority system because it included 224 gear and included EV and KP HM. That made it possible to get BiS gear in EV and KP HM. It also thereby devaluated the effort of beating more difficult operations. They should have simply let a priority ops drop double 220 gear for example, but I'm not advocating bringing priority operations back.

 

So yeah, I think it's necessary to have a progression gearing system next to GC that is not too stingy to take the fun out of it, but does reward doing harder content. In my view 242 gear should not be easy to get because it will require the hardest content to acquire.

 

For PvP I wouldn't want to presume to know what works. I do not PvP enough for that. Perhaps someone else has some ideas what is needed there. I've just been told by guildies who still play and are much more into PvP that set bonuses do make a big difference so newere players who didn't have the set bonuses from playing before 5.0 seem to be at a disadvantage.

 

At the same time there is the added issue of GC grinding ruining warzones by people standing around and still gaining lots of points or quitting matches early in ranked because it's quicker like that. I fear it will take something more to solve that issue, but in essence if reliable gear rewards are added, the CXP gain should go down drastically just as operations would give a lot less CXP if an additional progression gearing system is brought in.

 

But a key element I think is that 230 gear should be relatively easy to get, 236 would be more difficult and 242 even more difficult. A key mistake in GC is that even the basis of 230 gear (Tier 1 gearboxes) is subject to the same RNG rules as tier 2 and 3 as it looks now. It should be a progressive system rather than equally punishing. Surely the lowest tier gear should be available in noticeably higher abundance than the higher tiers.

[DanNV]

I am going to discuss your number 2. The entire reason for the GC is to slow down gear progression, so if they gave every boss a token drop it would completely negate that. If they put Token drops in Operations it would have to be something like this. The last boss of every Operations drops a token. Anything different would make gear progression be like 4.0 and that seriously needed to be slowed down.

 

Nope. 4.0 was crazy because of the weekly HM. One token per boss worked fine. You have 8 people in the group, 5 bosses in average in an Op. That means 5 people get a single token per lockout on the OP. That's not terribly fast.

[Exly]

Hey folks,

 

Please keep all of your feedback coming on Command Crates, Command XP, and Galactic Command. The team is always looking over your feedback and looking for ways we can improve the system! We have been reading everything you sent our way, and there are couple of stand-out points (this is by no means everything):

• There needs to be a way to work towards a specific slot of gear to fill in gaps (especially set bonuses) for people who are unlucky with Command Crates.
  
• Gearing your other characters is too grindy.
  

 

With this in mind, the team has some important changes planned for Game Update 5.1 coming next month to address the above concerns! We are finalizing those changes now and will walk you through our plans during this Thursday’s Livestream, 12/15 so be sure to tune in. If you can’t make the stream we will be posting a recap on the forums. I just wanted to let you know that along with the changes we have already made in 5.0a and 5.0.1, your voices are being heard. We look forward to talking with all of you about the upcoming changes.

 

-eric

 

PS - I will be back on the stream this week so the stream dream team is back together again.

 

-eric,

 

Point one should say:

 

[*]There needs to be a way to work towards a specific slot of gear (especially set bonuses).

 

and point two should say:

 

[*]Gearing your characters is too grindy.

 

You missed the point if you think otherwise.

[Alphasgimaone]

I think that first the question needs to be answered with proper argumentation WHY the gearing progress has to be slowed down to begin with. I am not convinced this has been answered satisfactorily.

This.

 

Especially in the era where catch-up mechanics are the trend. This is the exact opposite.

[Alssaran]

1) It means what it says. If any group logically needs a mechanism for shortenting the grind it is the people who face the longest grind - casuals.

 

2) So will the Ops/PvP players.

 

No. This entire reasoning boils down to the idea that for some reason, a casual needs the BiS gear quickly. There is no substantial reasoning to assume that someone who only plays casual or for story purposes needs the same gear as raiders or ranked PvP players. At least not as quickly. And that's the entire mechanism behind divide et impera explained. Bioware is suggest you that you need that gear for "some purpose later down the road", and that it would be "selfish to keep it to raiders alone". The issue is that a mechanism that sees casual story players be rewarded with the same BiS gear that dedicated raiding does is that this system is as abusable as the highlighted operations in 4.0.

