New operations confirmed - sort of ... plus a return to 2.0 era style development.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

You are referencing fiscal quarters, I was referencing calendar quarters. Yes, fiscal quarter for EA end Dec. 31 and will be reporting Jan. 31. But it is still calendar quarter 4. As we are currently in calendar Q1 (EAs Fiscal Q4).

 

Why would you care about calendar quarters if you were an investor? When referencing financial reporting the only thing that matters is the fiscal quater/year a company runs too.

 

 

Either way, differences between our quarter definitions aside, this current report will not accurately reflect the true impact of the expansion as Dec. will be loaded with many players that sub for just that month for the story and move on once it is done (and there are quite a few of those). So the following quarter (the one we are in - calendar Q1, EA fiscal Q4 will be the one to watch when that is covered at the very end of April/beginning of May).

 

Not true at all. They would have set a budget in mind and expected profit/losses over all products. If this product is coming in significantly below expectations that have an obligation to inform share holders.

Some could suggest how the product is performing YoY also but I don't feel they have as much obligation to report this if indeed the product is meeting expected goals. i.e. It could be down 20% in revenue YoY but they might have budgeted for this with less capital put in to the game in the first place.

 

In short we have no idea what they will report on, hell we don't even know what they hide from their investors if overall profit is where they forecast it to be.

 

Being I can't remember one time in the history of this game where so many livestreams were done right after expansion launch, or a survey sent from EA, or BW even giving away their development plans for almost a whole year as they did earlier today, I am not expecting the news to be good.

 

I also don't see how it could be good in this upcoming report however those items you indicated are all positive in the sense we want them to be doing more streams and taking more interest in the wants of the players which is why I find this 5.2 a positive first step.

[AscendingSky]

Well, I for one am glad to see that you and some others are bring optimistic about this and have decided not to walk away just yet.

 

Some posters have pointed out that releasing a new op in this manner shows that they haven't been thinking about doing them until now. They're probably right, but tha does prove one thing: they do listen. Because of the uproar you and other have made over the lack of new ops, they're finally back in the dev's sights as something the community wants. So kudos to the community for that, and keep uproaring because they've shown they're willing (if not immediately able) to give the community what it wants, and we have a long way to go.

 

And yet all the white knights continue to repeat the mantra "Stop being so negative, you're just haters, you're not happy with anything!" Yet we're now seeing tangible evidence that making a big noise on the forum DOES work. So keep on making noise, fellow 'haters' (AKA those who dare to criticize EAWare about something)!

Edited January 27, 2017 by AscendingSky

[Rabin_Lorac]

I am really lost on why you all are insisting an 1 boss encounter is an operation?

 

I am also confused why you all are so exciting and giving praise and thank you to a developer that took more than 2 years to make an 8/16 man encounter when they have all the tools, editing software, and assets already at their disposal?

 

Fallout 4 has a better level editor free with the game than what the devs want us to think they have.

 

Shoot back in 1996 I bought a DOOM level editor that was able to completely mod the game.

 

1998 Starcraft came with a full level editor with scripts and triggers.

 

And these fools with millions in budget can only do 1 boss at a time? And it will take 1 year to make 5 bosses?

Edited January 27, 2017 by Rabin_Lorac

[jozinkopucik]

You just will not be happy no matter what you hear.

 

If they said: 5.2 is coming out in March with full ops and all the other stuff they said i can guarantee you NO ONE would be complaining!

[AscendingSky]

I am really lost on why you all are insisting an 1 boss encounter is an operation?

 

I am also confused why you all are so exciting and giving praise and thank you to a developer that took more than 2 years to make an 8/16 man encounter when they have all the tools, editing software, and assets already at their disposal?

 

Fallout 4 has a better level editor free with the game than what the devs want us to think they have.

 

Shoot back in 1996 I bought a DOOM level editor that was able to completely mod the game.

 

1998 Starcraft came with a full level editor with scripts and triggers.

 

And these fools with millions in budget can only do 1 boss at a time? And it will take 1 year to make 5 bosses?

 

Maybe they should just go the STO route and let players make content for them, since they seem so inept and slow at doing it themselves.

[Halinalle]

I won't, not until they fix gearing.

 

Unless you're doing veteran/master operations gear doesn't matter. Even player skill doesn't matter much anymore in most of the content. You can't even do full rotation in story mode. Well, probably in master mode uprisings but even 5 new uprisings can be undermanned/undergeared in veteran mode and these are supposedly more difficult than uprisings release in 5.0:

[Sardorim]

Nice that they're being story tied though... Will the one you don't pick die?

[Wayshuba]

Why would you care about calendar quarters if you were an investor? When referencing financial reporting the only thing that matters is the fiscal quarter/year a company runs too.

