SWTOR: Random Complaint thread. F2P means P2Win

[Lucavi]

After ffxi that IS quick...

Why would you compare an ancient Japanese MMO to something that released recently? That's like comparing a naginata to a WMD in terms of technological advancements and destructive ability. Just as XI stood and fell on against the accomplishments of its peers, so to should SW do the same.

[Eldelphia]

XI is still running....

Well I don't really understand what you want. SWTOR is 6 months old and fixes things every week. We get the odd new feature and update inbetween game updates. These are every 2-3 months and are bigger than some expansion packs.

SWTOR is not perfect but its fun

[Neoscrilla]

SWTOR got a hell of a lot more fun for me when I quit. The new raid (Denova) was pretty cool though

[Goldencarnage]

XI is still running....

Well I don't really understand what you want. SWTOR is 6 months old and fixes things every week. We get the odd new feature and update inbetween game updates. These are every 2-3 months and are bigger than some expansion packs.

SWTOR is not perfect but its fun

I'm still enjoying the game. I've got 2 50s w/ almost both having full rakata and yet raids are still fun. Only complaint i have right now is the lack of population on my server. 1.3 can't come soon enough!

[Ambrosia]

Game Breaker TV: The Republic

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game...oomed-to-fail/

or

http://a58.video2.blip.tv/8290010868...=1037&bri=40.6


This is from episode 93 posted on May 30th. Folks on the panel are Gary from GameBreaker.tv, Larry from Massively.com, Justin from DarthHater.com, and Ed Park from Taugrim.com. The episode clocks in at an hour and eleven minutes. Here are the tidbits I found interesting from the episode. I try to match up the comments with the actual time they said as best I could. I would say if you can, watch the video from 2:22 to 41:11 if you don't want to watch it all.

This post is very long so I am breaking it up per comments. Any opinions of mine I give in (). Ones that really stood out I bolded.

2:22
Gary: Stephen Reid the community manager; some of you may remember was part of Game Breaker at one time. He was let go as well.

3:22
Gary: You don't want to get into the numbers?

Justin: The numbers are very very large unfortunately. (This is in reference to the amount of layoffs)

3:40
Justin: Well they said it was very large. E.A. comments that they would be laying off quite a few.

4:06
Gary: How many people were working on the team in total? Do we know? What was the total team?

4:10
Justin: I think the total max was around 450 people.

4:16
Ed: At the time around GDC 2012 the number was over 600 people.

4:23
Larry: There was a time when they had over 1000 people working on game at one point or another. (Meaning not all at the same time)

4:32
Larry: At the time of the Guild Summit they were sitting around 450 at BioWare, Austin.

4:49
Gary: How many? (In terms of people "estimate" getting the pink slip)

4:50
Ed: *He signals 200*

5:25
Justin: It is pretty much what I've heard from the unconfirmed rumors. It’s a human cost. You are talking about people I got to know personally and professionally in the past 2 and a half years. I know more personally than I am willing to share who were let go.

6:30
Gary: Did anybody see any of these signs early on?

6:37
Justin: They were expecting it. They mentioned it in the conference call. No one knew they day, it seems they had no warning.

7:07
Larry: The thing that really shocked me about it; it was companywide, it wasn't just the Q&A team or some other redundant team.

7:52
Larry: (He comments on one of James Ohlen’s quotes)

"Unlike a lot of other game companies that, once they launch a game, downsize their teams radically, our plan is to keep the team together and continue to focus on building content."

8:13
Larry: Apparently something changed.

8:22
Gary: When earning calls come in... they are dealing with people who put the money behind it... the effect of loss of subscribers... people on the inside not being happy... usually what people want to see... the very first thing is... they want to see heads roll. (He jumps around a bit here with all these comments) So they see heads roll and at least they see some form of budget cuts. There is some sort of money being recouped, and that is what usually execs like to see when times are tough.

8:51
Justin: Agrees to Gary's last statement.

9:31
Gary: When companies, especially MMOs, once they get past the launch phase there is always a restructuring phase. There is always redundancy and things that shift.

