Why does the development team have so few resources/staff?

[AscendingSky]

Somehow I don't think the supposed mass quitting protest is going to help the staff budget. If you want them to have a bigger budget, you should stop people who pretend that they are quitting.

 

I'm pretty sure EAWare can look at their own numbers and see how many people are actually ending their subscriptions, without a chance of being decieved by your alleged mass conspiracy of lots of people just saying they're quitting when they're not.

 

And again... we've gone from over one hundred servers to a handful, and a lot of those handful are now ghost towns. People have quit this game en masse in the past, are still quitting this game on a regular basis, and unless something is done eventually the game will be shut down for good due to a lack of a subscriber base.

Edited January 28, 2017 by AscendingSky

[DanNV]

Summer 2015 Ben became producer. Them we had KotFE and it's attempt to keep people subbed and then KOtET where they admitted that didn't work, so they added the grind from hell and back to the KotFE model for the operation.

 

See a pattern of not learning from prior mistakes? Ben was at BW for the launch of SWTOR. He obviously didn't learn those lessons well. On top of it, he then repeats his own mistakes.

[AscendingSky]

I have suggested a managerial change out for SWTOR or giving it to a different studio. I doubt it will happen. They've sunk it so far right now, who in their right mind would want to take it over unless EA was willing to pull a FF and rebuild and relaunch after spending a lot of time with players to get feedback and find out what their customers really want.

 

As I've said before on the forums, I wish EA would look to the example of FFXIV. That game cratered on release, and instead of ignoring the issues or trying to patch bandaids on them, the company APOLOGIZED, took the whole game down, and put up a new version completely rebuilt from the ground up. And now people love it, even as a completely subscription-based game!

 

I think a SWTOR Redux could be truly epic. I would gladly give up all my achievements/gear/decorations/mounts/etc. that I've achieved so far in SWTOR if it meant we could get a revamp of the game as amazing as the one FFXIV got. Contrary to certain people who keep stalking me around the forums, I don't want "Instant gratification for free". I want a game worth playing and paying for.

[AscendingSky]

Summer 2015 Ben became producer. Them we had KotFE and it's attempt to keep people subbed and then KOtET where they admitted that didn't work, so they added the grind from hell and back to the KotFE model for the operation.

 

See a pattern of not learning from prior mistakes? Ben was at BW for the launch of SWTOR. He obviously didn't learn those lessons well. On top of it, he then repeats his own mistakes.

 

At this point, I think he's either too prideful to admit his baby (Galactic Command) is poisonous to the game, or he's in too much denial to see the truth even when he's looking at declining sub numbers. Either way, that's why we keep getting tiny and poorly thought out bandaids applied to the open hemorrhaging wound that is Galactic Command instead of it being stitched closed.

Edited January 28, 2017 by AscendingSky

[Wayshuba]

As I've said before on the forums, I wish EA would look to the example of FFXIV. That game cratered on release, and instead of ignoring the issues or trying to patch bandaids on them, the company APOLOGIZED, took the whole game down, and put up a new version completely rebuilt from the ground up. And now people love it, even as a completely subscription-based game!

 

I think a SWTOR Redux could be truly epic. I would gladly give up all my achievements/gear/decorations/mounts/etc. that I've achieved so far in SWTOR if it meant we could get a revamp of the game as amazing as the one FFXIV got. Contrary to certain people who keep stalking me around the forums, I don't want "Instant gratification for free". I want a game worth playing and paying for.

 

Two things that need to be added. First, Square Enix recognized they had the wrong guy in charge of FFXIV, so they began to fix the situation by firing him and putting Yoshida-san in charge. That was the first step to recovery. The second step was a deep and heartfelt connection with the community to let them know they were going to fix things and give the players what they really wanted.

 

So, they followed the advice of the CEO of T-Mobile who said, "The secret to success in business is to listen to your customers and give them what they want. Then, don't be surprised if you do that you make a lot of money."

 

SWTOR has been plagued with development arrogance since the earliest betas. They were warned in beta about lack of end game content, but they thought they knew better. Just like now, they were warned not to let this atrocious GC System go live, they ignored that to, because they always know better, and now they are paying the price.

 

SWTOR should have been in the market position that FFXIV is in now. But it has never had someone competent or caring enough leading it. For some reason, this title has always had unjustified egos making the decision. And so it has been a game that has survived, rather than thrived and grown.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Wayshuba

[menofhorror]

We can't know what's really going on behind the scenes.

 

We can look at the numbers in report but numbers alone are by far not enough to analyze a company's situation. And as every large company there is definitely some shady **** going on at Bioware Austin. And of course the Star Wars IP which publishers use to minimize the ressources because the IP alone should carry the game, in their logic.

