Is this game engine, the only thing that prevented SWtOR from having a major succes ?

[DawnAskham]

Only?

 

No, far from it, though the abysmal launch performance, which was most likely tied to the engine, certainly didn't help.

 

Of the top of my head I'd include....lack of depth in end-game content, lack of group finder, no side-game systems such as outfits and strongholds and conquest and guild ships, and way too many servers.

[Tsillah]

Welll we have no choice... EA have the rights for the SW games... So what can we do...

In theory this game would be in great hands... Bioware should be a master in RPG Story Telling...

Except they no longer are. Recent games have shown that. So even the thing they were good at they no longer are. Arguably the best stories in SWTOR are the original class stories. Even KoTFE/ET, though the set up was much grander, came down to an elongated Zash II story with lots of deus ex machina moments to cover up the plot faults. And with Onslaught, at least it's back to the known universe but also there the story telling isn't necessarily that great and they really shouldn't have gone the way of having different main story lines depending on which side you play. That was really a bad move on their part.

 

People are quick to blame EA and in a lot of cases I agree but here I blame BioWare themselves, not EA. They screwed up so many times during pre-production, essentially going around in circles because they find their ideas soooooo cool, that at some point EA has to step in and force them into production...but that's down to BioWare themselves. They've been milking that BioWare Magic™ for too long and it went wrong too many times now. Do I need to remind you of ME: Andromeda and Anthem? Their latest games. And what do those games have in common? Exactly...jerking around for years in pre-production and then having 18 months to make a game that's unfinished. And guess what? The same happened with SWTOR. That's why they had too little content and didn't fix as many bugs. Too long in pre-production.

 

Now I can blame EA for trusting BioWare for too long. Reinvesting into Anthem no less. But BioWare is to blame for not managing their time better. Too many brainstorm sessions without decision-making. There is no leadership apparently in pre-production. And that is an old BioWare problem by now.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Tsillah

[OlBuzzard]

Except they no longer are. Recent games have shown that. So even the thing they were good at they no longer are. Arguably the best stories in SWTOR are the original class stories. Even KoTFE/ET, though the set up was much grander, came down to an elongated Zash II story with lots of deus ex machina moments to cover up the plot faults. And with Onslaught, at least it's back to the known universe but also there the story telling isn't necessarily that great and they really shouldn't have gone the way of having different main story lines depending on which side you play. That was really a bad move on their part.

 

People are quick to blame EA and in a lot of cases I agree but here I blame BioWare themselves, not EA. They screwed up so many times during pre-production, essentially going around in circles because they find their ideas soooooo cool, that at some point EA has to step in and force them into production...but that's down to BioWare themselves. They've been milking that BioWare Magic™ for too long and it went wrong too many times now. Do I need to remind you of ME: Andromeda and Anthem? Their latest games. And what do those games have in common? Exactly...jerking around for years in pre-production and then having 18 months to make a game that's unfinished. And guess what? The same happened with SWTOR. That's why they had too little content and didn't fix as many bugs. Too long in pre-production.

 

Now I can blame EA for trusting BioWare for too long. Reinvesting into Anthem no less. But BioWare is to blame for not managing their time better. Too many brainstorm sessions without decision-making. There is no leadership apparently in pre-production. And that is an old BioWare problem by now.

 

Ya know ... there is one possible good thing to note:

 

If EA was willing to reinvest in a complete bust ... (and it's still not much better) ... MAYBE there's a slight possibility that someone will see that there is a better opportunity for a better return on their investments and sink some serious cash into SWTOR ???

 

Maybe ???

 

[Tsillah]

Ya know ... there is one possible good thing to note:

 

If EA was willing to reinvest in a complete bust ... (and it's still not much better) ... MAYBE there's a slight possibility that someone will see that there is a better opportunity for a better return on their investments and sink some serious cash into SWTOR ???

 

Maybe ???

 

Well they did say at the latest livestream they were hiring to expand the SWTOR team, so yeah, maybe.

[aeterno]

Most likely yes as every issue you point out with SWTOR come launch can be traced back to engine limitations.

 

Yes they launched with too little endgame content and overestimated the rate of leveling content consumption but by all accounts creating group content on the engine was and is a pain in the rear, accounting for long development times of seemingly slim content additions.

 

Illum PvP had conceptual issues but what really killed SWTOR as a PvP game was the inability of the engine to actually handle PvP there without turning into a slideshow fps wise.

 

I mean heck, we still can't get a content update that doesn't break a plethora of other things to this very day, and that's 100% down to the spaghetti code under the hood. Foundation being what it is, requiring a large percentage of resources to virtually struggle with it instead of creating content, basically doomed this game out of the gate as a pretender to be the next wow.

 

 

 

And at the end of the day EA has demonstrated they're not beyond doubling down if the calculus on return investment is there. Warhammer online team was cannibalized to salvage this game and Kotet was a hail mary that very likely cost EA a pretty penny, but again, even with a model makeover, such lipstick on this engine couldn't really make it hold a candle to other SP episodic games of the day whose model it tried to emulate, even if you ignore the wisdom of it trying to in the first place.

 

But reinvestment in terms of porting to a new engine seems implausible at best. Why not milk this game as much as you can and just make SWTOR2 in that case.

Edited August 9, 2020 by aeterno

[Drew_Braxton]

I am asking this because bioware made so many things right, but it failed to have the succes EA expected.