9:52
Gary: You can understand people from customer service, things like that could have been handled. These would have been the first people to be caught up in the layoff. But in fact, it was really down in the trenches: developers and community managers. Stephen Reid, being part of Game Breaker at one time shocked seeing his name in the mix. He was everywhere, and you kind of associated the game with those guys.

10:34
Justin: I think that was the one area that was kind of weird from the cuts standpoint, the other areas I kind of understand. There is risk of payroll concerns of higher level people.

11:26
Justin: Made his face (Stephen Reid) engrained in the community, and once he is gone, who else is left? Is it David Bass or Joe Gonzalez? They lost the PR oomph by this one move alone.

13:23
Gary: Server merges are going to come. When that happens, everybody screams Star Wars is dead! The MMO is dead! It’s crashing! It’s over with! This seems to be 1000 times worse, this looks really really bad. (He is probably talking about doing the layoffs and how it was done first versus doing the server merges)

13:44
Gary: I have to ask the question: Does anyone think that the numbers are possibly worse than what we are being led on to, and we are not privy to the information?

14:07
Ed: It is a trailing indicator rather than a leading indicator.

16:43
Justin: The company health is an issue. They cut not only from BioWare, but also from other places. It wasn't just these unconfirmed 150-200 people that were cut from BioWare, there are several hundred others cut throughout E.A.

18:41
Gary: In hindsight, everybody is going to look back and go: Why did BioWare have to make a turn into the MMO space? There is a large part of the community that said don't do this. Make BioWare games. You are amazing at doing these story driven games. They wanted to do something totally different. (As in copy 90% of WOW and slap on the story with voice over aspect)

19:24
Ed: Before RIFT people were starting to question whether is it even viable to enter the market because no one was doing well except for World of Warcraft.

(For a long term P2P MMO I would also put EVE Online here and maybe one other MMO that have been able to either maintain a substantial amount of subscriptions or in EVE's case being able to stabilize and grow... compared to every other P2P MMO that has been released post 2005, that either has gone through severe server merges or F2P or closed shop)

19:51
Ed: The amount of effort that BioWare expended in the 1-49 experience, which almost everyone would say it was tons of fun. The problem is they spent so much time there, that they didn't spend enough time in endgame. There was not enough endgame content. Because they spent so much time from 1-49, this is probably why they were pushed out the door before they were ready because so much money was going into the vertical game. BioWare might have thought optimistically that the 4th pillar story was sufficient to hold people in the long term. There is not enough stuff at endgame as I would need to stay here indefinitely; this is the feedback I got.

20:40
Gary: I don't think anybody disses the leveling process and the story. Everybody seemed to love it. But once you did it... now what?

22:13
Justin: The biggest misstep that they made early on was not getting a huge patch in time. We sat here wait for 1.2, I mean how many times did we discuss 1.2 in the show. It seemed like it was never going to come out. That fact alone, initially not having enough endgame content; people immediately went away from it. And that is hard to come back especially after the initial drop of players that get disinterested naturally.

23:36
Gary: The MMO gamer is much more invested in things that happen behind the scenes versus the average gamer because it is such a long term commitment that you question these things and you go, hey do I want to invest my time here? And I can only think that this will turn off many players who are currently still playing.

25:18
Ed: Most games don't recover don't recover from the initial drop. It is really hard to plateau and climb again. The only games that have been able to do this are when they switch their model like Turbine did with LOTRO.

27:07
Ed: Do they have a sufficiently large team there to improve the existing content and crank out new content to retain or obtain new subscribers that is really the big question.

27:19
Justin: The biggest question for me is can they do that and follow the story model and the 4th pillar and story is important. There would be nothing more disorienting that new content has nothing to do with story and it has to do with endgame alerts.

28:04
Gary: I could see them abandoning the 4th pillar of story and just trying to adopt some other mechanics like in World of Warcraft, just put this in, just put this in, just put this in.

30:04
Justin: To me they have to decide which way they are going. They are either going to put more content for endgame and focus in on that, or decide on story and try to retain the casual players. It is going to be very very hard to continue on like that and try to carry both.