 

Lots of factors.

[HuaRya]

Well they were in a good enough situation to pay 7 MILLION for a five minute blur video. You could hire a thousand asian programmers to code 10+ operations for that much.

[grania]

I just wish EA would stop tying their hands. For example, I would gladly pay $50 for a true expansion with actual, open world questing and the return of class stories.

 

HOLY SMOKES so would I. My husband and I aren't rich but we would budget for this. We always did it for WoW, two copies of their expansions, and we're pretty much done with that game. Heck swtor was supposed to be the game I permanently left WoW for, but it fizzled.

[Wayshuba]

As for the premise of this thread, none of us (including the OP) have any idea what the development team, resources, and funding look like in any detail. This thread title is presumptive and pivots around the very popular meme-thought of "I'm not getting what I want, so clearly there are only three devs and a hamster inside the walls at Austin".

 

While it is true about not knowing the details of the specifics of the BWA team, it really doesn't matter. What can be seen, by almost anyone, is the volume of major content patches and expansions that other AAA MMOs are putting out versus the paltry amount of content people are getting in SWTOR.

 

Example 1: Assuming that they do indeed deliver a full Operation (5 bosses) by the end of the year, that will give them One Operation (Raid) and ZERO Flashpoints (dungeons) released over THREE years. In that same time frame, one of their competitors (and it isn't even WoW) will have released 18 NEW raids and 30 NEW dungeons. So in SWTOR you got five new challenge bosses compared to the competitor giving you 136 new bosses (more than 25 times more content just for group play). It isn't even remotely close how little content people are getting for their money in SWTOR. And that is just on a small section of group content, we won't go into how they have truly expanded the game with 5 new character classes, a new character race, flying, swimming and diving, over 1,600 new quests, 5 new PvP modes, 11 mini-games and six new full zones (not corridors called planets).

 

Example 2: Strongholds released with 4 types and a further one was added with SoR for a grand total of five. A competitor is launching their housing expansion next month and they have 41 housing types just from the get go.

 

Example 3: Cause we have to have this for comparison - WoW. In last three years 19 new dungeons and 6 new raids. Notice my Number 1 example which isn't WoW. If you want to take on the big boy, you at least need to try and compete with them.

 

I asked this on another forum and will repeat it here: Just how much leeway do you give to the Star Wars IP when it comes to an MMO? In the last three years quite a few AAA MMOs have produced literally 50 TIMES the content SWTOR has for the money people are paying. Just when are people supposed to say enough is enough?

Edited January 29, 2017 by Wayshuba

[Wallner]

And they have like, 2 persons that sometimes answer / gives updates on the forums. That says alot too..

[dr_mike]

Just how much leeway to you give to the Star Wars IP when it comes to an MMO?

 

We went through this with Star Trek Online. A couple times at the beginning, (I forget if it's Paramount or CBS that holds the license over the game. Each company owns part of Star Trek.) would step in and order something removed from the game saying that they hadn't given permission to have it used or that they didn't like how it was used in the game. You could read between the lines from the staff posts that they thought they were in the clear with permissions.

 

I don;t recall anything like that with DCUO but that game is a lot small then either STO or swtor. You level max out in alike 3 hours and then it;s all group or pvp content.

 

And they have like, 2 persons that sometimes answer / gives updates on the forums. That says alot too..

 

Used to be a lot more. Having said that, I'd rather see anyone doing actual coding to be doing that coding than answering questions on the forums.

Edited January 29, 2017 by dr_mike

[RudbekAlliance]

http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/final-fantasy-online-director-defends-monthly-subscriptions-in-the-golden-age-of-free-to-play-exclusive/

 

It's an interview from Naoki Yoshida from ffxiv, which I quote a bit about what I think this is a good perspective on content creation in a sub vs f2p model game, even though its 3 years old. Though I really hesitated on posting this because of the source of the opinion in the interview.

 

 

 

With free-to-play, because you’re selling these items, you’ll have months where you sell a bunch of stuff and you make a lot of money in that one month. But it’s all about what happens during that month. Next month, the person who maybe bought $100 worth of items in the last month could purchase nothing at all. You don’t know what you’re going to be getting, and because you don’t know what you’re going to be getting, you can’t plan ahead. You don’t know how much money is coming in. If you can’t plan ahead, then you can’t keep staff, because you don’t know if you’ll have enough money to pay the staff next month.