 

Because 99% of companies follow calendar quarters so it becomes a habit of referencing it that way after 25 years of investing. That is all. Small semantics that we need not waste any more time on.

 

Not true at all. They would have set a budget in mind and expected profit/losses over all products. If this product is coming in significantly below expectations that have an obligation to inform share holders.

Some could suggest how the product is performing YoY also but I don't feel they have as much obligation to report this if indeed the product is meeting expected goals. i.e. It could be down 20% in revenue YoY but they might have budgeted for this with less capital put in to the game in the first place.

 

In short we have no idea what they will report on, hell we don't even know what they hide from their investors if overall profit is where they forecast it to be.

 

Even if SWTOR revenue is down in the FY Q3, I don't see EA even mentioning it unless it is down significantly. Few companies ever report on the performance of products or product lines individually because most investors don't care as long as the overall numbers look good.

 

I also don't see how it could be good in this upcoming report however those items you indicated are all positive in the sense we want them to be doing more streams and taking more interest in the wants of the players which is why I find this 5.2 a positive first step.

 

I will bet it will be fine. 5.0 Launched end of November/early December. Many players will have come back, subbed for a month to play the story and moved on. I believe part of the intent of the GC System was to try and get them to sub longer but, those types of players that are here solely for story, could care less about gear. Instead, the effects of the GC system will begin to show in this current quarter.

 

As for more streams and interest, that is horse pucky. BW has only ever shown this level of interest (like the guild summit), when it is hurting them in the wallet. They have NEVER cared about their player base because they have always had the attitude they know better than their customers.

 

Anyway, I am done going back and forth with this as it is going in circles. Point being, none of us are really going to know how bad it is until they do their FY year end report in May. It is obvious that this game, which was once supposed to be a shining star to challenge WoW, has instead become a footnote product in their reporting.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Wayshuba

[Genada]

I am really lost on why you all are insisting an 1 boss encounter is an operation?

 

I am also confused why you all are so exciting and giving praise and thank you to a developer that took more than 2 years to make an 8/16 man encounter when they have all the tools, editing software, and assets already at their disposal?

 

Fallout 4 has a better level editor free with the game than what the devs want us to think they have.

 

Shoot back in 1996 I bought a DOOM level editor that was able to completely mod the game.

 

1998 Starcraft came with a full level editor with scripts and triggers.

 

And these fools with millions in budget can only do 1 boss at a time? And it will take 1 year to make 5 bosses?

 

I really think they have a budget around zero. They force interns to work on this game before they are ever offered a real job to work on real games like Battlefield.

 

Battlefield, not a mmo but gets more content updates then SWToR. For real, check it out. That's how sad this game is.

[jozinkopucik]

I really think they have a budget around zero. They force interns to work on this game before they are ever offered a real job to work on real games like Battlefield.

 

Battlefield, not a mmo but gets more content updates then SWToR. For real, check it out. That's how sad this game is.

 

The content they spit out definitely looks like that. While on one side i would like to give them time to make sure the ops is good, on the other, Its been too long without ops and i would like it now

 

Its strange that they dont have a budget, i mean even if they have 400k subs its whats almost 5 mil per month, not to mention other purchases, might be around 8 mil per month, how high can their costs be? Apart from salaries not much.

[darkapprentice]

Does anyone find it peculiar that it is going to take them 1-2 months to adjust CxP for Operations upwards but it took them a grand total of three days to reduce mob experience down to 1 CxP and three weeks to adjust down for the early part of KP farming.

 

Man, are they playing everyone for complete suckers.

 

It's because they're like a parent without parenting skills. They punished the children (players) when they do things they didn't want them to do, thinking it would change the behavior, instead of finding a way to reward us by doing what they want us to do. using the quote as my example, they didn't want us to farm mobs to gain cxp. What they should've done was increase xp for all other content to make it more attractive to the players so they'll see that farming mobs isn't the fastest way to gain the xp. but they figured the only way to keep us from farming mobs would be to nerf their xp into the ground.

[Quraswren]

Maybe they should just go the STO route and let players make content for them, since they seem so inept and slow at doing it themselves.

 

I like that idea. It's better than what we are getting in the coming months thats for sure.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

If they said: 5.2 is coming out in March with full ops and all the other stuff they said i can guarantee you NO ONE would be complaining!

 

I know of at least 1 poster that would still complain.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Even if SWTOR revenue is down in the FY Q3, I don't see EA even mentioning it unless it is down significantly. Few companies ever report on the performance of products or product lines individually because most investors don't care as long as the overall numbers look good.

 

They are obliged to do so. They had to mention it in Q2 becausse they needed to justify why overall subscription revenue was down YoY.

 

 

I will bet it will be fine. 5.0 Launched end of November/early December. Many players will have come back, subbed for a month to play the story and moved on. I believe part of the intent of the GC System was to try and get them to sub longer but, those types of players that are here solely for story, could care less about gear. Instead, the effects of the GC system will begin to show in this current quarter.