30:24
Larry: They have to look at who their core players are. They give examples on who their core players are.

31:11
Larry: I think the core of the game is more casual. We have seen the concurrent users drop down drastically as well beyond just subscription numbers. They may play the game a couple of times a week instead of playing every day. It is a bit more casual.

32:15
ED: I LEARNED MY LESSON BACK IN WARHAMMER NOT TO BLINDLY HOPE THAT A GAME WILL TURN AROUND EVEN WHEN ALL THE SIGNS ARE THERE THAT IT ISN'T GOING TO COME BACK. (You can say this about 99% of the theme park based MMORPG games post 2005 till present that follow the P2P model and copy 90% or more from EQI/EQII/WOW for Western developers and LineageI/LineageII/Aion for Eastern developers)

32:35
Ed: We are not just people that buy games and play for a week or two and put in on a shelf and never play it again. MMO players tend to invest heavily in their characters. By the same token they get involved on the community on their server, stuff that matters to us. I like the feeling of being part of something larger than just my own character.

33:11
Gary: Is this news kind of putting the fear in the panel even... we do a show... 4 people who are really super hyped for SWTOR... one runs a website solely... the other is a writer. Is this scaring the panel? I know Justin won't tell me because he runs DarthHater. He is not going to tell me if he is jumping ship. Even the hardcore players have to be sort of... the thought has to be crossing your mind at this point. Are these the telltale signs of a game that is not going to come back?

36:34
Gary: Is it a good time for SWTOR to go F2P? Would we be a little bit more forgiving and see where this road takes us?

38:01
Ed: If you are going to charge people upfront for the cost of the box and charge them $15 a month, they have tons of opportunity to opt out in that this game isn't worth my money anymore. Developers need to decide how they can make the cost for the game, not to provide too many opportunities for the customer to get frustrated and leave.

You create pressure on yourself to make those people happy because they are going to be extremely demanding and not be patient or forgiving. You need to create a critical mass environment. Whoever logs in, whichever server they are on feels vibrant and active enough. Folks have stopped playing because their server doesn't have critical mass. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE AROUND THEIR SERVER TO FEEL LIKE AN MMO.

39:15
Gary: We just spent the last 39 minutes discussing the game that has only been out for how many months? Layoffs, how are they going to fix it, will it go F2P, what they need to do to get people back. This is not a good sign.

39:40
Larry: It could be worse.

40:05
Gary: Most of these MMOs didn’t spend this kind of money or this hype and have the Star Wars IP. You have the #1 most iconic IP in the World. How angry are the money people at the top must be. How did you screw this up? (Easy: not learning from the NGE debacle which was the #1 reason SWG went downhill fast. Only this time around copy World of Warcraft and tack on voice overs and story... instead of just copying World of Warcraft for SWG.)

40:27
Larry: Star Wars and Lucas Arts do not have the best reputation as far as gaming is concerned.

41:02
Garry: What else is bigger than Star Wars?

41:10
Larry: Mario MMO.

[Guyverarmor]

In regards to the NGE update and Combat update...if those did not happen, can almost guarantee that SWG would still be around with people. That game was fucking fun before those
two update happened... I mean, I stayed after the NGE for a bit...but the combat update just put the nail in the coffin.

[ringthree]

XI is still running....

Well I don't really understand what you want. SWTOR is 6 months old and fixes things every week. We get the odd new feature and update inbetween game updates. These are every 2-3 months and are bigger than some expansion packs.

SWTOR is not perfect but its fun

Bigger than some expansion packs? There have been two real updates so far. 1.2 had legacy (nice window dressing but not much more), a FP, an Op, and some other random fixes. 1.3 had an incomplete Op, an event, some other random stuff and failed to deliver on rated WZ.

Let's get real here. While they were substantial sized updates, fixing problems with the game does not count as content.

[Ambrosia]

Wonderful magnificent article!