 

With a subscription base, if you get maybe 400,000 members, you know that you’re going to have the money from that monthly subscription for the next month. You also know that you’re going to have 400,000 this month, and it’s not going to go down to 200,000 users next month. That type of jump really doesn’t happen with a subscription model. So you know that you’re going to have a steady income. Because you have a steady income, you can plan ahead further. You can make sure you have staff members to create that new content. By creating new content, you’re making the players happy. If they know this game is going to keep creating new content, they’ll continue to pay their monthly subscription fees. So rather than going for the huge $100-million-a-month hit that you might get with the free-to-play model, having that steady income allows us to provide a better product to the players.

 

Now, you have Blizzard and you have Square Enix. We’re the only two companies in the industry, basically, that are making MMOs with our own money. That gives us an advantage, because where other companies have to get money from investors and have to pay that back, we don’t have a lot of time to build slowly and be able to pay that back. Investors want their returns right away. With Square Enix and Blizzard, because we’re putting our own money into it, we don’t have those investors to worry about, and that means we can release something and maybe take a little bit of a hit at the beginning, but as long as we’re increasing the amount of people we have, then we’ll get that money and make the players happy. We’ll get into that cycle I talked about before, where we’re creating good content and have that steady income to keep the cycle going.

 

 

In terms of content creation I think they tried to do this here with the monthly story chapters, and now trying with the Operations bosses. Its my belief that the story chapters monthly failed to retain enough people to continue along with the chapters this year, or else we'd have seen more of them rather than a pivot towards group content. I'm not sure the Operations cadence will do better than the story chapter cadence, though I do think it shows signs of some learning that its not just ops bosses but they've added a quest line and a daily area as well.

[curulz]

Somehow I don't think the supposed mass quitting protest is going to help the staff budget. If you want them to have a bigger budget, you should stop people who pretend that they are quitting.

 

yep, those people pretending to quit are the problem, you nailed it. like this guy here:

 

I unsubbed, but my subscription doesn't end for quite a while as I renewed it just prior to 5.0. After realizing just how bad it was for my alts and terrible command crates, I unsubbed and deleted my payment information.

 

Oh well.

[Talon_strikes]

yep, those people pretending to quit are the problem, you nailed it. like this guy here:

Nice digging there

 

Care to explain that statement Sundragon?

Edited January 29, 2017 by Talon_strikes

[AscendingSky]

Nice digging there

 

Care to explain that statement Sundragon?

 

Yes, please do explain White Knight Sundragon! Considering you're the guy who claims "No one ever actually quits SWTOR, everyone lies about quitting just for attention." What does that say about you?

Edited January 29, 2017 by AscendingSky

[Costello]

The problem is that if they have the resources/staff it doesn't seem that way so we are left wondering if its a situation with 11 people sat in a room debating which companion to bring back and one programmer told to code the new areas and content. So your in a bad place.

 

Worst is if they don't have the resources and this is doing the best with nothing, in which case you are just going to continue to heroage players as there is nothing to do for months on end and when new content is introduced its not enough to make a 15 buck subscription worthwhile or take the time to down load again. Its not going to get any better and as people leave they have to cut back further on development and more people leave.

 

So here is hoping that its the 11 people get moved to the development side and not discussing where to have the next cantina event.

[Wayshuba]

http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/final-fantasy-online-director-defends-monthly-subscriptions-in-the-golden-age-of-free-to-play-exclusive/

 

It's an interview from Naoki Yoshida from ffxiv, which I quote a bit about what I think this is a good perspective on content creation in a sub vs f2p model game, even though its 3 years old. Though I really hesitated on posting this because of the source of the opinion in the interview.

 

 

In terms of content creation I think they tried to do this here with the monthly story chapters, and now trying with the Operations bosses. Its my belief that the story chapters monthly failed to retain enough people to continue along with the chapters this year, or else we'd have seen more of them rather than a pivot towards group content. I'm not sure the Operations cadence will do better than the story chapter cadence, though I do think it shows signs of some learning that its not just ops bosses but they've added a quest line and a daily area as well.

 

A couple things. He did another interview in late 2014/early 2015 (not sure when, just that it was after GDC 2014, where he basically said it is the cash shop F2P model - especially those scamming customers with RNG lockbox models - that is making games become junk. He stated that he believes this happens for two reasons:

 

1.) The cash shops make developers lazy as they require so little effort for such a return, but it has long term consequences in that it is not sustainable and, he believes, it hurts the reputation of the whole company and makes future products harder to sell because you have tarnished the company name (bear in mind that the Japanese are very concerned with brand integrity and image) and

 

2.) For those that don't go the lazy route (i.e., avoid cash boxes), they spend a lot of resources developing content to sell because of the sporadic nature of the revenue they have to constantly develop for it (think of how many new packs SWTOR has created in the last two years versus actual content). As a result, they are not focusing on new content which is the lifeblood of being able to grow your game and retain you customers.