 

Just thinking about the none force user. I was really woried about how they could make a class like the imperial agent beeing fun compared to a sith. But IMO they have totaly nailed it. operative is one of the funiest class to play in he MMO genre IMO.

 

The voice narated quest are just killing it.

 

The gameplay is fluid wich is a big selling point that many MMO failed.

 

The only big problem that I can think of is about the game engine.

 

Shadow had to be turned off upon lunching and well the graphic where pretty meh.

 

Do you guys can think of something else ?

 

There were some noticeable limitations at launch that may have been due to the engine. Ilum open world pvp and other big group activities was noticeably laggy and the game could not handle the population per server that it can now. Since they addressed some of that over the years it may not have been soley the engines fault.

 

When the game launched there were a ton of servers. There were a ton of players and things to do until you hit level 50. Customer service was top knotch. I mean seriously, they responded quickly, could address issues themselves, and were engaged. I recall I was in a group for Eternal Conflict and was running into what looked like a bug. Submitted ticket and got a message quickly about it. The customer service person was able to appear in the game as part of the group to see what was going on. There is no comparison from customer service then and now. Now it is like dealing with a messed up order at a fast food chain. They don't care, and even if you find one that does they usually cannot help.

 

From my recollection it was Bioware or EA that were responsible for holding the game back from what it really could have been. It was clear from the start that the team either did not know anything about MMOs or the game was launched too early. So much was missing. No group finder, limited operations, very few quality of life things are that standard in other games. It was also wonderful up until you completed your class story. There was literally nothing to do. People were begging for more content. It seemed like Bioware thought that what they released was going to keep people busy for a while. Well it did not. People completed the stuff quickly and got bored. Imagine standing on fleet with no groufinder, almost no operations, no conquest, no strongholds, etc. Getting around was very laborious so you jjust kinda sat on fleet and complained.

 

Launch was huge. I still think it was the fastest growing mmo ever. But they underestimated their customers content consumption and people got bored and left. With all the servers in place populations got very low. Before the first mergers I had entire planets to myself and if you wanted to do heroics you had to do them yourself (and they were much more challenging back then).

 

In what would come to be typical Bioware/EA response to diving population they doubled down on insulting customers by blaming customers "Our conclusion was we had a great product in Star Wars, but that the subscription model in the world of free-to-play was challenging" was one of the statements. "Changing tastes and customer preferences" or something like that was what another executive said. These statements even though in game they were racing to get "elder game" content in place because they finally realized MMOs are a never ending cycle of new content to keep players. While free to play did add people, there were a million subscribers in the first three days of launch. They should have just been honest and said they were not completely up to speed on the whole MMO genre and race to give people things to do and the quality of life that their competition had. Swtors competition was aware of the continuous need for new content in mmos so gave players what Bioware could not. Obviously, Bioware did not and when the players raced through what was available there was a big population plunge.

 

I still subscribe, and I still think swtor could do really well into the future. The roller coaster of incompetence, denial, direction changes, and mismanagement over the years is fitting of a Hollywood True Story special. There is a term "wow killer". I don't agree with that term since they have so many addicted (or invested players) that a competing game will not kill it. I do think if Bioware was better versed in MMOs when the game launched and there was more content , quality of life, and more updates I think we would have still had much higher populations.

 

So we will see where it goes.

 

I will also note that there is the other space mmo (think pointy ears) that has already passed the 10 year mark and is doing well. They have had their own bumps in the road and the ground combat is still horrendous, but they have been good at evolving with their customers. I wish gsf was like the space battles in that game.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Drew_Braxton

[Sareeph]

Illum PvP had conceptual issues but what really killed SWTOR as a PvP game was the inability of the engine to actually handle PvP there without turning into a slideshow fps wise.

 

Funny, I remember Ilum as Imps spawn camping the Pubs and gaining Valor and gear thereby and when it was finally fixed and the Imps were allowed to keep said gear, many a Pub left the game reducing the pool for PvP. Yes, the fps sucked due to all that AoE on the spawn point. When the game finished rendering, you were dead and couldn't even leave the area.

[Jett-Rinn]

There were some noticeable limitations at launch that may have been due to the engine. Ilum open world pvp and other big group activities was noticeably laggy and the game could not handle the population per server that it can now. Since they addressed some of that over the years it may not have been soley the engines fault.

 

When the game launched there were a ton of servers. There were a ton of players and things to do until you hit level 50. Customer service was top knotch. I mean seriously, they responded quickly, could address issues themselves, and were engaged. I recall I was in a group for Eternal Conflict and was running into what looked like a bug. Submitted ticket and got a message quickly about it. The customer service person was able to appear in the game as part of the group to see what was going on. There is no comparison from customer service then and now. Now it is like dealing with a messed up order at a fast food chain. They don't care, and even if you find one that does they usually cannot help.

 

We must have played different games, what I remember at launch were the Star Wars Galaxy nutjobs screaming TORTANIC and doing everything in their power to ruin other players game sessions. Then there was the huge Bioware fumble of inviting only leet raiding guild leaders to a meeting where they pretty much said the game was all about raiding. That caused a large amount of non raiders to exit the game, and despite all the butt kissing raiding guilds eventually went back to WoW.. which made the SWG nutters screamed TORTANIC even louder .

 

ANYWAY.....for those of you having issues Suddenlink, Charter and Time Warner are all having connectivity issues. It should eventually be adressed.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Jett-Rinn

[Dallaen]

It's not FIFA

 

/Thread