SWTOR – MMO subscriber numbers “are funny things,” lots of “variables to consider,” says BioWare


http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/01/swto...-says-bioware/


"Speaking with Spong at MCM London Comic Con, Lusinchi said that while he is no expert when it comes to subscriber numbers, he is given feedback when it comes to gameplay events, such as the Rakghoul Plague.

“Subscriber numbers are funny things. How you count them – the math you use – really matters, and there are lots of variables to consider,” he said. “Such as, people that simply subscribe compared to people that actually buy the box. There are very different numbers out there, and you should be smart about which one you use when you talk to the press.

“All games of this nature, have a set of variables that are constantly changing. You will have a certain number of people that buy the box and never install it. I know it sounds strange, but it happens. There are people that play it, and then decide after ten minutes that it’s not for them – that’s a small percentage, but every game has them. Finally you have people who play for a couple of months, finish the story, and then be done with it.

“All of those are natural things to be expected, and they will all impact the subscriber numbers, depending on how you’re counting them in the first place.

“I do get really good feedback – what we call metrics, or telemetry – that allow me to actually do my job. So it’s more interesting for me to get feedback on how many people played the Rakghoul Plague event, something that happened a few weeks ago. To know if people who hadn’t played for a while came back just to play that… was it so that we had a surge in subscriptions so that maybe people that lapsed came back… I get to know how many people – what percentage of people – participated in it, and how many people finished it. And that’s a number I can work with.”

There have been many analyst reports over the last few months citing drops in subscription numbers for SWTOR. Recently, a SWTOR player took it upon himself to do some server population figuring, and found that the average game server has 344 players online at a given time."



Me: OKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKOK
So what type of maths do we need? Calculus? Topology? Combinatorics? Logic? Number Theory? Doughnut Theory?


EDIT: Forgot to post this: The person that he commented on having an average of 344 players can be found here:


http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=449144



And the numbers (simultaneous logins):


Date . Population
5/11/2012 95,859
5/16/2012 85,995
5/18/2012 83,194
5/21/2012 76,255
5/23/2012 73,693
5/25/2012 72,203
5/28/2012 66,574
5/30/2012 66,323
6/01/2012 65,772

"You should be smart about which one you use when you talk to the press."

[Shuichi]

Mmmmm....yeah. How many subscribers you have is such a difficult thing to determine.

>.>

[Grey Jorildyn]

So glad Bioware has finally solidified themselves in the mmo world. Knowing how to spin bullshit well is a staple of a company determined to be successful in this cutthroat business!

[Ohemgee]

People would be less forgiving if this game released with what 1.2 had to offer. The game lacks the depth of a good MMO. The game launched half assed with the expectations that people won't hit 50 and clear through the end game content by the end of the first month. They had 1 and a half raids, and a bunch of dungeons (which at the time isn't bad).

They made flashpoint gear (columi) easier to obtain so that your logical next step would be to go in to Ops right? WELL THERE WERE ONLY ONE TWO OPS TO GO IN TO. Then what? PVP? That was broken until April (I lost the incentive to pvp because there's almost no point in doing it unless you're in full BM gear). Illum? Fucking tragedy. And that's it. Flashpoints that you really don't need to do, Ops that are relatively easy to beat, PVP that you can ignore.

I look back at FFXI and I'm amazed at how much content there was for every release. Sky, Sea, Aht Urgan, the other shit that came after that. THATS real development, purposeful time sinks that force players in to investing time in to their characters. Nobody fucking cares about the story after they hit 50, so stop spoon feeding me this bull shit.

Fuck you EA and James Ohlen. Get a real hair cut.

[Biddinger]

People would be less forgiving if this game released with what 1.2 had to offer. The game lacks the depth of a good MMO. The game launched half assed with the expectations that people won't hit 50 and clear through the end game content by the end of the first month. They had 1 and a half raids, and a bunch of dungeons (which at the time isn't bad).

They made flashpoint gear (columi) easier to obtain so that your logical next step would be to go in to Ops right? WELL THERE WERE ONLY ONE TWO OPS TO GO IN TO. Then what? PVP? That was broken until April (I lost the incentive to pvp because there's almost no point in doing it unless you're in full BM gear). Illum? Fucking tragedy. And that's it. Flashpoints that you really don't need to do, Ops that are relatively easy to beat, PVP that you can ignore.