 

Secondly, they are not doing an Op, new daily area and two returning companions because they are learning (the GC system alone shows they haven't learned a single thing from the first three years of the games existence). They are doing it because they are desperate - most likely because subs are fleeing like crazy. The look on their faces on the last livestream should have told everyone how bad it is. They weren't happy, they barely ever smiled, and they were doing something they have never done in this entire games existence - talking about development plans for the whole coming year.

 

But even with those plans, they are asking people to stay subbed to get 1/50th the content competitive MMOs are putting out. I mean, come on, even TSW - run by a small company, has put out a lot more content in the last two years than SWTOR did. You can't get any worse than having a AAA MMO with the biggest IP in gaming getting outdone by a small development studio that does $20 million a year.

 

It really is at the point where you have to seriously ask yourself if you like SWTOR enough to keep drinking the cyanide laced cool-aid to keep throwing $180/year at them (not including CM purchases) when any other AAA MMO is going to give you 50 times more (and I mean that literally) for your money.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Wayshuba

[ShinDoRai]

ok ok .

i'm fine with all u said here. but pls guys and ladys. are u blind.

this game started somewhere in 2006. founded from €A wich is in the buizz since the 80th. they do have the money and they still have even more. saying they cant promote BWA is a lie, they just simply not doing it. the thing about it is,when it comes to €A games and their licensing for real names and clubs in sport games

 

STAR WARS is the best Sci fi IP since its released in the 70th.

stark trek was the pioneer for that kind of on the tv. and sci fi was always there. and sci fi exist since 1851.

are u all kinda silly to count 1+1 ?

the community for the IP is so huge, they couldnt even handle the release with 100+ servers ,

wich had queue times above +2h at release.

 

and lets talk about release. the devs were in it since 2006 and released it 2011 december 12th i think.

some got early access ( for me it was 15th ) and some got it regular.

but with the release of patch 1.7 they were there, where they wanted to be at release.

thats a hard FACT ! stated by the devs

 

only €A forced them to release it earlier than they wanted. but 5 years in development was enough in €A/suits/chairholders eys so they pushed them to release.so there was no time for finetuneing/polishing and implementing basic mmo things. what happend is history. not even a half year later F2P was thrwon in, in order to save this game from total exodus !! thats also a hard fact !!!

 

lets look at €A. they founded SWTOR, doesent matter if they have investors or not.

they decided to go the cheap way all the way till today. they gave their dev team a experimantal HERO-ENGINE in a alpha status !!!

wich was final at the end of 2012. i dont remember any game that runs this engine at all. they have now a new homepage where they took away a lot of info only to hide it under the carpet. but thats politics.

ESO was build on it only to experiment with ideas , but they took a better performing engine

, guess why . and BWA got this engine and modified it for their needs.

and with changing dev teams on a regular basis, they placed so much bad bugs in this game they cant repair stuff on one end to cause new bugs at the other end we all see that and learned it already

 

and saying the times are gone for mmos or there are all waiting for the new mmo grail just to stick on to the most popular is big BS. the Star Wars community is so large, it have his own religion. but games are today mostly made to make a fast dime.

u only see a dozen of games that realy have something meaningfull and great to offer. like devs from witcher, rockstar and gta,kojima san,ff, some indys or others. the devs today rather go the save way or are naild to it. in the middle of the 90th till the middle of 2k there was a lot of interesting things going on. fusions with playelements, mixing up diffrent styls of gameplay and experimantal things happend. since this retard iphone generation came up, the hole buizz changed so drastically and everybody jumped up on the hype train and fast dime to milk gamers.

games turned in dismembered pieces with dlcs, timesinks vs payment, carrot dangleing and paying for looks its disgusting. but thats the way things go when they hit the mainstream.

 

and talking about mainstream, €A stated out that they are aggressively pursue this approach.

guess why u have to pay for every BS, dlcsoked, sub, micromanagment, freemium, pixel and extra approach.

 

we gamers get conditioned through this since the early 2k. some resist and some fall in love with it. but games with this attitude dont last long on the market. but there is a new method. rehasing !. make a 2nd part,3 rd, 4th 5h or make a remake of old ones. its the same like in the music or movie buizz.

but from time to time u get great new songs, films and games. but most uf it is ****.

and everybody out there have a diffrent taste, so they can grab a little bit of our money.

 

and in our case, why we have so few new content is simple.

