Originally posted by minime2

Originally posted by Presbytier

This has been a whirl wind of a year for SW:TOR; there is no doubt about that. It started out as the second coming of Theme Park MMORPGs and now it is declared as an example as to why Theme Park MMORPGs are done for. Now I don"t have anything against Sandbox MMOs, but I do prefer the structure and nature of Theme Park games(which really is a misleading name since overal there are not many differences between a Theme Park and Sandbox game; just ask any one what constitutes as a pure Sandbox MMO and you will get an exceptionally wide variety of veiwpoints).

 

So, the question is; is SW:TOR over or is this just the beggining of its second coming. Now I will admit that most of this is just the hopes and wishes of a fan, but that does not devalue what i am about to say. Firstly I firmly believe SW:ToR would have been better served if it had taken a B2P model from the get go(notice i did not say F2P since i I think this game did sell well and would have continued to sell well without a sub). Now the game itself had an exceptionally solid launch one that I think many companies should emulate(from the looks of things GW2 is taking the same model with lots of Beta weekends and stress tests before launch). For the most part it also did not have an incredible amount of game breaking bugs( I am not sying it had no bugs, because it did, but instead pointing out that in comparison to most MMO launches it was considerably better).

 

Now the real issue was it just launched one year to soon. Many quality of life features the game needed as well as PvP and endgame content was just not there at launch, and i believe that it seriously hindered the game out of the gate. Many of those things have been addresed since launch(well except PvP which is still a mess), and the games overall performance has increased considrably since then as well. So, just less than one year later SW:TOR is going F2P, and it is a good thing. More people will be able to access the game with less restrictions; the only question is to whether they can keep their six week promise of new content and as to whether they can monetize it inj a way that does not piss off their fans but still makes them money.

Launched one year too soon your joking right . ? They had 6 years + a ton of money the game just sucks 10 more years it would still be a pile  of crap .

Totally agree...If anything the development of this Game dragged on much longer than expected...Which, in hindsight, may have been an indicator of the overall capabilities of this bunch...

Originally posted by IPolygon
Stop talking about it and start supporting the game and the devs ffs.

I do that is why I continue to play and even bought one of those Collectors Editions. I like the game, and it does have issues, but i also believe they will work to fix them. I mean SW:TOR problems pale in comparison to FFXIV.

Originally posted by KyngBills

Originally posted by Presbytier

Originally posted by NoLimit5401
I do not even think it is a matter of sandbox vs. themepark....unfortunately, it was/is just a bad game and a terrible use of the Star Wars license. Most aspects of the game are just not fun, plain and simple.

I dissagree I think it is a fun game just lacking in endgame combat; plain and simple.

I can promise you that...overall...you are in the minority where this point is concerned...

Nope the numbers actually back me up on this. There is a reason their subs climbed up until about March. March was when most people started capping out, and that was really when the complaints started rolling in.

Originally posted by Presbytier

This has been a whirl wind of a year for SW:TOR; there is no doubt about that. It started out as the second coming of Theme Park MMORPGs and now it is declared as an example as to why Theme Park MMORPGs are done for. Now I don"t have anything against Sandbox MMOs, but I do prefer the structure and nature of Theme Park games(which really is a misleading name since overal there are not many differences between a Theme Park and Sandbox game; just ask any one what constitutes as a pure Sandbox MMO and you will get an exceptionally wide variety of veiwpoints).

 

So, the question is; is SW:TOR over or is this just the beggining of its second coming. Now I will admit that most of this is just the hopes and wishes of a fan, but that does not devalue what i am about to say. Firstly I firmly believe SW:ToR would have been better served if it had taken a B2P model from the get go(notice i did not say F2P since i I think this game did sell well and would have continued to sell well without a sub). Now the game itself had an exceptionally solid launch one that I think many companies should emulate(from the looks of things GW2 is taking the same model with lots of Beta weekends and stress tests before launch). For the most part it also did not have an incredible amount of game breaking bugs( I am not sying it had no bugs, because it did, but instead pointing out that in comparison to most MMO launches it was considerably better).