 

If you shorten the grind on BiS gear to a minimum, and at the same time provide tokens from operations, we are essentially back at square one - equip your characters in a week or two, and then complain there's no content to do or unlock. That also ties in with the "no content" argument, but we can discuss that somewhere else.

 

The entire point of having GC (at least from Bioware) was to give casual players access to BiS gear. If that is the argument in itself, then you still have access to BiS gear by grinding the GC system, while at the same time having the option to get that gear faster by doing raids. They never said you'd get access to that gear faster or easier by only focusing on one aspect of the game.

 

3) No, my comment was more a "if you think its OK to only help one side of the equation, so do I - But I want the other side heped".

 

Then we face the logical issue of having gear be too readily available like in 4.0. 4.0 defeated the reward system of obtaining BiS gear by offering it for a modicrum of the initial difficulty. Essentially, having a character decked out in full set gear was a matter of days instead of weeks.

 

There is absolutely no reason to unlock BiS gear for both raiders and casual players on the same level. The characters I didn't raid or PvP with never had BiS gear. They had simple 216 blue crystal gear. That was it.

 

Also, how would you balance the acquisition rate for BiS gear for casuals and raid players? Should they acquire gear at the same level? Then a raid player would just spam a few story chapters and get said gear. Essentially, Galactic Command should nudge you towards trying out different things. There should be a system that makes sure you get a basic line of rewards without relying on one form of content (e.g purple non-set gear for non NiM raiders), but at the same time be a complimentary reward for people on top of the old system.

 

The old crystal systam was a GC 0.5 when we take that approach. You could gain crystals from almost any PvE activity, and then proceed to buy simple PvE gear from the vendors. Gear that was completely alright and more than enough to do any activity except NiM raiding.

 

The idea behind GC is to give casuals access to BiS gear. This access doesn't mean that they should acquire it on the same level as NiM raiders. That'd defeat the purpose of tackling more challenging content for better rewards.

 

BiS gear is NOT inconsequential to casuals. The Casual may not "need" BiS gear, but then neither do 90% of "raiders" most of whom will end being partly carried through that content by the 10% that do need it.

 

That is simply wrong, and I think the fact that you put "need" in brackets for casuals shows that you know it.

 

The definition of need is "of necessity". That gear is not of necessity for casual story players, but it is of necessity for raiders. And there's a simple reason for that: In order to progress further through his or her content (raids), a raider would need that gear. A casual player does not need said gear because there is no "further" content he needs it for.

 

The moment one of these 90% of raiders says: "I'll now do operation X on higher difficulty" is the moment the gear becomes of necessity. If you are a story player, chances are you'll never reach a point at which obtaining more gear for the next chapter in the story becomes necessary. There's no necessity for gear in casual daily quests either. And HM FP and veteran story chapters work just as well in normal purple non set bonus gear. The set items are tremendously important for ranked PvP and NiM raids though, seeing that the progs add another layer to a class' playstyle.

 

The Casual may "want" the BiS gear, just as the "Raider" wants the BiS gear - and I suggest that the only equitable way to resolve that is to have the same mechanism open to ALL players equally and NOT to "buff" just one group of players.

 

Which is not the case. No MMORPG in recent memory has a mechanic that rewards players on story difficulty the same gear as players on higher difficulties, simply because having an incentive to run more difficult content is a good way to keep an MMORPG alive. The person who plays twenty hours a week and the guy who plays one hour a week cannot obtain the same gear in the same amount of time because that'd make the game to easily doable for everyone who plays more than an hour. If you balance the entire game around the lowest average (the casual who barely plays and wants BiS gear), then everyone who plays more than the minimal will feel that the reward system might be instant gratification.

 

This idea doesn't even stem from an elitist NiM raider perspective because I rarely participate in NiM raids to begin with. The biggest issue is that (at least from what I gather), your point can't work because it is the "participation trophy" principle. Everyone participated and should be equally rewarded. This defeats the point of any competition. It defeats the point of trying to accomplish more challenging things.

 

Again: There is no issue with giving casual players access to said BiS. But he or she should be able to put in more effort than someone who defeats a very challenging boss. You can't just run a simple heroic and be rewarded for that with BiS, while at the same time someone grinds a NiM boss for three hours, spends rep fees and reads guides, and then is rewarded with a piece of gear that you had to only mindlessly push five buttons for.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Alssaran

[Wayshuba]

-eric,

 

Point one should say:

 

[*]There needs to be a way to work towards a specific slot of gear (especially set bonuses).