€A had chosen a bad starting point and continued on this. seeing there is less and less income and droped the sponsorship for the development. thats why we got low fix rates, balancing, content in between, updates and only got dlcs that were never near a EXpansion or addon.

if they had supported this game after the release with even more manpower, this game would be in greater shape, better performing and a meaning in the mmo field.

that's what made blizzard a major player in the mmo market, thats what square did, thats what nc soft do, thats what eso learned and thats what would help swtor.

 

but its more likely to let this game drift this way, and take the money that is comming in till it shuts down and will be replaced with a hopefull better star wars game in the current time. but pls disney take this ip away from €A.

they fold DISNEY with their numbers from their prognoses and other games selling ratio, only to get the permit to license.

thats my point of view what i get out of all this story.

 

and this game now is like that mongo from 300 who betrayed us ,) he can fight but its no help

this is STAAARRRR WAAAAAAAAARRRRSSS

Edited January 29, 2017 by ShinDoRai

[AlrikFassbauer]

Why does the development team have so few resources/staff?

 

Because of Mass Effect : Andromeda.

 

'Nuff said.

[ShinDoRai]

Because of Mass Effect : Andromeda.

 

'Nuff said.

 

i thought it was this

 

the devs couldnt develop much here, cos they were entangled for "star wars the force awakens".

they told disney, that rehasing is what the comunnity loves.

and knowing from here how great the story is, they gave their support to the filmcrew of JarrJarr Abrahams team

 

thats why we got so much content the past 2 years

[Wallner]

Because of Mass Effect : Andromeda.

 

'Nuff said.

 

It's EA that finances this, not BioWare. So by that logic all other EA games would be going down the hill as well, which they are not (BF 1, Titanfall 2, EA Sports games)

[ShinDoRai]

It's EA that finances this, not BioWare. So by that logic all other EA games would be going down the hill as well, which they are not (BF 1, Titanfall 2, EA Sports games)

 

thanku mate u mentioned this.

u realy believe this games u mentioned, are in any kind of quality vs quantity.

all sports games suck, thats why i dont play them anymore. also since ps3 Era nothing changed, except u now need season passes and pay for regular content. and shooters are boring as hell since CS1.6, 1. quake was fun or unreal 2k4

sry i maybe played games longer than u did.

but keep going on what u like. but his is not the way i play games.

u need to understand that once games were a complete package with real testers. today games are build on the latest engine, thrown on the market and than the fixing beginns.

or didnt u played sims,simcity or the other dumb games from €A, where the community rant over them like the hell would open their gates

 

i only stick to games that have quality over quantity, even it if means that the community is smaller.

thats why i stick atm to wildstar. it fullfill much more my needs, and i rather throw there my money in the cash shop then here.

[MadDutchman]

Because of Mass Effect : Andromeda.

 

'Nuff said.

 

This is not likely actually. Mass Effect has always been done in the BW Edmonton office, which has almost nothing to do with the BW Austin office.

 

 

 

As for what going on, we got a few possibilities as far as I see it:

1. EA is really screwing them over on budgets and everything is in the crapper

2. BWA is allocating resources to something else and doesn't have the talent left to work on SWTOR

3. Misallocation of resources. Ex. Too many graphics designers, not enough software developers (or engineers as they are typically called in the US). Bottlenecking on developers is a really good way to cause massive waste.

4. Some combination of the above.

Edited January 29, 2017 by MadDutchman

[Andryah]

As for what going on, we got a few possibilities as far as I see it:

1. EA is really screwing them over on budgets and everything is in the crapper

2. BWA is allocating resources to something else and doesn't have the talent left to work on SWTOR

3. Misallocation of resources. Ex. Too many graphics designers, not enough software developers (or engineers as they are typically called in the US). Bottlenecking on developers is a really good way to cause massive waste.

4. Some combination of the above.

 

You forgot one, the most likely one in fact:

 

5) they are staffed fine, it's just that they have decided to take the game in a direction that some players simply disagree with and said players then conjecture as to it being a resource limitation rather then a business direction.

 

It is after all... a tradition for MMO players to think they are the center of the universe and that what they want in a game simply must be implemented by any given studio. And when it is not, there are no limits to the conspiracy theories and negative rhetoric they will apply to try to get their way. Boundary issues are a big thing with MMO players, at least when they present themselves on the internet.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Andryah

[MeNaCe-NZ]

It really is at the point where you have to seriously ask yourself if you like SWTOR enough to keep drinking the cyanide laced cool-aid to keep throwing $180/year at them (not including CM purchases) when any other AAA MMO is going to give you 50 times more (and I mean that literally) for your money.

 

Every one of these posts you make I can't help but laugh at the hypocrisy of the amount of time you put into these forums proclaiming the wonder and enjoyment of other MMOs instead of actually playing said MMOs.