 

Now the real issue was it just launched one year to soon. Many quality of life features the game needed as well as PvP and endgame content was just not there at launch, and i believe that it seriously hindered the game out of the gate. Many of those things have been addresed since launch(well except PvP which is still a mess), and the games overall performance has increased considrably since then as well. So, just less than one year later SW:TOR is going F2P, and it is a good thing. More people will be able to access the game with less restrictions; the only question is to whether they can keep their six week promise of new content and as to whether they can monetize it inj a way that does not piss off their fans but still makes them money.

So several of the instances were unplayable because of bugs at launch, Illum was full of bugs at launch, including a massive exploit, had horrible graphical performance problems even for top end pcs....

But other than that, things ran pretty damn smooth huh!

You are right, the fact that you are a fan of the game doesn't disqualify you.  the fact that you are offering delusions does.

Is it down for the count though?  We will have to see.  But considering their success so far, the problem was that people had to pay for content.  The problem was the content was utter crap.

Originally posted by Presbytier

Here is the problem; I do not think the Devs don't care. I think they care allot. I do beleive the game can feel closed off, but I do not think that is a real problem. Also they have never given any indication they don"t care what the fans think; space combat is the way it is primarily do to limitation of the engine.

So the game is limited to an incredibly uninspiring Starfox 64 because of the Hero Engine?

[mod edit]

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

So to summarize, it should have been B2P, it released too early, and was lacking the proper amount of content?

 

Sounds about right. I actually agree with everything OP said. Can't speak for the genuine trolls, but I didn't think SWTOR was a bad concept, just a bad game. If it had more time to reach it's potential and attempted the leap away from p2p, it would be thriving. Not to mention, next year would have been a better release for them; only thing's coming out (far as I know) are TESO (lol), Wild Star (very different style and aesthetic), and...actually, those are the only two big MMOs I can think of. In any case, they'd have had less competition and the game would have been allowed to stand out more.

 

Oh well.

Under those conditions they probably would've had around 2-3 million people.  Not a smashing success compared to what they put in, but they would have a reasonable sucess on their hands.

Yet the content would still suck.  It would've just kicked the can down another 6 months, so after a year they would have lost 75% of their playerbase, instead of 6 months.

Once again, the problem was never that people were paying for the game.  Nobody says "gosh this game sucks, but I'd play it if it were free!"  When it came to the leveling up experience, it was as boilerplate as possible.  The voicevers masked it for the first 20 levels, then it really became every other grind.

IMO this whole "End game" stuff so many have got used to becuase of the shallow minded developer known as Blizzard is ruining games.

Weather the game lacks content is up to each individual.I do not believe lack of end game has any bearing at all.

A smart developer makes the CORE of the game VERY desirable to play,end game should be the LAST thing to worry about as a designer.The reason is when you make a really fun game to play,you have no problems going back and playing other classes,that is if the developer implemented a WOW type copy cat design of utilizing ALTS.

IMO the ALT design is another part of the failure to create a game for longevity,it points directly at "end game" which is  always a bad idea.Once you lock players into thinking end game is THE GAME,then they do not want to play alts,they don't care about the MAIN game,they want MORE end game.

I hope Bio Ware has learned their lesson on creating longevity in a MMO,this is the problem when single player game designers try to make MMO's.The bottom line is do NOT copy Wow's design of racing through quests to get to END GAME,it is a really bad design.

SUB CLASS is the way to go,it eliminates the need for ALTS,and eliminates the emphasis on end game,so it is two plus developers should be looking at.Also the obvious create a FUN intuitive combat system so players are having FUN and not worrying abotu what is at end game or does the game have enough end game content.

Originally posted by Enigmatus
Kind of doesn't help that Bioware, at least not to my knowledge except maybe Mass Effect 3, had no prior multiplayer experience, and the members who did have experience have a reputation for botching up MMOs...so yeah.

Although Warhammer had many faults, it did have public quests, tons of PVP warzones, really decent RvR, and introduced paricle detection so you couldn't run through opposing pplayers. Get ready to cringe, but Warhammer introduced a lot of things that Guild Wars 2 seems to be picking up and running with. Bioware seemed to stick to copying WoW and ignoring anything nice that came out of Mythic. And when I say copying, not so well. At least in my opinion Alterac Valley was far more fuun then Illum. (and it worked, 40 vs. 40 and NPCs in 2005.)