 

and point two should say:

 

[*]Gearing your characters is too grindy.

 

You missed the point if you think otherwise.

 

It really doesn't matter at this point. You have a large swath of the customer base that just doesn't like the system and is so frustrated by BW's insistence on keeping it they are leaving. Which will begin to make it harder for the remaining ones who want to do group content to find enough people to do it.

 

BW just can't seem to understand that when people grind 6 CxP levels, open 6 crates and disintegrate everything, there is nothing fun in that. Instead, it just frustrates people. Then they have the realization they are supposed to play games because they are fun, and this GC system in NOT fun. So then you realize that you are supposed to pay a monthly sub to NOT have fun and you feel like an idiot paying money monthly to a bunch of people that could care less if you are having fun or not.

 

Anyway, it doesn't take a genius to see where this is heading with this system. It is very bad now and it is only going to get worse as the gear disparity creeps into the game and completely kills any alt play (you know, the thing that kept a lot of people playing this game).

 

It boggles the mind to think they originally introduced a months long event to encourage people to create alts only to release an update that goes in a completely opposite direction. I don't even know if they know what they want to do with this game anymore.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Wayshuba

[Alssaran]

It really doesn't matter at this point. You have a large swath of the customer base that just doesn't like the system and is so frustrated by BW's insistence on keeping it they are leaving.

 

The issue is that you have a group of people who will leave regardless of how you handle this system to begin with. Some people are probably genuinely upset by this system, but most people will just justify their subscription downturn with other things. Even if you return to 4.0 gearing, I simply can't trust you anymore. I don't want to run that content again. My cat was hit by lightning and I need a month off.

 

Let me point something out: The biggest issue in this community seems to be the insisting of Bioware to have so much RNG, and not the existence of Galactic Command by itself. This issue is coupled with the fact that all gear now is Bound on Pickup and tailored to your current character with no way to ever transfer a reward you gained from playing an alt to a main and vice versa. I doubt that more than a few people would mind if the system provides adequate mechanisms to work to specific set bonus gear, rewards a good amount of levels for any activity you do between PvP pops and PvE operations, and is overall not the entire bottleneck in acquiring gear pieces.

 

The concept of Galactic Command (i.g reward doing everything you can do in this game with complimentary boxes) is great. It's the sheer amount of RNG that kills this system in it's bed.

 

People simply feel out of touch because there is no reliable way to farm anything. The entire gear distribution is handled by sheer RNG without any way to influence said RNG from a player's point of view.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Alssaran

[PlasmaJohn]

If you shorten the grind on BiS gear to a minimum, and at the same time provide tokens from operations, we are essentially back at square one - equip your characters in a week or two, and then complain there's no content to do or unlock. That also ties in with the "no content" argument, but we can discuss that somewhere else.

I agree with most of your post but I disagree strongly with the highlighted assertion.

 

The complaints have nothing to do with acquiring BiS gear it's that they've already beat the content. Knocking people back didn't magically make that content any more interesting than it was in 3.0 or 4.0. Quite the opposite. Letting them rapidly regear to an equivalent level will do much more for retention than slamming the brakes on.

[DarthSpuds]

No. This entire reasoning boils down to the idea that for some reason, a casual needs the BiS gear quickly. There is no substantial reasoning to assume that someone who only plays casual or for story purposes needs the same gear as raiders or ranked PvP players. At least not as quickly. And that's the entire mechanism behind divide et impera explained. Bioware is suggest you that you need that gear for "some purpose later down the road", and that it would be "selfish to keep it to raiders alone". The issue is that a mechanism that sees casual story players be rewarded with the same BiS gear that dedicated raiding does is that this system is as abusable as the highlighted operations in 4.0.

 

If you shorten the grind on BiS gear to a minimum, and at the same time provide tokens from operations, we are essentially back at square one - equip your characters in a week or two, and then complain there's no content to do or unlock. That also ties in with the "no content" argument, but we can discuss that somewhere else.

