Opinion about Old Wounds story update

[Trlance]

First i want thanks for this update (what i didn't finish yet but almost), it's interesting but it could be better. I don't like much kotor style cutscenes what is 3/4 of this update what is too much i think. I heard Chains in the Dark have those cutscenes too. Everything before Interpreter's Retreat was very cool and nice and then all hype goes down. Little dissapointing, as a decade veteran player i expected much more. Same with the new flashpoint, which doesn't have any cutscenes (I'll be on the third final boss soon, and if the first and second bosses didn't have any, I think the third one will be the same). For comparison Dantooine and Elom flashpoints had 3, 4 or more. Anyway, the daily activities in this new district of Voss were great fun.

I think with this new studio broad sword not much will change but i guess it's better this what we got than nothing for what again: thanks.

~ Tsukito, Alliance Commander

[Pietrastor]

Im just gonna say this - haven't Bioware* and the entire game industry at large had enough of endless discussions about rewards in games, especially when it comes to grindy quests and/or choices&consequences? Like seriously, thousands of articles, twitter fights and forum post written in the past 20 years or so. Points being made that it's not the grind in itself that is inherently bad, but the payoff that matters the most in the end. Endless examples of different kinds of possible "rewards" that would satisfy the audience - an exclusive story cutscene, a unique shiny horse armor, a significant plot developement/reveal, a new companion, a big stat boost etc etc. Anything really

Yet here have the devs coming up the entire Voss detour and grind that ends up on a literal "wow this is effing nothing" meme-incarnated from The Three and not even reputation grind tokens for some silly cosmetic items lol. 

C'mon. How many times the devs can repeat the exact same mistakes every few years. What's next, Mass Effect 5 once again attemptimg procedural planets in developement just to come to the same conclusion for the 3rd time that it will never work?

 

*I'm aware that this is technically Broadsword now but we're still talking the same devs mostly and the same circle of RPG studios in general

Edited February 2 by Pietrastor

[Kryptonomic]

On 2/2/2024 at 5:11 PM, Pietrastor said:

Points being made that it's not the grind in itself that is inherently bad, but the payoff that matters the most in the end.

In the gaming industry, there is an internal term used: "treadmill gamers." By that is meant the gamers who will most often complain about some form of "grind," or really any entirely repetitive activity, but will actually do it the most in spite of all their complaining. That isn't a statement directed at you; I'm speaking broadly of a concept used in the internal game industry to refer to certain classes of player.

You ask: "How many times the devs can repeat the exact same mistakes every few years."

By the same logic, if the discussion comes up a lot "in the past 20 years or so", as you indicate, the better question might be: why do players keep doing it? Why do they keep hopping on the treadmill?

In the end, the question is really: why do people think even a "good" payoff matters if, in reality, all you've been doing is the same thing over and over (and over and over) in the same game for a long time? It would be like reading a book a thousand times just to keep getting to that ending ("payoff") that you know is there. But, an argument could be made: maybe you should just move on to some other books?

But the game industry as a whole largely now has the idea of capturing players ("keep reading the book") and so they come up with ways to keep capturing those players. The treadmill. And players keep hopping on it, even when they claim to hate it or at least are tired of it. And for games to keep supporting that, they need a way to monetize or it becomes impossible to keep the treadmill going.

I apologize to the OP for what was clearly a derailing on my part but this is an area that has long been fascinating to me from a sociological perspective in gaming. Speaking to at least the OP's point, the idea of having KOKTOR-style dialogue and a relative lack of cutscenes becomes interesting. How much, and to what extent, are players willing to tolerate a perceived degradation in what came before? Game studios that have to monetize are always asking this question.

And it does lead to an interesting dynamic that the OP brings up: "it's better this what we got than nothing". Game studios will often see how far they can push that sentiment!

[Pietrastor]

3 hours ago, Kryptonomic said:

And it does lead to an interesting dynamic that the OP brings up: "it's better this what we got than nothing". Game studios will often see how far they can push that sentiment!

Which is the key point with this update actually. Don't worry, I understand exactly what you were talking about and YES, I do represent the section of the players that still hops in the treadmill endlessly and does all the stupid grind. I do it while complaining about it because I still care about the product and its quality.

Now, we also have the section of resident haters who don't even play anymore or never played to begin with but will hate & comlain to no end (i.e. the basis of existance of Saint Kodexia for one), but let's say it's also just a loud minority.

The main issue here is IMO the silent majority that leaves without much fanfare, doesn't want to buy a sequel anymore, loses interest in general and as the history shows, does NOT stay in the treadmill forever unlike the publisher/devs counted at. 