Sorry if it seems if I'm piling it on, but many of Bioware's descions are baffling.

story is all the game has... it holds your hand completely through every other thing possible... everything in the game is on rails, no choice where to go, no help getting groups till recently,  no real factional pvp.

Just a decent rpg morphed into a crappy crappy mmo.  I played up to the 3rd planet and that was it... I was done.  My highest char was a level 27 trooper and I just could not stand having no option but to keep space baring through stories to progress linearly through a predetermined path while my choices factional choices have no impact  other than my eyes start to glow and I can only use certain color crystals.... oooh ahhh wow.

I really looked forward to this game but now I just keep thinking they killed my SWG for this? (played swg since beta, actually had to go out and buy a better computer to play the game... had dial up back then still took me 20 hours to download the game lol)

I was really excited about this game and played a lot of Beta. The Developers didn't listen to feed back at all for this game. It took a mega thread for a reply for a Dev.

I played until 1.2 was in Beta and gave my feed back. We saw issues with rewards with PVP and they didn't do anything until after it was implemented. They called it a Bug. I was done and forever done with this game. 

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Originally posted by Kakkzooka
This should be as entertaining as the "Why Betamax is not down for the count!" thread.

---

Beta who?

Originally posted by william0532
SWTOR could completely make a come back, all bioware needs to do is make their game fun. Any of it.

Thats hard to do when you are stuck with a game that uses the same mechanics that have been done to death. 

It will get more players when it goes F2P but it still has nothing new or different to offer gamers.

Originally posted by Presbytier

This has been a whirl wind of a year for WoW clones; there is no doubt about that. It started out as the second coming of WoW clones and now it is declared as an example as to why WoW clones are done for..

Here, fix'd it for ya. When a company decides to make a clone it makes the first step on the road to a fiasco. Next inevitable steps are: "we need a shiny IP to sell more copies", "we don't want to break the formula for success", "we just need one new feature for ads", etc. Lazy thinking, lazy writing, lazy programming. I think the whole thing can be called 'wannabe cash cow mentality'. (Probably too long. Someone should come up with something shorter.)

But themepark MMOs don't have to be WoW clones. Just look at GW2.

Here is an even bigger question.

Clone Wars Adventures, had 10 million users in March.

http://www.starwars.com/news/clone_wars_adventures_10_million.html

And they already have a cash shop.

https://www.clonewarsadventures.com/stationCash.html

So as hilarious as it sounds, is SWTOR less profitable than its kids game counterpart?

Originally posted by Sleepyfish

Here is an even bigger question.

Clone Wars Adventures, had 10 million users in March.

http://www.starwars.com/news/clone_wars_adventures_10_million.html

 

And they already have a cash shop.

https://www.clonewarsadventures.com/stationCash.html

 

So as hilarious as it sounds, is SWTOR less profitable than its kids game counterpart?

I actually didn't even know of that games existence until you mentioned it right now.

Originally posted by Sleepyfish

Here is an even bigger question.

Clone Wars Adventures, had 10 million users in March.

http://www.starwars.com/news/clone_wars_adventures_10_million.html

 

And they already have a cash shop.

https://www.clonewarsadventures.com/stationCash.html

 

So as hilarious as it sounds, is SWTOR less profitable than its kids game counterpart?

Well kids get to play what their parents install on their computers to play, generally.  The game is surely fun.

Kids games will always do well .. while adult games have more scrutiny.  Same with kids books vs teen/adult books.

Adults are more willing to spend money for their kids enjoyment than their own.  Hence why if an adult MMO comes around it has to be worth paying for, which SWTOR was not.

Originally posted by Deleted User

Originally posted by Kakkzooka
This should be as entertaining as the "Why Betamax is not down for the count!" thread.

Beta Max was superior. get over it VHS people!

" Laser Disk" beat them both...  and does anyone rember 4-trak tapes?