 

The entire point of having GC (at least from Bioware) was to give casual players access to BiS gear. If that is the argument in itself, then you still have access to BiS gear by grinding the GC system, while at the same time having the option to get that gear faster by doing raids. They never said you'd get access to that gear faster or easier by only focusing on one aspect of the game.

 

 

 

Then we face the logical issue of having gear be too readily available like in 4.0. 4.0 defeated the reward system of obtaining BiS gear by offering it for a modicrum of the initial difficulty. Essentially, having a character decked out in full set gear was a matter of days instead of weeks.

 

There is absolutely no reason to unlock BiS gear for both raiders and casual players on the same level. The characters I didn't raid or PvP with never had BiS gear. They had simple 216 blue crystal gear. That was it.

 

Also, how would you balance the acquisition rate for BiS gear for casuals and raid players? Should they acquire gear at the same level? Then a raid player would just spam a few story chapters and get said gear. Essentially, Galactic Command should nudge you towards trying out different things. There should be a system that makes sure you get a basic line of rewards without relying on one form of content (e.g purple non-set gear for non NiM raiders), but at the same time be a complimentary reward for people on top of the old system.

 

The old crystal systam was a GC 0.5 when we take that approach. You could gain crystals from almost any PvE activity, and then proceed to buy simple PvE gear from the vendors. Gear that was completely alright and more than enough to do any activity except NiM raiding.

 

The idea behind GC is to give casuals access to BiS gear. This access doesn't mean that they should acquire it on the same level as NiM raiders. That'd defeat the purpose of tackling more challenging content for better rewards.

 

 

 

That is simply wrong, and I think the fact that you put "need" in brackets for casuals shows that you know it.

 

The definition of need is "of necessity". That gear is not of necessity for casual story players, but it is of necessity for raiders. And there's a simple reason for that: In order to progress further through his or her content (raids), a raider would need that gear. A casual player does not need said gear because there is no "further" content he needs it for.

 

The moment one of these 90% of raiders says: "I'll now do operation X on higher difficulty" is the moment the gear becomes of necessity. If you are a story player, chances are you'll never reach a point at which obtaining more gear for the next chapter in the story becomes necessary. There's no necessity for gear in casual daily quests either. And HM FP and veteran story chapters work just as well in normal purple non set bonus gear. The set items are tremendously important for ranked PvP and NiM raids though, seeing that the progs add another layer to a class' playstyle.

 

 

 

Which is not the case. No MMORPG in recent memory has a mechanic that rewards players on story difficulty the same gear as players on higher difficulties, simply because having an incentive to run more difficult content is a good way to keep an MMORPG alive. The person who plays twenty hours a week and the guy who plays one hour a week cannot obtain the same gear in the same amount of time because that'd make the game to easily doable for everyone who plays more than an hour. If you balance the entire game around the lowest average (the casual who barely plays and wants BiS gear), then everyone who plays more than the minimal will feel that the reward system might be instant gratification.

 

This idea doesn't even stem from an elitist NiM raider perspective because I rarely participate in NiM raids to begin with. The biggest issue is that (at least from what I gather), your point can't work because it is the "participation trophy" principle. Everyone participated and should be equally rewarded. This defeats the point of any competition. It defeats the point of trying to accomplish more challenging things.

 

Again: There is no issue with giving casual players access to said BiS. But he or she should be able to put in more effort than someone who defeats a very challenging boss. You can't just run a simple heroic and be rewarded for that with BiS, while at the same time someone grinds a NiM boss for three hours, spends rep fees and reads guides, and then is rewarded with a piece of gear that you had to only mindlessly push five buttons for.

 

You miss the point entirely.

 

I don't want Casuals to get X rank gear by doing easier content than Raiders, and nowhere did I even suggest that I did. The person I responded to wanted a mechanism for certain types of players to get better quality gear quicker. That's a text book case of entitlement.

 

My post was, a somewhat sarcastic, way of saying, "no, all players should be treated equally" and my comment on making gearing easier/quicker for casuals was there only to demonstrate how stupid and entitled the comment I was responding to was.

 

My point wasn't about "participation trophies". I quite clearly stated that whatever mechanism there was for gearing should apply EQUALLY (that is has no difference) to ALL (that is no group is given special treatment) players.