We've seen sales crashing down and reputations getting shattered into pieces for all the players involved - Bioware, Bethesda, CDP, Blizzard etc when things go south. While it may be relatively easy to get a large gaming population excited and willing to jump at the treadmill initially, the evidence IMO shows that the majority of it won't happily keep spinning the wheel endlessly if the quality is not there nor it doesn't seem to be improving. A small section will keep doing it no matter what and it may just be enough to keep a game alive, but it doesn't really work on a larger scale. And that's where the experience from the past years should be coming in

Edited February 4 by Pietrastor

[Kryptonomic]

28 minutes ago, Pietrastor said:

The main issue here is IMO the silent majority that leaves without much fanfare

Exactly and entirely this.

It's just like all the hoopla we see about the recent Star Wars movies. What Disney has to worry about is not the people who get on YouTube to talk about how much Disney has crushed their childhood memories and bastardized the franchise. (Just as they can't rest on their laurels with those who will love anything Star Wars no matter what.) They have to worry about the more "casual" (for lack of a better term) consumer who will or won't engage with the product but who also won't really care enough to say why in some public venue.

What you say here is spot on: "A small section will keep doing it no matter what and it may just be enough to keep a game alive, but it doesn't really work on a larger scale."

Indeed. And consider that in a game like SWTOR, you are often counting on people will keep their subscriptions simply because it's easier than cancelling and who think they may come back anyway. Just like someone may keep Amazon Prime and barely really use it. Or someone who keeps Netflix and Disney+ and Peacock and whatever else even though they only watch a fraction of what any one of them offer.

I bring that up because game studios really count on that. (For example, "People will stay subscribed if we promise exclusive content if they are subscribed. Or they get in-game 'money' if they stay subscribed.") They don't want people to do any sort of mental calculus, like "Hmm, I pay for this for six months but I only play on the weekends."

Game studio business (generally) is predicated on predicting A sales at B price with C margins running at D burn rate. Subscriptions are just like someone buying your game again at some interval (say, every six months). So you have A subscriptions at B cost to cover C percent of D burn rate. For the former, you have to calculate that until the release of your next game. (Think Rockstar with GTA 5 and GTA 6 or, in the case of Ubisoft, the "downtime" between Assassin's Creed titles.) With the latter, you have to calculate that based on the content you can keep providing for the same game.

So put yourself in the shoes of the SWTOR product team. (Not the development team; they do the work that the product team indicates is necessary.) You have a game that you need to keep people subscribed to and/or have a healthy number of people who will buy things like Cartel Coins. Short of external cost center allocations, this is the only way to sustain your development. Yet some segment of those same people are saying the content seems to be lacking across the board. It's there, it's just not very substantive. But you have different people saying different things: PvP folks may have one focus, whereas the story-driven folks may have another. And some may demand both.

It's an interesting dilemma. One thing I didn't bring up but along the lines of the "treadmill gamer," there is another industry insider term used called the "no-lifeing," which is a horrible term. The idea being that some people "no-life content" so fast -- because they have "no life" -- and that impacts the ability to produce content, particularly if that content was meant to be consumed at a more leisurely rate. (Interviews from the SWTOR design team early after its release indicated this very problem.)

 

Edited February 4 by Kryptonomic

[arunav]

On 2/4/2024 at 5:31 AM, Kryptonomic said:

Speaking to at least the OP's point, the idea of having KOKTOR-style dialogue and a relative lack of cutscenes becomes interesting. How much, and to what extent, are players willing to tolerate a perceived degradation in what came before? Game studios that have to monetize are always asking this question.

And it does lead to an interesting dynamic that the OP brings up: "it's better this what we got than nothing". Game studios will often see how far they can push that sentiment!

I've subscribed since the launch days, with only a few months not accounted for. After playing 7.4's story, alongside general problems with class design the game has had since 7.0, I finally got to the point where SWTOR isn't worth keeping up with. 

Not only is the story not very engaging since 7.0 (in the sense it barely goes anywhere, even with only 2 substantial updates a year), but now it isn't even presented well, going back and forth between voiced-acted cutscenes and KOTOR-style dialogue choices.  

Maybe the game's story ends up in a place that's worth playing through in a couple years, just to finish it, but various season rewards, replaying old multiplayer content, and Conquest isn't enough of a reason to stick around for, when story or multiplayer updates have degraded to what 7.4 was, and what 7.x has been generally. 

While the monthly subscription cost isn't much, there's simply much more you can get for it elsewhere, whether spent on a different MMO or on a different service entirely (like a streaming tv/film platform, an ad-free music service, etc). 

There's too large a gap between what Broadsword prioritizes in updates to SWTOR and what feels worthwhile. 

Edited February 6 by arunav