 

Just getting a boost isn't enough. There would be a planned boost and thus a planned amount of revenue generation ( don't forget CM is tied to all of this - more players = more money spent on the CM ). Comparing 2016 expansion spike with 2015 expansion spike there is a rather drastic decline in said spike in player numbers. Now if they banked on a similar spike for 2016 as they got in 2015 ( which I believe they did hence the investment in advertising with the trailer etc. ) then I feel they are taking a massive hit to their projected revenue.

 

 

 

As for more streams and interest, that is horse pucky. BW has only ever shown this level of interest (like the guild summit), when it is hurting them in the wallet. They have NEVER cared about their player base because they have always had the attitude they know better than their customers.

 

Who cares why they are doing it? The FACT is they are doing it and it's a nice change.

 

Anyway, I am done going back and forth with this as it is going in circles. Point being, none of us are really going to know how bad it is until they do their FY year end report in May. It is obvious that this game, which was once supposed to be a shining star to challenge WoW, has instead become a footnote product in their reporting.

 

Oh NOW you're done going back and forward and in circles? Is that going to apply to all the topics and posts you keep repeating over and over in multiple threads? Anyone not believing this have a read of his post history - funny stuff and the bias is insanely obvious.

[mmmbuddah]

I am really lost on why you all are insisting an 1 boss encounter is an operation?

 

I am also confused why you all are so exciting and giving praise and thank you to a developer that took more than 2 years to make an 8/16 man encounter when they have all the tools, editing software, and assets already at their disposal?

 

Fallout 4 has a better level editor free with the game than what the devs want us to think they have.

 

Shoot back in 1996 I bought a DOOM level editor that was able to completely mod the game.

 

1998 Starcraft came with a full level editor with scripts and triggers.

 

And these fools with millions in budget can only do 1 boss at a time? And it will take 1 year to make 5 bosses?

 

So it is just going to be a boss? No story to it? Nothing like EC or SnV, or any of the operations in the game except for the Ziost "operation" . If that is the case, I am done. An OP is an OP. Not a world boss labeled an op.

[DanNV]

Just getting a boost isn't enough. There would be a planned boost and thus a planned amount of revenue generation ( don't forget CM is tied to all of this - more players = more money spent on the CM ). Comparing 2016 expansion spike with 2015 expansion spike there is a rather drastic decline in said spike in player numbers. Now if they banked on a similar spike for 2016 as they got in 2015 ( which I believe they did hence the investment in advertising with the trailer etc. ) then I feel they are taking a massive hit to their projected revenue.

 

This is actually what i am interested in seeing. They didn't get the boost they planned and they cut off all the F2P revenue form the end-game unlocks (which I am sure they expected to get back in new subs.) If they are mentioned as having an increase, they fell somewhere within expectations, even if it was at the bottom. If they aren't mentioned, they missed expectations but not by a terrible amount. If they are called out for losing again, they're in trouble.

 

Personally, I don't expect any mention this quarter and a lot of mention in the next one once the sub cancellations really start showing on the bottom line. The sad thing is BW could stop the losses by reverting gearing now. Announcing it as a change for 6.0 in a steam six months from now may well be way too late.

[DanNV]

So it is just going to be a boss? No story to it? Nothing like EC or SnV, or any of the operations in the game except for the Ziost "operation" . If that is the case, I am done. An OP is an OP. Not a world boss labeled an op.

 

The daily area story is supposed to lead up to it, or something like that. This is supposed to be the first boss in a 5 boss op. They'll trickle them out in the hopes people will sub to get them one at a time over the year like they did the KotFE chapters.

[Quraswren]

So it is just going to be a boss? No story to it? Nothing like EC or SnV, or any of the operations in the game except for the Ziost "operation" . If that is the case, I am done. An OP is an OP. Not a world boss labeled an op.

 

Think of it like Ziost but it wouldn't be was intricate you can bet on that. It might have a bit of story because they mentioned oricon but that area started way before the daily area was there. Don't expect that for what we are getting. Expect something like uprisings where it's a watered down bit of content you remember being better somewhere else combined with a new rep bar. Think of a scaled down oricon or Yavin 4 maybe.

 

It's not like a world boss as it will be in a OPS zone/instance for 8 or 16 people and not standing out in the world would be my guess. Thats the only reason it gets called an OPS but it is only one boss and it wont happen for another 2 months at least. Worse yet as far as we know, since it's the first boss in a year long release of OPS bosses, it will have that same stupid RNG loot drop all first bosses have. Meaning you could go through the effort to kill it and get nothing. Yea RNG is so exciting.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Quraswren

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Think of it like Ziost but it wouldn't be was intricate you can bet on that.

 

Based on ... ???