 

Let me reiterate: Whatever route(s) is/are available to obtain gear of a certain quality/rating should be equally grindy or (and preferably) less grindy for ALL players EQUALLY.

 

Not sure how much plainer I can make it.

 

All The Best

[DarthSpuds]

N

If you shorten the grind on BiS gear to a minimum, and at the same time provide tokens from operations, we are essentially back at square one - equip your characters in a week or two, and then complain there's no content to do or unlock. That also ties in with the "no content" argument, but we can discuss that somewhere else.

 

And here is where Bioware's (and I think your) reasoning fails.

 

Gear ISN'T content.

 

Requiring a gear rating of X to open T1 content, and then X+25 to open the same content on T2 ISN'T adding new content. It's gating existing content behind a time-grind to make it appear to last longer.

 

If the content was truly challenging and required learning timings on skills, and learning how to create synergy between multiple players (I'm thinking along the lines of LotRO's Fellowship move here) to be able to clear content then it wouldn't matter if they gave us ALL a free set of BiS gear at the start of every Expac.

 

The challenge would be IN the content - the mechanism for overcoming that challenge would be Skill - not gear.

 

As it stands the challenge is grinding long enough to get the gear to access the minimal content at the end of the grind.

 

See the difference?

 

All The Best

[DanNV]

Well, I just got a survey about SWTOR. It came from an EA email address, not a BW or SWTOR email address. Maybe EA is seeing the numbers go in the toilet now.

 

The survey made me start thinking about the answers. With 3.0 I would have given a 10 to would I recommend the game, maybe an 8 with 4.0 and then again maybe a 7 since the repeatable content didn't exist. Now, it's a 1. The only change between 4,0 and 5.0 is the CG system that is all RNG for end game gearing. None of the other things they added or changed affect my rating, but the GC system has a huge negative impact. It was interesting to look at the survey and think back to the last two expansions and think about how I would have rated them compared to now. It's also pretty sad that BW has drug the game down so far in 2 years.

[Psychopyro]

Well, I just got a survey about SWTOR. It came from an EA email address, not a BW or SWTOR email address. Maybe EA is seeing the numbers go in the toilet now.

 

EA owns BioWare, EA is BioWare/BioWare is EA... There is no separation anymore. They finished the transition a few months ago moving everything except SWTOR to their forum and mail system. BioWare does not really exist anymore per se like it used to. I'm not even sure why they never moved this system into theirs... Maybe because their system sucks, IDK....

[TUXs]

Well, I just got a survey about SWTOR. It came from an EA email address, not a BW or SWTOR email address. Maybe EA is seeing the numbers go in the toilet now.

God I can only hope EA is behind this...Bioware Austin seems to be 100% clueless. Maybe someone at EA cares...

[DanNV]

God I can only hope EA is behind this...Bioware Austin seems to be 100% clueless. Maybe someone at EA cares...

 

Well, EA bean counters will care when they see the subs dropping all of a sudden and all the termination surveys list the same reasons. Of course, it may mean EA tells BW to sort it out ASAP or it could mean EA pulls the plug to cut their losses. Might be nice if they moved the entire game to a different studio, I don't know, but that seems to be a bit out there with the current state of the game,

[Psychopyro]

Maybe someone at EA cares...

 

HAHA! Best joke of the day right there. EA Cares... EA only cares about money...

[Tsetso]

HAHA! Best joke of the day right there. EA Cares... EA only cares about money...

 

Exactly. And losing subs will probably mean losing money. So he has a point.

[Alssaran]

HAHA! Best joke of the day right there. EA Cares... EA only cares about money...

 

And if this causes their profits to go down overall, they should care.

 

Keep in mind that EA is paying the developers good money. They might be inclined to put someone else in charge who can see a reasonable RoI for their product. Espescially after spending six million on a cinematic trailer for the game's advertisement campaign. And they seemed to have handed out money for another expansion pack already (stated/hinted by a developer in the live stream a few weeks ago). They want that to do well. If the developer already screwed up in 5.0, they might want to put someone else in charge for 6.0.