I look back at FFXI and I'm amazed at how much content there was for every release. Sky, Sea, Aht Urgan, the other shit that came after that. THATS real development, purposeful time sinks that force players in to investing time in to their characters. Nobody fucking cares about the story after they hit 50, so stop spoon feeding me this bull shit.

Fuck you EA and James Ohlen. Get a real hair cut.

Although I'm still playing the game...I have to agree with everything that was just said.

[Dantrag]

People would be less forgiving if this game released with what 1.2 had to offer. The game lacks the depth of a good MMO. The game launched half assed with the expectations that people won't hit 50 and clear through the end game content by the end of the first month. They had 1 and a half raids, and a bunch of dungeons (which at the time isn't bad).

They made flashpoint gear (columi) easier to obtain so that your logical next step would be to go in to Ops right? WELL THERE WERE ONLY ONE TWO OPS TO GO IN TO. Then what? PVP? That was broken until April (I lost the incentive to pvp because there's almost no point in doing it unless you're in full BM gear). Illum? Fucking tragedy. And that's it. Flashpoints that you really don't need to do, Ops that are relatively easy to beat, PVP that you can ignore.

I look back at FFXI and I'm amazed at how much content there was for every release. Sky, Sea, Aht Urgan, the other shit that came after that. THATS real development, purposeful time sinks that force players in to investing time in to their characters. Nobody fucking cares about the story after they hit 50, so stop spoon feeding me this bull shit.

Fuck you EA and James Ohlen. Get a real hair cut.

We got the game after a years worth of development and an expansion. Level cap in FFXI was 50 originally and raised to 70 around the time we started and then 75 after about 6 months.

[ringthree]

We got the game after a years worth of development and an expansion. Level cap in FFXI was 50 originally and raised to 70 around the time we started and then 75 after about 6 months.

That is true, but doesn't deny the fact that the time invested in leveling alone was enough to hold players over until more content was introduced.

[fantasticdan]

People were willing to put up with a long, content-less level grind back in the day because it was their first MMO, it will never fly again for a high budget game.

[Cleverness]

Like it was mentioned awhile ago, a lot of people aren't willing to put up with a major grind in a large scale MMO, if you made a niche one then sure, people will deal with it. But the problem with making leveling easy is you HAVE to have alot of stuff for the player to do endgame, because they are going to be breezing through the leveling so fast it's inevitable they will reach it. You can't have fast leveling + scarce endgame content, it just never ends well. Same shit happened to Star Trek Online. FF11 endgame worked before because A) leveling + meriting were a huge timesink and B) there were a multitude of events to do. Both of those combined gave the game alot of content. Plus since you can do everything on practically 1 character, people were more inclined to do a lot on just 1 character as opposed to other games where you'd need to farm gear/etc for each class you want to play since they are different characters.

SWTOR made a really engaging and interactive leveling experience, which is hard to do nowadays. They just needed to carry that over into endgame properly since people weren't gonna be wasting 5 hours partying in Kuftal Tunnel to get 1-2 level ups like in old school FF11.

[Dantrag]

I don't mind some form of level grind. I think 2-3 months of decent amount of playing should be how long it takes to get to a certain level cap. But 2 weeks is just way too short.

[Ohemgee]

End game shouldn't be leveling your alts. That's fucking stupid. The level grind shouldn't be like FFXI, but apply FFXI's end game grind to make it worth while.

Not sure if anyone remembers this from the guild summit:

http://www.dual-ring.net/wp-content/...evel-Curve.jpg

BUT WHO CARES. Streamlining the leveling experience doesn't really say much about an MMO.

[Ohemgee]

Speak of the devil, level cap increase in the future.

[ringthree]

People were willing to put up with a long, content-less level grind back in the day because it was their first MMO, it will never fly again for a high budget game.

No doubt, but if you want to buy yourself some time to set up proper end-game, it is one area that is massively neglected by current MMOs.