If I worked for Bioware, I'd probably tell EA to stick it where the sun don't shine and go Indie (where all the innovation is happening).

This is all predicated around the game engine and server actually being able to handle these things:

1: Merge servers and increase the cap.  I want to see 5000 people online when i do a search, like i did 8 years ago in FFXI.  This would allow people to play together instead of a solo rpg co-op.  This would require a change in quests so anyone can help and get credit for helping others complete them.

2: Move all the flashpoints and ops to their designated planets.  I'd use Fleet as a staging point to form raids to take over planets, which would be treated like capture points in intergalactic PVP.  Included in this would be guild ships, personal fighters, and vehicles for when players land.

3: Meaningful crafting that's better than any raiding gear but very difficult and rare to master.  Guilds would need to pool and feed their crafters mats in order to manage this.

4: Eliminate the stupid 4 member party size and change it to 6.  Whomever thought it was a good idea to have only 2 dps per tank should be shot as he has no idea how MMO's or it's players work.

5: Eliminate the ability for companions to craft/do missions.  Allowing them to do this, while saves time, also makes the planets feel empty as there's no one out and about gathering, farming, or mining.  This would also force players to be active in diplomacy and generally just be out and about.

6: Make the light/dark choices actually meaningful by having them affect what skills you can acquire and also how NPC's talk to you or even if they talk to you.

7:  Allow players to swap roles/specs anywhere while out of combat.  Being locked into one spec or class is old mentality.  Players should be flexable and should have a system which encourages it.

8:  Eliminate PVP gear and valor.  Has no one learned yet that this is just dumb?  I give Trion credit for realizing this and while not eliminating it,  bumping everyone to within tolerable levels of disparity.  Nothing like being a fresh 50 and going agaist players with 40% damage reduction while they have none.

9: Eliminate Hutball.  Seriously, we're at war and we're playing a freaking ball game?  Forms of entertainment are obvioulsy fine such as pod races and such, but jedi and sith should not be participating.

10: 3rd faction based around the Hutt which would also involve a lot more race options.  I'm talking like 20+ race options at least.

These are just off the top of my head and I could probably give 100 more little things.  This game is missing so many social and community building aspects, it's not even funny. I also stopped short of just converting it into GW2 filled with dynamic events, as that would mean just redoing the entire game, which i'm in favor of.

Fire everyone at bioware and hand the game over to people who still care.

Honestly, I would prolly shoot myself. I can't imagine a worse situation to be in as a lead designer. Situations like these are what tank people's careers. Something's require much more than a bandaid to solve, or even a tourniquet.

I think one of the big problems with a lot of these games is they don't design them from the ground-up. They just take a pre-existing design and pile as many features as they can afford on top, and think it'll be great. However, when the foundation isn't viable anymore, what you need is to stop adding things and start working on a new foundation (a new MMO). It's like hiring a skilled architect to fix the leaning Tower of Pisa. The only really viable solution is to not build it on a poor foundation.

Anyway, that's just what I think. I know there are a lot of people who still enjoy this game. However, even amongst these players quite a few aren't happy with Bioware. Seems mostly a case of 1) The IP keeping the game alive and 2) People were waiting for this game for so long they don't want to abandon it now. I think it's pretty safe to say that if this game wasn't a Star Wars MMO (say it was a dragon age MMO, with the same coding), it wouldn't be anywhere near as popular.

Originally posted by menoco

Fire Gabe Amatangelo!

 

 

 

That would be my first step too.

After that I would do the following:

• Add in a dungeon Finder ASAP
• Rework Ilum to be open ended with objectives gaining buffs to the winning side
• Remove the Fleets and put the population in Coroscunt and Domund Kas
• remove rewards for Warfronts and add them to Ilum
• implement real space combat and remove the rails

Originally posted by Kreedz

If I worked for Bioware, I'd probably tell EA to stick it where the sun don't shine and go Indie (where all the innovation is happening).

not possible. EA owns Bioware.  bioware cant leave without their permision because  bioware is not the devteam anymore its a part of EA and EA owns their name and place of busness along with anything they make.

Sell it to EA? Ho wait...

Originally posted by Kalfer

OK - Let's not forget that there are lots of people who like SWTOR how it is. There is. They are actively playing it, not defending on the forums. We can argue on for how long until the end of time. Instead this thread will be a role playing scenario, for those who feel SWTOR currently has missed the mark. This is a okay-you-don't-like-the-game-so-what-would-you-do-if-you-were-bioware-scenario type thread.