 

EA has market coverage right now. They don't need this game to do exceptionally, but they need it to do well in the years of "Star Wars". They might give them a good beating about this idiotic system.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Alssaran

[TUXs]

Well, EA bean counters will care when they see the subs dropping all of a sudden and all the termination surveys list the same reasons. Of course, it may mean EA tells BW to sort it out ASAP or it could mean EA pulls the plug to cut their losses. Might be nice if they moved the entire game to a different studio, I don't know, but that seems to be a bit out there with the current state of the game,

That's the thing...I don't think the bean counters "care"...they have no emotional attachment to this game, it's simply a number. If it costs them $XXX to maintain and they need to see a return of XX% to keep it going.

 

I'm hopeful that someone at EA has an interest in keeping this game going...even if it's only because it has the Star Wars name attached to it, and maybe they are stepping in...

[DarthSpuds]

And if this causes their profits to go down overall, they should care.

 

Keep in mind that EA is paying the developers good money. They might be inclined to put someone else in charge who can see a reasonable RoI for their product. Espescially after spending six million on a cinematic trailer for the game's advertisement campaign.

 

EA has market coverage right now. They don't need this game to do exceptionally, but they need it to do well in the years of "Star Wars". They might give them a good beating about this idiotic system.

 

Yeah imagine if you were a "new to SWtOR" customer brought here by Rogue One - and then find the game in its current state.

 

Not a good "first impression" for EA.

 

All The Best

[Psychopyro]

I suspect the survey has to do more with Direct Marketing for Rogue One.... There was a thing thru one of the ticketing sites that you could sign up for star wars offers thru Disney... I suspect they are going to "filter" what they want out of those surveys for it... I'm not betting it's for actual feedback, otherwise they'd let us use more then 50 characters...

[Psychopyro]

I'm hopeful that someone at EA has an interest in keeping this game going...even if it's only because it has the Star Wars name attached to it, and maybe they are stepping in...

 

I care, sadly EA is still in my portfolio (meh I'm a sucker for gaming companies)... I need to be making money... Problem is, not enough gamers own stock in these companies to make a difference...

[Alssaran]

That's the thing...I don't think the bean counters "care"...they have no emotional attachment to this game, it's simply a number. If it costs them $XXX to maintain and they need to see a return of XX% to keep it going.

 

Economists and financial personnel (usually) think long-term and take every factor into account.

 

Factor one: This game hasn't been doing bad for months. The recent sub loss is specifically about a single system - Galactic Command. This might become clear from the survey.

 

Factor two: The coming years are Star Wars years. They need this game to do reasonably well to attract customers from other games. It's not the profit they need - it is the market coverage. They want a game of every genre out there at any time. Mobile games. Online games. Shooters. Action RPGs. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a TCG for mobile phones soon. They won't be shutting down a game that can pull in customers who go to multiple Star Wars movies during the next few years.

 

Factor three: A game's direction can be influenced by putting different directors in charge. Look at Final Fantasy 14. That game was a mess. They fired the old crew and put a new crew in charge and told them to "fix the game!" They actually did. The new director is great. I'd say he's a good developer, and his team really fixed the game up after losing money.

 

Online games are not stagnant items. They can be changed by giving proper direction and putting some people with new visions at the helm. If the survey reveleas that GC was a bad idea, they'll find out who did it and give the word to change something. Maybe even exchange a few developers.

 

People should come away from the notion that there's some seventy year old dude in a dark room who pushes a red button whenever a game loses a single dollar. Even at EA. There are countless variables to consider here.

[TUXs]

Economists and financial personnel (usually) think long-term and take every factor into account.

 

Factor one: This game hasn't been doing bad for months. The recent sub loss is specifically about a single system - Galactic Command. This might become clear from the survey.

 

Factor two: The coming years are Star Wars years. They need this game to do reasonably well to attract customers from other games. It's not the profit they need - it is the market coverage. They want a game of every genre out there at any time. Mobile games. Online games. Shooters. Action RPGs. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a TCG for mobile phones soon. They won't be shutting down a game that can pull in customers who go to multiple Star Wars movies during the next few years.

 

Factor three: A game's direction can be influenced by putting different directors in charge. Look at Final Fantasy 14. That game was a mess. They fired the old crew and put a new crew in charge and told them to "fix the game!" They actually did. The new director is great. I'd say he's a good developer, and his team really fixed the game up after losing money.

 

Online games are not stagnant items. They can be changed by giving proper direction and putting some people with new visions at the helm. If the survey reveleas that GC was a bad idea, they'll find out who did it and give the word to change something. Maybe even exchange a few developers.

 

People should come away from the notion that there's some seventy year old dude in a dark room who pushes a red button whenever a game loses a single dollar. Even at EA. There are countless variables to consider here.

You really think it hasn't been doing bad for months? I'd say we're likely into month 12 or 13 of declines...4.0 added a story...that's it. 4.0 didn't do well either and in their last quarterly report, they fingered SWTOR specifically for a decline in revenue. 5.0 is strike two against the whole team.

 

It's not that I don't think SWTOR can be revived, it can be...but 5.0 isn't how it happens. We have a year minimum to wait for 6.0...I don't think this game has the core to last that long.

Edited December 15, 2016 by TUXs

[Alssaran]

You really think it hasn't been doing bad for months? I'd say we're likely into month 12 or 13 of declines.

 

Keep in mind that a declining population is not the same thing as making a loss out of the investment. They have been called on the decline of subscriptions before, but it was probably not enough to off-set any profit EA made with the little investment they put into the game as a whole.

 

World of Warcraft was also in decline through most of WoD, but the game was still doing exceptionally well for an MMORPG at the very end with roughly 5.5 million paying customers. The profit margin might get smaller, but the game was still not "making a loss or returning no profit". And this is most likely what's being pointed out here - the profit margin is getting smaller. This doesn't mean EA is losing money from the game (i.g paying more into it without getting anything back), but that the development team isn't turning the profit they used to, and that they are told to increase the gains.

 

4.0 didn't do well either and in their last quarterly report, they fingered SWTOR specifically for a decline in revenue.

 

Yes, but the actual terms of that call out haven't been established as of yet. Some people come and claim it's compared to the increase of 4.0. Some people claim it's compared to the last fiscal Year. The average of the last fiscal month. The fact someone says: "I know a thing or two about finances" doesn't really change the fact that there are seven different opinions about the same thing.

 

They have to report this decreasing revenue in subscription in order to provide information according to investment law.

 

The only thing I am saying here is that it is premature to equate "a decrease" or "less subscribers" with no profit. That's a very far stretch. An MMORPG without any development cost (or close to none) has a very low fee attached to it, and even after paying taxes and fees/salaries, you're still left with some money for your trouble. There are games with much less whales out there that are doing reasonably well for their developers.

 

We always love to assume that "some people unsubscribe" or "people subscribe less often" means that EA is forced to shut down anything because they don't turn a profit. They have dozens of different ways to screw around with investment money and salaries/the game to adjust said number.

 

We have a year minimum to wait for 6.0...I don't think this game has the core to last that long.

 

I doubt it. The game isn't in as good as a state as it was during 3.0 or most of 2.0, but the game is also far away from the levels of Final Fantasy 14 (pre-rework), Warhammer Online and other failed games. The diehard part of the whales can probably keep this game afloat with little development, and Rogue One will provide a slight boost in subscribers - even if just for a month or two. And don't equate this to: "There will be tons of new veterans!" now. The only thing this will do is provide a boost in profit for this fiscal quarter. It will essentially buy Bioware some time to react. It will not save Bioware in the next fiscal quarter or the one afterwards. But the movie boost in subscription will likely give them some breathing room to come up with possible solutions. As we've seen them do with this livestream (they actually called people back in to do it), they are already attempting to salvage the situation.

 

Something has given them a good scare. I think the message was received, but the implementation will need a month or two. This is the most important message: Do not expect them to do a 180° during today's livestream. They won't. They will talk around the issue and work to find the culprit behind the scenes, and then continue to fine-tune the "solution" until January.

[Wayshuba]

Well, EA bean counters will care when they see the subs dropping all of a sudden and all the termination surveys list the same reasons. Of course, it may mean EA tells BW to sort it out ASAP or it could mean EA pulls the plug to cut their losses. Might be nice if they moved the entire game to a different studio, I don't know, but that seems to be a bit out there with the current state of the game,

 

It does seem rather strange that this survey suddenly came out. I don't remember such a survey for 4.0.

 

If it is EA, and they actually read the feedback, unlike the team in Austin, and the sub counts are dropping fast, I would not want to be a fly on the wall when that information comes out.