 

You're a game designer (newly appointed lead designer) on SWTOR. Your task is to make SWTOR the best game possible. You have a meeting with an executive from EA. He does not understand in his crummy business head why the peons (the players) are not playing this game as much as WoW. Your asked to make SWTOR a game with 12 million subscribers. 

You receive additional funding, but within reason. You have your live team who can work on a dungeon, a flashpoint, 2-3 new big features, and a ton of balancing and bug fixes every patch(every 3-4th month).

You also have an expansion team for a retail 40-50 USD expansion pack that can expand the game greatly. 

How do you proceed? What do you do?

Which content do you focus on? what systems do you change, remove, revive or add? What will you do with the expansion? how do you avoid segregating players if they also have to buy an expansion? can you sell it in a different way? give it for free despite getting heavy losses? what do you do about end games, and fans expectations?

Buy the rights to SWG and slap in the voice acting from SWTOR = win

Originally posted by cloud8521

Originally posted by Kreedz

If I worked for Bioware, I'd probably tell EA to stick it where the sun don't shine and go Indie (where all the innovation is happening).

not possible. EA owns Bioware.  bioware cant leave without their permision because  bioware is not the devteam anymore its a part of EA and EA owns their name and place of busness along with anything they make.

They can leave and start a new company. EA cant own people working for them. They are not slaves.

Originally posted by Hurvart

Originally posted by cloud8521

Originally posted by Kreedz

If I worked for Bioware, I'd probably tell EA to stick it where the sun don't shine and go Indie (where all the innovation is happening).

not possible. EA owns Bioware.  bioware cant leave without their permision because  bioware is not the devteam anymore its a part of EA and EA owns their name and place of busness along with anything they make.

They can leave and start a new company. EA cant own people working for them. They are not slaves.

Originally posted by Kalfer

OK - Let's not forget that there are lots of people who like SWTOR how it is. There is. They are actively playing it, not defending on the forums. We can argue on for how long until the end of time. Instead this thread will be a role playing scenario, for those who feel SWTOR currently has missed the mark. This is a okay-you-don't-like-the-game-so-what-would-you-do-if-you-were-bioware-scenario type thread.

 

You're a game designer (newly appointed lead designer) on SWTOR. Your task is to make SWTOR the best game possible. You have a meeting with an executive from EA. He does not understand in his crummy business head why the peons (the players) are not playing this game as much as WoW. Your asked to make SWTOR a game with 12 million subscribers. 

You receive additional funding, but within reason. You have your live team who can work on a dungeon, a flashpoint, 2-3 new big features, and a ton of balancing and bug fixes every patch(every 3-4th month).

You also have an expansion team for a retail 40-50 USD expansion pack that can expand the game greatly. 

How do you proceed? What do you do?

Which content do you focus on? what systems do you change, remove, revive or add? What will you do with the expansion? how do you avoid segregating players if they also have to buy an expansion? can you sell it in a different way? give it for free despite getting heavy losses? what do you do about end games, and fans expectations?

Real game design is a full time job; and it's developed more organically that the lofty vision and exotic theory of forums.

It's also a pay cut; the wife would be displeased.

Many ways to make swtor a good game.

- Random generated quests for lvl 50s with defined rewards, a bit like in Anarchy Online. If they dont want to invest into random generated dungeons/underground facilities they can at start use open areas for this. Go there in that planet kill x of this etc or retrieve y objects and such. Anarchy Online here is a very good example of what an endgame experience should look like really. People would reach max level there and still keep playing the game for years..

- Remove all the bloody buy with tokens vendors. All loot should be randomly generated or have a specific mob from wich will have a small chance to drop from. A bit like Diablo loot system.. white items, blue, orange, pink whatever. Think you get the idea.

- Remove the stupid pvp only stat gear. The concept to separate pvp gear from pve gear is a game breaker. All gear should be of same type, no advantage given to people who like to win gear from pvp matches at all.

- Balance/Mirror both factions. Each type of char from one faction should have EXACTLY the same mirror type of char in the other faction. Balance both faction is really important and they never did it.

- Make all the flashpoints / Operations playable for single players.. not just for groups. Theres a loadcrap of content made for groups only that only people in big or organizaed guilds can access to. Thats a bad design option.. for several reasons. One of theese reasons is that a big % of people that will play SWTOR work and have their available play time limited for this or that reason. I think most of the players will be aorund the 30s, with families and dont really have lot of time to commit to groups and organized expeditions to those flashpoints/operations. By denying that content to them..

- Make open pvp areas just that.. open pvp areas. No rewards at all nada. Just maybe a few exp won by killing enemy faction individuals. People who like pvp will eventually go there, people who dont, wont. Simple.

- Pvp matches -> same thing. Stop giving tokens and that crap for joinning a pvp match warzone. Give exp in the same amount of the exp a player would win if going pve in the same amount of  time.. Again whoever likes warzones will join warzones, whoever doesnt, wouldnt give a crap about them. At the moment it is almost mandatory to go there.

- Space Combat -> Again.. this needs random generated space missions creation aswel. Actually the whole space combat system should have been remaped long ago. I had hopes that they would have done it a bit after launch. Guess they never bothered with it.

Well time for breakfast.. but theese are some ideas on how this game could improve. I am sure there are many more things that could be done to make swtor a proper enjoyable and profitable game.

Flush the servers and install SWG.,

SWTOR Redux:

PVE - Leave alone.

PVP - Complete utter rewrite. But not abandoned, just started again from scratch with pure balance and ultra tested for exploits before release. tested to death, many many balanced deaths. This shouldn't take too much work as they almost got it right before the exploits were discovered.

Space combat - multiplayer only. Space is left out of the game until multiplayer. Player ships stay in game as housing but only cut scenes take players from one planet to another. space travel is enabled when true mmo capability is put in.

Trading - Less aggressive AH monitoring, not everyone is a bot. Also exploits would be rewarded or at least allowed for clever trading and not banned as long as the player is confirmed not to be a bot.

RL prices, down, they go way way down, at least 50% off to what they currently charge.

Get rid of the fleet ship.

Oh and Permadeath......

Pump out a dozen or so new dungeons, a few new raids, a handful of new warzones, and a cross server queueing LFG tool for dungeons, raids, and warzones.

Dual specs, full appearance tab.

At this point, they can only pray they can entice people to not go back to WoW.

And have a massive new expansion in the works with multiple new planets, continuations of the class stories where it actually matters what decisions you make, these new planets would have to be far more open like Hoth/Tatooine than closed off like Corellia.

Some sort of dynamic open world PvE system, introduce secondary professions and majorly overhaul crafting, have each othe new planets also have open world PvP "lakes".

Remove the fleets, move "hubs" to Coruscant/Dromand Kaas.

Add in multiplayer space missions, and in more free-form flight in space missions, add in some form of PvP.

Expand player ships to be customizable internally and externally. Expand features to make ships more into housing.

Add in guild capital ships (guild housing)

Complete overhaul of combat system. Right now it is far too tedius. Expand on cover mechanics for ALL ranged classes, make cover/use of cover more like a Mass Effect or Gears of War where no cover = dead.

Speed up melee combat, add in dodge mechanics.

You know?

There are just far, far too many things I could list here.

Focus on story

If I want raids, I'll play WoW, if I want battlegrounds, I'll play WoW, if I want FFA PvP/Sandbox, I'll go play Darkfall/EvE or cry in a hole.   

People felt betrayed by TOR because it didn't provide the same storytelling experience as Kotor/ME at endgame. I say FORGET raids, FORGET dailies/grind and focus on 

1)  Turn the game into a B2P model, with optional COSMETIC microtransactions/convenience items.  (GW1 model)

2)  Every 2 months, release a 'Content Pack' for $20.  This would include a new PvP warzone, and a new planet.  On the planet would be a continuation of class quests, a single-player world arc, a mini-raid/world boss(es) and that's it.   

I want to continue the adventures of Cimeas the Bounty Hunter, or Cimara the Jedi Knight, not sit on the fleet waiting for raids and grinding dailies.  Let me play a Bioware adventure, a Star Wars adventure! 

Good stuff guys. keep it coming.

I would be pretending everyone is happy and trying to artificially increase the subscription rates for the next BoD meeting, while feeding my superiors with phrases from Gobbledygook Generator  such as "This is no time to bite the bullet with our quality management matrix approaches." or "We need a more blue-sky approach to compatible third-generation concepts."

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/examples/gobbledygook-generator.html